M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
Chapter 12
Miriam and Aaron Oppose Moses. 1 Miriam[a] and Aaron criticized Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married, for he had married an Ethiopian woman. 2 They said, “Has the Lord only spoken through Moses? Has he not also spoken through us?” And the Lord heard this.
3 Now Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else upon the face of the earth. 4 Suddenly the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and Miriam, saying, “Come out, you three, from the tent of meeting.” And the three of them came out. 5 The Lord came down in a pillar of cloud and stood at the entrance to the tabernacle and summoned Aaron and Miriam, and they both came forward. 6 [b]He said, “Hear now my words:
“If anyone among you is a prophet,
I, the Lord, make myself known to him in a vision,
I speak to him in a dream.
7 It is not that way with Moses,
who is entrusted with all my household.
8 I speak to him face to face,
clearly, and not in riddles.
He beholds the very form of the Lord.
Why then were you not afraid to criticize my servant Moses?” 9 Then the anger of the Lord blazed against them, and he departed.
10 Miriam’s Punishment. When the cloud lifted up off of the tabernacle, there stood Miriam, leprous, white as snow. Aaron turned toward Miriam and saw that she was a leper. 11 Aaron said to Moses, “Please, my lord, do not hold the sin against us that we have so foolishly committed! 12 Let her not be like a stillborn child who comes forth from its mother’s womb with its flesh half eaten away.” 13 Moses cried out to the Lord, “O God, I beseech you, heal her!” 14 The Lord replied to Moses, “If her father had only spit in her face, would she not have been shamed for seven days? Confine her outside of the camp for seven days. After that, let her be received back in.”
15 So Miriam was confined outside of the camp for seven days. The people did not move on until Miriam was brought back in. 16 After this, the people left Hazeroth and they camped in the Desert of Paran.
Chapter 13
Twelve Scouts.[c] 1 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Send some men out to explore the land of Canaan that I am giving to the people of Israel. Send one of the leaders from each of the ancestral tribes.”
3 So Moses sent them out from the Desert of Paran by command of the Lord, each of them being one of the heads of the people of Israel. 4 These are their names:
from the tribe of Reuben there was Shammua, the son of Zaccur;
5 from the tribe of Simeon there was Shaphat, the son of Hori;
6 from the tribe of Judah there was Caleb, the son of Jephunneh;
7 from the tribe of Issachar there was Igal, the son of Joseph;
8 from the tribe of Ephraim there was Hoshea, the son of Nun;
9 from the tribe of Benjamin there was Palti, the son of Raphu;
10 from the tribe of Zebulun there was Gaddiel, the son of Sodi;
11 from the tribe of Joseph, that is, from the tribe of Manasseh, there was Gaddi, the son of Susi;
12 from the tribe of Dan there was Ammiel, the son of Gemalli;
13 from the tribe of Asher there was Sethur, the son of Michael;
14 from the tribe of Naphtali there was Nahbi, the son of Vophsi;
15 and from the tribe of Gad there was Geuel, the son of Machi.
16 These are the names of those whom Moses sent to explore the land. Moses gave Hoshea, the son of Nun, the name Joshua.
17 Moses sent them to explore the land of Canaan. He said to them, “Go up into the Negeb,[d] then go up into the hill country. 18 See what the land is like. Discover whether the people who live there are strong or weak, few or many. 19 How is the land upon which they are living, is it good or bad? How are the cities in which they dwell, are they open camps or fortified? 20 How is the land, is it fertile or poor? Are there trees or not? Try to bring back some of the fruit of the land” (for it was the season of the first ripe grapes).
21 So they went up and explored the land, from the Desert of Zin up to Rehob, near the entrance to Lebo-hamath.[e] 22 They went up into the Negeb and came to Hebron where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, descendants of Anak dwelt. (Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) 23 Then they came to the Valley of Eshcol.[f] There they cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes. Two men carried it on a pole. They also brought along some pomegranates and figs. 24 That place was called the Valley of Eschol because of the cluster of grapes that the people of Israel cut there.
25 The Scouts’ Report. They returned from exploring the land at the end of forty days. 26 They left and went back to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly of the people of Israel that was camped in Kadesh in the Desert of Paran. They brought back a report to them and showed the whole assembly the fruit of the land.
27 Then they told Moses, “We went into the land into which you sent us, and it truly flows with milk and honey. This is its fruit. 28 However, a powerful people dwells in that land, and the cities are highly fortified. Furthermore, we even saw the descendants of Anak there. 29 The Amalekites live in the land of the Negeb, and the Hittites, the Jebusites, and the Amorites live in the hill country. The Canaanites live by the sea and along the banks of the Jordan.”
30 Then Caleb quieted the people who were standing before Moses and he said, “Let us go at once to take possession of it, for we shall surely conquer it.” 31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We will not be able to go up against the people for they are surely stronger than we are.” 32 Thus, they brought a negative report of the land which they had explored for the people of Israel saying, “The land which we went through to explore is a land that devours its inhabitants. All the people we saw in it were immense. 33 We saw giants there, the descendants of Anak (the Anak come from the Nephilim). We felt as if we were only grasshoppers, and we seemed like that to them.”[g]
Psalm 49[a]
Deceptive Riches
1 For the director.[b] A psalm of the sons of Korah.
2 [c]Hear this, all you peoples;
listen carefully, all you inhabitants of the world,
3 whether lowborn or highborn,
rich and poor alike.
4 My mouth will speak words of wisdom,
and the utterance of my heart[d] will give understanding.
5 I will listen carefully to a proverb,
and with the harp[e] I will interpret my riddle.
6 Why should I be afraid in evil times
when I am beset by the wickedness of my foes,[f]
7 those who place their trust in their wealth
and boast of the abundance of their riches?
8 [g]For no one can ever redeem himself
or pay a ransom to God for his release.
9 The price to ransom a life would be too costly;
no one would ever have enough
10 to enable him to live on forever
and avoid being consigned to the pit.
11 [h]For all can see that the wise die,
just as the foolish and the stupid also pass away,
and all leave their wealth to others.[i]
12 Their graves are their eternal homes,
their dwelling places for all generations,
even though they had named lands after themselves.
13 Despite his riches,
a man cannot escape death;
he is like the beasts that perish.[j]
14 Such is the destiny of those who trust in themselves alone,
the fate of those who are pleased with their lot.[k] Selah
15 Like sheep[l] they are destined for the netherworld,
with death as their shepherd.
They descend straight to the grave
where their bodies will waste away;
the netherworld will be their home.
16 But God will ransom me from the netherworld;
he will take me[m] to himself. Selah
17 [n]Do not be afraid when someone becomes rich
and the splendor of his house increases.
18 When he dies, he will take nothing with him;
his wealth will not accompany him below.[o]
19 Although during his lifetime he considered himself blessed:
“They will praise me because I have done well,”
20 he will end up joining the company of his ancestors
who will never again see the light.[p]
21 Despite his riches,
a man who does not have wisdom
is like the beasts that perish.[q]
The Internal Decadence of a People
Chapter 2
Jerusalem, the Religious Center.[a] 1 This is the vision seen by Isaiah, the son of Amoz, concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house
will be established as the highest mountain
and raised high above the hills.
Then all the nations will stream toward it;
3 many peoples will come to it and say,
“Come, let us ascend the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
so that he may teach us his ways
and we may walk in his paths.”
For from Zion will go forth instruction,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
4 He will judge between the nations
and serve as an arbiter for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.
One nation will not lift up a sword against another,
nor will they ever again be trained for war.
The Lord’s Triumph Will Come[b]
5 Come, O house of Jacob,
let us walk in the light of the Lord.
6 For you, O Lord, have abandoned your people,
the house of Jacob.
They are surrounded by fortune tellers
and by soothsayers like the Philistines,
and they are allying themselves with foreigners.[c]
7 Their land is full of silver and gold,
and their treasures are without limit.
Their land is filled with horses,
and there is no end to their chariots.[d]
8 Their land is full of idols;
they bow down before the work of their hands,
before what their own fingers have fashioned.
9 Therefore human nature has been humbled
and mankind has been brought low;
do not forgive them.
10 Let them conceal themselves among the rocks
and hide in the dust
in their terror of the Lord
and from the splendor of his majesty.
11 The haughty looks of men will be brought low
and human arrogance will be humbled;
the Lord alone will be exalted
on that day.
12 For the Lord of hosts has ordained a day
against all those who are proud and haughty,
against all those who have been exalted and raised high,
13 against all the lofty and proud cedars of Lebanon
and against all the oaks of Bashan,
14 against all the soaring mountains
and all the towering hills,
15 against every high tower
and every fortified wall,
16 against all the ships of Tarshish[e]
and every stately vessel.
17 Human pride will be humbled
and human arrogance will be brought low.
On that day,
the Lord alone will be exalted.
18 The idols will completely disappear;
19 they will crawl into the caves of the rocks
and the holes of the ground,
fleeing from the terror of the Lord
and the splendor of his majesty
when he arises to strike the world with terror.
20 On that day people will throw away
to the moles and to the bats
their idols of silver and gold
that they had made for themselves to worship.
21 They will crawl into the crevices of the rocks
and the clefts in the cliffs
to hide from the terror of the Lord
and the splendor of his majesty
when he arises to terrify the earth.
22 Have nothing more to do with men
who have only the breath in their nostrils.
Of what value are they?
Chapter 10
A Unique Sacrifice[a]
The Law Was a Shadow. 1 The Law contains little more than a shadow of the good things to come and not the true image of them. These sacrifices that are offered year after year can never bring the worshipers to perfection. 2 If they could, those sacrifices would no longer be offered, for the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all and would no longer feel guilty for sins.
3 However, in these sacrifices sins are brought to mind year after year, 4 because sins cannot be taken away by the blood of bulls and goats.
One Sacrifice for Sins. 5 That is why, when Christ came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but a body you have prepared for me.
6 You took no delight
in holocausts and sin offerings.
7 Then I said, ‘As it is written of me in the scroll,
behold, I have come to do your will, O God.’ ”
8 First he says, “Sacrifices and offerings, holocausts and sin offerings, you neither desired nor delighted in,” even though they are offered according to the Law. 9 Then he adds, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He thus abolishes the first to establish the second. 10 And it was by this “will” that we have been consecrated through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
11 [b]Day after day every priest stands to perform his ministry, offering over and over again the same sacrifices that can never remove sins. 12 But Jesus offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, and then took his seat at the right hand of God, 13 where he now waits until his enemies are made his footstool. 14 Therefore, by a single offering he has made perfect forever those who are being sanctified.
15 The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. For he first says,
16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, says the Lord.
I will place my laws in their hearts
and inscribe them on their minds.”
17 Then he also asserts,
“Their sins and their lawless acts
I will remember no more.”
18 When these have been forgiven, there are no longer any offerings for sins.
Perseverance in Faith[c]
The Need To Stand Firm
19 Let Us Approach with Sincerity of Heart.[d] Therefore, brethren, the blood of Jesus has given us confidence to enter the sanctuary 20 by the new and living way that he has opened for us through the veil, that is, through his flesh. 21 Since we have a great priest over the household of God, 22 let us approach with sincerity of heart and the full assurance of faith, with hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and bodies washed in pure water.
23 Let us remain firm in the confession of our hope without wavering, for the one who made the promise is trustworthy. 24 And let us consider how to spur one another to love and good works. 25 Do not neglect to attend your assemblies, as some do, but rather encourage one another, especially since you can see the Day[e] approaching.
26 Apostasy Remains Unforgiven.[f] If we deliberately persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth, then there no longer remains any sacrifice for sins. 27 There is only a terrifying expectation of judgment and of a fierce fire that will consume the adversaries.
28 Anyone who violates the Law of Moses is put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. 29 How much more punishment do you think is deserved by the one who has contempt for the Son of God, profanes the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and insults the Spirit of grace? 30 For we know the one who said,
“Vengeance is mine; I will repay,”
and
“The Lord will judge his people.”
31 It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
32 Do Not Abandon Your Assurance.[g] Remember the days gone by when, after you had been enlightened,[h] you endured a difficult struggle filled with suffering. 33 Sometimes you were publicly exposed to abuse and persecution, and sometimes you were companions of those who were treated in the same way. 34 You not only had compassion upon those who were in prison but also cheerfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you realized that you possessed something better and more lasting.
35 Therefore, do not lose your confidence now, since your reward will be so great. 36 You need to be steadfast if you want to do the will of God and receive what he has promised.
37 “For, after a little while,
he who is to come will do so,
and he will not delay.
38 My righteous one shall live by faith,
but if he shrinks back,
I will not be pleased with him.”
39 But we are not among those who draw back and are lost. Rather, we are among those who have faith and are saved.
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