Professor Horner’s Reading Plan

¹“Do not judge, so that you won’t be judged.

²For you will be judged by the same standard with which you judge others, and you will be measured by the same measure you use.

³Why do you look at the splinter in your brother’s eye but don’t notice the beam of wood in your own eye?

⁴Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ and look, there’s a beam of wood in your own eye?

⁵Hypocrite! First take the beam of wood out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye.

⁶Don’t give what is holy to dogs or toss your pearls before pigs, or they will trample them under their feet, turn, and tear you to pieces.

⁷“Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.

⁸For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.

⁹Who among you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?

¹⁰Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?

¹¹If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him.

¹²Therefore, whatever you want others to do for you, do also the same for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

¹³“Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it.

¹⁴How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.

¹⁵“Be on your guard against false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravaging wolves.

¹⁶You’ll recognize them by their fruit. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes or figs from thistles?

¹⁷In the same way, every good tree produces good fruit, but a bad tree produces bad fruit.

¹⁸A good tree can’t produce bad fruit; neither can a bad tree produce good fruit.

¹⁹Every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

²⁰So you’ll recognize them by their fruit.

²¹“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.

²²On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?’

²³Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you lawbreakers!’

²⁴“Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

²⁵The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house. Yet it didn’t collapse, because its foundation was on the rock.

²⁶But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn’t act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.

²⁷The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed. It collapsed with a great crash.”

²⁸When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astonished at his teaching,

²⁹because he was teaching them like one who had authority, and not like their scribes.

¹Pay attention, heavens, and I will speak; listen, earth, to the words from my mouth.

²Let my teaching fall like rain and my word settle like dew, like gentle rain on new grass and showers on tender plants.

³For I will proclaim the LORD’s name. Declare the greatness of our God!

⁴The Rock  — his work is perfect; all his ways are just. A faithful God, without bias, he is righteous and true.

⁵His people have acted corruptly toward him; this is their defect  — they are not his children but a devious and crooked generation.

⁶Is this how you repay the LORD, you foolish and senseless people? Isn’t he your Father and Creator? Didn’t he make you and sustain you?

⁷Remember the days of old; consider the years of past generations. Ask your father, and he will tell you, your elders, and they will teach you.

⁸When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance and divided the human race, he set the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the people of Israel.

⁹But the LORD’s portion is his people, Jacob, his own inheritance.

¹⁰He found him in a desolate land, in a barren, howling wilderness; he surrounded him, cared for him, and protected him as the pupil of his eye.

¹¹He watches over his nest like an eagle and hovers over his young; he spreads his wings, catches him, and carries him on his feathers.

¹²The LORD alone led him, with no help from a foreign god.

¹³He made him ride on the heights of the land and eat the produce of the field. He nourished him with honey from the rock and oil from flinty rock,

¹⁴curds from the herd and milk from the flock, with the fat of lambs, rams from Bashan, and goats, with the choicest grains of wheat; you drank wine from the finest grapes.

¹⁵Then Jeshurun became fat and rebelled — you became fat, bloated, and gorged. He abandoned the God who made him and scorned the Rock of his salvation.

¹⁶They provoked his jealousy with different gods; they enraged him with detestable practices.

¹⁷They sacrificed to demons, not God, to gods they had not known, new gods that had just arrived, which your fathers did not fear.

¹⁸You ignored the Rock who gave you birth; you forgot the God who gave birth to you.

¹⁹When the LORD saw this, he despised them, angered by his sons and daughters.

²⁰He said: “I will hide my face from them; I will see what will become of them, for they are a perverse generation — unfaithful children.

²¹They have provoked my jealousy with what is not a god; they have enraged me with their worthless idols. So I will provoke their jealousy with what is not a people; I will enrage them with a foolish nation.

²²For fire has been kindled because of my anger and burns to the depths of Sheol; it devours the land and its produce, and scorches the foundations of the mountains.

²³“I will pile disasters on them; I will use up my arrows against them.

²⁴They will be weak from hunger, ravaged by pestilence and bitter plague; I will unleash on them wild beasts with fangs, as well as venomous snakes that slither in the dust.

²⁵Outside, the sword will take their children, and inside, there will be terror; the young man and the young woman will be killed, the infant and the gray-haired man.

²⁶“I would have said: I will cut them to pieces and blot out the memory of them from mankind,

²⁷if I had not feared provocation from the enemy, or feared that these foes might misunderstand and say: ‘Our own hand has prevailed; it wasn’t the LORD who did all this.’”

²⁸Israel is a nation lacking sense with no understanding at all.

²⁹If only they were wise, they would comprehend this; they would understand their fate.

³⁰How could one pursue a thousand, or two put ten thousand to flight, unless their Rock had sold them, unless the LORD had given them up?

³¹But their “rock” is not like our Rock, as even our enemies concede.

³²For their vine is from the vine of Sodom and from the fields of Gomorrah. Their grapes are poisonous; their clusters are bitter.

³³Their wine is serpents’ venom, the deadly poison of cobras.

³⁴“Is it not stored up with me, sealed up in my vaults?

³⁵Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay. In time their foot will slip, for their day of disaster is near, and their doom is coming quickly.”

³⁶The LORD will indeed vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants when he sees that their strength is gone and no one is left — slave or free.

³⁷He will say: “Where are their gods, the ‘rock’ they found refuge in?

³⁸Who ate the fat of their sacrifices and drank the wine of their drink offerings? Let them rise up and help you; let it be a shelter for you.

³⁹See now that I alone am he; there is no God but me. I bring death and I give life; I wound and I heal. No one can rescue anyone from my power.

⁴⁰I raise my hand to heaven and declare: As surely as I live forever,

⁴¹when I sharpen my flashing sword, and my hand takes hold of judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me.

⁴²I will make my arrows drunk with blood while my sword devours flesh — the blood of the slain and the captives, the heads of the enemy leaders.”

⁴³Rejoice, you nations, concerning his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants. He will take vengeance on his adversaries; he will purify his land and his people.

⁴⁴Moses came with Joshua son of Nun and recited all the words of this song in the presence of the people.

⁴⁵After Moses finished reciting all these words to all Israel,

⁴⁶he said to them, “Take to heart all these words I am giving as a warning to you today, so that you may command your children to follow all the words of this law carefully.

⁴⁷For they are not meaningless words to you but they are your life, and by them you will live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to possess.”

⁴⁸On that same day the LORD spoke to Moses,

⁴⁹“Go up Mount Nebo in the Abarim range in the land of Moab, across from Jericho, and view the land of Canaan I am giving the Israelites as a possession.

⁵⁰Then you will die on the mountain that you go up, and you will be gathered to your people, just as your brother Aaron died on Mount Hor and was gathered to his people.

⁵¹For both of you broke faith with me among the Israelites at the Waters of Meribath-kadesh in the Wilderness of Zin by failing to treat me as holy in their presence.

⁵²Although from a distance you will view the land that I am giving the Israelites, you will not go there.”

¹If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

²If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.

³And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant,

⁵is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable, and does not keep a record of wrongs.

⁶Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth.

⁷It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.

⁹For we know in part, and we prophesy in part,

¹⁰but when the perfect comes, the partial will come to an end.

¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put aside childish things.

¹²For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, as I am fully known.

¹³Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love — but the greatest of these is love.

¹A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.

²She was pregnant and cried out in labor and agony as she was about to give birth.

³Then another sign appeared in heaven: There was a great fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on its heads were seven crowns.

⁴Its tail swept away a third of the stars in heaven and hurled them to the earth. And the dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she did give birth it might devour her child.

⁵She gave birth to a Son, a male who is going to rule all nations with an iron rod. Her child was caught up to God and to his throne.

⁶The woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared by God, to be nourished there for 1,260 days.

⁷Then war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels also fought,

⁸but he could not prevail, and there was no place for them in heaven any longer.

⁹So the great dragon was thrown out — the ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world. He was thrown to earth, and his angels with him.

¹⁰Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say, The salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have now come, because the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been thrown down.

¹¹They conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; for they did not love their lives to the point of death.

¹²Therefore rejoice, you heavens, and you who dwell in them! Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you with great fury, because he knows his time is short.

¹³When the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he persecuted the woman who had given birth to the male child.

¹⁴The woman was given two wings of a great eagle, so that she could fly from the serpent’s presence to her place in the wilderness, where she was nourished for a time, times, and half a time.

¹⁵From his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river flowing after the woman, to sweep her away with a flood.

¹⁶But the earth helped the woman. The earth opened its mouth and swallowed up the river that the dragon had spewed from his mouth.

¹⁷So the dragon was furious with the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring  — those who keep the commands of God and hold firmly to the testimony about Jesus.

¹⁸The dragon stood on the sand of the sea.

¹How beautiful are your sandaled feet, princess! The curves of your thighs are like jewelry, the handiwork of a master.

²Your navel is a rounded bowl; it never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a mound of wheat surrounded by lilies.

³Your breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle.

⁴Your neck is like a tower of ivory, your eyes like pools in Heshbon by Bath-rabbim’s gate. Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon looking toward Damascus.

⁵Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel, the hair of your head like purple cloth — a king could be held captive in your tresses.

⁶How beautiful you are and how pleasant, my love, with such delights!

⁷Your stature is like a palm tree; your breasts are clusters of fruit.

⁸I said, “I will climb the palm tree and take hold of its fruit.” May your breasts be like clusters of grapes, and the fragrance of your breath like apricots.

⁹Your mouth is like fine wine  — flowing smoothly for my love, gliding past my lips and teeth!

¹⁰I am my love’s, and his desire is for me.

¹¹Come, my love, let’s go to the field; let’s spend the night among the henna blossoms.

¹²Let’s go early to the vineyards; let’s see if the vine has budded, if the blossom has opened, if the pomegranates are in bloom. There I will give you my caresses.

¹³The mandrakes give off a fragrance, and at our doors is every delicacy, both new and old. I have treasured them up for you, my love.

¹Of David. [1] Oppose my opponents, LORD; fight those who fight me.

²Take your shields — large and small — and come to my aid.

³Draw the spear and javelin against my pursuers, and assure me: “I am your deliverance.”

⁴Let those who intend to take my life be disgraced and humiliated; let those who plan to harm me be turned back and ashamed.

⁵Let them be like chaff in the wind, with the angel of the LORD driving them away.

⁶Let their way be dark and slippery, with the angel of the LORD pursuing them.

⁷They hid their net for me without cause; they dug a pit for me without cause.

⁸Let ruin come on him unexpectedly, and let the net that he hid ensnare him; let him fall into it — to his ruin.

⁹Then I will rejoice in the LORD; I will delight in his deliverance.

¹⁰All my bones will say, “LORD, who is like you, rescuing the poor from one too strong for him, the poor or the needy from one who robs him?”

¹¹Malicious witnesses come forward; they question me about things I do not know.

¹²They repay me evil for good, making me desolate.

¹³Yet when they were sick, my clothing was sackcloth; I humbled myself with fasting, and my prayer was genuine.

¹⁴I went about mourning as if for my friend or brother; I was bowed down with grief, like one mourning for a mother.

¹⁵But when I stumbled, they gathered in glee; they gathered against me. Assailants I did not know tore at me and did not stop.

¹⁶With godless mockery they gnashed their teeth at me.

¹⁷Lord, how long will you look on? Rescue me from their ravages; rescue my precious life from the young lions.

¹⁸I will praise you in the great assembly; I will exalt you among many people.

¹⁹Do not let my deceitful enemies rejoice over me; do not let those who hate me without cause wink at me maliciously.

²⁰For they do not speak in friendly ways, but contrive fraudulent schemes against those who live peacefully in the land.

²¹They open their mouths wide against me and say, “Aha, aha! We saw it!”

²²You saw it, LORD; do not be silent. Lord, do not be far from me.

²³Wake up and rise to my defense, to my cause, my God and my Lord!

²⁴Vindicate me, LORD my God, in keeping with your righteousness, and do not let them rejoice over me.

²⁵Do not let them say in their hearts, “Aha! Just what we wanted.” Do not let them say, “We have swallowed him up!”

²⁶Let those who rejoice at my misfortune be disgraced and humiliated; let those who exalt themselves over me be clothed with shame and reproach.

²⁷Let those who want my vindication shout for joy and be glad; let them continually say, “The LORD be exalted. He takes pleasure in his servant’s well-being.”

²⁸And my tongue will proclaim your righteousness, your praise all day long.

¹The words of Agur son of Jakeh. The pronouncement. The man’s oration to Ithiel, to Ithiel and Ucal:

²I am more stupid than any other person, and I lack a human’s ability to understand.

³I have not gained wisdom, and I have no knowledge of the Holy One.

⁴Who has gone up to heaven and come down? Who has gathered the wind in his hands? Who has bound up the waters in a cloak? Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is the name of his son — if you know?

⁵Every word of God is pure; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.

⁶Don’t add to his words, or he will rebuke you, and you will be proved a liar.

⁷Two things I ask of you; don’t deny them to me before I die:

⁸Keep falsehood and deceitful words far from me. Give me neither poverty nor wealth; feed me with the food I need.

⁹Otherwise, I might have too much and deny you, saying, “Who is the LORD?” or I might have nothing and steal, profaning the name of my God.

¹⁰Don’t slander a servant to his master or he will curse you, and you will become guilty.

¹¹There is a generation that curses its father and does not bless its mother.

¹²There is a generation that is pure in its own eyes, yet is not washed from its filth.

¹³There is a generation — how haughty its eyes and pretentious its looks.

¹⁴There is a generation whose teeth are swords, whose fangs are knives, devouring the oppressed from the land and the needy from among mankind.

¹⁵The leech has two daughters: “Give, Give!” Three things are never satisfied; four never say, “Enough!”:

¹⁶Sheol; a childless womb; earth, which is never satisfied with water; and fire, which never says, “Enough!”

¹⁷As for the eye that ridicules a father and despises obedience to a mother, may ravens of the valley pluck it out and young vultures eat it.

¹⁸Three things are too wondrous for me; four I can’t understand:

¹⁹the way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a snake on a rock, the way of a ship at sea, and the way of a man with a young woman.

²⁰This is the way of an adulteress: she eats and wipes her mouth and says, “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

²¹The earth trembles under three things; it cannot bear up under four:

²²a servant when he becomes king, a fool when he is stuffed with food,

²³an unloved woman when she marries, and a servant girl when she ousts her queen.

²⁴Four things on earth are small, yet they are extremely wise:

²⁵ants are not a strong people, yet they store up their food in the summer;

²⁶hyraxes are not a mighty people, yet they make their homes in the cliffs;

²⁷locusts have no king, yet all of them march in ranks;

²⁸a lizard can be caught in your hands, yet it lives in kings’ palaces.

²⁹Three things are stately in their stride; four are stately in their walk:

³⁰a lion, which is mightiest among beasts and doesn’t retreat before anything;

³¹a strutting rooster; a goat; and a king at the head of his army.

³²If you have been foolish by exalting yourself or if you’ve been scheming, put your hand over your mouth.

³³For the churning of milk produces butter, and twisting a nose draws blood, and stirring up anger produces strife.

¹So all the work Solomon did for the LORD’s temple was completed. Then Solomon brought the consecrated things of his father David — the silver, the gold, and all the utensils — and put them in the treasuries of God’s temple.

²At that time Solomon assembled at Jerusalem the elders of Israel — all the tribal heads, the ancestral chiefs of the Israelites — in order to bring the ark of the covenant of the LORD up from the city of David, that is, Zion.

³So all the men of Israel were assembled in the king’s presence at the festival; this was in the seventh month.

⁴All the elders of Israel came, and the Levites picked up the ark.

⁵They brought up the ark, the tent of meeting, and the holy utensils that were in the tent. The priests and the Levites brought them up.

⁶King Solomon and the entire congregation of Israel who had gathered around him were in front of the ark sacrificing sheep, goats, and cattle that could not be counted or numbered because there were so many.

⁷The priests brought the ark of the LORD’s covenant to its place, into the inner sanctuary of the temple, to the most holy place, beneath the wings of the cherubim.

⁸And the cherubim spread their wings over the place of the ark so that the cherubim formed a cover above the ark and its poles.

⁹The poles were so long that their ends were seen from the holy place in front of the inner sanctuary, but they were not seen from outside; they are still there today.

¹⁰Nothing was in the ark except the two tablets that Moses had put in it at Horeb, where the LORD had made a covenant with the Israelites when they came out of Egypt.

¹¹Now all the priests who were present had consecrated themselves regardless of their divisions. When the priests came out of the holy place,

¹²the Levitical singers dressed in fine linen and carrying cymbals, harps, and lyres were standing east of the altar, and with them were 120 priests blowing trumpets. The Levitical singers were descendants of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun and their sons and relatives.

¹³The trumpeters and singers joined together to praise and thank the LORD with one voice. They raised their voices, accompanied by trumpets, cymbals, and musical instruments, in praise to the LORD: For he is good; his faithful love endures forever. The temple, the LORD’s temple, was filled with a cloud.

¹⁴And because of the cloud, the priests were not able to continue ministering, for the glory of the LORD filled God’s temple.

¹Call your brothers: My People and your sisters: Compassion.

²Rebuke your mother; rebuke her. For she is not my wife and I am not her husband. Let her remove the promiscuous look from her face and her adultery from between her breasts.

³Otherwise, I will strip her naked and expose her as she was on the day of her birth. I will make her like a desert and like a parched land, and I will let her die of thirst.

⁴I will have no compassion on her children because they are the children of promiscuity.

⁵Yes, their mother is promiscuous; she conceived them and acted shamefully. For she thought, “I will follow my lovers, the men who give me my food and water, my wool and flax, my oil and drink.”

⁶Therefore, this is what I will do: I will block her way with thorns; I will enclose her with a wall, so that she cannot find her paths.

⁷She will pursue her lovers but not catch them; she will look for them but not find them. Then she will think, “I will go back to my former husband, for then it was better for me than now.”

⁸She does not recognize that it is I who gave her the grain, the new wine, and the fresh oil. I lavished silver and gold on her, which they used for Baal.

⁹Therefore, I will take back my grain in its time and my new wine in its season; I will take away my wool and linen, which were to cover her nakedness.

¹⁰Now I will expose her shame in the sight of her lovers, and no one will rescue her from my power.

¹¹I will put an end to all her celebrations: her feasts, New Moons, and Sabbaths — all her festivals.

¹²I will devastate her vines and fig trees. She thinks that these are her wages that her lovers have given her. I will turn them into a thicket, and the wild animals will eat them.

¹³And I will punish her for the days of the Baals, to which she burned incense. She put on her rings and her jewelry and followed her lovers, but she forgot me. This is the LORD’s declaration.

¹⁴Therefore, I am going to persuade her, lead her to the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her.

¹⁵There I will give her vineyards back to her and make the Valley of Achor into a gateway of hope. There she will respond as she did in the days of her youth, as in the day she came out of the land of Egypt.

¹⁶In that day — this is the LORD’s declaration — you will call me, “My husband,” and no longer call me, “My Baal.”

¹⁷For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth; they will no longer be remembered by their names.

¹⁸On that day I will make a covenant for them with the wild animals, the birds of the sky, and the creatures that crawl on the ground. I will shatter bow, sword, and weapons of war in the land and will enable the people to rest securely.

¹⁹I will take you to be my wife forever. I will take you to be my wife in righteousness, justice, love, and compassion.

²⁰I will take you to be my wife in faithfulness, and you will know the LORD.

²¹On that day I will respond  — this is the LORD’s declaration. I will respond to the sky, and it will respond to the earth.

²²The earth will respond to the grain, the new wine, and the fresh oil, and they will respond to Jezreel.

²³I will sow her in the land for myself, and I will have compassion on Lo-ruhamah; I will say to Lo-ammi: You are my people, and he will say, “You are my God.”

¹After they passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue.

²As usual, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days reasoned with them from the Scriptures,

³explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and rise from the dead: “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah.”

⁴Some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, including a large number of God-fearing Greeks, as well as a number of the leading women.

⁵But the Jews became jealous, and they brought together some wicked men from the marketplace, formed a mob, and started a riot in the city. Attacking Jason’s house, they searched for them to bring them out to the public assembly.

⁶When they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city officials, shouting, “These men who have turned the world upside down have come here too,

⁷and Jason has welcomed them. They are all acting contrary to Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king — Jesus.”

⁸The crowd and city officials who heard these things were upset.

⁹After taking a security bond from Jason and the others, they released them.

¹⁰As soon as it was night, the brothers and sisters sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. Upon arrival, they went into the synagogue of the Jews.

¹¹The people here were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, since they received the word with eagerness and examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.

¹²Consequently, many of them believed, including a number of the prominent Greek women as well as men.

¹³But when the Jews from Thessalonica found out that the word of God had been proclaimed by Paul at Berea, they came there too, agitating and upsetting the crowds.

¹⁴Then the brothers and sisters immediately sent Paul away to go to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed on there.

¹⁵Those who escorted Paul brought him as far as Athens, and after receiving instructions for Silas and Timothy to come to him as quickly as possible, they departed.

¹⁶While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed when he saw that the city was full of idols.

¹⁷So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with those who worshiped God, as well as in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there.

¹⁸Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also debated with him. Some said, “What is this ignorant show-off trying to say?” Others replied, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign deities” — because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.

¹⁹They took him and brought him to the Areopagus, and said, “May we learn about this new teaching you are presenting?

²⁰Because what you say sounds strange to us, and we want to know what these things mean.”

²¹Now all the Athenians and the foreigners residing there spent their time on nothing else but telling or hearing something new.

²²Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that you are extremely religious in every respect.

²³For as I was passing through and observing the objects of your worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed: ‘To an Unknown God.’ Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you.

²⁴The God who made the world and everything in it  — he is Lord of heaven and earth  — does not live in shrines made by hands.

²⁵Neither is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things.

²⁶From one man he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live.

²⁷He did this so that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.

²⁸For in him we live and move and have our being, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his offspring.’

²⁹Since we are God’s offspring then, we shouldn’t think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image fashioned by human art and imagination.

³⁰“Therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent,

³¹because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed. He has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

³²When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some began to ridicule him, but others said, “We’d like to hear from you again about this.”

³³So Paul left their presence.

³⁴However, some people joined him and believed, including Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.