Professor Horner’s Reading Plan

¹After six days Jesus took Peter, James, and his brother John and led them up on a high mountain by themselves.

²He was transfigured in front of them, and his face shone like the sun; his clothes became as white as the light.

³Suddenly, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with him.

⁴Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it’s good for us to be here. I will set up three shelters here: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

⁵While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased. Listen to him!”

⁶When the disciples heard this, they fell facedown and were terrified.

⁷Jesus came up, touched them, and said, “Get up; don’t be afraid.”

⁸When they looked up they saw no one except Jesus alone.

⁹As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Don’t tell anyone about the vision until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”

¹⁰So the disciples asked him, “Why then do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”

¹¹“Elijah is coming and will restore everything,” he replied.

¹²“But I tell you: Elijah has already come, and they didn’t recognize him. On the contrary, they did whatever they pleased to him. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.”

¹³Then the disciples understood that he had spoken to them about John the Baptist.

¹⁴When they reached the crowd, a man approached and knelt down before him.

¹⁵“Lord,” he said, “have mercy on my son, because he has seizures and suffers terribly. He often falls into the fire and often into the water.

¹⁶I brought him to your disciples, but they couldn’t heal him.”

¹⁷Jesus replied, “You unbelieving and perverse generation, how long will I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.”

¹⁸Then Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and from that moment the boy was healed.

¹⁹Then the disciples approached Jesus privately and said, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”

²⁰“Because of your little faith,” he told them. “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”

²¹

²²As they were gathering together in Galilee, Jesus told them, “The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men.

²³They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised up.” And they were deeply distressed.

²⁴When they came to Capernaum, those who collected the temple tax approached Peter and said, “Doesn’t your teacher pay the temple tax?”

²⁵“Yes,” he said. When he went into the house, Jesus spoke to him first, “What do you think, Simon? From whom do earthly kings collect tariffs or taxes? From their sons or from strangers?”

²⁶“From strangers,” he said. “Then the sons are free,” Jesus told him.

²⁷“But, so we won’t offend them, go to the sea, cast in a fishhook, and take the first fish that you catch. When you open its mouth you’ll find a coin. Take it and give it to them for me and you.”

¹God remembered Noah, as well as all the wildlife and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. God caused a wind to pass over the earth, and the water began to subside.

²The sources of the watery depths and the floodgates of the sky were closed, and the rain from the sky stopped.

³The water steadily receded from the earth, and by the end of 150 days the water had decreased significantly.

⁴The ark came to rest in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on the mountains of Ararat.

⁵The water continued to recede until the tenth month; in the tenth month, on the first day of the month, the tops of the mountains were visible.

⁶After forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made,

⁷and he sent out a raven. It went back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth.

⁸Then he sent out a dove to see whether the water on the earth’s surface had gone down,

⁹but the dove found no resting place for its foot. It returned to him in the ark because water covered the surface of the whole earth. He reached out and brought it into the ark to himself.

¹⁰So Noah waited seven more days and sent out the dove from the ark again.

¹¹When the dove came to him at evening, there was a plucked olive leaf in its beak. So Noah knew that the water on the earth’s surface had gone down.

¹²After he had waited another seven days, he sent out the dove, but it did not return to him again.

¹³In the six hundred and first year, in the first month, on the first day of the month, the water that had covered the earth was dried up. Then Noah removed the ark’s cover and saw that the surface of the ground was drying.

¹⁴By the twenty-seventh day of the second month, the earth was dry.

¹⁵Then God spoke to Noah,

¹⁶“Come out of the ark, you, your wife, your sons, and your sons’ wives with you.

¹⁷Bring out all the living creatures that are with you — birds, livestock, those that crawl on the earth — and they will spread over the earth and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.”

¹⁸So Noah, along with his sons, his wife, and his sons’ wives, came out.

¹⁹All the animals, all the creatures that crawl, and all the flying creatures — everything that moves on the earth — came out of the ark by their families.

²⁰Then Noah built an altar to the LORD. He took some of every kind of clean animal and every kind of clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.

²¹When the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, he said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of human beings, even though the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth onward. And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done.

²²As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night will not cease.”

¹So then, dear friends, since we have these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from every impurity of the flesh and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.

²Make room for us in your hearts. We have wronged no one, corrupted no one, taken advantage of no one.

³I don’t say this to condemn you, since I have already said that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together.

⁴I am very frank with you; I have great pride in you. I am filled with encouragement; I am overflowing with joy in all our afflictions.

⁵In fact, when we came into Macedonia, we had no rest. Instead, we were troubled in every way: conflicts on the outside, fears within.

⁶But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the arrival of Titus,

⁷and not only by his arrival but also by the comfort he received from you. He told us about your deep longing, your sorrow, and your zeal for me, so that I rejoiced even more.

⁸For even if I grieved you with my letter, I don’t regret it. And if I regretted it — since I saw that the letter grieved you, yet only for a while —

⁹I now rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because your grief led to repentance. For you were grieved as God willed, so that you didn’t experience any loss from us.

¹⁰For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, but worldly grief produces death.

¹¹For consider how much diligence this very thing — this grieving as God wills — has produced in you: what a desire to clear yourselves, what indignation, what fear, what deep longing, what zeal, what justice! In every way you showed yourselves to be pure in this matter.

¹²So even though I wrote to you, it was not because of the one who did wrong, or because of the one who was wronged, but in order that your devotion to us might be made plain to you in the sight of God.

¹³For this reason we have been comforted. In addition to our own comfort, we rejoiced even more over the joy Titus had, because his spirit was refreshed by all of you.

¹⁴For if I have made any boast to him about you, I have not been disappointed; but as I have spoken everything to you in truth, so our boasting to Titus has also turned out to be the truth.

¹⁵And his affection toward you is even greater as he remembers the obedience of all of you, and how you received him with fear and trembling.

¹⁶I rejoice that I have complete confidence in you.

¹Then he showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb

²down the middle of the city’s main street. The tree of life was on each side of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree are for healing the nations,

³and there will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will worship him.

⁴They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.

⁵Night will be no more; people will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, because the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever.

⁶Then he said to me, “These words are faithful and true. The Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.”

⁷“Look, I am coming soon! Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.”

⁸I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. When I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who had shown them to me.

⁹But he said to me, “Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you, your brothers the prophets, and those who keep the words of this book. Worship God!”

¹⁰Then he said to me, “Don’t seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, because the time is near.

¹¹Let the unrighteous go on in unrighteousness, let the filthy still be filthy; let the righteous go on in righteousness; let the holy still be holy.”

¹²“Look, I am coming soon, and my reward is with me to repay each person according to his work.

¹³I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.

¹⁴“Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates.

¹⁵Outside are the dogs, the sorcerers, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

¹⁶“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to attest these things to you for the churches. I am the root and descendant of David, the bright morning star.”

¹⁷Both the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” Let anyone who hears, say, “Come!” Let the one who is thirsty come. Let the one who desires take the water of life freely.

¹⁸I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book.

¹⁹And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share of the tree of life and the holy city, which are written about in this book.

²⁰He who testifies about these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!

²¹The grace of the Lord Jesus be with everyone. Amen.

¹Then Job answered:

²Yes, I know what you’ve said is true, but how can a person be justified before God?

³If one wanted to take him to court, he could not answer God once in a thousand times.

⁴God is wise and all-powerful. Who has opposed him and come out unharmed?

⁵He removes mountains without their knowledge, overturning them in his anger.

⁶He shakes the earth from its place so that its pillars tremble.

⁷He commands the sun not to shine and seals off the stars.

⁸He alone stretches out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea.

⁹He makes the stars: the Bear, Orion, the Pleiades, and the constellations of the southern sky.

¹⁰He does great and unsearchable things, wonders without number.

¹¹If he passed by me, I wouldn’t see him; if he went by, I wouldn’t recognize him.

¹²If he snatches something, who can stop him? Who can ask him, “What are you doing?”

¹³God does not hold back his anger; Rahab’s assistants cringe in fear beneath him!

¹⁴How then can I answer him or choose my arguments against him?

¹⁵Even if I were in the right, I could not answer. I could only beg my Judge for mercy.

¹⁶If I summoned him and he answered me, I do not believe he would pay attention to what I said.

¹⁷He batters me with a whirlwind and multiplies my wounds without cause.

¹⁸He doesn’t let me catch my breath but fills me with bitter experiences.

¹⁹If it is a matter of strength, look, he is the powerful one! If it is a matter of justice, who can summon him?

²⁰Even if I were in the right, my own mouth would condemn me; if I were blameless, my mouth would declare me guilty.

²¹Though I am blameless, I no longer care about myself; I renounce my life.

²²It is all the same. Therefore I say, “He destroys both the blameless and the wicked.”

²³When catastrophe brings sudden death, he mocks the despair of the innocent.

²⁴The earth is handed over to the wicked; he blindfolds its judges. If it isn’t he, then who is it?

²⁵My days fly by faster than a runner; they flee without seeing any good.

²⁶They sweep by like boats made of papyrus, like an eagle swooping down on its prey.

²⁷If I said, “I will forget my complaint, change my expression, and smile,”

²⁸I would still live in terror of all my pains. I know you will not acquit me.

²⁹Since I will be found guilty, why should I struggle in vain?

³⁰If I wash myself with snow, and cleanse my hands with lye,

³¹then you dip me in a pit of mud, and my own clothes despise me!

³²For he is not a man like me, that I can answer him, that we can take each other to court.

³³There is no mediator between us, to lay his hand on both of us.

³⁴Let him take his rod away from me so his terror will no longer frighten me.

³⁵Then I would speak and not fear him. But that is not the case; I am on my own.

¹For the choir director: according to “The Lilies.” A of the sons of Korah. A love song. [1] My heart is moved by a noble theme as I recite my verses to the king; my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer.

²You are the most handsome of men; grace flows from your lips. Therefore God has blessed you forever.

³Mighty warrior, strap your sword at your side. In your majesty and splendor  —

⁴in your splendor ride triumphantly in the cause of truth, humility, and justice. May your right hand show your awe-inspiring acts.

⁵Your sharpened arrows pierce the hearts of the king’s enemies; the peoples fall under you.

⁶Your throne, God, is forever and ever; the scepter of your kingdom is a scepter of justice.

⁷You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of joy more than your companions.

⁸Myrrh, aloes, and cassia perfume all your garments; from ivory palaces harps bring you joy.

⁹Kings’ daughters are among your honored women; the queen, adorned with gold from Ophir, stands at your right hand.

¹⁰Listen, daughter, pay attention and consider: forget your people and your father’s house,

¹¹and the king will desire your beauty. Bow down to him, for he is your lord.

¹²The daughter of Tyre, the wealthy people, will seek your favor with gifts.

¹³In her chamber, the royal daughter is all glorious, her clothing embroidered with gold.

¹⁴In colorful garments she is led to the king; after her, the virgins, her companions, are brought to you.

¹⁵They are led in with gladness and rejoicing; they enter the king’s palace.

¹⁶Your sons will succeed your ancestors; you will make them princes throughout the land.

¹⁷I will cause your name to be remembered for all generations; therefore the peoples will praise you forever and ever.

¹Wisdom has built her house; she has carved out her seven pillars.

²She has prepared her meat; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table.

³She has sent out her female servants; she calls out from the highest points of the city:

⁴“Whoever is inexperienced, enter here!” To the one who lacks sense, she says,

⁵“Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine I have mixed.

⁶Leave inexperience behind, and you will live; pursue the way of understanding.

⁷The one who corrects a mocker will bring abuse on himself; the one who rebukes the wicked will get hurt.

⁸Don’t rebuke a mocker, or he will hate you; rebuke the wise, and he will love you.

⁹Instruct the wise, and he will be wiser still; teach the righteous, and he will learn more.

¹⁰“The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.

¹¹For by me your days will be many, and years will be added to your life.

¹²If you are wise, you are wise for your own benefit; if you mock, you alone will bear the consequences.”

¹³Folly is a rowdy woman; she is gullible and knows nothing.

¹⁴She sits by the doorway of her house, on a seat at the highest point of the city,

¹⁵calling to those who pass by, who go straight ahead on their paths:

¹⁶“Whoever is inexperienced, enter here!” To the one who lacks sense, she says,

¹⁷“Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten secretly is tasty!”

¹⁸But he doesn’t know that the departed spirits are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

¹The Spirit of God came on Azariah son of Oded.

²So he went out to meet Asa and said to him, “Asa and all Judah and Benjamin, hear me. The LORD is with you when you are with him. If you seek him, he will be found by you, but if you abandon him, he will abandon you.

³For many years Israel has been without the true God, without a teaching priest, and without instruction,

⁴but when they turned to the LORD God of Israel in their distress and sought him, he was found by them.

⁵In those times there was no peace for those who went about their daily activities because the residents of the lands had many conflicts.

⁶Nation was crushed by nation and city by city, for God troubled them with every possible distress.

⁷But as for you, be strong; don’t give up, for your work has a reward.”

⁸When Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Azariah son of Oded the prophet, he took courage and removed the abhorrent idols from the whole land of Judah and Benjamin and from the cities he had captured in the hill country of Ephraim. He renovated the altar of the LORD that was in front of the portico of the LORD’s temple.

⁹Then he gathered all Judah and Benjamin, as well as those from the tribes of Ephraim, Manasseh, and Simeon who were residing among them, for they had defected to him from Israel in great numbers when they saw that the LORD his God was with him.

¹⁰They were gathered in Jerusalem in the third month of the fifteenth year of Asa’s reign.

¹¹At that time they sacrificed to the LORD seven hundred cattle and seven thousand sheep and goats from all the plunder they had brought.

¹²Then they entered into a covenant to seek the LORD God of their ancestors with all their heart and all their soul.

¹³Whoever would not seek the LORD God of Israel would be put to death, young or old, man or woman.

¹⁴They took an oath to the LORD in a loud voice, with shouting, with trumpets, and with rams’ horns.

¹⁵All Judah rejoiced over the oath, for they had sworn it with all their mind. They had sought him with all their heart, and he was found by them. So the LORD gave them rest on every side.

¹⁶King Asa also removed Maacah, his grandmother, from being queen mother because she had made an obscene image of Asherah. Asa chopped down her obscene image, then crushed it and burned it in the Kidron Valley.

¹⁷The high places were not taken away from Israel; nevertheless, Asa was wholeheartedly devoted his entire life.

¹⁸He brought his father’s consecrated gifts and his own consecrated gifts into God’s temple: silver, gold, and utensils.

¹⁹There was no war until the thirty-fifth year of Asa’s reign.

¹Ephraim chases the wind and pursues the east wind. He continually multiplies lies and violence. He makes a covenant with Assyria, and olive oil is carried to Egypt.

²The LORD also has a dispute with Judah. He is about to punish Jacob according to his conduct; he will repay him based on his actions.

³In the womb he grasped his brother’s heel, and as an adult he wrestled with God.

⁴Jacob struggled with the angel and prevailed; he wept and sought his favor. He found him at Bethel, and there he spoke with him.

⁵The LORD is the God of Armies; the LORD is his name.

⁶But you must return to your God. Maintain love and justice, and always put your hope in God.

⁷A merchant loves to extort with dishonest scales in his hands.

⁸But Ephraim thinks, “How rich I have become; I made it all myself. In all my earnings, no one can find any iniquity in me that I can be punished for!”

⁹I have been the LORD your God ever since the land of Egypt. I will make you live in tents again, as in the festival days.

¹⁰I will speak through the prophets and grant many visions; I will give parables through the prophets.

¹¹Since Gilead is full of evil, they will certainly come to nothing. They sacrifice bulls in Gilgal; even their altars will be like piles of rocks on the furrows of a field.

¹²Jacob fled to the territory of Aram. Israel worked to earn a wife; he tended flocks for a wife.

¹³The LORD brought Israel from Egypt by a prophet, and Israel was tended by a prophet.

¹⁴Ephraim has provoked bitter anger, so his Lord will leave his bloodguilt on him and repay him for his contempt.

¹When it was decided that we were to sail to Italy, they handed over Paul and some other prisoners to a centurion named Julius, of the Imperial Regiment.

²When we had boarded a ship of Adramyttium, we put to sea, intending to sail to ports along the coast of Asia. Aristarchus, a Macedonian of Thessalonica, was with us.

³The next day we put in at Sidon, and Julius treated Paul kindly and allowed him to go to his friends to receive their care.

⁴When we had put out to sea from there, we sailed along the northern coast of Cyprus because the winds were against us.

⁵After sailing through the open sea off Cilicia and Pamphylia, we reached Myra in Lycia.

⁶There the centurion found an Alexandrian ship sailing for Italy and put us on board.

⁷Sailing slowly for many days, with difficulty we arrived off Cnidus. Since the wind did not allow us to approach it, we sailed along the south side of Crete off Salmone.

⁸With still more difficulty we sailed along the coast and came to a place called Fair Havens near the city of Lasea.

⁹By now much time had passed, and the voyage was already dangerous. Since the Day of Atonement was already over, Paul gave his advice

¹⁰and told them, “Men, I can see that this voyage is headed toward disaster and heavy loss, not only of the cargo and the ship but also of our lives.”

¹¹But the centurion paid attention to the captain and the owner of the ship rather than to what Paul said.

¹²Since the harbor was unsuitable to winter in, the majority decided to set sail from there, hoping somehow to reach Phoenix, a harbor on Crete facing the southwest and northwest, and to winter there.

¹³When a gentle south wind sprang up, they thought they had achieved their purpose. They weighed anchor and sailed along the shore of Crete.

¹⁴But before long, a fierce wind called the “northeaster” rushed down from the island.

¹⁵Since the ship was caught and unable to head into the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along.

¹⁶After running under the shelter of a little island called Cauda, we were barely able to get control of the skiff.

¹⁷After hoisting it up, they used ropes and tackle and girded the ship. Fearing they would run aground on the Syrtis, they lowered the drift-anchor, and in this way they were driven along.

¹⁸Because we were being severely battered by the storm, they began to jettison the cargo the next day.

¹⁹On the third day, they threw the ship’s tackle overboard with their own hands.

²⁰For many days neither sun nor stars appeared, and the severe storm kept raging. Finally all hope was fading that we would be saved.

²¹Since they had been without food for a long time, Paul then stood up among them and said, “You men should have followed my advice not to sail from Crete and sustain this damage and loss.

²²Now I urge you to take courage, because there will be no loss of any of your lives, but only of the ship.

²³For last night an angel of the God I belong to and serve stood by me

²⁴and said, ‘Don’t be afraid, Paul. It is necessary for you to appear before Caesar. And indeed, God has graciously given you all those who are sailing with you.’

²⁵So take courage, men, because I believe God that it will be just the way it was told to me.

²⁶But we have to run aground on some island.”

²⁷When the fourteenth night came, we were drifting in the Adriatic Sea, and about midnight the sailors thought they were approaching land.

²⁸They took soundings and found it to be a hundred and twenty feet deep; when they had sailed a little farther and sounded again, they found it to be ninety feet deep.

²⁹Then, fearing we might run aground on the rocks, they dropped four anchors from the stern and prayed for daylight to come.

³⁰Some sailors tried to escape from the ship; they had let down the skiff into the sea, pretending that they were going to put out anchors from the bow.

³¹Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, “Unless these men stay in the ship, you cannot be saved.”

³²Then the soldiers cut the ropes holding the skiff and let it drop away.

³³When it was about daylight, Paul urged them all to take food, saying, “Today is the fourteenth day that you have been waiting and going without food, having eaten nothing.

³⁴So I urge you to take some food. For this is for your survival, since none of you will lose a hair from your head.”

³⁵After he said these things and had taken some bread, he gave thanks to God in the presence of all of them, and after he broke it, he began to eat.

³⁶They all were encouraged and took food themselves.

³⁷In all there were 276 of us on the ship.

³⁸When they had eaten enough, they began to lighten the ship by throwing the grain overboard into the sea.

³⁹When daylight came, they did not recognize the land but sighted a bay with a beach. They planned to run the ship ashore if they could.

⁴⁰After cutting loose the anchors, they left them in the sea, at the same time loosening the ropes that held the rudders. Then they hoisted the foresail to the wind and headed for the beach.

⁴¹But they struck a sandbar and ran the ship aground. The bow jammed fast and remained immovable, while the stern began to break up by the pounding of the waves.

⁴²The soldiers’ plan was to kill the prisoners so that no one could swim away and escape.

⁴³But the centurion kept them from carrying out their plan because he wanted to save Paul, and so he ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and get to land.

⁴⁴The rest were to follow, some on planks and some on debris from the ship. In this way, everyone safely reached the shore.