Professor Horner’s Reading Plan

¹“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard.

²After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.

³When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace;

⁴and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.

⁵When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same.

⁶And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’

⁷They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’

⁸When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’

⁹When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage.

¹⁰Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage.

¹¹And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner,

¹²saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’

¹³But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage?

¹⁴Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you.

¹⁵Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’

¹⁶So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

¹⁷While Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the twelve disciples aside by themselves, and said to them on the way,

¹⁸“See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death;

¹⁹then they will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified; and on the third day he will be raised.”

²⁰Then the mother of the sons of Zebedee came to him with her sons, and kneeling before him, she asked a favor of him.

²¹And he said to her, “What do you want?” She said to him, “Declare that these two sons of mine will sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom.”

²²But Jesus answered, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am about to drink?” They said to him, “We are able.”

²³He said to them, “You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left, this is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.”

²⁴When the ten heard it, they were angry with the two brothers.

²⁵But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.

²⁶It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant,

²⁷and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave;

²⁸just as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

²⁹As they were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him.

³⁰There were two blind men sitting by the roadside. When they heard that Jesus was passing by, they shouted, “Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!”

³¹The crowd sternly ordered them to be quiet; but they shouted even more loudly, “Have mercy on us, Lord, Son of David!”

³²Jesus stood still and called them, saying, “What do you want me to do for you?”

³³They said to him, “Lord, let our eyes be opened.”

³⁴Moved with compassion, Jesus touched their eyes. Immediately they regained their sight and followed him.

¹From there Abraham journeyed toward the region of the Negeb, and settled between Kadesh and Shur. While residing in Gerar as an alien,

²Abraham said of his wife Sarah, “She is my sister.” And King Abimelech of Gerar sent and took Sarah.

³But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, “You are about to die because of the woman whom you have taken; for she is a married woman.”

⁴Now Abimelech had not approached her; so he said, “Lord, will you destroy an innocent people?

⁵Did he not himself say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ I did this in the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands.”

⁶Then God said to him in the dream, “Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart; furthermore it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her.

⁷Now then, return the man’s wife; for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all that are yours.”

⁸So Abimelech rose early in the morning, and called all his servants and told them all these things; and the men were very much afraid.

⁹Then Abimelech called Abraham, and said to him, “What have you done to us? How have I sinned against you, that you have brought such great guilt on me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that ought not to be done.”

¹⁰And Abimelech said to Abraham, “What were you thinking of, that you did this thing?”

¹¹Abraham said, “I did it because I thought, There is no fear of God at all in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.

¹²Besides, she is indeed my sister, the daughter of my father but not the daughter of my mother; and she became my wife.

¹³And when God caused me to wander from my father’s house, I said to her, ‘This is the kindness you must do me: at every place to which we come, say of me, He is my brother.’”

¹⁴Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and male and female slaves, and gave them to Abraham, and restored his wife Sarah to him.

¹⁵Abimelech said, “My land is before you; settle where it pleases you.”

¹⁶To Sarah he said, “Look, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver; it is your exoneration before all who are with you; you are completely vindicated.”

¹⁷Then Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children.

¹⁸For the LORD had closed fast all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.

¹Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries.

²Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.

³But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself.

⁴I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me.

⁵Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive commendation from God.

⁶I have applied all this to Apollos and myself for your benefit, brothers and sisters, so that you may learn through us the meaning of the saying, “Nothing beyond what is written,” so that none of you will be puffed up in favor of one against another.

⁷For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?

⁸Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Quite apart from us you have become kings! Indeed, I wish that you had become kings, so that we might be kings with you!

⁹For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, as though sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals.

¹⁰We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.

¹¹To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless,

¹²and we grow weary from the work of our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure;

¹³when slandered, we speak kindly. We have become like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things, to this very day.

¹⁴I am not writing this to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.

¹⁵For though you might have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.

¹⁶I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me.

¹⁷For this reason I sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ Jesus, as I teach them everywhere in every church.

¹⁸But some of you, thinking that I am not coming to you, have become arrogant.

¹⁹But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power.

²⁰For the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.

²¹What would you prefer? Am I to come to you with a stick, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?

¹But as for you, teach what is consistent with sound doctrine.

²Tell the older men to be temperate, serious, prudent, and sound in faith, in love, and in endurance.

³Likewise, tell the older women to be reverent in behavior, not to be slanderers or slaves to drink; they are to teach what is good,

⁴so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children,

⁵to be self-controlled, chaste, good managers of the household, kind, being submissive to their husbands, so that the word of God may not be discredited.

⁶Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled.

⁷Show yourself in all respects a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, gravity,

⁸and sound speech that cannot be censured; then any opponent will be put to shame, having nothing evil to say of us.

⁹Tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back,

¹⁰not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior.

¹¹For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all,

¹²training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly,

¹³while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

¹⁴He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

¹⁵Declare these things; exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one look down on you.

¹Then Zophar the Naamathite answered:

²“Pay attention! My thoughts urge me to answer, because of the agitation within me.

³I hear censure that insults me, and a spirit beyond my understanding answers me.

⁴Do you not know this from of old, ever since mortals were placed on earth,

⁵that the exulting of the wicked is short, and the joy of the godless is but for a moment?

⁶Even though they mount up high as the heavens, and their head reaches to the clouds,

⁷they will perish forever like their own dung; those who have seen them will say, ‘Where are they?’

⁸They will fly away like a dream, and not be found; they will be chased away like a vision of the night.

⁹The eye that saw them will see them no more, nor will their place behold them any longer.

¹⁰Their children will seek the favor of the poor, and their hands will give back their wealth.

¹¹Their bodies, once full of youth, will lie down in the dust with them.

¹²“Though wickedness is sweet in their mouth, though they hide it under their tongues,

¹³though they are loath to let it go, and hold it in their mouths,

¹⁴yet their food is turned in their stomachs; it is the venom of asps within them.

¹⁵They swallow down riches and vomit them up again; God casts them out of their bellies.

¹⁶They will suck the poison of asps; the tongue of a viper will kill them.

¹⁷They will not look on the rivers, the streams flowing with honey and curds.

¹⁸They will give back the fruit of their toil, and will not swallow it down; from the profit of their trading they will get no enjoyment.

¹⁹For they have crushed and abandoned the poor, they have seized a house that they did not build.

²⁰“They knew no quiet in their bellies; in their greed they let nothing escape.

²¹There was nothing left after they had eaten; therefore their prosperity will not endure.

²²In full sufficiency they will be in distress; all the force of misery will come upon them.

²³To fill their belly to the full God will send his fierce anger into them, and rain it upon them as their food.

²⁴They will flee from an iron weapon; a bronze arrow will strike them through.

²⁵It is drawn forth and comes out of their body, and the glittering point comes out of their gall; terrors come upon them.

²⁶Utter darkness is laid up for their treasures; a fire fanned by no one will devour them; what is left in their tent will be consumed.

²⁷The heavens will reveal their iniquity, and the earth will rise up against them.

²⁸The possessions of their house will be carried away, dragged off in the day of God’s wrath.

²⁹This is the portion of the wicked from God, the heritage decreed for them by God.”

¹The LORD answer you in the day of trouble! The name of the God of Jacob protect you!

²May he send you help from the sanctuary, and give you support from Zion.

³May he remember all your offerings, and regard with favor your burnt sacrifices. Selah

⁴May he grant you your heart’s desire, and fulfill all your plans.

⁵May we shout for joy over your victory, and in the name of our God set up our banners. May the LORD fulfill all your petitions.

⁶Now I know that the LORD will help his anointed; he will answer him from his holy heaven with mighty victories by his right hand.

⁷Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses, but our pride is in the name of the LORD our God.

⁸They will collapse and fall, but we shall rise and stand upright.

⁹Give victory to the king, O LORD; answer us when we call.

¹Wine is a mocker, strong drink a brawler, and whoever is led astray by it is not wise.

²The dread anger of a king is like the growling of a lion; anyone who provokes him to anger forfeits life itself.

³It is honorable to refrain from strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel.

⁴The lazy person does not plow in season; harvest comes, and there is nothing to be found.

⁵The purposes in the human mind are like deep water, but the intelligent will draw them out.

⁶Many proclaim themselves loyal, but who can find one worthy of trust?

⁷The righteous walk in integrity — happy are the children who follow them!

⁸A king who sits on the throne of judgment winnows all evil with his eyes.

⁹Who can say, “I have made my heart clean; I am pure from my sin”?

¹⁰Diverse weights and diverse measures are both alike an abomination to the LORD.

¹¹Even children make themselves known by their acts, by whether what they do is pure and right.

¹²The hearing ear and the seeing eye — the LORD has made them both.

¹³Do not love sleep, or else you will come to poverty; open your eyes, and you will have plenty of bread.

¹⁴“Bad, bad,” says the buyer, then goes away and boasts.

¹⁵There is gold, and abundance of costly stones; but the lips informed by knowledge are a precious jewel.

¹⁶Take the garment of one who has given surety for a stranger; seize the pledge given as surety for foreigners.

¹⁷Bread gained by deceit is sweet, but afterward the mouth will be full of gravel.

¹⁸Plans are established by taking advice; wage war by following wise guidance.

¹⁹A gossip reveals secrets; therefore do not associate with a babbler.

²⁰If you curse father or mother, your lamp will go out in utter darkness.

²¹An estate quickly acquired in the beginning will not be blessed in the end.

²²Do not say, “I will repay evil”; wait for the LORD, and he will help you.

²³Differing weights are an abomination to the LORD, and false scales are not good.

²⁴All our steps are ordered by the LORD; how then can we understand our own ways?

²⁵It is a snare for one to say rashly, “It is holy,” and begin to reflect only after making a vow.

²⁶A wise king winnows the wicked, and drives the wheel over them.

²⁷The human spirit is the lamp of the LORD, searching every inmost part.

²⁸Loyalty and faithfulness preserve the king, and his throne is upheld by righteousness.

²⁹The glory of youths is their strength, but the beauty of the aged is their gray hair.

³⁰Blows that wound cleanse away evil; beatings make clean the innermost parts.

¹Then the LORD spoke to Joshua, saying,

²“Say to the Israelites, ‘Appoint the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you through Moses,

³so that anyone who kills a person without intent or by mistake may flee there; they shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood.

⁴The slayer shall flee to one of these cities and shall stand at the entrance of the gate of the city, and explain the case to the elders of that city; then the fugitive shall be taken into the city, and given a place, and shall remain with them.

⁵And if the avenger of blood is in pursuit, they shall not give up the slayer, because the neighbor was killed by mistake, there having been no enmity between them before.

⁶The slayer shall remain in that city until there is a trial before the congregation, until the death of the one who is high priest at the time: then the slayer may return home, to the town in which the deed was done.’”

⁷So they set apart Kedesh in Galilee in the hill country of Naphtali, and Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim, and Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron) in the hill country of Judah.

⁸And beyond the Jordan east of Jericho, they appointed Bezer in the wilderness on the tableland, from the tribe of Reuben, and Ramoth in Gilead, from the tribe of Gad, and Golan in Bashan, from the tribe of Manasseh.

⁹These were the cities designated for all the Israelites, and for the aliens residing among them, that anyone who killed a person without intent could flee there, so as not to die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until there was a trial before the congregation.

¹In the year that the commander-in-chief, who was sent by King Sargon of Assyria, came to Ashdod and fought against it and took it —

²at that time the LORD had spoken to Isaiah son of Amoz, saying, “Go, and loose the sackcloth from your loins and take your sandals off your feet,” and he had done so, walking naked and barefoot.

³Then the LORD said, “Just as my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Ethiopia,

⁴so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians as captives and the Ethiopians as exiles, both the young and the old, naked and barefoot, with buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.

⁵And they shall be dismayed and confounded because of Ethiopia their hope and of Egypt their boast.

⁶In that day the inhabitants of this coastland will say, ‘See, this is what has happened to those in whom we hoped and to whom we fled for help and deliverance from the king of Assyria! And we, how shall we escape?’”

¹After the uproar had ceased, Paul sent for the disciples; and after encouraging them and saying farewell, he left for Macedonia.

²When he had gone through those regions and had given the believers much encouragement, he came to Greece,

³where he stayed for three months. He was about to set sail for Syria when a plot was made against him by the Jews, and so he decided to return through Macedonia.

⁴He was accompanied by Sopater son of Pyrrhus from Beroea, by Aristarchus and Secundus from Thessalonica, by Gaius from Derbe, and by Timothy, as well as by Tychicus and Trophimus from Asia.

⁵They went ahead and were waiting for us in Troas;

⁶but we sailed from Philippi after the days of Unleavened Bread, and in five days we joined them in Troas, where we stayed for seven days.

⁷On the first day of the week, when we met to break bread, Paul was holding a discussion with them; since he intended to leave the next day, he continued speaking until midnight.

⁸There were many lamps in the room upstairs where we were meeting.

⁹A young man named Eutychus, who was sitting in the window, began to sink off into a deep sleep while Paul talked still longer. Overcome by sleep, he fell to the ground three floors below and was picked up dead.

¹⁰But Paul went down, and bending over him took him in his arms, and said, “Do not be alarmed, for his life is in him.”

¹¹Then Paul went upstairs, and after he had broken bread and eaten, he continued to converse with them until dawn; then he left.

¹²Meanwhile they had taken the boy away alive and were not a little comforted.

¹³We went ahead to the ship and set sail for Assos, intending to take Paul on board there; for he had made this arrangement, intending to go by land himself.

¹⁴When he met us in Assos, we took him on board and went to Mitylene.

¹⁵We sailed from there, and on the following day we arrived opposite Chios. The next day we touched at Samos, and the day after that we came to Miletus.

¹⁶For Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus, so that he might not have to spend time in Asia; he was eager to be in Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost.

¹⁷From Miletus he sent a message to Ephesus, asking the elders of the church to meet him.

¹⁸When they came to him, he said to them: “You yourselves know how I lived among you the entire time from the first day that I set foot in Asia,

¹⁹serving the Lord with all humility and with tears, enduring the trials that came to me through the plots of the Jews.

²⁰I did not shrink from doing anything helpful, proclaiming the message to you and teaching you publicly and from house to house,

²¹as I testified to both Jews and Greeks about repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus.

²²And now, as a captive to the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there,

²³except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and persecutions are waiting for me.

²⁴But I do not count my life of any value to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the good news of God’s grace.

²⁵“And now I know that none of you, among whom I have gone about proclaiming the kingdom, will ever see my face again.

²⁶Therefore I declare to you this day that I am not responsible for the blood of any of you,

²⁷for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole purpose of God.

²⁸Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son.

²⁹I know that after I have gone, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.

³⁰Some even from your own group will come distorting the truth in order to entice the disciples to follow them.

³¹Therefore be alert, remembering that for three years I did not cease night or day to warn everyone with tears.

³²And now I commend you to God and to the message of his grace, a message that is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all who are sanctified.

³³I coveted no one’s silver or gold or clothing.

³⁴You know for yourselves that I worked with my own hands to support myself and my companions.

³⁵In all this I have given you an example that by such work we must support the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, for he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

³⁶When he had finished speaking, he knelt down with them all and prayed.

³⁷There was much weeping among them all; they embraced Paul and kissed him,

³⁸grieving especially because of what he had said, that they would not see him again. Then they brought him to the ship.