Professor Horner’s Reading Plan

¹When they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage at the Mount of Olives, Jesus then sent two disciples,

²telling them, “Go into the village ahead of you. At once you will find a donkey tied there with her foal. Untie them and bring them to me.

³If anyone says anything to you, say that the Lord needs them, and he will send them at once.”

⁴This took place so that what was spoken through the prophet might be fulfilled:

⁵Tell Daughter Zion, “See, your King is coming to you, gentle, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

⁶The disciples went and did just as Jesus directed them.

⁷They brought the donkey and its foal; then they laid their clothes on them, and he sat on them.

⁸A very large crowd spread their clothes on the road; others were cutting branches from the trees and spreading them on the road.

⁹Then the crowds who went ahead of him and those who followed shouted: Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!

¹⁰When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in an uproar, saying, “Who is this?”

¹¹The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

¹²Jesus went into the temple and threw out all those buying and selling. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves.

¹³He said to them, “It is written, my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves!”

¹⁴The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.

¹⁵When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonders that he did and the children shouting in the temple,” Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant

¹⁶and said to him, “Do you hear what these children are saying?” Jesus replied, “Yes, have you never read: You have prepared praise from the mouths of infants and nursing babies?”

¹⁷Then he left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there.

¹⁸Early in the morning, as he was returning to the city, he was hungry.

¹⁹Seeing a lone fig tree by the road, he went up to it and found nothing on it except leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” At once the fig tree withered.

²⁰When the disciples saw it, they were amazed and said, “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?”

²¹Jesus answered them, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you tell this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done.

²²And if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”

²³When he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to him as he was teaching and said, “By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority?”

²⁴Jesus answered them, “I will also ask you one question, and if you answer it for me, then I will tell you by what authority I do these things.

²⁵Did John’s baptism come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” They discussed it among themselves, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say to us, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him? ’

²⁶But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ we’re afraid of the crowd, because everyone considers John to be a prophet.”

²⁷So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.” And he said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.

²⁸“What do you think? A man had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘My son, go work in the vineyard today.’

²⁹“He answered, ‘I don’t want to’ but later he changed his mind and went.

³⁰Then the man went to the other and said the same thing. ‘I will, sir,’ he answered, but he didn’t go.

³¹Which of the two did his father’s will?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you.

³²For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you didn’t believe him. Tax collectors and prostitutes did believe him; but you, when you saw it, didn’t even change your minds then and believe him.

³³“Listen to another parable: There was a landowner, who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a watchtower. He leased it to tenant farmers and went away.

³⁴When the time came to harvest fruit, he sent his servants to the farmers to collect his fruit.

³⁵The farmers took his servants, beat one, killed another, and stoned a third.

³⁶Again, he sent other servants, more than the first group, and they did the same to them.

³⁷Finally, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.

³⁸“But when the tenant farmers saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’

³⁹So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.

⁴⁰Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those farmers?”

⁴¹“He will completely destroy those terrible men,” they told him, “and lease his vineyard to other farmers who will give him his fruit at the harvest.”

⁴²Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is what the Lord has done and it is wonderful in our eyes?

⁴³Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruit.

⁴⁴Whoever falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; but on whomever it falls, it will shatter him.”

⁴⁵When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they knew he was speaking about them.

⁴⁶Although they were looking for a way to arrest him, they feared the crowds, because the people regarded him as a prophet.

¹The LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron:

²“Tell the Israelites: You may eat all these kinds of land animals.

³You may eat any animal with divided hooves and that chews the cud.

⁴But among the ones that chew the cud or have divided hooves you are not to eat these: camels, though they chew the cud, do not have divided hooves — they are unclean for you;

⁵hyraxes, though they chew the cud, do not have hooves — they are unclean for you;

⁶hares, though they chew the cud, do not have hooves — they are unclean for you;

⁷pigs, though they have divided hooves, do not chew the cud — they are unclean for you.

⁸Do not eat any of their meat or touch their carcasses — they are unclean for you.

⁹“This is what you may eat from all that is in the water: You may eat everything in the water that has fins and scales, whether in the seas or streams.

¹⁰But these are to be abhorrent to you: everything in the seas or streams that does not have fins and scales among all the swarming things and other living creatures in the water.

¹¹They are to remain abhorrent to you; you must not eat any of their meat, and you must abhor their carcasses.

¹²Everything in the water that does not have fins and scales will be abhorrent to you.

¹³“You are to abhor these birds. They must not be eaten because they are abhorrent: eagles, bearded vultures, Egyptian vultures,

¹⁴kites, any kind of falcon,

¹⁵every kind of raven,

¹⁶ostriches, short-eared owls, gulls, any kind of hawk,

¹⁷little owls, cormorants, long-eared owls,

¹⁸barn owls, eagle owls, ospreys,

¹⁹storks, any kind of heron, hoopoes, and bats.

²⁰“All winged insects that walk on all fours are to be abhorrent to you.

²¹But you may eat these kinds of all the winged insects that walk on all fours: those that have jointed legs above their feet for hopping on the ground.

²²You may eat these: any kind of locust, katydid, cricket, and grasshopper.

²³All other winged insects that have four feet are to be abhorrent to you.

²⁴“These will make you unclean. Whoever touches their carcasses will be unclean until evening,

²⁵and whoever carries any of their carcasses is to wash his clothes and will be unclean until evening.

²⁶All animals that have hooves but do not have a divided hoof and do not chew the cud are unclean for you. Whoever touches them becomes unclean.

²⁷All the four-footed animals that walk on their paws are unclean for you. Whoever touches their carcasses will be unclean until evening,

²⁸and anyone who carries their carcasses is to wash his clothes and will be unclean until evening. They are unclean for you.

²⁹“These creatures that swarm on the ground are unclean for you: weasels, mice, any kind of large lizard,

³⁰geckos, monitor lizards, common lizards, skinks, and chameleons.

³¹These are unclean for you among all the swarming creatures. Whoever touches them when they are dead will be unclean until evening.

³²When any one of them dies and falls on anything it becomes unclean — any item of wood, clothing, leather, sackcloth, or any implement used for work. It is to be rinsed with water and will remain unclean until evening; then it will be clean.

³³If any of them falls into any clay pot, everything in it will become unclean; you are to break it.

³⁴Any edible food coming into contact with that unclean water will become unclean, and any drinkable liquid in any container will become unclean.

³⁵Anything one of their carcasses falls on will become unclean. If it is an oven or stove, it is to be smashed; it is unclean and will remain unclean for you.

³⁶A spring or cistern containing water will remain clean, but someone who touches a carcass in it will become unclean.

³⁷If one of their carcasses falls on any seed that is to be sown, it is clean;

³⁸but if water has been put on the seed and one of their carcasses falls on it, it is unclean for you.

³⁹“If one of the animals that you use for food dies, anyone who touches its carcass will be unclean until evening.

⁴⁰Anyone who eats some of its carcass is to wash his clothes and will be unclean until evening. Anyone who carries its carcass must wash his clothes and will be unclean until evening.

⁴¹“All the creatures that swarm on the earth are abhorrent; they must not be eaten.

⁴²Do not eat any of the creatures that swarm on the earth, anything that moves on its belly or walks on all fours or on many feet, for they are abhorrent.

⁴³Do not become contaminated by any creature that swarms; do not become unclean or defiled by them.

⁴⁴For I am the LORD your God, so you must consecrate yourselves and be holy because I am holy. Do not defile yourselves by any swarming creature that crawls on the ground.

⁴⁵For I am the LORD, who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God, so you must be holy because I am holy.

⁴⁶“This is the law concerning animals, birds, all living creatures that move in the water, and all creatures that swarm on the ground,

⁴⁷in order to distinguish between the unclean and the clean, between the animals that may be eaten and those that may not be eaten.”

¹For this reason, I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles —

²you have heard, haven’t you, about the administration of God’s grace that he gave to me for you?

³The mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have briefly written above.

⁴By reading this you are able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ.

⁵This was not made known to people in other generations as it is now revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit:

⁶The Gentiles are coheirs, members of the same body, and partners in the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

⁷I was made a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace that was given to me by the working of his power.

⁸This grace was given to me — the least of all the saints — to proclaim to the Gentiles the incalculable riches of Christ,

⁹and to shed light for all about the administration of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.

¹⁰This is so that God’s multi-faceted wisdom may now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavens.

¹¹This is according to his eternal purpose accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.

¹²In him we have boldness and confident access through faith in him.

¹³So then I ask you not to be discouraged over my afflictions on your behalf, for they are your glory.

¹⁴For this reason I kneel before the Father

¹⁵from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

¹⁶I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit,

¹⁷and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love,

¹⁸may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love,

¹⁹and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

²⁰Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us —

²¹to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

¹Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ: To those chosen, living as exiles dispersed abroad in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, chosen

²according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient and to be sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ. May grace and peace be multiplied to you.

³Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead

⁴and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.

⁵You are being guarded by God’s power through faith for a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

⁶You rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials

⁷so that the proven character of your faith  — more valuable than gold which, though perishable, is refined by fire  — may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

⁸Though you have not seen him, you love him; though not seeing him now, you believe in him, and you rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy,

⁹because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

¹⁰Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who prophesied about the grace that would come to you, searched and carefully investigated.

¹¹They inquired into what time or what circumstances the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating when he testified in advance to the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.

¹²It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you. These things have now been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven  — angels long to catch a glimpse of these things.

¹³Therefore, with your minds ready for action, be sober-minded and set your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

¹⁴As obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires of your former ignorance.

¹⁵But as the one who called you is holy, you also are to be holy in all your conduct;

¹⁶for it is written, Be holy, because I am holy.

¹⁷If you appeal to the Father who judges impartially according to each one’s work, you are to conduct yourselves in reverence during your time living as strangers.

¹⁸For you know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things like silver or gold,

¹⁹but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb.

²⁰He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was revealed in these last times for you.

²¹Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

²²Since you have purified yourselves by your obedience to the truth, so that you show sincere brotherly love for each other, from a pure heart love one another constantly,

²³because you have been born again  — not of perishable seed but of imperishable — through the living and enduring word of God.

²⁴For All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like a flower of the grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls,

²⁵but the word of the Lord endures forever. And this word is the gospel that was proclaimed to you.

¹The LORD answered Job:

²Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let him who argues with God give an answer.

³Then Job answered the LORD:

⁴I am so insignificant. How can I answer you? I place my hand over my mouth.

⁵I have spoken once, and I will not reply; twice, but now I can add nothing.

⁶Then the LORD answered Job from the whirlwind:

⁷Get ready to answer me like a man; When I question you, you will inform me.

⁸Would you really challenge my justice? Would you declare me guilty to justify yourself?

⁹Do you have an arm like God’s? Can you thunder with a voice like his?

¹⁰Adorn yourself with majesty and splendor, and clothe yourself with honor and glory.

¹¹Pour out your raging anger; look on every proud person and humiliate him.

¹²Look on every proud person and humble him; trample the wicked where they stand.

¹³Hide them together in the dust; imprison them in the grave.

¹⁴Then I will confess to you that your own right hand can deliver you.

¹⁵Look at Behemoth, which I made along with you. He eats grass like cattle.

¹⁶Look at the strength of his back and the power in the muscles of his belly.

¹⁷He stiffens his tail like a cedar tree; the tendons of his thighs are woven firmly together.

¹⁸His bones are bronze tubes; his limbs are like iron rods.

¹⁹He is the foremost of God’s works; only his Maker can draw the sword against him.

²⁰The hills yield food for him, while all sorts of wild animals play there.

²¹He lies under the lotus plants, hiding in the protection of marshy reeds.

²²Lotus plants cover him with their shade; the willows by the brook surround him.

²³Though the river rages, Behemoth is unafraid; he remains confident, even if the Jordan surges up to his mouth.

²⁴Can anyone capture him while he looks on, or pierce his nose with snares?

¹Of David. [1] I will give you thanks with all my heart; I will sing your praise before the heavenly beings.

²I will bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your constant love and truth. You have exalted your name and your promise above everything else.

³On the day I called, you answered me; you increased strength within me.

⁴All the kings on earth will give you thanks, LORD, when they hear what you have promised.

⁵They will sing of the LORD’s ways, for the LORD’s glory is great.

⁶Though the LORD is exalted, he takes note of the humble; but he knows the haughty from a distance.

⁷If I walk into the thick of danger, you will preserve my life from the anger of my enemies. You will extend your hand; your right hand will save me.

⁸The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me. LORD, your faithful love endures forever; do not abandon the work of your hands.

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.

¹Later on, during the wheat harvest, Samson took a young goat as a gift and visited his wife. “I want to go to my wife in her room,” he said. But her father would not let him enter.

²“I was sure you hated her,” her father said, “so I gave her to one of the men who accompanied you. Isn’t her younger sister more beautiful than she is? Why not take her instead?”

³Samson said to them, “This time I will be blameless when I harm the Philistines.”

⁴So he went out and caught three hundred foxes. He took torches, turned the foxes tail-to-tail, and put a torch between each pair of tails.

⁵Then he ignited the torches and released the foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines. He burned the piles of grain and the standing grain as well as the vineyards and olive groves.

⁶Then the Philistines asked, “Who did this?” They were told, “It was Samson, the Timnite’s son-in-law, because he took Samson’s wife and gave her to his companion.” So the Philistines went to her and her father and burned them to death.

⁷Then Samson told them, “Because you did this, I swear that I won’t rest until I have taken vengeance on you.”

⁸He tore them limb from limb and then went down and stayed in the cave at the rock of Etam.

⁹The Philistines went up, camped in Judah, and raided Lehi.

¹⁰So the men of Judah said, “Why have you attacked us?” They replied, “We have come to tie Samson up and pay him back for what he did to us.”

¹¹Then three thousand men of Judah went to the cave at the rock of Etam, and they asked Samson, “Don’t you realize that the Philistines rule us? What have you done to us?” “I have done to them what they did to me,” he answered.

¹²They said to him, “We’ve come to tie you up and hand you over to the Philistines.” Then Samson told them, “Swear to me that you yourselves won’t kill me.”

¹³“No,” they said, “we won’t kill you, but we will tie you up securely and hand you over to them.” So they tied him up with two new ropes and led him away from the rock.

¹⁴When he came to Lehi, the Philistines came to meet him shouting. The Spirit of the LORD came powerfully on him, and the ropes that were on his arms and wrists became like burnt flax and fell off.

¹⁵He found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, reached out his hand, took it, and killed a thousand men with it.

¹⁶Then Samson said: With the jawbone of a donkey I have piled them in heaps. With the jawbone of a donkey I have killed a thousand men.

¹⁷When he finished speaking, he threw away the jawbone and named that place Ramath-lehi.

¹⁸He became very thirsty and called out to the LORD: “You have accomplished this great victory through your servant. Must I now die of thirst and fall into the hands of the uncircumcised?”

¹⁹So God split a hollow place in the ground at Lehi, and water came out of it. After Samson drank, his strength returned, and he revived. That is why he named it En-hakkore, which is still in Lehi today.

²⁰And he judged Israel twenty years in the days of the Philistines.

¹In those days Hezekiah became terminally ill. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came and said to him, “This is what the LORD says: ‘Set your house in order, for you are about to die; you will not recover.’”

²Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD.

³He said, “Please, LORD, remember how I have walked before you faithfully and wholeheartedly, and have done what pleases you.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly.

⁴Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah:

⁵“Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the LORD God of your ancestor David says: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Look, I am going to add fifteen years to your life.

⁶And I will rescue you and this city from the grasp of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city.

⁷This is the sign to you from the LORD that he will do what he has promised:

⁸I am going to make the sun’s shadow that goes down on the stairway of Ahaz go back by ten steps.’” So the sun’s shadow went back the ten steps it had descended.

⁹A poem by King Hezekiah of Judah after he had been sick and had recovered from his illness:

¹⁰I said: In the prime of my life I must go to the gates of Sheol; I am deprived of the rest of my years.

¹¹I said: I will never see the LORD, the LORD in the land of the living; I will not look on humanity any longer with the inhabitants of what is passing away.

¹²My dwelling is plucked up and removed from me like a shepherd’s tent. I have rolled up my life like a weaver; he cuts me off from the loom. By nightfall you make an end of me.

¹³I thought until the morning: He will break all my bones like a lion. By nightfall you make an end of me.

¹⁴I chirp like a swallow or a crane; I moan like a dove. My eyes grow weak looking upward. Lord, I am oppressed; support me.

¹⁵What can I say? He has spoken to me, and he himself has done it. I walk along slowly all my years because of the bitterness of my soul.

¹⁶Lord, by such things people live, and in every one of them my spirit finds life; you have restored me to health and let me live.

¹⁷Indeed, it was for my own well-being that I had such intense bitterness; but your love has delivered me from the Pit of destruction, for you have thrown all my sins behind your back.

¹⁸For Sheol cannot thank you; Death cannot praise you. Those who go down to the Pit cannot hope for your faithfulness.

¹⁹The living, only the living can thank you, as I do today; a father will make your faithfulness known to children.

²⁰The LORD is ready to save me; we will play stringed instruments all the days of our lives at the house of the LORD.

²¹Now Isaiah had said, “Let them take a lump of pressed figs and apply it to his infected skin, so that he may recover.”

²²And Hezekiah had asked, “What is the sign that I will go up to the LORD’s temple?”

¹Saul agreed with putting him to death. On that day a severe persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem, and all except the apostles were scattered throughout the land of Judea and Samaria.

²Devout men buried Stephen and mourned deeply over him.

³Saul, however, was ravaging the church. He would enter house after house, drag off men and women, and put them in prison.

⁴So those who were scattered went on their way preaching the word.

⁵Philip went down to a city in Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah to them.

⁶The crowds were all paying attention to what Philip said, as they listened and saw the signs he was performing.

⁷For unclean spirits, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who were possessed, and many who were paralyzed and lame were healed.

⁸So there was great joy in that city.

⁹A man named Simon had previously practiced sorcery in that city and amazed the Samaritan people, while claiming to be somebody great.

¹⁰They all paid attention to him, from the least of them to the greatest, and they said, “This man is called the Great Power of God.”

¹¹They were attentive to him because he had amazed them with his sorceries for a long time.

¹²But when they believed Philip, as he proclaimed the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, both men and women were baptized.

¹³Even Simon himself believed. And after he was baptized, he followed Philip everywhere and was amazed as he observed the signs and great miracles that were being performed.

¹⁴When the apostles who were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them.

¹⁵After they went down there, they prayed for them so the Samaritans might receive the Holy Spirit because he had not yet come down on any of them.

¹⁶(They had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. )

¹⁷Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit.

¹⁸When Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles’ hands, he offered them money,

¹⁹saying, “Give me this power also so that anyone I lay hands on may receive the Holy Spirit.”

²⁰But Peter told him, “May your silver be destroyed with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money!

²¹You have no part or share in this matter, because your heart is not right before God.

²²Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, your heart’s intent may be forgiven.

²³For I see you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by wickedness.”

²⁴“Pray to the Lord for me,” Simon replied, “so that nothing you have said may happen to me.”

²⁵So, after they had testified and spoken the word of the Lord, they traveled back to Jerusalem, preaching the gospel in many villages of the Samaritans.

²⁶An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip: “Get up and go south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is the desert road. )

²⁷So he got up and went. There was an Ethiopian man, a eunuch and high official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to worship in Jerusalem

²⁸and was sitting in his chariot on his way home, reading the prophet Isaiah aloud.

²⁹The Spirit told Philip, “Go and join that chariot.”

³⁰When Philip ran up to it, he heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, “Do you understand what you’re reading?”

³¹“How can I,” he said, “unless someone guides me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

³²Now the Scripture passage he was reading was this: He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth.

³³In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who will describe his generation? For his life is taken from the earth.

³⁴The eunuch said to Philip, “I ask you, who is the prophet saying this about — himself or someone else?”

³⁵Philip proceeded to tell him the good news about Jesus, beginning with that Scripture.

³⁶As they were traveling down the road, they came to some water. The eunuch said, “Look, there’s water. What would keep me from being baptized?”

³⁷

³⁸So he ordered the chariot to stop, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him.

³⁹When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord carried Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him any longer but went on his way rejoicing.

⁴⁰Philip appeared in Azotus, and he was traveling and preaching the gospel in all the towns until he came to Caesarea.