Professor Horner’s Reading Plan

¹“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower.

²He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit.

³You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you.

⁴Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.

⁵I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.

⁶Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

⁷If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

⁸My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.

⁹As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.

¹⁰If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

¹¹I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

¹²“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

¹³No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

¹⁴You are my friends if you do what I command you.

¹⁵I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

¹⁶You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.

¹⁷I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

¹⁸“If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you.

¹⁹If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world — therefore the world hates you.

²⁰Remember the word that I said to you, ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also.

²¹But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me.

²²If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin.

²³Whoever hates me hates my Father also.

²⁴If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father.

²⁵It was to fulfill the word that is written in their law, ‘They hated me without a cause.’

²⁶“When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf.

²⁷You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.

¹At that time the LORD said to me, “Carve out two tablets of stone like the former ones, and come up to me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood.

²I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you smashed, and you shall put them in the ark.”

³So I made an ark of acacia wood, cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand.

⁴Then he wrote on the tablets the same words as before, the ten commandments that the LORD had spoken to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly; and the LORD gave them to me.

⁵So I turned and came down from the mountain, and put the tablets in the ark that I had made; and there they are, as the LORD commanded me.

⁶(The Israelites journeyed from Beeroth-bene-jaakan to Moserah. There Aaron died, and there he was buried; his son Eleazar succeeded him as priest.

⁷From there they journeyed to Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah, a land with flowing streams.

⁸At that time the LORD set apart the tribe of Levi to carry the ark of the covenant of the LORD, to stand before the LORD to minister to him, and to bless in his name, to this day.

⁹Therefore Levi has no allotment or inheritance with his kindred; the LORD is his inheritance, as the LORD your God promised him.)

¹⁰I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights, as I had done the first time. And once again the LORD listened to me. The LORD was unwilling to destroy you.

¹¹The LORD said to me, “Get up, go on your journey at the head of the people, that they may go in and occupy the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them.”

¹²So now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you? Only to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,

¹³and to keep the commandments of the LORD your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being.

¹⁴Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the LORD your God, the earth with all that is in it,

¹⁵yet the LORD set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today.

¹⁶Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer.

¹⁷For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe,

¹⁸who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.

¹⁹You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.

²⁰You shall fear the LORD your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear.

²¹He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen.

²²Your ancestors went down to Egypt seventy persons; and now the LORD your God has made you as numerous as the stars in heaven.

¹As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.

²For he says, “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.” See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!

³We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry,

⁴but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities,

⁵beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;

⁶by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love,

⁷truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left;

⁸in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true;

⁹as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see — we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed;

¹⁰as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

¹¹We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you.

¹²There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours.

¹³In return — I speak as to children — open wide your hearts also.

¹⁴Do not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness?

¹⁵What agreement does Christ have with Beliar? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever?

¹⁶What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

¹⁷Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you,

¹⁸and I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”

¹Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

²For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle.

³If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies.

⁴Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.

⁵So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!

⁶And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell.

⁷For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species,

⁸but no one can tame the tongue — a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

⁹With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.

¹⁰From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.

¹¹Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water?

¹²Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

¹³Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.

¹⁴But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth.

¹⁵Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish.

¹⁶For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.

¹⁷But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.

¹⁸And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.

¹And the LORD said to Job:

²“Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty? Anyone who argues with God must respond.”

³Then Job answered the LORD:

⁴“See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth.

⁵I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but will proceed no further.”

⁶Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind:

⁷“Gird up your loins like a man; I will question you, and you declare to me.

⁸Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be justified?

⁹Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his?

¹⁰“Deck yourself with majesty and dignity; clothe yourself with glory and splendor.

¹¹Pour out the overflowings of your anger, and look on all who are proud, and abase them.

¹²Look on all who are proud, and bring them low; tread down the wicked where they stand.

¹³Hide them all in the dust together; bind their faces in the world below.

¹⁴Then I will also acknowledge to you that your own right hand can give you victory.

¹⁵“Look at Behemoth, which I made just as I made you; it eats grass like an ox.

¹⁶Its strength is in its loins, and its power in the muscles of its belly.

¹⁷It makes its tail stiff like a cedar; the sinews of its thighs are knit together.

¹⁸Its bones are tubes of bronze, its limbs like bars of iron.

¹⁹“It is the first of the great acts of God — only its Maker can approach it with the sword.

²⁰For the mountains yield food for it where all the wild animals play.

²¹Under the lotus plants it lies, in the covert of the reeds and in the marsh.

²²The lotus trees cover it for shade; the willows of the wadi surround it.

²³Even if the river is turbulent, it is not frightened; it is confident though Jordan rushes against its mouth.

²⁴Can one take it with hooks or pierce its nose with a snare?

¹The mighty one, God the LORD, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.

²Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.

³Our God comes and does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, and a mighty tempest all around him.

⁴He calls to the heavens above and to the earth, that he may judge his people:

⁵“Gather to me my faithful ones, who made a covenant with me by sacrifice!”

⁶The heavens declare his righteousness, for God himself is judge. Selah

⁷“Hear, O my people, and I will speak, O Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God.

⁸Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you; your burnt offerings are continually before me.

⁹I will not accept a bull from your house, or goats from your folds.

¹⁰For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills.

¹¹I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine.

¹²“If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine.

¹³Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?

¹⁴Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High.

¹⁵Call on me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.”

¹⁶But to the wicked God says: “What right have you to recite my statutes, or take my covenant on your lips?

¹⁷For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you.

¹⁸You make friends with a thief when you see one, and you keep company with adulterers.

¹⁹“You give your mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit.

²⁰You sit and speak against your kin; you slander your own mother’s child.

²¹These things you have done and I have been silent; you thought that I was one just like yourself. But now I rebuke you, and lay the charge before you.

²²“Mark this, then, you who forget God, or I will tear you apart, and there will be no one to deliver.

²³Those who bring thanksgiving as their sacrifice honor me; to those who go the right way I will show the salvation of God.”

¹Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn her seven pillars.

²She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine, she has also set her table.

³She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls from the highest places in the town,

⁴“You that are simple, turn in here!” To those without sense she says,

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

⁶Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight.”

⁷Whoever corrects a scoffer wins abuse; whoever rebukes the wicked gets hurt.

⁸A scoffer who is rebuked will only hate you; the wise, when rebuked, will love you.

⁹Give instruction to the wise, and they will become wiser still; teach the righteous and they will gain in learning.

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

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

¹²If you are wise, you are wise for yourself; if you scoff, you alone will bear it.

¹³The foolish woman is loud; she is ignorant and knows nothing.

¹⁴She sits at the door of her house, on a seat at the high places of the town,

¹⁵calling to those who pass by, who are going straight on their way,

¹⁶“You who are simple, turn in here!” And to those without sense she says,

¹⁷“Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”

¹⁸But they do not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

¹Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year; and David inquired of the LORD. The LORD said, “There is bloodguilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.”

²So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. (Now the Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites; although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, Saul had tried to wipe them out in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah.)

³David said to the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you? How shall I make expiation, that you may bless the heritage of the LORD?”

⁴The Gibeonites said to him, “It is not a matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house; neither is it for us to put anyone to death in Israel.” He said, “What do you say that I should do for you?”

⁵They said to the king, “The man who consumed us and planned to destroy us, so that we should have no place in all the territory of Israel —

⁶let seven of his sons be handed over to us, and we will impale them before the LORD at Gibeon on the mountain of the LORD.” The king said, “I will hand them over.”

⁷But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Saul’s son Jonathan, because of the oath of the LORD that was between them, between David and Jonathan son of Saul.

⁸The king took the two sons of Rizpah daughter of Aiah, whom she bore to Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Merab daughter of Saul, whom she bore to Adriel son of Barzillai the Meholathite;

⁹he gave them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they impaled them on the mountain before the LORD. The seven of them perished together. They were put to death in the first days of harvest, at the beginning of barley harvest.

¹⁰Then Rizpah the daughter of Aiah took sackcloth, and spread it on a rock for herself, from the beginning of harvest until rain fell on them from the heavens; she did not allow the birds of the air to come on the bodies by day, or the wild animals by night.

¹¹When David was told what Rizpah daughter of Aiah, the concubine of Saul, had done,

¹²David went and took the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan from the people of Jabesh-gilead, who had stolen them from the public square of Beth-shan, where the Philistines had hung them up, on the day the Philistines killed Saul on Gilboa.

¹³He brought up from there the bones of Saul and the bones of his son Jonathan; and they gathered the bones of those who had been impaled.

¹⁴They buried the bones of Saul and of his son Jonathan in the land of Benjamin in Zela, in the tomb of his father Kish; they did all that the king commanded. After that, God heeded supplications for the land.

¹⁵The Philistines went to war again with Israel, and David went down together with his servants. They fought against the Philistines, and David grew weary.

¹⁶Ishbi-benob, one of the descendants of the giants, whose spear weighed three hundred shekels of bronze, and who was fitted out with new weapons, said he would kill David.

¹⁷But Abishai son of Zeruiah came to his aid, and attacked the Philistine and killed him. Then David’s men swore to him, “You shall not go out with us to battle any longer, so that you do not quench the lamp of Israel.”

¹⁸After this a battle took place with the Philistines, at Gob; then Sibbecai the Hushathite killed Saph, who was one of the descendants of the giants.

¹⁹Then there was another battle with the Philistines at Gob; and Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim, the Bethlehemite, killed Goliath the Gittite, the shaft of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.

²⁰There was again war at Gath, where there was a man of great size, who had six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number; he too was descended from the giants.

²¹When he taunted Israel, Jonathan son of David’s brother Shimei, killed him.

²²These four were descended from the giants in Gath; they fell by the hands of David and his servants.

¹The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, when King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon and all his army and all the kingdoms of the earth and all the peoples under his dominion were fighting against Jerusalem and all its cities:

²Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: Go and speak to King Zedekiah of Judah and say to him: Thus says the LORD: I am going to give this city into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.

³And you yourself shall not escape from his hand, but shall surely be captured and handed over to him; you shall see the king of Babylon eye to eye and speak with him face to face; and you shall go to Babylon.

⁴Yet hear the word of the LORD, O King Zedekiah of Judah! Thus says the LORD concerning you: You shall not die by the sword;

⁵you shall die in peace. And as spices were burned for your ancestors, the earlier kings who preceded you, so they shall burn spices for you and lament for you, saying, “Alas, lord!” For I have spoken the word, says the LORD.

⁶Then the prophet Jeremiah spoke all these words to Zedekiah king of Judah, in Jerusalem,

⁷when the army of the king of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and against all the cities of Judah that were left, Lachish and Azekah; for these were the only fortified cities of Judah that remained.

⁸The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD, after King Zedekiah had made a covenant with all the people in Jerusalem to make a proclamation of liberty to them —

⁹that all should set free their Hebrew slaves, male and female, so that no one should hold another Judean in slavery.

¹⁰And they obeyed, all the officials and all the people who had entered into the covenant that all would set free their slaves, male or female, so that they would not be enslaved again; they obeyed and set them free.

¹¹But afterward they turned around and took back the male and female slaves they had set free, and brought them again into subjection as slaves.

¹²The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah from the LORD:

¹³Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel: I myself made a covenant with your ancestors when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, saying,

¹⁴“Every seventh year each of you must set free any Hebrews who have been sold to you and have served you six years; you must set them free from your service.” But your ancestors did not listen to me or incline their ears to me.

¹⁵You yourselves recently repented and did what was right in my sight by proclaiming liberty to one another, and you made a covenant before me in the house that is called by my name;

¹⁶but then you turned around and profaned my name when each of you took back your male and female slaves, whom you had set free according to their desire, and you brought them again into subjection to be your slaves.

¹⁷Therefore, thus says the LORD: You have not obeyed me by granting a release to your neighbors and friends; I am going to grant a release to you, says the LORD — a release to the sword, to pestilence, and to famine. I will make you a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

¹⁸And those who transgressed my covenant and did not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me, I will make like the calf when they cut it in two and passed between its parts:

¹⁹the officials of Judah, the officials of Jerusalem, the eunuchs, the priests, and all the people of the land who passed between the parts of the calf

²⁰shall be handed over to their enemies and to those who seek their lives. Their corpses shall become food for the birds of the air and the wild animals of the earth.

²¹And as for King Zedekiah of Judah and his officials, I will hand them over to their enemies and to those who seek their lives, to the army of the king of Babylon, which has withdrawn from you.

²²I am going to command, says the LORD, and will bring them back to this city; and they will fight against it, and take it, and burn it with fire. The towns of Judah I will make a desolation without inhabitant.

¹The same thing occurred in Iconium, where Paul and Barnabas went into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks became believers.

²But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brothers.

³So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord, who testified to the word of his grace by granting signs and wonders to be done through them.

⁴But the residents of the city were divided; some sided with the Jews, and some with the apostles.

⁵And when an attempt was made by both Gentiles and Jews, with their rulers, to mistreat them and to stone them,

⁶the apostles learned of it and fled to Lystra and Derbe, cities of Lycaonia, and to the surrounding country;

⁷and there they continued proclaiming the good news.

⁸In Lystra there was a man sitting who could not use his feet and had never walked, for he had been crippled from birth.

⁹He listened to Paul as he was speaking. And Paul, looking at him intently and seeing that he had faith to be healed,

¹⁰said in a loud voice, “Stand upright on your feet.” And the man sprang up and began to walk.

¹¹When the crowds saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, “The gods have come down to us in human form!”

¹²Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes, because he was the chief speaker.

¹³The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates; he and the crowds wanted to offer sacrifice.

¹⁴When the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting,

¹⁵“Friends, why are you doing this? We are mortals just like you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them.

¹⁶In past generations he allowed all the nations to follow their own ways;

¹⁷yet he has not left himself without a witness in doing good — giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.”

¹⁸Even with these words, they scarcely restrained the crowds from offering sacrifice to them.

¹⁹But Jews came there from Antioch and Iconium and won over the crowds. Then they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead.

²⁰But when the disciples surrounded him, he got up and went into the city. The next day he went on with Barnabas to Derbe.

²¹After they had proclaimed the good news to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, then on to Iconium and Antioch.

²²There they strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith, saying, “It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God.”

²³And after they had appointed elders for them in each church, with prayer and fasting they entrusted them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe.

²⁴Then they passed through Pisidia and came to Pamphylia.

²⁵When they had spoken the word in Perga, they went down to Attalia.

²⁶From there they sailed back to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work that they had completed.

²⁷When they arrived, they called the church together and related all that God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith for the Gentiles.

²⁸And they stayed there with the disciples for some time.