Professor Horner’s Reading Plan

¹When they approached Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples

²and told them, “Go into the village ahead of you. As soon as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it.

³If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this? ’ say, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here right away.’”

⁴So they went and found a colt outside in the street, tied by a door. They untied it,

⁵and some of those standing there said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?”

⁶They answered them just as Jesus had said; so they let them go.

⁷They brought the donkey to Jesus and threw their clothes on it, and he sat on it.

⁸Many people spread their clothes on the road, and others spread leafy branches cut from the fields.

⁹Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted: Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

¹⁰Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!

¹¹He went into Jerusalem and into the temple. After looking around at everything, since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.

¹²The next day when they went out from Bethany, he was hungry.

¹³Seeing in the distance a fig tree with leaves, he went to find out if there was anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves; for it was not the season for figs.

¹⁴He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again!” And his disciples heard it.

¹⁵They came to Jerusalem, and he went into the temple and began to throw out those buying and selling. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves,

¹⁶and would not permit anyone to carry goods through the temple.

¹⁷He was teaching them: “Is it not written, My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it a den of thieves!”

¹⁸The chief priests and the scribes heard it and started looking for a way to kill him. For they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was astonished by his teaching.

¹⁹Whenever evening came, they would go out of the city.

²⁰Early in the morning, as they were passing by, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots up.

²¹Then Peter remembered and said to him, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree that you cursed has withered.”

²²Jesus replied to them, “Have faith in God.

²³Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him.

²⁴Therefore I tell you, everything you pray and ask for  —  believe that you have received it and it will be yours.

²⁵And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven will also forgive you your wrongdoing.”

²⁶

²⁷They came again to Jerusalem. As he was walking in the temple, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders came

²⁸and asked him, “By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do these things?”

²⁹Jesus said to them, “I will ask you one question; then answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I do these things.

³⁰Was John’s baptism from heaven or of human origin? Answer me.”

³¹They discussed it among themselves: “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Then why didn’t you believe him?’

³²But if we say, ‘Of human origin’” — they were afraid of the crowd, because everyone thought that John was truly a prophet.

³³So they answered Jesus, “We don’t know.” And Jesus said to them, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

¹Now Joseph had been taken to Egypt. An Egyptian named Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh and the captain of the guards, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him there.

²The LORD was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, serving in the household of his Egyptian master.

³When his master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD made everything he did successful,

⁴Joseph found favor with his master and became his personal attendant. Potiphar also put him in charge of his household and placed all that he owned under his authority.

⁵From the time that he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the LORD blessed the Egyptian’s house because of Joseph. The LORD’s blessing was on all that he owned, in his house and in his fields.

⁶He left all that he owned under Joseph’s authority; he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate. Now Joseph was well-built and handsome.

⁷After some time his master’s wife looked longingly at Joseph and said, “Sleep with me.”

⁸But he refused. “Look,” he said to his master’s wife, “with me here my master does not concern himself with anything in his house, and he has put all that he owns under my authority.

⁹No one in this house is greater than I am. He has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. So how could I do this immense evil, and how could I sin against God?”

¹⁰Although she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her.

¹¹Now one day he went into the house to do his work, and none of the household servants were there.

¹²She grabbed him by his garment and said, “Sleep with me!” But leaving his garment in her hand, he escaped and ran outside.

¹³When she saw that he had left his garment with her and had run outside,

¹⁴she called her household servants. “Look,” she said to them, “my husband brought a Hebrew man to make fools of us. He came to me so he could sleep with me, and I screamed as loud as I could.

¹⁵When he heard me screaming for help, he left his garment beside me and ran outside.”

¹⁶She put Joseph’s garment beside her until his master came home.

¹⁷Then she told him the same story: “The Hebrew slave you brought to us came to make a fool of me,

¹⁸but when I screamed for help, he left his garment beside me and ran outside.”

¹⁹When his master heard the story his wife told him — “These are the things your slave did to me” — he was furious

²⁰and had him thrown into prison, where the king’s prisoners were confined. So Joseph was there in prison.

²¹But the LORD was with Joseph and extended kindness to him. He granted him favor with the prison warden.

²²The warden put all the prisoners who were in the prison under Joseph’s authority, and he was responsible for everything that was done there.

²³The warden did not bother with anything under Joseph’s authority, because the LORD was with him, and the LORD made everything that he did successful.

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.

¹Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

²This is how you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,

³but every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming; even now it is already in the world.

⁴You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

⁵They are from the world. Therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them.

⁶We are from God. Anyone who knows God listens to us; anyone who is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.

⁷Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

⁸The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

⁹God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him.

¹⁰Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

¹¹Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another.

¹²No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us.

¹³This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.

¹⁴And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son as the world’s Savior.

¹⁵Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God — God remains in him and he in God.

¹⁶And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.

¹⁷In this, love is made complete with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world.

¹⁸There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love.

¹⁹We love because he first loved us.

²⁰If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

²¹And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.

¹Do you know when mountain goats give birth? Have you watched the deer in labor?

²Can you count the months they are pregnant so you can know the time they give birth?

³They crouch down to give birth to their young; they deliver their newborn.

⁴Their offspring are healthy and grow up in the open field. They leave and do not return.

⁵Who set the wild donkey free? Who released the swift donkey from its harness?

⁶I made the desert its home, and the salty wasteland its dwelling.

⁷It scoffs at the noise of the village and never hears the shouts of a driver.

⁸It roams the mountains for its pastureland, searching for anything green.

⁹Would the wild ox be willing to serve you? Would it spend the night by your feeding trough?

¹⁰Can you hold the wild ox to a furrow by its harness? Will it plow the valleys behind you?

¹¹Can you depend on it because its strength is great? Would you leave it to do your hard work?

¹²Can you trust the wild ox to harvest your grain and bring it to your threshing floor?

¹³The wings of the ostrich flap joyfully, but are her feathers and plumage like the stork’s?

¹⁴She abandons her eggs on the ground and lets them be warmed in the sand.

¹⁵She forgets that a foot may crush them or that some wild animal may trample them.

¹⁶She treats her young harshly, as if they were not her own, with no fear that her labor may have been in vain.

¹⁷For God has deprived her of wisdom; he has not endowed her with understanding.

¹⁸When she proudly spreads her wings, she laughs at the horse and its rider.

¹⁹Do you give strength to the horse? Do you adorn his neck with a mane?

²⁰Do you make him leap like a locust? His proud snorting fills one with terror.

²¹He paws in the valley and rejoices in his strength; he charges into battle.

²²He laughs at fear, since he is afraid of nothing; he does not run from the sword.

²³A quiver rattles at his side, along with a flashing spear and a javelin.

²⁴He charges ahead with trembling rage; he cannot stand still at the trumpet’s sound.

²⁵When the trumpet blasts, he snorts defiantly. He smells the battle from a distance; he hears the officers’ shouts and the battle cry.

²⁶Does the hawk take flight by your understanding and spread its wings to the south?

²⁷Does the eagle soar at your command and make its nest on high?

²⁸It lives on a cliff where it spends the night; its stronghold is on a rocky crag.

²⁹From there it searches for prey; its eyes penetrate the distance.

³⁰Its brood gulps down blood, and where the slain are, it is there.

¹For the choir director, for Jeduthun. A psalm of David. [1] I said, “I will guard my ways so that I may not sin with my tongue; I will guard my mouth with a muzzle as long as the wicked are in my presence.”

²I was speechless and quiet; I kept silent, even from speaking good, and my pain intensified.

³My heart grew hot within me; as I mused, a fire burned. I spoke with my tongue:

⁴“LORD, make me aware of my end and the number of my days so that I will know how short-lived I am.

⁵In fact, you have made my days just inches long, and my life span is as nothing to you. Yes, every human being stands as only a vapor. Selah

⁶Yes, a person goes about like a mere shadow. Indeed, they rush around in vain, gathering possessions without knowing who will get them.

⁷“Now, Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in you.

⁸Rescue me from all my transgressions; do not make me the taunt of fools.

⁹I am speechless; I do not open my mouth because of what you have done.

¹⁰Remove your torment from me. Because of the force of your hand I am finished.

¹¹You discipline a person with punishment for iniquity, consuming like a moth what is precious to him; yes, every human being is only a vapor. Selah

¹²“Hear my prayer, LORD, and listen to my cry for help; do not be silent at my tears. For I am here with you as an alien, a temporary resident like all my ancestors.

¹³Turn your angry gaze from me so that I may be cheered up before I die and am gone.”

¹Doesn’t wisdom call out? Doesn’t understanding make her voice heard?

²At the heights overlooking the road, at the crossroads, she takes her stand.

³Beside the gates leading into the city, at the main entrance, she cries out:

⁴“People, I call out to you; my cry is to the children of Adam.

⁵Learn to be shrewd, you who are inexperienced; develop common sense, you who are foolish.

⁶Listen, for I speak of noble things, and what my lips say is right.

⁷For my mouth tells the truth, and wickedness is detestable to my lips.

⁸All the words from my mouth are righteous; none of them are deceptive or perverse.

⁹All of them are clear to the perceptive, and right to those who discover knowledge.

¹⁰Accept my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than pure gold.

¹¹For wisdom is better than jewels, and nothing desirable can equal it.

¹²I, wisdom, share a home with shrewdness and have knowledge and discretion.

¹³To fear the LORD is to hate evil. I hate arrogant pride, evil conduct, and perverse speech.

¹⁴I possess good advice and sound wisdom; I have understanding and strength.

¹⁵It is by me that kings reign and rulers enact just law;

¹⁶by me, princes lead, as do nobles and all righteous judges.

¹⁷I love those who love me, and those who search for me find me.

¹⁸With me are riches and honor, lasting wealth and righteousness.

¹⁹My fruit is better than solid gold, and my harvest than pure silver.

²⁰I walk in the ways of righteousness, along the paths of justice,

²¹giving wealth as an inheritance to those who love me, and filling their treasuries.

²²“The LORD acquired me at the beginning of his creation, before his works of long ago.

²³I was formed before ancient times, from the beginning, before the earth began.

²⁴I was born when there were no watery depths and no springs filled with water.

²⁵Before the mountains were established, prior to the hills, I was given birth —

²⁶before he made the land, the fields, or the first soil on earth.

²⁷I was there when he established the heavens, when he laid out the horizon on the surface of the ocean,

²⁸when he placed the skies above, when the fountains of the ocean gushed out,

²⁹when he set a limit for the sea so that the waters would not violate his command, when he laid out the foundations of the earth.

³⁰I was a skilled craftsman beside him. I was his delight every day, always rejoicing before him.

³¹I was rejoicing in his inhabited world, delighting in the children of Adam.

³²“And now, sons, listen to me; those who keep my ways are happy.

³³Listen to instruction and be wise; don’t ignore it.

³⁴Anyone who listens to me is happy, watching at my doors every day, waiting by the posts of my doorway.

³⁵For the one who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD,

³⁶but the one who misses me harms himself; all who hate me love death.”

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.

¹At that time Merodach-baladan son of Baladan, king of Babylon, sent letters and a gift to Hezekiah since he heard that he had been sick and had recovered.

²Hezekiah was pleased with the letters, and he showed the envoys his treasure house — the silver, the gold, the spices, and the precious oil — and all his armory, and everything that was found in his treasuries. There was nothing in his palace and in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them.

³Then the prophet Isaiah came to King Hezekiah and asked him, “What did these men say, and where did they come to you from?” Hezekiah replied, “They came to me from a distant country, from Babylon.”

⁴Isaiah asked, “What have they seen in your palace?” Hezekiah answered, “They have seen everything in my palace. There isn’t anything in my treasuries that I didn’t show them.”

⁵Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the LORD of Armies:

⁶‘Look, the days are coming when everything in your palace and all that your fathers have stored up until today will be carried off to Babylon; nothing will be left,’ says the LORD.

⁷‘Some of your descendants — who come from you, whom you father — will be taken away, and they will become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.’”

⁸Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word of the LORD that you have spoken is good,” for he thought: There will be peace and security during my lifetime.

¹The apostles and the brothers and sisters who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the word of God.

²When Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcision party criticized him,

³saying, “You went to uncircumcised men and ate with them.”

⁴Peter began to explain to them step by step:

⁵“I was in the town of Joppa praying, and I saw, in a trance, an object that resembled a large sheet coming down, being lowered by its four corners from heaven, and it came to me.

⁶When I looked closely and considered it, I saw the four-footed animals of the earth, the wild beasts, the reptiles, and the birds of the sky.

⁷I also heard a voice telling me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’

⁸“‘No, Lord! ’ I said. ‘For nothing impure or ritually unclean has ever entered my mouth.’

⁹But a voice answered from heaven a second time, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call impure.’

¹⁰“Now this happened three times, and everything was drawn up again into heaven.

¹¹At that very moment, three men who had been sent to me from Caesarea arrived at the house where we were.

¹²The Spirit told me to accompany them with no doubts at all. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we went into the man’s house.

¹³He reported to us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa, and call for Simon, who is also named Peter.

¹⁴He will speak a message to you by which you and all your household will be saved.’

¹⁵“As I began to speak, the Holy Spirit came down on them, just as on us at the beginning.

¹⁶I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’

¹⁷If, then, God gave them the same gift that he also gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, how could I possibly hinder God?”

¹⁸When they heard this they became silent. And they glorified God, saying, “So then, God has given repentance resulting in life even to the Gentiles.”

¹⁹Now those who had been scattered as a result of the persecution that started because of Stephen made their way as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews.

²⁰But there were some of them, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, who came to Antioch and began speaking to the Greeks also, proclaiming the good news about the Lord Jesus.

²¹The Lord’s hand was with them, and a large number who believed turned to the Lord.

²²News about them reached the church in Jerusalem, and they sent out Barnabas to travel as far as Antioch.

²³When he arrived and saw the grace of God, he was glad and encouraged all of them to remain true to the Lord with devoted hearts,

²⁴for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And large numbers of people were added to the Lord.

²⁵Then he went to Tarsus to search for Saul,

²⁶and when he found him he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year they met with the church and taught large numbers. The disciples were first called Christians at Antioch.

²⁷In those days some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch.

²⁸One of them, named Agabus, stood up and predicted by the Spirit that there would be a severe famine throughout the Roman world. This took place during the reign of Claudius.

²⁹Each of the disciples, according to his ability, determined to send relief to the brothers and sisters who lived in Judea.

³⁰They did this, sending it to the elders by means of Barnabas and Saul.