M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan
24 Joash was seven years old when he became king, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother’s name was Zibiah, from Beersheba. 2 Joash tried hard to please the Lord all during the lifetime of Jehoiada the priest. 3 Jehoiada arranged two marriages for him, and he had sons and daughters.
4 Later on Joash decided to repair and recondition the Temple. 5 He summoned the priests and Levites and gave them these instructions:
“Go to all the cities of Judah and collect offerings for the building fund so that we can maintain the Temple in good repair. Get at it right away. Don’t delay.” But the Levites took their time.
6 So the king called for Jehoiada the High Priest and asked him, “Why haven’t you demanded that the Levites go out and collect the Temple taxes from the cities of Judah and from Jerusalem? The tax law enacted by Moses the servant of the Lord must be enforced so that the Temple can be repaired.”
7-8 (The followers of wicked Athaliah had ravaged the Temple, and everything dedicated to the worship of God had been removed to the temple of Baalim.) So now the king instructed that a chest be made and set outside the Temple gate. 9 Then a proclamation was sent to all the cities of Judah and throughout Jerusalem telling the people to bring to the Lord the tax that Moses the servant of God had assessed upon Israel. 10 And all the leaders and the people were glad, and brought the money and placed it in the chest until it was full.
11 Then the Levites carried the chest to the king’s accounting office, where the recording secretary and the representative of the High Priest counted the money and took the chest back to the Temple again. This went on day after day, and money continued to pour in. 12 The king and Jehoiada gave the money to the building superintendents, who hired masons and carpenters to restore the Temple, and to foundrymen, who made articles of iron and brass. 13 So the work went forward, and finally the Temple was in much better condition than before. 14 When all was finished, the remaining money was brought to the king and Jehoiada, and it was agreed to use it for making the gold and silver spoons and bowls used for incense, and for making the instruments used in the sacrifices and offerings.
Burnt offerings were sacrificed continually during the lifetime of Jehoiada the priest. 15 He lived to a very old age, finally dying at 130. 16 He was buried in the City of David among the kings because he had done so much good for Israel, for God, and for the Temple.
17-18 But after his death, the leaders of Judah came to King Joash and induced him to abandon the Temple of the God of their ancestors and to worship shameful idols instead! So the wrath of God came down upon Judah and Jerusalem again. 19 God sent prophets to bring them back to the Lord, but the people wouldn’t listen.
20 Then the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah, Jehoiada’s son. He called a meeting of all the people. Standing before them upon a platform, he said to them, “God wants to know why you are disobeying his commandments. For when you do, everything you try fails. You have forsaken the Lord, and now he has forsaken you.”
21 Then the leaders plotted to kill Zechariah, and finally King Joash himself ordered him executed in the court of the Temple. 22 That was how King Joash repaid Jehoiada for his love and loyalty—by killing his son. Zechariah’s last words as he died were, “Lord, see what they are doing and pay them back.”
23 A few months later the Syrian army arrived and conquered Judah and Jerusalem, killing all the leaders of the nation and sending back great quantities of booty to the king of Damascus. 24 It was a great triumph for the tiny Syrian army, but the Lord let the great army of Judah be conquered by them because they had forsaken the Lord God of their ancestors. In that way God executed judgment upon Joash. 25 When the Syrians left—leaving Joash severely wounded—his own officials decided to kill him for murdering the son of Jehoiada the priest. They assassinated him as he lay in bed, and buried him in the City of David, but not in the cemetery of the kings. 26 The conspirators were Zabad, whose mother was Shimeath, a woman from Ammon; and Jehozabad, whose mother was Shimrith, a woman from Moab.
27 If you want to read about the sons of Joash and the curses laid upon Joash, and about the restoration of the Temple, see The Annals of the Kings.
When Joash died, his son Amaziah became the new king.
11 Now I was given a measuring stick and told to go and measure the temple of God, including the inner court where the altar stands, and to count the number of worshipers.[a] 2 “But do not measure the outer court,” I was told, “for it has been turned over to the nations. They will trample the Holy City for forty-two months.[b] 3 And I will give power to my two witnesses to prophesy 1,260 days clothed in sackcloth.”
4 These two prophets are the two olive trees,[c] and two candlesticks standing before the God of all the earth. 5 Anyone trying to harm them will be killed by bursts of fire shooting from their mouths. 6 They have power to shut the skies so that no rain will fall during the three and a half years they prophesy, and to turn rivers and oceans to blood, and to send every kind of plague upon the earth as often as they wish.
7 When they complete the three and a half years of their solemn testimony, the tyrant who comes out of the bottomless pit[d] will declare war against them and conquer and kill them; 8-9 and for three and a half days their bodies will be exposed in the streets of Jerusalem (the city fittingly described as “Sodom” or “Egypt”)—the very place where their Lord was crucified. No one will be allowed to bury them, and people from many nations will crowd around to gaze at them. 10 And there will be a worldwide holiday—people everywhere will rejoice and give presents to each other and throw parties to celebrate the death of the two prophets who had tormented them so much!
11 But after three and a half days, the spirit of life from God will enter them, and they will stand up! And great fear will fall on everyone. 12 Then a loud voice will shout from heaven, “Come up!” And they will rise to heaven in a cloud as their enemies watch.
13 The same hour there will be a terrible earthquake that levels a tenth of the city, leaving 7,000 dead. Then everyone left will, in their terror, give glory to the God of heaven.
14 The second woe is past, but the third quickly follows:
15 For just then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices shouting down from heaven, “The Kingdom of this world now belongs to our Lord, and to his Christ; and he shall reign forever and ever.”[e]
16 And the twenty-four Elders sitting on their thrones before God threw themselves down in worship, saying, 17 “We give thanks, Lord God Almighty, who is and was, for now you have assumed your great power and have begun to reign. 18 The nations were angry with you, but now it is your turn to be angry with them. It is time to judge the dead and reward your servants—prophets and people alike, all who fear your Name, both great and small—and to destroy those who have caused destruction upon the earth.”
19 Then, in heaven, the temple of God was opened and the ark of his covenant could be seen inside. Lightning flashed and thunder crashed and roared, and there was a great hailstorm, and the world was shaken by a mighty earthquake.
7 Another message came to me from the Lord in late November of the fourth year of the reign of King Darius.
2 The Jews of the city of Bethel had sent a group of men headed by Sharezer, the chief administrative officer of the king, and Regem-melech, to the Lord’s Temple at Jerusalem, to seek his blessing 3 and to speak with the priests and prophets about whether they must continue their traditional custom of fasting and mourning during the month of August each year, as they had been doing for so long.
4 This was the Lord’s reply:
5 “When you return to Bethel, say to all your people and your priests, ‘During those seventy years of exile when you fasted and mourned in August and October, were you really in earnest about leaving your sins behind and coming back to me? No, not at all! 6 And even now in your holy feasts to God, you don’t think of me, but only of the food and fellowship and fun. 7 Long years ago, when Jerusalem was prosperous and her southern suburbs out along the plain were filled with people, the prophets warned them that this attitude would surely lead to ruin, as it has.’”
8-9 Then this message from the Lord came to Zechariah. “Tell them to be honest and fair—and not to take bribes—and to be merciful and kind to everyone. 10 Tell them to stop oppressing widows and orphans, foreigners and poor people, and to stop plotting evil against each other. 11 Your fathers would not listen to this message. They turned stubbornly away and put their fingers in their ears to keep from hearing me. 12 They hardened their hearts like flint, afraid to hear the words that God, the Lord Almighty, commanded them—the laws he had revealed to them by his Spirit through the early prophets. That is why such great wrath came down on them from God. 13 I called, but they refused to listen, so when they cried to me, I turned away. 14 I scattered them as with a whirlwind among the far-off nations. Their land became desolate; no one even traveled through it; the Pleasant Land lay bare and blighted.”
10 “Anyone refusing to walk through the gate into a sheepfold, who sneaks over the wall, must surely be a thief! 2 For a shepherd comes through the gate. 3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice and come to him; and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. 4 He walks ahead of them; and they follow him, for they recognize his voice. 5 They won’t follow a stranger but will run from him, for they don’t recognize his voice.”
6 Those who heard Jesus use this illustration didn’t understand what he meant, 7 so he explained it to them.
“I am the Gate for the sheep,” he said. 8 “All others who came before me were thieves and robbers. But the true sheep did not listen to them. 9 Yes, I am the Gate. Those who come in by way of the Gate will be saved and will go in and out and find green pastures. 10 The thief’s purpose is to steal, kill and destroy. My purpose is to give life in all its fullness.
11 “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 A hired man will run when he sees a wolf coming and will leave the sheep, for they aren’t his and he isn’t their shepherd. And so the wolf leaps on them and scatters the flock. 13 The hired man runs because he is hired and has no real concern for the sheep.
14 “I am the Good Shepherd and know my own sheep, and they know me, 15 just as my Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 I have other sheep, too, in another fold. I must bring them also, and they will heed my voice; and there will be one flock with one Shepherd.
17 “The Father loves me because I lay down my life that I may have it back again. 18 No one can kill me without my consent—I lay down my life voluntarily. For I have the right and power to lay it down when I want to and also the right and power to take it again. For the Father has given me this right.”
19 When he said these things, the Jewish leaders were again divided in their opinions about him. 20 Some of them said, “He has a demon or else is crazy. Why listen to a man like that?”
21 Others said, “This doesn’t sound to us like a man possessed by a demon! Can a demon open the eyes of blind men?”
22-23 It was winter,[a] and Jesus was in Jerusalem at the time of the Dedication Celebration. He was at the Temple, walking through the section known as Solomon’s Hall. 24 The Jewish leaders surrounded him and asked, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”
25 “I have already told you,[b] and you don’t believe me,” Jesus replied. “The proof is in the miracles I do in the name of my Father. 26 But you don’t believe me because you are not part of my flock. 27 My sheep recognize my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life and they shall never perish. No one shall snatch them away from me, 29 for my Father has given them to me, and he is more powerful than anyone else, so no one can kidnap them from me. 30 I and the Father are one.”
31 Then again the Jewish leaders picked up stones to kill him.
32 Jesus said, “At God’s direction I have done many a miracle to help the people. For which one are you killing me?”
33 They replied, “Not for any good work, but for blasphemy; you, a mere man, have declared yourself to be God.”
34-36 “In your own Law it says that men are gods!” he replied. “So if the Scripture, which cannot be untrue, speaks of those as gods to whom the message of God came, do you call it blasphemy when the one sanctified and sent into the world by the Father says, ‘I am the Son of God’? 37 Don’t believe me unless I do miracles of God. 38 But if I do, believe them even if you don’t believe me. Then you will become convinced that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.”
39 Once again they started to arrest him. But he walked away and left them, 40 and went beyond the Jordan River to stay near the place where John was first baptizing. 41 And many followed him.
“John didn’t do miracles,” they remarked to one another, “but all his predictions concerning this man have come true.” 42 And many came to the decision that he was the Messiah.[c]
The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.