M’Cheyne Bible Reading Plan

Joash rules Judah as king

24 Joash was seven years old when he became the king of Judah. He ruled in Jerusalem for 40 years. His mother was Zibiah, who came from Beersheba. ² Joash did things that pleased the Lord. He continued to do that all the time that Jehoiada the priest was alive. ³ Jehoiada chose two women for Joash to marry. She gave birth to sons and daughters for him.

⁴ After some time, Joash decided to repair the Lord's temple. ⁵ He brought together the priests and the Levites. He told them, ‘Go around to all the towns in Judah. Bring here all the money that Israel's people offer each year for the temple. We will use it to repair the temple of your God. Go quickly and do it now!’

But the Levites did not do it immediately.

⁶ So the king told Jehoiada, the leader of the priests, to come to him. He said to him, ‘You have not told the Levites to bring the money that the people of Judah and Jerusalem have given. Why have you not done that? The Lord's servant Moses and all Israel's people made the rule that people should give the money each year. It would be a tax to help with the tent of God's covenant.’^[a]

⁷ The sons of wicked Queen Athaliah had broken the door of God's temple. They had gone in there and they had taken the holy things. They had used them to worship the idols of Baal. That is why Joash wanted to repair the Lord's temple.

People bring money to the temple

⁸ The king told the Levites to make a big box. They put it outside the gate of the Lord's temple. ⁹ Then he sent a command to everyone in Jerusalem and in the rest of Judah. He told them to bring the money to pay their tax to the Lord. That was the tax that God's servant Moses had told the Israelites that they should pay when they were in the wilderness. ¹⁰ All the officers and all the people were happy to give this money. They brought it to Jerusalem and they threw it into the box, until the box was full. ¹¹ Every time that the box became full of money, the Levites took it to the king's officers. Then the king's secretary and the officer who served the leader of the priests took the money out of the box. Then they put the box outside the temple gate again. They did that every day, so that they had a lot of money.

¹² The king and Jehoiada gave the money to the men who would take care of the work on the Lord's temple. They paid men who could work with stone and wood to repair the temple. They also paid men who knew how to work with iron and bronze for this work.

¹³ These workers worked well so that they soon finished the work. They built the temple to be very strong, in the way that it should be. ¹⁴ When they had finished, there was some money that remained. So the workers took the money to the king and to Jehoiada. They decided to make tools to use in the temple. There were things that the priests used to serve the Lord in the temple, and to offer burnt offerings. They used gold and silver to make dishes and other things. While Jehoiada was still alive, the priests always made burnt offerings as sacrifices to the Lord in his temple.

¹⁵ But Jehoiada became very old and he died when he was 130 years old. ¹⁶ They buried him beside the kings in the City of David. They gave him that honour, because he had done many good things in Israel for God and for the temple.

Joash and the people turn away from the Lord

¹⁷ After Jehoiada died, the important officers of Judah came to the king. They bent down low in front of him to give him honour. The king listened to their advice. ¹⁸ They stopped worshipping the Lord, the God of their ancestors, in his temple. Instead, they worshipped Asherah poles and idols. So God became very angry with the people of Judah and Jerusalem, because they were guilty of these sins. ¹⁹ The Lord sent his prophets to tell the people to turn back to him. They warned the people, but the people would not listen to them.

²⁰ Then God's Spirit came to Jehoiada's son Zechariah with power. Zechariah stood in front of the people and he said, ‘This is what God says: “You are not obeying the Lord's commands. So nothing will go well for you. You have turned away from the Lord, so now he has turned away from you!” ’

²¹ The people decided to punish Zechariah. The king gave a command to punish him with death. So they threw stones at him to kill him in the yard of the Lord's temple. ²² King Joash forgot that Zechariah's father Jehoiada had been a faithful servant. He killed Jehoiada's son. Zechariah said, as he was dying, ‘I pray that the Lord sees what you have done! May he punish you because of it!’

Joash dies

²³ At the end of that year, Syria's army attacked Judah and Jerusalem, where Joash lived. They killed all the leaders of Judah's people. They took many valuable things to send to their king in Damascus. ²⁴ Syria's army was very small but the Lord gave them power over Judah's large army. He did that because Judah's people had turned away from the Lord, the God of their ancestors. Syria's army punished Joash as he deserved.

^25-26 Joash had received bad wounds in the battle. When Syria's army went away, Joash's officers decided to kill him. They were angry because he had killed Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada the priest. So they murdered him in his bed. The two officers who did this were Zabad and Jehozabad. Zabad's mother was Shimeath, who came from Ammon. Jehozabad's mother was Shimrith, who came from Moab.

Joash's people buried him in the City of David. But they did not bury him beside the graves of the other kings.

²⁷ The things that happened while Joash was king are written in a book. The book is called ‘The history of the kings’. It includes a list of Joash's sons, and the many messages that prophets spoke about him. It also includes a report of the work which he did on God's temple.

Joash's son Amaziah became king after him.

God's two servants

11 Someone gave me a stick, like the sticks that people use to measure things. He told me, ‘Go and measure the size of the temple and the altar. Also count the number of people who worship God there. ² But do not measure the yard that is outside God's house. Do not measure it, because God has given that yard to Gentiles who do not believe in him. They will stamp all over God's own city for 42 months and they will destroy it.

³ I will give authority to my two servants who speak my message clearly. They will tell people my messages for 1,260 days. They will wear rough clothes made from goats' hair.’^[a]

⁴ These servants are the two olive trees and the two lampstands.^[b] They stand in front of God who is the Lord of the earth. ⁵ If anyone tries to hurt them, fire comes out of the servants' mouths. This fire destroys their enemies. Anyone who wants to hurt the two servants must die in this way. ⁶ These servants of God have authority to shut up the sky. Then there will be no rain during the time that they tell their messages from God. They also have authority to cause the water on earth to become blood. They can cause many different kinds of trouble to happen on the earth. They can do this as often as they want to.

⁷ When these two servants of God have finished speaking God's messages, a wild animal will attack them. This is the animal that lives in the deep hole.^[c] It will come up out of the hole. It will be stronger than the two servants and it will kill them. ⁸ Their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city where people killed their Lord on a cross.^[d] This city should be called Sodom or Egypt, because it is as bad as those places.^[e]

⁹ People from everywhere in the world will look at the servants' dead bodies for three and a half days. Those are people from every nation, from every tribe and from every language. They will not agree to bury the bodies. ¹⁰ The people who live on the earth will be very happy because the two servants of God are now dead. They will send gifts to each other because they are so happy. These two prophets of God had caused bad trouble for them, but now they have died.

¹¹ But after three and a half days, God breathed life into those dead bodies. They stood up. The people who saw them were very afraid. ¹² Then God's two servants heard a loud voice that came from heaven. The voice said, ‘Come up here.’ They went up to heaven in a cloud, while their enemies watched them.^[f]

¹³ At the same time the ground shook with a strong earthquake. One in every ten buildings in the city fell down. 7,000 people died because of the earthquake. The people who were still alive became very afraid. They praised the God of heaven and said that he is very powerful.

¹⁴ That is the second great trouble and it has now finished. But the third great trouble will come soon.

The seventh trumpet

¹⁵ The seventh angel made a sound with his trumpet. Then there was the sound of loud voices in heaven. They shouted:

¹⁶ The 24 leaders were sitting on their thrones in front of God. Now they threw themselves down on their faces and they worshipped God. ¹⁷ They said:

¹⁹ Then the door of the temple in heaven became open. Inside it, I saw God's Covenant Box.^[g] There was a great storm with bright lightning and the loud noise of thunder. There was an earthquake and strong rain with stones of ice fell from the sky.

God wants people to be fair and kind

7 The Lord spoke to Zechariah when Darius had been king for four years. It was the fourth day of the ninth month. The name of the month was Kislev. ² Then the people in Bethel sent Sharezer and Regem-Melech and their men to Jerusalem. They came to ask the Lord to help them. ³ They came to the house of the Lord Almighty to speak to the priests and to the prophets. They asked, ‘Should we cry and not eat our food in the fifth month? We have done this for many years.’^[a]

⁴ The Lord Almighty spoke to me. ⁵ He said, ‘Say this to all the people in this country and to the priests: “You lived in Babylon for many years. You ate no food and you were sad in the fifth month and in the seventh month. But you did not do this for me. ⁶ You ate and you drank. But you ate and you drank for yourselves. ⁷ These are the words that I, the Lord, spoke by my prophets in past years. At that time, the people in Jerusalem lived without trouble. Many rich people lived in Jerusalem. People in the Negev region in the south and in the low hills in the west also lived safely.” ’

⁸ The Lord spoke again to Zechariah. He said, ⁹ ‘The Lord Almighty has said, “Be sure that you are fair to all people. Be kind to each other. ¹⁰ Do not cheat widows or children who have no family. Do not cheat foreigners or poor people. Do not think secretly of ways to hurt each other.”

¹¹ But the people would not listen and they turned away. They put their hands over their ears, because they did not want to hear. ¹² They decided that they would not listen to God's rules or to the messages from the prophets. But the Lord Almighty had sent those messages by His Spirit. So I, the Lord Almighty, was very angry.

¹³ When I spoke to them, they did not listen. So when they prayed to me, I did not listen to them, says the Lord Almighty. ¹⁴ As a storm takes things away, I took my people away to strange countries. The country that they left became an empty country. Nobody lived in it. That is how they made the good country an empty country.’

The story about the shepherd

10 Jesus then said, ‘I tell you this: A shepherd keeps his sheep in a safe place with a wall round it. There is a gate into that safe place. Anyone who gets into that place by another way, not through the gate, is not the shepherd. That person is a robber. He comes to take away the sheep for himself. ² But the shepherd goes in through the gate. ³ The person who watches the gate opens it for the shepherd. The sheep recognize the shepherd's voice. He calls each of his own sheep by their name and he leads them out. ⁴ When he has brought out all his own sheep, he goes in front of them. The sheep follow him because they know his voice. ⁵ They will not follow a stranger. They will run away from a stranger because they do not recognize his voice.’

⁶ Jesus told this story like a picture to teach the people. But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

Jesus is like the good shepherd

⁷ So Jesus spoke again. He said, ‘I tell you this: I am like the gate for the sheep. ⁸ All other men who came before me were like robbers.^[a] But the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹ I am like the gate. Everyone who comes in through me will be safe. They will be free to come in and to go out. And they will find plenty of food. ¹⁰ The robber only wants to take away my sheep. He wants to kill them. He comes only to destroy them. But I have come so that they can have true life. And so that they can have everything that they need.

¹¹ I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd would die so that he can save his sheep. ¹² Another man may take care of sheep so that he gets money. But the sheep do not belong to him. A man like that is not the shepherd. If a wolf comes, a man like that runs away when he sees it. He leaves the sheep in danger. Then the wolf attacks the sheep. It causes them to run away in all directions. ¹³ That man runs away because the sheep do not belong to him. He does not think that the sheep are important.

¹⁴ I am the good shepherd. I know my own sheep, and they know me. ¹⁵ I know them in the same way that my Father knows me. And they know me in the same way that I know the Father. I will die so that I can save my sheep. ¹⁶ I also have other sheep, and I must bring them too. They do not belong to this group of sheep. But they also will listen to my voice. So all the sheep will become one group, and they will have one shepherd. ¹⁷ The Father loves me because I choose to die for my sheep. But after I give my life like that, I will become alive again. ¹⁸ Nobody can take my life away from me. Instead, I myself can choose to die. I have authority to do that. I also have authority to become alive again. My Father has said that I must do that.’

¹⁹ Again, the Jews could not agree about these things that Jesus said. ²⁰ Many of them said, ‘He has a demon in him and he is crazy. You should not listen to him!’ ²¹ But other people said, ‘A man with a demon in him could not teach like this! A demon could not make blind people able to see!’

The Jewish leaders do not believe in Jesus

²² It was the time for the Jewish Festival called Hanukkah.^[b] This happened in Jerusalem. It was winter.

²³ Jesus was walking in the yard of the temple, under a place with a roof. The place was called Solomon's porch. ²⁴ The Jewish leaders stood around him. They said to him, ‘We want to know who you are. When will you tell us? If you are the Messiah, tell us clearly.’ ²⁵ Jesus answered, ‘I have already told you, but you do not believe. The things that I do by my Father's authority show you who I am. ²⁶ But you refuse to believe, because you are not my sheep. ²⁷ My sheep recognize my voice. I know them and they follow me. ²⁸ I give them life for ever with God. They will never die. Nobody can ever take them away from me. ²⁹ My Father has given them to me. He is greater than all things. Nobody can ever take my sheep out of my Father's hand. ³⁰ My Father and I are one.’

³¹ Then the Jewish leaders picked up stones again to throw at Jesus so that they could kill him. ³² Jesus said to them, ‘I have done many good things. The Father sent me to do them, and I have shown them to you. Which of those good things make you want to kill me with stones?’ ³³ The Jewish leaders answered, ‘We do not want to kill you because of any good things that you have done. We want to kill you because you are speaking against God. You are only a man, but you are saying that you are God.’

³⁴ Jesus answered them, ‘It is written in your own books of God's Law that God said, “You are gods.”^{[c] 35} God called the people to whom he spoke “gods”. And you know that the Bible always remains true. ³⁶ So, when I said that I am God's Son, why am I wrong? The Father chose me for himself. And he sent me into the world. So you should not say that I am speaking bad things against God. ³⁷ If I am not doing my Father's work, do not believe me. ³⁸ But if I am doing his work, you should believe that work. Even if you do not believe me, you should believe the things that I do. Then you will know certainly that the Father is in me. And you will know that I am in the Father.’

³⁹ Again, the Jewish leaders tried to take hold of Jesus. But he escaped from them.

⁴⁰ After that, Jesus returned across the Jordan River. He went to the place where John had earlier baptized people. Jesus stayed there. ⁴¹ Many people came to him. They said to each other, ‘John did not do any miracles. But everything that he said about this man was true.’ ⁴² So, in that place, many people believed in Jesus.