One Year Bible.

Give Thanks to the LORD, for He Is Good

¹Hallelujah!

Give thanks to the LORD, for He is good;

His loving devotion endures forever.

²Who can describe the mighty acts of the LORD

or fully proclaim His praise?

³Blessed are those who uphold justice,

who practice righteousness at all times.

⁴Remember me, O LORD, in Your favor to Your people;

visit me with Your salvation,

⁵that I may see the prosperity of Your chosen ones,

and rejoice in the gladness of Your nation,

and give glory with Your inheritance.

⁶We have sinned like our fathers;

we have done wrong and acted wickedly.

⁷Our fathers in Egypt did not grasp Your wonders

or remember Your abundant kindness;

but they rebelled by the sea,

there at the Red Sea.

⁸Yet He saved them for the sake of His name,

to make His power known.

⁹He rebuked the Red Sea, and it dried up;

He led them through the depths as through a desert.

¹⁰He saved them from the hand that hated them;

He redeemed them from the hand of the enemy.

¹¹The waters covered their foes;

not one of them remained.

¹²Then they believed His promises

and sang His praise.

¹³Yet they soon forgot His works

and failed to wait for His counsel.

¹⁴They craved intensely in the wilderness

and tested God in the desert.

¹⁵So He granted their request,

but sent a wasting disease upon them.

¹⁶In the camp they envied Moses,

as well as Aaron, the holy one of the LORD.

¹⁷The earth opened up and swallowed Dathan;

it covered the assembly of Abiram.

¹⁸Then fire blazed through their company;

flames consumed the wicked.

¹⁹At Horeb they made a calf

and worshiped a molten image.

²⁰They exchanged their Glory

for the image of a grass-eating ox.

²¹They forgot God their Savior,

who did great things in Egypt,

²²wondrous works in the land of Ham,

and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.

²³So He said He would destroy them—

had not Moses His chosen one

stood before Him in the breach

to divert His wrath from destroying them.

²⁴They despised the pleasant land;

they did not believe His promise.

²⁵They grumbled in their tents

and did not listen to the voice of the LORD.

²⁶So He raised His hand and swore

to cast them down in the wilderness,

²⁷to disperse their offspring among the nations

and scatter them throughout the lands.

²⁸They yoked themselves to Baal of Peor

and ate sacrifices offered to lifeless gods.

²⁹So they provoked the LORD to anger with their deeds,

and a plague broke out among them.

³⁰But Phinehas stood and intervened,

and the plague was restrained.

³¹It was credited to him as righteousness

for endless generations to come.

³²At the waters of Meribah they angered the LORD,

and trouble came to Moses because of them.

³³For they rebelled against His Spirit,

and Moses spoke rashly with his lips.

³⁴They did not destroy the peoples

as the LORD had commanded them,

³⁵but they mingled with the nations

and adopted their customs.

³⁶They worshiped their idols,

which became a snare to them.

³⁷They sacrificed their sons

and their daughters to demons.

³⁸They shed innocent blood—

the blood of their sons and daughters,

whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan,

and the land was polluted with blood.

³⁹They defiled themselves by their actions

and prostituted themselves by their deeds.

⁴⁰So the anger of the LORD burned against His people,

and He abhorred His own inheritance.

⁴¹He delivered them into the hand of the nations,

and those who hated them ruled over them.

⁴²Their enemies oppressed them

and subdued them under their hand.

⁴³Many times He rescued them,

but they were bent on rebellion

and sank down in their iniquity.

⁴⁴Nevertheless He heard their cry;

He took note of their distress.

⁴⁵And He remembered His covenant with them,

and relented by the abundance of His loving devotion.

⁴⁶He made them objects of compassion

to all who held them captive.

⁴⁷Save us, O LORD our God,

and gather us from the nations,

that we may give thanks to Your holy name,

that we may glory in Your praise.

⁴⁸Blessed be the LORD, the God of Israel,

from everlasting to everlasting.

Let all the people say, “Amen!”

Hallelujah!

Teachings about Divorce

¹When Jesus had finished saying these things, He left Galilee and went into the region of Judea beyond the Jordan. ²Large crowds followed Him, and He healed them there.

³Then some Pharisees came and tested Him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason?”

⁴Jesus answered, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ ⁵and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? ⁶So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

⁷“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses order a man to give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

⁸Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because of your hardness of heart. But it was not this way from the beginning. ⁹Now I tell you that whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

¹⁰His disciples said to Him, “If this is the case between a man and his wife, it is better not to marry.”

¹¹“Not everyone can accept this word,” He replied, “but only those to whom it has been given. ¹²For there are eunuchs who were born that way; others were made that way by men; and still others live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

Jesus Blesses the Children

¹³Then little children were brought to Jesus for Him to place His hands on them and pray for them. And the disciples rebuked those who brought them. ¹⁴But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them! For the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” ¹⁵And after He had placed His hands on them, He went on from there.

The Rich Young Man

¹⁶Just then a man came up to Jesus and inquired, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to obtain eternal life?”

¹⁷“Why do you ask Me about what is good?” Jesus replied. “There is only One who is good. If you want to enter life, keep the commandments.”

¹⁸“Which ones?” the man asked.

Jesus answered, “‘Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, ¹⁹honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.’”

²⁰“All these I have kept,” said the young man. “What do I still lack?”

²¹Jesus told him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.”

²²When the young man heard this, he went away in sorrow, because he had great wealth.

²³Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I tell you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. ²⁴Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

²⁵When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?”

²⁶Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

²⁷“Look,” Peter replied, “we have left everything to follow You. What then will there be for us?”

²⁸Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, in the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on His glorious throne, you who have followed Me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. ²⁹And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for the sake of My name will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. ³⁰But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.[’’]

Immorality Rebuked

¹It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is intolerable even among pagans: A man has his father’s wife. ²And you are proud! Shouldn’t you rather have been stricken with grief and have removed from your fellowship the man who did this?

³Although I am absent from you in body, I am present with you in spirit, and I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did this, just as if I were present. ⁴When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, along with the power of the Lord Jesus, ⁵hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the Day of the Lord.

⁶Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven works through the whole batch of dough? ⁷Get rid of the old leaven, that you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. ⁸Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old bread, leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and of truth.

Expel the Immoral Brother

⁹I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. ¹⁰I was not including the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. ¹¹But now I am writing you not to associate with anyone who claims to be a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a verbal abuser, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat.

¹²What business of mine is it to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? ¹³God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”

Lawsuits among Believers

¹If any of you has a grievance against another, how dare he go to law before the unrighteous instead of before the saints! ²Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if you are to judge the world, are you not competent to judge trivial cases? ³Do you not know that we will judge angels? How much more the things of this life!

⁴So if you need to settle everyday matters, do you appoint as judges those of no standing in the church? ⁵I say this to your shame. Is there really no one among you wise enough to arbitrate between his brothers? ⁶Instead, one brother goes to law against another, and this in front of unbelievers!

⁷The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means that you are thoroughly defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? ⁸Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, even against your own brothers!

Members of Christ

⁹Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts, ¹⁰nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. ¹¹And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

¹²“Everything is permissible for me,” but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me,” but I will not be mastered by anything. ¹³“Food for the stomach and the stomach for food,” but God will destroy them both. The body is not intended for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. ¹⁴By His power God raised the Lord from the dead, and He will raise us also.

¹⁵Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! ¹⁶Or don’t you know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” ¹⁷But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with Him in spirit.

The Temple of the Holy Spirit

¹⁸Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a man can commit is outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. ¹⁹Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; ²⁰you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body.