A New Beginning – Day 10

₇Pay, then, what you owe them; pay them your personal and property taxes, and show respect and honour for them all.

₉Honour the LORD by making him an offering from the best of all that your land produces. ₁₀If you do, your barns will be filled with grain, and you will have too much wine to be able to store it all.

₁₈And Melchizedek, who was king of Salem and also a priest of the Most High God, brought bread and wine to Abram, ₁₉blessed him, and said, “May the Most High God, who made heaven and earth, bless Abram! ₂₀May the Most High God, who gave you victory over your enemies, be praised!” And Abram gave Melchizedek a tenth of all the loot he had recovered.

₁Some time later God tested Abraham; he called to him, “Abraham!” And Abraham answered, “Yes, here I am!”

₂“Take your son,” God said, “your only son, Isaac, whom you love so much, and go to the land of Moriah. There on a mountain that I will show you, offer him as a sacrifice to me.”

₃Early the next morning Abraham cut some wood for the sacrifice, loaded his donkey, and took Isaac and two servants with him. They started out for the place that God had told him about. ₄On the third day Abraham saw the place in the distance. ₅Then he said to the servants, “Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I will go over there and worship, and then we will come back to you.”

₆Abraham made Isaac carry the wood for the sacrifice, and he himself carried a knife and live coals for starting the fire. As they walked along together, ₇Isaac said, “Father!”

He answered, “Yes, my son?”

Isaac asked, “I see that you have the coals and the wood, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?”

₈Abraham answered, “God himself will provide one.” And the two of them walked on together.

₉When they came to the place which God had told him about, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. He tied up his son and placed him on the altar, on top of the wood. ₁₀Then he picked up the knife to kill him. ₁₁But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, “Abraham, Abraham!”

He answered, “Yes, here I am.”

₁₂“Don't hurt the boy or do anything to him,” he said. “Now I know that you honour and obey God, because you have not kept back your only son from him.”

₁₃Abraham looked round and saw a ram caught in a bush by its horns. He went and got it and offered it as a burnt offering instead of his son. ₁₄Abraham named that place “The LORD Provides”. And even today people say, “On the LORD's mountain he provides.”

₁₅The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time, ₁₆“I make a vow by my own name — the LORD is speaking — that I will richly bless you. Because you did this and did not keep back your only son from me, ₁₇I promise that I will give you as many descendants as there are stars in the sky or grains of sand along the seashore. Your descendants will conquer their enemies. ₁₈All the nations will ask me to bless them as I have blessed your descendants — all because you obeyed my command.” ₁₉Abraham went back to his servants, and they went together to Beersheba, where Abraham settled.

₂₀Some time later Abraham learnt that Milcah had borne eight children to his brother Nahor: ₂₁Uz the firstborn, Buz his brother, Kemuel the father of Aram, ₂₂Chesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph, and Bethuel, ₂₃Rebecca's father. Milcah bore these eight sons to Nahor, Abraham's brother. ₂₄Reumah, Nahor's concubine, bore Tebah, Gaham, Tahash, and Maacah.

₁Jesus looked round and saw rich people dropping their gifts in the temple treasury, ₂and he also saw a very poor widow dropping in two little copper coins. ₃He said, “I tell you that this poor widow put in more than all the others. ₄For the others offered their gifts from what they had to spare of their riches; but she, poor as she is, gave all she had to live on.”

₁Jesus went on into Jericho and was passing through. ₂There was a chief tax collector there named Zacchaeus, who was rich. ₃He was trying to see who Jesus was, but he was a little man and could not see Jesus because of the crowd. ₄So he ran ahead of the crowd and climbed a sycomore tree to see Jesus, who was going to pass that way. ₅When Jesus came to that place, he looked up and said to Zacchaeus, “Hurry down, Zacchaeus, because I must stay in your house today.”

₆Zacchaeus hurried down and welcomed him with great joy. ₇All the people who saw it started grumbling, “This man has gone as a guest to the home of a sinner!”

₈Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Listen, sir! I will give half my belongings to the poor, and if I have cheated anyone, I will pay back four times as much.”

₉Jesus said to him, “Salvation has come to this house today, for this man, also, is a descendant of Abraham. ₁₀The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

₁₀So now I bring to the LORD the first part of the harvest that he has given me.’

“Then set the basket down in the LORD's presence and worship there. ₁₁Be grateful for the good things that the LORD your God has given you and your family; and let the Levites and the foreigners who live among you join in the celebration.