We’re now more than one month into the two-year Bible-reading plan that many in our church are doing together, and that many of the Village Green Collective churches are doing as well. I’ve been massively encouraged to hear many stories of people who are reading the Bible all the the way through for the first time. One guy who struggles with reading is listening to the reading everyday on his iPad. One 80+ year old member who has never read the whole Bible is doing so and loving it. I heard of a married couple who are reading it out loud to each other before they go to bed, and of a guy who is reading it with his family for the first time ever. I know of a bunch of kids who are faithfully keeping up with the reading.
It’ll get more challenging as we enter the portions of Exodus that focus on the elaborate instructions for building the tabernacle (and then the repetitious recounting of the actual construction of the tabernacle), followed by the intricate detail of Leviticus and Numbers. Let’s keep going, believing that every part of God’s Word is breathed out by God and therefore ‘profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work’ (2 Timothy 3.16-17).
And as we go, I want to recommend that – if you haven’t already done so – you get hold of a copy of Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart’s incredibly helpful book How to Read the Bible Book by Book. It’s an overview, a guided tour, of every book of the Bible and will give you a sense of the importance of what you’re reading each day and how it fits within the context of the whole book. It’ll also help you to understand why I chose the particular sections I did for each day in the Bible-reading plan (sometimes, it’s not immediately clear).
May God’s Word continue to be rich and sweet for us. May we talk about it and celebrate it and apply it to all the nooks and crannies of our lives.
