Tag Archives: Bible Reading

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Reading The Old Testament

Have you ever really taken the time to read through the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament? Have you done so recently?

Bible Study

A lot of the time, when I encourage people to read the Bible, they begin with Genesis. That’s a great place to start, and it has a lot of incredible and foundational history laid out through its pages. Once they finish with Genesis, they move on to Exodus. Again, there is a tremendous amount of history found here.

But then they hit Leviticus and Numbers. These books are filled with tedious information about Jewish feasts and festivals, sacrifices and censuses, the tabernacle and the distribution of the Promised Land.

It is easy to get bogged down and lost in these books, and feel discouraged about continuing to read through the Bible.

I encourage people to not give up. There is a lot of incredible information found in the books of Leviticus and Numbers!

At our church, we are studying through the Bible, one book at a time, during our Wednesday evening programming. We just finished Leviticus and have moved into Numbers. But what we discovered as we studied Leviticus, and are finding as we go through Numbers, has been nothing short of amazing.

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2015 Bible Reading Plans

Spending time in God’s Word is one of the most important aspects of daily spiritual growth. Allowing God’s Word to impact your life will not happen unless you are exposing yourself to it consistently. Bible reading is perhaps the most critical of the spiritual disciplines.

Bible Reading Plan 2015

I’ve written several times in the past about this discipline:

I firmly believe that this is a critical element of our spiritual lives. And it seems to be lacking in a lot of people’s lives. I think, when you experience the many benefits of consistent, daily time spent in God’s Word, you’ll develop a craving for more.

God’s Word truly does change us.

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ICR’s Days Of Praise Daily Devotional

A major key component of my daily rituals includes some significant devotional reading. The vast majority of this is from my Bible, utilizing a pretty comprehensive reading plan. I then narrow my study down to a specific portion of the Bible, using what I call the Nugget Approach to Bible study. But a third part of my daily devotional time is focused on something much lighter.

ICR Days of Praise

I have switched up this third component over the years to include several different items. Sometimes it’s a devotional book, like Today Is Your Best Day. More recently, I used the Ancient Christian Devotional, which includes several key passages from the Early Church Fathers, paired with a yearly lectionary reading cycle.

But even as those resources cycle in and out of my daily routine, one item has remained steady throughout the past several years. That is ICR’s Days Of Praise daily devotional email.

The Institute for Creation Research has long been a strong voice in the discussion about Genesis and Creation. As explained on their website, “For over four decades, the Institute for Creation Research has equipped believers with evidence of the Bible’s accuracy and authority through scientific research, educational programs, and media presentations, all conducted within a thoroughly biblical framework.”

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Book Review – 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Translation

1 Enoch: A Hermeneia TranslationI’ve long had a fascination with the early chapters of Genesis, and the early earth history that they contain. Almost everything I’ve ever read centered around these chapters is centered upon the text themselves.

However, early Judaism has several traditions concerning those early centuries that are not found in the book of Genesis. Although these documents date much later than early Genesis, they point back to those times and contain some very interesting information. One such document is 1 Enoch.

This document plays an important role in early Judaism, and several scrolls containing this document were discovered at Qumran. Most of the document is dated to the last three or four centuries before Christ. Because of the distance from the time of Genesis, and the life of Enoch, their authorship is suspect enough to deny them entrance into the canon of the Old Testament.

However, the traditions and stories that they contain shed a lot of light on ancient Jewish thought on Genesis and the lives that formed the first few centuries of human history after creation.

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Book Review – 1 Enoch: The Hermeneia Commentary, Volume 1

1 Enoch: A Hermeneia CommentaryI recently received a translation of 1 Enoch, along with the first volume of a new commentary from Fortress Press. I have to say, I’m pretty impressed with the level of scholarship evident in these volumes. I’ve never had the opportunity to use anything from Fortress Press before this, and I found this commentary to be pretty exhaustive.

As in my review of the translation itself, I discovered a lot of information in this ancient Jewish text that shed some light on how Judaism has viewed and handled some of the early history from the book of Genesis. While I disagree in some of the interpretations that the book of 1 Enoch draws, the translation and commentary seem to be spot on.

Based on the life of Enoch, from the fifth chapter of Genesis, but written during the intertestemental period, 1 Enoch gives some good insights into Jewish thought and theology. And this is only the first volume of the commentary. From what I have on hand, and when you add the second volume into the mix, this creates a very exhaustive and well-researched study tool for the ancient document of 1 Enoch.

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Establishing The Discipline Of Bible Reading (ESD)

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The benefits of reading the Bible are almost too numerous to count. If we want to develop spiritual disciplines that help us to grow our faith, then this is a simple first step.

But how do we go about this? What are some ways that we can implement this into our lives? All too often, I hear people say that they’ve tried to read the Bible, but either get discouraged, or fail in their attempt to stick to it.

In the past, I’ve written several articles about how to go about creating an environment where Bible reading and study can flourish.

I’ve used several different styles of Bible reading over the years, and have found one that fits my life pretty well for the time being. I seem to gain a lot from what I read.

I use a system where I read ten different chapters a day. Using this system, the Bible is divided into ten different lists. The idea is to read one chapter from each list daily. When you reach the end of the list, you simply start it over. Some lists are longer, others are shorter, so each one will end at different times. This guarantees you will be reading different portions of the Bible together every day. Many times, you’ll see correlations you never knew were there, simply because you haven’t ever read those passages together before. It’s pretty incredible. You can read more details about this system here.

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The Importance Of Reading The Bible (ESD)

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If you take a look around our society today, you see a level of superficiality that is almost unbelievable. Somehow, over the last few generations, we have turned into a culture that is focused on instant gratification, looks only to ourselves, and refuses to nurture the inner life.

The curse of superficiality is at epidemic proportions in the twenty-first century. The problem lies in the fact that we have lost the ability to be deep people. We are smart. We are connected. We are talented. But we aren’t deep.

If we want to see some incredible change in our lives, we need to be able to look at the inner life and take it deeper than we ever have before. And one of the easiest ways to do this is to spend time in the Bible.

Bible Reading Plans

Tomorrow, we will look at several ways to start this discipline, or deepen in in our lives. But to day, I want to look at some reasons why this is so important.

Here are ten reasons to spend consistent, daily time in your Bible.