A New Year, A New Bible Reading Plan
00:00:00.000 | Happy New Year.
00:00:05.320 | 2018 is here.
00:00:07.760 | I can't believe it.
00:00:08.640 | Thanks for joining us for another year, our sixth year of doing this podcast.
00:00:13.260 | Pastor John, I can't believe we've been doing this now for I think 230 weeks in a
00:00:18.920 | row, and of course, another new year is upon us, and that means Christians across
00:00:23.360 | the globe will be starting or restarting their read through the Bible in a year plan.
00:00:29.400 | So I want to ask you, Pastor John, today, I'm going to put you on the hot seat
00:00:32.360 | myself and ask you, can you make a case for the discipline of
00:00:36.360 | reading the Bible in a year?
00:00:37.960 | Can you name the plan that you use and explain why you like it?
00:00:42.480 | Explain the pace of reading, how it works, and maybe what you've learned about
00:00:46.960 | yourself and the plan from doing it for so many years.
00:00:50.320 | The Bible reading plan that I have used more than any other over the years, and
00:00:55.840 | that I used right up to the end of 2017, is the Discipleship Journal Bible Reading
00:01:06.240 | Plan.
00:01:06.640 | That's what it's called.
00:01:07.400 | And I just Googled it to make sure that you could get it.
00:01:11.360 | And you can.
00:01:12.120 | You can go online, just Google the Discipleship Journal Reading Plan.
00:01:16.360 | Probably the top entry is going to be a free PDF.
00:01:20.760 | And you can print it out and join me because I'm going to use it again in 2018.
00:01:25.800 | You can also, it's baked into some online Bible programs like Logos.
00:01:31.400 | I use Logos and read my Bible on my iPad.
00:01:35.480 | And it has a little feature where when you're done, it just brings up the next
00:01:40.240 | day automatically, which is wonderful.
00:01:42.960 | The way it works is this.
00:01:44.600 | Here's why I use it and why I recommend it.
00:01:48.040 | There are four different places in the Bible where you read every day.
00:01:51.840 | And by reading these four different places, you complete the entire Bible in
00:01:58.040 | one year.
00:01:58.560 | Two of those places are in the New Testament.
00:02:01.240 | Two of them are in the Old Testament.
00:02:03.280 | One of the effects of having two readings from the New Testament and two from the
00:02:08.400 | Old is that two of the readings tend to be quite short because the New Testament
00:02:14.760 | readings would get you through.
00:02:17.080 | The New Testament is much faster because it's a shorter book than the Old
00:02:21.240 | Testament.
00:02:21.920 | Now, this has the great advantage of combining both a broad scope of reading
00:02:30.200 | and a narrow, intensified reading.
00:02:33.760 | And I find that it's very important that we read the Bible in both ways.
00:02:39.640 | We read the whole Bible, even though I know we are reading parts of it fast.
00:02:47.440 | And not understanding everything we read because we're not stopping to look
00:02:52.040 | everything up or find out what things mean that we don't understand.
00:02:55.200 | I get that.
00:02:56.000 | That's true for me as well.
00:02:58.080 | I still think it's important to cover the whole range and grow in understanding
00:03:04.160 | year after year rather than think we have to stop and understand everything we're
00:03:09.680 | reading.
00:03:10.360 | And it's important to slow down and meditate significantly, deeply over a few
00:03:17.080 | verses or a few phrases.
00:03:19.360 | It's not easy.
00:03:21.520 | I admit it's not easy to maintain this balance of covering the whole and going
00:03:27.520 | deep in a few places.
00:03:29.160 | But I just I think it's worth the try.
00:03:31.760 | I think it's worth the effort to try to do both.
00:03:35.360 | Here's another advantage of this discipleship journal reading plan.
00:03:39.720 | Namely, it only schedules 25 days each month for Bible reading, which means that
00:03:48.160 | at the end of every month, there are five or six days with no assignments.
00:03:53.520 | Now, this, I think, is a stroke of genius because most people give up reading the
00:04:02.960 | Bible in a year because by February they're behind and they say, well, there's
00:04:07.720 | no hope.
00:04:08.120 | March, they're farther behind.
00:04:09.680 | So they give up.
00:04:10.560 | Whereas this plan gives you a gracious five or six days at the end of every month
00:04:17.720 | to catch up if you've fallen behind.
00:04:19.600 | And if you happen to stay up, then you use those, this is what I do, for
00:04:26.120 | memorization or some other use.
00:04:29.680 | I love to take a psalm, say a psalm like Psalm 25 I worked on recently, and during
00:04:35.080 | those five days try to memorize the psalm that I wouldn't have time for maybe any
00:04:39.960 | other way.
00:04:41.360 | OK, so that's what I do.
00:04:43.360 | That's my plan.
00:04:44.440 | I've used it for years and years.
00:04:46.000 | We used to use it together as a church.
00:04:48.480 | And if you've got a better way that suits you better, that is just fine.
00:04:52.800 | I'm not saying this is the best way.
00:04:55.440 | I'm saying it's a way that I've found helpful.
00:04:58.120 | The bigger question for me is, for us all, I believe, is not what method or plan you
00:05:05.120 | use, or even if you get through the whole Bible in a year.
00:05:08.160 | That is not the main point.
00:05:10.840 | The big issue is, why do you read your Bible and what happens when you read it?
00:05:18.440 | So why do we care about daily Bible reading in the new year anyway?
00:05:26.400 | I think the ultimate goal of every Christian should be to glorify God in your life every
00:05:33.040 | day, or to use the words of Philippians 1:20, to magnify Christ in your body, whether you
00:05:38.880 | live or whether you die.
00:05:39.960 | We exist ultimately on this planet to make God in Christ look magnificent, to make him
00:05:47.640 | look precious and valuable, to look like the supreme treasure that he is.
00:05:55.080 | That's the goal of life, make God look like a treasure.
00:06:00.280 | Now, how do we go about that?
00:06:03.560 | Since in our sin, even as believers in our sin, there's so much in us that is inclined
00:06:12.680 | to think or feel or act in ways that don't make Christ look great.
00:06:17.800 | The answer, how we do this, is that we have to see the glory of Christ.
00:06:24.800 | See him as glorious.
00:06:27.280 | See the magnificence and the value and the beauty and the greatness and the desirableness
00:06:34.040 | of Christ.
00:06:35.440 | We have to see him for what he's really like, because you can't savor what you don't see.
00:06:44.920 | You can't cherish and desire and love and enjoy and treasure what you're not aware of.
00:06:51.160 | And if we don't desire and cherish and enjoy and savor and treasure Christ, we will not
00:06:59.320 | commend him as magnificent in what we feel and say and do.
00:07:05.200 | Christ is most magnified in us when we are most satisfied in him.
00:07:12.360 | And we cannot be daily satisfied at the depths of our soul in Christ if we don't see him
00:07:19.960 | and savor him.
00:07:21.280 | And my point is that can only happen by a steady meditation on the word of God in the
00:07:30.920 | Bible.
00:07:31.600 | According to 2 Corinthians 4, the glory of Christ shines through the gospel, that is,
00:07:40.720 | through the narrative, the story, the message of the good news of the scriptures.
00:07:47.240 | We see the glory of Christ in the word of God.
00:07:51.640 | We encounter him in scripture.
00:07:54.560 | And then in 2 Corinthians 3.18, it says that in seeing the glory, we become transformed
00:08:01.720 | into the same glory, from glory to glory.
00:08:05.880 | So if we're going to see the glory and savor the glory and become images of the glory for
00:08:12.120 | others to see, we have to see Christ.
00:08:17.600 | And it only happens as we meditate on the Bible.
00:08:22.280 | But of course, I'm assuming something.
00:08:25.160 | This implies reading the Bible in a certain way.
00:08:31.320 | It means in this new year, at every point we are crying out over the pages of scripture
00:08:40.280 | that lie before us, we are crying out to God for the supernatural act of his spirit to
00:08:48.000 | open the eyes of our hearts to see spectacular, beautiful, glorious, wonderful, valuable
00:08:55.560 | things in the Bible.
00:08:58.040 | The reason I read the Bible is because I am stone cold dead without Christ in his word.
00:09:05.920 | But I want all my life, every part of it.
00:09:10.280 | I want my life to be glorious.
00:09:12.880 | I want life to be beautiful.
00:09:16.680 | I want life to be vastly more than it is if I'm left to myself.
00:09:22.480 | I want to see how astonishing reality is at every turn, in every person, every rock, every
00:09:29.280 | tree, every animal, every work of salvation.
00:09:32.160 | And I know that left to myself, I am an absolute dud.
00:09:38.520 | Dud, I am blank, nothing deep, nothing moving, nothing intense, nothing beautiful, nothing
00:09:45.360 | precious, nothing sweet or wonderful, just empty, blank, unmoved, coasting along from
00:09:53.280 | world, one worldly preoccupation to another.
00:09:57.200 | There is one hope for John Piper in 2018, one hope that I would have eyes to see the
00:10:06.240 | God-entranced magnificence of everything, namely, that God would be pleased in my Bible
00:10:13.600 | reading to cause me to see the glory that is really there.
00:10:18.760 | That's why we read our Bible, to see glory, to savor glory, to be shaped into the image
00:10:26.480 | of the glory of God, to show the glory so that God is magnified as we are satisfied
00:10:35.800 | in him.
00:10:37.120 | So that's why I'm in the Bible every day and read it through the whole year.
00:10:44.360 | And I really hope that you will join me.
00:10:48.840 | It is an awesome quest.
00:10:51.840 | Yes, it is an awesome quest.
00:10:54.200 | And thank you for this episode, this reading plan overview and why we read the Bible in
00:10:59.480 | the first place.
00:11:00.120 | This is a wonderfully robust episode to launch our sixth year.
00:11:03.160 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:11:03.960 | And thank you for listening and making the podcast a part of your week.
00:11:07.520 | You can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive and
00:11:11.520 | reach us by email with a question of your own, even questions that relate to how to
00:11:15.480 | better make scripture a part of your daily life.
00:11:18.280 | You can do all of that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:11:24.080 | Well, how do we go deep in one passage of scripture when we barely have time to read
00:11:29.920 | our Bible reading plan each week?
00:11:32.080 | It's a very common question we hear from busy parents and busy students.
00:11:35.560 | And it's the question I will pose to Pastor John next time on Wednesday when we
00:11:39.840 | return.
00:11:40.360 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.
00:11:41.520 | We'll see you then.
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