Hello everyone, this is Tony and before we dive into today's episode I want to ask a favor from you. We love serving you on this podcast and we want to serve you better in 2020 and beyond and to serve you better means we need to know you better. And to this end we put together a brief survey that takes just a few minutes to fill out.

It'll be up online until the end of January and if you're willing to help us out go online to DesiringGod.org/survey That's DesiringGod.org/survey and I'll mention this address again at the end of today's episode which starts right now. Well if this is my first read through the Bible what should I expect?

So many great Bible reading questions arrive at the start of a new year like this one from a listener named Mike. "Hello Pastor John, I have been blessed by your ministry for many years and in the year ahead I hope to read my Bible from cover to cover for the very first time using the Discipleship Journal Bible reading plan that you use.

I feel a little excited and a lot intimidated and enormously unprepared for the year ahead. I've never done anything like this before. So what's your advice for me and what obstacles must I expect to overcome to pull this off?" Well amen and praise God for what Mike is resolving to do.

I just what an hour and a half ago was reading my Discipleship Journal reading plan reading so I've been on this system for good night what 20-25 years I don't know and I love this system. I try other things and I generally come back to it so good Mike.

You should be excited and yes you should be intimidated. You are in significant ways unprepared. Me too. That's why we're reading. Paul said it's all inspired precisely to make us prepared that the man of God may be complete equipped or we could say prepared for every good work including Bible reading.

So you gotta read to get prepared to read right? So that's okay to be intimidated by reading the Bible. So what should you expect? I'll give you three negatives to scare you off and ten positives to suck you back in. So number one negative expect opposition. Satan hates the Word of God and will disincline you, blind you, distract you, bore you.

He will fight with all his might to keep this from happening. So pray and fight and ask God to make all four of those things that Satan tries to do to backfire to blow up in his face as you become a stronger warrior against him. So your heart inclined, your blindness removed, focus instead of distraction, excitement instead of boredom.

So that's expect opposition. Number two, expect to be shocked. The outrage of sin and its graphic descriptions and the horrors of God judgments and the failures of God's people are appalling in the Bible. The Bible is stunningly graphic in its description both of our outrageous sin and God's breathtaking judgment on sin.

You will want to throw up if you have any kind of sympathetic engagement with the Bible at times when you see what God ordains against sin in this world. So expect your views of man and God to be blown up in a good way. Shocked. Number three, negative, expect to be confused for three reasons.

Number one, God conceals many things that we'd like to know. Deuteronomy 29 29, "The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children that we may do his word." So there are things you're gonna want to know and God says, "Nope, that's my business, not yours." Number two reason why you're gonna be confused, what he has revealed is often hard to understand.

Peter said that flat-out in 2nd Peter 3 16. As Paul does in all his letters when he speaks of them in these matters, there are some things in Paul's letters hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures. 2nd Peter 3 16.

There are some things in Paul's letters that are hard to understand, which we should not expect to find easy. So we're gonna be confused at times. And number three reason why you're gonna be confused is that Christ has given teachers to the church. Have you ever thought about that?

That in the New Testament, he didn't just give a Bible and say, "No, we don't need any teachers because we've got the Bible, we've got the Holy Spirit, so no human beings need to be teachers in the church." He didn't do that. He said in every church there should be elders, those elders must be apt to teach, which means people need explanations for what they see in the Bible, and teachers are called to figure things out and help the others.

So just unless you're one of those teachers, and unless you're God, you're gonna run into confusing things in the Bible that you need help from other people. So the implication of those three, pray for illumination. Do whatever digging in study helps you. Put things together that you can put together, and what you can't figure out, put on the shelf for later attention and keep on moving.

If you get bogged down with what you can't understand, you'll never finish the reading for the day. Those are my negatives, here are the ten positives. I'll just tick them off really, really quickly. These are things you can expect. Number one, expect your faith to be deepened and strengthened, because Romans 10 17 says, "Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ." Or almost the same, expect your hope in God to be made more unshakable, because Romans 15 4 says, "Everything in the whole Bible is written for your hope." Number two, expect God to do serious, liberating work in your life, because Jesus said, "You will know the truth." When you read my Bible, you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Number three, expect new power in war with Satan, because that's the way Jesus defeated him in the wilderness. He quoted Scripture to the devil, and the devil could not stand before it. He won't stand before you either. He's a liar, he's a deceiver, he can't abide the truth. You're filling your head up with the truth, you're gonna be a valiant warrior more than you dreamed against Satan.

Number four, expect a deep, sanctifying work in your life, because John 17 17 says, "Sanctify them in the truth." Your Word is truth. Number five, expect to become a more loving person to those around you, because Paul in Philippians 1 9 says, he prays that our love may abound more and more with knowledge and all-deserving.

And he said in 1 Timothy 1 5 that the goal of his instruction, that is the goal of the Bible, is love from a pure heart. So unifying love for people growing in your heart as you immerse yourself in the whole sweep of Scripture. Number six, expect that even though you are now saved in a decisive way, you're going to go on being saved by the Scriptures.

Most people don't think about this. 1 Timothy 4 16, pay close attention to yourself and your teaching the Scriptures, persevere in these, for as you do this, you will save both yourself and your hearers. The Bible is the means of God by which he goes on saving us. Number eight, expect joy—great joy, unshakable joy that the world does not know, because Jesus said, "These things I have spoken to you." So you're reading them now, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full." So send the roots of your mind and your heart down into the whole Bible, and your joy will become indestructible.

Number nine, expect to meet God. Meet God, not just truths about God. Expect to meet God, because it says in 1 Samuel 3 21, "The Lord appeared again at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel by the word of the Lord." He revealed himself by the word— himself by the word—and he does that.

He does that. Expect to meet him. And finally, number 10, expect to see the glory of Christ. 2 Corinthians 3 18, we all—we believers—we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to the next. Now how do we know that happens in the Bible?

Because if you follow the flow of Paul's thought from 3 18 into 4 4 and 4 6, he refers to how we see the glory of Christ. Namely, we see it in the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. And the gospel is the written narrative of the stories or the events and their meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ.

So, Mike, I will pray for you what Paul prayed in 2 Thessalonians 1 11. He said this, "To this end, we pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every good resolve and every work of faith by his power." This is a great resolve before you.

You've got a great intention on your heart. Be valiant. Make a vow to the Lord to keep it, and you won't regret it. Amen. This will be a wonderful New Year's vow to the Lord. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for the great question, Mike. And here's a post-production note.

Later, after we recorded this episode, I noticed that there was no number 7 in the list of 10 above, so I checked with Pastor John, and he didn't have a number 7 either. So instead of 10, it's actually 9 total positives, if you're doing the math. And thanks for listening and subscribing to the podcast.

Next up, one of the most 10 most asked about topics here on APJ, sexualized dreams. Yes, that's right, sexualized dreams. One of the most common topics in the inbox that we have evaded for seven years. No longer sexualized dreams. Up next time on Monday. Until then, if you are willing to help us out and fill out our online survey, go to DesiringGod.org/survey.

That's DesiringGod.org/survey.