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Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective. Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist. Today is January 5th, 2021 and there is a very good chance that many of you have already started on your daily Bible reading for 2021.
Now in 2020, Sovereign Grace Family Church published a daily Bible reading through the New Testament. We encouraged all of our members to go through it, but we have not produced a daily Bible reading for this year.
So I thought I would take today's program and reach out to all of you and talk about the importance of Bible reading, some ways that you can create your own Bible reading list if you don't already have one, and possibly encourage you to take a new opportunity of reading through the Bible.
And I want to talk about different methodologies as we go through today, but let me begin by simply saying how important it is to read the scriptures. The Bible is God's word to us. It is God's word that is inspired, inerrant, infallible, complete.
It is able to teach us. It's able to correct us. It's able to reprove us. It is able to equip the man of God for every good work. And this is what it says about itself in 2 Timothy 3 .16, for all scripture is God-breathed and it is profitable for teaching and for reproof and correction and training and righteousness.
So we should be engaging with the word of God. We should be doing so in a regular way, in a systematic way, because if we simply go at the word of God haphazardly and we don't take it in a systematic approach, if we don't take it with a disciplined approach, oftentimes we fall off very quickly.
And many a person has started the new year saying, I'm going to read the Bible through, only to within just a few days to fall off because they didn't approach the subject with a systematic plan. And last year, our plan was to read through the New Testament in the order that we believe the books were written.
And we have that plan. If you want to go back to our website, sjfcjax .org and look at the way we structured it last year, you can look at that, simply change the dates and restructure. If you didn't get to go with us last year through that reading, you can go back and do that this year.
But I want to talk about some other ways that you might think about going through the Bible in 2021. And as I was thinking about this program, I began to kind of wonder, well, if someone wants to read the whole Bible all the way through, how many chapters a day would they need to read?
Because currently I'm actually reading through the Bible with my wife, whole Bible in six months, rather than a whole year. We started this just a few months ago. We're already halfway through our Bible reading, reading all the way through the Old and New Testaments.
And we're having to read seven to eight chapters a day, seven or eight chapters every day. And it does become quite a bit of reading every day. And I will go ahead and give a caveat for me. A lot of it is listening.
I have the Bible on audio. So a lot of times I will listen to the text that I am, my daily text for the day as part of my devotion. I try to do it first thing in the morning when I wake up, when I'm going about getting ready to do my daily task, when I'm brushing my teeth, combing my hair, doing those things.
I have my phone. I pull up YouVersion, which is the app that my wife and I are using to go through this program. And that is Y-O-U version. You can look up that app. It is free. And you can find the six months Bible reading program and you can look up.
If you want to jump on where we are now, you can jump on with us and finish out the last few months and start over. Or I think you might be able to start back at the beginning. I'm not quite sure. Right now we're in Isaiah 48.
That'll be our reading for tomorrow. Isaiah 48, 49, 50, 51. And it also reads portions of the New Testament. So we'll be reading Matthew 14 and 15. So tomorrow is six chapters. Now there are some days we take off.
We don't read on the Lord's Day because we focus on what we're studying and worshiping in the church on the Lord's Day. So sometimes it's seven or eight chapters. Sometimes it's six chapters. It just depends.
The app itself does the work for us of putting everything together. And when we're finished, we'll be done. We will have read through the whole Bible in six months. And some people say, well, that's too quick.
You're not really digesting it. You're not really exegeting it. You're not really studying it. You're just overviewing it. And we understand that. And that's actually part of the purpose. The Bible is one whole narrative.
It is the grand metanarrative of history, creation, fall, redemption, restoration. That's the great metanarrative of scripture and of history. And so when we look at our Bible version or Bible reading, we want to digest large passages, large sections, because it's taking us through the...
It's showing us the big picture of scripture. Not getting into the weeds, but standing at the top of the tower and looking over the horizon. So we understand that that's the approach we're taking right now.
But that's not the only approach that one could take. And it's not necessarily the best approach. It's just one of many approaches. So I'm going to give you a few thoughts. As I said, there are a certain number of chapters in the Bible.
If you want to read through the Bible in one year, you can simply take that number of chapters, divide it by 365 days, and you have your Bible reading. And the Bible has 1 ,189 chapters. 1 ,189 chapters.
If you divide that by 365, you get three point something. And so it becomes three chapters a day or four chapters a day will take you through the whole Bible in a year. Now my recommendation is to do four chapters a day and take Sundays off.
If you are going to study the Word with your church on Sunday, rather than reading your three or four chapters that you're reading normally, use Sunday as a time to worship with the saints in your church, read what the pastor's preaching on, read what the Sunday school teacher's teaching on.
And so if you do four chapters a day, Monday through Saturday, and you take Sunday off, one whole year, you'll read through the entire Bible. And again, four chapters may seem like a lot, but in some cases it is because some books of the Bible have longer chapters.
So you may want to alternate. You may want to do two chapters in the Old Testament, two chapters in the New Testament. And if you do that, then oftentimes it'll sort of balance itself out. So let's say you do Genesis 1 and 2, Matthew 1 and 2.
Genesis 3 and 4, Matthew 3 and 4, and just read through those books concurrently. So that's one way to do it. Now another way to do it is, let's say you don't want to try to take such a big bite. You don't want to try to read through the whole Bible.
You don't feel like you'll have the ability yet to do that. You're just not ready for that. Well, you can do what we did in the church last year. Simply read through the New Testament. Reading through the New Testament, there's 260 chapters in the New Testament, which means you could read one chapter a day and you have no reading on the weekends.
No reading on Saturday, no reading on Sunday, unless of course you miss a day. So you read one chapter a day, Monday through Friday, and you will be done reading through the New Testament in December.
You will actually finish reading through the New Testament before the end of the year. So if you haven't started yet, you're four days into January, start tomorrow, Matthew chapter 1, and read one chapter a day.
You'll read and only read on the weekdays. You'll read through the New Testament in less than a year. So that's two different ways to approach it. If you want to read the whole Bible, four chapters a day, don't read on Sunday.
If you want to read the New Testament, one chapter a day, don't read on the weekends. You'll get through in a year. But there are some other ways that you can study the Bible that can also be fruitful.
If you don't want to try to take such a large swath of reading, maybe that isn't something that you feel like suits where you are, or maybe you've read through the whole Bible and you want to do some more focused exegetical studies, I would say then bring it down to a smaller section.
Maybe a section of books. Maybe the Pentateuch, the writings of Moses. Maybe the history of Israel, starting with Joshua and going through the history of the Kings and the Chronicles and reading through those.
Maybe going in and just doing the four Gospels, spending the whole year studying the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. What greater thing can be done than to study the life and ministry of Jesus Christ for a whole year?
One of the things I'm looking forward to hopefully doing this year is starting a series of teaching on a harmony of the Gospels. That's something I've wanted to do for years, and I've been a little hesitant to do it because it's such a vast undertaking to study through all four Gospels.
But what a wonderful thing it is to just read the four Gospels, and I think that would be a wonderful thing to do. And to make your goal for 2021, I'm going to read through the four Gospels, Paul's letters.
You could read Paul's letters, or maybe just read the Psalms. There's 150 Psalms. So let's say you read one Psalm a day. You could read the Psalms twice through in 2020, or excuse me, 2021. You could read the Psalms two times all the way through and have a few days left over.
You probably take the weekends out, still be able to read the Psalms all the way through. Many of you know that the Proverbs, there are 31 Proverbs. You can read the Proverbs, one proverb a day, every day, every month, and you will be reading the wisdom of God, the Proverbs or the wisdom literature of the Bible.
So tomorrow is January 5th, you'd read Proverbs 5. The next day, January 6th, you read Proverbs 6. You do it just that way, and you're able to read through Proverbs, and you just read it over and over, and learn the wisdom of God through the Proverbs.
Now, speaking of reading over and over, there is one plan that I was introduced to about 10 years ago, and I did go through most of it. I didn't complete it all the way, but it's a three-year program through the New Testament, and it was, I read it through, I believe it was Grace to You Ministries, Dr. John MacArthur.
I'm not sure if he invented it, but I know he popularized it, and it is reading the New Testament in a very different way. You read the New Testament seven chapters a day, every day, the same seven chapters for 30 days, and then you read the next seven chapters every day for 30 days, and then you read the next seven chapters every day for 30 days.
So, you know, Matthew, 28 chapters long, it'd take you four months to get through Matthew reading it seven chapters a day, every day, but when you're done with Matthew after four months, you'll know Matthew.
You will know that book. You won't have it memorized, but you will know everywhere and everything that's in that book, and you'll know how to get there, and you'll know how to navigate the book. So, four months of study in Matthew to know Matthew really well, and to be able to navigate that book with precision and understanding, that's valuable, and that's certainly a different way of studying than most people consider ever trying.
But if you do that, you can get the whole New Testament in three years. Now, I know that's a long commitment, but Matt, I challenge you just to do four months in Matthew. Just go through Matthew seven chapters a day, 30 days, then the next month, seven chapters a day, 30 days.
At the end of four months, you'll know the book of Matthew. And again, I think there's great value in that, and it's one of the ways. Again, the Bible is such a treasure, and there's so many different ways to access that treasure.
There's so many different ways to study that treasure. And I want to end today with a story that I heard many years ago. I can't attribute this story because I don't remember where I heard it, but I do remember it, and it stuck with me for a long time.
And it was a story about a man who was having great difficulty finding value and purpose in his daily Bible reading. His daily Bible reading had become somewhat rote and had become somewhat not very uplifting in his heart.
He just wasn't really feeling like he was learning and being encouraged. And I think what it was, was he was haphazardly looking around the Bible, reading a verse here, reading a verse there. He wasn't taking a systematic and focused approach to his study.
So he went to his pastor, and his pastor said, listen, here's what I want you to do. I want you to read 2 Peter. The man said, okay, well, that's only a few chapters. He said, yes, but I want you to read 2 Peter every day for the next month.
And I want you to read the whole book every day for the next month. And so the man took his pastor's advice. He went home. He read over 2 Peter one time. Okay, that was good. It's good information. The next day he picked up his Bible, read through 2 Peter again.
Okay, good information. But as he got to the end of the first week, he found himself able to remember what the book of 2 Peter said, and he found himself able to better apply what 2 Peter was about in his life.
And by the second and third week, he found himself using the language of 2 Peter in his conversations with other people at church, in his conversations with other people at work. 2 Peter became second nature to him until finally he ended that month, and he felt like he had really internalized the book of 2 Peter.
He really had learned more about it than he had ever thought before, and it had an impact on him. So here's my takeaway from that little story. I'm not telling you to go read 2 Peter for a month, but if you do, I think there's great value in it.
I'm not telling you to take MacArthur's approach. I'm not telling you to take the approach my wife and I are taking right now, reading through the Bible in six months. But I am saying this, a systematic approach to reading the Bible will help you to stay on task, help you to stay disciplined, and help you to accomplish your goal, whatever your goal is, whether it's a broad goal of reading a lot in a short amount of time, or whether it's a more focused goal of reading a smaller amount over a longer period of time and spending time in meditation and focus.
Whatever your goal is, set a goal and stick to it, and I believe you will be the better for it. And I believe you will see that the Word of God certainly is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword.
I thank you for listening today to Coffee with a Calvinist. I hope today's lesson has been encouraging to you to read the Word systematically through in whatever form or fashion you choose in 2021. Thank you again for listening to Coffee with a Calvinist.
My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist. May God bless you.
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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners. All who come to Him in repentance and faith will find Him to be a perfect Savior. He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
May God be with you.