Episode 22: Reading the Bible in 2023

The Rural Church Podcast. Two-point-up. Just a couple of pastors discussing life, ministry, theology, and the gospel from a local church perspective. Eddie, what's it time for?

The Rural Church Podcast.

New Year Banter and the State of the Culture

Welcome to The Rural Church Podcast, episode 22. I'm your co-host, Allen Nelson, pastor of Perryville Second Baptist Church in Central Arkansas, and with me is my brother in Christ, co-labor in the Word of God and ministry, Eddie Ragsdale.

Say hello, Eddie.

Hello, everybody.

Happy New Year.

Happy New Year. Yes, 2023. I mean, it's not actually 2023 for you and I, but it will be when folks hear this.

You mean we're in the future right now, or are we in the past?

We're back to the future.

Okay. All right. So, 22, episode 22. When you were 22, did you even think about the year of our Lord, 2023?

You know, let's see. Yeah, I probably did not even think about the year 2023.

How long ago was that for you?

Well, I would be 43 now, so folks can do the math.

21 years ago.

Yeah.

Wow. You are old.

Pretty old. That's right.

21 years ago. That was 2001, 2023. It's wild, isn't it? And then you got the COVID year of 2020 and just everything, time is just, it's just wild, isn't it?

Yeah. It's really seen, you know, I was just having a discussion with a brother this morning and we were just talking about how, you know, just kind of how everything has been so different over these last three years, you know.

Yeah. And you're like, what door of depravity is going to be open in 2023? Can't wait. We're recording this the day after President Biden signed the so-called Respect for Marriage, really Disrespect for Marriage Act.

And basically he said something along the lines of, Americans have the right to marry the person they love. It's terrible.

And according to Nancy Pelosi, I believe, or according to Dr. Albert Mohler, Nancy Pelosi said that this was not the end, that ultimately the goal is the Equality Act, which we know is going to be detrimental to the freedom of people to worship and honor God with their lives.

It won't keep believers from worshiping and honoring God with their lives, but it will be detrimental.

To the freedom to do so. Yeah. You know, God has been doing a pruning, as it were. We saw that in COVID. COVID, in a sense, you might say, was detrimental to the freedom of worship, but the reality was, as you go back and you look back on it now, it really wasn't detrimental to the freedom of worship so much as it was detrimental to the nominal Christian.

That's right. And that's what's going to happen here, too. Now, listen, obviously, I don't want to undermine being detrimental to the true believer and the cost that it will cost us, but the true believer is willing to pay, right?

The true believer is like, I'm going to do what the Lord says,.

No matter what. That might actually be a good segue into what we want to talk about today, because we're thinking about the true believer, and maybe the thing that is most foundational for the true believer is the foundation we have in the Word of God, and so we want to talk today about Bible reading and our Bible intake.

Why Christians Should Read the Bible Every Day

Yeah. I think that we are.

In one of the most, I've said this before, we're in one of the most biblically ignorant societies. Yet, what's strange about it, Eddie, is that we have some of the greatest access to the Word.

Of God that any society has ever had. That's right. Nobody's ever had this much access to.

The Word of God in literally every possible form. Let's say someone's even illiterate today, which is rare, but it still happens. Let's say someone's illiterate or they're diagnosed with something they can't read, or let's say they're blind.

We even live in a society today that you can have basically unrestricted access to the Word of God being read. Right. Yeah. I think of.

My grandfather. He didn't complete high school, didn't have a full education, and he could not read very well. He and my grandmother, he was such a godly man, loved the Lord, loved to share the gospel with people, but he couldn't read very well.

So my grandmother, he and my grandmother every night would sit and they would read. They would read through their Sunday school literature. They would read the Bible together every evening, and then as he got older, he had these CDs, the Bible on CD, and he would listen to those.

I just think if he were alive today with the technology that we have, the ability to listen to the Bible just by punching a button on a phone, and then there are so many people that say they don't have time for the Bible, and then clearly we have more access than anyone has ever had.

The people that don't have time for the.

Bible are unregenerate, and I want to talk about reading the Bible today. I want to give a special exhortation to pastors. I want to talk about various plans. I want to talk about why we should be reading the Bible.

So we'll jump in on all this. First of all, let me start with this. If you are a Christian, given our cultural context, given the time that we have, the ability we have, if you're a Christian in America today, if you're listening to this podcast, you ought to be reading the Bible seven days a week.

Agree with that, Eddie? Yes, yep. I'll take a step further than that. If you're a pastor, not only ought you need to be reading the Bible seven days a week, if you're not reading the Bible every day, now we begin to talk about potential disqualifying habits in your life, because you are required before God to shepherd your people.

You need the Bible every day, doubly, one, because you need it. You need it before you study anything else. You need the Bible. Secondly, you need it because you need to teach God's people. You must, not just need, you must be in the Bible every day.

If you're a pastor listening to this, and you're not in the Bible every day, my great encouragement to you is to pause this, pick it up later, pause this, get on your face before the Lord, repent, know that God is for you in Christ, turn from that, rest in Christ, and then adjust whatever it is that's going on in your life.

Adjust your schedule and discipline yourself to be in God's Word every single day. Are we going to have busy weeks? Yes. Are there going to be unforeseen circumstances that happen? Yes. Are there going to be sickness and all those things?

Yes. But what I'm saying is, on a regular basis, a consistent week in, week out, we must be in the Bible daily. Now, that's an exhortation to pastors, but all Christians ought to be in the Bible daily.

If you're not in the Bible daily as a Christian, what's going on? Delete social media if you need to. Delete Netflix if you need to. Wake up 10 minutes earlier and get in God's Word. What do.

You want to say to that? Yeah, and I don't know exactly if you can put that link into that sermon excerpt from that you preached the other day. I think that would be helpful to folks if they can find you on Facebook or on Twitter.

I think it's in both of those places. I'll put the YouTube link in. Yeah, and that'd be helpful. Yeah, and it's not just a matter of you ought to as a duty or you need to, but it ought to be our joy, right?

I mean, the Bible is our food. It's that which we live by. The Lord Himself said we live by every word that comes from the mouth of God, and so we want to be people that love God's Word. I was thinking about it last night.

What really marks God's people? Well, God's people love the things that God loves. Well, what does God love? Well, He loves His Word. He loves His church, and I think those three things, there's more than that, but let's just think about those three things for a second.

Those are the three things that so often in our culture, even in our Christian culture, that people want to say, well, God loves you, and they want to focus on God's love for the individual person more than God's love for His glory or God's love for His Word or God's love for His church, but if we really want to love the things that God loves, we will love His glory, we will love His Word, and we will love His church, and the only way that that's going to be nourished in our lives is if we are regularly,.

Daily intaking God's Word. Amen. Psalm 19, verse 10, talking about the rules and the scriptures and the laws and precepts of God, David says, more to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold, sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb.

When we come to the Word of God, it's not like we're saying, hey, man, you got to eat your.

Cabbage or whatever. You like cabbage? I don't eat much cabbage.

I'm not saying like, hey, man, you got to eat your cabbage. You're saying, this is sweeter than honey. It's more desirable than gold. The Word of God is the great desire of the people of God. We long to know what God has said, right?

So many Christians are like, I want to know God's will. Ephesians 5, 17 says, therefore, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. We can understand. Think about this, the eternal, sovereign, holy God of the universe, we can climb into His mind, as it were.

Now, understand, we have to keep the creator-creature distinction. However, God has disclosed Himself to us. He has revealed Himself to us in such a way that we can know His will in His Word. So we desire to read His Word because we want to know His will.

We desire to read His Word because we want to know Christ. We desire to read His Word because we want to be kept back from presumptuous sins. We want to see the glory of Christ extended around the whole globe.

As we think about a new year, and as we think about, we don't know what is going to happen in 2023, but we do know this, we will be ready for it. We'll be more ready for it. We'll be.

More prepared for it if we're people of the book. Yeah, that's right. And you know, if you think about it, so often in our culture, people are chasing after something new, whether it be in the new age and they're looking for some kind of spiritualism, or whether it be even, you know, in professing Christian churches where people are looking for a new revelation, some fresh word from God, when honestly we haven't given attention to what God has already revealed.

We haven't taken Deuteronomy 29 to heart that the secret things belong to the Lord, but the things, think about this, the things that have been revealed belong to us and to our children forever. They belong to us.

God has given us His revealed word, and so many people, they're wanting God to speak, oh Lord, I want you to speak, and they've not even read everything that He's already said. They've not even read it all, and they're wanting God to speak to them.

Bible Reading Plans and How to Find One That Fits

That's right. I want to shift.

Now, we'll continue this conversation, but I want to shift now about the various plans out there, and I want to kind of talk about what we do. I want to also say this, God did not inspire a perfect Bible reading plan for us to follow, and I think that's because we're made in, we're made differently, we're wired differently, we think differently, and I want to talk about what I do, and then I want to let you talk about what you do, and then we can also talk about what some other guys do who are faithful.

I preached a sermon last week in our church, and I did talk about this. It takes an average person 75 hours. You add up all the time, about a little less than 75 hours to read through the whole Bible.

Well, if you divide that out by year, 75 hours is 4 ,500 minutes. You divide that by 365 days, and you come into about 12 .32 or something, which that's about 12 minutes and 20 seconds. It's actually a little less than 12 minutes and 20 seconds, but anyway, the point is, the average reader who would start in Genesis 1 and spend 12 minutes and 20 seconds reading the Bible, by the time that the year concluded, and they did that every day, they would have read through Revelation 22.

12 minutes and 20 seconds, that's not that long. You have 12 minutes and 20 seconds in your day, and here's the deal, you don't need to find time in your day to read the Bible, right? You need to make time.

You need to cut other things out. If you need to delete Wordle on your phone or Twitter, or if you need to get a different kind of phone, go back to the flip phone. If you need to cancel Netflix, whatever you need to do, 12 minutes and 20 seconds, I'm not saying that's the be all end all.

I'm just saying, if you've been a Christian for a number of years, let's say you've been a Christian for five years or more, and you've never read through the whole Bible, really the question is why. Why?

So, I don't think that you have to read through the whole Bible every year to be a Christian. I'm not saying that at all, but I am saying it's more doable than most Christians think. I guess we just believe the lie.

We look at this big book, and we just think, boy, I could never get through that. Yeah, you can in 12 minutes and 20 seconds.

Yeah, well, and it's not even just a matter of, you know, in a year, I guess that could be kind of arbitrary. You could read through it faster. Yeah, oh no, yeah, that's right. You could read.

Through it faster. Our friend from Marlton, Brother Russ Roden, he read through, I believe.

Last year, he did the 90-day plan. Yeah, and I've done the 90-day plan, and now that, I will say, that gets a little more intense. It's a couple hours a day, you know. I did one of the biggest.

Things. So, let me talk about how I'm wired. One of the biggest things I did in 2010, I believe it was, maybe 2011, is I did Professor Grant Horner's plan. You know, it's like, have you ever heard of that one?

I haven't heard of that. That's like 10 chapters a day, you know, and you're reading strategically from different portions of the Scripture. That opened my eyes like nothing else in understanding, you know, and connecting the Scriptures.

And it was in 2008 when I was exhorted by Don Whitney in a class on spiritual disciplines. He talked about how you guys are going to minister to God's people, who God says we are to live on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God, but you haven't read every word.

And that was during the time of my life, I was like, I knew it, that hit me, hit me in the heart. I was like, okay, I need to read. So, I began reading. And my first plan was I took my Bible, it was a little Bible, and I divided the number of pages by a year.

And it was like four pages or something, I don't remember. And I just started, I would just read like that. I was like, make sure I read four pages. And I got done, I actually got done in less than a year there.

But I read through the Bible every year. And the reason that I like reading through the Bible every year is I'm wired that way. I like, and my best plans are the ones like we're going to do this year.

They're similar to the Robert Murray McShane plan, that's another one you can look up. They're similar to that in that they read from multiple places in Scripture a day. Now, some people don't like that.

It jumps around too much for them. But I like reading from multiple portions of Scripture a day, because I like to see connections. Sometimes there's connections that you see in God's Word that maybe you hadn't picked up on before, because you're reading from over here and over here on the same day.

Yeah.

So, we'll do a plan. So, the plan that our church is, so this year, I'll tell you that this year I did the five-day-a-week plan. And it had readings for five days a week, and then you use Saturday and Sunday to either read what you want, something else, or you catch up.

You know, like if you're supposed to read six chapters, maybe that day you only ended up reading three. Well, you pick up Saturday or Sunday, you pick up. This year, we're going to do a plan where the church is going to do a plan where it's 25 readings a month.

So, it's a similar concept. You read 25 readings in a month, and then you have five catch-up days. Because one of the things that inevitably happens, whether it's sickness or some sort of busyness or whatever, and you end up missing a day, and then that can sometimes go to two days or whatever, then you get discouraged, and then you just quit.

Yeah, you think I can't, I'll never get caught up.

So, basically, the plans that I like and the plans I've been doing over the last 14 years now is the best plans that I like are the plans going multiple readings. What about you, from multiple places?

Reading the Bible Chronologically and by Individual Books

Yeah. So, I'll kind of tell you what I've done in the past, what I've done this year, and kind of what I'm going to do, because I'm actually making some changes. So, in the past, I've done the discipleship reading plan, which I think is by Navigators, but I've done that one before, and I found it really helpful.

Years ago, and I don't even know where we got this, but I just found in our house, I think my wife's, maybe my mother-in-law had gotten this for my wife, but it was an ESV daily reading Bible, and it had a read-through-the-Bible-in-a-year plan in it, and I used it, and I really loved it.

I've read McShane's plan. All of those are really great plans, and all of them have been really helpful for me, but one of the plans that, but the plan that I've done the most here lately, probably the last four years, is I've done the chronological Bible reading plan, and I'll tell you, there is actually a, you can go on the internet, and you can just type in Bible reading plan generator, and here's the thing.

You can put whatever you want in that. You can tell it how many days. You can tell it what calendar you want to use. You can tell it if you want weekends, if you want to, you know, you can do whatever you want, and it will generate a plan for you, exactly whatever parameters you want, and the reason why I point that out is simply because I think that, look, if you're like, well, I just don't like any of the plans, well, all the plans ought to be about getting you through the Bible.

Now, like you said, I do like the ones that give you readings from multiple places in the Bible. That's really helpful, but the last several years, what I've used is a chronological Bible reading plan, so I'll tell you what I've done in 2022.

In 2022, I read through the Old Testament chronologically, so I had a one-year plan generated just for me for the Old Testament chronologically, and then I had generated a plan for reading through the New Testament chronologically, and we read that with our family, so I still did the Bible in a year, but like the New Testament was with my family, Old Testament, I was going through that on my own, and it has been so beneficial to me to read the Bible chronologically.

It has been transformative to understanding. If you have struggled to understand biblical prophecy, read the Bible chronologically.

If you've struggled to understand. You mean our Bible's not in chronological order?

That's right. If you have struggled to understand the relations. Some Christians don't know that. Yeah, yeah, and that's right. Yeah, if you don't understand where, so right now, I'm in, my Bible reading where I'll pick up today will be in the prophet Haggai, but I'm in the middle of Ezra, right, and then so that really helps you to understand where the minor prophets fit in, but it really helps you to understand the trajectory of God's redemptive plan in the life of not just Israel, but even coming up to Christ, and so there is so much value in reading the Bible chronologically.

Now, however, I do want to say this. I'm making a change this next year, and like you said, everybody needs to need to figure out what works for you. I've read the Bible. I don't know how many times I've read the Bible through, and like I said, I've done the chronological thing now for four years, probably three or four years.

This year, as I was reading through Isaiah, I just have become convinced that, man, I need to know Isaiah better. I need to know Isaiah better, and so our brother Jim Eliph, he says his preferred way of reading the Bible is individual books, and so in January, I don't even have a plan other than January one, I'm going to start in Isaiah one, and I'm going to read Isaiah, and I don't know how many times I'm going to read it.

I don't know how long I'm going to read it. I may spend a month reading Isaiah. I may spend six months just reading through Isaiah several times. Now, I want to say two things with that. One, if you've never read through the whole Bible, you need to read through the whole Bible, and if it takes you a year or two to do a plan that gets you through the whole Bible, do that.

If you've only read through the Bible once or twice, and you're going, I'm not getting enough out of this, you need to keep reading through the whole Bible, and the reason I say that is the first time or two that I read through the Bible, I had more questions than answers, but after reading through it over and over and over and over, that's when you start to see the things.

You don't pick up on it the first time through. It is a big book, and so I would tell people you do need to read the entire Bible, but I also want to say there's a point where you also need to dive into individual books and maybe spend some more time in those.

So this year, I just really feel like I need to get a better handle on Isaiah. Isaiah is one of the four books in the Old Testament that is most quoted in the New Testament, and so I'm not telling everybody to start an Isaiah reading plan in 2023, but I'm just saying that that's another way of getting into the Bible.

Is there a book of the Bible that you really want to spend some time in? Well, take that book and read through it several times. Read through the Gospel of John several times. You don't think your relationship with the Lord would be enhanced by taking the Gospel of John and reading through it a dozen times?

Well, we've had Nate Pickowitz on the show before. It was when it was Rural Podcast 1 .0, Rural Church Podcast, but have you read his book, How to Eat Your Bible?

I have not. I remember us having that discussion.

I see it right now on that show. It's a good book, and it's different than what I encourage, but it's similar to what Jim Ellef encourages, reading a book of the Bible over and over and over again. I think his plan gets you through the whole Bible in like seven years, but by that time, you have gone through all these individual books a ton, and so that's great.

I think that's wonderful. I think it just depends on how we're wired, but I cannot stress this enough. You need to be in the Bible every day. It's not just I read the Bible, and I'm going to check it off, but as you're reading the Bible, and then you're hearing your pastor preach, and then you're doing other things in family worship, you're getting so much of the Bible.

I encourage even reading through plans with other people. That's what we're going to try this year as a church, reading through a plan with other people you can encourage, and challenge, and ask questions, and discuss.

It's so important. My friend, Jonathan Murdoch, gives three requirements that you need for effective Bible reading. You need to have a time. You need to have a place. You need to have a plan. That is, number one, you need to have a time.

When are you going to read your Bible? You don't wake up and say, at some point today, I'm going to find time to read my Bible. You're going to make time. For most people, but we don't apply this across the board, for most people, the most conducive time is when you wake up.

If you're not reading the Bible regularly, start out. I would encourage you just start out this. If you want to start out waking up an hour earlier, praise God, do it, but I would even encourage you just the baby step.

Wake up 15 minutes earlier and give those extra 15 minutes to reading God's Word. Then you need to have a place. That is, not just, I'm going to find that whatever place. It's like, you've got your chair, you've got the, maybe it is your bed, you've got the, maybe it's a spot in your room, maybe you have an extra room in your house, but you have a place, a consistent place, a consistent time and a consistent place.

Then thirdly, you have a plan and whatever plan that maybe you've heard on the show today, it may be a chronological reading plan. It may be the discipleship journal plan. It may be dividing your Bible, the number of pages in your Bible by a year or six months or three months or whatever, but you have to have some sort of plan.

For me personally, I keep a journal and I just write a little bit about what's going on in the world and in my life and then I write down what I've read and then I keep a little plan in there and I check off whatever it is I've read because we really are creatures of habit and consistency and routine.

All these little tools are going to help you. Don't just treat the Word of God frivolously and just say, whatever, if I get to it, I get to it. No, this has to be a priority. How are you going to eat?

You're going to eat and not read the Word of God when the Bible says, man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. So this is a necessary component to the Christian life.

You need to be reading the Bible seven days.

A week. Yeah, and like one of the things I'm planning on doing with Isaiah, and I heard Paul Washer say this several years ago, and he was talking about reading the whole Bible this way, but he said, just take a notebook and start reading, and when you come to a question, just write your question down and keep reading, and then when you read through it the next time or the next time or the next time, you'll probably discover that you found the answer to that question, and that's one of the things I plan to do with Isaiah.

I'm going to read through it, and as I go through it, I'm just going to take note of things and then just keep reading because so much can be answered by—I don't think we can stress too much the need to repeatedly read, repeatedly read God's Word, too, because a person might say, oh, I've read the Bible.

Yeah, yeah, okay, but you need to read it again. Over and over and over and over and over,.

And the Spirit of God works in the Word of God. You might have read a passage or a verse a million times, and then it's that next time that your eyes are opened, as it were, to see not anything, not new revelation, not new truth, but really to see what was there, because the Spirit doesn't give us new revelation.

He illuminates our mind to see what's in the Scripture and how that applies to our life. There's so much more that we could talk about— memorization, meditation. For me, these things all flow out of having a consistent time in the Scripture.

You say, well, I need to memorize more of the Bible. I need to meditate more. Okay, well, all this flows into reading the Bible every day, and certainly there are days. Some people are like, I don't want to have a plan, and I don't want to think about the 12-minute thing, because then I'll just read the Bible, and I can't just go to the Bible and read the Bible today because I would just be doing it to check something off the list, and my expectation is this.

It's better to read the Bible to check it off than it is to not read the Bible, because if you go to the Bible and you have the wrong motivations, well, it may be your reading will actually convict your heart and change your motivations and lead you to repentance.

Right, and you know, I said earlier that Isaiah was no plan, and I probably shouldn't have said it that way, because I do have a plan. My plan is that I'm going to read Isaiah every day.

Yeah, that's your plan, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, and I would almost say in some ways, so use whatever Bible reading plan you're using. Use it to keep you consistently in God's Word, but then don't let it be a thing that keeps you from going beyond that.

Absolutely. There's a lot of times that I'll read something, and then it'll be like, okay, now I'm going to read more that connects with this, because I read this in God's Word, and then I'll go read another passage that has to do with that, that connects to that passage, and that really wasn't a part of my Bible reading plan that day, but it was something that, you know, had I not been reading through the Bible or had I not been reading through that book of the Bible, I wouldn't have seen that, because it wasn't something I was studying for a sermon or studying for a blog post or studying for a lesson.

It was something I was just reading.

Because I was reading through the Bible. Yeah, and I guess a final exhortation I give, too, is like, if you are reading books about the Bible, but you're not consistently in the Bible, put down those books and read the Bible.

Now, I agree with Spurgeon, visit many good books, but live in the Bible. That's right. I think you ought to visit many good books. I really do. I think that, especially now, if you're older and you've spent a lot of time in other books and such, well, you know, but especially if you're younger, you need the counsel, in my opinion, you need the counsel and direction and help of other godly men who've gone before us, you know, and so it's a good thing, it's a helpful thing to read other good books, you know, theological books, books about the Bible, commentaries, all these things.

This is all, right now, I'm reading a commentary on Revelation, just kind of, you know, random things, all helpful. It's good, but those things cannot.

Replace you reading the Bible. Yeah, yeah, and maybe you and I probably ought to do another podcast on how to, because I could glean some wisdom from you, I think, on this, but how do you decide what books to read?

There's more books in the world than you could ever read, and so how do we work our way through what books we should read, what books are worth our time, all those kinds of things, but none of, no other book is worth taking your time away from the Bible.

You've got.

To be in God's Word. That's right, that's right. If you only have so much time in your day, if it does come to the choice, which one am I going to read today, has to be the Bible. That's right.

Every day, and so, anyway. And not only the Bible over other books, but the Bible over Facebook, and the Bible over Twitter, and the Bible over YouTube, and over the podcast. That's right. Most people, let's be honest, most people aren't not spending time in the Bible because they're spending time reading Pilgrim's Progress.

Most people aren't spending time in the Bible because they're on Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or, you know, whatever. Your life is probably not going to be changed for the better by more time spent on social media, but it will be transformed for eternity through more time spent.

In God's Word. Amen, brother. Well, at the beginning of 2022, we didn't even know we were going to be starting this podcast. I know. Here we are. Praise the Lord. 2023, I don't know what's in store, but I know this, brother.

Christ is on His throne. That's right. Saludeo Gloria. Amen. Thank you guys for joining us on this episode of the Rural Church Podcast. Read your Bibles. Read your Bible every day. Say goodbye, Eddie.

See you guys next week.