[NOTE: Those who are continuing the 1-year Bible reading plan we started on April 1, 2018, just go to the end of this entry and you will find the Day 276-Jonah 1-4; John 1 summary!]
Happy New Year! I’m so glad you are joining us for our 2019 Journey Through the Bible! Your New Life’s 1 YEAR PRAYER AND BIBLE READING GUIDEwill help you keep track of your progress each day and give you some helpful tips for deepening your prayer life, your intentionality about reading God’s word, and growing closer to Him as we move through 2019. If you have never read the Bible from cover-to-cover, then welcome to one of the most important journeys you will take as Jesus’ follower. We can only obey Jesus’ commandments when we know what they are. We find them in the pages of the Bible. We find Jesus’ commandments directly in the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which is why we will be reading from one of them each day the whole time we work our way through the Old Testament. The Old Testament gives us the foundational history of God’s people. As you open your Bible or Bible App each day to read, take a moment to ask God to fill you with the Holy Spirit, so you will gain a deeper understanding, and the power to live out the principles you find. The key to maintaining interest and completing a Bible reading plan is to acton what you read, so it becomes what God intended it to be: a guide for daily life. Thank you for joining us on the journey!
In the beginning God… so begins the book of Genesis. Before the beginning was also God. The age-old question of “Who created God?” goes unanswered in the Bible, because God is the uncaused caused. He always existed. How? We cannot say or know. Why? We cannot say or know. Part of the nature of God is being unknowable and beyond the capacity of the creatures He has created. Yet, God has made Himself known to us. He has revealed Himself to us in creation. (A creation requires a Creator, right?) He has revealed Himself to us in the history of the people of Israel. He has revealed Himself to us most clearly through His Son, Jesus Christ. Why? That we know. He tells us in the Bible. From cover to cover we read of God’s love for us, of God’s desire to be in relationship with us. That’s why reading and living God’s word in the Bible is vital to a growing relationship with God.
The greatest evidence and revelation of God’s love is the remembrance of Jesus walking out of the tomb, thus announcing sin and death had been defeated! You might never have experienced that love, or you might live in it daily. Either way, my prayer for you is you will experience God’s great love in Jesus Christ right now. Know God created the universe for His glory and so you and I might rule over it with Him. Know that when we rejected God (which we read about in Genesis 3) God continued to care for us. Know Jesus is the ultimate evidence of God’s goodness and love.
We will always have many questions about God we cannot answer in this life. That is to be expected of a being whose thoughts and ways are as high above ours as the heavens are above the earth, according to prophet Isaiah. The good news, the amazing news is God loves us so much He has revealed everything of Himself we need to know to experience abundant life and salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ! To God be all the glory, honor and praise!
Genesis 1 offers us a summary of God’s creative process. While not a scientific explanation for how creation took place, the poetic chapter offers us so much truth: God existed before anything. He brought the chaos to order. He created in an orderly manner, and the process resulted in the “pinnacle” of His creation–human beings. At the close of Genesis 1, God offers the purpose for human existence: To be fruitful, multiply, subdue the earth and have dominion over it. In other words, God created us as co-rulers with Him over the planet!
Genesis 2 offers us a different view of creation. While Genesis one gives us the “birds-eye” view from 30,000 feet, Genesis 2 is more of a “bus ride” through the country. It offers us an account of the specific creation of Adam and Eve. It tells us the only thing “not good” in all of creation was for the man to be alone. The chapter closes with a beautiful picture of the basis for human society: a man and woman leaving their families of origin and starting their own families. In the fabric of creation, we see a marriage between a man and woman is the basis for fulfilling God’s purpose of our being fruitful, multiplying, subduing the earth and having dominion over it.
Genesis 3 tells us why the world is not like it was in Genesis 1-2: perfect. While Adam and Eve knew a perfect relationship with God and each other, the serpent tempted Eve to reject that for something “better.” Of course, they already had perfection, but the serpent (i.e. the devil) always twists the truth to deceive us into thinking we can find something better than God. As a result, Eve rejected God’s warning and ate the forbidden fruit. Adam, who was with her, instead of intervening and protecting her, participated in the sin, and the “Fall” occurred. We call it the Fall, because Adam and Eve “fell” from their perfection, from their perfect harmony with God and each other, sin was introduced, and from that moment we and the world itself were “broken.” The rest of the Bible offers us an account of God’s pursuit of our redemption, our restoration to relationship with Him.
Genesis 4 shows us how quickly sin moves in our world. From Adam and Eve’s loss of direct, personal relationship with God, their son, Cain, murdered his brother. As we will see moving forward through Genesis, the LORD continues to work in the lives of people, while people continue to turn away from Him resulting in greater and lesser degrees of pain, suffering, and death.
As we turn to Mark 1, we introduce the LORD’s ultimate plan for redemption, for freeing humanity from sin and death: Jesus Christ. As we have noted, we will be reading from one of the four gospels the entire time until we get to the New Testament portion of our reading plan, because Jesus is the central character in God’s plan for restoring us to relationship with us. Mark 1 records the “beginning” of the good news or gospel of Jesus Christ. That beginning included John the Baptist preparing the way for Jesus, Jesus’ baptism and the first message He preached. His words and John’s coincided: Repent (or turn away from your sin and back to God), because the Kingdom of God is at hand. In Mark 1, Jesus also calls the first four disciples, demonstrates His amazing teaching skill, and His ability to bring the Kingdom of God to earth through casting out demons and healing the sick. For all these reasons and more, we claim Jesus as Savior and Lord in our lives.
(Day 276–Jonah 1-4; John 1)
Jonah is one of the most notable books of the “minor” prophets. The minor prophets weren’t less important than the “major” prophets, but their writings were much shorter. Jonah’s story is known the world over, because he is the poster child for being given a task by God, rejecting it for selfish reasons, and then undertaking the task only after God intervenes in his life in a supernatural way. Jonah’s story adds one final twist in that after he carries out God’s purpose, he is upset that God showed mercy to an entire nation of people. Jonah is the only prophetic book that focuses entirely on the prophet, himself, rather than on a prophetic message to a group of people.
Jonah 1 offers us the background for the entire book. The LORD called Jonah to go to Nineveh and preach a message of repentance to the people. Jonah didn’t want the Ninevites to be saved, so he ran away. Taking a boat in the opposite direction of Nineveh, Jonah thinks all is well. But the LORD sent a storm and the boat on which Jonah was a passenger was in danger of being destroyed. Jonah told the crew it was his fault and they had to throw him overboard. The crew attempted to save Jonah, but ultimately gave in to his request, and the moment he hit the water, the storm dissipated. We would think that would be the end of Jonah, but the LORD sent a great fish to swallow him. Many discount Jonah’s “story” as just that, a story, because of this detail, and what follows in chapter two, but we must remember if there is a God who exists beyond the natural, a supernatural God, then He is capable of intervening in the natural world, as Jesus did constantly during His earthly ministry.
In Jonah 2, Jonah cried out to the LORD from the belly of the fish, and the LORD heard. He had the fish vomit Jonah out on dry land!
In Jonah 3, the LORD tells Jonah to go to Nineveh a second time. Jonah goes. He preaches to the people to repent. They do, and the LORD shows mercy and spares them from punishment. The King of Nineveh took Jonah’s message so seriously he even had the people put their cattle in sackcloth, showing their repentance!
In Jonah 4, Jonah explodes with anger toward the LORD for His compassion on Nineveh. He tells the LORD he knew this is what would happen, that the LORD’s mercy and compassion would be shown. He asked the LORD to let him die, and said that’s why he left for Tarshish in the first place: he didn’t want the Ninevites to be spared. The LORD then made a plant grow up to shade Jonah from the heat. But after a while He sent a worm to kill the plant. Once again, Jonah’s anger flared and he wanted to die. The LORD asked Jonah whether he ought to be angry about a plant that died, which he did nothing to plant or cause to grow. Jonah said he ought to be angry. But the LORD was using it as an analogy, and asked Jonah whether He ought to have shown mercy for a city that had 120,000 children living in it? We don’t get Jonah’s answer, but we can guess Jonah might still have been angry. We don’t always find it easy to demonstrate the kind of compassion the LORD shows. Indeed, without the power of the Holy Spirit, we can all too easily have Jonah’s attitude. His life serves as a dramatic example of what great lengths the LORD will go to save thousands of people, and also how He works in the lives of individuals, because He cares about all of us, but He also cares about each of us.
As we return to John 1, we’re reminded how different John’s gospel is than the other three. John wrote his gospel much later than the others, and his purpose was more “theological” than “chronological.” That is while Matthew, Mark, and Luke wanted to present an overview of Jesus’ life from beginning to end (and return to heaven,) John wanted to show us clearly that Jesus is God. In John 1, John tells us Jesus is “the Word.” He tells us Jesus was with God in the beginning, and Jesus created everything. He tells us Jesus was full of grace and truth. We leave chapter 1 with a clear understanding: Jesus is not just an amazing man; He is God!