Audio Transcript
Comfortable New 12 months — 2025! — as we launch this podcast into yr 13. What an incredible trip — all made attainable by the grace of God and by your involvement in listening and sending us your questions and praying for us. Thanks on your position in making all of it occur.
For a lot of, this new yr comes with a clean, recent Bible-reading slate. I’ve a brand new one on my desk proper now that I simply printed out — 1,200 empty containers to examine off this yr, 4 readings per day for 300 days, about fifteen minutes of studying per day. Pastor John and I’ll once more be utilizing the Navigators Bible Reading Plan in 2025, the identical plan we used final yr.
And that is our invitation to you to learn your complete Bible with us in 2025. For some, this will likely be your first try. Welcome alongside! If not, welcome again! You’ll find the Navigators Bible Reading Plan on-line by looking for it. Discover the printable PDF of the schedule, print it off, and be a part of us in 2025. On the podcast this yr, we’ve a pair dozen fascinating questions lined as much as ask Pastor John that coincide with the day’s studying. You don’t must learn the Bible with us to be blessed by these episodes, however in the event you do, I believe you’ll discover additional profit.
So, right here we’re on the second day of January, getting down to learn your complete Bible in 2025, one thing you’ve got performed a number of occasions, Pastor John. So what challenges lie forward of us? And what blessings can we count on forward? These are the questions being requested by a listener named Mike. “Good day, Pastor John! I’ve been blessed by your ministry for a few years. Within the yr forward, I hope to learn my Bible from cowl to cowl for the very first time, utilizing the Navigators Bible Studying Plan that you simply use. I really feel somewhat excited and so much intimidated and enormously unprepared for the yr forward. I’ve by no means performed something like this earlier than. What’s your recommendation for me? And what obstacles should I count on to beat to tug this off in 2025?”
Effectively, amen and reward God for what Mike is resolving to do. I simply — what, an hour and a half in the past — was studying my reading-plan studying. So I’ve been on this technique for — good evening, what, 20, 25 years? I don’t know. I like this technique. I strive different issues, and I typically come again to it. So good, Mike, you have to be excited, and sure, you have to be intimidated. You might be in vital methods unprepared. Me too. That’s why we’re studying. Paul stated it’s all impressed exactly to make us ready, “that the person of God could also be full, geared up” — or let’s imagine ready — “for each good work,” together with Bible studying (2 Timothy 3:16–17). So that you’ve obtained to learn to get ready to learn, proper? In order that’s okay to be intimidated by studying the Bible.
So, what do you have to count on? Let me offer you three negatives to scare you off and 9 positives to suck you again in.
Three Enemies to Bible Studying
1. Anticipate opposition. Devil hates the phrase of God and can disincline you, blind you, distract you, bore you. He’ll struggle with all his may to maintain this from taking place. So pray and struggle and ask God to make all 4 of these issues that Devil tries to do to backfire, to explode in his face as you develop into a stronger warrior towards him — your coronary heart inclined, your blindness eliminated, focus as an alternative of distraction, pleasure as an alternative of boredom. So, count on opposition.
2. Anticipate to be shocked. The outrage of sin and its graphic descriptions and the horrors of God’s judgment and the failures of God’s persons are appalling within the Bible. The Bible is stunningly graphic in its description of each our outrageous sin and God’s breathtaking judgment on sin. You’ll want to throw up in case you have any form of sympathetic engagement with the Bible at occasions while you see what God ordains towards sin on this world. So, count on your views of man and God to be blown up — in a great way.
3. Anticipate to be confused for 3 causes.
First, God conceals many issues that we’d prefer to know. Deuteronomy 29:29: “The key issues belong to the Lord our God, however the issues which are revealed belong to us and to our kids perpetually, that we could do [his word].” So there are belongings you’re going to wish to know, and God says, “Nope. That’s my enterprise, not yours.”
“Anticipate opposition. Devil hates the phrase of God and can disincline you, blind you, distract you, bore you.”
The second purpose why you’re going to be confused is that what he revealed is commonly onerous to know. Peter stated that flat out in 2 Peter 3:16: “. . . as [Paul] does in all his letters when he speaks in them of those issues. There are some issues in [Paul’s letters] which are onerous to know, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their very own destruction, as they do the opposite Scriptures.” There are some issues in Paul’s letters which are onerous to know, which we should always not look forward to finding simple. So, we’re going to be confused at occasions.
And the third purpose why you’re going to be confused is that Christ has given academics to the church. Have you ever ever thought of that? Within the New Testomony, he didn’t simply give a Bible and say, “Now we don’t want any academics as a result of we’ve obtained the Bible. We’ve obtained the Holy Spirit. So, no human beings must be academics within the church.” He didn’t try this. He stated that in each church there must be elders. These elders have to be apt to show (1 Timothy 3:2), which suggests individuals want explanations for what they see within the Bible, and academics are referred to as to determine issues out and assist the others. So, except you’re a kind of academics, and except you’re God, you’re going to run into complicated issues within the Bible that you simply need assistance understanding from different individuals.
So, the implication of these three is that this: pray for illumination. Do no matter digging in research helps you. Put issues collectively you can put collectively, and what you’ll be able to’t work out, placed on the shelf for later consideration and carry on transferring. If you happen to get slowed down with what you’ll be able to’t perceive, you’ll by no means end the studying for the day.
9 Advantages of Bible Studying
These are my negatives. Listed below are the 9 positives. I’ll simply tick them off actually, actually shortly. These are issues you’ll be able to count on.
1. Anticipate your religion to be deepened and strengthened, as a result of Romans 10:17 says, “Religion comes from listening to, and listening to by the phrase of Christ.” Or, virtually the identical, count on your hope in God to be made extra unshakable, as a result of Romans 15:4 says that every thing in the entire Bible was written on your hope.
2. Anticipate God to do severe liberating work in your life, as a result of Jesus stated, “You’ll know the reality. Once you learn my Bible, you’ll know the reality, and the reality will set you free” (see John 8:32).
3. Anticipate new energy in struggle with Devil, as a result of that’s the way in which Jesus defeated him within the wilderness. He quoted Scripture to the satan, and the satan couldn’t stand earlier than it. He gained’t stand earlier than you both. He’s a liar; he’s a deceiver. He can’t abide the reality. You’re filling your head up with the reality. You’re going to be a valiant warrior greater than you dreamed towards Devil.
4. Anticipate a deep sanctifying work in your life, as a result of John 17:17 says, “Sanctify them within the fact; your phrase is fact.”
5. Anticipate to develop into a extra loving individual to these round you, as a result of Paul in Philippians 1:9 says he prays that our “love could abound an increasing number of, with data and all discernment.” And he stated in 1 Timothy 1:5 that the aim of his instruction — that’s, the aim of the Bible — “is love . . . from a pure coronary heart.” So that you’re going to seek out love for individuals rising in your coronary heart as you immerse your self in the entire sweep of Scripture.
6. Anticipate that regardless that you are actually saved in a decisive method, you’re going to go on being saved by the Scriptures. Most individuals don’t take into consideration this. “Pay shut consideration to your self and your educating [the Scriptures]. Persevere in these, for as you do that you’ll save each your self and your hearers” (see 1 Timothy 4:16). The Bible is the technique of God by which he goes on saving us.
7. Anticipate pleasure — nice pleasure, unshakable pleasure that the world doesn’t know — as a result of Jesus stated, “This stuff I’ve spoken to you, that my pleasure could also be in you, and that your pleasure could also be full” (John 15:11). So, ship the roots of your thoughts and your coronary heart down into the entire Bible, and your pleasure will develop into indestructible.
8. Anticipate to satisfy God — meet God, not simply truths about God. Anticipate to satisfy God, as a result of it says in 1 Samuel 3:21, “The Lord appeared once more at Shiloh, for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel by the phrase of the Lord.” He revealed himself “by the phrase.” And he does that. He does that. Anticipate to satisfy him.
9. Lastly, count on to see the glory of Christ. “All of us [we believers], with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being reworked into the identical picture from one diploma of glory to a different” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
Now, how do we all know that occurs within the Bible? As a result of in the event you comply with the circulate of Paul’s thought from 2 Corinthians 3:18–4:6, he refers to how we see the glory of Christ. Specifically, we see it in “the sunshine of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who’s the picture of God” (2 Corinthians 4:4). And the gospel is the written narrative of the tales or the occasions — and their that means — of the demise and resurrection of Christ.
Nice Resolve
So, Mike, I’ll pray for you what Paul prayed in 2 Thessalonians 1:11. He stated this: “To this finish we all the time pray for you, that our God could make you worthy of his calling and should fulfill each good resolve and each work of religion by his energy.” This can be a nice resolve earlier than you. You’ve obtained a terrific intention in your coronary heart. Be valiant. Make a vow to the Lord to maintain it, and also you gained’t remorse it.
