Inter-Varsity Press

PREFACE

This book is for Christians who want to read the Bible, who want to read all the Bible. It is the second of two volumes that share the same end.

At their best, Christians have saturated themselves in the Bible. They say with Job, “I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread” (Job 23:12). That comparison was something the children of Israel were meant to learn in the wilderness: we are told that God led them into hunger and then fed them with manna, to teach them “that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” (Deut. 8:3) - words quoted by the Lord Jesus when he himself faced temptation (Matt. 4:4). Not only for the book of Revelation may it properly be said, “Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it” (Rev. 1:3). On the night he was betrayed, Jesus Christ prayed for his followers in these terms: “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). The means by which God sanctifies men and women, setting them apart as his own people, is the Word of truth.

The challenge has become increasingly severe in recent years, owing to several factors. All of us must confront the regular sins of laziness or lack of discipline, sins of the flesh and of the pride of life. But there are additional pressures. The sheer pace of life affords us many excuses for sacrificing the important on the altar of the urgent. The constant sensory input from all sides is gently addictive - we become used to being entertained and diverted, and it is difficult to carve out the space and silence necessary for serious and thoughtful reading of Scripture. More seriously yet, the rising biblical illiteracy in Western culture means that the Bible is increasingly a closed book, even to many Christians. As the culture drifts away from its former rootedness in a Judeo-Christian understanding of God, history truth, right and wrong, purpose, judgment, forgiveness, and community so the Bible seems stranger and stranger. For precisely the same reason, it becomes all the more urgent to read it and reread it, so that at least confessing Christians preserve the heritage and outlook of a mind shaped and informed by holy Scripture.

This is a book to encourage that end. Devotional guides tend to offer short, personal readings from the Bible, sometimes only a verse or two, followed by several paragraphs of edifying exposition. Doubtless they provide personal help for believers with private needs and fears and hopes. But they do not provide the framework of what the Bible says - the “plotline” or “story line” - the big picture that makes sense of all the little bits of the Bible. Wrongly used, such devotional guides may ultimately engender the profoundly wrong-headed view that God exists to sort out my problems; they may foster profoundly mistaken interpretations of some Scriptures, simply because the handful of passages they treat are no longer placed within the framework of the big picture, which is gradually fading from view. Only systematic and repeated reading of the whole Bible can meet these challenges.

That is what this book encourages. Here you will find a plan that will help you read through the New Testament and Psalms twice, and the rest of the Bible once, in the course of a year—or, on a modification of the plan, in the course of two years. Comment is offered for each day, but this book fail utterly in its goal if you read the comment and not the assigned biblical passages.

The reading scheme laid out here is a slight modification of one first developed a century and a half ago by a Scottish minister, Robert Murray M’Cheyne. How it works, and why this book is “Volume Two” (even though it goes through the entire calendar year), are laid out in the Introduction.

I am deeply grateful to my doctoral assistant Tom Wood, assisted by Lesley Kim, for the extraordinary work they put into the indexes. The indexes make it possible to trace entire biblical themes through the canon. In that way these two volumes may contribute to helping readers develop biblical theology.

“Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good”
(1 Peter 2: 2-3).

Soli Deo gloria

D. A. Carson,
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

sample MAY 7

Numbers 15; Psalm 51; Isaiah 5; Hebrews 12

IT IS NEVER EASY TO GET ACROSS a message of impending judgment (Isa. 5) to people who are convinced they are not all that bad, especially when the ruling elite are enjoying good times. So Isaiah resorts to an attention-grabbing song. He picks up the ancient equivalent of a guitar and begins to sing a simple ballad about his true love. His audience is hooked-and then they cannot help but feel the hammer-blows.

In the ballad Isaiah begins by referring to God as “the one 1 love. . My loved one” (5:1). Because God has not yet been identified, doubtless the language instantly captures the audience. But it also reflects what Isaiah feels: he is not a dispassionate observer but a prophet deeply in love with the being and ways of the living God. Not to love him wholly is already part of the problem, whether under the old covenant or the new (cf. Rev. 2:1-7). Israel is often pictured as the Lord’s vine, so it will not be long before Isaiah’s hearers begin to get the point. Isaiah does not restrict himself to subtle allusions, however; he delivers both God’s threatening speech and his own explanation of his ballad-parable.

The people have produced only useless wild grapes, bad fruit. The nature of that fruit is described in the string of woes (5:8-25). In a nutshell, the social justice demanded by the covenant has been observed in the breach. Against the specific covenantal insistence that the land is the Lord’s and is to be parceled out fairly, land-grabbing has become the norm, squeezing out the little people (5:8-11). The wealth among the elite in Uzziah’s day has fueled wanton arrogance and drunkenness (5:11-12) and sneering defiance of God (5:18-19). Ultimately the land has overflowed with moral relativism and confusion, doubtless pitched as sophisticated thought, but actually nothing more than a commitment “to call evil good and good evil” (5:20). At bottom there is arrogance (5:21) and corruption in the administration and the courts (5:22-23). The Lord’s judgment is implacable (5:24-25).

None of this means that God is checkmated. In the final section of the chapter (5:26-30), God says what he will do. Punishment, the destruction of God’s “vineyard,” will come by foreign invasion - the metaphorical language of these verses is frankly terrifying. But the foreign invaders are not merely fortunate opportunists with a powerful army. God himself whistles them up, like someone calling for a dog. Despite the ruinous guilt of the people, Isaiah never doubts that God is sovereign over history and can dispose of nations in judgment as well as in mercy. That theme will grow stronger in this book.