It is my
pleasure to invite you to read through this coming series of blogs over the
course of 2014 that will take you through the entire bible.
The
intention of this series of blogs is to encourage its readers to read the whole
bible from cover to cover in a single year. The blog will also facilitate
discussion on the passages I have selected amongst its readers by allowing its
readers to make comments using the disqus system.
Consider the series to be a draft. I welcome constructive comments on how I can improve it. Over the next few years I hope to improve it in many ways.
The blogs
will have slightly varying formats depending on the stage in the bible being
commented on. The table below illustrates.
Old Testament
|
Gospels
|
Acts
|
Epistles
|
Blog Title - Heading
|
Blog Title - Heading
|
Blog Title - Heading
|
Blog Title - Heading
|
From - Passage
|
From - Passage
|
From - Passage
|
From - Passage
|
Introduction
|
Introduction
|
Introduction
|
Introduction
|
Question or Statement
|
Question or Statement
|
Question or Statement
|
Question or Statement
|
Overview
|
Overview
|
Overview
|
Overview
|
Passage and Comments
|
Passage and Comments
|
Passage and Comments
|
Passage and Comments
|
Story of
|
About Jesus
|
About
|
For Believers
|
Story of Jesus
|
Introduction
Modified an
existing introduction to each book and inserted it at the start of each book to
give a brief intro to the book.
Overview
This
section gives a brief overview of the whole passage covered. Each part is
broken up into;
1) the
reference to the passage
2) a
category used to distinguish this passage
3) a
description of what is in the passage
The main
purpose of this section is to give people who do not read the whole set of
chapters to get a brief overview of what happens. Its possible they will gain
an understanding of the whole bible if they read this section alone. Of course
this would be improved if they read all the chapters, but this is a help if
they can’t. The whole premise of this is that there are sections of the bible
that are difficult to get through. Sections like Leviticus and Chronicles.
At the end
of an entire book I will post all the overviews together. Each overview is
semi-comma ‘;’ delimited. This means the tech savvy can import it as a csv file
into excel if they want.
Passage
and Comments
I will
select a passage to comment on in each and every set of chapters. I generally
give a brief introduction and quote the passage. Then I will comment on it.
Story of
Israel
Story of
Jesus
With the
Old Testament, I intend to preach the gospel in the same way the apostles do in
Acts. Close examination of the apostles sermons in acts reveals that they tell
the story of Israel
and connect it to the story of Jesus when sharing about Jesus. See Preaching the Gospel with the OT for a better understanding of where
I’m coming from.
About
Jesus
This
section is only in the Gospels. My opinion is that the Gospels are the gospel.
So I don’t need to add anything extra other than quoting the passage itself.
The passage is part of the gospel. So I generally summarise what the gospel
says about Jesus.
About Mission
In Acts the
apostles are engaged in evangelism and mission. It seems appropriate to discuss
the things we can learn from their example in this section.
For
Believers
The Epistles were
written for existing believers in Jesus Christ. These are examples of how the
apostles engage in pastoral care with their church audiences (mostly believers,
possibly some unbelievers). So in this section I will comment on their practice.
I think we should learn from and adopt their practice in our churches today.