It’s a little hard to believe that we are already twelve sermons into our adventure through the Bible called The Whole Story. I have been very encouraged to hear from many of you how this pace of moving through the Scriptures week-by-week, book-by-book has helped you see things you’ve never seen before, and appreciate our Father and his Son, Jesus, so much more. Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed preaching as much as I have this year, discovering how, as our friends at The Bible Project say it, “The Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus.”
That truth is exactly what we discovered as we came upon Holy Week and Easter Sunday. It wasn’t necessary at all to step away from The Whole Story (at this point in the book of Samuel) to find Jesus, and clear promises about who he is and what he is doing in the world. What a delight to uncover, in the middle of this story about Israel’s first kings, the promise of a forever king and forever kingdom, and how that connects from the time of David all the way to the resurrection of the Christ.
If you’d like to see some of those connections from a slightly different perspective of what we studied together on Easter Sunday, please check out this great resource on the Messiah from the team at The Bible Project. And, if you weren’t able to be with us on Easter Sunday, you can watch the sermon, “King of My Heart” here. If you missed our Good Friday service, you can find that sermon here.
Finally, I’d like to encourage you again to read the Whole Story along with us. I just received yet another note yesterday from someone sharing the impact of doing that this year. She said, “So thankful for your encouragement to read through the Bible…changed my life. Wow.”
God’s words have a way of doing that.
I would love for you to have the opportunity of that life-changing experience as well, and all you have to do is take up this book, and read. And really, it’s more achievable than you may think.
Did you know that the average person reads about 200-250 words per minute? So, let’s take the average of that, and say you can read 225 words per minute. If you divide out all the words in the Bible (775,000) by the days in a year and that average per minute, you can read the whole bible in a year with an investment of about 10 minutes per day. That’s really doable.
Maybe for you, it would help to be able to listen to the Bible. With most narrations of the Bible coming in at about 75 hours long, you can read/listen to the whole Bible in a year with an investment of about 12 minutes per day. You can listen for free at ESVBible.org.
Even if you haven’t been reading along thus far, please don’t miss out on a life-changing experience by letting that stop you. Jump on our little moving train of The Whole Story and read 1 and 2 Kings this week, in preparation for Sunday. And if you are really up for a challenge — and a treat! — take a separate 20 minutes a day on Genesis through 2 Samuel, and you’ll catch up in no time.
Happy Reading! And, see you Sunday.
So blessed to be on The Whole Story journey with you,
Pastor Matthew
