This book is mostly about how God is working through the church. Jesus is the head of the church, and the unique thing about the church is that it is not only a group of Jews, but it is Jews and Gentiles together (not Gentiles who became Jews by converting). In the first three chapters,… Read More »
This book isn’t that long, but it is potentially difficult to understand unless you go slow because there is so much packed in here. The reason why Paul writes is that some outsiders have come to the churches in Galatia and told them that in order to be good Christians they have to also be… Read More »
1 Corinthians Paul started churches in many of the cities that he visited. But many of these churches had problems when he left. The church in Corinth was one of the worst. They were bitterly divided and they boasted in their sin. They took the Lord’s supper in a dishonorable way and they didn’t use… Read More »
This book, probably better than any other, gives the essence of the gospel. Man is sinful, but God saves on the basis of grace. Man can never do enough, but God has provided all that is needed for the one who believes. Some might think that because the Jews aren’t believing that they have been… Read More »
Following the Gospels, this book answers the question, “What’s next?” Since Jesus has ascended into heaven, the apostles are to go from Jerusalem, to Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. That’s what happens in this book. In chapters 1-7, they are in Jerusalem. Persecution pushes them out to Judea and Samaria… Read More »
Matthew, Mark, and Luke are similar in many ways, but the Gospel of John is quite different. It is the same Jesus, of course, but John knows those stories are well known to the churches and his readers, and so he chooses other stories. His main point: Jesus is God. In the first part of… Read More »
While Luke tells the same basic story of the life of Jesus that Matthew and Mark do, he has some particular emphases. One is that Luke was a doctor, so he sometimes gives more details about medical issues and he doesn’t say bad things about doctors like the other writers do. Another is that he… Read More »
What makes Mark’s gospel different? First, it is shorter than the other Gospels. That means he doesn’t include things like Jesus’s birth and childhood. Second, Mark is action-packed, moving from one event to the next. Third, Mark doesn’t have most of the long speeches of Jesus that Matthew records (like the Sermon on the Mount).… Read More »
After a break, I think it’s time to start the Bible reading guide for the New Testament. As I said before, I wrote this for one of our sons. Here’s Matthew: There are four books about Jesus, but they are not unnecessary. Each one presents not only different events in Jesus’s life, but also a… Read More »
With this post, we come to the end of the Old Testament in the Bible Reading Guide. I suspect that only a portion of the regular blog readers here have been following along. Some of you may find this more handy to read in the future, and I do plan to post the whole as… Read More »