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An emphasis on “the whole Bible” is very important.
* In my own experience, as a minister, writing Bible Reading Notes for the congregation(they cover the whole of Scriptures), I have come to appreciate the value of the Old Testament. Our study of God’s Word is enriched when we do not skim over the Old Testament and skip too quickly on to the New Testament.
* My work in the field of systematic theology has helped me, when reading the Old Testament, to see the bigger picture, indicated to us by the New Testament.
* When we are inclined to concentrate on the New Testament, we need to be reminded of the bigger picture – the story which begins at Genesis, long before we reach the Gospel of Matthew.
* When, having began to pay more attention to the Old Testament, we tend to get bogged down, we need to be reminded, from the bigger picture indicated by the New Testament, that the story is going somewhere and that our journey will take us beyond the Book of Malachi on to Jesus Christ our Saviour.
* In the short introduction to my Bible Reading Notes, I speak of the journey we embark upon when we commit ourselves reading the whole Bible: “Welcome to an exciting three-year journey of discovery. On this journey, you will visit places you know well. You will also travel to places you hardly know at all. They will be places of blessing – places where you will meet with God and be blessed by Him … May God bless you as you journey with Him to the many places of blessing found in His Word.”
* In God’s Word, there are places we know well and places with which we are much less familiar. We need an approach to Scripture which encourages us to visit both the familiar and the unfamiliar.
* We need the unfamiliar to keep us from getting bogged down in our favourite passages, seeing very little beyond these well-trodden paths.
* When, in our reading of the unfamiliar passages, we find it difficult to see the big picture, the more familiar passages help us to keep our focus on Christ.
* This blending of the familiar and the unfamiliar was reflected in the way I led people through the Scriptures, with my original notes. The basic journey was “Genesis to Revelation”. The route alternated between the Old Testament and the New Testament with occasional readings from Psalms and Proverbs.
* The early pattern was Genesis 1-3 (11 days), Matthew 1-1-2 (5 days), Psalm 1, Genesis 4-5 (5 days), Matthew 3-4 (5 days), Proverbs 1:1-7 …
* When I decided to put the notes online, I chose “Christ in all the Scriptures” as the title for my blog. This was intended to convey the sense of both the breadth of emphasis – “all the Scriptures” and the concentration of attention – “Christ”. It is important that we hold together these two aspects -ranging across the Scriptures without losing sight of Christ.