Reading the bible in 2 years

I will be following along with great interest!

 

Nice, the edges of the pages of my red-edged bible have lost all the color in the Psalms section, it's good to read those a lot

Looking forward to your posts!

 

I too and working through a daily bible study course, albeit over the course of year rather than two. I am only about 75 days into it, so I am still in the book of Numbers. I must admit, I find some of this very difficult reading but thankfully the course includes some insightful explanations from a learned and devout person following each reading.

This is by no means the first time I have read through the bible but I am hardly a bible scholar. I have always wrestled with the feeling that the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy, for example, describe a harsher God than what I understand from the New Testament. Numbers 15:32-36 is one example - God instructs Moses to have a man stoned to death for picking up sticks on the sabbath. It seems to me that Jesus would say of the same act, in His time, let whomever is without sin cast the first stone.

The explanation which follows the reading in Numbers instructs us to consider that the early Israelites were at a different level of learning than the Jews of Christ's time and thus God had to teach them in ways they could understand. You wouldn't teach math to a 1st grader the same way you would teach a high schooler. That makes sense to me but I am anxious to hear the reconciliation of these thoughts with Matthew 5:17-19 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished." (NRSVCE)

Regardless of the answer, pondering these questions and reading to learn more seems a very worthwhile way to spend time.

 

Romans 10
Dear brothers and sisters, the longing of my heart and my prayer to God is for the people of Israel to be saved. 2 I know what enthusiasm they have for God, but it is misdirected zeal. 3 For they don’t understand God’s way of making people right with himself. Refusing to accept God’s way, they cling to their own way of getting right with God by trying to keep the law. 4 For Christ has already accomplished the purpose for which the law was given. As a result, all who believe in him are made right with God.