exploring awesome landscapes of spiritual truth through bible overview

The Bible Tour is an invitation to a journey where you can discover, survey and explore rich landscapes of spiritual truth. God encouraged Abraham to:

‘take a walk in every direction and explore the new possessions I am giving you.’

Genesis 13:17 NLT

God has given us a spiritual inheritance that we can come to understand and experience through reading the Word of God as it is opened up for us by the Holy Spirit. The Bible itself uses the ‘promised land’ as a picture of this spiritual inheritance. We can regularly take a walk through the Bible and explore this wonderful spiritual ‘land’ that is ours in Christ. The Bible Tour is a simple guide to help us on this walk or journey.

It assumes the divine authorship of the Bible, that it is inspired by God and trustworthy in all that it teaches. It also assumes that the Bible is a living Word, with the power to transform our lives:

For the word of God is full of living power. It is sharper than the sharpest knife, cutting deep into our innermost thoughts and desires

Hebrews 4:12 NLT

This is why, when it comes to providing background to what you will be reading, it does not focus so much on the historical or cultural background, on the human authors or questions about dates. Many excellent resources do that already. Instead, it seeks to draw out and highlight the recurring Spirit-inspired themes of the Bible that give us insight into God’s truth. This will achieve two things:

1. It will help us to understand, appreciate and experience the new life we have through our relationship with Christ by the Holy Spirit.
2. It will give us a deeper and fuller understanding of God’s purpose – not just for us but for the whole world, for all things. It helps us to see the big picture.

In other words, it will make us more aware of God’s plan of salvation, for our personal reconciliation to God, and for the restoration of all things to his ultimate intention.  

Making the most of the Bible Tour

In the Daily Readings section, you will find the main posts for each month which will give an introduction to each week and then provide the daily readings for that week. These daily readings will be linked to the relevant parts of the Bible on Bible Gateway. We will use the New Living Translation for the links but you can easily swap to a translation of your choice on Bible Gateway.

The weekly introductions will give you some background to what you are going to be reading that week, an overview of the main themes and some inspirational insights that will encourage you in your reading. There will be a posting for both the Old Testament readings and the New Testament readings. You can choose just to read one of the Testaments or the whole Bible over the year.

As you read in the Bible, there will be lots of interesting details and things that are personally relevant to you. Expect God to speak to you as you read, and pause to respond in prayer. But the main aim of this resource is to help you gain an overview of the whole landscape of the Bible. We will do this by drawing attention to recurring images, and themes, and to seven key areas of truth (doctrine). There will be links to dictionaries of themes and images on this site to give short, simple explanations. From there, there will also be further links to other resources on the web such as BibleProject.

During the year, as we come to a new book of the Bible, we will provide a brief Book Background to it in the Support Materials section.

The Focus of the Bible Tour

As indicated above, to help draw out some key insights in our Bible overview, we will draw your attention to three main areas:

Images

This is a very productive area of Bible study. By following through how the Bible uses certain things – objects, places, people etc. – in a repeated pattern, we can gain great insights into what the Holy Spirit is revealing through the Word of God. For example, if you were to do a study on the use of trees, you would gain helpful insights into the nature of the spiritual life. Images will be shown by the use of italics, such as: tree, garden, river, altar, path, well or spring, Egypt, shepherd etc.

Themes

Repeated images in turn give us insight into key themes that run throughout the Bible and help enable us to understand what God is concerned about in working out his eternal purpose. Understanding, for example, that the life of faith is a life of pilgrimage is vitally important. Key themes will be shown in bold italics, and will include such as: worship, pilgrimage, building, battling, judgement etc.

Key Truths

Doctrines are simply areas of biblical truth, and we will seek unpack seven key are in this Bible Overview. Of course, the Bible is all about Jesus, and so he features at the top of the list. The truth about the Kingdom of God, and of Covenant, are also two key areas of truth that help us to get an overview of the purpose of God. But the list (shown below) includes seven:

1. Jesus
2. Kingdom
3. Covenant
4. Church
5. Faith
6. Holy Spirit
7. Salvation

As they appear in your readings, the first reference to them will be linked to longer articles that explain them and their relevance to the purpose of God and the spiritual life.

You Need the Holy Spirit

The Bible Tour is just an aid to help you read through the Bible in a year and get a sense of an overview of it. However, you must realise that the Bible is a living word through which God speaks to you. As you are reading through it, make sure you are asking the Holy Spirit to give you insight. Every time you read it, pray the same prayer as the Psalmist who prayed:

Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law….….

Psalm 119:18 NIV