Jesus Christ is the hinge of history. All history prior to His birth points toward Him; all history afterwards looks back at His life, and forward to His second coming. The story of this world is the story of the glory of God, as God redeems fallen man and, indeed, all of creation to the praise of His glorious grace.

At this hinge, at the first Christmas, God became man, Immanuel, God with us; Jesus then lived the only perfect life, a life in which He loved God the Father with all His heart, all His soul, all His mind, and all His strength every minute of every day, and always loved His neighbor as Himself; Jesus suffered and died, taking upon Himself all the sins of all of God’s people of all time; God raised Him from the dead, proving that the penalty was sufficient, the price was paid. He will return to overcome all opposition, to exercise perfect justice, to wipe every tear from the eyes of His people, and to establish His eternal Kingdom of righteousness and peace.

This is the storyline of the Bible, the plotline of God’s work in this creation. Do you know it? Do you see and understand how God has worked through the centuries to fulfill His plan to sum up all things in Christ?

One excellent way to gain that understanding and thereby impact your daily life is by following a Bible reading plan that will help you to make these connections.

In 1984 I first read through the entire Bible following a plan that guided me chronologically through the events recorded in Scripture. I saw God’s plan in a new light; I saw the centrality of Christ in a fresh way; I saw how all Scripture held together, from God’s work through the people of Israel, their apostasy, the destruction of the temple, the exile and the return from exile, the coming of Christ, the crucifixion and resurrection, the spread of the church, and Jesus’ second coming. Passages like Leviticus and Ezekiel, which I had struggled to read before, now I saw in a new light; the familiar gospels and epistles took on new meaning as I read the story of God’s glory in sequence.

A chronological plan does have a weakness, however: For almost 10 months, all of one’s devotional reading is in the Old Testament. While this is fine for one year, as a pattern to follow again and again, it is not healthy. Therefore, fifteen years ago I developed the Bible Unity Reading Plan. Like the plan I had followed in 1984, the Bible Unity Reading Plan takes the reader through the entirety of the Bible over the course of a year. The difference is that the Unity Plan organizes about two-thirds of the Scriptures into a chronological track, but assigns a reading from the other Testament every day. This achieves the benefits of seeing God’s storyline, while drawing our attention every day to both Old and New Testament truth. I have followed this plan or a minor variant every year since.

The Shorter Bible Unity Reading Plan similarly has two tracks every day, a chronological track and a reading from the other Testament. The only difference is that the shorter plan covers only a bit more than half of the Old Testament while taking the reader through the entirety of the New. 

As D.A. Carson says, “At their best, Christians have saturated themselves in the Bible. They say with Job, ‘I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread’ (Job 23:12).’” Will you saturate yourself with the Bible in 2017? I encourage you: Commit yourself to following the plotline of the Bible consistently through the coming year. Come to next Christmastime with a deeper understanding of how the birth of Christ is the hinge of history, so that you might be that much more in awe of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, rejoicing in His sovereign mercy and being steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, confident that He will indeed sum up all things in Christ to the glory of His Name and the good of His people.

[We’ll have copies of the Bible Unity Reading Plan and the Shorter Bible Unity Reading Plan on the foyer table at our services this Sunday. You can also download them at the links. In addition, there is an Android app available that takes you through the plan.]