Dave Miller's 2024 Bible Reading Challenge

Today's Reading - Jeremiah 13-17 Background Jeremiah's greatest battles were not with the sinful people of Judah but with complacent people who had been lulled by false prophets into an assurance that God would never judge them. In today's reading, he targets these false prophets. Devotional - False Prophets Preaching Comfort In the Garden, Satan challenged the Word of God and claimed that God was not speaking the truth. God had said that on the day that they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would surely die. "You shall not die," the Serpent countered. God won't really judge you. Your sin will not have consequences.  He has been telling the same lie ever since. "A God of love wouldn't judge people." "God made you just like you are - he won't be angry is you just do what makes you happy." We hear it all the time. It has become a mantra of progressive evangelicalism today - deemphasizing sin and denyi...

Today's Reading - Jeremiah 7-12 Background Jeremiah began his prophecies during the reign of Josiah and continued even after the fall of Jerusalem. He suffered many hardships and great resistance but God continued to give him greater and more difficult messages to preach. He is called the weeping prophet because he preached judgment with sadness. Devotional - Seduced These early chapters of Jeremiah's prophecy reveal a series of key, repeated themes - messages that God gave to the prophet. We will examine four of them. The people of God have been seduced by the ways of sin and by the lies of the false prophets. The first three are clearly delineated in Jeremiah 9:13-14. The  Lord  said, “It is because they abandoned my instruction,  which I set before them, and did not obey my voice or walk according to it.  Instead, they followed the stubbornness of their hearts  and followed the Baals as their fathers taught them.” The people have done three unimagi...

Today's Reading - Jeremiah 1-6 Background Jeremiah was a reluctant prophet, but faithful. In today’s readings we are introduced to the man. Devotional - Presumptious Folly "I can't believe you did that." I've heard that phrase more than once, especially in my earlier years when I tended to do crazy things for attention and fun. In Jeremiah 3, he expresses his utter amazement at the foolish behavior of his chosen people. Israel was in sin. Deep sin. Abiding sin. Idolatrous sin. Year after year they drifted farther from God, became more like the nations around them and less pleasing to the God who had redeemed them from the Egyptians, given them the land and blessed them richly. They ignored his laws and embraced the idols he had warned them against. He sent his prophets to warn them to change their ways. Some of them they just ignored. Others they silenced in various forms. And Jeremiah, speaking for God, was absolutely amazed at their brazen sin. They were sure t...

Today's Reading - Zephaniah 1-3 Background Zephaniah prophesied in the days of Josiah, the great king who was the great-grandson of Hezekiah, who led Israel back to God after his father Amon's brief but evil reign. He is described as the son of Cushi, which could mean "Cushite" - Ethiopian - and could indicate that he was a Black Jew. It could also just be a personal name. Zephaniah's great-grandfather was Hezekiah, but it is unclear whether that is the king or just someone else of that name. Zephaniah focuses on the "day of the Lord" - that moment in the future when the judgment of God comes on the enemies of God and things are set as they should be. This book focuses primarily on the judgment falling on the nations. Devotional - The Day of the Lord When you watch the news you might get the wrong idea. Bad people do bad things; people get hurt and things never seem to change. Things get worse and worse and nothing we do seems to make much of a differen...

Today's Reading - 2 Kings 20-21, 2 Chronicles 33-35 Background Manasseh was the king that broke the camel's back. He was so evil, even participating in child sacrifice, that God stopped warning Judah of its possible impending doom and said that it was coming. Even good king Josiah was not able to turn back the clock. Devotional - It is Never Too Late There is an interesting dynamic in the progression of these kings. The great king Hezekiah fell into sin late in life and his son Manasseh was born and became the worst of the kings of Judah. Other than David, Hezekiah would likely have been classed as the best of kings of Judah but his late-life sin caused him to raise a hellion. It is possible for any of us, in the later years of our lives, to undo the good we have done throughout our years. I have known men who were faithful servants of God but in their senior years, their pride and their sin negated much of their reputation and the effect of their ministry. If you had told Heze...

Today's Reading - Isaiah 60-66 Background Isaiah ends in a note of glory and victory, as the millennial reign of Christ is examined and ultimate victory of God is exalted. Devotional - God Wins History is a tragic story. God created this world as a paradise. It was filled with beauty, natural wonders we cannot even imagine. It was a place of true joy and pleasure, meant for a man and woman to enjoy each other and to raise a family in peace. And best of all, God was there. He walked and talked with Adam and Eve in the Garden. That was the world as God intended. But we came along and messed everything up. The first human pair rejected the God who made them and who placed them in a beautiful world. They chose the path of darkness instead of light, of destruction rather than glory. We rejected God, but he did not reject us. He could have destroyed this world or he perhaps just turned us over to our own devices, to suffer the consequences of our sin. But that is not what God did. He we...

Today's Reading -  Isaiah 54-59 Background The entire prophecy of Isaiah is filled with messianic prophecies, verses that are familiar because they are applied to our Lord and Savior in the New Testament. Isaiah 7's "Immanuel" prophecy. Isaiah 9 and the names of Jesus. Dozens of others. But the pinnacle, perhaps, is reached in chapters 52 and 53, which gives a remarkable prophecy of the death of Christ by crucifixion. Chapters 55-56, our readings for today, continue this theme by emphasizing, in a prophetic way, some of the elements of the gospel. Devotional - An Old Testament Gospel  While the full glory of salvation by grace through in Jesus Christ is not revealed until the New Testament, and its full-orbed glory awaits the treatments of Paul in Romans, Galatians, Ephesians and other such passages, there are foundational passages in the Old Testament that lay a firm foundation on which the New Testament doctrine is built. Of course, yesterday's reading of the ...

Today's Reading - Isaiah 49-53 Background This passage introduces us to the obedient, suffering servant, who in our New Testament-exposed eyes is clearly Jesus Christ. Devotional - Our Suffering Servant In Isaiah 52-53 we have one of the great passages of the Old Testament, a prophetic tour of the Cross of Christ. It is hard to imagine that a passage written hundreds of years before Christ was born could so accurately describe the sufferings of Jesus as he bore our sins so that by his stripes our sins could be healed. Yet he himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains; but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God,  and afflicted.   But he was pierced because of our rebellion, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment  for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds.   We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and the  Lord  has punished him for the iniquity  of us all.  Isaiah ...

Today's Reading - 2 Kings 18:9-19:37, Psalm 46, 80, 135 Background We have actually read through the life of Hezekiah three times now - In 2 Chronicles, in Isaiah, and here in 2 Kings. We focus again today on his pride and downfall, from a slightly different perspective. There is a reason to focus on this man's life. He was such a good king that he led Judah to return to God. He was an agent of genuine revival. But he was also the agent of Israel's destruction. The last 15 years of his life, the years he lived because of the blessing of God, were also years in which his pride led him astray. His son Manasseh was 12 years old when Hezekiah died. You do the math. He was born and raised during Hezekiah's time of sin. So, he turned away from God and embraced idolatry with a passion. Manasseh was such a wicked king that God stopped warning Judah that destruction was coming and pronounced it. "The end is near!" So, Hezekiah was an agent of God's revival when he...

Today's Reading -  Isaiah 45-48 Background This passage is a watershed in our theology. It is the reason that many do not believe that Isaiah wrote the latter chapters of the book. Isaiah wrote in the 8th Century BC, before the fall of Israel in 722 BC. But here we see the name of Cyrus, the Persian king who decreed, sometime after 538 BC, the return of Israel to Jerusalem. If you believe in a God who can give an 8th-century prophet accurate predictions of the name of the Persian king who would grant the people the right to leave their captivity and return to the Promised Land, then this passage provides no real problems. If you do not believe in the supernatural nature of Scripture, then you must believe that someone other than Isaiah wrote this after the work of Cyrus and pretended it was the great prophet's words. Devotional - God over All  It is a remarkable assertion in the prophecy of Isaiah. Ancient religions all had their gods who were cosmic champions, figh...

Today's Reading - Isaiah 40-44 Background Isaiah  40 begins the second major second of the book. The theme changes so dramatically that many scholars assume that there are two different authors. The first 39 chapters deal with judgment for Israel's sin and now God asserts his intention to restore Israel and comfort. Devotional - Grace Greater than Our Sin Marvelous grace of our loving Lord, grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt, yonder on Calvary's mount out-poured, there where the blood of the Lamb was spilt. Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse within; grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all our sin. I recently re-read a book called Exodus, by Leon Uris, in which he describes the founding of the modern nation of Israel. In one section, one of the modern Israelis explains that God chose them because as his people because he knew they would be faithful through all the years. That is almost the opposite of what the script...

Today's Reading - Isaiah 37-39, Psalm 76 Background Yesterday we spoke of the downfall of Hezekiah and today we read it (again - as recorded in both 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles) and see how pride destroyed this once-great king. As we close chapter 39 we finish the first and longest section of the book in which the judgment of God is pronounced. Now, starting in verse 40, we read of the comfort God will bring on his people when he restores them. The difference in tone is so stark that less conservative scholars believe that there are two (and sometimes three) separate books of Isaiah. Devotional - Perilous Pride If I hadn't done the same thing so often myself, I would consider Hezekiah quite the moron! In Isaiah 38, God grants this righteous king of Judah one of the great blessings any man has ever had. Told that he is about to die, he begs God for more time and God hears his prayers. God told him, in verse 6, that he would receive fifteen extra years of life. Hezekiah ...

Today's Reading - Isaiah 33-36 Background Today's reading, Isaiah 36-37, is a story covered both in 2 Kings 18-19 and in 2 Chronicles 32. It is a turning point moment in the life of Judah. Because of Hezekiah's self-confident sin, his son Manasseh became a wicked king who led Judah to its final destruction. Devotional - Misplaced Confidence  "God himself couldn't sink the Titanic."  The story has been passed down since that fateful moment in April of 1912 when the Titanic hit an iceberg, began to fill with water and within hours was at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean. Someone, in typical human hubris, was supposed to have spoken those overconfident words as the Titanic launched on it's only voyage. It may or may not be a true story but it is completely in line with the workings of human self-confidence. Too often, we leave God out of our calculations. We place our confidence in our own abilities, our advancements and technology, and we forget that th...

Today's Reading - Isaiah 28-32 Background The oracles of Isaiah scan the globe and announce God's judgement all around. But now God is turning to the sins of his own people, primarily of the soon-to-be destroyed Israel and the idolatrous Judah. Devotional If God had demonstrated anything to Israel throughout the years, it was that he always had a plan and could be counted on when things got rough. When the Hebrews were in bondage in Egypt, God had a plan. It was an odd one. He sent a felonious fugitive, one who had been on the lam for 40 years as a shepherd in Midian, armed with nothing but a staff. It seemed like a foolish plan but it worked. When the next generation of Hebrews was beside the raging waters of the Jordan at flood stage, God had a plan. Again, it was unusual, calling for four men to hoist the ark on their backs and step into the river. But his plan was good again. As soon as the men stepped into the river, the flood waters were dammed and the people went throug...

Today's Reading - Hosea 8-14 Background Hosea is largely written against the Israelite Tribe of Ephraim. Today's readings contains a series of oracles - prophetic words - against Israel/Ephraim, ending in a word of hope. Hosea's prophecy is the first to compare marriage to the human relationship with God. Devotional - A God Who Judges  "It isn't my fault." "It was just bad luck." "They did it first." "I'm only human." We are so often people of excuses, rationalizations, and justifications. We push the blame off on others and we deny our culpability for sin. Evidently, this was a problem with Israel (and Judah) as well. They had been told that God would bless them if they were obedient but that their sin would bring the judgment of devastating consequences. Yet, when Israel began to suffer for their wickedness and idolatry - in exact measure as Leviticus and Deuteronomy had predicted - they were dumbfounded that their sin coul...

Today's Reading - Hosea 1-7 Background Many prophets were asked to do strange things to illustrate the message of God. Hosea' entire life became a message of grace. He married then reclaimed a sinful woman to illustrate the infidelity of God's people. Devotional The prophets did some weird things to demonstrate the anger of God against sin and the love of God for his people. One wore ill-fitting undergarments to show how irritating Israel's sin was. But Hosea's story is perhaps the most graphic of all. God commanded him to marry a woman who would illustrate Israel's sin (Hosea 1:2). When she strayed back into her life of sin, God sent Hosea to reclaim her and bring her home. This story is a verbal painting of the love of God - nothing sweet, syrupy or sentimental, but a gritty love, the kind that sticks around through the good times and the bad and changes lives. Israel was a rebellious and spiritually adulterous nation, one that had left fidelity to the One Tr...

Today's Reading - 2 Kings 18:1-8, 2 Chronicles 29-31, Psalm 48 Background The life of Hezekiah is inspiational and tragic. He was a turning point in Judah's life, leading them in a great revival, but his late-life spiritual failure also sealed their demise. He raised a son named Manasseh who became the most evil of all Judah's rulers - so wicked God determined judgment would fall. Devotional - Microwave Revival Hezekiah was one of the best kings of Judah, one of only two who were compared favorably with David himself (later, Josiah will be the second). Almost as soon as he ascended to the throne, and having seen the devastation that sin brought to the northern kingdom of Israel, he decided to lead Israel back to fidelity to God. He started by cleansing the temple and taking all the idolatrous mess that defiled the temple into the Kidron Valley to be burned. He reinstituted proper worship in Jerusalem and reorganized the priests and Levites to reassume their proper roles. ...

Today's Reading - Isaiah 23-27 Background These readings are cosmic - big issues - God's glorious judgment and his amazing power for his people. Devotional - Our Sovereign God God is mighty and powerful, sovereign over the world - but not everyone experiences that sovereignty in the same way. In Isaiah 23 and 24 we read God's judgment falls on Tyre and then on the entire world. He strips bare the earth and makes it desolate in Isaiah 24:1. Those who ignore his warnings against sin will one day meet the horrible power of God's wrath. And that pretty much describes everyone these days, doesn't it? We have created a world in which God doesn't judge sin and the worst of sins is to say that he does. You live as you please - "you do you." No one should judge you or question your choices and dare to say that any choice you make is okay. But the Bible says that we live one life then give account to God. When the time is right he will judge the living and the ...