Story, Hero, Light: Why to Read the Bible in 2024

With a new year fast approaching, now’s a great time to commit to a Bible reading plan for 2024.

There is no shortage of great Bible reading plans out there. The end of this article links to a plan that we’re inviting our community to journey through together over the coming year. Before we get to the plan, though, let’s first explore why committing to reading through the whole Bible in 2024 is worth the time and energy it will take to do so.

Story: A Bible reading plan invites you to encounter, over the course of one year, the overarching story of the Bible, the narrative arc of Scripture. Though the Bible had many human authors writing over thousands of years, Christians also believe that God is the ultimate author of its single, unified story. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible tells one grand story, the true story of the whole world. *

By committing to a Bible reading plan, you discipline yourself to encounter the parts of the biblical story that, on their surface, seem less important. Consider the book of Leviticus. Most people, if they just sat down and picked a part of the Bible to read at random, would not find themselves in Leviticus. Yet the book of Leviticus, while admittedly challenging in many ways, is brimming with insights about the priestly work of Jesus Christ. That’s why the book of Hebrews in the New Testament — a book all about the greatness of Jesus — quotes and alludes to the book of Leviticus to describe and amplify the work of Jesus as the ultimate priest of God’s people.

A Bible reading plan gets you into every nook and cranny of Scripture, thereby immersing your heart and mind to the whole story the Bible is telling.

Hero: The Bible tells a story, and the hero of the biblical story is Jesus Christ. The goal of Bible reading is not first and foremost to get information about what you should do or how you should live, but rather, to encounter Jesus Christ. The whole Bible points to him (see Luke 24:27, 44).

Charles Spurgeon once used a vivid illustration to describe how every part of the Bible points to Jesus:

Don’t you know that from every town and every village and every hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London? So from every text in Scripture there is a road towards the metropolis, Christ. When you get to a text, ask, now what is the road to Christ? I have never found a text that had not got a road to Christ in it.

Every theme, character, and episode in Scripture points in some way to Jesus. As you immerse yourself in the whole story of the Bible, you’ll encounter the person and work of Jesus in a rich, multi-faceted way. For example:

• Jesus is the greater Ruth, who left all that was comfortable and familiar and didn’t just risk his life but gave it up to save his friends (John 15:13).
• Jesus is the ultimate priest, who carries his people on his heart and ever lives to makes intercession for them (Hebrews 7:25).
• Jesus is the ultimate temple, the ultimate meeting point of God and man, the true home for God’s people (John 2:21).
• Jesus is the greater Jeremiah, who not only weeps over the lost, but through his grace and power brings them back to life (Luke 13:34; John 11:35).
• Jesus is the ultimate Good Samaritan, whose compassion led him to come down not just from a donkey, but from heaven itself, to rescue his people through selfless love (Luke 10:25–37).

In reading through the whole Bible, you’ll encounter the richness of the person and work of Jesus in ever-increasing ways.

Light: Chances are you’ll be faced with hard decisions to make in 2024. There may be incredible joys and incredible challenges ahead of you. Moments of confusion and moments for courage. In those moments you will be asking some version of these questions: ‘What should I do? How can I know which way to go? Who should I trust?’

Psalm 119:105 proclaims that Scripture is ‘A lamp for my feet, a light on my path’. Notice that the psalmist doesn’t say Scripture is a floodlight illuminating the horizon. Scripture is, rather, a lamp for the feet. A lamp for your feet provides just enough light to take the next step.

Daily Bible reading provides light for each day. It’s not as though each day when you read the Bible you’ll get the answers to all the questions you’re asking. The Bible gives you something more, something better. Scripture doesn’t just tell you what to do; it tells you whose you are. The Spirit of God, working in tandem with the word of God, causes Christians to remember: I am a child of God (Romans 8:16). Scripture is a refuge, an oasis, a hospital, a refuelling station. Through Scripture you are reminded (again and again) that there is nowhere safer than God’s love and grace, and that walking with Jesus is always smarter than living for self. Yes, there are absolutely times when Scripture gives your clear guidance about big decisions to make in your life. But what is even more profound is that, through regular Bible reading, your life and character is formed into a person who can live with courage and poise and grace as you walk with Jesus no matter what each days brings your way. Scripture is the light you need for each day because you need Jesus every day.

As you’ve probably seen, to talk about the Bible’s story, hero, and light, are three different ways of talking about the same thing: the Bible brings us to Jesus Christ. The Bible is all about Jesus. He’s the one we need. By reading through the Bible this year, you’ll know him more deeply and walk with him more closely. What could be better?

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RCL’s Bible Reading Plan Recommendation

Once again across 2024, we’re recommending the ‘Read Scripture’ plan to use as a church family. An added joy of this plan is joining in with others at RCL who start reading at the same time and journey through the story of Scripture at the same pace. Following along in community creates space for accountability, discussion and reflection, and even deeper insights into the person of Christ.

The ‘Read Scripture’ app has been put together by the Bible Project and involves additional resources, including helpful videos, alongside the daily readings. The app is accessible for free here, and the PDF of the plan for the year is available here.

For anyone looking for a slightly more simplified reading plan that gets you through the whole Bible in one year, we recommend ‘Through the Bible in a Year’. The strengths of this plan are its simplicity and getting readers into both the Old and New Testament every day.

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* Craig Bartholomew and Mike Goheen, The Drama of Scripture: Finding Our Place in the Biblical Story, pages 20–21.