Sundays @ 10:00am at Dexter McCarty Middle School

GBC Bible Reading Plan 2025: Week 5

This Week on the Blog 2025

Week 5, January 26–February 1: Exodus 24–40; Joshua 1–3

  • Sun      Jan 26 Exod. 24–25
  • Mon     Jan 27 Exod. 26–28
  • Tue      Jan 28 Exod. 29–31
  • Wed     Jan 29 Exod. 32–34
  • Thu      Jan 30 Exod. 35–37
  • Fri        Jan 31 Exod. 38–40
  • Sat       Feb 1   Josh. 1–3

This reading plan generally follows the sequence of the biblical books as we find them in our Bibles. However, there are some variations to the sequence. For one, we will alternate between the Old and New Testaments. We also adjusted the plan so we are reading the book we’ll be going through on Sundays at church, which is why we begin reading Joshua after Exodus at the end of this week. We wanted to keep things simple, and we also see value in reading each book in its entirety before moving to another book. This way we can more easily trace the plot of the story or thought progression of each book from day to day, and we can see the ways the books relate to each other and how they’ve been meaningfully arranged in order.

 

The latter portion of Exodus is dedicated in large part to the tabernacle, its instructions and construction. While Moses was with the Lord on Mt. Sinai, God gave him instructions for the tabernacle, which was a large tent that would serve as a mobile sanctuary. It would be the dwelling place for the Lord’s presence while the Israelites were in the wilderness, until a temple was built in the Promised Land. The latter part of Exodus contains one of the saddest displays of sin in all the Bible in the golden calf incident of Exodus 32. God’s own people, who he just delivered from slavery in Egypt, fall into grievous idolatry and rebellion against the Lord. They build and bow to an image of their own making while Moses is meeting with God on Mt. Sinai.

Also in this section, we read perhaps the most definitive and profound statement of God’s character, spoken from the Lord himself.

The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” (Exod. 34:6–7)

It is significant that this statement of who the Lord is sits right after the golden calf incident. God’s grace and mercy are seen most clearly against the backdrop of human sin.

The book of Joshua begins with the Israelites preparing to enter the Land. The last book of the Pentateuch, Deuteronomy, ended with Moses dying and the Israelites poised to cross into the land God promised to give to Abraham and his descendants. Joshua is Moses’ successor, and he is now tasked with leading the people. God instructs Joshua to pay attention to the law (Josh. 1:8). The word translated “law” here is “Torah,” and it has a broader meaning than what we think of as law, more like teaching. That is important because what God is telling Joshua to meditate on is not just the laws given to Israel at Mt. Sinai, but the whole of the Pentateuch, or Torah, which is mostly narrative—the story of God, the world he created, and the people he chose and redeemed from slavery.

The Lord’s exhortation to Joshua to read and meditate on the Torah links the beginning of Joshua back to the end of Deuteronomy (Deut. 32:44–47). This link forms a sort of literary seam that ties the end of Pentateuch together with the narrative of Israel’s subsequent history, which goes from Joshua through 1–2 Kings. The same kind of emphasis on Torah meditation occurs at the beginning of Psalms as well (Ps. 1:1–1). God’s people were to love him and walk with him throughout their time in the Promised Land, and the way they were to do that was to read his Torah and meditate on it day and night, and then to live in light of it for a fruitful life with God in the Land.

The same applies to us too. This is why we are doing this read thru. We too have been given God’s word, and we too have the great privilege and responsibility to seek the Lord through Scripture. The difference for us is that we are reading the Bible as New Covenant Christians. We have the full canon of Scripture, the rest of the story that shows how Christ fulfills all the Old Testament pointed to and accomplishes the righteousness of God that the Old Covenant laws were never able to achieve. As we read both the Old and New Testaments we come to understand and appreciate more fully what Christ accomplished. As Christians we read Scripture from the vantage point of the New Covenant, with new, circumcised hearts and with the Holy Spirit to guide us.

 

We have been considering the purposes for doing a read thru like this, reflecting first on the point that we are doing this to meet with God regularly and hear what he has to say. We follow Jesus’ commands to abide in him by reading his word regularly. Now, we noted earlier that someone calculated you could read through the whole Bible in approximately 75 hours. I suppose you could skip work or school for a week, find a secluded place, and just read for several hours a day and get through it in a few days. There would certainly be a lot of benefit to that, but it’s not the same as reading a manageable portion regularly, daily, or at least most days.

I think we can see a helpful analogy in the principle of manna. Last week we read Exodus 16, where God miraculously provides manna for the Israelites in the wilderness. He sent it every day for six days a week and he instructed them to collect a certain portion each day, enough for each member of the household. But they were not to collect more than the allotted portion for one day and they were not to leave it over to the next day (except on the sixth day, when they were to gather twice as much in preparation for the Sabbath). Day after day, for 40 years, the Lord gave just what they needed, not more and not less. They were simply to obey his instructions to gather the manna daily and they were to trust that he would provide what was needed for their nourishment again the next day. In a similar way, by spending time regularly, daily reading the Bible to hear from him, we are nourished with the spiritual bread of Scripture.

When we order our day around reading his word, it means we are making it a priority to receive what he has graciously given to us. It is an investment of time, and it’s okay to admit that it can seem like another task in our already busy lives. We will find, though, that as we make it a priority and a regular part of our day, he will honor that, and it will become a joyful habit instead of a monotonous chore. It may even become the part of our day we look forward to most. Next week we will reflect more on the idea of cultivating the habit of Bible reading and how it helps us grow in a lifelong journey of knowing God through Scripture.