I have always loved outdoor hiking, especially in the Great Smoky Mountains. In our younger days, my wife Melissa and I would set out from a trailhead for a day hike to “see what we saw.” Every vista, surging waterfall, and black-bear sighting was exciting! But after a few years, we had hiked many of the trails so often that some of the luster had diminished. Even in the most beautiful places, what is predictable can become invisible.
Then we discovered the transforming power of a guidebook as a trail companion. Familiar trails suddenly became unexplored as the mountains suddenly offered both scars and hints of previous lives. These clues told the stories of vanished people and cultures who have long since disappeared. They offered testimony both to devastating forest fires and clear-cutting and to the healing and restorative power of God’s creation.
Our times in the mountains have become richer and more rewarding because we know something of the forgotten people who have walked these trails, played in these streams, and worked these fields before us. Hearing their stories, singing their songs, and walking into their remaining cabins and churches enrich us and flood our imaginations.
The Bible is very much like a mountain trail. You can simply read it, and the Holy Spirit will speak if your heart is open. But after a while, reading the same material over and over from the same point of view can fail to engage us. We know we “should” read the Bible, but all too often it becomes a dutiful chore rather than a faith adventure.
Might I be so bold as to request the honor of being your trail guide? Allow me to walk alongside you as you encounter God’s Word and share the experience of four decades of preaching, academic study, historical research, and time in the land of the Bible. Let me show you some magnificent views and open a world before you that you only suspected to have existed at all.
Welcome to the Bible!
My goal in writing is to produce a verse-by-verse trek through entire books of the Bible that you can’t put down. I hope the narrative that sprawls before you will “sizzle and pop” for both the novice and experienced Bible reader. I hope to sweep you up in the story, tell a few stories of my own, offer some lessons for living, and relay the author’s intent. I will treat each book as a single unit and respect the fact that biblical authors wrote “the way they wrote” and “what they wrote” for a reason. There will not be a lot of cross-referencing or attempts to soften the implications of the message. I will include what the authors chose to include and exclude what they chose to exclude.
We will faithfully walk the trail in front of us and do so until we come to the end.
We will then walk another trail through another book of the Bible.
That is how these Trail Guides work.
I pray that when we have completed our journey, not only will you better understand the material, but you will better know yourself and will have strengthened your connection with Jesus Christ.
Are you ready? I am. Let’s go!
