Via Justin Taylor…
Crossway makes available about ten reading plans. I’ll explain them in a separate post. But note that the ESV Bible Reading Plans can be accessed in multiple ways:
…This word euangelion, which means “good message” or “good news,” has a rich background in the Old Testament. There, the basic meaning of the term gospel was simply an announcement of a good message. If a doctor came to examine a sick person and afterward declared that the problem was nothing serious, that was gospel or good news. In ancient days when soldiers went out to battle, people waited breathlessly for a report from the battlefield about the outcome. Once the outcome was known, marathon runners dashed back to give the report. That is why Isaiah wrote, “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news” (Isa. 52:7). The watchman in the watchtower would look as far as the eye could see into the distance. Finally, he would see the dust moving as the runner sped back to the city to give the report of the battle. The watchmen were trained to tell by the way the runner’s legs were churning whether the news was good or bad. If the runner was doing the survival shuffle, it indicated a grim report, but if his legs were flying and the dust was kicking up, that meant good news. That is the concept of gospel in its most rudimentary sense.
From R.C. Sproul’s Romans, the first volume in the new St. Andrew’s Expositional Commentary series.
A group of 75 adults and students at Village Bible Church in Sugar Grove, Illinois spent Wednesday evening putting together 5,000 Share the Good News of Christmas gift bags (check out how they did it here). The bags include an ESV New Testament Christmas Edition, a Christmas tract by Max Lucado, and an invitation to celebrate Christ’s birth with the family at Village Bible Church throughout the month of December. Church members will be meeting at the church at 9 a.m. this Saturday and will be given a map and a box of gift bags to deliver to the homes on their maps.
But Tim Badal, Teaching Pastor at the church, got an early start, spending this morning delivering Share the Good News of Christmas gift bags to 100 of his neighbors. “My wife and son came with me and we prayed for our neighbors as we walked through the neighborhood,” said Pastor Badal. “Our church has always been known for our missions emphasis, which is usually focused on the ‘uttermost part of the earth.’ But the last couple of years we’ve been looking for more ways to become witnesses to the gospel in our own community. We believe this effort is going to get our church members thinking about their neighbors in a whole new way, as they prayerfully deliver the Share the Good News of Christmas gift bags.
“We hope that even if those who receive these Bibles don’t read them immediately, that the Bibles will sit around on an end-table where someone will pick them up and begin reading at some point—perhaps for the first time,” said Keith Duff, Shepherding Pastor at Village Bible Church. “What if only 1% of these Bibles are actually read by someone who hasn’t read God’s Word before? That would be 50 new people reading God’s Word! 5% would be 250 people!”
If you’ve been using the audio features of the ESV Online Study Bible over the past year, you may have noticed some strange blips and beeps in the recording, or verses that cut off before they were finished. We’re pleased to announce that our engineers have deployed a new back-end to the ESV audio which corrects these problems, bringing you a pure, uncorrupted listening experience. You don’t need to change anything to make this work, just keep using the “Listen” links at the top of each passage.
A few weeks ago, the Crossway Blog ran a series on the ESV Study Bible, one year after its publication. The intent was to honor God and give thanks for how this resource is being used by the church around the world. Here’s a roundup of those posts:
This series ended with “A Word from J.I. Packer“, in which Dr. Packer encapsulates why we’re so excited about this resource:
[The ESV Study Bible] is a study Bible which not only explains the texts and expounds them accurately, but it has in it a whole series of articles for the making and shaping of discipleship to Jesus Christ on the basis of the Bible. It can be, in a very significant sense, a single-volume resource for pastoral ministry, and indeed for personal life, because it’s doing the job which professional catechists have been doing ever since Christianity started—teaching people the truths that Christians live by and teaching them how to live by those truths.
Read the rest of Dr. Packer’s comments on his role in and his enthusiasm for the ESV Study Bible.
Recent Comments