The Bible Jesus Read Participant's Guide - Softcover

Yancey, Philip

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0310241855 ISBN 13: 9780310241850

Publisher: HarperChristian Resources, 2002

Synopsis

Award-winning author Philip Yancey serves as guide and interpretive leader of ten video study sessions. In a series of in-depth interviews and explanations he covers five crucial segments of the Old Testament: 1. Job: Seeing in the Dark 2. Deuteronomy: A Taste of Bittersweet 3. Psalms: Spirituality in Every Key 4. Ecclesiastes: The End of Wisdom 5. The Prophets: God Talks Back Philip approaches each of these major segments from a different point of view--from the paradoxes of Ecclesiastes to the poetry of the Psalms--and adds additional interpretive material extending the reach of his best-selling book. He teams again with the Emmy Award-winning production team responsible for video production of the "What's So Amazing About Grace?" Zondervan Groupware. Many Christians tend to ignore the Old Testament or dismiss it as impenetrable and obscure. Philip Yancey's combination of scholarship and insight brings new light to old material and stimulates new discussion, thought, and further study.

About this title

Review

Philip Yancey, editor at large and columnist for Christianity Today, follows up his back-to-back bestselling books, What's So Amazing About Grace and The Jesus I Never Knew, with The Bible Jesus Read, an exploration of the significance of the Old Testament to today's Christian.

Given previous book titles--Where Is God When It Hurts, Disappointment with God, and The Gift of Pain--one might jokingly suggest that in the Old Testament Yancey has found his true home. He acknowledges that in studying key sections of the Hebrew Bible (he concentrates on Job, Deuteronomy, The Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and the Prophets) he found himself confronted by the core questions that haunt his Christian faith: Do I matter? Does God care? Why doesn't God act? As always, Yancey explores these central human questions with a style that is marked by directness, humor, and honesty. He writes not as theologian or mystic but as a questioning seeker. Rather than providing simple answers--he in fact says that "by no means did Jesus resolve the problem of pain"--he instead affirms the words of Thomas Merton, which he quotes in his Introduction: "There is ... nothing comfortable about the Bible--until we manage to get so used to it that we make it comfortable for ourselves."

Even as he finds the Old Testament a "companion for my pilgrimage," so is Yancey a companion for his readers, precisely through his willingness to ask --and his courage not to answer--all the hard questions. --Doug Thorpe

From the Publisher

Philip Yancey has a way of confronting our most cherished--but misguided--notions about the Christian life. In his newest book, Yancey challenges the perception that the New Testament is more important than the Old, that the Hebrew Scriptures aren't worth the time they take to read and understand them. Writing as always with keen insight into the human condition and God's provision for it, Yancey debunks this theory once and for all. Yes, he agrees, the Old Testament can be baffling, boring, and even offensive to the modern reader. But as he personally discovered, the Old Testament is full of rewards for the one who embraces its riches. With his candid, signature style, Yancey unfolds his interactions with the Old Testament from the perspective of his own deeply personal journey. From Moses, the amazing prince of Egypt, to the psalmists' turbulent emotions and the prophets' oddball rantings, Yancey paints a picture of Israel's God--and ours--that fills in the blanks of a solely New Testament vision of the Almighty. As he reconnects for us the strong, sinuous chords that bind Old and New Testaments, Yancey reclaims the Reformers' deep sense of unity between the two. Most important, he says, reading the Scriptures that Jesus so revered gives believers a profound new understanding of Christ, the Cornerstone of the new covenant. The more we comprehend the Old Testament, Yancey writes, the more we comprehend Jesus.

About this edition

• Publisher: HarperChristian Resources
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0310241855
• ISBN 13: 9780310241850
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144