Bible Gateway Blog

May 23, 2019

Why Typeface Matters – The Creation of the NRSV Typeface

By Melinda Bouma

A few years ago, while researching how to continue to improve the readability and beauty of the Bibles we publish, I came across this presentation that Mark Ward made to his church about Why Typography Matters. This interesting video is inspiring and affirming for many of us who love to wrestle with such matters in our daily work.

My research at the time was in preparation for the creation of a new proprietary collection of fonts, but I’ll get deeper into that conversation in another post.

May 23, 2019

[Infographic] See How the Bible Fits Together: An Interview with Tim Challies and Josh Byers

[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Visual Theology: An Interview with Tim Challies]

Do you view the Bible as dated, obsolete, and irrelevant to your daily life? Or are you intimidated by the Bible and find it difficult to read? Or do you have difficulty seeing how different parts of the Bible fit together?

Bible Gateway interviewed Tim Challies (@challies) and Josh Byers (@joshbyers), authors of the book A Visual Theology Guide to the Bible (Zondervan, 2019) (website and @visualtheology), a feast for the eyes stuffed with colorful infographics that explain facts and teachings of the Bible.

For someone who may not be familiar with it, please explain what the Bible is and why you like it so much.

Tim Challies: Quite simply, the Bible is God’s Word; his communication to the world. We believe it is inerrant (without error) and infallible (perfect in all it decrees and commands); the perfect revelation of this perfect God and his perfect works and ways.

Describe how your book is organized and designed.

Josh Byers: The book is organized around several questions:

What is the Bible?
Can I trust the Bible?
How do I study the Bible?
What is the Bible about?

We started by answering those questions as the basic outline of the book. We spend the first two main sections of the book answering the first three questions. In the last part of the book, we go through the entire Bible starting in Genesis and show the reader how it all fits together and that ultimately the entire Bible is the story of Jesus.

May 23, 2019

NRSV: How the Gospel Informs Social Action

[Sign up for the 5-day free email devotional Spiritual Disciplines adapted from The Life with God Bible in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)]

Renowned for its beautiful balance of scholarship and readability and vetted by Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical, and Jewish scholars, the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) faithfully serves the church in personal spiritual formation, in the liturgy, and in the academy.

Read the NRSV on Bible Gateway

We’re grateful to Dr. R. Patrick Smith, associate research professor of Theological Ethics and Bioethics, Duke Divinity School, for partnering with the Zondervan NRSV Comfort Print® Bible campaign in helping people better engage the Bible.

Read Philippians 1:27-28 (NRSV) and Philippians 2:5-11 (NRSV).

May 22, 2019

How to Live the Bible — Greater Love and Memorial Day

Mel Lawrenz

This is the sixty-second lesson in author and pastor Mel Lawrenz’ How to Live the Bible series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, they can get more info and sign up to receive these essays via email here.

Check out Mel Lawrenz’s new book, How to Study the Bible: A Practical Guide, plus resources.

Many countries have a day when they remember people who paid the ultimate sacrifice—dying in war—for the benefit of others. In the United States it is called Memorial Day, and it happens every year at the end of May.

Sacrifice is part of life. Many small sacrifices, some large ones. Jesus set the model of sacrifice leading to life, and described it as the highest form of love.

Memorial Day wreath illustration

May 22, 2019

Video: How to Color a Bible Verse

[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Zondervan Releases NIV Beautiful Word Coloring Bible]

Watch this fun time-lapse video coloring in Proverbs 3:5-6 in the Beautiful Word Coloring Bible. It’s more than just trendy. It’s a wonderful way to slow down—and soak up Scripture!

May 21, 2019

The Biblical Cure for When the World Has Beat You Down

By Patrick Morley

We are made for relationships. A godly friendship can change everything. There is a peculiar math to friendship: shared joys are doubled, and shared sorrows are cut in half.

Friendship is a central theme of Jesus’ life and teaching. He tells us to encourage each other: “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:12–13).

In fact, loving one another is the evidence of our identity as disciples: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:35)

When the world beats you down, Jesus has a cure for that: godly friends. When Jesus came to the tomb of his friend, Lazarus, he was deeply moved. After he had the stone that sealed the tomb taken away, Jesus prayed. And after he prayed, “Jesus called in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go” (John 11:43–44).

May 21, 2019

Understanding Genesis 1-3: An Interview with Dr. Vern Poythress

[Read the Bible Gateway Blog post, Reading the Word of God in the Presence of God: An Interview with Vern S. Poythress]

How can we faithfully read and understand Genesis 1-3? What are the implications related to divine authorship, historical background, genre and structure, and chronology?

Bible Gateway interviewed Dr. Vern Poythress (@vernpoythress) about his book, Interpreting Eden: A Guide to Faithfully Reading and Understanding Genesis 1-3 (Crossway, 2019).

Why do you say that how a person interprets the first three chapters of Genesis “has massive implications” for understanding the rest of the Bible? What are those implications?

Dr. Vern Poythress: The record of creation and fall in Genesis sets the stage for understanding Christian redemption and the consummation. The redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ is central to the message of the Bible. But this redemption has a meaning tied to the nature of God, who is the holy creator, and the nature of man, who is created by God and now has fallen. If someone radically changes the framework of creation and fall, he changes or even dissolves the meaning of redemption. It no longer makes sense for Jesus to redeem us if there’s nothing to redeem us from, because there was no fall.

May 20, 2019

Suffering Is Never for Nothing

[Read Bible Gateway Blog posts on the subject of suffering]

By Elisabeth Elliot

I look upon suffering as one of God’s ways of getting our attention. In fact, C. S. Lewis said, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” I’d like for us to think about some of the things that God needs to say to us, for which He needs to get our attention. First of all, it’s interesting to me, it’s of great significance, that as far as we know the oldest book in the Bible is the book of Job. Of all the books in the Bible, it is this one that deals most specifically and head-on with the subject of suffering. You may recall that Job was called a blameless man, a righteous man. God, himself, said that Job was a blameless man. This is significant because the common understanding of morality those days was that a good man would be blessed and an evil man would be punished . . . so, Job’s experience seemed to turn that completely upside-down.

Job lost everything. His ten children were killed in a storm. His vast number of animals were killed. His household was essentially destroyed. This man who had been esteemed, wealthy by all accounts, was without all that signified wealth and blessing. Yet the destruction did not stop there. His physical body suffered as well with painful boils and disfigurement so significant that he was unrecognizable to some of his closest friends. All of this happened and Job did not know why. You may remember that there was a drama that went on behind the scenes that, as far as we know, Job was never given a clue about, where Satan challenged God in Heaven. And he said, of course Job trusts You. But does he trust You for nothing? Try taking away all those blessings and then see where Job’s faith goes. And God accepted Satan’s challenge. And here we have a mystery that we cannot begin to explain. In fact, it was God who called Satan’s attention to that individual, Job. And he gave Satan permission to take things away from Job.

May 20, 2019

John Maxwell Profiles in Leadership: Sarah – “Yes, Lord” No Matter What

[Sign up to receive the 30-day free email devotional by John Maxwell of biblical teachings to equip and encourage leaders and those who serve with them to meet the challenges of the 21st century]

This is the fifteenth lesson in bestselling author and speaker John Maxwell’s Leadership by the Bible series. If you know someone or a group who would like to follow along on this journey through Scripture, tell them to sign up to receive John’s free email devotional here.

By John C. Maxwell

1 Peter 3:5, 6

Sarah said yes to a lot of difficult things—when asked to leave home, accompany Abraham on a thousand-mile journey, and live like a nomad in the wilderness. Even when asked to say she was Abraham’s sister. But when it came to waiting on God’s solution to her childlessness, she didn’t. Perhaps the negative consequences from that impatient disobedience later reminded her to say, “Yes, Lord” no matter what, for she is commended in the New Testament for her submission and her faith (Heb. 11:11).