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For over 25 years Proverbs 31 Ministries' mission has been to intersect God's Word in the real, hard places we all struggle with. That's why we started this podcast. Every episode will feature a variety of teachings from president Lysa TerKeurst, staff members or friends of the ministry who can teach you something valuable from their vantage point. We hope that regardless of your age, background or stage of life, it's something you look forward to listening to each month!
Meredith Brock:
Hi, friends. Thanks for tuning in to The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast, where we share biblical Truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host, Meredith Brock, and I am here today with my co-host, Amanda Bacon.
Amanda Bacon:
Hey, Meredith. It's always fun to be here on the show with you, and today, we're going to hear from a new friend and bible teacher named Iva May. We loved our time recording with her, and she's going to unpack a chronological timeline of Scripture, and then we're going to chat about why that's so important for us. If you need to grab a notebook, we would love for you to, throughout the episode, hit pause and soak in what she's teaching and saying and take some notes too.
Meredith Brock:
We don't want you to miss how truly integral this teaching is. The understanding of the whole story arc of Scripture is to every believer. Iva, man, she gets us right through it very quickly. Buckle up, listeners; it's going to be incredible. But before we let you listen to today's episode, we wanted to let you know about two things.
First, like Amanda said, Iva is a Bible teacher, and she's particularly passionate about the NLT One Year Chronological Study Bible. This is a fantastic Bible to add to your collection before the new year because it breaks down Scripture into 365 daily readings, all in the order in which they happened. How cool is that? Second, we're headed into 2025, and we wanted you to not only purchase one of the NLT Chronological Bibles but also to download our free First 5 mobile app because starting in January, we'll be studying the book of Genesis together. What a great place to start the year! So both of these resources will help you set an amazing foundation for the beginning of your new year that'll help you strengthen your knowledge of God's Word and grow in your relationship with Him.
Amanda Bacon:
All right, friends, let's dive into today's episode.
Meredith Brock:
We are excited to welcome our new friend Iva May to the show today. Hi, Iva.
Iva May:
Hi.
Meredith Brock:
This was our first time connecting with Iva, and I must say her experience and passions align so well with Proverbs 31 Ministries' mission to help women know and live the Truth of God's Word. Let me tell you all a little more about this amazing gal. She's really awesome. First of all, Iva founded Chronological Bible Teaching Ministries to raise up a generation of trainers who make Bible literacy the DNA of their lives and the lives of their churches. She believes Bible literacy drives evangelism, discipleship missions and apologetics. Iva's experience as a former missionary, a pastor's wife, and a trainer and discipler of women has uniquely equipped her to develop materials for Bible literacy. So, Iva, before we jump into your actual teaching, you've got me intrigued. Will you share with us how your passion for God's Word started and about how you use the NLT One Year Chronological Study Bible on the daily basis?
Iva May:
Right. It's a bit of a long story, so I'm going to condense it. I came to know Christ as my Lord and Savior when I was 16 years old. I started reading through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and as you know, that could be difficult because after Genesis is Exodus and then there's all of our favorite book of the Bible ... Leviticus, and man, I would read that stuff, and I'm like, I don't even know what all this is about, but it is God's Word, and I gladly submit to it, so I'm reading it. So I did that faithfully from year after year. It got a lot of good from the New Testament and some from the Psalms and Proverbs, but frankly most of the Old Testament was a mystery to me.
So in 1999, I started reading through the One Year Chronological Bible; that was a game changer for me. For the first time, I understood how everything fits together, that it's a legit story, that there are no standalone stories in the Bible, that it just all fits together. And it just rocked my world. I began to understand that this God of the Old Testament that I thought He was aloof and angry and judgmental and all these things was actually kind and gracious and long-suffering and merciful, and I saw and understood that the heart of man is proud and rebellious and angry and needs to be redeemed. And that really helped me understand what was taking place in the Old Testament, that God is better to us than we deserve and that we are worse off than we can imagine.
It was a game changer for me. This is the 48th year that I read through the whole Bible in its entirety, but I really use it as a marker, 1999, when I began to read the One Year Chronological Bible as a game changer for me.
Amanda Bacon:
Wow. Iva, that is incredible. I am so inspired by your Bible reading history; that is just incredible.
Meredith Brock:
Forty-eight times ... That's amazing.
Amanda Bacon:
Love that. Thank you so much for sharing that, and we can't wait to hear from you. We love digging into God's Word, and Iva is here today to help us do just that. She's going to share a teaching on Genesis and why it's the key to understanding our identity and purpose. Iva, we can't wait to hear from you, so go ahead and take it away.
Iva May:
Thank you, ladies. Well, years ago, I traveled to the country of Myanmar and was overwhelmed by the level of idolatry that I saw everywhere. While in country, I visited the Golden Rock, the third most revered place in Buddhism. Legend has it that this huge, round golden rock sitting precariously on the hill's incline is held up by hair from the Buddha. Over centuries, Buddhist men have covered the rock with sheets of gold.
As I sat there with the women on the massive platform overlooking this scene, because women are banned from actually approaching the rock, I was reminded of a verse that I had read that very morning. Psalm 138:2 from the New King James [Version], says, "I will worship toward Your holy temple, And praise Your name For Your lovingkindness and Your truth; For You have magnified Your word above all Your name." I immediately understood that without God's revelation of Himself in Scripture to Israel, no man would know God.
We, like the Buddhists, would worship what God had made instead of who He is and would ascribe false causes to phenomena in creation such as the Golden Rock. As I thought about it, I reminded myself that Moses recorded the book of the Law, which is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, to avoid that very thing, to be read out loud every seven years to a largely nonliterate people who were preparing to enter into the land of Canaan ... Reading from Deuteronomy 31:9-13:
“So Moses wrote this entire body of instruction in a book and gave it to the priests, who carried the Ark of the Lᴏʀᴅ’s Covenant, and to the elders of Israel. Then Moses gave them this command: ‘At the end of every seventh year, the Year of Release, during the Festival of Shelters, you must read this Book of Instruction to all the people of Israel when they assemble before the Lᴏʀᴅ your God at the place he chooses. Call them all together—men, women, children, and the foreigners living in your towns—so they may hear this Book of Instruction and learn to fear the Lᴏʀᴅ your God and carefully obey all the terms of these instructions. Do this so that your children who have not known these instructions will hear them and will learn to fear the Lᴏʀᴅ your God. Do this as long as you live in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.’” (NLT).
Moses' goal was to establish Bible literacy as intrinsic to Israel's flourishing in the land but spiritually and physically. So by honoring this mandate, Israel would know who God is from His self-revelation, that they would remember His promises that animate their very existence in their story, and then they would reflect the creator God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to the nations around them. It's important for us to understand who God is must be revealed, it must be remembered, and it must be reflected.
Let's look at the first part of that. God revealed. God's Word begins with His self-disclosure. He reveals that He is and that He is powerful, purposeful and orderly. Unlike the deities of the other creation myths, God reveals Himself as the one God. Moses describes the activity of God as the creator God. In Genesis Chapters 1 and 2, God's goodness is displayed in all that He does. Moses makes it clear that God created man and woman, given them identity and purpose.
Then the story of the fall, which is in Genesis 3, explains man's rebellion and the consequences. God acts immediately however to promise the redemption, and you find this in Genesis 3:15 and to picture that redemption by covering their nakedness before He evicts them from the place of His manifest presence there in the Garden of Eden. Chapters 4 and 5 capture the two ways of navigating life, exhibited by Cain and Abel, and then His replacement, Seth as their convergence, has taught them about God's evaluation and judgment because He approaches Cain and says, "What is this that you've done?" He makes it very clear that He accepts Abel based on substitutionary atonement.
It says in Chapter 6 of Genesis, "The Lᴏʀᴅ observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil" (Genesis 6:5, NLT). This is God's assessment 10 generations after the fall, before He determines to destroy the world. God looks at what He's created, and He assesses them as evil with every thought of their heart being intentionally evil. In Genesis Chapter 6 through 10, they explain the judgment of God against rebellious humanity and a global flood and God's reboot of humanity through the three sons of Noah. Then Genesis 11 captures man's continued rebellion and God's intervention. The rest of Genesis, Chapters 11 through 50, highlight the promise of God given by God to Abraham in his descendants. When God introduces Himself to Moses in Exodus 3, He introduces Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Knowing these stories would provide Israel with a robust theology of who God is, who they are and what is their purpose. Therefore, Genesis 1 through 11 introduces God as the God of all creation and applies it universally. While Genesis 12 through 50 reveals His particular selection of Israel and His revelation as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He would also be known from this day forward as the God of Israel. All three of these titles would describe Him throughout the rest of the story of the Bible.
Secondly, we see God remembered. So in Exodus, the story transitions from Joseph's rescue from Egypt during the global famine to his liberation of his people out of Egypt 400 years later. That transition swings on the hinges of the lives of women, midwives, Moses's mother and sister, Pharaoh's daughter, her entourage and the daughters of Midian.
It's as if God refuses to redeem humanity without going through the wombs of a woman. After God liberates Israel from the Egyptian slavery, He establishes an annual Passover commemoration to remind His people of His redemption on their behalf. So Israel's flourishing as a nation ebbs and flows based on their remembrance of His works and His Word. As they celebrate their liberation from Egypt and as they read His Word aloud, they remember His covenant faithfulness to them during the 40 years of wilderness wandering. Their annual calendar includes seven described feasts that would enhance their memory and also form their identity. Even as Moses is up on the mountain receiving the Law of God, Israel demands that a god be made with hands, revealing their sinful default to adultery. You find this in Exodus 32. Then in Leviticus, God dedicates the tribe of Levi, to oversee the sacrificial system. He gives them all sorts of regulations that, when followed, would assure spiritual and physical flourishing.
God makes it clear that Israel cannot redeem themselves, that they must be redeemed, that they must be redeemed by God on the day of Atonement, which is clear there. Moses warrants specifically against the wicked sexual practices of both the Egyptians and the Canaanites, and you find this in Leviticus 18. God's people are to be distinct: holy to the Lord. In Numbers, Moses records two sets of genealogies: The first genealogy records those brought up out of Egypt, and the second genealogy records those who enter into the land of Canaan 40 years later. In between those genealogies, Moses narrates numerous stories, highlighting Israel's continued unbelief and their rebellion. Then in Deuteronomy, Moses records, among other things, numerous warnings about idolatry and instructions regarding Israel's future in Canaan. He also highlights God's intended blessings to those who love and obey God and the terrible consequences of continued disobedience. The blessings of keeping the covenant and the curses of covenant breaking in Deuteronomy 28 provide a metric that God uses from this point on with Israel throughout the rest of the story.
Finally, we see that God must be reflected. God's promise to Abraham that his descendants would be a blessing to all the families of the earth. You find this in Genesis 12:3. As his descendants believe God's promise and walk in His ways, they will bear witness of God's great goodness to all the nations. The rest of the Old Testament records Israel's failure before the nations and God's judgment of both Israel and those nations. You see Bible literacy — knowing, understanding, and living out God's story of redemption — enables God's people to reflect who He is: that He's holy, righteous, and interested in the first thing of His creation. It reflects why we are broken and why we need redemption, how He saves those who believe His goodness and trust in His good character through the shedding of the blood of the innocent on behalf of the guilty.
Without knowing who God is, how broken we are and how God saves us, we will be like the people of Myanmar, worshipping a belief system that is held together by hair to explain God's glorious creation. What you see is: The Bible is the heartbeat of the believers walk with God. It can be an overwhelming book: 66 different books, two major divisions, a worldview quite different from our contemporary existence. How can believers navigate this book and make sense of it? I've spent my life, and [will spend] the rest of my life, exploring this amazing book since I came to faith in Christ. I read it ... digested it. I've devoured this book. In 2021, we partnered with Tyndale to create the One Year Chronological Study Bible based on the 14-era breakdown of the story arc of the Bible.
In this Bible, you have introductions to every day's reading, keeping in context what's going on in the meta-narrative or the big story of the Bible. There are numerous articles and explanations of transitions from one part of Scripture to the next so that people can understand it really is a fluid story. This bible offers navigational aids to discover that this book is just one story. To learn that story, to tell that story, and to help women and all believers find their place in God's big story.
Meredith Brock:
Iva, you are just a wealth of knowledge and understanding of God's Word. I'm honestly blown away. It's incredible and so obvious how much time you've spent in God's Word and studying it to really understand and make the connections. I'm so excited for our listeners to be able to consider this chronological Bible study approach for them because I'm sure as they're listening to you unpack this big-story arc, they're going, "There's so much here that I didn't know and so much that I still need to know." I want to circle us back. You said right at the beginning of your teaching a couple things that I thought were really profound. One was: Without God's revelation of Himself through His Word, we'd worship His creation instead of the Creator, and that is so true. We all, I think, have such a propensity apart from the Holy Spirit in our lives and the interaction with God's Word itself to worship the creation, and so we have to stay connected to His Word.
You also said ... I really loved that, and I can't remember exactly how you said it, but it was something along the lines of: God has, one, revealed Himself through His Word. Two, we are to remember Him, and then three, we are to reflect Him. I think it's pretty obvious, we need to be engaged with God's Word to see, to learn who He is. That's the revelation of Him. But talk to me a little bit about what it means to remember who God is. What does that practically look like in your life as you continue to study the Bible and teach the Bible?
Iva May:
I think one of the things we have to remember is that we are a very story-oriented people, which means that we are created for story. Our lives are a combination of stories. We have a story of our origin and so on. But not only that, the world bombards us with alternate stories. Think about even a decade of being bombarded by the Friends sitcom stories, how that negatively impacted America so that cohabitation became a normal way of life after a decade of marinating in their story and those stories.
We're bombarded by stories, and we have to have a strong understanding of who God is as He's revealed Himself in Scripture because we'll hear His teaching, we'll hear ideas, we'll hear presentations that where God is altered, where He's more palpable to us in the sense of He's like us, but God is not like us. When we understand who He is in Scripture, as He has revealed Himself as holy and other than, but He's come to us with skin on through Jesus Christ to redeem us. What happens is we lose the gospel of salvation when we diminish who God is.
Meredith Brock:
Important to remember that, too, to go back to God's Word and see His otherness from us. And I think oftentimes, we're afraid to do that because we think, This is going to make me feel bad about myself. But that's where we find freedom.
Iva May:
Yes.
Meredith Brock:
It should convict you of sin, and it should convict you and implore you to connect with God more deeply so that you can reflect Him more accurately. So, Amanda, I think you had a question for Eva as well.
Amanda Bacon:
Iva, I was just thinking about our listener who maybe wants to know God's name, wants to know God more, wants to get into His Word. Where would you say she should start? Should she start small with one book of the Bible, or should she start with a read-through? What would you say to her?
Iva May:
From my own personal journey ... I've just read through Genesis to Revelation. The beauty about the One Year Chronological Bible is in the day of technology, our Bible publishers have been able to take apart the Bible [and] put it back together again as events occurred. Therefore, you read ... like the minor prophets are placed into their relevant ... they're responding to something that's taken place in culture under the reigns of different kings. The psalms are in their various places there as you have David responding and others are responding to what's taken place in Israel.
In the New Testament, you have Paul's letters, and other letters are placed within the context of the book of Acts. So you have it taken apart but put back together again. But I think it's important to understand, when you start reading the Bible from Genesis, God's goal for Israel, for them to understand this because they're going to be faced with all kinds of ideas about who God is when they enter into Canaan. They don't know God is God the creator, so it's important for us to go back and look in Genesis 1 and say, Who are You? You've developed boundaries, you make assessments in every day, the order that you have established, you have purpose for everything. And revel in the fact that that is our God. And then move on into the text and see, because we begin to see how God desires human flourishing at the very beginning of the story.
When you start at the very beginning of the story, you understand that God's desire for human flourishing is lost because of the fall — but God's promise of redemption is to bring us back to [the garden]. God really wants us to ... but in order to [come back], first we have to be redeemed. You have God's pattern of redemption as laid out in the early stories of the Bible, by the shedding of the blood of the innocent on behalf of the guilty. So I think if you just go to a book of the Bible and try to understand without understanding the meta-narrative of the story of the Bible, it can lead to a lot of confusion. I think an illustration that might help our readers would be the assembly of a puzzle. Imagine trying to assemble a puzzle out the box cover and the extraction of the straight edges in corners, and all that's given to you are the various pieces.
How difficult would it be to put together those pieces and even to appreciate those various pieces because those pieces, they were never developed to relish over, to enjoy. No, those pieces are just a part of assembling of the puzzle, and so that's what God has done. He's given us the understanding of the story by understanding the story arc of the Bible, that I believe the One Year Chronological Study Bible that Tyndale has produced, using the 14 eras helps people understand the story of the Bible [and] what is the framework of the Bible. So then when you read the various pieces, you know where to place them.
Amanda Bacon:
Thanks for that perspective. I've been reading through chronologically for the first time this year, and I made it to the New Testament this fall.
Meredith Brock:
Congratulations.
Amanda Bacon:
That's been really cool. And I've had that greater perspective, like you're saying, and I've loved even just the information of how the Bible has laid out chronologically has been really eye-opening for me. Thanks for sharing that.
Meredith Brock:
Absolutely. Actually, I was just reflecting, sitting here remembering I didn't grow up in church. I went a few times as a little girl but don't really remember anything about the Bible, to be honest. And I became a believer when I was 17, and honestly, if you asked me, I was like, there's just a New Testament. And then there's a couple of really crazy stories about giants and whales. That's what was in my mind. And then I ended up going to a little Bible college when I felt like the Lord had called me into ministry, and there was a class at my Bible college called “The Progress of Redemption.”
I wish you could have seen me in that class. It was like every day I went to class, it was like jaw on the floor, because I was seeing for the first time [what] you were just saying, Iva. Hold on, this whole thing is connected? It was so shocking to me because — and which I understand why churches have done it this way; it's hard not to — you can really only get little bite-sized pieces in Sunday school, and you can only get little bite-sized pieces on Sunday morning. But, man, it is the believer's privilege to be able to see the whole story, that it's so interconnected, and when you begin to see that, man, our God, you get to see a picture of our God's intentionality; His creativity; His unending, enduring love for us; the lengths that He has gone to communicating over history His love for us.
My goodness, I really don't want our listeners to miss out on this because it really is a significant part of our faith in really grasping the full story of Scripture and not just individual pieces, and so we're so thankful for your message today, Iva. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Iva May:
You're welcome. Thank you so much for inviting me. I really appreciate it. Love what you guys are doing at Proverbs 31 Ministries and pray that God would give you bandwidth in all that you do.
Meredith Brock:
Thank you. Thank you so much. As we wrap up today, we have just a few announcements. First, I hope Iva's teaching got you really inspired to dig into God's Word and understand how Scripture truly is the foundation of all that we do, how we understand the world around us.
The NLT One Year Chronological Study Bible is a resource we highly recommend because it does arrange the Scripture in the order of its historical events, enabling you to read the story of the Bible from beginning to end in 365 days. How cool is that? It divides it into 14 historical eras, from creation to the story of Israel, to the resurrection, and then all the way to the new earth. The Bible's magnificent narrative unfolds with greater clarity and power as you engage with it every single day with study notes and devotional questions. Each day, you'll see the unfurling of God's work among His people. And even better, you'll also see your place in God's grand story. It's a great Bible to add to your collection as you deepen your relationship with Jesus. Go out there, purchase one for yourself, or a great idea: Christmas is coming up, and that would make a cool Christmas gift for someone in your family. Just visit the link in our show notes below to get your copy.
Amanda Bacon:
Yes, Meredith. I'm excited to share that Proverbs 31 Ministries is going to be diving into the book of Genesis in the First 5 app, starting on January 6. If you haven't already downloaded the free First 5 mobile app, download it today in the App Store or by clicking the link in our show notes, and let's study Genesis together as we start the new year.
Meredith Brock:
That's all for today, friends, at Proverbs 31 Ministries. We believe when you know the Truth and live the Truth, it really will change everything.