How to Read the Bible for Beginners (and Everyone!) – My Top 10 Tips

[0:01] reading the bible is hard enough even if you've been reading it for a long time it's been around for over 2 000 years and it's pretty easy to see why it would be tricky to read it especially because the people who are reading it number in the millions and span that entire length of time which means that there are a lot of people who have different strategies and different approaches different interpretations different ways of understanding certain passages when i was first starting out as a very young christian it was really difficult for me to know who to trust when it came to reading the bible whose ideas should i have in mind when i'm going to open up the scriptures and try to learn from them it was honestly a very difficult time but thankfully i had brothers and sisters who were more mature than me who had been around for a while and who had done some deep study in the scriptures sort of come alongside me and teach me what they knew and i've since been able

[0:48] to extend that same courtesy to other people so with that i'm going to give you my top 10 tips for both beginners and intermediate and advanced honestly these are just the things you need to know when you're going to open up the bible my top 10 tips for how to read the bible and actually get the value out of it that you hope for hey and welcome back to the channel my name is tim i'm a pastor author and entrepreneur and on this channel we are learning how to rethink every second of our lives in light of what the bible really says about eternity if you want to live your life in constant amazement at god's goodness his grace and the beauty of his plans for eternity then you are in the right place so go ahead and like the video hit the subscribe button ring the notification bell so that you never miss another episode or you can make me wait until the end of the video to see if i earn it my first

[1:37] and most important tip is to keep the entire story in mind this is by far my most important tip there are 1189 chapters in your bible and there are only four of them where everything is going the way that it should be the way that it was designed to go it's the first two chapters in the last two chapters and in both the beginning and the end what you have is god's space and human space totally overlapping essentially you're given two chapters at the very beginning to explain the way that the world was supposed to work and supposed to look in the beginning with god and humans occupying the same space the next chapter chapter 3 this is chapter 3 of genesis describes how the fall happened and that unity was broken next comes 1184 long chapters including all of human history describing what it looked like

[2:25] when humanity is trying to get back into god's space describing god's plan to reunify everything in heaven and on earth in christ 99 of your bible takes place in the part of the story where the job isn't finished but you need to know what god's goal was for the creation and for humans in the beginning and what the goal is in the end in order to understand what's happening in the meantime the reunification of heaven and earth is what the bible is all about in ephesians 1 paul says that the plan of god for the fullness of time which he set forth and purposed in himself is to unify all things in heaven and on earth in christ if we don't have that storyline in mind whatever page we're on in the bible we're gonna walk away from it fundamentally confused my next main

[3:13] tip is to embrace the weird in the words of the great dr michael heiser if it's weird it's probably important the bible is the divinely inspired word of god and it is absolutely trustworthy and beautiful it's also really really bizarre to modern sensibilities so please go into your scriptural reading knowing that and embracing the weird rather than running from it there are a lot of sex scandals brutal stories about murder stories about slavery vicious awful things that humans do to each other there are long genealogies where such and such person begat so and so and then they had this child and then they had this child and then it's just pages and pages of people's family or lots of uh read the bible in a year plans get thrown off the minute somebody opens up leviticus and starts reading about how to properly sacrifice animals if you're

[4:00] expecting it to all make sense to 21st century western thinking then you're gonna be disappointed and you're gonna be disillusioned and you're gonna stop reading pretty quick embrace the weird and please commit ahead of time to doing some studying in order to clear up all of the points of confusion my third most important point is context context context once upon a time i heard someone tell me that the three main rules for understanding and interpreting the bible are number one context number 2 context and number 3 context a great example of this is philippians 4 13 where paul says that i can do all things through christ who strengthens me if you take that sentence on face value it sounds like he's saying i can do anything that i want and jesus is going to give me the strength and the power to do it that's the kind of verse that your christian high school prince on the banner to put out in front of the home team's tunnel

[4:48] for football games so that the team can run through and cheer and say we can do it we can win the game we can do all things but if you look at the context meaning the paragraph where that verse lives and then the page where that chapter lives or that page lives and then the letter itself the whole letter paul is actually saying something very different he's saying that he can handle both having plenty and having not enough because god will give him the strength to come through the point is that you can make a bible verse say anything and you could get it wrong if you're trying to find out what the original author had in mind when he wrote the verse but that that's much harder to do if you're doing that to a paragraph or to a chapter or to an entire letter it's very hard to take them out of context if you're including as much context as you can you can't understand a verse of the bible in a vacuum it needs to make sense with

[5:35] what the author's overall point is my number four tip is don't do it alone especially if you're a brand new christian find some humble open-minded christian friends talk to them about it you can even start a conversation by saying guys what do you think paul is saying here in ephesians 4. and if your friends are smart they'll pull out their phone and open up their bible app and start reading it themselves you've just started a conversation and gotten your friends reading with you at the same time especially when it comes to the letters of the new testament these were designed to be read aloud even the ancient old testament scriptures were designed to be read aloud in front of a big group of people they were not necessarily designed to be sat down and read one verse at a time and you go really deep on that one verse that's a totally valid way to read them but that's not what they were designed to do they were designed to be read out loud between a group of people and then meditated upon

[6:24] together so do it the way it was designed to do as sort of a bonus tip i would recommend that you find good youtube channels and other good resources to help you kind of understand what you're reading for a good variety of perspectives i recommend the bible project mike winger and alan parr for youtube channels i'll put the links down in the description they don't all agree but that's part of what's helpful is that you get a lot of different perspectives if you want to get really intense listen to the bible project podcast or go and join one of the bible projects free classroom classes or maybe you should start listening to nt wright or michael hype they are unimpeachably brilliant bible scholars who have my full endorsement because they don't get embroiled in all of these weird theological debates which brings me to my point number five don't get bogged down in systems

[7:13] it's easy to hear these debates about dispensationalism versus covenant theology or calvinism versus arminianism or rapture or no rapture your job is not to figure out all of today's pastors and how they land and whether any of them is more correct than the other that's not your job all of them get some things right and something's wrong your job is to figure out what the letter chapter or passage in front of you meant to its original audience if you pick up a system first like calvinism you're bound to misinterpret at least part of what the original author meant when he wrote what he wrote to his original audience if you're looking for proof of dispensationalism or covenant theology or calvinism or arminianism you're like that person who's not really listening in a conversation you're just waiting for that thing that you're going to piggyback off of and make your own point

[8:01] don't be that person point number six don't treat the bible like a devotional grab bag you can't just rip out the most emotional and beautiful sounding verse out of its context see point number three and make it your life verse the bible wasn't designed to be read that way what the bible actually has to say when you give it enough time to speak is more than beautiful enough you don't need to pick some verse out of context and make that your life verse by saying this is the the thing that i'm gonna build my life on build your life on the whole thing that's what the bible's for point number seven don't ignore the old testament it's the backstory of the entire christian faith jesus only means what he means because he's fulfilling old testament prophecies whenever you hear jesus call himself the son of man or he calls himself the son of god or

[8:49] somebody calls him the messiah those things only mean what they mean because they were defined in an old testament context the old testament is really strange sometimes it's difficult to read it's three quarters of your whole bible and i know it's a lot to work but there's nothing for it every single letter of the new testament makes references to the old paul understands jesus as the jewish messiah and if you're one of those people that's really interested in trying to understand revelation you need to understand that there are hundreds of references on the pages of revelation to the old testament and if you don't know what those images mean you're going to have a really hard time if you're coming from one of these churches where somebody has said that you shouldn't be reading the old testament i understand they're just wrong on this point if you're looking for a comfortable entry point to something that's not quite so crazy you can start with the psalms in the proverbs and you're going to have a really good time bringing me to my eighth and related point don't ignore the original languages get help with the

[9:38] original languages if you can you're probably not going to be learning greek hebrew and aramaic right now and that's fine other people have gone ahead of you to do some of that study and they've given you resources i've already mentioned three people or three groups of people that do this really well that would be the bible project nt wright and michael heiser all of them are very focused on the original languages which is important because if you are reading the bible and you think that it's in english a lot of things are going to get lost in translation here's a good habit if you're reading for instance romans 8 and you want to know what the greek says in the original text go to google and type romans 8 interlinear and you'll get a good result if you click through i think it's to bible hub if you click through you'll be able to see a greek and english translation together this tool is going to be a feature in a lot of my future videos when i start to discuss what the original words meant for instance soul or spirit it's going

[10:25] to be a really good time i recommend it to you highly tip number nine look for design patterns and repeated words while you're in those original languages you got to look for the repeated word if you're a ancient jewish scholar or author of the old testament then the way that you would emphasize something was often by repeating the words that you were using throughout a chapter or a section of the scriptures it's not just hebrew actually it's greek as well this works in the new testament as well when we're reading the scriptures most of us pick out the verse that makes the most sense to us and think that that's the most important but sometimes the verse that makes the most sense to a 21st century westerner is not the point that the author was trying to make if you're looking for clues as to what the author intends to say as the important part look for repeated words look for design patterns look for stories that sound similar to other stories you've heard before here's a hint most of those stories are going to be on pages one and two in genesis bringing me to my final

[11:13] tip number 10 just don't stop you don't have to load yourself up with this huge charge to be reading the bible every day and make it this big scary thing you want to learn to fall in love with the scriptures not chain yourself to it out of duty remember that it is for freedom that christ has set you free his yoke is easy and his burden is light don't load yourself up with moral failure if you don't read your bible today it's important for you to look at the bible as the origin story of the kingdom of god and your place in it and to stay curious about it read enough to get confused then stop and check your resources or check your resources first and start reading the bible with them this is related to the point i made above don't go it alone it's more helpful if you have people traveling with you than if you're going to try to do it by yourself let me tie a few of

[12:00] these points together actually into a funny story you might be wondering why was i eating paper at the beginning of this video well psalm 1 says that blessed is he who meditates on god's law day and night the hebrew word that we've translated meditates is actually the hebrew word means to chew on something the author is saying that you're going to be like a bear over there in the corner chewing on something and muttering the words aloud to yourself it's going to sound like you're chewing on the on god's word on the law so you need to be willing to chew on god's word if you really want to get the juice out of it only you should probably be using your brain to chew on it rather than this weirdo who was chewing on the actual paper so that's it those are my 10 tips as always give it a like subscribe ring the bell you'll see everything i make and more whenever i go live with another video you'll see it and as always if you're trying to go deeper you can always go to my website

[12:47] at theoverlap.life you can grab a copy of my book or check out our other resources if you're curious about going deeper into the scriptures right now if you're interested in learning more about eternity the way that i was talking about it at the beginning of this video i've got a video right over here where i'm talking about the three best books that i have ever read about eternity and i think it would be a huge blessing further up and further in thanks for