Transcript of Prep Episode 5: Avoiding Common Mistakes: What to Look for When You Read the Bible

Hey, Bible readers. I'm Tara Lee, Cabal, and I'm your host for The Bible Recap. If you and I are going to spend a year and hopefully the rest of our lives reading through the Bible, let's aim to do it well. Today, I'm going to talk about the three primary mistakes I made during my first trip through scripture and tell you how to avoid them. Hopefully, you'll be able to get the hang of this much quicker than I did and with fewer pitfalls. My first major mistake, and the one I think we're all naturally inclined to make, is that I was looking for myself in scripture. Maybe it was the result of my church upbringing, but I'd come to view the Bible as a big to-do list, even though I knew that wasn't the primary message. It's hard to rewire the way you think about scripture if you've held a certain view for a long time. But one thing that really helped me was asking myself a few questions each time I read. Number 1, what did God say in this passage? Number 2, what did God do in this passage? Number 3, why did God do or say what God said or did in this passage.

Number 4, what did I learn about what God loves? Number 5, what did I learn about what God hates? Number 6, what did I learn about who God is? If you can't find God in the passage, look harder. Ask yourself what's happening in these pages that could be attributed to God. There's only one book of the Bible that doesn't mention the name of God, Esther, but even in the absence of his name, the pages are saturated with his actions. So when you're in a section like that, try asking yourself, what is he doing behind the scenes? What's he doing in the hearts of the people we're reading about? Why did he put this section in his book? He's always at work, so look for it. The questions we ask of the Bible impact the wisdom we glean from it. Let's ask the right questions. As you ask yourself questions that point your eyes toward God, I believe your heart will be drawn in by the beauty of the divine all the more. You'll be motivated by love more than by work. You'll be moved by desire more than by duty. I'm such a task-driven, list-making, box-checking perfectionist that it's hard not to treat this as a task or a goal.

It's hard to remember that it's a relationship and I'm here to learn about a person. It's hard to look for who he is and stop searching for my application points. Those things are important for sure. I never just want to read the word of God and be unmoved or unchanged by it. It will have effects on my life. But the point here is to let those effects be the result of beholding Him and wanting to honor him and our relationship, not trying to do those things out of an obligation or in hopes of having a better life. This is not self-help. This is not even an attempt to earn God's favor. This is an effort to behold the beauty of God and be drawn in by Him. One sign that you might be viewing scripture as a to-do list is if you wonder how it's applicable to modern day life. That's like asking how your mom is applicable to modern day life, or your wife, or your husband, or your child. This is a relationship. This book reveals a person, not a task. Tip number one is read it as a story about God, not about you or your to-do list.

One beautiful side effect of this is that it actually sets us free to love God. My second major mistake was disregarding context. That's especially easy to do when you're reading things out of context, which is how most of us have spent our lives. We flip up into a random chapter or we read the little snippets in a devotional without ever seeing how the story works together. This may be the first time you're reading through in a way that you can actually see the storyline unfolding. That's so exciting. This time through, it won't be like you're dropping down in the middle of a movie for five minutes with no real idea of the storyline or the characters and trying to understand it. This will be like seeing the whole movie from beginning to end. And to continue with that analogy a bit, let's imagine the movie you're watching covers a true story and you've got your hand on the director's cut with bonus interviews and behind the scenes footage. You could actually find out about the lives of the people involved, find out more about where they came from, and even learn why the director was interested in telling this story.

Wouldn't that information help you watch the movie through a whole new lens? This same idea is helpful as we read scripture, so ask yourself a few questions here as well to help you get the inside scoop. Number one, who wrote this book? Number two, who did they write it to? Number three, when did they write it? Number four, what's the style of the writing? For instance, the narrative history books are intended to tell us history, not science. We have to read them as though they were written to be read and not ask them to tell us something they never intended to tell us. The wisdom books like Psalms and Proverbs, they have a lot of guidance on how to live and reveal a lot to us about God's character, but we're often tempted to take the wisdoms of the Proverbs, for example, and treat them as promises or prophecy. For example, Proverbs 22:6 says, Train up a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old, he will not depart from it. This is wisdom on how to raise a child, not a promise of God that your child will always follow Christ if you take them to church when they're young.

You know that's not true. You've seen that not be true. That's because these aren't promises of God. Their words, God inspired Solomon to write with the purpose of helping people know how to walk in wisdom. There's a whole section of scripture that is prophecy, and that is what we should treat like prophecy. If you don't know what book you're reading, you can do a quick web search to find information on some of the questions I've recommended asking. Or maybe you want to get a study Bible to help with this. We've linked to some of our favorite Bibles and study Bibles in the show notes. By the way, we'll also be releasing an exclusive episode to our patron family in January with more ideas about how to find this information, how to actually study the Bible instead of just read it. We'll even link to lots of free tools to use in your research. If you want to access that episode, just swipe up and click the link to our patron page or visit thebiblerecap. Com. Tip number two is get the inside scoop. This will really help you engage all the more with what's happening as well as read it in the way it was intended to be read.

My other biggest mistake, and the final one we'll talk about here, is that I was tempted to draw conclusions before I'd read it all, which meant I didn't have all the information. Let's continue with the movie analogy here because I think it's helpful. Have you seen the movie The Sixth Sense? It came out in 1999, so I hope I'm not spoil this for anyone. But the first time you watched it before you knew Bruce Willis's character was dead, you saw the movie one way. Then at the end, when you had some brand new information, you probably wanted to go back and watch it again all the way through so you could watch it with that new lens. I know I did. To see how this applies to scripture, I want to talk about a term you may not be familiar with. The term is hermeneutics, and it pertains to the way we interpret scripture. There are a few rules of hermeneutics, and they help us make sure we see things the right way as the author intended, I'm going to briefly cover the three rules of hermeneutics that I think are most helpful to our discussion.

You can do a web search for hermeneutics if you want to find out the other rules. One of the primary rules is this, scripture interprets scripture. That may sound confusing and tangible in particular, but it's important to understand how it applies to what we're doing here. Maybe you've seen places where scripture seems to contradict itself and you're confused about it. On the surface, that absolutely seems true. If you pull one verse out of context and another verse out of context and put them side by side, they may seem to say entirely different things. For example, in some instances, Jesus says not to judge, and in other instances, he seems to command it. The same thing is true in the world today. You probably hear scientists rave about the powerful health benefits of coffee, then a week later, they tell you it causes cancer. If you're a coffee drinker, you may want to scream, Which is it I need to know? But scientists will point out that those two things aren't mutually exclusive. You just have to tease out how they fit together. The same is true of scripture. So how do we do that? That's where another rule of hermeneutics comes in, interpret unclear passages in light of the clear passages.

For instance, if there are 10 passages on one topic and nine of those passages seem to say one thing and there's one passage that's at odds with the rest, we try to discern how that one passage might fit in with the others. Is there something we don't understand about it? Who is saying it and who are they saying it to and why? That might help us figure out why it seems to go off message a bit. I once heard a pastor say it this way, don't scream where Scripture whispers and don't whisper where scripture screams. As we read through the Bible, you'll start to notice some themes cropping up. It will gradually become clear what things are important or scream worthy. One last rule of hermeneutics that I think is important to mention, when you're reading a passage, notice whether it's descriptive or prescriptive. What I mean by that is, is this passage telling us what's actually happening? Or is this passage telling us what we should do? You might notice, for instance, that Solomon married a lot of women. These passages are describing what Solomon did, not prescribing how we should live or even telling us what God thinks about what Solomon did.

Descriptions don't always line up with prescriptions because people are sinful. And case in point, things never went well for him with women. So if we follow that storyline, we might come away with a conclusion that this was not a good idea. And that conclusion is consistent with the prescriptive things God tells us about marriage elsewhere in scripture. You can probably see how these rules of hermeneutics fit together. Maybe the thing you thought was contradictory is actually just the juxtaposition between descriptive and prescriptive verses, and it's not actually contradictory at all. You will continue to discover things like this as you aim to read scripture as it was written, which is tip number three, by the way, read it as it was written to be read. The rules of hermeneutics will help you with this. That's one reason why it's important, especially if you're brand new at reading scripture, not to draw your final conclusions until you've read the whole thing. We talked about this a bit in our interview with Pastor Lee McDermott on prep episode number three. Go back and listen to that episode if you haven't yet. Lee has been one of the most influential people in my life, and I know you will benefit from his words and his wisdom.

As you're reading the Bible, hold your questions and conclusions with an open hand and continue to ask God to guide you in wisdom, knowledge, and understanding as you read each day. I've had to mark through notes I made in the margins of my Bible because as I continued to read, I found out the things I'd written were wrong. For type A people, the thought of scratching out something in your Bible may drive you crazy, and I feel you on that. But now, every time I see it, it reminds me of the fact that God is teaching me about himself. It humbles me. It encourages me in my relationship with him. No one expects you to understand everything perfectly the first time. We're all still learning. And my Bible definitely reveals that. In the same way, aim to be open handed with the way you have historically viewed God by hearing about him secondhand in sermons and devotionales or even in your own original thoughts of him. Ask him to show you who he is in this first hand encounter with himself. Let him tell you who he is. Okay, let's sum up what we've talked about in this episode.

Tip number one, read it as a story about God, not about you. You are secondary. Fix your eyes on Him. Number two, get the inside scoop. Context is key. Number three, read it as it was written to be read. Start with a clean slate and take your time. Bible readers, I'm so excited to be on this journey with you. If you haven't subscribed to the Bible recap on the Bible app and on your podcast app of choice, I want to encourage you to do that now. I recently learned that the most successful Bible reading plans on the Bible app only have a three % success rate. My prayer is that this year you're going to be one of those successful people that we're going to blow that number out of the water and be the highest percentage the Bible app has ever seen. Because I believe as you take these tips to heart, as you read the Bible as a story about God and not about you, as you get to know what He's saying to you in His word, you're going to fall in love with Him. You're going to be drawn in all the more day by day.

You're going to look forward to your time in His word because you're going to start seeing Him in a whole new way. And when that happens, you will be transformed by joy because He's where the joy is. The Bible recap is brought to you by D Group, discipleship and Bible study groups that meet in homes and churches around the world each week. For more information on D Group, visit mydgroup. Org.