Teaching
Don't Just Read the Bible. Understand It.
Hey y’all, here’s something that’s been heavy on my heart lately.
A lot of folks read the Bible, and I’m glad they do. But reading it and understanding it are not always the same thing.
Here’s what I mean. If you pull one verse out by itself, you can make the Bible say just about anything you want. Folks do it every day. They take one line, leave the rest of the chapter sitting there, and build a whole belief on it. And somebody watching them believes it too, and off it goes.
That makes me sad more than it makes me mad. Most of these folks love God. They just never learned to slow down and ask what the words around that verse are saying.
Now let me be clear about one thing, because I don’t want anybody twisting my words either. I’m not saying getting a verse wrong sends somebody to hell. Jesus is the only way to heaven. It was never about our deeds, good or bad, and it isn’t about how good we are at studying either. But God gave us His Word so we can know Him and know the truth, and twisting it still leads folks wrong in this life. It can mess up a family. It can mess up a church. That matters.
So here’s what I’m going to tell you. Don’t just read it. Understand it.
Read the verses before it and the ones after it. Ask who is talking and who they are talking to. Ask what was going on back then. Read a whole letter in one sitting sometimes, like it was a letter written to you, because a lot of it was written like exactly that. A verse can’t mean something today that it never meant when it was written.
And you don’t have to do all that by yourself.
Go to church and sit under a pastor who does his homework. There is nothing wrong with learning from a man who studied it out and can tell you what was going on in those days. That’s one reason God gave us teachers. In Nehemiah 8 the folks reading the book of the law explained what it meant so everybody could understand it. That’s still a pastor’s job today.
But check it for yourself too. Acts 17:11 says the folks in Berea searched the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul told them was true. Paul himself was preaching to them, and they still checked. If they checked Paul, we can check anybody.
Get you a good study Bible, the kind with notes at the bottom. Read the same passage in another translation and see if it reads the same. Look and see where else the Bible talks about the same thing. And pray first. James 1:5 says if you need wisdom, ask God and He will give it to you. That counts for reading His Word too.
2 Timothy 2:15 says do your best to present yourself to God as one He approves, a worker who doesn’t need to be ashamed because he handles the word of truth the right way.
God’s Word is too good to guess at, y’all. He gave it to us so we could know Him. Let’s treat it like it matters.
Send this to somebody who loves the Bible. And tell me over on the Facebook page, what has helped you understand it better?
God bless y’all, see you later, John