How Not to Read Your Bible | Theocast

Hi, this is Justin. Today on Theocast, we are going to talk about Bible reading. Maybe you're discouraged about reading your

Bible. Maybe you feel like you don't understand it, or maybe you feel like when you do read it, you get nothing from it.

We are going to talk today about how not to approach reading scripture. And then we're going to consider what the

Bible says about how to interact with the Word of God. And then over in the members area, we are going to consider whether or not

Bible reading, even personal Bible reading, is a litmus test of being a good and faithful Christian.

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Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ, conversations about the

Christian life from a reformed perspective. Our hosts today are John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

Jimmy Buehler, pastor of Christ Community Church in Willmar, Minnesota. And myself,

Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. Guys, it's good to be recording with you again today.

There is at least a, I don't know, hint of sadness for me that we're not doing it actually physically in the same room.

Got spoiled last week being with you guys to record not just a regular podcast, but also some fun content on covenant theology that may already be available by the time you're listening to this episode.

So we're having to try to get back into the swing of recording these episodes remotely. And yeah, here we are again.

And so guys, how are you? Little lag. And so, you know, we're going to try to keep up the flow the way that we can in person.

But we, yeah, we hope it goes well. I need to give a shout out to Jimmy, though.

Jimmy made us dinner one night and it was, Jimmy, just tell us real quick what it is that you blessed our palates with.

So we had some roasted tomato asparagus. That was kind of the bed.

And then on top of that, we had some grilled corn with a little butter, salt and pepper, perhaps a little hint of garlic.

And then we did some charcoal grilled New York strip steak, medium rare.

And then everything was garnished with some with some chimichurri. So I mean, it was pretty good. It was.

I didn't know what chimichurri was. So tell them what chimichurri is because it's. So chimichurri is chopped parsley, cilantro, red onion, jalapeno, red wine vinegar, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper.

It's kind of like almost like a dressing. It's not soupy, but it's also not chunky solid.

Yeah. It has that. What's that Mexican? What's that? It's like chopped tomatoes.

What do they call that? Pico de gallo. Pico de gallo. It's kind of like pico. Yeah. It's a little bit. A little bit. A little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's really good for. It's really good for meat because it's acidic. It's bright.

It's fresh. It kind of cuts through the richness of meat. But yeah. Anyways, it was fantastic. We had a lot of good conversations sitting around the grill waiting for it to heat up.

And it was good. It was good times. Watch the storm blow in. That was fun. Yeah. And now we just get to stare at our computer screens.

So here we are. That's right. And we're back. And back. Snap back to reality. I think Marshall Mathers said something about that.

Yeah. But anyway, guys, what are we going to be? Well, I guess that's. See, I'm just completely out of the thing.

I almost ran over John's opportunity to give us a pro con, though, as Jimmy and I were talking before we recorded.

John tends to hijack our pro cons anyway. So, John, take it.

Today's yours. Before we consider what we're going to talk about today, give everybody their favorite segment. Why do

I feel like both of you are like my little brothers that, you know, anytime they get a shot at their big brother, they're going to take it.

If you're saying that you're the oldest of the three of us, that's true. It is true. Not by much, though.

My gray hair deceives many. It's the grayest. At least I got hair. OK. OK.

All right. So my pro con is I have gotten recently into the, you know, the water flasks, the you know, everybody kind of carries them around, which is good and healthy.

And I noticed that I drink more water, which is great. So yes, yes. We all have them. If you're watching on YouTube, we all have them.

And I would say these are all very what I would call appropriate flasks, like all three of us. We can get our hands around them.

I am pro those. I am con ones that look like a refrigerator. It's like it's like this statement of I am healthy and I drink 90 gallons of water a day.

Right. Ninety ounce, 90 ounce water like water or hydro flask. Oh, man,

I saw one the other day and I was like, does that even fit in the front seat of your car? It's like holy mackerels.

But yeah. So anyway. So, I mean, maybe a good way to maybe a good way to put it would be like a like a relatively good sized water bottle.

You should have like max three stickers on it if you can fit, if you can fit more than four or five stickers on your water bottle and they're not overlapping.

Yeah. Yeah. And they're not overlapping. Like you should reconsider. The other thing is if you can't put your hand around it on both sides and actually touch your hands, you know, it's like, yeah, so anyway, my my kind of former mentor in the faith used to joke around when this was becoming a trend.

He was like, listen, all you young guys walking around with with your in your skinny jeans, with your big jugs of water, reading the church fathers need to just calm down.

That's right. You know, and and just let let time do its thing. You know. Yeah. Like just be patient and trust the spirit of God.

It was funny because he would always talk about skinny jeans, jugs of water and reading the church fathers. And it was just it was kind of true.

Listen, the only reason I joined the bandwagon was I unfortunately recently had a kidney stone.

And so I realized, OK, maybe I need to up my water game. So yeah. Which please, please don't please.

This podcast is not a medical advice podcast. We're not here to give medical advice. So that was drinking water is a good thing.

I mean, I feel like I can with confidence say that. And there are certain there are certain ways where you can take it too far and maybe maybe do it poorly.

Yeah, maybe. Yeah, there it is. He did it. Jimmy, what are we talking about today?

Yeah, gentlemen. Yes. So as as more people have listened to our podcast and we kind of pay attention to kind of the the different backroom talk that we hear as people process the things that we're saying, the things that we're writing,

I think one of the pieces of pushback that we perhaps get is.

I will use the word attacks, but we're certainly not attacking this, but the way that we talk about the individual

Bible reading. Yeah, yeah. The way that we point out individual Bible reading and how it's handled within the world of Christianity today.

And so perhaps you're engaged by the title of this podcast. But what we really want to discuss today is how we understand, how we view, how we actually believe the

Bible talks about reading the Bible. And so perhaps to kind of get our bearings going this morning in August, late

August, guys, let's try to answer these questions. And so what are the ways that people tend to read the

Bible? What are the ways that as the common Christian person approaches the word of God, what are the ways that they are approaching the word of God?

What are the ways that people tend to read the scripture that perhaps are common to their church, their experience of Christianity?

So I'll throw that out to you guys, and then we're going to move on into how we think the Bible speaks about reading the

Bible itself. So why don't you guys take a swing at that? One of the ways that people approach reading scripture that's less than helpful, we might say they approach it from a sentimental perspective, or it's a very subjective perspective where they are looking for a kind of feeling, a sort of emotional takeaway from their time in the word.

And that's just going to be all kinds of unhelpful for people, in part because our feelings and our emotions vacillate like crazy.

I mean, by the moment, certainly by the day. And so you're going to feel different ways about reading the

Bible. You're going to feel different ways reading it. There are going to be some days where you might be affected and stirred, and there are going to be other days where it's just flat.

It's like, man, this is just nothing. Like nothing's happening. And then what usually is the takeaway from all that, on the days when we feel something strongly, oh man, that time was productive, and that time was useful, and that was a blessing, and all that.

But then if it's a day where we just didn't feel anything reading scripture, or maybe didn't read it at all because we didn't feel like doing it, because we were just sort of emotionally exhausted, then we are just mega discouraged.

And it basically just kind of, instead of putting any wind in our sails, it just robs us of any motivation, and we start to doubt all kinds of things.

And so it's definitely an unsteady way to approach scripture, to be looking for some kind of sentimental takeaway, or some sort of warm and fuzzy, good feeling, good vibe that we might glean from the

Bible. And we're going to pivot later to how we should read our Bibles, but this is certainly not a way to approach it.

I think another way of saying that would be looking for an experience every time we open

God's word. Yeah, we hear language like, you need to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you need to cultivate that personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and it needs to be intimate.

And so if you're not spending time, and they'll even say, if you don't spend time with your wife, how are you going to have a relationship with her?

So if you're not spending time with Jesus, how are you going to have a relationship with him? And what ends up happening is that we assume that every time we spend time with Jesus, it needs to be this euphoric moment.

And you almost have the pressure of having the first date syndrome, right? You always want that feeling you had on your first date, if it was a good first date.

And anybody who's been married for a long period of time knows that that's just not how relationships work and nor how you build it.

You're not shooting for your first date every time. Wait, that's not? Yeah. Sometimes a trip to the coffee store is just what's needed, not a $75 dinner, you know, but that's not even how—the dangerous part of that is that when we look at scripture, you don't see

Paul giving us instructions on how to have this experiential moment with God.

That's the danger in that I assume that— I would say a lot of people become discouraged in their interactions with God's word because it doesn't produce this experimental moment where my life was transformed this morning.

Now I'm going to have a better day. Very quickly, just a brief insertion, there was a very popular devotional

Bible study called Experiencing God that went around in some churches that I was a member of, but to your point, we are looking for this experience of communion with God, and communion with God is legit and real.

We just are not always going to have that conscious experience as we're reading scripture by ourselves.

It's unhelpful. Just to kind of qualify some of the things that we're saying,

I like what you said, John, and I think a lot of times when people approach the scriptures, they're approaching it as if it's like a prom dance.

It's like the lights have gone down low and the—what's the ball?

What's it called? The disco ball. The disco ball has come down, and for some reason, I'm picturing like an 80s prom dance because I feel like it's very cinematic.

And the slow jam comes on. Yeah, like the slow jam has come on and Jesus is out on the floor and we have to go and like meet

Jesus and dance. And it's very much like we have this moment where it's just me and Jesus on the floor.

And so I think a distinction that I want to make is that certainly there are aspects of the

Christian life and faith that are personal, but often I think when people use the word personal, what we often mean is private, and I think the idea of a private relationship with Jesus is very foreign to the

Bible. And we will discuss this in length and in detail a little bit later in this podcast, where the

Bible is very upfront about corporate realities and the corporate life of the church. And now that isn't to say that the

Holy Spirit doesn't personally save believers through the work of regeneration.

However, the Christian life is not a private experience. It's not a solo experience.

And unfortunately, I think this is often what people mean, is that we need to have this private experience each and every morning, that I need to have my prom dance with Jesus so that my day goes a particular way.

And it's kind of like Christian bookstore Christianity. You know, you walk in, I don't even know if Christian bookstores even exist.

I think every one that I grew up near. And yeah, they're certainly going away. Now it's just, maybe we should just call it like Facebook meme

Christianity, where there is like some picture of a mountain scene, and then there's a, like,

I can do all things. Yeah, I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. And we're supposed to look at that and have this emotive response.

And I think often that's what people are looking for. It's kind of this spiritually navel gazing sort of way of reading the

Bible that I need to get my spiritual McNugget for the day to carry me through. Well, it's kind of a precious moments approach to reading scripture too.

Absolutely. Well, what we do is we turn the event into, let me rephrase that.

We assume the act of reading the Bible is beneficial for us spiritually.

When we take the time to discipline ourselves and sit down and our eyes gloss over the words, then

God will use that to protect me. It's almost an earning a favor. God requires this of me.

And if I don't meet my required minimum, which for some people, it's one verse, some it's 30 minutes, who knows what it is, but if I don't meet the required minimum,

God won't be happy with me and I'll probably be more vulnerable to sin and I'll probably have less blessings.

Yeah. Okay. So John, I'm going to quickly insert here because something you just said, like I can hear people kind of pushing back and I can see the question marks above their head where you say, we assume that it's going to be beneficial.

So are you saying that when we read the Bible, there are times that it's not beneficial? What do you mean by that?

Can you explain that? Well, I think that, well, there's two answers to your question.

One, what I'm trying to get at is that the act of reading is not promised in scripture for you to have spiritual benefits because what some people think is if I read these holy words, it's almost like they're charms.

If I say these holy words, they will then charm me with whatever. And so there are a lot of people who read their

Bibles and at the end of it, they literally say, I didn't get anything out of that, like nothing, like there was nothing, like I read the genealogies today and I got nothing out of it.

And the big question to ask is, well, what did you expect to get? Right. So we're going to talk about that.

But they feel as if they don't do it, then they're going to be less than. Secondly, there are times where people do read and because they don't know what they're doing while they're reading the

Bible, that it's not just some spirit. Let me put it this way. The Bible is not the book of Proverbs.

We want to read the Bible as if there's these one or two spiritual nuggets that can come out of it. So you're reading about guts and glory and blood and promises and then you're saying, nothing here.

And so you're trying and people have, they've applied stuff out of the Old Testament where I'm like, it would be better if you didn't read that and didn't apply it than the way in which you applied it.

That's what I mean by that. Justin Perdue No, that's certainly true. When people approach, especially the Old Testament, like it's some handbook for living or it's a handbook for mental, emotional, and spiritual health, and then we start to try to apply the scripture that way, we do all kinds of bad things with it, for sure.

Another way that we tend to come to the Bible, I think that's unhelpful too, sort of along the lines of what you were saying,

John, it can be unhelpful to read scripture if you're going to just grossly misunderstand and misapply it.

One way we do that is when we just read and sort of are looking for impressions, like I'm reading the text and I get this impression, this thought pops into my head, this feeling

I have or something comes to mind, and then we kind of take that and run with it. It's the classic, we're sitting around in a

Bible study and it's that sort of, well, what do you get out of this text when you look at it or what does it mean to you or what's your takeaway?

It's like, well, on the one hand, in every sanctified way I could mean this, it's like, I don't really care what this kind of means to you or what your takeaway is.

The question is, what does it mean and what is God revealing and what is God promising and what does this mean for faith and what does this mean for redemption and things like that?

That kind of impressionistic reading of the Bible takes us all kinds of weird places too. One piggyback on something

John said about the earning favor with God and he's happier with me and the protection pieces.

This is where we turn, and we've said this before, we turn something like Bible reading, not only do we turn the

Bible into a charm, but we turn Bible reading into this kind of karma -like reality where if we do it, it's almost quid pro quo, like I do this and then

God does that. It's a favor. Yeah, and it's meritorious in some sense in our minds and things are just going to go,

I'm going to have a great day because I had a great quiet time. That may not be true. You may have had the best quiet time you've had in a year, whatever that means to you, and you pull out of your driveway and you're in a car wreck.

Well, what then? Or you run over your kid's bike and say a swear word.

Right, and then you're like, oh, I was doing great and now I'm doing terribly and I'm angry and I'm sinning all over the place. I guess it didn't take.

Yeah, John, that sounds personal, but we can move on from that. So, I think to offer an illustration with a beneficial piece, this was probably a year, year and a half ago, our child, one of our kids, he had broken something in our home and it was something that could be easily fixed with tape, duct tape, whatever, and so we had done that.

Well, then what my child had learned from that is kind of that everything could be fixed with tape and so things would break and things of large and heavy nature and I would begin to find things around the house that were just covered in tape where I was like, okay, tape is a good thing and it is beneficial.

But for a very, very specific purpose and my child is treating not duct tape, but like scotch tape as like the fix -all and the cure -all for everything in our home and a lot of times that's kind of how we view the

Bible is that, you know, the Bible is beneficial, right? I mean, you know,

Paul writes this to Timothy that it is beneficial for all sorts of good things.

However, when we view it as kind of through the lenses by which we are discussing, a lot of times it can be unbeneficial because we're applying it in all sorts of weird ways where, like you said, we're treating it like Proverbs exclusively, that we're just looking for that kind of practical truth to kind of get me through the day.

Even that word practical, I think, has just kind of been overused in so many ways that we have trained, at least maybe

I'll just kind of say arbitrarily in the past 20 years, that there's always going to be a practical application in a sermon or there's always going to be a practical application in Bible reading and certainly sometimes there may be, but a lot of times that they're not.

Now, JP, I think you want to insert something quickly here before I kind of move on, but go ahead. Before we maybe transition all together to better ways to do this.

Just this is true of many things in the Christian life. I think that we all tend to be very short -sighted in how we approach life and how we approach the

Christian life, and we tend to overestimate greatly what can happen in the short term, and we underestimate greatly what can happen over the long term.

I think this is true with respect to how we approach the Bible. Let's use a better word, our meditation on the word of God over the course of a lifetime will bear fruit in ways that we don't really understand and can't even really fathom, and it will have basically nothing to do with how you felt or what your takeaway was from the word on any given day, and just to kind of set people free from this kind of bondage of my

Bible reading, my meditation today has to be life -changing, that is just not the norm and frankly is a dangerous and difficult way and just something

I think that's going to produce more discouragement for people over the course of time than encouragement.

Just continue to trust the Lord in all things, including this matter, that He will do good work in your life over the long haul as you trust

Christ. Yeah. We're excited to announce that we have a new free ebook available at our website called

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We hope that you enjoy the rest of the conversation. Yeah, I know we're about to make a transition here, so let me jump in,

Jimmy, as we change directions here and turn this towards the positive.

Guys, what would you say the Bible promises? What benefits does the

Bible give us for our reading of it? What argument would you make for that?

Yeah, and I want to quickly say something, and then we can also discuss this, that I think many people, it could be new to them, but the

Bible actually does not give us an explicit command on an individual level to actually read the

Bible. We just don't see it. True. We don't see it. No.

Now, some of the things that we do see is the practice of meditation.

Meditating on Scripture. Absolutely, right. And that's a whole other conversation.

Some of the other things that we do see, the public reading of Scripture, the public teaching and preaching of the

Scriptures, and to kind of put a bow on our previous segment of what are some unhelpful ways that we read the

Bible. Again, I think one of the most unhelpful ways that we read the

Bible is we read it in a vacuum. So, Jimmy wakes up at 5, 6 a .m.,

has a nice, strong cup of coffee with a candle lit and lights down low, and he has this individual time, and I read it in a vacuum because it's all about my personal spiritual health.

It's all about my personal spiritual discipline and in my mind and heart. And I don't think people do this purposefully or with an ill will, but it's read in a vacuum that it has no benefit to the body of Christ that I am personally involved in, you know,

Christ Community Church, Covenant Baptist Church, insert your church name here. And so,

I think one of the things that I want to point out to answer your question, John, is

I think the way that the Bible points itself out as a way that's beneficial is when the

Bible is read, and I would say specifically taught and preached in a corporate gathering of believers.

Yeah, I mean, to that point, I used this illustration before we recorded. When we as fathers and husbands make decisions, and I mean life -altering decisions, moving states, changing jobs, buying a car, we always make those decisions and do our research on the premise of I am a father and I have a wife and I have to make the decisions based upon those, and even little decisions about, okay, that's too much money for this particular thing that I want to participate in.

And so, when we think about life, naturally, if you're a good father and you're a good husband, you always think about life in that context of my family.

But we don't do this with our relationship with the father. We think it's we're only children.

We only, it's me and God, and we'll figure this out if I have a struggle with sin or if I want to grow in my faith,

I need to work on that. And I would even say, to Jimmy's point, that your

Bible reading should be for the benefit and in the context of family.

I'm reading this because my family and I would benefit from ways in which

I can consider how to build them up into love because I am consuming our father's information that he's given us, and I can then use that for worship.

I can use that for encouragement. I can use it for those who are discouraged. I can encourage those who are growing, but that's not how we see it.

I need this to get me through my day. Yeah, it's all about your own personal development for your own sake, and that's not a biblical concept.

A drum that I'm happy to keep beating, and I know you guys are completely with me in this. I think it's just worth saying over and over is that the common notion for the evangelical is that the real important stuff of the

Christian life happens when we're by ourselves, and so this certainly is true with respect to how we approach scripture and God's word.

The most important interaction that I have with the Bible occurs me and Jesus by myself wherever you do it with whatever beverage you want.

That's when it really matters. That private time in the word is the real interaction that I have with scripture.

Sunday morning and gathering with the church, God says we should do it, and I'm sure it's beneficial, but this private stuff is the real thing, and that is just not, as Jimmy already pointed out, it's not the thrust of the

New Testament. The New Testament speaks in corporate realities. The letters in the New Testament are written to congregations.

The mention of scripture and the ministry of the word is always in the context of the body of Christ, whether it's the public reading or the teaching or even just interacting with scripture.

It's always assumed it's together that we do that, and it's something that we need to really embrace,

I think, as believers biblically, is that the corporate reality of the church and the corporate reality of the gathered church in particular drives my private life, not the other way around.

I think most people assume that my private life, in particular my private devotional life, drives everything else.

No, that corporate reality drives your private life, and that's a very disorienting thought for many evangelicals, but it's a very freeing one, and it's important for a number of reasons that I'm sure we'll continue to unpack.

Yeah. Well, for me, something that's kind of going off in my brain is I'm thinking of the fruit of the

Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. I mean, think of all of these things. The fruit of the

Spirit do not make sense if they only exist for the private individual.

No. Because you cannot be a loving person outside of the communion of saints, right?

Like you can't be patient outside of the communion of the saints, right?

Because there's nothing to be patient with. You don't love yourself. You're not patient with yourself.

I mean, that certainly just doesn't make sense, and yet this is something that we continually do when we talk about personal

Bible reading is that it benefits me. Now, here's something that I just kind of want to throw out that even as we think about Bible study,

I encourage people in my own body to gather with other saints to study the

Bible because I do think that it's a good way for people to know one another, to be around one another, to hear how

God has uniquely wired that person to offer various insights about the scripture. But even that, that's a corporate sense.

It's a community sense, and so maybe now is perhaps a good time to say, you know, none of us approaches the

Bible with kind of like this purely objective, like I'm just going to see the

Bible for what it is, and so is there a way, guys, that we are supposed to understand the Bible, that we are supposed to read the

Bible? So thinking about the corporate reality, one of the reasons it's so important for us, particularly as it pertains to reading scripture, is if we are a part of a church where the word of God is rightly preached and rightly divided, one of the things that we are learning every

Sunday corporately is how we are to read and understand the Bible. I know what we want to talk about now are things that we talk about regularly.

The big framework of scripture, and there are two different ways that we'll describe that big framework of the

Bible, are incredibly helpful for the individual Christian going to scripture. So two things that we've discussed here on Theocast before that are massively helpful for you to open your

Bible and go to any part of it and have some bearings and being able to orient yourself in terms of what's going on and what is

God doing and where do I fit in this are covenant theology, a covenantal framework of scripture, and then also the redemptive historical framework of the

Bible. So guys, perhaps we could give brief flyover definitions of those things just for people that might not be super familiar.

We don't spend a lot of time defining it, but we could define that briefly and then maybe just talk together about how those things are so helpful.

Yeah, redemptive historic would be the easy way to describe it is that the Bible is about the story of redemption.

And if you don't really know what that word means, I would say that God made a promise to Eve after the fall that through one of her children, he would restore back what was lost.

So what was lost in the garden between Adam and Eve, they lost their innocence and purity, and they lost fellowship with God, and then they were kicked out of the garden, right?

So what God promises is this, is that he is going to pay for those sins and restore not only the fellowship, but creation to back to not be under the cursory anymore, this is

Romans chapter eight. So what we then read is that promise starts to gain traction and you get clarity in Abraham and then in Moses and then in David.

So as you start falling, you have to ask the question, what seed of Eve is it going to be?

And then when you get to the New Testament, you realize it's when the virgin birth, when Jesus comes through Mary, that's the culmination of the

Old Testament, and so the whole thing is a story of redemption, that it means to buy back, history, when we put the word history in there, that means that the story of redemption unfolds through history.

It's not a theological book where it's broken up in topics, but it is the revelation of what actually happened.

That would be a quick definition. And I would compare, let me just compare that real quick. So a redemptive historic understanding of scripture and reading it that way is contrasted to a me -centered understanding where I'm finding me in the text and where I can be like this person in history.

So the stories are pure moral stories. Look at, these are great role models for you or bad role models for you, but it's a whole me -centered way of reading it versus this is a story of redemption that unfolds in history.

Yeah, super helpful, John, and I think this is kind of tying back to when we talk about not all

Bible reading is equally beneficial, and so we believe that when you read the

Bible with this specific lens, that you are reading the unified one story of God's pursuit of sinners through the gospel of Jesus Christ, culminating in the person and work of Jesus Christ, and benefiting sinners through their redemption, their forgiveness by grace alone, through faith alone, on account of Christ alone, that when that is the lens through which you are reading the

Bible, it prevents you, and we talked about this a lot in our covenant theology series. So maybe you should check that out.

But that prevents you from reading the Bible in such a way that you are looking for the spiritual

McNugget. Now, a lot of people would say, well, doesn't that just kind of rip the emotion out of the

Bible? I would say, actually, I think it does quite the opposite, that it helps you see, wow,

God made this promise to Abraham that through him, the nations of the world would be blessed, and I'm in that.

I'm one of those stars in the sky. I am one of those sands on the beach that God promised to Abraham, and that through Abraham's line would come the

Messiah and goodness, like thousands of years ago, God began setting in motion my redemption, praise be to his name.

Like that's your spiritual McNugget, man, that you can walk away with, that as you read, even the obscure places of the

Old Testament, man, even the genealogies, like as you read the genealogies, what you're seeing is the promises of God coming true.

You're seeing the promises of God that he made to Adam and Eve in the garden are coming through the lines of men and women, all coming to the person and work of Jesus Christ.

So the point of the Bible is God's plan of redemption accomplished through Christ.

Then obviously applied to his people by the work of the Holy Spirit. So that's a big thing that we never want to read any passage of scripture without that main point in view.

Then when it comes to the covenantal framework, the three big covenants that we understand are in scripture are the covenant of redemption that happened before the world started, where God determined to save a people.

Then God made a conditional covenant of works with Adam in the garden that he broke, and then there was the promise of this covenant of grace where the

Messiah would come and would accomplish everything necessary for salvation, and it would be applied by grace through faith in him to sinners, and so we read all of scripture with those understandings, and it keeps us from, like you guys have already alluded to, individualizing too much.

It keeps us from moralizing everything. It helps us when we come to things that are going on specifically with the nation of Israel that can be confusing.

If we read scripture, understanding that this kind of seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman thing goes throughout the entire

Old Testament, and there is this promised one in particular who will come, and who's he going to be, what's he going to be like, what's he going to do?

All of Israel's history is building to that crescendo, where at the end of Malachi, the last book of the

Old Testament, it's just this epic cliffhanger of, I'm going to send a forerunner, and then the great and awesome day of the

Lord is coming, and we already know we're waiting for a son of David who's going to represent the people and be their redemption.

It orients us. Like I said earlier, it's like a map and a key for us, and if we're sitting under that kind of teaching corporately all the time and we're learning these frameworks, it makes it possible for us to go to scripture and not do some of the silly things with it that we tend to do.

I can't overemphasize enough, guys, the importance of sitting under good teaching, being a part of a local church where you are learning to understand your

Bible in this kind of corporate way with the help of your brothers and sisters, not just running off to a mountainside by yourself all the time, thinking that that's what's going to do good for you.

Well, some of these theological systems that have come out in the last 200 years have come out because people start reading their

Bibles disconnected from church history, disconnected from any kind of theological training, and they're like, well,

I just need me and my Bible, and you start hearing all kinds of theologies, different views of the

Trinity, and understandings of end times, and the personal applications that come that have nothing to do with scripture, where all of a sudden it's like, no, the

Bible says this, and we use what's called biblicism, where we are only going to believe exactly what the

Bible says, and if the phrase or term is not in there, then I'm not going to use it. Well, you're throwing out a lot of church membership.

You're throwing out the Trinity because the Bible explicitly doesn't say this.

What happens when you appropriately understand the intention of God's word, I think your consumption of it will be so much more enjoyable because you actually understand what's going on, and therefore your understanding will then breed greater and greater knowledge.

When someone starts to read scripture and understand God is unfolding this promise, this covenant that He has given to the world, it's called the covenant of grace, that God's going to redeem people, this unconditional promise that it's not based upon their works, not obedience to the law, not obedience to circumcision.

It is not a fulfillment on their part, but God's going to restore back the fellowship that we destroyed based upon His mercy and grace, and how does that happen, and that's the intentions of God's word.

I mean, John even says when he wrote his gospel, I write these things that you may what, find personal application?

No, he says that you may believe, right? The Bible is designed so that your faith in your

Savior is increasing all the more, because the more we trust in Christ, the more rest we will have.

The less we trust in Christ, the more anxiety we're going to have. Most people cannot rest in Jesus Christ because they don't find

Him trustworthy. And I know that's a weird, bold statement, but it's true. The whole Bible is designed to prove that God is faithful when we are faithless.

So understanding your Bible is the right way will increase that as you read it. Yeah, exactly what

I'm thinking too, John, is come to the scripture, not for some sort of obscure personal application.

You read the Bible as John writes in his gospel. These things are written so that you might believe, or as John even says in his epistle,

I write these things to you so that you might know that you are safe, that Jesus is the

Son of God, and that you're in Him. That's why I'm writing this letter to you. And so, yeah, go to your

Bible, looking for these things. God is faithful, like you said, John.

Our God is a Redeemer. Jesus is able and mighty to save. Jesus is sufficient.

He's enough for me. Yeah, it's about faith, and it's about trust in Christ.

It's about knowing that I'm safe. It's about assurance. It's all these things. Then, of course, there are things that I can glean from God's law as a guide for my life, for how

I'm to live, but the main emphasis is Christ and redemption and faith and assurance, and I don't think that we often go to the

Bible looking for those things. No. All right, so as we kind of close this out and move into our members portion,

I'm going to drop something. I beat John to the punch once again. And so,

I'm going to say something, and I think this is going to really drive up our membership because people are going to want to listen.

That's what we're trying to do. Here we go. That's what it is. It's clickbait. It is. It's clickbait at its finest.

Are you ready? Yeah. Here it is. Bring it. Personal Bible reading is not necessarily the litmus test of a mature and faithful Christian.

Let me say that again. Personal Bible reading is not the litmus test or not necessarily the litmus test of a faithful and mature

Christian. So let me put it this way. When you go to your pastor or someone in your church and you tell them you're struggling and they ask you, well, how's your

Bible reading? Is that what you're talking about? That could be what I'm talking about. Or when

I ask somebody how they're doing, and the first thing that they respond to me with is, well, here's what

I'm reading. Lovingly, brother, sister, that's not what

I asked you. I asked you how you're doing. That's right. So we'll talk about that.

All right. Who's bringing us out? I guess that would fall to me, brothers. This has been, I hope, a good conversation for people as you've listened.

We thank you for tuning in and we hope that you continue to tune in and listen to Theocast as we aim to have a conversation like this every week.

We are about to head now over to the aforementioned Members Podcast. You might not even know what that is.

You could find more information about our membership at our website, theocast .org.

If you are a Total Access member, we look forward to having a conversation with you over there in the