Hey everyone. This is Troy. So, I want to give you three practical steps that you
can use to read the Bible and get the most out of it that you possibly can.
Step number one is: to read the Bible while allowing and asking God to
interpret it for you. I think one thing that is very easy for Christians to do
is to pick up the Bible and start reading with a preconception in mind.
That's when we are looking to either justify something or for confirmation
for something that we are already planning on doing. So what we are doing is
we are interpreting the Bible based on our desires instead of interpreting the
Bible based on the meaning that God desired for it to have. One verse that
applies to this is Proverbs 19:21. It says, "Many plans are in a man's heart, but
the counsel of the Lord will stand." Every single one of us has dreams or
goals or desires that we have stored away in our heart—things that we want to
do, accomplish, things that we want to have in our lives—some of those things
are not bad. But if we read the Bible and interpret it based on those things
instead of based on His word, then we are going to miss the point, We are going to miss
what God was actually trying to say to us. Proverbs 14:12 says, "There is a
way that seems right to a man, but it's end is the way of death." Now, those words
might be a little bit hard for us to swallow at first, but I want to show you
something very practical that this applies to. If an unbeliever
reads the Word of God and studies through it and does
everything that they can to understand it, and yet they come away from it
thinking—you know—"what seems right to me based on this is that God wants us to be
a good person. That is all He wants from us to receive salvation—that we just,
you know, clean ourselves up a little bit." Then what's happened is they have ended up
following the way that seemed right to them while reading the Word of God, but
they missed the truth of salvation. They missed the truth that God was actually
trying to communicate through His word. So it is so important that we read the
Word of God asking God to help us interpret what He has written and the real
meaning behind it. Step number two is: read the Word of God with the gospel in mind.
First of,f the first thing that this does for us—when we are
keeping in mind the gospel of Jesus Christ while
we are reading the rest of the books of the Bible—is that it makes it easier to
read. I think it makes it a lot easier to understand what God was doing here or
there or why this happened if we can see the end goal—what everything is pointing
to, which is Jesus coming to earth to die for the sins of mankind because God
loved us—because He wanted to save us and to give us a way out. Then the
second thing this does when we keep the gospel in mind while reading the rest of
the Bible, is that it allows us to receive from other books and it also
allows us to be thankful for other books of the Bible. To give you some
practical examples of that: if you start in Genesis and you look at
the creation story where God created the heavens and the earth, and everything, and
then created human beings, male and female—placing them on the earth, you
can look at that and say, "Wow. God looked ahead and He knew that we
were going to fall—that mankind was going to fall—and yet He loved us so much that,
even then, He had a plan in mind of what He was going do. Even then, He already
knew that He would be willing to send His Son Jesus to pay the price for us.
We can look at that book and we can say, "Thank you God for the plan that You
had for us." Then, another book which I think is the hardest book for anyone to
read, and I hear people talk about this book all the time. It is the book of
Numbers, and it is just a lot of genealogy. It is just a lot of names of
people and families. It is a lot of numbers of how many people were in which
family, and it is like, "Oh my gosh!" When you are reading through it, you just want
to skim through. Even this book, I think when we keep the gospel in mind—
even the Book of Numbers—and I know you are laughing right now and saying, "How
can I be grateful for that book?" But if you look at it from this perspective:
that God made Abraham a promise, and when you read through Numbers it feels like
this long task to get through it. It is like, all of those generations—from
person to person, generation to generation, all the way down to Jesus
Christ—God kept His promise that He made to Abraham.
When I read that book...I know this might sound crazy...but I can look at
that book and I can say, "God kept His promise for that amount of time. I
believe that He is going to keep the promises He has made to me in His word."
We can look at the Old Testament prophets. We can look at the law and we
can say, "Wow! There is a lot of commandments here. There is a lot
of wrath of God here." You know? It is maybe hard to get
through it. But when we keep the gospel of Jesus Christ in mind, we can say, "Wow!
God, I understand because of these books that You are just, and I understand that
you are holy, and that there is such thing as the wrath of God, but I just want to
thank You so much that I am no longer under under the law—that I no longer
have to be afraid of the wrath of God because Jesus Christ paid the price for
my sin on the cross. And I just want to thank You for that. God, these books allow
me to see how great of a cost it was for Him to die for me." You can even look
ahead of the the four Gospels that are in the Bible to the New Testament books,
and you can see promises of God like: freedom in Christ, or the gifts
of the Holy Spirit and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. You can see these things
and say, "Wow! I get to receive these things now as a believer in Christ
because of what He has done for me." And so, if you keep the gospel of Jesus Christ
in mind while you are reading the whole Bible, I think—not only is it going to
make it easier to read the whole Bible and actually and receive from it—but
it is also going to allow you to be thankful for the different parts of
the Bible that God has given us. And the third step I want to give you for
reading the Bible to get the most out of it that you can is: to read the Bible to
know God, not just to know more about God. Another way of saying this is: to read
the Bible to hear from God, not just to gain knowledge.
It is possible, and I am not trying to bash seminary or anything like
that—but, it is possible to go through years of seminary, to study the
Scriptures backward and forward, and to not have a real relationship with
Jesus Christ. Because, it is not the knowledge that saves us. It is not, you
know, Jesus said to the Pharisees, "you diligently study the Scriptures because
you think that in them you find eternal life." But the eternal life that
they were missing was standing right in front of them. It was a person, and that is
What God wants from us—He does not just want us to to find answers to all our
questions. He does not just want us to find direction for our lives. He wants us
to find Him in His word, and He wants to personally speak to us. The way that
He does that—the way that He speaks to us through His word—is that He begins to
change our hearts through the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Psalm 119:11
says, "Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You."
Notice how he does not say, "Your word I have treasured in my mind," or "in my head."
He says, "Your word I have treasured in my heart." God does not just want His word to
fill our minds; He wants it to change our hearts. And the reason is because the
word reveals His heart, and He wants our hearts—as we learn from Him and hear
from Him and grow in relationship with Him—He wants our hearts to
align with His heart, so that we are naturally doing the things—you know.
That is the difference between the old nature and the new nature. He wants
our hearts to change so that we are naturally doing the things that He
desires us to do, so that we are naturally doing the things that He would be doing,
that Jesus would be doing. Then, Hebrews 4:12 begins by saying that, "the
Word of God is living and active." That means that the Holy Spirit wants to
speak to you personally—that you can hear a specific word from God while
reading the Word of God if you are allowing Him to speak to you, and if
you are allowing Him to change your heart. You can hear a specific word for
now, for today, for the situation that you are in. It is not just applicable, you
know, 2000 years ago. It is not just applicable for the people that it was
written to. It is also applicable for us today if we are willing to listen to the
Holy Spirit. That verse actually ends by saying that, "the word is able to
judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart." So, that just comes straight
back to the idea that the Word of God—if we are reading it to know God, not just to
know more about Him and not just to gain knowledge, but reading it to know Him—
it is going to be transforming our hearts. Those are the three steps to
reading the Bible to get the most out of it that you possibly can that I have for
you today. I hope you enjoyed them. I also want to tell you that I have had a lot of
questions from people on my Youtube channel asking what version of the
Bible that I read, and so I wanted to tell you. I wanted to start by saying
that there are a lot of good translations out there. I am not going to go bashing
translations right now, but instead what I am going to do is I am going to give you a
very brief history of the translations that I have read during my life. So, when I
was a kid, my mom made us memorize verses of Scripture and I heard verses at
church and stuff. Most of the time, I was either either memorizing or
hearing old King James or new King James. I know there are some people that say, "You
always have to read old King James," but here is where things changed for me
personally...During the hardest time of my life, when I was even
questioning the existence of God, some of those old verses came to back to me, even
from old King James. God used those verses to speak to me, but at that same
time, during the same moments I was reading the NIV. Which, I know there are
people out there that also say, "Do not read the NIV," but God was able to use the
NIV to speak to me personally through the Holy Spirit. I actually
got saved reading the NIV Bible. Now, years after that, I have sought the Lord
about it and I have said in prayer, "God, what translation do You want me
to be reading? What is the best translation for me now?" And I believe
that the Holy Spirit has led me to read that NASB—the New American Standard
Bible. So, that is what I read now most of the time, however, when I go to look up
verses, I try to read as many different translations as I can to try to get a
better perspective of the original intent behind it. So, I hope you all
enjoyed this video and I hope that you all pick up your Bible everyday and ask God
to speak to you personally. God bless.