Truth Unites - How to Read the Bible (A Plan That Works)

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

Gavin Ortlund gives tips for reading the Bible, particularly with a view to daily devotional reading of Scripture. Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

This video is about how to read the Bible, and I'm going to give six theological principles for what the Bible is, and then three specific strategies at the end for daily Bible reading. And I hope this could serve both Christians who struggle to read the Bible, even though they do have a commitment to it, as well as those who may not have any beliefs about the Bible, or maybe they're just intrigued, and they want to understand what is this message about. My observation is both categories of people struggle to read the Bible. It's a fascinating book, but it has some strange parts. I've known many people who, you know, they're starting off and they get stuck in Leviticus or they get stuck somewhere.

And so hopefully this video could serve people. Let's put up these six principles about what the Bible is, and you can see on the screen, the Bible is shaped as a story. The Bible comes in two basic installments. The Bible has lots of diverse parts. The Bible was written mainly for ordinary people. The Bible is the Word of God and the Bible is about Jesus. You'll notice these are fairly obvious and basic Christian convictions about the Bible. Sometimes it helps to step back and see the big picture.

See the forest because we get lost in the trees sometimes. Both in academic contexts, you have hyper-specialization and so forth and you kind of miss the big picture. But also in everyday life, we have routine and mundane that kind of obscure the big picture. We get lost. We forget the forest. And so hopefully this will help, and each one will have an implication for how we should read or preach the Bible. Actually, a lot of my work as a preacher is what goes into this video. be sure to stick for the three specific suggestions at the end. And if you can help me share this video,

I always appreciate that. Number one, the Bible is shaped as a story. Now I say shaped as, because obviously not every portion of scripture is narrative as a literary genre, but taken as a whole story or narrative is sort of what shapes the Bible's form. It starts off with narrative. The New Testament also starts off with narratives. We could call ancient biographies of Jesus. and the bulk of it is narrative, about 75% of the Bible is narrative. And even the non-narrative parts tend to arise in a tight relation to the narrative. So, for example, in the Old Testament, you have the two sort of poles of the Old Testament story of Israel, the Exodus at the beginning and the exile toward the end.

And both of those tend to generate a lot of the non-narrative parts, like the law or prophetic oracles and so on and so forth. Even the wisdom literature can't be understood apart from the narrative because so much of it is corporate. It assumes a corporate context. You think of the Psalms that are intended for corporate use in worship, for example. And a corporate context means the nation of Israel. And the nation of Israel means the story of Abraham, starting back in Genesis 12 as God's answer to the problem of human sin. That's been introduced in Genesis 1 through 11. So basically anywhere you plunk down, you've got to recognize the story.

I remember one professor in seminary saying, a good question to be asking when in any given passage is, what time is it in the story? It's a great question to be asking, where are we in the unfolding narrative here? So basically what we're saying so far here is that narrative is kind of the skeleton of the Bible. Other genres like epistle or psalm or law are the organ and tissue. Implication from this is to read the particulars in relation to the unified unfolding story. Read the parts in light of the whole. Wherever, whatever particular passage you're looking at, see the bigger narrative. Ask what's the time in the story?

What's going on here? In other words, put it like this, read the Bible more like a novel than like Esop's fables or a collection of fortune cookies or something like this. Too many Christians read the Bible like Russian roulette encouragement. You know, you just pick up and try to find something. You have to see it as this unified unfolding story. And so much opens up for this when you do this. When you see the bigger picture, it is amazing how much starts clicking in.

All these odd little corners of the Bible that don't make sense on their own start to make a lot more sense. The book of Ruth, for example, read it in relation to the rest of the biblical narrative. The Day of Atonement ritual in Leviticus 16 and so much about Leviticus and the sacrificial system. Read that in relation to the unfolding story. The temple imagery. I think of like the, I think actually one of the most challenging. parts of the entire scripture is the end of Ezekiel about the new temple. Frankly, I have no idea how to interpret that. That's just one of my outstanding questions. Somebody can help me out. But at least I

know this much, you have to read these particular motifs in relation to the larger unfolding because there's a unity in an organic life from Genesis to Revelation. So, for example, take the idea of the temple, God dwelling with his people. And if you start looking at that from the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3 to the tabernacle, to the Temple of Solomon, to the incarnation of Christ, John 114, He tabernacled among us, to 1st Corinthians 316, we are God's temple. And then all of a sudden, and now you get to the very end, second to last chapter of the Bible, you're going to be reading it much more meaningfully when you get to this phrase, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people,

he himself will be with them as their God. This language, the dwelling place of God with man, you're going to see the richness of this and the significance of this if you've been following the unfolding. How that was the original plan in Genesis 3, and God's been establishing this more and more fully throughout redemptive history, and then in heaven is the full realization.

And of course, that language, he will be their people. He will be their God, they shall be his people. That is all throughout, that promises all throughout the scripture. There's constant allusions to the Old Testament throughout Revelation, and it's really exciting to see the unfolding unity of these different themes. I would say this art of reading the Bible, sometimes it's called pan-biblical theology or just biblical theology, reading thematically across the whole of the scripture is one of the most neglected tools that we have for making sense of the biblical story and making sense of particular

passages. Greg Beale has done a lot of great work in this area. This is one great book you might check out, but this is one insight we need to bring with us when we're reading the Bible. Number two, the Bible comes in two basic installments. I told you this was going to be, you know, seeing the forest, big picture, obvious stuff, Old Testament, New Testament. Okay, you have a larger, earlier collection of writings that look primarily forward and a later, shorter collection of writings that look primarily backwards, though also a little forwards. There's this longer, more concrete Hebrew part, for the most part, little Aramaic too, and then a shorter, more abstract Greek counterpart. Of course, there's further subdivisions, but the fundamental structure of the Bible is this

two-fold promise fulfillment movement. Now, again, probably most of us know that, but sometimes we don't think about the implications of that. That's relatively unique among world religions. The Quran is not like this, for example. And it provides some unique advantages. So the implication here is watch for the promise fulfillment patterns. So much of the Old Testament. I find that a lot of Christians just avoid the Old Testament.

We might think of the New Testament as just better. We may not acknowledge this, but we're just going to read books like Philippians about 20 times as often, 20 times more frequently than we'll read a book like Ezra or Nahum and so forth. But the truth is that the New Testament, disconnected from the Old Testament, is just as impoverished as the Old Testament disconnected from the new. Promise is empty without fulfillment, but fulfillment is meaningless without promise. We really need to read both Testaments and to read them in relation to each other.

For example, if you read through the book of Hebrews about Jesus' death, and what it has accomplished, your appreciation of that will increase tenfold if you've really struggled with the purity motif in the book of Leviticus first. You see sort of the problem that this is the answer to. If you're reading through the book of Acts and you're studying the Apostle's sermons, they're going to start clicking a lot more if you've previously been perplexed and dismayed by the slow decline of the monarchy in Samuel and Kings. Because what the main message they're saying is the Davidic king is now here. The subduing of the nations is now going on. You start to see the larger significance of what they're saying. I mentioned Revelation before.

You really can't understand the imagery of Revelation if you don't have any background awareness of Ezekiel and Zechariah and books like that. Again, Greg Beale's commentary on Revelation is also good on that. Now, having said this, so I'm saying read both, but I will say, you don't have to start with the Old Testament. If it's your first time, even though we're reading the Bible like a novel, you don't necessarily have to read it from front to back in order chronologically every single time you're reading it through. If you're brand new, I mean, that's good to do as well. But if you're brand new, I do recommend starting with a book like the Gospel of John,

maybe even a book like Romans, maybe one of the other gospels, and then sort of branch out just because of it's linked. that's easy to get bogged down. Nonetheless, even when you're reading there, you want to see it in relation to the whole narrative and the promise fulfillment movement. Okay, so those are the first two things. Number three, the Bible has so much diversity. The Bible is not just a book. It's a collection of many different books, and the extent of its diversity, again, makes it stand out from most other religions' sacred texts. So the Bible has diverse genres. You get every from law code to proverb to epistle, to apocalypse. You have to understand apocalyptic imagery,

you know. It's diverse with respect to history. You're covering roughly a millennium of time. It's diverse with respect to the cultural framework and political framework, you know, from a theocracy in 1,000 BC to this persecuted minority in the Roman Empire, from Hebrew to Greek. you know, it's just amazing the span of human history that's being covered here. Even the authors, it's just fascinating to think. You have everything from kings to doctors to shepherds who are the authors of this book. And just, I mean, just even you might even say in the vibe, you know, the book of First John and the book of Esther are both telling you about God, but they are doing so very differently,

and they just feel very different. Now, again, this is sort of obvious. we can recognize this, but think about it. It really makes a difference when you're reading. For example, if you were to just conceptualize, what is, let's say you'd never read the Bible, never knew anything about the Bible, and somebody said, there's a book that is God's Word. What would you sort of anticipate it be like? I tend to think it would be this very elevated book primarily in the realm of sort of Oracle and proclamation. more demanding and harsh, more elevated in its topics and this kind of thing, I wouldn't expect it to be

so earthy and so concrete and so human getting in, I mean, I would not expect books like Ecclesiastes. I would not expect books like the Song of Solomon. I'll talk more about that one in a second. And I don't reduce it just to this, but I do think one of the reasons why Islam tends to assert Arabic culture rather than contextualize its message into different cultures. has contextualized to different cultures much more. Christianity is much more geographically spreading throughout the world and changing culturally than Islam, which tends to assert Arabic culture. And I think part of that is the Bible's message is contextualized within itself,

within its own writings, which is amazing. So the implication here is simply just to read different parts of the Bible differently. And this means if you're, for example, if you're going through a reading strategy, if you're going through like an annual Bible reading plan, what I've found is helpful is to take larger units of text for some genres like narrative and smaller units of text for others, like say the book of Proverbs, because this helps you keep momentum. So for example, a medium-length book like Josea, I might read in one sitting, and then I take a really much smaller units for really dense books like the book of Romans. Because if you're going to read the Bible in a year,

it breaks down to a little more than three chapters a day, but it's hard to do like three chapters of Romans in one day. So the idea here is read the different parts of the Bible differently. I mean, one afternoon I remember reading through First and Second Kings on one Sunday afternoon. I was catching up on a Bible reading plan. But you can do that with narrative. You can kind of read more quickly. So the point here is just tackle the different genres differently with sensitivity to how diverse these different genres are. All right, principle number four, the Bible was written mainly for ordinary people. This picks up on something I was just mentioning a moment ago.

I just think it is astonishing how down to earth and honest the Bible is. You have passages like whoever blesses his neighbor with a loud voice rising early in the morning will be counted as cursing. That's what I favorite verses in the Bible is just so, I mean, God thought it important for us to have this information. I also frankly love the Psalms of Lament. This is a tremendous comfort in being a Christian because, as you can see an example here on the screen from the book of Psalms, just the honesty, just the absolute emotional honesty of the Bible. I think it's shocking to people who've never actually read the Bible, just to see

how much the biblical authors are willing to question and struggle. And a simple point that I want to make here is that the primary audience for the Bible is not scholars, but just ordinary people. That does not mean the Bible is not profound. It doesn't mean it shouldn't be studied and that we should reject scholarly resources to inform our reading of it. I'm just saying the overwhelming majority of people across the ages who have read the Bible haven't had a kind of formal training. This is not an elite book. It's not super intimidating. And therefore, the implication is, prayer and spiritual desire are just as important as scholarly tools, if not more so. I would say more so in a certain sense. So we should never give the impression that the main thing is how smart

you are in terms of reading the Bible. The main thing for allowing the Bible to speak to you in the way that it is intended is humility, a humble heart before God to hear what he is saying. And people like John Bunyan, for example, get an incredible theological education without lots scholarly resources, but just through humble, spiritual, listening to the text. The Bible's message is not an esoteric secret, available only to the experts. That's what I'm trying to say here. Fifth implication, and this extends a little bit from that, the Bible is the word of God, or I should say fifth principle. And once again, this is somewhat obvious. You know, Christians believe God has spoken to us through this book. Obviously, this is kind of, we even, this is a Christian

conviction, of course. Not everyone believes this, but Christians regularly speak of the Bible as the Word of God. But again, it's amazing just to step back and see the forest and think about this. Do we ever just take it in that God spoke through a book? Lots of religions don't conceptualize God as the kind of entity that could or would do that. Many think of God as the absolute, the ineffable. he's not going to speak through concrete verbal revelation. You know, the idea of words and God aren't going to go together. God is going to be beyond rationality and that kind of thing. But in the Christian faith, God subjects himself to rational communication. He condescends. You know, Calvin has a great image of God lisping to us, like the way we talk to children. This is the divine revelation. He condescends down to our languages and is humble enough to,

convey truth to us in written texts that could then be lined up next to Sophocles and Shakespeare and compared and studied and so on and so forth. It's just amazing to think God was willing to use words to get through to us. And the implication here is that when we're reading the Bible, we should remember that ultimately God is speaking. This is a counterpoint to our emphasis upon the humanity of the Bible and its diversity. A simple quote from Augustine is so profound when the Bible speaks, God speaks. This is why one simple thing that can often help us in our Bible reading is remembering that many books of the Bible were intended to be heard more than read throughout history,

not as many people who are literate as today. And so just reading it out loud can enhance this sense of this is God speaking, you know. And this is just a nerve center of Christian conviction that when we come up against the Bible, we are up against not just a new philosophy, a new teaching, we're coming up against a living person. We're coming up against God himself. God speaks to us through this book. And so the fundamental impulse in our heart should be to say, Lord, speak to me. When we open the Bible, you know, it's a dynamic spiritual activity to read the text of Scripture.

And we should say, Lord, I'm listening. I love this quote from Thomas Watson. Make every word as spoken to yourselves. When the word thunders against sin, think thus, God means my sins. When it presseth any duty, God intends me in this. Many put off scripture from themselves as if it is only concerned with those who lived in the time it was written. But if you intend to profit by the word, bring it home to yourselves, a medicine will do you

no good unless it is applied. Sixth principle, the Bible is about Jesus. Jesus is the central organizing focal point of the entire Bible. Everything sort of converges and collapses upon him. He is center stage in all of Scripture, and that includes what we call the Old Testament. That is his own claim. He speaks about everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms. He says it is the scriptures that bear witness about me.

However, different texts obviously do this in different ways. One homiletics text puts it like this. Every scriptural text is predictive of the work of Christ, preparatory of the work of Christ, reflective of the work of Christ, and or resultant of the work of Christ. So what we want to consider is with each given text, how do we see this in relation to Christ and the work of Christ through a sinless life, his death, his resurrection, his ongoing work on our behalf? So the implication here is to work hard at finding Jesus in every text.

Now this is not formulaic, and this is something we're always going to be growing in. But I love the way Spurgeon puts it. Don't you know, young man, that from every town and every village and every hamlet in England, wherever it may be, there is a road to London? So from every text of Scripture, there is a road to Christ. And my dear brother, your business is when you get to a text to say, now, what is the road to Christ? I have never found a text that has not a good road to Christ in it.

And if I ever do find one, I will go over hedge and ditch, but I would get at my master. For the sermon cannot do any good unless there is a savor of Christ in it. He's giving lectures to students about preaching there. I think a lot of what is going into this video is my own homiletics and preaching preparation and my own struggle as a preacher to make sure that every text is giving, think in two basic categories, law and gospel. It's every sermon must give both law and gospel on some level. You can't just beat people up.

You have to give people the hope of the gospel in every passage. And so when you're preaching through like the book of Leviticus or you're preaching through an Old Testament narrative, you have to work really hard to think about how to do this well. One person who does this well is Tim Keller. I really appreciate these comments from the 2007 Gospel Coalition National Conference. Just listen to what he says here. It's beautiful. What is the Bible really about? Is the Bible basically about me and what I must do? Or is it basically about Jesus and what he has done?

When you read in Luke and Acts how Jesus, in those 40 days, God has disciples together, 40 days before he ascended after he was raised, what was he doing? Basically, he was saying everything in the Old Testament is about me. He says, the reason you didn't understand what I was about was you didn't realize that everything in the prophets and the Psalms and the law was pointing to me. Do you believe the Bible is basically about you or basically about him? Is David and Glythe basically about you and how you can be like David and Goliath or basically about him, the one who really took on the mate, the only giants that can really kill us? And so his victory is imputed to us.

Who's it really about? That's the fundamental question. And when that happens, then you start to read the Bible new. You know, Jesus is the true and better Adam who passed the test in the garden, his garden, a much tougher garden, and whose obedience is imputed to us. Jesus is the true and better able, who, though innocently slain, has blood that cries out, not for our condemnation, but for our acquittal. Jesus is the true and better Abraham, who answered the call of God,

to leave all the comfortable and familiar and go into the voice, not knowing whither he went. Jesus is the true and better Isaac, who was not just offered up by his father on the mount, but was truly sacrificed for us all. While God said to Abraham, now I know you love me, because you did not withhold your son, your only son, whom you loved from me. Now we, at the foot of the cross, can say to God,

now we know that you love me, because you did not withhold your son, your only son from you love for me. Jesus is the true and better Jacob, who wrestled and took the blow of justice we deserve, so we, like Jacob, only received the world. of grace that wake us up and disappoints. Jesus is the true and better Joseph, who is at the right hand of the king

and forgives those who betrayed and sold him and uses his power to save them. Jesus is the true and better Moses, who stands in the gap between the people and the Lord and who mediates a new covenant. Jesus is the true and better rock of Moses, who struck with the rod of God's justice now gives us water in the desert.

Jesus is the true and better Job. He's a truly innocent sufferer who then intercedes for and saves his friends. Jesus is the true and better David. and better David, whose victory becomes his people's victory, though they never lifted a stone to accomplish it themselves. Jesus is the true and better Esther, who didn't just risk losing an earthly palace, but lost the ultimate heavenly one, who didn't just risk his life, but gave his life, who didn't just say, if I perish, I perish, I perish.

When I perish, I'll perish for them to save my people. Jesus is the true and better Jonah, who was cast out into the storm so we can be brought in. He's the real Passover lamb. He's the true temple, the true prophet, the true priest, the true king, the true sacrifice. the true lamb, the true light, the true bread. The Bible's not about you. Okay, so how do we go about, let me finish by giving three practical tips for daily Bible reading. And I'll just say, make it number one, regular, number two, simple, and number three, prayerful. And this just comes out of my own struggle to do Bible reading. And what I've, basically, here's my plan of attack of how I've approached this and maybe it could help someone else. So first of all, just plan a regular time and

place in your daily schedule. And don't feel too guilty if you miss a day. Don't feel crushed like, oh, no. But just as much as you can, build it into, you know, the power of habit is so profound. And so for me, I used to try to do this first thing in the morning, but there's a couple of problems with that. One is I have young children, which means I wake up at different times each morning. The other is I like to drink coffee in the morning, and so I'm not at my best when I first wake up. So what I found helpful is after breakfast when I'm first starting. the work day when I first sort of get to my office. And I'll just take a few minutes right then and before you turn to your computer diving in. Now some people have personalities or schedules

or both that would lead to a different practice. And that's fine. I just think, you know, some people I found, they'll get the audio Bible and listen to it on their drive into work. That's great. Different people, other people will go out and walk and listen to the Bible. That can work great as well. But the point is just find some regular moment that creates rhythm and habit so that it becomes just part of your daily schedule. Number two is if you're new to it or you're bad at it especially, just keep it simple and short. Lots of people struggle with devotional Bible reading because we work it up into our minds as this much more than it really needs to be. Just like someone might struggle to go to the gym because there's all these healthy people there and you feel intimidated,

and so you don't want to get started, you don't know where to begin, and so forth. And I found that just the simple practice of think and pray about one verse for five minutes is so much better than doing nothing at all, and it gives you a place to build from. Just like if you don't exercise at all, you're going to be a little intimidated to go to the gym and do everything that everybody else is doing. But if you just 20 minutes on the treadmill three times a week, the difference between doing nothing and that is huge. And similarly with Bible reading just a little bit each day. Just find a verse and dive in, you know, reading little bits. It is amazing how much more that will be for you

than when you're doing nothing at all. The third thing is implement a structure for prayer and application. So my simple practice is this. It's very simple. I simply write down one brief prayer that is one sentence, sometimes five or seven words, that encapsulates something I've learned from the passage. And sometimes it won't even be a prayer, but usually it'll be a prayer. And this just, the benefits of this are it gives you something tangible to hang on to later in the day. So at 3 p.m. I can think back on. And it also gives you momentum for the next day, so you can read what you wrote out, and it builds continuity from day to day. This morning, I'm reading through Jeremiah right now. So this morning, you know, some of these passages are kind of long and intense.

But one of the things that I found coming into my heart is the seriousness with which God takes sin in the book of Jeremiah. You can probably hear my kids in the background. That's okay. So at Jeremiah 5 this morning, the simple prayer was, Lord, help me to hate sin as you do. Now, it's not always easy to find what you're going to distill it down to. I remember years ago reading through the Book of Kings, for some reason I love First and San Francisco. 2 Kings, and I got to the story of the old prophet at Bethel in 1st Kings 13, and I remember thinking, I don't know what to do with this passage. It's kind of a bizarre and difficult passage.

And so one simple framework, if you're wondering, how do I pray? What should I pray? What's a simple way to break things down when I'm coming to a text of scripture that's complicated? I've found from this homiletics text, Christ-centered preaching, these two questions to be really helpful to ask of every text. Number one, what does this passage reveal about human nature that needs redemption? And number two, what does this passage reveal about God's nature that provides redemption? And that's not all you need to ask, but it's a great starting point for just getting to basic application. You know, so now when I'm in First King's 13, for example, I'm starting to ask questions about human nature, the crookedness of human sin, the darkness of this time in history, and then

God's nature, and especially the binding nature of God's word. And I'm starting to notice, there's this promise, you notice the promise for Josiah in verse two, and you start to feel the weight of human sin in this passage and the desperate need that God's people have for a king and for a savior, ultimately, like Tim Keller would say, for a greater Josiah. And you start to reflect on all that's happened in history since this passage. And it starts to move your heart toward an awareness of how deeply you need Christ and how serious a matter of sin is and what kind of a savior we have in Christ who has come. And you're saying, thank God, I don't live back at that time in history before Christ had come in this where God's people are sort of languishing for lack

of a king. And, you know, that's why honestly some of these Old Testament passages will make you love Jesus so much more. Final thought is just to remember that the Word of God is Spirit food. This is not merely an intellectual exercise. This is food for your heart. And you think of Jesus, you know, Satan is giving his first temptation to command stones to become bread. And you think of Jesus after 40 days of fasting, his ribs are sticking out and still nonetheless, his response is amazing words. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. He's not just rejecting Satan's offer there. He's sort of reinterpreting his condition. You might expect Jesus to say, man shall not disobey the Lord even if he dies of hunger.

But instead, what he's saying is actually, even now as my body is wasting away, even now, my deepest need is the Word of God. Amazing passage. Similarly, those of us who've been brought into Christ, we need the scripture. And those of us who are exploring Christianity, I think the best way to get a handle for, is this religion true, is immersion in the story of the Bible because it is spiritual food and feasting upon it will change our lives profoundly. So I hope this video will be helpful as a resource for you in your Bible reading. Thanks for watching everybody.