What the Wise Men Teach Us About How We Read the Bible

We all have one in our homes this time of year—a cute nativity scene. There’s baby Jesus, of course, right in the middle, flanked by Mary and Joseph, a collection of donkeys and sheep, a few shepherds, perhaps an angel above, and, last but not least, three wise men. Let’s talk about those wise men. The thing is, if your nativity scene has wise men in it, it’s wrong.

Let’s revisit the story.

Revisiting the Christmas Story

Mary, fully pregnant and ready to give birth, finds herself riding a donkey beside her faithful husband, Joseph, as they make their way to Bethlehem. After arriving, they find there’s no room for them in the local inn. But there is a manger, or stable, that has some room.

Having nowhere else to go, Mary and Joseph cozy up in the manger alongside what surely would have been a variety of animals. Once inside, Mary gives birth to her firstborn, a son. But not just any son. This was the very Son of God. They name him Jesus after having received earlier angelic instructions to do so.

Shortly after, angels appear to nearby shepherds and announce the good news that the Savior of the world has just been born. A choir of angels appears and explodes into song: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” Then, just as quickly as they came, the angels disappeared.

Awe-struck, the shepherds head off to Bethlehem to see this newborn boy. Once they arrive, they find the boy lying in a manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes.

Then, the wise men see a bright, shining star and start heading east, following it towards Jerus—not so fast.

The Case of the Missing Wise Men

This is where things go wrong. We assume the wise men were there at the manger because their story directly follows the birth narrative of Jesus in chapter 2 of Matthew’s Gospel. But our assumption leads us astray because the Bible never says the wise men were present at the birth. Instead, it says they visited Jesus when he was about 2 years old.

We know this from the tragic and gruesome details of Herod’s slaughter of young boys in Matthew 2. The wise men, in an epically unwise move, go to King Herod in Jerusalem to ask where this baby boy, the new “King of the Jews,” has been born.

Immediately sensing the threat to his throne and an opportunity to snuff out this newcomer, Herod plays along with the wise men. He tells them to go to Bethlehem and find this new king, then report his location so he could come and kill him. The wise men did find the baby boy, and yes, they brought him gifts of frankincense, gold, and myrrh. But they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, so they went home a different way.

Herod, realizing he’s been duped by the wise men, does what all dictators do when things don’t go their way—he starts killing people. Since he didn’t know which little boy to have killed, he orders every boy age 2 and under to be murdered.

This is how we know when the wise men came to visit Jesus. Herod deduced the time when the star appeared, then calculated how old the baby king would be. See for yourself:

“Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.” –Matt. 2:16

So now you know your nativity is wrong. At the end of the day, I’m not really concerned with whether you have the magi in your manger.

What I am concerned about is what this error reveals about how we read the Bible. In particular, it reveals three common problems with how we approach Scripture: we don’t read it for ourselves, we assume other people have read it for themselves, and we don’t see what we read.

We Don’t Read the Bible for Ourselves

Bible engagement is, to put it bluntly, abysmal, even within the church. You might even call it an epidemic. In American culture where unfettered access to the Bible exists in a variety of formats, more than half of Americans have read little or none of the Bible. After their recent study of Bible reading, LifeWay Research concluded that Americans are fond of the Bible but don’t actually read it.

Scott McConnell, Executive Director of LifeWay Research, highlights the problem, saying, “Even among worship attendees less than half read the Bible daily. The only time most Americans hear from the Bible is when someone else is reading it.”

The reason most of us think the wise men were at the manger is that most of us haven’t read the Bible for ourselves. We haven’t exposed ourselves to the text first-hand, let alone examined it. Most Americans seem content to live in Old Testament times where God’s Word had to come through the mouth of a prophet. Francis Chan writes,

“A mentor of mine lives in India. Last year, he called me on the phone crying, distraught over the state of the church in America. ‘It seems like the people in America would be content to take a selfie with Moses. Don’t they know they can go up the mountain themselves? Why don’t they want to go up the mountain?’”

One of the reasons we don’t want to go up the mountain is because we assume the people we hear the Bible from went up themselves, which leads us to our second problem.

We Assume Other People Have Read the Bible for Themselves

Millions of people missing a small detail of the manger scene is only possible when those people assume others have read the Bible closely and will tell them what they need to know. Perhaps this is why “good Bible teaching” is most important to American churchgoers—we need good Bible teaching or we won’t get any Bible for the week.

Whether it’s teaching in a weekend service, small group, or Bible study, we assume the people talking have read the Bible for themselves. That assumption leads us to believe we can trust what they say about it. And even when they say something that sounds off, we haven’t read enough of the Bible to know where to check their understanding.

One of the big takeaways from LifeWay’s recent study was that “people who really like the Bible don’t necessarily really read the Bible.” If the statistics are true—and if we care deeply about eternity—we would be wise not to assume people talking about the Bible have actually read it.

But what about those of us who do read the Bible? How have we read the birth narratives in Matthew 2 and Luke 2 without noticing the time gap between the shepherds and wise men? Because even when we read the Bible, we don’t see what we read.

We Don’t See What We Read

Of the small percentage of Americans who read the Bible, an even smaller percentage know how. Literacy, or knowing how to read, is not the only skill needed to read a two-thousand-year-old collection of books written in ancient cultures by people from a world that looked vastly different than ours. A solid grasp of hermeneutics, or the science of interpreting ancient documents, is crucial for people in 2018 to read a book written in Rome or Israel thousands of years earlier.

At a basic level, everyone in the church should have access to other, more mature believers who can show them how to rightly handle the word of truth (2 Tim. 2:15). The value in teaching something like hermeneutics is in helping Christians properly interpret what they’re reading in the Scriptures. The real goal, though, of hermeneutics is to train people to see the Bible.

Most of us read things at such a speed that we don’t notice much of what’s there. We miss context, innuendo, previous references, etc. We see so little because we don’t give ourselves time to look. We read through passages so we can check the box on our reading plan, or swipe right in our Bible app.

If we want to learn to read the Bible, we must learn to see the Bible. That takes time and effort. But the reward is like sweet, like honey in the mouth (Ezek. 3:3).

A Way Forward

Do you need to throw away your nativity if it has wise men? No. But you might need to chart a way forward with your own Bible reading habit. There are a few ways to get started.

First, read the Bible. Just read it. You won’t learn to love the Bible until you learn to read the Bible. So, tolle lege—take up and read!

Next, find someone to teach you how to read it well. If that’s not an option, make use of one of the great online resources available, like David Platt’s Secret Church session on How to Study the Bible, or Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary’s class on Interpreting and Teaching the Bible.

Finally, pray for God to give you a hunger for the Bible. Ultimately, we don’t read the Bible because we don’t delight in reading it. Pray for that delight as you continue to immerse yourself in the wonders of the Word.

Please don’t put your eternity in someone else’s hands. Read the Bible for yourself.

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Grayson Pope (M.A., Christian Studies) is a husband and father of three, and the Managing Web Editor at Gospel-Centered Discipleship. He serves as a writer and editor with Prison Fellowship. For more of Grayson’s writing check out his website, or follow him on Twitter.

Wrongly Handling the Word of Truth

I still remember my first hermeneutics class, where I learned how to interpret the Bible. We were required to take one through my university. I was not excited to spend a semester learning what I assumed I already knew. I recall being stunned as I learned that I was far from reading my Bible correctly! I quickly found that I knew nothing of the context from which any of the biblical stories came from, nor had I ever even taken the time to look for contextual clues through careful study. Questions like, “Where does this passage occur in the book?” or “Who is the author speaking to?” had never crossed my mind. But once I learned some basic Bible study tools, everything seemed new and no text felt off-limits or unapproachable.

Recently, Crossway released new research and infographics that revealed people’s bible study habits. As a Bible teacher, I was shocked to see how many books of the scriptures go completely unread because they're hard to understand.

With countless Bible studies are available for churchgoers, this shouldn’t be something we have to grapple with. Yet biblical illiteracy remains pervasive among us.

Perhaps that's because we teachers too often assume people understand the importance of Bible study. Why should people learn to study the Bible? After all, it's difficult to understand ancient cultures and multiple genres.

WHY WE SHOULD STUDY THE BIBLE

Why do we want our people to study the Bible? Because the Bible yields its treasure to those who dig for it. Too often we take a shallow approach to reading Scripture: we want the application without the work, the easy-to-grasp imperatives without the hearty parables, the cozy promises without the uncomfortable truths. Christians should study the Bible to know God deeply. It is a book filled with the glories that teach, reproof, correct, and train us (1 Tim. 3:16), but it is ultimately a book about God and what he is like (Luke 24:27).

As G. K. Beale’s popular work states, “We become what we behold, we become what we worship.” We are formed by the things we do, by the liturgies we participate in, and one of these things that can form us into disciples of his words is the careful study of Scripture. This is why love must be what drives us to the text. Then our study will formational instead of just educational. Disciples are, by definition, learners, and that learning should change transfer across creed and into conduct. Doctrine must motivate practice. Truth has to move from our head to our hearts and actions.

As we seek to live our lives in a manner worthy of the gospel (Phil. 1:27), our answer is to submit to be shaped by the author of life abundant. His words and his Spirit given to us are what guide us, as they point us consistently back to be like Christ.

A CALL TO BIBLICAL LITERACY

I shouldn’t have had to wait until a hermeneutics course to have at least some tools to study Scripture. Christian universities don’t bear the weight of training church members in biblical literacy—churches do. My local church should have equipped me with the basic tools for reading, understanding, and applying the foundational text of our faith.

Biblical literacy helps us more clearly recognize the gospel as it is reflected across all of Scripture. Even in portions of the Old Testament where it seems the difference between their culture and ours is too foreign and unfamiliar; Jesus, covenantal love and grace have abounded since the beginning. And that affects how we read scripture as a whole.

WRONGLY DIVIDING THE WORD OF TRUTH

Many of us could tell horror stories of passages being skewed, and the marks the false interpretations leave on the lives they touched. Books like Finding the Love of Jesus from Genesis to Revelation by Elyse Fitzpatrick and Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin unpack the many ways we have tried and failed to read God’s Word. You will no doubt find your reading habits implicated in some way, just like mine were.

But we can’t press on in learning to study if we don’t first know what we’re doing wrong. If being told that your way of studying and understanding has been wrong causes you a twinge of pain, this may be because it has become an idol in your own way of making Jesus out to be who you’d prefer him to be, rather than who he actually is presented to be in Scripture.

Hold fast, friends. Don’t let this warning deter you from stepping foot into what he has to offer you in his Word.

So many resources are readily available to understand the context and background from where the words of Scripture were written as well as resources on how to see meaning and application from them. Books like the aforementioned Women of the Word by Jen Wilkin, Asking the Right Questions by Matthew Harmon, and One-to-One by David Helm all outline helpful ways to approach the text. Online resources like stepbible.org, blueletterbible.com, and luminabible.org aid with things like cross-references and comparing translations of the Bible. Websites like bibleodyssey.org and thebibleproject.com can give you a feel for the history of the people and the literary structures within the book you may be reading.

TAKE UP YOUR SWORD

Teaching your people that these resources are easily accessible to them is a comfort, and helping them to test and discern these resources is so fruitful. A Sunday morning understanding of the Bible is simply not enough for the battle that wages from Monday to Saturday. We need to be able to readily approach scripture each day of the week.

There are a lot of voices out in our world, and we desperately need a whole body fighting together—and that means each of us must know how to fight. You wouldn’t send soldiers into combat without them knowing how to use their weapons; likewise, we shouldn’t send believers into the world ill-equipped to wield the double-edged sword of the word they have been handed (Heb. 4:12). Together, rightly handling the truth, we can be church bodies filled with the true and good news of the gospel, as seen page after page in God’s Word, and this should make a difference not only within our churches but in the world around us.

When we know how to read and reflect on Scripture, the Bible studies we lead and the discussions we have gain greater depth. We begin to see how a devotional that shies away from hard texts limits and stifles our spiritual growth.  We see how shallow study gives a limited view of the magnificent depths of our great God!

Most importantly, though, Scripture provides us with hope. Scripture shows us the gospel. The Torah, the Prophets, the Gospels, the Epistles, Revelation all point to knowing and treasuring the triune God. To know that God has spoken to our hearts and minds through his inspired Word ought to be a comfort to us. Knowing how to approach passages in their context and apply them faithfully to our lives shows us how to really recognize the hope we have in Christ. The more clearly we can read and glean truth from God’s Word, the more hope can take root in our hearts.

Christian, learning to read the Bible is ultimately up to you since each one of us will one day give an account to God of how we spent our days. I implore you: learn to rightly handle the Word of truth. Learn to study the good book for yourself. Don’t give up when there are so many tools to help you learn. Don’t give up when there are pearls on every page.

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Alexiana Fry (M. Div.) is a wife and associate Women’s Director at Crossroads Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her passion and call are to see the church make whole disciples, pursuing the Gospel in the everyday mundane of life. She also finds herself to be highly caffeinated and blogging regularly at mygivingofthanks.com.

Break Free from Bite-Sized Bible Study

In a well-intentioned effort to motivate daily Bible reading, the church has attempted to make the Bible more accessible. Apps and devotionals aim to make the Bible easier to consume and digest. Sermons are preached at the microscope level. Bible reading plans help us achieve a reading goal in desirable time frames. “Verse of the Day” notifications push morsels of the Word our way. While there is certainly value in these efforts, we cannot deny the problem they also create, namely, that our Bibles have become bite-sized. I’m afraid we have grown content with that measly portion and have lost our wonder at the whole feast. We’re so caught up in the paragraphs that we are falling out of love with the Story.

Has your bite-sized Bible grown your love for God’s Word? Has it led to more consistent and meaningful Bible reading? Maybe it has for you. But what I’ve found in my own life and in conversations with many of my Christian friends is that it has hardly improved anything. The attainability of only having one chapter to read tomorrow morning isn’t motivating us to feast on the Word.

There has to be another approach that makes for a more worthwhile time in the Word and makes us want to get out of bed to read about it. I believe the Story, treated as a story, is the key. Reading large portions of Scripture in one sitting is right and necessary and will increase the breadth and depth of our knowledge of God.

THE LIMIT OF BUSY-NESS

The notion of reading large swaths of Scripture as opposed to more “bite-sized” pieces may scare you. After all, there are only twenty-four hours in our days; eight of those are spent asleep; another eight or more are spent at work. Most of us probably already feel the lack of margin in our lives—it’s all we can do to fit in a five-minute devotional.

Please understand, I am not oblivious to your busy-ness. I am learning what it means to be busy as each week passes. In the past few months, I have watched both my family and my job expand. Adding a baby and new pastoral responsibilities to my plate have me wondering if they make bigger plates! When the baby will not stop crying and the meetings and deadlines begin to pile up, Scripture reading is not naturally at the forefront of my mind. I sympathize with you feeling like you’re trying to manage life with whatever Bible you can fit in whenever it seems to happen.

With that said, I do believe it would be wise to get a little more honest about how busy we are—and perhaps even better, if busy is best. Our Ace of Spades for getting out of anything is that we’re too busy. But the fascinating truth about time is that everyone has the same amount of it—24 hours—each day. There are solutions to recover healthy time in God’s Word in the face of our busy-ness problem if we are willing to face them.

TAKING THE LIMITS OFF OF SCRIPTURE

The fewer constraints and limitations we place on the Word, the better we will understand because we begin to read it the way it was intended to be read. How, in a practical sense, can we begin to reduce the limits we impose on Scripture?

First, at a macro level, we need to know the Story of Scripture as opposed to a few plot points. We must feast continually, not snack here and there. When we begin to see Scripture less as a hodgepodge of spiritual insights and more as an ordered revelation from God, we’ll realize that we need to know the Story.

We should then think about how exactly we read the Word. We are tempted, from the get-go, to start with one verse, one paragraph, one chapter. Why not read, however, until we feel there is a natural literary break? Why not, for example, read the whole book of Hebrews? It only takes about 45 minutes.¹ Go even further: What if you read the entire book of Hebrews 45 minutes each day, five times in one week? Don’t you believe your understanding of the whole book of Hebrews would be much improved? But if you committed to a chapter a day, it would take you two full weeks to get through it just once.

A special note for those that preach: we should help our congregation approach the Bible with this emphasis on widening our reading. Expository preaching is wonderful and important. The “microscopic” view of the text is necessary. But microscopes don’t help us see in the same way telescopes do. We need both views of Scripture; one that examines and investigates and determines, and another that searches and finds and marvels. Preach large portions of Scripture. Better yet, let Scripture preach in your stead. Help your congregation see how a passage connects the dots somewhere. Help them see that this small passage fits into a much larger Story.

Finally, we must confront our busy-ness. The first step forward here is to realize that we are not as busy as we think. Many of us can fix our “too busy” problem immediately if, for example, we would simply wake up thirty minutes earlier, spend thirty fewer minutes on social media, or listen to Scripture for thirty minutes of our commute to or from work. The second nudge would be to consider if we are indeed too busy, and what needs to be removed from our plate in order to make room for meaningful time spent in the Word. This may require small, subtle changes, like better time management or better planning. It also may require radical changes, like finding a job that better serves your spiritual disciplines. After all, what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but forfeit his soul?

INEFFICIENT TO GOD’S GLORY

Overall, our Bible reading habits are most in need of the freedom to be inefficient, untidy, drawn out, even wasteful. In a culture that demands we treat everything as Martha would, Jesus asks us to have the heart of Mary, choosing “the good portion” for our day (Lk. 10:38-42).

We truly cannot live this Christian life with any zeal, any hope, or any confidence if we will not feast at Christ’s table. It may mean we don’t get as much checked off of our to-do list as we had hoped. It may mean the Bible reading plan needs to be put on pause. But no matter the cost, we know it’s worth it because the Scriptures “are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:15).

May you break free from your snackable Bible and gorge yourself on God’s Word. And may Christ dwell in us richly, freely, and without limitation.

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1 - Check out Andy Naselli’s blog post, “Three Tips for Better Bible Reading,” which includes a helpful chart of Bible Reading Times for each book of the Bible: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/three-tips-for-better-bible-reading

Zach Barnhart currently serves as Student Pastor of Northlake Church in Lago Vista, TX. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Middle Tennessee State University and is currently studying at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, seeking a Master of Theological Studies degree. He is married to his wife, Hannah. You can follow Zach on Twitter @zachbarnhart or check out his personal blog, Cultivated.