Tips on reading the Bible

Psalm 119:105 says that God's Word is a lamp to our feet and a light to my path. Are you ready to start reading God's Word, but you don't know where to start? If so, then there are two basic approaches to take: reading by topic and reading by book. If you don't already have a Bible, you can ask a Christian friend, visit a Christian bookstore, or just look on the Internet. One popular web site is Bible Gateway. For the New Testament, an excellent version that is both true to the original Greek text and in good modern English is The Sovereign Creator Has Spoken (SCS).


Reading by Topic

If you are interested in a certain topic, you can either look in the topical index in the back of your Bible (if it has one), or you can search on the internet. You can also ask someone familiar with the Bible for related verses or passages.


If you read all the chapters of the following topics, you will complete the entire Bible:

  • Who is Jesus? - Read the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
  • What is the Church? - Read Acts of the Apostles.
  • What are Christians? - Read from Romans to Jude (21 books).
  • What are good Christians waiting for? - Read the book of Revelation.
  • How did we get here? -Read the book of Genesis, chapters 1 to 11
  • Who are the Jews? - Read Genesis 12 to Malachi (39 books)

Reading by Book

If you are interested in just reading in an exploratory manner, then it's probably best to start with the basics: the four Gospels. These are historic books with different perspectives on the life of Jesus. After that you can read the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul, James, Peter, John and Jude .Peter and John were early Jewish followers of Jesus.Paul was the man God chose to start many of the first churches among Greeks of the Roman Empire.James and Jude were half-brothers of Jesus.In all the New Testament has 27 books.

After you study the New Testament, you can move onto the Old Testament. These 39 books, from Genesis to Malachi are sometimes not easy to understand, because the times were so different, but they are very important and for understanding God and the New Testament writings.God never changes. He is the same God in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. The OT was also the scripture used by the first Christians.

Ideally, reading the Bible is something we do daily, like eating or sleeping. Jesus said in Matthew 4:4, "Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." Without food, we become physically hungry and weak.Without the Bible we become spiritually hungry and weak.