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I love this question. What's the best way for a beginner to start reading scripture? And I think there's two parts to that. One is they're not a believer yet, but... to come aware of, hey, there is God and there's sin and such. They're hearing the gospel maybe, but not saved yet. And then they are believers. I'd say they run into like a Ray Comfort on the street or a street preacher and like, wow. Yeah, they believe, right? They respond to that.

But they haven't read the Bible yet. So where do you start? Genesis, Matthew, John? Well, for both, I'm believer and believer, and this is going to sound overly simplistic, but open it and start reading. I see this with believers sometimes, you know, I'm not reading my Bible like I should. Then open it and read it.

You know, there comes a point in time in everybody's life where we got to get our act together. You know, somebody might put on extra weight and look at themselves in the mirror and say, you know what, I need to work out. I need to lose weight. I need to clean up my diet. I'll do that next year. No, do it right now. I've not been kind to my wife. I've not been submissive to my husband. You know, in six months when I get the vibe or the feeling, no, we need to do those things right now.

So for every time somebody says, I know I should read the Bible, but I don't, just open it and read it. I mean, I don't, you know, necessarily endorse just finding a spot and starting to read the chapter. In terms of content, I think for the unbeliever, you know, to run through the Ten Commandments is a good thing. You mentioned Ray Comfort. I'm not endorsing every jot and tittle of his practice, but the thing that I do appreciate about his practice is that And through the law comes the knowledge of sin. And through the knowledge of sin, we recognize our need for the Savior.

So, for an unbeliever to, you know, read the Ten Commandments, to understand the specifics that God speaks there at Sinai and repeated again on the plains of Moab, if an unbeliever is committing adultery, or an unbeliever is committing theft, or an unbeliever is committing murder, How do you know your sin and misery? The law of God tells me so. And then I would say, go to the Gospels, go to the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, learn who Jesus is and learn what Jesus did, because that's the answer to that condemnation that comes from reading the law of God. So how do I know my sin and misery? I know it because the law of God tells me so. How do I know grace and mercy?

Because of what Christ has accomplished on the cross. So, for the unbeliever, I would suggest that. For a believer that's perhaps new to Bible reading, I know the typical response is, read the Gospel of John. We just finished going through the Gospel of John. in our Sunday morning services. And it's glorious. It's wonderful. It is an amazing book.

But I don't want to say but like it's some big revelation. There's some tough stuff in there. There's some difficulties. I mean, I think we spent a lot of time talking about the, you know, Trinity and And I'm not suggesting a new believer doesn't need to hear that or know that, but just as, you know, reading through John's gospel, there'll be plenty for him to get.

But I think Mark is good. Mark is 16 chapters. It's not super long, and it's very much carried by the Word immediately. basically, immediately, immediately carries the narrative. And so what you're getting is here who Jesus is, and here's what Jesus does. It's this great presentation of Jesus as this wonderful, you know, Messiah that's come to save his people from their sins.

And then the final thing I would say You know, there's an old adage, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Sometimes people take on too much. They get too ambitious and then they burn out. You know, I'm going to read my Bible from Genesis to Revelation. They get to Leviticus and they're done. you know, be modest in your ambitions, take a piece, give yourself a time, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, you know, whatever it is, a chapter, and read and realize you're not going to get everything realize that it's a life lifelong transformation by the renewing of your mind, and that it's not going to happen overnight.

I just think familiarity with the Scripture as well, knowing the structure, there's an Old Testament and a New Testament, knowing the focal point in the Old Covenant was the people of Israel, the focal point in the New Covenant is the true Israel, Jesus Christ. and the church in union with him. I think it's helpful to understand a basic timeline in the Old Testament, some major events, some of the kings, some of the prophets, the various things going on, because while it's theology and while it's revelation, there's much historical and there's much going on that you're only benefited by knowing. So go, read, get a Bible and read. you know, the final exhortation.

And pray as well, right, just for the... Yeah, Spurgeon had a good observation on that. If I was, you know, reading a book that was written by my next-door neighbor, and I came across a confusing or a difficult part in that book, I'd walk next door, I'd knock on his front door, and I'd say, what do you mean here? Now, the answer doesn't always come the way my neighbor is going to say, oh, well, you know, that's what I mean.

But prayerful study of Scripture, prayerful study of Scripture is useful not only for illumination by the power of the Holy Spirit, but also to hopefully help us kill pride. Prayer-less study can result in proud, arrogant people that are puffed up. Paul says knowledge puffs up. In a prayerless study, in a prayerless acquisition of Scripture and knowledge and doctrine and theology, can produce pride. Now, it can't even prayerful study of Scripture, we always have to be on guard.

But prayer keeps us humble, it keeps us dependent, and it keeps us constantly, you know, imploring God, beseeching God to help us to understand, not so that we can best everybody on Facebook debates, but so that I can be faithful to you, God, Ezra set his heart to study the law, to do the law, and then to teach the law in Israel, Ezra 7.10. Boyce thought that's a great model.

Study it to do it and then teach. I think pastors can fall into this error as well. Study to preach. No, study to do and then preach. I think Lloyd-Jones said it well. You're not searching Scripture first and foremost for sermons as pastors. You're searching Scripture first and foremost for food. Get your own nourishment, get your own mind and heart and body in conformity to Scripture, then you'll be positioned to teach. So to bypass that practical application in one's own life, which most often comes through prayerful study of Scripture, it's to short circuit the whole process, and it is disingenuous then.

Because if I'm preaching great theology and, you know, Bible exposition, and I'm living like the devil himself, you know, God can use that. I think the Helvetic Confession says that even if the minister be evil, insofar as he's teaching the truth, you need to listen.

Jesus makes that observation in Matthew 23. They tell you these things, insofar as they tell you the truth that Moses said, do it, but don't follow their practice. So, what we want are men that are not perfect. No man, no elder, no pastor is, but men that are faithful and they study to do and then to teach.

Yeah, and I think one of the things, too, in answering the question, how to start reading the Bible, how are we to read the words of the Bible? When we approach the text, I think it's important for all of us, for all believers, for all Christians to understand that we're not attending to the nakedness of the words, but we're attending to the sense intended by the divine author. And so I think it's important to understand that when we read the Scriptures and we come across passages such as Christ saying, the Father is greater than I, how do I read the Bible there? Am I to understand that in the nakedness of the words that I'm confronted with, that Jesus, the Son of God, is somehow less than the Father? Or do I take the sense of the scriptures as a whole and as it's been understood by the church and see that, okay, Christ assumed our humanity for our recovery and our redemption so that he must there be speaking according to that assumed humanity because God cannot be less than God.

So, I think not only how do we read, or what do we read, or what do we start reading, but also the manner in which we are to read the Bible. And it goes back to Jim's comment about the believer as an island unto himself with the Word and the Spirit. That's not how the Bible ought to be read. The Bible ought to be read, as Jim indicated, within the blessed and safe confines of the reality that Christ promised to build His church, that He promised to send His Spirit to equip the church, and that He, in His ascended glory, gave gifts to the church, the gifts of men for the preaching and the teaching of the Word, to provide the reader with that safe biblical context within which to read it.

A practical thing that came to mind for me is, if you look at the last 10 years with social media, it's trashed most people's ability to read. And I found that myself, right? We're on our phones and we're scrolling, we're bombarded with information, and we just can't absorb or read. I just started like in the morning, no Bible, no phone, right? time alone, prayer, meditate, journal, whatever, and then start looking at messages and stuff. And that's been helpful.

Otherwise, we're filling in for a reminder, right? And we can't get into the text. It just bounces off. It just don't get anywhere. That's good. And it's almost as if, you know, with these devices and with social media, we're conditioning ourselves to only have the attention span for 144 characters.

And so what, are we just going to open to a psalm and stop after, you know, verses one to four? And then, okay, man, I got to scroll to something. Why isn't my page scrolling? I think, yeah, compartmentalizing our lives and staying away from You know, lawful things whose unlawful use can deter us from a good understanding of the Word of God and taking it in with the preciousness of slowing down, reading it, and meditating upon it as well. Not only are we to read the Word, But we read in the Scriptures, David, for example, meditated upon that word, upon the law, upon the revelation of God. So, we're to read it, we're to hide it in our hearts, and we're to meditate upon its truths and to draw out the glorious implications and the meaning that God intended by revealing himself in it.