Imagine walking into a movie 45 minutes late then trying to

explain the plot to someone else.

That's how most of us.

Read the Bible.

We know the characters.

We quote the lines, we quote the scriptures, but often we're

missing the story because no one ever told us it's a story.

We weren't taught that it's a story and we haven't read it as a story.

And here's the wild part.

The chapters in this book in the Bible aren't even in the right.

Order.

Welcome to Seek, go Create.

This is Tim Winders and this is episode three of the five

part series that we're doing.

Why The Bible doesn't make sense yet, and it's really part of the journey that I've

been on over the last, you know, we could say 10 years, maybe even longer than that.

But definitely in the last few years where I have taken a lot of things that

I thought I knew I've had to unlearn it.

I've spent a lot of quiet time.

I've spent a lot of time actually reading the Bible instead of listening to other

people tell me what's in the Bible.

And I've just come to what I believe is a better understanding.

I'm not saying that I know it all.

I'm not saying that I understand everything.

But I do believe that I have a better context and a better understanding

than I did yesterday, last year, and definitely 10, 15 years ago.

So anyway, let's dive in.

Last time, last episode, episode two, we talked about what we often

have to do, which is unlearn.

What we knew.

And that kind of goes to what I just said earlier, you know.

Much of what we get about the Bible comes from other people.

It comes from teachers, preachers that are all well-meaning,

but often they've got their interpretations, their understandings.

And then we also layer that with doctrines and theologies and systems and ways

that people have attempted to explain the Bible for the last 2000 plus years.

And so we have all of that.

And then we pick up the Bible or we open up, to a scripture and we have

all of that stuff floating around.

It just makes it difficult to understand or worse, we fool ourselves

and we think we understand it.

We're convinced, we understand it.

We tell other people we understand it, but yet we are missing some

key pieces and key context.

the example we used in the last episode was.

the matrix.

It's the red pill or the blue pill.

Which one are you gonna choose?

You choose one of them and you just stay sort of blinded and trapped within that

structure that you've always been in.

But some of the things that I've experienced and read and studied over the

last few years, it's going down that path of seeing beyond the matrix and seeing

that there's a bigger picture, there's a bigger story, and it is uncomfortable.

It's been, challenging at times because it's kind of taken some of the things

that were, I thought, core of who I was.

And my wife, Gloria and I have gone through this where we've sat many

a morning with a cup of coffee and her comments were something to the

effect of, I'm not sure that I could keep going down this path because

what I thought that I knew is being busted up and these paradigms and all.

It's like that, that pain of stepping out of the matrix and looking back

in and going, Hmm, I was deceived, or I was wrong, or I was slightly

off, and just being slightly off.

Is almost worse than being completely wrong.

And that's something that we have realized.

Here's what we're gonna do In this episode, I'm gonna share kind of the

biggest lens shift of my journey.

the biggest thing that's kind of helped me understand, what I believe, or at

least to put me in a better place to understand what the Bible is all about.

it's really this.

it's simple, but it's not, and that is that the Bible.

Is a story, it is an actual story with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

And if you don't understand the beginning and the middle, then it makes it

very difficult to understand the end.

And so we're gonna discuss that there's chronological aspects to it

and we need to understand there's chronological portions of it.

And if we are to read it out of order.

Or to take it out of context or to read sections of it and attempt to make that

the story, then it won't make sense, or it won't make as much sense, or

it'll cause us to skew the truth or to skew what it really is talking about.

And listen.

Guilty, I've done it.

I know many people that are speaking from pulpits and teaching and

preaching that may not be aware of it.

They're doing it and it's happened time and time again.

And you know, we could, we could sort of say, well, maybe it's the

enemy, you know, that old devil that's trying to just confuse us.

Or it could be that we just aren't doing some of the hard, difficult work of taking

the scriptures, taking the Bible, studying it so that we understand it better.

I will say I'm guilty of that.

I spent time under preachers, I would take what they said, I would repeat it.

Sometimes I would repeat it with confidence.

Sometimes I would look it up and check and study.

Sometimes I wouldn't.

I spent a few years in Bible school and I assumed that some

of the people teaching and.

Sharing there knew what they were talking about.

Some of them did.

Some good people, some of them didn't.

Some of them were taking things out of context, and that

happens time and time again.

I guess if there's one underlying message that's important in this, that's.

Kind of aside from the fact that you need to understand the Bible is

the, is a story, and that is taking personal responsibility for getting

to know and understanding it yourself.

Don't even take my word, don't even listen to what I'm talking

about here, just about my journey.

You need to take the time to study yourself.

You need to take the time to dig into this Bible, to these

scriptures and learn it yourself.

You need to spend quiet time and allow the Holy Spirit to reveal things to

you, ask questions, poke at things that you think you believe, but may not be

lining up with what's in the Bible.

Or that you've heard that it bothered you?

There were so many things that I heard and they, they sort of bothered

me, but I just kind of accepted them and just kept kind of going along

until over the last few years where truthfully, my journey is this.

I sort of disconnected.

I mean, most of you know, my wife and I for the last six, six and a

half years have lived in an rv and I haven't, we haven't been totally

isolated from the world, but we've been.

we've had a lot of quiet and still time we, as we traveled, we didn't really plug

into some churches or anything like that.

I didn't really go to YouTube and listen to this minister and that minister.

I really allowed the Lord to be my teacher, I believe, and the

Holy Spirit to lead and guide me.

And it really freed me up to ask some tough questions that I do not think

I would've asked had I been sitting.

Under someone's teaching or in a ministry or in a Bible school.

And so it really kind of helped me go down this path and so, so that's what

we're gonna do in this episode today.

We're going to kinda walk through that journey that I went on.

Some of you may be going on something similar.

I'll give you some glimpses of what I think, but again,

it's your responsibility.

You have got to do this on your own, and some people are uncomfortable

with me saying this, but it might.

Means spending alone time doing it, not plugging into the charismatic

preacher teacher that sounds so great, and we all say, oh yeah, all

he does is preach from the Bible.

But then when you do your study, you realize, Hmm, that actually wasn't

in the Bible or worse, it was out of.

Context.

So check me on this, put it down in comments if you're watching

this on YouTube or email, because I'm not pretending to know it all.

I'm just sharing my journey and the process I've been on and how

much it bothers me that years ago.

I didn't think I knew it all, but boy, I thought I was

really close, but yet I wasn't.

So let me give you my Bible experience.

This was back in the early nineties, so 30 something years ago, I was

saved and I knew that I needed to study and learn more about the Bible.

But here's what I did.

I treated the Bible like it was a manual.

Or a devotional and I read portions of it and I attempted

to understand the bigger picture.

I'm kind of a bigger picture guy.

I love to understand the bigger picture if I can, but I pulled out pieces of

it and what I did was is I attempted to apply it to whatever I was dealing

with or going through at the time.

Now, that's not a bad thing necessarily.

However, what it does is it causes us to, possibly twist some things around,

I was actually saved in a business setting, so I was sort of wired to be

pursuing and going after making money and.

being more successful in that financial area.

And so the scriptures initially that I started pulling out were those scriptures

that looked like scriptures that said I should prosper and be in good health

that I should, do well financially.

You know, I took a lot of the money scriptures and kinda made those fit

what I was going through at the time.

I took a lot of the sowing and reaping scriptures and made them apply.

And some of them I was probably close.

Some of them I was probably maybe accurate, but there was probably a lot

of them that I was taking them away outta context and taking them in a wrong way.

So I would just grab isolated versus just to kind of make myself feel

better, do better, or latch onto.

And I really did not understand how it all.

Fit together.

I mean, I would try to understand the creation, story and then I would try

to understand the ending story, and I never really liked either one of those.

I'll be upfront with you the creation story, being an engineer and someone

who kind of likes to see things and maybe didn't have a lot of.

Faith that that just, it is the way it is.

I wanted a little more information about that creation, and if you don't

understand creation and the things in the middle, then I'll tell you, you

definitely won't understand how it ends.

And that's really one of the catalysts for a lot of where I'm going now

that we'll talk about in a future episode is that ending that a lot of

people are trying to explain with.

With headlines and all this going on in the world, it really started bothering me

more and more, and that's when I realized that if you don't know how it fits

together, then it, it's just all jumbled.

One of the problems with the Bible also, let's just go ahead

and get this out, out here.

the chapters are not written in order.

You know, I've written a novel myself.

I think it had 39 chapters.

It's fiction.

If I took those 39 chapters that I wrote to be in a specific order, I had

some flashbacks and things like that.

But if I took those 39 chapters and let's say I took the first two

thirds of those, and I just sort of rewrote some of the chapters to tell

the same story over and over again.

And let's just say there was some perspective from some people during

those storylines, those story and plot points that may have had another

perspective and those were added in, and all of that would've sort of looked

like what the Old Testament looks like.

And then let's say I would've taken the last two thirds of that novel,

and instead of putting it entirely in order, I took the overarching

story of the main character.

And I put it in the first four chapters of that, second of

that last third of the book.

And then the last portion of the book, I actually just listed

it out by length of chapter.

Well, that's what is going on in the Bible.

We have in the Old Testament, if you want to try to read it in order,

you do have some of the creation and things that are in order.

But once you get into Kings and Chronicles and all the prophet books, some of those

overlapped, Before I realized that Kings and Chronicles are basically telling

the same stories, and then there's Isaiah and some of the others that are

telling some of the things that are going on also in Kings and Chronicles.

And if you don't understand that, then man, it's hard to fit it together.

then you get over to the New Testament and you've got.

Some of the epistles that really occurred before.

Some things in the Book of Acts.

You've got Revelation here that we like to think is the end.

and it is in some ways, but it's not the end as many of us think.

And then you've got Paul Anyway there, there's just a lot of.

Things that go on there.

It's like watching, this is the example that I like to use.

I'm a big Star Wars fan.

Most of you know Star Wars.

George Lucas started with what he called episode four, which is a new Hope.

It was the original Star Wars movie came out in 19, I think it was 77,

if I'm remembering correctly, and And that movie was awesome, man.

It was something like we've never seen and it was incredible.

Well.

As incredible as that movie was, the next movie that was

released almost three years later.

By the way, it was like excruciating when we realized that this

other movie was coming out and it was The Empire Strikes Back.

And let me tell you, one of the best movies.

Is the Empire Strikes back.

It started awesome.

It dropped us off a cliff at the end, and everything in between was incredible.

had we not seen a new Hope, the original Star Wars before then that movie never

would've had the impact It had the Empire strikes back because we had

to have that context of that before

Some of you're gonna get upset that I'm comparing the Bible to Star Wars.

I'm not.

I'm just saying that is the storytelling challenge that we, that we have.

It's what I just mentioned about my book.

we've done this time and time again and we just haven't understood the order.

So for me, my.

I guess first sort of ahas about something odd is going on here is

when I, a few years back, decided to do a read through the Bible.

Actually, my wife decided and she allowed me to go along with her, and we went

through the Bible in chronological order.

Okay.

Not the order it was written necessarily, but in the historical

chronological order that it went in.

And I won't say that the New Testament impacted me that much at that time.

I'll talk more about that in just a moment.

But what it did do was allowed me to really understand the Old Testament better

as I put those pieces together, like I said earlier, of Kings and Chronicles

and the prophets and all the overlap and the story of the Old Testament.

And so that really started me.

Thinking about maybe I'm missing some things because of the chronological

nature that I'm missing out on just reading these 66 books in the order

that they're placed in the Holy Bible.

So here's some things that I saw though.

These are some things that were revealed to me.

One was just how confusing the Old Testament, can be.

If you just read it in the order that it's listed and how much more sense that

it makes if you read it chronologically.

And when you do that, you really do understand the buildup and the leading

to the coming Messiah, which is Jesus.

The Old Testament is a lead up and buildup to what occurs.

In the New Testament and many times it's, we can sort of disconnect

those if you don't understand the chronological nature of it.

As I started looking at the New Testament.

And in the same light started looking at what was going on during that time.

We'll talk more about this in a later episode, but the importance of the first

century, specifically a 30 around the time of the, death, the cross, and the

resurrection of Jesus Christ up to 80 70, which was the destruction of Jerusalem.

You actually realize, the New Testament primarily was in between

those two, those two dates.

You understand the urgency that was involved in the writing of many of the

epistles, the letters, even the gospels.

There was a real urgency there that we don't get if we don't understand

that context, the context of acts.

Being before Paul's letters is very important because Paul's letters really

are sprinkled throughout the book of Acts.

And Dr. Luke, Luke, who wrote the Gospel of Luke, and then he wrote the Book of

Acts, which are meant to go together.

That's the.

Chronology of, the early church leading up to, Paul's.

Really not even then.

It's kind of most of Paul's ministry in the spreading of

the gospel in the first century.

So that's important to understand.

And then, like I mentioned earlier, you start to see that

The end begins to look different.

if you understand that urgency that's going on within the gospels and also

within Paul's letters, if you understand what is happening and most of the

epistles that Paul has written, if you understand what's going on with the early

churches, then you begin looking at what most of us have looked as the ending.

Of the vision of, of John, the revelation of the Christ.

You just, you kinda look at that differently, and that's not what we're

gonna talk about here, but I'll tell you that it just all begins to fit differently

and this is why story really matters.

And it's something that I didn't do with the Bible for a long period of time,

and I noticed that many people don't.

I went to Bible school for a few years.

I spent time around not just your average run of the mill.

Bible reading people.

These were people that studied it more.

These were people that taught it and, and I can tell you that my observation

is that many people don't really understand that flow, the beginning,

the middle, and the end of stories and storytelling or the narrative.

And again, I'm not saying that the Bible is fiction.

I'm not telling you that it's just a story, but I will tell you it's got a

narrative that we need to understand and stories will then give meaning.

To the events, not just commands or not just things that we can kind of

grab and totally apply in our lives.

We need to understand that context of what is going on.

God is telling a story of covenant exile.

Rescue and then restoration or, or bringing everything back to him.

And I, I've heard this said, and I do believe this, that the story

of the Bible is the story of God.

I. Really wanting a family, really wanting sons and daughters that are his,

and some would say, well, why didn't he just create that in the first place?

Well, he did.

Things changed things, went through various iterations, and that's

what we're moving back towards.

The kingdom.

The kingdom of God is the central theme.

The Kingdom or the Eden system or the new Jerusalem.

That is the theme that we see throughout the Bible.

many people, especially Americanized people that are westernized, we have

this thought that the theme of the Bible is punching our card to get to heaven.

That's all it's about.

We're trying to get to heaven.

That's all that matters, and that may be part.

Of it, but that's really not the theme of it.

If you really understand the story, that is not what's going on.

It's about the kingdom, the kingdom of God, and that kingdom growing and

expanding through us, and because of what Jesus Christ did and because

of what happened with creation.

So the kingdom is the central theme.

So let's talk a little bit more about the big picture.

And then we'll, uh, we'll kind of wrap up a little bit with, uh, with some

thoughts and some things that I believe I've started to see that have helped me.

Old Testament, fairly simple creation, covenant.

Exile, promise creation, covenant exile, and then the promise of something coming.

And that promise, came in a lot of shapes and sizes.

That's one thing that gets a little bit confusing at times, is that

promise is coming from the prophets.

It's coming from all the way back, really from the beginning,

all the way back to creation.

And that promises the buildup and it occurs over.

Thousands of years.

And that was something that was sort of interesting for me, especially with

people in our today's world that, begin to say things like, well, you know,

I'm, I'm praying for something and I expect something, and if it doesn't

happen next week, then you know, I'm starting to get impatient about it.

Well, I am always amazed when I look at the Old Testament and read

through it chronologically, how there were certain timeframes.

Where people were promised that a messiah is coming, everything will

change, everything will be better, and that better occurred 400 years later.

So let's put that in perspective.

Right now, someone told you, let's just say you're in a difficult situation.

Let's say things look bleak, things look bad for you, either financially or your

health, or just something that's going on bad and someone that you believe

that they've got a good word for you.

They say something to the effect of, oh yes, it's going to be resolved.

Be patient.

It's gonna get better.

And you later find out that that better is 400 years from now.

I mean, I've just, my head it was kind of hard for me to wrap around that.

It kinda let me know that we don't understand time.

The way God understands time or the way God, reveals time might

be a better way of saying it.

But, so anyway, so that's Old Testament creation, covenant exile, promise.

The gospels.

Are the kingdom arriving in the person of Jesus Christ, and

that is of course, that's God.

That's Jesus.

He was man.

He was also God, and that is the kingdom.

Jesus said it many times.

I've studied the kingdom of God.

I'll mention that in the next episode we'll talk about the

kingdom and the kingdom of God.

Those terms are mentioned over a hundred times in the New Testament, and Jesus

said, I have come to bring the kingdom.

That is his purpose, one of his purpose.

And in acts, when we look at the book of Acts, the kingdom continues to expand.

Through the believers in Jesus Christ, through that church,

through that Ecclesia that was established, truthfully at Pentecost.

That's when that started.

So the letters, the ones that came from Paul and others, is really,

and I love this term, coaching believers on how to live in that

kingdom and then also preparing for.

The ending of the old covenant and the time when there will only be

one covenant, which is that new covenant of Jesus Christ, the Messiah

Covenant, if you want to call it that.

And so a lot of the letters, and this is where we really have to

understand this and not take Paul's letters and try to apply them 2000

years later to what's going on here.

we also have to do this while understanding that these were letters

that Paul and others wrote specifically to coach these believers on how to

live in that kingdom during that time.

Also with an old covenant that was still in place.

And then of course we get to Revelation that again, we're gonna talk about

in the last episode of this series.

It's really that final hope that restoration and, a lot of people like to.

Say that it's, it just shows that we win, that Jesus wins, and I'll

say, in many ways, it shows that Jesus won and that he's continue

winning and we're winning through him and with Him and in his kingdom.

But we will, look at that again later in a later episode.

Here's what I, I do want to kinda look at what happens when you ignore the order.

And the context it leads to and, and probably a lot more than

this, but at minimum it leads to confusion, contradiction.

'cause a lot of people say, oh, the Bible contradicts itself.

No, it doesn't.

Not if you understand the story, not if you read through it chronologically,

not if you look at what it was doing at the time it was written, when it

was written and who it was written to, it does not contradict at all.

At all.

It doesn't.

but if you're out of order, if you're out of context, you can

misuse a lot of scriptures and that's one of the things that spurred me

on to do this group of episodes.

the more I started seeing and interacting and seeing people on

social media and, some people that I had been around a long period of

time, some I'd gone to Bible school with I'm like you know what, not only.

Are they not using that scripture correctly?

They really are misusing it.

and I think that that's where it starts becoming, I'll use the word

dangerous, that may be strong.

But misleading might be a softer word, but it could be dangerous.

There are people that are doing things with scriptures out of

context that I believe are, misuse.

We'll just say it that way and we will often miss the why behind.

The what?

And we'll, we'll, we'll use the what?

We'll try to establish rules and regulations and good and

bad based on things without understanding the why and that bigger

picture, I know you've seen it.

We see it in the political arenas here in the United States.

Probably in other parts of the world.

We see it with one denomination versus another.

We see it with groups of people against other groups.

We debate doctrines that would make sense and not be as divisive as they are.

If we really understood the story of scripture, and so that's something that

I'm attempting to make sense of myself and maybe share that as I'm learning this.

Jesus read it as a story and Luke.

24, 27, he explains the story from Moses through the prophets.

In Hebrews one, we see that God used it to speak one way and

now he speaks through his son.

And then I love the beginning of John one.

The word became flesh to fulfill the story that is the Holy Bible.

And so that's the scriptures that back up some of the things

that we're talking about.

Many times we've heard scriptures like, for example, John 5 39 and

40, where Jesus is saying, you study the scriptures, but you miss me.

And often we will see people and we have studied the scriptures, but we've missed.

What it's all about.

All scripture is useful, but it must be read in context.

That's from two Timothy three 16.

So just to kind of close this out, to kind of prepare for the next

episode, the Bible isn't a textbook.

It's not a rule book, it's not the law.

It is a narrative that includes some of those things, but it's a narrative

and if you don't understand the narrative, then you don't understand

how some of those other things fit.

I. Read it as a story and you'll begin to see the heart of the author.

And I do believe this word is divinely inspired by the author and creator

of the universe, but you won't understand the heart if you don't.

Understand the story.

If you take things out of order and out of context, when you see

it, the confusion begins to lift.

You're stepping out of the matrix and the kingdom starts to come into view.

And I'll tell you, it's so liberating when things at one point were.

Just kind of fuzzy and you would just sort of explain things away with statements

like, you just gotta have faith, you just need more faith, brother, come on now.

Just, you know, the, that creation, you just need to have faith or

some of the things from Revelation.

Well, you know, you just need to understand we win.

That's all.

there's more to that.

And if you read it in context.

And in the order that it was written at times and understand it.

Uh, then that's gonna help in the next episode, episode four, we're

gonna zoom in and go into the first century, and this is where I've

been living for about a year or so.

I've just been hanging out there studying the history of it.

Reading some of these, epistles and letters and gospels and trying to

understand when they were written, the audience they were written

to, and all of those things.

And boy has that helped.

We wanna understand the real people and the real audience and why understanding

who the Bible was written to, may the key to unlocking what it's really saying.

To us today, and I've been having fun with that.

I've actually been writing some things sort of in the fiction space.

Related to some of the things I've been learning.

So I love that.

So anyway, thanks for joining me on this journey.

It's been a fun journey for me.

I am hopeful that you're on a similar journey.

It doesn't have to look like mine, but I'm hopeful that you are digging in,

that you're spending more time in the word, in the scripture, you're spending

quiet still, time just to hear the Holy Spirit and allow yourself to be led and

guided to where God wants you to be.

Not where Tim wants you to be.

Not necessarily where, you know, a TV preacher or YouTube preacher wants you

to be, but where God wants you to be.

That is my desire for maybe pushing along this topic.

So hope you've enjoyed this.

Leave comments, love to hear from you down in the comments if, if you're watching

this or, or listening on YouTube or on any of the other platforms, if you're catching

some of these clips on social media.

Let me know what you're thinking on this.

I'd love to get your feedback.

Until next time, next week, we'll see you for episode four of the series.

Why The Bible Doesn't Make Sense yet?