Of all the things I learned and phrases I heard in preparing for Text Message, this one has stayed with me more than any other:

The Bible was written for us but not to us.

Hmmm.

Think about that. All the books of the bible had an original intended audience.

Genesis was to the early Jews.

Deuteronomy was to the Jews established in the Promised Land.

Psalm 137 was to the exiled Jews.

Nehemiah was to the newly returned Jews.

Matthew was to early Jesus-followers of Jewish ancestry.

John was to persecuted believers.

Romans was to the church in Rome.

Philippians was to the church in Philippi.

And, most importantly yet most forgotten, Revelation was to the seven churches in Asia Minor.

None were written to 21st Century American Christians.

The result? The books of the bible can't mean to us what they didn't mean to them. This is especially true of the book of Revelation.

The task of modern-day bible readers, then, is to excavate what the different books meant to their original, intended audiences . . . and then apply those truths & insights into today.

Because although the bible is not written to us, its truth and beauty are most definitely for us.

If you've heard any of the messages in Text Message, you know I'm big on reading the bible out loud. That's how most of the books in the bible are designed to be experienced: audibly and in community.

Unfortunately, we read most of them silently and in isolation.

Anyway, I have been trying to heed my own advice.

Here are some things you'll discover as you read the bible out loud. Even if you're the only one in the room.

1. You'll hear that Genesis 1 begs you not to read it as a science text book. It is something else altogether . . . and the beauty of that something else becomes as clear as the sound of your voice.

2. You'll hear that Psalm 135 is a resposive reading of the kind you hear in churches with a liturgical tradition.

3. You'll hear that Paul builds his argument in Romans around a series of rhetorical questions and emphatic answers -- May it never be! -- leading some modern scholars to conclude that the early church used multiple readers to play the parts of the different "characters."

4. You'll hear that Revelation is full of stopping, turning, and falling. It's more about spiritual re-orientation than crystal ball gazing.

5. You'll hear that the authors of biblical narrative are masters of understatement. My favorite example is 2 Samuel 11:27 in the aftermath of David's adultery with Bathsheba and his murderous plot against her husband Uriah: "But the thing David had done displeased the Lord." Ya think?!