Why Most People Misinterpret the Bible (And Don't Know It)
Sedrick Davis argues that most biblical misinterpretation comes from the reader's heart and mind, not the text itself. He teaches that revelation follows recognition, using passages from Exodus, John, and Hebrews to show how the word reveals or conceals itself based on your posture toward it. The video includes a free Truth Detector test to help you examine how you read.
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Did you know that you can know how to study the Bible and still get it completely wrong? And what most believers don't realize is that they're not misreading the Bible, they're actually being misled by how they read it. Well, by the end of this video, I'm going to give you a way to test which one you're actually doing— reading it or being misled by it. In the last teaching, you learned the 4 mandatory operations for the ABC method of how to study the Bible. Listen, if you missed it, please go back and watch it because it will most definitely help you. One of the questions we'll answer today is, how do you know whether you're reading the Bible right? And here's what it actually looks like. Somebody reads, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," and they use it to shut down every correction anyone ever brings them, even a loving one, even a true one. Somebody else reads, turn the other cheek, and they use it to stay in a situation that they should have left out of years ago. Same Bible, same verse, two completely different outcomes, and both people were certain they were reading it correct. Maybe you've even felt a passage get dismissed emotionally instead of examined honestly by someone else, or maybe even yourself. You didn't misread the words, but what if I told you that there was something else doing the interpreting for you. So now let's ask the real question. When the Bible feels confusing, is the problem ever the text, or is it always the reader? Is the problem ever the word itself, or is it always what's happening on the inside of the person reading it? Well, today we're going to find out. First, let me deal with the misunderstanding. When scripture feels confusing or contradictory, most people blame the text. They almost never stop to examine which mind is doing the reading. Is it the carnal one or the spiritual one? And they rarely ever ask the question whether my emotions have quietly taken over and are secretly interpreting instead of staying in their place. Well, that's what's about to get corrected. So let's start with what's already familiar, the literal word, and we can go from there. In John 6:63, Jesus says this, It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. It's literal, plain reading right there. It's real. It's the doorway. But if you stop there, you're only scratching the surface, because here's what almost nobody tells you about the doorway. We're going to go to Hebrews 4:12 for this. For the word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder from the soul and the spirit and the joints and the marrow, and it is a discerner of the thoughts, and it discerns the intentions of the hearts. In other words, you're not just reading the scripture, the scripture is reading you, and based on what it sees, it has the authority and the right to decide what it will reveal. Now let me show you exactly what this looks like in Exodus 3 with Moses at the burning bush. We're going to read it a little bit. Exodus 3, verses 1 to 4. Verse 1: Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the backside of the desert and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. Verse 2: And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Verse 3: And Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why this bush is not burnt up. Verse 4: And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, then God called him out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, here am I. I want you to notice the bush did not speak until Moses turned aside to look, because revelation waited on his interest. And I'm gonna give you more evidence. We're gonna go to Matthew 16 and 17 now. Verse 17 says this: And Jesus answered and said unto him, blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. Jesus did not reveal his identity until after Peter identified him correctly. Here's the principle: revelation follows recognition. So if the word is examining you while you're reading it, you have to ask yourself, what exactly is it looking at? Because here's the part that almost nobody catches about the word, and it's this: the word of God is discerning your thoughts. That's right, it's looking at you. If it sees a preconceived notion already sitting in you, something you've already decided, you know, it doesn't necessarily correct it. Sometimes it just lets you keep it. And I'm going to show you in scripture. Luke chapter 23, verse 3. And Pilate asked Jesus, saying, art thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus answered him, saying, thou sayest it. Listen, Pilate walks in with his own framing already built. He said, so you're the king of the Jews. And I want you to notice Jesus didn't argue with the framing. He didn't call angels out the sky to prove it. He doesn't even correct it. He just answers, you said it, not me. He lets Pilate hold on to a belief that he already walked in with. Why? Because God is not trying to force truth on somebody who's already made up their mind. We're not done here. I want to show you another example. We're going to go to the book of Numbers chapter 22, where God tells a prophet named Balaam plainly, "Do not go. Don't curse these people. They're my people." And then Balaam, because of what's being offered, goes back and asks God again anyway. The second time, God essentially says, "Fine, if the man called for you, get up and go with them." God saw that Balaam's heart was never actually turned toward obedience. And this is not what you want God to see when you go to study the word. You don't want the word to look inside of you and see that you're not coming to be a student, but you're coming to go and debate. You're coming with a preconceived notion that you already know what you're looking for. If you just want permission, the word of God will oftentimes allow you to get it. So I noticed this— Balaam heads down that road. He wanted permission. He didn't want to obey. In the very next verse, it shows an angel of the Lord standing in the way against him with a sword drawn, ready to kill him. Balaam, the prophet with a great gift to see the future, couldn't even see the angel, but the lowly donkey could. And every time she turned aside to avoid it, Balaam beat her for it. And then the Lord opened his eyes. When his eyes were finally open, the angel told him plainly why he'd come. Numbers 22, verses 30, 31 to 33 say this: Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way with his sword drawn in his hand, and he bowed his head and fell flat on his face. Verse 32, look at what the angel says: And the angel of the Lord said unto him, why have you smitten the donkey 3 times? Behold, I went out to withstand thee Because your way is perverse before me, and the donkey saw me and turned aside from me these 3 times. Unless she had turned from me, I would have certainly killed you by now, but I would have spared it. I want you to read that again because the angel says, I would have killed you. God let Balaam walk down the path that his heart was already set on. Permission and all, it was gonna cost him his life. The donkey saw the danger before the prophet did. And that's the pattern. See, when your heart is set on what you want and what you want is wrong, the Lord will not always stop your path before it turns deadly. Sometimes he'll let you keep walking it, sword already drawn in front of you, and whether you survive it or not depends on whether something in your life has the sense to turn aside when you don't. So if the word will let you keep what you already believe, what's actually deciding whether you receive truth or keep the lie? Great question. 1 Corinthians answers this. Chapter 2, verse 14. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. So see, the problem is not the word. It's the mind reading it. And here's exactly what it looks like side by side so we can know. Two people read Matthew 7:1, judge not that ye be not judged. They read it this week. Reader 1 is carnal-minded in that moment that he read it. He's using that verse to silence a friend who lovingly points out a real pattern of sin in his life. He's not interpreting the text, he's weaponizing it to protect what he doesn't want to be touched. On the other hand, reader number 2, who is spiritual-minded, reads the exact same verse. She reads it in context. She sees it's about hypocritical, self-righteous condemnation, and she actually checks her own heart before she corrects anyone else's, the way the verses in the very next chapter say so. Same words, same book, same week. One reader protected sin, the other one produced fruit. The verse wasn't the problem. The mind of the reader was. And here's exactly why you can't allow any emotion to get in the way to be trusted to do the job. Because when you look at what's going on, Jeremiah reveals something in chapter 17, verse 9. He says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Because he realizes something. Our emotions were never designed to interpret the the truth. It was designed to interpret how we feel about whatever situation we're being confronted with, and that's what makes it deception. I want you to keep this in mind: the greatest deception is when a person does not think they're being deceived. And Satan is the master of that. And so is the heart of the old man. It's already been given over to a spirit of deception. It will always believe a lie because it cannot agree with the truth of God. That's not me saying that, that's scripture. It's 2 Thessalonians, we'll read it. Chapter 2, verses 10 to 12. And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they receive not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. Verse 11. And for this cause God shall send them a strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, that they all might be damned, because they believe not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. You want to know what almost nobody teaches? That even as a believer of salvation, there are two hearts still at play. Proverbs 23:7 say, for as he thinketh in his heart, so is he. On one hand, he's saying eat and drink, but his heart is not with thee. See, that's the old heart. It's the natural thinking. It's the deceitful one that Jeremiah just described. This is why it's so important to get the new heart that Ezekiel tells us about in chapter 36, verse 26. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. See, this is the new heart that God gives us when we receive salvation, and it matters because it's the only heart that will allow us to get away from deception. See, the old man's heart is thinking exactly how it's supposed to think, and you won't know deception gets in because it's undetectable to that heart. You don't feel deceived. The old heart's thinking and it's feeling normal because it's coming from the inside, and that's what makes it such a great deception. Reader 1 from 1 minute ago, we read about, he felt completely justified, and that's the trap. So what happens when somebody keeps reading with the wrong heart long enough? Because even though many can't teach this principle, God's word has a unique system of self-defense built into it. It is uniquely designed to either open up to a person and reveal itself, or seal itself to keep a person from knowing what's going on. This is exactly how God kept the princes of the world from knowing the plans that he had for Jesus. Remember this: the word of God is not just letters on a page. It is a living organism. Jesus said it has a spirit and it is living. Isaiah 29, verses 10-11 says, for the Lord hath poured out upon you a spirit of deep sleep and hath closed your eyes. The prophets of your rulers, the seers, hath he covered, and the vision of all has become as unto the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray. And he says, I cannot, for it is sealed. See, the word can become genuinely sealed even to the sincere, even to the educated. If you approach it the wrong way, the word seals itself. And you may ask, well, how does someone actually get it unsealed? I can tell you this: it's not by being smarter. It's definitely not by being smarter. It's by humbling yourself. Matthew 16: Matthew 16:13-19, when Jesus is saying, hey Peter, who do men say that I am? Peter answers with the right answer. He said, thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And because of that answer, Peter receives keys of the kingdom. This is important because Peter answered— his answer wasn't a smarter guess. It was already given, and that's exactly why the keys follow. But here's the part that literally nobody wants to sit with. God will never force a truth on a heart that does not want it. If you don't love the truth, he will allow you to believe what you prefer. He's done it time and time again throughout scripture, not just in 2 Thessalonians. In 1 Kings chapter 22, we're going to read verses 19 to 22. Verse 19 says this: And he said, Hear thou therefore the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left. Verse 20, and the Lord said, who shall persuade Ahab that he may go and fall at Ramoth Gilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. Verse 21, and there came forth a spirit, stood before the Lord and said, I will persuade him. Verse 22, and the Lord said, go unto him. Wherewith? How will you do it? He says, I will go forth and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all of his prophets. And the Lord said, well, thou shalt persuade him and prevail. Go forth and do so. A lying spirit. Listen to me. A lying spirit stood before the Lord and said, let me go deceive him. And God allowed it. Why? Because Ahab had already rejected the truth. God doesn't deceive people. He allows deception when truth is rejected. Now here's the reveal. Because I, I want you to actually catch yourself in this the same way that we caught skipping subtraction in the last teaching. Out of two readers we just looked at, the one protecting sin versus the one checking her own heart first, which one do you think most people believe they are, even in the moment where they're being the other one? The one protecting sin. Almost nobody sits down to read scripture planning to misuse That's not how the old heart works. It doesn't announce itself. It feels exactly like conviction, exactly like wisdom. It feels like it's finally getting free of guilt, and it feels like I have some secret knowledge that nobody else has, and it makes me better than them. That's what makes it deception. It's not just a mistake. You don't just get to feel it happening from the end. So if you've never once in reading the Bible had a first correct you instead of comfort you, that's not a sign that you're doing it right. That may be a sign that the old heart has been doing all of your reading. So you may ask, how does all this, the reading, the mind, the heart, actually tie together? Let me demonstrate. In John 1:1, it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. We move down to verse 14. John 1:14 says, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and full of truth. See how the precision must matter? And this is why you have to be very clear in understanding how God operates, because what many don't know is there's a mathematical dimension in God where the literal and the spiritual facets of the word combine combined to cause supernatural events. But you'll only experience that, and it will only work when the reader has dealt with what we covered in the previous foundations. So what happens to somebody who just skips all of this and just starts reading and starts studying Mark 7 and 8? You have let go of the commands of God and you're holding on to the human traditions. If you skip the order, human tradition will end up standing in for the actual commands of of God. Not because anyone meant for that to happen, but because the foundation wasn't built properly. But you get the order right, and here's what actually will open up. Mark 4:20: And these are they that are sown on good ground, such as hear the word, and receive it, and bring forth fruit, some thirtyfold, some sixtyfold, some an hundredfold. The same word received the same way still producing 3 depths of different fruit. Mastering the foundation is only the start of the depth journey. It's not the end of it. The Bible is not confusing. It's revealing. And what it reveals depends on who's reading it. So here's what I want you to actually do, and I need you to hear me on this one the same way I wanted you to hear me in the last one. This is not a nice set of reflective questions I have designed for you. This is a mirror to detect which heart just did your reading. Think of the last verse that hit you hard this week, the one that you quoted, posted, or used to make a decision, and ask yourself, did it correct me, or did it comfort something in me that actually needed to be corrected? Then ask yourself, did I check the context around it the way that Reader #2 did in our story, or did I stop the moment it gave me the feeling that I didn't want or didn't agree with? And lastly, ask yourself this: Is that verse right now producing fruit in my life, or is it protecting something I haven't been willing to let it touch? See, you don't cleanse your heart by trying harder. You cleanse it by feeding it something different. And that starts with catching in real time which heart did the reading. Now you can sit with those 4 questions on your own, or you can just run the last 30 days of your reading of the Bible through my free Truth Detector test. It walks you through the actual verses you've learned recently. It helps you tell verse by verse whether they've corrected you or comforted you, because the hardest deception to catch is the one that feels like discernment. Well, the Truth Detector takes you through both hearts, both minds, and gives you a plan for rereading with the one that actually receives the truth. It's free. You can get it through the link below. It's in this video. I pinned it in the comment. This is the actual test that the entire video was built around— not whether you know how to study, but who's actually doing the reading. And if this one showed you how easy it is to misread God's word, wait until you see how badly we've misread money in it. Go watch Is Tithing in the New Testament and What Scripture Actually Says. It's sure to help you. And as always, hey, thanks for me. Be blessed. My name is Sedrick Davis, and I am God's prisoner.
