10 Things the Bible Says That Might Surprise You

Picture a wedding party in the small town of Cana. The music is playing, the food is great, but a disaster is unfolding: the wine has run out. It’s a social catastrophe. This is the setting for Jesus’ first public miracle, and it’s just one of many surprising things in the Bible that challenge our modern assumptions about faith, God, and what it means to follow him. The scriptures are not a tidy rulebook, but a sprawling, earthy, and often unexpected story.

TL;DR

The Bible is filled with passages that can feel startlingly modern and counter-intuitive. It celebrates embodied joy like drinking wine and dancing, includes sensual love poetry, and gives full permission for believers to lament and complain to God. Far from a simple instruction manual, it’s a complex library of books that consistently upends expectations.

Key Answers

Does the Bible forbid drinking alcohol? No, Jesus' first miracle was turning water into a massive quantity of high-quality wine for a wedding celebration. (John 2:7-10)

Is it wrong to be angry or sad with God? No, the largest category of psalm in the Bible is the lament, where writers pour out their honest grief, anger, and confusion to God. (Psalm 13:1-2)

Does the Bible say, “God helps those who help themselves?” No, that popular phrase isn’t in the Bible; the scripture actually says the opposite—that Christ came for the weak and helpless. (Romans 5:6-8)

Fill the waterpots with water.

John 2:7-10 · KJV

1. Jesus’ First Miracle Was Saving a Party

When the wedding at Cana ran dry, Jesus didn’t deliver a lecture on sobriety. He told the servants to fill six stone water jars—each holding twenty to thirty gallons—with water. The result was between 120 and 180 gallons of the best wine anyone had ever tasted.

Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them up to the brim. And he saith unto them, Draw out now, and bear unto the governor of the feast. And they bare it. When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine, and knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;) the governor of the feast called the bridegroom, And saith unto him, Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now.

John 2:7-10 (KJV)

This wasn’t just grape juice. The Methodist commentator Adam Clarke notes that the wine Jesus made was “perfectly pure, and highly nutritive!” This first sign of Jesus’s ministry is an endorsement of celebration and joy, not a condemnation of it.

Let them praise his name in the dance!

Psalm 149:3 · WEB

2. You’re Commanded to Dance

For some, worship is a quiet, solemn, and stationary affair. But the Bible often describes praise as a full-body experience. The Psalms, Israel’s great songbook, are full of instructions to worship God with music and movement.

Let them praise his name in the dance! Let them sing praises to him with tambourine and harp!

Psalm 149:3 (WEB)

This isn’t just a suggestion. It’s a reflection of how God’s people have always celebrated. King David, the nation’s greatest leader, famously brought the Ark of the Covenant back to Jerusalem with a display of uninhibited joy.

And David danced before the LORD with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod.

2 Samuel 6:14 (KJV)

As the great preacher C.H. Spurgeon noted, this kind of worship has deep roots: “Thus let them repeat the triumph of the Red Sea, which was ever the typical glory of Israel.” It is a physical expression of spiritual freedom.

How beautiful and how pleasant you are, love, for delights!

Solomon 7:6-9 · WEB

3. There’s a Sensual Love Poem in the Bible

Tucked away in the Old Testament is the Song of Solomon, a book that has made more than a few Sunday School teachers blush. It is an unapologetic, passionate, and beautifully written love poem celebrating romantic and physical love between a man and a woman. It’s far from the prudish text some imagine the Bible to be.

How beautiful and how pleasant you are, love, for delights! This, your stature, is like a palm tree, your breasts like its fruit. I said, ‘I will climb up into the palm tree. I will take hold of its fruit.’ Let your breasts be like clusters of the vine, the smell of your breath like apples, your mouth like the best wine, that goes down smoothly for my beloved, gliding through the lips of those who are asleep.

Song of Solomon 7:6-9 (WEB)

This book affirms that physical desire and delight, within the covenant of marriage, are good gifts from God, meant to be enjoyed.

4. “God Helps Those Who Help Themselves” Isn’t Scripture

It’s one of the most quoted “Bible verses” that isn’t in the Bible at all. The phrase was popularized by Benjamin Franklin. The Bible’s message is the complete opposite. Scripture teaches that God’s help is for the helpless, not for the self-sufficient. The Apostle Paul makes this point crystal clear.

For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:6-8 (KJV)

Commentator Matthew Henry drives this home, explaining that we were in a “dire and helpless state, unable to recover ourselves.” It is precisely our weakness that makes God’s love so powerful. He doesn’t wait for us to get our act together; he meets us where we are.

5. Jesus Got Angry (and Flipped Tables)

The popular image of Jesus is often of a gentle, soft-spoken teacher. While he was certainly full of compassion, he also demonstrated powerful, righteous anger against injustice and hypocrisy. Nowhere is this clearer than when he entered the temple in Jerusalem and found the courtyard turned into a marketplace.

And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables;

John 2:15 (KJV)

This wasn’t a momentary loss of temper. This was a deliberate act of prophetic judgment against a system that was exploiting the poor and dishonoring God’s house. His anger was not petty or selfish; it was a fire kindled by love for his Father and for the people being taken advantage of.

6. The Bible Invites You to Complain to God

Do you ever feel like you have to put on a brave face in your prayers? That you can’t bring your real frustration, doubt, or even anger to God? The book of Psalms gives us a powerful alternative. The single largest category of psalm is the lament, a raw, honest cry of the heart.

How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily? how long shall mine enemy be exalted over me?

Psalm 13:1-2 (KJV)

These are not faithless prayers. They are prayers of deep faith, honest enough to bring the hardest questions directly to the only one who can answer them. The Bible makes room for our sorrow.

7. The First Christians Shared Everything

In an age of fierce individualism, the economic life of the very first church in Jerusalem can seem shocking. The book of Acts describes a community so transformed by the resurrection of Jesus that their entire relationship to private property was rearranged.

And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.

Acts 2:44-45 (KJV)

This wasn’t a forced, state-run communism. It was a voluntary, Spirit-led outpouring of generosity. The Jamieson-Fausset-Brown commentary simply notes the radical nature of this early practice, saying, “all that believed were together, and had all things common.” Their unity in Christ was so real that it overflowed into their bank accounts.

8. The Heroes of the Bible Are Deeply Flawed

The Bible does not present its heroes as perfect saints on pedestals. It gives us an unvarnished look at their failures. King David was a man after God’s own heart, but he was also an adulterer and a murderer. Peter was the rock on whom Jesus would build his church, yet he denied even knowing Jesus three times on the night he was arrested. The scriptures are relentlessly honest about the brokenness of its main characters, which makes the story of God’s grace even more powerful.

9. The Bible Warns Against the Pursuit of Wealth

While some have tried to use the Bible to endorse a "health and wealth" gospel, the New Testament is remarkably clear in its warnings against materialism and the desire to be rich. The Apostle Paul, writing to his young apprentice Timothy, offers a perspective that cuts directly against a culture of accumulation.

But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we certainly can’t carry anything out. But having food and clothing, we will be content with that. But those who are determined to be rich fall into a temptation and a snare and many foolish and harmful lusts, such as drown men in ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some have been led astray from the faith in their greed, and have pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

1 Timothy 6:6-10 (WEB)

The goal is not wealth, but “godliness with contentment.” The problem is not money itself, but the love of it, which Paul describes as a snare that leads to ruin.

But Mary was standing outside at the tomb weeping.

John 20:11-18 · WEB

10. God Consistently Chose the Overlooked

But Mary was standing outside at the tomb weeping... She turned around and saw Jesus standing, and didn’t know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?”... Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him, “Rabboni!” which is to say, “Teacher!”... Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had said these things to her.

John 20:11-18 (WEB)