You’re probably reading the Bible the wrong way. I did this for years and missed a lot of what God was saying through various parts of the Bible. Parts of it really resonated with me, and parts of it, frankly, I could do without. Then I learned how to look at the Bible as a whole, not little parts put together that were unrelated, but as a complete work. When I did this things began to make far more sense. If this sounds familiar, you may not understand what the Bible is intended to do.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. – 2 Timothy 3:16-17
All Scripture. Every bit of it. You realize Paul was writing the New Testament as he said this, right? When Jude said that the faith has been delivered “once for all” that the New Testament wasn’t completed? Paul reminds Timothy that from “infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” You realize he’s talking about the Old Testament, right?
So what are we to make of the Bible as a whole? Famed pastor Andy Stanley has recently said Christians need to “unhitch” themselves from the Old Testament, and that the Ten Commandments don’t apply to Christians. I’ve known many Christians over the years who would say something similar, that the Old Testament has no bearing on us today, citing arguments based on a misreading of Colossians 2:14 and arguments based on the names Old Testament and New Testament, terms which Scripture itself never applies to itself.
I’ve always liked the description that the Bible Project uses when describing the Bible: “Our mission is to show how the Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus.” Scot McKnight summarizes it this way, “…there is an overarching plot to the Bible–God’s creating the heavens and earth to completing his creation work in the new heavens and new earth.”
Over the next few weeks we are going to discuss how we should approach reading and understanding the Bible. It’s a collection of 66 writings – letters, sermons, history, songs, prayers, complaints, warnings and prophecies – written by over 40 people over a span of 1600 years in three languages on three continents and has a unifying theme that can only be explained by a God behind its writing. And we completely miss it when we try to pick apart the Bible into little nuggets of information rather than viewing Scripture in context of the entirety of God’s Word.
As we approach this study, let us look at the Word with fresh eyes to discover the ancient truths perhaps for the first time, and let us remember that God’s Word never returns empty (Isa. 55:11). When we study the Word, we are blessed in doing so.
Living in the Word 