Finding Rest in God’s Word: A Better Way to Read Your Bible

This morning I want to share with you a way I have learned to read the Bible — especially the Old Testament — that has helped me as a Christian to gain a better revelation and understanding of Father God and His heart toward me.

Because many of us open the Bible out of duty and close it feeling confused, or worse, condemned. We were promised rest and found rules. If that has been your experience, I want to suggest that the problem is not the Book. It is the way we have been taught to read it.

The Bible is not a rulebook

Here is the first shift: understand that the Word of God is not primarily a book of rules for living, but the book of the revelation of a Person. The Bible is not primarily there to tell you what to do or what not to do. It is a story that reveals someone to you — your Father God — hoping that this revelation would lead you to experience eternal life and, as a consequence, change every aspect of your life, including the way you live.

Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.

John 5:39–40 (KJV)

What God wants to do is capture your heart first — before He captures your head or your hand.

God does not just want you to obey His laws. He wants you to be the kind of person who obeys His laws — someone who desires them, not out of fear of what happens if you don’t, but out of a desire to be a certain kind of person.

Take forgiveness. God wants you to forgive — not because if you don’t forgive you will go to hell, or because unforgiveness is holding you down (though those things are true) — but because it is good to forgive, and you are a good person.

Jesus said to be good the way your Father in heaven is good. When was the last time God forgave someone so that He would not miss heaven? When was the last time God did anything so that He would not go to hell? Everything God does, He does because of who He is. Because He is a good God, the thing He does is good.

Imagine if that became how you live and the reason for everything you do. That is the goal of the Bible. It is the story of God chasing your heart, God revealing Himself to you — so that as you behold God, you can say, “Oh wow, this is who I am too.” Like the baby eagle raised among chickens that never knew what it was until it beheld what it came from.

Can you get good ways to live out of the Bible? Sure — just as you can learn English by reading a car manual. But that is not the purpose of a car manual. The purpose of a car manual is to show you how to operate a car.

One God, one book

Here is the second shift: the Old Testament is the New Testament concealed, and the New Testament is the Old Testament revealed. In other words, there is no difference between the Old and New Testaments as far as revealing Father God to God’s people is concerned. The only difference is the eyes with which you read. Can those eyes see?

Think about it. If the Old Testament is no longer relevant, is it not odd that God would give us thirty-nine books He does not want us to read or understand? Why not just give us the twenty-seven books of the New Testament?

Yet we all know there are plenty of things in the Old Testament that we cannot do anymore — in fact, doing them today would be disobedience to God. And this is what has created so much confusion, because each group of Christians has had different views on which parts of the Old Testament carry over and which do not. Creflo Dollar, who for thirty years preached tithing as one of those Old Testament practices we carried over, recently came out with an equally forceful teaching saying that is no longer true.

Again — the problem is approaching the Bible as a book of rules rather than as a book that reveals a Person. And in that context I am here to tell you: as far as revealing the true God is concerned, the Old and New Testaments are one book.

This is why I push back on statements like “I prefer the New Testament over the Old” or “the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath and the God of the New Testament is a God of love.” No. God concealed the New Testament in the Old, and God reveals the Old Testament in the New. Grace is concealed in the Old Testament and revealed in the New. Love and mercy are concealed in the Old and revealed in the New. You cannot understand the Old Testament without the New, and you cannot enter into all the glory of the New without it.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

James 1:17 (KJV)

I often ask people: if Jesus is the same God as the God of the Old Testament, how come He lives with and accepts people whom the Old Testament seems to tell us God killed instantly? Some say one was the dispensation of law and the other the dispensation of grace. To which I say: so did God change from one dispensation to another? Is He a God in whom there is variableness and shadows of change? Were people simply unfortunate to have lived in the wrong dispensation?

The fact is that the true God and His nature never changed. The God who is revealed in the New Testament was simply concealed in the Old. He was always there — the same God — but hidden from mankind. Why? Because man’s heart was darkened by sin, “alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Ephesians 4:18). God and grace and love and mercy seemed hidden to us — until Jesus came and revealed what had been concealed.

The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up. From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Matthew 4:16–17 (KJV)

Look for Jesus first in every story

The third shift follows from the first two: approach the Bible looking for Christ our Savior, or God our Father, first — in every single story, both Old and New Testament. The whole Bible has only one point: in Christ, a Father who loves us became our Savior. The end. If you do not see this point in your reading of the Bible, you have not yet read the Word of God.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

John 1:1, 4–5 (KJV)

Jesus is the Word of God. The Word of God is not letters and writings and rules and regulations — it is a Person. And every time you read the Bible, if you do not encounter this Person, you have not read the Word of God.

Remember the road to Emmaus. Two disciples walked along, talking sadly about everything that had happened — the crucifixion, the empty tomb, the strange reports. Jesus Himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were kept from knowing Him. And then He did something remarkable with their Bibles.

O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

Luke 24:25–27 (KJV)

Beginning at Moses — the Old Testament — He showed them Himself in all the scriptures. Later He told them that everything written in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms concerning Him had to be fulfilled, and then “opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:44–45). That is the prayer for every Bible reader: Lord, open my understanding.

Three questions to bring to every passage

So here is how this works practically. Jesus is the point of any Bible passage you read — look for Jesus first. Bring these three questions to every story:

• What does this passage tell me about who Jesus (or Father God) is — or who He is not — in relation to me? Where is Jesus concealed in this story, and what is my relationship to Him?
• What New Testament passage(s) reveal the Jesus (or Father God) I see in this Old Testament story?
• What is my response to Jesus (or Father God) because of who He is to me?

Then try it. Take the story of Joseph and his brothers: where is Jesus concealed there — and where are we concealed in it? Take the Exodus and ask the same. Take David and Goliath. Ask where Christ is hidden, which New Testament passages reveal Him, and what your response should be because of who He is to you.

Do this, and something changes. The Bible stops being homework and becomes a meeting place. You stop reading to earn and start reading to behold. This week, open a familiar Old Testament story, ask those three questions, and pray the Emmaus prayer: Lord, open my understanding. He loves to answer it — and there is rest on the other side.