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This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Adam Sanders, Colby Houchin, and Art Devos.
Art Devos
Hey, so welcome to the podcast. We're going to answer a couple more questions. We have four questions that we're going to tackle this month and we want to thank you for tuning in. My name is Art DeVos, I'm the executive director here at Camp Rock Ministries. To my right we have Colby Houchin again, who is the youth pastor at Monument Bible Church in Scottsbluff. And to my left here, we have somebody who is new and he's going to be floating in and out of this podcast as well. When Dan Terrell, who is not able to be here, then Adam is going to fill in and he'll fill in if I can't be here and he'll fill in. Basically, he's going to be a regular here as a part of our podcast as well. Looking forward
Adam Sanders
Looking forward to it.
Art Devos
Adam is the associate pastor at Harvest Valley Church. What's your official title?
Adam Sanders
Pastor of Families and Discipleship.
Art Devos
Alright, perfect. I was only on the search committee that helped bring him into the church. You think I would know this, but I don't claim to know everything unless it's with my children, then I know everything. Alright, so we're going to jump in. We're going to get started. Thank you again for tuning in. Let's get going. Gentlemen, how can you take a verse that some people take out of context and turn it around and teach them in the right context? Great question. Because we do live in a day and age where people love to post a random Bible verse and thinking it very much applies to their situation and how they want it applied to their situation. And so we see that a lot. It comes up in conversation from time to time. So how can we do this?
Colby Houchin
Yeah, I can get started. I think there's a lot of different avenues that this question can go. And so we could look at it from the perspective of how do we make sure that we aren't speaking out of context when we interpret scripture, we could talk about on social media, how do we address that or what about with friends or what about those types of situations? So there's a lot of different nuances to this question, but I think in general, one thing I want to just state beforehand; I think there's a lot that we can go back and forth, but just to start, what we encourage and what we call good biblical interpretation is of Jesus. It is looking for the intended meaning and the intended context of a verse. That's what we desire to see. Eisegesis is something that we see a lot in our culture, kind of what Art alluded to. And Eisegesis is when we're going to input our own meaning or our own biases or our own message within the text. And so often, and again, this is just a starting place, this isn't my answer, but often what we see in our culture is what we call Eisegesis. And so what we want to do is we want to pursue Exegesis. And so I can talk a little bit more in a minute about what that means, but do you guys have anything you want to say?
Art Devos
I think I'll add in, the starting point has to be scripture, right? The starting point has to be scripture. If you're going to talk about, "Hey, that's out of context," then you need to also know why it's out of context. What is the context where that passage is found? And to really be looking at that, and we can know that even whether it's something applied to daily living or just our spiritual health, all that in general. I want to start and just look at 1 Timothy 4:1. That's where, "now the spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron." And then it starts to go through a list and everything too. The context of that too is, you start to see people going further and further away from sound doctrine. And so we are supposed to test all things by scripture. And so when somebody is speaking just like we are today, even in a podcast, everything that we say; you should be able to come back to scripture and to say, "you know what? That's true and this is why it's true, because it's right here found in the Bible and we know that to be true." So testing it by what scripture has to say becomes very important. We then can start to understand why something that would be said would be taken out of context, whether it was an eisegesis form of interpretation or whether it's truly an exegetical form of interpretation.
Adam Sanders
Yeah, absolutely. I think, one thing that came to mind for me too, even thinking about this question a little more was just the posture that we have towards that person is going to say a lot. And I think I've thought of different scenarios where this could happen, whether it's a brother and sister in Christ or maybe even someone who's not a believer. But I wrote down a list of maybe just some assumptions we can start with as just the beginning point. And one of those, if it's a believer in Christ, we can assume that they love Jesus, they love God's word. The reason they're even going to this verse is because they want to study the Bible and they want to be faithful to what it's saying. And so we can kind of give them that benefit of the doubt. If it's a non-believer, we could even assume things like, "hey, if they're studying the scriptures or going to it, they probably have some interest." The Lord's working in their life. And so, want to approach them as someone who genuinely wants to know the truth. And from there with that posture, I think it helps a long way to teach it as a teachable moment. So you can go to them and say, "Hey, when we study a verse, we look at it within the context of the paragraph that we find it in." We look at what's happening in that particular book of the Bible. What are they addressing? What are the events that are happening? And we even use the entirety of scripture. If we see a pattern in scripture that would debunk that idea, then we know that that can't be what it means in this particular instance. And so just kind of walking someone through that, not only is it charitable, but if you're not doing it in a really smart way where you're trying to make them look bad, then you can really help them to understand more.
Colby Houchin
Yeah, absolutely. I think just going off a little bit what you were talking about, grand narrative of scripture is something that is incredibly important to understand in order to read verses in context. So for example, when you read the book of Proverbs, what you are reading at the beginning of the book, it's a speech between a father and a son of building up his son in righteousness and helping him walk a godly and disciplined life. And then you get all these little proverbs, all these little sayings, and I actually have a couple to talk about at a later question. But what you'll find in the book of Proverbs, you'll read these different Proverbs, and what you'll learn is they're not promises, but they are instruction for godly living. And so what you do is, you read the proverbs and you develop your wisdom based off of the word of God. And you will find that it's not a promise from God, because you read it in the proverb when it says that, I can't remember the exact quote, but when it talks about parents building their kids up in the way of righteousness, "they won't depart from that path." That's not a promise that's not--and so you'll see people utilizing that out of context and then they'll be like, "well, the word of God is not true because this didn't happen for my child." No, what it is is it points us in the right direction, which is to look at Christ and to understand who God is and to let our hearts be informed by Him. And so great narrative of scripture is one of the first steps to understanding context, because we're going to read Jeremiah differently than Proverbs, differently than Psalms. Differently than the Gospel of Matthew, differently than Revelation and differently from the book of Romans. And so you have to understand that. And then within that I think you have to start asking yourself good questions of who? Why? Those types of questions. And so for example, I don't mean to call anybody out here. I don't mean to pop anybody's bubble if they have a tattoo of this, or they have wall art or if it's on your Instagram bio. I'm sorry, but looking at verses such as Jeremiah 29:11 or Philippians 4:13. So Jeremiah 29:11, let see if I can find it here, "for I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." That is a really good billboard. That's a great: put it on a piece of wood, put it in your kitchen, right? It's really uplifting. The problem with that verse, when you even look one verse backwards at Jeremiah 29:10, you see, "this is what the Lord says: When 70 years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good excuse, my promise to bring you back to this place." So, you don't get the whole context there, but when you read the book of Jeremiah and when you understand the history of Israel, what you understand is Jeremiah, at this point in his letter, is writing to a group of people that are either about to be put into very bad exile or are in exile because of their sinfulness and because of their godlessness for generation upon generation, upon generation. And so he's talking to a destroyed, hurt culture that has been dragged into slavery to a foreign land. And he's saying, at the end of this 70 years, your faithfulness, when you turn back to me, when you repent of your ways, I have a plan for you. You are my people. But it is not this like, "man, if I am raising my kids and I'm living my good Christian life, God has a good plan for me." There's a context there that we need to acknowledge. And it's kind of the same thing with Philippians 4:13. I should have flipped there a moment ago. Do either of you guys have that one memorized? I'm really bad with memorization.
Adam Sanders
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
Colby Houchin
Yeah, or I can do all things through a verse taken out of context, right? It's the same thing. So the group of people that usually speak that, or that use that verse, often it's athletes. "I can do all things through Christ that gives me strength." "I can win the big game, I can score the most points, I can hit a home run. I can overcome my enemies." The problem with that is that Paul didn't write that after winning the church softball league. He wrote that while in prison. He wrote that he was suffering, he was in prison. He didn't know if he was going to die or if he was going to live. He addressed that if you read the entirety of Philippians, and he is trying to make a case for joy and hope in a joyless and hopeless situation. He's trying to point his church to living for Christ in everything that they do. And he's saying this beautiful message where, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." It is not in the context of, "if I believe in Jesus or if I work really hard, I can accomplish all of my goals." It is recognizing a dependency on the Holy Spirit and leaning into the plan that God has for me and recognizing that the hardships I'm in God can get me through. There's a different message in there than, "I'm an athlete and I can win if I do the right thing." And so, with context, we have to talk about who's writing this. What's happening during this time in history? Why are they writing it? Who are they writing this to? Another thing that I talk about is the 20/20 rule. This isn't perfect, but in order to get a better idea of what's happening in context, read 20 verses before and 20 verses after. And when you read that chunk instead of just one little verse, you'll actually be able to see kind of what's going on. And again, 20/20 isn't the perfect analogy. It's not saying that if you do that, you'll always understand the context. But that's a start in order to understand the broader message that's being had there.
Art Devos
And if you're a camper that's been out here in the last year, especially last two years, you would've heard, especially in the junior high core camp or high school senior camps, you would've heard us talking about this at some point in time. Because we are feeling more and more strongly about this idea that you have got to be taking these verses in context as they were meant to be taken in there. And though it might be difficult to figure out, sometimes you can, it's there. And so we teach a class at Co-op together along with Dan and stuff too, and we've talked a lot about just the idea that we've got to know the context of it, because otherwise it's so easy to start putting our own thoughts and our own efforts. And so we've established this right? That we believe the Bible to be true in its entirety and that we can know and look at God's word and to start to understand its authority, its purpose, and what it's actually pointing to and to be useful in our daily lives; godly living. But now to fully answer this question, and you started to talk about the posturing of it, how do you now approach that with someone? And so 1. make sure you do understand the context yourself; study up on it. I think that's going to be really important to know because you can't say, "I know that's out of context, but I don't know how," and then just leave it because that's not going to be helpful to you. It's not going to be helpful to them. So know why it's out of context. Understand the purpose of that. Now, it really depends on that relationship that you have with that person of how you can approach it. If it is a complete stranger, you're probably not going to change their mind and not really get very far in a conversation with them. If it is a close friend or even a family member---my grandmother, I had an amazing relationship with my grandmother. But every once in a while she would say things to me that I'd be like, "where? Help me out. Where does it say that?" And it was funny cause she would go, "well, I think it's in there." And so we would start exploring that a little bit and I got to explore the Bible even more with my grandmother at times, and to kind of help that out. But I had a special relationship. I could bring that up and a lot of times she would laugh about it as soon as we started speaking and she'd understand. But she still wanted to continue to grow in her knowledge because she was a believer. She understood, "alright, this is good for me and I want to keep learning. I want to keep growing." So yeah, it really depends on that relationship and how you approach it. But always approach it in love. Always.
Colby Houchin
So, something that comes to mind on that conversation when it comes to people online misusing scripture, or people that you don't have relationships with, it is very challenging to have fruitful conversations. But when we look at the church and when we look at the intended way for people to be built up, we see kind of how this process can be played out. So looking at Ephesians 4:11 and down. "So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and the teachers to equip his people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining the whole measure of fullness of Christ." What that points to is the church being a place of knowledge and teaching and learning and growing and challenging. And where you come together, you have leaders of that church, but you also just have the body of that church, the diversity of the church that is unified around the gospel, that is unified around the good word of scripture. And what you do is you build yourself up. And then if you look at verse 14, it says, "they will no longer be infants tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people and their deceitful, scheming. Instead speaking the truth and love," which is huge in this conversation, "speaking the truth and love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head that is Christ." This conversation is best had in the church, in loving relationships, in conversation with people that are mature, loving followers of Jesus Christ. And yes, you will find on Facebook that there's some really bad theology and there is, you'll find it and it can be really challenging. It can be really frustrating. Or you can find kids at your school that don't know how to use scripture well, or just use it as almost just like a hammer to bash on people's skulls. What we have to acknowledge is that the body of Christ is there to build each other up, and that is the place where we come together and we study the word and we build each other up and we equip each other for works of righteousness so that we aren't the infants being tossed back and forth by false teaching. But we are the rock that stands strong against those false teachings.
Adam Sanders
That really kind of butts up with the final thought I had in terms of the practicality of the conversation. I think it is important to note the nature of the misrepresentation or the misinterpretation. Because if it's a brother and sister in Christ, and maybe they're expressing something that is true. Like, the Bible does talk about it, but they're going to the wrong verse to get there. Then you could do what we've talked about already, but then maybe say, "Hey, look, these verses actually communicate that same idea." And so you can kind of affirm that they're trusting in something that is true and is good, but maybe then teach them, maybe they're in the wrong spot to get to that conclusion. The other thought I had is, if it's someone who's using scripture to justify sin, oftentimes what I've found is there's not really, the conversation is less about what the Bible says. Maybe they've kind of picked that verse because they still want to hold some respect to the Bible, but really the nature of the conversation goes beyond being able to interpret it well. And you might start by asking those questions and kind of getting into the exegetical component, but once they've kind of found that they have already stuck their feet in the ground and they want to believe this sin is okay, and they're just trying to put a nice little Bible verse on it. And once you get past that, I would say, start to ask more questions about them personally. Take personal interest in them. They're obviously, the Bible's not really at the core of what is going on there. It's a love for sin, and so you're kind of changing the nature of the conversation at that point.