You're listening to KFI A six forty on demand, you know. Driving recently
saw a bumper sticker. A bumper sticker said I can fix anything with the
right hammer, and it got me thinking about how as people of faith,
there are times when you want the confirmation of God. And listen to me
that you want the confirmation of God even if you don't have the confirmation of
God, that you'll do anything to get that. You'll twist, you'll contort
scripture, you will press push, yes, sometimes even get out that big
hammer to get the job done. And the word of God is something yes,
breathing, absolutely, But is it something that you are to twist or
contort to your particular view to prove yourself right. Absolutely not. You are
supposed to receive from scripture, not put your views into scripture. This mindset
will save you a lot of pain and anguish and frustration with God. I
have met many a person's who have rejected truth, trying to pull from scripture
something that they want because it's easier. And I don't want you to be
there, not today, not any day. I don't want you to ever
get to a place where you feel that it's okay for you to place your
will into scripture rather letting. Rather than letting, Scripture breathe its will towards
you, and this bumper sticker off. I can fix anything with any hammer,
with the right size hammer has that same mentality. That's not truly about
fixing it. It's about banging into your will. And I don't want you
to do that with scripture in the Bible. As Paul writes to Timothy,
a young man going into leadership at the in the Ephesian Church, he writes
about scripture, he writes about care, he writes about scripture. Two Timothy
two fifteen says, be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman
who does not need to be ashamed, first and foremost, setting yourself apart.
Paul has talked about the difference in Scripture between being ashamed in front of
man and being ashamed in front of God. Obviously being ashamed in front of
God greater concern. And in some translations, I want you to hear the
words that are used. The sentiment is in every single one, but the
verbiage is interesting. It says not to be ashamed. That goes on rightly
dividing the word of truth, rightly dividing the Word of truth. Now this
is not a phrase that shows up a lot in Scripture. Are those that
go back and forth as to what this might mean, because it really translate.
Rightly dividing translates into cutting straight the Word of God. And there are
those that go back and forth as to you know what this might mean.
Many scholars believe that this this term to cut straight or rightly divide, that
Paul had in mind the stonemasons that had to cut every stone precisely in order
for the building to be erected properly, to stand properly, to have the
fortress like qualities that you want in a structure. But think about that precision.
Think about what that means. To divide rightly the Word of God.
That means to set apart when you sit and read scripture, to know that
when you proceed with reading and learning and taking from Scripture, that you do
it in a prayerful manner, in a manner which rightly divides the Word of
Truth. That isn't just hammering your thoughts into it. That the words there
imply specific division and a delicate touch, not the big hammer method. I'm
reminded of that play school toy. It looks similar to a globe, but
it's a geometric shape that has two sides. It has handles. One side
of it is red, one side blue. The handles are yellow. You
pull it apart and all the shapes come out, and then you put the
shapes back through each hole of the same shape. So you have hearts,
you have moons, half moons, you have stars, circles, squares.
Now, some kids that you give it to, they will look at the
shape, the shape they hold in their hand, they will look at the
cutout and they'll put it in the proper location. There are other kids that
will take the palm of their hand and push the circle through the square slot
because their goal is merely to get it inside the container. And I see
people do this with scripture. They'll take a verse and they will push,
and they will push, and they will pull, and they'll yank, and
they'll twist, and they'll try and cram it to mean what they want it
to mean. Do you do this? Do you try and get scripture to
say to mean what you wanted to say or mean, or do you let
it breathe and speak to you rightly? Dividing the meaning and the truth of
the Word of God. It's interesting that this term is not used throughout scripture,
that Paul used a specific way of saying to divide the truth the Word
of God, that this imagery of a stonemason, or some say it might
even be a surgeon or something. But the importance here is that Paul saw
the need to specifically use these words to rightly divide, to cut straight the
word of truth. Sometimes I feel like there are those that go through Scripture
with scissors, taking out what they want or don't want, and leaving what
they do, sort of making their own version, kind of the Thomasonian Thomas
Jefferson with his Jeffersonian. Rather, his Bible is a Bible of removal.
It's basically removing the things that Thomas Jefferson didn't want to deal with, leaving
what he did what he referred to as the teachings of Christ. But my
teachings were not just those. My teachings go throughout the tirety of Scripture.
And so to segment or partition or take away, or to cram and twist
the Word of God is to lose the truth about Scripture. It is to
lose the value because really, instead of you imposing your view on scripture,
instead of you imposing your thoughts, your wants, your desires on scripture,
on the contrary, scripture should be imposing its views on you. So interpretation
scripture receiving from scripture what it has to teach you. The important thing is
to use scripture itself to interpret itself so that you don't get lost in your
own interpretations or trying to squeeze out of scripture what you want. Continue to
read everything in its context. There are times where to get a huge and
important truth out quickly, you need to condense it. And I know that
this is very common, and so is scripture memorization and uh, taking certain
scripture and you know, putting them on notepads or a bumper sticker or a
T shirt. And there are definitely scriptures that are concise and to the point,
and you will remove it and you'll go, okay, this really,
you know, says what I'm trying to get across. But everything in scripture
is seated in its context for reason, and where it sits is important to
how you understand it when you dive into scripture, when you open it up,
I know you want it to speak to you, well, hear it
out. Hear it out in its entirety, read and understand the context,
what was taking place, and then it will speak to you truly, rather
than you feeling the need to only cut a little peace out and say,
okay, this is what I'm going to remember. Now, you may read
an entire chapter and find that one verse in that chapter seems to sum it
up. That's okay, but read it in its entirety. Know that scripture,
those that you come across that are difficult, those verses to come across
that are difficult, should be interpreted by the rest of scripture. So you
go through and you read, You see things in their proper context, and
let them come to life. You can compare and contrast against other parts of
scripture, and then you can know what God wants you to know. I
see people take very difficult scriptures out by themselves and try and make something that
contradicts the entirety of the Bible and tries to make some sort of doctrine a
belief out of it. You have to look at them and say, well,
it's contorting or I hear people make comments, oftentimes antagonists against God or
God's word, taking things complete completely out of context, and trying to make
them say something ugly or awful without knowing what their purpose was to begin with.
If it's wrong when they do it, it's wrong when you do it.
Ed. Welcome to the Jesus Christ Show. Thank you, Hello Jesus.
I want to tell you that I have never craved a bag of like
I am this morning. And whether it's onion or raisin, that's the dilemma.
Cream cheese is just a given. Oh well, goodness, that's your
only problem or dilemma today. You're doing all right, my friend. I
wanted to ask you, you hear that argument will prove to me that God
exists without using the Bible. Now, the Bible is the foundation of my
belief in Christ. But can that be done well? The Bible is the
foundation of the practice of your belief, but often there's something that precedes that.
Something has to precede it, otherwise you wouldn't have gotten to the Bible.
So it's not like in some cases some people have the Bible put in
their face as young kid and they just kind of okay, well, this
is what I do. But as you know, children tend to grow up
and become rebellious. And the simple truth is you either believe what your parents
believe or you believe the exact opposite. I mean, that's usually where people
go. They usually rebel or accept. But outside of that, and I'll
explain why the Bible is okay to use, even though I wouldn't always recommend
it, but intellectually why it's okay to use. But outside of that,
you have to start at the basics. You have to start at if there
is a God at all, and before you get into the specifics of the
nature of God, which is what the Bible kind of reveals and focuses on.
So there are certain things and arguments, and all of them break down
in one form or another, but they do paint a picture that points to
the necessity for transcendent being something that is outside of creation. And you can
do that by saying by looking around. Some call it the law of contingency.
If you look around, there is nothing in the universe, nothing that
you can point to that doesn't have to point outside itself to explain its existence.
The tree has to point to the acorn, which points to the tree,
which points to the acorn. You to your parents, to their parents
to their parents and everything. You know, the table you're sitting at has
to point back to the tree that it came from, which came from the
acorn. So if you see, everything has to point back somewhere. And
the law of contingency would argue that if everything in the universe is contingent,
then the universe itself is contingent, meaning that it's dependent upon something, and
that points to that something being possibly a god. So it's the equivalent of
saying, you know, if the legs of the chair are would, and
the seat of the chair is would, and the back of the chair is
wood, then what's the chair made of? Ed? What exactly? So
if everything in the universe is contingent, dependent upon something to prove its existence
or to explain its existence, then the universe itself has to point outside itself
to explain its existence. So that's one form. And all of these have
fancy names, the cosmological argument, the teleological argument, the deontological argument,
and things like that, but when it comes to these arguments, a lot
of them are just looking at logic and understanding. You can get into science,
you can get into thermodynamics and how things are winding down and becoming simpler,
which implies they were wound up and they're not getting greater, which points
to evolution becoming more complex. Nothing in science gets more complex. It always
gets simpler. Thermodynamics, things are breaking down. If you put an apple
in the cupboard, it doesn't become a greater apple. It breaks down in
rocks. It gets simpler in nature, not greater in nature. You can
point to design. You can point to the fact that there's nobody in their
right mind that would be driving through the Dakotas and look at Mount Rushmore and
saying say that, oh, look that is, you know, because of
erosion and rain. Wouldn't that seems silly that someone would look at Mount Rushmore
and think that it came just out of happenstance because of erosion. Oh absolutely,
that would be silly, because your mind knows that when it sees complexity,
that it has design, and design comes from a designer. Yet when
you look at humanity, people look at humanity and go, oh, well,
that's just an accident. I'm often floored by the the atheistic evolutionist who
sits there and chuckles about the these guys believe in this magic guy named Jesus
that came down and kind of threw his faery dust around, and now everybody
gets lived for forever. Reductionism, you know, you can reduce it to
sound silly, just like I could say that the evolutionist believes you come from
a magic bowl of soup. So if you look at the complexity of humanity,
if you look at the complexity of the universe and the necessity of the
universe, meaning every little star has a purpose and every grain of sand has
a purpose and a balance to this life, that that shows design. That
points to a designer and doesn't just point to randomness, and the actual mathematical
laws that you'd have to use and skew mathematically to say that humanity just happened
out of chaos runs on the other side of impossible mathematically. So there's a
lot of different areas you can run down and point to and use his arguments,
but ultimately there's going to be a point of faith because you're dealing with
a past singular like the creation of time and the universe and the world as
you know it. And even the evolutionary scientist has to do the same thing
because forensics is the only science you can use, which is the science of
basically looking backwards through that which is left. So no one could go back
to that moment and create that moment and say, okay, this is how
the world came to be, because the world's already here and you can't recreate
it. Somewhere, there was some some years ago there was a scientists that
created a simple and which is essentially like a life, and threw their arms
up in the air and said, whoao, we created life. See,
we did it. We finally in a Petri dish, we created life.
This is it. We've showed everybody that we can do it. And the
theist looked up and said, let me get this straight. You did what
well? We created life? I said, well, what kind of environment?
Oh it was it was a specific environment a lab excellent, and who
monitored well are greatest scientists. So you're saying that intelligence in a created environment
brought forth life, which is what the theist has been saying since day one.
All that proves is that you need intelligence to create intelligence and science.
The law is that the law of causing effects says that the effect is never
going to be greater than the cause. If I can push something, it's
because my strength leverage the viscosity of the ground that the item sitting on,
whatever it is, is going to be in my favor. I'm stronger than
whatever it is. If I can pick it up or throw it, I'm
stronger. My cause is greater than the effect of the ball being thrown or
whatever I'm tossing. Right, Well, they have to kind of reverse that
when it comes to creation and evolution, because in the evolutionary model, the
effect evolution is greater than the cause because it's getting more complex. It's getting
bigger, better, stronger, faster, smarter, and not smaller simpler.
There's a lot of problems with it. And I know that a lot of
folks will roll their eyes at this because they say, oh, well,
the cosmological has problems this way, the deontological has problems this way. Tellia,
they start picking apart, and all arguments do break down in certain areas,
but as a whole, you bring them to a place where you can
look at it and say, wow, there actually is great argumentation. It's
not illogical to believe in God. It's not just fantasy or faith. Faith
is great and important, but ed faith is that which comes after that which
you can know. I like that it's not illogical. No, absolutely not.
If you're going to serve a god. Do you want to serve a
whacked out illogical God? No? And I find it silly. And you'll
find that the cults or the occult at times other belief systems heretical systems.
Within the Church, they're often very nonsensical and usually teetered towards manm uh,
this is you know, you look at people and say, let me get
this straight. You think we made up scripture. You think that I wrote
a book telling me not to do the very things that is in my nature
to want to do, and that I'm going to live by it. Why?
Well, because the early man did it so that they could build a
structure of law and so people would abide. No, humans don't want to
abide by anything, no matter who says it. People have been rebelling against
me and the Father since day one. Written or unwritten, oral tradition or
not oral tradition. Man wants to rebel, why would that same man write
a book that he's going to rebel against. It's not a book that a
man would write if he could, or could write if he would. So
there's many, many, many, many different ways of going about it.
But lastly, Ed, I want to give you some comfort about scripture itself.
Scripture is not one book. That's the mistake people always think it's one
book. Scripture is over sixty five books, written by approximately forty authors on
three different continents, in three different languages, by priests and peasants, at
times of peace at times of war. It's voluminous. It's not one book.
Now, if I brought thirty books to somebody throughout the centuries that were
written by different people that all pointed to the same thing, that's not circular
reasoning or going back and arguing your point from your point. That's building a
case. If you ask me, John, Welcome to the Jesus Christ Show.
Follow Jesus. Hi John, what's up? Jesus. I decided to
call you today because I'm having a lot of problems in my life. Aside
from the fact that I'm going through a lot of financial difficulties, I've also
recently found out that my wife has been having an extra amount affair. It's
been about three months give or take since I've found out, and not by
any admission but just my own general knowledge. Oh so you're saying that she
hasn't confessed to this in any way, shape or form. Well, she
confessed after I presented her with the proof, So she got caught pretty much.
Okay, Well, John, I'm going to ask you a hold on
a second, as we're up against the clock. I want to talk to
you more and hear more of the story. We've been married for seventeen years,
find out, in addition to having financial woes right now, that your
wife is having an affair. When we come back, I want to talk
to you a little bit more about that and see what scripture has to say.
We were talking with John, been married for seventeen years, found out
his wife was having an affair. Now, John, you called her on
this right? Oh yes, okay, so you saw signs or whatever it
was you finally called her. How did you respond to you calling her out
on the carpet on that she was very upset, very upset, and come
to find doubt that it was a coworker of hers. And quite honestly,
you know, I'm doing a little bit more research. I found that I
confronted this person, okay, and you know I told them what my intentions
were, and you know, he says there was just a strong friendship and
so forth. But in reading emails and things of that nature, you know,
there was I seemed like there was more more of a bond there between
them. Jesus, I know, I know you didn't quit on us when
you were preaching your word the non believers, and I'm trying to follow that
inspiration and not not trying to quit on my marriage. There are children involved,
and I'm trying to be the better person, but it just seems so
difficult. You know, sometimes you don't you wish for the response, a
certain response, and you're not getting that certain response back, and all you
hear is any time I need time one day at a time. Is that
is that the response that she's giving you or is this this you working through
it? Uh? No, this is this is her responses. She needs
time for what I I don't know because she won't reveal that to me personally.
You know, there was you know, I was very naive. There
were a lot of text messagings and and things of that nature. Yeah,
Technology unfortunately has made it even easier for someone to have an affair or to
keep contact and kind of ruminate and build those emotions and about six months ago,
you know, without knowing anything, I asked her, I said,
you know, are you having an affair? Is there someone else? And
she both denied it. Come to find out that this uh was going on
for about a year or so. Wow, okay, well here's the rules.
This is what it means to you. Do you have you know,
biblical right to save the marriage? Yes, of course you do. Yeah.
This is a debate that goes on throughout Christendom. But the most Christians
would believe that in context on you know, somebody who is unchased or in
this say this case, an adulter, that you could save the marriage.
However, that isn't that's not my standard. My standard and one Corinthians seventy
ten is really about reconciliation. Reconciliation should always be at the forefront. But
these are the rules that I want you to know. One, John,
you could only be fifty percent of the relationship. You can't go over and
be her part as well. She has to participate in this. You have
to give the ultimatum that this is where we're at. I would like to
reconcile this relationship, but it's going to take work. None of this I'm
not ready now now that if you're not in now, then you're not in.
If you're not going to be a part of the marriage now, then
you're not going to be a part of the marriage, and we'll go our
separate ways. That stinks because for the children, most importantly, you both
should be together. However, in this particular case, if she's going to
be bringing other men into the relationship in one way or another, or these
types of things, and that's equally if not worse for the children. So
for the protection of the family or what's left of it, you have to
put the ultimatum down on the table and say this is what I want,
this is what I need. She has to be all in and you have
to be all in. You can't continue to beat her over the head with
it. She can't continue to make excuses or run around or be secretive.
You have to know where she is, know where you are. You guys
have to have an equal amount of trust in this, and then from that
point it can move forward. KFI A M six forty on demand M