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Good Baptist Church. It's good to see everyone here on this Sunday night. If you want to all please find your seats, we'll begin with our Sunday night service. You should find a songbook close by. Once you have one, please turn to hymn number 127. 127. Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus. Number 127. On this first verse together. 1, 2, 7. Tis so sweet to trust in Jesus. Just to take him at his word. Just to rest upon his promise. Just to know the saint, the Lord. Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him. How I've proved him o'er and o'er. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus. Oh, for grace to trust in more. Oh, how sweet to trust in Jesus. Just to trust his cleansing blood. Just in simple faith to plunge me. Leave the healing cleansing flood. Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him. How I've proved him o'er and o'er. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus. Oh, for grace to trust in more. Yes, it's sweet to trust in Jesus. Just from sin and self to cease. Just from Jesus simply taking life and rest and joy and peace. Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him. How I've proved him o'er and o'er. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus. Oh, for grace to trust in more. I'm so glad I learned to trust him. Precious Jesus, Savior friend. And I know that thou art with me. Will be with me to the end. Jesus, Jesus, how I trust him. How I've proved him o'er and o'er. Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus. Oh, for grace to trust in more. Amen. Great start to sing this evening. Let's go to Kevin to open up a prayer. Father in heaven, thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I pray that you bless us all as we sing praises to you. Fill us all with your spirit and just guide our path and please bless the services to follow. It's in Christ's name I pray. Amen. Amen, number 310. Footprints of Jesus, hymn number 310. Start on that first verse. Sweetly, Lord, have we heard the calling. Footprints of Jesus, number 310. On this first verse together. Sweetly, Lord, have we heard the calling. Come, follow me. And we sing where the footprints falling lead us to thee. Footprints of Jesus that make the pathway home. We will follow the steps of Jesus wherever they go. Long may we from the cold dark mountains sing in history. Or along by Siloam's mountains felt in the wind. Footprints of Jesus that make the pathway home. We will follow the steps of Jesus wherever they go. In they lead through the temple, holy, preaching the word. Or in homes of the poor and lowly serving the poor. Footprints of Jesus that make the pathway home. We will follow the steps of Jesus wherever they go. Then at last when Almighty sees us, our journey done. We will rest where the steps of Jesus' head that is gone. Footprints of Jesus that make the pathway home. We will follow the steps of Jesus wherever they go. We will follow the steps of Jesus wherever they go. Alright, this time we'll go through our announcements together. If you don't have a bullet, then slip up your hand nice and high. We'll get to you with one. We've got the soul winning times listed there below as well as salvations and baptisms. This coming Sunday, December 5th, we'll have the coffee and donuts before the service at 10 in honor of all the birthdays and anniversaries in December. We've got the music emphasis night coming up this Thursday. And then we've got the Mexico Monday coming up not tomorrow but a week from tomorrow. Ladies wreath decorating activity is going to be on Friday, December 10th at 7 o'clock. All ladies and teen girls are invited to attend and of course you can always bring your nursing babies but we prefer that you leave other children behind from this one. On the back, annual Christmas caroling is going to be Tuesday, December 21st at 5.30. So the plan is we'll meet here at 5.30, get organized, broken into teams. Don't worry because the teams are going to be big so if you're shy, if you're not a big singer, you can just kind of fade to the back. And nobody's going to mind. We'll make sure to have some strong singers in each group. And we'll split up into many groups and we'll give you an address to go to. And the idea is that we go caroling for just a little under an hour, just one hour max because it gets a little exhausting after that point. And we just only go to the doors that are decorated for Christmas. Okay, we learned this the hard way because we first did caroling like over a decade ago and it didn't really go very well. So then we almost abandoned it. It almost stopped being a thing. But then after many, many years we got back on the horse and we realized that you go to neighborhoods and knock on the doors that are well decorated, you know, or at least somewhat decorated. So then we have a really good response. People really like it. We sing a couple songs. We give them a Christmas CD. And it's really a fun time. Who's done it with us before you've gone out and done caroling? Almost everybody. Great. So who did it and you regret doing it? No, I'm just kidding. Nobody's, no hand would go up on that. So anyway, that's a really fun time. If you've never done it, it's one of those things that you kind of just have to do in life. You go to the grave having never Christmas caroled. So December 21st at 5.30 p.m., just that Tuesday right before Christmas. And that being said, December 26th is going to be the Sunday that we treat as the Christmasy Sunday. So that'll be when the Christmas sermons are preached. And on that day we're going to have the cookie bake off at 4.30. So, you know, you can enter your cookies into this contest and there are three different ways to win. You can win based on the best tasting, the best looking, or the most festive cookies. And let me just say this. We reserve the right to disqualify anything that's weird or strange. Okay, so if you do something strange or bizarre, you know, we will disqualify you. And it needs to be a cookie in order to be qualified. Now if you want to bring something that's more like a brownie or something, great. We'll eat it. We're not going to turn it away as far as food is concerned, but it's not going to be eligible to win a prize as a cookie. It has to be an actual cookie, all right? So just throwing that out there. So if you really want to win, then, you know, you've got to stay within the lines. You've got to follow the rules. So best tasting, best looking, and most festive. And otherwise just show up to eat the cookies. So you don't have to bring cookies in order to come to this thing. Of course, everybody's welcome to just show up and chow down on the cookies. And we'll provide hot cocoa as well. And so it'll be a good time of fellowship on December 26th, right before the evening service. So we will have our normal services as usual, 10.30 in the morning, 6 in the evening. And then below that, we've just got some other events coming up, especially note the small town soul winning trips. All of the information and the sign up for those is over here. And so if you have any questions about that, you can talk to me, you can talk to Brother Raymond, or any of us. So with that, let's go ahead and count up the soul winning from the past few days. So going back to Thursday, anything to report from Thursday? Any soul winning from Friday? Okay. Anything else from Friday? And then what about Saturday? I know we had the globe trip. Did we say total of 11 for globe, right? Anything outside of the globe trip? Got another one over here. Anything else outside of globe? And then what about today Sunday? Brother Scott? Three. One, two, five. Any other groups? Gotcha. Got it. Gotcha. Okay, anything else from today? All right, very good. Keep up the great work on soul winning. With that, let's sing our next song. Come lead us. All right, you should find a double sided insert in your hymnal. If you don't have one, please raise your hand. We'll begin by singing the birthday of a king. In the little village of Bethlehem, there lay a child one day, the birthday of a king. Let's sing it on that first verse together. In the little village of Bethlehem, there lay a child one day, and the sky was bright with a holy light for the place where Jesus lay. Hallelujah, how the angels sing. Hallelujah, how it breaks. And the sky was bright with a holy light. Twas the birthday of a king. Twas the humble birthplace, but oh, how much He gave to us that day. From the manger bay, what a fabulous life, what a perfect holy way. Hallelujah, how the angels sing. Hallelujah, how it breaks. In the little village of Bethlehem, there lay a child one day, the birthday of a king. And the sky was bright with a holy light. Twas the birthday of a king. Flip that sheet over, you'll sing come thou long expected Jesus. All this verse. Israel's strength and consolation. Hope of all the earth thou art. Fair desire of every nation. Joy of every holy heart. Born by people to deliver. Born a child and yet a king. Born to reign in us forever. Now thy gracious king of reign. By thine own eternal spirit. Cool in all our hearts alone. By thine own sufficient parent. Praise us to thy glorious throne. Alright, this time we'll pass our offering plates around and as the plates go around, let's turn our Bibles to 2 Timothy chapter number 2. 2 Timothy chapter number 2, as we always do, we'll read the entire chapter beginning in verse number 1. Follow along silently with brother Dan as he reads 2 Timothy chapter 2, starting in verse number 1. In 2 Timothy chapter 2 the Bible reads, Thou therefore my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also. Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warth entangleth himself in the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully. The husbandmen that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits. Consider what I say, and the Lord give the understanding in all things. Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel. Wherein I suffer trouble, as an evildoer, even unto bonds, but the word of God is not bound. Therefore I endure all things for the elect's sake, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. It is a faithful saying, for if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him. If we suffer, we shall also reign with him. If we deny him, he will also deny us. If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful, he cannot deny himself. Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no prophet, but to the subverting of the hearers. Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and vain babblings, for they will increase unto more ungodliness. And their word will eat as doth a canker, of whom is Hymenaeus and Philetus, who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrection is past already, and overthrow the faith of some. Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having the seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his, and let everyone that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity. But in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some to honor and some to dishonor. If a man therefore purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the master's use, and prepared unto every good work. Flee also youthful lusts, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart. But foolish and unlearned questions avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. And the servant of the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will. Father in heaven, I pray that you please bless Pastor Anderson with the power of the Holy Ghost as he preaches your word, and help us that your word would sink into our ears. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. Man, the verse I want to focus on is there in verse 15 where the Bible reads, Study to show thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. And that's what I'm preaching on tonight, rightly dividing the word of truth. Now there are many different ways that we would rightly divide the word of truth, and we could divide between the Old Testament and the New Testament. We could divide between what God is saying in the Bible versus just what people are saying in the Bible. But the way that I really want to focus on tonight is dividing the word of truth, dividing up the Bible based on what genre we're reading, or what type of book we're reading, or what type of verse or chapter we're reading. And if you would, turn in your Bible to the table of contents for a moment, okay? And I want to just show you this in the table of contents because when it comes to rightly dividing the word of truth, we already have a little bit of an example of how to do this based on the way that the books of the Bible are laid out. Because the books of the Bible are not laid out in the order that they were written down, and they're not laid out in a strictly chronological order either. So why are the books in the order they are? And the answer is that they are put in order based on what genre or what type of book they belong to, okay? So if you look at the table of contents there, the first five books of the Bible are what form kind of one unit known as the law, okay? Or the Pentateuch. Or if you want to get all Judaizing, you can call it Torah, okay? So you have those first five books known as the law, right? And then after that, you get into what's referred to as the historical books. So that goes from Joshua and all the way down through to the book of Esther, right? Those are historical books. And those are pretty much in chronological order. So if you start out reading in Genesis and you read all the way up through Esther, you're pretty much in chronological order at that point. But then all of a sudden you have the book of Job. Well, that's clearly not in chronological order because the events in the book of Job take place sometime between Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob's time and the time of Moses. Sometime in that 400 years when the children of Israel were down in Egypt, and so it's clearly way out of order. So why do we all of a sudden stick Job there? It's because we've changed genres. We're no longer in the historical books. Now we're getting into the poetic books. And so we have this group of poetic books, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon, okay? And so that's why those books appear all right next to each other, not because they necessarily happened around the same time or were even written around the same time, it's because they are poetic books. And then after the poetic books, notice how from Isaiah all the way to the end of the Old Testament, it's all prophets, right? It's just a list of prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, which is of course written by Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, down the list. So the Bible is broken into these different genres where you've got the law, you've got the historical books, you've got the poetic books, and then you've got the prophets. Okay, same thing in the New Testament. We've got the four gospels, right? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those form basically the heart of the New Testament, the gospels. What's the heart of the Old Testament? Well, the heart of the Old Testament are those first five books, right? That's the covenant. And so we've got the heart of the New Testament, which is the gospels, then we have not a whole bunch of historical books, but we have basically one historical book, the Book of Acts. And so it pops up just as it should, makes perfect sense, and just as the books of the law in the Old Testament roll directly into the historical books, because Deuteronomy rolls right into Joshua, of course the gospels roll right into the Book of Acts. The Book of Acts picks up right where the gospels leave off and we've got our historical book. Then instead of poetic books in the New Testament, we have epistles. And from Romans all the way to Jude, we have just epistles or letters that are being written. That's a certain genre of material. And then last, we have instead of a whole bunch of prophetic books, we have one prophetic book, the Book of Revelation. So it's roughly laid out the same way as the Old Testament. The Old Testament has the law, historical books, poetry, prophecy, and then the New Testament has gospels, historical books, epistles, and prophecy. So that's how things are broken down. So this is a guide unto us to help us to understand the fact that when we look at the Bible, we should also break it down in this way or think of these books in this way. Because again, the Bible could have been given to us in chronological order, it could have been given in the order that it was written down, but yet here we have it broken up by genre. I mean, think about the New Testament. Which books of the New Testament were written first? Well, if you stop and think about it, in the Book of Acts, we read all about the life and ministry of the Apostle Paul. Well, the Apostle Paul, throughout his life and ministry, writes epistles. And you can look at what he's talking about in the epistles and kind of see, okay, this is the point in the story in the Book of Acts where he wrote this epistle, this is probably where he wrote this epistle. So then it's pretty obvious that the epistles are written before the Book of Acts is written because the Book of Acts is telling the entire life story of the Apostle Paul, and he's obviously already written those epistles while he was alive. You know, during his lifetime he's writing those epistles, okay. Also, when you're reading the Book of Acts, notice that there's no mention of the four gospels. At no point do Paul or Peter pull out gospels and preach from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, or even talk about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they're constantly preaching out of Old Testament scriptures, showing that the gospels are written later. So the first stuff that's written in the New Testament are the epistles, okay. And obviously the Book of Acts is written after the Book of Luke because in the Book of Acts he says at the beginning, the former treatise have I written unto you O Theophilus, so he's referring back to the Book of Luke. So, you know, you can see right away these books are not in the order that they're written, they don't follow a strictly chronological order, but rather they're broken into these genres and these sections. You got four main sections in the Old Testament and four main sections of books in the New Testament. Now why is this important? Well, it's important because we interpret these books differently based upon what genre they are, okay. And this is especially important when we think about historical books. Historical books are telling us what happened, but they're not necessarily telling us what should happen or that it was good what happened. And so we need to be able to rightly divide the word of truth and understand when God is just telling us what happened versus God telling us what we are supposed to do or what he is commanding to be done because those are two very different things. And sometimes when we're reading the historical books, sometimes God doesn't really even appear for many chapters on end and we just see just chapter after chapter after chapter of people doing things and we don't really necessarily always know for sure whether what they did is right or wrong. So we have to use the rest of the Bible to interpret the historical books. We have to take the clear statements from the mouth of the Lord and from the New Testament epistles or the gospels where Christ is talking or in the Old Testament where the prophets are telling us thus sayeth the Lord and use that stuff to interpret the stories in the historical books. Another thing that we need to be careful to identify is poetry in the Bible. Do we read poetry in the Bible the same way that we read prose? No, we do not. Okay, now go if you would to Psalm 22. I'm going to give you an example of this because I heard someone say recently that Jesus fulfilled the poetry of the Old Testament literally. So you know, we need to take poetry literally because Jesus fulfilled the poetry literally. Let's see if that's really true. Let's look at the most famous Old Testament poem about the Lord Jesus Christ pointing us to Christ. This is the most famous example, Psalm 22. It's a beautiful psalm and it has all kinds of wonderful prophecies about the Lord Jesus Christ. But you tell me if this is actually literal being a poem. Okay, look at Psalm 22 verse 6, but I'm a worm. I am a worm. Is this literal? Is Jesus a literal worm? No, it's absurd. I'm a worm and no man, a reproach of men and despise of the people. Look at verse 12. Many bowls have compassed me. Strong bowls of beshan have beset me round. Now was Jesus surrounded by bowls at the crucifixion? Were there actually bowls there? The animal, the bowl surrounding him at the crucifixion? Absolutely not. Look at verse 14. I'm poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. Was Jesus actually poured out like water? My heart is like wax. It is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd and my tongue cleave with my jaws and thou has brought me into the dust of death. For dogs have compassed me. Now was he surrounded by literal barking dogs? The animal, absolutely not. This is a poem. This is not literal. Okay, it says the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me. Yeah, that actually literally happened, didn't it? They pierced my hands and my feet. That literally happened. I may tell all my bones. They look and stare upon me. Now is every bone in Jesus' body actually exposed to view? Is he just up there as a skeleton and his bones are actually looking back at him? No, this is a poem. So we have to rightly divide the word of truth and understand that poetic writing should be interpreted differently than prose, than when the Bible is just straightforwardly telling us what happened. Now look, this is not to downplay the importance of poetry. I'm not up here saying that the poetry isn't true or that it isn't important or that it isn't doctrinal. Folks, all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine. And all scripture is absolutely true. Every word of Psalm 22 is absolutely true. There's nothing in Psalm 22 that isn't true. But it has to be interpreted as a poem because it's a poem. And poetry will use all kinds of metaphors and comparisons and it will use hyperbole and exaggerations to get the truth across. The truth is that Christ was crucified. The truth is that he's despised of men and people are mocking him and rejecting him. The truth is that his hands and feet were pierced and he's surrounded by wicked people. He cries out in verse 1 of this famous psalm, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Now these things are all very true, but we need to interpret it as a poem and not get overly literal about our interpretation. Okay. You have people come along and you say, well, you know, why preach about this, Pastor Anderson? Why are you worried about people being too literal with the Bible? Well, you get these bozos that come along and they see poetic scriptures where the earth is resting upon pillars or something and it's just poetic descriptive language. It's not actually talking about a literal reality and then they go out and become a flat earther and have all these dumb views because they take some poetic description of the earth and they take it too literally. And see, the problem is that we have this idea as fundamental as Baptist often that the more literally we take the Bible, the better. Literal is better and if we're not taking it literally, then we must be liberal or something. But folks, this is a wrong way to approach the Bible thinking that more literal is always better. Okay. Because if we study the book of John, for example, over and over again, we see unsaved people taking the Bible too literally or taking the words of Christ too literally and getting into false doctrine. You know, right away, we see Jesus Christ talking to Nicodemus in John chapter 3. He says, you've got to be born again. And then somebody comes along who's a little too literal and says, oh, well, you know, is a man going to enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? That's a little too literal, isn't it? You know, then he talks to the woman at the well and says, you know, if you drink of the water that I give you, you'll never thirst. And she says, well, Lord, give me this water so that I won't have to come here to the well and draw water. You know, I want to drink the water that makes me never thirsty again. She didn't understand that he's talking about a spiritual truth, that he's not talking about literal water. When he says he's the bread of life, it's not a literal bread, okay? But what do the Roman Catholics believe? They believe that by eating a literal piece of bread, they will receive eternal life. And in John chapter 6, he talks about how they have to eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood in order to have eternal life. And they take him literally. And they think, well, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? You know, he says, I'm the bread that came down from heaven. And they don't get it. They're confused. But then Jesus explains it to them. He says, it is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I say unto you, they are spirit and they are life. When he's talking about eating his flesh and drinking his blood, he's talking about the fact that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. So the manna that came down from heaven is God's word, okay? Yes, they ate manna in the wilderness. Literally, in the Old Testament, they ate that bread. But the picture there that Jesus is referring to is that the manna pictures the word of God. And when Jesus says that he's going to give his flesh for the life of the world, he's talking about the fact that he's going to die on the cross and he's going to shed his blood. And then later on, at the Last Supper, when he breaks bread with the disciples, he says, this is my body, which is broken for you. Right? This is my body. The Protestants today and the Roman Catholics obsess over those words, this is my body, where he's holding the bread. And they say, well, he said this is my body. I just believe it. This is his body. He's sitting right there. I mean, think about how silly this is. He's literally, physically sitting there, holding the bread, saying this is my body, which is broken for you. Um, excuse me, his body's right here, holding the bread? Obviously, when he says this is my body, which is broken for you, it's not literal, okay? This is my body, is what he could have said, pointing at himself, okay? Because he's right there. To me, but here's the thing, you know, a lot of people don't understand this because they're not saved. And so these spiritual truths fly over their head and then all they're left with is just the literal interpretation, when Jesus is clearly using an analogy or metaphor. Well, here's the thing, when we get into a poetic book, then the analogies and the metaphors and the similes, they go to a whole other level, as we just saw by looking at Psalm 22. We could look at Psalm after Psalm after Psalm and I could show you the same thing. So we need to make sure that when we're reading poetic books, we read them as poetry. And we understand the fact that this is the style and that he's not always going to say like or as. Sometimes he will, like where we are in this scripture in Psalm 22. You know, sometimes he'll say, like in verse 14, you know, I'm poured out like water, my heart is like wax, and kind of make it clear that some of these things are just comparisons or similes. But sometimes he just says, I'm surrounded by bulls, I'm surrounded by dogs, all my bones are staring back at me here. You know, obviously that is not literal. Okay, so we need to make sure that when we're reading the Bible, we can rightly divide what genre we're reading. Are we reading a historical book? Are we reading the Gospels? Are we reading a poetic book? And then rightly divide between that which is literal and that which is clearly not literal. And always more literal is not just automatically better. Don't be that simplistic in your view of the Bible. And this is why the Bible says, study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Some people just want to have an overly simplistic view. Why? Because they're too lazy to actually study the Bible and discern which parts are literal and which parts are not. And actually study the Bible and discern between these different genres. They just want to just, everything's literal. Now I can go back to watching sports or whatever. No, I mean, you know, we need to get a little deeper into the word of God here and figure out that no, not everything in the Bible is literal. There are poetic sections and we need to be able to discern and rightly divide these things. Now as I said, one of the most important right divisions that we need to make is we need to understand the difference between the historical books versus God telling us what's right and wrong. Okay. And before we do that, though, I forgot to read you one verse. Are you there in Psalm 22? Look at verse 21. Save me from the lion's mouth, for thou has heard me from the horns of the unicorns. Okay. Is this literal? Can this in any way be reconciled literally with the cross? No, but it's of course figurative. Okay. And figuratively it packs a powerful punch and it has great truth. We're not downplaying the importance of it, but it needs to be read as poetry because that's what it is. Okay. Now let's talk about the historical books. Okay. So historical books, like we said, the section of historical books is from Joshua all the way through until Esther. Okay. Those are what we would consider the historical books. But even within these different divisions of scripture, there are going to be some places where these genres get mixed. Obviously, like, for example, if we're reading the historical books, there could be a poem mixed in, you know. Or, for example, in the law section, which is Genesis through Deuteronomy, Genesis is pretty much a historical book. And the first half of Exodus is pretty much a historical book. But then it's mainly just laws. You know, the second half of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, a little bit of history mixed in, a little bit of stories mixed in. But it's predominantly law. Poetry is mixed in. Genesis 1 is a poem. The rest of the book of Genesis is all prose. Okay. We have a poem in Deuteronomy chapter 32. We've got a poem in Joshua, or excuse me, Judges chapter 5. You've got a poem in, what, 1 Samuel chapter, um, sorry, 2 Samuel 22. You know, you go down the list and there are going to be places where these genres mix. But when we're reading historical books, we need to understand that when they tell us what people did, it doesn't mean that what they actually did was right. Okay. Now, some of the examples are very obvious to us. Okay. As we're reading scripture and we come across, you know, a guy marrying three wives, that's obviously not something that God wants us to emulate. Because there are other scriptures that say that God at the beginning made them male and female and right from the beginning, at the beginning of Genesis, you know, therefore shall a man leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife singular and they too shall be one flesh. Okay. And you have explicit commands in Deuteronomy about the king of Israel saying that he shall not multiply wives. So then when we read a historical book about Solomon multiplying wives, we know he's wrong. Or when we see that the king of Israel in Deuteronomy is not supposed to multiply horses and go down into Egypt to get horses, then we read about King Solomon. What does he do? Oh, he's importing horses from Egypt. It's pretty easy to see right there that what he's doing is wrong. Even though Solomon's a good guy, even though God's blessing him, even though he's being used by God in a powerful way, he's wrong to marry those wives. He's wrong to bring a bunch of horses out of Egypt. And we could go on and on. Some of these are very easy to ascertain when someone's committing adultery or murder or stealing. When Abraham's lying and saying that Sarah's his sister or when Isaac's lying and saying Rebecca's his sister and they end up looking like fools in front of the Philistines or the Egyptians. Then we look at that and it's pretty obvious, okay, these guys shouldn't have done that and the Bible has this story here to give us an example of what not to do. Some things are really obvious like that, but some things are less obvious and we need to be paying attention as we read the Bible and rightly dividing the word of truth. And when we see something in the Bible that seems to fly in the face of other scripture, we should stop and ask ourselves, is God telling them to do this? Is God commanding this or is this just telling us what people did? Now, a great example of this is in the book of Ezra, okay? If you want, you can flip over to the book of Ezra. I can show you a couple of examples. As I said, Ezra is a historical book and both Ezra and Nehemiah are both very strongly historical books because you don't have God showing up in the whirlwind or anything. You don't have prophets of God that are necessarily showing up with divine revelations directly from God in these books. These are historical books in Ezra and Nehemiah. And at the end of the book of Ezra, you have this crisis with the children of Israel having married a lot of foreign wives and they've been influenced by these foreign wives. And so the nation of Israel is being tainted and people like Ezra and later Nehemiah are going to be worried about this because they don't want the nation of Israel to lose its integrity and to get corrupted by all of these surrounding heathen nations. And so in Ezra chapter 9 verse 1, the Bible says, Now this, first of all, this right here, this listing of these nations, the Hittites, the Canaanites, the Parisites, the Egyptians, that's not really what's going on. This is just what someone is telling him. This is what they're saying. Because of the fact that they're trying to quote back to Deuteronomy chapter 7 where Deuteronomy chapter 7 specifically tells them, don't marry these certain nations. These seven nations of the Canaanites don't marry these specific people and of course that list includes the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Parisites, the Jebusites. So they're invoking those lists of names to try to invoke that rule. But then they start to add some other things like, you know, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Ammonites. When did God say, don't marry an Egyptian? Like, where is that? Okay? In fact, if you study the Bible and read beyond Deuteronomy chapter 7, you get to Deuteronomy chapter number 20 and, you know, he makes it clear, he says, well look, these nations that are close to you utterly destroy them. Don't take their wives. But he says, you know, the nations that are further away are a different story. And in Deuteronomy chapter 21, he specifically says that when the children of Israel go to war with their enemies and they end up defeating an enemy, that they can take those women from the prisoners of wars and if they see one of the prisoners of war that they like, they can marry her. So does the law of God actually completely prohibit marrying anyone who's a non-Israelite? Absolutely not. And if you remember, Miriam and Aaron get mad at Moses because he marries an Ethiopian woman. And God defends Moses, who married the Ethiopian woman. God tells them, don't marry these Canaanites of the land that you're inheriting. Why? Because they were supposed to destroy all of those people because they'd become very evil, very perverted. They weren't just run-of-the-mill heathen. They were involved in all kinds of horrible, filthy abominations described in Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20. And so God said, you gotta completely wipe these people out. But when it came to other nations that were not those seven nations, he said that they could make an alliance with them, they could make peace with them, they could put them to tribute. And in Deuteronomy 21, he explicitly says that if they see among the women of this conquered people a woman that they like, they can marry that woman. So isn't that a little different than basically just saying you can't marry any foreigner? That's a big difference. Also, all throughout scripture, we have very clear teachings that people can join the nation of Israel whenever they want and they don't have to be ethnically an Israelite to do that. Keep your finger here and let's go to Isaiah chapter 56, for example. Isaiah chapter 56. You know, and I question whether some of these groups, the Perizzites, you know, even really were a major group of people at the time that this is even happening in Ezra. But these guys, they're trying to invoke those names and then they just kind of tag on the Egyptians and other people just to kind of make it seem like, yeah, we're just enforcing Deuteronomy. But if you read Deuteronomy a little more carefully, these guys are going a little overboard by just demanding that no foreigners be married. That's not what the Bible actually taught. Look at Isaiah chapter 56, for example. It says in verse 6, Also the sons of the stranger, that join themselves to the Lord to serve him and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, everyone that keepeth the Sabbath from polluting it and taketh hold of my covenant. Even then will I bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar, for mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people. The Lord God, which gathereth the outcasts of Israel, saith, yet will I gather others to him beside those that are gathered unto him. Now does this sound like the children of Israel are just this exclusive ethnic group, nobody's allowed in, and don't marry anybody who's not ethnically an Israelite? That's not what the Bible's teaching here. The Bible is encouraging strangers and foreigners to join themselves unto the Lord. The Bible talks about in Esther how many of the people became Jews because the fear of Mordecai fell upon them. In Ezekiel it talks about people joining themselves to the nation of Israel and whatever tribe they physically live in, they'll be considered a member of that tribe and they get assimilated into that tribe. You know, look at Caleb. Caleb is not even ethnically an Israelite because he is of the Kenites, but yet he's brought in in the very early days and considered a full-fledged Israelite. You've got Abraham marrying a woman of Midian, you've got, or excuse me, not of Midian, producing Midian with a foreign woman, Keturah, producing the child Midian. You have, of course, Moses marrying the Ethiopian, you have Joseph's sons marrying Egyptians, okay? You have Joseph married to an Egyptian. And so as we go through this in Ezra, you have to understand that we're reading a historical book. This guy is saying something to Ezra and Ezra's reacting a certain way, but this isn't God talking. So is the book of Ezra absolute truth? Yes, because it's absolutely true that a guy came up to Ezra and said that, and it's absolutely true that this is how Ezra reacted. But are they interpreting the Bible correctly in Ezra chapters 9 and 10? No, because they go on to do something very radical, okay? They go on to demand that all of these men divorce their wives, and they even had children with these wives in many cases. Look at the last verse of Ezra chapter 10. It says, all these had taken strange wives and some of them had wives by whom they had children. So these guys are all married to strange wives and some of them even had kids with them. And if you read this passage, it took three months just to process all the divorces, okay? So they start on the first day of the tenth month, and the tenth month, eleventh month, twelfth month, they're just all day long, it's just family court. Ezra's just presiding over family court, it's just divorces all day long, divorces, divorces, divorces, divorces. Just to try to preserve the integrity of Israel, we've got to divorce all these foreign wives. Did God tell them to do this? No, but yet I've heard people use this as a justification for divorce and to get their doctrine on divorce from this historical book and say, well, you know, in Ezra 9 and 10 we got these divorces and so, you know, maybe I can divorce my wife too. But what did the scripture say when God's talking? He said the Lord hates putting away. The Lord hates divorce. That's what God said. And when God talked about divorce in Deuteronomy 22 and Deuteronomy 24, it was in very specific circumstances. What did Jesus say about divorce? You know, that if you divorce your wife and marry another, right? He said that you're causing her to commit adultery. And if you marry her that is divorced, you're committing adultery. And so don't divorce your wife except to be for fornication. But yet here, what do we see? Just, oh yeah, we all got to get divorced. And people will say, well, it's a special situation. But hold on a second. Where did God tell them to do this in this passage? It's just telling us what they did. And, you know, it's not really ending on a high note. Does the book of Ezra really end on a high note? Verse 41, all these had taken strange wives and some of them had wives by whom they had children. You know, it's a note of despair that the book ends on, okay? But then, okay, we roll right into Nehemiah and Nehemiah is taking place later in time. And by the time we get to Nehemiah, what do we have? The exact same problem. In Nehemiah chapter 13, again, we have intermarriages with the heathen. And we have in verse 23, for example, of Nehemiah chapter 13, In those days also saw I Jews that had married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon and of Moab, and their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and cannot speak in the Jews' language, but according to the language of each people. And I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, You shall not give your daughters unto their sons, nor take their daughters unto your sons for yourselves. Now look, Nehemiah's a good guy. He's got good intentions. His heart is in the right place. But is it really God's will that he just grab people by the hair, and rip out their hair, rip out their beards, and force them to swear by God that they're not going to marry foreign wives, and chasing people because they speak a different language and everything. You know, obviously he's going overboard. And plus, you know what this shows me when I read this in Nehemiah, is that whatever Ezra did back in chapter 10, it didn't really solve anything anyway. It didn't fix anything. Three months of divorce proceedings, and in Nehemiah we're back to the same thing again. And again, at the end of Nehemiah, we don't end on a high note. At the end of Nehemiah, we end up with this in verse 29 of chapter 13. Remember them, oh my God, because they've defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood, and of the Levites, thus cleansed I them from all strangers, and appointed the wards of the priests and the Levites, everyone in his business, and for the wood offering, at times appointed, and for the firstfruits, remember me, oh my God, for good. He's saying, look, they messed everything up, and I had to fix it, so at least remember me, God, that I fixed stuff. But again, things are in a shambles in chapter 13 in general if you read the whole chapter, okay. So the point is that we don't want to get some strange doctrine by reading Ezra 9 and 10 and saying, oh yeah, this is what they were supposed to be doing, they had to divorce all their wives. Really? Because show me where God told them to do that. So like I said, sometimes when we're reading historical books, it's obvious. When somebody's murdering and stealing, okay, they're sinning. Because over here the Bible says, thou shall not kill, thou shall not steal. But in places like this, we also have to use our brains and think about this and say, wait a minute, is this right for these men, hundreds of men, to divorce their wives and break up the home, and now you have these kids who don't have two parents and all this? This is not biblical what's being done, it's a historical book and needs to be interpreted as a historical book. This is what happened, this is what took place, and Ezra and Nehemiah are humans, they make mistakes, and this is a great example of that. Now, go to the New Testament if you would, go to Acts chapter 15. Because a lot of people get this with the Old Testament, they get it. You know, when they're reading about these kings and prophets, that sometimes the things that they do are wrong, even if their heart's in the right place. But what sometimes people fail to understand is that the book of Acts is also a historical book. You know, we talked about that at the beginning, right? That Acts is a historical book. If we take the Old Testament as an analogy with four sections, the New Testament also has four sections, and the book of Acts is a historical book. And what we need to understand is that everything that people do in the book of Acts is not necessarily right. They're making mistakes as they go because they are human. And we need to use the rest of the Bible, clear statements from the rest of the Bible to interpret the book of Acts. Okay? Look, if we're reading the Gospels and Jesus is talking, we know for sure what he's saying is right. Okay? If we read the Epistles, we know for sure that everything in the Epistles is the word of God. Whatever the Epistles are saying is the word of God. Whenever the narrator of the Bible is speaking, whether Old Testament or New Testament, if the narrator is speaking, it's absolute truth. It's the Holy Ghost speaking. Okay? But when we read a historical book about what someone said, it doesn't mean that what they said was right. It doesn't mean that what they did was right. You know, we have, for example, Mary saying, oh, your father and I have sought you sorrowing. Is that correct, to call Joseph Jesus' father? No. That's why Jesus corrects her and says, no, I'm about my father's business. He corrects her. Is it true that Mary said that? Yes. But is what Mary said there right? No, Mary was wrong when she said that. Okay? Is Mary a great person? Yeah. Is Mary a righteous, godly example? Absolutely. But even good people in the Bible get things wrong and make mistakes. And so we need to rightly divide the word of truth and make sure that we know the difference between what God is saying and what human beings are doing and saying that is not necessarily right. Here's a classic example of this. Acts chapter 15, look at verse 19. This is James speaking. So this is James, the half-brother of Jesus. He says, wherefore, my sentence is... Now look, is this the word of God? Is this thus saith the Lord? Is this the narrator talking? Is this Jesus talking? No. This is James talking. Wherefore, my sentence is that we trouble not them which from among the Gentiles are turned to God, but that we write unto them that they abstain from pollutions of idols and from fornication and from things strangled and from blood. For Moses of old time hath in every city then that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day. Now, first of all, James is not even giving a clear answer here. Because on the one hand he's saying, well, let's just tell the Gentiles to only do these four things. But then on the other hand he says, well, there's a whole bunch of other people preaching Moses anyway, so they'll get that other Mosaic stuff from them. Well, do they need that stuff or not? Which one is it, James? So what James is saying here is not really clear. But here's the big elephant in the room. What is with this list of four things, where did he get this list, and how does this list make any sense? Because look at verse 27 where this is repeated. We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth. For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, oh really? Oh really, it seemed good to the Holy Ghost. That's what they're saying, but is that really true? Let's keep going. It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things. You know, we only need you to do these necessary things, just these four things. That you abstain from meat offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication, from which if you keep yourselves you shall do well, fare you well. Why in the world would these four things be singled out as the only things that Gentile Christians need to worry about from the law? And here's the big whopper, is that abstaining from things strangled is not even in the Bible. Can someone please show me where in the Old Testament the Bible says we need to abstain from eating things that have been strangled? Can somebody show me that? Is it in Exodus? Is it in Leviticus? Numbers? Deuteronomy? Nope, isn't there. And even if it were there, this list would still make no sense. Why? Because these four things on this list are totally arbitrary. Now I get it why he would say, hey, they better abstain from fornication, because yeah, that's a big sin. Hey, stay away from idols. Okay, that makes sense. But it's like, well, just eating blood and things that are strangled. Why are you trying to get all kosher, James? Because why would those four things be the most important things, and one of them's not even in the Bible. One of them is an interpretation that's not found in the Bible, okay? That's not even a thing. Go to Acts 21, because, you know, maybe some people are skeptical right now and saying, well, I think James was right. I think that the Holy Ghost really did lead him to do this. No, that's just what he's saying. He said, this is my sentence. But then somebody else repeats it as, oh yeah, it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us to do X, Y, and Z. Just because somebody says that doesn't make it true, okay? Because this list does not jive with the rest of Scripture. You're not going to find this list anywhere else in Scripture. You're not going to find these things. Emphasizing just these four things doesn't make sense. And even James isn't even confident about it, because then he's like, well, at least people are preaching Moses in the synagogue. So they'll get it that way. Maybe they'll get it by osmosis that way. But look at Acts 21, verse 20. This is where, uh, James is again talking to the Apostle Paul. This is later on. And when they heard it, they glorified the Lord and said unto him. So this is James and company talking to Paul. Thou seest, brother, how many thousands of Jews there are which believe, and they are all zealous of the law. And they are informed of thee that thou teachest all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise their children, neither to walk after the customs. Neither to walk after the customs, right? So, so James wants people circumcised and walking after Jewish customs. And, you know, we hear that you're teaching something else. What is it therefore? Verse 22. The multitude must needs come together, for they will hear that thou art come. Do therefore this we say to thee. We have four men which have a vow on them. Them take and purify thyself with them, and be it charges with them that they may shave their heads, and all may know that those things whereof they were informed concerning thee are nothing, but that thou thyself also walkest orderly, and keepest the law. As touching the Gentiles which believe, we've written and concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication. Then Paul took the men, and the next day purifying himself with them, entered the temple to signify the accomplishment of the days of purification until that a what? Until that a what? Until that an offering should be offered for every one of them? So is somebody actually going to say to me that it's right for the Apostle Paul to be going down to the temple with James and his buddies so that they can offer a burnt sacrifice, or offer some kind of an offering on the altar to the Lord to purify from a Nazarite vow that Paul didn't even take, that he's just pretending to take? I mean look, there are four guys that had this vow that they're fulfilling, and shaving their heads, and finishing off their Nazarite vow, and now we're going to do animal sacrifice. Apostle Paul shaves his head to pretend that he's part of it, when he's not. Why? To please people. Oh, just to kind of make people happy to think that you're still Jewish enough, and you're still following the Jewish laws enough, why don't you shave your head, and you can get purified with these guys, and pretend that you're part of the group, and then we can all have a happy little animal sacrifice. Friends, Jesus Christ is already the sacrifice. It's done at this point. And you know what? This temple is already done. Because when Jesus died on the cross, what happened? The veil of the temple's rent in twain. It's over. Okay? We're in the New Testament now, New Covenant now. This is not right, what they're doing. James is completely wrong, and also, what's this thing about, well, we told the Gentiles to only do these four things, but the Jews have to do everything, he's saying. They've got to get circumcised, they've got to follow the customs, we're doing Nazarite vows down here, we're doing animal sacrifices down here, but the Gentiles, we just told them, you know, do just these four things. Now look, does anybody actually think that it's biblical to have different rules for Jews and Gentiles in the New Testament? That's not what the Bible teaches. Folks, the Bible teaches that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile. The Bible tells us to avoid genealogies. So, who's a Jew? Who's a Gentile? We're all one in Christ Jesus. There's no difference between the Jew and the Greek. We don't have a different set of rules for Gentiles and Jews, no. But these people, they've been brought up a certain way, and they're getting into the New Testament and they don't understand everything, and James is trying to hang on to these Jewish things, and he's even, at this point, been a bad influence on the Apostle Paul and gotten the Apostle Paul to agree to this shenanigans that doesn't even work anyway. What's the point of this whole shenanigans of Paul getting his head shaved and doing this so that they can make everybody happy? Let me ask you this, those of you who know the story, does it make everybody happy? No. Everybody gets enraged and he gets arrested and the whole plan backfires. Why? Because when you, as a man of God, set out to please people, it's not going to work. All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. Now look, how do I know that James' ideas in Acts 15 and in Acts 21 are wrong? How do I know that they're wrong? Because I have the rest of the Bible to guide me. Go to Galatians chapter 1. See, the epistles of Paul are scripture, they're God's word, they're divine oracles. These are absolute truth. When I'm reading a historical book, I'm reading about what people did and I have to ask myself, did Paul do it right here? Did James do it right here? Did Peter do it right here? But when I'm reading the epistles, I'm reading absolute truth, okay? Again, we need to know how to rightly divide the word of truth between a historical book versus an actual divine oracle telling us how it is, okay? So let's look at some highlights in Galatians and see if this is right. How about chapter 1 verse 10? For do I now persuade man or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. So when I see Paul doing something deceptive in order to please men, I'm going to interpret it in light of this verse and say he shouldn't have done that. How about this, Galatians chapter 2 verse 11? Let's see if guys like Peter and James and John can make mistakes. Verse 11. But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face because he was to be blamed. For before that certain came from who? From James. So James has this Judaizing tendency. But before that certain came from James, he did eat with the Gentiles, which is against their Jewish customs, right? And when they were come, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. So Peter's being a hypocrite. When James and the Judaizers aren't around, what do they do? They hang out with the Gentiles, they eat with them, they don't even worry about it. But then as soon as the people from James show up, the kosher police show up, now all of a sudden they're afraid and they don't want to eat with them and they withdraw, okay? Look at verse 13. And the other Jews dissembled likewise with him in so much that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation. And you say, man, you know, Paul's really throwing Peter and Barnabas under the bus here. Yeah, but you know, Luke's going to throw him under the bus in the book of Acts by telling us what he did, so it comes back around. But it says in verse 14, But when I saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, I said unto Peter before them all, If thou, being a Jew, liveth after the manner of Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compelest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? So he calls him out, and what does he say to Peter? He says, you live like a Gentile and you know it, buddy. You're only doing this because James' buddies are around. And Paul fell into the same trap in chapter 21 of Acts because he got peer pressured into Judaizing a little bit, and that's what happened in this passage. And the Bible is condemning it in Galatians chapter 2. Look at Galatians chapter 3 verse 27. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek. There is neither bond nor free. There is neither male nor female, for you're all one in Christ Jesus. Go to Galatians chapter 5. While you're turning to Galatians 5, let me remind you that Philippians 3, 3, Paul said to the Gentiles, We are the circumcision which worship God in the Spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. He tells Gentiles, we're the circumcision. Okay. That's not consistent with what we see in Acts 21. In Acts 21, oh, you're teaching, you know, the Jews that they don't need to circumcise their kids, and you're teaching them to depart from the customs of Moses. You know, you got to do this, you got to get your head shaved, bro, and set this straight. No. Look what the Bible says in Galatians 5, 3. For I testify again to every man that is circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ has become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law, you're fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit wait for the hope of righteousness by faith, for in Jesus Christ, neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love. He's saying, look, if you're going to do circumcision, you have to do the whole law. He's saying, we don't need circumcision in the New Testament. Don't do circumcision in the New Testament, is what he's saying in short. But yet we have James rebuking Paul for teaching people that circumcision doesn't matter. But that is what Paul taught, and he was right, because this is an epistle, okay. Then look at verse 11, and this is the key verse right here, 5-11. And I, brethren, if I yet preach circumcision, why do I yet suffer persecution? Then is the offense of the cross ceased. He's saying, look, I'm clearly not preaching circumcision, because if I did, then I would not be persecuted. But I am being persecuted, why? Because I'm not preaching circumcision, that's why. And in Acts 21, why does he go through that song and dance with that vow? Because he wanted the Jews to think that he taught circumcision, because he's just trying to fit in and not get persecuted, because he thinks he's going to reach more Jews that way or whatever. But it backfires, it doesn't work, because God's not going to bless that anyway. Look what the Bible says in chapter 6, verse 12. I mean, look, it's very clear when we're reading the epistle to the Galatians what the truth is. Verse 12 of chapter 6, as many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they constrain you to be circumcised, only lest they should suffer persecution for the cross of Christ, for neither they themselves who are circumcised keep the law, but desire to have you circumcised, that they may glory in your flesh. And this is similar to the Peter accusation. You live as do a Gentile, but you're trying to Judaize Gentiles when you don't even live like the Jews, you live like a Gentile. But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Now, that's what Paul's saying under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost here. That is correct, but here's the thing. Paul is still human, even though this is the ideal, that he be crucified with Christ, and that he just, the world doesn't matter, and I don't care what people say, I'm not trying to please man. Still, as a human being, we could all fall into that trap, even if we know these things, we could still fall into the trap of compromising our beliefs in order to please the people around us. We've all done it. At some point in our life, we've all probably compromised our beliefs just to fit in, or be cool, or get along with the people around us. Well look, that's what happened in Acts 21, but it doesn't make it right. Okay, and we need to be able to rightly divide the word of truth and understand that what the epistles are saying is the truth, the word of God. What Acts is telling us, it's true that that happened, but what the people in the story are doing is wrong, in light of other scripture. It says in verse 15, For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature, and as many as walk according to this rule, peace beyond them and upon the Israel of God. Peace beyond them and mercy and upon the Israel of God. And so, we need to rightly divide the word of truth. Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it's obvious. Sometimes it's crystal clear when Solomon has, you know, 700 wives and 300 concubines that that's not a good idea. That's not what God is allowing or telling him to do. Other times, we have to maybe think a little harder or cross-reference more scriptures, but that's where the studying to show yourself approved comes in. Don't try to oversimplify the Bible. You need to understand that some things in the Bible are simple, but the Bible says that some things are hard to be understood. And they're going to take study, and they're not going to be as easy as maybe you want them to be. Some things can be a little more complicated. You know, the book of Ezra is just a complicated book. And you can't just take Ezra at face value and say, everything Ezra does is right because Ezra is the good guy. So when he has a mass divorce for three months straight, it must be God's will. Really? Because I can't find that anywhere in the Bible. The command to divorce your wife because, oh, it turns out she was from one of these other nations, so you've got to divorce her now. That's completely wrong. It's not biblical. It's not found anywhere. It's not found anywhere. You know, there's the Ten Commandments, right? And then you've got the Big Four strangling. I mean, look, I'll eat something that's been strangled right now. If somebody wants to strangle something out in the parking lot and barbecue it, I'll eat it right now. Because James is wrong. It's that simple. You know, and I'm not going to teach for doctrines the commandments of men. Okay? I mean, and if it's a pig, then so much the better. Okay? You know, we need to be able to rightly divide the word of truth. And when we read the book of Acts, we can't just assume that everything people do in the book of Acts is right. But Judaizing Christians, they'll completely ignore the book of Galatians, clear scripture. They'll completely ignore the fact that Jesus is the Lamb slain once for all. They'll completely ignore the book of Hebrews. And what will they do? They'll grab ahold of Acts 15, grab ahold of Acts 21, and then they'll start teaching that we're supposed to be keeping the feast, and we need to be shaving our heads, and we need to be doing a Nazarite vow, and we need to be kosher. And in fact, there are even these Judaizing Christians today that would even, if they rebuilt the temple, they'd go over there and they would delight in an animal sacrifice down at that temple. Look, I've been in Baptist churches and heard them teach that in the millennium we're going to do animal sacrifices again. That's absurd. I mean, that right there is not rightly dividing the word of truth between Old Covenant and New Covenant. Why in the world would we do an animal sacrifice in the New Testament? We're not doing them now. Well, that's because the temple's gone? No, no, no. We wouldn't have been doing them anyway. Even before the temple was physically destroyed in 70 AD, the veil was ripped in half when Jesus died on the cross. That's, from God's perspective, that's when it was over, right there. From God's perspective, New Covenant starts with the death of the testator, the death of Jesus Christ, New Testament, the New Covenant, right there. But here's the thing, it took people time to catch up. God knew that that's when it started, but people like James and Peter are slow to catch on to some of these things, and it's easy for us to be a little harsh on them today because we have the completed New Testament. It's not like James had a copy of Galatians in his back pocket, knowing that it's the word of God. Okay, so he's just got some wrong ideas, and he's got his own biases, and he wants it to be more Jewish and whatever. And even these people that are wrong about things in the book of Acts or in the book of Galatians, you know, they get these things right later. You know, Peter is stuck in Jerusalem when God told him to go into all the world. But by the time he writes the book of 1 Peter, he's writing from Babylon. So that shows that he finally got out of Jerusalem and did what Jesus told him to do. But it took him literally decades to do that because he just stayed in Jerusalem. Even though Jesus specifically said, what did Jesus say? He said, wait in Jerusalem until you be endued with power from on high, and then go into all the world and preach the gospel to every preacher. Go teach all nations. So how long were they supposed to stay in Jerusalem? Just till Pentecost. The day of Pentecost, it's a matter of weeks. In fact, it's called the Feast of Weeks. A couple weeks, right? A few weeks. Seven weeks. Pentecost. Fifty days. So a matter of weeks. The Holy Spirit is poured out in a powerful way in Acts chapter 2. You know what? At that point, you know what it was time to do? Get out of Jerusalem. Go to India. Go to Spain. Right? Go to Babylon. Go wherever. Go everywhere. Go into all the world. Go teach all nations. Is that what the apostles did? Nope. Even when heavy persecution came and scattered the Christians, and they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the gospel. Oh, except the apostles. The people who were specifically told to leave. Everybody else is leaving and they're staying. Was that what Jesus told them to do? So how do we rightly divide the word of truth? Well, when Jesus says, go teach all nations. Go into all the world. That's absolute truth. When Peter and James and John hang out in Jerusalem, after the day of Pentecost, it's disobedience. I don't care if it's recorded in the book of Acts. Yeah, that's because Acts is recording an act of disobedience for us to learn from. Every word of the book of Acts is true because they really did disobey like that. But listen to me. If they disobeyed about that, which is the most core tenet of their mission, go into all the world, go teach all nations. If they disobeyed about that, am I really shocked when I get to Acts 15? And they've got these squirrelly ideas about Jews and Gentiles? They're not even in the right city. Okay? When they get to chapter 21 and they cook up this idea, okay? It's pretty easy to understand once you grasp the idea that we have to rightly divide the word of truth and understand what God is telling us to do. Another way of saying this is we have to tell the difference between what is prescriptive and what is descriptive. Right? What is God prescribing and telling us to do versus just descriptive, this is what they did. And so I'm thankful personally that the Bible is not some super simple, super easy book because if it were, we'd all be bored with it by now if we'd been saved for a long time. But the wonderful thing about the Bible is that it's so deep and so rich in meaning that we can spend the rest of our lives studying it and still not understand everything. Because, you know, what if I could just understand everything in the Bible? I mean, then what do I do for the rest of my life for devotions? We're supposed to spend our entire lives learning the Bible and the great thing is the Bible is so deep we'll never understand all of it. So we can spend our whole lives learning it and growing. Now the good news is there's a lot of really easy simple stuff for beginners to jump right in. And a beginner, a brand new saved Christian can read their Bible tomorrow morning and they will get something out of it. They will understand it if they're saved. They'll understand something. It's got stuff that's basic and it's got stuff that's more advanced. And, you know, my sermon tonight is a more advanced sermon. I'm preaching about more advanced things. The simple-minded might just kind of want to plug their ears at these things. But we need to study to show ourselves approved and we need to, even early in our Christian life, get this idea in our head of rightly dividing the word of truth. And when we see something that doesn't jive, ask ourselves is this for sure coming from God or is this coming from just a human who is maybe making a mistake? Let's bow your heads and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you so much for your word, Lord. And what a pleasure it is, what a joy it is to read our Bibles every single day. And, Lord, there's so much to learn and there's so much truth. I pray that everyone here would learn to rightly divide the word of truth and to understand the difference between poetry and prose, to understand the difference between that which is prescriptive and that which is descriptive. And, Lord, help us not to get hoodwinked by these people who want to use a passage in the wrong way in order to teach false doctrine and get us thinking that divorce is okay or getting us thinking that, you know, that we should Judaize or whatever, Lord. Just help us to be grounded in the truth so that we won't be deceived by these things and so that we will know what the Bible says and what it means and how to interpret it. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Take your hymnals, please, and sing number 169. Come, thou fount of every blessing, hymn number 169. Let's start on that first verse, number 169. Sing it out. Come, thou fount of every blessing, to my heart to sing thy praise. Streets of mercy never ceasing, all for songs of loudest praise. Teach me some rebellious sonnet sung by flaming tongues of heart. Praise the fount I'm based upon in, mount of thy redeeming love. Here I raise my heaven-easer, hither by thy help I come. And I know by thy good pleasure, safely I'll arrive at home. Jesus saw me when a stranger, wandering from the fold of God. He to rescue me from danger, interposed his precious blood. O to praise how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be. Let thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee. Grown to wander, Lord, I feel it. Grown to lead the God I love. Here's my heart, O take it, seal it, seal it for thy courts above. Hey, great singing tonight, Yours List. Copyright © 2020, New Thinking Allowed Foundation