Monthly Archives: November 2011

Understanding John 5:39,40

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Pastor John,40. The Pharisees loved the Bible but were not even saved. Don’t become like them.” I still believe I should study the Bible but his words ring in my ears as a constant dampener on the joy I feel when I look into God’s word. Is he right?

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” – John 5:39, 40

Many thanks for writing and sharing. I have heard similar things myself spoken by people who have a very surface level understanding of Scripture.

It does not require much indepth study of the Scripture to find out what our attitude should be towards it. Jesus made it clear that when we read Scripture, we were reading what was spoken to us by God (Matt. 22:31). Paul told Timothy that “all Scripture is God breathed” (2 Tim 3:16) and this alone reveals, by its very nature, its supreme authority as the sole infallible rule of faith for the Church as well as our individual consciences.

Job said he loved God’s law more than his necessary food (23:12). In other words, he would rather starve than neglect the rightful place of the word of God in his life.

Psalm 119 is the lengthiest chapter in the Bible and is entirely devoted to show us what our attitude should be to the word of God. Just reading and applying that chapter alone would mean that your friend’s argument is totally undermined.

But what of the Scripture he quotes? Well, it is fairly easy to see how he has misunderstood the text.

In John 5:39, 40 Jesus says, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me [literally, “you do not want to come to me,” Greek ou thelete elthein pros me] that you may have life.”

“The Scriptures” is a reference to what we would call the Old Testament (as the New Testament was not yet written). So here Jesus is saying to the Pharisees, that they search (read/study) the Old Testament, which points everywhere to Himself as the fulfillment, but they don’t see this at all, because they don’t want to.

Jesus was in no way condeming them for studying the Scriptures. That needs to be sounded loud and clear. Jesus was saying that they searched out the Scriptures and in doing this, the truth about Him was staring them clearly in the face but they refused to see it.

It is possible to read the Bible with a closed heart, refusing to acknowledge what is obvious. Jesus is saying that the Scripture is a revelation of Himself. He is not hidden in the pages of the Bible; He is clearly revealed. To read it and not see Him there in the Scripture is the evidence of a closed heart towards God. It shows a willful blindness.

I am sure you remember that Jesus, after His resurrection, walked with the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, who were very sad and downcast. Jesus said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” (Luke 24:25-27) Later on, the disciples remarked to each other, “”Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?”

Jesus did much more for them than give them a supernatural experience. He could have just said “Hey guys, I am Jesus and I am raised from the dead.” That would have been amazing and He would later open their hearts to recognize that He was present with them. But Jesus did not do that FIRST. He did something even more valuable. He rooted and grounded their joy about seeing Him raised from the dead in the revelation of Himself found in the Scriptures. He showed them Himself in the familar pages of the Old Testament.

Later, in appearing to His disciples, we are told, “Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures…” Luke 24:44,45

Your friend has given you some very unhelpful and may I say, unscriptural counsel. The Holy Spirit, the author of Scripture, gives His people the desire to study it, and to help us interpret it correctly. When I see someone who has no desire to study the Bible, it causes me concern as to their true heart condition before God. Peter tells us “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” – the milk being a reference to God’s word (1 Peter 2:2,3). In other words, whatever our stage of growth as Christians we are to mimic newborn babies in terms of our desire for the word of God. That’s plain isn’t it?

There is never anything wrong with searching out and studying the Scriptures. What is wrong is refusing to see Christ as we do so.

As we open up the pages of the Bible to read, study and meditate, we should pray, “Oh God, open up to me the treasures of Your word; and by Your Holy Spirit, show me more of Jesus.”

Its a prayer God loves to answer.

So you fell! So what? Run, Christian, Run!

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Phil 3:12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. 13 Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Heb 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith…

After training for this event for months and months, Heather Dorniden faced the unexpected when another racer cut her off – she fell very hard. But when you see what happens next, you’ll be amazed and inspired.

The Spread of AIDS and the Spread of False Doctrine

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“Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers.” – 1 Timothy 4:16

Here’s an insightful analogy from Tim Challies:

In 1981, the Centers for Disease Control​ and Prevention in Atlanta published a report saying that they had identified, without probable cause, five cases of a rare strain of pneumonia among men in Los Angeles. By the following July, this disease, now appearing in isolated pockets around the world, was given the name Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome​ or AIDS. Just two years later, proclaiming that we would soon be able to inoculate people against this disease, the United States Health and Human Services Secretary said, “yet another terrible disease is about to yield to patience, persistence and outright genius.” Almost twenty years later, we know a great deal more about the disease, but we still have no cure and no inoculation. Since its discovery AIDS has claimed over 25 million lives.

Yet AIDS has never killed anyone; not in the truest sense. As scientists researched AIDS in the months and years after its discovery, they came to see that it was not really a disease itself but was in fact a collection of symptoms and infections stemming from a common cause that they soon identified as what we now know as Human Immunodeficiency Virus​ or HIV.

But HIV does not kill people either. HIV is what is known as a retrovirus—a kind of virus that can insert its DNA into a host cell’s genome and then reside there indefinitely. Transferred through bodily fluids, HIV primarily attaches itself to important cells in the immune systems—cells that defend the body from infection and disease. As infection spreads to greater and greater numbers of certain types of these cells, the body becomes susceptible to infections, tumors and other life-threatening illnesses. Viruses, bacteria, parasites and fungi that a healthy immune system can easily defeat soon rage unchecked by the weakened immune system. Eventually most HIV patients develop what we know as AIDS. While it typically takes nine or ten years for HIV to become AIDS, a person with AIDS has a life expectancy of less than one year.

New and promising treatments continue to turn up, but the disease continues to develop resistance to these. What is at one time effective quickly becomes useless as the disease adapts to beat it. Once HIV becomes full-blown AIDS, most patients succumb quickly to lethal combinations of disease and infection. AIDS has a 100% mortality rate. It is an awful, horrific way to die.

Have you ever considered that spiritual discernment functions much as the church’s and the Christian’s immune system? The parallels are crystal clear. It is spiritual discernment that allows us to identify and overcome the disease of false doctrine and false gospels. Like the body’s immune system, discernment responds to “disease,” quickly identifying and destroying what is foreign.

What this means is that without discernment we are like a body without an immune system. We are a like church stricken with AIDS. We are helpless and hopeless; we will be destroyed. It is not the lack of spiritual discernment that will kill us, but the lack of protection that spiritual discernment offers—the kind of protection that allows us to filter truth from error and right from wrong.

And I guess this is the reason I wrote The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment way back in 2007. And it is why wherever I travel I find myself encouraging people to be deliberate in growing in spiritual maturity. The church is in need of discerners, of people who are mature and maturing in the faith, who are skilled in separating truth from error and right from wrong, and who can do it all holding fast to both truth and love. The church needs Christians like this who can protect her from the constant false gospels that rise up against her.