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How NOT to Interpret the Bible |
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People often say, That’s just your interpretation! or, You can make the Bible mean whatever you want it to mean. True enough, some people have tried to twist the Bible to mean all sorts of things. But, just because some people abuse the Bible (just like some people have car crashes), this does not mean that we cannot understand what the Bible is teaching (or that it is impossible to safely drive in cars).
Here are my top ten favourite Bible Bloopers:
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Ten Ways to Grow a Church |
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I was preaching at a small church recently and after the service an old lady came up to me and said, with feeling, the following heart-breaking words: 'I am tired to belonging to churches that close'. Evidently there were plans afoot to close the small church. This lady had been through that experience once before and was sad at the idea of having spent her whole life working hard in churches that eventually went to the wall.
Robert G. Lee was a Southern Baptist pastor in the USA. As pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee from 1927 to 1960, he saw 24,000 people join his church. The Southern Baptists, of course, are the largest Christian denomination (apart from the Catholic church) in the USA and are currently numbered at about16 million members - quite an achievement considering the fact that the Episcopalians (C of E), Presbyterians, Congregationalists and Methodists were the main early Christian bodies in the history of the USA. Just how the Southern Baptists achieved such predominance may be explained by the ways that men like Lee built their individual churches. Here are his ideas about how NOT to grow a Church ...
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A Sinful Messiah? The Problem of the Messianic Psalms |
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The problem of the Messianic Psalms could be framed like this: How is it that we find parts of Psalms quoted in the New Testament, which are taken by the New Testament writings to refer to Christ, yet when we turn to the Old Testament and look at the Psalms from which the quotations are taken, we find other parts of these same Psalms which seem to speak of the Psalmist’s sinfulness? How could these sinful statements apply to Christ? How can we take certain parts of these Psalms and apply them to Christ but ignore other parts of the Psalms that we find difficult to apply to Christ?
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Born of Water and Spirit? |
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What does it mean to be born of ‘water and spirit’ in John 3:5?
Different commentators present a variety of suggestions to explain what being born of ‘water’ in John 3:5 means:
- Some say it refers to baptism,
- Others take it to be a reference to the Word of God (for Ephesians 5:26 speaks of the washing of water by the word)
- Others argue that the word ‘and’ here means ‘even’ and that the ‘water, even the Spirit’ must be a picture or figure of the Spirit of God.
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The Parables of the Mustard Seed and the Leaven |
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In Matthew 13, Christ told his seven famous Parables of the Kingdom. In verses 31-33, we have the third and fourth of these parables, about a mustard seed that grew into a tree in which the birds sheltered and about yeast which spread and permeated throughout the dough.
Strangely, Christ did not explain these parables, either to the crowds or even to his disciples in private? What are these parables teaching? |
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Consider the following two churches:
In 1950, 39% of the population of the United Kingdom attended Church on Sundays. By 1979, the figure had dropped to 12% and by 2005, to 6%. In the UK, 1 million people left Church in the 1990's. The Church of England saw a 20% decline in membership in England between 1980 and 2000.
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