Getting More From Your Bible
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words and put them back in the context of the rest of the Bible: “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God’” (verse 7). In other words, true Christians do not throw themselves off of high buildings or handle deadly snakes on purpose. There is a dramatic difference between faith and presumption! It should be obvious to us what was wrong with George Hensley’s theology. It was unbalanced. He took a “buffet” approach to scripture, loading only the things that looked appetizing or useful onto his theological plate. The rest— the all-important defining scriptural context—he left behind. That is a poor approach to studying scripture. Sadly, it is also a common one. Christians are often guilty of using scripture like a fortune cookie, or as a garnish for their own opinion. They only turn to the Bible for quick advice the way some people shake a “magic eightball” for the answer to an important question. While this may not always result in such extremes as snake handling, it is still poor scriptural stewardship, and can lead to some rather strange thinking. Pastor John MacArthur tells the story of watching a popular Christian television program some years ago on which a guest explained the “biblical” basis for his ministry: “My ministry is based entirely on my life-verse, Matthew 19:26: ‘With God all things are possible.’ God gave me that verse because I was born in 1926.” The host of the program became very excited, and grabbed his Bible to find his life-verse. He was born in 1934, so he looked up Matthew 19:34. There are only 30 verses in Matthew 19, so he turned to the gospel of Luke instead. HTTP://WWW.SERVANTOFMESSIAH.ORG