Transcript & Slides: Twisting the Bible

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Twisting the Bible
By David Feddes

Last time we were together, we talked about trusting the Bible. Today, I want to think with you about twisting the Bible. I'd like to just begin with the story of the drunkard and the roses. Once upon a time, there was a man who had a headache and woke up after a night of drinking. He mumbled something to his wife, and she knew that it meant to call the office and tell them that he wouldn't be coming in for work today and because he was ill. She did that, and then she decided to go out with their children. She said, "Daddy's sick today, so we're going to go out for a while." So they headed out. 

Meanwhile, around noon, the drunkard woke up and still had a splitting headache. So he decided he would drink a little bit more to just get rid of that headache. He was out in the backyard, saw the rose bush in bloom, and decided he would do something very special for his wife. He went into the house, got a sharp knife, went back out, and grabbed a rose. It poked his hand, causing it to bleed. But he didn't feel too much, so he cut it, and then he cut some more roses. Finally, with bloody hands and an arm full of roses, he heard his wife returning with the kids. 

He went out to meet them in the driveway, grabbed the kids, and hugged them with the roses. They said, "Dad, those are poking us! Let go!" But he just hugged them tighter and said, "Don't you love your dear old dad?" 

Then he went up to his wife, thrust the roses in her face, and poked her with them. She said, "Get away from me!" He replied, "What's the matter? I go to all this trouble for you because I love you so much, and you don't even like it. What's the matter? Don't women love roses? Don't kids like hugs?"

"Like a thorn bush in a drunkard's hand is a proverb in the mouth of a fool" (Proverbs 26:9). Roses can be good, but the thorns are going to do a lot of damage if the wrong person is wielding those roses. Likewise, the Bible is a wonderful book, but in the wrong hands, used in the wrong way, it can cause a lot of pain and a lot of damage. A proverb in the Book of Proverbs is expected to be a very good thing, but in the mouth of a fool, those proverbs of God's wisdom can be misused in terrible ways. Then they're like waving thorns in a thorn bush and hurting people wherever you go.

The New Testament also talks about twisting the Bible. 2 Peter 3:16 says, "There are some things in Paul's letters that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures." It's possible to twist things in Paul's letters and in other parts of the Bible to the harm of other people and to your own destruction. 

I want to think with you, first, about some different ways of twisting the Bible. Second, we'll look at the harm that's been done. Sometimes you've been on the wrong end of having the Bible twisted, and it has hurt you. So then, how do you respond? What do you make of the Bible when it has been used to hurt you? Third and finally, we're going to look at some principles that can lessen the likelihood of twisting the Bible and enable us to understand and apply the Bible rightly.

Twisting

Let's begin by just looking at some examples of twisting the Bible. 

• Drinking
• Authority
• Discipline
• Holiness
• Grace
• Wealth
• Slavery
• Race
• Women
• Conquest

There are people with a drinking problem who will quote the Bible and its fine passages about the value of drinking. Psalm 104:15 says "wine that gladdens the heart of man" is a gift from God. There's even a command in the New Testament: "Drink a little wine because of your bad stomach" (1 Timothy 5:23). Somehow that's twisted into a mandate for all ages to drink lots of wine because Paul told Timothy to drink a little to help him with illness and bad drinking water. Some people who drink too much appeal to the Bible and say, "Hey, wine is a gift of God! Someone was even urged in the Bible to drink a little wine. See? That justifies my drinking." Meanwhile, they ignore Bible verses that say, "Don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Holy Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18), or "Wine is a mocker and beer a brawler; whoever is led astray by them is not wise" (Proverbs 20:1).

There are Bible verses about authority. "Children, obey your parents" (Ephesians 6:1). "Wives, submit to your husbands" (Ephesians 5:22). "Citizens, submit to the governing authorities" (Romans 13:1). Those verses about authority have been favorites of bullies and tyrants. Rulers read a verse: "Submit to the authorities," and before you know it, they have a whole theory called the divine right of kings: the king does what he wants and answers to nobody but God. Some husbands say, "Yeah, I like that part about wives submitting. That means that I am always right, that whenever there's a disagreement, it's settled by me calling the shots. I really like that verse." Some control freaks and abusers of children are experts on Bible verses about discipline. "Children, obey your parents," and "Don't spare the rod; make sure you use that rod and use it plenty" (see Proverbs 13:24, 22:15). They leave out the Bible verses directed at rulers and tyrants, telling them that God will bring them down if they are mistreating their people or going against God. Overbearing husbands don't mention Bible verses that say, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her" (Ephesians 5:25). Authoritarian abusers overlook verses that say, "Fathers, don't provoke your children, lest they become discouraged" (Ephesians 6:4; Colossians 3:21) and "Husbands, love your wives, don't be harsh with them" (Colossians 3:19). All of those Bible verses tend to get left to the side. As a result, the passages about authority and discipline have often been misused in terrible, abusive ways.

Then there are passages about holiness. Before you know it, holiness has taken on God's authority on every little hangup I ever had. "The Bible makes it very clear that a woman shall not wear pants because you need to be holy. The Bible makes it super clear that you should always wear a tie in church because a church is a holy place, and so those who come there should be properly attired. Certain things that we've gotten to have habits: you shall not play cards; that's probably so far in the distance that nobody even remembers that kind of restriction anymore, or that dancing is evil, and so on. But the biblical mandate for holiness is taken to rule out or condemn everything I ever didn't like.

On the flip side, of course, there is a way of using the Bible passages about grace to justify everything I ever felt like doing: "Do not judge, or you too will be judged" is the only remaining verse of the Bible that some people will pay attention to. They say, "Hey, it's all grace. God is love. Love is love, for that matter." So everything is grace, and we don't have to worry about anything such as holiness. You see the kind of ways that there can be an imbalance or a twisting of the Bible this way and that, usually to suit our particular way of thinking.

When it comes to matters of wealth, rich people read Bible verses that say, "Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider her ways and be wise. A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like a bandit and scarcity like an armed man." See, I know why you're poor: you're a lazybones, unlike me, who has worked very hard for everything I've got. So you have wealthy people reading Bible verses about poverty, and they've decided that they know why everybody's poor. Sometimes you'll have poor people reading verses about wealth, and they'll say, "Yeah, the hand of the oppressor is what we see here. The reason we're poor is because there's been so much oppression and discrimination, and we know it's all the fault of those powerful rich people, that one percent who mess things up for everybody else." It might be possible that some people actually are poor because they're lazy or have addiction problems or have other issues. It is possible that some people are rich because they exploit people. It's not just possible, it's a certainty. Both of those things are a certainty. But when you're reading the Bible and you happen to be lazy, you would like to blame it on the exploiters. When you read the Bible and you happen to be a bully and an oppressor who underpays all your workers and cuts corners, you'd like to credit your wealth to your wisdom and hard work and their poverty to their flaws. So we tend to twist the Bible in ways that suit us and then apply the verses that we like best.

When it came to the matter of slavery, some people who enslaved others would say, "Well, the Bible says slaves, submit to your masters. What could be clearer? Slavery is a biblical practice, and we're just being biblical when we make you work our plantations. When we capture people and ship them over the oceans and make them work here, this is just being good biblical people." Left out of that were Bible verses that said, "Enslavers live contrary to the doctrine of the gospel of the blessed God." Or the words of the Bible that said, "If you can gain your freedom from slavery, do so." It's pretty obvious that it was not thought to be a wonderful good thing. Of course, in the history of the church, in the early generations of the church, Chrysostom, St. Patrick, and others preached against slavery, and it was virtually eliminated from among Christians at that time in history. But people who wanted to enslave others found their justification in the Bible. 

Those who wanted to enslave people of a particular race also found justification in the Bible. Didn't it say somewhere in the Bible, "Yeah, I remember that after Noah got drunk, there was a curse uttered against Canaan, the son of Ham. Wouldn't you know it, I'm pretty sure black people are descendants of Ham, and that curse is still on them. So it's just obvious that black people are inferior." This is actual Bible interpretation and application from times past. So you take a curse like that, and of course, the curse was on the Canaanites, who no longer exist, but it was smoothly transferred to whatever racial target you wanted to transfer it to.

Then, of course, there have been the passages where people will say, "Oh, those are so demeaning of women," and they turn against the Bible for those reasons. They neglect the passages where Paul, the great enemy of women, is going through a list of woman after woman after woman who was my beloved co-worker in the gospel, my co-laborer in the gospel, and all of the passages about the women being witnesses of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You know, I could go on and on. But once again, when you get dialed in on one particular thing, then you twist it, and you make that your thing.

There were also simply the passages about conquest, and people would take verses about the conquest of Canaan on the direct orders of God and think that their own aggressive invasion or attempt to wipe somebody out was on God's command or by God's good providence. King James, he of King James Bible fame, for that matter, gave thanks for the plagues that were wiping out the natives in North America. It was so good of God to send those plagues so that the English could take over the continent. These are some of the ways that the Bible has been misused. It's been misused in personal relationships. Sometimes it's been very misused in public life and in historic settings, whether the conquest of North America or the conquests of the Crusades. As we've learned recently, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity is engraved on some Russian missiles that are flying currently. So you can use the name of God and the authority of the Bible to do many things.

Wounds

What do we make of it when people have been affected and harmed by people quoting the Bible and by things that use the Bible to legitimate or defend what they're doing? How do you respond to that? 

Refuse to reject the Bible.

One response is to say, "I am sick and tired of the Bible. The Bible is a cause of problems. Religion is a cause of war in general. Maybe we'd have some peace on earth if we could just get rid of religion and get rid of the Bible and just live without any of that kind of influence." When people are twisting the truth or hijacking the truth for their own purposes, what shall we do in response? If you discovered that someone had hijacked an airplane, what would be your solution? "I believe that in order to prevent hijacking, we must blow up all airplanes, and there will never be another hijacking again." That's true. If you have some maniac who drives a car into a crowd at a parade and kills a bunch of people, you say, "Cars are weapons of mass destruction, and we're going to make sure that never happens again. We are going to obliterate all cars, and never again will anybody drive a car into a crowd." If you could wipe out all cars, that's true, they would never again use a car to destroy anybody. But you might not want to destroy all airplanes to prevent hijacking. You might not want to abolish all cars to prevent the misuse of cars. It might be wiser to find ways to use those things rightly and to take steps to deal with hijacking and to prevent it.

When we think of the wounds that people have suffered, one is the temptation to reject the Bible because you were wounded by people quoting it. If you grew up with an abusive dad, and he happened to be a Bible-quoting dad at the same time, you might not be too fond of dear old dad, and you might not be too fond of the Bible. If you heard the Bible quoted against your race and to justify racism and exploitation, you might not like the racist very much, and you might not be too fond of the Bible that was quoted. We need to recognize again that the temptation to just throw it all out is there, and it's real. If you've been offended by the behavior of Bible-quoting people, it is tempting to distance yourself from those people, and sometimes you need to. But it may also be tempting to just distance yourself from the Bible and say, "I don't want anything to do with it." But again, as I said, it's probably not the best approach because to abolish something good because it's been twisted or misused is not the best idea.

Repent of twisting the Bible.

Sometimes we think that lies are the only dangerous thing. Truth is dangerous when it's used in the wrong hands by the wrong people. Truth is dangerous, and the greatest truth is often the most dangerous. That's why the Bible is the most dangerous book there is because it speaks with divine authority and with such power, and it has been honored for so many generations that if you can get the Bible to do your dirty work, then the Bible becomes just about the most dangerous book there is. We need to acknowledge that fact rather than pretend, "Oh, the Bible would just be completely harmless. We don't need to worry about such things."

Some of you know that in current thought, there's a thing called postmodernism, which doesn't look at objective truth or things being accurate or true anymore. It says everything is just a power play. People claiming to have truth are really just trying to impose their will on you. They have a will to power, and they're just trying to manipulate and control. So don't listen to anybody who claims to be bringing truth because all they're trying to do is get you to go along with their particular approach. At one level, I think that's a bunch of hogwash. There is such a thing as truth; there is such a thing as falsehood. Yet that postmodern idea that all claims to truth are just an attempt to manipulate and impose your own power on others, we've got to admit that there is an element of truth in that because that is something that does happen. Oftentimes, when you're quoting a truth, you're actually doing it to get your own way or to just get what you want and manipulate somebody else. That doesn't mean the truth you're quoting is false, but it might mean that you're using it in a very false manner. So we need to grant that. I've read a lot of learned stuff by godly professors saying, "Postmodernism is a bunch of rot, this idea that there is no such thing as objective truth," and those are fine books. But keep in mind that those accusations do have a point, that very often there is a will to power and a misuse of the truth to try to get your way.

We need to refuse to reject the Bible, but we also have to recognize that the Bible has been twisted historically in a number of very significant and harmful ways. We need to look for the possibility that we ourselves have been among those who've done some of the twisting. When there are wounds that we have endured, we need to resist the temptation to just chuck the Bible. When there are wounds that we have caused, we need to repent of the ways that we've twisted the Bible. 

We need to relish God's love and relish God's Word anew. Because the Bible gets twisted, we need to be aware of it, but we also need to rededicate ourselves to a love for God, a love for Jesus, and enjoying the ways that he loves us and enjoying and appreciating the fact that he has revealed himself. No matter how many times his Word gets misused, it is still the Word of the living God, and it is still filled with treasure and filled with blessing for us.

Let's think a little bit not only about the ways the Bible is twisted and some of the wounds that have resulted from it. I certainly do want to pause and just say again, examine your own heart and say, "What ways have I been hurt by Bible quoters or by people professing to be Christians that are still affecting me today?" Because that's important. Don't just pretend that it never happened or that it had no impact. Sometimes it does, and you still have a sour relationship that's poisoned by past wounds. Then to repent and to learn to relish. 

Principles

But having said all that, how in the world do we avoid twisting the Bible? Well, here are a few principles for considering how to avoid twisting the Bible.

• Get right with God.
• Hear the whole Bible.
• Focus on Jesus.
• Apply to yourself first.
• Interact with church.
• Speak truth in love.

Get right with God. 

You're never going to be able to use the Bible properly or benefit from it or help others benefit from it if you're out of touch with God. There is such a thing as knowing the Bible is the truth, but also the Bible says God desires truth within. So David, for instance, said, "Surely I was sinful at birth; surely you desire truth in the inner parts. You teach me wisdom in the inmost place. Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me." When your heart is wrong, it's impossible to be right in your use of the Bible. In the scripture we've been focusing on, Proverbs 26:9, but if you just move a little bit further into Proverbs 26, it has a couple more proverbs that are very relevant. One is a gross one: "As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool returns to its folly." He pukes and then decides that would make a nice meal. That's the picture of the fool. What's wrong with that? Well, the main problem is a dog's a dog, and a fool is a fool. A person with an unregenerate heart isn't born again, and they really can't handle God's truth rightly. The next verse: "Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him." The greatest danger in Proverbs is thinking you know everything already. A person who's already wise in his own eyes is just bound to go wrong. So what all of that is saying is we need a new heart and a new spirit. If we have not been born again by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, then don't be shocked if we end up not getting the Bible right and not trusting. We need truth in the inner parts. The dog needs to not be a dog anymore. It's not just enough to be stood and say, "Naughty, naughty." He needs an entirely new nature; he needs to be a non-dog in order to pull that off. You and I need to be a non-rebel against God to even begin to listen to God's Word.

Hear the whole Bible.

Many of the problems in twisting the Bible come from listening to one isolated verse that I happen to like. It may not fit with the whole tone of the Bible the way I'm using it out of context, but you know, and so you listen to a verse about grace and "Judge not that you'll be not judged," and you say, "See, that means that," and it goes, and you ignore all the verses about God's warnings and Jesus' warnings of his wrath, of his punishment against sin, and the need for grace to actually change who we are. We need to hear the whole Bible and not just little snippets that seem to suit me here and now. As we listen to the whole Bible, we need to listen to the words of grace and the words of judgment. We need to listen to the words about hard work and the words about generosity and not exploiting the poor and listen to the full range of what the Bible says to rich and poor and everybody in between. When we listen to the Bible, we need to just be hearing the whole Bible. That's why, among other things, it's important to have yourself a Bible reading plan where you read through the Bible and not just flip it open now and then to the verses that you happen to like. A wider reading of the Bible will help you to hear the whole Bible. Another way to hear the whole Bible more fully is to just pay attention to a few of the major creeds and confessions of the church that summarize some of the most important and biggest truths of the Bible and did so in great councils of many, many Christian leaders coming together and determining those things. Again, they help you sometimes to get the big picture and the major truths and doctrines and ethical teachings of the Bible. Hearing the whole Bible means on your own, read it, but also be listening to great summaries of the faith.

Focus on Jesus.

This is the very, very, very heart of it all: focus on Jesus. Jesus said to some of his opponents who happened to be religious and who happened to be the ones who ended up killing him, "You search the scriptures, and you think that in them you have eternal life, but it is they that bear testimony to me." So when you read the Bible, the supreme question always is, "What is this telling me about Jesus? How is Jesus speaking to me?" The Bible is given to fill your heart with faith in Jesus. It's given to fill your mind with thoughts of Jesus. It's given to fill your life with the character of Jesus. If you're using it for totally different purposes than that, you're likely to get way off track. Is your heart being strengthened with faith in Jesus, your mind with thoughts of Jesus, your life with the character of Jesus? That is the heart of why the Bible and the entire gospel is given to us. Be sure to focus on Jesus when you read your Bible. As you do that, be talking to him: "Jesus, I'm about to read this Word, and I know that it is meant to lead me to you. So let it do so. Speak to me right now. Help me to be understanding you." Let prayer be at the very core of your approach to the Bible.

Apply to yourself first.

A fourth principle, and this too has already been coming through in some of the things we've looked at: apply the Bible first to yourself and to your own situation long before you wield it against somebody else whom you might be in disagreement with. In family relationships, that means that before parents even pull the "I'm the dad or the mom" card, you've looked at the Bible itself, and when it says, "Honor your father and your mother," you hear that verse and you say, "What would it mean for me to be an honorable mom or dad?" Not, "First of all, Junior, you honor me or else." That was nice, but look in the mirror and say, "Why would Junior honor me, besides the command of God? Is there something that God has given me and is leading me into that would make it a lot easier for that person to honor me?" The same with children, of course, who are sometimes experts in how moms and dads could be much better at being a mom and a dad. "If only moms and dads would get a clue, I could obey them, but they are so dense that we must take other steps." It is possible that what you need to hear is God's Word to boys and girls, and not first of all try to figure out what a good parent would do. It is possible, of course, that your parents are very flawed. It is possible, just every so often, that mom and dad are actually right. There is that possibility. Allow for that possibility, and then think about, "Now, what is God saying to me when it says to obey my mom and dad or to honor them?" The same in relation to government. We're very quick to criticize and sometimes very slow to heed those in authority. Whatever our situation is, we need to apply it to ourselves first and ask, "God, what are you saying to me?" Remember the famous words of Jesus. He said, "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you'll see to take the speck out of your brother's eye." That's the principle. First, get rid of the thing that you need to deal with before trying to be an expert on straightening out somebody else. Apply what the Bible says to yourself first. Remember the principle of the plank and the speck. You may say, "Well, yeah, but they're the ones with the plank, and I have the speck." Maybe, but just remember, in our own distorted ways of thinking, another person's problem always looks like a plank, and our own little tiny teeny itty-bitty problem always seems like a speck to us. We don't have a very good sense of proportion. So if you're aware of even a speck in your own life, just realize that it might be a log in relation to other people or in relation to God. Deal with that and apply it to yourself first before you try to help somebody else fix what's wrong with them.

Interact with the church.

A fifth important principle is to interact with the church, to be part of a body of God's people locally where you're just part of a community, and they help you and you help them. Some of the most whacked out things I've come across in my ministry come in the lives of people who couldn't possibly ever find a church good enough for them. So they were always off on their own. When you're off on your own, you do some really nutty stuff that, if you were in relationship with other people and talking with them and in conversation with them, they could be helping you and saying, "That is just crazy. What are you thinking?" Of course, you can always find... One of the problems, of course, with online communities is you can find about any community you're looking for. That's an advantage; it's also a disadvantage because you can find any kind of lunacy and a group that'll support such lunacy. When I say interact with the church, choose the church carefully because there are religious groups that will help reinforce what's wrong with you already. I'm presuming that when I say interact with the church, find a healthy one. Find one that preaches the truth. Sometimes that's an important part of your growth in understanding too, is just the preaching of the Word. Reading the Word on your own is absolutely vital, but preaching and study of the Word in the setting of someone who's called and gifted to preach the Word, as well as brothers and sisters in Bible studies who are talking to you about the Word, is vital. Study the whole Word, but don't just do it on your own because you're going to have your own weirdness and idiosyncrasies and agendas that might run away with the Bible and make you an abuser of the Bible unless you have some people that can help you. As I mentioned earlier, part of interacting with the church is not just interacting with the particular body that you're part of, but as much as you can, try to get at least some understanding of what the church around the world and throughout the centuries has understood the Bible to mean. If you did that, for instance, on the matter of slavery, you would find that the church in many civilizations and in many areas of the church was very strongly against slavery when almost nobody else was. You would find that the church was standing for women and standing for a healthy treatment of women and the dignity of women and protecting the lives of widows when many other civilizations weren't doing so. You would find, if you study the historic church, that it stands on some of the ethical ideas of what marriage is. Every generation of the church and nearly every church around the world, up until the last few decades, has held the same understanding of what marriage is. So to interact with the church in a whole variety of different settings is to say, "Boy, if the church spoke with almost one voice in almost every era in almost every civilization, I'm guessing that that's probably what the Bible does mean." Now, the church's authority is not a substitute for the Bible. All I'm saying is if a lot of godly people in a lot of different places and a lot of different times were reading the same Bible you were and came to a different conclusion than you do, guess who's most likely to be wrong. That's why the confession, you know, people who say, "No creed but Christ, no confession but the Bible." Yeah, the Bible is the ultimate source of authority, but if you say, "I'm going to ignore all the thought of people studying the Bible for the last two thousand years and all the thought of those in various countries around the world today who are studying the Bible, and I'm going to learn it all direct for myself," well, good luck with that. It doesn't work well. The person who has their own final authority and what the Bible means generally ends up way off the tracks.

Speak the truth in love.

Finally, love. The Bible says, "Speaking the truth in love, we will grow up into him who is the head, which is Jesus Christ." Truth just wielded as a club against people can often do more harm than good, but truth spoken in love, truth spoken in the spirit of Jesus Christ, can bring tremendous blessing 

When we think about God's gift of the Bible, let's again trust the Bible because it is God's Word. Every word of God is flawless. All Scripture is given by inspiration from God. People spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit in writing the Bible. The Bible is supremely worth trusting, and therefore it's also supremely important that we avoid twisting it and that we instead speak the truth in love until we grow up into him who is the head, our Lord Jesus Christ.

Prayer

We thank you, Father, for your precious book. We thank you for the Holy Spirit who inspired each writing in this book. We pray for that Holy Spirit now to guide us in the way of Jesus, that we may follow you, that you will give us the new heart which only the Holy Spirit can give, that you will open our ears to the entire body of your truth, that you will always do, Holy Spirit, what you have promised to do: to bring glory to Jesus by taking from what is his and making it ours. Help us, Father, to have that Spirit working in our heart and convicting us where we need convicting, where the Bible can reveal to us and teach us, rebuke us, correct us, and train us in righteousness. Help us to apply it to ourselves. 

We pray, Father, that you will also help this congregation to be a body of truth and love that is worth belonging to, that is a place where the truth flourishes and where love grows and prospers, where your people support one another, where they also have the love and the courage to correct each other where needed. We pray that our church will be a manifestation of your great universal church, which is true to you, the church throughout the ages, the church around the world that is faithful. Help us learn more and more to grow into our Lord Jesus and to grow in the stature of those who've learned from all of the church throughout the generations. We do pray, Lord, for the fruit of the Spirit above all: love. Help us, Lord, to speak truth in love. Help us, Lord, never to fall to the temptation to reject the Bible because of how it's been twisted by others. Help us to, Lord, to be freed from many ways that we distort its meaning ourselves. Lord, help us again to treasure and trust this book and not to twist it, but to use it for your honor and glory and for our blessing and the blessing of others. For Jesus' sake, Amen.

Twisting
the Bible
Slide Contents
David Feddes

Like a thornbush in a drunkard’s hand is a proverb in the mouth of a fool. (Proverbs 26:9)

There are some things in Paul’s letters that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction,
as they do the other Scriptures.
(2 Peter 3:16)

Twisting

• Drinking
• Authority
• Discipline
• Holiness
• Grace
• Wealth
• Slavery
• Race
• Women
• Conquest

• Refuse to reject the Bible.
• Repent of twisting the Bible.
• Relish God’s love and Word.

Principles

• Get right with God.
• Hear the whole Bible.
• Focus on Jesus.
• Apply to yourself first.
• Interact with church.
• Speak truth in love.