Lowell Sallee - Can We Understand the Bible Alike?
5:52PM Aug 1, 2024
Speakers:
Lowell Sallee
Keywords:
god
bible
understand
passage
word
church
verse
study
question
read
truth
jesus
answer
talk
people
heart
knowledge
sower
division
preached
Well, I'm happy to be here tonight. I appreciate so very much the invitation to come, and thanks for inviting me. And so I understand I've got an hour and a half, so I'll go ahead and get started, and we're going to talk about this evening, can we understand the Bible alike? So I hope that this will be beneficial and helpful as we study this topic. And when you think about this particular topic, can we understand the Bible alike, I want to thank the Bowens for having me for a meal this evening. And he asked me the question what my topic was, and I told him, and he says, well, what's the answer? And I said, Well, yes. He said, Well, we're done so. But anyway, this is a great question, and if you do any home Bible studies with folks, you have to talk about this topic. This comes up, and so I hope that what we'll talk about and study about will be helpful and beneficial to you.
So, when we stop to consider the idea of, can we understand the Bible alike? {Oh, which way do I point it? That? There we go.] So the question is it really possible to understand the word of God and to Mitch his question? Yes, it is. So I'm done. So, we'll stand and sing and no, let's talk about some really important things about that. Many do not believe that the answer is yes, and there's lots of reasons for that. We can't talk about all of them tonight, but we'll talk about some of those things. And here's a typical kind of response that you might have for someone about the religious division that there is. That you believe it your way, and I'll believe it my way. And most people in the religious world today, they're satisfied with that answer. That you just believe it however you want to believe it and practice it however you want to practice it, and that's going to be okay. And that makes, God is completely happy with that kind of action. So, when we stop to consider the religious division that there is in the world today, I think that is a great part of convincing people to believe that you cannot believe the Word of God alike. So, I have a question that I like to ask, and that is that we need to ask, Is God promoting division among us by a message that cannot be understood?
I think you know the answer to that question. But the reality of it is, if the Bible cannot be understood, all of us alike in what we read and what we conclude, then, is God responsible for giving us information that ultimately is responsible for the division that there is in the religious world? The Bible says in First Corinthians, chapter 14, verse 33 that "God is not a God of confusion." I think if you are familiar at all with the religious world, and let's narrow it down by saying the "Christian" religious world, there is much division. There's all sorts of things believed, there's all sorts of things practiced in "Christian" religion. But if we have the idea that that's okay, you just do it your way, I'll do it my way, and then we'll all get to heaven. It won't make any difference. If that's true then we really shouldn't worry about it. But is it true? I'm going to suggest to you the Bible can be understood.
So, this is how we're going to do it. Here's an important point. I hope you have your Bibles. And you'll read with me a few of these passages. I'm going to start by simply saying the Bible can be understood. And if he, excuse me, Isaiah 55 is a passage that I would like to begin reading. And I know that you are familiar with this text, but in Isaiah 55 beginning at verse eight, notice the reading, "for my thoughts are not your thoughts," and I'm reading from the New American Standard, 1995 updated version, "nor are your ways my ways, declares the Lord." Remember that passage? "For, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain and the snow comes down from heaven and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater so, my word, so will my word be which goes forth from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it." So, here's a question I'd like to ask you, what is the purpose of God's word? What is his desire in giving us his word? Well, you can learn from a couple of these passages here. In First, Timothy chapter two and verses three and four, Paul talks about the idea that God desires all men to be saved, for all to come to the knowledge of the truth, the knowledge of the Son of God. Now, I want you to think about that a moment. If the purpose of the Word of God is to lead us unto Christ, is that word going to be understandable? Is it going to be believable? Is it going to direct and guide us to the point that God wants us to be? I think the obvious answer is yes.
When you read Romans 1:16, and 17, "I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ." Remember that? "For it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth, to the Jew first and also to Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed." Sos here's a very important point. Jesus Christ came to earth to seek and save the lost. It is God's desire that no one perish, but that all come to repentance. Second, Peter three and verse nine. So, if it's God's purpose and desire from his word that is spoken to mankind, is for us to be saved, does it not stand to reason that His word could be understood? And is he wanting me to understand it and you not understand it? Or vice versa? Or every other one gets it, the others don't. Is that what we're dealing with? Then what we're talking about, we're talking about a different topic. We're talking about God, his abilities, his characteristics, his essence, His deity, who he is. Is he capable of communicating with us in such a way that we understand?
Ephesians chapter three is one of those passages that, again, if you're doing home Bible studies with people, you know this passage. You use this passage. It's marked in your Bible. You know where to find it. I'm not going to read all 11 verses, but you should read it and understand it from the perspective of the question, can we all understand the Bible alike? I have found through the years in studying the Bible that our eyes are opened depending on the perspective of the reading or the study of a passage. You may have read this passage a number of times, but it just, it didn't click with you. If you're asking this question now, read the verse and see how it just, it just pops out. Notice Ephesians, three, verse one, "For this reason, I Paul, the prisoner of Christ, Jesus, for the sake of you Gentiles, if indeed you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace which was given to me for you, that by revelation, there was made known to me the mystery as I wrote before in brief. By referring to this, when you read, you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the spirit." I think when we think of the apostle Paul, verbally inspired of God, and we read his letters, we quickly come to the conclusion that Paul sure did know a lot. And the reason he knew a lot? God gave it to him. What was in the mind of the Apostle Paul, he says, has been written down. It has been prepared and preserved for us. And he says, And when you read, you can understand my knowledge in the mystery. I can know what Paul knew by reading the Word. Now, what is important about all of that? All of this suggests a very important point, God's word can be understood. If you don't learn anything else tonight, understand that the Bible makes it clear God's word can be understood.
Well, let's look at a couple things here. The Bible was written to be understood. You remember in John 17, verse 17, Jesus said, "Sanctify them through Thy truth, Thy word is truth." Thy word is truth. Now someone would say to Jesus, what is truth? But Jesus says, Thy word is truth. Now here's the thing that is interesting. Truth is absolute. It's always true. The reality is, if there's anything that is not truth, it's false as compared to truth. So, there may be two conflicting views on a particular point or a particular issue. And here's the thing, they cannot both be right and both might be wrong. When I do home Bible studies, always carry this little ruler with me, and I have a little book that I use. It's four little lessons. And the first thing I do when I give them one of these books and I tell them to do the lesson, and then we'll sit down and talk about it and go through it. So, when we meet, they've studied the lesson, they've looked up the passages. I show them this. We'll give you a test. How long is that line? So whoever's with me, we've already got it made up that I'm going to guess something ridiculously too long, they're going to guess something ridiculously too short, and then the people we're studying with see what they come up with. So, we usually let them go first. So say, how long is this line? Oh, and they give their answer. Then I'll say, Well, you know what? I think that line is at least three and a half foot long. They'll look at me and kind of grin, you know? And then the other person that's with me, they'll say, two inches. And they'll be like, what? So, I watch the reaction. I said, I couldn't help but notice that you were, you were kind of laughing at my answer. I said, Do you think that's kind of ridiculous? Yeah, it's not three and a half foot long. So, I'm sitting here with this ruler, and I'm waving it, and I said, Well, you say what you said? I say it's three and a half. This guy says it's two. Question, can we each be absolutely correct as to how long that line is? No, we've got different answers. Is it possible for all of us to be incorrect? Yes, it is. So, how would we resolve that question? How would we be able to figure out how long that line is? And finally, they get tired of me doing this, and they say, measure it. Yeah. I said, well, well, here's a ruler. Why would I want to measure it? I said, well, well, it's it'll tell you how long the line is. Well, that's true. It will tell you how long the line is. So, I lay the ruler down there, and we measure it, you know, and come up with an answer, what the ruler says. And I said, Well, are we going to go with what this says. They said, Well, yeah, because it's a ruler, I said, but what else is this? It's a standard. It's a standard by which we all agree to measure how long this line is. Okay? We use it throughout all kinds of things that we do.
So, I make the point. The standard in religious matters is the Bible. Whenever you have a question, how long is this line spiritually speaking? So how do we do, how do we figure that out? Well, you got an idea, I got an idea. Everybody's got an opinion. And you believe what you want to believe, and I believe what I want to believe and and everything's cool. So if I want to believe this, this line is three and a half feet long, well that's going to be okay, because I'm sincere. Is that going to get it? No. Getting people to understand that the Bible is the standard by which God has given to each of us to live our lives according to his rules and His laws. Would God then give you a standard by which each of us are incapable of measuring the line the same? Now that takes a little bit of deduction. It takes a little bit of reasoning. It takes a little bit of thinking process, and that's okay. It's important that we do that when we're looking at the word of God, our goal is to find out the truth of God's Word. This little book, I'm not promoting this or selling it or anything, but it's a real simple little book, four easy lessons, and it's got a bunch of fill in the blanks. And I explained to the folks that I'm not trying to insult your intelligence or anything like that. I said there's one purpose and one purpose alone that it has all these little blanks and stuff in it. It's so you will take your Bible, open up to the passages discussed, fill in the missing words, so that I know that you know what the Bible says, because we're not interested in selling or promoting what I think, but it's what the Bible says. So the goal is to find the truth of God's Word. The question is, Can each of us do that and come up with the same conclusion?
Ephesians five and verse 17, the apostle Paul then makes this statement. He says, "so then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is." But if all of us in this room read the same passage, and we come up with all of these, however many's here, different answers and different conclusions. That's a problem. Understanding God's word takes a good heart. It requires a good heart. Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not listen to God. Lydia was one whose heart was open to receive the things that God said. God is given credit for both of those situations, I don't think God did anything miraculous to Pharaoh or to Lydia. It was the result of the word spoken. The same is true today. Did you know that there are people that don't believe what the Bible says? And we'll have more to say about that in a minute, and the reason? They don't want to believe it.
The Bible calls for unity. Jesus prayed that we all might be one. And I want to stop and ask the question for you to think about. Is it possible for the whole Christian religious world to be one? Is that possible? Jesus prayed for it. Then why isn't it happening? Did God write his word and we can't understand it? Or has he written his word to be understood and it's our problem, our issue. First Corinthians, chapter one and verse 10 talks about we all speak the same thing. How can we do that if we understand the Bible differently? In Philippians two, verse two, we're all to be like minded, same love, one accord, one mind. How can we do that? Time and time again, we see the Bible encouraging people to be on the same page, to believe the same thing, to practice the same thing. Is that possible? Well, the Bible would say yes. In Second Peter one and verses three to four," according to His divine, power has given unto us all things, or everything that pertains to life and godliness." Now this is a trick question. It's going to take the real sharp to get this. So, if I reach in my pocket and I pull out all my money and I give it to you, how much do I have left? It's a trick question. Probably most won't pass. I pull out of my pocket all of my money and give it to you. How much do I have left? Hey, good job. Nothing. If God gives us everything, all things that pertain in life and godliness, what'd he leave out? Nothing. So, what we need to know in order to go to heaven, God revealed that to us. There's going to be a judgment day. Jesus said in John 12:48, that His word would be what will judge us in the last day. Now, if I don't understand it, I can't understand it, we all can't understand it alike, on the Day of Judgment how's that going to work when Jesus is using his word to judge us? I think a lot of people think God is just going to say, well, it don't make any difference what you did, what you believed, where you went to church, etc, etc, etc. You know, you just gave it a pretty good, sincere try, and that's good enough. If God decides to do it that way, I'm fine. I'm good with that. But that's not what the Bible teaches.
So, why do people not understand the Bible? I think Satan has a lot to do with that. The reality of it is he seeks to divide us. Remember back in Matthew chapter 13, verse 19? Matthew 13 verse 19, the text says, Matthew 13 verse 19, "When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one on whom seed was sown beside the road." I know you studied the parable of the sower. The four soil conditions represent hearts. The one whose heart is hardened, the seed just lays there, and the devil comes and snatches it away. There's no chance for germination. So, the devil, he tries to divide, he tries to confuse, and it has led to many erroneous conclusions about God, His Word, and how we live our lives. The experts have muddied the waters. In First Corinthians, chapter one is an example of the fact that there is the wise of this world supposed, and they have led folks astray. First Corinthians chapter one, verse 18, "for the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God." Again, the heart, as we think of about God's word, how we accept it. What we think about it. We've been attacked on every front about God's word. It's just almost every day there's something comes up in the news about this or that or the other. It has caused all kinds of hysteria. It's called all kinds of problems and issues and argument and debate division, and the devil's winning. And people that are Christians that believe the Bible is the Word of God, and he has the answers, He has the truth. We're made to look like a bunch of idiots.
There's a lot of self will with people that don't believe the Bible can be understood, and each of us understand it alike. And that just simply means that they do what they want to do. In a land far far away, in a time removed, which I'll not mention, time place, people involved that are all the guilty parties. I was teaching a Bible class, and I read a passage. I just read the verse. A guy raised his hand. He said, I don't believe that. I hadn't made any comments. Wasn't anything else said, I just read the passage. And I said, I'm sorry. What are you disagreeing with? What you just said, I don't agree with that. So, I calmly said, I was trying to be calm. I calmly said, You do understand I was just reading the Bible. And I read it again. He said, again, I don't believe that. I didn't know what else to say. This guy was a member of the church. You know why he didn't believe it? Because he didn't like what it said. There's indifference. I don't care. I just don't care. You can talk about things that God has said to do or not to do. And there are people who are Christians, claim to be Christians, who just take the position who cares? In Matthew 13, again, the parable of the sower, it talks about those who have dull hearts that are dull of hearing. Dull has to do with they don't listen. They're not going to listen. My daily Bible reading I'm in the book of Ezekiel, and read the first three chapters today. And so, I was doing my walk and I was reminded again of God speaking to Ezekiel and saying, he's in the land of Babylon, in the captivity, and God says to Ezekiel, I want you to go speak to my people. And he says, they're an obstinate people. They're hard headed. I want you to go speak to them. They ain't going to listen. They're not going to hear you. But you go tell them anyway, and they won't listen to a word you say. I've preached to churches like that. Brethren don't want to hear the truth. Hearts hard, pride, not willing to admit when we're wrong.
Just an observation of an old, bald headed, fat guy that's been preaching nearly 50 years now. Just observation. Way back after the Civil War, when I first started preaching, it used to be kind of a regular, kind of common thing, that after a sermon was preached, people would come forward and sit on the front row and be crying and saying they were going to repent and correct and change they done wrong and wanted the prayers of the church. And that used to be pretty common. I've noticed in the last decade or so that rarely ever happens anymore. Has the gospel changed? Has God changed? Who's changed? We may point fingers at someone out there, or goes to another church that they don't think you can understand the Bible. But we probably need to make sure we understand, that's probably us, and we've become prideful. Confess your faults one to another and pray you one for another. When did we stop doing that? Long time ago. We're seeing the consequences of it. Closed minds, satisfied and don't want to change, even if they're wrong. Ears that are hard of hearing, eyes that are closed. Parable talks about that.
Well, people don't understand the Bible sometimes because of ignorance, and ignorance destroys. Hosea, My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge. The Bible teaches us that we need to understand God's word. So, how do we do that? It's through study, through learning, reading the Bible. I'm pretty sure I didn't do this here. I didn't look at my notes. If I did or not, but if I did, I'm an old man I'll repeat myself, okay? I've taken surveys in a bunches of churches. Three questions, do you read your Bible every day? Number two, do you study your Bible every day? Number three, do you pray every day? I've done that for several years, a bunch of churches. And I'm not a math whiz, but I got a calculator, and I took off my shoes in case I needed a couple of other digits, and I come up with these kinds of numbers. Do you read your Bible every day? Less than 20% of all Christians over the years read the Bible every day. Do study? Do you study the Bible every day? Almost less than 10%. Do you pray every day? 90% say yes. And what does it tell you? Most all of us are willing to talk to God, but we're not real good at listening. And when you've got people who are not listening to God regularly you're going to have some major issues in the church.
Sometimes we're just too busy. Remember Martha how she was so distracted doing something that was not bad, preparing food. Had a house full of people. Mary chose the good part. It's easy to get distracted. If we're not careful, we're always distracted. That contributes to a lack of knowledge. A failure just to devote time to studying into learning. I don't know about this church, when a new quarter comes up, need teachers to go back and teach the classes. Sometimes that's difficult to do. I want to mention this because it's very important. I think one way that the devil has affected us in our knowledge process, we have stopped studying the word for ourselves. I teach at Athens Bible school, and I've taught 10th grade Bible for years, and one of the most challenging things that I have students do is have them to turn to a scripture. Read the Scripture. Tell me what it said. Reading comprehension among members of the Church is awful. And the reason for it? We're not used to doing that. People call up say, preacher, what do we believe about -? And it's probably something very simple. I said, Well, have you not read in the Bible, you know this and that and the other? Well, I knew it was in there somewhere, but I couldn't find it. I'm just going to say to us all that we all need help sometimes. The eunuch did. But we must not depend on others for all of our knowledge of the Bible. Brother Kenny is a great teacher.
I don't know how to word this without it sounding bad. I don't mean this bad. But if all you know about the Bible is what you heard him say, is that enough? Most people today say yes. It's not true. You need to be able to study for yourself. What if? What if Kenny comes off, goes off, the rails. He starts teaching something wrong. Well, but what happens is, we can be misled. We want to be like the Bereans and search the Scriptures daily to see whether those things were so who were they checking up on? An apostle. So ,if Kenny tells you, or if I tell you, you think you ought to check on that? You better. I ain't no apostle. Last time I checked he wasn't one either. So, we need to do that. We need to learn how to study the Bible for ourselves.
So, are there passages that are difficult to understand? Absolutely. Peter talks about things that Paul had written hard to be understood. Didn't say impossible to understand, but we need to study. In matters of faith, God has given us everything we need to obey and get to heaven and be united. So, here's how I would like to conclude, and I think they're fixing to ring the bell. Right Jerry? Gonna ring the bell? John 20 verses 30 and 31 is that very familiar passage where John mentions and says that there's a lot of other things that Jesus did, lot of the miracles that he performed. He says, "But these things have been written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ." If God had all of those things written down so that we could believe in Jesus, and we all understand it differently, how does that work? God's word is intended to direct us to truth. You study the Bible. I study the Bible, we should come up with the exact same truth. Well, I guess I'm done. Thank y'all.