Show Notes
In this episode, Derek Vreeland discusses the importance of using the Bible kindly and not as a weapon. The Bible is sacred. It contains God’s written words for us. The Bible is an inspired, orderly and diverse collection of ancient books that faithfully leads us to Jesus. And the Bible is too sacred to be used as bullets in our theological guns. The purpose of the Bible is not to win arguments or put people down, but to guide us in the ways of Jesus. Derek encourages listeners to filter all of scripture through Jesus and to use the Bible in a way that promotes kindness and peace.
Scripture verses mentioned in this episode:
Psalm 119:9
Psalm 119:11
Psalm 119:25
Psalm 119:28
Psalm 119:89
Psalm 119:103
Psalm 119:105
Psalm 119:169
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Transcript
Narrator: Welcome to Peaceable and Kind, the podcast where we explore the transformation. Each week your host, Derek Vreeland, will delve into the stories, scriptures, and practical steps that help us embody these essential Christian virtues.
Derek Vreeland: Welcome back to another episode of Peaceable and Kind. I have to tell you, I have really enjoyed making these podcasts for you. And I hope that you are enjoying them. I hope these episodes are encouraging you on your spiritual journey. And I hope these episodes are making you think. I’m not here simply to confirm everything you believe about the Christian faith or how Jesus expects us to live in the world. I want to challenge you a little bit. And I don’t expect that you’re always going to agree with me. And that’s okay. If you have questions or if you want to push back, you can always hit me up on social media. at derekvreland. com with your question or your comment because you don’t have to always agree with me. I don’t always agree with myself. There’s times I will reread things I wrote five, six years ago and I’ll kind of scratch my head like, ah, I don’t know if I really believe that. And so disagreement is okay. It’s funny, my wife and I have been married now 29 years. And we share a lot of the same values in terms of like our faith and how we live. But we are different people in how we approach things and how we make decisions and our general kind of orientation and temperaments are just really different. And so our entire marriage has been spent disagreeing with one another, but learning how to do that, check it in a peaceable and kind way. So I hope I’m saying things in these podcast episodes that challenges you a little bit. And again, you don’t have to agree with me, but let me know. If you have thoughts or questions, you can always hit me up on social media on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook. That’s where you will find me. Today I want to talk about the Bible in particular. I am a very proud Bible nerd. You can call me a Bible nerd. I wear that label like a badge of honor. I’m recording today’s episode in my office. And if I look behind me on the bookshelf, I have I don’t know how many Bibles, 17, 18 Bibles. Currently, I have a Bible reading plan where I read through the Bible every two years. And so I get a new translation and a new Bible every two years. So I can mark things and underline. I like to write in the margins. When I got baptized in a Baptist church when I was 11 years old, they gave me a Bible. And they told me that this is our book. You’re baptized now, you’re a Christian now, and this is our book. So you should read this book. You should read the Bible. I’m so happy to have come into the Christian faith in a Southern Baptist church because they take the Bible seriously. And so they gave me this book. They gave me this Bible. They they said I should read it. Now, like many kids, I I lost that Bible. You know, I’m 11 years old. This is in the 1980s. You know, my life at this point was about cartoons. I was just getting into sports at that time. I lost that Bible. I actually have no idea where that Bible went. But then when I was 15 years old, I began to take my faith seriously. Let me share with you the story. Here’s what happened to me. I was a sophomore in high school, and my dad had announced that we’re going back to church. So I was baptized when I was eleven and we were in and out of church like a lot of American families. We’d be there Christmas, Easter a couple times a year. But then there was this announcement that our entire family going back to church, and not just church, but Sunday school and church. And so we found ourselves back at our Baptist church every Sunday, and I was trying to figure out the relationships among the youth and I actually found a really good group of middle school students, high school students that were really kind and they really kind of welcomed me in. And so it was springtime in 1990, and my youth group was holding an event at our local college. It was on a Friday night, and they were playing Christian music videos and we were playing games and Our youth pastor was talking at various points, and at the end of the night, we’re all sitting on this gym floor near a volleyball net. And our youth pastor preached the gospel. He told us about Jesus. He told us how Jesus had died for our sins, that he rose up from the dead, and that Jesus is inviting us to follow him. Well, when I heard that, my heart was stirred. I knew that this is something that I wanted. And the youth pastor had said, if you want to pray with me, I’ll be hanging around after the event. I I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t approach him. I just went home. Now at this point it was close to midnight. And I got home and the house was quiet. My brother was asleep, mom and dad asleep, and I saw my dad’s big black Bible sitting on the counter. And I grabbed that Bible and I took it up to my bedroom and I began to flip through the pages. I hadn’t been a Bible reader. I didn’t really know what I was doing. But I found myself in the book of Psalms. Oh, how I love the Psalms. And I read one verse. I read Psalm 37, verse 5. which says, Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him, and he will do it Well, I closed the Bible and for the first time began to pray. And in the darkness of my bedroom, I said, God, I believe that you’re real. Jesus, I want to follow you, and so I commit my life to you. And it seemed like right overnight uh my whole life was brand new. It seemed like church which had been a drag and boring had come alive. And the Bible, which had always been mysterious for me, was something I was interested in. I really wanted to read this book And I started hearing about quiet times. That is Southern Baptist language for morning prayer and the devotional reading of the Bible. People would talk about quiet times, having quiet time with the Lord. And I had no idea what that was. And I didn’t ask anybody, but I went to our local Christian bookstore and I was looking for a book on Quiet Times. And I found this small little booklet. It wasn’t even a full book. It was like stapled, and it was a little university press booklet, Quiet Times for Christian Growth. And so I spent, I don’t know, maybe two or three dollars, bought that little booklet, took it home, read the little introduction, and it had daily Bible reading for, I don’t remember, seven or eight weeks. And so I got that during the summer when I wasn’t in school. And so I wanted to have a quiet time. I wanted to spend time praying and reading my Bible. Now later I found out that most people were having quiet times that lasted 10 or 15 minutes. Mine were taking well over an hour. Because I would not only read every verse in the little daily guide, but I had a spiral notebook and I was jotting down notes and questions and reflections. In fact, we were in a Sunday school class when I was about a senior in high school, and our Sunday school teacher had asked about quiet times And I said, yeah, I I I’ve I’ve been doing quiet times. Well, how’s that going? And I told him my whole process. And he was like, it takes you an hour? Oh yeah, my quiet time’s about 20 minutes. But I couldn’t set aside my love and desire for reading this book. And that’s only continued now, oh my goodness, how long? 30 plus years later, I still love reading the Bible Now, if I’m honest, my Bible reading has ebbed and flowed over the years. There’s times where I lost interest in reading the Bible, even as a pastor. Like. It’s my job. I mean, I’ve always done like Bible studies as a pastor, but in my own devotional reading, there have been times Where I have lost interest and I’ve gone through long seasons where I’m not reading every day. Uh today that’s not the case. Right now, my Bible reading is flowing. I will describe how I read the Bible in a different episode because in this episode, what I want to talk about is not our process of reading the Bible, but how we use the Bible You can use the Bible as a weapon to browbeat people, to bludgeon sinners and strike down everyone we see as an enemy. you know, the so-called Bible thumpers. Or you can use the Bible kindly. And that’s what I want to talk about today. How do we use the Bible kindly? I want to encourage you to no longer see the Bible as a weapon to be used to gun down your enemies, rhetorically speaking. And here’s why. The Bible is too sacred to be used as bullets in our theological guns Too often online and in conversation I hear people using select Bible verses to prove themselves right and to prove their enemies wrong. And I’ve come to discover that the Bible is too sacred, it’s too holy to be turned into a weapon to shoot down those we disagree with, whether theologically or politically. It’s interesting when I have done couples counseling over the years as a pastor. I’ll meet with couples. They’ll say, Pastor, we’re having some difficulties in our marriage. Can we meet with you? We’re looking for counseling. And I’m always really clear to say that I’m not a counselor. I believe in counseling. I mean, it’s okay to have Jesus and a therapist too. I have a therapist, probably the best decision I’ve made in the last five years, but I’m not a counselor. I’ll tell these couples I’m a pastor, I’m a shepherd, I’m a coach, if you like to use sports analogies. When I do couples counseling or couples coaching, I will tell them when you are in an heated argument with your spouse. Don’t even start quoting Scripture because you will end up using the Bible and God to gang up on your spouse. That’s not helpful at all Now, I advocate that we live our lives within the story that the Bible is telling, that we read the Bible every day, that it becomes a part of our lifestyle. I want us to be rooted in Scripture, but in moments of conflict, we can’t start loading individual verses in to shoot down the person we’re mad at. That is not helpful at all. Because the Bible is sacred. For Christians, it is our holy inspired text. These are God’s written words for us. It’s interesting when we think about the Bible to understand that these words were not written to us, but they were written for us. We are not the original receivers for these holy words. Rather, we are the people of God. We are the church living thousands of years after the time the Bible was written. And it is for us, even though it wasn’t written directly to us. But Scripture in various places will say things about the nature of these words of God, the Word of God, the Scriptures. And in one place in particular in Scripture, we see a concentrated amount of information about God’s words, and it’s found in the Psalms. In Psalm 119, the longest chapter of the Bible. In fact, Psalm 119 sits by page number just about in the middle of our Bibles. Lots of verses in Psalm 119, but there’s a number of verses that speak to us about God’s word. So just a couple of verses that I want to draw out from Psalm 119. First is verse 9. How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. In that way, Scripture has a purifying effect on us. A couple verses down, verse 11: I have stored up your word in my heart that I may not sin against you We read God’s words not only to shape our mind, but also to filter down into our hearts. Verse twenty five, Psalm one nineteen, twenty five. My soul clings to the dust, give me life according to your word. We believe that the Bible is God breathed. And as we’re reading Holy Scripture, that breath of God, that life of God gets on the inside of us. Verse 28: My soul melts away for sorrow. Strengthen me according to your word. Holy Scripture gives us a kind of spiritual energy, a spiritual strength. Verse 89: Forever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens. God’s words are holy and they are eternal Oh, this one I love. Psalm 119, verse 103. How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth. See, that one speaks to me because I love reading the Bible. Even the parts of it that sound very distant and very strange. some of the hyperviolent stories that are in the Old Testament seem somewhat off-putting, but I place those kind of scriptures and those stories in the context of this entire story of how God is rescuing the world. And I love it. It’s sweeter, sweeter to my mouth than than honey. And then two verses later, Psalm 119-105, your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. The church historically has gotten itself in trouble when it strays too far away from Scripture. God’s words are a light to our path. And then one more verse from Psalm 119, verse 169, let my cry come before you, O Lord, give me understanding according to your word. Now notice that there is no weapon here. Now notice that there is no mention of a weapon here. Nowhere in Psalm 119 is God’s words compared to a weapon. Now I know Paul goes on to call the Word of God the sword of the Spirit. That’s in Ephesians chapter 6. And so, in a sense, God’s word is a sword, but that’s for cutting down falsehood. That’s for cutting down lies, cutting down the schemes of the devil, not for cutting down people. God never intended this sword of the spirit to be used as a weapon for cutting people down in arguments. Rather, what we see in Psalm 119 is that God’s word is a lamp, it’s a light, it’s honey to our taste buds. So let’s pause for a moment and think about what the Bible is. If we’re going to use it kindly, let’s think about what the Bible is. And here is the most concise definition I can give you for the Bible. The Bible is an inspired, orderly, and diverse collection of ancient books. that faithfully leads us to Jesus. Now you don’t need to hit pause and write that down. I’m going to walk you through that definition. The Bible is an inspired, orderly, and diverse collection of ancient books that faithfully leads us to Jesus. Let’s talk about each part of that. First, it’s inspired The inspiration of Scripture means that this is the book that God wanted us to have. It is God Breathed. This is what makes the Bible holy or sacred. It’s not like any other book written in all of human history. This book was superintended by the Holy Spirit. That’s the language from the nineteen seventy-eight Chicago statement on biblical inerrancy. They use this statement that the Holy Spirit superintended the writings of Scripture. God was breathing in the minds and imagination of human authors to produce a book. That we needed. This is the book God wanted us to have. And so because it is the only God-breathed, inspired, holy text, we treat it as sacred. So the Bible is inspired and it’s orderly. It is laid out in books, it’s laid out in sections. There’s the Old Testament, the story of Israel. and the New Testament, the story of Israel fulfilled in Jesus and through the church. And maybe in a later episode we’ll we’ll talk more about The relationship between the Old Testament and New Testament. But there’s some order, there’s some structure there. So the Bible is inspired, it’s orderly, and it’s diverse. Different human authors living at different times in different places wrote, compiled, and edited what we know as the Bible. The Bible is not purely inspired or a divine book, and it’s not purely a human book. It is both. And isn’t it interesting that this is the story that the Bible itself tells? That while God could choose to save the world in any way that He wants, God chooses to save and rescue the world. By working with and through people. And so our holy book, the Bible, has a diverse human authors who are all moved by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit was inspiring all the human authors so that the book that we have is both human and divine. A lot of diversity there. And not only is it diverse, it is a collection of books. The Bible is not just one book. Now it is telling one comprehensive story, but it’s not just one book, it’s a collection of books. The Bible itself is like an anthology And speaking of the diversity, there’s different kinds of books of the Bible. There’s history, there’s prayers, that’s what the Psalms are. The book of Psalms is a collection of prayers. There’s prophecy, which sounds a lot like poetry. There’s a lot of metaphorical language. There are announcements. That’s what the Gospels are: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. There are letters. A lot of the New Testament is letters. And then the Bible closes with a book, which is Jewish apocalyptic literature. Again, a topic for another episode. So it’s a vast collection, a diverse collection. of ancient books, old books. The writings that we hold together as holy scripture were written thousands of years ago. In ancient languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, but the purpose for the Bible Is to lead us to Jesus. It’s not the Bible that saves us, it’s Jesus. The Bible is not our Lord, our King, our Savior, that’s Jesus So the Bible is telling a story, a single story from Genesis to Revelation, a very true story, and the main character is Jesus. The purpose of the Bible is not to have enough God facts to win an argument or to put people down. The purpose of the Bible is to lead us to Jesus. And Jesus is the one who saves us. Jesus is the one who leads us. He is our king, he is our shepherd, he is our guide, and he’s the one that we follow. And so if we recognize that’s the purpose, of the Bible to lead us to Jesus that we might walk in the ways of Jesus, then we can’t use Holy Scripture to try to put people in their place or simply win arguments, to browbeat people with Our Bibles and to become those kind of Bible thumpers is antithetical to the ways of Jesus. We do want to devote ourselves to the reading of Scripture. But we want all of that reading to filter through our mind and our hearts to form us in the ways of Jesus. Jesus is not only our savior and our shepherd and our king, Jesus is also our rabbi. Rabbi is a Hebrew word which means teacher. Jesus is also the interpretive guide for all of Scripture. Jesus leads us to understand what we are reading. So if we’re reading something and it doesn’t look like Jesus or sound like Jesus, we bring that into the presence of God and ask Jesus about it. Jesus, what am I supposed to do with verses like this? Not everything that we’re reading is prescriptive telling us what to do. Rather, scripture is descriptive. Telling us what was happening at a certain point of time with the people of God, both Old Testament and New Testament. So everything that we’re reading, we submit it to Jesus. And I believe if we filter all of Scripture through what we know about Jesus, it will lead us into a place of kindness. I think it will become that convicting moment where we think, oh yeah. Oh yeah, I can’t post that verse in that Facebook comment because it’s going to make me sound like a jerk. Once we filter all of Scripture through Jesus, I think it will help us. In this journey of being peaceable and kind. Well, there’s so much more I want to say about the Bible. We’ll do that for later episodes, but thank you for joining me for this one. That’s all we have for today. Thanks for listening. Go in peace and be kind
This transcript was generated with AI and may contain errors.