Latest / The Living Waters Podcast / Ep. 195 - How to Avoid the Dangers of Biblical Illiteracy

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Ep. 195 - How to Avoid the Dangers of Biblical Illiteracy · The Living Waters Podcast

• 1:04
  Ray Comfort: If you join an army, the first thing you do is cut off your curly locks.
• 1:07
  Ray Comfort: That's Oscar.
• 1:08
  Ray Comfort: If you go to the army, they're going.
• 1:10
  Oscar Navarro: That's why I'm not in the army.
• 1:11
  Oscar Navarro: Go on, yeah.
• 1:12
  Ray Comfort: But I mean seriously, don't they like hair?
• 1:13
  Ray Comfort: Well, they don't want you on the heat of battle looking in the mirror and making sure your hair's nice, because there are certain things that matter when it comes to the heat of battle and we're soldiers for Christ and, as Napoleon said, an army marches on its stomach.
• 1:25
  Ray Comfort: If you've got a weak army that doesn't eat, it's not going to get anywhere.
• 1:28
  Ray Comfort: I like the verse go to the ant.
• 1:29
  Ray Comfort: You slug it and consider her ways.
• 1:32
  Ray Comfort: Why is it feminine?
• 1:33
  Ray Comfort: Yeah, because women are more studious often than men.
• 1:37
  Ray Comfort: Men are lazy often, and so we need to discipline ourselves.
• 1:40
  Ray Comfort: And so many people that you're a Christian?
• 1:42
  Ray Comfort: Yeah, I love the Lord, reading the Bible every day.
• 1:46
  Mark Spence: And they say I try to?
• 1:48
  Ray Comfort: And I like to say do you try to eat your food every day?
• 1:50
  Ray Comfort: And they don't try to eat their food.
• 1:51
  Ray Comfort: They eat their food.
• 1:52
  Ray Comfort: Why?
• 1:53
  Ray Comfort: Because it's prioritized.
• 1:54
  Ray Comfort: You don't try and eat your food.
• 1:56
  Ray Comfort: And you shouldn't try to read God's word.
• 1:57
  Ray Comfort: You discipline yourself to read it daily.
• 1:59
  Ray Comfort: And I'm not saying read Leviticus before you get out of bed, but just meditate on the words of Jesus, chew them over and soar them into your spirit.
• 2:07
  Ray Comfort: Let them become part of you, to energize you throughout that day.
• 2:14
  Emeal Zwayne: Rate comfort.
• 2:14
  Emeal Zwayne: You played a soldier and had the perma part in your hair to prove it.
• 2:21
  Emeal Zwayne: Oh, you remember that.
• 2:23
  Ray Comfort: There was almost embarrassing things in my life.
• 2:25
  Ray Comfort: Talk about a flathead.
• 2:27
  Emeal Zwayne: To me it was the most intriguing thing.
• 2:29
  Emeal Zwayne: No, it was embarrassing, but beyond embarrassing.
• 2:31
  Emeal Zwayne: There are certain things in life you look at and you say how can that be humanly possible?
• 2:35
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, a perma part.
• 2:37
  Emeal Zwayne: No matter what you did, do it would not go away.
• 2:40
  Ray Comfort: Yeah, yeah, we were filming middle, was it middle Call?
• 2:43
  Emeal Zwayne: it middle.
• 2:44
  Emeal Zwayne: That was seriously the funnest episode we ever filmed.
• 2:49
  Ray Comfort: And Kirk and I were in tanks and we had explosions, we had pyrotechnics.
• 2:53
  Ray Comfort: So we're filming to the night and it was about 2 am in the morning and decided we'd filmed us with our helmets on for about 2 hours or 3 hours.
• 2:59
  Ray Comfort: So we took our helmets off and my hair was flat.
• 3:03
  Ray Comfort: It was just insane.
• 3:04
  Ray Comfort: Everyone was trying to bring life back to it, to get it to go out, and it would not come back.
• 3:11
  Emeal Zwayne: We needed gorilla, glue or something.
• 3:13
  Ray Comfort: Yeah, it was really weird, Ray, how much money have you spent on haircuts.
• 3:16
  Ray Comfort: Oh, quite a lot.
• 3:17
  Ray Comfort: Actually, I haven't spent anything for the last 50 years on haircuts because my wife's always from me.
• 3:22
  Oscar Navarro: Does she really?
• 3:22
  Oscar Navarro: Yeah, she saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars compared to the last 50 years on haircuts.
• 3:25
  Oscar Navarro: She's just a shi.
• 3:29
  Emeal Zwayne: I make meals for her and it keeps her happy.
• 3:30
  Emeal Zwayne: Mark, you still cut your own hair.
• 3:32
  Emeal Zwayne: No, I don't have time to do so much sense that makes.
• 3:34
  Emeal Zwayne: So much sense.
• 3:35
  Mark Spence: So you go turn the zoom.
• 3:36
  Mark Spence: I did.
• 3:36
  Ray Comfort: Get the money back from the body.
• 3:38
  Ray Comfort: That's funny.
• 3:40
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, Oscar needs a haircut period Always and forever.
• 3:44
  Oscar Navarro: Yeah, what happened to you, Oscar?
• 3:45
  Emeal Zwayne: Your hair has evolved over time.
• 3:47
  Emeal Zwayne: Here you came in, you had this nice, clean cut.
• 3:49
  Emeal Zwayne: Do Do you not like it now?
• 3:51
  Oscar Navarro: Go ahead and embarrass me in front of everybody, in front of our new friend here.
• 3:56
  Emeal Zwayne: What do you do for your hair Carrie?
• 3:57
  Emeal Zwayne: You get it.
• 3:57
  Emeal Zwayne: Do you ever cut?
• 3:59
  Oscar Navarro: it Well, first I perm it, and then I pamper it, yeah, and then I curl it, richard.
• 4:06
  Emeal Zwayne: And then I put it in a bowl.
• 4:07
  Emeal Zwayne: Sounds like Richard Simmons.
• 4:08
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, yeah, that's not out to me.
• 4:13
  Ray Comfort: Speaking of tumbleweeds, I was out at a church and I think Hemet, and they had all tumbleweeds behind the church.
• 4:18
  Ray Comfort: So I went out and see if I could do something with tumbleweeds.
• 4:21
  Ray Comfort: Ever felt a tumbleweed?
• 4:23
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, they're horrible, they're horrible.
• 4:26
  Ray Comfort: I mean, talk about the Genesis curse.
• 4:27
  Ray Comfort: There's nothing you can.
• 4:28
  Ray Comfort: I thought we could squeeze them into a pillow and make them nice, and there must be something they could be used for.
• 4:32
  Ray Comfort: But no, I didn't mean to question that.
• 4:34
  Ray Comfort: That's why I was laughing, you're here with tumbleweeds.
• 4:36
  Emeal Zwayne: Thank you, I appreciate that Tumbleweeds are bizarro stuff, but they're, I mean, but again, a design of God's creation.
• 4:41
  Emeal Zwayne: They are dispersing seeds as a roll.
• 4:44
  Ray Comfort: Weeds, of course, do they really.
• 4:46
  Oscar Navarro: More tumbleweeds.
• 4:46
  Oscar Navarro: I thought they were just there for gunfights.
• 4:49
  Oscar Navarro: Yeah, to show you.
• 4:51
  Ray Comfort: Did you?
• 4:51
  Emeal Zwayne: buy a tumbleweed as a prop.
• 4:53
  Emeal Zwayne: I wonder Sure they?
• 4:54
  Ray Comfort: have it.
• 4:54
  Emeal Zwayne: Sure you can.
• 4:55
  Emeal Zwayne: So, ray, there was a point to all of that.
• 4:57
  Emeal Zwayne: You played a soldier.
• 4:59
  Emeal Zwayne: Ray, if you're conscripted to serve as a soldier, could you do it?
• 5:03
  Emeal Zwayne: Yes, I'd become a chaplain.
• 5:05
  Ray Comfort: No, yes, I'd become a chaplain, no, a fighting soldier.
• 5:07
  Ray Comfort: I couldn't really shoot anyone.
• 5:09
  Ray Comfort: I'd feel terrible.
• 5:10
  Ray Comfort: That's what, yeah, you've got to shoot the guy before he shoots you.
• 5:13
  Oscar Navarro: But I'd say Ray would shoot him and run over him like do you think you're a good person, Quick, quick.
• 5:18
  Emeal Zwayne: I'd start it as foot and work my way out.
• 5:20
  Ray Comfort: That's what I do start of the foot, move the way up and say move out of the way please.
• 5:24
  Emeal Zwayne: Oh, Ray Ray, you would be kind of like the Hogan's Hero kind of guy.
• 5:30
  Emeal Zwayne: Why did you love that sitcom so much?
• 5:33
  Ray Comfort: Oh, because of Schultz and stuff like that.
• 5:35
  Ray Comfort: I don't know how a sitcom with that theme after the war could have become a hit, but it did.
• 5:40
  Oscar Navarro: Is that a black and white?
• 5:42
  Ray Comfort: It was black and white, then went color.
• 5:43
  Ray Comfort: Hogan's Heroes You've heard of Hogan's Heroes?
• 5:46
  Ray Comfort: I honestly have never heard of Hogan's Heroes.
• 5:47
  Ray Comfort: You are kidding.
• 5:48
  Emeal Zwayne: It's iconic, it's a little bit like a little a little label Boy.
• 5:52
  Emeal Zwayne: A little label, I got nothing.
• 5:52
  Emeal Zwayne: Is that the guy at the cross-dresser, or was that Mesh?
• 5:54
  Ray Comfort: No, that's Mesh.
• 5:55
  Emeal Zwayne: That was horrible that was crude yeah, and that guy was Lebanese I think too.
• 6:00
  Ray Comfort: Yeah, hogan's Heroes was pretty wholesome.
• 6:01
  Ray Comfort: It was fun, interesting.
• 6:03
  Emeal Zwayne: I mean, it was basically, it was these guys that were duping Silly Nazis and they were pretending they were spies, right or something.
• 6:13
  Ray Comfort: They were just, they had everything going inside the camp.
• 6:15
  Ray Comfort: I mean everything, it was just, it was just fun.
• 6:18
  Emeal Zwayne: They were prisoners no prisoners, but they had like they were spying on them.
• 6:22
  Ray Comfort: Yeah it doesn't sound funny at all, but it was Speaking of that.
• 6:26
  Ray Comfort: I just watched a video that someone sent me this morning of a golden Labrador very friendly, a golden doodle.
• 6:31
  Ray Comfort: Yeah, no, it was a golden Labrador going up to a guy who was getting a bike out of a garage, who was actually stealing it, and the whole thing.
• 6:38
  Ray Comfort: The golden Labrador is so friendly to the thief, the thief bends down and pats somebody's wagon as tail rolling over.
• 6:45
  Ray Comfort: And then the thief says, hey, where's your master?
• 6:47
  Ray Comfort: You should tell him not to leave his garage door open, and he's no way.
• 6:50
  Oscar Navarro: He's with a bike Like a security camera and yeah it's all a security camera.
• 6:53
  Ray Comfort: The dog's just wagging his tail.
• 6:55
  Emeal Zwayne: I got to see that.
• 6:56
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, that was funny.
• 6:57
  Emeal Zwayne: You know, I saw a delightful video today.
• 6:59
  Emeal Zwayne: I saw someone get tackled by a police officer who's trying to steal their second television set and the same day from a target.
• 7:09
  Oscar Navarro: They went back into the same target the same day.
• 7:11
  Oscar Navarro: Yeah, they stole one, went back in.
• 7:13
  Emeal Zwayne: Courage.
• 7:13
  Emeal Zwayne: And so they call the police and they tell them I mean, in our day and age that's like refreshing, yeah.
• 7:18
  Emeal Zwayne: And the guy's like let me go, no, I can't go to jail.
• 7:21
  Emeal Zwayne: It sounds weird, what a weird voice, do you remember?
• 7:25
  Oscar Navarro: walking out of Lakewood mall and that dude was wrestling the.
• 7:28
  Oscar Navarro: The security guard was wrestling that guy, oh yeah, and.
• 7:32
  Oscar Navarro: I, I went to court, you did.
• 7:33
  Oscar Navarro: Oh, I didn't know that.
• 7:34
  Oscar Navarro: Yeah.
• 7:35
  Mark Spence: Where I went in there and I was, I helped the guy.
• 7:37
  Mark Spence: Maybe we were talking about a different scenario.
• 7:39
  Oscar Navarro: You filmed the guy.
• 7:39
  Oscar Navarro: I don't remember you helping him.
• 7:42
  Mark Spence: Yeah, I got the guy in a headlock.
• 7:43
  Mark Spence: Yeah, so it's a different scenario that's very, very small yeah.
• 7:47
  Emeal Zwayne: You didn't get him in a headlock.
• 7:48
  Mark Spence: I did, I got him in a headlock First off.
• 7:50
  Mark Spence: This is not a headlock.
• 7:51
  Oscar Navarro: This is holding a bullsuit.
• 7:53
  Mark Spence: No, I got him in a headlock.
• 7:54
  Mark Spence: The police came and the security was just standing around saying you know, sorry, we can't do anything, we can't help.
• 7:59
  Mark Spence: The police was so livid, so upset at security not not helping out.
• 8:03
  Mark Spence: And so the guy wanted to get inside of a getaway car and that getaway car had hit another car and took off.
• 8:08
  Mark Spence: Motorcycle took after him and I ended up going to court to testify against the guy and right before I testified they called it all off.
• 8:18
  Mark Spence: I don't know what happened.
• 8:19
  Emeal Zwayne: So, mark, is that separate from the time you filmed?
• 8:21
  Emeal Zwayne: There was some time.
• 8:22
  Mark Spence: Yeah, that's the one I was talking about.
• 8:23
  Mark Spence: I did both.
• 8:24
  Mark Spence: I filmed and I got the same incident.
• 8:26
  Mark Spence: I'm always trying to film.
• 8:28
  Oscar Navarro: And then, like the wife was in the car, like get in the car, hurry they dude was like holding on to him, yeah.
• 8:31
  Mark Spence: I didn't speak in English.
• 8:32
  Oscar Navarro: I don't know that part.
• 8:33
  Oscar Navarro: Yes.
• 8:34
  Ray Comfort: So, mike, you were filming while you were headlocking.
• 8:35
  Ray Comfort: Yes, how many arms do you got?
• 8:37
  Mark Spence: Well, the thing was, I think I think I went while you were, but I didn't hit record.
• 8:42
  Mark Spence: Oh, that's like.
• 8:43
  Mark Spence: I do that or I hit it twice or something happened.
• 8:46
  Emeal Zwayne: You should have had Siri help you.
• 8:47
  Emeal Zwayne: I wrecked my shirt that day.
• 8:49
  Ray Comfort: I know what I told you guys about.
• 8:50
  Ray Comfort: In Australia, a guy walked into a court.
• 8:52
  Ray Comfort: He had a white jacket on while court was in session and he put a ladder against the wall, reached up and grabbed the clock and stole it.
• 8:58
  Ray Comfort: And no one stopped him because this were in a white jacket.
• 9:00
  Ray Comfort: Seriously, seriously, it's a white coat.
• 9:02
  Ray Comfort: You can do anything.
• 9:03
  Ray Comfort: You go to a hospital, or was that you?
• 9:04
  Ray Comfort: No, you can go to a hospital and operate on people.
• 9:07
  Ray Comfort: If you were in a white coat and prove it.
• 9:08
  Emeal Zwayne: Well, wait a minute.
• 9:09
  Emeal Zwayne: What was it called?
• 9:10
  Emeal Zwayne: Catch Me, if you Can.
• 9:11
  Oscar Navarro: That's basically all we know.
• 9:12
  Oscar Navarro: Oh yeah, that's a true story, by the way.
• 9:13
  Oscar Navarro: Yeah, no, I know.
• 9:14
  Emeal Zwayne: He was in high school, I think, and he went and became a doctor.
• 9:16
  Emeal Zwayne: He pulled like the head of all these doctors, a lawyer and a doctor and a pilot.
• 9:20
  Emeal Zwayne: But, ray, that's the kind of thing you would do, isn't that what you?
• 9:24
  Emeal Zwayne: I would not steal a coat, no, no, no, no, when you want it.
• 9:29
  Emeal Zwayne: Speaking of jackets and coats, when you want to get that jacket, oh, yes, yeah, I wasn't a Christian then, yeah.
• 9:33
  Ray Comfort: But I did.
• 9:34
  Ray Comfort: I was in a store and there were all these people on the outside and I knew it was going to open at nine o'clock.
• 9:40
  Ray Comfort: So I had a suit on, I was carrying a briefcase and they just hit the whole crowd.
• 9:43
  Ray Comfort: I move away, please.
• 9:44
  Ray Comfort: It's nine o'clock, move away.
• 9:45
  Ray Comfort: And they all pardon, like the Red Sea.
• 9:47
  Ray Comfort: They opened the door because I thought I was starved and I got the jacket.
• 9:49
  Ray Comfort: It was in the window.
• 9:51
  Ray Comfort: It was yesterday, right?
• 9:52
  Ray Comfort: No, no, I wasn't a Christian.
• 9:54
  Ray Comfort: So you Ray.
• 9:54
  Emeal Zwayne: So you All right, friends, we have a comment.
• 9:58
  Emeal Zwayne: This is from a Jed who would go with Jessica Feet.
• 10:02
  Emeal Zwayne: Wow, that's what it says EJJDH.
• 10:05
  Oscar Navarro: EJJDH.
• 10:05
  Oscar Navarro: What if that's actually his?
• 10:08
  Emeal Zwayne: name Miraculous, Amazing.
• 10:10
  Emeal Zwayne: On the last podcast I think it was a moising.
• 10:12
  Emeal Zwayne: Now it's amazing.
• 10:13
  Emeal Zwayne: This podcast is amazing.
• 10:15
  Emeal Zwayne: It's truly helped me grow in faith and made me laugh too.
• 10:17
  Emeal Zwayne: You guys should cover the books of Enoch, book of Enoch, and try and figure out if there True or not.
• 10:24
  Emeal Zwayne: True or not Enoch, Enoch.
• 10:27
  Ray Comfort: Enoch, true or not, quoted in the book of Jude.
• 10:29
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah Well, thank you, our dear friend.
• 10:32
  Emeal Zwayne: I will not try to repeat your name, but there is another name I will say, and it's our friend Kaitlyn, who's here with us in the studio.
• 10:40
  Emeal Zwayne: Let's give her a big hand, kaitlyn, welcome Round of applause.
• 10:43
  Emeal Zwayne: She is All the way here from Wahahuahu Washington.
• 10:47
  Emeal Zwayne: There's something like that you can say it.
• 10:52
  Oscar Navarro: Wah-la-wah-la-wah-la.
• 10:54
  Emeal Zwayne: Sounds like a fish.
• 10:55
  Emeal Zwayne: Kaitlyn, welcome.
• 10:56
  Emeal Zwayne: We're so glad to have you, so blessed to have you here in this video.
• 11:00
  Oscar Navarro: She was in the bookstore and we walked in and was like hey, do you want to come and sit in on a recording?
• 11:04
  Oscar Navarro: And here she is.
• 11:05
  Ray Comfort: And she said no, but we forced her to.
• 11:07
  Ray Comfort: She's heard the podcast before, but she came.
• 11:08
  Ray Comfort: She came anyway.
• 11:09
  Ray Comfort: But something more important than all.
• 11:11
  Emeal Zwayne: Of that is what Kaitlyn said about what her favorite ministry is and what her second favorite ministry is Answers and Genesis.
• 11:20
  Emeal Zwayne: So we're in first place today.
• 11:22
  Emeal Zwayne: We like that.
• 11:23
  Emeal Zwayne: What are you doing, rick?
• 11:23
  Emeal Zwayne: I'm for it.
• 11:27
  Ray Comfort: Let me pour out a little loud to say that again, Kaitlyn.
• 11:30
  Emeal Zwayne: We got proved.
• 11:31
  Emeal Zwayne: We got proved.
• 11:32
  Emeal Zwayne: Yes, this is my favorite organization, and second to it is Answers and Genesis.
• 11:37
  Emeal Zwayne: Kaitlyn, your voice made it onto the Living Waters podcast.
• 11:41
  Emeal Zwayne: You're a legend now forever.
• 11:43
  Emeal Zwayne: All right, friends, this podcast is brought to you by the Starter Kit Boy.
• 11:50
  Emeal Zwayne: That was a buildup for nothing.
• 11:52
  Oscar Navarro: You're going to blow out your lungs just thinking what he is the Starter Kit.
• 11:56
  Emeal Zwayne: The Starter Kit, friends, 350 gospel tracks.
• 12:00
  Emeal Zwayne: In there we got the million dollar bill, the Tenka Mammon's coin, the comic Are you a Good Person, small version and 101 of the world's funniest one liners.
• 12:08
  Oscar Navarro: If you've never handed out track before in your life, the Starter Kit is a great place to start, because you get a variety of packs, some of them are more popular ones and for everybody.
• 12:19
  Oscar Navarro: The reason why we make so many different kinds of tracks is because everyone feels comfortable handing out a different kind of track, and you should be comfortable with whatever track you have in your pocket.
• 12:28
  Oscar Navarro: This is a great way of trying the multi-track shop and we've got the Starter Kit.
• 12:31
  Ray Comfort: I was thinking of creating the Finisher Kit, but I don't know what.
• 12:34
  Ray Comfort: I don't know.
• 12:35
  Mark Spence: Speaking of that, ray, do you have any gospel tracks on you?
• 12:37
  Ray Comfort: Of course, you owe me a thousand, prove it Always Wow.
• 12:42
  Emeal Zwayne: Prove it.
• 12:46
  Mark Spence: That's money what?
• 12:46
  Emeal Zwayne: else Take it off him, so I can ask him.
• 12:51
  Ray Comfort: It's because I've said for many years I'll give a thousand dollars to anyone who finds me in public without gospel tracks.
• 12:56
  Ray Comfort: But people don't realize.
• 12:56
  Ray Comfort: I've got John 316 tethered on my chest with a sinner's prayer underneath it.
• 13:02
  Oscar Navarro: Just in case we can't see it behind all the fur, though that's right, ray, but I sense a real lack of confidence in yourself.
• 13:09
  Emeal Zwayne: Why isn't it a hundred thousand?
• 13:10
  Emeal Zwayne: If someone catches?
• 13:11
  Ray Comfort: it.
• 13:11
  Ray Comfort: That's right.
• 13:11
  Ray Comfort: I should take it off.
• 13:12
  Ray Comfort: I should take it off.
• 13:15
  Emeal Zwayne: All right, friends.
• 13:15
  Emeal Zwayne: Enough of the silliness, more silliness.
• 13:17
  Emeal Zwayne: Today, we are talking about how to avoid being biblically illiterate.
• 13:27
  Emeal Zwayne: Ill, ill, sick.
• 13:31
  Ray Comfort: No, hang on.
• 13:31
  Ray Comfort: What's the word Light racy?
• 13:32
  Ray Comfort: He hasn't even said the word yet Illiterate, illiterate, illiterate.
• 13:38
  Emeal Zwayne: That's what it should be A sick fool.
• 13:39
  Mark Spence: Illiterate.
• 13:40
  Emeal Zwayne: Illiterate.
• 13:40
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah yeah, how to avoid the dangers of biblical illiteracy.
• 13:44
  Emeal Zwayne: Now I got to admit, this was Oscar's idea.
• 13:46
  Emeal Zwayne: Oscar, what are we talking about today?
• 13:48
  Oscar Navarro: I don't remember making this idea up.
• 13:50
  Oscar Navarro: You know I was thinking about the importance of this and I'm going to equate it to your nutrition Right, Like if you spend five days a week weightlifting and another three or four days a week doing cardio running because you want to build muscle, get in shape, but you're still stuffing your face with chili cheese dogs.
• 14:10
  Ray Comfort: Oh, stop it.
• 14:11
  Ray Comfort: No, don't go there, I actually love chili cheese dogs.
• 14:13
  Emeal Zwayne: Hey, wait, wait, wait.
• 14:13
  Emeal Zwayne: Did you actually go?
• 14:14
  Emeal Zwayne: We talked about it on the last podcast.
• 14:16
  Mark Spence: I didn't.
• 14:16
  Mark Spence: I didn't go yesterday or the other day, because what was it yesterday?
• 14:19
  Mark Spence: Because I have work to do.
• 14:21
  Ray Comfort: Good, that's good, mike yeah.
• 14:24
  Oscar Navarro: But listen, if you want to build muscle, get in shape, you don't just work out, you also have to look at your dietary habits, your nutrition fiber.
• 14:33
  Oscar Navarro: You need fiber to digest food.
• 14:35
  Oscar Navarro: You need protein to build muscle.
• 14:37
  Oscar Navarro: You need good healthy fats for nourishment.
• 14:40
  Oscar Navarro: See, the thing is, the Bible says something similar about our relationship with God's word.
• 14:46
  Oscar Navarro: No amount of church attendance, of prayer, of podcasting, of worship music will make up for the malnourishment that comes from neglecting your Bibles.
• 14:57
  Oscar Navarro: And unfortunately we do have an epidemic within the church Only 30% who attend church on a regular basis claim they read their Bible on a daily basis.
• 15:09
  Mark Spence: Wait a minute, I want you to finish.
• 15:11
  Mark Spence: But this is exactly.
• 15:12
  Mark Spence: Listen to James Montgomery Boyce's quote here and then continue.
• 15:15
  Mark Spence: He says inerrancy is not the most critical issue facing the church today.
• 15:19
  Mark Spence: The most serious issue, I believe, is the Bible's sufficiency.
• 15:25
  Mark Spence: That's good, right.
• 15:27
  Oscar Navarro: We have what we need, but then we avoid it, we're not reading it, we're discarding it and we play games all day and so many people, I think, have the felt need of this spiritual malnourishment, because so many Christians that I hear from and talk to are like man.
• 15:43
  Oscar Navarro: I just want the joy of my salvation back.
• 15:45
  Oscar Navarro: I want to be on fire for the Lord.
• 15:47
  Oscar Navarro: I want to feel and understand his presence in my life, and often we'll be like man.
• 15:51
  Oscar Navarro: How much time, what is your time, reading God's word?
• 15:55
  Oscar Navarro: Look like to you and it's little to none.
• 15:57
  Oscar Navarro: And so if you have that felt need where you're like you just feel disconnected from the grace of God, is it possible that you're experiencing the malnourishment of biblical illiteracy?
• 16:10
  Mark Spence: Yeah, and I tell kids all the time, when I speak at youth group camps and things of that nature, I say listen, you guys are on a high right now.
• 16:18
  Mark Spence: Think about what you've been doing.
• 16:21
  Mark Spence: You've been fellowshiping in the Word, you've been encouraging each other, you've been listening to good, solid teaching and you've been worshiping the Lord through music.
• 16:29
  Mark Spence: When you come down the camp right, because it's not how high you can jump at, how straight you can walk when your feet hit the ground again Do the same things.
• 16:37
  Mark Spence: Now.
• 16:38
  Mark Spence: You're still going to go to school, you're still going to go to work, but surround yourself with good teaching, with good worship, with good fellowship.
• 16:45
  Mark Spence: When you do that, you're going to have the accountability and you're going to grow in your knowledge, because we are changed continually from precept upon precept.
• 16:53
  Mark Spence: That's what you need to do to grow.
• 16:55
  Mark Spence: That's great.
• 16:56
  Emeal Zwayne: You know, the thing that I think should astound us as Christians is the disconnect between what is professed and what is lived out in connection with scripture.
• 17:07
  Emeal Zwayne: I mean, you ask any Christian what do you think of the Bible?
• 17:09
  Emeal Zwayne: Oh, I love the Bible.
• 17:10
  Emeal Zwayne: It's God's Word.
• 17:10
  Emeal Zwayne: You believe it's God's Word Absolutely.
• 17:12
  Emeal Zwayne: You believe it like the Lord actually gave it to us for a purpose to live our lives.
• 17:19
  Emeal Zwayne: This is from God's love letter.
• 17:20
  Emeal Zwayne: I mean, they'll go on and on.
• 17:21
  Emeal Zwayne: How often do you read it?
• 17:22
  Emeal Zwayne: Oh, I've been struggling lately, brother, brother, you know, and Ray, that's a problem.
• 17:30
  Emeal Zwayne: I mean seriously, like if we believe this is God's word and this is a sad truth and this is not for condemnation, friends, I hope this is an encouragement to like make us say wait a minute.
• 17:40
  Emeal Zwayne: I mean, sometimes we need big boy talk, you know, sometimes we need a little kick in the pants to say what am I doing here?
• 17:45
  Emeal Zwayne: If you profess to know and love the Lord and you profess to love His word and haven't even read it all, and you've been a believer for decades, there's a problem there.
• 17:55
  Ray Comfort: A huge problem.
• 17:56
  Ray Comfort: There's no excuse.
• 17:56
  Ray Comfort: We've got access to God's word and, as I've said a billion times, no Bible, no breakfast, no read, no feed.
• 18:03
  Ray Comfort: It's a matter of discipline.
• 18:04
  Ray Comfort: That's all it is.
• 18:04
  Ray Comfort: If you join an army, the first thing you do is cut off your curly locks.
• 18:07
  Ray Comfort: That's a Oscar.
• 18:08
  Ray Comfort: If you go to the army, they can.
• 18:10
  Oscar Navarro: That's why I'm not in the army.
• 18:11
  Oscar Navarro: Go on, yeah.
• 18:12
  Ray Comfort: But I mean seriously, don't they like hair?
• 18:13
  Ray Comfort: Well, they don't want you on the heat of battle.
• 18:15
  Ray Comfort: Looking in the mirror and making sure you hear is nice, because there are certain things that matter when it comes to the heat of battle.
• 18:20
  Ray Comfort: And we're soldiers for Christ.
• 18:22
  Ray Comfort: And, as Napoleon said, an army marches on its stomach.
• 18:25
  Ray Comfort: If you've got a weak army, it doesn't eat, it's not going to get anywhere.
• 18:28
  Ray Comfort: I like the verse go to the aunt you slug it and consider her ways.
• 18:32
  Ray Comfort: Why is it feminine?
• 18:33
  Ray Comfort: Yeah, because women are more studious often than men.
• 18:37
  Ray Comfort: Men are lazy often, and so we need to discipline ourselves.
• 18:40
  Ray Comfort: And so many people that you're a Christian?
• 18:42
  Ray Comfort: Yeah, I love the Lord, reading the Bible every day.
• 18:46
  Ray Comfort: And they say I try to, and I like to say do you try to eat your food every day?
• 18:50
  Ray Comfort: And they don't try to eat their food.
• 18:51
  Ray Comfort: They eat their food.
• 18:52
  Ray Comfort: Why?
• 18:53
  Ray Comfort: Because it's prioritized.
• 18:54
  Ray Comfort: You don't try and eat your food and you shouldn't try to read God's word.
• 18:57
  Ray Comfort: You discipline yourself to read it daily.
• 18:59
  Ray Comfort: And I'm not saying read Leviticus before you get out of bed, but just meditate on the words of Jesus, chew them over and sob them into your spirit, let them become part of you to energize you throughout that day.
• 19:10
  Ray Comfort: And this is not a boast, because I thought every Christian did this.
• 19:14
  Ray Comfort: I have read the Bible every day without fail for 52 years.
• 19:18
  Ray Comfort: Never a day have I gone without reading the Word and I want to do it to the day I die.
• 19:22
  Ray Comfort: And every Christian should be like that, because the Bible is God's love letter to humanity.
• 19:27
  Ray Comfort: And so often, if we ignore our instruction books, whatever you're trying to put together doesn't work and you won't put things together if you don't put God's word first.
• 19:35
  Ray Comfort: Someone says blesses the man who meditates on the law of God both day and night.
• 19:40
  Ray Comfort: And it says he shall be like a tree planted by rivers of water strong and firm.
• 19:45
  Ray Comfort: His leaf won't worthy or retain vibrance and freshness.
• 19:48
  Ray Comfort: You'll bring forth fruit in season love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, faith, meekness and temperance.
• 19:54
  Ray Comfort: And whatever you do will prosper.
• 19:56
  Ray Comfort: That's not like the prosperity gospel.
• 19:58
  Ray Comfort: It means your marriage will prosper and your vocation and your evangelistic endeavors.
• 20:02
  Ray Comfort: If you put God's word first, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all the other junk will be added.
• 20:08
  Ray Comfort: That's a little paraphrase, just a little.
• 20:11
  Mark Spence: Or as Martin Luther worded, he said the Bible is alive, it speaks to me, it has feet, it runs after me and it has hands, it lays a hold of me, and that gets a little bit closer to literacy, because one biblical literacy starts with frequency, and that's what we're kind of talking about right now the frequency of reading our Bibles.
• 20:31
  Oscar Navarro: Absolutely, if you're not reading it daily, if you're not reading it often, there's an issue.
• 20:35
  Oscar Navarro: But there's also wrong ways of reading the Bible.
• 20:38
  Oscar Navarro: You can read the Bible in the wrong kind of ways for every day of your life, and that's where biblical literacy comes into play.
• 20:47
  Oscar Navarro: It's not just about the frequency of your Bible reading, it's about the also the quality of your Bible reading.
• 20:53
  Oscar Navarro: Have you come to understand the Word of God?
• 20:57
  Oscar Navarro: Do you know what it's like to meditate on the Word of God?
• 21:00
  Oscar Navarro: Do you know what the Word of God is?
• 21:04
  Mark Spence: So how do we approach the Word of God If we're going to not become illiterate?
• 21:08
  Mark Spence: How do we approach it to study it, to be prepared, to be prepped to allow it to change us?
• 21:15
  Mark Spence: What do we do?
• 21:16
  Emeal Zwayne: Well, I was going to say, yeah, you have a couple of things going on.
• 21:19
  Emeal Zwayne: First, there's the avoidance of Scripture and obviously, when we say biblical literacy, we're not meaning that someone literally cannot read, it's that they will not read.
• 21:28
  Emeal Zwayne: First, you have to consume Scripture in order to do the proper things with it.
• 21:33
  Emeal Zwayne: That will make you literate in it, and I think that's the big key.
• 21:38
  Emeal Zwayne: It's first getting yourself in the habit, and let's camp here for just a moment and then we'll break it down.
• 21:44
  Emeal Zwayne: What are the things we need to know?
• 21:46
  Emeal Zwayne: How do we understand Scripture, how do we interpret it, what are the different genres within Scripture, and so forth.
• 21:52
  Emeal Zwayne: But yeah, first and foremost, I think there's an intimidation on the part of a lot of Christians when it comes to Scripture, especially newer believers.
• 22:02
  Emeal Zwayne: Like what is this thing?
• 22:04
  Emeal Zwayne: Where do I start?
• 22:06
  Emeal Zwayne: I mean, I've shared it multiple times.
• 22:07
  Emeal Zwayne: As an unbeliever, I didn't even know how to use the Bible.
• 22:11
  Emeal Zwayne: When there were references given, I'm like what in the world is that Right?
• 22:14
  Emeal Zwayne: So there's that intimidation factor.
• 22:16
  Emeal Zwayne: What do you guys think causes that?
• 22:19
  Mark Spence: I before I became a Christian, when I was Catholic, you know.
• 22:21
  Mark Spence: I grew up and I was told that I cannot interpret it, that I cannot understand it, that I need somebody else to tell me what I am reading.
• 22:30
  Mark Spence: And that's still what is being propagated today in a lot of different cults and even within the Catholic Church.
• 22:35
  Mark Spence: Today, you need us to help you to understand what you're reading.
• 22:40
  Mark Spence: That's good.
• 22:41
  Oscar Navarro: I think.
• 22:41
  Oscar Navarro: To go back to your question, izzy, what is it that holds people back?
• 22:45
  Oscar Navarro: You have to realize that God's Word is set apart.
• 22:50
  Oscar Navarro: It is unique and different than anything else you will ever experience in your entire life.
• 22:54
  Oscar Navarro: Most people that are going to be listening to this podcast are readers, actually, but they read 5, 10, 15 second increments.
• 23:02
  Oscar Navarro: On Instagram and TikTok, they read, you know, thousands of words every day, every week, but they read them in small increments.
• 23:09
  Oscar Navarro: God's Word is different, though.
• 23:11
  Oscar Navarro: While everything else we consume, god's Word has the power to consume us.
• 23:17
  Oscar Navarro: God's Word speaks to us, so it is unique and it is different.
• 23:21
  Oscar Navarro: You're reading, first and foremost, in ancient text, which you are going to need to read If you want to understand it through its depth and length.
• 23:27
  Oscar Navarro: You're going to need to read it differently than you would read a book that was written 3, 5, 10, 15 years ago, first and foremost, and you also have to understand that you develop a relationship with God's Word because God's Word is so unique and different.
• 23:41
  Oscar Navarro: We bring with us sin attributes as we read God's Word, and the more we saturate ourselves in the Word of God, the more those things start to fall away and the more we begin to delight in the Word of God.
• 23:54
  Oscar Navarro: I've said it before on this podcast Delighting in the Word of God takes time.
• 23:59
  Oscar Navarro: It actually takes an acquired taste, because we have to shed off the old self, we have to allow God's Word to renew our minds.
• 24:09
  Oscar Navarro: And so I've equated it to taste buds.
• 24:11
  Oscar Navarro: Right, like coffee for some people, wine, like when I drink coffee.
• 24:16
  Oscar Navarro: I know we joke often, but hang on here.
• 24:17
  Oscar Navarro: When I drink coffee I can taste different flavors in there.
• 24:23
  Oscar Navarro: I can taste fruits and acidity, I can taste chocolate.
• 24:26
  Oscar Navarro: And to people who have only ever drank in coffee with creamer, that freedom to taste the goodness that's in coffee is not available to them.
• 24:35
  Oscar Navarro: That comes with time of drinking black coffee.
• 24:38
  Oscar Navarro: In that same way, the beauty and the nourishment and the goodness that comes with God's Word sometimes takes time, and so if you're a new believer, if you're someone that's always struggled but you're in and out of God's Word in quick seconds, you're not delighting in it.
• 24:53
  Oscar Navarro: My encouragement to you is to take your time, allow God's Word to change your spiritual taste buds so that you can begin to taste the notes of God's goodness.
• 25:07
  Ray Comfort: Yeah, I've got a lesson from dogs.
• 25:09
  Ray Comfort: My dogs each one that I've had eats like it's got no taste buds in its mouth.
• 25:14
  Ray Comfort: The taste buds are in the stomach.
• 25:15
  Ray Comfort: It just attacks that food that's cost us a lot of money and tastes good and got a lot of goodness in it and it's gone in like four seconds.
• 25:20
  Ray Comfort: I think what's wrong with you?
• 25:23
  Ray Comfort: What?
• 25:24
  Oscar Navarro: does it sound like again Like that One more time?
• 25:28
  Oscar Navarro: No, no, that's all you're getting.
• 25:29
  Mark Spence: That's all you're getting.
• 25:31
  Ray Comfort: Anyway, that's how we approach God's Word.
• 25:32
  Ray Comfort: I'm going to read three chapters right now.
• 25:34
  Ray Comfort: Just consume it.
• 25:36
  Ray Comfort: No, take your time, like you're saying, chew it over, meditate on it.
• 25:40
  Ray Comfort: And the other thing is, god's Word is called a rock and when you get a rock, you break the rock open and you find the gold within the rock.
• 25:48
  Ray Comfort: And that's what God's Word is like.
• 25:50
  Ray Comfort: And sometimes I'll stay in a chapter for literally weeks just going over and over the chapter and after a while you go oh, I never saw that Word.
• 25:58
  Ray Comfort: And that Word is just like a gem.
• 26:00
  Ray Comfort: Like David says, I rejoice at your Word.
• 26:03
  Ray Comfort: It's one who finds great treasure.
• 26:06
  Ray Comfort: Someone once said in it so wonderful, saying this book will keep me from sin and sin will keep me from this book.
• 26:12
  Ray Comfort: And it's a great thing to put in the front of your Bible.
• 26:14
  Ray Comfort: Because if you get into sin, any type of sin, sexual imagination, you won't want to open your Bible, because the Bible will read you and it will.
• 26:23
  Ray Comfort: It will accuse you, you'll feel guilty when you read it instead of delighting in God's law.
• 26:28
  Ray Comfort: So true.
• 26:29
  Emeal Zwayne: You know, what you guys are saying has resonated with believers for generations.
• 26:36
  Emeal Zwayne: Once you know the God of Scripture and then you begin to really dive deep into the scriptures that God gave, it just transforms everything and it enriches your heart in ways that are beyond description.
• 26:52
  Emeal Zwayne: I think Jonathan Edward captured it well.
• 26:54
  Emeal Zwayne: He said I had then and at other times, the greatest delight in the Holy Scriptures of any book whatsoever.
• 27:01
  Emeal Zwayne: Oftentimes, in reading it, every word seemed to touch my heart.
• 27:05
  Emeal Zwayne: I felt a harmony between something in my heart and those sweet and powerful words.
• 27:10
  Emeal Zwayne: I seemed often to see so much light exhibited by every sentence and such a refreshing food communicated that I could not get along in reading, often dwelling long on one sentence to see the wonders contained in it.
• 27:25
  Emeal Zwayne: And yet almost every sentence seemed to be full of wonders, you know.
• 27:31
  Oscar Navarro: Let me try to summarize what we're saying here, because I think, if you listen closely, what we're saying is there's several ways in which you can read the Bible the wrong way.
• 27:37
  Oscar Navarro: There's, of course, not reading it at all, but there's also reading it as though it's a magic eight ball, where you just kind of open it up and you point your finger and it's okay, what has God got for me today?
• 27:47
  Oscar Navarro: Let me get this one verse that better be good.
• 27:48
  Oscar Navarro: That's treating your Bible like a magic eight ball.
• 27:51
  Oscar Navarro: That is not how you should read your Bible.
• 27:52
  Oscar Navarro: Another way you shouldn't read your Bible is, if I'm listening closely, is thinking that it's all about me, right, like how is this going to serve me right now?
• 28:01
  Oscar Navarro: But the scriptures are not about me, it's about God.
• 28:05
  Oscar Navarro: It's about the God who is reconciling the world to himself.
• 28:07
  Oscar Navarro: And so when I spend time in God's word, it's like spending time in a relationship with someone.
• 28:11
  Oscar Navarro: I am there to learn about him Exactly, not to be fulfilled for my own self.
• 28:18
  Oscar Navarro: And then, thirdly, often we treat the Bible.
• 28:20
  Oscar Navarro: We expect the Bible to be like and I'm borrowing Jen Wilkins' words here like a debit card.
• 28:25
  Oscar Navarro: We want to go to God's word and be like all right, give me what I need today.
• 28:28
  Oscar Navarro: But she says that we need to treat God's word like a savings account.
• 28:31
  Oscar Navarro: Every time we spend time in God's word, we are investing, and it's building up a type of spiritual savings account that will later pay off in fruits and dividends.
• 28:41
  Oscar Navarro: It is not a debit card that you get something out of it right away.
• 28:44
  Oscar Navarro: Sometimes it does that, but that's not the intention every time we read the Bible.
• 28:47
  Oscar Navarro: It is a savings account, something that would bear fruit later on.
• 28:50
  Mark Spence: Yeah, you know I love the scripture concerning that third point that you just brought up there Oscar, in John, chapter 5.
• 28:55
  Mark Spence: I'm going to read from the amplified version I just like the way it's worded out Start turning it down and obviously you're going to read it louder.
• 29:00
  Mark Spence: I'll probably read it a little bit louder.
• 29:01
  Mark Spence: So in John, chapter 5, verse 39, it says you search and keep on searching and examining the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and yet it is those very scriptures that testify about me, and still you are unwilling to come to me so that you may have life.
• 29:19
  Mark Spence: What happens is we approach the word of God as a textbook to just learn about life, but in reality the word of God points back to God.
• 29:30
  Mark Spence: Let him, who glories, glory in this, that he knows me, that he understands me.
• 29:34
  Mark Spence: When we approach the word of God, we want to do it in such a way to where we learn about him, where we know him intimately and passionately.
• 29:45
  Mark Spence: It says that God knows us, and that word knows is the same word that Adam knew his wife and conceived a child.
• 29:50
  Mark Spence: It speaks of intimacy.
• 29:52
  Mark Spence: When we approach the word of God, god wants to be intimate in a way where he can search us and try us and see if there be any wicked way inside of us and lead us in the way everlasting.
• 30:03
  Mark Spence: When we approach the word of God, I want to do it in such a way Lord, show me great and marvelous things about you that I know not of, and lead me in the way.
• 30:13
  Mark Spence: Everlasting Amen.
• 30:14
  Emeal Zwayne: No, it's really good.
• 30:15
  Emeal Zwayne: I love the verse in 2 Timothy 3, 14 to 15, but, you must continue in the things which you have learned and been assured of knowing from whom you have learned them and that from childhood you have known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.
• 30:32
  Emeal Zwayne: Isn't that awesome, the thought of knowing the holy scriptures from childhood and he references his mother and his grandmother, eunice and Lois and just growing up in the word, being rooted in the faith.
• 30:47
  Emeal Zwayne: My encouragement to us who are listening, who are parents, is to have a multi-generational vision.
• 30:55
  Emeal Zwayne: This concept of yes, god's word is important in the development of my own spiritual depth, but it goes beyond that.
• 31:08
  Emeal Zwayne: There are ripple effects.
• 31:10
  Emeal Zwayne: My kids are watching me.
• 31:13
  Emeal Zwayne: One of my favorite things when my kids were growing up was doing my devotions in the living room.
• 31:17
  Emeal Zwayne: I remember especially Julia.
• 31:19
  Emeal Zwayne: She'd get up.
• 31:21
  Emeal Zwayne: She was like I think maybe three or four and she'd come and she'd sit on my lap and I'd be reading the word or I'd be reading, like morning and evening, by Spurgeon.
• 31:30
  Emeal Zwayne: We do this thing called big words and I'd point out words to her and what I was reading.
• 31:36
  Emeal Zwayne: That was so sweet that my children were seeing their father get into God's word and seek after the Lord.
• 31:45
  Emeal Zwayne: Our kids watch us.
• 31:47
  Emeal Zwayne: By contrast, they can watch us too get in the flesh and not live out God's word, as my kids have seen at times being a fleshly, sinful man, and that can be a contradiction.
• 31:59
  Emeal Zwayne: There has to be a connection between God's word transforming our own life, thinking about the ripple effects into the lives of successive generations, but then connecting what we're doing and taking the word with living out the word and having that testimony, like Timothy.
• 32:16
  Emeal Zwayne: And then the next verses 2 Timothy again, 3.16-17,.
• 32:20
  Emeal Zwayne: All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness.
• 32:28
  Emeal Zwayne: That the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
• 32:32
  Emeal Zwayne: We oftentimes groan about the prosperity preachers and profiting off God's word.
• 32:38
  Emeal Zwayne: There is a good profiting off God's word.
• 32:41
  Emeal Zwayne: God wants us to profit from his word.
• 32:43
  Emeal Zwayne: It's profitable and it's profitable in all of these ways.
• 32:48
  Mark Spence: In fact, somebody once said if you want knowledge, go to school, but if you want wisdom, get on your knees with God's word.
• 32:56
  Oscar Navarro: So we've talked about frequency, we've talked about how not to read God's word, but what about growing in biblical literacy?
• 33:04
  Oscar Navarro: What are practical ways our listeners can grow in their biblical literacy, of understanding what the Bible actually says?
• 33:15
  Emeal Zwayne: Well, I think, first and foremost, a key component I remember first learning of this when I was just a couple years old in the Lord, when I was at a Christian university, in one of my Christian thought classes, I believe and that is that there are different genres within scripture and that's important to understand.
• 33:31
  Emeal Zwayne: There are different types of literature within scripture and this is a good one, kind of a good list, given by Mel Lawrence on Bible Gateway.
• 33:40
  Emeal Zwayne: He said there's first narrative, second poetry, third wisdom, fourth prophecy, fifth gospel, sixth epistles and then seventh apocalypse, and these are different types of texts within scripture Genres within scripture and so it's important to understand those.
• 33:59
  Emeal Zwayne: You have to be careful Like, for example, you can drift into maybe the wisdom literature.
• 34:04
  Emeal Zwayne: You might get into proverbs or Job or Ecclesiastes and you'll read stuff in there.
• 34:10
  Emeal Zwayne: For example, there are things in Ecclesiastes that don't align with what is doctrinally right, but they are things that someone is pondering or thinking or saying.
• 34:21
  Emeal Zwayne: There are things in Job that we'll see maybe his comforter saying that don't align scripture and God rebuked them for that so you could grab those verses they said and think this is true.
• 34:31
  Ray Comfort: And sometimes that's done.
• 34:32
  Emeal Zwayne: People will use some of those as proof texts out of context, right, because they don't understand the genre to say look at this, or we've talked about it before.
• 34:40
  Emeal Zwayne: You could take again the wisdom literature like proverbs and you could read a verse like bring up a child in the way that he should go, and even when he's old he won't depart from it, and you'll take that as a promise when in reality it's a truism right, yeah, ecclesiastes is also wisdom literature.
• 34:54
  Oscar Navarro: I think so practically.
• 34:55
  Oscar Navarro: Why is that also important?
• 34:56
  Oscar Navarro: I mean, you think about it when you understand the genre.
• 34:58
  Oscar Navarro: So, first and foremost, the right way of reading God's word is to understand that it is God's story about reconciling the world to himself.
• 35:05
  Oscar Navarro: That's the big narrative.
• 35:07
  Oscar Navarro: It's a narrative in creation, fall, redemption and reconciliation.
• 35:12
  Oscar Navarro: In that you've got your as you pointed out, you different genres, literary genres.
• 35:18
  Oscar Navarro: Why is that important?
• 35:20
  Oscar Navarro: Because I read poetry different than I read history.
• 35:24
  Oscar Navarro: I understand that poetry often speaks in medical force, even though it has true things to say.
• 35:30
  Oscar Navarro: And I read history different than I read poetry.
• 35:33
  Oscar Navarro: I read the prophecy different than I read history.
• 35:36
  Oscar Navarro: And so for you to be able to understand the context of the literary genre as you're reading it and, for that matter, the context of where it fits in redemptive history, right, like what covenant is happening in that period of time, to help you see the grand narrative in the story.
• 35:55
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, yeah, that's huge.
• 35:57
  Emeal Zwayne: I wanna get into hermeneutics for a little bit.
• 36:01
  Emeal Zwayne: But Herman who?
• 36:02
  Emeal Zwayne: Herman who?
• 36:04
  Emeal Zwayne: Our good buddy Todd Freel will get you set straight on that.
• 36:07
  Emeal Zwayne: But Ray Hebrews 412, for the word of God is a living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
• 36:21
  Ray Comfort: Speak to that that, yeah, I often use that first, when I'm a little bit discouraged because some atheist said I'm not listening to anything you're saying and I'm not even gonna think about it.
• 36:29
  Ray Comfort: And I say to him too late word of God's quick and powerful, it's gone right between the marrow of your bones and you can't fight it.
• 36:36
  Ray Comfort: And I just thinking what Mark said.
• 36:39
  Ray Comfort: The word of God points back to God.
• 36:41
  Ray Comfort: God's word shapes our view of his character and his will and, without scriptural verance, of the deception of idolatry.
• 36:47
  Ray Comfort: That's what happens within the Catholic church because of its ignorance of God's word.
• 36:50
  Ray Comfort: They don't esteem God's word as they should and they get a wrong view of God's character and nature and thus you get works righteousness fed into their pews.
• 36:59
  Ray Comfort: Without the knowledge of the word, you lack knowledge of God and his will.
• 37:03
  Ray Comfort: And, like Oscar was saying about the whole plan of redemption, once we understand that the reason Jesus came is because God was not willing that any should perish, and when you understand God's word and get a grip of it, as we should, you align yourself with that will.
• 37:18
  Ray Comfort: We shouldn't be willing that any perish but all come to repentance.
• 37:22
  Ray Comfort: And I don't think anything unifies a local church greater than setting its eyes on the lost.
• 37:27
  Ray Comfort: You want a church to be unified and not argue, and have one mind, one spirit.
• 37:33
  Ray Comfort: They should strive together for the faith of the gospel.
• 37:37
  Emeal Zwayne: Amen.
• 37:37
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, you know, mark.
• 37:38
  Emeal Zwayne: I think a big problem today in the church is that God's word is not given the supremacy that it should have in the worship of God's people, and Ephesians 6, 17 makes it clear that, as it's talking about the armor of God, that the word of God is the sword of the spirit, and that sword is not often wielded appropriately within churches, either because God's word is given very little time or it's not exposited appropriately.
• 38:10
  Mark Spence: And so, yeah, and when you don't do that, right, so you can either exegete a text or you can isegete a text.
• 38:15
  Mark Spence: Isegeting a text means you are going to put into the text what you want it to say and what you think it may say, without any proper preparation or study.
• 38:23
  Mark Spence: When you exegete a text, you're going to extract from the text that which the original author intended for the original audience, and to do that we have to study culture and customs and tradition and languages of the time.
• 38:37
  Mark Spence: I had a dinner with my pastor, philip, last night.
• 38:40
  Mark Spence: Our pastor and he was talking about the way the church should be, that he has to minimally labor in the word 20 hours a week, opening up commentaries and lexicons and helps and look at what other people that have gone before him have said concerning the text.
• 38:57
  Mark Spence: And if you don't do that, what are you left with?
• 39:00
  Mark Spence: What are you left with Some speaker who can connect with an audience and tell neat little stories that can make people feel good about themselves?
• 39:10
  Mark Spence: Nobody needs that.
• 39:11
  Mark Spence: You are giving poison to your people if you do not labor in the word of God before you give them the word of God.
• 39:18
  Oscar Navarro: Well, and now you're leaning into what tools and resources can help with biblical literacy, and you mentioned commentaries.
• 39:24
  Oscar Navarro: I think Bible study, bibles and commentaries are huge help.
• 39:28
  Oscar Navarro: I would argue that pastors often make poor commentators.
• 39:32
  Oscar Navarro: Pastors just don't have the time, capacity or discipline to understand both the nuances of theology and God's word.
• 39:39
  Oscar Navarro: And so to me, scholars and theologians, when they write commentaries, they bring some meat and potatoes to the table right, and so most often, people rely on YouTube, google searches to try to understand what the Bible says and what it means, or to formulate their opinion on a subject.
• 39:55
  Oscar Navarro: The problem with that is that reading it's been proven that it increases your critical thinking, your empathy, your reflection, your understanding of the thing that you're trying to understand.
• 40:05
  Oscar Navarro: In other words, if you're not studying God's word and all you're doing is relying on sermons or on YouTube videos or Google searches or AI, you're simply just not gonna understand God's word.
• 40:16
  Oscar Navarro: Commentaries are great.
• 40:17
  Oscar Navarro: One of the things that commentaries do is it's people way smarter than us come before us and often, if you're reading an old commentary, they're bringing different perspectives outside of our own cultural narrative to the text, which helps us understand the text well.
• 40:33
  Oscar Navarro: For those of us, there's some commentaries that are thick and heavy and hard to read.
• 40:38
  Oscar Navarro: But the Good Book Company is an organization, a company that has done a really good job of making approachable commentaries for the everyday lay Christian that wants to start to get into that.
• 40:51
  Oscar Navarro: And so what do you do?
• 40:52
  Oscar Navarro: You open God's word let's say you're gonna read through Romans.
• 40:54
  Oscar Navarro: You buy a $15, $20 approachable commentary, you put it right next to God's word and as you read the passage, you read the commentary and allow it to help you to understand the backstory of what's happening.
• 41:07
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, and friends, we don't want you to also be intimidated.
• 41:10
  Emeal Zwayne: We talked about intimidation of God's word, but intimidated by what we're discussing so far.
• 41:15
  Emeal Zwayne: I mean, hermeneutics in and of itself is a word that makes people kind of step back and say, whoa, what in the world?
• 41:22
  Emeal Zwayne: I don't need that, I just need to know God's word.
• 41:23
  Emeal Zwayne: Don't make the mistake of those who say, oh, I just need to know God and not know things about God.
• 41:31
  Emeal Zwayne: How can you know God and not know things about him?
• 41:35
  Ray Comfort: Did we define hermeneutics or just use the?
• 41:37
  Emeal Zwayne: word.
• 41:37
  Emeal Zwayne: Well, yeah, I'm about to define it.
• 41:39
  Emeal Zwayne: So, yeah, ray, yeah, so when we talk about hermeneutics, we're talking about the science of proper biblical interpretation.
• 41:46
  Emeal Zwayne: So in other words, you're reading scripture but you're mining out the meaning of it so that you understand it, because without knowing the significance and the meaning, then you're gonna apply it in a way that could be even harmful, and we've seen a lot of people do that.
• 42:03
  Emeal Zwayne: And so we don't have time.
• 42:05
  Emeal Zwayne: We're almost out of time already on this episode.
• 42:07
  Emeal Zwayne: But Daniel Aiken lists some great principles of hermeneutics.
• 42:12
  Emeal Zwayne: I'll just share a few of them.
• 42:13
  Emeal Zwayne: And this again, friends, is to wet your appetite so that you can go deeper and you can research.
• 42:18
  Emeal Zwayne: We mentioned our friend Todd Freel.
• 42:19
  Emeal Zwayne: He has a great audio called a hermeneutics and that'll give you the basics, so you could check that out.
• 42:25
  Emeal Zwayne: You can go to wretchidorg and find that there.
• 42:28
  Emeal Zwayne: But here are a few principles.
• 42:30
  Emeal Zwayne: The Bible is the inspired, infallible and an errant word of God.
• 42:32
  Emeal Zwayne: That's a foundation.
• 42:33
  Emeal Zwayne: So you have to begin with understanding the nature of scripture.
• 42:36
  Emeal Zwayne: It's inspired, it was given by the Lord, breathed by the Holy Spirit.
• 42:40
  Emeal Zwayne: It's infallible and an errant in all of its content.
• 42:44
  Emeal Zwayne: Another one is the primary goal of hermeneutics is the discovery of the author's intended meaning that's so important.
• 42:52
  Emeal Zwayne: You're trying to get to the meaning of what the author intended.
• 42:56
  Emeal Zwayne: It's not this open sort of thing.
• 42:58
  Emeal Zwayne: Oh, this is what it means to me.
• 43:00
  Emeal Zwayne: It's something we often hear people say it doesn't matter what it means to you.
• 43:04
  Emeal Zwayne: What matters is what it means, and God has connected his word with the intention of the author.
• 43:10
  Emeal Zwayne: The author's intended meaning is conveyed through the different layers of context.
• 43:15
  Emeal Zwayne: Context is huge, so you have to understand the context of what's being discussed.
• 43:20
  Emeal Zwayne: The author's intended meaning in every biblical text is always discovered within its own unique context.
• 43:26
  Emeal Zwayne: So you have layers of context, you have the unique context that's connected to it and so on.
• 43:30
  Emeal Zwayne: So again, we don't have time, but those are just a few again to wet your appetite and get you excited about that.
• 43:36
  Emeal Zwayne: Ray you mentioned earlier when certain portions of scripture hit you or strike you in a certain way and the whole kind of strength connected to that is through meditation, right.
• 43:50
  Ray Comfort: Yeah, it's a hard thing to put into words, but it's just a sense of excitement comes.
• 43:56
  Ray Comfort: It's kind of like being in love.
• 43:58
  Ray Comfort: You know, when you look at your wife, it's just gives great instant joy to your heart when you understand scripture and rejoice at God's word.
• 44:05
  Ray Comfort: It's one who finds great treasure.
• 44:06
  Ray Comfort: Understand that this is the most precious gift God's given to man outside the cross.
• 44:11
  Ray Comfort: It just thrills your heart when you begin to understand it.
• 44:13
  Ray Comfort: I was just thinking you can see biblical illiteracy reflected in these shallow lyrics and contemporary worship music.
• 44:21
  Emeal Zwayne: Yep, so it's true.
• 44:22
  Ray Comfort: And you go back to those old hymns from 200, 300 years ago.
• 44:25
  Ray Comfort: And can it be that I should gain interest in the Savior's blood?
• 44:28
  Ray Comfort: Just powerful.
• 44:30
  Ray Comfort: Powerful looks based in scripture.
• 44:32
  Ray Comfort: Worship comes in ministry to your spirit and soul that you worship.
• 44:39
  Oscar Navarro: Oh, so good.
• 44:40
  Oscar Navarro: Let me go back to something you said, izzy, because I think it's really important and I want to pass over it, which is that some people are like oh well, you know, I don't need to know these things.
• 44:47
  Oscar Navarro: One of the common phrases is like I don't need to know theology, just give me Jesus.
• 44:50
  Oscar Navarro: That in and of itself is a theological statement, but, as you just pointed out, theology is simply-.
• 44:56
  Ray Comfort: Who's you when you're listening?
• 44:57
  Oscar Navarro: I'm sorry when they listen.
• 44:58
  Oscar Navarro: As you, ray Comfort, just pointed out, theology is knowing God.
• 45:02
  Oscar Navarro: If you're in a relationship with somebody, as you pointed out as well, if I'm in a relationship with my wife, to love her is to know her, and as the years move on, I get to know her more and more and more.
• 45:13
  Oscar Navarro: And so theology reading the biblical literacy is about knowing your savior.
• 45:18
  Ray Comfort: It's like getting a text from your wife with a little uh that little heart yeah.
• 45:23
  Oscar Navarro: And I love the way John Piper has an illustration that actually has a story about when he was in school.
• 45:29
  Oscar Navarro: A teacher had a goldfish in a bowl and he asks the students walk up to the bowl and make an observation and write it down.
• 45:36
  Oscar Navarro: And so the first time they walked up to the bowl it was like, alright, what observations?
• 45:40
  Oscar Navarro: There was a goldfish in it.
• 45:41
  Oscar Navarro: Okay, go back, because all there was was a goldfish in it.
• 45:44
  Oscar Navarro: Right, there was nothing else.
• 45:46
  Oscar Navarro: So he's like okay, go back and make more observations about the goldfish.
• 45:48
  Oscar Navarro: They went back and it was like okay, it's got two eyes, it's got fins and it's blue.
• 45:53
  Oscar Navarro: And he's like, okay, go back and make more observations.
• 45:55
  Oscar Navarro: And they start to go back and he starts to say you know, the observations for round three or four is like ah, there's dirt, particles in the water, the colors of the scales changed based off the lighting.
• 46:06
  Oscar Navarro: And the point that Piper makes is that the more we slow down just on one text as an example, the more it begins to become illuminated to us.
• 46:17
  Oscar Navarro: We start to mind those single texts, for all of the beauty and goodness, but if we just pass by, all we're going to see is a fish.
• 46:24
  Oscar Navarro: Yeah.
• 46:25
  Ray Comfort: And if the goldfish is blue, it's dead.
• 46:28
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, and you know it's important for us to recognize that there are different things we do in connection with scripture.
• 46:36
  Emeal Zwayne: I mean, we read it.
• 46:37
  Emeal Zwayne: Obviously we got to be there, we got to read it first, like we talked about initially.
• 46:41
  Emeal Zwayne: We memorize it and that's a lost discipline.
• 46:44
  Emeal Zwayne: But you know you want to hide God's word in your heart.
• 46:48
  Emeal Zwayne: Psalm 119 talks about that to keep your way pure, to not sin against the Lord.
• 46:52
  Emeal Zwayne: We study it, we open up, like we talked about commentaries, you get word helps.
• 46:59
  Emeal Zwayne: There are concordances, lexicons that help you to understand the language, and it's so beautiful to examine certain words and plumb the depths of what they really meant and the richness of the original language.
• 47:11
  Emeal Zwayne: It's super powerful.
• 47:12
  Emeal Zwayne: We get to meditate on it.
• 47:13
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, we meditate on it, and it's like chewing the cud where it gets integrated into your life and then we obey it.
• 47:20
  Emeal Zwayne: We're not merely hears of the word, like scripture talks about in James, but doers also.
• 47:25
  Emeal Zwayne: Like Jesus said, if we know it and don't do it, we're like a man who built his house on the sand and the storms will come and it will crash.
• 47:31
  Emeal Zwayne: But, mark, I want you to finish us off on the richness of sharing God's word.
• 47:37
  Emeal Zwayne: There's something special about taking the word that we have read, memorized, studied, meditated on, obeyed, and now we can share it with others, having connected with it.
• 47:49
  Mark Spence: People do not need our opinions.
• 47:51
  Mark Spence: What they need is the word of God, as you guys were quoting earlier with Hebrews 412,.
• 47:55
  Mark Spence: It is living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword that listen.
• 47:59
  Mark Spence: It is going to accomplish what God wants it to accomplish.
• 48:03
  Mark Spence: So the more we can get the word of God in us, there will be ample opportunity to get it out of us.
• 48:08
  Mark Spence: Remember someone said that if we do not meditate on God's word as truth, we're going to believe.
• 48:12
  Mark Spence: Lies are true.
• 48:14
  Mark Spence: What people need and what they're hungry for, whether they realize it or not, is God's word.
• 48:20
  Mark Spence: That's what they need.
• 48:21
  Mark Spence: If they're a non-believer on the way to hell, they need to have that continual reminder that they will face a holy God on judgment day If they are on their way to heaven.
• 48:31
  Mark Spence: What they need is God's word because it sanctifies them, it sets them apart, it prepares them for every good work, it reminds them of who they are and who God is.
• 48:40
  Mark Spence: It stamps eternity on their eyelids that, whether they're awake or whether they're asleep, god is real and we have to give an answer to him that he is a very present help in time of need.
• 48:51
  Mark Spence: What people need is God's word.
• 48:53
  Mark Spence: So you get it in you.
• 48:54
  Mark Spence: There will be ample opportunity to get it out of you, and when that opportunity comes, jump at it to be able to share it.
• 49:02
  Emeal Zwayne: Amen and Ray, god's word in evangelism.
• 49:05
  Emeal Zwayne: Oftentimes in your videos, you'll just give people scripture after scripture.
• 49:10
  Emeal Zwayne: And how important is that integrating God's word into the proclamation of the gospel?
• 49:15
  Ray Comfort: Because my illustrations, my anecdotes and my thoughts and ideas don't do what God's word does.
• 49:21
  Ray Comfort: God's word doesn't return void.
• 49:23
  Ray Comfort: That's the promise.
• 49:23
  Ray Comfort: So thoroughly feed scripture into what you're saying and you don't need to quote the verse.
• 49:29
  Oscar Navarro: like Jack, what's his name?
• 49:34
  Ray Comfort: You don't great that he did that.
• 49:36
  Ray Comfort: It was very, very interesting.
• 49:37
  Ray Comfort: But you don't need to quote chapter and verse when you're talking to ungodly people, because it means nothing to them and the original wasn't even in chapters and verses, so it doesn't matter.
• 49:45
  Ray Comfort: So just get God's word when you're witnessing to people and you can just say oh, this is a Bible verse I want to share with you, and it goes right to the heart.
• 49:53
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, let the sword of the spirit do its work.
• 49:56
  Emeal Zwayne: Amen.
• 49:57
  Emeal Zwayne: Well, friends, there you have it.
• 50:00
  Emeal Zwayne: I hope you've been encouraged.
• 50:01
  Emeal Zwayne: I've been stirred more than ever for God's word this week by what we discussed.
• 50:05
  Emeal Zwayne: Don't forget the starter kit.
• 50:07
  Emeal Zwayne: Make sure to get it, along with the evidence study Bible, the Living Waters podcast, mug and all other good things at livingwaterscom.
• 50:15
  Oscar Navarro: Oh really.
• 50:16
  Emeal Zwayne: Oh sorry At livingwaterscom.
• 50:21
  Oscar Navarro: You're getting more creative.
• 50:23
  Emeal Zwayne: Yeah, and friends, remember podcastatlivingwaterscom with your thoughts, comments, ideas for podcast topics, and also remember to rate and give us your comments.
• 50:33
  Emeal Zwayne: Thank you for joining us.
• 50:34
  Emeal Zwayne: We'll see you here next time on the Living Waters podcast.
• 50:37
  Emeal Zwayne: The ultimate cure for insomnia.