Sounding the Warning Siren About Twisted Scriptures--Twisters Series Part 1

            Around here, we know all about the devastating power of tornados, or “twisters” as they are occasionally called. Many of you lived here when Greensburg was nearly wiped off the map by a powerful tornado. Vernon and Shirley had their own close encounter with a tornado this Summer, and we still praise God that they are okay.

            Tornados can bring unimaginable havoc and ruin into your life. Likewise, twisted Scriptures have a similar power to hurt you. When the Bible is misunderstood, misinterpreted, or misapplied, the results can ravage your well-being in every way—spiritually, emotionally, and in some cases, even physically.

            Some misunderstandings of Scripture may leave you relatively unscathed. They are like the funnel cloud that forms but perhaps never even touches the ground. But other twisted Scriptures may have eternal consequences. They are like the EF-5 that destroys everything in its path and leaves the landscape permanently changed.

            Today, we’re beginning a series that will take us to some passages of Scripture that are commonly misunderstood, misinterpreted, or misapplied. We may end up talking about a couple of your favorite verses, and if that’s the case, I’ll ask you to simply be patient with me and hear me out. But before we take a look at some specific verses, today I’d like to deal with a few general questions that will set the stage for the rest of this series to play out.

Why are twisted Scriptures so dangerous?

            Remember that, as I said a moment ago, not all twisted Scriptures are created equal—they don’t all have the same potential to wreak havoc in your life. For example, if you get two Bible characters confused with each other while you’re reading through a genealogy in 1 Chronicles, that’s probably not going to be a very big deal. But other misunderstandings could have terrible consequences.

            Why do they have such power? Its because of the high trust that we give to Scripture. As Christians, we correctly believe that the Bible is a message from God, and therefore, it is true. In general, then, our thinking is, “If the Bible says it, that’s good enough for me! I choose to believe it.”

            We are strongly inclined to believe whatever we think the Bible teaches. Perhaps you can see the subtle danger that lurks just under the surface of our trust. What happens if we get an idea in our heads that is actually wrong, but we’re convinced that the Bible teaches it? Well, we are very likely going to believe it, and when we do, we become vulnerable to its destructive power in our lives.

            Twisted Scriptures are so dangerous because they’re like a Trojan Horse that Satan uses to smuggle lies into our minds. Since we think these lies are actually truths from the Bible, we welcome them into our minds. And once we have, they can begin to destroy us.

We should acknowledge, though, that not all misunderstandings of Scripture necessarily come from Satan. So what are the possible sources of misunderstanding?

Sources of Misunderstanding

1. Human mistakes and errors

            Sometimes, as we try to interpret the Bible, we simply make an honest mistake and get it wrong—like the child who thought God’s name was “Howard” because he thought The Lord’s Prayer said, “Howard be thy name.” There’s no malicious intent behind an innocent mistake like that—we can simply chalk that up to being human.

            A long-time professor of Greek at Dallas Theological Seminary liked to tell the story of a pastor who misunderstood Matthew 26:27. That passage is a record of The Last Supper, and in the King James translation which the pastor used, v. 27 says, “Drink ye all of it.” Now, as you read through that passage, its clear that Jesus was telling the disciples that each one of them should drink some of the wine from the cup that He was going to pass around, but this pastor understood it as a command that all of the wine should be consumed.

            This misunderstanding created a problem for the pastor. He served in a denomination that used real wine during Communion, and even though he had a rather small church, their tradition called for a full pitcher of wine to be prepared for the observance. So each Sunday, after the congregation left, this pastor would drink all the leftover wine and get drunk—all because he misunderstood this statement in Scripture!

            So sometimes, despite our best intentions and our best efforts, we simply make a mistake and get it wrong. But other times, there’s more to it than that. Sometimes, we encounter distortions of Scripture that are much more deliberate.

2. Human deception and distortion

            Since the Bible occupies such a place of honor and influence in our world, people often want to use it to justify their own thoughts or to gain power over other people. And so, they come to the Bible with a particular agenda, then distort the teaching of Scripture to match their agenda. Thus, these distortions are much more intentional than mere mistakes or errors.

            Let me read a quote from a man who believed that he found support in the Bible for his personal hatred of Jewish people: “My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them…. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in his might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and of adders. How terrific was his fight for the world against the Jewish poison!”

            Who was this man who called himself a Christian and called Jesus his Lord and Savior? It was Adolf Hitler, perhaps the last person that you might expect to hear quoting stories from the Bible! Yet Hitler made these kinds of appeals to the Bible throughout his rise to power. Its possible that he never could have gained power in a historically Christian country like Germany without making appeals to the Bible.

            A little closer to home and to our own day, we see other people using the Bible in an effort to advance a particular agenda. The gay rights movement in our country would be one such example. From the time that the Bible began to be written, Jews and Christians have interpreted its commands to be saying that homosexual behavior is sinful. But in just the last few decades, people from within the gay rights movement have told us that they’ve suddenly discovered we’ve been wrong all along. Its almost impossible to see their efforts as anything but an attempt to make the Bible say what they want it to say.

            Now, I suspect that some people who have distorted the teaching of the Bible have done so with their eyes wide open. They knew full well that they were simply using the Bible as a tool to try to achieve their own ends. But others who have twisted Scripture were very likely deceived themselves by an even more sinister personality.

3. Satanic deception and distortion

            At first, it may seem surprising to us that Satan would want to have anything to do with the Bible. We might think he would melt in its presence the way that the Wicked Witch of the West melted when she was doused by water. But in fact, it may not be inaccurate to say that the Bible is actually Satan’s favorite book—not because he agrees with its teachings, but because he can do so much damage by distorting it.

            Fortunately for us, we get a pretty clear picture of Satan’s strategy for distorting Scripture by looking at his temptation of Eve in Genesis 3. We can learn some lessons from that conversation that will help us be on guard against Satan’s schemes. So what is the first step of his strategy?

A. Satan wants to get us confused about the content of God’s Word

            Look at Satan’s first question to Eve [READ Gen 3:1]. Now that was a whopper of a distortion, because its almost the opposite of what God actually said. Here’s the actual command that God gave to Adam in 2:16: “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

            So Satan’s first statement grossly distorted the Word of God. Eve didn’t really take that bait, but notice that in her reply, she didn’t get God’s Word quite right, either [READ 3:2-3]. Notice how Eve added the words “neither shall you touch it,” which God had never said. Now, we don’t know precisely why Eve said that. Some people have speculated that Adam may have added those words to God’s command to simply encourage Eve to avoid the tree altogether.

            So Satan deliberately twisted God’s Word, but in her reply, Eve didn’t get it quite right either. Who knows what kind of difference that small distortion made in her mind? Perhaps she thought, “You know, that does sound kind of restrictive. Why can’t we at least touch the tree?” When Satan told her next that God was essentially depriving them of something good, perhaps this misunderstanding put her in a frame of mind where she was more willing to consider that thought.

            The important thing to recognize is that at this point, the conversation between Satan and Eve was now revolving around a misrepresentation of God’s Word rather than its exact teaching. When we find ourselves on that playing field, we are on Satan’s turf.

            Satan cannot topple the truth of God’s Word when it is properly understood and applied. What he wants to do instead is create what we call in logic a “straw man.” He wants to set up a weaker imitation of God’s Word and attack that rather than deal with the unfiltered truth of Scripture. This observation just underscores once again why twisted Scriptures are so dangerous. It is much easier for Satan to attack us when we have a misunderstanding of Scripture.

So once Satan has us confused about the content of God’s Word, then he goes in for the kill.

B. Satan wants to convince us that God’s Word is not true

            Now that Satan had created some confusion for Eve regarding the content of God’s Word, he then took the step of making an outright denial of its truth [READ vv. 4-5]. There is no “beating around the bush” in that statement. Satan openly accused God of lying by saying that God’s Word is not true.

            When Satan is trying to tempt us, he knows better than to make that suggestion right out of the gate. He knows that we’re confident that God’s Word is true, so he’s not going to get very far if he calls it a lie right out of the gate. That’s why the first step in his strategy is so crucial, and that is where we must fight the battle against him. If Satan can get us to buy into a misinterpretation of Scripture, we become easy pickings for him to knock off.

            One clear example of Satan’s two-step strategy today would be in his attacks on the Bible’s teaching about leadership and submission between husband and wife. Many people today think the Bible’s teaching on family roles is old fashioned and out of date, or even sexist and demeaning to women. But when you press further, what you find is that so many people are rejecting not the Bible’s real teaching on the matter, but a distortion of it. They think of leadership in terms that the Bible actually rejects, and they think of submission in terms that the Bible never actually calls for.

            But Satan knows that the real picture of love and respect between a husband and wife is so beautiful and so powerful that he can’t defeat it when its clearly understood. He has to distort it before he attacks it, because that is his only hope for victory.

            Now that we are privy to Satan’s schemes, we are ready to prepare ourselves to withstand them. We are ready to clear up some common misunderstandings of Scripture that Satan has successfully used to attack people time and time again.

            Along the way, I hope to teach you also about how to spot twisted Scriptures—whether they stem simply from a human mistake, or whether they come from something more sinister, like an intentional deception or a Satanic distortion. As you learn how to spot these errors, you’ll also be learning how to avoid making the same errors yourself as you study the Bible. All in all, I hope that you’ll become more confident in your ability to understand God’s Word and in your skill to interpret it correctly.