Creflo Dollar — The Basics of Understanding Scripture
We've been talking about how to rightly divide the Word, and I hope you're discovering that it's no longer just the matter of picking the Bible up and reading it. That is important, but you know, we got to know, we got to know how to go through it.
And so we taught a little on that, but we're teaching on these four questions that you need to ask yourself when you read the Scripture. Who's speaking; who's doing the speaking? To whom is it spoken to, whatever you're reading? What is it that it's speaking about?
Maybe some questions about the time in which it was written. And then, how do we understand what we're reading, in light of the finished works of Jesus Christ. And all of those things will really help you to properly interpret what you're reading.
I can't tell you how dangerous it has been over the years for people to go to the Bible, pick a Scripture up and just forget about the context, and just use it any old kind of way, just as long as they have a thought and say that's the Holy Ghost. And man, it has destroyed lives, it has perverted ways of thinking, and that's why I felt this is the time to do it, and to do it here at Bible Study, and so you can help me to preach it along the way.
So now, we dealt with who's speaking. We talked about that some. We dealt to whom it is being spoken to. We dealt with what it was speaking about last week, and tonight, I want to talk to you about how to understand the Word of God in light of the finished works of Jesus Christ.
Now, how many of you know you've got some shades on, you put some shades on, and when you look at everything, you're going to see it through the lens of the shades, right? So it's going to be darker or whatever the color of the shades is. So you can take the Bible with the shades on, and whether you're reading the Old Covenant or the New Covenant, you're still going to see it through the lens of that shade, okay? And if you want to see it differently, you going to have to put on some new lenses.
Now, what I'm saying is, is we so long read the Bible through the lens of religion and self-righteousness. In other words, most of the time, if you read the Bible with those lenses on, then everything you see, you're going to see it through self-righteousness, you're going to see it, you're going to see it through this is what I got to do in order for that to happen, and you're going to see it through religious understanding and beliefs, because those are the lens that you have on.
Now, I am saying we got to take those lenses off. We cannot continue to look at the Word of God through these lenses of religion and self-righteousness. We got to take 'em off, we got to replace those with new lenses. And the lenses I'm asking you to put on, are those lenses where you can see everything through the finished works of Jesus Christ, that every time you read a Scripture, you're reading it in light of the finished works of Jesus Christ.
Now, what happens when you do that? When you now put the lenses on, the lenses of the finished work, let's call it that: the lenses of the finished works of Jesus. When you put those lenses on, then you can read the Bible with an unveiled face. You can read the Bible with an unveiled face.
Now, the reason why I want to start with the glasses, because now imagine if there's a veil over your face, a dark burgundy veil over your face, then everything you see through the veil is going to be affected by the veil, right? But when you remove the veil of that religion, and self-righteousness, then you're going to be able to see something you couldn't see before.