Transcript:

Teaching The Scriptures Without Teaching Christ

CARLOS: This is Carlos.

JESSIE: And this is Jessie.

CARLOS: And in preaching Christ in Christianity, I wanted to ask Jessie to share a story. It’s a story from man like nine, maybe 10 years ago, many years ago, in which you kind of like see how some your interaction with somebody. And it helps, it kind of points to the fact that now you can kind of like, we’re going to be talking about how you can focus on the scriptures, but it can kind of miss the point about pointing to Christ as like, it says something I would like, I feel like you need to learn to be as part of like, getting into your theology on how we do things, and how we talk about things. So you want to share the story?

JESSIE: So it was a while ago, many years ago, someone had shared a sermon on the word, and I don’t even remember all of the exact details of it. But I do know that it was on the Word of God. And basically, it was, “read the Word of God.” follow its principles, and you will live a good life, a successful life, a godly life, which is all true. But I felt like in the sermon, it was just missing Christ and missing that element of knowing Christ through Scripture. And it was more about, living living out Christian principles, instead of knowing Christ through Scripture. And the person who shared it was a friend and a brother, someone I could talk to. And so I remember, I think it was the same day or I’m not sure if it was. I just talked to him after I was like, “Hey, you know, I enjoyed listening to your sermon. But I, one thing I felt was that it was missing Christ.” And he’s like, “What do you mean, because Christ, the Word is Christ, Christ is the Word, like the Word became flesh, and who was Christ?” So he was like, “what do you mean, it’s the same thing.” And it just felt like Christ was not so much the topic of why we read the Scriptures, it was more about an outcome, actions for our life instead of knowing Christ.

Two Routes

And I was just trying to explain that we don’t come to Scripture, just to simply see the principles that it lays out for us, and then act upon them and live a godly life. But we come to Scripture, to know Christ, and to know who He is, and to love Him more. And to see Him in the Scriptures. And as a byproduct of that, we become more like Him, because Scripture is living and active, and it’s changing us. And as we read Scripture, it is literally changing our souls; it is working in us and it is feeding us. And as it changes us, we become more like Christ. And as we become more like Christ, we are sanctified. And as we’re sanctified, we live out godly lives. It’s like a natural byproduct, but we don’t come to the Word just simply for behavior, modification and changes, but we come to the Word to know Christ and to love Him and to magnify Him and to glorify Him and to see Him and just grow our souls, our love for Him. And so the I see, I see a big difference between coming to the Word just simply for actions and changes and behavior. And then coming to the Word, to know Christ and see Christ.

CARLOS: The simplest things that are asked of us as Christians is to be in the Word, and prayer. But then you have to understand that a sense that the approach to the word isn’t in this specific way. We don’t want to add to that. It feels weird because you want to keep it simple, like just “the Word and prayer” is what its really about. Yeah, but in a sense, they are both to connect to God. We pray to talk to God and we read the Word to speak to God. We’re connecting with a person. When do you think that somebody misses the mark then, and uses the Scriptures in other ways?

JESSIE: I think when you take God out of it, and take Christ out of it. In a sense, you’re kind of coming to it, to instead become a better person. Instead of knowing God more, it’s two different perspectives. In one way you’re coming to become better, and another route you’re coming to know God more.

Asking The Right Questions

CARLOS: I would say that people are very quick to jump to application when it comes to the Bible. When I come to the Bible, it’s “what do I do?” They’re very jumpy to: “How do I do something here? What’s my action point?” Instead of connecting them to the —

JESSIE: — instead of saying? What do I learn about Christ here? What do I see about Christ? What does this Scripture tell me about God first, instead of what is it tell me about myself? One thing that Jen Wilkin talks about which I have done a lot of her studies for women, is instead of approaching Scripture to immediately ask, what does this say about me? What is this story showing me about myself? What action points is this story guiding me to? Instead, not asking that first but asking, what is this telling me about God? What is this telling me about Christ?

And as we see God in the Scriptures, as we seek Christ in the Scriptures, then as a natural byproduct, we will see ourselves and ourselves will be revealed, our flesh will be revealed, our souls will be revealed, and we will be able to see ourselves in light of God. But we can’t see ourselves in a without Him.

CARLOS: I remember that theologian that said that, “We do not know who we are, because we do not know who God is.” And once we know who God is, we’ll be able to understand better who we are.

They Bear Witness

JESSIE: And one of the Scriptures that I think about often is in John 5:39, which says,

“You search the Scriptures, because you think that in them, you have eternal life. But it is they that bear witness about me.”

It’s these Scriptures that point to me, you’re just going to them to, to get eternal life and to, to save yourselves, but the Scriptures are not just about that. They’re actually pointing to me, they’re pointing to My coming, My sacrifice and the redemption that I’m going to bring. It’s all pointing to Christ. And I think that we can also learn from that, and learn and see that in the Pharisees, and also not want to be like that, because we can also just come to the Scriptures just simply for, salvation, either salvation of our souls, or salvation of our lives, or salvation in certain areas of our lives, like, I need help with this, and I need to come. And not that Scripture doesn’t help us with things because Scripture helps us with absolutely every single area of our lives. But we have to come to Scripture, knowing that it’s about Christ and about God. And it’s about loving Him.

I was talking to someone recently, and I absolutely see no other way for you to grow as a Christian, then by reading the Word, like, there’s really just no other way. There’s no people come up with so many excuses, and so many things, and the this and that, and whatever. But there is really no other way to grow in your faith and grow in knowing God, in growing sanctification, if you’re not reading the Word. And we read the Word knowing that it’s living and active. We read it, knowing that we’re going to know Christ more through it. And we may not understand everything, but as we read if we’re faithful and we continue reading, and continue asking the Lord to show Himself to us and that we may see Christ more then our love for Christ may increase as we read, And He does that. And as a byproduct, you are changed. Your soul is changed, Christ is changing you and sanctifying you, and you become more like Christ. It’s not even that you are able to change your behaviors, but you actually become more like Christ. Through reading the Word which is sanctification. Sanctification is becoming more like Him, it’s having Him increase and us decrease. it’s having the Spirit be strong and the flesh be weak.

CARLOS: I always remember this kind of struggle with people. With a brother in specific that he says, “I just gotta do better, do better”, that talks about the same thing that we’re doing our our self-behavior modification in our own strength. It’s not about that, it’s about allowing Him to change us, this spirit-empowered transformation. to become more like Him.

JESSIE: And that comes as we behold Christ, and how do we behold Christ? In the Scriptures.

CARLOS: That’s a very good verse (John 5:39) because it’s Jesus Christ and exactly that is saying, “you’re looking for the Bible, and you’re looking at the Bible to have eternal life, to be better and to have life forever.” But honestly, as he says, the Scriptures are the ones that are bearing witness to me they’re pointing. In that verse it says, I think it says its pointing towards me. You guys are looking for the Scriptures. You guys are just digging yourselves in this Book, but you guys don’t understand that it points towards me. So not a wall but a window to get to be exposed and be open. So, thank you. Thank you for sharing with me, and thank you for listening.

JESSIE: Yes, thank you.