Is It Really The Good Book?

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Now please enjoy the broadcast.

Here are some of these headlines we're watching on the conference was over.

The president won a plan.

Americans worshiping government over God.

It's really rare safety moved by a 17 years.

The palestinians of the Israelis.

Hi friends welcome to in the market with Janet partial.

Thank you so much for joining me this hour and get ready.

This is one of those conversations designed to get you to be thinking

critically and biblically and let the record reflect your honor.

That is not a multiple choice test.

It is not an either or it is a both and you come to faith in Christ.

Your hardest transformed your mind is renewed.

How do I know that because the Bible tells me so?

Oh, well, there's the sticky wicked and that's exactly what we're going to talk

about this hour.

Is it really the good book?

I mean, I can tell you here in Washington DC where we have more PhDs per

capita than any other city in the nation.

We've got a lot of people who will go on national television or national

radio and say, no.

The Bible is filled with airs.

It was written by ignorant Bedouins.

It was passed down through an oral tradition.

So you can imagine how many mistakes there are.

It can't be perfect.

It's a book of rules.

I can't possibly feel them.

I'm not interested.

It conflicts itself continuously and it just absolutely repels people

from digging, digging deeper into the word of God and discovering who Jesus is

because that is after all what the entire Bible is all about.

So that's what we're going to talk about.

And I found this brilliant book that really challenges some of the thinking

about what people think about the Bible.

In fact, it's been a long time since I, and you can imagine I reviewed just a

few gazillion books every week.

How many times I've looked for a book that really is a succinct, apologetic

and defensive the Bible.

And that's really what this book is.

But it's brilliantly done because it answers some of the main objections

that people have to scripture and it's written well and it's written

comprehensively and it's written with a strong understanding of how you,

if these are your questions and questions are great.

It's the beginning of exploration.

And exploration is the beginning of discovery and discovery might lead to the

foot of the cross.

So I think those questions are great.

But I don't want you to get stuck because very often people will say, well,

the Bible says and you dig a little bit deeper like maybe two sentences into

their apologetic and you find out they've never read the Bible at all.

So a lot of hearsay gossip and, you know, rumors.

So we're going to unpack a lot of that for this wonderful new book called

Is it really the good book restoring your faith in the Bible by questioning

your assumptions about it.

It's co-authored by John Merritt and Sean Wicks and Sean is going to spend

the hour with me this hour.

He's a pastor and author and a ministry leader in Southern California.

He serves as vice president of the Southern California Bible Conference

directing camps and retreats and for Jugo Pines Bible camp.

He's a graduate of Talbot School of Theology.

He's the co-author of Before You Go Uncovering Hidden Factors in Faith

Laws and he has served as a youth minister and cross cultural ministry

trainer for quite some time and he joins us today.

Sean, the warmest of welcomes.

I am so glad you're here.

You know, my, the reason I'm glad I took the time to read a little bit

longer biography of who you are is because I would imagine that a lot of

the questions that you address in the book are emanating right out of a

generation that is asking these kinds of questions.

I'm concerned because there are people.

I love following as an example before I asked the question.

I love following people like George Barnett and the work he does at the

Cultural Research Center in Arizona Christian University and the data that

he puts out on Americans and biblical literacy slash illiteracy.

And even people who make a profession of faith in Christ as their Lord and

Savior are absolutely befuddled about what it says in Scripture.

It's full of airs.

Jesus in the Trinity is undefidable and unknowable and the Holy Spirit

isn't a true entity and neither is Satan.

And these are people who make a profession of faith.

And then I had the opportunity recently of talking to Dr. Arnie Cole,

who's the president and CEO of back to the Bible.

And while we have this interesting cultural phenomenon of the up to up

tick and Bible sales, 20 year rise in the Bible sales, one would think,

oh, that's great.

It's indicative of spiritual revival of an internal kind of quest for

knowledge.

And yet Arnie points out there's a distinction between purchasing a Bible

and letting it transform your life.

And part of that, I think, might be what we're going to talk about this hour,

which is this misunderstanding.

And if you will, subscription to a mythology about what the Bible is,

rather than what the Bible does say.

So thank you for being here.

And I'll go back full circle to where we're saying it before.

Is this a crisis of faith that you ever suffered or is it because you've

been listening to the people that got us brought into your life?

Well, to answer that, I'd have to say it was both.

I've had questions about the Bible versus that I popped up and throughout

reading it and it bugged me through time.

I mean, I'm a pastor, but I see the verses there.

And when I hear other people question and talk about them, of course,

it starts to weigh on you too.

And of course, a lot of this goes back to my younger years,

but I had a lot of questions and I was afraid to ask them or I was afraid to

bring them up that someone might consider me stepping away or something like

that. The fact is, is everyone is asking these questions today with the internet

and with so easy access to knowledge out there, whether it's right or wrong.

People are asking these questions and it's affecting our youth.

I have a dear family member.

This is where the whole book sprang from.

And John has witnessed the same thing in his research.

But he, we met for a afternoon to, for round Thanksgiving time and it was our

tradition. And every year he was coming back, he was falling farther and farther

away from the faith we could tell.

And one of my good friends was sitting there and he just called him on it and

kind of, you know, awkward silence as he said, you even believe in God anymore

because the way he was answering questions and talking about things,

we, we, we were getting the gist and we saw it coming year after year.

He said, no, he said, he paused, you know, nervous with him.

He said, no, I don't know how anybody can believe in God.

Because the only reason we would believe in God or Jesus is because of the Bible

and the Bible is a bunch of nonsense and a bunch of fairy tales.

Bob.

And yeah, and that's a family member and hit me to the core.

And I said, a bunch of fairy tales.

I said, you read the newspaper, you don't call that a fairy tale.

And I said, the Bible is not written like a fairy tale.

It's a totally different type of book.

What would make you say that?

And he's like, well, and he responded a little bit.

We went back and forth.

I got up to go get a drink and you followed me and he said, you know why?

Because the Bible promotes slavery.

And I was like, excuse me.

No, it doesn't.

And my, you know, apologetic side, I quickly gave him some proof texts that show

that that's wrong.

That's a wrong way to look at the Bible.

And I showed him versus what says that kidnapping is wrong and in

slavers are equated to murderers.

And I showed him those verses, but it didn't even make a dent.

And he looked at me and he said, yeah, but the Bible says slaves obey your

masters.

Why doesn't it just say slavery's wrong?

And it hit me.

This is my college educated cousin.

And he is brilliant.

He's a smart guy.

And he had no idea how far that he was interpreting scripture wrong.

Yeah.

You know, I think that's precious.

That the Lord allowed that conversation to become a catalyst for a book that

is really going to answer those kinds of questions.

And what you do beautifully in the book is you break down so many of these

myths and give us some really studied responses.

So I'm glad that you're here.

Thank you for writing the book.

Thank you for telling me the story of the catalyst.

Thank you for having a heart that was responsive.

So we're going to take a break and come back and we're going to dive into this.

The book is called, is it really the good book?

And then here's the subtitle restoring your faith in the Bible by questioning

your assumptions about it back after this.

The Bible calls us to be bold and courageous for the cause of the cross, but too

often we retreat because of fear of cultural blowback.

That's why I've chosen call to take a bold stand is this month's truth

tool. Discover how to overcome the fear of intimidation or persecution.

As for your copy of call to take a bold stand when you give a gift of any

amount to in the market, call 877 Janet 58.

That's 877 Janet 58 or go to in the market with Janet partial dot ORG.

We get to spend the hour with Sean Wicks, who's a pastor, a ministry leader in

Southern California and an author and he joins us as the co author of the new book.

Is it really the good book restoring your faith in the Bible by questioning

your assumptions about it?

And you laid the book out in really two sections and I'm so glad you did it

this way.

First, you kind of do the background to kind of fly over 35,000 feet.

And I want to spend just a few minutes there, just kind of a backdrop to our

conversation.

And the rest of the book is spent undoing these false assumptions.

Now, fair warning to my friends, you hear me say this all the time,

particularly in books that I really, really love.

And this is one of those books.

This is not a book report.

It's not a fireside chat.

It's just to get you to start thinking along the lines on this topic.

And there is no way I'm going to get to all eight of these assumptions.

And that's a good thing because whatever we talk about, great.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

What we didn't get to, that's why you need to get the book.

So there you go.

There's my spiel.

So let me go to the flyover and ask a question early on in the book that is

great.

What is the Bible?

Why did we get it?

First, let me say thank you for having me on your show.

My manners there.

You got me so excited with that first question, but my mom and my dad would be

horrified to know that I did not say thank you.

So anyway, thank you for having me on.

You are most welcome.

Yeah, as for the flyover on the Bible, we realize how few people actually

truly understand what the Bible is.

They understand that it might be this inspired word of God, but they don't

understand it at a, at a more fundamental level.

And so on the flyover, we talk about that the Bible is actually a collection of

books.

It's full of poetry, it's full of history, it's full of testimony in the

gospels, it's full of letters, all of those things and little wisdom

sayings and all of that matters in the end, because if you just treat the

book as the Bible is like the single book, then you're going to miss out on

the fact that there's these different ways of writing and different ways of

experiencing God.

And if that's how you approach the Bible, you're going to do what causes a

lot of people to walk away, you're going to misunderstand it, you're going to

misapply it, you're going to misinterpret it, because you're not taking in the

fact that the Bible is not the single one book, it is a collection of books.

That collection of books is eventually come to be known as the Bible as kind

of a single unit, this anthology becomes kind of a single unit.

And it's for that reason, we all, and we find out when it's all kind of put

together, it ends up telling one story.

And that's great.

We call that salvation history, but that allows us to also understand that the

Bible has a, this overarching story, and that helps our understanding of the

Bible as well.

So it's both.

It's both a collection, but it's also a united story.

And the reason why it's united is because it's about the greatest

person in, in, in history, and that's God himself.

It's about Yahweh.

And we follow in his relationship with man, and it starts with verse

Genesis 1, 1 to Revelation.

And even though he's not mentioned everywhere in scripture, he is the

the overarch, he's the shadow that he shadows everything.

He's everywhere, even in Esther, where he's not mentioned, he is the guiding

force in that book.

He is what brings all the books together and ties them together and his love for

mankind.

And that's in general quickly.

I mean, I can't go into all the details that we do in the book, but that's,

that is what the Bible, the, the Bible is.

Yeah, that's a great answer, Sean.

Thank you for that.

So it raises, and I could linger on the backdrop.

But I do want to get to some of the assumptions, but I'm not going to leave until

I get a couple of other questions answered.

So John 316 is so simple a child can understand it.

But when you start getting into eschatology, angelology, numerology, all of these

studies that are there as well, it's not as easy.

So he raises the question that if God wants us to come to him and that our

faith could, it's so easily understood about how we can come to faith and

Christ through Jesus.

We would say that's not difficult at all.

But when we start getting into the word, it gets tough.

It's not necessarily an easy book for people to read.

And then you have to decide, what is the manner and style of this is this poetry?

Is this allegory?

Is this history?

Is this chronology?

Is this genealogy?

I mean, the list goes on and on and on.

That raises a question.

God loves us.

He's not willing to then he should perish.

Excuse me, but that all should come to repentance.

So why I hate to say this because I subscribe to Alan Bloom's idea of the

closing of the American mind.

We've done nothing but dummy down Americans for decades.

And the church has fallen out of that.

We are dumbing down constantly and it's an embarrassment.

I want to raise the bar.

We need a higher view of God and a deeper view of Scripture.

But to those who say, well, why didn't God just make it simpler?

Why isn't it salvation for dummies rather than 66 books that are

have all of these epochs and series and family stories?

Why didn't he make it simpler?

How would we respond?

That's a great question.

And first, we have dumbed down.

And it's not just America.

It's the dumbing down in our churches.

And that's part of what the problem is is we don't teach our

congregants our people how to study the Bible for themselves and give them the

right tools.

This book is more about giving you the tools than it is about telling you how

the right answers.

Having the tools, you can solve issues on your own.

You can look at things.

And so, yeah, I totally agree on that dumbing down of the American

mind.

Now, as for the the ease, yeah, God wants people to be saved.

And there's a Protestant doctrine called the Purpose Cutie of, and I know it's a,

it just means clarity, but the purpose cutie of Scripture.

And that means that it's clear and is understandable.

And we believe that as Protestants and as Christians, we believe that the

Bible is understandable.

But what that doesn't mean is that you don't have to work to interpret it.

And that you don't have to work to understand it.

And it means that it is understandable if you put the time into

understand it.

And that's, that's a lost thought on today's generation where everything is so

quick and easy.

I look up a meme.

I look up a, you know, it's just everything is so fast.

Our food is fast.

Our, and so it's harder sometimes to get to the truth than it is to believe

a lie.

And the lies are easy, but the truth takes time and you have to discover it.

And so we, while, while the Bible is easy to understand, the Bible also says

that interpretation is necessary.

And there's a, there's a way to go about doing that the right way.

Yeah, exactly right.

All right, there's so much more I could, like I say, I could spend the whole

hour just on the backdrop part of this.

The Bible's impact on the world.

It's influencing people from Michelangelo to Charles Dickens, which you're

right about in the book.

But I'm going to roll up my sleeves and start looking at some of these

assumptions.

I'm not going to get through all of them.

But I want to get through several of them because this might be your

question.

This maybe was your turnoff point.

Why you walked away, you grow cold, you fell away.

Well, stick around because you're going to find out and you're going to get

the answer to is this really the good book back after this.

Is it really the good book?

Restoring your faith in the Bible by questioning your assumptions about it.

That's the new book by Sean Wicks who co-authored it along with John

Meredith and it married out and it does a wonderful job of taking a look at

some of the false assumptions that people make about the scriptures.

And that's okay.

We're not cascading them.

It's just a matter of lifting the shades, opening the front door and

letting the sun shine in and get some real good teaching in on what the Bible

has to say.

For example, and this is the very first assumption.

Let me report your honor for their record.

I'm not going to get to all eight, but I thought this one was a very good one

to start with because a lot of people will dismiss his outright by saying,

it's a fairy tale.

It's a book of fairy tales.

And one of the sticky wickets for me is this whole idea about miracles.

So I want to get into this.

So the idea that it's not a book of fairy tales is, in fact, before I go any

father, you better explain to our friends who David Schumitz because you

referenced him quite a bit in this chapter.

Yes.

Now actually, this was a chapter that John was focused on, but yeah,

John wrote this chapter mostly.

So, but that being said, yes, part of David Hume's argument is that miracles

are so rare and that if someone told you they saw a miracle,

the natural instinct is to disbelieve it.

And that would be the right decision.

And so he kind of dismisses all miracles by just coming to a conclusion

that if you're going to say miracles exist, and then we have to, you need

a lot of evidence to prove that because miracles aren't common and

miracles aren't normal.

And John gives a defense on that.

He really addresses how, and that argument has actually been quite answered

through different other Christians as well.

But he gives an answer on that idea that miracles, it's, it really comes

from an idea of the world we live in, we accept maybe that there's,

we come to the table with an assumption that miracles don't exist.

And by doing that, by, by nature, we say we need a, you need a lot of evidence.

And the truth is, is you don't, you just need sufficient evidence to believe

in a miracle.

But if you already start with the idea that miracles are impossible,

then when you come to that idea, you're going to look at it and you're going

to say, Hey, miracles aren't possible.

Therefore, you need to show me the impossible for me to believe it.

But that's not the case.

That's not how the world is believed it for most of centuries going by.

It's not even how most of the world believes now.

It's not even how Americans believe.

I think the last survey we read is like 80% of, 83% of Americans still believe in miracles.

So that is a, that is a, a wrong approach.

And a better approach is to, is to say, is there sufficient evidence?

And, and here's the thing about miracles is, yeah, as natural order goes,

it is things that we don't normally see.

But I think that's the wrong question because you can, if a ball is falling off

a, if somebody throws a ball off the roof, the natural says gravity is going to take it down.

But it's going to take it all the way down to the ground.

And we would say it would be impossible for the ball just to float there.

And that's true.

And if it float there, that would be like a miracle.

But here's another thing.

Is it somebody could just stick out their hand and catch the ball

and it would stop it from hitting the ground?

You know, that apple that fell for Newton.

You could just, you can catch it before it stops.

And that's an agency getting involved.

And so when God personally gets involved and brings a miracle into life,

that is like an agency.

He's the invisible hand, you could say, and on all miracles.

And that's what forensics comes from.

The study of forensics.

And we look for the crime who committed the crime.

We look to make sure there was no natural causes.

But we can actually find agency.

And I think there is great agency, great proof for agency,

and a lot of things that happen.

And that's what, either way, the point of the chapter is to say,

you're assumptions, you got to be aware of your assumptions.

Are you already coming into the Bible saying that miracles can't happen?

Because then you're going to misinterpret a lot of Bible passages.

Because the Bible doesn't come from that perspective.

And the Bible isn't telling fairy tales.

It doesn't come from that perspective either.

It doesn't think it's making up stories.

It's coming as if it's reporting things that have happened in history.

So, let me linger here because I think this is,

I've talked before about us learning how to think critically and biblically.

And this is part of critical thinking.

So you have to be careful.

We're godless of what you're reading.

But particularly with the word of God,

you have to be careful that you don't come with your own inherent biases.

You have to ask yourself before you start,

am I willing to go where the evidence leads?

Or am I going to start with some predetermined biases?

And everything I read will backfill.

Kind of a situational emphasis approach to this, right?

I've already predetermined my outcome.

And then I'm just going to plug in the stuff that just supports my position.

As opposed to being, everybody wants to be open-minded, right?

That's a very liberal position.

Let's be open-minded about this.

If you're going to be open-minded,

then be open-minded when you read the word of God.

You can't start out with a series of presuppositions or biases.

And then think you're going to go where the evidence leads.

That doesn't work in science.

And it certainly doesn't work when you're reading the word of God.

It seems to me.

Exactly.

And having that, one of my favorite characters in fiction is Sherlock Holmes.

And I mentioned him in the book.

Yes, you do.

Kind of an example of how to go about

trying to uncover truth and descriptions and how to interpret it correctly.

And one of the things that he says is,

is once we got to let aside those biases.

And I love this line from one of his books.

He says, I confess that I have been as blind as a mole

but as better to learn wisdom late

than to never learn it at all.

So when we realize we've had a bias,

we have to be willing to change.

We have to be able to change our thoughts

with the evidence that we receive.

And that goes both for the Christian and the skeptic either or.

Are we approaching it with leaving China as much as we can?

It's probably impossible to do it completely,

but leaving our biases at the door.

And when we try to enter in and try to solve the

the meaning of a passage or scripture.

Exactly.

And if I can extend that, not to the skeptic, the seeker, or the scenic,

but to the believer.

That's also a wonderful way to start reading the scriptures

because if it was written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,

the Holy Spirit is likewise your teacher when you're reading it.

So when you open your Bible, I hope you're not using it,

put it by an open window where the wind blows,

put your finger down, that's where I'm going to start.

Go before the Lord first and say, Father, I want you to teach me.

You told me in your word that if I asked for wisdom,

you'd give it to me liberally.

And so I'm asking you through the power of the indwelling power

of the Holy Spirit in my life,

to really open my eyes, my mind and my heart

to what it is you want to teach me.

And here's the thing about that.

The wonderful thing about the Bible is that once you dig,

and if I don't care if you read it a thousand times,

on your thousand and one time you will find something

you've never read before, it is deep and deep and deep.

That's why you keep plumbing to the depths of this book

and you'll never find the bottom.

More with Sean Wicks after this.

Tired of the endless bias spin you hear on mainstream media,

and in the market, we're using God's Word as our guide

as we examine today's events.

And we want you to be informed and bold about his truth.

This is a listener-supported program.

So if you value what you hear and you want us to continue

on your station, become a partial partner with your monthly support.

Call 877-Janet58, that's 877-Janet58

or go online to in the market with JanetParshall.org.

We are visiting with Sean Wicks,

who's a pastor and author and a ministry leader

in Southern California.

He serves as vice president at the Southern California Bible Conference,

directing camps and retreats at Verdugo Pines Bible Camp.

He's a graduate of Talbot School of Theology

and he's the co-author of Before We Go,

Uncovering Hidden Factors in Faith Loss.

He's also the co-author of the book.

Is it really the good book restoring your faith

and the Bible by questioning your assumptions about it?

It is that letter book that we are discussing this hour.

By the way, let me repeat that there are multiple assumptions

that are addressed and debunked, if I may, in this book.

I'm not going to get to all of them

and I want you to get curious enough for you

to read the breakdown of how you can answer these kinds of questions

when a family or a friend raises them with you.

And you can go to my website

in the market with JanetParshall.org

under the summation of each of the two hours we do every day.

There is a little red box.

It says program details and audio.

Click that on.

It'll take over the information page.

You're going to see Sean's handsome face

and you're also going to see in the right hand side the book.

Click it through.

It'll take you to a website

where you can purchase your copy as well.

So Sean, I did my homework and I wanted to make sure that

because I was talking to you not just you and John.

I wanted to make sure I picked chapters.

You wrote because that's terrible.

Just like, wait, I thought I was supposed to turn

into paper and geography.

This is math class.

I made a mistake.

So I'm glad I found chapters that, in fact,

I knew you authored.

And one of them was such an important assumption.

You had to break it down into two chapters.

And that was the false assumption

that the Bible is simple.

Now, let's talk about the clarification of terms

right out of the gate.

When you say, when the myth says the Bible is simple,

how do you think that's used as a word?

It's as opposed to it's easy.

It's not complex.

Simple as in simple minded.

Simple as it's easy peasy.

As you said in the title of that chapter,

talk to me about that.

Many people approach the the Bible

that it's going to be easy to interpret.

So I pick it up.

I read it.

I read a verse.

And then I immediately just say,

oh, I'm going to apply that.

And unfortunately, if we read it like it's a letter written

from a friend to us,

we're going to interpret the wrong way.

That is a way of interpreting the Bible.

It's not a good way.

But that's a way a lot of people come to the Bible.

They just pick up the,

and I'm not saying God can't speak through his word

to somebody in a way.

But when we're looking to understand,

especially difficult verses,

difficult verses that are hard to understand,

and we just pick it up and we say,

oh, it's going to be simple.

And I'm not going to put any effort into it.

Then we're really doing ourself a disfavor.

It's that dumbing down.

Yes.

And so, and the Bible is,

while the Bible is the concepts

that Jesus came to die,

that God loves us, we sin.

He died for our sins,

and he rose again for the forgiveness of sins.

And it all for the forgiveness of sins.

And he's coming back again to judge the world.

Those are easily understood in Scripture.

And that's what we mean when we say the Bible

is clear and understandable,

is that we understand what we're accountable for.

And but where the Bible gets a little bit more thorny

and difficult is when it goes into other issues

and more difficult issues.

And that's where we have to be careful

that we're just not reading it like we picked up

a book written today.

And because it's not, it's written in a different time period

at a different time, a different time, a different place.

It's like a different culture.

It's a culture from thousands of years ago

and across the seas, across the Atlantic, right?

It's, we have to look at the Bible

in a more intellectual way.

I'm not trying to just focus on the intellectual.

We need to approach it and that takes time

and that's where it gets a little bit more difficult.

It's not that we can't do it,

but we just have to be a little bit more thoughtful

in the process of doing that.

And the Bible lends itself to both of those things.

The Bible tells us, it says in a verse that Paul writes,

Paul's writing, Peter says,

Paul, some of the things he says is difficult to understand.

So, right?

And so that's very clear that the Bible can both be

simple and difficult.

And here's the thing is, is God did that,

it seems like on purpose.

Jesus, when he said he gave his parables

to conceal and to reveal.

So he wants to reveal things,

but he also wants to conceal.

I think that's so man, he's transcendent

and he, we're never gonna stop learning about him.

And the Bible is always,

you're never gonna stop learning about the Bible

because it comes from his heart.

There's always something new to learn

and he wants people to seek after him.

And so there is a sense where God

by his own transcendence and majesty,

that he's gonna demand a little bit more of us.

And I think that's, it's a part of God's character

in a part of just being God.

And I think it's a part of our growing up.

You know, Paul tells us to get off that diet of milk

and get to a diet of meat and grow up in him.

Well, how do you do that if you're not getting into the word

every day and getting it written on the tablet

to your heart and trying to plummet and understand it?

And I was thinking when you were talking,

the people that walked with him looked at him and went,

I don't get it.

They didn't weed it in a book.

They heard him say it and they still didn't get it.

So again, let me harken back

and you write about this too in the book.

I'm so thankful that what's different about this

in my reading Melville, for example, is because

I have the Holy Spirit as a teacher.

It is inspired in an errands transcendent and immutable.

There's no other book any human being will ever read

at any spot in the timeline of human history

that can meet those criteria.

It sets it apart.

So it's not just a book.

It's a book that's unlike any other book.

And it's also why you make this statement

that we should look at the Bible not as a lemon,

but as an onion.

I love that.

Tell our friends what you mean by that.

Yes.

And so the easy, peasy lemon squeezy is a phrase

I learned from my son and I said, what does that mean?

He goes, that it's going to be easy.

And I'm like, okay.

And so because a lemon, you just had to,

all you have to do is squeeze it to make, you know,

to get this juice out.

But it says like an onion comes from the Shack Shrek movie,

but because the Bible has layers.

And there's a process.

There's actually an art and a science

to interpreting scripture.

And people have been doing this for ages.

And that's where you can hone in and get the truth

because there is tried and true methods of,

if you really want to understand someone,

you got to learn to communicate.

And so the Bible, we need to learn to communicate

in its language.

And hermanidics is a skill of interpretation.

And so that's, this book is actually not a classical

apologetics book because we're not trying to defend

everything.

This isn't a sense we're trying to say,

hey, one of the biggest issues,

why people have a problem with the Bible

or they stumble over it is because there's these

misinterpretations of scripture.

We're not saying there's still going to be

some other types of difficulties,

but most of, I would say the vast majority

of the difficulties are because the Bible,

the person who's approached it has not approached it.

I'm not trying to come down on them,

but we don't think about it.

And you have to approach the scriptures

with thoughtfulness.

And then you start to see, oh, I misunderstood this verse.

And I could give you a whole slew of those.

I could give you an example.

I don't know if you want one,

but my favorite is the mustard seed.

Tell me if you want, okay, let me give you the mustard seed.

So this verse bugged me.

So that's why I have it in the book,

but the mustard seed said,

Jesus says it's the smallest of the smallest seed

on all the earth, but it's not.

And it bugged me as a young man in my 20s.

I was like, Jesus should know better.

He's gone.

Why doesn't he understand that the mustard seed

isn't the smallest seed in the world?

I know, right?

And it sounds silly,

but now that first thing make me walk away from my faith.

But if you get enough of those, add it up.

Exactly.

And then you start wondering,

why didn't Jesus know that?

And then I remember I went to the polyjectics,

it didn't really answer.

Then I realized one day my wife actually told me,

I just had the greatest day of my life.

And I was like, really, more than our marriage,

more than our kids, more than the day you got saved,

being a little too literal, right?

And then it hit me that Jesus was simply saying,

I hate spiders, and I would say,

that's the biggest spider I've ever seen.

And I realized Jesus was saying,

this is the smallest seed in the earth.

He wasn't teaching botany.

Right.

The Bible is not a science book.

It's not a science book.

He was just speaking in everyday language.

And he said the mustard seed is the smallest seed

in all of the earth.

And you would give each other allowances for that.

And so the false assumption is there

is that the Bible has to teach botany

and or teach science,

the Bible is teaching science when Jesus speaks like that.

It's not.

It's just isn't.

And so, and then once you understand,

oh, you go, actually that isn't really that big of a deal.

But think about how many, I've read on websites

where people say, look at Jesus doesn't know science.

And I'm like, well, right?

But isn't that, if I can borrow from scripture,

isn't that a little bit like swallowing camels

and straining at nets?

In fact, that's very apropos

because we're talking about proportionality here.

The point of the teaching is not the size of the mustard seed.

It's the size of the mustard seed

compared to the mountain you can move through faith, isn't it?

So whether or not it's the smallest seed,

if you found the smallest seed,

if you still have enough faith, you can move the mountain.

Jesus didn't want us to focus on the size of the seed.

It was the size of our faith that could move mountains.

Was that not the point?

Absolutely.

It was talking about the kingdom of God too,

the kingdom of God in cuisine and expanding.

And he says it starts off as a little mustard seed

and then it becomes a, a, he, it comes,

well, no, even the mustard seed's not the biggest of trees.

What it says, it becomes this big mustard tree.

He was just making an example of showing

how something small can become really big.

And he was basically saying in his humbleness,

I'm starting small, but by the time,

this all is all over, the kingdom of God is going to be huge.

And look around now, there's a billion Christians

in the world.

Don't fill their own Christians, a billion plus

because the kingdom of God, and it's everywhere,

it's not in one location, it doesn't have any borders,

the kingdom of God is everywhere.

And it's exactly what Jesus said would happen happened.

Because he wasn't teaching botany, he was giving a,

if anything, it was, it was a parable,

but it was, it was, there's a prophecy.

There's a lesson to be learned there

that small things can become big things.

Exactly.

Wow, so much to say.

So maybe this is a good point for me

to bring up another point that you make

that I think is so, so, so crucial.

You know, when people are playing Bible baseball,

and by that, I mean, they use it as a cudgel.

I can't because, and they pull something out.

If you do not read in context, you were lost.

Otherwise, it's like Jesus went,

Judas went and hung himself,

go down and do likewise.

Okay, both of those verses are in the Bible.

You take him out of context,

and you've got this horrible misinterpretation.

I'm going to come up to a break,

but start this, Sean, because in context,

if we don't read this in context,

then it's just take out a verse.

Well, there's the music.

Let me get you to respond to those seconds.

I think this is a crucial point,

particularly for the critic,

who loves to take another example

as judge, not less GB judged.

Okay, that one is a cudgel verse as well.

So when we come back,

talk to me about how it is imperative

as you approach the scriptures

to learn to read in context.

And why that's so crucial.

The book is, I think it's so important and so timely.

And you know what, if you're not asking these questions,

you have family or friends that are asking these questions.

Well, I can't believe in the Bible

because it's just too simple.

Really?

Well, no.

And that's why Sean said,

it's not a lemon.

It's a squeezy lemon.

It's easy, peasy lemon, squeezy.

It's much more like an onion.

You have to peel back the layers, get it?

Is it really the good book?

That's the book that Sean Wicks has co-authored

more after this.

We're visiting with pastor, author, and ministry leader,

Sean Wicks, who's the co-author of the new book,

is it really the good book?

And the subtitle says it all,

restoring your faith in the Bible

by questioning your assumptions about it.

So, and by the way,

I think we've gone through one and barely a quarter

of the second assumption

and there are eight in this book.

So, it'll tell you how much more there is for you

to read and find out and discover.

Talk to me about context.

If we don't read in context,

we just open a Pandora's box of confusion here.

Talk to me about this.

Yes.

Understanding, there's a lot to bring a context in.

So, not only does context mean finding where it is written,

literary context, where it is in the Bible.

It also needs historical context.

And you need to understand the genre.

You need to understand the time and place

and what's going on at the time in this story.

There's a lot that's involved.

And failure to do that, of course,

will lead to horrible interpretations, actually.

And, because we have different sensitivities,

we have different values now

and we have different ways of looking at life,

we have, there's a lot of differences.

And so, when we go there, we might,

I would just say there's actually a great chance

that you're gonna misinterpret the Bible

if you don't spend time to understand

who wrote it to, who they wrote it to,

in different books of the Bible,

different portions of the Bible, require a different approach,

require different approaches.

And so, whatever verse you wanna go to,

whatever one you wanna look at, there's steps.

And we list them in the book.

I mean, I'm not gonna be able to say them all now,

but there's a process of going through.

And when you go through that, you can say,

okay, now that I'm narrowed this down,

this is a Psalm or this is a proverb.

And you know, train up a child and the way he should go,

when they were depart, that's not a promise,

that's a proverb.

And you can, if you mistake that,

you can be really heartbroken in life.

And we cover things like that.

And I think that's important because the,

I just wanna leave people hanging on that one.

The proverb is an observation, it's a good advice.

And it's what's normally true in life.

But it doesn't have to happen.

And so, when you misinterpret that,

and I've counseled women,

I raised my children in the Lord.

I'm still waiting for God to fulfill his promise

for my child to return, you know, to come back

and not to, he did depart.

And it's sad when you,

when you see that and you realize

they're holding God accountable

for something that God never promised.

People have their own individual souls

and make their own individual choices.

What it's saying that the observation is,

is most children who are raised right,

well, when they get older, they won't depart from the faith.

And that's true, but that's not everyone.

We all, we all, we see it all the time in churches.

You can have the best parents

and a child may walk away.

That's because they're individual souls.

And so, the proverb is just an encouragement

of good advice is, hey, raise up your children

and in a godly way.

And it's a better chance, things will go right.

So, but there are promises,

but that just happens not to be one.

So, understanding the genre, for example,

and that thing is so key

to understanding what the Bible is saying.

And so, and that's for everything.

So, ask David about his kids,

how that work out for him.

Exactly.

You make the point in the book that I think was excellent.

You said, the Bible is often hard to understand

and obscure because of our own sinfulness.

I thought this was such an important point.

So, it isn't just preconceived biases or notions

or hearsay or you really haven't read it.

You've read about it.

I mean, guilty by rumors, not by association.

But if you really don't want to read the Bible,

maybe it's because you're afraid that in the end,

it's like looking in a mirror.

It is for me, among the other things it does,

and it does a panoply of things is it convicts.

So, maybe you don't want to read it.

Talk to me about this.

Yeah. So, the idea here is when Jesus,

Jesus often corrected bad interpretations of Scripture.

And the interesting thing that came out to me

as I read that is he put that on people

and their sinfulness sometimes, sometimes are the reasons,

but sometimes there's sinfulness.

He never blames Scripture.

And that's telling to me.

And that's, it opened my eyes.

I was actually of kind of a last minute insert in the book

when I was writing it is,

it hit me how many of our times our misinterpretations

come from our, and our misreadings of the Bible,

misapplications come from our own sinfulness.

Because here's the thing is, is we are sinful people.

And when God is challenging us, we're going to resist.

And it's just human nature.

When someone tells us something we don't want to hear,

what do we do? We resist.

And it's normal.

It's, but when that happens with Scripture,

we have to be aware of it.

Am I resisting this?

Because I don't want it to be true.

And that can be for a skeptic, for a Christian,

for anyone.

Why am I resisting this?

And even when I start to find out what the passage really means,

I want to hold on to something or I want,

I want to believe the Bible is a bunch of fairy tales.

I'm going to look for all the fairy tales,

things I think sound fairy tell-ish.

And in order to, you know, to write myself off

that I don't have to be accountable.

And, you know, if I think the Bible says, you know,

about, for example, Slaves of Bayer Masters,

if I don't want to be accountable to my boss at work, right?

And there's a lot to go into that discussion.

But if that's what I want to say,

that I'm going to say, see the Bible teaches slavery,

I can't trust the Bible in these things.

And so this ends up being our approach

instead of seeing what the Bible is really saying,

our sinfulness gets in the way.

And it happens a lot.

It's just natural and it's normal.

And so yeah, that's really where it came from, that section.

Let me share with our friends

when you talk about the different genres.

All of this is in scripture.

There's narrative, law, poetry, wisdom, prophecy,

gospel, parable, letter, homily, and apocalyptic.

So when you're reading, which genre does it fall in?

And I think it's imperative that you understand that.

So, oh, golly, there's so much more I want to talk to you.

And it's imperative, you understand it.

So you, oh, I'm sorry.

It's imperative that you understand it.

So you ask the right questions.

That's the important thing when you come to the text.

It's like a detective.

You're trying to find the right questions

to ask of the text.

And that's the hardest part is learning

to ask the right questions.

I had a lot of Bible school and I was such a blessing

to learn how to ask the right questions.

And I just want to get that into everybody's hands.

John and I both want to get that into everybody's hands.

How to ask the right questions

so you can understand scripture.

Well, you just kind of anticipated my questions, John.

And I'm thrilled that you did.

Because I think this is a great book for somebody

who falls into that seeker skeptic cynic category

because I'm going to guess it's going to address.

And a minimum one, if not all,

of many of the presuppositions they have,

the mythology they have subscribed to,

that could be mitigated by reading the book.

But I tell you, as a woman who's walked with the Lord

for a long time, I have to tell you,

I thought it was worth my read because it went back

and I thought when the enemy sits on your shoulder

and says the same lie he did in the beginning

of the book of Genesis, did God really say,

this is a wonderful way to mitigate it.

And it is, even though you didn't write it necessarily

as an apologetic book, it's sharpened my apologetic

to be able to contend for the faith by saying,

when anybody gets these kinds of doubts

and there may be moments of doubts

in your own pilgrims progress,

it's a great way to look at some of these mythologies

and to say, oh, oh, there's a great answer.

John and John have done an absolutely fabulous job

with this book.

So, Sean, I thank you.

A hour that went far too quickly.

And I'm glad I made that statement of truth

at the beginning.

There are eight assumptions,

the false assumptions that they look at.

I think we did one and a half.

So, there's a boatload of stuff in the book

we didn't get to, which means I would strongly recommend

you read it and make sure that you can then

better contend for the faith by knowing what you believe

and why you believe it.

Sean, thanks for a great conversation and a great book.

And thank you, friends.

We'll see you next time on In the Market with Janet Partle.