Many years ago, an older minister described the worst possible way of studying and presenting the Bible. He called it “Wrongly Dividing” as a word play on the concept of “Rightly Dividing“. He used these 3 Bible verses to illustrate a darkly humorous sarcastic ungodly unbiblical way to string verses together to mean anything you want them to mean…
Judas threw the silver coins down in the Temple and went out and hanged himself (Matthew 27:5)
And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.” (Luke 10:37)
So Jesus told him, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” (John 13:27)
In today’s vernacular, this might be called sound bite (a short extract from a recorded interview, chosen for its pungency or appropriateness) hermeneutics (the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation, esp. of the Bible or literary texts).
It’s easy to understand that it is wrongly dividing to string these three verses together like this. However, we often see just as egregious mistakes in Bible studies.
Sadly, in this information age, there is almost no excuse for this kind of error. We have access to dozens of Bible translations, several very good Bible dictionaries, several very good lexicons of Hebrew and Greek language, hundreds of commentaries, and thousands of published works. There are probably more study materials available for the Bible than any other book ever published. And, even more importantly…
But it was to us that God revealed these things by his Spirit. For his Spirit searches out everything and shows us God’s deep secrets. No one can know a person’s thoughts except that person’s own spirit, and no one can know God’s thoughts except God’s own Spirit. And we have received God’s Spirit (not the world’s spirit), so we can know the wonderful things God has freely given us. When we tell you these things, we do not use words that come from human wisdom. Instead, we speak words given to us by the Spirit, using the Spirit’s words to explain spiritual truths. But people who aren’t spiritual can’t receive these truths from God’s Spirit. It all sounds foolish to them and they can’t understand it, for only those who are spiritual can understand what the Spirit means. (1 Corinthians 2:10-14)
If you think we have made that kind of mistake on any of our studies, please write to us and let us know, it would be kindness to us (Psalms 141:5).