Does the passage say that?
I have a complaint. Every day I am more irritated with those who make Bible passages say things that it doesn’t say. Maybe my frustration isn’t warranted. Maybe I should be a little nicer. What does it matter if someone stretches things ever so slightly?
It’s easy to shrug it off when someone exaggerates in life. The fish wasn’t that big. The waves weren’t that high. No, you were not that good at football back in the day. We listen and we move on. Unless someone aggressively exaggerates, we just get over it.
Should we take this loose attitude with the Bible? No.
Let me show you how easily a passage can be made to say something that it does not say. This is a classic misuse case in some churches.
Acts 27:29 – “Then, fearing we might run aground on the rocks, they dropped four anchors from the stern and prayed for daylight to come.”
A well-meaning preacher may get up and preach a message on the “four anchors” of our faith. His four points may even be biblically true. Maybe he preaches on salvation, faith, loving God, and loving others. There is an argument to be made that these things do, in fact, anchor our faith.
So, what’s the problem? It’s simple. The passage doesn’t say that. The passage is only telling us what happened. I don’t get the sense that this information is meant to bring about any application in our lives. It’s simply telling the story. It would be easy to use this passage to make the four anchors something the Bible doesn’t teach too.
Once we come untethered from the passage, we can say what we want to say.
Let me share a passage I saw misused personally. This one makes me laugh to this day. It’s clear that this preacher wrote a message and then went and found a passage that said something vaguely similar.
Amos 7:8 – “The Lord asked me, ‘What do you see, Amos?’ I replied, ‘A plumb line.’ Then the Lord said, ‘I am setting a plumb line among my people Israel; I will no longer spare them.”
A plumb line is held against a post or a wall to determine if it is level. Specifically, it determines if the post is vertically straight up and down.
I watched as a preacher read this passage and proceeded to preach a message on holding the line. He gave a line to a group of students and told them to hold the line as if you were playing tug of war. We were told to hold the line of biblical preaching, biblical standards, and much more. It was a laughable attempt to preach what the preacher wanted to preach.
Once he came untethered from the passage, he could say whatever he wanted to say! We all sat there stunned. We could tell he didn’t even know what a plumb line was.
Let’s get a little more subtle. Let’s look at a passage where there are some gaps that could quickly get exploited.
John 6:9 – “There’s a boy here who has five barely loaves and two fish – but what are they for so many?”
This young man put himself in the right place at the right time. He chose to be where he should’ve been. He volunteered all he had! We should do the same. We should be in church every time the doors are open. We should volunteer for Jesus. We should be living right. Even more, this young man willingly gave Jesus everything. He gave him every fish and every loaf, holding nothing back.
Amen?
Does the passage say that? No. The passage says that there was a young boy who had five loaves and two fishes that Jesus broke and miraculously fed thousands of people with. We don’t know anything more than that. And, in the absence of more information, shouldn’t make things up.
Why? First, because I omitted a piece of information that blows my point up. In a parallel passage we see Jesus’ command to go and survey what food they had. It is an inference to say the boy gladly and quickly volunteered.
Mark 6:38 – “He asked them, ‘How many loaves do you have? Go and see.’ When they found out they said, ‘Five, and two fish.’”
It is unreasonable to build an application off an inference that doesn’t necessarily agree with the passages. Did this boy volunteer in some altruistic way? He might have. I don’t know. But that’s just it, I don’t know!
Second, I subtly included an unbiblical application inside of all the other biblical applications I listed. You should surrender everything to Jesus. You should volunteer to serve. You should go to church. But I snuck in that bit about every time the doors are open, didn’t I? If I wanted to I could have used this story to tell you to donate every fish and every loaf to the church too.
Third, I subtly stole the glory from God. This story is one of the most prolific miracles in the Bible. Why in the world would anyone make it about this little boy? Why would we uplift his decision to be in the right place at the right time? Especially since we don’t even know if that was his decision! This would be akin to giving Esther the credit for God’s sovereign planning!
Esther 4:14 – “If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will come to the Jewish people from another place, but you and your father’s family will be destroyed. Who knows, perhaps you have come to your royal position for such a time as this.”
We overlooked Jesus’ miraculous providential power to focus on someone who’s barely a part of the story! Why?
I know. I should settle down. This has been a rant not a devotional.
But it’s just so subtle. It can quickly get us off center. We can make the Bible say something ever so slightly different than what it actually says. The temptation will always be there. I feel it nearly every week I am preaching. Even if I want to make a truly biblical point, I must ask myself:
Does the passage say that?
Let me share at least one passage I felt tempted to do this on. Recently we studied the following passage about Peter’s denial:
John 13:37-38 – “’Lord,’ Peter asked, ‘why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.’ Jesus replied, ‘Will you lay down your life for me? Truly I tell you, a rooster will not crow until you have denied me three times.”
Matthew 26:33 – “Peter told him, ‘Even if everyone falls away because of you, I will never fall away.’”
I felt there was an obvious question posed by this story. How do you handle it when God reveals something about you that you either don’t like or don’t believe? Peter did not believe Jesus’ estimation of his faithfulness and readily argued with the God of the universe about it.
Practically, this speaks to our need to readily listen when God reveals to us who He says we are. We must humbly accept. Peter did not and was quickly proven wrong.
Here’s the question I wanted to ask in a secondary application: how do you handle it when godly influences tell you something about you that you either don’t like or don’t believe? But there would have been a subtle mistake in making that application. When God makes a statement about you, it is true. When I make a statement about you, it might be true.
I could have accidently uplifted my pastoral evaluations and advice to the place of God’s clear and convicting commands. And that is a gross abuse of my authority as a pastor.
What stopped me? I asked a simple question. Does the passage say that? The Bible can and will filter all of our thoughts if we allow it to.
I could preach an entire message on heeding godly authority figures in our lives, but I can’t preach that message from that passage. Why? If I did, I would add or subtract needed context from the teaching that God deemed needful to us.
I don’t want this to terrify you. I don’t want you to worry every time you hear someone preach. Most preachers who get off track aren’t even doing it maliciously. They’re probably being more careless than anything. I don’t want you to fret. I just want you to carefully read the Bible.
Ask yourself constantly: what does the passage say?
This question will be a powerful guide for you. If you master reading the Bible as it is, you’ll never be threatened by off-center teaching. My prayer for you is that you allow the Bible to filter anything and everything you hear because it alone is our final authority in all matters of faith and practice!
Eyes on God 
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