Biblical Illiteracy

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2 verse 5 where the Apostle Paul said, "...but we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.".

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Sports Banter and Yogi Berra as a Theologian

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, Mike Abendroth here with Steve Cooley. How are you, Mike? Let's do a sports show, what do you think? Let's try to, you know, let's use some of the air time for sports. Sure.

Can the Patriots make the playoffs? What about Adrian Rodgers? I think they should sign him. I think they should sign him. Well, before we get in our show today on biblical illiteracy, or biblical literacy, depending on how you want to do that, I've got some...

I'd rather be biblically literate. I know. We started with the sports theme, and so we're going to do a little Yogi Berra theologian. One of my favorite theologians. You know, it's just amazing to me how accurate he is.

I mean, some people in a day and age of vagueness and grayness, and everything's got to be balanced, he just was so clear. How clear?

Yeah, he just cut right to it. He is the exacto knife of theologians.

Now, according to Peter Smith's article from 20 years ago, Yogi Berra theologian... Finger on the pulse. The paper's even kind of yellowed here, kind of different colored. Here's a few things that Yogi Berra said, and then, Steve, maybe you can elaborate.

Elucidate. You could explicate. Okay. Prevaricate. Exposit. 90 of salvation is grace. The other half is works.

Well, that would be erroneous math and theology.

I'm thinking of Romans 11, verse 6, where if you add any parts of works to grace, then it dissolves grace. You nullified it. Totally. Yogi Berra, number two, if they don't want to come forward at the altar call, you can't keep them away.

I don't know what that means, but it's funny. That is inherently contradictory.

The 11 a .m. service is so crowded, everybody goes to the 9 a .m. service now. This one's very true, you know, because it's amazing, because of our mediator, because of how we have a loving father, you can pray anywhere from the belly of a fish to, you know, the top of Mount Everest.

You can intercede a lot just by praying. Yogi Berra. Brother Teresa. That's pretty good, though. Well, this one is very biblical, and it helps us because, you know, at the very beginning of the Bible, in the front, they've got a variety of things, table of contents, units of measure.

My signature. Your signature. That's right. A shekel ain't worth a talent anymore. Units of measure. The great Yogi Berra. And the final one, before we get into our topic du jour today, Yogi Berra, a theologian by Peter Smith.

It ain't Easter till it's Easter. It ain't. It's so true. All right. I usually don't read blogs by Ed Stetzer. Do you, Steve? Go tell him on the mountain. You know, from time to time. Yeah, once in a while.

Yeah. But, you know, we will give him credit for this one. He writes the blog The Exchange, and this one was published by ChristianityToday .com, and it's talking about biblical literacy and how well Americans know the Bible.

Biblical Literacy, Bible Reading, and Cultural Illiteracy

So before we look at the article, tell me just your random thoughts about people in general, both believers, let's start with them, and unbelievers, how well do you think they know their Bible?

Well, A, not as well as they should. B, I think it's funny how many times you hear this comment. I've never seen that before or, you know, I've never heard that before or whatever. So even people who read the Bible, typically, I think there are whole sections they either never read or they gloss over, you know, and so they're shocked when they hear that something actually is in the Bible.

Okay.

Good. How about unbelievers? We live in a post-biblically illiterate, I mean, biblically literate, I almost did a Yogi Berraism.

In a post-biblical illiterate, what would that even mean?

Literate illiteracy. And so people, unbelievers, they don't really know the Bible. So I was talking to this guy in the plane, and he doesn't really realize how God's holiness would keep him out of heaven, and he doesn't realize how bad his sin is.

And so you have a generation of unbelievers that have no concept of the holiness of God and His justice and His judgment.

But the funny thing is they think they know, you know, in other words, they think they know and they go, well, you know, if God exists, I know enough about the Bible to know this, that, you know, as long as I live a pretty good life by my standards, He'll let me into heaven.

And Steve, don't you think it's true that a generation ago, five generations ago, Civil War, Founding Fathers, Revolutionary War, those people, even though they were unbelievers, they knew their Bibles?

Well, sure. I mean, it was taught in public school. And when did that stop? Sixty-one? Sixty-two? Something like that? So, when they took it out of, I mean, they knew I was about to enter public school, and that's when they yanked it out.

Oh, that's true. I think even Mormons knew the Bible, didn't they? Not really, no.

Not really! Well, I mean, we had proof texts, right? I mean, you know. Okay, yes, yes. Just a verse here and a verse there, and I can remember coloring in crayons on my Bible, and that's going to sound horrible until I explain, can I explain?

Yes, I will. We would have these scripture chase things where we would hunt for scripture super fast. Well, if you took a crayon and colored the verses that they wanted, then if you just kind of pressed like this, your Bible would just open up to those pages because they were all slippery.

See, that's why we need No Compromise Radio TV, Tuesday Guy TV show, so I can see.

So I can show you the technique so that you can be the first in your class to get to the.

Verse. When those Crayolas came out that had 48 different colors, and the little sharpener in the back, I was all over it. That was about the best thing ever. Ever. I always used up black and skin color the most.

Did you? Yeah, because Tarzan was the skin color. I'd use that up a lot, and Batman, he used a lot of black, because I was like Dark Knight ahead of my time. I liked the maroon.

Seriously? Yeah, and the orange. I was a Trojan from, you know, from the... See, I only have one question for you, Steve. What color is your parachute?

Okay. Alright, so biblical... It's gold. It's a golden parachute. Biblical illiteracy. It's interesting, Setzer says there's lots of phrases and slogans that America uses, and they would have no idea that they came from the Bible.

So bite the dust, right? I thought that was from, you know, Freddie Mercury. Another one bites the dust. Yeah, that's Psalm 72. How about a drop in the bucket? Isaiah 40, verse 15, you know, all the waters, right?

It's in the hollow of his hand. The blind leading the blind. How about kicking the bucket? Okay. Pharisees in Matthew 15. Blind guides, yeah. Yeah, you know, you should probably go the extra mile, don't you think?

Oh, yeah. Matthew chapter 5, sermon on the mount. How about the skin of your teeth? That's Job 19. Yeah, how are your teeth doing, by the way? Great.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that always, whenever I hear skin of the teeth, though, it always makes me, it's like, when you drink something that just has that kind of, I don't know.

Well, that's almost the kind of, you get the fur in your teeth from eating kiwi or mango. I don't know what that is, but it feels like fur. Exactly. Yeah. Steve, when I was in school, they warned us when I was at master's elementary school.

You know, I went to master's college, master's seminary, master's elementary. Master's pre-K. Yeah. Yeah. And I always was told by the teacher that if you take LSD, you could hallucinate. And one man in his hallucination, according to the teacher, took a razor because he looked in the mirror and he saw hair growing on his eyeballs.

And then he shaved his eyeballs and became blind. And so, actually, I took almost every kind of drug, but I never injected heroin and I never took LSD, probably for that reason.

I never took any kind of drugs, but thanks for confessing.

So why do you need like a prescription to go to the CVS now and buy Sudafed or something? Well, I can tell you why that is.

Why? Because they turn that into meth. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. But it bugs me anyway, because by the time, I just don't know why they don't have an easier way to track that. So, you know, if I buy five pounds of that stuff, well, then fine, come, you know, get a warrant, kick my door in, take care of my house.

But if I have a cold, I shouldn't have to, you know, go to the back. It's like I'm buying, well, frankly, it's like what ought to happen if you want to buy porn, you ought to have to go to a special place in the store and everything else and everybody ought to look at you and there ought to be a record of your name, but they don't do that kind of thing.

But if you want cold medicine, shame on you. You know, that's what that's what it feels like. You're presumed to be a meth dealer until proven otherwise.

Reading Habits, Parenting, and the Need for Bible Intake

Steve, talking about biblical literacy, Stetzer says people don't read in general, let alone the Bible. So if you've got a culture that doesn't read, I think he says the Pew Research, 23 of people did not read a single book in the last year, three times more than that was in 1978.

If we've got a problem with reading in our culture, then it'll affect Bible reading too, won't it?

Well, and why would kids read? I mean, how many kids do you see with Nintendo, Xbox stuff, you know, from a very young age? So if you can give a kid an Xbox, let's say he's seven years old, what's he going to want to do, read or play Xbox?

You know, at least a young boy and probably some girls, depending on the game, they're probably going to want to play. What's more fun? You know, so I think it's really up to the parents. But yes, I would agree with that.

I think many people don't read at all, let alone read the Bible. All right.

In this article by Setzer, Stetzer, didn't he play for the Stray Cats? Brian Setzer? Yeah. He can play a mean guitar.

Yeah, he can. Yeah. He plays a big old guitar.

I didn't know. He was a Southern Baptist writer, blog writer.

Well, you know, things change over time.

What was the bass player's name? And wasn't he married to somebody famous? Somebody older?

I wouldn't know about that. Yeah, but I do remember the bass player had a funky name, you know, probably a made-up stage name, but I don't remember now.

Okay. Sorry. So in the article, it talks about Lifeway Research. Lifeway is an arm of the Southern Baptist, a strong arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. And it said 45 of those who regularly attend church read the Bible more than once a week.

Over 40 of the people attending are reading their Bibles occasionally, maybe once or twice a month. In fact, 18 of attenders say they never read their Bible. So I know it would be, okay, Southern Baptist world, I just got back from the South, and there are good Southern Baptist churches there, bad Southern Baptist churches there, but you've got a lot of people who just don't read their Bible.

Well, let's just think about part of the reason. Part of the reason is because there are some churches that actually discourage you, right? You don't need to lug that big old Bible around. We're going to throw some verses up on the screen and you can trust us.

You don't have to worry that we're taking things out of context. Just trust us.

Don't look it up for yourself. It's the message Bible quote, because that seems to feel good. It's the new living.

It's just a scam way translation. I mean, there's just like translation after translation.

Yeah. You know, you know, things are bad when the pastor uses a Bible translation that's part of a pyramid scheme. That's when you're in church is a little sketchy. At least you can put it in your Tupperware cover and it just never gets ruined.

It's kind of like an Otterbox except, you know, it's Tupperware. Nice. Yeah. So Steve, in my discipleship group here at church, there's about 12 men and here's what I've made them do the last six weeks.

You know, you don't have to do this, but to be in the discipleship class, you have to, and they have to memorize verses. They have to read part of the Arkane Hughes book. They have to come on time. They have to come to the class prepared with their letters written to their wives.

I have a variety of assignments that I've given them, but one was, I want you to write down every day for the next six weeks, how many minutes you spent reading your Bible before you go to work. Now, is there anything wrong with trying to get people to read their Bible before the day starts?

I could put it the other way. There's nothing wrong with reading your Bible in the night, but what was I trying to get them to do? Get up in the morning, grab a cup of coffee or tea, and then read your Bible.

Well, I think it's pretty easy trying to get them to get their mind right. You know, start your day off thinking rightly, and you know, I mean, I think that's a great idea because if you're about to enter traffic, you know, and bumper to bumper traffic and everything else and all the temptations that come your way while you're just sitting in your car, you know, the temptation to want to gouge the eyes out of your neighbor or whatever.

I mean, you can get pretty, I don't mean you, but people can get pretty upset. I mean, thankfully, over the years, I've just learned to kind of laugh at the dumb things that people do in their cars. But you know, so...

Steve, what I found is if I don't read my Bible early in the day, then I'll just have my day so filled, it would be kind of crowded out. I mean, I have to study the Bible as my job. I have the privilege to do that.

But just in terms of me sitting down with a Bible in kind of a devotional way, I mean, I try to study devotionally as well. I'm not trying to say, you know, there's some kind of weird bifurcation between the two.

But after six weeks, these guys start to have a habit. And now I will see the world through the lens of God's sovereign control. I think that's a great way to start the day.

I agree. I mean, like I said, just get your mind right. If you're, if you can start the day focused on the blessings that are yours and what the Lord has done and how He's sovereignly in control of things and really, and then think about the people that you're going to be interacting with, and just think, they don't know about Jesus.

I need to tell these people about Jesus, makes things a lot better.

Spiritual Maturity, Exposition, and Repentance from Neglect

Let's talk a little bit about growth and maturity related to Bible intake. And so God could have us grow all kinds of ways. I guess there could be a USB port in our temple or something like that, and it could just download or some seances or telepathy.

There's a variety of ways he could do it, right? Osmosis, right?

Osmosis. Remember, through your pillow?

And so God has ordained that we study to show ourselves approved, at least, of course, the leaders. And then if the leaders do it, others should. And so we grow in respect to salvation through longing for the word, 1 Peter 2, verses 1, 2, and 3.

So if there are people who aren't reading their Bible very much, what does that tell us about their spiritual maturity?

That they're lacking in it. They're going to find, well, they're going to struggle, you know, in life. They're going to be overwhelmed by circumstances, not know what to do, you know, and their focus is not going to be where it needs to be.

It's going to be on things, you know, on their circumstances, more often than not.

Now, Steve, you have grandkids and kids, and I have just kids. But we know that when they're a little tiny, there's nothing wrong with being immature. If you're an eight-day-old baby or a two-month-old baby, you're just immature by definition.

But if you never grow, we'd take the baby to the doctor. So what about immaturity for Christians who should be mature by now? If you're a brand-new Christian, by definition, you're immature. We don't have any problem with that.

We want you to grow and learn and love the Lord and study His word and be in awe of Christ. But what if you've been around the proverbial block or two? Is that one of the original quotes of the Bible?

It is. Around the block. But what if you're old enough in the Lord, and you don't know? There's something I know about you, is that you're not studying the Bible, because it's directly proportional to your, maturity is proportional to your intake of the word.

Well, I mean, there are a multitude of possibilities here. One is that, you know, you're not saved. You know, you read the Bible, and it just bounces off your, you know, your forehead, and you're going, I don't really get it.

But you know, some other things too, like when people say, well, I've never heard that before or that kind of thing, when it comes to doctrine, you know, and the application of the Bible, it's because they've never done anything other than merely read.

They've never pondered, meditated upon the word. They've never read godly men and what they have to say about it, and they've never listened to a good teaching, a good Bible teacher to really explain it to them.

Pete Steve, that's a great point. When we think about Bible reading, Bible understanding, Bible comprehension, pastors have lots of reasons for preaching on a Sunday, oh, it's commanded, they want to talk about their Savior, the Lord Jesus.

There's all kinds of reasons they do it. But one of the things that I do when I preach, and I know you do the very same thing, as we preach, we're teaching our congregation how to study. We want the people to say, oh, he's teaching verse by verse, he gets into the original, he looks at the nuances, customs and manners, how does this fit in the Bible overall?

Don't we want the people that we shepherd to study the exact same way? Yes, we do. So then tell me about a person who's at a church, and they don't get sequential exposition. They don't get Christ-centered preaching to go into the deep things of the Lord, and they don't examine every little nuance.

Well then, what do the poor people do who are sitting there?

Well, I mean, they're going to have a deficient understanding of Scripture, because they're only going to get the, what you like to call the jugular texts, you know, it's going to be a series maybe of 35 or 40 texts, and he's just going to kind of rotate through those, because those are the good ones to preach, you know, the easy ones to preach, and you won't hear a lot of the cultural aspects brought out, you won't hear a lot of the flow of the author brought out, because who needs it?

You know, you just pick three or four verses, jump in and then jump out, and wasn't that great? See you next week. Just give me something to do. Yeah, give me something to make me feel better about myself.

The Lifeway research that Stetzer quotes says for every person that they interviewed that reads their Bible every day, there's the same amount of people, that is one, who doesn't read their Bible at all, rarely or never.

So, for every person at the church that's really the Bible reader, I'm going to read it every day, there's somebody that doesn't really pick it up.

Well, that's entirely believable, and I mean, basically, if you look at, if we were to do a test, you know, of Bible knowledge, you know, I think that would be borne out. We would see, wouldn't that be cool?

If we could like give a test on Sunday morning and, you know, have everybody turn it in and just go, okay, some of you people really have your work cut out for you.

We used to do that at the Bible study, and you've done it at your Sunday school class. Everybody take out a piece of paper, write down what the gospel is. You can't say Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John are good news.

You know, you have to, you have to parse it out. Steve, it says here in the article that Bible publishers pull more than a half billion dollars per year, and that nine out of ten American homes have a Bible.

The average home in the U .S. has three Bibles. The Gideons have passed out more than 1 .9 Bibles. And so...

1 .9 Bibles? Sorry, 1 .9 billion Bibles. Okay, I was going to say, those Gideons are really slacking off. You know what? Times are tough.

So tell our listeners who know better, I would imagine our listeners at No Compromise Radio like to study the Bible. Let's say they're in a little rut, and they haven't been reading like they should. Tell us about repentance, and how it's not too late to start again, and how God would love you to read the Bible today, and it would be a lie to just get caught up in the whole thing, well, now I can't start because I'm a hypocrite.

Well, you know, I was just talking to somebody about something similar the other day. I think this applies across the board. Let's say you haven't been to church for a while. You haven't read the Bible for a while.

You haven't done whatever for a while that you know you ought to do because you're a Christian. Just start. You know, I mean, there's no magic to it. You know, is the Lord going to forgive you for not reading the Bible?

Yes. I mean, if he forgave you all your other sins, you know, is there a forgiveness for that? Yes. And you know what? Here's the thing. It's just good to be, it's good to be in the Word for a number of reasons, but the number one is you will remember the joy of your salvation.

You will be refreshed to that. You know, you'll think back and you'll just go, you know, what I love about the Bible is it really talks about the holiness of God, the sinfulness of man, and what God did to redeem sinful man.

And when you think, when you personalize that, put yourself in there, you will have a much better approach and view of the world and yourself and everything will be much better, a better view of Christ.

Pastoral Encouragement to Return to the Word

Steve, I know you, so I know you think the same way I do in this regard. As leaders in the church, as undershepherds for Christ Church, when someone hasn't been around for a few weeks and we contact them and say, we miss you, is everything okay?

And then they show up the next week. We don't say, how could you? I knew you wouldn't. I forced you to do it. We say, great, welcome back. We're glad you're here. Right? That's our attitude because we're sinful too.

Different context, but the prodigal son, the imagery there, you know, where the father is thrilled and we're not the older brother, you know, who just sits there going, how could you? You're so lame. You know, you really left us in the lurch.

That's not the approach we take at all. And certainly the Lord, even less so, you know, he's pleased every time that we repent that has changed our minds and start doing the right thing and repent of our sinfulness.

Pete Steve, I know folks that don't read very well, but they try to read their Bibles. I know folks that have dyslexia and they try to read their Bibles. I think the more you read, the better you become in reading.

Pete. Well, that's, I mean, it's like running or, you know, whatever you, you know, if you ask Kobe Bryant, because he's the first basketball player, you know, that comes to their mind, hey, Kobe, do you just kind of, you know, show up for the games and don't really practice at all?

Yeah, that's exactly what I did. No, he works like a dog. He's devoted to improving himself and improving his shot and doing everything he can. And yet when it comes to the Word of God, we're just like, well, you know, it's not really that important.

I don't really need to, I don't really need to work at my reading or understanding of it.

And now you can go get the ESV app and it can read the Bible for you or Bible .is. There's all kinds of ways to get the Bible into your ear gate to use Bunyan's thoughts and into your mind gate.

There is no excuse for not doing that.

Mike Abendroth with Steve Cooley, bbcchurch .org. If you want to hear some of Steve's Sunday School messages and sermons, see you then.

No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life transforming power of God's Word through verse by verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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