How to beat the devil: Day 2

A Bible verse can be 100% accurate and still be used in a way that leads you away from the truth. We start with a quick reminder from Jesus’ temptation at the temple: the enemy doesn’t always attack Scripture by rejecting it, but by quoting it and twisting it just enough to make a lie sound like wisdom. That’s the uncomfortable reality behind so many spiritual half-truths, and it’s why “I know what the Bible says” is not the same as “I understand what God means.” 

We talk about the difference between biblical knowledge and biblical wisdom. Knowledge helps us remember what’s written. Wisdom helps us apply it faithfully, in context, and in alignment with the whole counsel of God. We also name a common trap in modern Christian life and Bible study: proof texting, where we grab one verse we love and use it as a blanket answer while ignoring the surrounding passage. To make it concrete, we walk through Philippians 4:13 and explain what it actually promises and what it doesn’t. 

Then we bring it home with a direct challenge: are there places where we’re trying to make the Bible bend to our desires rather than submitting our lives to what Scripture commands? If you want better discernment, stronger spiritual maturity, and a healthier approach to Christian living, the next step is simple and practical. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves a good Bible context check, and leave a review. What’s one verse you’ve heard taken out of context?

Transcript

Morning Welcome And Quick Recap

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Well, good morning. Happy Tuesday. Welcome back to Field Notes. I am so glad you are choosing to spend this morning listening to my voice. This is Pastor Josh, and we are going to get into it on this beautiful Tuesday. I hope you're having a great morning so far. So, yesterday we talked about the necessity of biblical knowledge, about knowing what the Bible actually says. Today we're going to look at why that is only half the battle. That knowing is only half the battle. GI Joe. Yeah, they had it right. This is why cartoons back in the day were better than cartoons now, and I digress because that has nothing to do with what we're going to be talking about. See, when the devil takes Jesus to the top of the temple, he actually does something incredibly deceptive, and we see it a lot. He takes the Bible and he twists it to mean something that it doesn't mean. See, he takes Jesus up to the top of the temple and he goes, Hey, throw yourself off. Because if you really are the Son of God, he will send his angels to catch you. And that is a hundred percent in the Bible. Psalm 91, 11. But the devil doesn't teach the Bible. What he does, and what he's very good at doing, is he knows what the Bible says, and he's a master of twisting it just enough to make a lie sound like the truth. Isn't that the basis of every lie? If there's no truth in it, it's very easy to go, oh, that's not true. But when we add a little bit of truth, we just sprinkle a little truth in there, it becomes very hard then to look at it and go, wait, hold on. Like if we look at Genesis 3:1, we see the devil trying to tempt Eve. And he goes, Did God actually say that? How many times do we do the same thing? We try to pull one verse that we really like or one verse that's very important to us, and we sit here and go, but it's not in context, and that's not what it means. That's why having knowledge isn't enough. We desperately need wisdom. Wisdom is the ability to properly apply the knowledge that we have. It's very dangerous, like we just said, to take one verse and rip it completely out of context. For example, Philippians 4.13. Yes, it says you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength, but that doesn't mean you can fly. That doesn't mean you have magical powers to walk through walls. But when we put it in context, what we see is Paul is going, whether I have a lot or I have a little, my circumstances don't matter. I can do all things. I can make it through any circumstances. See, when we we pull that one verse out, we call that proof texting. See, the Bible is given to us so that our lives bend to the Bible, so that we look more like Jesus. It is not given to us so that we can take a pair of scissors and cut out the parts we don't like and bend it to fit our lifestyle. Jesus defeats the enemy's twisting of scripture by having the wisdom to use scripture to define scripture. He didn't fall for this trap. He understood that the whole counsel of God matters. And that brings us to our challenge for today. Are there areas in your life right now where you're trying to make the Bible bend to your desires rather than submitting your life to what the Bible actually commands us? Are we clinging to one verse out of context as an excuse to have an attitude or carry a grudge or have a habit? See, and here's our action step. If that is us, we need to identify a verse that we frequently lean on or quote. And we need to commit to reading the entire chapter that that verse is in today. We need to ask God to give us the wisdom to understand its true, full context so we can actually apply it rightly with wisdom to our life. We need to stop playing games with the text, and we need to start living it out with wisdom. So I hope you have a great Tuesday. I can't wait to catch you tomorrow morning on Field Notes.