Imagine you walk in to the church service early one Sunday morning. Not here in West Virginia, but a church service in the city of Ephesus around the year 95 AD. Men are praying; Psalms and hymns sung by the faithful. The pastor stands up and looks excited, but also a little troubled. Looking out at the assembly, he says “We received a letter. From the Apostle John.” You sit up in your seat, excited to know what John has to say as the pastor continues, “It is a prophetic letter; a word from the Lord, who has a message for us.” You can hardly contain yourself. A God inspired letter from John, the Word of God has come and you are about to hear from Jesus. The Lord Jesus has spoken and John has written the Words of God down and sent them to this church! Now, your heart skips a beat because you must know what the Lord had to tell you.
The pastor, with letter in hand, says “This morning, I want to go to the middle of this letter and look at second half of this sentence as my jumping off point. I speak to you on the subject of “why a Christian cannot support Domitian, Emperor of Rome.” You look around and no one seems to object and the letter goes unread, unexplained, and used for a motto, rather than to be understood.
Does this seem a little off? I imagine when the church of Ephesus first received the book of Revelation that the Pastor read the letter so they all could hear the whole message from Jesus. When they got to the part written just for them (chapter 2 in our Bible) and relevant to their situation, I’m sure they read it again and again. No doubt the pastor expounded all the different aspects of what the Lord said. Maybe he focused on the part about leaving their first love for a while, perhaps weeks. That is a reasonable expectation. You get a message from Jesus, you want to know what He said to you and be able to understand His message, as He related it to you.
A Christian’s desire should be to hear from the Lord, and the Lord has spoken to us in His Word. When you randomly open the Bible and just read a verse and take it out of context, you are doing what our imaginary pastor did in our story. In reading, in study, and preaching, God’s people should hunger for what God has said and to know the true meaning of that passage. Preachers teach and promote false doctrines because they take verses out of context. The Bible is not merely a book of mottos, but God speaking to you. You must be diligent to hear the message, by understanding the meaning of the text. When a preacher opens the book and gives you the meaning of the passage, you are hearing a message from Jesus.
