Nothing new or sophisticated here:

“All I did on the radio program this morning was go over verse after verse about the message Paul preaches being a secret and several people came up to me after the service and said, ‘Boy, that was a powerful radio program this morning!’ " recalls Jordan in an old study.

“It’s easy as pie to make a program like that. All you got to do is read the verses. But isn’t it interesting how different it sounds? Did you listen to the guy who comes on after us? I can take about seven minutes of him and then I have to turn him off. They got beautiful music and this guy's got the exquisite elocution but, boy, what he’s saying is just stinko. It just doesn’t get it.

*****

“Jesus Christ’s ministry in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John was exclusively to the nation Israel, but as soon as you say that, somebody says, ‘Well, wait a minute, if His ministry was just to Israel, why does He say in John 3:16, For God so loved the WORLD?’

“Well, let me ask you a question. Why does He say in Matthew 10:5, the so-called Great Commission, ‘No, no, you 12 don’t go to the world’? The verse says, ‘These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not.’

*****

“You see, if you don’t rightly divide your Scripture, that Book can be confusing; that Book can be a mess. You never will figure out your Bible.

“You’ll be just like the fellow recently who told me that when He got saved He went to church, rejoicing and all happy about getting saved, and the preacher said at the end of the service, ‘We’re going to have church again tonight and you need to be here,’ and proceeded to quote Hebrews 10:25: [25] Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching.

“You’ve heard that verse used by thousands of people to say you ought to go to church. But this brother said, ‘I sat in the pew and read down past Hebrews 10:25, and verses 26-29 had me thinking I could lose my salvation!’

“This brother went up to the preacher and told him, ‘I thought you said I couldn’t lose my salvation?!,’ and he responded, ‘What are you reading them verses for?!’ 

"Well, you know, dumb stupid me that I would read that verse and want to know what else is in the passage for me.

“You see, this smorgasbord thing where you go along and pick out whatever you like won’t work when you study the Bible. You’ve got to be able to ‘rightly divide the word of truth,’ and if you don’t, it’s just going to be confusion.

“No wonder the world thinks that tradition and scholarship ought to set the pace and not the Bible. No wonder people think you can’t just let the Bible tell you what it says and let it mean what it says and that be it. No wonder people won’t let the words on the page in their Bible change and revolutionize their life.

“Why would you want to risk changing your life for something that you couldn’t trust?! You’d be nuttier than a fruit cake. But if it was something you could trust, you’d be WISE.

*****

“In Matthew 15, The Syrophoenician Woman cries to Jesus to heal her daughter ‘but he answered her not a word,’ and His disciples begged Him, ‘Send her away; for she crieth after us.’ And then, as verse 24 says, ‘He answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’

“You better settle it once and for all, if John 3:16 is all you know in the Bible, there’s some other stuff you better consider.

“If John 4:42, about how Christ is ‘the Saviour of the world,’ is all you know, there’s something else you ought to consider.

“If that’s all there is, why did Christ forbid His disciples to go to the Gentiles and why did He Himself refuse to help one? She was the only Gentile woman who ever came to Him for help and He refuses her and says to His disciples, ‘I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’

*****

“The answer to John 3:16 is verse simple. God had made a covenant with Abraham and told him that, ‘In thy seed shall all the nations be blessed.’ God’s covenant and promise was that through redeemed Israel His redemption and salvation would go to the nations.

“Never think that in the prophetic program, in the earthly ministry of Christ, Gentile salvation wasn’t the ultimate goal, but Israel was to be the channel of blessing.

“In Zachariah 8:23, it says, ‘In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.

“Isaiah 2 says that out of Jerusalem the Word of God would go and that 'all the nations would flow unto it.' But it was through Israel’s ministry that the nations were to be brought to Christ. When you arrive in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, was Israel ready to do that?

“When the Magi came seeking Him that is born King of the Jews, going to Jerusalem to seek the Messiah through Israel . . . when Herod hears about Him that’s born King of the Jews, Matthew 2:3 says, ‘When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him.’ They weren’t happy to know their Messiah had come. They didn’t care anything about Him.

“You want to know why somebody out here in the world around you today--why they’ve got no interest in Christ or God’s things? . . . No interest in anything that’s going to help and just say, ‘Agh, that’s just a bunch of baloney. Get away from me; I don’t want any part of that. It’s not for me.’

“They go on in their darkness, just beating themselves against the wall, bloody and battered, and you plead, ‘You know, I’ve got an answer for you,’ and they just respond, ‘I’m not interested. I don’t want any. Leave me alone.’

“You think they’re nuts, but Israel was doing the same thing back there. That’s human nature. People been doing that since Genesis 3. You’re not anything new and sophisticated.”