Failing to Divide the Word

By RANDY WHITE, D.Min.

Founder and CEO

In many sectors of Christianity, the Old Testament Mosaic Law is divided into three parts: moral, civil and ceremonial.

This is not the Biblical reality, however. Notice the statement we find in James 2:10:

For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.

Jesus also spoke similarly regarding the law, when He stated as follows:

Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17-19)

Our misunderstanding of the unity of the law shows us how common and truly easy it is to base our beliefs on faulty notions passed down to us by man, rather than on the solid teachings of the Word of God. It also demonstrates how far off base we might go very quickly if fail to rightly divide the Word, according to its own dispensational distinctions, as we saw last time from our study of this very significant verse of Scripture:

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)

We have learned that we must make such a division—or straight cut—at any place in Scripture where there was a fundamental change of operation in God’s revelation to man, marking the beginning of a new dispensation. Then we must also decide which concepts carry over and remain in force from one dispensation to the next.

Failing to do so, we will become susceptible to the following types of false teachings and practices—which may have had a place in earlier dispensations, but are no longer applicable to us today:

To commune with God, we only need to be quiet and hear Him speak.
Every believer can hear from God if they just listen.
If you do not give 10 percent of your income, you are robbing from God.
Believers should have the power to heal the sick, cast out demons and raise the dead.

We must always rightly divide the Word of God dispensationally—even when that is not convenient or takes us out of the comfort zone of our acquired understanding. When we do so, we can then make sense of difficult doctrinal and worldview issues, such as the following questions:

Why do bad things happen to good people?
Is speaking in tongues still valid for today?
Do prophets exist in the church today?
Can I build church doctrine from the Old Testament?
Where is the saving gospel found?

We are not yet in the coming millennial kingdom! Therefore, we must learn to understand and obey Scripture, which alone can guide us through life in this sin-cursed and dangerous world. In order to understand the Bible fully, however, we must rightly divide God’s Word that we may know exactly how it applies to our lives today.

This is your job as a Christian—to rightly divide the Word of truth!

Editor’s Note: This blog article is taken from the following sermon, which you can watch in its entirety here: