Truth Trek

Seeking Truth in the Bible: A Conversation with Pastor Jason Hovde

Jason Hovde Episode 1

Send us a text

What if we've been reading the Bible all wrong? What if our interpretations have been clouded by others' perspectives? This daring episode urges you to ponder these questions as we journey through the insightful narratives of the Bible alongside Pastor Jason Hovde. Together, we'll navigate the fascinating story of a man born blind from Luke 9, dissect the controversial reactions it stirred among the Pharisees and highlight the importance of seeking biblical truth independently.

Being knowledgeable in God's Word is more than just a virtue—it's a safeguard against deception. This episode is dedicated to equipping you with the tools to approach Scripture with enthusiasm and a critical mind, from developing a daily reading routine to discerning trustworthy preachers and teachers. We'll extract wisdom from revered theologians such as Charles Spurgeon, William Gage, and NT Wright, shedding light on the significant role they play in spiritual development. Join us on this enlightening Truth Trek—your journey to a deeper understanding and appreciation of the Bible begins here.

Support the show

Jason Hovde:

Welcome to Truth Trek, where we dive deep into the Bible to uncover the treasures there. I'm Pastor Jason Hovde and I will be your guide as we journey together into Scripture, god's Holy Word. In today's episode we will be taking a look at what the purpose of this podcast is. Since this is the first podcast, what is Truth Trek all about? So we're going to talk about that. In the first section We'll talk about why Truth Trek, and then in the second section we'll talk about the importance of biblical knowledge. In the third section we will talk about using biblical knowledge to avoid being deceived. So, first off, why Truth Trek? Well, I believe I have a calling and desire to teach God's Word. I love to dive into the Bible and do research into it to find out more clearly what it's saying and then to present that to others. In fact, some of you may have ever done the Strength Finder test, and two of my top five have always been in the two or three times I've done that test. Input and learner, which means that I like to go and do research, and that's the learner part. And then the input is I like to share what I've learned with others, and so that goes well with my current occupation, which is a pastor, but I also wanted to add to that this podcast. So the podcast is going to involve topics primarily based upon my own curiosity when it comes to God's Word. I read from Scripture every day, and I often note in my journal some thought or question that a portion of Scripture has prompted me to think about, and often these do not correlate with my regular preaching or teaching, so this podcast will more or less be like a playground for me. I love diving into the Bible to learn more, and my hope is that, with you joining me, we will all increase in our knowledge and appreciation of the Bible. And since it's things that catch my attention and should be interesting to me, I hope, then, that you will find it interesting as well. I don't know if you have noticed this as well during your time in classes and schools with teachers is that when the teacher is interested in the subject, it is much more interesting to the people who are learning as well, and so I'm hoping that that'll be the case for this podcast going on. I don't anticipate a time where I'll ever run out of interesting things that I find in Scripture that we'll have to talk about. So I'm looking forward to this and I'm looking forward to having you join me on this journey.

Jason Hovde:

And the world is full of bad doctrine or false teaching, and my desire is that I could help people to start thinking biblically and that they will be inspired to search Scripture for themselves. Whenever we hear a claim of truth, whether it's on Christian radio or from a preacher or from a Christian writer, or even claims made on this very podcast, we ought to ask ourselves a question Is that what the Bible really teaches? How can we know? We must not just think we know because we heard someone say it. We must be people of the book. We must be people who are willing to do a little extra work to figure out what God is telling us in His Word. You do not need a PhD to figure it out. As we go together through this journey of faith, I hope that you will learn how to be a critical thinker and learn how to discern what Scripture says.

Jason Hovde:

To end this first section, I have a quote from AW Tozer. He said this it is astonishing what some people will believe when they get going. They properly hold it a sin to doubt the Bible, so they refuse to doubt anything that has served up along with the Bible, however ridiculous and unscriptural it may be. If the story has a flavor of wonder about it, these uncritical friends will accept it without question and repeat it in an odd voice with much solemn shaking of the bowed head. Multiply such people in any given church and you have a perfect soil for the growth of every kind of false teaching and fanatical excess. We need to cultivate a healthy skepticism toward everything that cannot be supported by the plain teaching of the Bible. Belief is faith only when it has God's revealed truth for its object. Beyond that, it may be fully as injurious as unbelief itself.

Jason Hovde:

In our next section I want to talk about the importance of biblical knowledge. People who do not go to the source of truth may be manipulated or swayed by bad teaching. Consider the man who was born blind in Luke 9. Jesus was asked whether the man was born blind because of his own sin or the sin of his parents, and Jesus replied. This is in John 9, verse 3, it says Jesus answered it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. And after he said that, jesus did something very unusual.

Jason Hovde:

We know from the Gospels that Jesus healed people in different ways. Sometimes he spoke, sometimes he ordered a spirit out and so on. But here Jesus spits on the ground and makes mud with his spit, then he puts the mud on this man's eyes and instructs the man to go and wash off the mud at the pool of Silo. So the man does as Jesus instructed he washes and then he sees. And now the people start discussing his healing. We can certainly understand that this was an absolutely miraculous thing, no doubt about it.

Jason Hovde:

This was not like today where, thankfully, the miracles of medicine we have people that go and get a cataract surgery this is quite a normal surgery anymore and they see better, and that's a wonderful thing. That didn't happen in these days. This man had been blind from birth and now he was seeing. And so they bring the man to the Pharisees, and I'll pick up. In John 9 and verse 14 to 16, it says now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight and he said to them he put mud on my eyes and I washed and I see.

Jason Hovde:

Some of the Pharisees said this man is not from God for he does not keep the Sabbath. But others said how can a man who is a sinner do such signs? And there was a division among them. So it's important to understand a little bit more about the Pharisees and their system of rules. If you spent much time learning about the Gospels, the Pharisees are not usually painted in a very good light. They're the legalistic ones, they're the ones that have a whole set of rules and they seem to always be opposed to Jesus. In particular, when Jesus heals on the Sabbath or something like that, they get all upset because they have set up a whole system of rules about many things, including the Sabbath. However, it's important to understand that the beginning of the Pharisees was not necessarily that they were of some motive that was to abuse people or to hold people hostage to their rules.

Jason Hovde:

The way it sort of started out, according to some scholars, is at the time of Ezra the priest, when they had come back to Jerusalem. They had rebuilt the temple and rebuilt the walls, and the people of Israel seemed to have a newfound appreciation for God and a new desire to serve him. Well, and there's a number of things you can read about in Ezra and Nehemiah and you can find out about how they really repented of some past acts and desire to do well and to obey God's law, and so there are scholars that believe this is around the time when this idea that became the Phariseeical system took place. Let's think of it this way If God's law was a city and they didn't want the law broken, as someone wouldn't want their city destroyed, they began to build walls around the city itself. If the city is God's law, they were building fortifications around it. So they would make extra rules around God's rules to keep people even further from breaking God's rules. And then the problem is they would keep building fences and walls beyond and beyond, so that there was all these other rules that had nothing to do with what God had said and instead were a bunch of man-made rules. So, for example, the Sabbath is a great example. God's law said that they were not to do any work on the Sabbath.

Jason Hovde:

Now, to prevent anyone from even coming close to breaking the law of the Sabbath, the Pharisees established a whole system of rules, including how many steps you could walk on a Sabbath, all kinds of things that they had very specific rulings on, and these were the walls and fences they built around the city. That was the Sabbath law, so that no one would even come close to violating the Sabbath. And you can see how that perhaps starts out as a genuine desire to obey God and to do well. And by all means we shouldn't be sneaking right up, as close as we can to God's laws to see how far we can get before they break. But neither should we be building walls outwards so far that we can't even enjoy life because we've set up so many rules, because really those rules ended up being the rules that people had created, that men wanted, and so they had anger when Jesus healed on the Sabbath.

Jason Hovde:

So in these days, regular people relied on the experts of the law to tell them what was allowed and what wasn't allowed, and this was for various reasons. One is that most people did not have access to the scriptures like we do. Therefore, it makes sense that they relied on those who had studied the scriptures to tell them what they said. So they had hundreds of rules and regulations, but these were not from God's word. They were made by men. They would argue that they were enhancing God's word or they were protecting God's word, but that was what they were doing, and one of those rules, one of the many rules, had something to do with not making mortar or mixing dirt and clay or those kind of things or mud work. So when Jesus made mud with his spit and made that mud to put on the man's eyes, they were saying that was work. So they were saying Jesus was working on the Sabbath, and so they accused Jesus of violating the Sabbath.

Jason Hovde:

And so, as we see that happening, we have to think about this logically, but also just looking at how is the best way to obey God. And we know that there were many examples of this in the Gospels, where Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath and he was called before to answer for that, and he would say man was not made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for man. And so Jesus was saying that the purpose of the Sabbath was not to have these just really difficult rules, so basically, no one could even enjoy themselves. The purpose of the Sabbath was for people to be able to have a break and enjoy life, and so we need to keep that in mind Now. William Barclay said this there arose a group of men called the scribes who made it the business of their lives to reduce the great principles of the law to literally thousands of rules and regulations, and that sums it up pretty well. They had made it their business to tell everybody else. Here's the set of rules. So it's important for us to remember the rules that God himself gives. We should take every effort to obey them, but rules that men give that are not found in scripture we should not obligate ourselves to, and we need to understand the difference between those Music playing, and they were relying on the scribes and the Pharisees and others to tell them what was biblical and what wasn't. In this situation, where Jesus had healed the man on the Sabbath and the Pharisees were complaining about it, how could they know who was right and who was wrong? So this is an evidence to us that it's important we need to know scripture for ourselves so that when someone tells us something, we know whether that's true from scripture or whether someone is trying to teach us something that is not in scripture. Music playing, and it's now time for our glorifying God fact. During each episode, we're going to feature a fact that should help us to glorify God with our praise, with our worship and with our lives.

Jason Hovde:

When I was younger, I remember being told that there were over a trillion stars. This was mind-boggling, to say the least. Even the number a million or a billion is very difficult for us to fathom, but a trillion stars? My young mind could not even handle this information. Just today I saw a science video that stated that currently, scientists think there are about two trillion, but not two trillion stars, two trillion galaxies, and each of these two trillion galaxies contains anywhere from 100 billion to one trillion stars. The galaxy is more vast, and the more we understand it, the more incredible it is. Not only that the universe is expanding and the rate of expansion is increasing. Even if we developed light speed travel today, most of the galaxy would never be reached, no matter how much time we were to travel and even if our lives had infinite length. God has complete control over His creation, and the more we learn, the greater God becomes. So when we who are in Christ consider our eternal safety, we ought to rest secure in the power of God to sustain each of those who are His. We should marvel at His ability to work all things for the good of those that love Him.

Jason Hovde:

In our final section for today's podcast, our main point is going to be that we want to use biblical knowledge to avoid being deceived. We mentioned a moment ago how those people who witnessed the healing of the blind man by Jesus were there and the Pharisees were saying oh, he did work on the Sabbath. He made mud. He's a Sabbath breaker. How could they have known that this was not true? Well, other than what some of them said in other biblical accounts is, how could a sinner heal people involved some way here? But the more important thing I want to get across to us today is that if they had biblical knowledge true biblical knowledge about God's intent for the Sabbath law, they would be less likely to be led astray by those Pharisees who had their endless rules about the Sabbath.

Jason Hovde:

Let's go to a verse that many of you will be familiar with about the Bereans in Acts, chapter 17, verse 11. It talks about some Berean people who received the gospel and it says Now, these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. This is a model for us. We should receive God's word with all eagerness and examine the scriptures daily to see if these things are. So we should receive God's word all the time, but with eagerness. We should be hungry for it, and if you don't feel like you're hungry for God's word and sometimes we have days like that ask for his help. Ask for him to give you a greater desire to dive into scripture. Sometimes it's a motivation issue and we need to have our priorities reset, and so it's okay to sometimes take a moment and repent of not caring what the scripture says and saying Lord, I want to care. Please help me care and help me to move forward in my understanding, and we live in an unprecedented time.

Jason Hovde:

Scripture is available to us in so many forms. We have access to it like no other time in history. We must spend time in God's word. How can we know whether what someone is teaching or preaching to us is truly biblical if we are not ourselves in God's word?

Jason Hovde:

This is why I encourage you to have a daily reading plan. I may step on some toes here, but some daily devotions are not cutting it. If your daily devotion all it has is one or two verses of scripture and then two to three paragraphs of some nice feeling encouragement, you are not really going to grow in your understanding of God's word. You need more than that, so I recommend everyone have a reading plan. It may take time to work into this habit, but I recommend a reading plan that will have you in different parts of scripture each day, something with the New Testament and Old Testament. Every day is good. Some reading plans have you read something from the Psalms each day, something from the Gospels or something and something from the law. There are all kinds of reading plans available. If you do a web search for a reading plan, you can find one that works well for you On top of a reading plan.

Jason Hovde:

Go to church and listen to preaching every Sunday During the week. Find teachers that you can trust and listen to. There's tons of podcasts and many churches have their own apps where you can listen to teaching during the week. There's YouTube channels. There's all kinds of options for you, but you wanna find yourself some reliable teachers that you can trust to listen to, and if you're looking for help with a reading plan or finding a good preacher or teacher to listen to, feel free to email me at truthtrekking at gmailcom. That's truth trekking T-R-E-K-K-I-N-G. Truth trekking at gmailcom and I'll be happy to help you out there. So, as we close we're getting close to the end here.

Jason Hovde:

Paul told Titus to appoint elders who would help people in the church by teaching them the word. And in my context I am considered an elder as a pastor. I'm an elder, and here's what Paul wrote to Titus about elders. One of the qualifications in Titus one, verse nine he, the elder, must hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught, so that he may be able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it. Also, paul told Timothy in second Timothy 1.13, follow the pattern of the sound words that you heard from me. In the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus, we are to learn the things of God in order to live according to His will ourselves, and we are to pass these things on to others as well.

Jason Hovde:

Those who do not know scripture are prone to following teachings that will lead them astray. I'm gonna close here with a few quotes. The first one is from Charles Spurgeon. If you wish to know God, spurgeon said, you must know His word. If you wish to perceive His power, you must see how he works by His word. If you wish to know His purpose before it comes to pass, you can only discover it by His word.

Jason Hovde:

William Gage said this take heed what you hear. He's quoting there from Mark 24. We must hear nothing with approval except what we know to be the word of God. We must therefore be well acquainted with the scriptures ourselves and by them test the things which we hear Whether they are the word of God or not, as the men of Berea did. Acts 17, 11. Take heed how you hear Luke 18, 18. That which we know to be grounded upon scripture, we must receive not as the word of men but as it is in truth the word of God. First Thessalonians 2, 13. We must with reverence attend to it, we must in our hearts believe and we must in our lives obey it. And the final quote here is from NT Wright. He said to affirm the authority of scripture is precisely not to say we know what scripture means and don't need to raise any more questions. It is always a way of saying that the church, in each generation, must make fresh and rejuvenated efforts to understand scripture more fully and live by it more thoroughly, even if that means cutting across cherished traditions.

Jason Hovde:

To summarize what we've gone through in our podcast today, we went through the purpose of this podcast, truth Trek. Why are we doing that? I have a calling to teach God's word and his desire to do it, and we talked about the importance of biblical knowledge, and we talked about using biblical knowledge to avoid being deceived. Next week, we're gonna discuss what Hebrews 12, 24 means, which says and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. What does that mean? How does the blood of Jesus speak a better word than the blood of Abel? Subscribe to the podcast and next week we will dive into that together. Now I wanna thank you for listening today. If you found this to be helpful or encouraging, could you do me a huge favor and share it with someone who may enjoy joining us as a brand new podcast? I can sure use your help to get us going. So have a great day and God bless you, and I hope to have you back listening again with next week's podcast.

People on this episode

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.

Truth For Life Daily Program Artwork

Truth For Life Daily Program

letters@truthforlife.org (Alistair Begg)
Renewing Your Mind Artwork

Renewing Your Mind

Ligonier Ministries
Simply Put Artwork

Simply Put

Ligonier Ministries
Jason Hovde Artwork

Jason Hovde

Jason Hovde
Just Thinking Podcast Artwork

Just Thinking Podcast

Darrell Harrison & Virgil Walker