Charles Spurgeon's Warning on Taking Scriptures Out of Context!

One of the biggest life lessons that I learned while I grew up as a Christian was, "Just because a person quotes from Scripture to justify their doctrine, does not mean it's Scriptural."  After I got out of Roman Catholicism and looking for a church to go into, I had no idea that other "Protestant" churches were not Christian but they were just anti-Catholic groups that taught another gospel which is not another.  

If Roman Catholics can misquote Scriptures to justify their heresies like Peter as the first Pope, the Iglesia ni Cristo (Manalo) also misquotes Scriptures to justify Felix Manalo as the last messenger, the Mormons have done the same to justify Joseph Smith as the last messenger.  A lot of false prophets even use Scriptures to promote themselves but when those verses are take in context, you can see that these men are not men of God but phonies who misquote the Scripture.  A lot of people ended up joining quasi-Christian denominations from Roman Catholicism or the anti-Catholic cults because they do not read their Scripture.  

What cannot be denied is that during the temptation of Jesus, we see that Satan also quoted Scriptures.  If you think of it, Satan did speak some truth to Jesus as the Son of God with some deadly lies.  He misquoted Psalm 91:12 to get Jesus to jump off presumably to commit suicide or to make the Son of God look pompous.  He quoted the Scriptures out of context, Jesus quoted Scriptures in context.  Satan may have failed with misquoting Scriptures to Jesus but he can succeed with sinful men who refuse to read the Bible in context.  

I noticed how people misquote the Scriptures to justify the heresies they so uphold.  I have seen how works salvation crowds take 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 out of context or how the Antinomian crowds take Ephesians 2:8-9 out of context.  1 Corinthians 6:11 says that some were such of you that people were sanctified by the grace of God to live a new life.  Ephesians 2:10 says that after you are saved by faith, God equips you with good works.  The more one studies the doctrine of grace and good works, the more one sees the inseparable sequence between them.  If you read about faith and works, the more one knows of true faith, the more one sees how works results from it but most people are just too lazy to study the Bible.

Paul commanded Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:15 saying, "Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."  Knowing the context of the verses is the only way to really show how verses are taken out of context.  That's why I am in for expository preaching where everything is expounded verse by verse.  It helps me understand the Bible more and make much less mistakes while becoming more sound in interpreting Scriptures.