God Has Spoken
Selected Scriptures
Now in our study we are looking at the subject of revelation. Not the book of Revelation but the subject of Christianity as a revealed religion. I feel that it is very important for us to establish the credibility and the believability of the Bible. Since we believe and acknowledge that it is the source of all knowledge about God, since we study it so in detail and adhere to its principles, we need to be sure that what it says is true.
Sooner or later Satan is going to bring into our lives doubts that are going to make us suspect whether or not the things that we have set our life on are really valid. And the more evidence we have, the better off we're going to be in times like that. There is no knowledge of God from reason alone. Paul says that the mind of the natural man cannot comprehend God. There is no knowledge of God from experience. There is no knowledge of God from the world systems of religion. There is no knowledge of God from philosophy. Every once in a while, it is true that those various things like reason and experience and religion and philosophy will intersect with truth.
So I've said that's like that clock that doesn't run. It happens to be right twice a day. So there will be an intersection with truth from time to time, but true knowledge of God comes only from the revelation of God. God must disclose Himself to man. We believe that the Bible is that disclosure. That this book in its entirety, 66 total books, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New and that's easy to remember because three times nine is 27. That's how I remember it. A little Sunday School thing I learned. That'll help you.
But that in its entirety it is the revelation of God. Now today the Bible is being denied blatantly and out rightly as the revelatory word of God. It is also being denied in a more subtle way, neo-orthodox says it contains the word of God and so as you read it, certain parts that speak to you may or may not be the word of God to somebody else, but they become the word of God to you. That is it is subjective and whatever happens to you then gives its revelatory content.
Others are flatly denying it saying it is simply book of morals and ethics, etc. I heard a man on the radio today who was saying that Jesus was a wonderful teacher, the greatest teacher who taught many wonderful things that certainly gave us the philosophy of life for every happy man.
And so there are all kinds of views of the Bible. We believe that its in its entirety, it is revelatory, it is the disclosure of God, it is the revelation of knowledge that is otherwise unknowable. It cannot be attained to by any human source. Now, when we hold such a view of the Bible and the fact that it is not only the only revelation of God and the authoritative one, but that it is in its original autographs or copies inerrant, that is without mistake, in the very words and letters.
Since we believe such a very narrow view, why is that we can stand against all of the philosophers and intellectuals of our world that hold of this view? Now last time we said is it because we're more intelligent? No, because we're not. Is it because we have some secret information that they don't have? No, they can read the same Bible we read. They can make the same examinations that we make. They can look up the same archeological facts, the same prophetic truths, the same miraculous evidence. It's available to everybody. We don't have any special scoop on the unbeliever.
Some people think as we said last time that if an unbeliever only knew about archeology, if he only knew about miracles, if he only knew all the facts of the resurrection, if he only knew everything there was to know about fulfilled prophecy, both historically and in the end times, he would have to believe. But it doesn't work that way, because you see his mind is darkened. His reason is crippled. He is blind in his understanding to God's truth.
And all of the proofs that we'll be getting into of the Bible are not really proofs at all. They do not make the Bible true, the Bible is true. And they are not nearly so important to the unbeliever as they are to the Christian. We already believe this Bible. This is endeavoring to help us to have a firmer footing for our faith. There's a basic fallacy as we pointed out last time in thinking that the Bible can be proven to be true. Just as there's a basic fallacy in trying to prove that God exists. That's something that's apprehended by faith.
When you give to the unregenerate man the right to judge whether the Bible is true or not, you give him a right that the Bible doesn't even give him. He doesn't have the right to judge whether it's true or not. It is true. No matter what he says and he is never to sit in judgment on God and he is never to sit in judgment on the word of God. And so the reason we believe is not because we're smarter and it's not because we've seen all the truth and our logical processes have led us to believe. The reason we believe folks is because the Holy Spirit did a divine miracle in our hearts and gave to us the knowledge of the word of God. He made us new creations. He opened our minds. The darkness flew away and we were able to see the word of God.
We cannot expect that to happen to the non-Christians, so let's not call these proofs. Let's call them products. We are not going to say that because of these facts, because of archeological, historical, prophetic, and miraculous truth, the Bible is therefore true. We are going to say the Bible is true, therefore these things are products of its truth.
And this then is to substantiate our faith. So our study is really for Christians. It's for believers or maybe it's for those just escaping from unbelief whose eyes are beginning to be open by the Holy Spirit and God will use this. Then again, we wouldn't rule out the fact that maybe some darkened unbeliever will hear these facts and at some time the Holy Spirit will bring these facts back to his consciousness, do a work of grace in his heart and it'll all come together and lead him to salvation.
But the purpose of the study is not to intellectually convince people who don't believe the Bible and it is not to give them a pile of information by which they can judge whether the Bible is true. It is to strengthen believers primarily. We begin then with the doctrine of revelation. And the doctrine of revelation is simply a theological title for the fact that God reveals Himself.
Now, as we said, man lives in a world where he cannot know what is outside his world. The only way we can know God is when God condescends to reveal Himself to us. And so we believe that Christianity is that revelation of God. God has given to us a revelation from Himself. Revelation then is the act of God by which He has made known what was otherwise unknowable. There is no way to know what the Bible says unless God discloses it.
Now, as we look at our subject we're going to take five aspects. The revealer, the revelation, the reason, the result, and our response. Now first of all, just a quick review, the revealer. And by looking at Hebrews 1:1-2 just as a quick review, we'll see this in its perspective. The revealer, who is the Bible revealing? Who is this God whose up there disclosing Himself?
Hebrews 1, "God who at sundry times," different times, "and in different manners spoke and time passed unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son." Now God has revealed Himself in many ways at many times. In fact, the Bible bridges a period of at least 1,500 years. And during that period of time in which God was revealing Himself, He was doing it in many different ways to many different individuals.
But always disclosing Himself. It is characteristic of God to speak. That's part of His nature. Now people ask why does God create? Why did God create men if He knew they'd all go awry? Why does God create? That's a simple question. He creates because it's His nature to create and that's what He does. Why does an artist paint? Why does a singer sing? It's because that's what's in them to do.
And so it's in God by virtue of His nature to create and so He creates. And it's also in God's nature by virtue of who He is to speak so He speaks. God cannot remain undisclosed. It is His nature to communicate. We found that in the Old Testament as we studied it, God said, "I am not like the dumb idols. I will speak." And you know, there are times when God doesn't speak. And we said the times that He doesn't speak are for the most part what? Judgmental.
When God is silent that's judgment. And a good passage to support that concept is Proverbs Chapter 1, verse 23 to 28. When God doesn't talk it's because men have refused to listen for so long that His silence is judgmental. Now as we look at the Bible, we get an introduction to this revealer, and we're not going to look all the way through because that's the whole Bible.
The whole Bible is a disclosure of God. But let me just give you four facts about the revealer. Who is He? First of all, we saw the last time that He is personal, right? Whoever this revealer is, He is personal. Secondly, He is moral. He has personality and He has righteous standards. Thirdly, He is the beginning and the end of everything. He is the source and the stay and the end of all creation, the Alpha and Omega.
And fourthly, He is available. Isn't that nice to know? Personal, moral, the beginning and the end of everything, and He's available. And so we met the revealer. Now that revealer has given us in this book the revelation, but not just in this book. Because outside this book there is another revelation and we'll talk about that in a moment and I want you to hang on, don't lose me at this point.
Let's go to point two, the revelation. The revealer has revealed His revelation. By revelation we simply mean the content of His communication. He spoke and what did He say? Well, let's find out. You know, it's important for us to know what God's revelation is because there's an awful lot of revelation being claimed today, did you know that?
There are all kinds of people writing books supposedly coming from God. I spoke at seminar last Saturday. No...well, I guess it was last Saturday, a week ago Saturday, some time. And a person came to me afterwards and said "you don't believe that there's any more revelation being given today." And I said, "no, I believe the revelation of God has been given. I believe it's finished." Well, this girl said, "well, I happen to go to a church where we have an apostle." I said, "who, Peter, James, John, or Paul?" "No, it's not any of those. He's...he's an apostle." And I said, "how do you know he's an apostle?" "Because he speaks direct revelation from God." I said, "you mean when he gets up and talks it isn't like a sermon it's like God is speaking through him." "That's right," she says, "he gives direct revelation every Sunday."
Now how are you going to evaluate that? And some of you may go to the bookstore and you're going to pick up a little book that says David Wilkerson's Vision. And you're going to read David Wilkerson's Vision. What's most interesting about it, Dr. Rod Mocker was telling me last week that another fellow at the very same charismatic conference in the same city at the very same week had a vision himself. That he also has published his vision and it contradicts with Wilkerson's vision. How interesting. That two people got two visions from the same God the same week and both of them contradicted each other.
It seems to me that God has never contradicted Himself once in the entire Bible. What is He doing contradicting Himself now? "I am the Lord," He said, "I," what, "change not." Now if two people are having two different visions from the same God either those people are not having two different visions or God has abdicated the throne and somebody else is running the place.
What is revelation and how much of the Bible or all of the Bible is revelation? Or is there more than this? We'll get into all of that. Let's begin at the beginning. Revelation is God's free voluntary act of love in disclosing Himself to men. It is God's communication. And there's no other way than the way God did it. Now, how do you suspect that Moses is going to sit down and write the creation of the world? He's going to sit down and He's going to say to himself, now let me see. I wonder how this whole thing came to be?
All of his human reason could never begin to come up with Genesis 1 and 2. So you know what happened? God simply told him what happened. And Moses sat down and wrote "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. The earth was without form and void. Darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved upon the waters, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.," all the way down to the first day, second day, third day, seventh God rested. Second Chapter He created man and so forth and He wrote that all down because God told him that. That's revelation.
There's no way Moses could know that. And so this is revelation. This is God's disclosure of Himself that reveals information which is otherwise unknowable. Now the next study we get into after revelation will be inspiration and inspiration is the method by which God transmitted the revelation. It's as if God took the package of revelation and stuck it on a vehicle and hauled it down to man. The package is revelation, the vehicle is inspiration, and we'll talk about how inspiration functions.
Can you imagine Isaiah sitting down to write and he writes, "A virgin shall conceive and bear a son." Now, I didn't come up with that myself. That's revelation. Can you imagine David sitting down and penning Psalm 22 and giving an absolute perfect description of crucifixion even to the statement, "My God, My God, why hath thou forsaken me." And doing it hundreds of years before Jesus was ever born and not having had it revealed to him by God.
Can you imagine Ezekiel sitting down to write about the valley of dry bones and gathering all of the people of Israel together and putting them in the land again. Something you and I take for granted, but he was hundreds and hundreds of years before the time, if he didn't get it from God? That's revelation. That's what this book is.
These guys didn't sit down and write their thoughts. They wrote God's thoughts. Now let's back up a minute. In the concept of revelation, God has revealed himself in two broad categories. Now I want you to get these. First of all, He has revealed Himself through natural revelation, through natural revelation. And what do we mean by this? Well, we mean apart from the Bible. We can just put this aside for a minute.
God has revealed Himself through natural revelation. What do you mean by that John? Well, two ways, turn for just a brief moment to Romans 1 and I'll show you what I mean. Do you remember this verse? "The heavens declare the glory of God and," what, "the firmament showeth His handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night reveals knowledge." In other words, you can't look at the day time and you can't look a the night time and see the stars and all that God has made and the sun and all of its glory and not conclude that there's somebody who made that. Not and keep your mental sanity in balance.
So the firmament shows God's handiwork. Now that's what Paul says in Romans 1. Watch as we begin in verse 18. "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men." Now you say well, why would God do that? I mean, why does He hold everybody responsible? Why would He fire out wrath on all ungodliness? Because men hold, what, the truth. You say well, where do men have the truth? (Tape messes up at 17:08) Now the next verse 19, "Because that which maybe known of God is manifest in them." This is conscience. God speaks to a man's conscience about His own existence.
And the second part of this natural revelation is not only in man, but it says in the next phrase, God has shown it to them and then the next verse, it's revealed in creation. So man has inside information about God and an outside. It is not only the created world that speaks of a creator, but it is man's inner conscience that tells him somebody made him.
I've never met a ten year old atheist. It takes a long time for a guy to get to the place where he's got enough intellectual pride to try to reason away the fact that there is a God. Now you say, well, what does natural revelation bring to bear on a heart of a man? As he looks around and he sees creation around him, verse 20, "the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world are clearly seen." What is? "Being understood by the things that are made, even has eternal power and God had so that they are without excuse."
Now here he says that at least three things in that one verse, verse 20 are revealed by natural revelation and creation. What's the first one? His eternal power. The second one, His God head. And really we could add to that, His wrath. And if we throw Psalm 19 into here, we can add "the firmament shows His handiwork, the heavens declare the glory of God." So in natural revelation through creation man can see the glory of God, the power of God, the God head, and he can see God's wrath.
You say how in the world can he see God's wrath? Because he can see the curse on the earth. He can see that somewhere along the line this world is under a moral sentence. I think that's becoming more and more obvious. This is a great day for us to take the approach of saying look at the earth if you don't think there's such a thing as a morale standard, look at the violation of the earth that's going on today and its destroying itself.
It's under a curse. But just from the natural revelation, first of all man can see the glory of God. Now what is the glory of God? It's the composite of all of His what? Of His attributes. You look in this world, and you can begin to see what God must be like. You can look out there and you could be...you could be Joe Aborigine from the middle of nowhere. And you could walk out on your little lump outside your little mud hut and you could look up and say whoever's up there is very wise.
Look what he did. Whoever's up there is a very gracious God because look at the beauty of the world. Look at the color of the world. Look at the happiness and the joy and there are things that are happy and joyful. I mean, God could have made brown sky and brown grass and brown flowers and brown eyes and nobody with blue and all that, but God has added color to the world. God has done thi