Romans 1 - God Speaks
Tom Shrader explores how God speaks to us through two forms of revelation: general revelation through creation that shows His existence to all people, and special revelation through Scripture that reveals His character and will. He emphasizes that the Bible is God-breathed and serves as an owner's manual for life, teaching us what's right, what's wrong, how to get right, and how to stay right.
“The Bible is profitable for teaching what's right, reproof what's not right, correction how to get right, and training in righteousness how to stay right.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Doctrine
Recorded: 2011
Duration: 47 min
Themes: revelation, scripture, truth, guidance, creation, doctrine, authority, foundation, new believer, seeking truth, questioning faith, studying doctrine, biblical student, confused about god, needing direction, spiritual seeker
Scripture: Romans 1:18-20, 2 Timothy 3:16, Psalm 14:1, Psalm 19:1, Isaiah 6:3, Matthew 4:4, Deuteronomy 8:3, 2 Peter 1:21, Isaiah 55:8-9, Ecclesiastes 10:19
Theological Themes: general revelation, special revelation, biblical inspiration, god-breathed scripture, natural theology, biblical authority, doctrine of scripture, divine communication
Full Transcript
We are in the second week of what will be a 13-week series dealing with what we call doctrine. There are two resources that we have made available to you. Sometimes I feel a little bit like a huckster in terms of promoting these, but I quickly add, we don't ever try to make money in the bookstore. We try to break even in the bookstore and in the cafe as well, so I hope you understand that.
This is the book that we're following as we work our way through these 13 weeks. It's a book titled Doctrine, What Christians Should Believe, co-authored by Mark Driscoll. So that's a $23 book. It's available in the bookstore for $15. We ordered 500 of them, sold them all last week, got another 200 in, and when I went over there today, they were lined up getting them. So this is really helpful, and this should be helpful to you. I'm not going to read you what's in there, though we're following along, but this will be important information.
This is a study guide that we put together that a lot of people are using on their own as they work with another person, small groups, really helpful tool. So the study guide's available over there too. I think it's $5 or $6, but we produced 700 of these, sold about 600 of them last week. So if you did not pick up these resources, I would just encourage you to do that. You can go over to the bookstore and you can get them today. I have no clue, I'm not trying to hype you here. I just know last week I said there'll be plenty and there wasn't. So we sold right out and we sold out at the other campuses as well.
What Is Doctrine?
When we talk about doctrine, here's Webster's definition. It's something taught as a principle of a creed or a religion, a tenet, a belief, a dogma handed down as authority as true and indisputable. And that's exactly what we're talking about here. We're talking about those things that we believe.
Now, if we were to do kind of a word association where I said doctrine, the response that comes back or the response you might have would be dull, boring. Might go the other way and go heavy, intellectual, over my head, for theologians. So let me deal with two myths here that I think are really important and they're both wrapped up in that.
Everyone Is a Theologian
One is that idea I'm not a theologian. Everyone is a theologian. Might not be trained in it, it might not be systematic, but everybody has a view of God and of man and of the world around us. If I went over to Fashion Square today and just arbitrarily picked 10 people and started saying, tell me about God, tell me about what happens when you die, tell me about your condition or your view of man, virtually everybody has a view.
I was born and raised at Catholic grade school, high school, college. So I was in kindergarten, then I had the Sisters of Mercy for eight years, then I was at Assumption High School for four years, then I went to what could have been a four-year college, but I decided to drag it out to six or seven or eight. I'd still be there if they wouldn't have said, you now have 23,000 hours, you need to go. Fly, little bird, fly. But it was a Catholic college.
So I knew a lot of stuff. By the time I moved away from home and moved out here, I had developed a theology, in retrospect now as I go back, it was a little bit of Augustine and a little bit of Aquinas, a little bit of papal authority, and then a little bit of what I thought. I took the stuff I didn't like, I did kind of my version of the Jefferson Bible where Thomas Jefferson took the Gospels and then did his own version. Jefferson is smart as can be, dumb as a brick when it comes to spiritual things, but that's easy to see because he doesn't have the spirit of God living in Him. So dumb as a brick in spiritual things, but he did what you'd love to do, and that is he took the Gospels and just took out the stuff he didn't like and produced something called the Jefferson Bible. You can order it on Amazon today or find it in a lot of bookstores.
So that's kind of what a lot of people do. Pick what we like, here's something, makes sense, makes sense to me, stick it in there. I'm sure Jesus came down in a spaceship, that kind of stuff. Well, we're all theologians.
Doctrine Is Practical
The other myth that's really important is to understand that doctrine is enormously practical. In fact, that's exactly what Luther said. I found a couple of long paragraphs that Luther had written, and at the end it simply said this: doctrine is practical. I can tell you from me, I wouldn't be interested in this if it was all theoretical. One of the Puritans, William Perkins, said this, speaking of theology: it's the science of living blessedly forever.
So right now, it's 11 o'clock, right now, over at summer camp, they are just finishing up my favorite service of summer camp. It's outside, even this year, when I knew I wasn't going to teach all of my, so I'll teach Sunday morning. We're outside in an amphitheater setting, and it's just beautiful, typically a little June gloom over there, so it'll be cool. If the sun comes out, you have to take your jacket off. If you're sitting up, so I'm down teaching, you're sitting here, you're looking at me, and then there's like this Greek structure behind me, and then you see the ocean. It's a really great setting.
And what I say to them at the beginning of summer camp, the middle of summer camp, the end of summer camp, is the same thing I say to you so often, and that is, here's our goal: to see God transform our hearts, and then inform our minds, so we live a radical life. So our heart needs to be transformed. That's a work that God does in our hearts. Some of you can go back and say, well, that happened when I was five. Some of you said it happened when I was 25. Some said 55. The date is irrelevant.
The fact that your heart's been transformed is key. Some of you are here today, I'm really confident of that, and you're not Christians—not in the sense of how we understand that to mean somebody who's come to Christ in repentance and faith. You may be religious, you may be chronically religious, but you don't know Christ. So our heart needs to be transformed, but then what do I do? My mind needs to be informed, and the primary tool God uses for that is this book.
We study it and study it, but as I was preparing, like today, I have lots of quotes. My daughter, Haley, observed one time that if Tom has lots of quotes, he doesn't have anything to say. Now, I think it's important to note, I never liked her. The day she was born, I just kind of looked down and said, I don't think I like this kid very much. Sarah was always my favorite. But I know, and I had just told somebody about this the other day, there's a sense in which it's true, but it's not true today.
So I do have a lot of quotes today. But as I was going through, I had stacks. What I do in preparation lots of time for something like this is, rather than use a dozen books, I'll copy sections of them. This is not exaggerating—Thursday when I was done, and then Patty helped me, I'm not kidding you, I had a stack of papers this high, plus a few books. So my challenge today was culling out those things, not figuring out how much to get in it.
Six Benefits of Being Spiritually Informed
In preparation, I found these sheets. I thought I'd mention them to you, and I don't have a clue where this came from. It's something I've taught before, but in a different series. Six benefits of being spiritually informed. So there's that transformed heart and informed mind.
Number one: knowledge gives substance to our faith. So we understand this just isn't a blind leap of faith.
Number two: knowledge stabilizes during times of testing. So Aaron and Brittany today, the most comforting thing that can happen as people come around is for them to experience and hear in their heart, or recall something they've heard, the Spirit of God apply the Word of God in times that are difficult.
The third is it enables us to handle the Bible accurately. There's some interpretation that needs to take place. So if somebody says to me, do you take the Bible literally, I will always say, yeah, where it's meant to be taken literally. Sometimes it speaks figuratively, and it's literature in that sense. Sometimes it's poetic. So when Jesus says I'm a door, I'm not walking up looking for hinges on His hip. I understand the imagery there.
The Importance of Context in Scripture
I also understand that as we interpret scripture, the explicit interprets the implicit. And that context matters. So here you go—this could easily be my life's verse, Ecclesiastes 10:19: "Men prepare a meal for enjoyment, wine makes life merry, and money is the answer to everything." Now, I could probably get a whole bunch of amens to that, huh? Increase the size of the church. But you sense when you hear it that maybe it needs some context.
So what knowledge does is allows us to be able to take that, and it's my fourth point: it equips us to detect and confront error. So if somebody came up to almost any of you today who would say Redemption Church is home and said, "You know, I got this verse from the book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 10, verse 19, to be merry and wine is good and money's the answer to everything," something in you, I think, would go "That's probably not right." Knowledge does that.
The fifth thing is, it gives us confidence as we walk or as we live, and then the sixth thing is, it allows us to kind of filter truth and to sort out error and superstition.
Warning: Knowledge Alone Can Be Dangerous
Well, paperclipped to that was this thing that says, warning: knowledge alone can be dangerous. Knowledge, when it's just knowledge on its own, can become a heady thing, and it can become a source of pride. Knowledge, if it's just an end in and of itself and not a means to live practically, if it's not put into practice but simply stored up, knowledge can become dangerous.
So knowledge should affect the way that I live. Knowledge needs to be this combination of love and grace and needs to not remain theoretical.
The Need for Genuine Response
So one of the points I make to the students—I can make the same point to you here—but over there, especially this service outside, every Sunday we've been at Point Loma, every Sunday morning at 10 o'clock, I get out there and I stand, or I stand down here in the same place, lower facing them, lower right hand, about the second row, and I start to cry. And you see these students and you see some of them, by then, some of those hard hearts have started to soften and then you see kind of the kids that are punks and jerks and all that stuff, kind of like youth, the way some of you sit.
And so in the midst of this, one of the things that happens is you see a response. And so like tonight is a response night. And what I try to tell the students is, hey man, I am fine with this emotion. I got no problem if you have an emotional response to God. If you start to contemplate who you are and who He is, and that doesn't move you emotionally, something's wrong.
But if it's all emotion and there's no action—so here's what I'll tell the students. If I was closing this out tomorrow night, here's what I'd tell them: We had a great time and you can raise your hand and praise Jesus and have this great time, but if you go home and don't obey your parents and get along with your brothers and sisters, then either you are a terribly sinful person, a hypocrite, or you don't know Christ.
Same thing is true of you and me. If you're in here on Sunday and go, "How great is our God, how great is our God," and you have these tears and you go out and screw people tomorrow in business, then there's a disconnect here. So either you're a hypocrite, because we still sin, right? So it could be that, in which case...
God Reveals Himself to Us
God's going to convict you—we'll talk about that—or you're that hypocrite playing to be something you really aren't, and you're in the most dangerous of all positions. If you're just out there going, "I don't buy any of this, that's a bunch of hooey," that's very easy to deal with. The person that's hard to deal with is the person that goes, "Yes, yes, yes, oh yes," and then goes home and in fact isn't saved at all. So there's a warning to knowledge.
We're following what would be the table of contents in here. On your bulletin, you'll see the circle of design on the outside, and the same design is on the study guide. You see the topics beginning in the upper right-hand corner—the Trinity—and then you just move around this circle. Today we're talking about Revelation.
Now, not the book of Revelation, meaning the last book of the Bible, talking about end times. We will do that—that's the thirteenth of the topics we'll deal with. Pretty sure I'll be gone that week, but we'll be dealing with it. That good old Tyler—he took the Trinity, he ought to take that, don't you think?
Focusing on Practical Truth
Last week we talked about the Trinity, and Tyler—and it's the same thing that happens: as the day goes on, that message gets stronger and more clear, and he did a great job. When I came to Revelation, what we're talking about really is God speaking to us. I made a couple of decisions, and one of them was this: I'm not going to give you a bunch of information that's in this book, though there'll be some that's covered in here, nor am I going to give you a bunch of information that's purely academic that you can go home and Google.
I mean, we have a resource now with Google that we don't need to stand up here and conduct a seminary class. So how did we get the Bible? If you go home and Google "How did you get the Bible?" "What is canon?" "Proof the Bible's accurate"—there's a ton of information that's available to you. It occurred to me that rather than have me give you this, if you don't care enough to go home and spend an hour researching it, I don't think this is the place for me to go through that. I trust you can look at those things, because again, we can get bogged down real quickly in that.
What Revelation Means
I want to give you an overview using two passages of Scripture dealing with this idea of Revelation. "Reveal" means literally to unveil, to remove a covering or something that's been concealed. It reminds us that our faith isn't based on speculation or fictitious wishful thinking, but our faith is based on fact. God reveals to us who He is, who we are, the world around us.
If you take—and I know it's almost boring to some of you—but if you take those great questions in life: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? How did we get this way? We're going to find the answers in here if God thinks we need them.
God—this is interesting—God starts in the first book and the first verse, and He says, "In the beginning God created heaven and earth." We're trying to figure out how did all that take place, and He starts with that supposition that He already created. He tells us about why the world is the way it is—that's Genesis 3. If you read Genesis 2, it ends with Adam and Eve in the garden, they're naked, they're in harmony. You skip Genesis 3, you get to Genesis 4, and there's discord, there's anger, jealousy, envy, murder, and you say, "How in the heck did this happen?" Genesis 3: man's sin. Ultimately, we can explain all of the world around us in the idea of sin. How do we learn that? Well, God reveals things to us.
Two Types of Revelation
God reveals in two ways. He reveals in what we call general revelation, and He reveals in what we call specific or special revelation. General revelation is that revelation that's given to all people in all places, all ages, and all times. It's the heavens and the earth.
Psalm chapter one, verse fourteen: the psalmist declares, "The fool has said in his heart there is no God." Well, how can he say that? Psalm 19: "The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims His handiwork." We look at Isaiah chapter six, verse three, and Isaiah says, "The whole earth is filled with His glory."
Missing the Wonder Around Us
R.C. Sproul writes this: "We tend to live on the surface of things. We are asleep to the wonder and awe that God provides us in His creation. We tuned it out. We're out of touch. The sublime presentations of God are all around us, yet we are often blind and deaf to it. We don't understand its language. It takes more than stopping to smell flowers. The flowers contain more than a sweet aroma or fragrance. They exude the glory of the creator. We are all in touch with divine revelation when we're in awe of God's glory."
Suppressing the Truth
That passage in front of you, Romans chapter one, verse 18—what God is going to say here through the pen of the apostle Paul is that everybody has the sense, in a general sense, that there is a creator, there is a God, there's a higher power. May not know the specifics of it, but there's a general revelation.
Verse 18: "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness against men who are unrighteous who suppress the truth." Now that word that's translated "suppress" there is an active, engaging, holding down.
Here's my favorite illustration. When Sarah was a little girl, somebody gave her—clearly people who either hated Susan and me or took a perverse pleasure in our anxiety would give them things. Like perhaps the worst toy ever invented was that popcorn popper that you pushed around—I hated that. But somebody gave her a jack-in-the-box. It would simply go "do-do-do-do-do-do do-do-do-do-do do-do-do-do-do," and then the thing would come out and Sarah, at that point, didn't have the dexterity to put the thing back in, so she'd wrestle with it and honestly, it was pretty good for a while because it would keep her busy. Somewhere in there, she realized that there's a little hook over that door, so—
that hook that goes back and it releases the door and out pops the jack-in-the-box. So she would begin to go, put her hand on the top of that and go do-do-do-do-do-do do-do-do-do-do do-do-do-do-do do-do-do-do-do do-do-do-do-do do-do-do-do-do do-do-do-do-do-do do-do-do-do-do. It became so annoying that one morning when we got up, I said, "Honey, I have bad news. Some bad men broke in last night. They left the TV and the credit cards and the cash and the computer, but they took that jack-in-the-box."
Now, you'll never forget Romans chapter one, verse 18 again when it talks about suppress the truth. That's the word. They're ungodly, unrighteous. What do you have to do to be ungodly? He's going to tell you.
Look at this: "For what can be known about God is plain to them. God's shown it to them." Now, He's talking about the whole world, every person that's ever lived in every culture. He's talking about that person in the deepest, remotest part of a jungle who's never heard or seen anybody from the outside. "For His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and His divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world and the things that He had been done so that everybody is without excuse. For although they knew God, they knew about Him, they could see they didn't honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts became hardened."
What It Takes to Be Ungodly
So what do I have to do to be ungodly? What do I have to do to be unrighteous? The answer's really nothing. Don't do anything. That's what they did. They didn't give Him honor. They didn't give Him thanks.
And so what God did in their case is their hearts were dark and you begin to see it there in verse 24. He gave them over to their lusts. You see it again in verse 26. He gave them over to their degraded passions. Verse 28, He gave them over to their depraved minds. It's not that God actively intervened and pushed them that way. He simply said, "Is that what you want to do? Go do it." It's not that God made them do something they didn't want to do. He simply said, "If that's what you want, then you go for it." And consequently, they claim to be wise. This is like many people you see around you today, but in reality, they became fools.
The Evidence of General Revelation
So general revelation is just that. It's the sunrise, the sunset. I look up, it's astronomy. I look down, it's biology. I see order. I see magnificence. I see the human body. I see our ability to create, to put a man into space, to do phenomenal things.
I'll never get how you can take this little device here and somehow I can go through this and punch buttons and it go, some signal goes from here to somewhere to my brother driving from Chicago. Every Thursday, I'll be driving home. My brother will be driving from Chicago to Davenport and every Thursday around 1:30, we'll talk on this phone and he's on this one like this. I don't get it. But man's creative power is a picture, we're a picture of God as a creative God. So that's general revelation.
John Calvin wrote this: "That there exists in the human mind and indeed by natural instinct some sense of deity we hold to be beyond dispute. Since God Himself has endued us," it means invested in us, "God has endued all men with some idea of His Godhead, the memory of which He has constantly renews and occasionally enlarges." So we get the sense that there's something out there. We get the sense even though over time it can be darkened, we get the sense of right and wrong.
An Innate Sense of Right and Wrong
Like I would talk to Haley a lot. Like Haley, well both of the girls, Haley more than Sarah, she'd study and study and study and study and it would just drive me nuts and she'd study and I'd say, "Let's go for a walk" and she'd say, "No, I have to study." I'd say, "You're going to get a C, just get your C, get out." That's how I tried to motivate her.
So I remember, I tell this story all the time. I remember one night she was doing, I said, "Let's go for a walk." She said, "I can't, I have to study." I said, "What is it?" She said, "Math." I said, "Math? Wow, you're never going to use that. I mean, why?" And she said, "You know, go away." And so I did. I went away, got my stuff to go on a walk and I came back and I said, "Wait a minute. When I was in school in math, all the answers were in the back of a book. Are the answers still in the back of the book?" And she said, "Yeah."
And I said, "Well, go back there and get the answer and write it down." And she said, "How did you ever get through school?" And I said, "Well, I had help." And she said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Well, I took tutoring right into the classroom with me." She said, "Well, I don't know what you mean." I said, "Well, I kind of would look over to see what he had as an answer and figured that was a good answer."
And she said, "Well, that's not right." And I said, "Well, I wasn't a Christian." And she said two things. One, "That's your answer for everything." And two, and this is pretty insightful, she was about 12. She said, "Did you hide when you did it?" And I said, "I'm not sure what you meant." And she said, "Well, did you hide when you did it? Did you sneak it, or did you just stand up and look?" And I said, "Well, I kind of snuck." And she said, "Well, then you knew it was wrong. That's why you hid it."
That's the same one that had the thing about the quotes. I'm telling you, I never liked this kid the whole time. I'll tell you something. I didn't say this first hour. She's just like her mother. I should tell you what my life's been like for 33 years. Well, you know, I think she stumbled onto the truth. God kind of put in us this idea of right and wrong. It's general revelation.
Moving to Special Revelation
Well, then we get to the New Testament, and we see, and Old Testament, to the Bible itself, and we see what we call special or specific revelation. So I'm going to walk on the assumption, operate on the assumption that you're like me, that you kind of get a Bible. You really
Many people approach the Bible without understanding what it really is. You come to it thinking some guy had a lot of time and wrote all this. But there are over 40 authors. The books of the Bible—the word Bible means book—that singular book is made up of 66 little books or letters: 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament.
In Matthew chapter four, Jesus is led into the wilderness and tempted by Satan. Satan says to Him, "If you're the son of God, command these stones to become bread." Jesus quotes from the Old Testament, from Deuteronomy chapter eight, verse three: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." Vox Dei—it's the voice of God. That's what this book is.
The Scope and Unity of Scripture
The Bible was written primarily in two languages, though a little bit of a third: Hebrew, Greek, and a little Aramaic. It was written over 1,500 years by 40 different authors on the continents of Asia, Africa, and Europe. The authors were men who were kings and peasants, philosophers and fishermen, poets and statesmen, scholars and a doctor. The book contains history, sermons, letters, songs, poems, and love letters.
We believe that it is literally God's word, telling us the story of man from the beginning: creation, then the fall, then restoration. I love to do this because I think it's a powerful word picture. This in my Bible right here is Genesis one and two—the story of creation. This side, this page here and a little bit on the other side, is the fall. So this is God creating—one page. This is man sinning. This is God putting it back together, giving us a picture of how things will be restored, how this earth will come to an end, and what happens when we die. It's this history of redemption and revelation that's laid out for us.
This is a book that became, through what we call canon, recognized as these books that are written by God. When we say written by God, even that can be confusing because we understand—when we get to the book of Romans, for example, we'll say Paul wrote the book of Romans. Well, you said God wrote the book of Romans. Who wrote the book of Romans?
Understanding Scripture's Divine Authorship
Turn to 2 Timothy chapter three. As you turn there, let me talk about translations for a second. Somebody a couple weeks ago mentioned to me—because if you get a Bible that we hand to you, it's the ESV, the English Standard Version. It's the Bible that virtually all of our pastors teach out of. The exception to that would be me—I teach out of the New American Standard. One of the elders came to me and said, "I think you're confusing people because we give them the ESV, then you teach out of the New American Standard. Though they're very similar, there are some differences. So we give somebody a Bible—ESV—then you read the passage from your translation, and they're different, and we could be confusing people." So I probably am going to make, perhaps, a shift to the ESV.
When we talk about translations, let me remind you there are three types of real translations. One is word for word—those would be the best of the translations: ESV, New American Standard. I'd put them both there. Again, probably the ESV, technically, perhaps slightly, moderately, a little bit different. The next are translations that are thought for thought—that would be the NIV. When you get to the NIV, you need to understand you're getting thought for thought. That gets potentially a little bit dangerous. Then there are translations that are, in fact, a paraphrase: the Message, the Living Bible, Phillips. The Message would be the most popular of those. If you want something that is the most reliable, you're going to be in the ESV or the New American Standard.
God-Breathed Scripture
In 2 Timothy chapter three—Bible from Us, page 645—Paul is writing to his protégé Timothy. Paul's at the end of his life and ministry, Timothy at the beginning of it. He says in verse 16, "All Scripture is God-breathed." Peter tells us in 1 Peter 1:21, "No prophecy came by the impulse of man, but by men moved by the Holy Spirit." By prophecy, he doesn't just mean prophetic utterance, but teaching.
When we're talking about who wrote the books, it's not that God dictated these. Even as we read in the original language, in the Greek, we see that Paul's Greek is far more developed, more professional than Peter's. It's not that they dictated what God was saying. It's not that they made a draft and got it to Him and He made corrections and got it back. It's that as they were moving that pen, God was moving them. These are God's thoughts, taken down and given to us by these men.
One of the amazing proofs of the reliability of Scripture is the fulfillment of prophecy. There are some 2,500 prophecies that have been given to us in the Old and New Testament. Two thousand of them were fulfilled just in the birth of Jesus—talking about where He would be born, how He'd be born, things that couldn't possibly be contrived. The Old Testament speaks of His death on a tree, speaking of crucifixion before crucifixion had ever been invented.
Scientific Validation
One day in Priority Living, I had a guest speaker named Dr. Hugh Ross. Some of you know that name now. He was not nearly as popular or familiar then. I met him, and he was indeed a doctor, allergic to eye contact.
and shy in all the most pronounced ways. So I introduced him, he got to the podium, this is exactly how he did this. "Hello, good morning, my name is Dr. Hugh Ross. Since age seven, I've wanted to be an astrophysicist." So right away, he and I are clicking, we're hitting on everything. I was sitting next to Jerry Smith, I said, "What is an astrophysicist?" And he said, "I think the guy invented AstroTurf." So we might not have had this guy figured out.
So he went on and on, and he's really smart. Well, one of the things he left behind is this little brochure, it's titled "Fulfilled Prophecy: Evidence for the Reliability of the Bible," and he took simply 13 prophecies and pointed out how they have been fulfilled perfectly. Here's his last paragraph: "Since these 13 prophecies cover mostly separate and independent events, the probability of chance occurrence of all 13 is about one in 10 to the 138th power. 138 equals the sum of all the exponents of 10 and the probability estimate above. For sake of putting this figure into perspective, the probability can be compared to the statistical chance that the second law of thermodynamics would reverse in a given situation. For example, that a gasoline engine would refrigerate during combustion cycle or that heat would flow from a cold body to a hot body, that chance is one in 10 to the 80th power."
"Stating it simply," which when I read that, I thought, well, this will be good. "Based on these 13 prophecies alone, the Bible record may be said to be vastly more reliable than the second law of thermodynamics." Now, the next sentence made me laugh. "Each reader should feel free to make his own reasonable estimate of the probability of chance fulfillment of the prophecies cited herein."
The Bible's Reliability and Purpose
So here's my point. Now, every time I read this, there's somebody who wants to email me, meet with me, or talk to me about this. I don't want to meet you, I don't want to hear your email, and I don't care. All I'm saying is, this is a smart dude, and those are 13 of the 2,500 prophecies. I'm saying, unless you just want to close your mind, the Bible's the word of God.
God breathed, and now He says it's profitable. See that in the passage? The word means beneficial, productive, sufficient. So He lists four things. It's profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. So here's my easy handle for that. The Bible is profitable for teaching what's right, reproof what's not right, correction how to get right, and training in righteousness how to stay right. In essence, it's an owner's manual written by God to tell you how to get the most out of your life.
The Owner's Manual Illustration
I was doing a men's conference in Tucson, and I'm driving back, and so I stopped to call Susan. Didn't have the cell phones then. Stopped to call Susan, and in our house, in our life, very little drama. I don't like drama, we don't allow it. Susan didn't allow it, even with our girls. We just never had a lot of drama. And so I called Susan, and I said, "How you doing?" She said, "Just not good, very stressed." And I said, "Well, what's the problem?" And she said, "Well, while you've been gone, the hot water heater broke, the garbage disposal broke, and the garage door opener broke."
So then I gave her some words that were designed to give her encouragement and comfort, though I don't think they did. I said, "I'll be home soon." Anybody who knows me knows that isn't going to help anything, because all I'm going to do is say, "Well, how did you break it, why didn't you fix it?" So I got home, and she was back to Susan again, just she was great.
So we sat down, and there were two takeaways from this. One was hers, one was mine. And she said, "Here's what I learned, that the garbage disposal, the hot water heater, and the garage door opener, of the godly and the ungodly alike both break. In other words, life is life." Here's what I learned: then after I paid for these three new things, we were filling out warranty cards and stuff, and here's what I discovered. All three, these are not connected products. Hot water heater, garbage disposal, garage door opener. They have nothing in common other than that I could see this. They all came with an owner's manual, written by the manufacturer himself, telling me how to get a hold of him in case this manual didn't answer all of the questions I had. And that manual told me how to get the maximum efficiency out of the product.
That's when I realized that that's what this book, the Bible, is. It's written by the manufacturer Himself, God, given to us to tell us how to get the maximum efficiency out of life: what's right, what's not right, how to get right, how to stay right. And it comes even with an 800 number, it's called prayer, where He'll send, and I know this could sound demeaning, I don't mean it this way, but His customer representative in that case, it's the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit and God's Word
Most powerful force in your life is going to be when the Spirit of God applies the word of God to the heart and mind of the child of God. That doesn't mean that every question is answered. It means that He's given us answers to every question, either that He thinks we need to have answered or that we can handle the answer and comprehend it.
So it's good for teaching that isn't this action, it's the action or speaks of the content that's involved. It's good for reproof, it carries the idea of correcting or convicting. So somebody may come to you at some point in your life and they may say, "Gosh, you're doing this and this isn't right," and your flinch is going to be, "Who made you God? Who gave you the right? How do you think you're king?" Well, I'm just going, "This is what you're doing and this is what it says," and sometimes it happens on your own. It happens to me all the time. I'll be reading this and go, "Oh my gosh, I'm not the husband I'm supposed to be or the grandfather or father I'm supposed to be or employer, employee," whatever it is I am, I don't even know.
Whatever those things are, I'm not that. All of a sudden, that's what happens—it's conviction, it's reproof. Then it's correction. It's the idea of restoring something to its proper condition.
If I take this stool, and when we came in today, if this stool—and we could have illustrated it in a variety of ways—but if this stool is sitting down and one of those legs were pulled out, and I took that leg and knocked it back in and took that stool and sat it up, that's the Greek word that's used there. It's to take something and put it back in its correct condition. Then for training in righteousness—we think of that idea of training up a child in the way he should go.
How We Know God
So God's special revelation, His word, answers those questions about who He is. When somebody says, "Who is God?" and they'll say, "Well, it's..." and as you're talking and listening to them, like I always say—Rudy, we used to have a dog named Rudy—like you'd talk to Rudy, and the more I'd talk to him, he'd just look at me, and then after a while, he'd glaze over, and then he'd start going like this. Sometimes I know people are talking to me about what they think about God, and I find myself going like that.
You want to go, "Where did you get that?" And they'll go, "Well, gosh, Oprah, Rush, Hannity, I don't know, my grandma." Well, how do we know about God? Here's how we know about God. How do you know who God is and what He's like? Right here. I can know—get that?
General revelation points me to the fact that there's a creator, there's a power, a force, but specific revelation tells me who He is. Then it tells me how to live. It teaches me that body of truth. Who is God, who am I? How did I get here, where am I going? What's the meaning of life? It tells me about teaching and reproof and correction and training and righteousness. It tells me what's right, what's not right, how to get right, and how to stay right.
God's Higher Thoughts Made Understandable
It takes those thoughts and minds of God and reduces them, brings them down to something that I can understand. Some mysteries are now revealed. Others are kept from us. Others are beyond perhaps our even comprehension. Isaiah 55, verse eight and nine: "My thoughts are higher than your thoughts and My ways higher than your ways."
What the Bible gives us is that those lofty thoughts of God—some of those mysteries and His secrets—are revealed. Sometimes we take truth and sometimes it's revealed, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes we look like maybe where Aaron and Brittany are this morning and look at it and go, "I don't know that I'm ever gonna have this in a box or figure it out, but what I know trumps what I feel."
The Human Maze Illustration
Years ago, we had this super August vacation and part of it, we were at Knott's Berry Farm. So we're at Knott's Berry Farm and there was this one—it wasn't even a ride, it was over in one sense, it went into the park and it was a human maze. People would get in it and walk around and walk into each other. I personally am smart enough to not get in something like that.
So I'm up in the observatory and I'm watching and there's this one kid and he's becoming very, very frustrated. It was like he was in this area and he would just turn and bump into this and then turn and bump into this and then he started to cry. Well, I didn't realize it at the time, but it was his mother who was standing next to me.
His mother said to him all of a sudden, "Johnny, Johnny, Johnny"—must have been from Tucson. She said, "Go to your left." "Which way is left?" "Go this way. Go here, now go over there. Now make another right, make a left, go straight ahead." She was able to do in just a matter of seconds what he was incapable of doing.
Now, it's not a perfect analogy, but it's a little bit of this. You're in life just bumping into wall after wall and God comes along with His word and says, "Here, let me just straighten this out for you a little bit." See, that's what we begin to understand when we look around, is that God has given us this word for our good, for His glory.
The Foundation for Life
Revelation is God speaking to us how? General revelation through His creation, specific revelation through His word. If I want to know God, I want to know who I am, and I want to understand life and the world around me, here's where I'm gonna find it—I'm gonna find it in this book.
We know something's desperately wrong with us, that's called sin, and we know there's a solution that God gives us, and that's Jesus. Now, in the course of our 13 weeks, we'll talk about that, but every week, even before we get to an explanation of that, we'll talk about and realize that that means the crucifixion and redemption, and that's communion for us.
This time He's gonna come and lead us in communion, let me pray as he comes. Father, for this amazing truth in our life, will You open our eyes to see this reality? Thank You for Your word that is clear and real and specific. God, thank You for revelation that shows the heart of man and who we are, what we're like, what You're like. God, we pray that You would take this time and touch our hearts, we ask it of You, in Christ's name, amen.