We can amass all the prophetic evidences, scientific evidence, miraculous evidence, historical, archeological evidence, the evidence of transformed lives and in the end, while certainly all of those are reasonable and a true representation of Scripture, they cannot take the scales off the blind eyes, they cannot give life to the dead soul. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Consider these interesting nuggets from history. The printing press that made Voltaire's godless philosophy available to the world in the 18th century later printed the Word of God. And this one about the philosopher David Hume, who was highly critical of Christianity for most of his life, 20 years after Hume died, the Bible Society of Edinburgh held its charter meeting in the very room where he died. Some vivid and ironic illustrations of how God's Word has triumphed over human wisdom time and time again, and yet most people reject the Bible.
The question is why? Why are unbelievers indifferent, if not hostile, to God's truth? Well, John MacArthur has five specific reasons to show you today. It's part of his helpful study called Making a Case for the Bible. So open your Bible to 1 Corinthians 1 as John begins today's lesson. It was years ago in my life that I was asked to write a little book and the original title of that little book was Focus on Fact.
You've probably never seen it, it didn't last very long. It came out in another edition with another title a couple of years later and that title was Why I Trust the Bible. And as I was preparing to write that book about why I trust the Bible, which is really what the first one was about as well, I had to answer the question, why did I trust the Bible? What was it about the truth of Scripture that made it believable to me? Was I smarter than everybody else? Had I been presented a more powerful set of evidences about Scripture?
And certainly such can be presented. Why did I have such immense confidence in the Bible? I can remember in my college days when very little appealed to me other than an athletic event, when I found my greatest joy on a football field that even then I had complete confidence in the Word of God. I actually couldn't wait to get to seminary and when I decided that I would give up an athletic career and opportunity on a professional level to go off to seminary, some of my athletes, athletic friends and coaches couldn't understand the reason. And it really wasn't that I had a drive to preach or a drive to teach, I had this compelling longing to dig into the Word of God and understand what it meant because I was unequivocally committed to its truthfulness.
Where did that come from? Why was I so convinced of the truth of Scripture? I hadn't studied apologetics or defenses of Scripture.
I hadn't read a lot of that. There was just in my heart a complete commitment to the Word of God. And when I sat down to think about why I trusted the Bible, I looked at some passages of Scripture that came into play. I remembered that Jesus had said to Peter in Matthew 16, "'Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but My Father who is in heaven.'" And that the reason that Peter knew that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God, was because of divine disclosure, divine revelation. And then I looked at 1 Corinthians chapter 12 and verse 3 which says, "'No man can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Spirit of God.'" It is reasonable to me to say that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
It is reasonable to me to say Jesus is Lord, but no one can say that as reasonable as it now appears to me to be unless the Father discloses it and the Spirit reveals it. I was also drawn to John chapter 6 where Jesus was speaking and many of His disciples it says, went away. And He said to those that stayed, "'Will you also go away?' And out of the mouth of Peter on behalf of the rest came these words, "'To whom shall we go? You and you alone have the words of eternal life.'"
Another massive affirmation that what the Lord Jesus Christ says, what God says is true. It had been again, Jesus says, given Him of the Father. Jesus even says in that passage, "'Have not I chosen you?'" And then I was reminded, and I might ask you to look at this passage of Romans chapter 8. In very clear terms, we read this in verse 5, "'For those who are according to the flesh,'" that is, apart from God, apart from spiritual life, spiritually dead, blind, bankrupt, "'those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.'"
You have two mutually exclusive dimensions. The mind set on the flesh, verse 6, is death. The mind set on the Spirit is life and peace. Verse 7, the mind set on the flesh is hostile toward God. And then this, "'It does not subject itself to the Law of God for it is not even able to do so.'" And those who are in the flesh cannot please God. If you're in the flesh, you can't please God. It would please God if you believed the Bible. In fact, that would be at the top of God's list of things that please Him. It would please God if you believed the gospel. That would also be on the top of the list of things that would please Him. It would please God if you affirmed the deity and the Savior-hood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That would please God. Those three things would be at the top of God's list of things that please Him. And the fact of the matter is, if you are in the flesh, you cannot please God.
You can't please Him at the lowest level, let alone at the pinnacle. So how is it then that I came to have such confidence in the Scripture? I was reminded again of Ephesians chapter 4, I say therefore and affirm together with the Lord that you walk no longer just as the Gentiles also walk in the emptiness of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them because of the hardness of their heart.
Now that litany of descriptions is intended to give you the idea that this is an utterly inescapable spot for the unregenerate, apart from divine intervention. And so I concluded that by the normal means of human insight and human understanding. I could not have come to this confidence in Scripture, that the only way I could come to this confidence in Scripture is because God had given it to me as a gift. Our confidence in the Word of God comes from the Spirit of God.
It is a component of the sovereign gift of regeneration. Traditional approaches have been to try to prove the Bible to unregenerate people by amassing all kinds of evidences that they can process through their fallen intellects in the futility of their mental function and the ignorance that is in them and the darkness of their mind and the hardness of their heart and the callousness and sensuality of their soul. We can amass all the prophetic evidences, scientific evidence, miraculous evidence, historical, archeological evidence, the evidence of transformed lives. And in the end, while certainly all of those are reasonable and a true representation of Scripture, they cannot take the scales off the blind eyes, they cannot give life to the dead soul. The Scripture tells us how this works in one of the great texts in the Scripture. Open your Bible to 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and we'll touch lightly on these truths while maintaining the flow of thought and the main point. The theme of the section starting in chapter 1 and verse 18 and running to the end of chapter 2 is divine wisdom...divine wisdom. The word wise or wisdom appears twenty times or so here, contrasted with foolishness which appears about a half a dozen times. This is about divine wisdom. And the whole section explains why people reject the wisdom of God and why other people accept the wisdom of God, why people reject the Scripture, the gospel, the cross, and other people accept the Scripture, the gospel, and the cross. In fact, there are some phrases here, the wisdom of God, the word of the cross, and even the testimony of God. But whether you're talking about the wisdom of God, the word of the cross, or the testimony of God, you're talking about the divine revelation which is inscripturated. This is the theme. Now the simple way to break this up is to break it up into two sections which overlap and recycle and restate things.
But nonetheless, two sections are somewhat discernible. Section number one, why non-Christians reject the Bible. Section number two, why Christians accept the Bible.
Why non-Christians reject the Bible and why Christians accept the Bible, and I will tell you at the outset, nothing is said about evidences. Nothing is said about human reason. Nothing is said about how to manipulate people's will or how to move their emotions. This is not about evidences. This is not about reason. This is not about emotion.
This is about condition. This is about the condition of a non-Christian and the condition of a Christian. Let's look, first of all, at why non-Christians do not believe the Bible.
And I'll give you five reasons which are laid out for us in the opening section. First of all, the message is unreasonable. That's the first cause for them to disbelieve.
It is unreasonable. Verse 18, the word of the cross, or the testimony of God, or the word of God's wisdom, that is to say the revelation of God in Scripture rated, is to those who are perishing, that is their condition, foolishness. It is foolishness. In a somewhat sarcastic way, that idea is repeated in verse 21, God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message. Verse 23 says to the Gentiles, it is foolishness. And then in another sarcastic way in verse 25, the foolishness of God is actually wiser than men. And so, clearly there is this idea that the revelation of God in Scripture is foolish.
It is...the word is moron, moronic, stupid, pointless, unsuitable to human reason. They treat the Word of God with contempt and disdain. And I won't go into all the details about that, but a crucified God was ridiculous to the Gentiles and equally if not more ridiculous to the Jews. Conversation by faith in a crucified God was even more ridiculous.
The whole thing was frankly unreasonable. Secondly, non-Christians do not believe the Bible, not only because the message is unreasonable, but because the reality is unattainable. You heard people say, I knew that Jesus died but I couldn't connect why or how that had anything to do with my life. Or you heard someone say, I grew up in the church and I had all these disconnected stories in my mind and I wasn't sure how it all came together.
And that's essentially the idea here. It just doesn't make sense to those who are perishing. Verse 19, it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside. Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe?
Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, that is to say God made it this way, the world through its wisdom did not come to know God. In the Fall, God cast the human race into a condition in which it is impossible by means of human wisdom to come to know God.
You can't get there on your own. And God designed it that way. I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, He says. I will destroy the cleverness of the clever. I will turn the wisdom of this world in the direction of folly, I will because it pleases Me cause that no man, no matter how worldly wise, can through that worldly wisdom come to know Me.
In verse 19 he's quoting from Isaiah 29, 14, from the Septuagint, the Greek edition of that. Isaiah had said at that time, Isaiah 29, that when Sennacherib was threatening Judah, threatening to attack and pillage and plunder Judah, Isaiah said, deliverance will come from God. But it will not come by the wisdom of the leaders. It will not come by the wisdom of the sages, their cunning, secretive treachery that was being laid against Judah would perish not by human ingenuity, but because of the power of God.
God would step in and deliver His people. The wisdom of the wise couldn't save them. The cleverness of the clever couldn't do it.
Only God could do it. And as if to say, so where is the wise man when you need him? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?
Line them all up. Line the literate, the elite, the intellectuals, the philosophers. And by the way, verse 20 alludes both to Isaiah 19, 12 and Isaiah 33, 18 and the supposed wise counselors of Egypt who were turned into absolute fools in the 19th chapter of Isaiah. And then the scribes of the Assyrians who were all ready to record the record of the spoils they were going to get when they came in and all of a sudden they all looked like fools because God intervened.
Where are the disputers, the debaters, the suzetates, the philosophy debaters? Line them all up and it pleases God that by means of all their intellects and all their wisdom and all their erudition, they cannot come to know Him. In the wisdom of God, God made it impossible for men and women to come to know Him on their own.
You cannot get there from here unaided. You cannot get to confidence in the Word of God, belief in the message or word of the cross, the word of divine testimony. So, people don't believe because it is foolish, unreasonable, because it is unattainable.
Thirdly, because it is frankly unbelievable, or I guess you could say ridiculous. Verse 22, they...the Jews seek for signs, the Greeks for wisdom. The Jews were looking for signs. You say, wait a minute, Jesus gave them signs and signs and signs and signs. Yeah, but they wanted the big sign, knock off the Romans, set up the Kingdom, reign and fulfillment of the Abrahamic and Davidic Covenant. When He started talking about His death He went to the cross, it was over. Crucifixion came to the Lord Jesus because He condemned their hypocritical religion, because He didn't display His power against the Romans and fulfill their own messianic scheme. And then even on the cross, they said, why don't you come down off the cross? Maybe there was a last hope that He would do the sign that they were looking for. But the crucifixion of God, the crucifixion of the Messiah by the Romans?
Unthinkable. On the other hand, the Greeks, they sought wisdom. And what does that mean? They sought intricate, complicated, profound, complex philosophies with fancy words and esoteric concepts.
Number four, its people are unremarkable...its people are unremarkable. The Jews wanted a sign, the Greeks wanted wisdom. Paul preached Christ crucified, the Jews stumbled over it, the Gentiles said it was foolish.
Verse 26 doesn't help. Consider your calling, brethren, there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. Bottom line here is we're not too impressive. They weren't then and we aren't now. The majority of believers have always been unremarkable. They have always been unimpressive to the world, especially the world of elite minds who treat us with contempt. We're not the smartest and we're not the noblest. In fact, verse 27, God has chosen the foolish to shame the wise. He has chosen the weak to shame the strong. He has chosen the base and the despised. And He has chosen the things that are not.
It just keeps getting lower and lower and lower. He chose not the wise, He chose not the noble, not wise, not the intellectual elite, not the mighty, not the great, the influential, the movers, the shakers, the powerful, not the noble. It's actually a Greek word that means well-born, high-born, socially ranked. But He's chosen foolish, weak, base, agenase, the no-births, the nobodies, the no-names, the jondos, the insignificant, and the despised.
And then it goes down even lower than that. The things that are not, the present participle of ami, the non-existent ones, He's chosen. That, by the way, that last statement that Paul uses, the things that are not in verse 28 is the most contemptible expression in the Greek language to demean another person, to treat them as if they did not even exist. So they don't believe. The fact that we are such an unremarkable lot adds to their resistance. And then a fifth, not only are the people of this book unremarkable, but the preachers are unfashionable.
And I could have thought of a lot of words for that, unfashionable. Come in to chapter 2, when I came to you, brethren, I didn't come with superiority of speech or of wisdom. And that was a problem because they loved this esoteric kind of fancy, complicated, maze-like teaching that brought in all kinds of complexity and profundity and titillated their minds. I didn't come with superiority of speech, no tricks of wisdom. I'm determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. There again is this repulsive, unbelievable, simplistic message. Furthermore, He didn't help His cause any by His own persona. You remember the Corinthians said about Him, His person was frankly contemptible and His speech was unimpressive.
He was with you in weakness, fear, much trembling. My message, my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power. So you have a pretty...a pretty comprehensive look at why people don't believe. You start with the fact that they can't, that they don't have the capability, that they're void of the life of God.
They can't escape the natural. They can't escape being in the flesh and the one who is in the flesh minds only the things of the flesh and he cannot know the things of the Spirit. They are unknowable to him. And you add the fact that all of these give reason to reject. And you understand something of the dilemma of the unregenerate.
The message itself was offensive, unreasonable, unbelievable, incomprehensible. The people were the lowly and the preachers were the weak and the unimpressive and the fearful and the trembling. And you add the fallen condition, natural darkness, satanic blinding and divine judgment and non-believers cannot on their own believe the truth. So the search for God and the search for Christ and the search for the truth and the search to discern whether the Bible is really true and what it's saying cannot begin and end with human reason. That's why every time you see one of these deals on television, the search for the real Jesus, the search for the truth, it always ends up in error.
Fallen mind can't get there on its own. That's why non-Christians don't believe the Bible is God's word, but they don't always trust it as they should. Maybe they have heard arguments from science, perhaps, that have them wondering whether the Bible is accurate and unchanging and sufficient.
In fact, maybe you have those doubts from time to time. To help you with that, we want to send you a free booklet by John called God's Sufficient Word. If you're unclear about what the Bible says about miracles, prophecy and science, you will benefit from this booklet.
It answers some of the most common questions people have about the Bible's reliability, and it can help you put your doubts to rest. So let me encourage you to contact us and ask for a free copy of God's Sufficient Word. It's available for a limited time, so request your booklet today. You can ask for God's Sufficient Word online at gty.org, or you can call us at 855-GRACE.
Again, this booklet is our gift to you. Ask for it by name, God's Sufficient Word. When you call us at 855-GRACE or go to our website, gty.org. And thanks for remembering to pray for us and for encouraging your friends to listen and for letting us know how we've helped you better understand and apply God's Word.
If Grace To You has benefited you spiritually, would you let us know? Just write a note and mail it to us at GraceToYou, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Or you can send an email to letters at gty.org. That's our email address one more time, letters at gty.org. And thanks for remembering to mention this station's call letters whenever you get in touch. Now, for John MacArthur and our entire staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace To You Television this Sunday on DIRECTV Channel 378, and then be here next week as John shows you some of the strongest arguments for the divine inspiration of Scripture. What you hear just might surprise you, so tune in for our next 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Monday's Grace To You.
