Though man's senses are marvelous, they are incapable of reaching beyond the natural world.
Man is sensorially incapable of comprehending, identifying, or understanding the supernatural. It has to be revealed to him. So revelation is the act by which God makes Himself known. And if he doesn't do that, then he is not known, because man cannot know it. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.
Maybe you've made an offer on a new car and sat down with a salesman to close the deal, only to find that the features you thought were standard equipment are really high-priced extras. Well, you can rejoice that when God saves you, He also gives you everything you need to grow spiritually, including the encouragement and correction and daily guidance of His Word, the Bible, with no add-ons, no extras, no left-out options. See why you can trust the Bible's instructions for every circumstance as John MacArthur continues his study called Is the Bible Reliable? Now here's John with today's lesson.
Here's the point of this whole series. This is for you that love the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to strengthen your faith. I want you to see what a marvelous book it is. And if you can get more confidence in the Bible and you can pour more of your life into the Bible, you're going to be a richer Christian for it, is that right? I want you to believe it with your whole heart.
Like Spurgeon said, I want your blood to be bibbling. The Bible says that God, by His grace, has dealt in a very special way with Christians, and He's removed the barriers. He's removed the blindness. You know, 2 Corinthians 4 says, the God of this world has blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto them. They're blind, they're ignorant, they're dead.
There's no way they're going to understand it. When God gives spiritual life, then the apprehension of the Word of God comes to us. You remember what Jesus said?
I think it's beautifully illustrated in John 10. He said, My sheep hear My voice. His sheep hear His voice. You know why you hear His voice? In the Word of God, you're a sheep.
Remember the verse in Galatians 3, I think it's verse 26, where He says, For you are all children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. Listen, I'm a child of God and I know when My Father's talking. I pick up this Bible and I say, yep, that's Him. He's talking and I'm hearing.
If I don't know Him, I don't know if it's Him talking. So only when the Holy Spirit does a regenerating work, opens the mind, tears down the scales of blindness, gives life where there's death, plants the marvelous understanding of the revelation of God, will we ever understand. You say, Well, John, are you telling me that all those traditional proofs have no purpose?
Yes, they have a wonderful purpose. But I don't think their primary purpose is to convince unbelievers. The only way an unbeliever is ever going to get saved is when the Spirit of God does a miracle in his heart. And I'll tell you something else, all the proof in the world, if the Holy Spirit's already doing the work, really isn't that necessary. So this is to undergird the faith of Christians. Now the Spirit may use it in the life of an unbeliever to bring that final convincing, I pray that He does.
Let's do it this way. Instead of saying prophecy has been fulfilled, the Bible is scientifically accurate, miracles occurred, the Bible produces radical and revolutionary changes in lives, therefore it is the Word of God. Let's reverse that whole thing and let's say this, the Bible is the Word of God. We believe that, therefore prophecy has been fulfilled, miracles have been done, scientific facts have been given that are accurate, lives have been transformed, prophecy has been fulfilled, etc. Instead of saying these things are true, therefore the Bible is the Word of God, let's say the Bible is the Word of God, therefore these things are true.
These aren't proofs, friends, these are products. Thus we do not grant the non-Christian the right to sit in judgment on God's Word as to whether or not it meets his approval. He is a creature and as a creature he is subject to the Word of his Creator, he is to believe it, he is to obey it, he is never to judge it. So in a sense our study is for Christians. You know, the unbeliever, he can't evaluate. You know what I always think of when I think of this?
I think of the life of Jesus. Is there any way conceivable to explain away the fact that a population of Jewish people totally and absolutely rejected their own Messiah when he did for a period of three years miracle after miracle after miracle after miracle incessantly in the face of all of them. When it was all said and done, they screamed for his blood and executed him. Now you talk about proof. Jesus Himself said, if it isn't the words that I've said that should convince you, it's the deeds that I've done. But Jesus knew that wasn't convincing to them. Most of the miracles that Jesus did throughout His entire ministry were the convincing of the disciples, not the world. Sometimes they came and said, hey, Jesus, do a trick.
Do a trick. And Jesus said in John 6, yeah, you want a trick so you can get some food. Not so you can be convinced who I am. And sometimes when they came and said, show us a sign, He said, I'm not giving any more signs to this evil, adulterous generation. It's for you that I'm going to go through this series because I want you to really fall in love with the book and I want you to have absolute confidence that every word here is true and when somebody nails you to the wall and says, why do you believe the Bible, I want you to be able to say, this is why I believe the Bible, not so much for His sake but for your sake so you're secure in your faith.
So this is for us. I just want to introduce a thought to you. We have to start somewhere. Now if we're going to defend the Bible, here's what we're going to start with. We're going to start with the concept of revelation because revelation is the heart of everything. Christianity claims to be a revealed truth.
Here's the difference. A philosophy is something a man sits down and cranks out. A revelation is something that's revealed from God. We claim to be a revealed religion. You know, here we are in our little world, trapped on earth, bounded by time and space, sensing somewhere in the deepest part of our being that somewhere out there there's some kind of power called God.
But we haven't got any way to attain the knowledge of Him. Satan's told us if we stir up certain kind of religions, we'll reach God. So man has invented religion upon religion upon religion and attempted to crawl out of his little box and find God and it doesn't work. Christianity says that God invaded the world and revealed Himself. This is a revealed religion. God Himself removed the obstacles to understanding and disclosed who He was.
The word reveal apokalupto means to unveil something previously hidden. That's what Christianity is. You know folks that until this book was put together, none of this stuff was known. The revelation of God in its fullness was unknown and it was given progressively, little by little, more and more until it was finally completed at the end of the New Testament, the totality the revelation of God was given. Christianity is the unveiling of God.
Look with me for just a minute and you can stay there for a second because we're going to consider it. Hebrews 1 in the first two verses gives us probably as good a sum up on the biblical doctrine of revelation as there is anywhere in the Bible. Hebrews 1, 1 and 2, God who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke in time past unto the fathers by the prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son whom He hath appointed heir of all things by whom also He made the world. Now notice, God who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke in time past unto the fathers by the prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.
Now that is a majestic statement. That defines for us the Bible. It is God speaking. It is God's disclosure of Himself.
It is God's revelation. Though man's senses are marvelous, they are incapable of reaching beyond the natural world. Man is sensorially incapable of comprehending, identifying or understanding the supernatural. It has to be revealed to him. We don't expect the bug in the bottle to understand the boy that put it there. Nor can we expect man in his natural state to comprehend God.
It can't be done. So revelation is the act by which God makes Himself known and if He doesn't do that, then He is not known because man cannot know Him. Now as you look at the glorious truth of revelation, I want to consider five aspects. Five aspects of revelation, the revealer, the revelation, the reason, the result and the response.
First of all, the revealer. Who is this God who is revealing Himself? Who is this God who in Hebrews 1 speaks? Now the term, notice that Hebrews 1, 1, God who at sundry times and in diverse manners spoke. God spoke. Who is this God? Notice that it says He spoke at sundry times and in diverse manners, palumeros and palutropos.
What does it mean? It means that in many portions that is in different books and in many manners through visions, types, symbols, parables, prophecies, everything, God through many different books and through many different ways of communication spoke. But He always speaks. Francis Schaeffer is right when he says, He is there and He is not silent. God speaks. Aren't you glad He speaks? Because if He doesn't speak, we don't know Him.
If we don't know Him, we're lost. But He speaks. Do you realize that it is the character of God to speak?
It is His nature to speak. Just like you are made to speak, you're given a mouth to speak, God in the essence of His nature communicates. For example, Genesis chapter 1 says He spoke and out of nothing the universe was born. In fact, when Jesus came in the world, it is said of Him that the Word was made flesh. You know, the name for God was the Word. The Jew understood God as a speaking God. Thus saith the Lord, he heard all of his life.
God speaks and the best title that John could come up with for the revelation of God in the flesh was the living Word. God speaks. People, I'm so glad God speaks and we don't have to guess.
Right here, God has spoken. This is the claim the Bible makes for itself. You realize that Deuteronomy chapter 4 at the Mount Sinai, God even let the children of Israel hear His voice?
They didn't know what was going on, but they heard a loud, thunderous voice. Way back in the early days when Israel began, God spoke...spoke to the prophets. Prior to that even to Abraham He spoke. God speaks. The psalmist said this, forever, O Jehovah, Thy word is settled in heaven. Jesus said, heaven and earth shall pass away but my...what?...words shall never pass away. Peter said, the Word of the Lord abides forever, 1 Peter 1.25. Listen, friends, our God is not silent, He speaks. He's not like the dumb idols of 1 Corinthians 12 to. Let me show you an interesting passage on this, Isaiah 46. And I know I've gone by a lot of things rapidly and we'll cover them again as we go through the series.
This is interesting. Here's the difference between God and all the systems of religion, the idols. He says in verse 5, to whom will you liken me and make me equal and compare me that we may be alike? You're going to have gods like me? They lavish gold out of the bag and they weigh silver in the balance and they hire a goldsmith and he makes a god.
Take all the little gold and silver and they make a god, a nice little god made by the goldsmith. And you know what they do? They fall down.
Yes, they worship the god. They bear it on their shoulders. They carry it. They set it in its place. It stands. From its place shall it not move. That's a god who's got a problem. It's not omnipresent.
Now watch this. Yea, one shall cry unto it, yet can it not answer. God is the only God who speaks. He's the only God. It is God's nature to express Himself.
Remember on Mount Carmel, 1 Kings 18? Elijah went up and said, all right, let's see who's God. We'll find out who's God.
Let's find out who speaks. You call on Baal, I'll call on God. Whoever answers, that's God. And man, they called on Baal for a long time. And the prophet kept saying, well, maybe he's asleep.
Oh, I think he's away on a vacation. And then Elijah said, God, would you like to say something? And God said a lot.
Sent fire from heaven, consumed not only the sacrifice but the rocks and the water. And the people said, the Lord He is God. The Lord He is God. God speaks. It is God's nature to express Himself.
Let me add this. When God is silent, it is judgmental. When God is silent, it is judgmental. When Saul rejected the Lord in repeated disobedience over and over and over, 1 Samuel 28 verse 6 says, He inquired of Jehovah and Jehovah answered him not. In regard to Israel, God said to the dear weeping prophet Jeremiah, He said, Pray not for this people, I will not hear their cry, Jeremiah 14, 11 and 12.
Proverbs chapter 1 verse 23, you ever read this? Turn you at My reproof. God says, Behold, I'll pour out My Spirit unto you, I'll make known My words unto you. God says, If you turn and listen, you can hear Me.
I'll talk to you. Because I've called and you refused, I've stretched out My hand and no man regards. You would have said it not all My counsel and would have none of My reproof. Then the table turns, I will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear comes. When your fear comes as desolation and your destruction comes like a whirlwind, when distress and anguish come upon you, then shall they call upon Me and I will not answer.
They will seek Me early and they will not find Me. God's silence is judgmental. But God has spoken and He's spoken in His Word. God is a God who speaks. It's abnormal for God to be silent.
It only occurs in judgment. It's His nature to speak. You say, Well, what's this revealer who speaks like?
Let me just give you some thoughts and we'll just cover these and be done. He's personal. Did you know that God's personal? He calls Himself I and He calls us you.
He's personal. You know what He said to Moses? He said, Hey Moses, you know what My name is? My name is I Am that I Am. That's personality. My name is I Am that I Am. What a name and that was a name that was like all other God-given names like Abraham and Israel and Jesus.
It had significance. The name I Am stands for a free, purposeful, self-sufficient personality. I Am that I Am. Not just I Am, but I Am what I want to be.
Free, purposeful, sovereign, self-sufficient personality. God's not a floating fog. God's not an it. He's not an aimless blind force, not a cosmic energy. God is an almighty, self-existent, self-determining person with mind and will. He's a person. All you have to do is read the Bible and you find out that God is a person.
He has all of the attributes of personality. You know, you'd never know that unless you had a Bible to know it. You say, What about the creation? Can't you see God in the creation? Sure, but what you see in the creation you see is not personality.
What you see in the creation is power and deity. But personality comes in the revelation of the Word of God. And if you read through the Bible long enough, you're going to find out that not only is God personal, but He's tri-personal, right? I mean, you know, it starts out when it says that God created everything, He uses the word Elohim and any time you see an I Am ending on the end of a Hebrew word, it has to do with plurality.
And then you have a little conversation in heaven going like this, The Lord said unto my Lord. Even in the Old Testament, God is a plurality, He's tri-personal, He's a personality. You know what the New Testament name for God is? You ever know what the New Testament name for God is? Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's the New Testament name for God. It's right there in Matthew 28, 19.
He's personal. Secondly, we find that the revealer is moral. He reveals Himself as one supremely concerned about right and wrong. It's a high priority with God. Thinking of Exodus 34, an interesting passage beginning in verse 6, and the Lord passed by before Him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God...watch...merciful, gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. Now watch this, and who will by no means clear the guilty. He just said He was merciful and forgiving.
What is that supposed to mean? It means that God is a just God and He will not just throw aside guilty people and say, well, it's all right, I'll let you off the hook. He'll show mercy, but believe me, somebody will pay the penalty for the sin.
And if you know anything about the gospel, you know that somebody was Jesus Christ. God's a moral God. He must punish sin as well as forgive. Gracious and merciful and yet He's moral.
He will by no means clear the guilty. He's personal. He's moral. I'll tell you something else about this God. He is the source and the stay and the end of all creation. It says in Romans 11, 36, of Him and through Him and unto Him are all things. Turn with me for just a minute and we'll just look at this passage and be done.
Acts 17, Acts 17, 22, then Paul stood in the midst of Mars Hill and said, you men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you're very religious, which is a good way to start, kind of winning him over a little bit. As I passed by and behold your devotions, I found an altar with the inscription to the unknown God, whom therefore you ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you. I notice you've got an unknown God around here like you have in your medium.
I know Him very well. And then he describes the unknown God. First of all, he says He's the source of everything, verse 24, God who made the world and all things in it. Hmm, source of everything, who made the world and all things in it.
Verse 26, hath made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the earth and determine the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation, not only geographically but in terms of ages. God is the source of everything. God is the stay of everything. He upholds it, verse 25, neither is He worshiped with men's hands as though He needed anything seeing He giveth to all life and breath and all things.
Here's His sustaining power. Verse 28 puts it this way, in Him we live and move and have our being. Here's God not only as the source but as the stay. He is the one in whom we live and move and have our being. God is the end of all things, verse 27, that they should seek the Lord if perhaps they might feel after Him and find Him though He's not far from every one of us. He is the end of all. Man's destiny is to know Him. So God is personal, moral, He is the source, He is the stay and He is the end of all.
Let me add this forethought. He's available. Aren't you glad about that? Verse 27, that they should seek the Lord if perhaps they might feel after Him and find Him though He's not far from every one of us. I'm telling you, folks, it's a glad thought to know that God is available. He's infinitely great according to verse 24. He doesn't dwell in temples made with hands. And He doesn't need a thing. He doesn't need anything, verse 25. Neither is worshiped with men's hands as though He needed anything. He's self-sufficient but He's also available.
Praise God for that. So we meet the revealer. Who is this God who speaks? He's personal, He's moral, He's the source and the stay and the end of all things and He's available to you. And you see, friend, that's the reason that He wrote this because He wanted you to know Him. The fact that He's personal indicates that He wants to have fellowship with you. The fact that He's moral indicates that He wants to deal with you righteously. The fact that He's the source and the stay and the end of all creation means that your life and its destiny is dependent upon your relationship to Him.
The fact that He's available is the concluding, exciting concept that you can come into a full relationship with Him. That's why He revealed Himself in order to be all to you that you needed a God to be. I hope you can meet the revealer.
The only place you'll ever meet Him is in the pages of His revelation and we'll talk about that next time. Let's pray. Father, we thank You that we've had a good time of fellowship. I feel, Lord, like we really didn't cover all the things that we had in our heart to cover, but just trust Your Spirit. We want to have confidence in the Word. We want the study of the doctrine of the Word of God to build us up and strengthen us and encourage us in the faith. And we do, even as Peter said, want to be able to give to every man an answer for the reason of the hope that is within us with meekness and fear.
We want to know what we believe, but we also want to know why we believe it. We want to have confidence in Your Word. So bless the time that we'll spend together in the weeks to come studying this. Thank you, God, for being a revealing God. Thank you for not hiding yourself. Thank you for revealing that you're personal, that you care about us as individuals, that you're moral, that you're just at the same time, you're gracious and forgiving and merciful, that you're the source and the stay and the end of all things. That is that our entire life and all of its destiny is wrapped up in the knowledge of you.
Thank you that you're available. Thank you for the joy and the privilege of sharing together, giving us all that you've given us in Christ. Thank you for being the revealer you are. We'll pray in Jesus' blessed name. Amen.
That's John MacArthur. Besides teaching on this daily radio broadcast, John is a pastor, author, chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary in the Los Angeles area. And today's lesson is from his current study here on Grace to You titled, Is the Bible Reliable? Well, when you think about the attacks on the Bible's reliability, they come from multiple directions, from the academic world and from psychology, from cults, from liberal churches. As far as meeting those attacks is concerned, John, you said yesterday that the Bible's best defense is the Bible itself.
So expound on that. The Bible, of course, is its own best defense. And that's why God revealed himself in the Bible when it came to God deciding how to reveal himself. Yes, he put his glory on display in creation. The heavens declare the glory of God.
From him it shows his handiwork. And in Romans 1, the creation declares the glory of God. But as far as the specifics of a relationship with God, the moral law, sin, salvation, redemption, and the promise of eternal life in heaven, all of those things are laid out in Scripture. In other words, God chose to reveal himself on the pages of a book, one book with 66 component books. And that means that God's best effort toward bringing the truth, he designed to be a Bible.
And then that's where you need to go to know the truth. Now, one thing about that, you have to have the right translation of the Bible, right? It's originally written in Hebrew and Greek and gets translated through all the languages of the world throughout history. And that allows me to mention to you that the Legacy Standard Bible edition, which is the latest and best English translation, is now going to be part of the MacArthur Study Bible family. For decades, I've taught from the New American Standard version of Scripture, and it's an excellent text, excellent text.
And it's been my favorite through the years. The Legacy Standard Bible builds on that heritage and refines that to even be more precise in handling the Old and New Testament. Some of the refinements are, for example, consistent rendering of God's name in the Old Testament, Yahweh, consistent translation of doulos, the word slave in the New Testament, and gender language that is precisely what is found in the original texts, and many more. When you combine the Legacy Standard Bible with the 25,000 footnotes of the MacArthur Study Bible, you have an all-in-one study tool like no other resource. And here's some insider news for you. My monthly letter in October will include an offer for a free hardbound copy of the brand new Legacy Standard Version of the MacArthur Study Bible. If you currently do not receive the monthly newsletter, let me encourage you to contact us by no later than Friday, September 13, and ask to receive my October letter with the offer for the MacArthur Study Bible in the Legacy Standard Version. Thanks, John, and friend, to repeat those important details, the deadline to request John's October letter is Friday, September 13, so be sure to get in touch with us right away so we can process your request in time.
You can call us at 800-55-GRACE. You can reach us weekdays from 730 to 4 o'clock Pacific Time, or email us anytime at letters at gty.org. However you reach us, be sure you do it before Friday, September 13, and ask to start receiving John's monthly letter if you don't already get it. That way you will receive John's October letter with its accompanying offer for a free MacArthur Study Bible in the Legacy Standard Version. Again, make your request by calling 800-55-GRACE or send an email to letters at gty.org.
And if you're being encouraged by John's verse-by-verse Bible teaching, thanks for letting us know. Your letters are a great encouragement to John and our staff. You can mail a letter to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Or even quicker, send us an email address to letters at gty.org.
Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace to You television this Sunday on DirecTV, Channel 378. And be here tomorrow to find out what sets the Bible apart from, say, the Koran or the Book of Mormon. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
