Revelation is God's free, voluntary act of love in disclosing Himself to men. It is God's communication.
This is God's disclosure of Himself that reveals information which is otherwise unknowable. asked you to prove the Bible comes from God, what would you say? For answers to those compelling questions, I urge you to stay here as John MacArthur considers the question, Is the Bible Reliable? That's the title of John's study today, and as John will show you, there are undeniable reasons to believe that the Bible is what it claims to be, the very Word of God, and the only guide for this life and for eternal life.
So follow along now, and here's John. 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 the 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 3 times 9 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 outrightly as the revelatory Word of God.
It is also being denied in a more subtle way. Neo-orthodoxy 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 it its revelatory content. Others are flatly denying it, saying it is simply a 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 it's 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. 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, and 2, just as a quick review, we'll see this in its perspective. The revealer, who is the Bible revealing? Who is this God who's up there disclosing Himself? Hebrews 1, God who at sundry times, different times, and in different manners, spoke in time passed unto the fathers by the prophets hath on 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. 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, 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'm not like the dumb idols.
I will speak. Now, 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, verses 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 the 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 the 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 a seminar last Saturday. No, I guess it was last Saturday.
We could go Saturday, sometime. 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, not any of those. 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, he says, he gives direct revelation every Sunday.
Now how are you going to evaluate that? 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 this 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, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all the way down to the first day, second day, third day, seventh day, God rest his 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. 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 hast 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.
I want you to get these. First of all, He has revealed Himself through natural revelation, through natural revelation. Now 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 daytime and you can't look at the nighttime 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 and 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? Verse 19, because that which may be 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 an 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 the God. Now you say, well what does natural revelation bring to bear on the 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 his eternal power and Godhead 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 in creation. What's the first one? His eternal power.
The second one? His Godhead. 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 Godhead, and he can see God's wrath. See 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 moral standard, look at the violation of the earth that's going on today and it's destroying itself.
It's under a curse. First of all, man can see the glory of God. 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 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 things to just brighten up life and so we can say God must be a caring God. He must be a gracious God. He must be a God of beauty. And we could say He must be a just God because there's just something about the world that makes right kind of prevail and there's a knowledge that it does.
So we could talk about the attributes of God. Secondly, He says in this verse 20 that the man should know his eternal power. And one thing that you surely can see if you look at the created world is that whoever this God is, He's tremendously powerful, tremendously.
When I was reading about the sun and how many millions of miles some of those gaseous arms shoot off the sun, it was staggering to imagine the power generated to shoot those things into space. And yet to think that that's one little tiny infinitesimal sun in a universe of billions upon billions of sun with energy and power we couldn't conceive of and God is greater than all of those staggers your mind. And so we see that from our world alone we know whoever He is, He's not only revealing His attributes but He's especially revealing His power. He must be tremendously powerful. Then it says we should see His Godhead.
What does that mean? Well, the Greek is theotes. And what it has reference to is it has reference to His divine character. The fact that He is God, whoever He is, let's face it, He's in charge. So we ought to see His attributes. We ought to see His specifically His tremendous power. We ought to get the idea that He's running the show. Anybody that could do that is in charge, folks.
Anybody that could make this universe is in control. He is sovereign deity. He is supreme. He is absolute. He is infinite. And then you ought to be able also, as I mentioned, to see His wrath.
So watch without saying one word, without speaking a word. God has revealed His attributes, His power, His absolute supremacy and His moral character and it's all visible to man. No man can believe there is no God unless that man has accumulated sin and by his superego his conscience has become seared and he has sinned away his very reason. There must be a first cause. I can't understand how anybody could say nobody times nothing equals everything.
That doesn't make sense. Psalm 100, which you've recited a lot when you were a little child and maybe never thought of the verse, says this in verse 3, it is He that hath made us and not we ourselves. We did not spontaneously generate. It is He that hath made us, not us making ourselves. That's a pretty important verse. To imagine that creation is not the act of a revealing God is to say that a painting was done without a brush, better yet without an artist or without a canvas or paint or without a concept of art.
Paul was simply answering the information of natural revelation when he said to the Athenians in Acts 17, 24, he said, God made the world and all things in it. I mean, that's something anybody ought to know. That's as obvious as anything. Now that is the content of natural revelation. That is the content of natural revelation. Let me give you secondly the clarity of it. You say, well, maybe it's foggy, fuzzy, hard to tell. Watch verse 20. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are fuzzy. Is that what it says?
Foggy. What does it say? Clearly seen. Natural revelation is clear. God would be wasting His time to put a fuzzy revelation out. If God's going to do it, it's going to be clear.
In fact, it is so clear that the last two words of verse 20 are what? Without excuse. Nobody can beg off on the count of ignorance. No excuse for atheism. There's no excuse for agnosticism. Say, well, John, if it's so plain, why don't men see it? Educated and bright, intelligent people claim to see no evidence of God in creation.
I'll never forget reading what I read. I read an article in the Science Thing and the guy said, I'm an evolutionist and the reason I am is because I reject the idea of a transcendent God, so what other options do I have? Now, if that isn't the most subjective conclusion you ever heard, he just decided there wasn't a God, therefore he had to be an evolutionist. That's just an idea of what men have done. How, if this is so unmistakable, have men missed it? Listen, friends, God says the difficulty isn't with my revelation, the difficulty is with man. Catch it in verse 21. Because when they knew God, the knowledge is available, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful, became vain in their imaginations, their foolish heart was darkened, and they thought they were smart, but they were fools.
So they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man, birds, four-footed beasts, and creeping things. God says the difficulty is with man, he held the truth. Verse 18, he held the truth in unrighteousness, and so he can't know anymore. In fact, it says in verse 24, once he went this way, God gave him up.
What a fearful statement. God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for the lie, the lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator.
They loved themselves. So God gave them up, verse 24. Verse 26, God gave them up.
Verse 28, God gave them over. God let man go in his own way and reject clear revelation. So you know what man's problem is? Here's unregenerate man, stands in the midst of a world where God's content is revealed, his attributes, his power, his wrath.
All of these features we've talked about, they're disclosed to man, the fact that God is sovereign, and man can't see it. Man rejects it. The state of unregenerate man is really sad. The reason he rejects it is, number one, Ephesians 2 1 says he's dead. Dead men don't respond. Not only is he dead, but Ephesians 4 18 says he's blind. Not only is he blind, but Ephesians 4 18 says he's ignorant. So unregenerate man is dead, blind, and ignorant.
See, how did he get in that mess? Because he turned his back on the truth, because he willfully rejects the truth. He throws it aside, turns to himself, accepts himself, chucks God, and God says, if that's the way you want to go, I'll just let you go. And God gave him up.
Dr. Thomas, whose book I was reading this week, made this statement. He says, man has poked his own spiritual eyes out. God made himself clear. God made himself visible in the natural world. The fault is not God's. It is the self-imposed choice of blindness through sin that man puts on himself that suppresses truth.
So natural revelation comes in creation. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur. Pastor, author, chancellor of the Master's University and Seminary, today's lesson is part of his current study titled, Is the Bible Reliable? John, when you think about all of the people we're reaching right now, hungry listeners who will listen and learn and grow today, it's a very personal ministry that Grace to You has, isn't it?
It's also a ministry that people make very personal investments in. Yeah, I think radio in itself is a very personal ministry. Most people listen to the radio by themselves. I suppose most people listen to the radio in their car or maybe through these days earphones or whatever.
So it is a very personal experience. And that's wonderful because you're not lost in the crowd. I'm preaching on Sunday at Grace Church. I'm preaching to thousands of people.
And you can kind of come and go if you're sitting in the audience. The preacher's not under any illusion that everybody's listening to every word. But radio, and even the internet, is a personal conversation. You're engaged with an individual, and that's a dynamic reality. We've seen the Lord use the dynamism of that reality through the years in people's lives in powerful, powerful ways. So I want to say thank you to those of you who listen and love Grace to You, and particularly those of you who support it. That, too, takes it to another personal level. It gets very personal when you pray for us and very personal when you give to this ministry.
We have no other resources than the ones that are sent in by our listeners, and that's absolutely true. Everything that we receive here to function in the ministry comes from people who listen and learn from the means that Grace to You provides. So God sees your sacrifice, and God is faithful to bless you for that. But you'll never see your full reward until we all get to heaven together, and we'll find out how the Lord used us together in ways that we never, ever could have imagined. So thank you for standing with us.
We value your trust in us. We value your generosity and your prayers. Yes, friend, thank you for your prayers and for your financial support. If John's verse-by-verse teaching is helping you understand Scripture and apply it to your life, and if you'd like to take part in bringing life-changing truth to communities like yours around the world, consider partnering with us when you get in touch today. You can mail your tax-deductible donation to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412, or you can express your support when you call us at 855-GRACE.
You can also make a donation anytime at our website, gty.org. And once again, thank you for your help in reaching as many people as possible with the life-changing power of God's Word. And remember, at our website, gty.org, you'll find thousands of free Bible study resources. If there's a passage in the New Testament that you're not clear on, or you simply want to know more about it, John has a sermon on it. Or you can check out our blog. You'll find articles on compelling topics like glorifying God in the gray areas of life, overcoming sin, hope for a doomed culture, and many others. And if you've benefited from John's current radio series, perhaps let a friend know about it and encourage him or her to tune into Grace to You on this station. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Join us again tomorrow to learn how a book that's thousands of years old deals with the problems you face today. It's another thirty minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
