God is not revealing Himself today apart from His Word. This is the danger in people running around saying God revealed Himself to them and God spoke to them and they had a vision and et cetera, et cetera.
This is the canon and it is closed. All revelation came to the holy prophets of the Old Testament or it came to the apostles and those people who were near Jesus Christ, they were the biblical writers. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. How could a book written over 1,500 years by more than 40 authors on three continents be perfectly accurate in everything it teaches? More important, how can such an ancient book be a trustworthy guide for you and me today? Well, the answer is bound up in why we have that book in the first place. Why did God give us the Bible? What does He want you to learn from the Scriptures? John MacArthur considers those questions today as he continues his compelling study, Is the Bible Reliable?
So take your Bible and follow along with John MacArthur. Basic to Christianity is the fact that the Bible is a revealed book, that this book was not written by men. It may have been put down on paper or whatever was used by men, but it was written and authored by God. This is our commitment. This is our confidence. This is our belief. This is our assurance that it is God's own revelation to men. The truths regarding God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and man and sin and all of the facets of information revealed in the Scriptures are the disclosure of God. They are the revelation of God. Now if we do not believe that this is the revelation of God or if we question that it is, we have no foundation for our faith.
Unhesitatingly, week in, week out, Sunday after Sunday and then all through the week we teach the Word and teach the Word and teach the Word and study it and share it and discuss it and minister it. And we must, beginning at the bottom of all of that, have absolute confidence in its authority and its inerrancy. But more than ever before, the truths of the Word of God have been questioned in recent years. The dogma of the authority and inspiration of Scripture is being questioned. It is being challenged. Seminaries challenge the inspiration and authority of Scripture.
Pulpits and pulpitiers are set up to fight against the concept of biblical inspiration and authority. And it's an amazing thing, but we shouldn't be surprised because if you went all the way back to the very beginning, you would find that the very first attack on the part of Satan was aimed at discrediting the revelation of God. In Genesis chapter 3 and verse 1, Satan said to Eve, hath God said? The first...the first attack of the tempter was to question the Word of God. Nothing different.
It's still going on. It will be that way at the end. The Apostle Paul said to Timothy, every Scripture is inspired of God. Later on in that same epistle he said, preach the Word for the time will come when they will not endure...what?...sound doctrine. But having itching ears will heap to themselves teachers after their own lusts and turn away their ears from the truth and turn aside to fables. So says 1 Timothy 3 and 4. What about the Bible? What about this dilemma?
Is it resolvable? Can we really say with Jesus Christ who said in John 17, thy word is truth? Or do we have to stand alongside of Pilate in John 18, 38 and say, what is truth? It will be the purpose of this study as we pursue it to show that we can say with Christ, thy word is truth. Now to begin with, we've been studying the subject of revelation. Revelation by definition is the act of God by which He has made known what was otherwise unknowable. This information that is herein in terms of its spiritual content, in terms of the revelation of God and His self-disclosure is unknowable unless God reveals it. Revelation then is that act by which God makes known what is otherwise unknowable.
And this book is just that. Now we've seen five things to be considered in Revelation, the revealer, the revelation itself, the reason for it, the result of it and our response to it. Now just reviewing very quickly, we started talking about the revealer.
Who is the revealer? God is the revealer. Hebrews 1, God has spoken in sundry times and diverse manners. This is the Word of God. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by what?
Every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. God then is the revealer. Secondly then, we looked at the revelation itself and we said that revelation, as God has revealed Himself, comes in two broad categories. God reveals Himself in what we call natural revelation. Now natural revelation, as we've seen, is made up of two parts, creation and conscience. And the result of natural revelation is a consciousness of God. Natural revelation then is designed by God to give man the consciousness that he exists.
And more than that, some idea of his character. Now we said that natural revelation comes also in two parts. First of all, creation. Creation itself is the revelation of God.
The heavens declare the glory of God, Psalm 19. Romans chapter 1 and verse 19 and following tells us that the things of God are revealed in the world by the creation so that man is without excuse. He can know His eternal power, His Godhead, that is absolute deity, and he can know something about the wrath of God because he finds that God is a moral God. So God has revealed Himself in two areas of natural revelation, creation which is external and conscience which is internal. And through that revelation there is the consciousness of God. And men in the world today because of what they sense inside and because of what they see outside are conscious that God is.
And that's the beginning. For he that cometh to God must believe...what?...that He is. And so God by natural revelation establishes in the consciousness of man that He is. Now natural revelation reveals the consciousness of God and it tells us that God is glorious, that He is also powerful. You have to believe that when you look at the universe. That He is sovereign.
Whoever He is, He's running the show. And that He is moral because people can see in the world that generally speaking evil brings evil results and good brings good results. There is a moral entity somewhere in the universe and only a very wicked man denies it. You can call him a fool or a wicked man.
It's the same thing. Nature then is God's self-disclosure in man and around Him. So natural or general revelation gives to man the consciousness of God. But that isn't enough. God went further than that and gave to us what we call special revelation.
Now I want you to notice one thing. Only in the Garden of Eden was natural revelation sufficient. Only before the fall was natural revelation sufficient to lead men to a total knowledge of God because, you see, they had an absolutely unclouded mind. They had a crystal clear perception. There was no sin.
There was no barrier. They could live with God out of the depths of a pure heart before there was sin and so God didn't need to write anything down in the garden. God didn't need any special revelation. Natural revelation, the disclosure that all of creation was the work of God, that that which was in the man revealed God was sufficient before sin clouded his mind, cut the cord of life, darkened his intellect and alienated him from God. And once that happened, natural revelation wasn't enough because man was alienated. Oh, it was good for him to have the consciousness of God, but the consciousness of God was only to lead him to the Word of God. It isn't enough just to know that God is unless you know who He is and unless you know what it is that He desires. And so the consciousness of God is to lead men to the searching to find the revelation of God that is specific. By slow steps and gradual stages, God revealed Himself in special revelation.
We say that special revelation as it comes in the Word of God was progressive revelation. You know, if you were to read the book of Genesis, would you get all the revelation of God? No, very limited, isn't it? Say if you were to read only the Old Testament, would you get all the revelation of God?
No, it's very limited. It isn't that it's wrong, it's that it's progressive. It isn't that it's in error, it's just in progression. You don't get it all until you get it all. God slowly and in stages revealed as much as He desired. And finally when the fullness of time was come, He revealed Himself totally in Jesus Christ. But the revelation was progressive. Did you know that some of the Old Testament prophets, according to 1 Peter, used to look at what they read and try to figure out what it meant?
And they had written it. They would search in their own prophecies to determine the fulfillment regarding the Messiah. So special revelation was a process. First God would reveal Himself in just a small frame, then larger, then larger, sometimes to a family, then a tribe, then a nation, then a race, and then the world. And so God's progressive revelation came. Now in special revelation, how did God reveal Himself?
Well, I'm just going to reveal quickly, I told you. First of all, in theophany, from phano and theos, which means a visible form of God. Often in the Old Testament, God appeared in a visible form. For example, He appeared as a burning bush, didn't He? The Lord Jesus Christ appeared as an angel, the angel of the Lord. There were times when God's presence was there, such as the Shekinah glory.
There was a form to it, Exodus 33. So sometimes God's special revelation was in the form of a theophany or an actual appearance of God in some form. Now mark this, God's not a man, God is a, John 4, spirit. And Jesus said, a spirit hath not flesh and bones as you see Me have. So God is not a man.
But God could take on any form that He wanted to take on, that's no problem for Him, for the purpose of manifestation. So God revealed Himself through theophany. Secondly, through prophecy.
Now what do we mean by that? Prophecy just means speaking forth, telling forth, announcing, proclaiming. God spoke. How did He speak?
In many, many ways. God spoke through the casting of lots. He revealed His will through casting lots. Then He spoke through dreams and He spoke through visions. And He also spoke directly and verbally.
How many times have you read the prophets saying, thus saith the Lord? And sometimes He spoke face to face, like He'd come down nose to nose with somebody and in a verbal confrontation, in a private way, He would communicate. It doesn't mean that God was literally there in a body, but God came down and spoke verbally, face to face. Now the last two that I mentioned, God's direct verbal speaking, God said, and the face to face, seem to be the dominant ways that God revealed Himself in terms of prophecy.
Now you can study throughout the Old Testament and you'll find this to be a very common thing. Let me show you just a couple of verses to show you what I mean by God speaking, or God confronting face to face. In Jeremiah 1, 9, listen to this, the commissioning of Jeremiah the prophet. Then the Lord put forth His hand...and of course this is an anthropomorphism, that means it's putting God in human terms, God doesn't have a hand. The Lord put forth His hand and touched my mouth. Jeremiah said something touched my mouth. God placed His hand, as it were, on my mouth. And the Lord said unto me, Behold, I have put My words in Thy mouth. Now when old Jeremiah opened up his mouth, do you know what came out? God's word.
God used human instruments to be the vehicle of revelation. Now this becomes very much a pattern and a standard procedure for the prophets. Look at Ezekiel, you find the same thing in chapter 3 verse 4. He said unto me, Son of Man, go get thee unto the house of Israel and speak with My words unto them.
Speak with My words unto them. That was the characteristic of a prophet. He spoke with God's words. Verse 26 and 27 of the same passage in Ezekiel 3, And I will make Thy tongue cling to the roof of Thy mouth that Thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be to them a reprover for they are a rebellious house. God says He will put words in His mouth and sometimes He won't.
And He'll leave them without words to hear. But verse 27, But when I speak with thee, I will open Thy mouth and Thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God. And so there was the very stringent characterization of a prophet. He spoke God's words and only God's words. God could silence him or God could speak through him. Now do you remember the first great prophet that we know about, a man by the name of Moses?
In Exodus chapter 4, we find an interesting account. The Lord has said to Moses that He is to go out and preach, proclaim. And Moses said to the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore nor since Thou has spoken unto Thy servant, but I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue. What he was saying was I have a speech impediment. You know, he was saying, God, I stutter.
I've got a problem. And I love this answer. And the Lord said unto him, Who made man's mouth?
Isn't that tremendous? Who do you think made your mouth? I think if I made it, I can make it go. Or who makes the dumb, the deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord? Now therefore, go and I'll be with your mouth. Oh, what a problem. I wish to God that I was a prophet, but I'm not in the day of prophets. I have to dig it out and I praise God for His truth in the Word of God, but how fantastic it would be to have no preparation. And then when people come to me afterwards and say I made a mistake, I'd say, Sorry, fella, no way. Now I have to say, Yeah, right, I probably did.
Well, you go on further. Moses, the great hero, you know, that we think he is, was really a weak character. He said, Oh my Lord, send I pray thee by the hand of Him whom thou wilt send. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses. And he said, Is not Aaron the Levite thy brother? I know that he can speak well and also behold he comes forth to meet thee and when he sees thee he will be glad in his heart. And thou shalt speak unto him and put words in his mouth and I'll be with thy mouth and his mouth and teach you what you shall do.
You know, Moses messed up by not believing God and had to go through his whole life whispering everything in Aaron's ear and Aaron announced it to the people. And he shall be the spokesman unto the people, verse 16. God said, I made your mouth.
This was standard procedure. This was the way God spoke His Word through the mouths of His servant. This is special revelation, verbal revelation. The Spirit of God came upon them and they spoke the Word of God.
That's the standard procedure in the Old Testament and in the New Testament with the apostles who are responsible for the writing of Scripture. And so God spoke through human instruments. That's prophecy. So you have theophany and prophecy and, thirdly, miracles. And I want to speak to this a minute. God revealed Himself in special revelation in terms of miracles.
Now watch this. Those three areas make up the testimony compiled in the Bible. The Bible includes the appearances of God, right? The Bible also has all the prophetic statements that God wanted recorded and the Bible also records, thirdly, the miracles. So the visible presence of God, prophecy or the spoken Word of God, and miracles are the composite disclosure of God that then was put together in the Word of God to make up the Bible. You say, well, how, John, do miracles reveal God? You see, any miracle is the revelation that God exists. Anything that violates the human order, anything that alters the normal human course of events indicates an intervention by a higher power.
Do you see? It's no problem for God to do a miracle He made the world. A miracle is just like sticking His finger in the pond and making waves.
C.S. Lewis points out so very well in his book on miracles, which is something every Christian really ought to read, that when God makes a miracle, it doesn't go bouncing through the world and create havoc all the rest of the time until Jesus comes. It has a way of just flowing back in. For example, Jesus stands at the grave and says, Lazarus, come out. And you know Lazarus came out, took his grave clothes off him, he went over, had dinner and a few years later died. You see, the miracle occurs and then goes right back into the natural stream again.
It doesn't go pounding and bouncing through chaotically. God just makes ripples and the ripples go and they hit the shore and they're done. God can intervene anytime He wants. If there's anybody out there, He can stick His finger in the pond and make a wave. That's a miracle. And every time a wave was made, God was saying, I'm here. Do you recognize that?
I'm up here. Now the unregenerate world has difficulty accepting miracles because they don't like to accept God. The liberals, amazing, David Hume, don't recommend that you read David Hume.
It's really bog you down. But he's written a thing called The Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding. He says that experience shows the laws of nature to be absolutely unalterable. So he says, therefore miracles are ruled out. Furthermore, no miracle has ever been observed in any age by any person.
Isn't that interesting? It's nice of David Hume to tell us that. And he said those who did testify to miracles were not telling the truth. He stands on his own square inch in his own little century, lives his own 60 years and tells what happened all throughout history. You see, he just says there were no miracles, no one ever saw one and everybody who said they saw one in the Bible lied or were misled.
Renan in his book, Life of Jesus, regards Bible miracles as legends. For example, he explained the raising of Lazarus this way. Lazarus faked being dead.
You know why? He was so much a lover of Jesus Christ and people were being critical of Christ and he wanted people to really believe in the power of Christ, so he faked being dead and set up a phony resurrection. And he got himself laid in the tomb and then he had Mary and Martha pull off the deal, Jesus came down, everybody was gathered around, a big deal, come out, and he came out and he never was dead. Jesus never healed anybody, Renan says.
He only aided people who were sick by his gentleness and they felt better. And his followers tagged them miracles. Now friends, that is denial of biblical authority and it takes more faith to believe a stupid explanation like walking around on the heavy growth of lily pads.
How stupid. From a responsible mind, Jesus' miracles were for the sake of revealing that he was God. He said, believe me for the very what?
Work sake. Miracles are the self-disclosure of God. They're not amusement. That's why Jesus wouldn't do them when people demanded them all the time. They are revelatory and they point to redemptive truth.
Mark those two terms. Miracles are revelatory and redemptive. They are revealing of God and they are to point to redemption. I'm going to say something that somebody might misconstrue.
It's a guarded statement and I've thought it through. Biblical miracles, because they are revelatory, are not for this age. The canon of Scripture is closed and we'll get into that. The revelation of God is closed. God is not revealing Himself today apart from His Word. This is His revelation. And as I said earlier, this is the danger in people running around saying God revealed Himself to them and God spoke to them and they had a vision and et cetera, et cetera.
This is the canon and it is closed. All revelation came through the holy prophets of the Old Testament or it came through the apostles and those people who were near Jesus Christ, they were the biblical writers. The canon of Scripture is closed.
Revelation is closed. All that God intends to say He has said in His Word. So in the truest sense, biblical miracles don't happen today. Now this doesn't mean He doesn't work in wonderful ways. It doesn't mean that God doesn't work in unusual ways.
It doesn't mean that God doesn't heal. But the label miracle should be applied only to those special, extraordinary ways in which God has operated in the past in His universe which is both revelatory and redemptive and then is recorded in the pages of the Word of God. And these three areas, theophany, prophecy and miracle make up the totality of God's special revelation and then God took all that He wanted of that information and put it in the Word of God. And so this Bible is a composite of theophany, prophecy and miracle. And in it, God is revealed.
You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. John's current study has been answering the question, is the Bible reliable? Well, something I trust you're seeing in this study is that God's Word has power.
It gives strength and comfort like nothing else can. And John, you have a letter there from a woman who understands the precious comfort of biblical truth. So read that letter from Dorothy. Yes, Dorothy writes, I want to tell you that I do appreciate the free sermon CDs you have sent me. I commute a hundred miles once a month to buy groceries.
I'm a widow and spend much of my time alone. I want to utilize this time well and I choose to listen to your messages and I listen more than once. For me, travel becomes a time of worship as I drive along the highway in northern New York. I'm surrounded by God's beautiful creation and I take the opportunity to grow in knowledge and wisdom of the Lord. Christian radio is my constant companion. I listen to grace to you on WMHQ 90.1 FM. And I can't thank you enough for your daily broadcast and the free books you send.
They make this season of widowhood feel more meaningful and purposeful. It's one of my greatest challenges to live joyfully and gratefully. As a child of the king, after the loss of my pastor husband, my three children live in three different states. God calls me to depend on him every day. Thank you for your teaching."
And she signs her name Dorothy from Malone, New York. Wow, that's a serious loss when you lose your pastor and your husband all in one. But in this day of MP3 downloads and podcasts, other technologies have allowed the word of God to come through these technological means and teach people like Dorothy and so many others all around the world. And radio is still a strategic means of connecting people with our Bible teaching. Sure, there are other options for hearing programs like Grace To You.
We know that folks, however, are still tuning in and growing from the teaching they hear on the daily radio. And God continues to use that radio really as a kind of front door to introduce people to the wide variety of Bible teaching resources that we have available, including thousands that are available free of charge. And when you support Grace To You, you make possible the kind of ministry that you just heard about, ministries to people like Dorothy, a widow isolated to some degree and in need of the feeding of the word of God. You're a part of her life spiritually when you're a part of Grace To You. So thank you so much for your prayers and your financial support.
Yes, friend, thank you. This ministry would not exist without your generosity. We've heard countless testimonies, like the one from Dorothy, of lives being changed by John's verse-by-verse Bible teaching, and we've been able to reach those people because friends like you stand with us. If you'd like to partner with us in this Bible teaching ministry, get in touch with us today. You can mail your tax-deductible donation to Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California 91412. You can also express your support online at gty.org or when you call 800-55-GRACE.
Thanks for standing with us and especially for praying for us. Again, to help bring verse-by-verse Bible teaching to people in your community and beyond, make a donation when you call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. Also, while you're online, be sure to download the Grace To You Sermons app. It gives you mobile access to all of John's sermons, 3,600 sermons in total, and our website also has a regularly updated blog featuring articles from John and the staff in which they discuss issues vital to the church today, and you can download John's most recent messages preached at his church here in Southern California.
All of those resources and much more are available at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thank you for starting your week with Grace To You and join us again tomorrow as John shows you why God gave us the Bible and what you need to learn from it. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace To You.
