Hebrews
Lesson 5 March 17,
2005
NKJ Philippians 4:6
Be anxious for nothing, but in
everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be
made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
Last week we started in on Hebrews 1:1. The doctrine
of revelation is crucial to understand the importance and significance of how
the Bible was revealed to man. There is a unique methodology to the revelation
of Scripture to man. It is not
like any other religion.
Unfortunately everyone coming from human viewpoint or pagan perspective
has that as their frame of reference and they want to ram, cram, and jam or
reinterpret the Bible and the revelatory aspect of the Scripture into a pagan
or human viewpoint framework. Consequently you get all kinds of distortions and
confusion over how revelation operates.
Corrected
Translation: After God spoke long ago in various fragments and in a
variety of forms to the fathers by means of the prophets, He has in these last
days spoken to us by means of His Son
The Greek text begins with these two adverbs that
indicate the manner of revelation - polumeros
and polutropos. Polumeros
indicates something given in parts or fragments. This indicates the fragmentary nature of Old Testament
revelation. Even New Testament
revelation was fragmentary. People
don’t understand that. Paul did
not understand the entire scope of New Testament revelation. That is why God used the Apostle John
and the Apostle Peter and the other apostles to give other revelation. Even in I Corinthians 13:8 we read that
prophesy was partial. No one
individual had all the revelation.
Even in New Testament times, the same procedure is followed until all
the pieces get there. Then the
canon was closed. The second
adverb polutropos refers to the many
way He used including direct revelation – dreams, visions, angels, and
theophanies. God was not
restricted to one form. There was
no normative way that God revealed Himself. He did this by means of the prophets. This is the instrumental dative. The prophets were the vehicles through
which He operates. God does the
revealing. The first verse focuses on how He operates in the Old
Testament. The second verse
focuses on what happens when we have the incarnation with the Son.
We compare verse one and verse two to see the
parallelism. In verse one He spoke
to the fathers, that it the Old Testament fathers. In verse two He spoke to us, Church Age believers. In verse one he spoke by means of the
prophets. In verse two He spoke by
means of His Son. A question
should come up if you are thinking.
What about the apostles? We
will get to that. One of the
fascinating things is that Jesus never wrote anything down. He never wrote an
epistle. The apostles represent
the foundation of the body of Christ.
They are the ones who give that revelation. That is part of understanding the whole dynamic of how New
Testament revelation takes place.
This is a foreshadowing of coming attractions. The main idea of these two verses is
“that God spoke.” Everything else
relates to this definitive act of God in revealing Himself to us. The verbiage
here is so important. God
spoke. No other religion has the
kind of speaking that the Bible has.
If you go to India, the Indian gods are all silent. They don’t speak. They don’t reveal themselves. This radically distinguishes the method
of operation that God has and what the Bible represents from everything
else. You have the Bible on one
side and all other religions and Christian heresies on the other side.
Doctrine of
Revelation (See lesson 4 notes)
Revelation is the unveiling or unfolding of God. He reveals or discloses information
about Himself to mankind.
Revelation has to be distinguished from other words
that are important in the process.
Inspiration is the process God uses to reveal Himself
and to oversee the recording of the revelation. The revelation is the content of what is disclosed. Inspiration is the process whereby God
the Holy Spirit works in and through the writers of Scripture to guarantee
accurate recording of the revelation.
II Tim 3:16-7, II Peter 1:20-1
Illumination is the process whereby the Holy Spirit
enables us to understand what has been revealed in Scripture. People claim to read their Bibles and
that God spoke to them. That is
poor verbiage because people aren’t taught. When you say that God spoke to you, you are making a
profound statement. When those
circumstances occurred in the Old Testament, it isn’t that they were reading
the Bible and got an incite into the meaning of the text or how it applied to
their life. That is referred to
theologically as illumination. It
is the process whereby we come to understand what the text means and how it
applies in our life. It is not God speaking. It is not revelation.
It is not just now being revealed.
It has been in the Bible for thousands of years.
Then we have the concept of the leading of the Spirit
whereby He uses the Scripture, as well as counsel and the teaching of pastors
or various circumstances to direct our lives. These are different.
Don’t get into sloppy verbiage.
The intelligent design argument in creation doesn’t
get you to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Just because you have an intelligent designer doesn’t tell
you that it is God because you don’t have essence or attributes attached to
that. You just know that there is
an intelligent designer. But, what is it?
Only the Bible can come in and tell you that He is omniscient,
omnipresent, omnipotence, righteousness, justice and love and give you the
attributes. So you can’t say that intelligent design equals the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob. All you have is a
“that”, but you don’t know what it is. Only the Bible gives you that
information.
It is crucial to understand that revelation in the
Bible distinguishes the Bible from everything else because it is verifiable,
testable and objective. Men down
through the ages have wanted to take the concept of inspiration in Scripture as
mystical and subjective. The problem with a mystical revelation like you have
in many pagan religions is that there is no criteria
to determine its veracity. Anyone
can say, “God said.” If you want
to back yourself up you can say that God told you to do it. The Bible says that that is not good
enough. If you have miracles and
heal people and raise them from the dead, that isn’t good enough. The Bible gives us tests to evaluate
this.
NKJ Deuteronomy 13:1 "If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he
gives you a sign or a wonder,
2 "and
the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, 'Let us
go after other gods' -- which you have not known -- 'and let us serve them,'
3 "you
shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for
the LORD your God is testing you to know whether you love the LORD your God
with all your heart and with all your soul.
4 "You
shall walk after the LORD your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and
obey His voice, and you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him.
This is the first test – the content of their
disclosure must be consistent with the rest of the Bible. It must meet the test of theological
accuracy. It can’t contradict what
God said somewhere else.
Because there is a wonder or sign doesn’t mean that it
is from God.
If what they say or do doesn’t pass the doctrinal
smell test then what they are doing doesn’t come not from God. It elevates doctrine above everything
else.
Is the Word of God more real to you than your
feelings, your emotions and your experiences? Is it more real to you than the fact that you got suddenly
got healed when someone passed his prayer cloth over you. Will you listen to the Word of God or
let your experience control? The
bottom line is that the Word of God must evaluate and judge experience and
emotion, not the other way around.
You don’t let your experience and your emotion cause you to change your
interpretation of Scripture. This
happens so frequently in a lot of different areas. Intensity of emotions can lead people astray. Better understanding should come
through exegesis, not emotions.
Experience is so dangerous.
Experience is a test God from to see if you will stick with the Word or
let experience rule in your life.
Deuteronomy 18 gave us the second test. The second test was that when a prophet
makes a prophecy the standard for God’s prophets is 100% accuracy. Not 90% or 85%. Every single prophecy
that they make is going to come true.
Absolutely. What happens if they make a prophecy about something that is
going to happen 500 years or 1,000 years or 2,000 years away? How would you know? God always gave a near term prophecy
that would be fulfilled in the immediate time frame to validate the long term
prophecy. That is a
principle. God is remarkable. One of the corollaries is that God never
does something in private. If he
speaks to people in private, He always confirms it in public. There is always
that objective, verifiable, and testable criterion to verify that God is the
one who spoke. It is not based on
your feelings.
NKJ Deuteronomy
18:21 "And if
you say in your heart, 'How shall we know the word which the LORD has not
spoken?' --
22 "when a prophet speaks in the name
of the LORD, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not
spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of
him.
The result was the death
penalty.
In point 7 we saw the illustration
of the test. That illustration
came from a young prophet from Judah who came and confronted Jeroboam I. It is a bizarre situation. We saw the operation of the second test
– that the prophecy is fulfilled.
He gave a precise prophecy.
A king would come and sacrifice false priests on this altar. It didn’t happen for 290 years. But it happened precisely as the
prophet said. To be sure that
Jeroboam understood that his authority was from God and it was the Word of God,
the prophet said that the altar would split and the ashes poured out on the
ground. These altars were big. The
altar split and the ashes fell.
Then Jeroboam invites him home for
dinner. If the prophet were to go
with him, it would signify that he was compromising with Jeroboam. This was a
problem in the Northern Kingdom.
God specifically told him to avoid this. When he got done with his message he was to go straight
home. So, he heads home. On the way home another prophet comes
along. This is test number two. It is an old prophet from Bethel. When he found the young prophet he said
to come home with him and have dinner.
At this point the old prophet lied. That is the first test – the test of consistency. The
old prophet said an angel appeared and said it was okay to come home with
him. The young prophet didn’t
apply the first test of Deuteronomy 13. The new command violated the fist
command. He compromised and went
home with the old prophet. While
they had dinner, God did speak through the old prophet he tells the young
prophet that he won’t make it home.
We don’t know if this is audible
reference from God or if it is in his mind. It is difficult to determine. In some cases God speaks and the prophet may hear the words
in his head. So it has a
subjective aspect. But it is
validated because it will come true.
So the young prophet got on his
donkey and headed home and was killed by the lion. Then there is a miraculous
scene. The lion just sits
there. He doesn’t eat the donkey. He doesn’t eat the man. This indicates something miraculous is
going on. The old prophet comes
down and picks him up and carries him home and buries him. The point is that God demonstrates to Jeroboam
and everyone else that when you compromise with the pure Word of God there is
going to be divine discipline. You can’t compromise the Word of God. We see the importance in this whole
episode of sticking to the tests that Scripture has for itself to validate its
own consistency. So that was our
illustration.
I want to deal a little bit with the
whole concept of mysticism. This
is where people get so confused today.
How do we know anything? We
have two categories. We have the
autonomous systems of perception. This is how man apart from God tries to
figure out and explain reality. How do you know anything? In a strict breakdown there are only
three ways. In reality most people
blend them. We have to
understand it systematically to begin with. This is in contrast to divine viewpoint. The top three are how human viewpoint
always functions. Human viewpoint
always puts ultimate truth in one of these categories.
In terms of explaining revelation,
each of these systems has its own concept of trying to explain revelation. Notice that they all operate apart from
God. It is only in the divine viewpoint
system that you have revelation.
The giving of the information in the Bible wasn’t mystical. It stands
over against mysticism. It is
revelatory. God speaks intrusively
into creation. So the top
categories completely reject the creator creature distinction. And only faith upholds the creator
creature distinction. So you have
an objective truth. You don’t get there in the top three. That is what happens if you are a
student of philosophy. That is
what happened with Immanuel Kant and the critique of pure reason. He said we
can’t know truth as it is. After
that, everything went to hell in a hand basket intellectually. It destroyed objectivity. You can’t know
truth in and of itself any more. You can only know
your perception. We have been working
out the consequences of his screwed up thinking ever since. God gave us logic and reason to use
within the framework of what He has revealed. This gives you a radically different sense of how God
operates.
Having gone through that, we must
understand mysticism. It
works around every single corner.
People have heard that the Bible is mystical. They talk about a mystical union of the believer with
Christ. That is because down
through the ages Christians have always compromised a pure revelatory position
with rationalism, empiricism, or mysticism. So you come out with some kind of hybrid. People don’t fit into nice little
categories. They aren’t all
rationalists or empiricists or mystics.
They combine all of this stuff.
Most Christians are products of a worldview that is either heavily
rationalistic or mystical. Then
they come into the church and bring that baggage with them and try to interpret
the Bible in terms of their past framework. So in the late 20th century we have a society
that is mostly mystical. Someone
gets saved out of a New Age background and they read the Bible that God spoke
to them. How do they interpret
that? They do so in terms of their
screwed up mystical framework.
Then you have the pillar saints, the
Quakers, and the Shakers. You have these different mystical movements. The charismatic movement is the latest
blending of mysticism and the Bible.
You should know what is going on around you.
Chafer wrote about false mysticism
in his systematic theology.
“The theory that divine revelation is not limited to the written word of
God but that God bestows added truth to souls that are sufficiently quickened
by the spirit of God to receive it. This class contends that by self effacement
- going out and living in the desert, giving up food and water by devotion to
God - individuals may attain to immediate and direct conscious realization of
the person and presence of god.”
They just know it. It is like an inner light.
“False mysticism includes all those systems which teach identity between
god and human life. In it are
included practically all of the holiness movements of the day - spiritism,
Seventh Day Adventism, new thought metaphysics, Christian Scientism, Mormonism
and millennial dawnism. The
founders and promoters of many of these cults make claims to special revelation
from god upon which their system is built.”
You have to have some criteria to
discern the difference.
In their doctrine of the inner light they say that having the indwelling
spirit. The individual Christian
is in contact with the same one who inspired and gave the Scriptures and that
the spirit is not only able to impart added truth beyond that already given in
the Bible but that he appointed by Christ to do so according to John 16:12-13.
The idea here is that the Spirit
continues to reveal. It is ongoing
through the Church Age. How do we
answer that? This is
important.
NKJ John 16:12 "I still have many things to say to you, but you
cannot bear them now.
13 "However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you
into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell
you things to come.
Chafer continues.
True mysticism contends that all believers are indwelt by the Spirit and
thus are in a position to be enlightened directly by him.
If you are going to have mysticism,
then what happens because you have gotten rid of the creator creation
distinction is that man is really in control. So that means that man tries to manipulate the circumstances
to get God will speak to him. One
of the things that developed in this is the idea of ecstatics. People would use drugs or hunger
crusades. Eventually they would
see visions. They would use all
different things to achieve this ecstatic state. Many people come to the Scripture and they don’t understand
the difference. Ecstasy is
emotion. To communicate revelation
you have to think. It is based on
the subordinated use of reason and logic to God’s communication. It is not emotion. So you have dreams and visions as modus
operendi in the Old Testament. But
it wasn’t emotion. As we will see,
the Old Testament men are having conversations with God. So dreams and vision never operated on
ecstatics.
Leon Wood an Old Testament professor
wrote.
“In ecstatic frenzy the subject seeks to withdraw his mind from
conscious participation in the world so that it may be open to the reception of
the divine word. To achieve this
ecstatic state, poisonous gas may be employed, a rhythmic dance or even
narcotics. The desire is to lose
all rational contact with the world and so make possible a rapport with the
spiritual realm. Already before
Israel’s conquest of Palestine, Moses calls himself a prophet and states that a
prophet like himself would arise after him. He uses the singular in reference to this one as so is
correctly taken to mean Christ as the supreme prophet thus to arise. But the context shows that he has
reference in a secondary sense also to other prophets that generally should
appear later in history. Moses himself was not an ecstatic. Hence, if prophets were to follow Moses
were to be like him neither would they be ecstatic.”
His argument is so good. Moses says he is a prophet. But Moses’ methodology was not the
methodology of the ecstatic prophets of the pagan religions around him. God comes to Moses face to face. If God
spoke to Moses plainly, then ecstatics are ruled out.
How did God speak in the Old
Testament? Did these guys just
wake up one night? Or, was there
something to objectify it? What we
see in Deuteronomy is that there were tests. When we investigate a subject like this, just walk your way
through the Scripture. Genesis one
is the first time we hear God speaking.
Is that subjective in someone’s head? Is God verbally articulating something? If you had a tape recorder somewhere in
the cosmos would you have taped a voice?
You would have taped a voice.
NKJ Hebrews 11:3 By faith we
understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things
which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
Furthermore, Jesus is called the
Word of God. There is an
objective speaking here. It goes
on through Genesis one – God said, God said, God said. And then we have statements that God
called. So God begins to give
nomenclature. He is not just
thinking within Himself. He
verbally articulates.
We see it even more in Genesis
2. God talks to Adam.
NKJ Genesis 2:16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of
every tree of the garden you may freely eat; 17 "but of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely
die."
Is this verbal out loud
communication? Yes, He is speaking
out loud. You could have taped the
voice.
The next interesting thing regarding
the revelation of God is found in Genesis 3:1. The serpent challenges the accuracy of God’s statement. God is not revealing Himself in ideas
and concepts. He revealed a precise statement about the tree of knowledge of
good and evil. That is why we talk
about the Scripture as propositional.
It was an objective statement.
It is not just an impression.
Satan challenges the verbal articulation of God. As we move through the story, Adam eats
of the fruit. Then he and the
woman hear the sound of God coming in the garden. Then God called Adam’s name. It is audible.
There is a pronouncement of judgment
in Genesis 3:13-22 where God again speaks audibly.
In Genesis 5:24 we are told that God
walked with Enoch. It appears that they were having a conversation. They were walking along and they walked
right into heaven. Again it was
audible conversation.
In Exodus 19:9 Moses talks to the
people. This is one of the great
statements in the Old Testament as Moses calls the people to receive the law
from God.
NKJ Exodus
19:9 And the LORD said to Moses, "Behold, I come to
you in the thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you, and
believe you forever." So Moses told the words of the people to the LORD.
God speaks to Moses but the people
listen in. That implies audible conversation. It is not something happening internally.
We see that God speaks to the people
when Moses blasts on the trumpet.
NKJ Exodus
19:19 And when
the blast of the trumpet sounded long and became louder and louder, Moses
spoke, and God answered him by voice.
How much clearer could it be? And then the people don’t want to hear
it. They can’t stand to
listen to the voice of God.
We have all of these different
examples. Furthermore there are
various theophanies in Scripture.
Angels appeared to give revelation. This is going to the aspect that there were various ways God
communicated revelation. Angels
communicated information to Zechariah in Zechariah 4:1-4 and 5:5. Angels appeared and warned Joseph. They told him that it was okay that
Mary was pregnant. They also
warned him about Herod and to flee to Egypt. You have other kinds of appearances that occur again and
again and again.
Why isn’t this mysticism? That is how thousands of Christians
have interpreted this. Because
whenever God does something even in private He always confirms it in public.
In chapter 9 of I Samuel, Saul’s
father has raised a bunch of donkeys.
They got lose and were scattered all over the place. He searches for them. Along the way, his companion says that
there is a man of God in the village.
The man of God is Samuel.
So they go to ask the man of God if he can tell them where the donkeys
are. Something else is going
on. God is working behind the
scenes to prepare the circumstances.
NKJ 1 Samuel 9:15 Now the LORD had told Samuel in his ear the day
before Saul came, saying,
Isn’t that an interesting
phrase? What do you think that
means? Samuel is not getting this
internally between his ears. It
doesn’t mean that other people heard it.
It is an objective statement.
NKJ 1 Samuel 10:1 Then Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on his head, and kissed him and said:
"Is it not because the LORD has
anointed you commander over His inheritance?
If you read the text nobody else is
around. This is a private
ceremony. How do you demonstrate
even though it was private that it is objective? How do you verify it? Verification comes in chapter 10
NKJ 1 Samuel 10:2 "When you have departed from me today, you will find two men by
Rachel's tomb in the territory of Benjamin at Zelzah; and they will say to you,
'The donkeys which you went to look for have been found. And now your father
has ceased caring about the donkeys and is worrying about you, saying,
"What shall I do about my son?" ' 3 "Then you shall go on forward from there
and come to the terebinth tree of Tabor. There three men going up to God at
Bethel will meet you, one carrying three young goats, another carrying three
loaves of bread, and another carrying a skin of wine. 5 "After that you shall come to the hill of God
where the Philistine garrison is. And
it will happen, when you have come there to the city, that you will meet a
group of prophets coming down from the high place with a stringed instrument, a
tambourine, a flute, and a harp before them; and they will be prophesying
How much more precise can you get? The first evidence is in verse
two. The second evidence is in
verse three. All of this came to
pass. We plug that into
Deuteronomy 18 and see that there is objective, verifiable and testable
criterion for the revelation that Saul is going to be the king.
He validates it even further in chapter 11 by giving
Saul a military victory that was a sign of an anointed king. One of the indications that a man was
the designated king was that he had victory over the enemies of God’s people.
There is all of this objective evidence. God doesn’t
do something in private that He doesn’t validate in public through clear
objective revelation. So we have
to distinguish what happens in the Bible with what happens outside the Bible.
The next big question that we have to answer is how we know that revelation ceased? How do we know that God isn’t still speaking to people? How do you know that the revelatory gifts cease? How can you demonstrate it from Scripture? We will see that next time. We can’t separate these things from His ascension and session. It is all woven together.