Hebrews
Lesson 7 March 31,
2005
NKJ Romans 8:38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor
angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39
nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Last time, we ended in I Corinthians
13:8-13. Sometime ago somebody told me that geniuses need to hear
things 5 times in order to remember them.
The rest of us need to hear it 24 or 25 times. So we will repeat to some degree what we ended with last
time in I Corinthians 13 because this is so very crucial to understand. We understand that the canon is
closed. There is no more
revelation given. But let me tell
you that this is where the battle lies today.
Martin Luther started the
Reformation when he nailed his 95 discussion points to the door of the church
in Wittenberg. The door of the
church was the local bulletin board.
That started the Protestant Reformation on October 31, 1517. Luther once said that if you defend the
fortress at every point except where you are being attacked, you would lose the
battle. The point of the primary
attack today is in technical language epistemology or in everyday language it
is knowledge. How do you know what
you know? You claim that Jesus
Christ is God and that the way salvation is based upon faith alone in Christ
alone. How do you know that? You say that is what the Bible says. But how do you know that it is God’s
Word? Scholars say this or that or
the other thing. They can quote whoever they go to on the Discovery channel or A&E or
whatever. Too many Christians are
left hanging. They don’t know the
answer.
I Tim 3:15 says
that we are always to be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us.
That is called apologetics. It
comes from the Greek word apologia
meaning to give a legal defense.
That is a well-reasoned argument or understanding for why you believe
something. So we need to go over
this again and again because this is the issue.
Outside the church, the attack is on
the Scripture. This is very clear
in the Da Vinci Code. It has been going on for 200
years or more. The attack is that
the Bible is just another collection of literature. The latest kink in the whole argument is that the old white
men that put the canon together back in the 5th century left a lot
of books out. So, you can pick and
choose. You are not any
better or worse than those men, so you can put together your own canon. There are all of these other religious
texts that were circulating and were declared heretical by the church
fathers. So we have to be prepared
to answer this. That is the battle
from outside the church. How do
you know that it is God’s Word?
How do you know that God has spoken? How do you know you can rely on that? How do you know that
it’s those books and not some other books? That is the big challenge of post-modernism, to debunk all
canons. Canon means a rule. They want to get rid of the canon of
literature. They want to get rid
of the rules and standards.
Inside the church we have the same
problem, the same battle and the same issue with knowledge. How do you know
that God is speaking to you? Do you know it because you have exegeted the Scripture according to a set standard of
procedures in exegesis, word studies, syntax, context, and culture? This is what we call isagogics. Or do you just sort of pray about it
and see how the Spirit moves you?
Or do you just open your Bible, close your eyes, and let your finger
fall on some text? If you don’t
understand everything that is there, do you say it longer and louder and get
more emotional? That happens in a
lot of churches. How do you go
about this? Is there a standard that you use in studying the text or do you
have some internal feeling that you blame on the Holy Spirit? Believers blame their failures and
unwillingness to do diligent study work on the Holy Spirit. This is crucial today. People come along and say that God is
speaking to them. How do you know it the voice of God? It was no less a problem in the ancient
world in the Old Testament than it is now.
When God gave the people the
Pentateuch, He gave them two tests.
He gave them the test of theological consistency in Deuteronomy 13 and
the test of prophetic accuracy in Deuteronomy 18. That was the standard. In Deuteronomy 13 we are told that in
His permissive will God allows them to perform real, genuine miracles, signs
and wonders (not in the power of God of course) to test you to see if you love the
Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Will you stick fast with what the Word
says or will you add to it from what other people say? So we need to understand a principle
that is lost today. That is that
when the Word of God is more real than your experience or feelings or intuition
or hardships or a difficulty that is when you are then walking by faith and not
by sight. It is not some super
spiritual, otherworldly endeavor.
That is how it comes across in the media. Faith is not a counterpoint to science or knowledge. Faith under girds everything. We have seen the four ways of knowing
– rationalism, empiricism, mysticism, and revelation. You don’t see faith as a means of
perception. It juxtaposes faith to
knowledge. They are
opposites. In the Bible faith is
always directed to something.
Faith is in and of itself
non-meritorious. It is the object
of faith that is important. In
rationalism, the object of faith is human ability and thinking. In empiricism, the object of faith is
man’s ability to properly interpret the sense data. In mysticism it is faith in man’s ability to intuit absolute
truth. In revelation the object of
faith is the revealed Word of God.
It is not faith verses knowledge.
What is the object of your faith?
Is it finite human experience or finite human reason? Or is it the infinite, omnipotent God
who is absolute truth who is omniscient and who has revealed Himself
and overseen the process of revelation?
That is the issue. What do
you believe? It is not faith
verses reason. It is not faith
verses science. Many believers have already lost the war because they agree
with the counterpoint. They have
already lost the battle because they are operating on human viewpoint
categories.
In the church the issue is just as
bad because they import to Christianity the same methodology. They think that because they can learn
by some intellectual hot flash outside the church they can also do the same
thing inside the church. They
accept intuitive reasoning as God’s leading. Some pastors don’t want to plan a schedule out too far ahead
because they want to leave room for the Holy Spirit to work. They allow for the spontaneity of the
Spirit. Do they think that
the Holy Spirit doesn’t work in an organized manner? The issue is that the Holy Spirit is not honored and
glorified by poor planning or lack of discipline. Paul points out in I Corinthians 14 that our God is a God of
order and a God of stability. So
we have to address this issue. And
the key text on whether or not revelation is going to cease is in I Corinthians
13. We are in Hebrews 1:1-2a. That is what we are studying.
In the first two verses, the writer of Hebrews is saying that
there are two periods of revelation.
One is in the Old Testament referenced in verse one. And the other is
the New Testament. It is important
to have a historical perspective.
Corrected Translation: After God spoke in various fragments
and in a variety of forms in time past to the fathers by means of the prophets,
He has in these last days spoken to us by means of His Son
This is what I hope to finish this
evening. It is special
revelation. It is important for
believers to have a historical perspective. I find that most Christians don’t have a clue about what is
going on historically. They watch
various ministries on TV. If you
don’t know who the players are you can get fouled up.
I Corinthians 13 is
a key passage.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 13:8 8 Love never fails. But
whether there are prophecies, they
will fail; whether there are tongues,
they will cease; whether there is knowledge,
it will vanish away.
9 For
we know in part and we prophesy in part.
10 But
when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done
away.
11 When
I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a
child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
12 For
now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but
then I shall know just as I also am known.
13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
If you have been around
non-charismatic doctrinal churches for awhile you know
that verse 10 is the verse that everyone goes to. How do you know that the gift
of tongues has ceased? Because the perfect comes and the perfect is the canon of
Scripture. You have
probably heard that so much that you wonder what the issue is here. But, let me tell you that it is a big
issue. You get out there in the big wide world of evangelical Christianity and
for the last 35-40 years the one interpretation of this passage (and there are
about 10 different interpretations of the perfect) that is dumped on the most
as being irrelevant and non-supportable is the view that the perfect equals the
canon. Bruce Baumgartner who
is the pastor over at Pine Valley told me that when he was at Dallas Seminary
the head of the theology department there assigned in their pneumatology
class to write a position paper on the cessation of the sign gifts, the
cessation of tongues. He didn’t
want anyone taking the view that the perfect is the canon because it had been
decimated by recent scholarship.
That is the view that we hold.
Is it really a valid statement?
If you get out there and read the literature and talk to people in
charismatic churches, they are convinced that the perfect
being the canon could only be held by a person with a single digit IQ. That is why I am taking some time with
this. Not only is it a valid
position, it is the only position.
Our position is that it is the only position that makes sense within the
vocabulary of the text unless you just want to do what is popular today. It is amazing how many people today
don’t want to believe whatever is based on reason or logic. Everyone wants to do what is right in their own eyes today.
They reject reason because of arrogance.
Let’s go through this again so that
we understand what is happening.
Contextually in chapter 12 Paul talked about the gifts. In there he seems to distinguish between
revelatory gifts (knowledge, wisdom and prophecy) or standard service
gifts. The problem in Corinth was
that the Corinthians were elevating these gifts to a
high level of significance for spirituality. The background is that not to far from Corinth was The
Temple of Delphi. You had the
Oracle of Delphi which was a priestess who went in smelled the vapors that came
up from the navel of the earth. As
she inhaled, she would see visions and dreams and would be possessed by the god
Apollo. Then she would speak in ecstatic utterances. This was standard
operating procedure in the pagan worship of Dionysus as well. He was the god of wine. If you had enough wine you could speak
in tongues and exchange your spirit for god’s spirit. He would speak through the priestesses in tongues. So this was SOP
in pagan Greek mystical religion.
If you want to be spiritual, you have to let the gods speak to you and
he does it in an unknown language.
They elevated this in arrogance and said they were super spiritual because
they spoke in tongues. So
Paul lays out the basis for spiritual gifts in chapter 12. Then in chapter 13 he says that the
real issue is love. Love is always
juxtaposed to arrogance. Love is
based on genuine humility and appreciation for what God has for us. So he defines love in the first 7
verses. Then he makes the case
that love abides through the Church Age.
In fact, love abides into eternity. He makes this distinction.
The key is to understand where the
last verse in chapter 13 goes. The
“now” means in the Church Age. It
is a word in the Greek nuni that indicates a broader period of
time. The now in the previous
verse indicates a more immediate sense. What continues in the Church
Age is faith, hope and love. They
continue in contrast to the three gifts in verse 8 that are going to stop. If
you don’t understand the context there, you will miss the whole thing. Part of the problem in Bible study is
that few people take the time to sit and reflect on the text. The first rule in Bible study methods
is to pay attention to what you are reading and to see and write down
observations. Everyone wants to jump into application and interpretation. They bypass observation. Some pastors have not had this type of
training. We need to take the time
to do what Sherlock Holmes did and pay attention to all the little
details. Get out the
microscope. Once you have the
data, the interpretation falls right in your lap. You don’t have to spend a lot of time with that and the
application will come out.
Paul says in verse 8 that love never
fails. That is the big idea. Love never fails. He is saying that love is permanent. These three things are not. Knowledge and prophecy will both be
removed. The verb is katargeo. It
means to be abolished. They will
be removed. Something will happen
to abolish them. They receive the
action of the verb.
In contrast tongues is said to
cease, pauo. The main thrust of this passage is not
tongues. The best argument for the
cessation of tongues is not found here.
The best argument for the cessation of tongues is from its purpose in
chapter 14. Its purpose was a sign
of judgment of Israel. It goes all
the way back to Deuteronomy 28 where God warned the nation that if they
disobeyed Him they would be conquered by a people whose language they didn’t
understand. That is what Isaiah picks up in Isaiah 28:11 when he warns them
about the Assyrian invasion.
It runs all the way through the Scriptures. You just can’t take things out of historical context.
Back to verse 8. It is the same verb. Whatever ends one ends the other. The implication is that by that time
happens tongues is already out of the way. Katargeo is the future passive indicative meaning it
receives the action. Pauo is a future
middle indicative. It
indicates it will naturally die.
That is the idea there.
There is a word shift and a voice shift.
Let me give you a little added
insight here. One of the things
very popular today in seminaries is to say that it is a stylistic shift. The author didn’t want to use the same
word over and over. He didn’t want
to be boring. Then why did he use karargeo five
times in three verses? He isn’t
into stylistic variation for the sake of stylistic variation. That avoids the implications of
verbal plenary inspiration. What is happening today is that people affirm a
doctrinal statement in theory but in practice they violate it left and
right.
In verse 9 we learn that prophecy
and knowledge are both considered to be partial gifts. They only communicate a limited amount
of information. The two partial
gifts will be abolished by something.
That is the conclusion from those two verses.
In verse 10 we learn that what
abolishes them is the coming of what is called the perfect. Perfect is a lousy translation. I don’t
know why they did it in the King James.
Maybe that is what it meant in those days. The word group based on teleios never means
flawlessness. It just doesn’t. But
it is always translated that way.
It has to do with completion or maturity. That is always the idea. It is in a context that contrasts it
with something that is partial. So
even if you have the two options of perfection or completion when you are
talking about something that is partial, the only thing that makes sense in
context is to translate it as complete.
It completes something that is incomplete. Knowledge is incomplete. Prophecy is incomplete. When the completing thing comes, then the incomplete will be
abolished. So what is the complete
thing? There are 7 interpretations
of this.
Two views on the completion side are
the completion of the canon or the matured church. What is the difference? The matured church view is they say that the church reached
maturity when the last apostle died.
When the last apostle died, the canon was closed. There isn’t a lot of practical
difference here. There is on some
exegetical questions and I understand that. I take a completed canon view but I argue that both of these
views find 95 AD as the terminus point.
All of the other views take it as
some kind of perfection when we are absent from the body and face to face with
the Lord at the rapture or the Second coming or whenever you leave this
life. Once you leave this life all
of a sudden you will have full, clear knowledge. They take the passage “now we see through a mirror dimly but
then face to face” as being face to face with God. They think we will know it all. No, we won’t.
We will never be omniscient.
God is omniscient. We are
not. We will always have limited
knowledge. We may see things more
clearly but that is not the point here.
It is not talking about a perfect state. It is talking about an incomplete state. What Paul is arguing here is that there
will be a time when the revelatory gifts are completed by something. What completes them must be something
in kind. You don’t complete a half of glass of water with a steak. It is not
the same thing. You have to use the same thing. So if you are talking about revelatory gifts, what completes
it must also be revelatory by nature.
Verse 11 simply explains the process
- that there are periods of differences.
It is immature verses mature.
When you are a child you think like a child. But when you are an adult you put away childish things. Hopefully you grow up. He explains his whole argument in terms
of the now versus then.
Then in verse 12 he continues the
point. He uses the word arti that means right now.
It refers to the pre-canon period, the apostolic period. In a mirror we see what reflects back,
not through. What do you look at
in a mirror? You are looking at yourself. We examine what the mirror says about
who we are.
The word dimly is the word enigma. It comes from a usage in Numbers that we will look at in a
second.
Face to face with what? Face to face with the Word of God. We will have the complete canon so we
will see the whole picture. We
will have the completed picture.
This reinforces the doctrine of the perspicacity of Scripture. It reveals us for who and what we
really are. If pieces are missing
then we don’t get everything because we have incomplete or partial revelation.
Now what I know is incomplete. But then I will know completely. That is epignosis – full knowledge. The Word of God can give you epignosis
knowledge about whom and what you are, your problems, your old sin nature, and
how to resolve those problems.
NKJ Numbers 12:6 Then He said, "Hear now My words:
If there is a prophet among you, I, the
LORD, make Myself known to him in a vision; I speak to him in a dream.
7 Not so with My servant
Moses; He is faithful in all My
house.
8 I speak with him face to face, Even plainly, and not in dark sayings; And he sees the form
of the LORD. Why then were you not afraid To speak
against My servant Moses?"
God revealed Himself uniquely to
Moses. “Dark sayings” in verse 8
is the same word used in I Cor 13:7. It is enigma. This indicates
that what he is talking about is the uncertainty of prophecy. Once the canon is complete it will make
sense.
“Now” in verse 12 refers to period
before canon was complete. “Then”
is the post canon period. The word now changes. It is not just stylistic. Now what abides.
What continues is faith, hope and love. He is not saying that faith, hope and
love will continue after the Second Coming.
A book came out on the four views of
tongues. What was interesting is
that the article on the cessation of tongues was from a man at Westminster
Seminary named Richard Gaffin. He never used I Corinthians 13 in his
whole argument. Scholars don’t
want to hear it. Who cares what
the Word of God says? Their
argument is that the terminus is when you die or are face to face with the
Lord. But the thing is that after you die or are face to face with the Lord,
hope and faith stop. So it can’t
be that. The argument of the
passage is that love is permanent and these other things are impermanent. Faith, hope and love are going to
continue past the point that knowledge and prophecy end. The Scripture says in II Corinthians
5:7 says that now we walk by faith and not by sight. When we are absent from the body we will walk by sight. So obviously faith stops being
operational at death or the rapture or Second Coming.
Rom 8:24 says the same thing about
hope.
NKJ Romans 8:24 For we were
saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still
hope for what he sees?
Hope has to do with what is
unseen. So what we have a clear
indication that the terminal point for the perfect has to be the canon of
Scripture. It just can’t be
anything else. It is based on the
view that the apostles were those who oversaw the revelatory process. That is
what is important to the background of Hebrews 1. Dr.Gaffin puts tremendous weight
on Eph 2:20 and Hebrews 1. He said
that based on the strength of these two passages that the apostles and prophets
are the foundation of the church (once the foundation is laid you don’t lay it
again every time you lay a new floor) and that God has spoken (aorist tense),
you have to argue that revelation has ceased. By not referring to I Corinthians he has some
weaknesses. That gets us to where
we ended last time. I wanted to
reinforce for everybody that I Corinthians 13 nails it. Knowledge and prophecy
ceased when the canon was closed.
There was a clear closing of the New Testament canon just as there was a
closing of the Old Testament canon.
The Jewish leaders clearly understood that God didn’t speak anymore
after Malachi. There were no more
additions to the canon.
The Apocrypha that you have in a
Catholic Bible is a collection of books that had to do with Israel between the
closing of the Old Testament canon and the New Testament canon. I and II Macabees
deals with the Hasmonean revolt and what was going on
with Antiochus Epiphanes. It is great historical data but it isn’t canon
material. The Jews recognized
that. They didn’t wait until 90 AD
to close the Old Testament. That
is what every liberal is going to tell you. It is clear that they understood the Old Testament was
closed by at least 300 BC. It was
closed and God was silent. He
wasn’t speaking anymore. That is
the test. Once He has given you
all the information you need to pass the test, am I going to trust Him when He
is silent? That is part of the issue here. Or do you act like a baby and need stimulation every month
or two thinking that God is speaking through you? That is where people are
today. They want constant validation. If God spoke once that ought to be enough
for 6,000 years of history. He
doesn’t need to repeat Himself in every generation. God has given us revelation down through 2,000 years of
history. He doesn’t need to repeat
miracles. He doesn’t need to repeat special revelation. He doesn’t need to act
the same way. That is an arrogant
presumption to make. He has to
keep doing it the same way. Talk
about putting God in a box. It is
the charismatic that limits God to the same means that He has always used.
Back to Hebrews 1:1
Corrected Translation: After God spoke in various fragments
and in a variety of forms in time past to the fathers by means of the prophets,
What are the forms? One of the forms is theophanies
and direct appearances. It was
clear direct communication that could have been recorded by anyone. That was the background. He also appeared in dreams and
visions. People claim that God
spoke to them in a dream. Let’s
understand what is going on historically in dreams and visions. Once you understand this you realize
that it was unusual for God to speak in dreams or visions. There were important reasons for why He
did so.
You see that there is nothing in the
giving of dreams or visions that is personal divine guidance. It is all national and covenantal in
scope.
That is why we say that revelation has ended. It ended in 95 AD. The test for us is to rely on it. We are to walk by faith and not by sight. If God is still communicating, you are walking by sight. You are expecting God to show up in your dreams or visions or speak to you. That is not walking by faith. Faith means putting your trust in the Word of God and the sufficiency of the revelation of God. We are to study it and meditate on it and concentrate on it. That was the whole point. Our attention needs to be focused on the study of the Word of God.