God Spake In Divers Manners Pt. 2

Scripture Reading | Hebrews 1:1-4

Introduction

Finding Out God

The Determinate Counsel of God

God Hath Revealed

———

Self-Revelation - can man by searching find out God?

Kinds of Revelation

1. General Revelation - creation, conscience

2. Special Revelation - God speaks

3. Written Revelation - special + general inscripurated (put into scripture - written down)

Psalm 19 “To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, And night unto night sheweth knowledge. There is no speech nor language, Where their voice is not heard. Their line is gone out through all the earth, And their words to the end of the world. In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun, Which is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, And rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race. His going forth is from the end of the heaven, And his circuit unto the ends of it: And there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul: The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart: The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: Sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned: And in keeping of them there is great reward. Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins; Let them not have dominion over me: Then shall I be upright, And I shall be innocent from the great transgression. Let the words of my mouth, And the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.”

3. Mode of Revelation

4. Content of Revelation

1. His Nature - His attributes

2. His Will

Sermon

Hebrews 1:1–4 “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high; Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they.”

God

Sundry times - different points in history

Divers manners - different ways

Spake - His express word(s)

Kinds of Revelation

1. “General Revelation”

That which God reveals of Himself through creation + conscience

Indirect

Universal

Visible to all

2. Special Revelation

that which God reveals through His spoken word

Direct

Detailed

Special

Addressing what general cannot

Mediums of Special Revelation

God does this through 1) direct acts, 2) dreams and visions, 3) Christ’s incarnation, and 4) scripture.

Direct Speaking

Adam

Noah

Abram

Moses

Direct Acts - theophanies - physical manifestations of God’s presence

Ex. 3:1-6 - burning bush

Ex. 19:16-20 - Mt. Sinai - fire

Ex. 24:9-11 - see God and eat and drink

Ex. 33:18-23 - show me thy glory

Josh. 5:13-15 - captain of the host

Judges 13:2-23 - Manoah and his wife - “We shall surely die, because we have seen God.”

Dreams

Gen. 37:5-10 - Joseph dreams (the comes true)

Gen. 40:5-41:36 - Dreams of butler and baker - means of getting Joseph out of prison (Pharoah’s dream)

Dan. 2:1-45 - Nebbie’s dreams

Matt. 1:20-24 - angel unto Joseph in a dream

Visions - Ps. 74:9

Gen. 15:1 - Abram sleep and vision

Gen. 46:2 - God spake to Jacob in visions of the night

1 Sam 3:1-15 - no open vision - the word

2 Sam. 7:17 - vision to prophet Nathan - Davidic covenant

Miracles

Ex. 14:21-22 - splitting of Red Sea

2 Kings 4:32-35 - resurrection (Elisha)

1 Kings 17:17-24 - Elijah’s prayer - resurrection

Dan. 3:19-27 - men in fire not quenched (hearkening to burning bush)

Jonah 1:17 - swallowed by big fish and lives

Christ’s Incarnation

John 1:1-5, 14 - Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us full of grace and truth

John 5:39 “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.”

John 14:9–10 “Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”

Colossians 1:15 “Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature:”

Colossians 2:9 “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.”

3. Written Revelation - Scripture

General revelation is canonized

Special revelation is inscripturated

Its’ fixed

Composed over 1500 years

40 different human authors

superior to general (Ps. 19:7-11)

specific + verbal

given to prophets + apostles

lasting + forever settled witness

3. Mode of Revelation

Progressive Revelation - God unfolding His truth in stages across history, “milk to meat”, “witness to manifest”

Gradual - not all truth was given at once (Heb. 9:24-28)

Cumulative - later revelation builds on earlier revelation - each new building and clarifying what came before

Consistent - it never contradicts prior truth

Types, Shadows, Figures

Hebrews 8:5 “Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.”

Heb. 9:1-10

Hebrews 9:23–24 “It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:”

Hebrews 10:1 “For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.”

Hebrews 11:17–19 “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.”

1 Cor. 10:1ff

Colossians 2:16–17 “Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.”

Romans 5:14 “Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come.”

John 1:19 “And this is the record of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou?”

John 3:14–15 “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

1 Corinthians 5:7 “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:”

Matthew 12:39–41 “But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas: For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: because they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here.”

Conclusion

What we have seen today is nothing less than the matchless grace of God — a God who did not leave man to grope in the darkness of his own reason, but who spoke. He spoke to Adam in the garden, to Noah before the flood, to Abraham on the mountain, to Moses in the fire. He spoke in dreams and visions, in types and shadows, in miracles and theophanies. And then, in the fullness of time, He spoke His final and fullest word — He gave us His Son. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." In Christ, the invisible God became visible, the incomprehensible became knowable, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.

And now that Word has been written down. Fixed. Settled forever in heaven. You hold in your hands — or you can hold in your hands — the complete and sufficient revelation of God. Every attribute of His nature, every counsel of His will, every shadow and its fulfillment, every promise and its heir — it is all there, inscripturated for you. The same God who opened the Red Sea, who spoke from Sinai, who raised the dead through Elijah and Elisha, who preserved Jonah in the deep — that God has made Himself known, fully and finally, in His Son and in His Word.

So the question before you today is not whether God has spoken. He has. The question is whether you will hear Him. Will you go to that Word — not merely as a religious duty, but as men and women who are desperate to know the living God? Christ is the sum of all revelation. Every page of Scripture points to Him, is fulfilled in Him, and leads you to Him. To know the Word is to know the Son. To know the Son is to know the Father. And to know God — this is eternal life.

And this is where we are going. In the weeks ahead, we will not be content to simply know that God has spoken — we will press into what He has said. We will look carefully at who God is in His attributes: His eternality, His omniscience, His holiness, His goodness, His grace. And we will see that none of those attributes can be rightly understood apart from Christ, for it is in Him that the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily. We will likewise turn our eyes to the purpose of God — that eternal counsel which was not an afterthought, but was determined before the foundation of the world, and is being worked out in Christ Jesus to the praise of His glory. Every attribute of God finds its fullest expression in the cross. Every purpose of God finds its answer in the resurrection.

Do not neglect so great a revelation. Open your Bible. Read it with expectation. God still speaks through it, and what He says is enough.