Understanding Our Faith 006 Special Revelation 03 Scripture
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God revealing Himself in Scripture
God revealing Himself in Scripture
We come to our last talk on Special Revelation which, if we remember, follows on from General revelation which is about how God reveals Himself to everyone. Special simply means the way God has revealed Himself in a special way to specific people in specific places at specific times.
Today we come to the third way God has done this:
Direct communication from God
God in Jesus or the Incarnation
Scripture
Almost everything we can know about God comes from the Scriptures. Though I have said a number of times already there are some ways to know something of God in creation, history and conscience but we also know that this does not lead to true knowledge if this is all we know. This is clear from the sheer multitude of religions in the world today. There are so many different understandings about God, gods, goddesses and other variations that it leaves people with a bewildering choice of ways to peace, love, understanding and bliss but all are completely wrong. They really are blind leading the blind groping in the darkness because they have not found the true knowledge of God. Of course we all also have an enemy who is trying to keep people blind too.
However we, on the other hand, are exclusive. We have the ways of God revealed to us. Unless God chose to reveal Himself we really would know next to nothing about Him and certainly would be worshippers of One we do not know or understand just as the Athenians had an idol addressed to the unknown god. Of course we can never truly know everything that there is to know about God or we would be perfect in knowledge and understanding of all things and that is certainly not possible for people. This is only possible for God.
But He has not left us to grope in the dark. Last week we saw that God is speaking to us through His Son. But He is now ascended. God is still speaking through His Son, whom John calls the Word of God. Everything has been recorded in the pages of Scripture, otherwise known as our Bible, also known as the Word of God. We had God’s Word in the flesh but we know that He went back to Heaven. Now we have God’s Word in written form. God has chosen to continue to reveal Himself through the pages of Scripture. We need His Holy Spirit to grasp it and illumine it.
What I don’t yet get is why, if God has revealed Himself, revealed who He is and what He is done and it is basically the only record of the dealings of Jesus, His Apostles and the Ancestors and we have no other true source for the knowledge of God, how come the Word of God is so neglected?
So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.
The Bible reveals just how accurate it is in the literal fulfilment of prophecy. Some prophecies were not fulfilled until millennia afterwards. Prophecy is another way God has revealed Himself but we are treating it within the revelation of Scripture.
Ezekiel foretold the fall of Assyria in Ezekiel 31, Jeremiah foretold the fall of Babylon in chapters 50-51, Ezekiel foretold the fall of Egypt in chapter 30 and Daniel foretold the fall of Greece in Daniel 8.
And then there are over 360 prophecies concerning Jesus, especially relating to the suffering Messiah. It was missed by the Jews because they did not know the Scripture. They missed His first coming because they had the wrong idea of Messiah. We have to be careful to know Scripture to know the signs of the times for the 2nd coming of Messiah. He will come again through the Golden Gate that has been closed up for over 1500 years, itself a prophecy fulfilled – it is impossible for it not to come to pass.
It is also in the Bible we read of the men of faith, it is here that we find out about God’s dealings with people, it is here that we read of miracles, of Jesus life, death, resurrection, ascension and coming again. Without the Bible we would be lost and making guesses, mostly wrongly. Without the Bible we do not know about hope or what true love is. Without the Bible we lose our way for it is a lamp to our feet. The Bible gives us an infallible or perfect revelation of the nature, being and will of God.
It is why we should read it every day; it should be the first and last thing we do.
God has revealed Himself through Scripture and is the main way He reveals Himself to us. We miss out if we neglect, ignore or forget this precious gift. God has given us the Bible so that we can know Him and know that everything within its pages are God’s truth.
All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
And this is what we will be turning to in the New Year, God willing, as we look at what we should know about the Bible in Understanding the Bible, why we can trust it and how we know it to truly be God’s Word.
Ryrie’s Basic Theology B. Revelation as Personal Encounter
Special revelation as now recorded in the Bible furnishes the content of God’s message to the world