Systematic Theology (part 31)

Bethlehem Bible Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:00

Today we are going to do a Sunday School that's a little different than what we've done in the past few weeks. In the last several weeks we've looked at some challenging subjects.

00:09

We've looked at some aspects in theology that our minds can't fully comprehend, but we want to be faithful to the biblical revelation.

00:18

So we looked at how God is sovereign over everything, including evil, and yet he is not the author of sin. We looked at how

00:24

God is sovereign over all events and people and brings about the eschaton according to his intended pleasure, but we are not robots and we have the ability to exercise our choices freely.

00:41

And so we were looking at these subjects, looking from the biblical standpoint, how should we as Christians engage the subject, what can we learn about the subject, and where do we need to know the boundaries so we don't cross over and either presume certain things which are not revealed to us, or let our questions transgress in our trust of the character of God.

01:12

So those were the things we looked at, but today is going to be more of a summary class, and in fact I have only one class due, so I have to do it rather fast.

01:20

So I've broken it down into several sections, and the way I'm approaching this is, now that we've considered these heavy, weighty subjects, how would we approach this to unbelievers who may have questions in this area?

01:36

So the title if you want to give for this one in the

01:44

Adventures in Theology is, How do you mediate mystery? How do you mediate the mystery in theology and the nature of God to those who do not know it?

01:55

So that's the broad theme, and to do that I'm going to go by, I have about six or seven sections, one of the sections we're going to get into the scriptures and look at some applications that come from it, but for the most part

02:08

I'm going to go through how to think about the subject, these heavy subjects, how do we mediate these concepts and these unknowns to those who have questions about them.

02:19

So let me begin with a wake -up kind of thought game.

02:28

Imagine an alien with two heads. All right,

02:36

Star Wars, Star Trek, all you fans can easily do that. Now having put that image in your head, the wonderful image, try to now picture that this object, this being, is the source of life on Earth.

02:52

Okay, I'm not saying this is true, okay? Just imagine this. Interestingly enough, in the secular world, there are people who try to find the origin of life here on Earth and struggling to find justification for the various theories, they would want to kick the can further up and say, you know, maybe some being from outer space, you know, started all of this over here.

03:12

But just imagine for a moment that there is this alien being with two heads, and that was the source.

03:21

That's a hypothesis that that was the source of everything that we see in existence.

03:28

Now for us as Christians, that may seem humorous and maybe silly. But if someone were to propose that to us, the question that should be running in our head is, what kind of evidence do we have for such a being being the source of life here?

03:46

Is there some data by which we go, or is it just some imaginative like fantasy sci -fi that we've just come up with?

03:54

And we say, oh, this would be cool if it were true. And because I want it to be true, it must be true.

04:02

Now, as a Christian, if you were examining such a hypothesis, you would be thinking of various questions.

04:09

Okay, what does it mean to have two heads? If you have two brains, does that mean these are two independently sentient beings?

04:18

Or is it one being which could potentially have conflicting ways of thinking? What does it even mean that when you have an alien with two heads?

04:25

So here is, I just want to phrase this mystery for us in a way that we can think of when it comes from an absurd position.

04:34

And then I want us to turn it around and say, how do we present the truth of the scripture when it actually crosses over into mystery when we communicate that with unbelievers?

04:43

Now, the difference, the big difference between what we see in an imaginative being like this alien with two heads and the truth of mystery in the scripture, such as the

04:57

Trinity, for example, will have to do primarily with the evidence that we have for it.

05:03

And the evidence, as we've been looking at in the last several weeks, rests in the scriptures.

05:10

We have data upon which we believe certain truths, certain mysterious truths, and that is basically the foundation upon which we communicate.

05:20

We communicate what we know and we mediate what we do not know. So there is communication happening now, evidence.

05:39

Now, if you reverse these roles, sometimes you may feel like you're the one trying to communicate an alien with two heads.

05:48

And these are things that we just want to walk away from. When we talk about the

05:53

Trinity, it's like, oh, this is so challenging. How can I even explain these things? And my charge this morning is that we can hopefully see ways in which we can talk about those things that we cannot fully comprehend to those who do not know these truths.

06:11

So let me begin by saying, how do we normally communicate truth? When we think of apologetics, our responsibility is to take the truth of the scriptures, take the evidences that the scripture provides and the evidence that we have in the natural world, prepare logical, coherent arguments or statements on propositions that explain the truth of what we believe about the

06:35

Holy God and a sinful man. And we try to communicate it in a way that the person can understand what we are saying, even if they don't agree with it, because we do believe regeneration is a vital part of accepting what we actually do say.

06:50

But there is a lot of things that we can know scriptural truths and that we can communicate verbally and in a rational way to people that can at least form an image of what we are saying, whether they accept it or not.

07:05

Now, the focus of today's Sunday school is that when we move from the straightforward truths of scripture to those aspects of scripture that we can't really penetrate the mystery and the transcendent nature of God, we can still mediate that to those who do not know it.

07:32

And we do not need to be afraid of certain doctrines on the scripture when they come to us from unbelievers saying, how could you believe such an incoherent or absurd idea?

07:46

Imagine again this alien with two heads. That's what your mystery sounds like to us.

07:52

So my purpose here is to say that these mysteries. We can indeed mediate, we can do it in such a way that honors

08:03

God and we can use it, in fact, as a secondary means of apologetics as we connect with people who do not know the truth.

08:10

So with that, let me just give a few definitions and then I'll take some questions and we'll go on to the main content.

08:19

Mystery. What do we mean by mystery? There are mystery exists in certain things that are available to us.

08:25

So things we do not know are things that we know, but we can't understand.

08:31

So when you think of biblical mystery, we talked about the sovereignty of God and responsibility of man. There are certain ways in which they work that we cannot penetrate.

08:39

So we know some things, but we don't understand how they work. Or there are certain things that are about God that are mysterious and we actually do not know them.

08:47

We may know some of them when we are in glory, when we have our finite beings have been have taken off the garb of sin.

08:57

There is no more sin clouding our minds, as it were, as we are in the presence of God. And yet as finite creatures, even in glory, we will not know everything.

09:05

We will just keep knowing more and more. And there is going to be that differential where we look at God and God is still beyond all that we can understand.

09:14

So there is mystery. And that's basically how I want us to define mystery. What we do not know as well as what we cannot understand what we already know.

09:23

But there is another term that I want to use, and that's transcendence. Transcendence of God really means he surpasses the created universe.

09:33

He is far above and beyond the categories that we as created beings are used to.

09:42

Things that we understand life by. Things through which we process information. God transcends them all because he is the author of all these.

09:52

And there are no categories that can box God in as we think about God and we develop concepts about him.

10:06

We need to recognize that God is beyond our thinking. There are paths.

10:14

Why am I struggling with this so much? Let me just stick to my notes. God's transcendence in the

10:21

Trinity ought to evoke awe since it exceeds every category and frame of reference that the human mind can conceive.

10:29

Now you can see it's put in a positive sense while we think of transcendence as what do we do about it? The way

10:36

I look at transcendence is that's one of those key elements about who God is in and of himself that ought to evoke something in us.

10:42

As believers we already stand in awe of him and that ought to be something that we can communicate to unbelievers as well.

10:50

That this ought to be the kind of God that you must be worshipping. Not a God that you have tamed, domesticized and captured in the categories of your mind.

10:58

So when we come to the third definition which is mediating transcendence, mediation normally we think of reconciling between two parties.

11:07

Like Moses was a mediator. Jesus is our only mediator between God and man.

11:14

And apologists now, you can think of them as standing as a dot between two dots.

11:21

How do you connect something and you can bring in a mediation, a point of reference between two subsequent points so that now you start to see a line rather than two disconnected points.

11:33

So we now try to bring something in the middle and mediation is primarily based on the gospel because that's what

11:38

Jesus did. What he finished, we represent. But when it comes to mysteries, the challenge is when we have knowledge, you can communicate it, verbalize it, articulate it, explain it.

11:52

And whether they acknowledge it or not. When it comes to mysteries, one of the questions that people would have is, is this an oxymoron?

12:01

Can we actually communicate something that you actually do not either know or fully comprehend? And that's why

12:06

I like the term mediation, because here we are representing what we know. But we are also secondarily bringing to bring before the unbeliever the necessity of.

12:18

The transcendent God, the necessity of mystery in the Godhead, because the

12:24

God that we are worshiping is not just a God like us, but he is far above and beyond. And therefore, the very fact of mystery and transcendence as we mediate to them through the secondary explanation, like the one that I just gave, should be a powerful means of communicating the truth about the

12:41

God that we worship. God, the God that we worship is not just a God that we can wrap our minds around, but a

12:46

God who far exceeds all that we can imagine because he is the creator of us all.

12:52

Let me stop here for a moment. I know it's a little abstract early in the morning. So any questions on this or thoughts on this?

13:00

Make sense? OK. Sometimes if I talk too much, I can't keep my thoughts in order.

13:06

So now let's go to the next section, which is epistemology. So how do we know these things? So we've talked about this in the beginning of our section.

13:15

Epistemology is the study of how we know and understand things. What capacity do we have to absorb this kind of knowledge?

13:25

And the question we want to ask is, can man know God? And the answer is yes.

13:33

Why can man know God? Man is made in God's image.

13:40

Man, you know, even after the fall, we have this apparatus inside of us.

13:48

Some philosophers, Christian philosophers, call it census divinitatis. I think it comes from Calvin and earlier.

13:55

And the idea there is that there is this apparatus in us because of God's image where we know that there is a

14:02

God who made us. Romans 1, Psalm 19, all of these point to that aspect of us being able to know

14:07

God. But the problem is that because of the fall, we choose to ignore, suppress the knowledge of God that man has.

14:20

And we have God both revealing himself to us in the scripture, what we call special revelation, as well as his signs or his pointers to him in his creation that actually point back to him.

14:33

So these are all things that point people to God. Now, the problem is not that man cannot know

14:41

God because he can. It's a question of what we do with that knowledge that God has given of himself. If the question is of knowing exhaustively, can man know

14:51

God in the sense that he can absorb everything? And the answer, obviously, is no, is no.

14:59

We've already looked at some of the reasons for this. We are finite creatures. We are simple creatures. We cannot know everything about God.

15:08

And in fact, the. The fact that we do not know and we will not know even in all of eternity, it'll be a joy of getting to know

15:18

God so much more is one of the joys of the Christian. In habit that we will be enjoying him forever.

15:26

He is the deep satisfaction of a soul that never ends because he is infinitely good.

15:33

We as finite beings will continue to assimilate and enjoy the truth about God.

15:39

Now, when it comes to mystery, one of the challenges that we've had is if we take

15:50

Trinity, for example. We have theologians who have taken the biblical data and they have tried to systematize it in a way that we can comprehend it.

16:01

So right now, when I ask any of you what the Trinity means, many of you have a pretty will be able to explain the

16:09

Trinity in pretty simple terms. You know, there are three persons in the Godhead. There is only one

16:14

God. And each person of the Godhead is fully and completely

16:20

God. How do we know all of these things? Because they are from the data of Scripture and men have tried to make statements that are fair to all the data of Scripture without doing injustice to any other part of Scripture.

16:35

So that's basically what we have when we try to systematize what we know. And the problem in church history that we see is when someone takes one aspect of Scripture and tries to oversimplify it.

16:49

For example, the unity of God and they say, well, then the three persons must be defined in a certain other way.

16:58

Maybe it is an appearance of three persons rather than the real three persons of the Trinity. Then you have a heresy because you have you have tried to oversimplify the facts of Scripture in order to make it in order for it to make sense to you that you have rejected some other facts of Scripture in the process.

17:16

And that is a danger that Christians have faced through church history. And even today, when people try to redefine or reprocess the data of the

17:26

Trinity, there are challenges that people run into. And we need to be very careful that we were faithful to every facet of Scripture that is given.

17:35

Now, on the one hand, you have this overbearing systematization, which can try to simplify or develop other concepts that may not be faithful to the

17:46

Scriptures. And then you have, on the other hand, experience, which basically says, you know, these things can be articulated and therefore it has to be mystical.

17:56

And so there are those who would go on the other extreme. And the challenge, again, with mysticism is it doesn't articulate the facts of Scripture that it would reject.

18:07

But it actually ignores, for the most part, the data of Scripture in its in its value of experience over the objective truth of the revealed word of God.

18:18

So our challenge here, when we are talking about mediating, mediating the mystery in God is, how do we bring the unbeliever face to face with the transcendent mystery that is in God when we cannot systematize certain things that are beyond our comprehension?

18:39

And we are not asking them to, you know, do TM or something else, you know, in order to just kind of come and experience the nature of God.

18:49

So to do that, I actually have a couple of examples for us. So if you turn with me in your Bibles, we're going to look at Hebrews 11, 7.

18:57

I have a couple of biblical examples, a couple of examples from early church history.

19:05

And I want us to look at what they did with what God revealed to them. So now that we have the stage set,

19:11

I want you to be thinking, here are some individuals who had some knowledge of God.

19:18

And that knowledge spilled over into this transcendent mystery.

19:23

And what did they do with this knowledge that they had when they when they interacted with unbelievers?

19:32

So hopefully that gives you a model that we can apply for ourselves as we consider the mysteries that we face and the people that we face today.

19:40

So if someone can just read Hebrews 11, 7. So there are a few terms here that I just want us to just take a few moments to consider carefully.

19:49

In Hebrews 11, 7, you see the phrase events as yet unseen, events as yet unseen.

20:00

In my mind, that sounds like mystery to me, and I'll explain what why I think so. So Noah had a revelation from God, right?

20:06

So there is something that is going to come. There is a deluge. There is going to be a judgment and the earth is going to be wiped out. That's what

20:11

Noah had heard from God. But here the biblical writer here talks about the event itself.

20:23

He had not seen it. He has no mental model to understand what deluge is going to look like.

20:28

There is no rain. He has not seen a cataclysm of the nature that is being described. He does not know geotectonics.

20:35

He does not know what it means for the springs of the deep to be broken open. He does not even know what a ship and its function is like, except that he has been given a mechanism.

20:44

You know, if you want to think about it, it's like Noah's having a God tells Noah, you know, you make a time machine.

20:51

I'm not going to tell you the physics and the and the engineering behind it. I'm just going to give you the blueprint you just build.

20:57

I'll give you all the parts and supplies, put it together like Lego. And when it when the time comes, I'm going to take you out of here.

21:03

Right. I mean, literally for us looking back, it's all. Oh, yeah. No, I was going to, you know, build an arc and he's going to take care of it.

21:10

But as far as Noah's concerned, at the time of the revelation that he has, he has no conception of what is actually coming to pass.

21:18

It's mysterious to him. All he knows is that God has revealed this to him and it is true. And he must act upon what

21:23

God has said. Does that make sense? OK.

21:29

Now, and the real issue here is going back to what we started with. He did not have categories in which to capture the revelation of God, which is why it's mystery.

21:41

He could not understand what he knew and the people to whom he is going to be talking about.

21:46

They, too, do not have those conceptual categories to absorb or say,

21:52

OK, this is I understand it because it's mystery to them as well. Now, let's look at the next phrase here.

21:59

It says in reverent fear. When you think of reverent fear, this is not fear of the deluge because you do not revere a deluge.

22:12

He is in reverent fear of God. So here is this God who transcends the created order, who is going to change the order that Noah's knows and is familiar with in a way that transcends all of his understanding.

22:26

So this is where we come. God transcending creation. And he is now going to be the one who is going to come into it and change it the way he wants, the way that he has chosen to.

22:37

So no, Noah's job is to communicate this to the world, which has no regard for God.

22:45

And he by the grace of God. And this is basically where the believers and the unbeliever difference comes in is while we do not have the categories for the mystery and God, we revere him because we recognize him as transcendent.

22:57

And the unbeliever who does not have those categories normally rejects it. And our responsibility here is to mediate that reverence that ought to be there because of the nature of God as a transcendent

23:09

God. Now, let's see how Noah does this. How does Noah mediate this? If you look at what he did, he was obedient.

23:17

You have the phrase he constructed an arc. Again, this is a very familiar story.

23:23

So we just kind of get so used to this idea of just Noah doing what God asked him to do. But what is it that is happening as Noah builds this arc?

23:32

You have this huge gigantic structure standing in the middle of this land that has no use for any of the categories that people are used to.

23:41

But people are observing this giant construction and the people who are used to seeing categories on their plane, the mundane are now forced to look up.

23:53

You know, literally, if you were, you know, if you think of the size of this thing, but to look up at a new category that has now been brought, but that they have been brought face to face with.

24:03

They may not be willing to acknowledge it, but right there is that object less than that big elephant in the room that you now have to contend with.

24:10

Because Noah was one who trusted in the transcendent mystery and God and acted upon what

24:16

God said. So Noah's actions and obedience to God actually brings the rest of the world face to face with something about the work of God as a transcendent being in their midst.

24:28

Whether they acknowledge it or not, they have to face it because Noah has obeyed God in doing what he was told to do.

24:42

Now, there is a little bit more here. So anyway, let me just stay with my notes.

24:48

And if I miss it, I'll come back. The next phrase there is for the saving of his household. Here is this arc that shows that he has confidence in the revelation of God that he would build it.

24:58

But it actually demonstrates the faith or the trust that Noah has in God.

25:03

That's basically what impels him to build it. But that object of his obedience will actually be the instrument that will carry him through the flood.

25:14

And interestingly, while the doors were still open, that very object could have been for the saving of anyone who would have trusted in the message of Noah as well.

25:26

So here was this object that was the revelation of God that was also the instrument of salvation.

25:37

Now, there is a phrase here, and I think we need to watch this carefully. It says, by this, he condemned the world.

25:47

The way I look at it is when you act upon the revelation of God, your action of obedience is an outward apologetic of truth and salvation and judgment.

25:58

You need to remember the rest of the scripture that talks about this one singular event in history.

26:04

We know that God's patience waited in the time of Noah, 1

26:09

Peter 3 .20. God was actually patient for this entire object lesson to be completed while he was waiting before he would bring the flood.

26:22

And it's only Noah's family that would end up trusting in God. Now, maybe

26:29

I'll just say this here. How many people listened to Noah and repented? Only his family.

26:38

There was really not one single person through this entire object lesson of God's working through Noah and the transcendent mystery.

26:47

And we need to be very careful that our focus is never on the results that would come from it, but rather our faithfulness in presenting the transcendent mystery of God to a people that do not know him.

27:01

And again, if you just extend this a little bit more, this is not in scripture, but if you try to think how much did

27:08

Noah know about Christology, hypostatic union, Trinitarian economy?

27:14

I don't know, maybe he did, but at least it's not recorded for us what actually he did know or not. But he was just faithful with what was given to him and being an obedient servant of God.

27:24

Oh, I'm missing a verse.

27:30

What is the verse I'm looking for? Oh, yes, 2 Peter 2 .5, where it talks about Noah as a herald of righteousness with seven others.

27:40

And the word for herald is actually preacher. We don't have any other place recorded in terms of what

27:47

Noah preached and taught. But at the very least, we know that he was a herald and it was both in his words and in his deeds.

27:57

And so here we have one example from Noah, how something that is not fully known by us, but we trust what we know and we represent the

28:08

God who is bringing about this judgment. So here were the people, they were eating and drinking and making merry.

28:13

And actually the reason for the judgment was the violence that filled the land. So those are the things that they were all very familiar with.

28:20

And here comes a new category that is imposed upon them. The judgment of God that is coming in a very unique way that showcases the character of God, who transcends the life as they know it at this point in time.

28:32

And Noah, by his faithful obedience, becomes a mediator of transcendence to the people around him.

28:41

Let's stop there for a moment. Thoughts? Questions? Okay, then we'll take one more example and then maybe we'll dive a little deeper.

28:50

The next example is Moses. Moses, as you know, is a prototypical mediator in the

28:56

Old Testament. His apologetic goes to the unbelieving Egyptians, to Pharaoh, and even to the unbelieving

29:04

Israelites. He is this friend of God who knows God and has to constantly be proclaiming the revelation of God to these people.

29:16

Here is what God told. And then at some point it switches over into a demonstration of God's power to these people as they reject the message that comes from God.

29:26

And then what really happens is as God brings destruction, there is an awe that comes upon the people.

29:33

And God actually says, I do this in order to glorify myself. I'm going to harden their hearts, and as they stand up against me,

29:39

I'm going to show who I am. And I'm going to be glorified in their myths, both the

29:45

Egyptians as well as the Israelites. And so here, again, we want to ask the question, how much did

29:52

Moses know when he embarked on this mission? Every time

29:57

I look at Moses, I always think of this guy 120 years later, who was this real deep, rich, intimate friend with God, who knew so many things that most others, we would just hope for, that I would have those 40 days up on that mountain with the presence of God.

30:12

Those are the things we remember. But where did this all begin? Think about the burning bush. When he was confronted by God at the burning bush, what did

30:25

Moses know about God? Here was his mandate. There was a revelation from God. I am the God who has heard the cries of the

30:31

Israelites, and I am going to rescue them, and you must go. And what does Moses do?

30:41

Find every excuse in the book to get out of this. He does not know exactly what God's plan is.

30:46

It's not yet revealed to him. It's mysterious to him. He knows Pharaoh. He actually left

30:51

Egypt because he wanted to, I have to be careful what I say there, partly to save his skin, but partly rejecting the power that he was a part of.

31:05

But here, we can empathize with Moses, as it were, as his entire journey begins.

31:14

When you are faced with the mystery and the transcendence of God and his purposes in our lives, we don't always know those things.

31:21

But when Moses continues to minister, he is faithful in obeying

31:28

God through the entire process. What are some of the things that we see? Let's take the veiled face of Moses, for example.

31:42

Here is something that he experiences God. He experiences the glory of God, and there is this transference, and I still remember

31:53

Dan's message from 2 Corinthians 3 on the veiled glory.

32:00

And then now we have something much more grander in the person of Jesus Christ.

32:06

And again, these are all the parallelisms we want to be thinking of Moses as a mediator. In what ways are we to represent

32:12

God before the people now that we have encountered Christ himself? But Moses knew

32:17

God as a friend, and yet he was only given what God would permit him to know.

32:24

So you remember, there are things that he could not know and survive, and God graciously reveals and hides them from what he must not know.

32:32

And the response of the Israelites, if you remember, while Moses was up on the mountain and the mountain is trembling, they see the transcendence of God as it bears upon their existence, and they are afraid, and they want

32:47

Moses to be the communicator between them and God. And Moses would end up writing down the revelation that they needed to have.

33:01

And in addition to that, you have the tent of meeting that is filled with the glory of God as the presence of God comes upon them.

33:08

And there is a visible reminder that there is a God that they just can't analyze and box who is in their midst.

33:14

And this is a holy God, a God that is beyond the categorizations that they can imagine.

33:20

Now, Moses had a responsibility to communicate. And again, I'm using the word communicate deliberately when we talk about those things that God has revealed in the scriptures that we must know about God and we must obey him.

33:32

And those things that we cannot know, those things that we just have a faint hint of, or things that we can't wrap our arms around and say,

33:40

I've got it all, you know, the triune God. These are things that we just bow down to in awe, knowing that he transcends our mind and our thinking.

33:48

So with that said, how could this apply for us today?

33:57

Is there any sense of application when we think of the mystery of God or the transcendence of God and in the way in which we mediate?

34:06

What are some thoughts that come to mind? It makes perfect sense. So again, if our eyes are fixed upon God rather than the people that we are looking at, you know,

34:14

I don't know if Moses thought this way, but at the burning bush, you know, here is a burning bush and God speaking from the bush.

34:22

If I just keep my eyes fixed upon the God, then all my fears and concerns should slip away.

34:30

But if I'm thinking of what will the people say, why would they accept me? Why would Pharaoh listen to me?

34:35

Those are things that can tend to keep my mouth quiet. And rather, if I trust in God, the

34:41

God who is transcendent and I know him to be transcendent, I can believe that he will help me in mediating his transcendence to the people.

34:52

Excellent. Any other thoughts? And actually, that is really the thrust of today's

34:57

Sunday School is many a time people, we just think of Trinity, for example, as a mathematical equation.

35:03

I just need to have the most complex way of solving this before I can communicate it to others. And that's really not the point.

35:10

We want to be faithful with what we know and communicate it, leaving the mystery as it is, because it is intended to shock people to know that their

35:20

God that we present is beyond the categories that they are used to. Amen. And it won't explode.

35:32

And whether they listen or not, you know, I think it is John 13, 34, and 35, Jesus gives a new commandment that you love one another.

35:39

By this they will know that you are my disciples. And there is an object lesson right there, you know, when we think of Noah's Ark.

35:48

Here is something, and actually a colleague at work, another believer, he just told me this. 30 years ago, he had this unbelieving friend that he was, not friend, colleague, and a real nice person, but very anti, not anything willing to consider the things of God.

36:06

And then he had worked with this person, I think, four or five years. And then just this year, he reconnected and then met for lunch.

36:14

And then the person says, I'm a believer. And he's like, wait, how did this happen? And she said, you know,

36:20

I observed the way you and the other Christians interacted and how what was going on with you.

36:27

And I was different, even though radically opposed to all the things that a Christian would normally believe in.

36:33

Here's what happened in this person. And he got to find out 26 years later that the

36:38

Lord had worked through this. And he may not have even known that he was mediating the mystery of God, the love that he had for his other fellow workers.

36:46

But the Lord used that. That was an excellent point. We can we can think about similar things in the

36:55

New Testament as well, in terms of what did Peter know? What did Paul know? And what are things that they grew in knowledge of as opposed to things that, you know, may they just knew the data, but they didn't have them all tied together.

37:09

In fact, I think if you think of First Timothy 316, Paul talks about the mystery of godliness, talking about the the mystery embedded in the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

37:23

And John Gill comments this. He says on this term, great mystery of godliness, the incarnation of Christ, his his birth of a virgin, the union of two natures, divine and human in his person.

37:35

This is a mystery which, though revealed and so to be believed, is not to be discerned nor accounted for, nor the modus of it to be comprehended by reason.

37:47

And it is a great one. Next, if not equal to the doctrine of the Trinity of persons in the divine essence and is a mystery of godliness, which tends to encourage internal and external religion, powerful and practical godliness in all the parts and branches of it.

38:02

And is so beyond all dispute and doubt. So my my my point here is this.

38:10

You know, the bulk of our effort stays in studying the word of God, understanding those things that are clearly revealed that we may worship

38:18

God, that we would obey God, that we would tell people the gospel that is simple and clear and understandable.

38:24

But when it comes to those things that are mysterious, that are transcendent, that are hidden before us, we ought not to say, oh, you know what?

38:31

These are things that I want to kind of hide under a sheet and pretend that they don't exist.

38:38

They are there for a reason. They are intended to evoke all in us of the God that we worship. They are intended for us to mediate to others, that people would recognize that they are not the judge of the

38:52

God they would choose to serve, but rather they are creatures who cannot comprehend the

38:59

God that they will ultimately bow their knees to. And really, that's and I'm presenting just this element of it.

39:05

So I don't want it to make it look like, you know, all this doesn't matter. The bulk of our work will be in studying and explaining the truth that is clearly revealed to us.

39:12

But when it comes to those things that are mysterious and transcendent, we want to be faithful to God and let him employ that in the unbelievers life.

39:26

So let me give you a couple more examples. Justin Martyr, here is a conversation he has.

39:33

When he was speaking with Trifo, Trifo said, you endeavor to prove an incredible and well -nigh impossible thing that God endured to be born and become a man.

39:43

So here is a Jewish person who is responding to Justin's claim that Jesus is God. And so Justin said, if I will, because he's speaking to a

39:54

Jew, he says, if I undertook to prove this by doctrines or arguments of man, you should not bear with me. But if I quote frequently scriptures and so many of them referring to this point and ask you to comprehend them, you are hard hearted in the recognition of the mind and will of God.

40:10

But if you wish to remain forever, so I would not be injured at all.

40:15

And forever retaining the same opinions which I had before I met with you, I shall leave you.

40:22

So you can just see the confidence he just has in the revelation of God that it's his lack of faith.

40:29

The Jews lack of faith doesn't doesn't injure Justin, but he provides a judgment of the

40:37

God's view on on the on Trifo's opinion. When he when he chooses not to believe what

40:44

God has clearly revealed, even if it is incomprehensible. There's a few more examples.

40:50

Let me just give you one. OK, let's take

40:55

Tertullian. He says the same subject matter is discussed over and over again by heretics and philosophers.

41:02

The same arguments are involved. When's comes evil? Why is it permitted? What is the origin of man and what way does he come?

41:08

And besides the questions that Valentina says lately, very lately proposed, when's comes

41:15

God and Tertullian says, you know, here is the kind of unbelief and the questions that it spawns.

41:24

They have always been the same. This is what the nature of man is when it comes before God. Here is all the objections and the, you know,

41:31

I demand or deserve or I ought to know. And then

41:36

Tertullian says, unhappy Aristotle, who invented for these men dialectics, the art of building up and tearing down an art so evasive in its propositions.

41:48

And then he goes on to say, really retracting everything and treating of nothing.

41:54

And then he connects that with Paul's words in Colossians about empty and vain philosophy.

42:00

And then he concludes by saying, what indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the academy and the church and what between heretics and Christians?

42:11

Our instruction comes from the porch of Solomon, who had himself taught that the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart, away with all attempts to produce a model

42:20

Christianity of stoic, platonic and dialectic composition. We want no curious disputation after possessing

42:29

Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel. With our faith, we desire no further belief.

42:36

But this is our praiseworthy faith that there is nothing which we ought to believe besides.

42:44

Now, what Tertullian in this particular phrase is a very famous phrase that people quote all the time.

42:50

And they would just say, oh, you know what? Tertullian is this guy who doesn't care for reasoned argumentation.

42:57

And, you know, I have a ton of other quotes here just talking about he was he was one of the earliest men to use the word

43:03

Trinitas. And he spoke pretty extensively on how to explain the facts of scripture as best as humans could.

43:11

He wasn't minimizing scripture. He was just warning the believers of trying to accommodate the truth of scriptures along the categorization that the world was so comfortable and familiar with.

43:25

He said, you know, this is the kind of questions you're constantly going to be facing. And if you take that as the standard that you need to somehow meet, you're going to miss the point of what the faith is all about.

43:35

You have a faith that is revealed to you in Jesus Christ and be content with presenting it as simply and as clearly as possible.

43:45

Don't try to make a mix in order to make a portion that seems so attractive for the people who are asking you.

43:51

And in the end, they will just continue to keep asking it. Actually, we are out of time.

44:01

So maybe just a few thoughts and we'll wrap it up here. So my trust has been, you know, when it comes to those things that you don't understand.

44:11

And in fact, when you look around the room here, there are probably things that some of you understand in the deep theology that we have that I may not know.

44:21

And and vice versa, that we may all be in different states of understanding the truth that has been revealed to us.

44:29

We ought to be students of the word. We want to study it as diligently as we can so that we can faithfully that we can enjoy it as well as faithfully communicated.

44:37

But when it comes to those things, especially like Trinity, theodicy, the incarnation, free will, sovereignty of God.

44:45

There are many things that we as Christians know for ourselves that we are creatures, finite and limited in our ability to know.

44:53

And we want to be able to redirect that that beam when it comes to unbelievers who want to know these answers.

45:02

Not like I think how Becky said, keep your eyes fully and fixed, fixed fully and firmly upon God.

45:08

And don't try to accommodate for the questions that come from unbelief.

45:15

Mediate mystery because you cannot always unravel the threads that are behind divine providence.

45:22

And the nature of God himself. Questions, comments. All right.

45:31

So with that, we'll close for today. What's going to happen is the next few weeks, Pastor Bob will be teaching on progressive sanctification and how that looks like.

45:41

Not just a theoretical abstract idea of progressive sanctification, but how must we grow in the knowledge of our

45:48

Lord and live that life of that God has called us to. So for the next few weeks, Pastor Bob will do that and then we'll pick up on theology.

45:56

We won't be picking any controversial subjects. The rest of the subjects in theology will be hopefully straightforward.

46:02

All right, let's pray. A loving and gracious father, we thank you for saving us. We thank you for opening our hearts and minds to who you are.

46:10

And Lord, this morning we are here to give you praise. We acknowledge that you are indeed transcendent and we rejoice in the fact that one day we will see you face to face and enjoy you forever.

46:24

We come at this morning into your care. May our worship. Oh, Lord, be pleasing before you.