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Father, what a blessing it is to be here this morning with your people, to have your Word, to be able to look at what you've given us concerning spiritual gifts.
Father, I pray that this time would be a good time of instruction and interaction.
And Lord, would you just bless our time in Christ's name. Amen. Well, as always, I like to read
Christianity Today so you don't have to. One man calls it, and I think rightfully so,
Christianity astray. You know, it started in the 1950s by the
New Evangelical Movement. It had the best of intention. I think maybe the first editor was
Carl Henry. A lot of good stuff. But now, this little article here just kind of caught my attention.
It's called Blogging the Bible. A Harvard -educated Reformed Jew grapples with the
Old Testament. How appropriate for Christianity Today. What does this have to do with anything?
Let's see. He says he was, you know, sitting at a bat mitzvah, bored out of his mind and picked up Genesis and started reading and found the story of how
Dinah's brothers avenged the attack on her. And he thought, wow, this is the Bible? I think
I'd like to read it. Anyway, fast forward a little bit. Christianity Today.
You say you started as an agnostic. Have your religious views changed by reading the Bible? The answer.
I guess I'm one of these agnostics who is becoming closer to atheism now because I'm so upset by the picture of the
God there. I'm so disturbed by the God that I found there. The most disturbing part of this journey for me was how do
I as a Jew cling to a God who seems to be so unmerciful so much of the time and so cruel so much of the time.
That's very troubling. Do I want such a God to exist? I don't know that I do.
As Jews, we don't have the comfort of the New Testament to fall back on. Christianity Today.
And you can subscribe for just $19. I just thought, what is wrong with that?
Well, what's wrong with that, first of all, is it got a wrong view of the New Testament. I mean, if you think the
New Testament is comfort, I like to say, well, don't read Ananias and Sapphira and don't read about King Herod and don't read about a lot of things because there's a lot of discomfort in the
New Testament. But what about this idea that God is somehow the
God of the Old Testament is cruel, capricious, malevolent. What's that?
It's the same immutable God. Charlie? Well, yeah, it's a commentary on how bad men are, not how cruel
God is. And when you think about it, what did I say? Yeah, about how bad we are.
I mean, when you think about it, the most, if God was even just, if he just gave out what was deserved, the minute
Adam and Eve fell, they would have gone straight to hell and that would have been it. That's not what happened.
So actually, the God of the Old Testament is loving. I mean, over and over again, talks about his loving kindness.
When we think about all the saints of the Old Testament, were they saved because of their goodness?
You know, here's the problem. People like this man, you know, over and over again, and by the way, he's written a book.
How nice of them to basically blurb for the book in Christianity Today. I mean, this is just bizarre.
Oh, it's called Good Book. I don't know what the point of the book is.
Maybe he took all the Old Testament stuff out he didn't like and just changed it. I don't know. Okay, so enough of that silliness.
And if you get Christianity Today, may I just suggest that you spend your money somewhere else. Spiritual gifts.
Spiritual gifts. We'll probably spend the next 20 or 30 minutes or 20 or 30 weeks talking about spiritual gifts.
Definition, first of all. A spiritual gift is a God -given capacity through which the
Holy Spirit supernaturally ministers to the body of Christ. Spiritual gift is a
God -given capacity through which the Holy Spirit supernaturally ministers to the body of Christ.
Keep that in mind as we move forward here. It is not a talent. What's the significance of saying it's not a talent?
Stephen. Unbelievers have talents. Before we get saved, we have talents.
I put down a few here. There's no such thing as a spiritual gift of fast running. I never had that.
Singing. We don't see, you know, he's got the spiritual gift. Xbox skills.
How many kids have Xbox skills? Maybe a PlayStation 2 or 3 skills. That is not a spiritual gift.
You can't, you know, play games for the glory of God. You know, well, I don't know, maybe you can.
I don't know, but that is not a spiritual gift. Someone could say, you know, my voice is a gift of God.
Well, is that true? It might be true in some cases. But it's not, it's something that you can't be born with these things.
But there's a difference between an ability and a skill and a spiritual gift.
The Greek word translated gift that we understand to be a spiritual gift.
You're going to learn some Greek this morning. That word right there is charisma. Charisma. Which some of us are sadly lacking.
But that's the word that is spiritual gift. It occurs 17 times in the
New Testament. 16 times in Paul's epistle, in Paul's epistles once in 1
Peter. The basic premise is that there are different charismata, different spiritual gifts, or varied grace, or different charismata, different gifts.
And that each person, or the Greek word there, ekastos, means each one, to each has his own.
Each person has their own spiritual gift. Each Christian has a spiritual gift.
Let's go ahead and turn to 1 Corinthians 12. And I think it's going to be,
I mean I can't, well I could. I'm not going to teach everything about every spiritual gift, otherwise we'd be here for a long time.
I mean I did a seven week course on charismatic theology in the
IBS class. And you can't really, you can't even cover all the branches of that in 14 hours, let alone what we're going to attempt to do over here, in here in the next several weeks.
But I want to give you an overview anyway of spiritual gifts. And I'm going to read 1
Corinthians chapter 12. And I learned this in Orlando. R .C.
just keeps mocking the Baptists by saying, and, verse 1.
Because he says, he goes, if I don't tell my Baptist friends what verse we're reading, they get all confused. 1
Corinthians 12 and verse 1. Now, concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware.
You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to the mute idols, however you were led.
Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus is accursed, and no one can say
Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same
Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same
God who works all things, who works all things in all persons, but to each one is given the manifestation of the
Spirit for the common good. Vital that we understand that. Let me read that again. But to each one is given the manifestation of the
Spirit for the common good. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same
Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one
Spirit, and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues.
But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as He wills.
And again, notice in verse 7, that phrase for the common good. And it really becomes key to understanding spiritual gifts, particularly in our current context.
By the way, does everybody have a copy of the handout? Do we have any extra copies?
Okay, if you don't have one, would you just raise your hand? Carl, yeah, please.
Why is it so important in the current context to understand for the common good? Patty? Oh, are you just raising your hand because you don't...
Oh, you don't have a copy of the notes and you want to comment. Steve? All right.
Is there anybody who wants to come and raise both your hands? Stephen? That's right.
Stephen said, basically, we all have different gifts, and if we don't exercise them, in fact, Paul goes on to say that, you know, one may be a foot, one may be an eye, and if we don't exercise them correctly, then the entire body suffers.
But more than that, and we'll discuss this in some more length later on, what about the way the church,
Christianity today, exercises spiritual gifts? Daniel?
Excellent. Excellent, Daniel. He said that, you know, the way speaking in tongues is often practiced now, people have a private prayer language or something like that, which is only for them, okay?
And when we see that the entire purpose of spiritual gifts is for the common good, it's a curious way to view it.
Freiberg, in his dictionary, says that the word for the common good means profit or advantage. In other words, it is to the benefit of the entire body.
That's an evangelical New Testament dictionary is what it should be.
I don't know why I have those things backwards. Maybe that's how they abbreviate it. Anyway, in summary,
New Testament use of... Yeah, it has to do with profit, advantage, places not human earthly benefit and personal advantage in the conceptual foreground, but rather the welfare and growth of the church.
That's how the word is used, both by Matthew and in the epistles of Paul. Kistmacher says this,
God's people should never use their gifts and talents for personal interest and satisfaction, even though the recipients themselves may greatly benefit from them.
However, they blatantly sin against God by their disobedience if they allow such selfishness ever to occur.
God asks his servants to go forth in his name and serve him wherever he places them.
Many times this involves leaving behind relatives, friends, and possessions. God's promise to them is that he will give them a hundred times as much in this life and eternal life as their inheritance.
What's Kistmacher saying? You have a spiritual gift and you are to employ it for the kingdom.
And, you know, there may be a case... Let me just throw out an example. There may be a case where someone is gifted in teaching and preaching and they're so gifted here that if they were to stay here, they would have just about zero opportunity to preach.
So it might be in the providence of God, the right thing for them to go somewhere else and serve the body there.
MacArthur says this, Essential to unity is diversity. He's such a get -along kind of guy.
Unity of spirit and purpose can be maintained only... I mean, that sounds very common in our culture, doesn't it?
Essential to unity is diversity. We must prize diversity. Unity of spirit and purpose can be maintained only through diversity of ministry.
That's what Stephen was saying earlier and what the Apostle Paul says. We don't want everybody to be exactly the same.
We don't need 300 feet at Bethlehem Bible Church. We need a variety of different gifts.
A football team whose players all wanted to play quarterback would have uniformity, but not unity.
It would not function as a team if everyone played the same position. So, then how are the gifts distributed?
Well, I just read it here a minute ago in verse 8.
For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit. And actually, I think I have another one here.
Oh, verse 11. But one and the same Spirit works all these things. Listen to this. Distributing to each one, each believer, by the way, to each one individually just as he wills.
Not as we choose, but just as he wills. God is sovereign.
The Holy Spirit is sovereign. And he distributes spiritual gifts as he wills.
Okay. So, then let's read 1 Corinthians 12. I'm going to stay here for just a few more minutes.
1 Corinthians 12. And this is what I've been talking about for some time. So, I'm going to read this. Verses 14 and 25.
For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot says, because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body, it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.
Now, let's just stop there for a second. We hear from time to time. We run across believers from time to time who say, you know what?
I don't attend church. I don't believe in religion. All I need is what?
What's that? Golf course. No. No, how about this?
As long as I have the Bible, the Holy Spirit, and me, kind of like some kind of whacked out trinity.
As long as I have those three things, I'm fine. God doesn't care that I attend church or not. He just cares that I worship him.
And I can do that by myself. What does Paul say right here?
So when someone says, look, I am a Christian, but I don't really need to be part of the body of Christ, that's not right thinking.
And if the ear says, because I am not an eye, I am not a part of the body, it is not for this reason any the less a part of the body.
If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? That's what MacArthur said. If we're all quarterbacks, we're going to have a bad football team.
If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But now God has placed the members, each one of them in the body, just as he desired.
If they were all one member, in other words, if they were all exactly the same, where would the body be?
But now there are many members, but one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand,
I have no need of you. Or the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body, which seem to be weaker, are necessary.
And those members of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow more abundant honor.
And our less presentable members become much more presentable. What's Paul, I mean, beyond what
I've said already, what is Paul saying? Any thoughts on that? What if somebody says, you know,
I'm just not that important. It doesn't really matter if I go to church or if I talk to anyone or if I interact or if I serve, if I have any kind of active role in the church.
Paul's saying here, look, you might think I am the fingernail, you know, on the right pinky.
I'm not that significant. He's saying, listen, the body functions the best, the best that it possibly can when every single part of the body is fully exercising its spiritual gifts for the good of the whole.
Not thinking, oh, poor me, I'm just not that significant. Oh, I just don't have anything to offer.
Oh, there's already somebody else who's the fingernail. What am I going to do? We're all to fully function to the best of our capacity.
That's how the body best works. Comments about that? Okay, two classifications of spiritual gifts.
Temporary sign gifts, apostles, miracles, healings, languages, interpretation of languages.
By the way, I didn't really go into, I don't think I go into, oh, I did go into apostles, so I'll skip over that.
I was going to say something about that and I won't. Temporary sign gifts. What does that mean?
I don't know, but I think you're going to tell us. What is a sign? A sign is something for which there is no natural explanation.
It is an evidence of divine work. It was interesting when I was looking at this, the different places you can see, and I don't remember if this is a place where I saw signs or not, but let's look at Genesis 9.
And when somebody has that, would you read it, please? Genesis 9, verses 12 and 13. Yes, go ahead.
Okay, and what is God talking about there? A sign of rainbow, right?
It is an evidence of divine work. Let's look at Luke 11, 20.
I mean, did rainbows exist before then? No, but that's because there was a canopy and we could talk about creation and the flood and how it existed around the throne.
Is that before the flood or after the flood? During the flood. All right,
Luke 11, verse 20. Who has that? Dave.
Okay, and Jesus was doing what there? He was doing some kind of work that showed the work of God.
He did a work, cast out, let me see where we even are here, 11, 20. Casting out the demon just to show that he was from God.
There's no natural explanation for that. You can't cast out a demon by the power of man.
Yeah, they were claiming it was of Satan, exactly right. And these signs are given by God for the purpose of authenticating and confirming the work of God, both the living word and the written word.
And this is an interesting one here, Exodus 7, verses 3 and 4.
And who has
Exodus 7? Danu. And what were the signs and wonders?
The plagues, right? And so it's interesting because God says that he's going to harden
Pharaoh's heart so that the plagues, so that he can bring about these plagues.
Otherwise, the plagues would not have been necessary if Pharaoh's heart hadn't been hardened.
But the signs and wonders are things that only God can bring about by his power.
And what do they do? They confirm his word. He says, I'm going to harden Pharaoh's heart and then
I'm going to bring about these signs and wonders and then he does it. Let's look at Acts 2 .22.
Book of Acts written by Mr. Acts, right? Who wrote
Acts? Luke, very good. Luke, the physician. He gave us the
Gospel of Luke and then the sequel, the Book of Acts. Acts 2 .22. Who has that? Yes, go ahead,
Paul. Okay, again, this is
Peter, the day of Pentecost, preaching. And he says, listen, you know that Jesus was of God.
Why? Because of the signs, wonders, and miracles that he did by the power of God. Romans 15 .19.
We're going to kind of flog this horse a little bit this morning because I want to drive home this point of what we're talking about.
There is a movement in Christianity today known as the signs and wonders movement.
And I wonder why anyone would want to follow that. Romans 15 .19.
Who has that? Charlie. Lyricum.
Okay, and I probably should have had verse 18 in there. But Paul is saying that he did these signs and wonders.
Why were those so important? Because they testified to who he was.
And I think we'll get back to that in a minute. Let's go ahead one more time. 2 Corinthians 12, verses 11 and 12.
Fred. Okay, so again, his evidence, excuse me,
Paul's evidence for his apostolic office was the fact that he did signs, wonders, and miracles.
Not just anybody can walk around and do these things. They are specific works of God done for a specific purpose, that is to authenticate and confirm the word of God, to authenticate the men of God, as it were.
And point number three here on page 36. These gifts were no longer needed when the authority of the apostolic community had been established and the
New Testament had been completed. What we see, and we're going to look at this here right now, what we see is a diminution, a fading, a phasing out of the miraculous gifts as the
New Testament era proceeds. 1 Corinthians, written about 54 A .D.,
so one of the earlier books of the New Testament. And when Paul talks about the miraculous signs, he talks about signs and wonders, speaking and serving, sign gifts, speaking and serving gifts.
And then in Romans, written in 58 A .D., four years later, he only talks about speaking and serving gifts.
When he writes Ephesians in 63 A .D., it's only speaking and serving gifts. And when 1
Peter is written in 64 A .D., and again, what are epistles? Well, they're written to churches, to Christians, and they are, generally speaking, letters of instruction.
They give us doctrine, and then typically there's some implementation of that doctrine. And when Peter wrote in 64
A .D., again, only speaking or serving gifts are mentioned, not the miraculous gifts.
Now, miracles in and of themselves. Now, there's kind of a strange word. A miracle is what?
What was that, John? Okay. A suspension, it's a supernatural suspension of, you know,
I could get really funny here. It's a supernatural suspension of the space -time continuum.
You know, in other words, miracles are things that only God can do. He says, you know what, I'm going to part the
Red Sea, and guess what? The Red Sea parts. In spite of gravity, in spite of all the laws of physics and everything else,
God just says, this is what's going to happen. You know, slow down or stop time for a little while.
You know, you just go on. A miracle is something that only God can do. And the reason
I say it's kind of a funny thing the way I phrase this, because it's really dumb the way I phrase it, but miracles, and then
I put there number one, were normative. Well, a miracle can't really be normative. You know, it's just, you know, but they only existed basically, or for the most part, you know, they're concentrated.
That's a better way of saying it. They're concentrated only in three eras in history.
One is during the period of Moses and Joshua. Again, you know, the parting of the
Red Sea, the things that Joshua was able to do. What was the, I mean,
I'm just completely, oh, Jericho, yeah. Just losing my mind here for a minute. You know, typically, you don't walk around the walls of a city and expect them to collapse.
That's, you know, work that only God can do. And the things that Moses and Joshua did were, in fact, miracles.
Let's look at Exodus 4, 1 to 8. And, again, this is such a key issue today when we have people claiming miracles on a fairly frequent basis.
And who has that? Exodus 4, 1 to 8. It's kind of a long passage, so you've got to read it with mucho gusto,
Steve. So what's
God telling Moses? What's he doing with Moses? He's equipping him with some miracles.
He's giving him something that, I mean, certainly for Moses who was like, you know what, I really can't do this,
God. I think you've got the wrong guy. I don't speak well. I'm not really, you know, if you're looking for some slick salesman to present your program,
I'd suggest you pick somebody else because I'm not the right guy. And God says, well, that's very interesting, but let me just show you the power of God while you just keep on sniveling.
And I think Moses was pretty much convinced because he went and did what
God said. He goes on to say, you know, in verse 10, then Moses said to the
Lord, please, Lord, I've never been eloquent. I mean, even after that, he's still whining and all that, but eventually he comes around and he does the right thing.
But the point is when people see this, when people see what Moses can do, they at least know that he's speaking for God.
Now, do they disbelieve? I mean, the story of the Israelites is one of the amazing stories of all time because, you know, obviously they see all these miracles.
They get delivered from Egypt. And, you know, you would think they would be faithful forever. But then if you really believe that, you don't understand human depravity.
But I digress. That's the point. The point is that God uses these miracles to affirm his servants and to affirm really a new message.
He sent Moses in a time of Israel's desperation, and he gives him this power so that the people will believe and follow
Moses. Second, we have the prophets, Elijah and Elisha, 1
Kings 17, 24. Well, we're going to have to read more than that.
Let's take, well, I think we're going to have to read all this, 17 through 24.
So I'll read that. 1 Kings 17, 17 to 24.
Now, it came about after these things that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became sick, and his sickness was so severe that there was no breath left in him.
So she said to Elijah, What do I have to do with you, O man of God? You have come to bring my iniquity to remembrance and to put my son to death.
He said to her, Give me your son. Then he took him from her bosom and carried him up to the upper room where he was living and laid him on his own bed.
He called to the Lord and said, O Lord, my God, have you also brought calamity to the widow with whom
I am staying by causing her son to die? Then he stretched himself upon the child three times and called to the
Lord and said, O Lord, my God, I pray you, let this child's life return to him.
Verse 22, The Lord heard the voice of Elijah and the life of the child returned to him and he revived.
Elijah took the child and brought him down from the upper room into the house and gave him to his mother.
And Elijah said, See, your son is alive. Then the woman said to Elijah, Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the
Lord is or in your mouth is truth. Again, affirming the messenger and the message by what?
By a miracle, by a supernatural act of God. I'm surprised nobody's ever written a book of this.
The prayer of Elijah, you know, how to bring people from death to life.
You know, lay on them three times, pray this prayer. It would be kind of like, it would be as good as a book that sold a lot of copies.
Okay, Jesus and the apostles. Again, we're talking about miracles, about how they're not, they're really not normative.
And they're really focused in three eras of history. Now, can
God do a miracle anytime he wants? That's one of the things about being God.
You can do that. You make the rules and you can suspend them. Let's look at John 10, 25.
When somebody has that, would you read it, please? Okay, so he said the works that he does in the
Father's name testify of him. The things that he did, the miracles that he did.
I mean, you know, when he fed the 5 ,000, did people think, eh, anybody could do that cheap parlor trick?
No. They knew, I mean, that's what, they were following him. They knew it was of God. They just didn't, they didn't believe everything he had to say because of the hardness of their hearts.
In fact, they left him almost right after that. Okay, so again, purposes.
To introduce and call attention to a new era of revelation. That's why miracles are done.
I'm not going to go over that again. To authenticate messengers of that revelation. To authenticate the message.
All these things are right. These three eras, Moses, Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, Jesus and the apostles, total less than 100 years.
We don't see miracle after miracle after miracle. There's not a miracle on every page of the
Bible. And we're not told in the New Testament anywhere to expect a miracle. I think that's some kind of football, you know, saying or motto or something like, you know, expect, actually that is some kind of,
I think somebody has that ministry where they expect a miracle. But we're not told that in the New Testament to expect miracles.
Yes, Dave. I think it's explained by many people marching around the seven days.
Well, that's right. You know, whether we can explain it or not, God is showing his sovereignty. And kind of the twist
I would take on that, though, is like, for example, in, let's say, Jericho. You know, is it possible that, you know, such and such a frequency or whatever after the walls are weakened after seven days, yada, yada, yada?
Yes. But Joshua wouldn't have known that. You know, having not gone to MIT and studied the sonic frequencies of building and construction materials, he would have had no way of knowing that.
And, you know, are natural explanations for some events in the
Old Testament possible? Yes. But, you know, I would say with regard to the parting of the Red Sea, imagine a wind strong enough to separate the
Red Sea. And then imagine walking across the Red Sea while that wind is blowing.
I'd say that would probably be problematic. Yeah, I think you'd wind up in Saudi Arabia somewhere.
So, you know. So, I mean, and you know what?
That's a great point because I'll tell you what. Now, I'm going to get a little esoteric on you. That means a little, you know.
Now, don't fall asleep. But what I am going to say is there are different theories where people approach, like, the
New Testament, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. There you go. There's your 25 cent word for the day,
Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
Thank you. So, yeah, any Iowana kid could do that. But there are different experts, and this started in the 1800s, different experts who look at it and go, well, you know, it wasn't written by Moses because there are different voices, different words used, and there are actually four different authors and J -E -D -P, and they have all these different theories.
What we need to understand is these experts who look at the Bible and who come up with these rational explanations for these miracles approach the text with this bias.
They say there is no supernatural event that can occur.
In other words, miracles aren't normal, and therefore they do not happen. There's no such thing as a miracle.
So if the Bible says something, if that actually happened, there has to be a natural explanation for it.
So, for example, the flood. How would someone who doesn't believe in God or the supernatural or miracles explain the flood?
They would say, well, it was localized, or it's a story, or whatever.
They will discount whatever evidence they have to discount, and they will totally ignore what the
Bible says because it doesn't fit their worldview. If you come to the Bible as an unbeliever, and you say, well,
I don't believe the miracles can happen, then you can explain a lot of things away.
And you'll come up with things like, well, you know what? Jesus really wasn't raised from the dead. He wasn't really killed.
People thought he was killed, but he wasn't. Or the apostles snuck in and stole the body, you know, and they dug a tunnel.
Or, you know, I mean, you'll come up with all kinds of fantastic theories because you won't look at the Bible and say, this is the word of God, I must believe it.
You'll look at the Bible and say, well, this is the work of men, and I must explain away the supernatural elements of it.
And so there are, yes, Pam. Right.
Pam says, well, what about, you know, do you think that God does things in such a way that there cannot be a natural explanation for them?
And I think the answer is yes. You know, I mean, maybe one exception, I think Dave rightly pointed out, you know, could there be a naturalistic explanation for, say, the walls of Jericho falling down?
Well, there could be, but that's certainly not how the Bible presents it. And like I said, even if that was the case, even if it was a matter of sonic vibrations or whatever,
Joshua would have had no knowledge of that. So that kind of under, what's the word
I'm looking for? Undermines. Yeah, thank you. I'm a little slow here. It's the cold medication.
Undermines the whole concept. You know, in other words, whether or not that, and I would just argue, we need to just go with what the text says.
If the text says God did something, then God did something. And whether you, I mean,
I would call it a miracle. Let's see, the creation, a miracle. You know, are there natural explanations for it?
Well, no. Here's an interesting thing, you know, about science.
Science says a lot of things, but ultimately, to be good science, something must be testable, must be something that you can observe or test or whatever.
And there is no way to test something like the Big Bang Theory or anything like that.
Yeah, Dave. Yes. Okay.
And so what Dave's saying, and let me kind of put in my own words, let's say that there is a natural explanation.
For example, the wind parting the Red Sea. What a fortuitous timing.
You know, here comes the Egyptian army, Israelites, mountain, mountain, sea, army, trapped.
No hope for escape. And it just so happens that a wind comes up. I mean, this is something that a skeptic would say.
Well, you know, it could have been a wind, you know, opening up the Red Sea. Well, okay, if it could be, could
Moses by himself say wind? No. So, yeah,
I mean, that's absolutely true. And like I said, I mean, I think even if that could, I mean, it kind of begs the whole question, well, then what?
You know, while the wind was blowing, did they go out and sandbag the lake? But the bigger point is, like, for example,
Joshua and all those things, Joshua didn't know that. Joshua couldn't control it.
And in any event, none of those things could be controlled by man or known by man. They would have to be of God one way or the other.
So even the best naturalistic explanations are going to fall short. Does that address your point,
Dave? See, I mean, there's no way around it. Even if they come with this precondition that, or this pre -understanding that God does not act, and they try to explain these things away, they ultimately cannot.
Yeah. Yeah, they talk about different, I've heard this before, you know, where, well, you know, from time to time the frogs come up.
Well, yeah, there's a little problem with that. The problem is that God specifically said the frogs are going to come up, and the
Egyptians didn't go, well, you know, it's just another season of frogs, who knew? You know, they recognize this.
They recognize this. I mean, we have contemporary testimony at the time. So these aren't just, you know, they want to explain them away.
They want to be able to look at them and go, well, that's not really a miracle. But they, in fact, even the best naturalistic explanations are going to fall short.
Yes, Charlie. I mean, there's all, you know,
I mean, Charlie said, you know, they try, this is another explanation for the
Red Sea. I mean, they'll try to move it around. It wasn't really the Red Sea as we know it. It was a different Red Sea.
They walked across a particularly, or it was a particularly dry era, and so the
Red, you know, where they parted was, or where they crossed was really low. So Charlie just said, well, praise
God. You know, somebody in the class said, praise God. And the professor said, how's that? You know, they crossed, the
Israelites crossed over two or three inches. He says, well, praise God, because he was able to drown the entire Egyptian army in two or three inches.
And that's right. I mean, no matter, if you come to the Bible as a skeptic and you try to explain things away, you wind up just looking like what the
Bible calls you, foolish. You exhibit your foolishness in trying to do these things.
Well, let's go ahead and close in prayer.
Father, thank you for this time. Lord, just pray that you would use this in our lives as we consider how we might serve the body, how we might look to your word and see it as the confirmation of what you have done over the ages.
Father, that we would come to it as your children wanting to learn more about you.