Becoming Better Theologians (part 19)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Father in heaven, Lord, we come before you this morning, thankful for all the things that are ours in Christ Jesus.

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Thank you for salvation. Thank you for redemption. Thank you for saving us.

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Father, thank you for giving us your word. Thank you for illuminating our eyes that we might understand it.

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Father, I pray that you would bless our time this morning, even as we look to your word, that we would be reminded and even learn new things about it.

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Father, would you consistently throughout this morning, throughout this week, throughout our lives, point us again and again to your word upon which we can firmly rely.

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Father, again, we ask for your blessing this morning in Christ's name. Amen. Well, I will start with the slightly ridiculous, the

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TVN newsletter. The good news is it is, what do they call that offering time?

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What do they call it? Oh, the praise -a -thon. Yeah, and they have a, for any pledge,

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Bethlehem anointing oil. Anybody who was recently in Israel and failed to get this, shame on you.

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It's fragrant, virgin olive oil that has been blessed by the Bishop of the Historic Church of the

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Nativity in Bethlehem. Was anybody here on the Israel trip?

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They're probably all still sleeping it off. That was a rough trip home. But the

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Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is not anything spectacular, but it's been blessed by the bishop there. Okay.

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It has myrrh, spikenard, aloes, and cassia, and they're blended to create the fragrance of heaven.

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I always thought that was Krispy Kreme donuts, but I digress. Some of our ladies here at TVN feel it is more than an anointing oil.

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It is literally a unique perfume. Anyway, just silliness. For any offering, how many of you were here last

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Sunday night when Eric preached through the book of James, chapter 1, a few verses? Now, for those of you who weren't here, something

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I think unique in the history of Bethlehem Bible Church took place. What would that be?

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Eric Johanson, the pulpit. We had two Mormon missionaries in the house.

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And I bring that up, not because we had Mormon missionaries here, but because afterwards, it's kind of like instantly,

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I'm like, I want to make sure that they're not running around proselytizing people.

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What's that? Why'd they come here? They wanted to hear the truth. So, I'll tell you in a sec.

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Well, I'll tell you now, and then I'll get back to what I was saying. Why'd they come here? They have been engaging one of our members in extended conversation, and they were so impressed by this man's knowledge of the

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Bible that they wanted to come out and check his church out. So, they weren't here on a Sunday night. So, I decided

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I'm going to talk to one, and then I noticed I was going to try to engage them both, but one of them was already occupied by Bruce Binney.

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Good job, Bruce. And I just want to make sure they weren't getting their two cents in.

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So, I was talking to one, and I'll skip all over the gory details, but I said,

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I said, let me ask you a question. Where in the Bible does it talk about temple marriage?

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And he says, well, it's really, it's not in the Bible. I said, is there a single example anywhere in the

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Bible of somebody getting married in the temple? He says, no. I said, okay. Is there a single example of anybody in the

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Book of Mormon getting married in the temple? I mean, it's good to know something about Mormonism, I guess.

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And he says, no. And I go, so, you know, why would you have to get married in the temple in order to reach the highest degree of heaven, which is what they believe?

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And he said, well, have you ever been in the temple? And I said, yes, I have. And he goes, baptism for the dead?

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And I said, yes. And he goes, you know, the closest I've ever felt to God was inside the temple.

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And I'm like, okay. And he goes, that's why I believe in temple marriage. And that's why

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I think, you know, being married there is so essential to go into heaven. And I'm going, it brought me right back to where we, where we've been talking about the

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Bible, scripture versus experience. And what was this man saying?

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He was going by feelings rather than truth. What I felt when I was in the temple trumps whatever the

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Bible teaches, whatever it doesn't teach, whatever the Book of Mormon teaches, which, you know, neither here nor there.

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We could talk about, you know, people are always like, you know, do you ask him this question? Do you talk about the,

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I mean, I could, you know, the Spalding manuscript, how the Book of Mormon was copied from a novel.

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And, you know, whole parts of the King James Bible are lifted and put into the Book of Mormon.

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I didn't talk about any of that. But if experience is our guide, we can go almost anywhere.

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We can wind up with almost anything. And that's the problem with so much of Christianity today.

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Last week, you know, again, these are, these things, you know, might seem a little outrageous.

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But this is what the kind of thing that people say all the time, not the audible voice. We talk about, you know, God speaking an audible voice and this man saying, well, if it happened once in the

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Bible, basically, God will do it again. You know, if you're walking around and you hear a voice, it could be the voice of God.

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God speaks through a whisper. Sometimes I don't even understand that. You know, the old timers still call it the still small voice of God.

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God speaks through scriptures. This is all just a lot of it is silliness, but this is how so many people make decisions.

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But again, thinking back to what that Mormon missionary said, how many times do we hear people say,

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I had a real peace about this. I felt really close to God. Are our feelings, can our feelings be an indicator of our spiritual life?

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Yes, they can be. Should they be the ultimate arbiter of our spiritual life or of truth?

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No. So, and I mean, that's the kind of thing, you know, the

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Mormons will challenge you and tell you to read the Book of Mormon and ask you if you've got a burning in your bosom. And, you know, if you do, then that means it's true.

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Well, I, well, let's put it this way.

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If sensation, if excitement, if emotion were the determining factor, how do you think, and I'm sure, well, we'll see by a raise of a show of hands, how many of you have ever robbed a bank?

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Okay, Chuck. I wonder what the bank robbers feel like when they walk into the bank.

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I'm guessing because having been on the other end of things, you know, where we're approaching an alleged bank robbery or something like that, there's a certain amount of adrenaline that's going within you.

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There's a certain amount of excitement that's moving within you. Are those bank robbers operating on truth or are they operating on fear or something else?

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I mean, there are a lot of emotions that we experience and to try to deduce them, to try to sort them out, to try to interpret them is problematic.

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And again, I'm just reminded of Jeremiah 17, 9. We need to understand that our heart is deceitful and sick.

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It misleads us. What we feel is not necessarily true.

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And when we go with our feelings, we're really operating according to the Hollywood style of things.

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You know, we just follow your heart. If I hear that on one more show or one more TV or one more movie,

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I'm just going to never watch another one. Okay. Sorry. And then we talked about the

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Roman Catholic Church a few weeks ago. How they said, and this is just incredible, in Vatican II, how...

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I want to make sure I get this quote correct here. The Sacred Synod professes that God, the first principle and last end of all things, can be known with certainty from the created world by the natural light of human reason.

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And they suggest Romans 1, 20. And I want to start in Romans 1, then we're going to go to Psalm 19, and then we're going to go to Psalm 119.

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And again, you know, some of these things are things that we've talked about, but I just think we cannot stress them enough.

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Because our tendency is, if we ever have a tendency to do anything based on our feelings and to think that somehow

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God is involved in it, I think, could we be right? Yes. But unless we have

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Scripture as our basis, we can't be certain that we're right. Pam.

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Yeah. And I think Pam's right. I think, you know, there can be a tendency to overreact, you know, the other way.

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But here's what I would say. I'd say, typically, what we see in the evangelical church isn't a bunch of spirit -filled

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Scripture, you know, drowning in Scripture people, you know, worried about making decisions based on their feelings.

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What we see is a bunch of people that make decisions based on their feelings and then try to figure out maybe if it fits within the boundaries of Scripture.

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You know, they've got the ox completely before the cart. Is that right? Yes. Okay, thank you.

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No. Cart before the ox. Yeah. Or horse or whatever, you know, cow. If you've got a little dachshund in front of your, behind your car.

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Sorry. For those of you who don't know, I have three dachshunds. I always think about hooking them up to a sled and mushing them through the snow, but I don't think it'll work very well.

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Try it. Yeah, try it. Sure. Okay, Romans 1 verse 20.

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For his invisible attributes, gods, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world in the things that have been made.

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So they are without excuse. And the Roman Catholic Church says, see, that is evidence that we can obtain saving faith by the perfect revelation of God in nature.

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Hmm. I think, you know, if you just back up to verse 18 there a little bit, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.

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In other words, there is truth about God and man even that can be seen in nature.

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But what do we do with that truth? We inherently suppress it. And there's nothing in there that says that we can be saved by virtue of what we see in creation.

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In fact, let's look at Psalm 19. I think it gives us a very clear picture of the difference between creation and the revealed word of God.

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Yes, Charlie. Right.

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Right. They actually knew God. I mean, think about it. You know, I think

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I mentioned a few weeks ago, but it's really incredible to think when you have... Has anybody ever... Well, let's put it this way.

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Is there anyone who's ever not looked at a timeline for how long Adam lived and then where all the different...

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You know, Methuselah's born and, you know, how they all overlap. And so it's generation after generation after generation and they're still alive.

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You know, they're still all walking around together and pretty incredible to think about it.

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But what happens is even while there is still... While there are still people alive who, you know, knew

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God, even Adam, you know, walking in the Garden of Eden. And then afterwards when we had, you know,

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Cain and Abel and how that all ends. But Seth and all these others, there were people who still communicated with God, even if it wasn't quite exactly the same.

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And while this is still going on, people are departing, are going and, you know, following their own gods of their own imaginings.

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Why? Because they don't want to yield to God. But that's... Yeah, that's right.

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And then the descendants of people who knew God just depart from him too, even though they knew him. So that's exactly right.

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But Romans... Or I'm sorry, Psalm 19. And this first part, first six verses, talks about his general revelation or his creation.

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Psalm 19, The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

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When we look at creation, we are impressed by God's glory,

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God's majesty, God's power. General revelation speaks to us in a very direct sense that we understand that there is something greater than us at work in the universe.

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That does not save anyone. Their voice goes out throughout all the earth and their words to the end of the world.

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In them he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber.

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And like a strong man runs its course with joy, its rising is from one end of the heavens and its circuit to the end of them.

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And there is nothing hidden from its heat. Just talking about, again, physical creation.

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But look at verse seven. The law of the Lord is perfect.

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Notice what was missing in the first half here. Listen to this. Reviving the soul. We don't see anything like that in the first six verses.

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There's nothing in there that would indicate that creation itself revives the soul. The testimony of the

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Lord is sure, making wise the simple. Nothing about wisdom. We're not guaranteed wisdom in the first half of it.

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The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The first creation just puts us in awe of this

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God who can do all this. The law of the Lord is what sets us right with him, which gives us wisdom, which brings us joy.

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I mean, if it were just creation alone, I think we could be in fear of God in the sense that we would understand how mighty he is.

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But we wouldn't understand his love. We wouldn't understand his holiness. We wouldn't understand forgiveness.

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We wouldn't understand any of these things. The precepts of the

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Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.

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You can see all of creation, all you want, but you're not going to have the same kind of enlightening of the eyes, that same kind of awareness of who

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God is and who you are in the sense of sin and whatnot. The fear of the

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Lord is clean, enduring forever. The rules of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

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Again, we don't see any of those things said about creation. It's not righteous altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold.

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Sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned.

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In keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults.

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Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless and innocent of great transgression.

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Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

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There's a quantitative difference, a leap as it were, between general revelation and special revelation.

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That is just simply the difference between the created world and the revealed word of God and what it does for us.

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Thoughts, comments, questions, revelations? Psalm 119, just reading it this morning.

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By the way, I don't know how many of you have the authorized version, the new authorized version, also known as the

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MacArthur Study Bible. Whatever version you have, if you look at Psalm 119, you'll notice that it's divided.

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He says, as he starts thinking about it, is it 22 sections? I think it's 22 sections.

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And there's one each for each of the letters of the

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Hebrew alphabet. And so when you look at it, you go, none. What are they?

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N -U -N, none. It has nothing to do with the nunnery. It has everything to do with the letter of the

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Jewish alphabet. And you can look at almost any of these.

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Again, let's look at verse 153. And listen again to how the psalmist writes about the word of God.

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Great is your mercy, O Lord. Give me life according to your rules. Many are my persecutors and my adversaries, but I do not swerve from your testimonies.

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I look at the faithless with disgust, because they do not keep your commands. Consider how

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I love your precepts. Give me life according to your steadfast love. The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.

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What do we get from Scripture that we cannot get from general revelation?

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The Roman Catholic Church says you can be saved by the perfection of creation.

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How would you learn about who God is? We could probably stretch it and maybe get three, four, five attributes of God that we would...

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six attributes that we could get from his creation, but we wouldn't be able to get them all. Could we understand, for example, just looking at creation,

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I suppose maybe you could extrapolate triple bank shot off three cushions to get his justice.

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How would you get it? You could say, well, obviously he's great and we're finite, and so if we...

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well, you'd have to go if we break his law. I mean, you couldn't get there. You just couldn't get there.

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But also, I think it was interesting in that particular section of Psalm 119, talked about the promises of God.

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How would you know, just looking at creation, how would you know about the promises of God? How would you know that he's a faithful God?

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And the truth is, what would you wind up... you could easily wind up believing what scientists say, which is that God, if he exists, is capricious.

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He's random. He's chaotic. That there's no way of predicting what's going to happen tomorrow because, you know, the whole universe just kind of came out of one big explosion.

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We don't want to be captive to anything but the

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Word of God. Alright, so we've been looking through this systematic theology here, and amazingly enough, our next point is something we've been talking about all morning.

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God reveals himself through what he has made, which is absolutely true. God has revealed himself through the materials, through the material heavens and earth, which he has made.

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Older theologians call this the light of nature. She's singing amen.

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The baby. The Bible is very clear as to the fact that nature does have something to say to people about their creator.

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Let's look at Psalm 104. And would someone read

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Psalm 104, verses 1, 2, and 3, please? Bruce.

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And just by those pictures, what would the psalmist be telling us about God?

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He's creator. His majesty is revealed in his creation.

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He's bigger than creation. I mean, he kind of uses all of creation as, you know, props.

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And, you know, just a very obvious point, he's so much greater than we are.

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When you just look at that and you go, well, no man could do that. The rest of the psalm in detail declares all aspects of nature are

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God's work in creation, preservation, and government. They all, including mankind and human works.

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They are all, including mankind and human works, God's works. Verse 24.

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He says this. Oh, Lord, how well, let me read 23 man goes out to do his work and to his labor until the evening.

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Oh, Lord, how manifold are your works in wisdom? You have made them all.

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The earth is full of your creatures. And then verse 31. May the glory of the

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Lord endure forever. May the Lord rejoice in his works. When we look about at all that is and all that is created, it all ultimately comes from God.

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In other psalms, we would see the psalm psalmist reflecting on nature to call attention to God's greatness, his honor and majesty.

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In Psalm 86, God's manifold wisdom, great riches, his eternal glory.

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He says here, the discerning believer by means of this revelation understands his, meaning our dependence on God.

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And the importance of praising God and worshiping

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God while life shall last. That would be in verse 33 of Psalm 104. He also understands the unnaturalness of the presence of sin and of sinners in God's perfect creation.

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What does he mean? Well, let's look at verse 35. We'll discuss that for a minute.

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Let sinners be consumed from the earth and let the wicked be no more. Bless the

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Lord. Oh, my soul, praise the Lord. What do you suppose the psalmist is looking forward to there? Why would he say that?

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Let sinners be consumed. Is he just thinking, I'm better than everybody else? Charlie.

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Absolutely. Could it be, Charlie asks, that he sees sinful man as a blemish on his own creation?

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Which is true, you know, and before he starts sounding like he's some kind of ecological nut.

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You know, I mean, there are people alive today who think, you know, the biggest problem in the world is mankind.

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If we could just get rid of men, this would be a pretty nice place to live. I remember saying that.

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This group my son used to listen to, I used to say to him, I go, you know what the message of that band is?

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That the world would be a pretty nice place if there were no people in it. So, of course, then there would be nobody to listen to their music.

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Yeah. Pam says, you know, that the environmentalists, you know, worry about all this stuff, and yet the earth is groaning to be delivered from them, and that's the psalmist's point here.

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Is he saying, I mean, what do we think when we sin, we regret our sin, we're sorrowful before the

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Lord, and what do we look forward to? Heaven, because we won't sin.

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And so when he says here, let sinners be consumed from the earth and let the wicked be no more, he's really saying,

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I look forward to the day where sin is not a blight on the earth, where sinners do not infest it, where the world is delivered from its groaning, and where all is set as God originally made it, that is, without fault or blemish.

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And we went through Psalm 119.

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The message from and about God throughout Psalm 19 is the same as 104.

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But God holds people responsible for their unbelief and their disobedience. We've talked about that at length in Romans 1, it feels like a psalm.

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This is, we've looked at God's, his natural revelation and his specific or his special revelation, and these are both, they tell us of him, but the created world can never save us.

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It can never deliver a saving knowledge of God to us.

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So what then is the content of nature's message about God? It tells of his greatness, his honor, his majesty.

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It displays the riches of his wisdom and great glory together with his joy in creating such wonders.

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Such revelations teach also the utter inappropriateness of sin and of the presence of sinners in God's world.

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I think that's a striking phrase, that it is inappropriate that there are sinners in this world. We think about God's wrath being kindled and how he is patient and long -suffering.

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He is putting off the day of wrath, even now. There's a message of God's goodness in nature, his benevolence.

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But it is muted, however, for nature provides earthquakes, like that one in Christchurch this week in New Zealand, tornadoes, pestilences, and floods.

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I mean, do you suppose that all those things existed in the Garden of Eden? I'm quite certain they didn't.

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When sin entered the world, so did disaster. The gifts of sun, wind, rain, fertile soil, fruitful seasons fill people's hearts with food and gladness.

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This is all the things that God does for us. God employs mankind's own personal, moral, and rational nature to reveal himself to us.

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Furthermore, God is employed in speaking to the sinful race in all ages, is to employ mankind's own personal information.

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Certain philosophers from ancient times have sought to begin their search for ultimate truths by searching their own hearts and minds.

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Who said, know thyself? Or how about this one,

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I think, therefore I am. What's that? I think it's before him.

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But those are famous expressions of that method. Calvin wrote at the opening of his great work of Doctrine this.

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He said, no one can look upon himself without immediately turning his thoughts to contemplation of God, in whom he lives and moves and has his being, in Acts 17, 28.

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For quite clearly the mighty gifts with which we are endowed are hardly from ourselves.

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Indeed, our very being is nothing but subsistence in the one God. Then by these benefits, shed like dew from heaven upon us, we are led as by rivulets to the spring itself.

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In other words, what he's saying is, as we just reflect on all that God has granted us, we are drawn toward thinking about the greater being who created us.

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Culver says, Calvin's logic is correct, but it is regenerate, sanctified logic.

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I mean, the problem with all these, whether you're talking about Nietzsche or whoever else, I said

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Nietzsche once, which is the correct pronunciation of my preaching prof got on me. Everybody knows it's

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Nietzsche. Well, not if you're German, it's Nietzsche. But all these men, as smart as they were, were operating with one grave problem, and that's without, they had no

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Holy Spirit. So they're thinking in a vacuum. And that's, you know,

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I just say it this way, that's one of the problems with psychology. Nietzsche was the father of modern psychology, and if you get to know anything about his personal life, you'd realize what a disaster that all was.

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So how smart can the guy be? Talking about our ability to reason, it's marred by the fall.

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It's, well, it's marred by the fall. We don't have a perfect understanding, we don't have the ability to reason perfectly because of the fall of Adam.

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That impacts all of our thinking. People do legitimately reason of God's nature from their own.

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Why? Because we are made in God's image. And what does that mean? We know what it doesn't mean.

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It doesn't mean that God looks like us, because God is a spirit. But what does it mean?

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It means that we are able to reason, we're able to, what else?

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What else do we do that's like God? We can be creative, well, make decisions.

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How about love? How about being angry?

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I mean, when we think about, it really is remarkable to think, to look, just look at the world the way so many people do.

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I heard, or I read, I think it was I heard, but this idea this week that if you save dogs, it's like saving a human life.

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I love dogs. But it's not, you know, if you gave me a choice between saving 10 ,000 dogs and saving one human being, what am

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I going to do? If you save the 10 ,000 dogs, you know, we're going to close in prayer.

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It's the human being. Why? Because the human being has a soul. The dog doesn't.

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No matter how much we want to believe that they do, they don't. They're not created in God's image.

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They are created by him, but not in his image. There's a quantitative, a qualitative difference between us and other creatures.

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You know, even as smart as, you know, whatever branch of monkey or orca or dolphin or whatever they want to compare us to, it's just, it's vastly different.

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You know, let me know the next time you go, you're under the water and you see some gigantic dolphin city that they've created.

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It just doesn't, it doesn't happen. We're just in a different level and God created it that way.

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And I was thinking too this week, it's funny, you know, what being a grandfather and having a baby around a lot makes you think about.

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And I was just like, you know, I can't really think of another species of animal where the young are absolutely so helpless.

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I mean, all of them, you know, to a certain extent, they all are a little bit helpless. But whatever kind of animal learns how to walk much sooner than a human being does.

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They learn how to survive much sooner than a human being does. And it's just pretty amazing.

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You know, aren't we lucky to have survived so long and really to have such dominion over the planet? Who knew?

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It's an absolute sophistry to think like that, but that's how scientists think. He talks about ancient

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Greek philosophy and he says that even these ancient Greek philosophers knew God to be a universal free spirit.

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And they said so, even though it was dangerous to deny the prevailing idolatry.

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Socrates, for example, was executed for, anybody know why Socrates was killed?

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For being an atheist. Those were the days. Oh, sorry. And Paul, when he spoke on Mars Hill, was understood when he appealed to the

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Greeks on the basis of their God likeness to see the stupidity of their idolatry. He knew, he told them that they were created in God's image.

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They knew that. But idol worship turns God into the image of mankind and others of God's creatures.

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It really is amazing when you read back, I mean, some of my favorite chapters in all of the Bible are between Isaiah 40 and 48 and over and over and over again.

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He says, you know, this is what you guys do. And this is Isaiah, God speaking through the prophet

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Isaiah. And he says, this is what you guys do. You're so sophisticated. You're so smart. You get a piece of wood and you carve it all up and then you put it up and worship it.

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Or you get a stone and you chisel it and you make it, you know, some kind of image for yourself and then you worship it.

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Who even thinks, you know, what kind of sense does that make? But we're still doing it today.

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Maybe it's not an idol made like that, but it's something else. It's some person. It's some other thing.

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So we may be sure that Paul was understood when he wrote in Romans 2 .14. Let's look at Romans 2 .14

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-16 and we'll close there. Romans 2 .14 -16. Pretty sure it's going to talk about the law of God.

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And would somebody read it when they have that? Romans 2 .14 -16. Nobody has it.

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Okay. It's an amazing thing, the conscience.

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And I would say one of the greatest evidences of the existence of God ever. How do we know that something is wrong?

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It's not, like this man said last week, our knower. It is our conscience. And our conscience is informed by the law of God, not even having heard the word of God before.

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We still know inherently what's right and wrong. Why? Because God has put that in our hearts.

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Pam says that the law of God will drive you either into more sin or more religion.

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And I think that's true. And she makes mention of the idea that some religions, it'll be nameless,

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Islam, could have you chop off somebody's head or their hand or whatever and get a full night's sleep at night.

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But if you ate pork, you would be, I mean, this is just an aside.

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I just think what we ought to threaten all these people with is just tell them that we're going to dip all of our bullets in bacon.

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Because that would send them, in their religion, it would send them immediately to hell.

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And anyway, I digress. But the fun that is,

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I mean, you can see how my head works. The point of this is, and what she's saying is that our consciences can be misinformed, which is true.

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But the point of this passage is that we have a conscience. And that what happens over time, and we could say this further, but what happens to our consciences over time is that we dull them, we sear them.

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And so even a religion like Islam, with all of its rules and all of its regulations, eventually teaches us to set aside what we know to be true and to follow a set of rules that aren't true.

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You know, how do things like Nazi Germany, how do things like slavery, how do these things take place?

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Because over time, we convince ourselves that what we instinctively know to be true and right, we do it so many times that it becomes nothing.

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We're exposed to, you know, hands being chopped off for theft or, you know, people getting their heads cut off for alleged adultery or whatever.

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And we become just sort of hardened to the whole process. And we lose that capacity to tell what is right and what is wrong.

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And the way that we keep that keen and fresh and sharp is by studying the

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Word of God. We'll close there. Our Father in Heaven, Lord, we delight in your

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Word. We are thankful to have it, to be reminded again that your creation cannot save us.

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The light of your creation tells us that you exist. It tells us about your greatness, your goodness.

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But it doesn't tell us of your promises, of your love, even of your plan to send your

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Son to die on our behalf. Father, as we're here this morning to worship you, would you bless our times of fellowship?

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Would you bless our times of singing, praying, and even contemplating just all that you have done to give us salvation and to give us access to your truth?