Bibliology | Revelation In The O.T. (12/03/2000)

Hebrews 1 and the Question of Revelation

Amen. Thank you. Let's turn to Hebrews chapter 1. Humans forget, isn't that a message? But then we have Miss B to remind us, so that's a blessing too. Josh, would you like to come up and sing for us this morning?

Alright. I'd like to introduce to you Mr. Josh Cox, visiting with us from O 'Hare, Texas. Glad to have you with us. Let's turn to Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 1 and just kind of hold the place open there.

And let me give you just a little bit of review and we'll get into this message this morning. Let's have a word of prayer first. Father, we thank you so much for the service already this morning. And we ask you to call our attention to your word at this time.

Thank you for the wonderful truths you've given us that guide us as a bright light. That we might walk down the right paths. And that we might avoid the confusion of the author of confusion. And that we might find our minds and hearts and families and our church to be in order as the God of order would have it.

And so, Father, we ask you to guide our minds into the heavenlies for the next few moments. In Jesus' name, amen. We are, we've embarked on a road down the path of doctrinal studies. And let's just call it a study of systematic theology.

Time before last, before Dr. Ball was here, we talked about several existing attitudes towards theology. One is rationalism, which is very common today. There are two forms of it. Extreme rationalism is a philosophy that there is no divine revelation and never has been any.

In fact, there is no God. And I think Dr. Ball set that to rest last week, didn't he? He kind of blew away the theory of evolution. But there is a more moderate form of rationalism that may even be more dangerous.

Because it is a person who believes that part of the Bible is true and part is not. In fact, the part that makes sense to his reason is true and the part that doesn't make sense to his reason is not true.

So that actually places this person as God because he then decides which part of the Bible is God's Word and which part isn't. And he's smart enough to figure it out. That's a very dangerous person. And yet that type of person is who has taken control of most of our seminaries in this country in the last 25 to 50 years.

And many of the pulpits across this land, and unfortunately, it's filtered down to the pew in many, many circles. People who don't believe that all of the Bible is inspired and all of it is God's Word.

We would call them rationalists. Second form of attitude that can be a false attitude is called mysticism. And it is quite a problem in our day. The charismatic movement has found its popularity in this area of false belief.

And it is that there can be a person who is a mystic. Who, because of his separation from this world and his separation from the pleasures of this world or other reasons that he may invent in his own mind, he feels that God has favored him above all people and gives him messages that the others cannot find in the Word of God.

And therefore, folks must follow this person and learn from this person because the Word of God does not reveal all the truths that this person knows. And this is called false mysticism, and it is a great problem in our day.

Jude 3, if you'd like to look that up in your private time later, dispels this error. Because it says, It says,. A third form is called Romanism, which is the Roman Catholic Church. This is a prevalent attitude by many people in the world.

And it is that salvation comes through the church and the sacraments rather than through the finished work of Christ. Also, there is a great stress on the authority of the church and church tradition above the scriptures.

And then there is the Orthodox Protestant position, which has these main tenets, that the Bible is infallible, that it is the only rule of faith and practice, that human reason must be made subject to the scriptures and not vice versa, that there is no inner light in any man that allows him to add revelation given beyond what is contained in the Bible, and that no authority relative to forming truth has ever been committed to the church or to men beyond the New Testament writers.

Now, you might say, well, I'm a Protestant then, because I agree with all those. Well, you're not if you're a Baptist, because Baptists were never Protestants. Protestants actually came out of the Catholic Church, and Baptists had a parallel line of history that went along with the Catholic Church, but they were never part of it.

But our beliefs are very similar to those. The only thing that you would add to it is put a sixth thing is we dunk people. We dunk them. We believe in baptism by total immersion, and that's the only biblical method of true water baptism.

And there are some other differences between us and Protestants. But in these main five tenets, I think we would agree completely and with many other areas. In fact, there are far, far, far more areas where we agree with the Protestants than where we disagree with them.

The only main thing we disagree with is how many Baptists that they killed. But fortunately, they're not still doing that. Neither are the Catholics, at least not in this country. Now, then we talked about the different divisions of theology, and the first one is called bibliology, and that's where we find ourselves last time I spoke and today.

Bibliology is, of course, the study of the Bible, and that's a great place to start any study of theology. So in the area of bibliology, there are several sections of study. The first is called revelation, and that's what we will study today.

The Old Testament Was Spoken by God Through the Prophets

So let's think about the Bible. Let's think about how the Bible was given, how God has revealed truths to man. Now I want to start by asking you several questions. So listen to these questions and kind of begin to answer them in your minds.

And understand that the answers to these questions are not as simple to some or many as they might seem to you. But in many Baptist churches and many other forms of churches all across this country, the answers to these questions may not be obvious.

I hope the answers are pretty obvious to you already, but if not, by the end of the day today, I think they will be. The first question is this, was God's method of revelation the same in the Old Testament and the New Testament?

The second question I want you to think about is this, if it was not the same, how was it different? What was God's method of revelation in the Old Testament and what was His method of revelation in the New Testament?

Or of the New Testament and of the Old Testament, I should say. Another question is this, was the Bible completed by the end of the first century A .D.? Was the Bible completed by the end of the first century A .D.?

Or is it still being written? And the fifth question you might ask is this, is God still revealing doctrinal principles outside and independent from the revelatory information already given in the Bible?

Now that was a mouthful, so let me read it again. Is God still revealing doctrinal principles outside and independent from the revelatory information already given in the Bible? Now we're going to attempt to answer those questions, and we may not get them all answered today, but we will answer them by the time we finish studying this idea of revelation.

So first, let's compare and contrast the Old Testament and the New Testament method that God used to reveal each of those two parts of our Bible. Let's look at the Old Testament method of revelation first.

Look at Hebrews chapter 1. And I think as we read verses 1 through 3, we will see the answer to the first question that I pose today is, is there a difference between how the Old Testament was given and how the New Testament was given?

So follow along, and I'll read Hebrews chapter 1, verse 1. God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.

I think that gives us an answer, a partial answer to the first question. There seems to be some difference in the method by which God gave us the Old Testament truths and the methods by which he gave us the New Testament truths, because he says very clearly in verse 2 that he hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, which seems to be in contrast to the way that he spoke in sundry times, in old times, when he spake to us by the prophets.

So let's continue here with verse 2. Whom he hath appointed heir of all things, that's Jesus Christ, by whom he has spoken to us in these last days, heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds, who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of majesty on high.

Now there's some things said about Jesus Christ in that last verse that certainly cannot be said of any of the Old Testament prophets or the New Testament prophets. So we see there is a difference in the way that the New Testament was given, in that it was given to us by his Son, who is the brightness of God's glory, and the express image of his person, and there is none other like that.

So there has to be a difference in the method by which it was given, if for no other reason because of the person by whom it was given to us, in the case of the New Testament, by the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

So, now let's look at the Old Testament method before we get into the New Testament method. It says in verse 1, God who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets.

Now we have to understand that this book of Hebrews in the New Testament was penned shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem, which was dated 70 AD. Therefore, it is one of the older books of the New Testament.

It is probably older than just about every other book and epistle other than the latter books that John wrote, which would be Revelation and 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. And so kind of keep that in mind. But he says, God who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets.

Let's look at the key elements of this part of the scriptures this morning. We're talking about the Old Testament revelation. First notice that it says God spake. Now look at Hebrews 1 .1, and I want you to notice, I believe, in your Bible, does it have a comma after the word God?

Okay. There really are not any commas in the Greek, but the thing is that as you read it in the Greek, you get the idea that the subject of the sentence is God and the verb or the predicate is spake. And the little phrase who at sundry times in diverse manners is a parenthetical kind of an adjective, right?

Phrase, I have to be so careful with her sitting on the front row. But so let's do this. Let's put a parentheses around that phrase and remove it for a moment, and we'll bring it back towards the end of the sentence.

We'll kind of play like we're diagramming this sentence. And this would be one of those things we might put down on the line underneath the main line that has the subject and the verb in it. So let's look at what it really says.

Leave out that phrase and read it this way. God spake in time past and to the fathers by the prophets. So the first point is God spake. All right. Second, Timothy 316 says that all scripture is given by inspiration of God, which which I wish that had been rendered literally because in the literal Greek language, it says all scripture is God breathed.

That is the very first lesson that we must understand if we're going to understand revelation at all. When we say revelation, we're talking about things God has revealed to man that man could have never known had gotten had God not revealed it.

You can know God is there by looking at the trees and the waterfalls and the beautiful sky and and all of God's creation. You can know he's there, but you can't know about his character completely by just looking at nature, can you?

So most of what we know about God, the only way we know it. In fact, most of what we know about truth and absolute truth in the whole world, the only way we know it is because God has revealed it to us.

And that's what we're talking about is how did he do this? How did he reveal these truths to us? And slightly different, though very similar, but slightly different in the Old Testament versus the New Testament.

In the Old Testament, God begins by telling us it was me that spoke to you. It was not Moses. It was not David. It was not Isaiah. It was me who spoke to you. God is, in fact, the author of the Bible, and that's why we call it God's word.

There were humans who were penmen that God chose to use to express his word exactly as it had already been formed in that other dimension, which we call the outside of time dimension. It is an eternal book, and it has always existed.

And God gave it down into time, into the dimension of time, through human penmen who operated exactly according to his will and according to as he breathed it into their hearts and minds and as their hand put it down on the paper.

Jesus Christ himself authenticated the Old Testament and said, To the jot and the tittle, everything shall come to pass exactly as it is written. It is a perfect book, even though human penmen had something to do with it.

But the point is, God is the author of it, and it is written by God. We're going to find in a few minutes that's true of the New Testament as well. Second thing we see, now look at this. It says, God spake in time past.

I want you to think about that phrase, in time past. It is the Greek word palahi, which means ancient times, or it can be translated and has been translated a great while ago or of old. So it's saying that God spake a great while ago or in ancient times unto the fathers by the prophets.

And that's going to be contrasted with how he speaks to us now in the last days. So we have a contrast between the last days, which we find ourselves living in, and the ancient days, which is when the Old Testament was written.

And so God is the author, it is God who spake, and he spake in time past. Now let's look and see what the method was. In time past, he spake unto the fathers by the prophets. Notice this phrase, unto the fathers.

There's a lot taught in that phrase. And the main thing we need to understand is that God's word was written by God for God's people. It was not a book that could be understood at all by those who are not saved and is totally undiscernable, if that's a real word, by the lost.

Let me give you a couple of verses that prove that in the New Testament. 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14 says,. But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. For they are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Neither can he know them. The lost natural man cannot discern anything about the word of God. Even though God wrote the book, and even though he has given it into this dimension, those who are not saved cannot understand anything spiritual from it.

It can be nothing other than a history book to them. Perhaps a book that contains some scientific information to them. But not a book that they can learn about God from. Isn't that amazing? These things, they may not know them because they are spiritually discerned.

But he that is spiritual judges all things. You can judge and discern and know spiritual things if you've been born again. Let me give you another passage. Matthew chapter 13 and verses 13 through 16.

And we're discussing this word where it says, God spake in time past unto the fathers. It says who he spoke to. He didn't speak to the world. He spoke to his people, which we now call our fathers, our spiritual fathers, the Old Testament saints.

He spoke to them. Matthew 13, 13 says, Therefore speak I to them in parables. Now Jesus is speaking, and this fits the New Testament as well, but it's also true of the Old Testament. At least the principle is true.

I speak to them in parables because they seeing see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. Now how do we know that can apply to the Old Testament? It seems that Jesus is applying this to his own words.

Well, we know that because he's quoting the Old Testament when he says it. In fact, he mentions it in verse 14. And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand, and seeing ye shall see and shall not perceive.

For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, should understand with their heart, should be converted, and I should heal them.

But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear. That implies very strongly that the eyes of the lost don't see, and their ears don't hear. And so God has given his book to his people.

In the Old Testament we call them now the fathers. It means those who were saved before us and who led the way for us, spiritually speaking. Now let's go on back into Hebrews 1 .1. It says, God spake, and time passed unto the fathers, and now it gives the method.

It says, by the prophets. Now let me give you an important definition. I want you to jot this down if you would, because there's some controversy about this in theological circles today, and many of the commentaries that you will read that we would recommend, the good commentaries, there is a slight point that I differ with them, and you can take their side if you want to, but I'm just going to give you this definition and let you decide.

Many would say today that there are still prophets, and that the word prophet simply means to speak forth God's truth. If that is true, then I'd have to say that any preacher is a prophet. And if you use that definition, then I would allow you to say there are still prophets today.

But the problem with that is I don't believe that is a proper definition of the word prophet, either in the Greek language or in the context of the entire Bible. Well, let's look at the Greek language first.

The word prophet is translated from the word profetas, profetas. And it comes from two smaller words. The first one is the word pro, which means for, f-o-r-e, for, in front of or prior, for. The second word is femi, which means to show.

And so profetas comes to mean a foreteller or a foreshower. A foreteller is what a prophet is. He is, by analogy, the Greek language definition would say he may also be an inspired speaker. Now, I'm here to tell you today that there are no inspired speakers left on the face of the earth during the church age.

The last one died when the last apostle died. And so by a true definition of prophet, there are none today. There are no literal prophets in the true sense of the Bible. Now, I said not only is it true that the definition in the Greek means that, but I did a study one time because I was puzzled with why some of the commentators seemed to say that they talked of preachers as being prophets today.

And I thought they were being a little bit lazy with their speech. And so I went and looked every place in the entire Bible, Old Testament, and knew where the word prophet is used. And I couldn't find one place where it was not either explicitly stated or implied that this was a person who could tell the future because God gave him the ability to do that.

Now, that is the difference. Now, we need to understand that as we go on into our study of what the prophets are. So, we see then in Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 1, God spake and time passed unto the fathers by the prophets.

These prophets were unique individuals. And so don't think for a minute that they were just preachers because they were not. They were far more than that. They were foretellers. They were people who had the ability given to them by God to see things that God had revealed to them about the future and about his word and about what to write and how to pin the very truth that he wanted us all to learn.

Now, let's go back to that little parenthetical statement that I told you to take out just a few minutes ago. It says, at sundry times and in diverse manners. That's how he spake to us by the prophets.

Sundry times is a little bit of the old English, I believe. And let me just tell you, it comes from a Greek word, polymeros, which means in many ways and in many times. And then when it says in sundry times and diverse manners, the phrase diverse manners is another word that has really the same, first part of the word is the same.

It's poly, which means many, but it's tropos, which means modes or styles. So what it is saying is that God spake to the fathers in the old times by the prophets in many times, in many different ways, and with many different styles, but it was God that was speaking.

And it gives you a lot in that little phrase that describes for us how God accomplished this. Michael made it safely. I've already introduced you, so everyone knows you. And you have to memorize their names at lunch, so good to have you.

I'm glad you made it safely. We're in the New Testament in Hebrews chapter 1, so Papa didn't bring his Bible back there, but that's all right. He's got it memorized. Just ask him if you need to know where we're headed next.

Okay, now let me give you another verse to think about. Hebrews 1, 1 says, God spake, and I'm going to paraphrase it now according to the definitions we just learned. God spake in ancient days unto his people by the foretellers, the prophets, at sundry times, different times, and in different ways.

Turn with me, if you would, to 2 Peter chapter 1 in verse 20. I'll give you another verse that talks a little bit about how God revealed himself to us in the Old Testament times. 2 Peter chapter 1 in verse 20 says, Knowing this, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation.

Now, that would blow away most of modern theology, especially the charismatic theology, the modern tongues movement. I call it the false tongues movement, the faith-healing movement. All of the, quote, new doctrines that are coming out of the charismatic movement.

This verse, verse 20, would do away with them because it says no prophecy is of any private interpretation. That means no man has the right to privately invent new things that God is saying. Now, of course, this is written to us in the New Testament times.

This is written to us at a time after the apostles had given us the New Testament even. But it says even in that day, none of that prophecy was given by private interpretation. I'll tell you this, there is a principle in the Bible, and that is that the prophets were always the ones who discerned the prophets.

Does that make sense to you? Let me tell you a new way, or a modern way we can think of it, now that we have the Word of God. Let the Bible interpret the Bible. There is no place that, if it is true, will be contradicted by any other place in the Bible.

If some man stands up and tells you this is what's true now, because I've seen this, God has shown this to me, if you can find one place in the Word of God that contradicts what he's saying, then it's not part of it.

And the fact is, now, after we get through with this study, you'll be able to say just the fact that he said that proves it's not part of it. Because he's not an apostle. He's awfully old, he's nearly 2 ,000 years old, if he is one.

And so we see here then that there is no Scripture given by private interpretation. All of the Scriptures will fit all of the other Scriptures harmoniously, if it's given by God. And if it's not given by God, it's not Scripture, because it started out saying God spake to the fathers.

So it has to be God's Word, or we don't count it as part of God's Word. Now look at verse 21. Now it begins to show some more about the method that God used in the Old Testament. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man.

Now there's a lot of scriptural doctrinal, quote, truths that are coming out now by a lot of the new charismatic preachers that seems to be coming by the will of man. They're teaching us things that they in their own will decide they want to teach us.

A great example of that that's not so recent is the Book of Mormons. When Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormons, he claimed that it was part of God's Word. But the truth is he wrote it by the will of man, which means he accomplished something that he desired, which was to have more than a dozen wives.

So he wrote a book, claimed it was from God, that said it's okay to do that. And the problem with it is it contradicts the Bible in hundreds of places. So it cannot be part of the canon, but he claimed it was and a few gullible people believed it and their children believed it and their grandchildren believed it.

And so now we have a fairly large movement based on a man who wrote something according to his own ideas. They were private interpretations. They were according to his own will. That's just one example, but there's far more damage being done by modern preachers today as they get up and preach what they think is the truth and it may not fit what the whole Word of God says.

So the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man. It was never done that way. But holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Now, what does that mean? Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Let me give you a very simple verse that'll clarify exactly the mechanics behind this. Turn with me to Acts chapter 1, verse 16. And there are many verses like this, but this one is so clear because this one takes an actual portion of Scripture, part of the Psalms.

And we say that David, King David, is the author of most of the Psalms. And when we say that, we really mean he's the penman because God is the author. And you'll see that very clearly in this verse. Now, if it is truly done according to God's methods, then the prophecy was given by, first of all, a holy man.

Isn't it interesting that most of the cults, if you study them, and you look at the life of the founder of the cult, many times they were adulterers or adulteresses, and they were a part of uncleanness in their lives.

This verse says they must be holy men. And then secondly, it says that God spake to them as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. Now, let's look at Acts chapter 1, verse 16. This shows exactly how God did this, and it uses David as an example.

And we're talking about part of the Psalms. And it says, Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled. Now, look at this phrase because it teaches the method. Which the Holy Spirit by the mouth of David spake.

Now, if you go back to your grammar that you had in grammar school when you had to diagram the sentences, you remember that? That's fun, isn't it? Wouldn't we all like to go out and have to do about 20 of them before supper time?

Well, she's just smiling down here. She gets a kick out of it, assignments like that. But how would you diagram this? If you said that this scripture must be fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake, who is the subject in that last phrase where it says the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake.

Was it the Holy Ghost or was it David who was speaking? The Holy Ghost is the subject. And what's the verb? Spake. So the Holy Ghost spake. The Holy Spirit of God spake. But how did he do it? Through the mouth of David.

The word by can be translated through many times. Most of the time in the New Testament is through. So the Holy Spirit spoke through David's mouth. That's how we got the Psalms. And we say David is the author of Psalm.

No, he's not. He's the secretary. He was God's secretary. He typed it. He wrote it. He penned it. But God was the author of it. And so we see through and through as we study how the Old Testament was given that that is the method.

Now, many parts of the Old Testament that are contested by modern scholars. Now, remember back when we reviewed a few moments ago some of the elements of modern theology. And what different types of rationalism did we have?

There was the extreme type, which is a person who doesn't believe there is a God. But there was the dangerous type, which is a person that believes there's God and that he spoke to us. And some of it's in the Bible, but some of the rest of what the Bible says is probably not true because it doesn't match my reason.

Well, that type of person has infiltrated our seminaries. And they are the people in many cases who teach our young preachers how to preach. And they totally strip them of any faith that they may have had when they went to seminary.

Many times. I don't mean in all cases, but many times this has happened and is still happening. And they even go, in fact, I can say it by experience because when I went to Baylor University, I was not a Christian yet.

I thought I was, but I wasn't one. But I vividly remember sitting in the required theology classes that you had to take. One of my professors was named Dr. Christian and he taught that none of the miracles in the Bible really happened.

Thought his name was kind of ironic. Should have been called Dr. Devil. But he was Dr. Christian and he taught that none of the miracles happened and that you could explain all of them through natural phenomena.

Now, he probably would not believe that a real fish swallowed a real man named Jonas, would he? Let alone that Jonas was spit out three days later and was alive and went and preached in a city, a literal city.

He probably wouldn't believe that, would he? But let's look and see what the Lord Jesus Christ said about that very event. And what I'm pointing out to you right now is that Jesus Christ himself authenticated the Old Testament.

He never said it was a book of good sayings. He said it is the word of God and it is absolutely accurate to the jot and the tittle, which to them was the cross of the T and the dot of the I. But he authenticates portions of the Bible that modern scholars say never even happened.

In Matthew chapter 12 and verse 40, Jesus said this, he said, for as Jonas, just as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Do you see how that if you could be a skeptic and say that it was impossible for Jonah to be in the stomach of a fish and be regurgitated three days later and still be alive, all of a sudden, if that's impossible, then you have just said that it's impossible that Jesus was in the grave three days and three nights and came back alive.

Because Jesus said it's the same. He said just as that happened, that's what's gonna happen to me. And so Jesus authenticated the story of Jonah and the whale and said it was a literal story. In Matthew chapter 23, verse 35, Jesus Christ authenticates the entire Old Testament because he mentions righteous Abel who is found in the first book of the Old Testament, Genesis, and he goes all the way to the blood of Zacharias which is found in the last book of the Hebrew Bible.

The Hebrew Old Testament, Zacharias is the last book. And so he gives you the first book of the Old Testament, the last book, and everywhere in between, and he says these things are the word of God. In Matthew 5 .18, Jesus himself said, for verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all be fulfilled.