Broadlands Bible Church
August 17, 2022
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Thesis: God's primary objective has to do with men "believing" in His love for them.
Introduction: In our last study, we did not finish out our notes, so we are going to pick up where we left off.
We were dealing with the fact that everyone has a "perspective" about everything and the need for men to be willing to "adjust" their perspective so that it mirrors God's. When we finished last week, we were asking the question of "Why?" we have a Bible.
This evening we are going to go into that question a bit further.
- I. The Bible's Perspective On God's Production Of Special Revelation.
- A. Why do we have a Bible?
- 1. It is a more specific revelation.
- a. Paul claimed that though "In the generations gone by He permitted all the nations to go their own ways, and yet He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave your rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness" (Acts 14:17).
- b. But that "witness" was admittedly pretty general except that it concerned "goodness".
- c. So, He gave a more specific revelation for the purpose of prodding men to "seek God" (Acts 17:27) in "repentance" (Acts 17:20).
- 2. But, why does God care if we have a more specific understanding?
- a. Clearly, the goal of "specific revelation" is to build upon the general thesis of His "goodness".
- b. With plenty of "witness" of exceptionally "bad" things, man needed to know how to discern the reasons for the reality of a "mixed bag" (which is what "general revelation" gives us).
- 3. The bottom line is: "God loves us".
- a. But, there was a period of about 2500 years of human history when men didn't have a "Bible" as we know it.
- b. But, men were not left without divine revelation during that time.
- c. God had given man a lot of special information and men had been passing it down from father to son for that period.
- 1) Moses tells us that God spoke to the ancients (Hebrews 1:1).
- a) Genesis 4:26 speaks of a time before the flood when "men began to call upon the name, "Yahweh". The word "call" was, up to this point in Genesis, used to indicate the "naming" of someone/something. It may be that Moses was saying that after the birth of Seth, men called "God" by the name "Yahweh".
- b) That creation declares the "infinity" of God is indisputable; creation is the major "creation metaphor" for "infinity".
- 2) Enoch was a prophet of the second coming who lived before the flood (Jude 14-15).
- 3) God had prophets on the scene, but men were perverse.
- a) Thus, they began to alter the information over time.
- b) The Zodiac reveals that men knew an awfully lot of the information we have in our Bible.
- i. Josephus bears witness of the Zodiac as a device for remembering what God had revealed, begun by Seth.
- ii. The Zodiac actually has many signs that show up in the biblical text regarding the "glory of God".
- i) The Lion, Eagle, Man, and Bull of the four "sides" of the Zodiac are the same images as found in Ezekiel 1 and 10 and Revelation 4.
- ii) Ophiuchus is an image of the biblical picture of Jesus who struggled with the serpent over the "crown".
- c) In 2500 years a lot of distortion had occurred.
- d. The answer to why God has given us special revelation is God's love for us so that we could have a relationship with Him.
- 1) He could have remained quiet and men would have perished from off of the earth.
- 2) Man's "perishing from off the earth" is not God's "first" objective.
- B. "A Biblical Perspective" must start with God's love for us. In the text of Hebrews 11:6 God is only "pleased" when men both "believe" that God "is" and that He "rewards" those who seek Him.
- 1. It is a concept that we give easy lip service to, but we have difficulty really believing that He loves us.
- 2. Part of the reason is the multi-person reality of love so that to "love" one person may mean to "hate" another.
- a. By its very definition, "agape" is a "value system" in which certain things are set at the "top" of the order and lesser things are set further down.
- b. Thus, if a circumstance develops where "you can't have your cake and eat it too", one will "love" one priority and "hate" the other: John 3:16.
