How Do We Know About God? The Doctrine of Revelation | Rev. Michael Fredericks

When I was a kid, maybe 13, 14 years

old, I remember thinking, you know, I've

grown up in church, listened to a lot of

sermons, and sat through a lot of Sunday

school lessons. I'm pretty sure I know

at this point how I'm supposed to live.

But what I thought at the time was, I'm

less clear on what I'm supposed to

believe.

So, I went and I knocked on my pastor's

office door

and I said to my pastor something along

the lines of,"I have so many questions.

What does the Bible say about this or

that or what am I supposed to believe as

a Christian? What is right Christian

belief?" And my pastor gave me a little

book. He helped me and gave me a little

book called What Baptists Believe. Um, I

don't know, some of you may have seen

that before. It's a publication of the

Southern Baptist Convention. So, I

learned what Southern Baptists believe.

Um, but that inspired this the title for

this series, which is what Christians

believe. We're not going to be

specifically Baptist. Um, now I know

that it's a broad category, Christian.

There's a lot of different varieties of

belief amongst Christians, so we're

going to do our best.

Uh, but that's the goal of this series

is to help us unpack some Christian

beliefs. And maybe some of you can

relate to how I felt when I was when I

was 13 or 14 years old, right? You say,

"Well, I've I've got a lot of questions

or or things are a little bit foggy for

me about some of these things that

Christians believe or what the Bible

says about this or that." Nowadays, most

people aren't knocking on their pastor's

office door when they have theological

questions, although some people do. And

I love those conversations, by the way.

So feel free to make an appointment and

come and see me and I'd love to chat. Uh

but most people today when they have

theological questions, they're going to

Google, right? Going to Google or to

YouTube or to chat GPT. That's the new

one.

And look, I'm glad for access to

information and I use chat GPT. But

there's a lot also a lot of potential

for our core beliefs to be shaped by

algorithm

uh and YouTube and artificial

intelligence

rather than what I think is a healthier

approach which is through personal study

of the Bible, through sitting under the

consistent faithful teaching of your own

pastor properly educated and

credentialed

and the communal discernment and

interpretation that happens in a local

church context.

So, what I'm hoping to do over the next

roughly 15 messages is to kind of knock

on the pastor's door. That's what we're

going to do. We're going to knock on the

pastor's door and ask some questions and

and and hopefully we'll as we walk

through several foundational doctrines

of Christianity, you will get a better

sense of what Christians believe.

And as a pastor, I believe that in doing

this, I am obeying the command of

scripture from Paul to Pastor Titus when

he wrote, "As for you, teach what

accords with sound doctrine."

I think this series will at times

stretch you. I think it will challenge

you and some of the things that you

thought you knew. It will answer

questions, I hope. And I think it will

also raise some questions that maybe

raise more questions than it gives

answers. But and many of these messages

are just going to scratch the surface of

these topics.

So I'll say that right out front. You're

going to hear a message and you're going

to go, "Oh man, but there's so much more

to be said about that." I know, but

we've only got so much time to to to

spend on it. But hopefully what it will

do is maybe prompt you to then do some

further study on your own. Maybe

there'll be a couple of messages that

you'll go, "Wow, that's really

interesting to me. I need to go deeper

on that." And it will it will it will

lead you into some personal study.

All in all, my ultimate hope and prayer

for this series is the same as Peter's

for the church, that we would quote grow

in the grace and knowledge of our Lord

and Savior Jesus Christ.

All right, why don't we start with

prayer? Let us pray.

Father, we desire

to love you with all of our hearts and

soul and strength and also with all of

our minds.

So Lord, please help us as we seek to

engage our minds to love you and learn

more about you that we may follow you

more closely and more faithfully in

Jesus name. Amen.

>> All right. Now, we're going to ease into

things today. Uh there's there's nothing

too heavy in this morning's message, but

it's very important. I think it's a

really important starting point for uh

any discussion about theology. And that

starting point is a question. How do we

know what's true?

Where do we get these beliefs from? Do

we just make them up? Is there like

church HQ somewhere in the world that

writes a book and says this is what

you're supposed to believe? How do we

know anything about God?

And so that's what we're starting with

today. We're starting with the word of

God.

The starting point of any discussion

about theology is the idea that God has

made himself known.

Theologians

call this the doctrine of revelation.

That doesn't mean the book of revelation

although it's the same meaning has the

same root meaning but the doctrine of

revelation meaning how God understanding

how God has chosen to reveal himself.

The doctrine of revelation is about how

a big gigantic universecreating God has

chosen to make himself known to us

little earth people.

And thankfully, we haven't been left in

the dark about God. God wants to be

known by us. He wants to have

relationship with us. And in a variety

of ways, he has and is revealing himself

to us.

There's two categories of revelation.

There's general revelation and special

revelation.

General revelation meaning the things

that we can observe

and special revelation meaning the

things we have to be told.

Let me explain it this way. Imagine if I

brought someone up onto the platform

here who none of you have ever met

before. Complete stranger to all of us.

I bring them up here and and I don't

hand them the mic so you don't they

don't get to speak but I just say okay

let's make some observations about this

person. What can we learn about them

just by looking at them? you say, "Oh,

well, it's it's a man. That's right.

Yeah, he's about maybe about 50 years

old. We're going to guess. Looks like

he's in good shape. Probably takes care

of himself. Um, you know, he's dressed

well, so maybe he's, you know, well off.

Uh, he looks pleasant." So, we could

make some inferences and assumptions

about this person just by what we can

observe with our eyes.

But then, if I gave this guy the

microphone and said, "You got 2 minutes.

Tell us everything about yourself."

Well, then we'd learn a whole lot more,

wouldn't we? Right? We'd we'd we could

learn his name and if he's married and

what he does for work and where he comes

from and all sorts of information that

is special revelation. General

revelation is the things we can just

observe. Special revelation is what we

can learn through being told. And God

has given us both general revelation of

himself and special revelation of

himself.

Let's start with just talking a little

bit about general revelation. So when we

talk about general revelation, also

sometimes known as natural revelation,

we're talking about what we can observe

about God primarily through creation,

looking at what he has made and what

that tells us about our God. Romans 1

speaks about this about how we can look

around at the world and and see that God

exists. Um, and a favorite passage that

highlights the idea of general

revelation is Psalm 19 where it says,

"The heavens declare the glory of God

and the sky above proclaims his

handiwork. Day to day pours out speech

and night to night reveals knowledge."

How does the the night sky reveal

knowledge? How does it speak? How does

it declare the glory of God? Because

when we look at the sky and we look at

the star, you ever had that feeling when

you go outside and you look at the stars

and you see the Milky Way and you're

just in awe and wonder of it all, right?

That awe and wonder tells us something

about the God who has created all of

this.

It speaks to his character. It speaks to

his nature. We get some insight as we

look around at things like the the

starry night sky, but also other

intricacies of creation. As you study

the intricate details of cell science

and all these amazing things that God

has created, it tells us it gives us

information about about the nature of

God that he is highly intelligent,

incredibly powerful, detailoriented. He

cares about the little things and the

huge things. All these things we can

make inferences about God. Even just the

fact that there must be a God, right?

The Bible says the fool says in his

heart there is no God. In other words,

you'd have to be crazy not to look

around the world and think there's no to

look around the world and think, "Oh,

there's no God." No, come on. Come on.

But all of those observations that we

can make in general revelation are

incomplete.

We can't get all the details we need to

understand who God is. We don't know his

name. We don't know about Jesus. We

don't know about salvation. We don't

know about what God expects of us when

we just look at general revelation. It's

insufficient.

And what happens if we don't go further

and seek out God's special revelation of

himself is that we might end up just

making up our own idea of who this God

is. Right? I have conversations with

people sometimes that they'll I'll we'll

get talking and they'll learn that I'm a

pastor and then I'll say, "Well, are you

a are you a believer?" And they'll say,

"Oh, yeah. I'm a believer. Yeah. I mean,

I I believe in God. I said, "Well, do

you go to church?" "Well, no. I don't I

don't believe in organized religion or,

you know, I I I believe in God, but I'm

not religious. I'm spiritual, but not

religious." You know, those sorts of

conversations. Um and and so I get that

people are theists, right? Cuz the fool

says in his heart, "There's no God." Um

but it's incomplete. They need more

information. They haven't got there yet.

I believe in God is a good first step.

Uh but it's it's not enough. We need to

know who this God is and what he expects

of us. We need special revelation. We

need to hear God speak. And thankfully

God has spoken.

I'm going to use the whiteboard. Now you

can see uh we've got this beautiful

whiteboard. This was actually um was

donated to the church. I don't remember

who the person was, but um Ian and

Brenda arrived at the church one day

with this whiteboard and said someone

was getting rid of this and we thought

the church could use it. And it has come

in handy, I'll tell you. Um we use it a

lot. Uh and it's great for for this

series as I like a whiteboard. Whenever

I do like small groups and Bible

studies, they're like, I got to put

stuff on the whiteboard. Um so we're

going to use this over the course of

this series.

So we'll start with this. We're going to

write we're going to depict God on here.

here. I don't know how to depict God, so

we're just going to write the word God

and put him in a cloud. How's that?

All right.

So, God has spoken.

Another way to refer to the ways that

God has spoken or this special

revelation is the word of God. The word

of God. Now, when I say the word of God,

what's the first thing that comes to

your mind?

>> The Bible, right? The Bible. Yeah.

That's what most of us immediately jump

to when we hear the phrase the word of

God.

And I'll say this, the Bible, the

scriptures are the word of God. We're

going to talk about that. They are the

divinely inspired authoritative written

record of the word of God. But I want to

expand your understanding of the term

word of God this morning.

Broadly speaking, God's word is anytime

that God has communicated

And I would say we can think about three

main categories

where God has spoken. So, we've got

God's word

and and we're going to

we'll say this. God's we can think of

God's word as God's word spoken,

God's word written down,

and God's word

made flesh as it says in John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

We're going to talk about that more.

If uh I was a good Baptist pastor, I'd

have three points that alliterate. So, I

did that supernatural scripture son

>> or if you don't like that personal

message, printed text, personhood of God

become man. You think that the the

message the personhood of God becoming

the message to us as Jesus the word

became flesh and dwelt among us. So

there's three primary ways that God's

word has been delivered to us in special

revelation. These are the main ways that

God has spoken. This is how we know

about God specific the details and this

is how we can know God personally

through his word.

So let's first talk about God's word

spoken to us. God's word spoken. We see

many instances in the Bible when God

speaks directly to people. God talks to

Moses in the burning bush. For example,

Elijah hears God speak in the still

small voice. God speaks to Old Testament

Joseph in dreams. And God speaks to New

Testament Joseph in a dream. and angels

meet people and bring messages from God

and miracles happen and so on and so on.

God intervenes supernaturally

in our world. He speaks directly into

our world and he still communicates

directly into our world all the time.

I'm not a cessationist, okay? I don't

believe that miracles and things only

happened in the in the olden olden

times. I believe the these things

continue. There's lots of evidence. I

think if we went around the room and

said, "Hey everybody, tell us about a

time that you felt God speaking to you

or you experienced the Holy Spirit in

your life." I think almost everybody

would have a story. We all can testify

that we have felt God speak or most of

us can testify to that. This

supernatural conversation with God. I'll

tell you what, regularly when I pray, I

take a notebook with me. Not because

I've got a bunch of stuff written down

that I need to tell God about, but

because I want to write down all the

stuff that God tells me when I pray.

It's it's a two-way conversation. A lot

of my prayers are silent prayers. I

spend time just dwelling in the presence

of God and listening to what the spirit

may say to me. This is how I pray in the

Arab world today. We've talked about

this in the Middle East and North Africa

region. you know, God is speaking

through dreams and miracles in huge huge

ways. Uh it's it's it's absolutely

incredible. So yes, in supernatural ways

beyond natural, God is intervening

directly into our world to say and do

things to communicate to us. This is his

word.

He's speaking delivered by the Holy

Spirit to people. He still speaks like

this. You might recall I did a whole

series called God Speaks last year. So

some of this is review if you were there

for that.

So yes, God speaks directly. He's he he

has spoken. But then also we have God's

word written down. The scriptures.

The scriptures.

Let's talk about the Bible a little bit.

The the the word Bible comes from the

Greek word for book biblios.

But it's not really just one book. It's

actually a whole library of books.

What's library in French?

>> Bibliotech, right? So yeah, it's good.

You can see the connection. All right.

The B the Bible is a whole library of

books. When you go to the library, the

books are all organized in different

sections. It's the same thing with the

Bible. There's two main two main

sections of the Bible. There's the Old

Testament, which is about 3/4 of the

Bible. the first uh 39 books of the

Bible. And then the New Testament, which

is about one quarter of the Bible, which

is 27 books. The Old Testament is called

the Old Testament because it's

>> old, right? And the New Testament is

called the New Testament because it's

>> right. It's still old. It was 2,000

years ago, but it's newer than the older

part. All right, good. You guys are

smart. You're with it today. This is

great.

It's also called the Old Testament

because it is primarily about the Old

Covenant. The word testament covenant

kind of mean the same thing. The old

covenant that is God's old agreement,

relationship, contract with mankind uh

through the nation of Israel and the

law. That's what we read about in the

Old Covenant. The Old Testament and the

New Testament is primarily about the new

covenant that God has with people

through Jesus Christ. as Jesus said at

the at the last supper, "This is the new

covenant in my blood."

So, the Old Testament flows into the New

Testament like a sort of like a prequel

to the main event. The main event is the

arrival of Jesus. It's like Star Wars,

right? Everything comes back to Star

Wars in one way, shape, or form. And uh

we've got the Star Wars prequel series,

which leads into the original trilogy,

the main event, right? the Skywalker

Sega. We're not going to talk about the

sequel series. There's a lot of problems

with the sequel series. Um uh but so

we've got the prequel that leads into

the the the main and that is sort of

what the Old Testament is like to the

New Testament.

And even though it's 66 different books,

it really is one unified story. This is

part of why the Bible's so incredible

that it can be, you know, it was written

by about 40 different authors over a

range of 1,500 years

in three different languages

from a people from a broad range of

backgrounds. We've got kings and

prophets and priests and a doctor and

fisherman, a farmer, and many others.

And yet, it tells one complete story.

Entright says it this way. The Bible is

really the complete story of the people

of God from the very beginning right

through to the vision of the new

Jerusalem at the end of revelation.

And the main character of this complete

story is Jesus.

The the library of books that we call

the Bible u is also organized by genre

just like a library would be today.

Right? In the Old Testament, you've got

the Torah, the prophets, and the

writings, sometimes also called the

historical books, the books of law,

poetry, wisdom, and prophecy. In the New

Testament, you have the Gospels, the

book of Acts, which is a history of the

early church in the first century, the

letters, right, the epistles that Paul

and Peter and others wrote, and an

apocalypse, the book of Revelation.

And understanding the genre of what

you're reading when you read the Bible

is really important. You need to

understand how what you're reading was

intended by the author to be understood.

You can't read poetry the same way that

you read history and so on.

So the scriptures are both the words of

men, the men who wrote them, but they

are not just the words of men. They are

also more than that. The Bible is the

word of God or as some theologians

prefer to say contains the word of God.

I don't get hung up on that difference.

I think we're saying the same thing that

the words of God are found in scripture.

We believe that the scriptures are or

contain the word of God because

Christians believe that the Bible is

inspired by God.

Inspired by God. God the Holy Spirit in

various ways guided the composition of

these texts so that we can rightly call

them divinely inspired.

There's two uh images that the Bible

uses to describe inspiration.

The first comes from 2 Timothy chapter

2 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

3.

Paul was writing to Timothy. He said

from childhood you have been acquainted

with the sacred writings which are able

to make you wise for salvation through

faith in Jesus Christ. And then he says

all scripture is breathed out by God and

profitable for teaching for reproof for

correction for training in righteousness

that the man of God may be complete

equipped for every good work. The image

the first image being used there is the

idea that scripture is breathed out by

God.

God breathed.

The second image is found in second

2 Peter 1 · chapter mention

Peter chapter 1 where it talks about how

the authors were carried along by the

spirit. For no prophecy was ever

produced by the will of man but men

spoke from God as they were carried

along by the Holy Spirit.

The word for that we translate as Holy

Spirit or the word that the New

Testament uses to describe the Holy

Spirit is the same word for or similar

related to the word breath or wind. Same

in the Old Testament as well, the Hebrew

word.

And so it's interesting that both of

these images have this have relation to

breath or wind. Um, in the first one we

we think about God breathing out the

Holy Spirit in some way breathed out

these texts. And in the second image,

which I really like this image, it's the

image of the wind in the sails of a

sailboat. You can imagine, right? The

wind is blowing in the sails and it

carries along the boat along the waters.

And that's the idea that these men who

and women who were prophesying, people

who were writing down the scriptures

were carried along like the wind in the

sails of a sailboat as they wrote.

Now, we don't know exactly what that

means. It's a bit of a mystery. It's a

bit of a mystery to be honest.

I like how uh Jerry Brashier's put it in

his book doctrine.

He puts he describes it this way. He he

explains it this way. People who were

providentially prepared by God and

motivated and superintended by the Holy

Spirit spoke and wrote according to

their own personalities and

circumstances in such a way that their

words are the very word of God.

I think he hits the nail on the head

there because what he's describing

is an interplay between God and man.

What he's describing is people who were

prepared by God. They were prepared for

this text and that they have

circumstances and experience and

knowledge and research. I mean, the

Gospel of Luke starts with Luke saying,

you know, I did my research. I sat down.

and I thoroughly researched this and and

I'm writing my best attempt at a

thorough account of history. Right? So

these were people who used their brains

and their experience and they were

prepared. Uh but also they were

superintended by the Holy Spirit. He

supervised the process. He was their

supervisor

and they spoke and wrote according to

their own personalities. You see that

coming through in the text, right?

Paul's letters for example in some cases

are very advanced. He was a very well-

educated person and so sometimes it's

like big words and you have to like

really go like what is Paul talking

about and you got to really dig in and

then you got other things like the book

of Amos. Amos was a farmer and so it's

really like down to earth and easy to

understand. Peter's letters are less

complicated than Paul's because Peter

was a fisherman, right? Paul was a well

educated person and the big difference

there and so you can see like their

personality comes through in in the

writings of of the Bible. They write in

accordance with their own personalities,

their circumstances, their own ideas.

And yet because of this role that the

Holy Spirit played, this mysterious role

that we don't really fully understand

it. Uh we we can say with confidence

that what we're reading is the word of

God.

I think some people might misunderstand

inspiration to think that the Holy

Spirit just kind of took over their

bodies and put them in a trance and and

and and took control of their pen and

they wrote without thinking. It wasn't

that. But it also wasn't people just

writing whatever and then people at some

point decided, well, we'll call this

sacred scripture. No, there was more to

it than that. The Holy Spirit was very

involved.

And we can see the evidence of God's

hand in the composition of the word of

God and and the composition of the

scriptures because this book is

powerful. This book has been changing

lives and transforming our world for

generations. This is more powerful than

anything I've ever read. It's

incredible.

And we also do see the personality,

character, thoughts, and circumstances

of the authors come through. So there's

this interplay between God and man. And

in that we say the scriptures are

inspired.

Can we just agree by the way like how

blessed are we that we have the written

word of God? Like isn't this incredible?

Like we have we have copies of this

library of that God has given to us. We

have it in our own language by the way,

right? It was written in Greek and

Hebrew and a little bit of Aramaic. And

yet we've got it in English and we don't

even have to read it in King James

Shakespearean English. We can read it in

the New Living Translation or the

English Standard Version because we're

getting dumber and we need we're not as

good at the old English as we used to be

and we need it in plain English like

grade five English. We can read it like

it's available to us. And if you can't

and it maybe you're like well I I'm not

really good at reading then you can get

it on a Bible app that can read it to

you. I mean, we we have so much access

uh to God's word. Isn't that it's just

what a an incredible blessing. Yeah.

Amen. Hallelujah.

Yet, this is still not the full extent

of God's word. We have God's word

spoken. We have God's word written down.

And yet, oh, praise the Lord. God's word

made flesh. God's word made flesh. He

has also spoken to us by his son Jesus.

Hebrews chapter 1, listen to this. I

Hebrews 1 · chapter mention

love the book of Hebrews. I preached on

Hebrews a few years ago.

It says, "Long ago, at many times, and

in many ways, God spoke to our fathers

by the prophets." Yeah, that's what this

is talking about. God's word, he spoke

directly into our world. He spoke

through prophets, right? People would

get up and say, "Thus, thus sayeth the

Lord." and he have a message for people

that came through the prophet and a lot

of it was written down, right? We have

the scriptures written down. We have

God's word written down. So, this is

what that's talking about. In the past,

in many times and in many different

ways, God spoke to our our forefathers

by the prophets.

But in these last days,

boy, there's even more. In these last

days, that's the time we're living in

now, by the way. Sometimes when people

say, you know, pastor, we're living in

the last days, right? The signs are all

there. I say, amen. We are living in the

last days. We've been living in the last

days for 2,000 years. Cuz it says in

Hebrews that we're in the last days.

Okay. Uh in the in these last days, he

has spoken to us by his son whom he

appointed the heir of all things through

whom also he created the world.

He is the radiance of the glory of God

and the exact imprint of his nature and

he upholds the universe by the word of

his power.

God actually came to be with us in human

form. We just celebrated that at

Christmas. He stepped into human

existence and gave us the clearest,

greatest, most authoritative, most

infallible, inherent word of God, his

son.

>> Amen.

>> John's gospel calls Jesus Christ the

word of God.

Let me read that from John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

In the beginning was the word

and the word was with God and the word

was God.

Next week's sermon, by the way, is the

Trinity. So, we're going to dig more

into that. Uh, and he was in the

beginning with God. All things were made

through him, and without him was not

anything that was made. If you skip down

to verse 14, and the word became flesh,

God's word made flesh.

And we have seen and he dwelt among us.

And we have seen his glory. Glory as of

the only son from the father full of

grace and truth. Jesus is God's word in

human form. In John 14:9, Jesus tells

John 14:9

his disciples that anyone who has seen

me has seen the father. What a

statement.

You want to know what God is like? He's

like Jesus. That's what Jesus tells us.

If you see me, you've seen the father.

And he says in Matthew 28 and when he

gives the great commission, all

authority in heaven and on earth has

been given to me.

That's a huge statement.

So God has spoken to us by Jesus. God is

best known when we know Jesus. And Jesus

is the most authoritative word of God we

have. Adam Hamilton in his book making

sense of the Bible says this. In Jesus,

God wrapped his message, his character,

heart, and purposes in human flesh.

Jesus is the decisive, definitive,

unmitigated word of God.

So, final thought,

jumping off of that last point about

Jesus being the most authoritative

expression of God's word, the clearest

demonstration of what God has spoken.

Let me highlight an important principle

for us

which has to do with how we prioritize

each of these modes of special

revelation practically in our daily

lives.

So whiteboard again.

So we have we have God's word spoken.

I'm going to write supernatural

as another way of describing that.

And in our lives, as I said earlier, uh

we have experiences

hopefully you have experiences from time

to time or on a regular basis where you

sense the presence of God in your life,

where you sense God speaking, where

you've heard God speak or you've seen

God do miraculous things. You've seen

him with that direct experience of God's

word into our world. And that's great.

But there's a potential problem with

that. And that is that our

interpretation of the supernatural is a

bit subjective.

Right? I've heard people who have said

things to me, they've said, "Pastor,

I heard the Lord say to me," and then

he'll tell me something that's crazy.

And I say, "I don't think the Lord said

that to you. I think you need to take

your medication." You know what I mean?

Like sometimes sometimes

we don't get it right. Right. We we our

version our understanding of reality is

sometimes a little bit skewed.

And so we have to have a bit of a filter

for the supernatural.

So I'm going to my artistic skills are

going to come out here. Now this is a

this is supposed to be a magnifying

glass. Okay. The handle goes over to

here somewhere. And the the filter, the

lens through which we need to interpret

the supernatural is the scriptures,

right? The Bible.

We always have to ask as we are having

potential experiences or people have

said that God said this or that to them,

we have to always say, okay, but does

that line up with scripture? Because God

will never contradict himself. And God

has made himself very clear in the

Bible. He has revealed himself to us in

God's word written down. And so the

filter through which we need to

understand the supernatural is the word

of God. The the scriptures, the written

word of God.

Okay, that sounds good. But there's also

an issue and that is that the Bible, I

don't know if you knew this, but the

Bible is open to interpretation. What?

And sometimes we have different

interpretations of the Bible.

And so I think an important filter or

lens through which we need to understand

the Bible, you can see where I'm going

with this, right, is Jesus.

I'm going to draw a little person up

here looking down through the

>> Wow.

>> All right.

looking down.

Isn't that great?

>> See, the scriptures,

I believe, are only truly understood

and correctly interpreted when we read

the scriptures through the lens of

Jesus.

Right? He is the main character after

all. The written word, someone said this

one time, the written word leads us to

the living word. The word uh the word

written down leads us to the word made

flesh.

Jesus himself, Rabbi Jesus on many

occasions corrected common

misunderstandings or misinterpretations

of the scriptures. Right? He would say

things like, "Well, you've heard it

said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for

a tooth." Right? capital punishment.

But I say

turn the other cheek, forgive. Right?

And so you go, well, but the Old

Testament, yeah, but Jesus says, but I'm

correctly interpreting it for you.

Here's what the heart of God is. He

commanded authority over the scriptures,

right? Jesus did stuff on the Sabbath,

and people would say, "You can't do

that. The Bible says you can't do that

on the Sabbath." And Jesus would say,

"Yeah, well, you know what? I'm going to

do it anyway." uh because you're not

you're misunderstanding what the Old

Testament was saying. He had authority

over the interpretation of the

scriptures. Uh he he he he definitely

made that very clear. And so it's

important for us too when we read the

Bible to make sure that we're not

missing the Jesus parts. I believe that

Jesus parts are the most important parts

of the Bible because Christ's own words

and his example will guide us to

correctly read and interpret and apply

all the rest of the Bible.

So the filter through which we

understand the scriptures is the filter

of Jesus, the lens of Jesus. And that's

an important thing too because man, you

read some stuff in the Old Testament

sometimes you go, "What on earth is

going on here?" And and when you

understand that Jesus is God, he's

always been God has always been like

Jesus. We just didn't always know this,

but we do now. That helps us understand

the Old Testament correctly, too, and

and try to figure out better what's

going on there. Um, and so that's a

whole another conversation for another

time. But I think it's a really

important principle to understand. When

we interpret, we interpret our

supernatural experiences of God through

the filter of the scriptures. And we

understand the scriptures and interpret

them to the best of our ability through

the lens of Jesus because he is the word

of God most clearly portrayed to us.

Okay, let's wrap this up and then Chad

will come and lead us in communion. Um,

at the beginning of a series that tries

to lay out Christian beliefs, we need to

start with the foundational belief and

understanding that God is knowable. God

is not silent. He has spoken and he's

still speaking. If we want to truly know

what's true, we don't lean on our

feelings, our experiences, our

subjective speculation, on algorithms or

artificial intelligence.

We start with Jesus.

We listen for God's voice through his

living word and through his written word

and through his Holy Spirit.

And we let that shape and believe what

we let that shape what we believe and

how we live. So I'll give you one simple

point of application this week. Okay?

It's not just going to be head

knowledge. Also hopefully there's some

things for you to do. So this week your

homework is open your Bibles. Open your

Bibles.

Find your Bible. Maybe you need to find

your Bible. I think I got a Bible

somewhere. Find it.

Get that Bible out. Blow the dust off of

it. Or maybe you don't have a Bible.

Well, guess what? We've got Bibles here.

We just got a shipment in from the

Gideonss. Thank you, Howard. Uh we have

these Bibles, redemption Bibles. We got

a whole bunch of them. And they're out

in the lobby on the shelf on the on the

wall where you can take things. And uh

if you don't have a Bible, take one.

It's a New Living Translation. It's easy

to understand. We'd love for you to take

that. and you say, "Well, I've got a

Bible on my phone." Well, okay. If

that's if it's working for you, the

Bible on your phone, and you're reading

your Bible all the time on your phone,

great. Don't mess with a good thing. But

I think a lot of people have the Bible

app on their phone like I do, but don't

actually use it because very much

because what happens is you go to your

phone and you got the Bible app and then

right next to it is the YouTube app

or the Facebook app

or whatever app,

Candy Crush.

And it sometimes is a lot easier just to

click on that one than the Bible app. So

get a real physical Bible

and go leave your phone somewhere else

and open the Bible and spend some time

listening to God through the scriptures.

And if you're already in that habit,

great. But for many of you, it might not

be a part of your normal life. Um, and

so let's carve out space to listen for

God through his word.

>> Amen.