Bible

27
Dec
2024

The Christian View of Revelation

When a CEO wants to communicate with someone, he has different ways of doing so.

One CEO dictates a letter to his secretary, who prints it out for his signature.

A second CEO tells his secretary to write a letter to Smith and say these three things.  She writes the letter and presents it to her CEO, who then tweaks it and signs it.

A third CEO says, “I’m going to go see Smith myself,” and he pays Smith a visit and talks face to face. 

I use the examples of CEOs communicating because they illustrate some differences among different types of revelation.  For example, when Muslims speak of revelation, they have in mind something like the first CEO.  Islam claims that Allah dictated the Quran and all other revelation.  To Muslims, Mohammed has no role in the Quran other than merely reciting and repeating what he received. 

The Christian concept of revelation is much more complex.  To be sure, the dictation model of revelation does exist within Christian thinking.  Sometimes God reveals His words through means like writing ten commandments on stone and handing them to Moses or speaking directly from heaven, “This is my Beloved Son with whom I am well-pleased.  Listen to Him.”  Within the Christian concept of revelation, there are times for “Thus saith the Lord.”

But the Christian concept of revelation is bigger than mere dictation.  To a Christian, God does not just speak to men.  He speaks through men.  In other words, God is not just a giant dictator.  He works with men and through men in order to communicate His will.  In this respect, God’s communications can include a process akin to that of the second CEO.  Revelation from the top can include lower-level involvement, yet still come from the top.  We see this all the time here on earth.  God certainly can do it.  In the Christian idea of Scripture, we have the concept that men spoke from God.

Men spoke.  But they spoke from God.  It was not the will of man that produced the revelation.  But the men still had a role.  They had to seek God, hear from God, and communicate to their situation what God communicated to them.  When they did this, they spoke.  And when they spoke, they did not all sound alike.  Paul communicated with his own personality and style.  John with his.  Jeremiah with his.  David and Solomon sound different.  As do Luke and Micah. 

In the Bible, God does not crush the voice of a man when He communicates through him.  He uses the man.  He works through the man in such a way that God’s message is never compromised, but the man is still himself. 

Some people have difficulty with this type of revelation.  They think that God must dictate or we have all sorts of room for error.  This thinking misunderstands God.  It thinks that God cannot preserve His Word unless He dictates it.  The God of this thinking is much too small and weak.  The problem with this view is not with its concept of revelation but with its concept of God.  These people do not know God at all.  The idea that God cannot preserve His Word unless He dictates is blasphemy.  It focses only on earth and ignores God Himself.  But when Christians speak of revelation, they are not focused on earth.  Christians speak of God with infinite power directing the whole affair so that the message revealed is the message God wants revealed.  Human ability to mess up God’s message is finite, but God’s ability to preserve His message is infinite. 

And here’s the thing.  The human ability to mess up God’s message exists even within the dictation model, for the one receiving the dictation must remember it correctly, copy it correctly and pass it on correctly.  But this is nothing for God.  God has infinite power, and infinite power outstrips any measure of finite weakness by the same amount in any form of revelation.  God has preserved His message through men, not just to them. 

But Christianity has a deeper and more complete form of revelation than this, for in Christianity the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  The Creator became a man.  God revealed Himself not just through words but through a life.  God did not just tell us about Himself.  He showed up.  He lived among us, so that people could see Him and hear Him.  He healed.  He taught.  He suffered.  And those closest to Him could see His glory.  God’s fullest revelation was the Incarnation.  His most complete message was Jesus.

This type of revelation is more like that of the third CEO, who paid Smith a visit.  This revelation is more personal. 

People have different kinds of problems with incarnational revelation.  On one level, if God truly came to earth in the person of Jesus, then Jesus is your Lord.  And He is your Lord whether you like it or not.  For most people, especially in the West, the idea of making someone else your lord does not sit well.  Their problem with the Incarnation of Jesus is not philosophical but personal.  They don’t want to follow Him. 

Others somehow think that God cannot or will not come to earth.  Those who think God cannot come to earth do not believe God is all powerful.  Their god is not God.  Those who think God will not come to earth usually say that an Incarnation would be too demeaning for God.  To them, God would never condescend in such a way as to mingle with men. 

To them an Incarnation is abhorrent.  To the Christian it is glorious.  To them it is insulting.  To the Christian it is love in action.  To them it contradicts God’s character.  To the Christian it reveals God’s character.  The Incarnation is like a king who came to live among the people for a time.  He doesn’t give up his royalty while living among the people, but he does allow the people to know him in a way they never could have known him had he remained hidden in his palace.  The Incarnation is wondrous and glorious. It is reason to exalt God even more. 

Christian revelation has, thus, included all three forms of communication that the three CEOs represent.  Sometimes God dictated, frequently He spoke by His Spirit through people, but when the time was right, He paid a visit. 

The fact that God communicates to us in all these ways says something about His relationship with people.   It says that God is not merely transcendent.  He is not a distant god who dwells in the sky and issues decrees for us to follow.  Instead, the God who is beyond you and me wants to come near.  He wants to include you in His work.  He wants you to know Him so well that you can describe His character and will in your own words.  He wants you to be united with Him. 

The Christian concept of revelation flows out of the Christian concept of God.  Revelation and theology are integrated.  God chooses to reveal Himself through men and to personally visit men because He is a relational God, a humble God, and a loving God.

Posted by mdemchsak in Christmas, Scripture, 0 comments
18
Oct
2023

The Voice of God and the Word of God

Lord, teach me your Word, that I may know your heart.

If someone hands me the phone, and I hear my wife’s voice on the other end, no one has to tell me who I am talking to.  I don’t see her, but I know her voice. 

God wants His voice to be something we know.  So how do you learn His voice?

I learned my wife’s voice by listening to her and spending much time with her.  We learn God’s voice by listening to Him and spending much time with Him.  Of course, God’s voice is not auditory, so we must listen in a different way, but the principle remains the same.  If you spend little time with God and if you never try to listen, you will never learn His voice.  The most common reason people do not hear the voice of God is that they don’t even try.

Sometimes they believe God is nebulous – so why bother?  Sometimes they don’t like what God says, so they shut Him out.  But most people don’t think much of anything about God.  They are so busy going to work and school, cooking dinner, shopping for groceries, watching movies, surfing the internet, thinking about a guy or girl, fixing their car, taking their kids to the doctor, and more – that they have no time to think on God.  It’s not that they think God is nebulous, confusing, or distasteful.  It’s that they don’t think on God at all.  God is irrelevant to their world, so the idea that He can speak to them is likewise irrelevant.  When people laugh at the idea that you can hear from God, it is usually these people who are doing the laughing. 

But those who have faith will take steps to know God.  They will want to hear His voice, and the first place in which you will hear the voice of God is in the Scriptures.  The Bible is the very Word of God.  It reveals how God thinks.  It contains His voice.  When you immerse yourself in Scripture, you immerse yourself in the voice of God.  You soak your mind in God’s thoughts.  When you ignore Scripture, you ignore the voice and mind of God.

Saturate your mind with Scripture, and you prepare yourself to hear from God.  Scripture provides the intellectual, spiritual, and moral operating system through which God speaks.  It reveals the culture of heaven.  It is the worldview God has breathed out.

Soaking your heart and mind in Scripture helps you know God’s voice because God’s voice will never contradict God’s Word.  Scripture provides a pattern that God’s spoken voice will fit, a standard that it will conform to.  It provides the background for hearing from the Holy Spirit.

Suppose a friend tells you that your mother spoke glowingly about a politician that you know she cannot stand.  You know that your friend is mistaken, not because you heard the specific conversation yourself, but because you know your mother.  Perhaps the friend missed some sarcasm, but his claim is false, and you know it.  You have background knowledge about your mom based on repeated experience with how she thinks and talks.  This background helps you recognize her message.

It also helps you interpret her message when she speaks.  Let’s say you know that your mom can get animated when she explains herself.  When that happens, you know she is not angry because you know that’s just the way she is.  You know her heart.  But someone who doesn’t know her so well may ask why she is so upset. 

Scripture helps you in these ways.  It shows you the heart and mind of God, and as you get to know how God thinks and feels, you begin to recognize the sorts of messages God would or would not say.

Knowing Scripture is essential for discerning God’s voice.  If you want to know the voice of God, get to know the Bible. 

Posted by mdemchsak, 0 comments
16
Jun
2021

Food for the Soul

Man does not live by bread alone . . .

Feed me, O God.  Feed me yourself, that I might know you more closely, love you more strongly, walk with you more constantly.  I need to hear and to heed your words – not mine, not those of my friends or family or government or culture.  I need to hear from you.  How my soul thirsts for the living God and for a word from Him! 

A growing boy needs to eat.  When I was a child, I remember my mother saying, “Now eat your dinner.  If you want to grow strong, you’ll have to eat.”  And, of course, she was right.  People who don’t eat, grow thin and weak.  They are more prone to cold and sickness; they move more slowly and are often more irritable.

But when it comes to food, the message, “Eat” is incomplete, for growing boys need not just food but the right food.  That’s why my mother would also say, “No dessert until you eat your vegetables,” for she knew that a healthy growing boy needed to fill his belly with healthy foods and not just any food.  In fact, in America at least, we have all sorts of health problems not because people don’t eat but because they gorge themselves on cakes, chips, sodas, and fast food.  If you eat too much junk, pretty soon your body becomes junk.  You really are what you eat. 

The soul is this way, too.  Just as the body needs healthy food so, too, does the soul.  But food for the soul is not beef or broccoli.  Food for the soul consists in the thoughts you think, the ideas you read, the attitudes you see in movies or TV, the words you hear and speak – in short, the worldview you expose yourself to.  And just as people often eat too many cookies and donuts, so, too, do people often feed their souls on too much junk food.

In the spiritual realm, healthy food is Biblical food, and junk food is everything else.  Some of that junk food is spiritually neutral.  It’s background noise – the cooking channel, a soccer team, your job.  Everyone has such noise in their lives, and, like chocolate, it is not necessarily harmful in and of itself, but a diet consisting mostly of background noise will not move the soul toward God.  Too many people cannot hear God through the noise.  Other junk food is poison – sexual content in movies, celebrities who proudly mock Biblical teaching, peer pressure to think like your culture.  These phenomena actively move the soul away from God.  What you expose your mind and heart to affects how you think and live.

In the physical realm, the solution to too much junk food is simple.  Eat more meat and vegetables and fewer pies and cakes.  The same is true in the spiritual realm.  The soul that feeds on the Bible grows strong, while the soul that neglects the Bible withers away.  The soul with heavy exposure to the surrounding earthly culture and light exposure to God’s culture becomes thin, shallow, and distant from God.  You really are what you eat.

This means that the Bible is essential for a vibrant spiritual life.  The Bible is God’s message for the human race.  It grounds people in ultimate matters and places their lives firmly on a solid rock, so that they can stand even when the waves of culture hit.  Remove that rock, and people just bob in the sea, flowing back and forth wherever the waves take them. 

The Bible points the soul to God.  It shows us how God thinks, what He is like, and what He has done.  It shows us why we are here and where we are going.  It shows us our own hearts and what God wants those hearts to be.  It shows us what a new life looks like and where the power comes from to live that life.  The Bible is the meat and vegetables for a healthy spiritual life.  It is where you go to renew your mind.  It is what the soul must feed on.  Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. 

Most souls, however, do not consume the Bible, and a majority of souls that identify as Christian do not consume the Bible.  I don’t mean that none of them ever reads the Bible at all.  I mean that most people in the church pay such scant attention to the Bible that they might as well not read it.  The lack of Biblical content in the average “Christian” is staggering.  Most people who identify as Christians spend minimal (if any) time each day feeding on the Bible but hours a day on social media, viewing movies, or listening to pop music.  In other words, they feed on junk food.  And their consumption shows.  They have difficulty standing against the culture they feed on, and their walk with God is shallow.   They feed their souls large amounts of donuts and cupcakes every day but rarely eat healthy.  

They don’t know how God thinks because they don’t take the time to find out.  They grow weak, fat and spoiled, and they hurt themselves and the church. 

If you want to walk with God, you have to set time daily to get to know what He has said in Scripture . . . to meditate on it from the heart . . . to yield your soul to its authority.  If you have access to the Bible and choose to ignore it, you cripple your soul. 

But if you devote yourself to it, you have something substantial to build your life on, for it will point you to Christ.  You are what you eat.  Even in the soul.

Posted by mdemchsak, 0 comments
13
Nov
2020

Wanting God’s Word

I have not departed from the commandment of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my portion of food. (Job 23:12)

I love you, O Lord.  Therefore, I love your Word.  Feed me on it.

The Bible is God’s Word. 

Many voices deny this fact.  They claim that the Bible is man’s book, not God’s book.  They claim that the Bible is culturally conditioned and, thus, suspect when it comes to addressing people today.  They claim that the Bible is full of contradictions or that the events it relates never happened.  They claim that the Bible is cruel, oppressive to women, or sexually backward.

Today the various voices against the Bible are loud and occupy the seats of power within all cultures.  The Bible stands as the most attacked and most censored book in history, and among the power brokers of Western culture, its ideas are roundly mocked and brushed aside.

But the Bible still stands as God’s Word.  Despite the efforts to discredit and dismantle Scripture, it still changes lives, brings peace, frees people from sin, reconciles enemies, puts joy in the heart, and more.  This is because the Bible is God’s Word. 

The power of the Bible is not in the book on its own but in the God who stands behind it.  The Bible has power because ultimately it comes from Christ and points to Christ.

For this reason, those who know God love the Bible.  Indeed, one of the marks of genuine faith is a love for Scripture, for if you love God, you want to know what He says.

Unfortunately, however, too many who go by name of Christian have no desire to know what God says.  They work their jobs, go to their schools, raise their children, eat, shop, play, and live life as if God has nothing to say about who they are and how they should live.  They are so busy living life that they have no time to listen to God.  They don’t even think about listening to Him.  But they consider themselves good people (churchgoing people even) and, thus, Christians.  This phenomenon is not Christianity.  You do not see it in Scripture.

But most people in church don’t know Scripture.  They don’t take time to read it, to meditate on it, and to learn from it so that they might obey it.  And so they disobey it (all along thinking they obey it) because they love other things more than they love God.  For if they had loved God, they would have taken the time to learn what He says.

The irony is that many of these people would tell you that the Bible is God’s book, but they live like the people who tell you that the Bible is man’s book.  They somehow think they revere the Bible when in reality they pay scant attention to it. 

God calls you to know Him, to love Him, and to obey Him.  From the heart.  And a heart that wants God, wants His Word. 

Posted by mdemchsak in Discipleship, 0 comments