So that's all the unnecessary
information. Now let's try something that's
beneficial. Did everybody get a set of these notes? You don't
have to have them. We are going through a Bible
doctrine series in our Sunday morning Bible classes. I did
this primarily because we have a few young people that not that
many years from now, they're going to be grown. And, uh, then
they essentially make their own decisions about where they want
to go. And I wanted to be certain that they had a basic understanding
of what we believe and why we believe it. We cannot make our
children believe the truth. That's beyond our power. But
we do have the privilege of telling them what the truth is and seeing
that salvation comes through the hearing of the truth. He
has begotten us again by the word of truth. It is our great
privilege, those that still have children within our little universe,
it's our great privilege to be able to teach them God's truth. Without it, there is no hope
for them. With it, if God is pleased, it
may work to their salvation. Now, I'm going through this much
as you would a class in systematic theology, approaching the various
subjects that the Bible speaks of. Now, most Most of the time,
when someone does a systematic theology, they will start with
the doctrine of God, which if you go to Bible school, they
call that theology proper. But I'm starting with the subject
of Revelation, not the book of Revelation, but the idea that
spiritual truth must be revealed. It must be shown to us by God. It's not something we can find
out for ourselves. And I start there because it's
very important. If we're going to learn truth,
we got to find out where you get it. So we'll begin there. And if you, um, what is revelation? What does
the word mean? In the Greek of the New Testament,
the word revelation comes from two Greek words crammed together. The word kaloupsis, which means
to cover. And then in front of that, they
put one of their prepositions, apo, which means from. So essentially,
it is to take the cover from. Now, when you walked here in
this room, here's this piano sitting there. It took no revelation
for you to know there's a piano in this room. It's right out
here. But this piano's got a lid on it. If you want to know what's
inside the piano, the lid's got to be taken off so that you can
see. That's what revelation is, simply
to take the lid off of something. We don't really have an English
word, we do, but we never think of it in these terms, but the
word uncover or discover. In fact, the old timers used
to talk about God making fresh discoveries to us. And by that,
it means fresh revelations, not new revelations. Now, there's
a distinction. Not new revelations, but fresh ones. Now, the things
of God must be revealed to us because some of the things of
God are simply beyond natural human discovery. Truth of the
matter is, there are some things God can't even reveal because
we just cannot fit them in our minds. We are utterly bound to
the concepts of time and space. We can't think of something without
thinking about where is it and when is it? God is nowhere at
no time. It almost sounds like we're saying
God doesn't exist. No. We're saying He exists outside
of time and space. In one sense of the word, God
is everywhere and nowhere all at once. And we can talk, we
can say those words, but not a one of us knows what that means.
In fact, have you noticed that most of our descriptions of God
are negative? He is infinite, not finite. We can say those words, but we
don't even know, we can't grasp, not finite. So there are some
things about God have to be revealed that can't even be revealed. We say the words, but they are
in some respects meaningless to us. In our state of sin, we
are blind to God's truth. Ever since Adam fell, humanity
has been unable to grasp the things of God. He thinks he understands,
but he doesn't. He can understand certain doctrines,
but he still doesn't know God. In fact, sometimes he is blinded
to the knowledge of God by this very fact. He thinks he sees
when he doesn't. Now, if you think you see something,
you never look anywhere else. You say, I found it. And therefore,
humanity is rendered blind partially because he thinks he sees. Do
you remember the story of a man that was born blind and the Lord
healed him? And the Pharisees and other religious
leaders just could not grasp that. Well, they could grasp
it. They didn't want to believe what that necessarily implied.
And they kept asking this fellow and questioning him about the
Lord Jesus. And finally they said, well, we don't know where
he's from. And that blind man said, now here's a wonder. Here's
a man that opened the eyes of one born blind and you don't
know where he came from. And then our Lord later said, I have
come that those who are blind may see and that those who see
will be made blind. And a lot of people in this world
are blind because they think they see. It must be revealed
to us. If you know the truth of God,
if you believe it to the saving of your soul, it's because God
did a special work of grace called revelation for you that He doesn't
do for everybody. Natural man is blind in three
ways. He inherits a natural blindness.
When Adam fell, here's an interesting thing. Adam ate the fruit. And according to the Lord's promise,
shall we say, he died. Now we know it took his body
some 930 years to die. Spiritually, he died right away.
And how do we know? He became a spiritual fool. Now
the day before, he was walking with God, he fellowshiped with
God, he knew God, loved God, believed God, all those things.
He eats the fruit, and what does he do? He tries to hide from
God behind a bush. Do you think you can hide from
God behind a bush? How silly is that? And yet it's
no less silly or no more silly than all the forms of religion
that men try to hide from God behind. Do you think you can
hide from God by a cup of wine and a wafer in your hand? Do
you think you can hide from God by being dunked underwater or
sprinkled with water? Do you think you can hide from
God with a flimsy veil of your own morality? Most people think
you can. If you think you can't, you know
why? God revealed that to you. And
then, there's natural blindness, there's a judicial blindness.
Now, I've put scriptures on here, but we won't turn to many of
them or we'd never get done. In fact, we might not get done
through this whole lesson anyway. Just believe me, they refer to
these things, and you can look them up. But it speaks about,
in John 12, John quotes Isaiah, where Isaiah says that God has
given them a spirit of blindness, of stupor. Why? Because they
didn't believe what had already been told them. Now, we'll see in a minute, God
gives a revelation through creation. sufficient revelation that those
who see it are without excuse if they do not believe. And those
who will not receive what revelation God has given, God will make
it so they cannot see anymore. Now this morning, I will do all
I can to preach the truth to you, shine the light to you with
whatever grace God has been able to give. And you are responsible
to believe God's truth. And to reject it puts you in,
shall we say, a double jeopardy. It may be God will never let
you hear it again. Oh, you may sit while somebody's
preaching it, but it'll never have an impact on you. A judicial
blindness. And then we are naturally held
captive by a satanic blindness. The God of this age has blinded
the hearts of men. He blinds them, I think, to a
great degree by false religion. He fascinates them with the baubles,
bangles, and beads of human religion. You who believe, is it not amazing
to you what kind of foolishness men can follow and call worship? What silly doctrines they can
receive and call truth? Why do you think that otherwise
intelligent people believe such silly things? Because they're
held captive. But here's the bigger question.
Why is it that people like you and me believe the truth? Only
because of revelation. God took the lid off and he opened
our eyes so we could see. Because we were, every one of
us, by nature, just like the children of wrath. The hardest
doctrine, I think, for the natural man to receive is what Paul says
at the end of verse 22, Romans 3, there is no difference. Oh, we love to make a difference,
don't we? We love to say, I'm better than this guy. Or, yeah,
I've done some brilliant things wrong, but I never did this.
Paul says, there's no difference. All have sinned. Fall short of
the glory of God. It doesn't matter what kind of
sin you did. In fact, the way that's written in the Greek language,
it strictly says, all sinned. And when the same phrase is found
in Romans chapter 5, it's referring to the sin of Adam. One man sinned. And we all sinned before we were
ever born. And therefore, we come into this
world, every one of us falling short of the glory of God. And it doesn't matter what form
our sin takes, whether it's a form of sin in gross corruption, or
our sin takes the form of glorious human religion, it's still sin
and renders us under judgment from God. The Scriptures then speak to
us of at least four ways that God reveals. Now of these four
ways, three of them may come to a man and him remain lost. God can speak to men. in a general
way, and yet they remain lost. The last one, which is the revealing
work of the Holy Spirit, is that work which if it is done, a man
is no longer lost. Because it not only takes the
lid off of truth, it opens the eyes that the truth may be seen.
And we'll see if we can get through these. And I may go a little
bit fast, so... Tighten up your seatbelt, hang
on, we'll see if we can't get through them. And like I said,
you can take these papers home, you can look things up, ponder
on them yourselves, and see if the Lord will reveal even more
to you. Creation. Look at Romans chapter 1. Creation
is the first and most general form of revelation given by God
concerning Himself. And in verse 18 of Romans chapter
1, the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against
all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth
by their wickedness. Since what may be known about
God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
For since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities,
His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen,
being understood from what has been made so that men are without
excuse." Now this revelation of God, which is the creation
itself, stuff, the fact that there is existence at all, is
an evidence that there's someone who brought existence into existence. Now this is a revelation from
God. God has made it plain. God created the universe in such
a way that it points back to him. It was his intention that
at least some of his nature would be revealed by what he created. An illustration. You walk into
a room and there's an easel, and on that easel is a painting.
And in that painting is some people and some scenery. You look at it. You may not say
it, but there's one thing you know of a certainty when you
see that painting. Somebody painted it. It did not appear on its
own. Another thing you know of is
that nobody in the painting painted it. Right? I know some of you young people
are saying, that sounds crazy. I know. I know it does. But believe it
or not, people look at creation and think it got here on its
own. Well, that's just as crazy as saying, well, that painting,
it just showed up, or somebody in the painting did it. And then
what does it tell you also? Whoever painted that painting
is not a part of the painting. He stands outside of it, unaffected
by it, but absolutely in control of it. Why is that painting the
way it is? Because the painter made it that
way. And so we look at creation, we
say, somebody made this place. And nobody in creation made it. And nothing in the creation caused
the creation to come into existence. That's what it means when it
speaks of His eternal power. His power that exists outside
the framework of time and space in which you and I exist. We're
the painting. He's the painter. It says it
reveals His Godhead. What do we mean by that? That
He is really a God in every sense of the word. The gods of pagans
are really just semi-gods, and they fight with each other, and
they strive with the creation itself to get their will done. God doesn't. Everything God has
done, he's done without breaking a sweat. Do you think that when
God created the universe, he had to go... He said he spoke,
and it was. It doesn't take a lot of energy
to speak, believe me. Because I don't like exerting
a lot of energy and I do a lot of speaking. So be it. And it was. He commanded. It stood firm. He didn't ask things to come
into existence. He didn't strive with chaos to
turn it into order. He said, exist. And it existed. Let there be light. And there's
light. And he was happy, if we can use that word with regard
to God. He was pleased, satisfied with everything he did. His eternal power reveals all
those things about God, or some of those things about God, which
can be known naturally. There are things about God that
the natural man can grasp. He can grasp them as well as
a believing man can. Things like his eternal power
and his Godhead. Do you know why that everywhere
you go there's religion? Because of this revelation. At
least in part. Man is naturally religious, but
he is so because he questions existence. Why does it exist? And he comes up with the only
rational choice. There must be a God. Now, he
kind of really goes off rationality after that. But he knows there's
a God. Now, this revelation is suppressed.
In the King James, it says they hold the truth in unrighteousness.
And I've heard people say, well, that means they're holding to
the truth, but they're being unrighteous while they do it.
No, that's not what it means. It means they're suppressing
it. We all suppress truth. Because truth challenges us and
we don't like being challenged. And it is wicked when we resist
and suppress the testimony of God, wherever it comes from.
Whether it is the testimony of God in creation, or in a conscience,
or in the scriptures. In fact, even that testimony
of the Holy Spirit, Stephen said to those people, you do always
resist the Holy Spirit. You're suppressing what He says.
And we do it because we're unrighteous. Unrighteousness or rejection
of anything God has said is in and of itself an unrighteous
thing to do. But unrighteousness itself suppresses
truth. That is, the pursuit of unrighteousness
works to suppress the testimony of God around us and in us. The desire of the Romans to pursue
their godless ways. And I know that our country is
a mess, but we haven't gotten as messy yet as the Romans did.
We're heading there pretty fast. But so far, we are not killing
people for sport. But their desire For that corrupt
lifestyle suppressed the truth. And when the truth came to them,
they reacted in violence, many of them. And this suppression
makes otherwise intelligent people to be fools. God says, professing
themselves, and this is later on in the same chapter, professing
themselves to be wise, they became fools and they made themselves
gods that look like men or four-footed beasts or whatever. What a silly
thing to think that God looks like a horse. What a silly thing
to think that the eternal God looks like a man. I know He became
one. He became one. That is not his
essential form. He has no form in the way that
we understand him. Or that is the way we understand
form. But, otherwise intelligent people, men of great intellect,
women of great understanding, become absolute fools about the
things of God. because they suppress the truth.
Secondly, the conscience is a revelation of sin. Look at Romans chapter
2 beginning at verse 12. All who sin apart from the law...
Now who is he speaking of basically there? The Gentiles. All who
sin apart from the law will also perish apart from the law. And
all who sin under the law will be judged by the law. For it
is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight,
but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous.
Now for those who desire to be under the law, and by that I
mean desire to be blessed according to their obedience to the law,
I like to ask that question that Dr. Phil asked, how's that working
out for you? You know? No. The law can only
render one verdict when it comes to us, and that's guilty. And
the punishment for all the guilty is to be cursed by God forever. So nobody's going to be declared
righteous by the law unless they're perfectly righteous under the
law, and nobody can do that. But verse 14, Indeed, when Gentiles
who do not have the law That is, God never met with them on
a mountain and had it written down. But they do, by nature,
things required by the law. Now, nearly everybody, when people
try to talk about the law, they talk about the two tables of
the law, and certainly the first four laws specifically relate
to how we approach God and think about God. The latter six refer
to our relationships with men. The law written on the heart
primarily concerns, by the way Paul's talking about here, our
relationships among ourselves. And is it not interesting, you
take those six laws, every culture in the world has some form of
it. I read an article in an old life magazine one time that a
fella who's an anthropologist, and he'd gone around studying
the various moral systems, because he said, let's find those things
which everyone says is good. And as I was reading that, and
he started to list them, I said, well, this is written down in
the Bible. Don't lie. Respect authority. Don't steal. Don't kill. Keep your marriage
vows. I remember him saying, he said,
now there's differences among how many spouses a person may
have, but every religion believes in a thing called marriage and
in the sanctity of the marriage. Actually, not every, every society
and all this stuff. It's all written on the heart.
That's the conscience. Now, this conscience is the law
written on the heart. and it reveals God's righteousness
and justice and is, in many respects, the foundation or the reason
for human religion. It says in Hebrews 9, verse 27,
it's appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment. Why does everybody know that?
Because everybody knows that there is a law, that He's broken
it, and that death is the response of it, or the result of it, and
that when he dies, he's going to have to give an account of
himself to God. You could take, if it were possible,
a few young children, put them on an island, if they could survive
to adulthood and begin having children and all that, they would
set up a society with these basic laws, and somebody, somewhere,
would build a church or something like it. They would start worshiping
them, worshiping, and they would contemplate their own mortality
and the judgment that comes afterwards. Why? It's written in the heart.
And when the conscience is corrupted, that is, when it no longer performs
its job of revealing right and wrong, it is evidence of God's
judgment in giving men over to their natural passions. In chapter
1 here of Romans, we see how because they did not accept one
revelation, God just gave them over to what they wanted. They
were suppressing the truth by their unrighteousness. God said,
okay. Have the unrighteousness. And see, that's what we see going
on in our culture right now. That's why as creeped out as
we may be by what people are doing, that's not the serious
part of this. Because we see a pattern happening
in our culture and we know what the end game is on that. God
is giving people over. Now what does it mean to be given
over to it? Any one of us might fall to any of these things.
To be given over to it means you think it's okay. It's one thing to kill and know
you've done wrong. It's another thing to kill and
think it was perfectly all right to do so. It's one thing to be involved
in all the corrupt sexual perversions and then be grieved in your heart
that you did such a thing. It's another thing to demand
that that be accepted because you yourself believe it's perfectly
acceptable to live that way. I've heard people say, God's
going to judge us because of homosexuality. Friends, God's
not going to judge us because of it. That is the judgment.
For our culture to be given over to the acceptance of it, approval,
and even celebration of it. And that's just the beginning.
Because you read through the rest of the list, the whole culture
just keeps corrupting into violence. It's no longer a safe place to
live. And apart from an intervening work of God's grace in behalf
of this nation, that's where we're going. Don't know how long
it'll take to get there, but that's where it'll go without
intervention on the part of God. All right, thirdly, the Holy
Scriptures are a revelation. And they are the revelation of
salvation. Creation is a revelation of God. Conscience, the revelation
of sin. And the Scriptures, the revelation
of salvation. The Holy Scriptures come from
God. Every time, and I'm sure you
do this, but I'll exhort you to it again. Every time you meet,
open this book. Because you've got no reason
to meet without it. That's the Sunday morning message. We'll
leave it in there. Oh, really? and what a blessing this book
is. Do you realize for the first 2,500 years of human history,
and that's if you stick strictly with the Bible chronology, there
was no Bible. The only way you knew the truth
of God is if you lived near to one of those men to whom God
revealed himself, somebody like Enoch or Noah. How many people
live close to one of those fellows? Not many. It was all what anthropologists
would call oral tradition until God spoke on Mount Sinai. And that's when the scriptures
began to be written. Some speculate that the book
of Job may have come before then. But the point is still this.
People had to go without a written revelation. for roughly a third,
somewhere between a third and half of biblical history. You and I, we've got the whole
written revelation from God. And let me emphasize that, the
whole written revelation from God. And we can get it cheap. You can get it free online. Even when the Bible was completed
there in the first century, How many people had one? There were
churches that did not even have an entire Bible. They had a scrap
here, a book there. You and I have the whole thing.
We probably, every one of us, have several copies at home because
we got this translation, that translation, the study Bible
of this version, and the kids' version, you know, all this kind
of stuff. What a blessed time we live in. We can lay our hands
on a written, unchangeable revelation from God. The funny thing is, with all
this written revelation, men will give themselves over to
arguing which translation is the best. And all the time they're
arguing on that, they're not bothering to read and believe
what's written in it. I'm not saying that which translation
is best is not a legitimate question to ask. I'm just saying that
Satan can divert us from the truth by making us pursue a lesser
truth and ignore the greater truth. This book was not written
for us to argue about. It was written for us to open
it up and see what God has to say and thank God that He said
something. Now, the Holy Scriptures come
from God. We have no way to prove that. And we shouldn't try. People say, well, prove to me
it came from God. I say, I can't. But I can prove to you it's a
unique book, that there's not another book in the world like
it. First of all, nothing in this book has ever been proven
false. Now, there are some things in
it which are not subject to proof. I cannot prove to you that in
six days God created the heavens and the earth. Why? Because we
can't repeat that. I cannot prove to you that Jesus
Christ is the Son of God. That's not susceptible to experimentation
to prove the point. But those things which can be
tested, every time they've been put to the test, they've been
proven true. I remember at one point archaeologists, and it's
something, archaeologists dig a few places and they think now
they know everything. And they said, the Bible's wrong
because we've been digging around, we cannot find any record of
the Hittites anywhere, and the Bible talks Hittites. The Bible
is wrong, there never was any Hittites. Until they dug in the
right spot and found the Hittites. There are things which have not
been proven in the Scriptures, but the fact that something has
not been proven does not mean it has been proven wrong. It
just means that the evidence is not. So here we have a book
that nothing that appears that we can see contradicts it. Much of the scriptures are biographical.
Now, when men write biographies, what do they do? They write what
is called a hagiography, and that means a book that you write
to advance someone to sainthood, essentially. You know, if you
read, in the north, if you read a biography of Lincoln, it's
gonna set him forward as just the best man that ever walked
the earth. Well, he wasn't. He was a remarkable man in many
ways, but biographers, particularly when there's an autobiography
being written, they leave out those things which would cast
the subject in an ill light. Have you ever noticed that the
scriptures are absolutely honest about the people they write?
King David, what a remarkable man. Yeah. Isn't it remarkable
the man given so much grace and seeing so much of the hand of
God in his life could end up taking a man's wife and then
taking his life and then be lifted up with pride and count the people
without extracting the redemption price for them? David said, remember not the
sins of my youth. He said, what's your youth? Anything
up to now. Because a moment ago, you're
younger than you are now. David, when he wrote the Psalms,
freely expressed his own unworthiness. Men don't write books like that.
They paper over their sins. If the history of their errors
cannot be denied, they will find a way to mitigate the guilt of
them, not in the Scriptures. The Scriptures only record one
person without sin. And that's the Lord Jesus Christ. And then the Holy Scriptures
are the only writings in the world that set forth God as he
must be, set forth man as our own experience tells us he is,
and sets forth a form of salvation that can breach or can bridge
such a breach as exists between God and man. It sets forth a
God that is absolutely, unalterably sovereign over everything. These
many gods that the pagans worship who are constantly fighting,
constantly striving with creation, wanting to do this but can't
do it, that's foolishness. That's not a God. Such beings
may be more powerful than us, but to be a God, well, what does
the Bible say? It says to be a God, you have
to be able to do whatever you want. They said to David, and
these were idolaters speaking to David, they said, where is
your God? Because they can show you their God. You can go to
them, where is your God? Well, He's down at the corner
of 5th and Main. There's a little building there.
You go in the first door and then another set of doors, and there He is.
And they said to David, where is your God? He says, our God
is in the heavens. He's done whatever He wants to
do. Really? That's some God you've got. Yes,
it is. It's a real bona fide God. And so, such a God is that
who's holy and whose judgments cannot be withstood or stopped. Nebuchadnezzar says, He does
as He wills in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants
of the earth. Nobody can stop Him. No one even has the right
to put a question mark on what He's doing and say, why are you
doing that? You know, what in the world are you doing? We're
not even allowed to say that to God. Here recently, well that shooting
up there, was it in Oregon here recently? I think somewhere,
huh? Colorado? Okay, wherever it was,
there have been several of them. But I just remember, you know,
people were saying, we send our prayers to them or something,
and then one of these newspapers said, God isn't gonna fix this.
I said, you misunderstand, God sent this. Most people think
God's only in the fixing business. He says, I create light, I create
darkness, I create peace, I bring disaster. The tornado that misses your
town was caused to miss your town by God. And the tornado
that goes right through the middle of it, destroying and killing
is equally sent by God. And our own experience teaches
us what we are, doesn't it? Has anybody here been able to
stop sinning? I can hold my breath for about
20 seconds. I don't think I can keep from sinning for 20 seconds. How in the world can you ever
get a God like that and rebels like we are together? Every form
of religion brings this God down and this man up until they're
able to reach and touch. This book presents the only message
in which God remains who He is. And yet, through the person of
His Son who actually can span the gap, He holds on to God and
lays hold of man. The day's men who can put the
hand on both and satisfy the demands of God and the need of
man. And there is no other book that
has any message like that. The subject of the Scriptures
is salvation. I will leave that to you to look
up, because I want to spend the last few minutes on the Holy
Spirit who is the revealer of Christ. The Holy Scriptures reveal
that salvation is in Christ, but it is the Holy Spirit Himself
who reveals Christ Himself. Only the Holy Spirit can deliver
us from our spiritual death and blindness that keeps us from
grasping the Gospel. Not all the spiritual gifts possessed
by anyone called of God to preach can call a man from death to
life. I've been privileged to know
some remarkably gifted preachers in my time. And they stand up
and speak, and nothing happens. Because it's not the gift in
the man, certainly not the man, it's not the gift in him that
raises the dead. It's the Spirit of God Himself.
What was said to Elijah in the Valley of the Dry Bones, he said,
prophesy unto the bones, and so he did. He preached to the
bones, and what happened? Well, all those disjointed bones
came together, and some flesh came on them. And that's what
we preachers can do. We can take people who don't
know anything about the truth, and we can put the pieces together.
We can assemble them into orthodox people. But when the prophet
was all done, you had a valley then full of corpses. They looked
better, but they were just as dead as that valley of dry bones. And what did God say to him?
Prophesy to the wind. And in both the Hebrew and the
Greek, the words for wind, breath, and spirit are all the same.
What did he say? Spirit, come breathe on these
bones that they may live. And that breathing is the revelation
of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit not only reveals
the content of the truth, the truth of Christ, but convinces
the heart of that truth. We often hear people say, you
have to believe not only with your head, but with your heart.
And that's a confusing thing, depending on what you think heart
and head are. But rather than trying to make
that distinction and describe, you know, what the heart is and
what the head is, let me just tell you what it looks like. A couple of points here. This
knowledge that the Holy Spirit gives is the knowledge of experience. Something happens when the Spirit
of God speaks. A person is changed. Now, I hear
people say, well, you know, the old desires are gone and new
desires come. I beg your pardon. If that's
the truth, I've never met anybody that the Holy Spirit spoke to.
Least of all me. Every wicked desire I ever had
is still there and as the years go by, I pick up some new ones.
Yes, there may be just some desires that were not there before, Though
as one who professed faith at seven years old, what I believe
has kind of been there is just about as far back as I can remember.
Nonetheless, something happens. And we may illustrate it as the
difference between looking at a piece of sheet music and hearing
the song. Now there are those so good at
music, they can look at a piece of sheet music and the tune can
go on in their head. but it's still not the same thing
as hearing the song. In fact, Beethoven, the great composer,
went deaf. He still wrote music, beautiful
music, music he never got to hear, at least not in the way
even that you and I can. When the spirit works upon a
man, he doesn't just read the gospel, he hears it, and it's
beautiful to him. And then it's a personal knowledge,
and we'll stop with this point. We come to know Christ. We don't
just know about him anymore. You know, to know someone, as
opposed to just knowing about them, means there's contact. Before I came here, I guess Bernie
told you something about me, at least my name. You knew that
I existed. You could have called my wife.
She could have told you a lot of things about me, most of which I hope
she never tells anybody. But she could have. You could
have become an expert on me. But you didn't know me until
today. Because now there's been contact.
Now there's been communication. And we don't know God. We don't
know Christ until there's been contact. What did our Lord say? To some on that day of judgment,
depart from me, I never knew you. What do you mean? This is
the Lord Jesus Christ. He knows everything about everybody.
He knows people better than they know themselves. Yes, there'd
never been contact. There'd never been personal contact.
Never been communication between the two. He never spoke to them,
they never spoke to Him. But when the Spirit of God comes,
that's the Spirit of Christ, and He speaks, and we hear, and
whenever He calls, we call back. That's revelation. Has God revealed
Himself to you? I hope He has, and not only in
His creation and in the conscience and the Scriptures. I do pray
that by the Holy Spirit of God, He reveals Himself to you.