Thursday, May 17, 2007
Bible truth
This is going to really make you mad if your not saved, I am hoping this is hard for you and I hope you if your not sasved hear this and really think it over. Macarthur wrote this and I agree and feel you need to read this and ingest it. I also think like the last part on the false teaching of the chur4ch today
Let’s look, first of all, at why non-Christians do not believe the Bible. And I’ll give you five reasons which are laid out for us in the opening section. First of all, the message is unreasonable. That’s the first cause for them to disbelieve, it is unreasonable. Verse 18, “The Word of the cross, or the testimony of God, or the Word of God’s wisdom, that is to say the revelation of God inscripturated is to those who are perishing, that is their condition, foolishness...it is foolishness.” In a somewhat sarcastic way, that idea is repeated in verse 21, “God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message.” Verse 23 says to the Gentiles, “It is foolishness.” And then in another sarcastic way in verse 25, “The foolishness of God is actually wiser than men.” And so clearly there is this idea that the revelation of God in Scripture is foolish. It is...the word is moron, moronic, stupid, pointless, unsuitable to human reason. They treat the Word of God with contempt and disdain. And I won’t go into all the details about that, but a crucified God was ridiculous to the Gentiles and equally if not more ridiculous to the Jews. Salvation by faith in a crucified God was even more ridiculous. The whole thing was frankly unreasonable.
Here is a good and truth to t he core
Secondly, non-Christians do not believe the Bible not only because the message is unreasonable but because the reality is unattainable. You heard a couple of times in the baptisms tonight that people say, “I knew that Jesus died, but I couldn’t connect why or how that had anything to do with my life.” Or you heard someone say, “I grew up in the church and had all these disconnected stories in my mind and I wasn’t sure how it all came together.” And that’s essentially the idea here. It just doesn’t make sense to those who are perishing. Verse 19, “It is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the mind and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside. Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God...that is to say God made it this way...the world through its wisdom did not come to know God.” In the Fall God cast the human race into a condition in which it is impossible by means of human wisdom to come to know God. You can’t get there on your own. And God designed it that way. “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise...He says...I will destroy the cleverness of the clever. I will turn the wisdom of this world in the direction of folly. I will because it pleases Me cause that no man no matter how worldly wise can through that worldly wisdom come to know Me.”
Reason you cannot trust the bible? You cannot with out the Lord opening your eyes and showing you the plan of salvation. Yep you got to be a saved person to understand the bible. No Holy Spirit no understanding.
So you have a pretty...a pretty comprehensive look at why people don’t believe. You start with the fact that they can’t. That they don’t have the capability. That they are void of the life of God. They can’t escape the natural. They can’t escape being in the flesh. And one who is in the flesh minds only the things of the flesh. And he cannot know the things of the Spirit, they are unknowable to him. And you add the fact that all of these give reason to reject and you understand something of the dilemma of the unregenerate. The message itself was offensive, unreasonable, unbelievable, incomprehensible. The people were the lowly and the preachers were the weak and the unimpressive and the fearful and the trembling. And you add the fallen condition, natural darkness, satanic blinding and divine judgment. And non-believers cannot on their own believe the truth.
Years ago...many years ago now...Protestant denominations eliminated heresy. You might think that was quite an achievement. Protestant denominations eliminated heresy. But the strange twist is that the way they eliminated heresy was not by crushing it with the truth, not by overpowering it with the Word of God, but rather they eliminated the idea of heresy when they eliminated the idea of absolute truth. If there is no such thing as absolute truth, then there can be no such thing as heresy. If there is no fixed truth, then there can be no discernable error. If everything is up for grabs and the words of the Bible don’t matter, or are only suggestions, or are at best equal to other religious books, then you can believe whatever you want, then there is no such thing as fixed truth and therefore there can be no such thing as fixed heresy. So they eradicated heresy by eradicating the idea of truth at the same time. And now there is a comfort among old-line liberal Protestant denominations with anything and everything. That is why a few weeks ago when I was preaching in Calvin’s great cathedral in the city of Geneva, it was a big event. The cathedral was packed from front to back and side to side and I opened the Word of God in that cathedral for the first time, we think, in 30 years to give a message that truly represented the Word of God. And the last formidable event in that cathedral, which is a confessed Protestant Christian cathedral, was Buddhist...it was Buddhist. That worked, in a way, for us because they said when asked if I could come and preach, I suppose if we had a service for Buddhists, we could have a service for our Bible. And so I guess, in a way, the Buddhists prepared the way.
But the point is, how can a church that is a confessed Christian Protestant church embrace Buddhism? That church also is the mother church that brought into existence The World Council of Churches, the most ecumenical body on the planet. They were happy to declassify heresy, it was easy. All they had to do was eliminate absolute truth. And in our day, I’m afraid, the movement is spreading. There is a new kind of inclusivism even in evangelicalism, a new kind of inclusivism that threatens to eradicate truth and therefore eradicate any classification of error and blur everything. And the only hope, of course, in the midst of all of this, is to go back to the Word of God. And all this sinful rebellion doesn’t change or alter what the Scripture is...whether it’s attacked by rationalism, or whether it’s attacked by liberalism, or whether it’s attacked by what is called neo-orthodoxy, or whether it is attacked by pluralism, or mysticism, or inclusivism, or political correctness or tolerance, or any other assault, it changes nothing about the nature of this book. It was Jesus who said, “Not one jot or tittle would in any wise pass from this book until all is fulfilled.” It is an eternal book. It is an unchanging book. It is the anvil in the old story of the man pounding the hammers, the blacksmith and after many years the anvil stood but many hammers had been destroyed. The hammers that have hit the Scripture lie in the rubble, the Scripture still stands. The Bible still is the truth of God, the only truth of God and nothing but the truth of God.
Let’s look, first of all, at why non-Christians do not believe the Bible. And I’ll give you five reasons which are laid out for us in the opening section. First of all, the message is unreasonable. That’s the first cause for them to disbelieve, it is unreasonable. Verse 18, “The Word of the cross, or the testimony of God, or the Word of God’s wisdom, that is to say the revelation of God inscripturated is to those who are perishing, that is their condition, foolishness...it is foolishness.” In a somewhat sarcastic way, that idea is repeated in verse 21, “God was well pleased through the foolishness of the message.” Verse 23 says to the Gentiles, “It is foolishness.” And then in another sarcastic way in verse 25, “The foolishness of God is actually wiser than men.” And so clearly there is this idea that the revelation of God in Scripture is foolish. It is...the word is moron, moronic, stupid, pointless, unsuitable to human reason. They treat the Word of God with contempt and disdain. And I won’t go into all the details about that, but a crucified God was ridiculous to the Gentiles and equally if not more ridiculous to the Jews. Salvation by faith in a crucified God was even more ridiculous. The whole thing was frankly unreasonable.
Here is a good and truth to t he core
Secondly, non-Christians do not believe the Bible not only because the message is unreasonable but because the reality is unattainable. You heard a couple of times in the baptisms tonight that people say, “I knew that Jesus died, but I couldn’t connect why or how that had anything to do with my life.” Or you heard someone say, “I grew up in the church and had all these disconnected stories in my mind and I wasn’t sure how it all came together.” And that’s essentially the idea here. It just doesn’t make sense to those who are perishing. Verse 19, “It is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the mind and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside. Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God...that is to say God made it this way...the world through its wisdom did not come to know God.” In the Fall God cast the human race into a condition in which it is impossible by means of human wisdom to come to know God. You can’t get there on your own. And God designed it that way. “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise...He says...I will destroy the cleverness of the clever. I will turn the wisdom of this world in the direction of folly. I will because it pleases Me cause that no man no matter how worldly wise can through that worldly wisdom come to know Me.”
Reason you cannot trust the bible? You cannot with out the Lord opening your eyes and showing you the plan of salvation. Yep you got to be a saved person to understand the bible. No Holy Spirit no understanding.
So you have a pretty...a pretty comprehensive look at why people don’t believe. You start with the fact that they can’t. That they don’t have the capability. That they are void of the life of God. They can’t escape the natural. They can’t escape being in the flesh. And one who is in the flesh minds only the things of the flesh. And he cannot know the things of the Spirit, they are unknowable to him. And you add the fact that all of these give reason to reject and you understand something of the dilemma of the unregenerate. The message itself was offensive, unreasonable, unbelievable, incomprehensible. The people were the lowly and the preachers were the weak and the unimpressive and the fearful and the trembling. And you add the fallen condition, natural darkness, satanic blinding and divine judgment. And non-believers cannot on their own believe the truth.
Years ago...many years ago now...Protestant denominations eliminated heresy. You might think that was quite an achievement. Protestant denominations eliminated heresy. But the strange twist is that the way they eliminated heresy was not by crushing it with the truth, not by overpowering it with the Word of God, but rather they eliminated the idea of heresy when they eliminated the idea of absolute truth. If there is no such thing as absolute truth, then there can be no such thing as heresy. If there is no fixed truth, then there can be no discernable error. If everything is up for grabs and the words of the Bible don’t matter, or are only suggestions, or are at best equal to other religious books, then you can believe whatever you want, then there is no such thing as fixed truth and therefore there can be no such thing as fixed heresy. So they eradicated heresy by eradicating the idea of truth at the same time. And now there is a comfort among old-line liberal Protestant denominations with anything and everything. That is why a few weeks ago when I was preaching in Calvin’s great cathedral in the city of Geneva, it was a big event. The cathedral was packed from front to back and side to side and I opened the Word of God in that cathedral for the first time, we think, in 30 years to give a message that truly represented the Word of God. And the last formidable event in that cathedral, which is a confessed Protestant Christian cathedral, was Buddhist...it was Buddhist. That worked, in a way, for us because they said when asked if I could come and preach, I suppose if we had a service for Buddhists, we could have a service for our Bible. And so I guess, in a way, the Buddhists prepared the way.
But the point is, how can a church that is a confessed Christian Protestant church embrace Buddhism? That church also is the mother church that brought into existence The World Council of Churches, the most ecumenical body on the planet. They were happy to declassify heresy, it was easy. All they had to do was eliminate absolute truth. And in our day, I’m afraid, the movement is spreading. There is a new kind of inclusivism even in evangelicalism, a new kind of inclusivism that threatens to eradicate truth and therefore eradicate any classification of error and blur everything. And the only hope, of course, in the midst of all of this, is to go back to the Word of God. And all this sinful rebellion doesn’t change or alter what the Scripture is...whether it’s attacked by rationalism, or whether it’s attacked by liberalism, or whether it’s attacked by what is called neo-orthodoxy, or whether it is attacked by pluralism, or mysticism, or inclusivism, or political correctness or tolerance, or any other assault, it changes nothing about the nature of this book. It was Jesus who said, “Not one jot or tittle would in any wise pass from this book until all is fulfilled.” It is an eternal book. It is an unchanging book. It is the anvil in the old story of the man pounding the hammers, the blacksmith and after many years the anvil stood but many hammers had been destroyed. The hammers that have hit the Scripture lie in the rubble, the Scripture still stands. The Bible still is the truth of God, the only truth of God and nothing but the truth of God.
Labels: BIBLE
