Preservation of God's Truth, Part 2 (Jude 3)

Introduction: The Human Tendency to Forget and the Church's Commitment to Truth

0:02 The following sermon was delivered on Sunday morning, February 11, 2001, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey.

0:13 Well, brethren, let us again pray.

0:18 When dealing with the issues we're dealing with, I do believe there are special efforts on the powers of darkness to keep God's people from thinking clearly about matters that relate to the demolition of his kingdom of darkness. So let's pray that God will give to me and to you together special help as we come to the ministry of the word. Let's pray.

0:46 Our Father, we are mindful of your word that tells us we wrestle, but that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but principalities and powers, against unseen rank upon rank of the host of darkness. And we would acknowledge that we are no match for them, in ourselves. But we thank you that we can be strong in our Lord Jesus and in the strength of his might, that standing by faith in our conquering Savior, who triumphed over these powers in his death, resurrection, and his session at your right hand, we come to this time in the expectation of faith, praying that you will make us good warriors, even as we think, even as we seek to bring our hearts to your word. Lord Jesus, come forth upon that white charger of gospel triumph and victory, ride in our midst today on the behalf of truth and of righteousness. Hear us, we plead. Amen.

1:59 One of the most patent and undeniable evidences that sin has tragically affected, our minds is that we so soon forget what we ought to remember and so easily remember what we ought to forget. Does that answer to your experience? That you constantly find yourself forgetting what you ought to remember and remembering what you ought to forget. And it is for this very reason that in our sorrowful, calm this morning, David stirred himself up to what? Forget not. David had this problem. He was honest about it and so he spoke to his soul, telling his soul, don't forget what you ought to remember.

3:01 God's forgiving mercy, God's care over his physical frame and the healing of his diseases, God crowning him with loving kindness. It is for this reason that God spoke to his ancient people, Israel, when they were about to enter the land of Canaan and told them that they were not to forget his law, that every seven years that law was to be publicly read to the entire congregation. He warned them again and again, said, when you go into the land and my blessing is upon you and you have material blessing on every hand, beware lest you forget. Again and again in the book of Deuteronomy, God says, beware lest you forget. And it is the recognition of this harsh reality that caused us to put into our Constitution this requirement laid upon the leadership and I trust will be demanded by the rank and file of God's people that every five years at least 15 Lord's Days would be given to preaching the biblical truths contained in our Confession and in our Constitution. That's there because we recognize this reality that we so soon forget what we ought to remember

4:29 and we remember that which we ought to forget. And in our 14th study of some of the basic issues in our Constitution, we come again this morning, to consider another aspect of what it is to live together in the Father's house by the rule of Scripture and by those principles of Scripture contained in our Constitution. And in looking at that basic paragraph on the purpose of the Church, we have considered together the supreme and all-encompassing purpose, which is to glorify the God of the Scriptures. Secondly, the God-appointed means by which we are to pursue that purpose and there are the issues in the circle in the arrows, I'll not even go over them. And then thirdly, the commitments necessary if we're to continue in pursuit of that purpose and our Constitution says those commitments are threefold. We are committed to the proclamation of God's perfect law and glorious gospel. And to the defense of the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

5:47 And I've identified those in this verbal structure that I hope has a little more stickability. We are committed to the enunciation of God's changeless standard of right and wrong, the law. We are committed to the proclamation of God's changeless method of making sinners right with himself, the gospel. And thirdly, we are committed to the preservation of God's changeless body of revealed truth.

Review of Jude 3: The Call to Contend for the Faith

6:16 That is contending for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Now since that last commitment is couched in the very language of Jude and verse 3, we began last Lord's Day a consideration of this very crucial passage. I ask you to turn there with me again this morning. The letter of Jude.

6:45 I read the first verse. There are four verses. Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James, to them that are called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ, mercy unto you and peace and love be multiplied. Beloved, while I was giving all diligence to write unto you of our common salvation, I was constrained to write unto you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints.

7:19 For there are certain men crept in privily, even they who were of old written of beforehand unto this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into unbridled license to sin, and denying our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. Now last Lord's Day I spent the bulk of the time simply unpacking, expounding this text. We pried the text with three very basic questions. Question one, to whom are these words addressed?

7:57 And we noted that they are addressed to all of God's people in their wonderful identity as given in verse one. They are the called ones, those whom God has efficaciously and powerfully actually brought out of darkness into marvelous light. They have been actually united to Christ. They have been called by God into the fellowship of Christ.

8:23 And they are described as the ones beloved in God the Father and kept in or by or for Jesus Christ. So all of God's people are addressed and addressed in the light of those wonderful redemptive realities. And as they think of their duty to contend for the faith, they must never forget what that faith, when it's preaching was blessed by the Holy Spirit, is done for them. It was the instrument of their calling.

8:54 Paul says in Thessalonians, the God who chose you from the beginning called you by our gospel. And surely if I remember my identity as called, not by religious mush, not by sentimental claptrap, but by the proclamation of the faith, delivered to the saints, then surely I'll be ready to contend for that that God by its means may yet call others. I am always to remember my identity beloved in God the Father. I have learned in the proclamation of that faith that my salvation was no afterthought in the mind and purpose of God.

9:38 That he set his love upon me along with an innumerable company, whom no man can number, out of every kindred, tribe and tongue and nation. Surely if God so loved me from eternity, then I must love him enough to contend for his truth. And I remember my identity as kept for Jesus Christ. I am God's reward to his Son for his suffering.

10:07 I am kept in virtue of my union with Christ. I'm kept for him. I'm kept in him. I am kept by him.

10:17 And so for us, as with them, these words are not just stuck in to write a polite, kosher, first century Greco-Roman letter after current cultural norms. These words are pregnant with significance. When the words come contend earnestly, it comes to us as the people of God in our wonderful identity as his people. Question number two.

10:43 What was the occasion of Jude writing the letter? And it's very clear in verses three and four what the occasion was. While he was marshalling all of his powers to write a positive exposition of new covenant salvation, he became aware of the influence of false teachers who had infiltrated the ranks of God's people. And the result was, and this would be a more literal rendering of the original, that he received a compulsion when it says, I was constrained.

11:17 The structure is, I received compulsion. He couldn't do anything other than put to one side the outline of his letter in which he would be expounding aspects of our common salvation in Christ, and then the fundamental directive of our text. What is it? To whom do these words come?

11:39 God's people. All of God's people. God's people and their unique identity of redemptive grace and blessing. What was the occasion?

11:48 The man of God concerned that false teachers have infiltrated into the lives and into the circle of the lives of these people. And what is the fundamental directive of the text? That was our third question. Well, it comes as an exhortation.

12:05 I was constrained to exhort you. To exhort you. And exhort them to do what? To perform a duty as a conscious, vigorous, spiritual activity.

12:18 To contend earnestly. A duty that has respect to God's changeless body of revealed truth. They are to contend earnestly for the faith. The faith being the body of truth.

12:30 And then like one long hyphenated description, it is the once for all delivered to the saints faith. And then we concluded with two basic observations on the text. Number one, that all of God's people are the God appointed stewards of God's changeless body of revealed truth. This is the truth delivered once for all to the saints.

12:56 And he is writing to all of the saints to whom his letter comes when he exhorts them to contend earnestly for the faith. And then the second observation we made was that God's people have been and always will be the objects, of the activities of those who desire to seduce them into error. Always. And we can trace out our Bibles from beginning to end.

Rationale for the Study: Analogies of Counterfeit Money and Human Features

13:25 And we see that God's people are not immune from the devil's effort to draw them away from the truth. And I can only urge those who are not with us and are members of the church, please, I don't often say this about my own preaching, but I believe, the issues we dealt with are so critical, I would urge you, please, get the tape, buy it or borrow it, and at least get the substance of what I've tried to give you in about eight or nine minutes in the course of the full hour of exposition. Now today, and next Lord's Day morning, God willing, I want to bring one extended final observation and application concerning this duty laid upon every one of you as the people of God, to contend earnestly, for the faith, once for all, delivered to the saints. And I've entitled the message this morning, and again, God willing, next Lord's Day morning, the five features on the face of truth. The five features on the face of truth. Now, please think with me as I use two different analogies to establish the rationale for our study this morning, and next Lord's Day morning.

14:44 Those of you who've been here any length of time at all know that I usually have a reason for what I do, and I don't think I stand up here and just effuse and rattle on and ramble. And I have a purpose for taking the time to set before you two very different analogies, illustrations, which I trust will be helpful as we move into what is the heart of the message this morning, and God willing, again, next Lord's Day morning. The first analogy that I want to work with, is that of counterfeit money. Those skilled in making counterfeit bills are able to make the bogus bills look and feel so much like the real paper money that is produced under the auspices of the US Treasury, that they deceive people. Now, if you are skilled at detecting, say, counterfeit $20 bills, you'll become skilled in one of two ways. You might be able to go to the place where the authorities keep all of the various counterfeit $20 bills, at least a sampling of all those counterfeits, and they perhaps have a room full of them, spread out and under glass and magnified, etc. And one way that you could become expert at detecting the counterfeit is to look at the distinctive characteristics of counterfeit bill,

16:14 $20 bill in exhibit A and B and C, and B all the way through the alphabet, and then A1, A2, B3, sort of like the manuscript evidence in the apparatus of your Greek Testament. Some of you students will know what I'm talking about. Now, by acquainting yourself with all of the subtle nuances of the various defects in counterfeit bills, you might program into the hard drive of your brain, and into that part of the brain that stores visual images, that part of the brain that stores the sense, of tactile elements, things that you feel, and you know if you're blindfolded, whether you're feeling steel, or whether you're feeling the fuzz on the back of a pear, on the back of a peach. I'm sorry, I never had a fuzzy pear. And into that hard drive, where all of that is stored, so that you become an expert. Whenever a $20 bill comes into your hand, you may look, well, exhibit A had this thing that characterized it as counterfeit, and exhibit B, this, this, and this, and you would become a veritable storehouse of the counterfeit, of the insignia of the counterfeiter.

17:26 But there would be another way for you to become fairly expert in detecting bogus $20 bills, and that would be to master those features in the properly printed $20 bills, that rarely can be imitated by the best of counterfeiters, and by mastering those five or six things. I showed one of them to one of my fellow elders this morning. This is a bonafide, non-bogus $20 bill. If you hold it up to the light, there's the shadowy outline of another man's face over here on the right, embedded in the paper.

18:02 It's not printed on the surface, but actually embedded in the paper. And this is one of the things very, very difficult for the counterfeiters to reproduce. So if you master those elements of the real thing, then, any number of counterfeits may come into your hand, and because you've got a handle on the four or five telling indications that it's a real bill or a bogus bill, you'll become in your own right an expert in making sure that you don't traffic knowingly and willingly in bogus bills. Now, while there are a few people who have a calling from God to be masters of all the known marks of the counterfeit, and God raises up, in every generation, men who, by cast of mind and gifts and God's providence, become masters of being able to detect all of the ancient counterfeit products of the so-called Christian faith, and they become what we say, able polemicists and apologists for the Christian faith. But the rank and file of us have no such calling, and if we are to be discerning in picking out, those things that are the indications of bogus Christianity, how can we hope to become, quote, expert in this? Well,

19:25 by mastering those things that are always present in the real thing, and which are most difficult, if not impossible, to imitate in anything that's bogus. You follow my analogy. So what we're going to be doing, God willing, in a few moments, for the rest of this morning, and next Lord's Day morning, I'm not going to weary you with a whole litany of all of the various deviations from the faith, once for all, delivered to the saints. But I want us to take the magnifying glass of the Word of God, and we're going to focus on five features of the real thing.

20:05 And when you have learned instinctively to judge any truth claim by these five things, very seldom, will you be vulnerable to swallow that which is set before you as food for the soul, when in reality, it is poison. But then there's a second analogy I want to use, and this is the one I've chosen to use for the title of our study. It's the analogy of the features on a normal human face. You say, Pastor, these are the kind of things you think of at your study.

20:40 Yeah, that's what I get paid to do. All right. Now, think of a normal human face. What are the irreducible elements, features on a normal human face?

20:52 Some babies are being born in local hospitals, some of them perhaps at home with a midwife. When that baby is first born, before it's even washed, and it's umbilical cord cut, if it is a normally developed, formed human child, what features will be there on its face? If we see that child 90 years later, an old man, toothless, bald, the wrinkles on his skin such he could bury pencils in the folds. What does his face have in common with that chubby little round, rotund baby just born?

21:33 If the baby's born in the Balim Valley in West Irian, the people that sticks through their noses and big clumps of hardwood in their lips, what are the features of that person born and reared in the primitive setting of the Balim Valley with its devil worship, and the sophisticated person living in a high-rise apartment in the expensive parts of Manhattan? What are the features? Are you thinking with me now? I've got you thinking.

22:01 I want you to think. What are they? Well, let me suggest they are these. There will be two eyes set generally somewhere in the midline between the top of the face and the bottom.

22:13 Right? That's a normal human being. Eyes set there. You think your eyes are up higher than they are, but if you doubt it, just measure some time.

22:19 You'll find it's just about midline between here and here. Two eyes. Then the normal human face will then have a nose set between the two eyes, but below the eyes. If I appeared this morning with my snout here, you'd say it's not right.

22:37 So a normal human face will have the two eyes set approximately midway, have a nose set below the eyes and between them. May be flat. May be pointed. May be hooked.

22:49 May be punk. May have flared nostrils. Now, makes no difference. Has a nose.

22:53 Two eyes. A nose. Furthermore, it will have a mouth with an upper and lower lip set beneath the nose. Not on top of the nose.

23:05 Not to the side, but right beneath the nose. And then we'll have two ears set on the side of the head. Now, I think my thesis will count. You think of any human, normal human being you've ever seen personally in the National Geographic magazine?

23:21 Wherever. These are the irreducible, irreducible factors in a normal human face. Two eyes set there. A nose in between set below.

23:35 Two lips and two ears. And you know when there is abnormality, genetic deformity of birth defect, or someone has been tragically scarred and marred, and their face ripped open in an accident, and all of the king's horses and king's men, couldn't put it back together again to approach normalcy. You immediately recoil if you see only half a nose, or if you see an eye placed somewhere other than symmetrically there in its normal place. These are the features of a normal human face, with its basic features and those features in place, relatively speaking, where they ought to be. All right? Now, what in the world does all that have to do with Jude 3? Well, it has everything to do.

24:33 Because what I want to urge you to do is to think with me on the fact that the faith, once for all, delivered to the saints, that is, God's body of revealed truth, whenever it is presented to us, in whatever setting, in whatever context, it will always, have certain features. And when anyone comes to you by means of a book, by means of a lecturer in a classroom, by means of a pulpit in a church, by means of air radio waves coming over your radio, whenever anyone comes with truth claims, look for the five features that will always be present on the face of the faith. So there's my title. The five features on the face of the faith. All right?

Feature 1: Scripture-Reverencing

25:36 I hope I've carried you. I don't often take so much time, but I felt it was crucial to have stuff, hopefully, that will stick. I'm thinking of the young people, thinking of the many that are going to go off into schools of higher learning. Now then, we have time this morning to take up just two of those features, and God willing, three.

25:56 Next Lord's Day morning, I won't have to spend this much time setting out my analogies. Here's the first thing about the faith, once for all delivered to the saints. It will always be Scripture reverencing. It will always be Scripture reverencing.

26:17 Now what does the word reverence mean? To reverence something or someone is to treat with a deep respect, love, and awe. A-W-E. To regard as sacred.

26:31 That's the dictionary definition, and that's the definition with which I'm working. And I'm asserting that when a truth claim comes to you with respect to the great issues of life, who am I? Where'd I come from? Why am I here?

26:49 Where am I going? Is there a God? Can I know Him? How can I know Him?

26:57 When anything comes to you with a truth claim touching those great ultimate issues, look at it and ask yourself this question. Does it have this feature? Is it Scripture reverencing? Does that so-called truth come out of and is it based upon the Scriptures?

27:22 Does it lead me back to the Scriptures with a greater love and reverence? Is it reverence for the Scriptures? And if it is the faith once for all delivered to the saints, it will always be Scripture reverencing. The more we grow in the faith, the more we will prize the Scriptures and be determined to view all reality in the light of the Scriptures.

27:49 Now we're going to turn to our Bibles for the evidence. Stay right there in Jude. In this very letter, having exhorted his readers to contend earnestly for the faith, notice what Jude goes on to do. He starts in verse 5 and says, I desire to put you in remembrance, though you know all things once for all.

28:15 What did they know once for all? They knew the facts of Biblical history. And Jude begins to amplify his exhortation to contend for the faith and expose these false teachers for who and what they are in such a way that one thing is clear. He knew and he believed his Bible.

28:40 And he assumed that this company of believers knew and believed their Bibles. And so in this very short letter, he makes reference to God's people down in Egypt and the Exodus. He makes reference to that which predates our human history, angels that keep not their own principality. He makes reference in verse 7, Sodom and Gomorrah.

29:08 He makes reference further on to Cain in verse 11. He makes reference further on to Adam, verse 14, to Enoch. He makes reference to all of these Biblical characters and all of these Biblical individuals, all of these angels, all of these angels, all of the angels that are present today. He says, Biblical scholars, biblical disciples, biblical people, biblical priests, and all of them.

29:48 His disciples are these good, beautiful, wonderful, beautiful, beautiful, true of Jude is true of all of the human authors of the New Testament documents. The documents that contain the faith once for all delivered to the saints are documents that drive us back again and again to our Bibles. It is a faith in which the biblical writers, the human authors, assume that Bible history is straightforward history, that Bible realities are real realities. They are not fantasies. They are not stories told with a moral whether or not they are true. We pick up the gospel records and we find again and again in Matthew, this came to pass, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, and all the way through the gospel writers. We are led back again and again to our Old Testament.

30:49 And the incident of the flood, the incidents in the lives of individuals are all treated for what they are presented to us to be in our Old Testament, God's Word, containing stories of men and women and nations, and the mighty activity of God in the course of redemptive history. And then when we come to the epistles, Paul states in Romans one that the gospel for which he was was set apart was promised in the Old Testament scriptures, and all the way through in the establishing of this grand doctrine of the righteousness of God by faith. Paul is treating the Old Testament scriptures in such a way that to embrace the faith as defined and described by the apostle in the book of Romans would lead us to a higher regard of the scriptures, because the faith is scripture reverencing. Peter himself, in his second letter, though he heard the very voice of God on the Mount of Transfiguration, says in chapter 1 and verse 19, we have the word of prophecy made more sure, whereunto you do well to take heed, knowing this. No prophecy of scripture

32:10 is of private interpretation, for no prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spoke from God,

32:18 being born by the Holy Spirit. And all the way through the New Testament writings, wherever we touch a writer expounding, applying, explaining, defending the faith, once for all delivered to the saints, they do so in a way that is scripture reverencing. And then we come to our Lord Jesus himself, truth incarnate. And what did he say? He would say, have you never read?

32:49 And he based arguments on one word, and on the pence of a word. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. He said, you should understand from that very terminology that there's a resurrection. I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Not I was, and now they're gone who knows where. No, I am. And because they live in their renewed spirits, disembodied state, I am committed to raising them from the dead, that they might forever look upon my face. The Lord Jesus said, sanctify them in the truth. Thy word is truth. In John 10, 35, the scriptures cannot be broken. After his resurrection, Luke 24, 45, then he opened their mind that they might understand the scriptures. And he said, thus it is written, and thus it is necessary for Christ to suffer. What is Jesus doing? He's saying, if you're attached to me, you're attached to your Bibles.

33:57 The Son of God incarnate never exerted an influence that in any way took people away from the deepest reverence for and the highest regard towards the sacred writings. So the more you know the faith, that is the faith once for all delivered to the saints, the more you experience the blessing of having mind and conscience and life tethered to and shaped by your Bible, the more you're going to be at home with the lofty language of Psalm 119. As I sat at my desk yesterday, I just speed read through Psalm 119 and said, Lord, this is what anyone who's embraced the faith will say about your word with growing, passion and conviction. Verse 16, I will delight myself in your statutes. I will not forget your word. Verse 24, your testimonies are my delight and my counselors. Verse 54, your statutes have

35:06 been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage. Verse 72, the law of your mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver. He speaks of its sweetness. Sweeter than honey. He says he will never forget them because by them he has been quickened.

35:25 If you are confronted with a truth claim that is based upon and is a facet of the faith once for all delivered to the saints, look for this feature on its face. It will be scripture reverencing. You got that? And you may not be able to sort out all of the subtle nuances of what this truth claim is affirming or asserting, but if it in any way has the slightest tendency to even begin to put a crack in your confidence in the scriptures, run from it for your very life.

36:10 Remember the first attack the enemy of God and man made upon Eve in the garden? Remember what it was? Turn to Genesis 3. Perhaps some of you have forgotten.

36:24 The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said the first words recorded by the devil using this serpent. Please turn this cassette over to continue the message. Which the Lord God had made. And he said the first words recorded by the devil using this serpent.

36:53 Yea? Has God said you shall not eat of any tree of the garden? What's he doing? He's raising a gray question mark over God's word. Has God really spoken? And is what he said really clear? That's his first word. To somehow shake Eve from the persuasion that yes, God has spoken authoritatively authoritatively. And clearly, and as his creature, I am to obey. And the next word the devil speaks, very clear, verse 4. He doesn't say anything else until verse 4. And the serpent said to

37:40 the woman, you shall not surely die. From raising a gray question mark over whether or not God has spoken and God has spoken clearly. He now moves from casting his hand upon an doubt to open denial. Once he got the woman prepared to consider a truth claim, at the expense of reverencing the word of God as clear and clear, it was all over. Any true friend of Eve would have drawn alongside of her and strengthened her conviction that God had spoken, God had spoken clearly, and God meant what he said. And my dear people, anyone who truly loves your soul is going to do that with you. They're going to exert their influence to deepen your persuasion that God has spoken in his word. God has spoken clearly in his word, and God means what he says in his word. Our attitude and settled

38:55 disposition must be that of the Apostle Paul, where he wrote in Romans, Romans 3 and verse 4, let God be found true, but every man a liar. You and I live in a climate that has totally reversed that. Let every man be true. Anyone wants to make any truth claim he or she wishes. It's an open-ended game these days. Shirley MacLaine gets front cover press in a woman's magazine. Saw it somewhere recently. There she is on the cover. And she gets several pages to tell you the truth about reincarnation. And she's received without question by multitudes. The climate of our day is let every man be true. But your truth is fine. This is my truth for me. But whatever we agree on, let's agree, God's a liar.

39:53 The cob who supposedly speaks in the Bible, he's a liar. He doesn't know his cosmology. He says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And God's a liar. He's a liar.

40:05 And God said, and there was, and God said, and there was. That's a lie. We all know it didn't happen that way. Oh, is that true? Were you there, sir? Well, no, not, no, no, no. Were you there?

40:20 No. Well, I know someone who was. And he introduces himself in the opening words of the Bible. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. You must have that settled disposition.

40:35 Let God be found true. And every man, a liar. And if any truth claim does not treat scripture as a self-consistent body of infallible revelation from God, beware of their truth claim. It is a revelation whose meaning is accessible to any ordinary person who is enlightened by the Holy Spirit and handles the scriptures in an honest way. It's not just for the scholars.

41:09 Error. And the propagators of error, they do what Peter describes in 2 Peter 3, 14 to 16. He exhorts the people in the light of the second coming to give diligence, to live in such a way as is consistent with such a glorious hope. And then he says, our beloved brother Paul has written of these things in his epistles. And he says this with respect to what his fellow apostle Paul wrote.

41:36 As in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things, wherein are some things hard to be understood, he said, not impossible, but hard, which the ignorant and unsteadfast and the Greek verb rest means to put on a torture rack and to stretch it out of shape. If you were to find a verb in the Greco-Roman world at that time to describe what some would do in this horrible, inhumane torture process where they put someone on the rack and then they crank the wheels that stretch their limbs until they snap out of joint and they're, tendons and ligaments are torn. That's the verb you would use. And Peter says, they don't abandon the Bible. They don't abandon scripture, but they put it on a torture rack and they stretch it out of its God intended shape. So this is why I say the face of truth is scripture reverencing scripture as God's authoritative word scripture as a word accessible to the common man who comes illuminated by the spirit and independence upon the spirit. Some things are harder to be understood. Yes, the Bible itself says certain truths are like milk. Certain truths

42:56 are like strong meat. The Bible does make a difference. Yes, but it is not truth that is only for the initiate, the Illuminati, those who have super insights. No, it is God's way of truth set before God. It is God's way of truth set before God. It is God's way of truth set before God.

43:13 It is God's way of truth set before God. It is God's way of truth set before us to be a lamp to our feet and the light to our pathway. I trust you'll memorize and ask God to write upon your souls Isaiah 820 to the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, there is no light in them. Now I want to speak particularly to you young people because a number of you over the next few years are going into so-called schools of higher learning.

43:48 And you will encounter some very well-educated, brilliant, and persuasive people. But now remember this. You know them better than they know themselves. Those who have rejected the teaching concerning God and themselves and sin and grace and heaven and hell, you know them better than they know themselves. And you know them in terms of Paul's classic statement in Romans 1, verse 18 and following. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold down, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. For that which may be known of God is manifested in them. God has clearly revealed it to them. They are

44:43 without excuse. Now that brilliant, persuasive, well-educated professor, be it he or she in the classroom, will seek to make you feel very, very country bumpkin-ish and may stand up the first day in class and say, now as we approach psychology 101, let's make something very clear at the outset. If any of you have any stupid sense of believing that man is fundamentally and essentially different from animals, you're going to be lost in this class. Because our studies on what makes us tick and our drives and our needs and our responses are not only going to be based upon empirical data, extensive, long-range case studies, but as we have observed animals in their behavior in controlled circumstances, far more controlled than we can do with humans, we have come to some very wonderful insights. Now certainly, there's no one here that believes the Bible is there.

45:53 You'll be made to feel like you came to the classroom dressed in the knickers with which I went to school back in the 40s. You follow me? You need to fix in your mind before that smooth, talking, well-educated person with a bad conscience tries to get the barb out of his conscience. You need to understand this very simple truth, that if what he has to say doesn't in you a great reverence for your Bible, learn what you've got to learn, stuff it somewhere, just spit it back out and regurgitate it on your final exam if you have to sit through the class. But you pray that God will fortify your mind and your spirit with this conviction. I may not be able to answer all of his sophistical arguments, and I may not be able to respond to this, that, or the other, but one thing I know, if his true claim is valid, it will drive me back to my Bible, loving it, reverencing it, and if it doesn't, it's bogus. It is not truth. It is error. And you know why he goes after the

47:16 Christians in the class? Because his own conscience is troubling him. He's not the master of his own faith and the captain of his own soul. He knows by simply looking at himself in the mirror and reflecting on who he is.

47:34 God's world, whether under the microscope in its microcosm, or the microscope in the electronic telescope, He knows there is a God. That God made Him. He ought to seek Him and to know Him. And your presence turns up the volume on the voice of His own consciousness, and He wants to turn it down. Don't let Him do it. You raise your hand and say, Lord Jesus, if Daniel could confess you in Babylon, I can confess you here. Yes, sir, I do believe the Bible. I do believe man is the special, the unique creation of God. He is not just quantitatively beyond the animals. He's qualitatively of another thing.

48:33 He is image-bearer of God. Then if you get people that come with a truth claim, and you say, man, I wouldn't see that in that passage in a hundred years. And they can tell you what the number 256 means. And they can tell you all of these great mysteries. And you say, oh, I've got to latch on to this guru, because in a thousand years, I'd never see in my Bible what he does. The obvious meaning that all the responsible commentators for saying that, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

49:07 I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have seen. And all responsible expositors see. But he's got the spiritual meaning. He's got the real inside track. That doesn't make you reverence your Bible in the way that draws you to it, believing that it will be a lamp unto your feet. It attaches you to the guru who sees things that no other rational person sees. And I don't care who fits that description. Don't lend your ears. The face of truth is the face that has, as its first feature, it is always scripture reverence. Now, secondly, it is always, don't, don't, don't run away from my words. I'll explain. It's always mind boggling, mind boggling. Now, what does the word boggle mean? I quote from the dictionary.

Feature 2: Mind-Boggling (Supra-Rational)

50:05 To boggle is to be or become confused or overwhelmed by something difficult, or vast. Now, I'm using the term boggle in this sense. It is to be overwhelmed by something vast. Mind boggling is a description of what happens to the human capacity to think and to reflect in the presence of that which is so vast and expansive that the mind feels that if it's stretched one little bit more, it'll snap. Now, such, such things are not irrational or foolish. Rather, they are realities which stretch the human mind to the breaking point. For example, on the cover of the January edition of the Banner of Truth, someone has taken a reproduction of one of those pictures taken of a star cluster and of how many galaxies, I don't know, unnumbered stars. It appears like one big blot of white, but they tell us within that, numberless amounts of stars. And when you and I stop and think, now, let's think. They tell us

51:23 this is not something that is spun out of somebody's desire to get rid of God. Valid instrumentation tells us that this particular cluster of stars is so many billions and trillions of miles away, and that it is relatively close to us. And when I stop and think that God will come to me, and I'll be able to see him, I'll be able to see him. I'll be able to see him. I'll be Compass is space. There's only one infinite reality in the universe, and that is God. He is infinite. Space is not infinite.

51:56 Matter is not infinite. Billions of miles and trillions of miles and ten thousand times ten thousands of light years. And my Bible says He calls all the stars by their name.

52:12 Now, when I try to think about that, I tell you, I don't get a headache. I feel like I get a paralysis. My mind comes to the point where it stops, and I say, no, I've got to think about what I'm going to have for breakfast. Get down to something where my mind can relax.

52:27 Now, what I'm saying is this. If you want to test to see whether this truth claim is true, look for this feature. Not only is it Scripture referencing, but is it mind-boggling? That is, does it set before me without shame that the faith once for all delivered to the saints is a faith that at every point confronts us with the mind-boggling and is not embarrassed about it?

52:59 Not with things that are irrational, but supra-rational. They go beyond our capacity to grasp. You open your Bible and you're hit with it in the first verse. And if you can embrace in faith the mind-boggling truth of Genesis, one, one, there's nothing else you read that will even tempt you to say, well, how could that be?

53:25 What are the opening words? In the beginning, God. Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Maria sang in the song, in the sound of music, that's got good and bad theology within a few lines.

53:42 But she sang, nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever did. That's good theology. Nothing comes from nothing.

53:50 Nothing ever did. Then she goes on with her bad theology. So somewhere, somehow, I must have done something good, did all these good things. That's bad theology.

54:00 But let's isolate her good theology.

54:03 Nothing comes from nothing. In the beginning, God. And you parents know, when your child begins to think about the things you're teaching them, and you start in the catechism, who made you? God made me.

54:16 But Daddy, wait a minute. Who made God? How many of you have been asked that question by your kids? All right.

54:26 Who made God?

54:29 And how do you explain the uncaused cause of all causes? He has just been there. Yes, but I can't conceive of anything that is that didn't get put there by something else that was. Can you follow me?

54:46 And I spoke it here. You know, somebody somewhere cut down a tree and planed the boards and measured them. And connected them with glue or dolls. Nothing comes from nothing.

55:00 You know that. And yet you're confronted in the opening words of the Bible. In the beginning, God. Uncaused cause of all causes.

55:11 And you contemplate that to the point where it's mind-boggling. And then as you come through the scriptures, there are beginning to be hints right in the opening chapters. This God who made says in verse 26, Let us...

55:28 Make man in our image and after our likeness. One God. God in the beginning created. But this God is talking to himself.

55:45 Let us make man in our image and after our likeness. And as we read through our Bibles, we come to the persuasion that it is pervasively rock-ribbed monotheistic. There is one God. The great Shema.

56:01 Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God. In him only shalt thou serve. And the worship of any other God is idolatry.

56:13 And yet the same Bible presents us in its full-blown revelation with the fact that this God is not monistic. This God is the one in three within the Godhead. There are three subsistences. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

56:33 The three are one God. But the one is three. In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God.

56:41 Oh, fine. That there is some being that was there. Maybe a parallel God. No.

56:46 And the Word was God. It's a mystery. The mystery of all mysteries. One God.

56:54 Yet three subsistences. And the Father is not the Son. And the Son is not the Father. And the Son is not the Spirit.

57:01 And the Spirit is not the Son. And yet the Son is not the Father. The three are one. Mind-boggling.

57:09 Then the Lord Jesus appears on the scene. And we find in conjunction with his conception, then in his life and ministry, and in the subsequent inspired documents about him, that he was as truly man as though he were not God, as much God as though he were not man. That in the Lord Jesus there are two distinct natures, not coalescing into something that is halfway in both directions. He is God.

57:38 He is man. He is the God-man. Who can fathom that mystery? We read in our Bibles that God is absolutely sovereign.

57:50 Known unto God are all his works from the beginning. He works all things after the counsel of his own will. And yet you and I as creatures are fully responsible for our moral actions. God is utterly, totally sovereign.

58:06 Man is totally, fully responsible for his moral acts. The Son of Man goes even as it is written of him. If the Son of Man, it is written of him, he must go by way of a betrayer, then there had to be a betrayer. And whoever was conceived as a betrayer has no choice.

58:28 There's no responsibility. No. Jesus said the Son of Man goes as it is written, but woe unto him by whom he is betrayed. It were better for that man he had not been born.

58:41 Because he'll go to the judgment fully responsible. For his sin of betrayal. Ah yes, but it was decreed and prophesied. Yes.

58:51 Who can bring together in his own little constricted mental compass that we hold to these biblical realities? We were contemplating one of them in the adult class. The bodily resurrection of the dead. Think of the man who died at sea.

59:09 Was thrown overboard in a solemn burial at sea. Before two hours were up the sharks ate him. One of the sharks was caught in the fisherman's net. And they cut it up and some of the cartilage went to a health food place where they made it into shark cartilage so people would avoid cancer.

59:32 Or someone sent me a bottle of it after I was diagnosed with cancer. They'd cure my cancer. Don't go to the physician. Swallow your shark cartilage.

59:41 So suppose I'd swallowed it. Some of it has been eliminated. Some of it's in my tissues. So I've got the man who died at sea in my tissues.

59:52 And my body goes in the... You start thinking about it and you say, wait a minute, wait a minute.

59:58 If the Lord should come when the body is still there in the casket and it's sealed and there's been a relatively little amount of decomposition and no other creature has eaten parts... I can understand but a resurrection that has continuity?

60:14 That poor fella dumped at sea that became part of the shark that's now part of John Jones. Listen, folks. When you've accepted Genesis 1, it's no big deal. How many particles of matter are in one star, one galaxy?

60:32 And how many in the vastness amount to the galaxies? And if God can spew all of that out with a word of His mouth, making matter and energy and form, it's no big deal for Him to reconstitute every particle of what is me. Only resurrection? What's the big deal?

60:53 Why? Because you've embraced from the outset faith once for all delivered to the saints contains that which is mind-boggling through and through. You see, when the Apostle Paul comes to the end of expounding this great salvation and demonstrates how that salvation cuts the course in human history, showing special favor to the Jewish nation and then casting them off because of unbelief and sending the gospel to the Gentiles, all during this God is utterly sovereign, loving whom He will love, rejecting whom He will reject. Man is utterly responsible.

61:32 Paul comes to the end and what does he say in verse 33 of Romans 11? Oh, the depth! Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past tracing out!

61:48 Who has known the mind of the Lord? Rhetorical question, the answer to which is obvious. No one in his right mind says he knows the mind of the Lord. He has been His counselor.

62:00 When did God say, so and so, I need a counseling session. I can't quite figure out how to do this. I'm afraid if I do this, it might not appear fair. And I'd like to know, does this wash with your senses?

62:12 With whom did God take counsel? That's the Paul who earlier, when someone is objecting to what he's taught about God's absolute sovereignty, says, but now, man, who are you to reply against God? Who made you with a brain vast enough and intelligent enough to teach God His manners? No.

62:34 As one dear servant of God said, all of our doctrinal formulas are hedges around a mystery. And you trace every doctrine up far enough and it explodes in mystery. Now why have I said all of this? Because the faith once for all delivered to the saints is suffused with that which is mind-boggling.

63:02 When David contemplates the omniscience and omnipresence of God, Psalm 139, he says, such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain to it. But he revels in the reality of it and glories in the omniscience and the omnipresence of God.

63:26 But he says, I can't understand it. Paul glories in it here in Romans 11. He writes later in Ephesians 3.19 that they might know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

63:39 It is unknowable. Psalm 147 says his understanding is infinite. And you see the Bible doesn't hide the mind-boggling nature of the faith like an ugly mold that someone might cover up with makeup because they feel self-conscious. God's not at all self-conscious and nervous that he confronts us again and again with that which transcends our ability to feel the love of Christ.

Application: Humility and Discerning Truth Claims

64:11 Let me say in my concluding application as images of God you and I were given rational self-reflective minds. However, the human mind was not created with a God-sized capacity. Only God's mind can fully comprehend God. Get hold of that.

64:30 Jesus said that in his prayer in Matthew 11, verse 27. He says, No one knows the Father save the Son No one knows the Son save the Father. It takes God to comprehend God. You and I as creatures were made with minds that have a capacity to receive what God has revealed about himself, his world, his will, and his ways.

65:00 And woven into the first temptation was an enticement to an inordinate intellectual ambition. You got that? You shall be as God's knowing. It was an enticement to an inordinate intellectual ambition. Adam and Eve had many avenues by which to exercise intellectual inquiry. Adam would have been the great astronomer and astrophysicist and botanist and all the other things in fulfilling the mandate to replenish the earth and subdue it. God gave him a mind with not infinite but amazing capacities and we are told that the best of us uses only one tenth of his brain power. The most brilliant on the world.

65:54 The mind is a marvelous thing given by God. It images something of God as an intelligent self-reflective being. But God never gave you a mind to determine the boundaries of who God is. God never gave your mind for that.

66:21 Had sin never entered, man's mind would have gone in these many directions glorifying God in every intellectual pursuit. But man would never have felt my mind has contained God because if he did though he might feel satisfied that he contained God he couldn't worship Him. You'll not fall down and worship with delight of God and you can encompass with a pound and a half of gray matter. And you young people remember not only are you going to be assaulted with every form of enticement to fleshly appetite and to carnal lust but remember when Paul describes man's state in sin under the control of the devil in Ephesians 2 he says this, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the what? The mind. Of the mind! There is a slamming lust of the mind that man will do anything to rid himself of the God that he knows is there and the God to whom he is accountable. And you will encounter

67:35 these brilliant well educated men and women in college and their living proofs that they hold down the truth in unrighteousness and they will say everyone knows that and you want to challenge and say no not everyone knows, everyone assumes that. And when one begins to read some of the current theories of the origins all they've done is just keep pushing the thing back further and further and further. And someone has the audacity to raise his hand and say alright you've pushed the big bang back another few million years but what was there to bang and who put it there? Well that's the realm of religion we don't touch that. No, no it's your religion that's taking you there. It's one that says whatever I see in God's world I will not let it speak its true message to me. There is a God, He made me and I'm accountable to Him and I ought to seek Him. I close with this silly illustration.

68:35 You've been talking to one of your professors about your lovely experience as a child down at the Jersey Shore. You've seen beautiful sunsets coming up from the eastern horizon seen beautiful sights etc. And you're talking about the ocean the Atlantic Ocean, the ocean ocean. And one day you say well I've never seen the ocean I'd like to come with you. So they make your trip down to the Jersey Shore. And he carries with him his mug twelve ounce coffee mug and he goes over to the edge of the ocean scoops up a mug full of Jersey sea water and he holds it and looks at it and says I don't believe there's an ocean. You may not believe it but look it doesn't all fit in my cup so it can't exist. What would you say of him?

69:27 You'd say he's wacko. Because he can't fit the ocean in the cup doesn't mean the ocean doesn't exist. But this is what they do with the rationalistic approach to life. If I cannot conceive of it as being normal and logical and reasonable it doesn't exist.

69:46 And he says that all the while. God is thundering in the ears of his conscience I do exist I made you you're accountable to me and you'll stand before me in judgment. Any truth claimed that grows out of and is consistent with the faith once for all delivered to the saints look for these two features. Scripture reverencing and it will be unashamedly mind boggling.

70:19 Then we'll look at the three other features God willing next week. But am I talking to someone sitting here? Maybe I've been talking about you. You have sat as it were on your chair of arrogance refusing to embrace Christ and the salvation that is in him because you said until God answers for me these questions my friend with all those questions answered you still got the problem you're a sinner and you know it and you're not ready to die as much as you whistle in the dark trying to persuade yourself death is the end of it all you know better and I plead with you humble yourself and say oh God I'm ready to be taught come to the scripture saying oh God reveal yourself to me in your book that I may know you and know your son and his salvation and may you who are the Lord's people especially again of you young men and women you better have some serious deep dealings alone with God over these issues and continue to have them as the battle for your soul will for some of you in the days to come be waged in great measure between your ears in your gray matter may God help us that we will contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints. Let's pray.

71:45 Our Father we are so thankful that we cannot fully comprehend you but that we can worship you we thank you for that which you have revealed of yourself to us and we pray that you would give us that disposition of humility for you have said you resist the proud but give grace to the humble we would confess that we are ignorant of many things we thank you that though we see through a glass darkly that many of us do see and we thank you that a day is coming not that we will be omniscient and know everything but when our knowledge will be stripped of all that is twisted and marked by imprecision and we will know even as we are known. We pray that you would write these things upon our hearts for the good of our souls and for the glory of Christ our savior we ask in his name. Amen.