Classic Christianity – A Closer Look at The Word of God P12 (03-03-21)
Synopsis
Once it is established in your mind that indeed the scriptures are the very words of God, and you know God is not a liar, then you can trust that whatever event God says happened, then it happened. The word of God has relevance to our lives and has more meaning than just confirming that some historical event happened. In other words, it would be irrelevant to me whether Noah and the flood actually happened or not if I did not believe Jesus is God, or had no confidence that these are the words of God. Whether I believe in Noah or the flood or not is irrelevant to whether I am going to spend eternity with God or not. But if I did not believe Jesus is God, and then heard Jesus say that I shall surely die in my sins if I do not believe in Him, in what He came to do and did, then His words might just have enough meaning, to ask the question, “Do I want to have life or die in my sins?” So faith in what God says has bearing on my life.
Now, if Jesus is God, and Jesus testified there was a flood, and there was a man named Noah, then there was a flood and there was a man named Noah. God told him there was going to be a flood and without the ark, there is no escape from drowning in a flood. The flood came as the judgment of God against sin because sin had become so great. Those events and people are historical facts. Noah believed God and his faith was credited to him as righteousness and his faith led him to do what God had said, to build an ark, even though no man yet at that time in history had ever seen rain. Those are the things recorded down in the scriptures.
The events happened as Jesus said and those people were people that existed because otherwise Jesus would be a liar and would cease to be God. So what you believe about Noah and the flood shows either that you are ignorant of what was written in the scriptures or you do not believe Jesus is God. For if you believe Jesus is God, and after hearing about these events that Jesus testified about, then you would have to believe they are true as Jesus said.
So there really is no logical reason to believe the Old Testament is a myth or merely fairy tales. So why then would people believe in evolution? Are they believing in what men say, claiming that to be true based on what they claim as science. Science is really observation of men. Who was there at creation to observe? So evolution is just as much a belief since it cannot be observed, tested or verified through experiment. But is it true according to the historical account recorded in scripture?
We do have God’s word that testifies of how God is the creator of all that is seen and unseen. And if someone believes in God, then one would believe what God says about creation in Genesis, where God said, “Let us make man in our own image” Well, that being so, and you were trying to believe in evolution, then you would have to think of God as an advanced ape, something like a glorified King Kong, but that defies sane reasoning. But then you have to also ask, “Who is the “us”and who is the “our“? God is three persons in one, the Trinity as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. The gospels, as written down through the apostles, testify of this.
Matthew 17:5
5 While he was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”
So, it is so important to listen to God and what He has to say, and take His words to heart, for they have far greater meaning and purpose for you. They have words of life for you. They have words of how you can have a harmonious relationship with your spouse, if you are married. They have words of how you can best relate to your coworkers in all truth and righteousness as God designed you to be created.
Transcript
Let us pick up in Isaiah 40:8, again the testimony of God to His own word.
Isaiah 40:8
8 The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.”
Once again, if this statement is true, and if this truly is the word of God, then how long is the word of God going to remain relevant in our lives? Does it just go up to the 19th century and just fade away? In other words, maybe the word of God is like grass or like a flower and it fades so some new revelation can come in and stand forever. Or is it the fact that the word of God is going to stand forever, meaning that it is as relevant today in the 1900s as it was back in 500 or 300 or 200 A.D. or 2000 B.C? It makes no difference whether the word of God is as relevant today as it has ever been. Man does not change. That is the issue.
Ecclesiastes 1:9
9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
The same problems I have today are the same problems that Job, Noah and Abraham had. There is no difference. As you read the Old Testament, you might as well be reading today’s newspaper as it regards man. Nothing has changed. If that is true, where should we go for direction in our lives? You do not have to be too brilliant. If Jesus truly is God and here is the key issue to this whole matter. He said the word of God is true and His very word testified to the fact that just like grass that withers and flowers that fade, that is the world. If the word of God is standing forever then there is only one place that I can go to that is going to be the same today, yesterday and forever and that is the word of God for my basis of truth, the standard of truth, the plumbline of life, the compass to tell me which direction I am going instead of eyeballing it. If the word of God becomes our standard of truth then anything that is outside of that is contrary to that.
Hebrews 13:8
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
1 Peter 1:23
23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.
To people who come up and say truth is not confined to the word of God, I beg to differ with you on that. Truth is confined to the word of God. People come up and say medical science is absolutely true. There is no such thing. If it was, it works the same way, on everybody the same way. You can use aspirin to get rid of headaches in some people but not in others. That ceases to be scientific. We are a variable. There is no constant except God. Therefore, do not come up with any scientific truth that has not been developed by God. People say, “This is just an adjunct to God’s truth.” No, it is not. We are a variable. If you come to my treatment center, you can get done in 40 days or 60 days. It depends on when the insurance runs out. But that is a variable because we are dealing with people. A man making that statement is making a flat lie for there is no such thing as that.
Romans 12:2
2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is; his good, pleasing and perfect will.
First of all, there is no such thing as a permanent cure as to your mind. You can go back to stinking thinking any time you want to. So the word of God has to be a constant renewal of your mind in order to plug into truth, not just for today but for every single day of your life. So if the word of God is standing forever that means I need it forever. I need it today, tomorrow and the next day. That is what renewing of the mind is all about.
When talking about confirmation of Old Testament events, He is the ultimate confirmation of Old Testament events. There are a lot of people who say it is a bunch of myths and fairy tales. They say it is not true and there are contradictions. Not if you understand it, it isn’t. It might look like it. But if you rely on the Holy Spirit to tell you what it means, there is no contradiction.
Let us look at something like the flood. There are volumes of information about the flood and it’s implications on mankind. On everything that at least I understand and I am certainly a far cry from being scientific. But the issue is from what I understand that even the dating tests taken on this earth are inaccurate. We are always being told it is billions of years old. While that is being determined, there is a total discount of the fact this world was totally surrounded by water. That was totally discounted and that to me throws off any piece of scientific evidence in regard to the dating of this earth. The doubters and skeptics have discounted the flood as a flood. A biblical student has held closely to the viewpoint that the flood was an actual historical event and was used as example of power and judgment and salvation of God toward man.
We hope this study we are embarking on will help each and every one of you to establish your own convictions on this important account. Turn to Matthew 24:37-39. Who is speaking? This is Jesus speaking. Who is Jesus? He is God. So we have God speaking to us.
Matthew 24:37-39
37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
Luke records Jesus again saying the same thing.
Luke 17:26-27
26 “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.
It goes ahead to say in 2 Peter 2:5.
2 Peter 2:5
5 if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;
That was Peter. Not only was Christ Himself testifying to the fact there was a flood, then we have Peter an apostle testifying of that.
1 Peter 3:20
20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water,
When you look at that type of thing, reading this deal, you realize the moral conditions of the world have not changed at all. The same things going on then are going on now and even of more degradation than what we can see today, or maybe not so any more. Look at the response of Noah and his activities to what God told him to do, to build an ark. So he built an ark. My understanding is that prior to that time, there was no such thing as rain. The earth was watered by the mist. There was no such thing as rain coming from above. So when talking about a coming flood, it was difficult to understand how that was going to take place. Yet it was recorded that it did. It was verified that it did by the Lord Jesus Christ and verified again by the apostle Peter. Like Jesus, if he was not God, then he certainly testified to a pretty idiotic event, if it was not indeed true.
I get a little revved up whenever I start teaching through the sufficiency of the word of God because the more I study it and rethink the whole issue, the more irritated I get in my spirit of hearing a Christian cast doubt on the total sufficiency of the word of God. As I said before, if the word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword and it absolutely gauges the attitudes of a person’s heart, then everything we do stems from our attitude and that stems from what we are thinking. So the key to any behavioral problem is the renewing of the mind and the bible certainly speaks to every aspect of that.
So people who are naming themselves as Christians and then casting doubt on the sufficiency of the word of God, they are not only doing a great injustice to their own lives but certainly doing great injustice to people who are listening or watching in confidence in them. So those of us in ministry especially to sit back and ask what in the world is our calling? Is it to be a psychologist or preacher or was it to preach the sufficiency of the word of God? If our calling is to preach the sufficiency of the word of God, then why are we compromising and bringing into our churches and assemblies every idea of man that is perpetuated under the name of psychiatrists. If we are not welcome in the psychological camp, then why are they welcome in the Christian camp?
So what we have done is both. Let us become a Christian psychologist. I am not saying you cannot be a Christian and get a degree in psychology. But if you believe in the sufficiency of the word of God, then there is no way you can be commingling two thoughts, especially when they contradict one another. So sorry if I sound a little testy when I get into this subject. But the more I get into it, the more irritated I get in my spirit when I see what is taking place in the Christian world today. I challenge all pastors in the country to get back to the sufficiency of the word of God. You can rely on it a hundred percent. You are more qualified to counsel anybody than any degreed psychologist in the world today. You have a book you can study. Ask God to reveal truth to you.
2 Corinthians 3:6
6 He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant – not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Never take a secondary position to anyone in regard to your ability and your competency to communicate truth that will set people free. I pray to God that you will never allow the renaming of something. That is what people do. Where are you going to find out how to treat anorexia in the bible? You are not. You will not find it in there. That is why someone named it anorexia. Who in the world put a name like that on it? The very same profession who says we are only ones who know how to treat it. So if I rename it I can tell you what it is and tell you how to treat it.
John 1:12
12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God
2 Corinthians 5:17
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
Self centeredness is talked about in scripture. That is involved in every one of those behavior patterns. Are you anorexic or a child of the living God? If a child of the living God, then throwing up after you eat is not consistent with who you are. That is how you have to deal with that because you have to change a person to see that is their identity, if they are in Christ. If we do not want to talk to Christians, we should not be on Christian radio and television. If you are in Christ and indeed in Christ then you have a brand new identity. If you have a brand new identity, you will find you need your mind reprogrammed or renewed on truth and Jesus’ promise is that truth will set you free. Free from what? Any behavior problem that you have. I will tell you some day what I really believe.
I am not sure what this has to do with Noah. Maybe because we are flooded with a flood of junk perpetuated to the Christian community.
Let us go back to Jesus’ testimony in regard to that event. When Jesus is talking about that and Peter verifying that there was a flood, did they state this as an actual account or as a mythical story? No, it is an actual account. What if this account that had been written in the Old Testament had been wrong? In other words, there was no such thing as Noah or a flood, so do you think Jesus would have corrected that, and said something like this. “Guys, do you know that the bible is not really inerrant, and one of the big ones is in regard to the flood. There really was not a Noah and really not a flood. That was really kind of a mythical story.” But He did not say that, did He?
Matthew 24:37-39
37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
He would have had to have done that with such a major event. He not only did not do that but He did that with a comparison with another fact that had to occur and that is His coming again. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.
So he was stating that just as the conditions were in the days of Noah, so the identical conditions are going to be when Jesus comes back to this earth.
2 Peter 2:5
5 if he did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others;
1 Peter 3:20
20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water,
How much sense does it make to compare such an important event as the second coming of Christ to some mystical fairy tale? It would be like saying just as Santa Claus is going to give you toys down a chimney so I am going to give free grace. That just does not make any sense. You do not compare an event like that to some kind of a fairy tale.
That was an actual event. Noah was put in the ark and was told by God to build it. As it says, he was a preacher of righteousness and along with seven others were protected, and there was a universal flood that came upon the entire earth as a result of God’s judgment upon the earth and a starting over.
So if the flood was false, what would you have to conclude about Christ and His authority? You would have to conclude He is a liar and that means He ceases to be God.
Now the book of Hebrews, one of the deepest books in the bible, solidifies that again.
Hebrews 11:7
7 By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family. By his faith he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that is in keeping with faith.
How was Noah saved? By faith. What do you mean? He believed God. God told him there is going to be a flood. “Build an ark.” Noah, in holy fear, with no clue what a flood was going to be, but he built an ark. Can you imagine having no water around and building a boat? “What is going to come?” “Rain.” “What is that?” “I do not know but it is going to come.” No wonder they were laughing at him. But he believed the warning that God gave. So he became an heir of righteousness as a result of nothing more than faith that spelled itself out in action.
James 2:20-25
20 You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? 21 Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. 23 And the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness,”[Genesis 15:6] and he was called God’s friend. 24 You see that a person is considered righteous by what they do and not by faith alone.25 In the same way, was not even Rahab the prostitute considered righteous for what she did when she gave lodging to the spies and sent them off in a different direction? 26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.
Quite frankly, that is what the book of James deals with when it says faith without works is dead. It is not saying he was saved because of his work. He worked because he was saved. In other words, Noah was not saved because he went out and built an ark. He was saved because he believed God who told him to build an ark and merely walked in a dependency upon God, believing in what God had said, and carried out the instruction.
If you truly believed God, is that a burden carrying out His instruction? Not if you truly believed Him. If God said, “Bob, there is a million dollars in the bank if you go over there.” Well, I am going to be obedient to God and go do it. If I believe there is a million dollars in the bank, I am going over there to check it out, and it would not be through gutting out obedience. It would be the most natural outflow of believing God. “Man, thank you. I do not know why you did that, but I am going to go get it.” The same thing. “There is going to be damnation on the world, Noah. Build an ark.” Because of his faith, he believed in what God had said, and so he built an ark. That is where faith and works go hand and glove. But works have to come as a result of faith. It is not to generate faith or to make it bigger. It is a natural outflow of true biblical faith.
What do you think you would say to someone if someone said, “I believe in Jesus but I do not believe all the things about the flood? What would you think of someone saying something like that? Either he did not know what he was talking about or he does not believe in Jesus. It is the same type of thing as what Jesus said to the Pharisees. They said, “We believe in Moses.” Jesus replied, “No you don’t. If you believed in Moses, then you would believe in Me because he wrote about me.” That is the same type of thing here.
The writer of Hebrews believed that the flood was an actual event in history. Would God want someone to believe in something that is not going to happen? No. So if a person says, “I believe in Jesus, but I do not believe in the flood”, that is a contradiction of terms. If Jesus is truly God and He testified about the flood, you cannot separate one from another, can you? Again, if Jesus is God, and He said there is a flood, there was a flood. If He is not God, we are still in our sins, and whether or not there was a flood is completely irrelevant in our lives. If Jesus is not God, what do I care if there was a flood or not? It is not going to help me walk in dependence on God today. It is not going to help me get along with my wife or with my coworkers.
So the validity and significance of the flood and other Old Testament events rests entirely upon the testimony of Jesus and the apostles.
So people throw smokescreens. “Do you believe that flood stuff?” “Let me ask you this. Do you believe that Jesus stuff?” “What does that have to do with it?” “It has everything to do with it. If I convinced you beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a flood, would you accept Christ as Lord and Savior?” “No.” “Then why would I bother to try to convince you. If you were convinced or not convinced has nothing to do with your salvation. Your eternal life is predicated on who you say that Jesus is, not what you say about the flood Jesus spoke of. But if you come to believe that Jesus is who He says He is, God, that if you truly believe He is God, then you have to believe what He says, such as things about the flood.”
Now, we are going to talk about creation. In most of our educational systems today, the theory of evolution is taught as an absolute fact. We sit in our so-called educational systems and just study that evolution all over the place. You have got all kinds of diagrams, and you listen to people who show you prehistoric animals and those cavemen who evolved into men and the reason we all have back trouble today is because we are supposed to be walking on all fours instead of upright as we do. It goes on and on and on. It is taught in so-called schools of higher education. I can come up with another name, but I will be kind in this last segment.
Its proponents have totally ignored biblical revelation and discounted it as nonscientific. They seldom ever admit that evolutionary theory is just as much a statement of faith as biblical belief, since it cannot be observed, tested or verified through experiment. In fact, the definition of science itself prohibits dealing with origin, only observable data. Yet, evolution is taught as a scientific fact. The real issue remains, once again, in the person of Jesus Christ. The biblical record stands or falls together, and ultimately rests on His identity and authority.
Even the government down in Waxahachie, Texas. I heard that it has been killed now politically, but they were going to build this multi-billion dollar supercollider for the purpose of studying the origins of the universe. I could have sent the president a $20 bible and saved the government a ton of money on that type of thing, yet that would be perceived as stupidity. So a Christian stands up and says, “Let us study the creation of the universe.”
Genesis 1:26-27
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
I would hate to think God is a monkey, wouldn’t you? Isn’t that amazing. In the image of God He created him, male and female He created them. So if you are going to believe in evolution as it deals with human life, then God is just an advanced ape, if we were created in His image. It is kind of King Kong elevated to the position of God. It is just ludicrous what the world does with that. I can understand a person that does not know Christ from a spoof. He might as well believe that as the other nonsense. But for a Christian to believe that is beyond comprehension.
But He says, “Let us make man in our image”. That was written in Genesis before there was anyone to make that observation. But inasmuch as God is Creator, you would have to ask who is the “us” and who is the “our”? That would certainly confuse the old rabbis, scratching their heads, not able to figure that out. Who is that “our”?
Again, you get back to the proclamation in the first chapter of the very first book of the bible, of the plurality of the godhead, and that is dealing with, which was revealed in the fullness as the Lord Jesus Christ, revealed then as God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Now prior to that total revelation, that is who God is, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, yet one God, then people would say, “I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and that is as good as you could do. But that is who the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is, and that was explained by Christ Jesus, who is God, and quite frankly, ought to know.
So the creation of human life, Jesus again spoke of that in Matthew 19:4.
Matthew 19:4
4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[Genesis 1:27]
Jesus was talking about the Creator, and then we were told in the gospels that Jesus is the Creator.
Colossians 1:15-16
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.
So He is talking literally about Himself.
