March 30, 2008

Tom Cruise has been in the news of late with a focus on his new religion of Scientology. Do you know what it is? (Shared Facts on that religion from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Scientology

It is one of many feeble attempts of man to chisel out of the box to find God.

Hebrews 1:1-3
The Preparation for Christ

Verse 1 >
The subject of the verb in this sentence is God and the whole sentence can be boiled down to 2 words “God Spoke.”

God spoke! That is called special revelation. The only way we can ever know about God is for him to speak. YOU may say, “I am seeking God” But you will not find him unless he speaks to you, seeks you.

The natural man cannot understand the things of God. One writer said,“Man lives in a box, a natural box and man desires to find the supernatural but cannot, so he starts a religion, goes with chisels to the edge of the box and tries to chisel a hole in it hoping to find God sitting on a cloud saying ‘ Hi I’m God where have you been?”

The world religions are like that. Buddah says “DO,DO,DO and maybe you will get out of the box.
Mohammed says, “Do,Do,Do” and maybe you will get out of the box. Every religion tries to escape the box But the natural man cannot know God.

You can’t just pop into a phone booth and take off your clothes (well you can but I don’t recommend it) and come out superman.

The only way to know God is if God speaks. We can’t break out of that box, but 2000 years ago Jesus Christ broke into that box (Luke 19:10) giving the world the only religion that does that. God revealing himself to us-breaking into the natural arena in human form, the form of Jesus Christ. That is the difference between Christianity and other religions, it is God finding man.

So God spoke. First he spoke in Old testament words using men as instruments. It says, “in times past” literally “of old.”
And God proved he isn’t speechless like the idols of the land.
God is involved he is not silent. (Dan Truax you got me there)

This has always be the difference ! Only JHVH can save, and he spoke of old.The Old Testament is not the wisdom of men but the Word of God.

It also says he spoke in different ways and at various times. In the Greek this is a play on words, in different parts and different means. Different parts = 39 books of the OT. Different means = spoke directly sometimes, visions, parables, symbols, many manners, God speaking.

Some of the OT is history, some law, some prophecies but always God speaking.

The OT is fragments, written over 1500 year span, 40 plus writers each with a block of truth and thr whole of the truth began to be revealed. The OT is a progress of revelation. n ot all the truth dumped on us at once. It builds forward to total truth.

It doesn’t build from error to truth as some try to say, but from incomplete truth to a more complete truth. It was and is a developmental book, developed until it was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

Truth builds like letters build words that build sentences. So the OT is built. Not a hodgepodge...not human wisdom, opinion but God spoke.

We see that he spoke To the Fathers. The OT people, the forefathers.

HE spoke BY the prophets. A prophet is one who speaks to man for God.  A priest is one who speaks to God for man. So the OT is accurate. (2 Peter 21:21) No scripture came as a private word or from a man, but it came as God moved men  by the HS.
The OT is accurate-and in this progress of revelation which came in many ways, forms, patterns and times and built toward the climax of revelation. This is God’s message to man concerning the coming of his son.

So we see the OT as the preparation for Christ, now as verse 2 begins we see the unfolding the Presentation of Christ.

This presentation comes in these last days, the finalizing of revelation..

Before: many ways many times, now only one way by one individual and the New Testament is where Christ is presented..

The gospels tell the story, the epistles comment on it and the revelation shows where it is going.  The last days is a messianic reference, The Jews knew this meant the time when Messiah came, it is the time from Christ to the end. When Jesus came He spoke the final revelation of God. This is the Christ, the preeminent one, he became the Son of Man so we could become the Sons of God.

There was never anyone like Christ. James Crumpton said “Christ came from the bosom of the Father to a woman. Born contrary to the laws of nature he lived in poverty, was reared in obscurity and only once crossed the boundary of his native land. He had no money or influence or training in the worlds schools. His relatives weren’t influential.  But in his infancy he startled a King, ni his childhood he confused the priests.

He never wrote a book, yet all the writers in the world cannot fill more books than he.

He never wrote a song, but there are more songs about him than any other. There is no one like him.

And in the OT GOd spoke through prophets, in the NT he spoke through his son. The OT is fragments of truth but Christ is truth incarnate, (John 14:6)

Divine revelation for  the Old to the new is progressive. The OT promised, the new fulfilled it. Jesus said, “I am not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it.”

In the OT they trusted in a promise to come and never received it (Heb.11) They didn’t understand what they wrote.  They just wrote it and read it and tried to figure it out(1 Peter 1:10-12 Of which salvation the prophets have enquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: 11 Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. 12 Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into.) But in Christ it all came to be.

If you want to know what God has to say, listen to Jesus, no other religion can do this.

In times past God used words, then spoke in the person of his precious son. In John 4:25 the astonished people said “When Messiah comes he will tell us all things.” They knew that Christ was the full and final revelation of God.

To add to the NT is to blaspheme. To write new books ostensibly from God is to call a curse on your head Because Jesus Christ is God’s full and final revelation.

The OT came in parts - In Noah we see the section of the world Christ would come from. In Abraham we see the Nation, In Judah the tribe,  in David & Isaiah we see the family, In Micah the town of birth, in Daniel the time, in Malachi the forerunner. In Jonah the type of the resurrection.  ALL PARTS, but in Christ all whole, complete and total. God has fully explained himself in Christ.

The presentation of Christ is the New Testament. Here God speaks through his son Jesus Christ.

We see divine revelation is progressive, from promise to fulfillment. OT promises, NT fulfills. Christ came to fulfill.

If you want to hear what God has to say listen to Jesus Christ, all is fulfilled in Christ. Every promise resolves itself in Jesus Christ.

This letter urges people to go all the way to a commitment to Jesus Christ as the only means of salvation.
Have you committed to him? Is he Lord in your life?
Romans 3 23 says all have sinned
Romans 6: 23 says the penalty for that sin is death, eternal separation from God.
But in romans 5:8 we see Jesus breaking into the Box even when we were sinners and paying that penalty for those who would receive it.
romans 10:13-14
Preach “one who tells”
Hear- “understood”
Believe-trust in Christ
Call- ask him in and make a commitment to him

 
  Next session we will see part 3, The preeminence of Christ