Hebrews
Lesson 50
NKJ Psalm
119:11 Your word I have hidden in my
heart, That I might not sin against You!
Two
problems we have been studying the last three or four weeks have to do with how
we think. It is very difficult for people to think about thinking.
This is not simple stuff. Most of you are doing pretty good slugging your
way through this. I was thinking this week about a good illustration for
this. The only illustration that I could think of relates to the concept
of foundation because knowledge is our foundation for everything. What is the
foundation for your views on life? Everybody has a philosophy of
life. You may not have ever thought about it.
I
remember having a conversation with one old
I
made the comment, “That is your philosophy.”
“I
ain’t no philosopher.”
He
may not be. He has an unthought-through
philosophy of life. He probably has an inconsistent philosophy of
life. But, everybody has a philosophy of life. It includes
all of your values, your view of what is right and what is wrong, your views on
politics, your views on marriage, and your work ethic. All of these
things are part of your philosophy of life. Your philosophy of life is
grounded in some sense in what is true versus what you think is false. So
at the very root of everything are people’s ideas of right and wrong, truth and
error, that which is absolute and eternal and that which is not absolute and
eternal. Even if you believe there are no absolutes you have a problem
because you have a hidden absolute there that there are no absolutes. So
everybody has a philosophy of life. They interpret whatever is going on
in life through that grid. That is the foundation on which we build that
house that is our life.
Jesus
used the illustration of a man who can either build a house on quick sand and
shifting sands or there are those who build their house on solid rock. It
is that foundation idea. What are you building your house on? The
house in that analogy is your whole worldview - how you interact with
everything in life. That foundation has to do with your view of truth,
your view of absolutes, and your view of that which is eternal. You see
by the time that most of us got saved and even for those like me who got saved
at an early age, you still have years that go by where you are loading up that
foundation with a lot of human view point. It is a foundation that is
made with solid elements that are necessary to have good solid rock concrete
foundation. We all import into that a lot of stuff that shouldn’t go in
there. It produces a fairly crumbly foundation. Once you are
saved and you start the process of spiritual growth and sanctification, what
you really have to do is go in and not just tear down the house that is built
on that foundation, but you have to go in and tear down the foundation.
If the foundation is the cultural way of thinking about truth that surrounds
you, (That is either going to be empiricism, ultimate truth sense knowledge or
your cultural view is rationalism where everything is ultimately determined by
rigorous logic and reason or whether it is mysticism whatever that worldview of
foundation of truth is.) when you come in and you try to build the Christian
life on that foundation, what is going to happen? When the storms of life
come and they get really bad and you hit Hurricane Katrina in your spiritual
life, then that foundation that has incorporated elements of autonomous
rationalism or autonomous empiricism or mysticism is going to crumble. That
foundation that has incorporated elements of autonomous rationalism, autonomous
empiricism, or mysticism, then it is going to crumble. This is sometimes
very difficult to spot. I personally believe that God sends certain
storms into our lives because only when certain storms hit your life do you
begin to realize that there is some element in that foundation underneath it
that really isn’t as stable as you thought it was. All of a sudden things
start to come unglued and unraveled. Sometimes no matter how long you
have been a Christian you might even start questioning the goodness of God, the
plan of God, the consistency of God. Like Job you are a mature
believer, but there are things that are going to be exposed by this storm that
you need to deal with in your own spiritual life. So that is why I am
going through this.
Another
reason I am going through this is that we live in an era when there is a lot of
fuzzy thinking about this. I am always amazed at how few seminary trained
pastors that come out recently (I am including my own generation.) I look
around sometimes and one of my closer friends when I was at seminary has been a
full board charismatic for the last 20 years. I went back the other day
and I was reading someone in the late 19th century and they were
talking about how everything was falling apart culturally. So this
deterioration has been going on for at least 150 years, probably more. I
would trace the source to Emanuel Kant at the end of the 18th century.
Whatever the worldview is the culture around the church, the church always
imitates that. There is a simple explanation for that. Everybody in
the church comes out of that cesspool. So they come into the church
dragging all of that nasty baggage with them. It takes a while to get rid
of it. Some people never do quite get rid of it. It hangs on down through
the centuries.
Last
time I pointed out that in the early church you had two key figures -Origin and
Augustine of Hippo who was the Bishop of Hippo. They front loaded
Christianity in that era even though there were a lot of their contemporaries
who rejected what they were doing. They brought in all of this baggage from
Platonism and neo-Platonism that introduced a lot of mysticism to the church
today. It stayed in the church all through the Middle Ages and elements
continue to plague the church even today.
In
fact I was doing some background study on CS Lewis. I have never been a
Lewis scholar. I knew several people when I was in college that loved CS
Lewis. They read everything that CS Lewis wrote. I read the “Screw
Tape Letters”. If you haven’t read the “Screw Tape Letter” you ought to
read it some time. He had a great imagination. It is letters
between an older demon to his charge who is a young neophyte demon who is like
a Class 1, just getting into the business. He has got to tempt this
Christian. He has got to cause him to fail in his spiritual life. So the
older demon is giving advice to this young rookie as to how he can be
successful. He has a lot of insights. I read that the year before I went
to seminary. I had to read books that he wrote on miracles, “Mere
Christianity”, and some other writings of his when I took an apologetics class
in seminary. That was fine but Lewis never floated my boat. I like to
read Josh McDowell and Cornelius Vantill and Francis
Schafer. But Lewis before he was saved (just like you see this paradigm)
he was an idealist and a Platonist. That element of his view of knowledge
always impacted (very subtlety but it is there) his view of apologetics, his
view of reasoning and his view of where that common ground was in communication
between a believer and an unbeliever. If you get these human viewpoint
elements in your foundation they do tend to bubble up at different times and
expose certain weaknesses in whatever you are building on top of this
foundation.
Now
I finished up with that last week and I just want to start with this one slide
so that you know why I am doing this. The reason I am doing this is
because there is this reference in Hebrews 5:11 these advancing believers who
had advanced had gone into regression in the spiritual life. They were now
lazy and dull of hearing. We are going to take some time exploring this
whole idea of how this happens in the Christian life because you see all kinds
of people who when they are young new believers they are excited and they are
learning and there is this tremendous momentum. They are at Bible class
two or three times a week and they are listening to tapes the rest of the
time. There is this hunger and then they tend to reach this
plateau. Then the next thing you know, they get married (especially if
they are young) and have kids and their jobs make demands on them. The
next thing you know the details of life begin to crowd out their priority of
the Word of God.
In
the initial stages of the Christian life so often we are often driven because
we have questions that we want answered. How do I know there is a
God? How do I live the Christian life? What do I need to do in the
faith rest drill? How do I handle this situation or that situation and
all of these other things? But once we get these questions answered,
then that part of our motivation dries up. We tend to coast a little bit
and that is an important time in the Christian life because we start switching
motivation. The motivation is no longer driven by intellectual
curiosity. Now it needs to be driven more by our desire to learn more
about the Lord and to serve the Lord. That is when we start going through
those shifts that occur in spiritual adolescence. A lot of folks hit that
level and they start to coast. Other things come into their lives and the
next thing they know they are being distracted by the details of life and they
go into spiritual regression. Most folks will talk to you about sin.
That is what you will hear from most preachers.
“It
is sin in your life.”
There
is a basis for that because Peter talks about the fleshly lusts that war
against the soul. Of course the internal enemy of the believer is the sin
nature. But what I am pointing out is that there is something more
insidious that can go on inside of our souls making war against our spiritual
life than simply propensity to sin in the usual categories of sin that present
themselves. That is within the realm of our thinking. This is where
the weakness in the foundation starts to bubble up.
So
we talked about cosmic degeneracy that involves immoral degeneracy, overtly
which has a complementary role in the way we think. It produces
irrationalism, mysticism, licentiousness. Mysticism is basically
anti-authoritarianism when applied to knowledge.
“Whatever
I want to do.”
In
other words it is a counterpart to moral relativism and displayed by that
phrase in Judges - everyone did what is right in his own eyes. It is
bubbling up from inside.
“Whatever
I want to do is right.”
That
is mysticism in the extreme.
On
the other hand you have moral degeneracy where you have this rigid
authoritarianism that comes out of some sort of moral or religious code or even
a philosophical code. Many of the ancient philosophies had rigorous
procedures that you had to go through in order to grow and advance in their
goal towards the ultimate good or whatever it was that was there in order to
fulfill their spiritual selves. So it produced asceticism or self
righteousness. This was typical in Platonism and many forms of
Gnosticism. All of that had consequent impacts on the church. So we
looked at the Bible and saw the two extremes indicated by the fertility or the
prosperity worshippers on the one hand illustrating immoral degeneracy and the
Pharisees on the other hand.
That
is our backdrop. We are looking at how the sin nature pressures us in
these areas. I went back to CS Lewis a minute ago. Last time I
ended up and I want to go over it again this issue of how we know truth comes
into play is in the realm of apologetics when you as a believer are trying to
communicate the gospel to an unbeliever. You are talking to an
unbeliever. I am not talking about witnessing to a child. This may
come into play when children ask perceptive questions at times. You are
witnessing to someone who is a little more astute. They are older perhaps
and have heard all of these objections to Christianity. They have
legitimate questions. It is always difficult when you are witnessing to
unbelievers to decide which questions are legitimate questions and which
questions are merely diversions. They are trying to throw a red herring
across the trail to change the conversation. And you can talk to people
who have been around awhile and have heard this objection to Christianity, that
objection to Christianity and this misrepresentation. They think it is
legitimate. For them it is really an issue because they don’t want to put
their brains in neutral and accept some religious viewpoint or accept the Bible
just because somebody says so. They have significant questions about what
the Bible says. Many times they are coming from a wrong position.
We need to help them with those questions and answer them never getting
diverted off the course of focusing on the cross and the need for
salvation. Sometimes you have to lay that foundation and it takes
time. You may be the one who is planting the seed. Someone else
comes along and provides a little water. Somebody else comes along and
provides some light. Then eventually God is the one who makes it clear to
them. God the Holy Spirit makes it clear to them in salvation. In
the process what we are doing is we are talking to them about truth. We
are talking to the other person about how you know what is true. What is
the criterion for evaluating a truth claim? If I am going to say, “Jesus
is God.” how do you know that? What is your basis for saying
that?
You
are talking to someone who is an unbeliever and they say, “What is the ultimate
validation? How do you know that Jesus is God? How do you know that
that wasn’t something that the church added because they were so impressed with
the tradition that they started talking about Jesus as God? He never made
those claims.”
You
have to know some things about the Bible in order to go back and answer
that.
Then
they are going to ask the question, “How do you really trust the Bible?’
Ultimately
it comes back to this foundational issue - how do we know truth? What is
the ultimate criterion for determining whether this is true or this is
false? That is your foundation. When you do that, when you answer
that question, sometimes if you are talking with someone who is really bright;
you can really stub your toe here. We have all done it. God is
gracious enough so that often He manages to use it anyway or get around their
objection.
Let
me give you an illustration. I threw this chart up last week and I didn’t
differentiate things so I wanted to do that this time. Here is the
believer. On the other side is the unbeliever. They are trying to
talk. Remember that the believer is hopefully talking from a position of
divine viewpoint and absolute truth. So he has an accurate view of reality as
defined by God and defined by the Scripture. But he is talking to this
unbeliever.
Here
I am going to get very much like CS Lewis. I thought I would throw this
in since we are going to see the film on Saturday night. CS Lewis
emphasized that God defined the real. Throughout his apologetics and
philosophy was this idea that man in arrogance was living in an unreal world.
I think he is right about that. In arrogance we construct our own
view of reality. We try to live within that view of reality, but it is
not the way that God created the world. The unbeliever has generated this
castle in the sky that is his view of reality. The believer on the other
hand is in a rock solid biblical world view. They are trying to talk to
each other. They can go this way and that way and completely miss each
other because they are talking from two completely different
perspectives.
Now
the pressure that is on you as a believer is to try to step across the aisle as
it were to help this guy to get back to your side of the aisle. That is
where you get into trouble. We are struggling to find what our point of
common ground is. Where is the point that we can agree on something and
build an understanding and discussion so that I can bring him back over to
divine viewpoint? We have to struggle with this issue. You might
not have thought about it quite this way. If you have ever tried to
witness to an unbeliever you have all wrestled with this. It is almost as
good as a conservative Republican trying to talk to a liberal Democrat.
It
is two completely different constructs of reality. They are trying to
figure out something they can agree on. For the believer and the
unbeliever the difference is more extreme than that. So you have to ask
the question - what is the common ground? Now in doing that we can’t give
away or commit a strategic error. The unbeliever may be looking to
reason as his ultimate authority to determine truth and error.
We
sit back and say, “The Bible is rational.”
God
of course is ultimate reason and ultimate truth. God is logic. After all
we call Jesus the Logos. Where did we get the word logic if we didn’t get
it from the Greek word logos? It is from the same root.
Reason is embedded in logos. We believe that the Bible is
ultimately rational. The Bible is only ultimately rational if you don’t
presuppose the Bible as true. If you don’t presuppose the Bible as true
and you are coming and reading the Bible as a Hindu or agnostic or an atheist
then it sounds like a bunch of gobbledygook to you because you are coming from
a false position. So we think that we can go to logic and
rationalism. This is an apologetic strategy.
There
are a number of apologies that use this kind of strategy. I have
mentioned Gordon Clark in the past and there are a number of others. Norm
Geisler is another one. This is the main issue
- to appeal to logic. There is a way to appeal to logic within an
apologetic strategy without out appealing to autonomous logic. The
unbeliever looks at reason as autonomous – existing independent from the mind
of God. But you as a believer are not looking at reason as independent
from the mind of God, are you? So you aren’t looking at reason the same
way. That is important.
That
may seem really abstract and it is. Let’s say that you and I go outside
and we are talking with the head of the Biology or Botany Department at the
The
other way in which we often see this done is the unbeliever views reality as
historical evidence. It is empiricism. He views history, that which
is recorded, as objective reality. That is your ultimate appeal for what is
true. So when the believer comes along and agrees with the unbeliever on
empiricism then he is looking at historical evidence. But, the believer
is looking at historical evidence coming out of what kind of history? You
see the believer out working of the plan of God that is guided and directed by
God foreseen and overseen from eternity past working out so his view of history
is not the view of the unbeliever who sees history like Henry Ford who said,
“One damn thing after another.” It is just random events that have
happened. So ultimately when they are appealing to historical evidence,
they have completely different views of what that historical evidence is.
So
you can’t go over as a believer to an autonomous view of empiricism and try to
argue the guy back to a dependent view of empiricism. What is your
ultimate criterion? If you use his ultimate view of criterion then you
have a problem.
Now
the next view is mysticism. The apologist’s strategy here is called
fideism from the Latin word fide meaning faith. It is the idea of
“just believe.” It doesn’t matter if the tomb was empty or not. It
doesn’t matter if Jesus was God or not. It doesn’t matter if He died as a
substitute for your sins or as an example of how to live. You just have
to have meaning and purpose in your life. So take that existential leap
of faith and believe. Now you will have meaning in your life. Don’t
use any reason or logic at all. It totally divorces itself from reason,
logic or history. That is a mystical approach. So you see how each
view of how you think about truth affects your strategy for how you are going
to communicate to the unbeliever.
I
believe if you are going to be consistently biblical and you are looking for
that point of common ground with the unbeliever - this is why what I think is
very helpful for Christians. A lot of times we get enmeshed in a lot of
dialogue with unbelievers and the next thing you know - I don’t know the
answers to all of these questions and I feel so inadequate. They are
asking this and that and I don’t know the answers. We feel overwhelmed
because we have bought into either the rationalist approach or the empirical
approach. We think that we have to be able to marshal all of this
evidence to prove our point. You see the role of evidence isn’t to prove.
It isn’t the ultimate criterion. The role of evidence simply
validates. There is a difference between being ultimate truth and simply
being corroboration or validation. The ultimate issue is
revelation. God speaks.
Remember
the chart that I put up with the different views of knowledge. You have
got rationalism, empiricism and mysticism all out of autonomous human
viewpoint. Then there is that separate category - the difference between
the creature and creation (that important creator-creation distinction) is that
God has spoken. In Romans 1:18-19 God tells us something. He tells
us that dialoguing with that unbeliever, that unbeliever has an inner knowledge
of certainly about truth already. We don’t have to go to history to prove
that God exists. He already knows that God exists. In other words
the point of contact is in the image of God that he has. As warped as it
is by sin, we don’t have to go to the five truths of Aquinas. Those
arguments philosophically (this may blow you away) never work. They have
never been constructed in such a way that doesn’t give away the boat. You
have the argument and the anthropological argument and the moral
argument. My favorite was always the ontological argument. That is
what I wrote my master’s thesis on. But they don’t work because they are
never built on a biblical presupposition. They all go over to the
autonomous categories of the unbeliever, try to win him over by the dependent
categories of the Scripture.
NKJ Romans
NKJ Romans
It
is in them. It is made clear to them. The “them” here is
unbelievers. Every unbeliever knows in the core of his soul that God
exists, that he has violated God’s righteousness, and that there is
accountability. What he has been going all along is trying to suppress
this knowledge.
You
have to know the truth before you can suppress it. To suppress it means
to hold it down and reshape it and reformulate it according to your own
agenda. So from day one the carnal mind of the unbeliever is trying to
redefine reality in terms of its independence from God.
It’s
not fuzzy. At the Great White Throne Judgment God is not going to accept
from anybody the view that “Well, it just wasn’t clear.”
God
says, “It couldn’t have been more clear and you know it.”
Now
they are going to know it. They will be there without excuse. That
is what this says.
The
word that I find there that is so fascinating is the negative side. It is
like unapologetic instead of apologetic. Apologetic is a positive defense
that is given in a courtroom given for a defense.
Without
excuse means that they are without defense before the bar of God’s
judgment. That is how clear God says the evidence of His existence is.
No matter how atheistic they claim to be or no matter how agnostic they claim
to be, in the core of their soul they know that God exists and they know they
are created in the image of God. They know that they are sinners.
Not only that, when we start witnessing to them according to John 16 the Holy
Spirit is taking the message that we are communicating and He is using that to
convict them in regard to sin, righteousness, and judgment.
So
when you are communicating to an unbeliever, you have two things in your
favor. Don’t ever be intimidated by some PhD or smart aleck who thinks he
knows all of this stuff. You have got the reality of what God’s Word says
that they know that God exists. They are just suppressing it. The Holy
Spirit is going to take what you say and He is going to use it to peel back
that suppressive camouflage that they are using to expose it. That
may really get them angry. They may resist. They may
reject. They may become hostile and they may continue to be hostile
toward Christianity and toward you because your use of the Word is exposing
their strategy of suppression. Just because they don’t believe doesn’t
mean you didn’t do your job. Our job is simply to explain the gospel as
clearly as we can and answer as Peter says in I Peter 3:15…
NKJ 1
Peter
Try
not to make strategic errors in the way we present the gospel. God is
always going to work around whatever flaws we have. That is what is
great. It gives us great confidence that when we use this approach to
apologetics and witnessing. It is called the pre-suppositional approach
because the presupposition is that they already know that God exists. So
we are operating on that presupposition. We are not going to give up our
beliefs. We are not going to compromise our view of dependent reason and
empiricism in order to bring them over to our view. By doing this we are
in a greater way relying on God the Holy Spirit to make things very clear to
them.
So
Paul talks about that at the beginning of Romans. This is how important
it is to maintain the foundation of truth.
Now
I want to move to the next area in the study we are doing. We have gone
through mysticism. Then we looked at rationalism. Now we have been
looking at these examples of how they affect our view of knowledge. How
do we know what we should do? How do we know what is right? There
is one subject that comes up that is related to our study in Genesis on Tuesday
night related to divine guidance. That is the subject of the leading of
the Holy Spirit. How do we know when God the Holy Spirit is
leading? The big question is, is the leading of the Spirit
the same as divine guidance? The reason I ask that question is because in
common everyday fuzzy terminology we equate the two. Good theologians do
it. There are only two places in the Scripture that talk about the
leading of the Holy Spirit.
So
what we have to do is look at how those terms are used in those two passages
and then after we understand how it is used in those two passages then we come
back and say, “Is this talking about divine guidance?”
Now
let me define divine guidance. By divine guidance I am
talking about God helping us, communicating enabling us in the decision making
process overly guiding us in the course of our life.
So
what is the leading of the Holy Spirit? I am going to use a quote from Charles
Ryrie. Charles Ryrie makes a statement in the book “Basic
Theology”. First let me read the core verses to you that we are going to
talk about. These are the only two places that talk about the leading of
the Holy Spirit in the New Testament.
NKJ Romans
NKJ Galatians
Those
are the only two passages that talk about the leading of the Holy Spirit.
Now what is interesting is that if you read the surrounding context of both of
these verses, what you discover is that Paul is talking about the same
thing. That is the contrast between the believer who is living his life
in the filling of the Holy Spirit on the basis of the Holy Spirit and in the
light of the Holy Spirit versus the believer who is living his life in the
power of the sin nature, walking according to the flesh. That is the
context in both passages. Neither passage is talking about how to make
decisions. Neither passage is talking about God’s special revelation or
internal revelation or direction in life. Neither of those passages is
talking about the will of God in that sense. Both of these passages are
talking about the contrast the believers who are living their life energized by
God the Holy Spirit versus those who are energized by the sin nature. It
is important for us to understand this so we get a grasp of what this is
saying.
I
hear this terminology from believer after believer after believer that it is
how a pastor is led to teach or this person was led to be a missionary in
If
you don’t get anything out of sitting under my ministry when people start
saying things, ask “Okay, where do you get that from the Bible?
Let’s look at the text. Let’s look at what the Scripture
says. Let’s not talk about what some theologian said. Let’s not
talk about what your favorite pastor said. Let’s not talk about what
Robby said. Let’s look at what the Scripture says. Go through the
Scripture.
I
am not picking on Dr. Ryrie. Dr. Ryrie was one of my favorite professors
at Dallas Seminary. I spent time in his office discussing different
things with him. I remember at different times going in and complaining
about some other professors and poor theology with Tommy Ice. We were
trouble makers from day 1.
We
would go in and say, “Dr. Ryrie, we can’t believe that they would let this guy
teach this in seminary.”
We
always had a receptive ear. But I don’t agree with everything that Dr.
Ryrie said. Just to give you a little background. What happens when
you are going through a good seminary is you learn who is who and who says what
and who teaches what. You learn something about the strain of ideas
that go through the history Christianity. You don’t what just hear one
person teaches that the Bible says. You learn that none of us just popped
up out a vacuum. We were all influenced by various pastors, teachers,
professors and parents all through our life. You can trace out where
these ideas come from. There are some tremendous theologians within our
heritage. Dr. Ryrie is one of them. I remember when I was
probably in college I read his book “A Survey of Bible Doctrine”. I can’t
tell you how many times I have used that and referred to it when I have gone
through basic series. I have used it as a textbook on basic theology. It
is tremendous. The work that Dr. Ryrie has done especially in the field
of the authority of Scripture and bibliology as well as in dispensations is
just tremendous.
I
will never forget this. In my first day of class sitting in a large lecture
auditorium in Lamb Hall would seat about 200 students sitting there about the
fourth row back sitting there.
I
thought, “Pinch me. I am sitting in a classroom. I get to sit in here two
days a week for a whole semester and listen to him teach. This is
just tremendous.”
He
must have been about 50 at that time. I think he is 81 or 82 now.
He was frail. It looked like if anyone breathed hard it would knock him
down. He has had some real health problems over the years. His
theology while it is very good in a number of places also had some areas that
are not so good especially in the area of the Christian life and the Holy
Spirit. He has made several changes down through the years.
I
remember I was in a Bible class over here at
I
kept thinking, “There are things in here that just don’t jive with what I have
been taught.”
I
didn’t realize until later on that Ryrie at that time he was the head of the
Theology Department at Dallas Seminary did not have the same view of the
spiritual life that Dr. Chaffer had or that Dr. Walvoord had. A lot of
people don’t pick up on these differences. Even within Dallas Seminary at
that time there were different ways and I believe conflicting ways professors
viewed how to live the Christian life and conflicting ways on how they taught
the filling of the Spirit, leading of the Spirit and walking by the
Spirit. You can go back through Dr. Ryrie’s writings and I can identify
three distinct positions over the years - different positions (not just
refinements) that he has taken with regard to some of these issues.
In fact I ran across this quote a few weeks ago and was stunned. As much
as I have learned from Dr. Ryrie on the whole issue of revelation, one of his
(that is what I had him for at
“For all who are being led by the Spirit of God these are the
sons of God.”
Leading is a confirmation of sonship, for sons are led. This work of
guidance is
particularly
the work of the Spirit.
Then
he gives his biblical support.
Romans
The ministry of the Spirit is one of the most assuring ones
for the Christian. The child of God never needs to walk in the
dark. He is always free to ask and receive directions from the Spirit
Himself.
Does
the Spirit act independently from the Scriptures to communicate this? He
is not clear here. Ryrie would say yes. I know that. This is
just fuzzy terminology. There are a couple of things that I want to point
out so that maybe you will read a little more intelligently when you read
things.
Notice
how he interprets this phrase “the sons of God.”
He
is equating sonship here to every believer. That is an important
exegetical decision. Is sonship in Romans 8:14 a term that refers to
every believer or is it a term that refers to only certain kinds of
believers? Now you don’t have to guess at that. It is clear from
the Greek. When you get over into John 1: 12…
NKJ John
It
is the same phrase in the English but there are different words in the
Greek. In the Greek he used the word teknon
over in John 1 which refers to a child. In Romans
Scofield
in his Scofield Reference Bible indicates that an Old Testament believer can be
saved by keeping the law. That is wrong. It led him to a number of
erroneous statements in his study notes related to the law.
Chaffer
thought that when John the Baptist baptized Jesus it was sprinkling. That
is because Chaffer was a Presbyterian. Did you know that? Most
people don’t. Walvoord was a Presbyterian. Guess what? John
Walvoord sprinkled his infant sons when they were babies because he was a
Presbyterian. These guys didn’t hold everything right.
When
John Walvoord in the early 80’s took on a project to abridge Dr. Chaffer’s
systematic theology, he abridged it to 2 volumes. I think it was a
horrendous mistake. I can understand why they did it. Most
people don’t know this.
Chaffer
looked at the 8 volumes and he said, “Wow.”
And
you start reading it and you realize that on about every other page he quotes
some other theologian. And sometimes he will quote Shed or Benjamin
Warfield for 5 pages of fine print. Why is he doing
this? At the time he was writing his systematic theology as a
dispensationalist Presbyterian he was under attack from Presbyterians that
dispensationalism wasn’t orthodox. And so what he is doing in his
systematic theology is as he goes through theology proper Christology and pneumatology, he is quoting from all of these orthodox
theologians (Shed, Warfield, Calvin) to show that as dispensationalists we
don’t disagree with the foundations of what these men are saying. We are
not heretics. It is an apologetic approach to systematic theology.
That is why it is there. So what Walvoord was doing was going in and getting
rid of all of these quotes and making it read smoothly. That would reduce
the size of his systematic theology by at least 2/3rds because it had so many
quotes in it. That got in the way for a lot of people. But Walvoord
did something else.
At
the time that he did this I was in PhD studies in historical theology under
John Hannah. John Hannah had written his PhD dissertation on origins and
the foundation of the
“You
the opposite of what he originally said.”
Walvoord
said, “That is because he was wrong.”
Walvoord
was probably as close a student follower of Chaffer as you can be. You
read Walvoord’s book on the Holy Spirit. It is
a thinly massaged redo of Chaffer’s book on the Holy Spirit. He just
changes the organization a little bit. It is so obvious that Chafer
mentored him. He is so close to Chafer. He hardly drifts at
all. But he disagreed with him in at least 70 different places. He
couldn’t go along. He had to change it. That is the right thing to
do. If you are going to abridge something, abridge it. Don’t change
it. Don’t make them say something that they didn’t say originally.
So we have these men and they said some great and wonderful things and taught
some things. But they also have some things in their thinking that aren’t
quite kosher in our look at the word. So let’s look at these
verses. Ryrie says are support. I don’t want to hit all the verses;
I just want to hit a couple of them.
In
Acts
NKJ Acts
What
do we have here? We have a miraculous transportation number one.
That doesn’t happen today. We have the Holy Spirit giving specific
special revelation and guidance. This isn’t what we talked about in terms
of this inner guidance of the leadership of the Holy Spirit. This is special
revelation.
NKJ Acts
Peter
is being told to go from the men of Cornelius to take them the gospel and to
officially take the gospel for the first time to gentiles the Spirit said …
“Behold three men are seeking you.”
This
isn’t some sort of vibration, liver quiver, sense or impression. This is
special revelation. This is specific revelation.
NKJ Acts
13:2 As they ministered to the Lord
and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, "Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul
for the work to which I have called them." 3 Then, having
fasted and prayed, and laid hands on them, they sent them away.
This
is specific special revelation. It may have been overt. It is
audible voice from the Holy Spirit that everybody in that group heard.
NKJ Acts
16:6 Now when they had gone through
I
don’t know how he did it because that is all it says. Whether there was
it was through overt revelation or circumstances it is not clear. It
seems to be another case of special revelation.
NKJ Acts
20:22 "And see, now I go bound
in the spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that will happen to me
there, 23 "except that the Holy Spirit testifies in every city,
saying that chains and tribulations await me. 24 "But none of
these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may
finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus,
to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.
Paul
is talking on the way to
Prophecy
was still active. If you keep going to
Paul
in his stubbornness just kept going. The point is that the Holy Spirit is
testifying in every city. That is special revelation. This isn’t
some internal liver quiver, impression movement, some sense of
weightiness. It is none of that. It is special revelation.
So
our conclusion is that when Dr. Ryrie gives all of these verses that it doesn’t
fit what he is talking about. If that is not talking about divine
guidance of the Holy Spirit in terms that we talk about divine guidance then
what about Romans 8:14? Now we have to understand what Romans
Let
us pray.