Telling the Truth

Jill Briscoe: Today on Telling the Truth with Stuart and Jill Briscoe,

Stuart Briscoe: Life lessons are all about coming to know God.

And what it says here is that God's divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through knowing him. Who called us by his own glory and goodness.

Through these, he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them, you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

Jill Briscoe: If you're alive, you're on a journey of knowledge that doesn't end when you reach a certain age. And today on Telling the Truth, Stuart Briscoe encourages you to continue learning about God and his ongoing purposes for you. But first, the Bible's wisdom teaches you a lot about how to succeed in every dimension of life.

And Stuart and Jill want to help you master the art of being successful with their three-message series, A Lifetime of Wisdom. It's our thanks for your gift today to keep this broadcast going strong. As an additional token of our appreciation, we'll send you a beautiful framable art piece featuring Hebrews 10:23 that will help you remember God's faithfulness daily.

So call today to request your copy. 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388. Or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org.

Now, here's Stuart with today's message, What I'm Still Learning.

Stuart Briscoe: Peter Drucker, I think it is, said an educated person is somebody who has learned how to learn and never stops learning. I have adapted that slightly.

And I like to say to people, a disciple is somebody who has learned how to learn and never stops learning. That's basically what we're talking about in this series.

I want to read to you a passage of scripture. First of all, today it's found in the first chapter of 2 Peter. It's on the subject of learning how to learn and never stop learning and what the results will be. 2 Peter chapter 1, verse 3.

Speaking of God and the Lord Jesus, it says, "His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through the knowledge of him." All right. Now, just think about that.

Life lessons are all about coming to know God. What it says here is that God's divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through knowing him.

Who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these, he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them, you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. So, how do we participate in the divine nature and how do we escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires? The answer is through the very great and precious promises he has given us.

Well, how do we know what they are? Well, we've got to learn them. You've got to learn what the promises of God are. "For this reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness knowledge, and to knowledge self-control, and to self-control perseverance, and to perseverance godliness, and to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love." All right.

So if we've got to learn those, then we've got to keep adding to these things that we've learned. So what's that about? Learning how to learn and never stop learning. You say, "So what? Why?" Read on. "If you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

So apparently, it is possible to say we know Christ, but to be ineffective and unproductive in that knowledge. Now, how do we avoid that? Well, he tells us. If all the things that we have been adding up along the way, as we've been learning how to learn, never stop learning, if those things are in us, they are the things that will stop us being ineffective or unproductive in the knowledge of him.

"They will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." Now here's a warning. "But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins." Wow.

Now, I would submit to you, that is a very, very powerful passage of scripture. And I want to tell you this, if you forget every single thing I say, whatever you do, don't forget 2 Peter chapter 1 and set your heart on studying it, learning it and applying it in your life. For it will say far more than I can say.

Did I've been asked to speak to you for a little while, and that's what I propose to do. And it's simply a case of illustrating these things from my own experience. You'll notice that I keep talking about what I learned and am still learning about certain fundamental things. The first of which is what I learned and am still learning about the Bible.

Now, I think those of you who know me and know what I do, know that the Bible plays a pretty large role in my life. That that's kind of a given. But I think it would be true to say that many of the people in the culture in which we live at the present time, not only don't know much about the Bible, but that most of them who don't know much about the Bible, don't know much about it because they don't want to know about it.

That they have already decided they can't figure it out, or there's no point working on it because it's irrelevant, because it is outdated, because it's wrong. I saw somebody on television the other day pontificating on the fact that the Bible was written by a lot of ignorant people and is full of a lot of ignorance. I thought, "Well, at least he was able to express his view of the Bible." I wonder actually if he'd ever read it. Anyway, that's by the way.

The question is, given the general trend in our culture in which we live today. How does somebody like me get churned up out of this culture? I was that somebody who could take the Bible seriously in a culture that is drifting further and further away from it.

Well, I think I can tell you how I began to learn the Bible, and how I'm continuing to learn it. I remember a very formative experience when I was a young boy. I got into a conversation with my mother one morning because I startled her by simply announcing to her, "I am not a Christian."

Now, I was just a young boy at the time, but I needed to tell my mother, "I am not a Christian." Now that was quite a shock to her system. She immediately rushed to my side, bearing a large Bible, which she opened to chapter 3 of the book of Revelation, and read verse 20 totally out of context.

"Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him and will sup with him and he with me." This was in the old King James English, because it was so long ago, that was all we had. All right.

Now, fortunately, my mother not only knew her Bible, not only studied her Bible, but she knew how to interpret a Bible into the thought patterns of her child, which is part of a mother's job. Did you hear that? That's part of a mother's job. Learning how to interpret the Bible into the thought patterns of the child.

Not just a mother, obviously the father plays a role as well.

Jill Briscoe: You're hearing from Stuart Briscoe today on Telling the Truth. He's coming right back, but first, there's a special resource you'll want to hear about.

Stuart Briscoe: My mother fortunately was able to do that. And so she said, "Well, this is really talking about the fact that a Christian is somebody who has a relationship with Jesus, and the best way of describing that is that Jesus comes to live in their hearts. But he never forces an issue, he never bangs down the door, he just knocks on the door and asks to be invited."

So I said, "Well, how do you invite him?" She said, "You pray." I said, "Well, what words do you use?" She said, "I can help you with that." So she said, "I will pray and if this is what you mean to say, you pray after me." So I did.

And as soon as we'd finished praying, I said to her, "Did he?" She said, "Did he what?" I said, "Did he do what he said he would?" She said, "Yes." So then I asked a second important question, "How do you know?"

You see what kind of a kid I was. All right. I prayed this prayer. I want to know, did he do what he said he would do? Okay, if they say yes, I say, "Okay, I want to know how you know you know that."

And she said, "You can always rely on the words of Jesus because they are the words of a gentleman." Now that may not sound like much to people living in America in the 21st century. But I can tell you living in the 1930s in England, there was a certain attitude where they would say, "An Englishman's word is his bond."

If he says it, he means it, you can rely on it. Many business deals didn't have a contract, they didn't sign anything, they shook hands. That was it. An Englishman's word is a bond.

"Jesus is a perfect gentleman," she said, "you can rely implicitly on what he said." That sowed the seed in my thinking. This book is reliable. Now, of course, I had to go a long way from that, but that was the start.

Now, fast forward a few years. I started to take this more seriously now. I started looking into this Bible of mine, and I really want to get the hang of it. I read something that was helpful. This is what it said. "When you come across an ancient document, you start out by accepting its self claims as true until proven otherwise."

When you approach an ancient document, you accept its faith claims, its self-claims as true until proven otherwise. So I started looking into some of the Bible's self-claims. What it claims for itself. One of them, 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 16. This is what it says. "All scripture is God-breathed." In other words, it's not just human beings dreaming up some theories.

There's an action of God where God breathes his truth into human instruments. Now, that takes a bit of getting your arms around. "All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." So, this is what I said. "All right, this is an ancient document."

"The way you approach an ancient document is by starting out by accepting its self-claims until proved otherwise." So I started reading it. And I asked myself a question. "Well, it says here it will teach me. Is it teaching me anything?" Of course, it was teaching me stuff.

Did it sometimes rebuke me? Yes, unfortunately it did. Did it correct me? Yes. You say, "That's the same thing, isn't it?" No. To rebuke is to say, "That's not the way to do it." To correct is to say, "This is the way to do it." We're better rebukers than correctors usually.

Did it correct me? Yes, constantly. Did was it training me in righteousness? I didn't even know what righteousness was until I got into here. I didn't know how you did it. I didn't know what it looked like.

Did it train me in that? Yes. It says here, "so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." Did I find myself being more and more equipped to deal with life, and work, and relationships? The answer is yes, I was. So I concluded, "This thing lives up to its faith claims."

It lives up to its self-claims. It lives up to its billing. Now how in the world are you going to know that until you try it? You can't. You can't. And so I began to develop a high view of scripture.

And that required me now to do something about it. I couldn't say, "I have a high view of scripture," and demonstrate how high a view I have by ignoring it. I say, "I have a high view of scripture, and I will demonstrate how high my view is by reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting it and sharing what I discover." And that's what I began to learn and I'm still learning about my Bible.

Now what would you say about your relationship to your Bible? All right, moving right along. What I learned and I'm still learning about God. One of the things I learned about God is that human beings cannot figure him out. Human beings cannot figure him out.

That the best we can do is speculate, but as soon as you speculate, everybody else is speculating, and they speculate on your speculations, so you finish up being totally speculative. And the best you could come up with is, "I think." But then you look for somebody else who thinks the same.

And you cling together and hope you've got it right. That's that's the best you can hope for if you start with human beings figuring out God. You say, "Well, can we ever know God then?" Well, yes, there's one alternative to us figuring out God, and that is God revealing himself.

God revealing himself. And that is clearly what scripture teaches. In the Old Testament, it puts it like this, "The heavens declare the glory of God." In the New Testament, it says it differently. "The invisible things of God are clearly seen in the things that are made." Both those are saying the same thing.

They are saying that God reveals himself in his creation. In the created, there is evidence of the creator. That's what it's saying. So scripture is very clear, it says that the way we're going to know God is through God revealing himself, and he starts that revelation in creation.

Now, Elizabeth Barrett Browning puts it this way: "Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush a-flame with God. He who sees takes off his shoes and worships. The rest sit round, plucking blackberries, and dove their natural faces unawares." All right.

Two views of creation. You can move around in the creation with a fundamental assumption that the Creator is revealed in the created, and you look for it, and when you look for it, you see it, and you recognize it, and you respond. You take off your shoes and worship.

And all around you there are people who are not seeing anything that you're seeing, are not responding in any way that you're responding, totally unawares. Does that describe our culture? You bet it does.