The Alternative

Dr. Tony Evans: God is not like you and me. His ways are not like our ways. His thoughts are not like our thoughts. Getting to know God starts with letting Him speak through Scripture.

If you're going to understand God, He must explain Himself. Revelation is simply God making Himself known.

Guest (Male): This is the Alternative broadcast, featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans.

We all have questions about life, but some answers can only come from a heavenly source. Today, Dr. Evans helps us see how God uses Scripture to reveal His thoughts, His will, and His ways. Let's join him as he explains why understanding God has to begin with receiving what He's chosen to make known.

Dr. Tony Evans: Revelation is simply God making Himself known. Why do we need revelation? Let's go back to our favorite passage, Isaiah 55, beginning in verse 8: "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways," declares the Lord.

Verse 9 says: "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." Revelation is important because God is totally different than us.

Because of this huge gap between us and God, the infinite versus the finite, if you're going to understand God, He must explain Himself because He is the unfathomable God. Perhaps one way to understand this is a parade.

When you look at a parade, you watch a parade linearly. That is from beginning to end, from start to finish, from the first band to the last band. You don't stand and watch a parade and see the whole parade at the same time. It's impossible.

You can't see it because where you're standing is a limited view. Now, you can get a little better view of the parade if you go up in a building. But even from a window in a high building, you can only see as far as the linear aspects of the parade will allow for.

If you go up in a Goodyear blimp or something that takes you higher, your scope is broadened. Well, when it comes to understanding God, you can't get that high. So you can't figure Him out. You can't reduce Him to the definition of men. Therefore, He must reveal Himself.

There is another reason why God must reveal Himself and why we cannot figure Him out on our own. Ephesians 4:18 says our understanding has been darkened by sin. So, whatever abilities we have have been contaminated by our sin.

Since sin acts as a blinder, it limits spiritual receptivity or the ability to understand. So even what you could understand has been thwarted by our inability to see clearly because of the stigma of sin that has infected and affected the whole human race.

Regarding the nature of revelation, revelation can be divided into two categories. Theologically, we call it general revelation and then we call it special revelation. Let me say a word about general revelation because our focus today is on special revelation.

General revelation refers to God revealing Himself in nature so that men have a clear picture that He exists. It is the manifestation of His attributes, of His abilities, of His characteristics validating His existence.

Psalm 19 says the heavens are telling of the glory of God and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day they pour forth speech, night to night they reveal knowledge. They don't speak, there are no words, their voice is not heard, but their line has gone out through all the earth.

In other words, creation manifests that God does exist. One of the other things you'll find in New York, you'll find it in every city, but New York has a plethora of them, and that is museums.

Museums are where great artists have painted great portraits. When you come to a great portrait, the Mona Lisa, or you go to Rome and you see the Sistine Chapel, you look at the works of Michelangelo or Picasso.

You don't look at a painting that is obviously a masterpiece and assume there was no painter. You don't look at a painting and say, "Nobody did this." You don't look at a painting and say, "Oh, this evolved into this."

It didn't take hundreds of years where paint just got sucked into the canvas and that's how this beautiful masterpiece showed up in this museum. It's amazing God doesn't get the respect of a good painter.

Look at the canvas He's painted on. The heavens are declaring, screaming the glory of God. The Bible says you've got to be a fool, Psalm 14:1, to wonder if God exists. Can't you see the painting? Don't you see the canvas?

Every time you say, "Wasn't this day beautiful?" you're saying, "Can't He paint?" When you see the night heavens and the stars and you look out on a starlit night, it's screaming, "Can't He paint?" It's manifesting the glory of God. The fool has said in his heart there is no God.

Look at a couple of verses maybe you haven't noticed in the Bible before. Acts chapter 14, verse 17: "And yet He, God, did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good and gave you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness." God did not leave Himself without a witness.

Now let me read one other verse before I make a comment. Chapter 17, verse 24. This is a great section: "The God who made the world and all the things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands."

"Neither is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gave to all life, breath, and all things. And He made from one every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation."

He did this so "that they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not very far from each of one of us. For in Him we live and move and exist, and even some of your prophets have said, 'For we also are His offspring.'"

We have insurance policies. Your insurance policies have a clause in them. The clause is called an "Act of God." Now, that's referring to something negative that you have no control over that God gets the blame for in a clause in your insurance policy.

Your insurance policy says if an earthquake happens, you couldn't control that. That's an act of God. Or some hail storm or something that nature wreaks havoc, that's an act of God.

It's amazing how much attention God gets in writing for stuff that goes wrong. But it's hard for Him to get any credit for the regular stuff that goes right. Every now and then stuff goes wrong.

Even if you're having a bad day, bad month, or bad year, that's still a small portion of your life. Acts says, Luke says when he wrote Acts, that every time you eat a meal, it's an act of God. Did you know that?

You ask why you should give thanks every time you eat. Because every time you eat, God had to do something for that to happen. You trace it back. You say, "God didn't do this, I got this from the store."

Hello? Whether it's meat, fruit, or vegetables, or let's go further, ice cream, God had to be acting in His creation to produce the ground that produced the grass that the cow ate that produced the milk that wound up being ice cream.

It all funnels back to God, and that's an act of God too. In fact, that's His most regular act. He has painted a canvas over all creation.

Guest (Male): The evidence of God is woven into everything we see. But when Dr. Evans continues our message in just a moment, he'll show how ignoring that evidence comes with serious consequences.

First, though, be sure to check out how you can receive a copy of Tony's current audio series, The Glory of God's Word. This ten-message collection explores the nature, purpose, and divine power of Scripture, showing how God's word can renew your mind, direct your steps, and transform your life from the inside out.

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In it, Dr. Evans challenges us to move beyond simply knowing about God to pursue the kind of deep, personal relationship with Him that transforms us from the inside out. Request your copy of this special resource package online today at tonyevans.org, or call us at 1-800-800-3222, where someone from our friendly resource team will be glad to assist you.

Right now, let's get back to Dr. Evans with more of today's message.

Dr. Tony Evans: Romans 1. The final word I want to say on this because I want to talk a moment about special revelation. Romans 1 says this: "For the wrath of God," verse 18, "is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known from God is evident within them, within their own conscience."

"For God made it evident to them." How? "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power, His divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so they are without excuse."

No man, no woman, nowhere can ever argue, "I did not have enough data to believe in God." Nobody can ever say that. Because God says, "I painted on the canvas of creation, and I painted it everywhere so that everyone can see."

You say you can't see God? Well, you can't see wind. But its effects are clear. If the effects are there, you don't have to see the cause to know the cause is real.

But when we talk about special revelation, we're talking about God giving details about Himself that general revelation does not provide you. It picks up where creation leaves off so that now you can not only understand God through what He's written but meet Him because He's a person behind the words.

Hebrews 1:1: "God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, who is appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world."

"And He is the radiance of His glory, the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high."

Now, guess what He says. He says in the old days, God spoke a lot of ways. He spoke through nature, He spoke through fire, He spoke through signs, through wonders, through dreams, through visions, through donkeys. He spoke through all kind of ways, but they were all leading up to the main way.

These were all small highways leading up to the main road. And He says in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son. Now, what was the job of Jesus Christ? I've got to show you this. John chapter 1. John chapter 1, verse 14 says: "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

What became flesh? The Word. Okay, you see the relationship between Word and person? The Word, that which is spoken, became a person, flesh. That which is spoken became a person and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Now look at verse 18: "No man has seen God at any time, no exceptions." Jesus Christ came to give details. And He gave details in two forms: by His personal life, visual details, and by His written word, verbal details.

Special revelation is where God gives you details about Himself. So, what you have in the Bible are details about God. And you can see it in what God says, and you can see it in what Jesus did, because what Jesus was was the visible manifestation of God. What the Bible is is the verbal manifestation of God. And since the Word, verbal, became flesh, visible, the living Word and the written Word are the same Word.

An important verse is John chapter 5. In John 5:39, this is what we read: "You search the Scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life, and it is these that bear witness of Me." You see what He says? He says you read the Bible, but you've got to look for Me. Because the Scriptures, the written Word, is about the living Word.

Chapter 6, verse 63: "It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life." He says these words are not just words; they're living words because the Word became alive.

So when we talk about the Bible, we're talking about God giving us details so that we can understand Him a little better since He must reveal Himself. What then are the benefits of Scripture?

Benefit number one of looking at the Bible as divine revelation: it becomes an objective standard by which to assess and experience divine reality. For many of us, the Bible is a book about God only. Now, it is that, it is a book about God.

But the purpose of giving us the book about God is to give us the ability to see things from a spiritual perspective and not from the finite earthly perspective everybody else is looking at that same thing from. It's a new pair of eyeglasses.

It is the ability to see in the invisible realm this reality of the revelation of God that otherwise could not be seen or understood. Another benefit is to reveal God's purposes and God's ways. Psalm 25, verse 4 says that God wants us to know His purposes and His ways.

Why do I need Scripture to know His ways? Because His ways are not our ways. He wants you to know His ways. Why else does God give us Scripture? To fix what's broken in our lives. Let me read you James chapter 1, verse 19. This is what James 1:19 says.

"Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to deliver your soul." That means fix what's wrong, deliver the soul or the self or the being.

Receive the word, and if you receive it—that doesn't mean just hear it preached—if you take it to heart, take it in, it will deliver you. Why? Because it's not just a book; it's alive.

Another thing that the Word will do: it'll reveal why you ought to worship God. Psalm 89, verses 5 and 6 says anybody who can do this, you ought to be magnifying Him. You ought to be praising Him.

When you go to get your car fixed, they look in a book. They see what kind of car it is, they find the match, they find the parts, they order the parts, they fix your car. They've got on record what it needs to get it fixed.

The Scripture is designed to let you have God's perspective on how to get it fixed. The longest chapter in the Bible is Psalm 119. Every verse of the longest chapter in the Bible talks about the importance of the word of God.

Every verse in there tells you what it can do, tells you what it is, tells you why you need it. David says, "I can't live without it."

Something very interesting in closing. The Wise Men came to see Jesus. When they got to Jerusalem, they asked the religious leaders and scholars of the day, "Where can we find the baby that was to be born King of the Jews? Where is He?"

The biblical scholars of the day said, "Bethlehem. If you just go down the street five miles, you will find Him." The Magi, wise men, went to Bethlehem, found Jesus, and worshiped Him.

But wait a minute. It was the Bible scholars, it was the folks who went to seminary, that told the wise men where Jesus was because they had studied the Scriptures, had read Micah 5:2 that prophesied about the birth of Jesus seven hundred years before Jesus was ever born.

And they were saying, "The Bible says you'll find Jesus five miles down the road in a little town called Bethlehem." But guess what? The folks with less Bible knowledge took the trip.

The folks with more Bible knowledge stayed in Jerusalem. They had more information, but they didn't bother to take the trip. God gave you the Bible not so you can tell folks what you know. He gave you the Bible so you would take the trip.

He gave you the Bible so you would visit the Savior. He gave you the Bible so that you would worship Almighty God. And if the Bible doesn't lead you to take the trip, then you've studied it in vain. You can study the Bible for seventy years, but if you don't take the trip, you have studied in vain. God has revealed Himself. But He doesn't reveal Himself just because He has nothing to do. He reveals Himself so that you can come to know in your experience the Almighty living God.

Guest (Male): Dr. Tony Evans, reminding us that a deeper relationship with God starts by listening to what He's already said.

Now, don't forget to take advantage of our special double offer: all ten full-length messages in Tony's current collection, The Glory of God's Word, along with his insightful book, The Power of Knowing God. They're both yours with our thanks when you make a donation to help keep this listener-supported program coming your way.

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There's a difference between human opinion and divine truth. Tomorrow, Dr. Evans unpacks how the Bible wasn't just written by people; it was God-breathed in order to equip us for everything He's called us to do. I hope you'll join us.