So if you didn't get a handout, you should get one. Looks like everybody, most people have one. The topic, and I guess if I have, if you have the handout, I don't have to write on the board. Anything I would write on the board is on the handout. So don't worry about the board. The topic today is divine revelation and the two types, general and special. And some of the sections of the Westminster Confession, Chapter 1, Sections 1, 4, and 5 are some of the ones for our consideration. Let's open up with a word of prayer and then we'll get started. Father, thank you for this beautiful day that you've made for us. We're grateful to be here on the Lord's day, and we pray, Lord, that your spirit would help us to pay attention, illumine our minds, help us to learn from this lesson on divine revelation, and also help us, Lord, after this to prepare our hearts to worship you. In Jesus' name, amen. So, just quickly, the words to define for us are divine on the one hand and revelation on the other. Someone give me a definition of the word divine. From God. Okay. From God, okay. I remember there's a dish called chicken divine. It's chicken with... cheese and and broccoli it's pretty good yeah and it's from God divine that's right okay the divine might just definition would be God and then revelation By the way, the last book of the Bible is Revelation, singular, not revelations, plural. Some people get bothered by that. What does revelation mean? What's a working definition of revelation? Sure. Yep. Showing or demonstrating. or communicating. So, with divine revelation, what we're talking about is God communicating. It's divine, and it's revelation. It's God communicating. And, as we think about God communicating, what worldview implications are associated with divine revelation? Another way of asking that would be, what things are assumed If you just say that there is such a thing as divine revelation, what kinds of things are assumed worldview considerations based on the fact that there is divine revelation? One would be that God wants to make Himself known. Yep, yep. Right. And that God exists. Yep, without a God, there is no divine, there is no revelation, because there would be no divine. Another thing is what you mentioned, that He is a communicating God. I suppose there are some worldviews out there that envision God to be something that, some energy or force that is just unknown. People say, well, how could you say something about God? If there is a God, He must be unknown. He must be so great that He's unknown to us. It would be impossible for us to know anything about Him. And what we would say is, no. God is the kind of God that reveals things. He's a communicating God. And then, lastly, is that there are receivers of communication. God picks up a phone and starts talking, and you say, well, is there anybody on the other end? When God communicates, He's not communicating to no one. He is communicating to someone, namely, to His image-bearers. So, with the concept of divine revelation, those things are assumed. That God exists, that He is a communicating God, and that there are receivers of that communication. As an analogy, you might think of a radio station. What are the things that are assumed in the fact that there are such things as radio stations? Think of K-Love that you were listening to on the way here. Maybe you weren't. Well, same type of thing, radio towers. If there are radio stations, there are radio towers. If there are radio stations, there are radio waves. If there are radio stations, there are radios, which we call it a radio, but in older times, it was called a receiver. That's what they called it. It's a receiver. Do you have a receiver in your car? Turn on your receiver. Well, we don't talk that way now. You just say, turn on your radio. But the fact that radio stations exist means that there's a tower, there's radio waves, there are receivers, and you can think of that as you think of revelation. Okay, so two kinds of revelation that we're looking at, general revelation and special revelation. We're gonna talk about the two, and you think about what is included in the two, what's the scope, and think of the two audiences. General revelation has an audience, and then special revelation has an audience. There are more distinctions between the two types of revelation, but audiences are one that maybe we don't think about all that often. General revelation is communicated to all people generally. Sometimes that word general is perhaps defined or understood a little differently. Sometimes you can use the word general and you don't, if I'm just speaking generally, that might mean something. But when we talk about general revelation, we're talking about general in that sense is the way we would think of general anesthesia. Why is it called general anesthesia? What does it do? Knocks you out. It's the type of anesthetic that doesn't just put your jaw to sleep, right? Yeah, as opposed to local, right? You can deaden something to pull a tooth out, or I could say, yeah, this is general anesthesia, it's gonna knock you, it covers the whole body, the whole body generally. You're out, and I could, work on your fingernail or your toe or your tooth or even cut you open and do heart surgery on you, right? Because the whole body is knocked out. I'm not going to call it that. Yes. General revelation General Revelation's audience is to all of mankind generally. That means every single person, every image bearer gets General Revelation. Okay, and as you think about that, we might start trying to get our heads around the idea that we are talking about anthropology here. We're talking about the study of man, which is what anthropology is. When the scripture tells us things about all people in general, And one of the things it tells us is that God has revealed something to all people in general. One of the things that I think is interesting is that scripture tells us about mankind, doesn't it? Scripture says that all people are liars, all men are liars. And that means that I could meet somebody that I've never met before, and I know something about them. I know something about them because God tells me in the Bible that in general, All people are liars. And so I know that that applies to everybody. People that I've never met before, I say, gee, I already know something about you. I know that you're a dang liar. And what if they don't admit that they are? What if I meet somebody and I say, hey, let's say I'm walking through the way of the master evangelism, and I say, I know that you've told lies. And they say, no, I haven't. Well, yeah, I know that they're lying. Well, what if I go to somebody and I say, God has made a revelation of Himself to you, and I know that He has. And they say, no, He hasn't. I don't know anything about God. God has not revealed himself to me at all. You might think of people like Richard Dawkins or some of the atheists of the past who said, yeah, the problem, the reason I don't believe in God is because he's never made himself known to me. If he would just reveal himself, if he would just communicate, yeah, then maybe I'd believe in him. What we would say is, he has done that, and we know that he's done that because he's told us that he's done that. He has revealed himself generally. Okay, what is the scope, the content, and the form of general revelation? By the way, GR is general revelation, SR is special revelation. What is the scope? How much information is there? How much communication is there? What's the content? What are the actual pieces of the revelation? And then, what is the form? How does God do it? Does God whisper audibly to every single image bearer in their ear and say, hey, I exist? Is that the way that he does it? Is it just that he exists? Is there more to it? Does he do it audibly? Well, that's what we're going to look at in Romans. So Romans 1, 19 and 20, By the way, I'm sure that the scripture passages are there in the handout, so if you guys want to get there. By the way, Romans 1, 1 and 2, we're going to live there. So, Matthew, if you have Romans 1, 19 and 20, that'd be great. clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse." Very good. Yep. For what can be known about God is plain to them, and listen to this piece, because God has shown it to them. God is the one who has shown it to them, and what can be known about God is plain to them. It's obvious to them, it's evident to them, and God is the one who delivers the information. And, it says, His invisible attributes, namely His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived. That means that the perceiver has perceived these things. I don't remember when I was an unbeliever, I don't remember knowing that God had eternal power in a divine nature. If you would have asked me that as an unbeliever, I'd say, I don't know what you're talking about. But, we have to remember that Scripture says more about mankind than just that God has revealed Himself. It says that sinners suppress the truth about God in unrighteousness. And that means that people are not going to readily admit what God has revealed to them, and in a lot of ways, they may have it so suppressed that it's not even at the top of their thinking. It's not that they know, you say, hey, you know God exists, and they know it to be true. right at the front of their brain, and they'll say, no, no, I don't know that. They may have suppressed it so much, they may have deceived themselves so much that when they say, no, I don't know that God exists, they could have believed that lie that they've told themselves. So, anyway, I don't want to get too far into the weeds on apologetics on that way, but What scripture tells us here in Romans is that God has shown it to them. God has revealed these things to them, namely His eternal power and divine nature. Any questions on that? I go up to the General Grant Tree with students and my buddy who's an atheist, we both stand in front of that thing and it's so wide and big and we're both in awe. Yeah. It's plain to him, this is awesome. And I'm praising God, like, wow, God protected, preserved, made this tree, and he's not. How is that worth it? But it's plain to him. Maybe explain how is the awe of that tree? We're both having an existential moment of, wow, wonder. Well, he may be glorying in the creation, which sinners do that all the time. Sinners will worship the creation rather than the Creator. But the proper way to do it is to say, wow, look at that tree that God made, rather than, wow, look, there's a tree that no one made. Tom? I think the last time you see this was the last time they get hung up on the crossroads. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Yep, okay. Next, well, let me see if there's anything else here in verse 20 that I wanted to point out. In the things that have been made so that they are without excuse, no sinner on the last day at the judgment will ever go to God and say, I never knew you existed. because that would be an excuse. It's going to be obvious to them. Their mouth is going to be closed. They won't even be able to give an excuse. But the fact is that when it comes time for judgment, the situation is not going to be them trying to explain to God, gee, I just didn't know. I mean, I looked at the tree and I couldn't tell that there was a Creator. John Mark could tell, but I couldn't. No excuses like that are going to fly because, again, because God has made it known to them. Okay, Romans 2 15. Does someone have that ready to read? Josh. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts, accused or even expelled, Okay, thank you. So when we think about the scope of general revelation, one of the things that Romans 1 told us is that His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly perceived. Okay, so all people know that about God because that's part of what is generally revealed. Another thing that's revealed to people in general is the work of the law written on their hearts. That means that the moral law of God is something that all people have innately or instinctively, and again, that's a poetic way of saying it, that it's written on their hearts. Obviously, you're not going to be able to, you know, we talked about heart surgery, you're not going to be able to look at the heart and go, oh, look at that. But it's just made known to us, it's given to us in our conscience. God has done that in such a way that all people know it. And again, we talk about what's the form? What's the form? Is it God whispering to people? No? Well, how do we understand written on the heart? I mean, you're going to start getting into some complex understanding to say, I don't know what it means to know something in my conscience. How do I know that? Well, again, I'm not going to explain to you, and I don't fully understand it myself, how God makes himself known to people without audibly speaking to them or without writing something down so that they can read it, but the fact that God tells us that He's done that for all people, we believe it. Yes, Ray? On chapter 1, we see that it's outward. In chapter 2, we see that it's inward. In other words, in terms of scope, it's as thorough as it can possibly be that God has revealed Himself to every human being in this general way. And that's why he could say that every man is without excuse. We have a God-shaped hole in our hearts, and on one hand that's another poetic way of saying it. We're conflicted because we know there's a standard. Somehow there's a right or wrong. And of course we suppress that, but that's the inward and the outward. It's clearly perceived to us that there's a Creator and we're a creature. Yeah, good point on that. What about blind people? Blind people who can't see General Grant, who can't look at the double helix of the DNA molecule and all that stuff. Do they know? Yeah. Will blind people have an excuse? Will deaf people who've never heard anything? Yeah. No one is going to have an excuse because God has not only put it out there, but He's put it inside of us. Okay, one of my questions here is, I'm using special revelation. General revelation is the way God reveals himself without scripture, and then special revelation includes scripture. Is it proper for me to appeal to special revelation in order to explain and show you how to understand general revelation? You see what I'm doing. I'm going to Romans to tell you what God has revealed to people in general without Scripture. The revelation to all people is not, in general, is not Scripture. Scripture is going to be included in special revelation. But I'm using special revelation to tell you how God has revealed himself to all people. Is that proper? Am I breaking the rules? Okay, yes and no, I'm just asking. So, the double helix, you're not going to learn turning to 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians? Double helix? That's what you did there. I went from science books at some level, and I'm going to learn from the Psalms something different. So I know that, yes, you can go to Scripture and learn, but where's that distinction? I'm going to get to that distinction in a minute here, and when we get to gravity, which one of the examples I have, you tell me if that scratches you, where you itch. So, I do believe that it's valid to go to special revelation in order for us to understand general revelation. because that's where the clarity is. God's Word is written in propositional form for us in Scripture, and we don't have to just scratch our chins and say, Yeah, I'll tell you what God has revealed to me in general revelation just by scratch. No, you're a sinner, right? We have a problem. We're suppressing the truth. We wouldn't be able to give you the general revelation of God accurately because of our sin. Okay, Romans 1.18. 121 Romans 118 and 121 Jackson, would you take 118 and then Tom if if you can take Romans 121 Who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth So, the truth is being suppressed, and it's being suppressed in unrighteousness. That means there is a culpable suppression of the truth. It's not just that the truth of God comes and it gets shuffled out. There's a culpable... people are guilty for suppressing the truth of God. And then Romans 1.21, Tom? For although they knew God, they did not honor Him. Right. Yep. Although they knew God, they knew God, they did not honor him, and then they became futile in their thinking. That's more on anthropology, more about what mankind is like. What are people like? What is this fallen man, natural man, what is he like? He's like this. He suppresses the truth of God and unrighteousness. He fails to give God honor. He's futile in his thinking. He has the law of God written on his heart. He knows that God has eternal power and divine nature. This is what people are like, walking around the streets, and all of that is true about them. Okay. The form of general revelation in 120, which I think we read already, it's in the things that have been made. And Ray, you had pointed out that it's, that the stars are, tell us something about God, right? The night sky, that God made the stars, and that tells us something about God. And the question is, what about we ourselves? Are we part of what's been made? Yes. So it's not just the things that are out there, the facts that are out there, things that can be learned about the double helix or about what stars are made out of, but it's also the mind of man, the intellect of man, That's been made by God. And so, it's not just that the things out there reveal that God exists, but my own thinking is evidence that God exists. And as a presuppositionalist, you'll expect me to say this, that everything is evidence that God exists. All the facts, any fact, and the mind that we use to understand the facts, it's everywhere. It's out there, it's in here, it's obvious. God puts the information about himself into us. We don't go and get it. God has shown it to them, that's what Romans 1.19 says. Again, so it's not that God has put information about himself out there, and if you just stare at General Grant long enough, and you're smart enough, it'll click, and you'll come to the conclusion that God exists. No, that knowledge of God's existence isn't something that is something for us to go and get. We don't have to work to go and achieve it and say, ah, I finally got it. I figured it out. Nope. God is the one who brings it home and brings it into you. And it's the job of knowing about God's existence is something that he accomplishes, not something that he leaves to us to accomplish. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Yep, so what we said earlier is that it is what Romans 1 says it is, his divine nature or his eternal power and divine nature. And then also what Josh read is that the work of God's law is written on the heart of man. So his moral law, we're told, is part of that. general revelation of himself and obviously his existence, but things about his character, namely his eternal power and divine nature. That's what Romans tells us. Okay, so that concept about God putting it into us, putting the knowledge of himself into us, rather than us going out to get it. You think of a cell phone. When you get a brand new cell phone, there are some applications that are already pre-programmed onto the phone, and then there are some applications that you can add after. God's knowledge is a pre-programmed type of thing. It's innate, it's instinctive, and it's there because God put it there. Okay? Yes? God implanted knowledge of Himself in the things that we make in the mind, so God accomplishes that, that we know. Can we help that? Is there any sense in which we can grow in that knowledge of Him through general revelation? So He has gifted us that, can we... So we're not working to achieve it, but is there a sense in which we can work to know more of it? That's a good question. Because I believe the scope of general revelation is not greater than the scope of special revelation, I don't think that there's more to know about God in general revelation than there is in special revelation. So if someone says, how do I get to know God more? I would say, read the Bible. Now that will, as you study God's creation, you could know more about His creative work, the double helix stuff, and things about trees and stars. Those are things that would help you glorify God more because you're learning more about His creativity. But I wouldn't say that when it comes to His law, can I know His moral law better? by studying General Revelation, or should I just go to the Word?" I'm like, yeah, go to the Word. Because it's not like there's more in General Revelation, and it's made clearer in Propositional Special Revelation. Tom? Yeah, sure. Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is growing in gratitude is a different thing than learning more about God. Yeah, it's like you can learn a fourth attribute of God, right? Because Romans 1 says, divine qualities, existence, power, whatever. It's not like I can learn His trinitarian essence, or rather nature, unitary life. from nature, right? So I can grow in, like you said, gratitude, but I can't learn more about God from nature than the word says here, right? Is that what you're asking? I listened to part of the commentary, and I just feel the question as well. I'm just going to trust that you understand the question. All right, good. Yes? Why do all these examples always have to be the Africans? You could say there are some Colombians, some unreached Colombian tribes. Let's make fun of them. Well, I would say that in so much as these tribes that have not heard the gospel and have not been regenerated, I don't, again, they have the general revelation just like everybody else does. Whether they can get to the point where they understand it better in an unregenerate sense, I'm not sure. I mean, I'm sure in some sense that general revelation can be suppressed to a point where it becomes cannibalism, right? What are you guys doing, right? And they've seared their conscience so much that they'll even eat each other without having a problem. So there is a sense in which people can get darker in their suppression. But as far as the clarity of it, I don't know that sinful man is going to ever be a good student of General Revelation just because of the type of student they are. They hate God. They're not seeking God. It's not like they're coming to the class of General Revelation wanting to know more. Yes, Ray. Just to sort of make it out loud here, but I think in the same way that was helpful that we could suppress I think it's possible in a very narrow range to sort of see more light or work towards less suppression, decompress, I don't know what you call it, the opposite of suppression. But it's so mixed, I mean, it's never gonna be enough, right? It's not like that's gonna get you to God in any way. But I think there might be a way to sort of say that, and whether we call that growth or, it's another question, but. What would be an example of that? So we have the cannibal as the older suppression. What would be an example of what you're, deciding not to eat humans at some point, right? The tribe might prove some kind of conviction, right, because their consciences are convicted about it, and they say, this is not a good idea anymore. Are they getting closer to God in any way, in any insane state, though? Are they responding to a creational, general level I think what the Westminster says is that in as far as some tribes don't eat each other, they're not breaking that law. And if they do, let's say one of these tribes feeds their children a hot meal, well, that's good. Outwardly, that's good, but it's not done with the right motivation. So it would still be sin. Wow, the time is really getting ahead of me, and I've got a lot more to go here. So let me see how fast I can talk. Yeah. I'll do some general revelation for you guys. Okay, general revelation is not verbal, it's not written, except for the non-literal writing of the law on the heart. Can humans communicate without speaking or writing? Yeah, we have body language, right? Body language, communication without language, is not propositional and it's often ambiguous. Body language can be described in writing. I can say that Jackson shook his head, which means no, and now I've put that in propositional form. And that clarifies it, but body language is often ambiguous. And for that reason, I would say that as we think about God revealing himself in a nonverbal way, and we think, hey, humans do that too, we have body language. I'd say that's a bad analogy for general revelation, for this reason, because God is the revealer and he has successfully revealed himself within people in such a way that we can't do. I can do some body language stuff and you can kind of think, hmm, I wonder if I can discern anything from that. That's still you doing work to try to figure stuff out when God, uh, communicates to people non-verbally. He is again, he, he's God. He's getting that information right into us. And, and, um, and I can't do that. I can't do that to you guys. We can't do that for each other. Okay, just a reminder, General Revelation is not God trying to communicate to us, it is God successfully communicating to us. General Revelation is not God putting clues in creation that, if studied correctly, will result in the conclusion that He exists. We already know that he exists because he's made that known. Well, what about Proverbs 25.2, which touches on the question that you had, John Mark. Does anyone have that scripture handy? As the heavens for height and the earth for depth, so the heart of kings is unsearchable. Is that two? That's three. It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to Okay, so thinking through that, there is a way that it is wonderfully glorifying to God that when God says, I'm going to conceal the form of the DNA molecule, the double helix, and then at some point it's going to be found out, and this wonderful study and understanding of the way God made life and DNA, that when we discover that, God hides that information, and we discover it, and it's glorious. It's wonderful. It's a marvelous thing. But I want to say that that type of thing is not general revelation, because not everyone knows that generally. In order for it to be general revelation, all people at all times would have had to have been... that would have to be demonstrated to all people, and it's not. But it's not like it's a wrong thing to do to study God's creation. It's a wonderful thing to do, and God commends it, so long as we are doing it in a way that brings Him glory. Okay, I still have to talk about special revelation. Yes? are essential to understanding God and his nature and what he, like, his law for us to do. Whereas, like, the DNA, you were talking about, like, someone not, you know, 200 years ago not knowing what DNA is, that doesn't somehow make them in rebellion against God. Correct. Like, general revelation, you're talking about these are things that if you suppress these things, you are in rebellion. Correct, yeah. General Revelation is God revealing Himself, and the double helix thing is something about His creativity, but it's not part of what He's revealed to all people in general. Okay, Special Revelation. It's still God doing the communication. It's not general to all mankind. Not all mankind has special revelation. The mode is language, spoken and written, and we'll have more on that next week. Human language is an effective vehicle to communicate information. We need to remind ourselves of that again and again. I think because of the way the culture views human language and communication, there's sort of like an evolutionary type thing, like people first started grunting to each other and then started making words out of stuff. That's not the right way. God spoke to Adam. Now, did Adam have to take the equivalent, did he have to learn his ABCs, whatever that would be in Hebrew? Maybe it wasn't even Hebrew at that time. When God made Adam, was there something in him already pre-programmed that he already knew language? I think so. What's that? Yeah, Mark. There you go. I like that. So he already knew how to speak and how to understand human language. Human language is God's idea and it's effective. It's an effective form of communication. We talked about the scope. In Special Revelation, we get more information about God. We get more information about the Trinity. We get information about the Gospel. There's more information about God in Special Revelation than there is in General Revelation, so the scope is bigger. We talked about the difference between nonverbal communication and then verbal propositional communication. In special revelation, we have propositional communication, which removes ambiguity. We might know this just in our human dealings. Anytime you have something important to communicate to somebody, a last will, a testament, a business deal, we always do it in writing. We do it in writing because written communication is a way to protect the communication from misunderstanding and remove ambiguity. Okay, I have an illustration about ice cream that we're going to have to skip. Ask me about that later. Let's see. You may. Yeah. No. Yes, yes, yes. I would say audience on the one hand is general. Yeah, thank you for that. So general revelation has an audience of all mankind. That's what makes it general. And then special revelation has a subsection of mankind who get that. Yes, right. Yeah. Yep. Thanks for asking that. All right. I think I think we will make it. OK, God's God's word is unchanging, inflexible, propositional and objective truth. And that's that's what the Westminster says that for the for the better clarity and propagation of the truth, God said it. He said it to writing. He wanted to put his revelation in writing, even though it wasn't always in writing. Remember, God spoke to people in the past, God revealed himself in many ways, and God wanted to commit all of that to writing for us, for the better propagation of the truth. Okay, how do sinners come to know the Scripture as God's Word? Well, I'll have to give you that answer. It's, uh, the Westminster says that it's the spirit, the one who authored the word, he must work on the sinful heart of man and, and remove the scales and stop the suppression. That that's how people come to see scripture for what it truly is. It's a, it's a work of the spirit that has to go in and fix the problem, fix the problem essentially. Right? So back, back to the, um, to the radio analogy. If you have a good radio tower, good radio waves, nice music playing along these waves on a particular station, but your receiver, your radio in your car is broken, you turn it on and you guys remember that it's static. Do you still get static with digital radio? Who knows. But static is coming through because there's something wrong with the radio. Now, what God has done for those who have been born again is He has removed the static so that, again, there was nothing wrong with the towers, nothing wrong with the radio waves, but there was something wrong with the receiver. And that receiver is being worked on by the Holy Spirit, removing the static so that we might understand clearly what's there. And one of the things that we should keep in mind is that not all of the static has been removed. even for believers. That's why we have differences of opinion on things, that's why you guys are not all believing exactly what I believe. And maybe that's why I've got a bunch of holes in my thinking as well. There's still static there, but the bulk of it has been removed, the essential pieces have been removed, and through sanctification God continues to remove that static so that when we look at his revelation, his special revelation and his general revelation, we can come to know him more. I'm over time. Hey kids, let's pray. Father, thank you so much for our time. We pray that the things here, especially the things in Romans, would sink down into us, help us to understand sinful man better, and help us to understand ourselves better in the remaining sin that we have. We pray, Lord, that you would continue to work in us, that we might be better receivers of your good communication. In Jesus' name, amen.