Can We Truly Understand God?

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The CEM Network is pleased to present Ronald L. Dart and Born to Win.

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It seems odd to me that man should have a hard time understanding God. After all, we’ve got a comprehensive testimony to God in one book, the Bible. The book has been well translated into modern English, and anyone should be able to sit down, read it, and understand it. Yeah, I know that some people have told you the Bible is hard to understand. Well, they were wrong. Yeah, I understand some parts of the Bible are obscure and some parts are boring. But if you want to understand God, the testimony is there. The problem is that religious teachers want to argue over the things about God that are not revealed there. What I want to talk to you about are the things that are revealed. Now, of all the things about God that are important to know, what does God himself say is the most important? Well, once he spoke to a young prophet named Jeremiah, and he had this to say about himself. He says, let him that glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercise loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in these things I delight. And so, I know that God says we can understand him and that we can know him and that there are three very important things that we can know about him. Now, I would be the first to admit, though, that there is a superficial problem with this passage. There is a tension, really in our own minds, between a God who exercises loving kindness on the one hand and a God who exercises judgment on the other, because these things often seem to be mutually exclusive. Take Sodom and Gomorrah, for example. It isn’t immediately apparent that Sodom is an example of the loving kindness of God. After all, the city was destroyed by fire. Now the tension between the first two aspects of God’s character, loving kindness and judgment, is resolved in the third aspect of his character. What’s that? Righteousness. But righteousness is an ambiguous word in English. It probably wouldn’t be if it weren’t for all the religious arguments that revolve around it in the Bible. But righteousness is a little ambiguous in English. In Hebrew, it is less so. It comes from a root word that means straight. What God told Jeremiah that we should know about him is that he will always be straight with us. He won’t be capricious. He won’t be arbitrary. When he tells us a given behavior is right, then we can trust that it is intrinsically right. Not arbitrarily right. Not right merely because God said so. That it is intrinsically, in and of itself, right and true. I know that when I was a child, and I got an order from my mom, I commonly said, Well, Mom, why? Why? Sometimes I got a reason. And sometimes she would say, because I said so, that’s why. Now, why does a parent sometimes fall back on authority like that? Why don’t they can always explain to children? Well, sometimes the reasons are too complicated for a little mind to understand. Sometimes there isn’t time to explain. When mom says, get out of the street, Johnny, she doesn’t have time to explain that there’s an 18-wheeler coming down the road. You know, sometimes it’s necessary to just reach out and grab him by his shirt collar and drag him back. There isn’t time to make it clear to him. And some of the instructions of God don’t become clear until much, much later, and sometimes after terrible harm has been done. And so consequently, we have to depend on God to be straight with us. Oh, to be sure, we humans have a hard time walking a straight line, even when we’re sober. And that’s where we have to depend on the loving kindness of God and something called grace. But the grace and the kindness of God does not mean that he has become something less than straight. There is judgment and justice that we must concern ourselves with. One of his prophets, the last prophet in the Old Testament named Malachi, recorded a statement from God that’s fascinating in this regard. It’s in the third chapter of the book of Malachi. God says, Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant whom you delight in. Behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. And a lot of biblical commentators read this passage and see the Messiah in this. They see the Messiah coming to the temple and beginning to move there, and they see Jesus foreshadowed in this passage. But the passage goes on to say something a little strange if you’re thinking in terms of Jesus’ first coming. He says, I’m going to come, saith the Lord of hosts, but who may abide the day of his coming? Who will be able to stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire. He is like fuller’s soap. Two very different ways of purification. He shall sit like a refiner and purify of silver, and he shall purify the sons of Levi and purge them like gold and silver to make them pure, so they can offer an offering to God in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem shall be pleasant to the Lord as in the days of old in the former years. And I will come near to you in judgment. So here’s God speaking. I’m going to come to this temple that you’re delighting in, and I’m going to come near in judgment, and I’m going to be a swift witness against certain categories against the people. What are they? Sorcerers, adulterers, false swearers, those who oppress the hireling in his wages. the widow, the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right. Those people who oppress the hireling, who oppress the widow, who oppress the orphans, and who turn aside the stranger from what he should have and who don’t fear me, God says, I am going to be a swift witness against those people. That’s what we mean when we said God is straight with us. If you deviate in the areas he has here, you’re in a lot of trouble. Then he says something very important in verse 6. For I am the Lord, I change not. Therefore, you sons of Jacob are not consumed. Both his justice and his kindness are illustrated in one characteristic of God. He doesn’t change. He is consistent. He is straight. He is always compassionate. He is always kind-hearted. But he is always just. That means His law is not capricious. It’s not arbitrary or made up. There’s a rationale behind it even when we don’t get it. One of the most classic examples you’ll ever see of this lies in the often repeated Christian idea that the Old Testament laws are somehow abrogated and of no meaning to Christians. That’s easy to say, but what does it mean in the real world? What does it mean to say, well, the laws of the Old Testament are all abrogated and they don’t have any meaning to Christians? The ignorance of this law is leading to a great human disaster on the continent of Africa. AIDS has decimated the population of some countries and continues to spread. There are quite literally millions of children in Africa who are orphans because of AIDS. many of whom have AIDS themselves, and the disease continues to spread. The tragedy that is stalking Africa is worse than your worst nightmare. And what no one seems to understand is that AIDS could have been prevented entirely had the nations of Africa been directed by the laws of the Old Testament. Even a superficial reader of the Old Testament will recall that there is a steady thread through the law having to do with blood. And many people look at it, and they think, well, that’s just old ceremonies going way back to heathen times that may have been adopted in the Old Testament. No, no, no. People should understand that between the laws governing what foods you can eat, the treatment of blood and bodily fluids, and who you can and have sex with, there is a comprehensive program for the prevention of AIDS. No, the Bible doesn’t say it’s an AIDS prevention program. But the truth is, you can follow the trail right through the Old Testament, and you can find laws sequentially that had they been followed, would have prevented AIDS and probably a lot of other plagues in Africa as well. And yet, a lot of people who claim to believe the Bible want to argue that the law of God is abolished, abrogated, done away with. They believe in God. They just aren’t persuaded that God is straight, that he is constant, that the reason why he gave these laws in the first place was for the good of mankind. They believe, I guess, that God just did them arbitrarily because people needed a good idea for something or other, need laws. And so he gave them laws. You don’t understand that. How many of the Old Testament laws were basic hygiene, sanitation, and health laws? Oh, yeah, we’re scientific these days. We have our own health laws. We’ve solved a lot of those health problems. That’s true. But much of what we do has its roots in things Moses told the Israelites thousands of years ago. We simply understand the science behind it today, and we apply it in more modern ways. But the basis? The basis is the same. But because we reject the basis of it, those things we haven’t figured out yet are continuing to plague us. The painful truth is the plague of AIDS in Africa and in this country has come about because of promiscuous sex, something the Old Testament didn’t allow. Think about that. I’ll be right back.

SPEAKER 02 : 11:06

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Now I think it is fair to say that there are many Old Testament laws that we cannot apply today. There are others that we can apply, but not in the same way they did back then. We have to apply them in different ways. Basically, our culture is different, our science is different, and consequently, the application of the law is different. But the law is still there, providing a straight line, acting as a compass, revealing that there is a difference between right and wrong, and telling us what the difference is. This is what Jesus was driving at in the Sermon on the Mount, where he made a statement which must be problematic to some people who read his words. He said in Matthew 5, verse 17, Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy but to fulfill. For I am going to tell you the truth, till heaven and earth pass. Not one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till everything has come to pass. Now, when you think about this in relation to what I’ve been talking about, that if you start erasing jots, tittles, sentences, paragraphs, laws out of the book, you have started erasing parts of the straight line of God. And as a result, you’re making a God who is inconsistent. What Africa needs right now is a good, strong dose of what we call the Old Covenant. They need a straight line, and they need some discipline in following that straight line. And that’s what the Mosaic Covenant did for Israel. Africa needs a God who is straight, who exercises righteousness. And the choice of God’s words there, that he is one who exercises these things in the earth, is interesting because sometimes we need exercises. We need push-ups to get our arms strong. We need knee bends to get our legs strengthened. In other words, some of the things that God gave to Israel were exercises, disciplines, in order to help them become focused on right and wrong. And merely because, let’s say, a person today, at least theoretically, has the Spirit of God to help them understand right from wrong, doesn’t change the nature of right and wrong. This somehow gets lost in a lot of the rhetoric about the law. The psalmist who wrote the 119th Psalm understood this in a way that many people have long since forgotten. In the 161st verse of this long psalm, he said this, Princes have persecuted me without a cause, but my heart stands in awe of your word. I rejoice at your word as one that finds great spoil. The image he draws for us is someone who has wandered through a place and found a Bible or found the books of the law, and he picks them up and he said, I’m so excited because I’ve got this. It’s like one that has found a treasure. I hate and abhor lying, but I really love your law. Now, why? What was it about the law that has somehow touched this man in such a way that he realized he had found a treasure chest? Seven times a day, he said, I praise you because of your righteous judgments. Great peace have they that love your law, and nothing shall offend them. And here, you know, we’re in a world where people are torn up, frightened, scared, depressed. And he says this, What’s he talking about? He’s talking about a book that describes a way of living. It tells you where the rocks are, where you’re going to hurt yourself, where you’re going to fall down if you do this, where you’re going to hurt other people without perhaps even realizing it. It tells you these things, and the result of obedience is great peace. Lord, I have hope for your salvation, he said. I’ve done your commandments. My soul has kept your testimonies, and I love them exceedingly. Testimonies. What does that mean? Well, what is not well understood, I guess it overlooked many cases by Bible readers, is a little passage back in Exodus 31, verse 18. It says, God gave to Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him on Mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone written with the finger of God. Now, if you read the Bible at all, you’re going to know immediately what he’s talking about, the two tables of the Ten Commandments. In fact, you’re going to know that if you saw the movie with Charlton Heston playing Moses, the Ten Commandments, or maybe even the Prince of Egypt. You’re going to understand the two tables of stone are the tables of the testimony of God, are the Ten Commandments. That’s rare, though, to hear people speak of the Ten Commandments as the testimony of God. But that’s what they were originally called, and the first name of the Ark of God was not the Ark of the Covenant. It was the Ark of the Testimony because it contained the testimony of God. Now, if that idea seems strange to you, consider this. The Ten Commandments are not arbitrary laws given to control man. They are a revelation to man of what works and what hurts, what works and what doesn’t. After all, that’s the fundamental meaning of righteousness, what is right and what is wrong. God’s testimony to man is that these are the laws that work. They are written into nature. They are written into the genetic code of man, and they are written into the world around us. The man who wrote the 119th Psalm understood this very well. He said, I have kept your commandments, I have kept your testimonies, for all my ways are before you. Let my cry come near before you, O God. Give me understanding according to your word. Let my supplication come before you. Deliver me according to your word. My lips shall utter praise when you have taught me your statutes. My tongue shall speak of your word, for all your commandments are righteousness. Generations, years, millennia ago, it was established with man that righteousness is the commandments of God. God exercises righteousness in the earth. He draws a straight line. He reveals that line to man and says, this is the way you should live your life. Live this way and it will work. Deviate from it and you’re going to get hurt. The psalmist went on to say, Let your hand help me, for I have chosen your precepts. Every possible synonym for law that you can imagine is found in this 119th Psalm. Precepts, words, statutes, commandments. I have longed for your salvation, O Lord, and your law is my delight. You know, in a lot of ways, saying that is like saying, This flashlight… In this very, very dark place is a real delight to me. It’s a lifesaver because that’s what the law is. It’s a lamp to your feet and a light to your path so you don’t fall down and hurt yourself. Let my soul live and it shall praise you. Let your judgments help me. I’ve gone astray like a lost sheep. I’m out in here in the dark all by myself. Seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments. Now, the psalmist said something very interesting in this passage, and I wonder to what degree you caught it. He said, I rejoice at your word as one that finds great spoil. Imagine yourself finding a life-changing book. There’s a book on the market today that makes a claim like that called The Prayer of Jabez. And I’ll tell you this much, it was a life-changing book for the guy that wrote it because he has certainly found great spoil. The thing is on the bestseller list and has already made the author a lot of money. But life is a little more complicated than The Prayer of Jabez, and one needs a book with a few more details, a book like the Bible. But consider the implications of finding out that there really is a secret to living a life after all. There is a book that opens doors, that tells you where the pitfalls are, leads you down the secret passageways, and opens the way to health, long life, and prosperity. You see, that’s what the psalmist thought he had found in the law of God, the way to live a life. And that’s why he said, I rejoice at your word as one that finds great spoil. Stay with me.

SPEAKER 02 : 20:45

I’ll be right back after this short message. For a free copy of this radio program that you can share with friends and others, write or call this week only. And request the program titled, Knowing God, Number 4. Write to Born to Win, Post Office Box 560, White House, Texas 75791. Or call toll-free 1-888-BIBLE-44. And tell us the call letters of this radio station.

SPEAKER 03 : 21:15

The person who wrote the 119th Psalm is… Well, it’s more like a song than it is anything else, but it is an attempt in his way to explain to us why it is he loves the law of God, how it is that he came to this depth of understanding. He begins the psalm by saying, “…Blessed are the undefiled in the way who walk in the law of the Lord.” Blessed are they who keep his testimonies and that seek him with the whole heart. And again, right from the beginning, he makes the point that the law of God is the testimony to man about life, about how life works, about how life doesn’t work, about the things that will help and the things that will hurt. He said those people that seek God and his testimony with their whole heart, they don’t do iniquity. They walk in his ways. You have commanded us, he says, to keep your precepts diligently. Oh, he says, I’m really frustrated by my occasional failures to keep the law. I wish my steps were always directed to keep your statutes. Then I shall not be ashamed when I have respect unto all your commandments. And I have to make a small confession. As I think back over my life, over the occasions when I have had opportunity or occasion to be ashamed, It’s inevitably a situation where if I had just paid more attention to what God said, I would not have done the thing that caused me shame. And so the value of being able to walk through life with your head up and without shame is enormous. This young man says, it’s like a treasure I have found. I’m not going to have to ever be ashamed as long as I have respect to the commandments of God. Now I have to ask the question, when a man, you try to tell this fellow, well, the law, don’t worry about that law. It’s been done away with. He will think you’re crazy. Because he goes on to say in verse 9, then how shall a young man cleanse his way? All right? Young man comes to you and says, I want to clean up my act. I’m tired of living the way I want to change my life. What do you do? He answers it by taking heed thereto according to your word. And remember, in this context, your word is another synonym for the law. With my whole heart have I sought you, he says. Oh, don’t let me wander from your commandments. I have hid your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. What’s he talking about? He means he has memorized the law of God. How shall a young man clean up his life? How can he straighten up his act? By starting to pay attention to what he is doing in accordance with the word and the law of God alone. to memorize the Scriptures, to memorize those principles which show him how to live and how not to live, it makes all the difference in life. It makes the difference between poverty and wealth, health and sickness, destruction and life itself. Blessed are you, O Lord, he continued, teach me your statutes. With my lips have I declared all the judgments of your mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of your testimony as much as I would in all riches. I’ll meditate on your precepts. I’ll have respect unto your ways. The word meditate is interesting in this context because it’s true. When you read through the Old Testament laws, you’re going to come across any number of law that you’re simply not going to understand. And you’re going to, in many cases, think, I don’t think this is right. This isn’t something that somebody ought to do. You know, when you come across something like that, it’s time for some meditation. It’s time to put your feet up. Lay your Bible down on your lap, stare off into space for a while, and think your way through the problem. Because as you think these things out, that straight line of God’s righteousness will slowly become clearer and clearer to you and will become a part of that which directs your life and the choices you make. And that will be the difference between life and death. Later in verse 44, he says, So shall I keep your law continually forever and ever, and I will walk at liberty, for I seek your precepts. Now that’s fascinating, because what he is saying in this occasion is that the law is a law of liberty. Now, it’s unfortunate that so many people, I don’t know where they get this, and perhaps from a mistaken idea of some of the things Paul said, that they look upon the law as a burden, as a yoke of bondage, as shackles, as chains that keep them from doing the things that they’d like to do. Whereas this young man, in reading through the law of God and writing his psalm, says this, that I walk at liberty because of these laws. These are the things that actually guarantee my freedom. He didn’t think they were a yoke of bondage. He didn’t think they were controlling. What they were was a straight, bright line about how to live a life, a straight, bright line that pointed toward the place that he really wanted to go. Why would he want someone to erase the line, to blot out portions of the line, to obscure the line, to take the line away, when the line led right to where he wanted to be? Of all the things we want to know about God, God has told us what the important things are. That he is the God who exercises loving-kindness. It’s important to know that he is a God who exercises judgment and justice in the earth. And that he is a God who exercises rightness. As the psalmist said, all your ways are straight. These are the things that winners know about God. Until next time, I’m Ronald Dart.

SPEAKER 02 : 27:25

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SPEAKER 01 : 28:02

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