SPEAKER_01: As we begin a five-week series dealing with the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis chapter three reads as follows.
SPEAKER_01: Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that Yahweh God had made.
SPEAKER_01: He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
SPEAKER_01: And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.
SPEAKER_01: But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die, for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open, and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil.
SPEAKER_01: So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desired to be make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.
SPEAKER_01: And she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.
SPEAKER_01: Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
SPEAKER_01: So reads the word of the living God.
SPEAKER_01: He was called a horse beater, a gambler, a cheapskate, a dictator, and a most horrid swearer and blasphemer.
SPEAKER_01: He was called mischievous, a spoiled child, a tyrannical monster.
SPEAKER_01: He was accused of sedition, treason, faithlessness to his country, to his wife.
SPEAKER_01: His most famous friends publicly disowned him and twisted his words to try to end his career.
SPEAKER_01: One even prayed in a newspaper that he would die soon.
SPEAKER_01: Who is it?
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know him as the namesake of the district.
SPEAKER_01: The first president, the model of a modern major general, General George Washington.
SPEAKER_01: As lauded as this father of founding fathers is in American history, in his day, he was equally vilified, especially by the press, and he never actually responded publicly to it.
SPEAKER_01: He was silent before all of his critics, except on a couple of occasions in private correspondence, he made known his feelings about this slander.
SPEAKER_01: One letter to Thomas Jefferson, he wrote, quote, the newspapers printed the grossest and most insidious misrepresentations in indecent terms as could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket.
SPEAKER_01: Washington suffered wild intentional misunderstanding, and he responded essentially with silence.
SPEAKER_01: How then would God respond?
SPEAKER_01: Who has been vilified, intentionally misunderstood, rejected, and vilified more than anyone else in all of history, how would God respond to that kind of slander?
SPEAKER_01: What does this slander sound like?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's usually attacking his word.
SPEAKER_01: According to recent polls, half of Americans say that the Bible contains outright lies.
SPEAKER_01: One in four evangelicals say that the Bible is mythical, like every other book, every other holy book.
SPEAKER_01: One in three, one in three evangelicals, that's people who say that they believe the Bible, one in three evangelicals say, quote, religious belief is a matter of personal opinion.
SPEAKER_01: It is not about objective truth.
SPEAKER_01: You hear this kind of misrepresentation of God and his word all the time, I would guess, in your relationships with people at work or school, maybe family members or friends who don't know the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: It sounds a lot of different ways.
SPEAKER_01: Tell me if you've heard something like this.
SPEAKER_01: Well, you can't really know what the Bible says because there's all those different translations out there, right?
SPEAKER_01: How could anyone possibly know which one is right?
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe you've heard, you know, there's a whole bunch of different denominations that all believe a bunch of different things.
SPEAKER_01: Who are you to say that yours is right?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, who are you to judge, really?
SPEAKER_01: Have you heard that one?
SPEAKER_01: Who are you to be the ultimate decider of what scripture really means?
SPEAKER_01: Or my personal favorite.
SPEAKER_01: That is just your interpretation.
SPEAKER_01: All of this is really nothing less than a slander of God.
SPEAKER_01: And it's a rejection of one thing: the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: The clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: And it's a deception as old as the garden itself.
SPEAKER_01: Did God really say?
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Why has this subtle rejection of God's word caught on so much?
SPEAKER_01: Why do so many people really believe that the Bible is very unclear?
SPEAKER_01: And I think there's something to it.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just think of hard Bible passages that you've encountered in your life.
SPEAKER_01: I think of 1 Corinthians 15, 29, where Paul talks about baptism for the dead, whatever that is.
SPEAKER_01: I think of 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul speaking about head coverings says, you know, you should wear head coverings because of the angels.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever that means.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think of 1 John 5, 16 to 17, that passage that has to do with the sin not leading to death, the sin leading to death.
SPEAKER_01: What's that about?
SPEAKER_01: Have you encountered passages like that in your Bible reading?
SPEAKER_01: Ones that made you scratch your head and you couldn't really figure it out?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the Bible can be challenging to interpret, can't it?
SPEAKER_01: And then there are a host of texts that say things clearly, but things that we don't necessarily like to hear.
SPEAKER_01: For some people, it's complementary in doctrine, right?
SPEAKER_01: 1 Timothy 2.12, I don't promote a woman to teach or exercise authority over man.
SPEAKER_01: I don't like what it says, so it doesn't seem very clear to me.
SPEAKER_01: Or I don't know how to make that work with the rest of what I know to be true about God.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe it's just how barbaric God seems, particularly in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: Remember the end of Psalm 137?
SPEAKER_01: Blessed is he who dashes his babies against the rocks.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, good night.
SPEAKER_01: That's in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: My guess is that if you have professed to follow Christ for some amount of time, there's been some point at which you've been like a little embarrassed to admit that you actually do think you know what the Bible means.
SPEAKER_01: That it is clear.
SPEAKER_01: And after all, who are you?
SPEAKER_01: Good and godly people disagree.
SPEAKER_01: So who am I to say, really?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, have you felt that?
SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, it all comes down to one question.
SPEAKER_01: Has God spoken clearly?
SPEAKER_01: Did God really say?
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna spend the next five weeks, Sunday evenings, going through a study of the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: So you can already probably guess what my answer to that question is.
SPEAKER_01: Has God spoken clearly?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think he has.
SPEAKER_01: Is the Bible clear?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I do think it is.
SPEAKER_01: God has spoken clearly.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason that we're going to do that is because I have felt, and I think maybe you have to, that there is a kind of lost art of having convictions in our day.
SPEAKER_01: That I have felt afraid at times to plant my feet firmly on God's word and say, thus saith the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: I've felt embarrassed, like I'm being arrogant or prideful to say that I really do know what the Bible means.
SPEAKER_01: But I think God would mean for us to have convictions from his word.
SPEAKER_01: And I think the key to unlocking them is to rightly understand the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Every generation has to defend God's word at some level.
SPEAKER_01: In previous generations, it was the inerrancy of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Scripture's full of all kinds of falsehoods.
SPEAKER_01: Other generations, it's just the authority of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: There's other authorities besides the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: I think in our generation, in this day, what seems to be the hottest point of the attack is the doctrine of the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Did God really say?
SPEAKER_01: And who are you to say?
SPEAKER_01: Really, your whole devotional life is either vain meditation or it's communion with the living God.
SPEAKER_01: And the difference is the clarity of Scripture, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: The church has stood on the clarity of Scripture since Peter's sermon at Pentecost, and we need to reassert it today.
SPEAKER_01: What I want practically out of our time together is for you to be able to respond to your friends and family who aren't believers and confidently say, Yes, I do know what the Bible says, and let me show you why.
SPEAKER_01: But I also want you to feel confident in and of yourself.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want that to be just an evangelistic technique.
SPEAKER_01: I want that to be true in your Christian life.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to have convictions deep down in your bones that you know God has said.
SPEAKER_01: And you can live everything in your life based on it.
SPEAKER_01: You could even lose your life because of what this book says.
SPEAKER_01: You're that certain.
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't think that Scripture is clear, I don't think that you can have that kind of conviction.
SPEAKER_01: If the Bible is clear, then your God has spoken and we ought to listen.
SPEAKER_01: So let me just give you a brief roadmap for what we're going to do over the next five weeks, and then we'll get into what we're going to do for tonight.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to walk through the Bible and see how the scripture itself argues for the clarity of Scripture rather than kind of taking a systematic approach, which I'll do just in brief this evening.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to take a kind of biblical theological approach and march through scripture.
SPEAKER_01: So we'll start in Genesis where God first speaks and speaks clearly.
SPEAKER_01: We'll go to Deuteronomy next week and really to the rest of the Old Testament to see where clarity is tested by Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Then we'll go to Matthew and we'll see how Jesus thinks about the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: And then we'll turn to Romans and think about how clarity works itself out in the church.
SPEAKER_01: That'll be Secret Bowl Sunday, so I expect to see all of you here.
SPEAKER_01: And then we'll look at 1 Corinthians to think about how the clarity of Scripture then impacts our evangelism, how we take it outside of the church.
SPEAKER_01: So that's what we're going to do this evening, beginning this study in Genesis by asking three questions.
SPEAKER_01: And the first question is this: Does God speak clearly?
SPEAKER_01: Does God speak clearly?
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to hide anything here.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not trying to play any fancy games.
SPEAKER_01: Does God speak clearly?
SPEAKER_01: My answer is yes.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to defend it briefly.
SPEAKER_01: In case you don't hear any of the other sermons, at least you will have heard this and you get just a broad overview of the doctrine of clarity of scripture, kind of from a systematic approach, and then we'll look at Genesis.
SPEAKER_01: So, does God speak clearly?
SPEAKER_01: And I would say yes, and supremely so in his written word, the Bible, the scriptures, which we would say are the 66 books of the Old and New Testament inspired by God over thousands of years, 40 plus authors for our edification and salvation.
SPEAKER_01: But what do we mean when we say that God speaks clearly?
SPEAKER_01: There's a couple ways that you could approach this.
SPEAKER_01: One would be just to give synonyms.
SPEAKER_01: That's one way to define a word is with synonyms.
SPEAKER_01: So here's a couple synonyms for you: Accessible, understandable, intelligible, graspable.
SPEAKER_01: It's a way of saying you can actually read God's word and understand it.
SPEAKER_01: Truly.
SPEAKER_01: And I just want to defend this briefly from a couple of texts.
SPEAKER_01: We'll look at these at length later, but I just think it's valuable to read them right now.
SPEAKER_01: Deuteronomy chapter 30, verse 11.
SPEAKER_01: Moses says, For this commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off.
SPEAKER_01: It's not in heaven that you should say, Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it?
SPEAKER_01: Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say, Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it?
SPEAKER_01: But the word is very near you, it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.
SPEAKER_01: Moses fully expects when Israel receives his word on the plains of Moab, that they can understand it such that they can respond and obey.
SPEAKER_01: It says in Isaiah 55, 8, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares Yahweh, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts, which you might think is kind of a death knell for the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, how how on earth are we going to get access then to these high, high thoughts?
SPEAKER_01: Then he says this, verse 10 For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and don't return there, but water the earth, making it bring forth its sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth out of my mouth.
SPEAKER_01: It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
SPEAKER_01: If God's word is not clear, it can't do its work.
SPEAKER_01: And really, this is the strongest argument for the clarity of Scripture, is just how widely it's assumed in the Bible, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Everyone who believes in God in the Bible assumes that he could be understood.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus even goes to such great length, and we'll look at this in two weeks, to say over and over and over again to the Pharisees, I mean, haven't you read?
SPEAKER_01: Not, haven't you taken that class and learned Greek and Aramaic and all of that so that you really could get it?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: Did you just have like a passing glance at the text?
SPEAKER_01: If you did, you should have known this.
SPEAKER_01: That's the assumption of Scripture, is that it's clear.
SPEAKER_01: God speaks so as to be understood.
SPEAKER_01: It's normal speech, it's not esoteric, you don't have to have a degree, you don't have to go to seminary, you don't have to learn the original languages to understand it.
SPEAKER_01: You can understand it in whatever language it's translated into faithfully.
SPEAKER_01: God's word is clear.
SPEAKER_01: It's not in code, it's not a secret, you don't need a magic ball.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, so much of the Bible is just stories about people, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: How do you where do you live your life?
SPEAKER_01: You just have conversations with people about what's going on in their lives.
SPEAKER_01: Guess what's a lot of the Bible?
SPEAKER_01: Stories about people.
SPEAKER_01: Very understandable, very accessible.
SPEAKER_01: But a couple of caveats.
SPEAKER_01: Second, I want to say that God speaks clearly.
SPEAKER_01: To say that God speaks clearly is not to say that we listen clearly always.
SPEAKER_01: That's an important distinction.
SPEAKER_01: I got um nose surgery this last week.
SPEAKER_01: You might be able to hear it a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: And um for two days after the surgery, they jammed these two rods up my nostrils.
SPEAKER_01: Very pleasant, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_01: And um my wife later, one of those evenings, got pizza for us, which I love pizza.
SPEAKER_01: And she brought it in and she said, Oh, did you know that we were having pizza?
SPEAKER_01: Could you smell it?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: No, I couldn't.
SPEAKER_01: Uh why not?
SPEAKER_01: Is it because the pizza didn't smell?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: It's because I was blocked up.
SPEAKER_01: The way Calvin says this, which is way more poetic, is that you really ought not to listen to a blind man tell you that the sun isn't shining.
SPEAKER_01: It's not the sun's fault that he can't see it.
SPEAKER_01: So it is so often with the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Scripture is, one way to say this, innately clear.
SPEAKER_01: When God speaks, the actual speaking that he's doing is clear.
SPEAKER_01: The reception of it, that's another question.
SPEAKER_01: That's actually a lot of what we'll talk about over the coming weeks.
SPEAKER_01: Which means that the clarity of Scripture is properly understood as a property of Scripture, not of interpretation.
SPEAKER_01: Thirdly, I want to say that God speaking clearly is to say that its clarity was at its peak for the original audience, because of this very fact.
SPEAKER_01: So God's word was immediately and totally and supremely clear when it was first written.
SPEAKER_01: On the plains of Moab, when Moses is delivering the second giving of the law, Deuteronomy, that's when the Israelites understood that the most obviously.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Well, because time and cultural change and language barriers enter in, don't they?
SPEAKER_01: And they do add a level of intellectual difficulty to understanding the text of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Which is why it is valuable to study the text, and we'll look later on at what it means to work hard at understanding scripture, how that doesn't actually work against clarity, but for it.
SPEAKER_01: But those difficulties aren't insurmountable.
SPEAKER_01: Just because it was mostly clear for the original audience doesn't mean it's unclear for us who are at a distance.
SPEAKER_01: We can still understand God's word through translation and other means.
SPEAKER_01: So, fourth, to say that God speaks clearly is to say that what God wanted to say, he said clearly.
SPEAKER_01: I think often when we come to the scriptures and we have something that's like a burn our saddle that we just don't understand about it, quite often it's not really what the text is even trying to say.
SPEAKER_01: It's something we want to know that's related to what the text is saying, right?
SPEAKER_01: Like we're trying to do theology and make things meet up.
SPEAKER_01: For example, the sermon this morning, right?
SPEAKER_01: Malachi chapter 1, we're talking about election.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, in Malachi's mind and in the divine author's mind, the Holy Spirit, as he's writing that text, he's not trying to solve your problems with free will, right?
SPEAKER_01: He's trying to tell you something about the way that God loves Israel and has a hatred for Edom.
SPEAKER_01: So that question, though it's a good one and a legitimate question, is not a detraction from the clarity of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: It's just to say that's a good question that we ought to ask.
SPEAKER_01: What God intended to communicate, he communicated perfectly.
SPEAKER_01: But what we want to know about Scripture, that might be more confusing.
SPEAKER_01: Or it might not be revealed at all.
SPEAKER_01: The sovereignty of God in saving Israel and condemning Edom is a question of theology, not of exegesis, properly speaking.
SPEAKER_01: And fifth, to say that God speaks clearly means that God speaks.
SPEAKER_01: That God speaks.
SPEAKER_01: God Almighty, the thrice holy God, is the one who is speaking in this book.
SPEAKER_01: And so it should not surprise you and I when, as we encounter it, it's kind of mysterious.
SPEAKER_01: It's transcendent, it's otherworldly.
SPEAKER_01: It feels like we're grasping beyond where our minds can go.
SPEAKER_01: Of course it is.
SPEAKER_01: Look who's talking.
SPEAKER_01: It's God Himself.
SPEAKER_01: You should expect the word of an eternal three-in-one being to challenge your thinking.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's God who is speaking.
SPEAKER_01: All that being said, God has spoken clearly.
SPEAKER_01: God has spoken clearly.
SPEAKER_01: And there's plenty of other caveats that we could give and we will, as time allows.
SPEAKER_01: But I hope that's at least just a beginning understanding of what we mean when we say the doctrine of the clarity of scripture.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean it's equally clear in all parts.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't mean that you're going to magically download information from the Bible to your brain without any effort.
SPEAKER_01: The clarity of Scripture simply means that God speaks clearly in his word.
SPEAKER_01: But here's the question that I want to turn our attention to this evening.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Why is it that God speaks clearly?
SPEAKER_01: And for this answer, we need to turn to Scripture itself.
SPEAKER_01: Go with me to Genesis chapter 1, verse 26.
SPEAKER_01: On the sixth day of creation, God makes man, and he says this.
SPEAKER_01: Then God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heaven and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
SPEAKER_01: What this tells us is that we were made like God in some respects.
SPEAKER_01: We were made after his likeness.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the likenesses that we bear to our creator is our communicative capacity.
SPEAKER_01: Don't you even see it in the verse?
SPEAKER_01: Then God said, Let us make man in our image.
SPEAKER_01: There's a kind of divine deliberation going on between the persons of the Trinity having to do with creation, such that they're communicating with one another about what to do with these creatures.
SPEAKER_01: That's why it says us.
SPEAKER_01: The Trinity, God, is inherently communicative.
SPEAKER_01: And the way that God communicates with God, God the Father, with God the Son, with God the Spirit, is perfect.
SPEAKER_01: Perfect shared knowledge.
SPEAKER_01: Everything that's in one mind, in all minds, it is such that it is one mind.
SPEAKER_01: And whatever ability we have then to communicate, whether through reading or writing or speaking, whatever ability we have to talk to one another and to understand and to get information from one mind into another, therefore, is derivative of God.
SPEAKER_01: The reason that we can communicate at all is because God is a communicator by his very nature.
SPEAKER_01: God speaks because God is a speaker.
SPEAKER_01: But why does he speak clearly?
SPEAKER_01: And for that we need to turn to Genesis 2, where we see the first conversation on record between God and man.
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh God took the man, it says in Genesis 2.15, and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
SPEAKER_01: And Yahweh God commanded the man, saying, You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.
SPEAKER_01: So on the sixth day of creation, God makes Adam, and that very same day begins talking to him.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know if there is another conversation prior to this.
SPEAKER_01: This is the first recorded conversation that we have.
SPEAKER_01: And there's three elements to this first sentence.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to see.
SPEAKER_01: First, he gives him a kind of permission.
SPEAKER_01: He says, You may eat, you may surely eat.
SPEAKER_01: God's in control of it, he's in charge, but he gives permission to Adam.
SPEAKER_01: Second, he gives a prohibition, but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
SPEAKER_01: He's allowed to say which ones you can and can't, and so he puts a prohibition on one.
SPEAKER_01: And then he makes a promise, because in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.
SPEAKER_01: Now, how does that work?
SPEAKER_01: Like backing up in the most fundamental way, how does that work?
SPEAKER_01: How does language itself work?
SPEAKER_01: Well, in this text, there's a noun, tree, there's a preposition of, there's a verb eat, there's direct objects, there's clauses, phrases, sentence.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just the normal stuff of language, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: All the stuff you forgot from seventh grade, all of that is at work in this very first sentence between God and man.
SPEAKER_01: God made language and he gave it to man as a gift, and it seems like right out of the box it's working.
SPEAKER_01: God expects there to be understanding from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_01: Notice it's a command.
SPEAKER_01: It says, Yahweh God commanded the man.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't a suggestion.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't like, well, if you happen to interpret this correctly one day, then maybe let's talk about the implications of it.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: This is right now today.
SPEAKER_01: You better understand this and act according to it.
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, you got serious problems.
SPEAKER_01: All of it works on day six.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's because language itself shares something with the rest of creation.
SPEAKER_01: Back in Genesis 1, what was that refrain that we heard over and over again?
SPEAKER_01: Verse 10, God called the dry land earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called seas, and God saw that it was good.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 12, each according to its kind, and God saw that it was good.
SPEAKER_01: To rule over the day and over the night, verse 18, and separate the light from the darkness, and God saw that it was good, and God saw that it was good, and God saw that it was good, and God saw that it was very good.
SPEAKER_01: So when God makes everything, he looks at it before the fall and says, This is all really good.
SPEAKER_01: I think language is included in that.
SPEAKER_01: The capacity for human beings to communicate one with another and for God to communicate to us is good.
SPEAKER_01: Why is it good?
SPEAKER_01: Because God is good.
SPEAKER_01: And he makes good things.
SPEAKER_01: See, even in the first warning to Adam, God is putting his goodness on display.
SPEAKER_01: Not just by the means of language which itself is good, but look what he's doing.
SPEAKER_01: He's warning Adam.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, I care about you.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want you to face death.
SPEAKER_01: And so I'm warning you, don't go down that road.
SPEAKER_01: What is that?
SPEAKER_01: That's goodness.
SPEAKER_01: That's kindness, that's generosity, that's love.
SPEAKER_01: Was God beholden to tell Adam this?
SPEAKER_01: No, of course not.
SPEAKER_01: God could do whatever he wants with Adam.
SPEAKER_01: He's his creation.
SPEAKER_01: But he's good.
SPEAKER_01: He loves him, and so he talks to him.
SPEAKER_01: He shares something of what is in his infinite knowledge in some finite way with Adam through the means of this good vehicle called language.
SPEAKER_01: And I would submit to you that language is only good, in the most proper sense, meaning it works the way that it's designed to work.
SPEAKER_01: Language is only good when it is clear.
SPEAKER_01: Language is only good when it is clear, when it effectively gives you access to an author's mind.
SPEAKER_01: That's the purpose of language from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_01: God did not put this sentence in Adam's mind so that Adam would just wonder about it.
SPEAKER_01: He didn't want him to just have a certain kind of experience.
SPEAKER_01: He wanted him to know something, to believe it to be true, because it was given from a good God by a good means.
SPEAKER_01: It was clear.
SPEAKER_01: Obscurity destroys the very reason for language at all.
SPEAKER_01: So the reason that we have clear language to begin with, the reason that you can talk to your wife or your kids or your friends or your coworkers and understand each other is because God is good.
SPEAKER_01: And because he gave you this wonderful, mysterious gift of language, words and sentences that fit together and somehow make whatever's in here go out there such that you know what I'm thinking.
SPEAKER_01: What an incredible gift.
SPEAKER_01: And it's all because God is good.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, taste and see, Psalm 34, verse 8, that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 25, 8, God is good.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 119, you are good and you do good, therefore I look to your statutes.
SPEAKER_01: Why do we believe that the Bible is clear?
SPEAKER_01: Because we believe that God is good.
SPEAKER_01: God speaks clearly because God is good.
SPEAKER_01: He is loving, he is kind, he is generous.
SPEAKER_01: What I'm saying here is what's true about every aspect of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Any doctrine of Scripture that you have, you have to follow it up the trail to see where it comes from.
SPEAKER_01: It all comes from the character of God.
SPEAKER_01: I'm saying that the clarity of Scripture depends on the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_01: If God is not good, then of course Scripture is not going to be clear.
SPEAKER_01: But if God is good, then Scripture will be clear.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible is clear because God is good.
SPEAKER_01: He intended Adam to clearly understand, and so he spoke clearly.
SPEAKER_01: That's why he still speaks clear.
SPEAKER_01: It's out of his goodness.
SPEAKER_01: But let me ask one other question, and we'll be the rest of our time together.
SPEAKER_01: Why then does God's word often seem so unclear?
SPEAKER_01: Really, the whole reason why we're having to talk about the clarity of Scripture is because there's a bunch of people saying we don't think the Bible's clear.
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe you in your own heart have felt that.
SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know that the Bible really is clear.
SPEAKER_01: It feels very unclear to me at times.
SPEAKER_01: Why does it seem that way?
SPEAKER_01: Well, enter Genesis 3.
SPEAKER_01: Before cultural distance, before translations of the Bible, the clarity of the Word of God was undermined in the only way that it could have been by slandering the very character of God.
SPEAKER_01: Look at Genesis chapter 3, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that Yahweh God had made.
SPEAKER_01: Genesis 3 begins with the serpent.
SPEAKER_01: We don't really get an explanation where he's coming from.
SPEAKER_01: He's just there.
SPEAKER_01: We know that he's made by God.
SPEAKER_01: But other than that, we don't know much more.
SPEAKER_01: We find out later in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: This in Revelation chapter 12, it tells us this is Satan.
SPEAKER_01: So Satan, in the form of a serpent, enters into the garden, and it says that he's crafty.
SPEAKER_01: He's cunning.
SPEAKER_01: It's not necessarily a negative word, it just means that he's subtle.
SPEAKER_01: He's very smart and sharp.
SPEAKER_01: He knows how to get what he wants.
SPEAKER_01: There's a kind of play on words here in the text with the word crafty, it rhymes, so to speak, with the word naked.
SPEAKER_01: And I think the idea here is, as one commentator has said, that Eve looking to become shrewd like the serpent became nude like the serpent.
SPEAKER_01: And not like she expected.
SPEAKER_01: And so the serpent tries his first ploy to undermine this good creation of God, mankind, with an outright lie.
SPEAKER_01: He says to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
SPEAKER_01: This is a content question.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying, was that actually what God Himself said?
SPEAKER_01: And then he says the opposite, right?
SPEAKER_01: You shall not eat of any tree.
SPEAKER_01: And Eve gets it right away.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, this is before the fall, she's got perfect memory, so she's like, no, that's not what God said.
SPEAKER_01: He really said the opposite.
SPEAKER_01: You can eat of any tree in the garden.
SPEAKER_01: So the question is then, why does Satan take that approach?
SPEAKER_01: He's crafty, he's cunning, he's no fool.
SPEAKER_01: Why does he take that approach?
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's embedded in the word in my text, actually, or sometimes translated, really.
SPEAKER_01: Did God actually say?
SPEAKER_01: It's like.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what I just heard from one of the gazelles over there.
SPEAKER_01: But did God really say that to you?
SPEAKER_01: Please, no.
SPEAKER_01: Seriously?
SPEAKER_01: To you?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, of all people.
SPEAKER_01: God said that to you?
SPEAKER_01: What kind of God is that?
SPEAKER_01: It's an attempt to make God seem diabolical.
SPEAKER_01: It's essentially saying, I can't believe God said that.
SPEAKER_01: He's pretending to be on Eve's side.
SPEAKER_01: How dare God say that to you?
SPEAKER_01: Of course, Eve responds, and it seems like mostly correctly, the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.
SPEAKER_01: It seems like maybe the serpent's trickery has already started to work a little bit on Eve at this point because she doesn't just replicate exactly what God had said to Adam, which presumably he told to Eve.
SPEAKER_01: And she modifies it a little.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, you'll note that she doesn't use the name Yahweh God.
SPEAKER_01: In your Bible, it probably says capital L-O-R-D God.
SPEAKER_01: That's how he called himself.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he was called in every previous verse.
SPEAKER_01: Why the change in this one?
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's the name that the serpent used.
SPEAKER_01: Not the personal covenant God, just God.
SPEAKER_01: But you'll also notice she adds something to it.
SPEAKER_01: You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know exactly why she added that, but seems like maybe there's a hint of misunderstanding, desire to be close to this forbidden fruit, and yet a feeling that God is somehow keeping something good from them.
SPEAKER_01: And so Satan not succeeding with this first attack then goes for the jugular.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 4.
SPEAKER_01: But the serpent said to the woman, You will not surely die.
SPEAKER_01: For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
SPEAKER_01: All of it is bound up in those two words.
SPEAKER_01: God knows.
SPEAKER_01: Do you see what Satan's trying to intimate in his sly way here?
SPEAKER_01: God knows that when you eat from this fruit, you're gonna be just like him.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't want competition.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, he's scared.
SPEAKER_01: He's jealous.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't want anyone else to be like him.
SPEAKER_01: And so he's hidden this one thing that could actually be good for you.
SPEAKER_01: Because he just wants it all for himself.
SPEAKER_01: Really, he's selfish, isn't he?
SPEAKER_01: All of that bound up.
SPEAKER_01: God knows.
SPEAKER_01: The way that John Milton said this in Paradise Lost, which is a very long, very unclear book to us, poem, about this very instance in book nine, this is his words uh imagining what Satan might have said.
SPEAKER_01: He says, The offense that man should attain to know, what can your knowledge hurt him?
SPEAKER_01: Or is this tree in part against his will if all be his?
SPEAKER_01: And then he says this, listen.
SPEAKER_01: Or is it envy?
SPEAKER_01: And can envy dwell in heavenly breasts?
SPEAKER_01: Do you see what he's saying?
SPEAKER_01: I can't undermine God's word by convincing you it says something that it doesn't say.
SPEAKER_01: I tried that, it didn't work.
SPEAKER_01: But I can undermine your confidence in the character of the speaker.
SPEAKER_01: I can cause you to believe that he is not good.
SPEAKER_01: That he does not have your best interests at heart.
SPEAKER_01: That he is just in it for himself, and he doesn't really love you.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, this is the lie behind all lies.
SPEAKER_01: This is the travesty that ushered sin itself into the world.
SPEAKER_01: And the falsehood that still perpetuates our misunderstanding of Scripture today when we say God is not good.
SPEAKER_01: We believe serpents lie.
SPEAKER_01: This slander that gives birth to every rejection of the word of God, every claim that it's unclear.
SPEAKER_01: Like Satan, the world today tells us the same thing, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01: You can't really believe what God says, can you?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, what kind of God is he, after all?
SPEAKER_01: And it's just like Satan, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: He's a God just like me.
SPEAKER_01: He's a God just like you.
SPEAKER_01: He's just as jealous as you.
SPEAKER_01: He's just as petty as you.
SPEAKER_01: He is just as insecure as you are.
SPEAKER_01: So you can't trust his word.
SPEAKER_01: Who knows why he said what he said?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe he's making the whole thing up just to control you and coerce you.
SPEAKER_01: We are being told that the only judgment that we can trust is our own.
SPEAKER_01: Which is a subtle way of saying you're the only one who's good, right?
SPEAKER_01: But if there's anything that's patently true in a world with so many good and glorious things, it's that the God who made it is good.
SPEAKER_01: And the God who has spoken into it with his word is unfailingly good.
SPEAKER_01: And that means that his word is clear.
SPEAKER_01: Satan never goes after the power of God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you notice that?
SPEAKER_01: He never tries to convince Eve that God couldn't say what he wanted to say.
SPEAKER_01: Nobody thinks that.
SPEAKER_01: But he's fine trying to convince Eve that God didn't say what he really meant.
SPEAKER_01: Because he's not good.
SPEAKER_01: So Eve takes the bait, eats the apple, tries to become like God.
SPEAKER_01: So when this woman saw that the tree was good for food, who was the only person who saw something and called it good before?
SPEAKER_01: God.
SPEAKER_01: Saw that it was good for food, and it was delight to the eyes.
SPEAKER_01: The tree was to be desired to make one wise.
SPEAKER_01: She took of the fruit and ate, and also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
SPEAKER_01: They wanted to become like God.
SPEAKER_01: And do you notice all of the things that Satan said, they are kind of half-truths.
SPEAKER_01: There's some element of truth to it.
SPEAKER_01: Their eyes were opened.
SPEAKER_01: They did come to know good and evil in a very new way that they didn't know before.
SPEAKER_01: And they didn't die exactly on the day that they ate of it.
SPEAKER_01: But all of those half-truths also contain a half-lie.
SPEAKER_01: That their eyes were opened and became blind.
SPEAKER_01: That what they knew of good and evil was now experiential, not intellectual only.
SPEAKER_01: And they did die on that day, a spiritual death that would echo throughout every era of human history.
SPEAKER_01: You remember I asked at the beginning, how then would God respond to that kind of slander?
SPEAKER_01: When people slander his word like Satan does, and defame his character, how does God respond?
SPEAKER_01: It's not like George Washington.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't remain silent.
SPEAKER_01: Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets.
SPEAKER_01: But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his side.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that when you and I slander God's word, say it's unclear, say God isn't good, say he can't satisfy me, however we say it, God's response is not to shut off and become silent, it is to continue speaking and to only speak more clearly.
SPEAKER_01: To give the ultimate revelation of what he really is like by sending his son.
SPEAKER_01: The ultimate word, the word made flesh, comes and says, I will die on a cross so that.
SPEAKER_01: You'll believe that I'm good.
SPEAKER_01: Don't believe my word.
SPEAKER_01: Believe my son and his death.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we call it good news, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: So why should you believe that the Bible is clear even when it seems so unclear?
SPEAKER_01: Because Christ has proven once and for all that God is good.
SPEAKER_01: If he is willing to die to do you good, don't you think he'd be willing to speak clearly?
SPEAKER_01: To continue doing you good.
SPEAKER_01: So the question really isn't, has God spoken clearly?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he has.
SPEAKER_01: The question is on our end, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: Will we listen?
SPEAKER_01: What do we believe to be true about the one speaking?
SPEAKER_01: And here's what Peter says we ought to do with the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and abiding word of God.
SPEAKER_01: For all flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass.
SPEAKER_01: The grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.
SPEAKER_01: And this word is the good news that was preached to you.
SPEAKER_01: Some of them put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.
SPEAKER_01: Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.
SPEAKER_01: If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, only having begun to step into this glorious new doctrine, we are overwhelmed with how deep it goes.
SPEAKER_01: This goes all the way.
SPEAKER_01: Back to you.
SPEAKER_01: You are good.
SPEAKER_01: And you do good.
SPEAKER_01: And it's for that very reason we trust you and we trust your word.
SPEAKER_01: We know that you want to speak clearly to us because we know your heart.
SPEAKER_01: We know your character.
SPEAKER_01: You're a God who wants to make himself known, that his creatures might rejoice in him forever and ever.
SPEAKER_01: And so I pray for my brothers and sisters that this week their study of your word would be rich.
SPEAKER_01: That they would feel the grandeur of what they set out to do when they open their Bibles in the morning.
SPEAKER_01: That they get to commune with you, the source of all good, the one true and living God.
SPEAKER_01: That they get to understand exactly what you have said to them.
SPEAKER_01: And Father, I pray for the hearts here who have not seen your goodness in your word.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that you would transform them by this word this evening.
SPEAKER_01: That you would attend the preaching of your word with your spirit and convince them that this truly is a word from heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And that they desperately need you to be their Savior.
SPEAKER_01: May we cling to you and take confidence in you and trust you as unfailingly as you have spoken clearly to us.
SPEAKER_01: We pray all of this.
SPEAKER_01: In the good name of Jesus.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.