What the Bible says about God's Revelation of Himself
(From Forerunner Commentary)
This event illustrates why there are so many false conceptions of God. Once Satan and sin enter man's life, man hides himself from God, and God must seek him out before a relationship and revelation of true knowledge of God can even begin.
Because it suits His purpose, God has permitted Satan to continue what he began in the Garden with Adam and Eve. Despite the fact that Adam and Eve literally saw God, they sinned because they really did not know Him.
Since eternal life lies in the relationship with God, it is extremely important how frequent and accurate our thoughts about Him are. Many influential people in this world are convinced that He does not even exist. By definition, agnostics are not sure, so how does their uncertainty affect their worship of Him?
This is a major reason why Jesus says in John 6:44 that no one comes to Him unless the Father draws him. He adds in Matthew 11:27 that no one "knows the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him." Only true believers, those to whom God has specifically revealed Himself, have truth and thus eternal life.
Adam and Eve's summary dismissal from the Garden was among the most serious punishments ever inflicted on mankind because it severed contact with God. Without contact with God, a true conception of Him was impossible, and wholesale sin followed. We can conclude that what one knows about the true God Himself and how one uses that knowledge are the two most important issues in life. Seeking God is the most serious challenge of our lives! The quality of our present lives and the continuation of those lives everlastingly hinge on these two factors.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Seeking God (Part One): Our Biggest Problem
It is not the brilliant, luminous glory of God's appearance that humbles Job but God's power, intelligence, and wisdom revealed in the creation. This, combined with His right to do with it as He pleases, brings Job to understand how ignorant, puny, and base he is by comparison.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Sovereignty and Its Fruit: Part Ten
God has endowed us with the sense of the future and with a curiosity about what goes on beyond the grave: Is there life beyond the grave? Do we have immortality? Is this life all there is? He has made man with the capacity to think about these matters. Unfortunately, as Solomon says, nobody can figure out what He is doing. Without vision, people perish (Proverbs 29:18); without revelation, people cast off restraint—they go off the path.
"They do not know what He is doing from the beginning" does not refer to what He is doing in His creative acts but the purpose of life. His purpose has been revealed to us that we might have the same hope that God has for us: to share all eternity with Him and live as He does. If we have caught the vision and understand what the resurrection is—the doorway through which we step to continue in all of its fulness the kind of life that God has already introduced to us and we have begun to put into practice—we realize that we will be able to continue as His companions, His children for all eternity. This is what the resurrection represents!
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Resurrection From the DeadRelated Topics: God's Revelation of Himself | Hope | Hope of the Resurrection | Resurrection | Resurrection to Immortal Life | Resurrection, Hope of the | Revelation | Vision | Vision of Future | Vision of God
Isaiah, like Moses, became unglued in God's presence. We may conclude from these two examples that we are better off the way things are, that is, unable to see God physically. Being face-to-face in the presence of God should not be something we feel the need to experience. What we have of the revelation of God is sufficient to produce the right mix of fear and devotion—if it is given half a chance.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Fear of GodRelated Topics: Devotion | Fear | Fear of God | God is Invisible | God's Presence | God's Revelation of Himself
A major proof of false religion is that it cannot validate its effectiveness before the witness of man, but God can and does validate the true religion. He produces evidence of His righteousness, power, purpose, and way in many forms. God has performed miracles, signs, and wonders in the sight of thousands of witnesses.
Without objective assurance from time to time, we would be living in a world of religious make-believe. God sometimes validates Himself before man by advertising His power through an undeniable occurrence like Jesus' resurrection (I Corinthians 15:1-8). Men have verified the truths of God through observation and experimentation (I Kings 18:30-39). Man is thus without excuse (Romans 1:18-25).
On occasion, God also verifies our personal relationship with Him by immediately answering a prayer or miraculously saving us from harm. On the other hand, if He needs to get our attention, He will shake us awake by allowing a test or trial to warn us that the relationship is degenerating. Because we are assured that God is with us, the testing is good. It keeps us from sinking into complacency and pride, both of which will separate us from Him.
This is what God is addressing in the principle of the plumb line. Amos understood that God was using it to test the spirituality, morality, and genuineness of the people against the standard. The test answers the question, "Are they really God's people?" God wants to know if they are exhibiting His characteristics.
This idea of a spiritual standard of measure transferred directly into the New Testament church. God uses similar imagery, a measuring rod, in Revelation 11:1. To the Laodicean church (Revelation 3:14-22), God uses fire to refer to a test instead of a plumb line.
As we can see from these examples, the end-time church will be tested. How are we going to build? What will the test reveal about our Christian growth (I Corinthians 3:9-16)? We are commanded to grow "to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13). From this we see that the plumb line is God's revelation of Himself as the standard.
At first, God's revelation of Himself was direct, visible, and personal, but later, as Israel grew, He revealed Himself more verbally through the prophets. They recorded His revelation for all time and all people, and we read it today in our Bibles.
God's law is the primary vehicle He uses to reveal His nature; it defines how He lives. If we want to be in His Kingdom and live as He does, we must obey His law, but obeying God's law in no way minimizes grace. God revealed Himself to Israel first as Redeemer and then as Lawgiver. He freed His people from their slavery in Egypt before He gave them the standard of His law. Grace precedes law. God gives grace first, but He does not leave His people ignorant of the life that pleases Him, which is revealed in His law.
The plumb line combines grace and law, and God will test us against both. If we rely on His grace without law, or on His law without grace, we will not pass the test. If either is abused, we will not measure up to the standard.
Leviticus 19 shows that the revelation of the law is important because it is a verbal description of God's nature. Our God is a holy God (verse 2), and He expects His representatives to be holy also. But how do we become holy?
After God redeems us from sin and extends to us His Spirit and grace—His free, unmerited election, He expects us to follow His instructions. The remainder of Leviticus 19 fills in the details—we become holy by doing these things. These actions reflect God's nature. Since God is holy, His law is holy, and if we follow His holy law, we can—with the indwelling of His Holy Spirit—grow to be holy like our holy God.
God chose Israel and extended the offer for a relationship with Him, to walk and fellowship with Him. After Israel's rejection of it, He has now extended this offer to those He has specifically called and chosen (John 6:44; I Corinthians 1:26-29).
God loves His people and gives them redemption, grace. He expects it will result in obedience to His law, the reflection of His nature, so on occasion, He holds a plumb line against them to check their progress. But when He sees that they have rejected His way of life, He has no choice but to try to guide them to repentance—by any means necessary.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Prepare to Meet Your God! (The Book of Amos) (Part Two)Related Topics: Answered Prayer | False Religion | God's Law | God's Revelation of Himself | Grace | Measuring Rod | Plumb Line | Redemption | Relationship with God | Repentance | Trials
Here, He did not affect people positively. The overwhelming evidence of Scripture is that mankind did not see Him. Instead, they were perplexed or disturbed. He created divisions. Some were outright offended. Notice Jesus' reaction: "But Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house.' And He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief" (verses 57-58).
His statement begins to reveal an application of "seeing" to us. Will He be working in our lives if we do not see Him? If we do not understand His purpose, what He is working out in us? We have come out of a world in which there is just as much, if not more, confusion today regarding Him as when He walked the earth. The concern is not whether we can identify Him, because we recognize Him as the Christ—we "see" the real Jesus—but do we see Him as a vital part of our lives?
John W. Ritenbaugh
Do You See God? (Part One)Related Topics: God's Intervention | God's Purpose | God's Revelation of Himself | Seeing and Believing | Seeing God
Man cannot "find" God; only God can initiate a calling. The world, including most of physical Israel, is consigned to unbelief until later in God's plan, yet most modern Israelites would say they know God or believe in Him. Romans 10:12-15 describes how God generally introduces people to Himself, though they may suppose they initiated contact with Him by "calling on the name of the Lord." Men must hear of Him through a preacher - and one whom God has sent, not one that is self-proclaimed.
Martin G. Collins
Basic Doctrines: Faith Toward God
Sometimes a person's calling can be dramatic, sudden, and painfully embarrassing, as Paul's was on the road to Damascus. Sometimes it can be long, drawn out, and accomplished in virtual solitude, like Moses' forty years in the wilderness as a shepherd. Sometimes it can be as uneventful as a child growing up in the church to converted parents, whose children are sanctified already, according to I Corinthians 7:14. However it comes, God is directly and personally interfacing with us to reveal or disclose Himself, as Paul says, "by His Spirit" (I Corinthians 2:10).
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Holy Spirit and the Trinity (Part Two)
They became that way! Even though God may not have given a specific calling to these people, because evidence of His existence is clearly available, God considers them to have rejected the possibility of a relationship with Him. This is how God feels about what man has done.
John W. Ritenbaugh
The Covenants, Grace, and Law (Part Eleven)
This is a powerful statement: "There is none who seeks after God." Wait a minute! Are not people all over the world are seeking after a god to worship? Yet God says there is none that is seeking after Him. They are not seeking God in the way the Bible instructs. The people of thiis world are so deceived by Satan that they do not even know what to look for. God has to reveal Himself, then they can seek Him!
John W. Ritenbaugh
What Is Prayer?Related Topics: God's Revelation of Himself | Prayer | Prayer's Purpose | Seeking God | Seeking God First | Seeking God's Counsel | Seeking God's Righteousness
The word "mystery" is not the same as our English usage of the word. "Mystery" to the Greek meant not a puzzle that was difficult to solve, but a secret impossible to penetrate. It was something that was hidden and unintelligible to those who were not initiated, as into a secret society or as into a religion.
Most of you have heard of the mystery religions. What they did was unintelligible to those who were on the outside, but to those who were on the inside, what was being said or enacted in their ritual made clear sense.
This is the idea here: a secret impossible to penetrate, not a puzzle that is difficult to solve. What is crystal clear to those on the inside is unintelligible to those who are on the outside.
In like manner, to those who have received the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit has joined with the spirit in man, adding a dimension to their lives that they previously did not have (I Corinthians 2:11-12). So then, things that are crystal clear to them are unintelligible to those who do not have this added dimension. Thus, Paul says, the things of the Spirit have been revealed by God.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Satan (Part 3)Related Topics: God's Revelation of Himself | God's Wisdom | God's Wisdom Eluding Rulers of the World | Godly Wisdom | Hidden Wisdom | Ignorance | Ignorance of God | Mystery | Mystery Religion | Revealed Knowledge | Revelation | Revelation, Private | Secret | Secret Knowledge | Wisdom | Wisdom of God
The reason the rulers of the world did not understand (verse 8), did not put into the proper perspective, did not grasp what they saw in the Lord of glory is that God did not reveal to them who Jesus was, what He was doing, or why He was doing it. Those things cannot be discerned by physical means - eye, ear, nose, mouth, the senses - but they have to be revealed. A spiritual miracle must take place for a person to understand and to see these spiritual things.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Satan (Part 3)
The "us" are the members of the Corinthian church, and in its broad application the "us" is also those of us who have the Spirit of God, because Romans 8 says that those who have the Spirit of Christ dwelling in them are the children of God.
So the revelation of God, the Word of God, has been revealed to God's children through His Spirit, "for the spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God." God has revealed the mystery to us by His Spirit so that we can understand the things of God with the same clarity that we understand human things.
Paul uses the word "reveal." The English word comes to us out of the Latin, and it is used here to translate a Greek word that means "to uncover." Webster's first definition of "reveal" is quite interesting: "to make known through divine inspiration." It also means "to open to view" or "to make something secret or hidden publicly or generally known."
This is what I Corinthians 2:10 says: "God has made them known to us." We could say God has disclosed, divulged, or told these things to us.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Image and Likeness of God (Part One)
There are experiences, ideas, and feelings in each of us that are so personal, private, and intimate that nobody knows them except we ourselves. And nobody can know these feelings unless we decide to reveal them.
In like manner, only God can tell us about Himself, which is why no man could ever find that knowledge on his own. God has to tell us who He is and what He is like. Does not Jesus say in John 6:44, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day"?Paul confirms Jesus' statement. Unless God chooses to make Himself known, we—no one—will never find out about His true nature.
John W. Ritenbaugh
Grace Upon GraceRelated Topics: Calling | Calling Out | Calling, Uniqueness of | God's Calling | God's Nature | God's Revelation of Himself | Nature of God | Revelation | Revelation as Disclosure | Revelation as Unveiling | Revelation, Private
God has given us revelation, and He has enlightened us that we may know the hope of His calling and the glory that lies ahead. Then, Paul immediately draws our attention to Christ's power to accomplish those ends.
John W. Ritenbaugh
What Is the Work of God Now? (Part Five)Related Topics: Calling | Calling, Hope of God's | Christ's Power | God's Calling | God's Power | God's Revelation of Himself | Power of Christ | Power of God
In context, God tells us one of the purposes of His revelation to mankind. The writer of Hebrews scolds his audience for being "dull of hearing" (verse 11). Using an analogy of milk, the nourishment of children, against "strong meat" (KJV), the fare of those "who are of full age," he laments that he needs to "go back to the basics," the first principles of God's revelation. Not using that revelation to exercise their senses "to discern both good and evil" (verse 14), they had failed to grow up.
The purpose of God's revelation is to provide the nourishment, the food, by which we come "to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" (Ephesians 4:13). It is God's revelation, His oracles, which allow us to "go on to perfection" (Hebrews 6:1).
Charles Whitaker
The Oracles of GodRelated Topics: Discernment | Discernment, Growing in | Discernment, Physical | Discernment, Spiritual | Dull of Hearing | God's Revelation of Himself | Going On to Perfection | Milk as Metaphor | Oracle | Perfection | Perfection, Going On To | Spiritual Growth | Spiritual Growth, Process of | Spiritual Immaturity | Spiritual Maturity | Spiritual Maturity, Process of | Stature of the Fullness of Christ | Striving to Perfection