General Revelation

Theology is the most important endeavor that we can ever be engaged in. Theology is a big word. We've discussed before theology, which in Greek means what? God and "ology" means the study. So it's simply the study of God, all who He is, all who He's revealed Himself to be, how He relates among the three persons of the Godhead — the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit — how He relates to us and all of His creation.

There are lots of things that can take up our time in our lives and lots of things that are good and fun. I enjoy sports. I enjoy fooling around with old cars. I enjoy fishing. Those are all good pastimes, nothing wrong with them. But look what the Scripture says in Jeremiah, chapter 9, verses 23 and 24. Thus says the Lord, "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, nor let the rich man glory in his riches, but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, exercising loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth. For in these I delight, says the Lord." The greatest endeavor we can be a part of is knowing God, right? That's what God has created us for. That's what He's called us to be as Christians, to be disciples, to be followers of Christ. So we're going to start off on lesson number one tonight, on general revelation.

Bible point number one. The first blank is "general." General revelation describes how God reveals Himself to all men through creation. So the second blank is "creation." This is called mediate general revelation. Mediate as in media, okay? So general revelation describes how God reveals Himself to us in creation. Have you ever been out where there's not much light pollution on a dark night and looked up at the stars? How amazing it is.

When I was in seventh grade, I had a science teacher at my school who lived way out in the country. This was way out in Texas, a place called China, Texas. At that time, they didn't even have a stoplight. She had a little barn and a ranch out there, and she invited all of the students to come out. And her husband put a tarp down on the ground. He put a big telescope up on a tripod. There were no lights at all, no city lights. And you could just see the whole Milky Way galaxy up above you. It was amazing to be able to see God's handiwork. And when you see that, it speaks. It tells you about the greatness of God. It tells you about His glory, right?

The same thing, and maybe you've been to the mountains. If you enjoy going to the Blue Ridge Mountains or the Smoky Mountains or the Rocky Mountains, how glorious it is. We stayed at a place one time up near Asheville. This was about north of Asheville. It's near Blowing Rock, I believe, is where Billy Graham is from. Boone, Boone, Boone, North Carolina. We stayed at a place just outside of Boone, North Carolina. And it was way up on top of a mountain. I think it was Sugarloaf Ski Resort or Ski Mountain there. And we were above the clouds. And it was amazing to see. I mean, as far as you can see, you can see these little blue tips of mountains sticking above the clouds. And it just fills your heart with glory, right?

It's a glorious thing to be able to see. Creation mediates to us revelation from God. And when we say mediate, we mean it conveys to us. We get our news from various types of media, right? If you're an old guy like me, maybe you listen to talk radio or maybe you still get a newspaper. Most of us get our news on our phone, right? Or from Facebook or in an app or online. Those are media as a way of conveying a message. And God conveys what we call general revelation to us through nature. Psalm 19:1 says, "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork."

The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork. Both the word "declare" and the word "shows" in the Hebrew are in the present tense. What it's saying is that they didn't just show us at one time God's glory. They didn't show us His excellencies at one time. They're showing us His glory right now. The heavens are declaring the glories of God.

The voice of His general revelation is His handiwork, His nature. The application is this: hear and see what creation declares of God. It's all around us. Don't be blind to it. We often rush through our days and we stop to even notice the beauty in the most simple things that are around us. God's creation is everywhere, speaking of His glory — every blade of grass, every ray of sunshine, every leaf that's falling in all my pools right now, which is by the thousands. They all declare His glory. They all show who He is and how great He is towards us.

Right now, my granddaughter and grandson are living with us, along with my daughter and son-in-law, for the next two months. They're going to be moving in June as soon as the school semester's out. And my granddaughter — she'll see me in my office and she'll come and she'll put her hands up like this, and she's two years old, and how can you say no to that? And she'll say, "Show me animals." And so I'll put her on my lap and we'll get on the computer and I'll show her some animal videos.

And I'll tell you what, I'm learning stuff. You figure you've been through school, you know everything. Have you ever heard of a pistol shrimp before? Look it up when you get home. It's amazing what it tells you about God. It's a shrimp, it's about the size of your thumb, two inches long. It has this giant claw on its hand, and what it does, it uses that claw as a pistol, as a weapon. When it sees its prey, it will click its claw together and when it does, it sends out an air bubble at 65 miles per hour and it's full of hot gas. And when it hits its target, it explodes. There's a flash of light, there's a sound that is louder than a firearm going off, and the heat that's registered is as hot as the surface of the sun. So it kills its prey instantly. That's amazing, and they're everywhere in our oceans.

Submariners have actually found beds of them, and because they're always making that noise, when they think they're being pursued, they will rest the submarine over there and that noise camouflages their audio signature. So it makes them very difficult to find because of the pistol shrimp. And that's all around us. There's glories in the eagles that fly and the blades of grass that we tread upon. Everywhere in nature declares the glory of God. Psalm 19:2 says, "Day unto day utters speech and night unto night reveals knowledge."

All of nature is singing God's praises. Psalm 19 continues in verses 3 and 4, "There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the earth." In other words, they're not just singing God's praises here on the grounds of Beulah Baptist Church. Everywhere you go in this world, their voice is being heard. Everybody can hear about the glory of God from His creation.

Look at Psalm 119, verses 90 through 91. Would someone like to read those two verses, please? "Your faithfulness endures to all generations. You establish the earth and it abides. They continue to stand according to Your laws, for all are Your servants." Now, all of creation, even what we call the natural processes, those are guided by God's command, are they not? Don't they reveal to us about His character, about His goodness, about His faithfulness to us?

Bible point number two. General revelation also describes how God reveals Himself to all men in their conscience. This is called immediate general revelation. So the first blank is "conscience," the second blank is "immediate." God reveals Himself to all men in their conscience. What we mean by revealing Himself to all men in their conscience is twofold. First of all, in our rational being. In other words, as human beings, we're created in the image of God, right?

When we did our study on the nature and attributes of God, we talked about God being a personal being and we are created in His image as unique persons, are we not? And we talked about what that actually means to be created in God's personhood. That God, first of all, is a God who's rational. He thinks about Himself, the persons among the Trinity, and He thinks about Himself as He relates to His creation, right? He's a rational being. He is not a brute beast who acts just out of instinct. He can think abstractly. He can think about Himself and others.

We also talked about how being a personal being means that God is what we would call a resolute being, one who wills and acts freely from within, and so are we, right? Don't we will and act freely, unconstrained? Aren't we a people of volunteers, as it says in Scripture, for the Lord's followers? And also, we are relational beings as God is. Not only does God act and will freely from within and have purposes towards us, right? He relates to His creation. He relates to the three persons of the Trinity. And so are we.

Because we are created in God's image as rational beings, our very thoughts about God can lead us to know a little bit about Him. It's not going to tell us everything about Him. That's why we call it general revelation. For example, the fact that there is anything at all in this world tells us that there's a God, right? Out of nothing comes nothing, right? So the fact that there's something tells us that there's a Creator. God's given us the ability to grasp that in our minds, right?

Beyond just our rational abilities, God has given each and every one of us a conscience. What we mean by conscience is that it's the moral judiciary of the soul. It's that inner sense of right or wrong that compels us to do what is right. And when we don't do what is right, we feel condemnation. And that is universal. You'll find that in tribes that have no Western Christian influence at all. They have an inner sense of something that's right and wrong. They'll believe that murder is wrong. Those are not social mores or social constructs. That's something that God has implanted in every man's conscience. It is an ability to have an inner sense of what's right or wrong and to feel guilty when we don't follow that.

Look at what the Bible says in Isaiah 40:21. "Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told to you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?" From the very beginning, from creation, God created us to be rational beings so we can understand and grasp the idea of God in our conscience. Romans 1:19 says, "Because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them."

It's amazing that even across the world, before Christianity spread, tribes had a sense of God, right? Calvin, whom we spoke about in our nature and attributes series, had the famous quote that the human heart is an idol factory. It's always pumping out idols because we are created to worship, right? And so even the pagans, they may not worship the right God, but they have an idea, some sense of deity, that they are responsible to someone, that they are accountable to someone who created this world.

The application is this: do not ignore or neglect your conscience. Don't, don't ignore your conscience and don't neglect it. As Christians, we need to feed our conscience with the right rule of faith, and that's Scripture, right? The more Scripture we know, the wiser our conscience is going to be. The more it's going to act prudently and tell us what we're doing is indeed right, or condemn us when what we're doing is wrong. We will not have a misinformed conscience when we let Scripture inform our conscience, right?

Look at what Romans 2:14 through 15 says, "For when the Gentiles who did not have the law by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them." In other words, everyone's heart will either condemn their actions or excuse their actions, and that's universal. Our conscience can be seared. Our conscience can be ignored. Our conscience can be misinformed, but everybody has a conscience, and that's one way that God reveals Himself to us generally — in our conscience.

Look over on the back. Job 32 says this, Elihu speaking: "But there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding." Where does all understanding come from? God, right? All principle of movement towards God is by His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is working in our conscience, working in our heart even before we become Christians, right? He's the principle of all movement towards God.

John said pretty much the same thing in John 1, verses 4 and 9. He says, "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men," talking about Christ. "That was the true light which gives light to every man coming into the world." Every single person is created by Christ, for Christ, and in His image, right? And even though man is twisted in his heart and wants to rebel against God, there is the principle of God working within him saying, "You're guilty. You need to get right with Me. You need to know Me." That's the Spirit of God working even in an unregenerate man, working inside him to turn him, to convict him so that he may repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Bible point number three. General revelation reveals some of God's works, especially creation and providence. It also reveals some of God's attributes, such as His deity, power, holiness, and goodness. I'm going to reread that, don't worry. General revelation reveals some of God's works, especially creation and providence. It also reveals some of God's attributes, such as His deity, power, holiness, and goodness.

Has anyone here ever been to Cairo? Cairo, Egypt? You have. What did the pyramids look like to you? Did you feel like an ant when you saw the pyramids? Yeah. Aren't they amazing? The stones are gigantic, right? Yeah. We've seen pictures of them. We haven't maybe been there like Ken has, to see them. But when you look at a picture of one of those pyramids, how great they are — do you ever think about the builder of those pyramids?

People come up with crazy ideas that aliens built them or giants built them, right? Because these stones are so big. So whoever built them had to have been powerful, right? Whoever built them also had to be very precise. The way these stones are massed out and made to be very smooth and to fit so tightly among each other, and measured so perfectly so that the pyramid is symmetrical — I mean, it's really mind-boggling when you think about it. You can see why someone may say, "Maybe it was an alien," because it took such great effort to build those pyramids.

What I'm getting at is this. If something as simple as some blocks of stone can leave you in awe and tell you a little bit about their designer and their creator, how much more can creation in all of its vastness tell us about our Creator? If you were to go outside in the breezeway or outside right now, I guarantee you, you would find little geckos, little lizards running around there. Just the eyeball of one of those geckos is infinitely more complex than the pyramids of Giza. Who built this? God did, right? And it tells us about who He is.

We can see not only His creation and His providence by looking at His works, but we can see His deity, His power, His holiness, and His goodness. Romans 1:18 says, "For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." They have an inner sense of God's wrath in their conscience, knowing that what they are doing is wrong.

Romans 1:20 says, "For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, having been understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead." From the very beginning, if you look around creation, you know that there's a God, and you know that He's powerful, and you know that He is in control of all things.

The application is this: rejoice in what He has revealed to us. General revelation doesn't tell us everything we need to know, and we'll get to that in a second, but it tells us a lot about God, and we should rejoice about what His creation and what our conscience tells us about God. Psalm 97:6 says, "The heavens declare His righteousness, and all the peoples see His glory."

When we see His glory, we should praise the Lord. In Job 12, Job answers his critics, and he says, "But now ask the beasts, and they will teach you, and the birds of the air, and they will tell you. Or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, and the fish of the sea will explain to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind?" Even the beasts and the fish know whose God gives them breath. Ask of them, and they will tell you.

Bible point number four. General revelation shows God's holiness, the demands of His law, and the certainty of judgment. Every man is guilty without excuse. Psalm 50:6 says, "Let the heavens declare His righteousness, for God Himself is judge." And we talked about this when we talked about the holiness of God when we discussed His attributes — that because God is holy, He must uphold what is righteous, and He must punish what is evil. And all nations know this from looking at creation.

The application for us is this: in evangelism, address man's guilt. Have you ever shared Christ with somebody, and they throw up roadblocks? They'll say, "Yeah, but..." or this or that, and you can tell they're not really interested in getting to the truth. They will keep filing up objections, whether it's ontological objections about the existence of God or the veracity of the New Testament, and they're throwing them up, but you can tell they're trying to avoid really talking about their heart and their guilt.

Address those concerns as well as you can, but as quickly as you can, address their guilt. That's your greatest friend in evangelism — the conscience that God has placed inside of every single person. Every person has a nagging sense of guilt and a sense of punishment, realizing that injustice is coming their way. They don't like to talk about it. They don't like to talk about death. They don't like to talk about judgment, but they know that it's coming, so address that.

If you can't get through their intellectual excuses, ask them: "So, you don't believe in God — what do you do with your guilt? What do you do with your regrets? What do you do with your failures, your shortcomings? Just keep on going and pretend that they're not there?" All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Address their guilt in evangelism, because the Holy Spirit is working in their hearts, whether you realize it or not. And He's breaking up their heart, breaking, breaking up the fallow ground, and getting it ready to receive the Word of God. And what is faith? Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.

Romans 1:20 through 21 says, "For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, having been understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse. Although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but they became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened." They know that they're responsible to God, they know they're accountable to Him, but they ignore Him, they refuse Him, and they are without excuse.

They will not be able to stand before the Lord one day and say, "What I did was wrong but I didn't know that it was wrong to lie. I didn't know it was wrong to kill, to steal." God will say, "No, you do know. My Word's been written in your heart in that sense that you have a conscience, right? And the Holy Spirit has been working on your heart — you knew, you just refused."

Psalm 14:1 through 4 says this, "The fool has said in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt. They have done abominable works. There is none who does good. The Lord looks down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there are any who understand, who seek God. They have all turned aside. They have together become corrupt. There is none who does good, no, not one. Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge, who eat up my people as they eat bread and do not call upon the Lord?" Of course they have knowledge, but they're doing it anyway. They are without excuse.

Bible point number five. General revelation leads us to consider our relationship with God. It is given to show His exceeding glory and our great need of Him. Why does God reveal Himself to man at all? Because He loves us. He wants to have a relationship with us, right? That's why He reveals Himself. He could have remained hidden, so to speak, and not revealed Himself to us, left us in the dark.

Look at Psalm 8:3 through 4. We're showcasing who He is in the heavens up above. When we discussed the nature and attributes of God, one quote we used was from Augustine in the Confessions. He said, "O Lord, You have created us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee." What he was saying is that we were created for God, and therefore we are restless until we find our true purpose, which is only in Christ. Only in Christ can we find our rest. We were created for that relationship with Him in the very beginning.

The application is this: in evangelism, address man's separation. Not only do you address man's guilt when you're talking to someone who's unconverted — "What do you do with your guilt? Where do you find release from that guilt? Where can you find forgiveness of your sins?" — but also, talk about their separation. Every single person knows that they were created by the Creator, by God. They know that they are estranged from God. They sense that estrangement, and they fill it with other things.

Maybe they fill it by being part of a gang, right? Because they find community there. Or maybe they find it with their drinking buddies down at the local watering hole, right? Maybe they do it on social media. They just get tons of likes, and they get to where they're just looking for a social media "attaboy," and that's where they try to find some type of fulfillment, some type of fitting in, right? But they're only going to find that resolution in Jesus Christ, nowhere else. Just address their separation.

Look at Acts 14. In Acts 14, if you recall, Paul and Barnabas are traveling, and they find a lame man, and they heal this lame man, and they're in Lystra and Iconium, that region. And they heal this lame man, and all the pagans there who have never heard the gospel, they begin to want to sacrifice and worship Barnabas and Paul. They call Barnabas Zeus, because he's the elder among them, and probably the more dignified, had more gravitas, if you will. And Paul would have been younger, but he was a talker, and so they called him Hermes, the messenger of the gods.

And so Paul and Barnabas say, "Stop this." The priests had brought out this animal, this ox, who was going to be slain, and they were going to worship these two disciples as if they were gods. And they said, "No, don't do that." And they addressed them. He says in Acts 14, "Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men, with the same nature as you, and preach to you that you should turn from these useless things to serve the living God, who made the heaven and earth, the sea, and all things that are in them, who in bygone generations allowed all men to walk in their own ways."

Speaking of the Gentiles, it was outside of Israel. "Nevertheless, He did not leave Himself without witness, in that He did good, gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness." All of nature, God's providence, is there to draw us near to Him. We see the good things He's given us, the fruitfulness. I love things like the brownies my wife made on Sunday, but I also love stuff straight from what God makes, right?

Have you ever had a sweet peach? How great that is. Have you ever bit into a grape? What's that? A navel orange. Yeah. Those things are meant to be a taste of God's goodness, a taste of His benevolence towards us, right? To lead us to seek Him. His Word says it's the goodness of God that leads us to repentance, right? So He has revealed Himself to us through nature, not only to address our guilt, but to address our relationship that's been broken, because it needs to be mended, and only Christ can mend that relationship.

When Paul speaks before the Athenians on Mars Hill, he says in Acts 17, "God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is He worshiped with men's hands as though He needed anything, since He gives life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings." Look at verse 27: "So that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us."

God desires us to find Him. Of course, He's the one who seeks us, right? We don't seek Him. So He is the one who leaves the ninety-nine to go and find the one. But the point is, all of creation is speaking. It's God's loving benevolence reaching out to us and saying, "There I am." That's His general revelation. That's the voice of God.

Bible point number six. General revelation reveals God as Creator, but not as Redeemer. It convicts, but it cannot save. General revelation reveals God as Creator, but not as Redeemer. It convicts, but it cannot save. Guys, you're not off the hook. You can't say, "You know what? I've got these nice little tracts here that the pastor gave me. I don't need to use them. I'm going to leave them here on the table. Because you know what? They've got the sun and the moon and the stars and the birds and the animals, and that's all they need to know about God. They know God's love from looking at creation. I don't need to go and tell the good news."

That's not true, right? Creation can convict you of sin by telling you that there is a God who is judge, who is holy, who has created all things, whom you're accountable to, but does creation reveal the incarnation? Does creation reveal the Trinity? Does creation reveal Christ, His sacrificial death, His atonement for us? No. Does it reveal the outpouring of His Holy Spirit on everyone who's put their faith in Jesus Christ — new life within? No. That only comes through the gospel, what we call special revelation, that Pastor Casey is going to be teaching us next week.

Look at Romans chapter 10, verses 14 through 15. "How shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: 'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, who bring glad tidings of good things.'" It's upon us to declare the gospel, right? To go into all the world to make disciples, and to make disciples you first have to make converts, right? It's up to us to tell people the good news of Jesus Christ, to tell them, as Paul went ahead and did a little bit in Acts 17, that the God who created this world and appointed your boundaries and given you all these good things is going to judge the world by His Son who rose from the dead, right?

We have to give the gospel — the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's incumbent on us to proclaim, because general revelation only condemns and convicts, which is gracious in the sense that it prepares man to receive the gospel, right? But it doesn't convey the gospel. The gospel is conveyed through the Word of God. The good news is declared through us as human instruments to preach and teach the gospel.

The application is this: the gospel declares pardon and reconciliation. The gospel declares pardon and reconciliation. What in nature declares to you pardon — that your sins can be blotted out, that there's a remedy for the guilt that you feel? Nothing in nature declares that. General revelation can't. What in nature or general revelation declares that you can be reconciled with God, the God who created you to be in fellowship with Him in the garden, and from whom man has fallen? What in nature tells you that you can be reconciled? Nothing. But the gospel does, right? It's the glory of the gospel.

Romans 10:17 says, "So faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God." Romans 5, verses 6 through 11 says this, "For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love towards us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified, made right by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation."

Only the gospel can say the wrath has been taken away from you. Your sins have been blotted out. You're reconciled to God. And that's what we call special revelation. Each week over the next ten weeks we're going to have kind of a carousel of teachers. Our elders are aiming to take different weeks, so you'll be hearing from each of us. We'll be still following the same type of outline here. And next week Pastor Casey is going to come and he's going to bring us special revelation. So looking forward to that. Pastor, do you want to come and say any closing words?