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I Believe in God---#4

I Believe in God---#4

God Speaks Using Human Languages

Hopewell Church of Christ

October 29, 2000 Mural Worthey

Introduction

In the last message, we noted the many different ways in which God has spoken. The Hebrew writer said, "God, who in sundry times and divers manners, spoke in times past unto the fathers by the prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things and by whom also he made the worlds." (Heb. 1:1-2.) Some of these ways are: the casting in lots, Urim and Thummim, dreams, visions, angels, inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and by Jesus His Son.

I want to go further and investigate the matter of language and communication. God can speak to man and has done so. He can speak distinctly to man. Man can understand his will. (Eph. 3:4.)

On Language and Communication

1) The incomprehensible God !

God has found us; we did not find God. He revealed Himself. God cannot be discovered by man.

"For what man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God." (1 Cor. 2:11.)

Elihu said, "Behold, God is great and we know him not; neither can the number of his years be searched out." (Job 36:26.)

"(God) Who only hath immortality, dwelling in light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen, nor can see, to whom be honor and power everlasting." (1 Tim. 6:15-16.)

"Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it." (Psalm 139:6.)

If God did not reveal Himself, we could never know God. He is incomprehensible to mere man without the revelation. This doctrine of God is important to remember. God came to us in Christ and in Scripture. With the reality of revelation, therefore, Christianity stands or falls.

2) The readiness of God to speak

Barth wrote about "the readiness of God to speak." God opened up the conversation with man. One author wrote that God came to us in Christ "to make friends with us." He initiated the contact with man. God has made Himself known by His speaking. We have named the various ways in which God has done so. The Bible is a collection of all those various ways in which God has spoken. There is indeed a readiness on God’s part to speak to lost man. He desires our good and salvation. His commands and statues are for our good always. (Deut. 6:24.)

God spoke with Adam and Eve in the Garden. He spoke with Abraham who was called "the Friend of God." (James 2:23.) One thing that friends do is to speak to one another. The Bible is God’s message to everyone. We are all included in this conversation of God to lost man.

The revelation of God was presented gradually extending for nearly 1600 years. Since God is incomprehensible it makes sense that much time would be needed for man to gradually come to understand the nature of God. Note how indirect the method of lots or Urim and Thummim. Then came dreams and visions. Finally, God was manifest in the flesh. It is evident that God wanted to make Himself known to man.

3) The role of language

The beliefs, feelings, or intentions of a person are best known through conversation. Only in speaking does the inner life of man become adequately known. (Special Revelation and the Word of God, Bernard Ramm, 1961, 25.) God condescends to man both in the use of his language and in the incarnation. (Phil. 2:5f.) God and man are not only covenant-partners, but also speech-partners. The two go together. A spiritual community, a moral order, and a knowledge of God without language is unthinkable.

Language is a fundamental adhesive of society, from the small circle of the family to the larger circle of the nation. A division of languages dissolves this social adhesiveness and the society begins to come apart. The confusion of languages at Babel is an example. Pentecost represents the healing of Babel, at least a partial healing.

Language is the basis for: culture, community (God intended a Christian community), a knowledge of God, of sharing the inner life. The Holy Spirit knows the inner most being of God and revealed the heart of God to man. (1 Cor. 2:11.) Paul concluded, "But we have the mind of Christ." (2:16.)

It was necessary for future communities that a more permanent record of God’s revelations be made. Writings serve that purpose. People can read and study the messages.

4) God spoke in man’s language

The language used by God to address man was not some special divine language. The modality used shows the condescension of God to man. He was not only manifest in the flesh, but he was also manifest in human language.

Through the Spirit guiding and inspiring, man wrote and preached God’s will. God used man with his various abilities to communicate.

The Bible is not written in God’s language (whatever that is); it is written by men in man’s languages. The Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek are not special Holy Spirit languages. There has been an over exaltation of Biblical languages. They are not different from Spanish, English, etc. They are human languages. Often people ask, But what does it say in the Greek? It says basically the same thing in Greek as it does in English!

God used men in making known his will. Yes, the Holy Spirit guided them, but their own styles and abilities were used. We can distinguish between John’s, Paul’s, and Luke’s writings once we get to know them. They reflect the personality of these men. Could these men use the wrong verb tense occasionally? Yes, just as we do in everyday conversation. Is it possible for someone to misunderstand what they said or wrote? Yes, Peter wrote that Paul wrote some things hard to be understood! (2 Peter 3:16.) So did Peter, in that very chapter. Remember that God uses human preachers as well. People probably "hear" more of the Gospel than they "read." God uses imperfect humans to try to express his will.

What we have is not a "perfect" book or perfect preachers, but a divine Savior who did no wrong and who can reconcile man to God. The Bible is an instrument to lead men to God. We do not worship a book, but the God of the book. The Bible is therefore instrumental, not an end in itself. Note this passage:

"(Ye) search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me that ye might have life." (John 5:39-40.)

This is not a command to search the Scriptures. The Jews were doing that. They thought that salvation was inherently in the Scriptures, not in the Jesus of the Bible. The Bible is an instrument to make known God in the flesh.

This instrumental character of Scripture a) rebuts any charge of bibliolatry (excess regard for a book), and b) prevents any charge of treating the Bible magically. (Special Revelation, Bernard Ramm, 120-21.)

5) Is speaking in tongues an exception ?

Some claim that tongue speaking is an exception to God using human languages. I do not think so. Paul wrote, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." (1 Cor. 13:1.) This was a hypothetical case. There is no indication as to what the language of angels might be.

In Scripture, when angels speak they speak with the tongues of men. When the angel spoke to Zechariah in the temple concerning a son, the angel spoke in a language that Zechariah understood. Zechariah also spoke to the angel. (Luke 1:12-20.) Gabriel announced to Mary that she would conceive and bear a son. Mary responded in her language to the angel. (Luke 1:26-37.) Angles sang at the birth of Jesus. The song was in the language of men. (Luke 2:8-14.)

God gave some the gift of tongues in the early church. These remarkable event is mentioned in only three books in the New Testament---Mark, Acts, and Corinthians. The KJV translators inserted the word, unknown, before tongue in 1 Corinthians 14. The italics mean that is was supplied by the translators and was not found in the original text. The language was unknown to the one speaking, but it was not unknown to those who heard it. Further, if one spoke in tongues, it was commanded that the message be translated so that all might know its meaning. If some gibberish was spoken, it could not be translated.

When Peter and the apostles spoke on Pentecost, every man heard them speak in their own tongue wherein they were born. (Acts 2:8.) This act of speaking in foreign languages is interesting. Paul said to the Corinthians, "In the law it is written, With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak unto this people; and yet for all that will they not hear me, saith the Lord." (1 Cor. 14:21.) This quotation is from Isaiah 28:11-12. The prophet was referring to the time of the Babylonian captivity. Every morning, the Israelites would awaken to hear a foreign language, not the familiar words of Hebrew or Aramaic. By this God rebuked his people. Probably everyone present in Jerusalem on Pentecost could have understood Hebrew, yet the apostles spoke in the Gentile languages where they now lived. This was a final and complete rebuke of Israel. The Gospel was not first preached in their language, but in the languages of Gentiles. The Gospel would go into all the world; it was not just for Israel.

O. Palmer Robertson wrote, "Tongues served well to show that Christianity, though begun in the cradle of Judaism, was not to be distinctively Jewish. . . . Now that the transition (between Old and New Covenants) has been made, the sign of transition has no abiding value in the life of the church. Today there is no need for a sign that God is moving from the single nation of Israel to all the nations. That movement has become an accomplished fact. As in the case of the founding office of apostle, so the particularly transitional gift of tongues has fulfilled its function as covenantal sign for the Old and New Covenant people of God. Once having fulfilled that role, it has no further function among the people of God." ("Tongues: Sign of Covenantal Curse and Blessing," O. Palmer Robertson, The Westminster Theological Journal 38, 1975-76, 53.)

6) God has spoken expressly

"Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith. . . . " (1 Tim. 4:1.)

"The word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi." (Ezekiel 1:3.)

Expressly means distinctly and clearly. God knows how to speak.

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