God
has Spoken!
The LORD God has not left us in the dark groping for answers to
our eternal destiny and relationship with him. He has clearly revealed himself and
his
eternal purposes for his creation.
Man was created for fellowship with a loving God, but sin interrupted
it. However, God in grace and mercy demonstrated his love for us by sending
his Son to go
to the cross and die for our sins so that our relationship with him could be restored.
There is no other name under heaven whereby we can be saved (Acts 4:12;
John 14:6).
How do we know these facts to be true? Simply
because God has spoken! Hebrews 1:1 says, “After God
spoke long ago in various portions and in various ways to our ancestors
through the prophets”
(NET). Yes, the LORD
God spoke, not just once, but “in many portions and in many ways.” His
revelation to man did not come in one big package, but bit-by-bit, so man could comprehend
it. God progressively revealed himself throughout the Old Testament preparing man for
his
full, compete and perfect revelation of himself in his Son.
In the opening chapters of
Genesis God spoke revealing his eternal purpose for his creation. After man sinned God
came seeking to save and spoke to Adam and Eve with words of judgment and hope. Salvation
by grace was promised in Genesis 3:15. The Bible tells us clearly, “The wages of sin is death,” but God reached down
to man with saving grace even in the garden.
Moreover, God spoke to the
Jewish patriarchs, and by the prophets. He did not speak just once, but over and over
again by means of promises, types, symbols, commandments, precepts, warnings, judgments,
exhortations, etc.
God has not been silent down
through the ages. God has spoken out of the heights of his majesty and glory and revealed
himself. The central message of his revelation is that he is a holy, yet a loving God, who
wants us to love him in return and live in fellowship with him.
“Beautiful is the night in which the moon and the stars of
prophecy and types are shining; but when the sun arises then we forget the hours of
watchfulness and expectancy, and in the clear and joyous light of day there is revealed to
us the reality and substance of the eternal and heavenly sanctuary,” writes
A. Saphir.
God spoke through his prophets and we have his message recorded in
the Old Testament.
Moreover, the God who spoke “long
ago in various portions and in various ways to our ancestors through the
prophets, in these last days he has spoken to
us in a son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he
created the world” (vv.
1-2 NET).
Jesus Christ is God in the flesh. The Son of God, has fully revealed to
us what God is like. God has no further revelation to make. You do not need the Book of
Mormon or the Koran, or other books of the cults. Jesus Christ is the final and
complete spokesman for Deity. God has spoken. The written revelation is now complete. It
was finished with the book of Revelation in the New Testament in the first century A.D.
The cannon of Holy Scripture is closed. Jesus Christ is the center of all God’s
counsels.
God has spoken. God has spoken in his Son and in so doing has fully
expressed himself. He has left nothing in reserve. The cults and pagan religions cannot
add anything new to God’s full revelation of himself in Christ. All that we know, or
can know, or need to know of God is what he has revealed of himself through
his Word.
“The whole revelation and manifestation of God is now in Christ;
he alone reveals the Father’s heart. . . he himself was and is God’s message.
All that God has to say to us is in his Son: all his thoughts, counsels, promises, gifts,
are to be found in the Lord Jesus. Take the perfect life of Christ, his deportment,
his
ways; that is God ‘speaking’—revealing himself—to us. Take
his
miracles, revealing his tender compassion, displaying his mighty power; they are God
‘speaking’ to us. Take his death, commending to us the love of God, in that
while we were yet sinners, he died for us; that is God ‘speaking’ to us. Take
his resurrection, triumphing over the grave, vanquishing him who had the power of death,
coming forth as the ‘first fruits of them that slept’—the earnest of the
harvest to follow; that is God ‘speaking’ to us” (A. W. Pink).
Jesus Christ brings us into a living contact with the LORD God, the
One true and only God, for there is no other. Jesus brings him to dwell in our heart, as
he dwells in God’s heart.
“Heavenly truth is nowhere spoken but by the voice of Christ,
nor heard but by the power of Christ, living in the hearer. . . . The external words of
Christ . . . prepare us for, and point us to, the inner speaking in the heart by the Holy
Spirit, which alone is life and power,” writes Andrew Murray.
The Son of man came to “seek and save that which was lost.”
That was God “manifest in the flesh,” God revealing himself in
his Son. That was
God speaking to us. What will you do with Jesus Christ? Where will you spend eternity?
What will you do with what God has said to you in his Son?
Selah!
Message by Wil Pounds (c) 2006
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