Author: David Petts

How God speaks to us    Talk 13   Prophets and Prophecy (Part 1)

We saw last time that God speaks to us through pastors and preachers, but, as we shall see today, he also speaks to us through prophets and the gift of prophecy. We’ll begin by explaining what prophecy is. In the English language the word prophet is often used to refer to someone who foretells the future. But its basic meaning is someone who speaks on behalf of someone else. A good illustration of this can be found in Exodus 7:1-2. Here the Lord says to Moses:

See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go…

Aaron is called Moses’ prophet because he is going to speak on his behalf. So prophets are people who hear from God and then pass on to others what he has said. They speak on behalf of God. Moving now to the New Testament, we find that there are three different levels at which prophecy may operate:

1. There is a sense in which all God’s people are prophets(Acts 2:16-18)
2. Prophecy as a spiritual giftis given to some Christians, but not all (1 Corinthians 12:8-11).
3. Prophets are given to the churchto equip God’s people for works of service (Ephesians 4:11-12).

All God’s people are prophets

As we’ve already seen, a prophet is a person who speaks on behalf of God. Understood this way it is easy to see how, in a sense, all God’s people are prophets. We are all called to speak on his behalf. As the children of God, it is our privilege to be led by the Spirit of God (Romans 8:14) and the purpose of the Spirit’s coming at Pentecost was that we might receive power to be witnesses (Acts 1:8). The Spirit was poured out so that all God’s people could prophesy – sons and daughters, young and old, servants, men and women (Acts 2:16-18).

This does not mean that all Christians will exercise the gift of prophecy as it is described in 1 Corinthians 12-14 or that they will be prophets in the Ephesians 4:11 sense, but it does mean that God has made his Spirit available to all so that we can all speak on his behalf. As we’ve already seen, Acts 8:1 tells us how, because of the persecution that had broken out against the church in Jerusalem, all the Christians (except the apostles) were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Verse 4 tells us that these people preached the word wherever they went. As a result, many people turned to Christ and the great church at Antioch was founded (Acts 11:19-21).

These people were not called to be ‘preachers’ in the way we tend to use the word today, nor were they prophets like John the Baptist, but they had received God’s Spirit and they did speak out on his behalf, and in that sense they were both preachers and prophets! In short, all God’s people are called to speak up for him. All God’s people are prophets.

The gift of prophecy 

In 1 Corinthians 12:8-11 Paul lists nine spiritual gifts. One of these is prophecy. 1 Corinthians 12:10-11 says:

 …to another prophecy… he (the Spirit) gives them to each person just as he determines.

This strongly suggests that this gift is not given to everybody and Romans 12:6 backs this up by saying:

We have different gifts according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.

This gift is given by the Spirit to individual Christians to speak words of encouragement and edification to the church. In 1 Corinthians 14:1-5 we read:

1. Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy. 2. For anyone who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit. 3. But everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement and comfort. 4. He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church. 5. I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be edified.

These verses make it very clear that the gift of prophecy is very valuable. The reason for this is that it edifies or builds up the church. It strengthens, encourages, and comforts God’s people. In church it is more valuable than speaking in tongues because, although speaking in tongues edifies the person who is speaking, it doesn’t help anyone else unless it’s interpreted.

However, when an interpretation is given, speaking in tongues becomes just as valuable as prophecy. In fact, when speaking in tongues is understood, it is in itself a form of prophetic language. On the Day of Pentecost, when Peter was asked for an explanation of how the disciples were able to speak languages they had never learned, he replied that this was the fulfilment of Joel’s prophecy that your sons and your daughters shall prophesy (Acts 2:17ff.).

All this shows us that God may speak to us through the gift of prophecy or through the interpretation of tongues[1] or even through speaking in tongues when the hearers understand the language that is being spoken, as on the Day of Pentecost. And I can testify from my own experience that God does speak to us in all these ways.

In 1959, when Eileen and I were seeking the baptism in the Holy Spirit, we decided that perhaps we should visit a Pentecostal Church to find out more and possibly ask for prayer. So one Tuesday evening we went to Bethel Church, Dagenham, when they were having their weekly prayer meeting. The church was several miles from where we lived and no one in the church had any idea of who we were. We were slightly nervous as neither of us had ever been to a Pentecostal prayer meeting before and we didn’t know what to expect. Would there be speaking in tongues, for example?

As it turned out, the meeting was not unlike the Baptist prayer meetings we were used to, apart from the fact that there were no real gaps between one person praying and the next. Then, just as we were getting used to it, somebody spoke in tongues. This was followed by an interpretation, which, to our total amazement, began with the words, You have come into this church seeking to be filled with the Spirit…

This was followed by two more ‘messages’ in tongues each followed by an interpretation and we knew without a doubt that God was speaking directly to us. We continued to attend that Pentecostal prayer meeting and a few weeks later we were both baptised in the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues ourselves. This experience brought us into an entirely new dimension of Christian living and ever since we have been grateful for words from the Lord that have come either through prophecy or the interpretation of tongues.

Some years later, when I was pastoring a church in Basingstoke, we were both rather concerned when Eileen discovered that she had a lump in her breast. Fearing the worst but hoping for the best, we committed the matter to the Lord.

We have always believed in divine healing, but we also believe that God expects us to take what medical help might be available[2], but we weren’t sure which was the right course of action in this case. So on Saturday night I asked the Lord to speak to us through the gifts of the Spirit in church the next morning.

And, sure enough, the answer came through an interpretation and a prophecy. After one person had spoken in tongues, someone else gave the interpretation: You have considered the help of man, and that is great, but in this situation it is the Lord himself who will meet your need…

At this point I began to cry and the floor was wet with my tears, when the interpretation was followed immediately by a prophecy: For has he not promised to heal you…?! Needless to say, the lump disappeared within days.

So God undoubtedly speaks to us through gifts like prophecy and the interpretation of tongues, but on rare occasions he speaks through the gift of tongues itself. This happened on the Day of Pentecost when people from several different nations heard the disciples speaking in their languages, and it still happens today.

One evening, some years ago, when I was Principal at Mattersey Hall Bible College, I was preaching in Newark when, in the middle of my message I spoke a few words in tongues. My purpose in doing so was to demonstrate that, when God has given us this gift, we can use it as a means of praying with our spirit whenever we wish (1 Corinthians 14:14-15).

Straight after the meeting, a woman with her husband approached me and said: I’m rather embarrassed to speak with you, but, you see, I understood what you said when you spoke in tongues. Then she went on to explain that, although she had been a Christian for several years, she had never been able to give up smoking. Only that day her husband had said to her, You really must give it up. If you don’t, it will kill you. She had replied, I know, but it’s so hard. She then went on to tell me that she and her husband were gypsies and that they had a language of their own known as Romany. I had never heard of such a language, yet when I spoke in tongues on that occasion, Romany was the language I was speaking. And what did it mean?

I have told you already. Cigarettes are not good for you!

So God has wonderful ways of speaking to us, through tongues or interpretation or through prophecy. And he also speaks through the ministry of prophets. But that will be the subject of our next talk.

How God speaks to us       Talk 12       Preachers and Pastors

In recent talks we’ve been considering how God speaks to us through our parents and through other Christians. We now turn our attention to how God speaks to us through the preaching of his word by those he has called and gifted to do so. We have already seen that God expects all Christians to spread the good news of the gospel to those with whom they come in contact. The gift of the Holy Spirit is available to all Christians and his empowering enables us all to be witnesses for Christ. 

In Ephesians 4:11-12, however, we read how Christ has given to the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers, to equip God’s people for works of service so that the body of Christ may be built up. I have written at length on each of these roles in my book, Body Builders, so won’t be going into great detail here. It will be enough for us to remind ourselves that one of the chief ways that God has chosen to speak to us is through his servants.

Of course, God speaks to us individually as we read our Bibles, but that by no means does away with the need for the teaching of God’s word through those to whom he has entrusted our spiritual welfare. In Acts 20 the apostle Paul is on his way to Jerusalem and at Miletus he calls for the elders of the church to come and see him (v17). He knows that none of them will ever see him again (v25) and he wants to encourage them and pray with them one last time. He tells them to 

Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood (v28).

Notice that in verse 17 these people are referred to as elders. In this verse they’re called overseers and shepherds. It’s clear from this and from passages like 1 Peter 5:1-5 and Titus 1:5-7 that:

1. In the New Testament elders, overseers, and shepherds (pastors) are interchangeable terms referring to the same role.
2. Their responsibility is to protect and care for the flock (God’s people) from ‘wolves’ (false teachers) who distort the truth (Acts 20:29, 1 Peter 5:2).
3. They must encourage others by sound teaching and refute those who oppose it (Titus 1:9).
4. They are ultimately accountable to Christ, who is the Chief Shepherd of the flock (1 Peter 5:5).

Since God has given such a serious responsibility to those who are the shepherds of his sheep, it follows that his people are to pay attention to the teaching and advice given by church leaders. I can’t say in all honestly that I have always done so – in fact I remember that as a teenager I sometimes argued publicly with our Baptist pastor (for which I wrote and apologized a few years later after I was baptized with the Holy Spirit). But I’m so glad that down through the years again and again God has spoken to me and guided me through the teaching and advice of pastors and other preachers.

Perhaps the best example of this is how the Lord called me to full-time ministry. Mamhead Park is a country mansion built regardless of cost in the nineteenth century. Set in hundreds of acres of beautiful countryside, with views going down to the sea at Lyme Bay on the south coast of England, in the 1950s it was used by the Baptists as a centre for retreats and conferences. It was also used in the school holidays for Summer Schools for young people. It was at one of these that God spoke to me and showed me that I was to be a minister.

It was at the end of one of the evening sessions. The preacher had just finished his message and the Reverend Cyril Rushbridge, who had been leading the meeting, was expected to close in prayer. But before he did so, he said, Before we close in prayer I just feel the Lord wants me to tell you how he called me to the ministry. He then took just a few minutes sharing with us how this had happened. It was nothing like Paul’s experience on the Damascus Road. I don’t remember the details, but by the time he had finished I felt sure that God was calling me to the ministry too. This was confirmed by Kate, one of the young people from our youth group, who said to me as soon as the meeting ended, David, do you know now what the Lord wants you to do with your life? The answer was yes, I was absolutely sure.

I wrote home to my parents telling them what had happened. When I got home, they told me how pleased they were and how, when the doctor had told them that they were unlikely to have any children, they had prayed that the Lord would give them a son who would have an international ministry.

I was 16 at the time and in the middle of preparing for A levels at school. I spoke to our pastor, the Reverend Leslie Moxham, and asked his advice as to my next steps now that the Lord had called me to the ministry. He suggested that I should start to attend the midweek Prayer and Bible Study meeting and this I was happy to do. But there was just one problem – time! 

Students at Brentwood School, where I attended, had lessons for six days every week and were expected to do two to three hours ‘prep’ every evening. Sunday was the only day we were not at school and on Sundays I was already attending Boys’ Brigade Bible Class at 10am, the morning church service at 11am, teenage Bible Class at 3pm, youth discussion group at 4.30pm, the evening service at 6.30pm and an after church ‘sing-song’ from 8-9pm! I also attended Boys’ Brigade, Young People’s Fellowship, and the church Youth Club three evenings every week. Could I still fit in an extra meeting without it affecting my studies at school?

My history teacher clearly thought not! About two months before I was due to take my A level exams, he said to me in front of the whole class, 

Quite honestly, Petts, unless you work harder, you’re going to fail you’re A levels. 

To which I replied, Well, you see Sir, I believe that God has called me to the ministry and that it’s important that I attend the meetings at our church, 

and I explained to him how busy I was. 

Then I added, Actually, Sir, I believe that if I put God first, and if he wants me to pass my A levels, he will not let me down. 

To which he replied, Petts, I respect your convictions, but I can’t say that I agree with you. 

As a result of that conversation, I did try to work harder, but I also continued to attend all the meetings at church, including the midweek Bible Study recommended by my pastor. When the A level results were published, to the surprise of my teacher I had received a comfortable pass in all subjects, including History. And to my surprise, I was shortly afterwards awarded a prestigious Heseltine Exhibition to study at Brasenose College, Oxford. I give God all the glory for this. I had followed my Pastor’s advice and had tried to put God first. I had honoured the Lord in front of my teacher and fellow-students, and the Lord did not fail me.

A few years later, after graduating from Oxford, I was pastoring a small church in Colchester. The church funds were insufficient to pay me full time, so I was teaching Religious Education in a local secondary school to provide for the needs of our young family. This was clearly part of the Lord’s plan as during the years I was teaching there dozens of teenagers came to our church and made decisions for Christ. But I knew that the Lord had called me to full time ministry and that eventually the time would come for me to give up my teaching job. The question was, when?

The answer came during the Assemblies of God Annual Conference held in Clacton in May 1966. I was not able to attend during the day as it coincided with the school summer term, but I was able to go in the evenings as Clacton is not very far from Colchester. The preacher on the first night was Pastor Eddie Durham. He began by talking about how, in time past, if a man wanted to challenge another to a duel, he would throw down a gauntlet in front of him. The challenge was accepted by the other man picking up the gauntlet. Pastor Durham then produced a motorcycle gauntlet and threw it on the floor before the congregation, saying, I challenge young men in this meeting to give themselves full time to the ministry!

I remember thinking, That’s all very well. I’d love to be full time in the ministry, but it simply isn’t possible financially. My teaching job was our only means of income.  But then I added, But, Lord, if that’s what you want me to do, I’ll do it, but you’ll have to make it very clear by the end of the week.

The reason I said this was that I was contractually obliged to submit my resignation to the school where I was teaching by the end of May if I was not going to return for the beginning of the new term in September. God had just a week to let me know what he wanted me to do. 

And he did! Night after night I went back to those meetings, having told no one but Eileen what I had prayed. And each night, in one way or another, God spoke to me confirming that I was to give up my teaching job. A particular highlight was the preaching of Thomas F. Zimmerman, the General Superintendent of Assemblies of God in the USA, who was one of the guest preachers at the conference. What made it particularly significant was the fact that it was the night of my ordination where hands were laid on me in recognition of the ministry God had given me. Zimmerman’s message was based on 1 Kings 17-18 and the story of Elijah. I was reminded that if we follow God’s PLAN, we will know his PROVISION and his POWER.

By the end of the week Eileen and I were fully convinced that God’s plan was that I should give up my teaching job and trust him to provide for our needs. And so, first thing on Monday morning, I went to the head teacher, who, incidentally, was an atheist, and handed in my resignation. When asked for a reason, I could only reply, Well Sir, this may sound a little strange, but God has told me to.

Next time: God speaks to us through prophets

Talk 11 God speaks through other Christians

Welcome back after a short break. Let’s remind you what we’ve been saying so far. We’ve seen that:

• God speaks to all humanity through his creation
• He spoke to Israel by the prophets
• He has finally spoken by his Son
• He speaks today through the Bible
• He speaks through other people – parents

Why believe that God speaks to us through the Bible

Tells us about Jesus

Jesus believed that God speaks through scripture

The apostles and early church believed…

The Bible shows us the way of salvation

How to understand the Bible correctly

What part of the Bible are we reading – OT or NT?

What is the context of the passage we are reading?

            Literary context

            Historical/sociological context

            Immediate context

Different ways God speaks through the Bible

He teaches what we should believe and how we should behave

He shows us what to expect by giving us examples from the lives of God’s people

He encourages us by giving us many wonderful promises

He directs us by bringing key verses to our attention

God speaks through other people

Last time: Parents

Today: other Christians

I suppose that if we were to ask most Christians who it is they expect God to use in speaking to them, their answer would almost certainly include preachers or pastors or prophets. And we will be dealing with these in later talks. But it’s very important that we should realise that God often speaks through Christians who do not come into any of these categories.

Of course, there are those who are especially gifted by God to speak for him. Ephesians 4:11, for example, mentions apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. But the New Testament also makes it clear that God expects all his people to speak for him. As I have pointed out elsewhere, there is a sense in which all God’s people are prophets[1]. The Holy Spirit can use anyone he chooses.

For example, the great church at Antioch was first started by ordinary Christians spreading the word. In Acts 8:1-4 we read that, as a result of the persecution that followed the death of Stephen, the Christians were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. But they spread the word wherever they went (v.4). Acts 11:19-21 tells us:

Now those who had been scattered by the persecution in connection with Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, telling the message only to Jews.

Some of them, however, men from Cyprus and Cyrene, went to Antioch and began to speak to Greeks also, telling them the good news about the Lord Jesus.

The Lord’s hand was with them, and a great number of people believed and turned to the Lord.

So this church was founded, not by the apostles, who had all remained in Jerusalem (Acts 8:2), but by ordinary Christians spreading the good news of the gospel. God can speak through any one of us, and he can speak toany one of us by whomever he chooses, as the following examples from my own experience demonstrate.

I have already mentioned Laurie Dixon whose testimony changed the course of my life. The year before I met Laurie, I was on holiday in the Lake District at a Baptist Summer School where I made friends with a young man named Michael Stewart. Michael told me that the following year he was planning with a couple of Christian friends to take a car and visit several countries in Europe. He asked if I would be interested in joining them. Travelling abroad was far less common in those days than it is today, and I jumped at the opportunity.

So, in 1958 I found myself in Switzerland with Michael and three new friends climbing a mountain. The long climb in the heat of the August sunshine had been tiring. We were unaccustomed to this kind of exercise and the cool water of the mountain stream was inviting to our aching feet. Graham, Michael, and Daphne sat down to rest, putting their feet in the water. But it was my first visit to Switzerland, and somehow I felt that we were wasting an opportunity when there was so much to see. Leaving the others to paddle their feet, Laurie and I climbed higher following the path of the stream, but half an hour later we had had enough too. As we looked down at the others a few hundred feet below us, we realised that we had come up the hard way. To our right there was an easier way down.

Gratefully we turned to take it, when suddenly, as if from nowhere, a large rock came hurtling down the mountainside toward the stream and I was directly in its path! As a fairly athletic nineteen-year-old, I should have been able to jump clear with relative ease, but I was gripped with terror, unable to move. As a Christian I might have thought of praying, but my mind refused to function. In a second it would hit me. The end had surely come. But when the rock was only about a yard away, it struck a small protusion in the ground, changed direction, and crashed into the stream below, missing me by inches! The danger was over as quickly as it had come.

I heaved a sigh of inexpressible relief.

Wow that was lucky! I exclaimed.

Lucky, David?

said Laurie who’d been watching from a few yards away.

That wasn’t luck. I believe God has a purpose for your life and that rock couldn’t have hit you.

It was that simple statement of faith that started a process of enquiry which was to lead to an experience which revolutionised my life. This man was moving in a dimension of Christianity that I knew little or nothing about. So I questioned Laurie to see if I could discover the basic difference.

Although from different denominational backgrounds, I discovered that we had much in common. Doctrinally, our beliefs were almost identical. We believed the same Bible, preached the same gospel, and worshipped the same Saviour. We both knew what it meant to be a born again Christian. We had both been baptised as believers by immersion in water. Basically, we had very much in common. And yet this man had something which I didn’t have, something indefinable, but very real. I asked him what it was.

He started to talk about an experience he had received after his conversion – being baptised with the Holy Spirit he called it – when the Holy Spirit had come and filled him to overflowing. He said he had spoken in tongues and told me I could read about it in the book of Acts. It was at this point, however, that my interest began to wane. I certainly wanted to experience more of God in my life, but as for speaking in tongues, I frankly couldn’t see the point of it. If being baptised with the Holy Spirit meant that I had to speak in tongues, I decided that I had better forget about it. And for a while I did!

On returning to England, I dismissed the subject from my mind and might have ignored it forever, had it not been for the remarkable series of events which took place the following summer. Eileen, my fiancee, and I were sitting in the youth meeting at church singing from a well-known chorus book, when I happened to notice a list of books advertised on the back cover, one of which was entitled, The full blessing of Pentecost, by Dr Andrew Murray. Immediately I concluded that this book must be dealing with the subject Laurie had been talking about last year in Switzerland, and I suggested that it might be good to get it. In a few days, Eileen received a reply from the advertisers saying that the book was no longer available.

A little disappointed, I returned home from Eileen’s to my parents’ house for lunch. As the meal was not quite ready, I went into the sitting room to wait. On entering, I happened to notice a book lying on the piano and casually picked it up – The full blessing of Pentecost by Dr Andrew Murray! But how did it get there? No one, except Eileen, knew anything of my interest in the subject. My parents did not know where the book had come from. It is true that my father had always had a large collection of books, but if it was his, he certainly had never read it, and didn’t even know that he possessed it. Anyway, why wasn’t it in the bookcase and how did it get on the piano? No one to this day has any idea how that book came to be there on the very day that I had thought it to be unobtainable. The answer must surely lie in the realm of the supernatural. With great anticipation, Eileen and I both read the book, and then we both began to pray fervently that we too might be baptised with the Holy Spirit. But the rest of the story must wait till later in the series.

So God used Laurie Dixon to speak to me. This was not only by his words but also by his actions. No doubt we’re all familiar with the expression, Actions speak louder than words. Less well known is the Latin motto, Facta non verba, which means, Deeds not words. We’ve already seen how God speaks to us through Jesus both by what he said and what he did. His actions as much as his words show us what God is like and how he wants us to behave. And this is how he often speaks to us today

A good example of God speaking to me through the actions of another Christian is our friend Jill Cooper who used to help Eileen serve coffee on Sunday mornings at our local church. What she did was incredibly simple, but before I tell you what it was, I need to give you the background story.

In February 2010 Eileen and I went to India for a month at the invitation of the Finnish Pentecostal Churches who asked me to go and teach about the Holy Spirit where they had missionaries working in Mumbai and Machilipatnam. Now while I was the Principal at Mattersey Hall Bible College we had the privilege of training many overseas students several of whom were from India, and when our former students heard about our trip, they were quick to ask us if we would visit them too so that I could preach in the numerous churches they had planted since returning from Mattersey.

We, of course, were delighted to agree, but I knew that the schedule they organized for me would be quite intense and, as I have always believed in observing a Sabbath principle, I asked that one day in seven should be a rest day. However, in practice this didn’t happen, as the day they scheduled as a rest day was the day we had to travel from one place to the next! As a result, and because that year the temperature in India was higher than usual, I was suffering from dehydration and to the disappointment of all concerned, a few of the meetings scheduled had to be cancelled.

Apart from this, we had had a great time in India and after a few weeks back in England I thought I had fully recovered. But towards the end of April, on a preaching trip to Essex, I started to experience similar symptoms to those I’d had in India. I couldn’t understand this as the temperature in England was about half what it had been in India. Without going into unnecessary detail, the next two years proved to be extremely difficult. I continued to experience similar problems every time I preached. I began to wonder if the time had come for me to give up.

Then, at just the right time, Eileen and I were in Exeter at a meeting for Assemblies of God ministers and their wives. The guest preacher was John Glass, the General Superintendent of the Elim Churches. He was preaching on Jeremiah 1 when he came to verses 11-12:

The word of the LORD came to me: “What do you see, Jeremiah?” “I see the branch of an almondtree,” I replied. The LORD said to me, “You have seen correctly, for I am watching to see that my word is fulfilled.”

He explained the play on words that we find in these verses – the Hebrew word for almond is very similar to the word for watch. The almond tree is among the first to blossom in spring. It’s something you watch for as a sign that spring has come. Winter will surely be followed by spring because God watches over his word to see that it is fulfilled.

Now in England most of us don’t see an almond tree too often, so John likened it to crocuses. In his garden they’re the first flowers to bloom in spring. They’re the sign or guarantee that winter won’t be forever. Then John broke away from his notes and said something like this:

There are some of you here who are feeling that your ministry has come to an end. You have been experiencing a bleak winter, but the Lord wants you to know that it will not be forever. You will experience a new springtime.

Eileen and I looked at each other. Was this for us? Surely it must be. But there were a lot of other people in that meeting. Could it be that John’s prophetic word was for them and not for us? We drove home after the meeting hoping, rather than believing, that this really was a word from the Lord for us.

And then, that evening, Jill Cooper arrived on our doorstep and said, I’ve brought you a little present. To be honest, I had bought it for someone else, but then I felt the Lord tell me to give it to you instead.

What was the present? A bowl of crocuses! And without a doubt, I have experienced a new springtime in my ministry. So the Lord does speak to us through other Christians, both by their words and by their actions. And, as the story I have just told you clearly illustrates, he most certainly speaks to us through preachers. But that’s the subject for next time.

How God speaks to us  Talk 10  God speaks to us through our Parents

So far, all that we have said has centred very much around the Bible. We have said that God speaks to us through the person of Jesus, but what we know about Jesus we derive from the Bible. We have also considered various ways in which God speaks to us directly through the Bible, but now we turn our attention to other ways in which God speaks to us.

We’ll start by looking at how he speaks to us through other people. But even here our knowledge of what the Bible teaches will be vital. Well-meaning people can get things wrong and anything they say must be filtered through our understanding of what the Bible has to say.

Of course, God can speak through anyone he wants to – he once even spoke through a donkey (Numbers 22)! But in the next few talks we’ll be concentrating on four major categories of people through whom the Lord may speak to us – parents, preachers, pastors, and prophets. As usual I’ll be illustrating what the Bible has to say with examples from my own personal experience. Today our subject is parents.

Parents

The Bible is very clear in its teaching that children should learn from their parents about the things of God. We are told to honour our parents, to obey our parents, and to heed their instruction. It follows, therefore, that one way that God has chosen to speak to us is through the instruction and advice of our parents. It is our parents’ responsibility to explain to us the truth about God, to show us by their teaching and example the difference between right and wrong, and to advise us as to the best course of action when we are unsure of what we should do.

I am personally very grateful to God that my parents fulfilled that role in a wonderful way, but I am very conscious that not all my listeners will have had Christian parents and that some may have had a very different experience from mine. My wife, Eileen, is one example of this. Her parents, despite many good qualities, were by no means ideal, but they did send her to Sunday school and at the age of seven Eileen was led to the Lord by her Sunday school teacher. Since that day she has always sought to be the kind of person God would want her to be and, was determined that when she became a mother she would be a better parent to our children than her parents had been to her. The fact that our three children, who are now in their fifties, have all grown up to love and serve the Lord is in my view largely due Eileen’s godly influence. So, if you did not enjoy the benefit of ideal parents, please remember that the Lord can help you to be a better parent to your children than they were to you.

However, as I have said, my experience was very different from Eileen’s. I remember how, at the age of eight, I was sitting on my father’s knee when I asked him, Daddy, how good do you have to be to go to Heaven? I think the question was on my mind because of something that was called David’s good boy chart. This was a chart my father had made, rather like a calendar, with space for each day for him to stick on it a coloured sun or moon or star depending on how my behaviour had been that day. I think he had made it because my mother had been having some problems with me during the day while he was at work. When he got home, my mother would tell him how I had behaved that day and an appropriate sticker would be applied to the chart. If I’d been good, it would be a sun, not so good, a moon, and so on. I think I must have been wondering how many suns I would need if I wanted to go to Heaven!

My father explained that it wasn’t a question of how good we are, because none of us is good enough to go to Heaven. That’s why Jesus came to die on the cross to take the punishment for our sins so that all who believe in him would have everlasting life. Then he asked,

Do you believe that, David?

I replied, Yes, of course I do.

And why do you believe it? asked my father.

Because you have told me, I said.

That’s a good reason, he said, but one day you will come to believe it for yourself.

That’s the first time I can remember that I was consciously aware of the truth of the gospel. I suppose that, like many who have been brought up in a Christian home, I can’t put a date on when I first believed. It feels as though I have always believed. I cannot remember a time when I did not believe. I used to be concerned about this, especially when so many Christians can remember a specific date. But then I heard an illustration that was very helpful and which at the time of writing is particularly relevant because this week Eileen and I are celebrating our 60th wedding anniversary. Now I have never forgotten our wedding anniversary, but even if one year I had, I would never have forgotten that I am married and who I am married to!

The point of the illustration is this. The date that my married relationship with Eileen started is relatively unimportant compared with our relationship now. The same applies to our relationship with Jesus. What matters is not when our relationship started, but am I in relationship with him now? Am I trusting him now for the forgiveness of my sins and my home in heaven? And if I am, then the exact date it all started is relatively unimportant.

So I cannot remember an exact date when I first believed. But I can remember the day when I decided to give my life to Christ. And again, it was through my father that I came to that decision. Every Sunday afternoon my father used to teach the teenage Bible class in our Baptist church. I remember sitting listening to him week after week talking from John 3:16. The challenge was not so much, Did I believe? but rather, What would I do about it?

I decided that, if God loved me so much that he sent his Son to die on the cross to save me from my sins, the least I could do was to give my life to him. So the next time our pastor made an appeal for those who would surrender to Christ and obey him by being baptised in water, I walked forward in response and was baptised on July 19th 1953.

So it was through my father’s teaching and my mother’s example and encouragement that I became a Christian. As we have said, one of the ways God speaks to us is through our parents and the most solemn responsibility of every Christian parent is to show their children the way of salvation.

But there are other ways too that God uses our parents to speak to us. The book of Proverbs emphasises again and again the wisdom of paying attention to the advice of our parents and in both Old and New Testaments we are told to honour our father and mother. And surely if we honour and respect them we will be grateful for the advice they give us.

Of course, when we are young children and not yet mature enough to make wise decisions for ourselves, it’s appropriate that our parents should tell us what to do. We should obey them. But when we are mature adults it’s not so much a question of obedience as of honouring them and listening to their advice. And in between our childhood and our adulthood we have the period of adolescence. This is a time of transitioning from obedience to honouring and I am grateful for my parents’ wisdom in encouraging me as a teenager to make my own decisions while at the same time offering their advice as to what might well be the right course of action to take.

One example of this was when, at the age of 12, I had to decide whether to opt for studying Greek or German at school. My father pointed out that if I opted for Greek it might help me if, in the future, I needed to study the New Testament in greater depth. Within three years I was translating parts of the Greek New Testament and eventually taught Greek for many years in our Bible College. Neither my father nor I could possibly have known this, but I believe that through my father the Lord directing my steps according to his plan for my life.

A few years later, at the age of 17, I was offered a scholarship to read P.P.E. (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at Brasenose College, Oxford. A year before this I had already felt a call to serve the Lord as a minister and, when I received the news about the scholarship, I was initially unsure as to whether I should accept it. Perhaps I should be applying to Bible College instead?

I asked my father what he thought, and he suggested that I should take into consideration that God might well have a purpose in my going to Oxford, especially bearing in mind that places at Oxford were pretty hard to come by! As I look back, I’m glad I took my father’s advice. I was baptised in the Holy Spirit just four weeks before starting my course at Oxford and was used by the Lord in spreading the Pentecostal testimony to other students and conducting Bible studies and prayer meetings seeking spiritual gifts. The type of degree I was reading was relatively unimportant. I knew I was at the right place in the right time. And my Oxford degree has opened doors for me that might not have been open had I studied elsewhere, including invitations to speak in universities and colleges not only in Britain, but further afield in Europe, Africa and the United States.

So in this talk I have tried to show firstly from Scripture and then from my personal experience that one way that God speaks to us is through our parents. Much of what I have said has related to my father who, in my early years, clearly had a very great influence on my life for which I will always been grateful to God. But ultimately we must decide for ourselves what the Lord is saying to us, whoever it might be that he has chosen to speak through. And that applies not only to parents but also to the preachers and pastors and prophets through whom he also speaks to us.

Break for August. Resume in September.

Talk 9.  How God speaks to us through the Bible (Part 3)

He directs us by bringing key verses to our attention

So far we have identified three ways in which God speaks to us through the Bible. He shows us what to believe and how to behave. Through the lives of God’s people in the Bible he teaches us what to expect. And he encourages us by the promises he has made. We now turn our attention to how God sometimes directs us by bringing key verses to our attention.

Now we need to tread very carefully here. We have already seen the importance of understanding Bible verses in the context in which they are written. Taking a verse out of its context can lead to wrong conclusions about what God is saying and even to seriously wrong actions if the following anecdotal story is to be believed.

A young Christian, who was feeling the need of encouragement, opened the Bible at random looking for a word from the Lord. It fell open at Matthew 27:5 where he read that Judas went and hanged himself. As he did not find this very encouraging, he thought he would try again. This time the Bible fell open at Luke 10:37 where to his dismay he read, Go and do likewise! So he tried again and read in John 13:27, What you are about to do, do quickly.

Now I’m pretty sure this story is apocryphal. If it isn’t, it’s to be hoped that the young man did not act upon what he read. However, I suspect that the story was made up to illustrate the danger of taking verses out of their context, and the point is well made.

Nevertheless, I’m sure that many Christians have had similar experiences to me, where God has spoken very clearly through Bible verses taken completely out of context. I’m now going to give you a few examples from my own experience and although, admittedly, I’m not sure we can find any parallel examples in Scripture, I hope to show you that there are times when God can and does speak to us in this way and I’ll suggest some guidelines on how to be sure we’re hearing the Lord correctly.

During my first year as a student at Oxford I was asked by my tutor to write an essay on the ontological argument for the existence of God. This was one of the arguments used, for example, by the philosopher René Descartes in an attempt to prove God’s existence. During the course of my essay I said something to the effect that although philosophy cannot prove the existence of God it cannot disprove it either.

It was at this point, as I was reading my essay to my tutor, that he interrupted me by saying:

Oh, I don’t know. I think if you mean by ‘prove’ what we normally mean by ‘prove’, and if you mean by ‘God’ what we normally mean by ‘God’, then we can probably disprove God’s existence. But perhaps we can talk about it another time

(which, incidentally, he never did).

This was the first time in my life that I had been confronted with such an outright denial of God’s existence, and my tutor’s statement shocked me deeply. It challenged everything I had based my life upon. I felt numb. As soon as he had left the room I instinctively wanted to call out to God for help. But what if my tutor was right and there was no God to call out to? But I called out anyway:

          God, if there is a God, HELP!

And He did!

I walked into my bedroom and picked up my Bible and opened it. It fell open at Psalm 119, verse 99. My teacher had told me that he could prove that there is no God. Who was I to challenge the statement of an Oxford tutor? But in that verse the Psalmist said:

I have more insight than all my teachers, for I meditate on your statutes.

I came later to realise that by reading the Bible the most simple believer can gain more understanding of the things that really matter than all the intellectual rationalising of the philosopher. That verse brought immediate reassurance to my heart. It was not just the content of the verse that reassured me – though it certainly did – but the fact that, of all the verses in the Bible I should turn at random to that very one. This was surely no coincidence.

Just over ten years later, in January 1972, while I was pastoring a church in Basingstoke, I was also a visiting lecturer at Kenley Bible College in Surrey. The College later moved to Nottinghamshire and became known as Mattersey Hall Bible College where I eventually became the Principal.

During one of my fortnightly visits to Kenley I learned that one of the full-time lecturers was leaving at the end of the academic year. I naturally wondered who might be chosen to replace him. I was thinking about this as I was driving home that evening and I wondered for a moment if they might ask me. But I quickly dismissed the thought as I believed that God wanted me to stay in Basingstoke and build a big church. However, I said to God as I was driving along:

Of course, if ever You want me to move to the College and work there, I will.  But please make it very clear that that is what You want me to do.

That night I woke up at about 2 o’clock in the morning with a burning conviction that I was going to the Bible College. I tried to shake it off, but the conviction would not leave me. I tried telling myself that there was a simple psychological explanation. It was because of what I had been thinking about before I went to bed. But I couldn’t get back to sleep, and remembering what I had said to God in the car coming home, I decided to go downstairs and pray.

I poured myself a glass of milk from the fridge and then said to God:

Lord, You know I need my sleep, so if You’re trying to tell me something, please talk to me quickly so that I can go back to bed.

Looking back on it, I’m surprised that I dared to talk to the Almighty like that, but that is what I said. Then, thinking that it might help if I read something from the Bible I opened it at random. It fell open at 2 Chronicles 34:22 which, in the Authorised Version of the Bible I was using at the time, referred to Huldah the prophetess who DWELT IN THE COLLEGE in Jerusalem.

I did not even know that the word college was in the Bible. But as I was seriously asking God if He wanted me to live and work at the Bible College, the first verse I turned to as I opened my Bible contained the words dwelt at the college. This surely could be no coincidence? Yet that is what at first I thought it must be. I couldn’t really believe that they would want me full time at the College. I had all kind of objections to the whole idea, not least of which was that I thought they would say I was too young. But as I made my objections, one by one God answered them by directing me to verses that showed me I had no good reason for making such excuses. By the time God had finished with me that night I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I would one day live and work at the College. But I did not know then that I would be its Principal for 27 years (1977-2004).

When the time came for me to retire from Mattersey and move on to an even wider international ministry, I was naturally concerned that the right person be appointed as my successor. During my principalship, with God’s help and the able assistance of a gifted and dedicated team, the number of students had more than trebled, we had erected a wonderful new Hall of Residence and a beautiful new chapel and classrooms, we were offering a range of university validated courses, and, most important of all, we had prepared hundreds of students to spread the message of the gospel throughout the world. It was, therefore, vitally important that the right person be appointed to built on the foundation we had laid.

But I had no idea who that person should be. I could think of a few names of people who might well be suitable, but who was the person chosen by God? I did not know. Surely this was time for a clear word from the Lord.  However, the decision was not mine to make. I was one of a committee who would interview candidates and then recommend to the National Leadership Team (NLT) who should be nominated for appointment. Nevertheless, I was conscious that my opinion would be well respected, and I felt a burden of responsibility to come to a decision as to whom I would recommend if I were asked. But on the day before the NLT were due to meet I still had no clear word from the Lord. But then, why should I expect one as the decision was not mine to make?

Then something happened very similar to what took place in 1972 when the Lord first showed me that I was going to work at the Bible College. That night I woke up at about 2 a.m. and could not get back to sleep. The issue of who should be my successor was playing on my mind. So I said something like this:

Lord, I don’t know who it should be. I don’t even know if I need to know. It’s not my responsibility to make the decision. Please help.

Then I picked up a Bible. It fell open at the first chapter of the Song of Songs. In the version I was reading verse 8 says:

My dearest, if you don’t know, just follow the path of the sheep.

I felt the Lord was saying that, since I didn’t know who my successor should be, I should simply follow the decision that would be made by God’s people (the sheep) who were to be meeting the next day. The Lord then gave me Psalm 125:3 which assured me that he wouldn’t let the wrong person lead his people and Matthew 6:34 telling me not to worry about tomorrow.

Now I need to make it very clear that I do not recommend opening a Bible at random as a regular means of getting guidance from God. The Bible is God’s word and He does speak to us through it, but to understand what He is saying we should read it in context. I have spent the last 50 years of my life trying to teach Christians to do just that! But there are rare occasions when a verse of the Bible seems to leap out of the page at you and God speaks to you through it even though the original intention of the verse may have been entirely different.

But when this happens how can we be sure that we are hearing what God is saying correctly? We’re not now talking about the guidelines we gave earlier on how to understand the Bible correctly. Those guidelines relate mainly to what we should believe and teach. But when we feel that God is speaking to us directly and guiding us personally through the words of a Bible text, other guidelines are appropriate.

The basic principle is that we should not rely on the words we have read to guide us without seeking confirmation. This can come in various ways. Let’s use the example of the call to the Bible College that I received in 1972. The first thing to notice is that I already had an inner conviction that I was going to live at the college.

Secondly, the verse containing the words dwelt at the college was not the only verse God gave me that night. I was given several other verses that supported it.

Thirdly, my call to the college was tested by other people, first by confidential discussion with senior church leaders and ultimately by the vote of confidence given by a conference of ministers.

Fourthly, the task to which God was calling me was totally suited to the natural and spiritual gifts he had given me.

And fifthly, the calling was tested by time. It was not until five years later in 1977 that I became acting principal and not until 1978 that the appointment was finally confirmed.

These five safeguards will ensure that we are hearing God correctly when we feel that God has spoken to us through a random verse of scripture. You may not receive confirmation in all these ways, but at least you should receive it by some of them.

I will be developing these principles towards the end of this series when we talk about other ways God guides us.

Talk 8 Different ways God speaks to us through the Bible – Part Two

Last time we saw that God speaks to us through the Bible by teaching us:

• What to believe and how to behave
• What to expect by giving us examples from the lives of God’s people

Today we will see that:

He encourages us by the promises he has made

We read in 2 Peter 1:3-4 that

God’s divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

And notice the repetition of the word promise in the following verses in Hebrews 11:

9. By faith Abraham went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.

11.By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.

13. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised but having seen them and greeted them from afar…
14. By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son…
15. …who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mounds of lions…
16. And all these, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised…

But what exactly are these promises? In this section we’ll look at:

• How to identify God’s promises
• How to understand God’s promises
• How to receive them

How to identify God’s promises

Let’s begin by considering the basic meaning of our English word promise. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as follows:

1. A declaration made to another person with respect to the future, stating that one will do, or refrain from, some specific act, or that one will give some specified thing.
2. Divine assurance of good or blessing.

Notice that the first part of the definition relates to the future. When we make a promise we’re saying what we will or won’t do in the future. Statements about what we have or haven’t done in the past, although sometimes referred to as promises, are probably better understood as solemn assurances. I can’t promise you that I did something yesterday. If I say, ‘I promise you I did…’ I really mean ‘I assure you that I did…’. And that’s where the second part of the definition fits in. God’s promises are his assurance of his blessing. God is eternal and his assurances of blessing relate not only to the future but to the past and present as well. Consider the following:

1. Do not steal
2. Love one another
3. Christ died for our sins
4. The blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin
5. God is love
6. I will come again

A and B are commands. They are not promises. C, D, E and F are statements. C is a statement about the past. D is a statement about the present. E is a statement about the eternal nature of God. But, if we limit our understanding to the first part of the dictionary definition, only F is a promise because it’s a statement about the future.

However, the second part of the dictionary definition defines promise as divine assurance of good or blessing, and according to that definition C, D, E and F are all promises. We can trust confidently in them because they are statements God has made that assure us of his blessing. And we can be sure about them because of God’s integrity and his ability. And it is through them that we have become partakers of his divine nature (2 Peter 1:4). So, although it would be wrong to think that every verse in the Bible is a promise – some are commands, some are questions etc. – we can be sure that, wherever God assures us of his blessing, that is truly a promise he has made.

How to understand God’s promises

Once we’ve identified something as a promise that God has made it’s important to make sure that we understand it correctly. We need to look at the context and see who the promise was originally made to. We need to ask what it meant at the time it was made and how, if at all, it applies to us today.

The guidelines we gave earlier on how to understand the Bible correctly apply as much to God’s promises as to everything else in the Bible. So, please, don’t just lay hold of a Bible verse and claim it as yours just because you like it, or because it makes you feel good. Make sure that you’re understanding it correctly. But that brings us to the important question as to how the early Christians understood the word promise.

So far we’ve been looking at the way the English dictionary defines the word promise. But, of course, the New Testament was not originally written in English. It was written in Greek. The Greek word for promise is epaggelia (pronounced epangelia). And if we’re to fully understand the significance of this word and how to apply it to our lives today we need to look at how it is used in the New Testament.

A detailed examination will not be possible within the scope of these talks but in a series of podcasts I made in 2021 I showed how NT writers use the word promise to refer to major themes that relate to our salvation rather than to individual Bible verses. These include:

righteousness, sonship, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the promise of an inheritance, victory over death,  eternal life, and the promise of Christ coming.

It’s by reading the Bible and understanding and trusting these promises that we grow in our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. These are the promises that Paul is referring to when he says:

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ  (2 Corinthians 1:20).

This does not mean that we can claim any and every promise in the Bible, as some Christians mistakenly believe. It means that all God’s promises – those that relate to our salvation – find their fulfilment in him. Christ IS the fulfilment of all God’s promises. There’s a sense in which, if you have Christ, you don’t need the promises, because you already have them in him! You don’t need to ‘claim’ them! All you have to do is trust them! But that’s the subject of the next section.

How to receive God’s promises

Claiming God’s promises is common terminology in Christian circles today. So why do I say that we don’t need to claim them? The first reason is that nowhere in the New Testament do we find the word claim. Writers use a variety of verbs in connection with promise – have, receive, obtain, for example – but never the word claim. As we’ve already noted, God’s promises were seen as already fulfilled in Christ. Some of them we already have, so there’s no need to claim them. Others will not yet reach their ultimate fulfilment until the return of Christ. These we have to wait for patiently knowing that our present experience of the Holy Spirit is God’s guarantee that all will be fulfilled in the age to come. So there is no biblical basis for saying that God’s promises are to be claimed.

My second reason is the faithfulness of God. The writer to the Hebrews particularly stresses that God’s promises are reliable. Christians are to hold unswervingly to the hope they profess, for he who promised is faithful (10:23, cf. 11:11). The Christian’s hope is firm and secure (6:19), an anchor for the soul because God’s purpose is unchanging (6:17).

Other New Testament verses also stress God’s faithfulness and the reliability of his promises. Surely in the light of this the appropriate response to a promise from one who is totally reliable is a simple and implicit trust that he will do what he has said, not an insistence on one’s rights on the grounds that he has said it! Such an insistence takes no account of the patience we have already mentioned.

My third reason is the fatherhood of God. God’s promises are fulfilled in the salvation we receive in Christ. In him we  have been brought into right relationship with God, our heavenly Father. Let me give you a personal illustration. I enjoyed throughout my life a very warm and close relationship with my earthly father while he was alive. Ι knew from him nothing but love, even if in my younger days that love was sometimes tempered with discipline. I count myself privileged to be his son and, because he was the kind of father he was, I not only loved him but I trusted him and respected him.

Such was my relationship with him that I knew that, if he had promised me something which was in his power to d0, he would certainly have done it. To claim such a promise — by saying, ‘Father, I insist that you give me what you have promised me.  Give it to me now. Ι demand it as my right. You have promised’ – would have been to doubt his love, impugn his integrity and question his faithfulness. But because Ι trusted him and respected him I would not have dreamed of talking to him like that!

So, if I’m not going to claim God’s promises, how do I receive them? First of all, remember that in Christ all God’s salvation promises are already yours. You are already righteous in God’s sight because you have put your trust in Christ (Romans 5:1). You are already a child of God enjoying all the privileges of sonship (John 1:12-14, Romans 8:14-17). God’s Spirit already lives within you (Romans 8:9). You already have eternal life (John 3:16) and the promise of an eternal inheritance (2 Peter 1:4-5). All these blessings are described as promises in the New Testament and they are already yours. You don’t need to claim them. You don’t even need to receive them! They’re already yours because you’re in Christ.

But what about other promises that don’t come into this category? How do I know if they apply to me? Here are some simple guidelines. First, if the promise applies to all people, it applies to you. A good example of this would be promises that begin with words like whoever or everyone who. When God says:

Whoever (or everyone who) calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Joel 2:32)

the promise clearly applies to everyone and that includes you! A New Testament example of this would be John 3:16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Secondly, if the promise applies to all Christians, it applies to you. The promise in John 3:16 applies to all humankind. But there are some promises that only apply to Christians. For example, when Jesus promised his disciples, I am with you always, to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:20), the promise was clearly intended for all his disciples for all time. But the promise of his presence was not made to those who are not Christians. But if we’re Christians this is a promise which we have no need to claim or receive. We simply need to believe it.

The fact that some promises are only made to Christians shows that some of God’s promises have conditions attached. If you’re not yet a Christian, the promise of John 3:16 applies to you, because it applies to all. The condition for receiving it is putting your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you are a Christian, many of God’s promises to you are conditional. For example, the promise in 1 John 1:9 that God will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness only applies if we confess our sins. So when you’re looking at any of the promises God has made, it’s important to make sure that you fulfilled any conditions that may be attached.

Finally, let’s consider the category of promises that God made to individuals or to the nation of Israel. How do they apply to us as Christians? We’ll use two examples as illustrations. First, as I mentioned in an earlier talk, God’s promise to Abraham that he would become the father of a great nation (e.g. Genesis 12:2-3) was clearly specific to Abraham. It’s not a promise to you or me. But that does not mean that God cannot speak to us through it. As we read on in Genesis, and indeed in the rest of the Bible, we learn how God graciously fulfilled that promise in a wonderful way. We learn that God is faithful to his promises and are encouraged to believe that he will keep the promises he has made to us.

Secondly, let’s consider a promise that has become very popular among Christians in recent years. In Jeremiah 29:11 God says:

I know the plans I have for you… plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

This is clearly a promise that is of great encouragement to us as Christians and yet, as we look at the context, it was not made to Christians, but to God’s people who were in exile in Babylon in the sixth century before Christ. So how is it of any value to us as Christians today? Quite simply because it very wonderfully summarises truths which we know from elsewhere in Scripture are most definitely applicable to us as Christians. So, although the promise was not made to us, we know that it is as true for us as it was for those to whom it was first made. And the same is true of many other Bible promises. They reveal the character of God and it is not difficult for us to believe that what he said to his people back then he is still saying to us today.

In conclusion, then, the Bible records many things that God has said. Some of them are statements of fact, some are questions, some are commands, and some are promises. It’s important that we distinguish between them. Then, when we have identified a promise, we need to take note of the context and who the promise was made to. As we have seen, not all God’s promises are directly applicable to us, although God may very well speak to us through them.

However, some of God’s promises – those that I referred to earlier as salvation promises – are most definitely for all who have trusted Christ as Saviour. Some of these are already ours. Others, like the promise of Christ’s return and the blessings that accompany it, though guaranteed, are something for which we must patiently wait. It is through faith and patience that we receive God’s promises (Hebrews 6:12). Sometimes we may need to take a step of faith and act upon the promise he has made. Other times all we can do is trust him. If God has made a promise, he certainly will keep it. But the timing is in his hands and it’s enough for us to know that he loves us, that he knows what is best for us, and that he is always working all things together for our good, because we are called according to his purpose (Romans 8:28).

Talk 7 Different ways God speaks through the Bible (Part 1)

In recent talks we have been considering the fact that God speaks to us through the Bible. We have seen why we should believe that God speaks to us through the Bible and how we can understand the Bible correctly. We now turn to considering different ways in which God speaks to us through the Bible. Today we will see that:

• He shows us what to believe and how to behave
• He teaches us through the lives of God’s people.

In future talks we’ll consider how:

• He encourages us by giving us many wonderful promises
• He directs us by bringing key verses to our attention

He shows us what to believe and how to behave

We dealt with this earlier when we were talking about how God speaks to us in the person, the words, and the actions of Jesus. In the person of Jesus, he reveals the true nature of God. In the words of Jesus, he tells us what we should do. And in the actions of Jesus, we have an example of how we should behave. This, I believe, is the primary way that God speaks to us though the Bible. It’s through the person, the words and the actions of Jesus. These are of course mainly revealed in the four Gospels, but actually, in one way or another, the whole Bible is about Jesus. We’re told in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 that

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

And in Luke 24:27 we’re told that on the road to Emmaus Jesus explained to two of his disciples what was said in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself. As he did so we’re told that the disciples’ hearts burned within them. This is something we can all experience as we read or listen to God’s word. The Holy Spirit makes a verse or passage come alive to us and we feel an inner excitement as we see how it fits so relevantly into our present situation. But I’ll be saying more about this when we talk about how God brings key verses to our attention just as we need them.

So God can speak to us through any part of the Bible and reveal to us more about himself and about his purpose for our lives, always bearing in mind, of course, the lessons we’ve already learned about the importance of examining the context of what we’re reading. But that leads us to another important way God speaks to us through the Bible.

He teaches us through the lives of God’s people

When Paul tells us that all Scripture is useful for teaching this clearly shows that God speaks to us not only by the passages that give us direct instructions as to what to do, but also by narrative passages that give us examples from the lives of God’s people in the past. For example, in 1 Corinthians 10 we read:

Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did (6)

These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall (11-12).

In this passage Paul is warning the Corinthians against the sins of idol worship, sexual immorality and grumbling (vv. 7-10) and he does so by reminding them of what happened to God’s people in the Old Testament when they were guilty of these things. He uses a Bible story from the Old Testament to warn New Testament Christians of the need to live holy lives.

In a similar way, we can learn not only from the lives of God’s people in the Old Testament, but we can also read the New Testament accounts of the lives of Jesus’ disciples and learn from their mistakes. For example, as we read about Thomas and his doubts we see that he did not really need to doubt, and God speaks to us through the story and encourages our faith. And we can all probably identify with Peter and see in his shortcomings a picture of our own. But we also learn how Jesus forgave him and showed him that he still had a purpose for his life. 

So Bible stories are not just there to warn us. They are more often there in order to inspire us, to encourage and comfort us. In Romans 15:4 Paul tells us that everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Who, for example, has not been inspired and encouraged by the faith and heroism recorded in the story of David and Goliath? Of course, we know from the New Testament that today our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 6:12), but although the enemy may be different the principles of victory remain the same. God speaks to us in both Old and New Testaments through the accounts of his dealings with his people[1].

So God speaks to us through the lives of God’s people in the past and it’s even possible that we learn more from them than we do from the passages that contain direct instructions to us. At the very least they shed light on the meaning of these passages. This is particularly true of the story of the early church as it’s recorded in the book of Acts. If all Scripture is useful for teaching – and Acts is certainly Scripture – then we can surely learn that the kind of things God did back then are just what we should be expecting today. I shall always be grateful to Laurie Dixon, the man who first told me about the baptism in the Holy Spirit, for challenging me to read the book of Acts and ask myself how the life and practices of the church I was attending measured up to the experience of the early disciples. That challenge was to radically alter the entire direction of the ministry God had called me to.

Although I didn’t realise it at the time, Laurie’s challenge involved a very important issue of hermeneutics – the principles by which we interpret Scripture.  The New Testament epistles are largely comprised of direct instruction, but I believe that some of the teaching found in them can only be understood correctly by reading the narrative passages in the Gospels and Acts. For example, in Ephesians 5:18 we’re encouraged to be filled with the Spirit. But what exactly does it mean to be filled with the Spirit? The immediate context does not make this completely clear. That’s almost certainly because Paul knew that his readers would have understood exactly what he meant by it. But that doesn’t help us very much. However, as we read the book of Acts we see several examples of people being filled with the Spirit. These examples paint a clear picture for us of what Paul means when he tells us to be filled with the Spirit. We learn that Paul is referring to a supernatural experience that is received suddenly rather than gradually and is accompanied by miraculous gifts that greatly empower our witness for Christ[2].  

A similar example might be what it means to be baptised. Jesus commanded his disciples to make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19-21). But what does it mean to be baptised? As we read the accounts of people being baptised in the Gospels and Acts we see that there is no suggestion that baptism was by sprinkling. Apart from the fact that the Greek verb baptizo means immerse and not sprinkle, the descriptions of people being baptised strongly indicate that baptism was always by immersion. To give just one example, in the story of Philip baptising the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:36-39) we’re told that both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and that after the baptism they both came up out of the water. This surely implies immersion rather than sprinkling[3]. However, my purpose in saying this is not to argue the merits of baptism by immersion but rather to illustrate how narrative passages in the Bible can shed light on what is meant by the terminology used elsewhere. The examples I have used show how Acts can provide a visual aid for us which helps us understand the terminology used in the epistles.

But that is not all. A distinction is sometimes made between what passages of scripture that are descriptive and those that are prescriptive. The narrative passages in the Gospel and Acts, for example, are seen as descriptive. They describe what happened. But the teaching in the epistles is referred to as prescriptive. It prescribes what we should believe and how we should behave. On this basis, some have argued that descriptive passages are not really suitable as a source of doctrine. Yet the major doctrine of the Christian faith, the resurrection of Christ from the dead, is based largely on the description we have in the four Gospels!

Furthermore, it seems to me that descriptive passages can at times have prescriptive value. Of course, when I describe an incident I am not necessarily prescribing a course of action.  But when I am in a teaching situation and I describe not just one event, but several, and all those events have certain features in common, my students may legitimately assume that my intention is not just descriptive but also prescriptive.  For example, if I relate how I handled certain cases in the course of my pastoral ministry, and in connection with each case I mention that I prayed for guidance in that situation, my students would be right to assume that my intention is to teach them that they too should pray in similar situations.  I am in effect teaching by example.  This is a powerful didactic method which may well be far more effective than straight instruction.  Understood this way the narrative passages in the Gospels and Acts really can teach us a great deal[4].

So let’s remember that God speaks to us throughout Scripture and as we read the historical accounts of God’s dealings with his people, and especially the lives of the early disicples after Pentecost, God may well challenge us, or encourage and inspire us. The things that happened to them are written as examples for us, and as we shall see in the next talk, the promises he made to them are often promises that he makes to us too.

How God speaks to us    Talk 6 Understanding the Bible correctly (Part 2)

In the last talk we saw that to understand the Bible correctly we must be aware of what part of the Bible we are reading and of the context of the passage we are looking at. We considered the literary context and the cultural/historical context. It’s now time to talk about the immediate context.

The immediate context

By the immediate context I mean the verses and chapters around the verse or passage you’re looking at. The key to the meaning of a verse will usually be found in the verses that precede it and those that follow it. Take, for example, the last two sentences I have written.  In the first sentence I used the word around. Now around can have a variety of meanings depending on the context in which it’s being used. If you don’t believe me, take a look in a dictionary! One I just consulted listed at least eight different meanings[1]. But I wasn’t using the word to mean all these things. The key to how I was using it is found in the second sentence. I used around to mean the verses that precede and those that follow the verse or passage we’re studying.

So be careful! Don’t read into a word every possible meaning it can have. Sadly, far too often have I heard preachers fall into this error. The Greek, they tell us, can mean this, or this, or that. That may well be true, but it almost certainly can’t be meaning all those things in one particular verse. Let me illustrate this further with the use of two examples, one from modern English and one from NT Greek.

First, let’s think about the English word court. As a noun it can refer to a law court (the building or the people assembled within it), or a tennis court, or a courtyard. As a verb it can be used in expressions like to court someone’s favour, or to mean to be dating someone. Now let’s imagine that some zealous Bible student decides to check out the origin of this word and he discovers that court (English) comes from the French word cour which basically means an enclosed space. This comes from the Latin word hortus and the Greek word chortos, both of which mean garden. And if he studies further our student will discover that all the various meanings of our English word court are historically connected with the original concept of an enclosed space. But, as interesting as all this might be – and as a linguist I have always been fascinated by the meaning and origin of words – it is of little value in helping us to understand the meaning of the word court in a particular English sentence. The context will usually make it abundantly plain.

The same applies to the origin of the Greek word sōzō  which basically means to make safe. Long before the New Testament documents came to be written, sōzō was being used in a wide variety of ways, rather like the way we use the English word save today. We can talk about saving money, or saving time, or saving a goal in football, or saving someone from drowning, or being saved from our sins.

In the Greek language spoken at the time of the New Testament, sōzō was used in all of these ways – with the obvious exception of football! Its basic meaning is make safe or deliver from a direct threat or bring safe and sound out of a difficult situation. So it is not surprising to discover that New Testament writers use sōzō in a variety of different contexts, rather like we use save in many different ways today. They apply it mainly in three quite distinct and different contexts, salvation from sin, deliverance from disease, and rescue from danger.

So it can mean save or heal or rescue. But it won’t mean all of these things at the same time! When Peter is walking on water and begins to sink, he cries, Lord, save me! He doesn’t mean heal me and he doesn’t mean save me from my sins. He means rescue me. The immediate context makes it plain.

One way to avoid this pitfall is to read the passage in two or three different translations comparing them with each other. Although I have numerous hard copies of different Bible translations, I rarely use them today as it’s so easy now to access them online[2].

And although I have been studying Greek for over seventy years – and have taught it to several generations of Bible College students – and have found it of great value in my study of the New Testament, I would strongly recommend that, for most Christians, the use of the many various English translations that are available to us is more than enough to help us understand what God is saying to us through his word. So I suggest that you read a passage two or three times using a different translation or version each time. As you do so, begin to ask yourself questions. The questions will vary depending on the passage you’re reading, but the following should be a helpful guide.

Who said it? To whom?

These are obviously very important questions to ask. For example, the Bible records not only the words of God, but also the words of men. It also on rare occasions records the words of Satan. We have examples of all three in the book of Job. Of course, it’s clear when it’s Satan who’s speaking because the Bible tells us so and we aren’t in any danger in confusing what Satan says with the voice of God. But it’s not always so straightforward when it comes to what men are saying. Much of the book is a record of the very bad advice Job’s so-called comforters were giving him, so to ask the question Who said it? is clearly very important. We mustn’t receive the advice of Job’s friends as if it were God speaking to us.

And it’s equally important to ask who the verse or passage is being written or spoken to. As we’ve already said, what God said to Israel in the Old Testament is not necessarily what he’s saying to us as Christians today. Indeed, the New Testament teaches very clearly that it is not.  I will say more about this when we talk about God’s promises in the next talk, but to illustrate the point, God’s promise to Abraham that he would become the father of a great nation was clearly specific to Abraham and is not directly applicable to us today. So as we read the Bible it’s always important to ask who said it or wrote it and to whom it is being said.

Why? In what circumstances?

Another question that it might be helpful to ask is why and in what circumstances the writer has said what we’re reading.  Sometimes it’s perfectly obvious, but if we’re not sure, a look at the immediate context will help us. For example, what did Peter mean when he said, By his wounds you have been healed (1 Peter 2:24)?

Some Christians believe that this means that because Jesus died for us we can claim healing from all our sicknesses, but a look at the context in which Peter said it suggests that this is not what he meant. The next verse makes it clear that Peter is referring to healing from the wounds of sin. And if you read the preceding verses you will see that Peter is talking to slaves who were often unjustly punished, and Peter is encouraging them to follow the example of Jesus who, though he was completely innocent, bore our sins in his body on the tree so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.

So by considering the context and the circumstances in which Peter is writing we see that there is no mention of the healing of our sicknesses, either in the immediate context or anywhere else in the rest of the letter for that matter[3]. In fact the overall purpose of the letter is to encourage Christians who are being persecuted to endure suffering rather than to escape from it. But that brings us to the next question that it’s useful to ask.

What is the main theme of the passage?

Now, assuming that you’ve done as I’ve suggested and read through the passage two or three times, preferably using different versions of the Bible, you should be getting a fairly clear idea of the writer’s main theme or purpose. One thing that will help you to do this might be to ask if there are any key words that are repeated in the passage. In the section of 1 Peter we’ve been looking at you will notice the repetition of words like suffer and submit. As we’ve just seen, the main purpose of 1 Peter is to encourage Christians who are suffering persecution. And if we look at the immediate context of 1 Peter 2:24 we see that it’s set in a section where Peter is teaching his readers the importance of submitting to authority even if it involved suffering.

Verses 13-17 encourage Christians in general to submit to every authority (v13). Verses 18-25 encourage slaves to submit to their masters, and the first six verses of chapter 3 encourage wives to be submissive to their husbands. The purpose of this submission is that by following the example of Christ (v.21) those who are not yet Christians might be won over (3:1) to Christ and themselves live lives that will glorify God (2:12). So our understanding of this section of 1 Peter and our interpretation of individual verses within it should be influenced by our knowledge that the main theme of the passage is submission to authority.

Metaphorical or literal?

Another important key to understanding what God is saying to us through the Bible is being aware of the frequent use of metaphor. It’s important not to take something literally when the writer is speaking metaphorically. For example, sin is often referred to in terms of sickness. In Isaiah 1, where God is complaining about the sins of Israel he says:

Ah, sinful nation, a people loaded with guilt, a brood of evildoers, children given to corruption! They have forsaken the LORD; they have spurned the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him.

Why should you be beaten anymore? Why do you persist in rebellion? Your whole head is injured, your whole heart afflicted.

From the sole of your foot to the top of your head there is no soundness – only wounds and welts and open sores, not cleansed or bandaged or soothed with oil (Isaiah 1:4-6).

The language used here is clearly metaphorical. In saying that the whole nation is sick, God is not saying that everybody is physically ill. Because of its rebellion and sin it is spiritually sick. Jesus himself uses the same metaphor for sin. When criticised for eating with sinners, he says:

It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners (Mark 2:17).

And, as we have already seen, when we read in 1 Peter 2:24 that by his wounds you have been healed the context strongly indicates that Peter is using the quote from Isaiah metaphorically.

So, to summarise what we’ve been saying in the last two talks, if we want to understand correctly what God is saying to us in the Bible, there are several questions that it will be helpful to ask:

• What part of the Bible are we reading? Old or New Testament?
• What is the literary context of the passage we are reading?
• What is the historical and cultural context?
• What is the immediate context?

And in this connection we should ask:

• Who said it and to whom?
• Why and in what circumstances?
• What’s the main theme? Are there any key words?
• Metaphorical or literal?

And finally, and perhaps most important of all, when we’ve discovered what God is saying in the passage we’ve been reading, we should ask ourselves:

How does this apply to me?

Next time well start to look at different ways God speaks to us through the Bible.

How God speaks to us   Talk 5   Understanding the Bible correctly (Part 1)

In the last talk we considered why we should believe that God speaks to us through the Bible. In the next few talks will be looking at how he does so. But first it will be important to consider how to understand the Bible correctly.

We have already seen that as far as Jesus was concerned, when the Bible spoke, God spoke[1]. We also said that the writings of the Scriptures are as much the voice of God as the experience Peter had when he heard God’s voice in audible form on the Mount of Transfiguration[2]. All that’s true, but it clearly needs further explanation. We know from the account of when Jesus was tempted in the desert that the devil can quote Scripture[3]. The Scripture he quoted from Psalm 91 is certainly the word of God, but Satan was misapplying it, and Jesus knew it! From this we learn the importance of correctly understanding what the Bible is saying, and in this talk I’ll be outlining some of the things we need to bear in mind when asking what God might be saying to us through a particular verse or passage. Before we jump to a conclusion as to what it means, there are two basic questions we need to ask:

• What part of the Bible are we reading?
• What is the context of the passage we are reading?

What part of the Bible are we reading?

The first thing we need to be aware of is whether the passage we’re reading is from the Old Testament or the New. Whenever we read the OT it is important to remember that it is not God’s final revelation to the human race. As the writer to the Hebrews pointed out:

In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe

(Hebrews 1:1-2).

We need to understand that Jesus himself is the fulfilment of all OT law and prophecy:

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them (Matthew 5:17).

The OT is a revelation of the old covenant that God made with his people, but the OT itself promised that the day would come when God would make a new and better covenant with them. This is made very clear in the letter to the Hebrews. As Christians, we are not living under the old covenant that God made with the Jewish people, but under the new covenant which is sealed with the blood of Jesus. John 19:30 tells us that when Jesus died on the cross he declared, IT IS FINISHED. The word ‘finished’ here means ‘accomplished’ or ‘completed’. Jesus had completed the work his Father had given him to do. His death on the cross provided atonement for our sins and was the fulfilment of all OT law. This is why we should always read the OT in the light of the NT. A good example of how to apply this practice is the OT food laws.

The Old Testament food laws as an example

We’ll use Leviticus 11:1-8 as a passage that represents the sort of things the Israelites were allowed to eat and not to eat. Camels, hyraxes, rabbits and pigs were forbidden, but an animal that both chews the cud and has a divided hoof was permitted.

We don’t need to concern ourselves with why the Lord gave Moses these instructions. What is significant is that the instructions were given to the Israelites. But how do we know that they don’t apply to us as well? To answer this we need to consider various passages in the New Testament.

First, notice what Jesus said in Mark 7:14-23. He makes it clear that nothing outside a person can defile them by going into them because it doesn’t go into their heart but into their stomach, and then out of the body. Mark then clarifies this by saying:

In saying this, Jesus declared all foods clean.

This certainly seems to mean that for us as Christians there’s no such thing as unclean food. But how does this stand up in the light of Acts 15:22-29? In this passage we have a record of a decision made by the early church in order to resolve a particular problem they were facing at the time. Some of the Jewish believers, because of their Old Testament background, had been teaching that Gentiles who became Christians should be circumcised in line with OT teaching. This was clearly causing great difficulty for the Gentille converts and a meeting of the apostles and elders was called to resolve the problem. The decision they came to, with the help of the Holy Spirit, was that the Gentile converts did not need to be circumcised – something which Paul makes very clear in his letter to the Galatians – but that there were certain things that the Gentiles should abstain from. So they sent them a letter saying:

It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality.

But does this mean that those prohibitions apply to Christians today? In my opinion, with the exception of the last item in the list, which is of course forbidden in the rest of the NT, the answer is no. I say this for three reasons:

1. Acts 15 is a record of a decision made by the church at a specific time to resolve a problem that was current at that point in history. It is not necessary to understand it as being applicable to Christians today who are living in quite different circumstances.
2. The decision was almost certainly made so that the Jewish Christians would not be unnecessarily offended. This interpretation is certainly in line with Paul’s teaching in Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 10[4].
3. It is very clear from Paul’s epistles that Christians are not subject to legalistic regulations, but that out of love for our fellow believers we should modify our behaviour so as not to cause anyone to stumble.

In short, Paul clearly teaches that it doesn’t matter what we eat or drink as long as we can do it with a clear conscience and will not distress someone else by doing so. The underlying consideration is LOVE.  The whole law is summarised in this:

For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ (Galatians 5:14).

Jesus replied: ‘ “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments’” (Matthew 22:37-40).

In this example with regard to the OT food laws, which we’ve used to illustrate how the Old Testament must be interpreted in the light of the New, we’ve been careful not to read a passage in isolation, but to compare scripture with scripture. We have also touched on another important principle with regard to how to interpret the Bible correctly – the context of the book or passage we are reading.

What is the context of the passage we are reading?

The question of context is undoubtedly the most important issue with regard to understanding correctly what God is saying. We’ve already dealt with the most basic aspect – Which part of the Bible are you looking at? OT or NT?  But there are three other areas in which context is vitally important:

• The literary context
• The cultural/historical context
• The immediate context

The literary context

The Bible is not really a book. It’s a collection of books. In the Greek New Testament the word for bible is plural and it means the books. These books were written over a period of some 1500 years by a wide range of people in many different places. If we want to understand a book correctly we need to consider its genre – what kind of literature it is. Here’s a brief summary of the different kinds of literature we find in the Bible:

Types of OT literature

• Narrative (found mainly from Genesis to Esther)
• The Law (found in the Pentateuch, the first five books)
• The Psalms
• Wisdom (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs)
• The Prophets

Types of NT Literature

• Narrative (The Gospels, Acts)
• Parables (found mainly in the Gospels)
• Letters
• Apocalyptic (Revelation).

The reason it’s helpful to know what type of literature we are reading is that although all Scripture is inspired by God[5], the way he may speak to us through it may vary according to the kind of literature it is. For example, in the narrative passages we may learn from the example of what happened to God’s people in the past[6], but in the NT letters we’re given direct instructions as to what to do. We learn from all these different kinds of literature, but we learn in different ways. To use the illustration of the OT food laws again, you will have noticed that I based my conclusions on what Paul said in his letters rather than on the narrative of what the early church decided in the book of Acts. I was taking the genre, the literary context, into consideration.

The cultural/historical context

Although the books of the Bible were inspired by the Holy Spirit, God used human authors to write them. The epistles, for example, are conditioned by the language and culture of the first century. They speak to specific situations in the first century church. Their authors lived at a certain point in history and in a society where the culture was often very different from ours today. This is reflected in their writings and if we understand their culture we will understand more clearly what God might be saying through them. And although some passages may not seem directly relevant to us today, we should be able to see the principles being taught in them and apply them to situations that arise in our own lives and the life of the church today.

One example of this might be how we understand Paul’s teaching on eating food that has been offered to idols. The Christians in Corinth were confronted with this problem on a daily basis, and there are parts of the world where Paul’s teaching is still highly relevant today. However, if you’re like me, this may not be an issue that has ever arisen for you personally. But does this mean that those of us who have never been in those circumstances can learn nothing from what Paul says on the subject in 1 Corinthians 8?

By no means! The principles Paul teaches will always be relevant wherever we live and whatever the culture may be. However much we may think we know, our first duty is to love other people (vv. 1-3). We must be careful that our freedom in Christ does not become a stumbling-block to those who are weak (v.9). It’s better not to exercise our freedom if it’s going to cause a brother or sister to fall into sin (v.13). So even if we’re not in a situation where we’re likely to be invited to eat meat that’s been sacrificed to an idol, it’s not difficult to think of ways in which we can apply the principles Paul teaches in this chapter. For example, although the New Testament nowhere teaches total abstinence from alcohol, many Christians feel that they should abstain rather than setting an example that might lead others into addiction.

So, to summarise what we’ve said so far in this talk, when we’re reading a particular passage or verse and we want to understand what God is saying to us through it, we need to be aware of what part of the Bible we are reading – Old or New Testament. We should also bear in mind the literary context and the historical and cultural context in which it was written. If you’re not sure about this, there are many different sources that will help you. The Bible you are reading may already have the information available. The NIV Life Application Bible, for example, at the beginning of each individual book of the Bible, gives you a useful summary of what the book is about, and provides a basic outline of the context it in which it was written. With all that in mind, you’re now in a position to consider the immediate context. And that’s something we’ll be looking at next time.

Talk 4. God speaks to us through the Bible

So far we have seen that God speaks to all people through creation, that in Old Testament times God spoke to Israel through the prophets, and that now God has spoken finally and definitively by his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. We now turn our attention to another way that God speaks to us. He speaks through his written word, the Bible. In this talk we will consider why we should believe that God speaks to us through the Bible. In the following talks we’ll look at how he does so.

Why believe that God speaks to us through the Bible

How can we be sure that we can expect God to speak to us through the Bible?

• The Bible shows us the way of salvation
• The Bible tells us about Jesus
• Jesus made it clear that God speaks through Scripture
• The apostles taught that God speaks through Scripture
• Christian experience confirms that God speaks through the Bible.

The Bible shows us the way of salvation

It’s important to believe that God speaks to us through the Bible because it’s the Bible that shows us the way of salvation. The Scriptures are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15).

Peter tells us that we … have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God (1 Peter 1:23) and Paul tells us that faith for salvation comes from hearing the word of God (Romans 10:17).

If you’re like me, your first experience of hearing God speak to you was when he spoke through the preaching of his word challenging you to repent and put your trust in Christ as your Saviour. He spoke to you through the Bible then, and he will continue to do so throughout your Christian life. And closely connected with the fact that the Bible shows us the way od salvation is the fact that it tells us about Jesus.

The Bible tells us about Jesus

We saw in the last talk that God speaks to us through Jesus, showing us what God is like, teaching us what to believe, and demonstrating through his example how we should live. But how do we know all these things about Jesus? Because they are recorded in the Bible.

Admittedly, our first acquaintance with the facts about Jesus may not have come directly from the Bible, but from someone telling us about Jesus – maybe our parents, or a Sunday school teacher, a Christian minister, or a friend. But, of course, whoever it was who first told us about Jesus, they first got the information from the Bible.

So God speaks to us through Jesus who is his final word to the human race (Hebrews 1:1), and he speaks to us through the Bible which is his record of who Jesus is, and what he said and did. The Bible is all about Jesus. Even the Old Testament scriptures, written long before he came, are about him:

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he (Jesus) explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself (Luke 24:27).

So God speaks to us through Jesus and it is through the Bible that he tells us about him.

Jesus made it clear that God speaks through scripture

Another good reason for believing that God speaks to us through the Bible is that Jesus himself believed this. With regard to the Old Testament, Jesus stated that the scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35). The Sadducees were in error because they were ignorant of the scriptures (Mark 12:24). It was easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the law (Luke 16:17).

As far as Jesus was concerned, when the Bible spoke, God spoke. For example, in Genesis 2:24 the Bible says:

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.

But in Matthew 19:4-5 Jesus says:

Haven’t you read… that at the beginning the Creator… said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”?

So for Jesus, when the Bible speaks, God speaks. It is surely enough for us, as Jesus’ disciples, to believe as he believed.

The New Testament, of course, had not been written at the time of Christ. But Jesus promised his disciples that the Holy Spirit would accurately remind them of his teachings and would lead them into further truth for which they were not yet ready:

But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you (John 14:26).

But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. …He will tell you what is yet to come (John 16:13).

In a later chapter we’ll be talking about various ways that God speaks to us by his Spirit. But the primary way the Holy Spirit speaks to us is through the Bible.

The apostles taught that God speaks through scripture

As we read the New Testament we discover that the first Christians believed that God spoke through the scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments.  Paul tells us that all Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16).

Peter tells us that he and the other apostles did not follow cleverly devised stories when they spoke about Jesus. They were eyewitnesses of his majesty. They heard the voice of God saying, This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. But he then goes on to say:

We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:16-21).

This shows us that the Scriptures are completely reliable. The people who wrote them were speaking from God. The writings of the Scriptures are as much the voice of God as the experience Peter had when he heard God’s voice in audible form.

What’s more, the New Testament writers were aware of the inspiration that Jesus had promised. Their writings were not a product of their own wisdom or ability. They were conscious of direct guidance and authority from God. The things they wrote were the commandments of the Lord taught directly by the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:13, 14:37) and their writings were acknowledged as equal to those of the Old Testament.

Notice how, in 1 Timothy 5:18, Paul quotes the New Testament alongside the Old Testament and evidently considers both as an integral part of scripture:

For the scripture says, Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain (Deuteronomy 25:4) and, The worker deserves his wages (Matthew 10:10).

The same attitude is adopted by Peter in 2 Peter 3:16, where he refers to all Paul’s letters as part of the scriptures:

He (Paul) writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

It is clear, then, that both Jesus and his early followers taught that the scriptures are the written word of God and that, therefore, as we read them he will speak to us. The message is simple. If you want God to speak to you, read the Bible!

Christian experience confirms that God speaks through the Bible

I’m sure that countless millions of Christians can testify that God has spoken to them through the Bible. It may have been through reading the Bible, or someone else preaching from it, or through a verse of Scripture that has suddenly come to mind just when it was needed. Perhaps, like me, you’ve heard God speak to you in all of these ways. As we’ve just seen with regard to Peter’s experience, the writings of the Scriptures are as much God’s voice as when he heard it in audible form. But let me give you just one example from my personal experience of how God spoke to me and through me from two Bible passages in a very unusual situation.

Some years ago I was invited by the Christian Union of a college in Chester to conduct an evangelistic mission among the students. When I arrived just after lunch on the Monday, a member of staff conducted me to the bedroom they had allocated for me.  I hope you don’t mind, he said, we’re putting you in a room that was occupied until recently by a student we have had to expel from the college. He had been practising witchcraft.

I was rather surprised by this, to say the least, but I put a brave face on it and said, as casually as I could, Oh, that’s fine. No problem! But when I entered the room, I confess I began to wonder what evil presence might be lurking there. The half-burnt candle on the windowsill didn’t help. Had that been part of his devilish paraphernalia? Or had they just had a power-cut recently?

Then I remembered what Jesus had promised to his disciples as he sent them out on the task of world evangelisation:

Surely, I will be with you always, to the very end of the age (Matthew 28:20).

I reminded myself of other Bible verses like      

Behold I give you power over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you (Luke 10:19)

and I began to take courage. I settled into my room and started to prepare myself for the meeting at which I had to speak that evening.

After a few minutes there was a knock at the door. Two men stood there. They had seen the light on in my room and wondered who it was that was in there.

Are you a new student? they asked.

No, I replied, I’ve come to conduct a mission for the Christian Union.

That’s interesting, said one of them. It’s strange they should put you in my old room.

It was the man they had expelled for practising witchcraft! He had come back to visit his friend. Of course, I invited them to the meeting that evening and the ‘witch’ said he might come. And sure enough, when the time for the meeting came, there he was sitting in the audience.

I preached the gospel and I would like to be able to say that the man gave his life to Christ, but he didn’t. Instead, he came and argued with me! This went on for some time after the meeting had closed, and after about half an hour, feeling that we were getting nowhere by arguing, I decided to invite him to come to the meeting the next day.

I think you’ll be particularly interested tomorrow, I said. The subject is Jesus the way to power. How real is the supernatural? Is it safe?

I don’t think you know the first thing about the supernatural, he replied.

What a challenge to a Pentecostal preacher!

Well, I don’t know much about what you get up to when you practise your witchcraft, I said, but I will tell you one thing. When you come under the control of a familiar spirit, you can’t say Jesus is Lord, can you?

I don’t know who was more surprised, him or me! I had said this on the basis of my understanding of 1 Corinthians 12:1-3, but I was not prepared for the effect it had on this young man. He went visibly pale and said, How did you know that?

Taking courage by his reaction, I said:

Because the Bible, which is God’s word tells me so. And I’ll tell you something else it says. You may not acknowledge that Jesus is Lord now, but the day is coming when you will have to, whether you like it or not. For the Bible says that one day at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father

As I quoted these verses from Philippians 2:10-11 to him, he retreated out of the room! I went to bed at around 11pm and fell asleep straight away, sleeping soundly until about 7 the next morning. While the students were having their breakfast, I went down the corridor to the washroom to shave. While I was shaving, I saw in the mirror the face of the ‘witch’. He was standing right behind me.

Good morning, he said. Did you sleep well?

Yes, thank you, I replied.

 Are you sure?

 Yes, perfectly sure. I went to bed around 11 and slept soundly until about 7.

 Really? I can’t understand that!

Why? What’s so unusual about having a good night’s sleep?

Well, you see, he confessed, I was so annoyed with what you said last night that I stayed up all night practising my witchcraft. I was trying to get a poltergeist into your room to disturb you. I’ve done it many times before and it’s never failed. That’s why they expelled me from the college. I can’t understand why it didn’t work this time.

Oh, I said, ‘I wish you had told me. I could have told you not to waste your time. Don’t you know that Christians are immune to such things?’

Later that day he was seen leaving the college with his bag packed.

Leaving? said one of the Christians. Aren’t you coming to the meeting today?

No, he replied, that fellow knows too much about the supernatural.

Now how does all that relate to God speaking to us through the Bible? Please notice five things:

• The Bible passages I quoted were passages I had memorised.
• They came into my mind as the Holy Spirit reminded me of them.
• They were directly relevant to the situation.
• They brought glory to Jesus.
• They had a powerful effect on an unbeliever.

The word of God is powerful and the Holy Spirit who inspired it can use it to speak to us and through us as we allow him to. Christian experience really does confirm that God speaks through the Bible to Christians and non-Christians too.