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I'm going to take us back to World War II, where they
had bombers crewed by a whole group of men here.
And of course these men weren't all pilots--a lot
of these men were gunners on the airplane.
And their job was to sit behind these guns
and protect the aircraft.
They sat in these Plexiglas turrets, and these turrets
were scattered through the airplane;
you can see them on the front here,
and on the top, and the back, and the side
and down the bottom, depending on the aircraft.
And their job was to protect the bomber from
fighter aircraft attacking it.
That's what they did.
And so these guns were strategically placed on the
airplane as a protection for that aircraft.
But it wasn't just for that aircraft alone.
What they would do was that they would fly in formation.
And one airplane's gunners could also protect the other
aircraft that was flying along next to them.
And so they would have these very complex formations
that they would fly in-- all to protect each other.
And as they flew in formation, they had strength;
you could say there was strength in their numbers.
But there was also strength in the way that they were
fitted together in formation.
Now, anyone flying alone was a sitting duck.
It was just like--well, you're out there. Sorry.
And sometimes when we try to establish--
you run into somebody and you're trying to witness
--they say, "Where do you get this information?"
"Well,from the Bible." "How can I know the Bible is true?"
Oh, we quickly grab this Scripture 2 Timothy 3:16
and we say, "All Scripture is inspired by God."
And we throw this little piece of information out there;
and it's like--bing! Battle's won. Uh-uh.
The guy comes back and says, "Oh, Scripture? So, all
"Scripture is inspired by God. Well, I agree with
"that--yeah. The Hindu Gita, it's inspired by God too;
"let me see, the Quran, it's Scripture;
"it's inspired by God. Listen, while we're at it,
"we might as well throw the Book of Mormon and a few
"other books that we know about into that.
"All these Scriptures that different people hold sacred,
"they're inspired by God, too.
It says 'all Scripture,' doesn't it?"
And your sitting there and thinking--whew!
How did we get here?
And then you try to nail the word,
"Well, no, no, no, no. It means inspired."
"Oh, yeah, I wrote a poem the other day, and I just,
"oh, I just felt so inspired; it just flowed; it just came.
That must be Scripture, too."
And you think, oh, how'd that happen?
We're off on some sort of rabbit trail.
And then, oh, my! You get to the word 'God'--
and now who knows where you are going to end up?
And there in just one little short sentence,
not a whole verse, you just feel like you
kinda ran up against a wall.
You know what you have?
You have one little piece of truth--
flying by itself unprotected.
It's true, it's powerful.
It, indeed, even that little bit alone, is very potent.
But, the enemy comes in there and envelopes it
with its ameba there and wraps itself around
and shoots it down, and when you are left; you think--
"Oh, where am I supposed to-- where should I begin?"
Well, we want to talk a little bit about that.
We want to talk about flying truth in formation.
And I just want to start out by saying,
that what I want to present here is not
because I'm sort of scholar and I sat down
with a long face and I looked at the Scriptures for a
while and studied it--all of a sudden, "Oh, I see that!"
The way I began to see this was, as I was
teaching individuals, all of a sudden, I would
see something come in there and grab them.
And I--wow, that's powerful!
Oh, now I see why that's in the Scripture that way!
It would really have quite an effect on them.
Now, what I want to show you here is actually a framework
that is stuck together in the Scriptures.
And when we fly this together, it's extremely potent.
When we teach the way that we're talking about,
you're actually doing this.
Now, when we teach, in a sense, what we do, is we take
a person--the individual that is coming to us,
the unbeliever--we take their framework, and
we have some little tricks of the trade that we've learned.
We take their framework and we hang it up and we say,
"We'll just let it sit over there."
And we teach them this whole new framework.
Now, there's ways that we do that. For example,
I was teaching a fellow; he was a very sharp man.
And as we were going through the story, beginning
with Creation and working our way through the Fall
of mankind, and then eventually, we got to the story
of Noah; and we're developing it out a little bit--
we just touch on these stories.
He looks at me and says,
"John, you don't believe this, do you?"
And this is the way I answered it.
I said, "Well...what I believe is up to me,
"and what you believe is entirely up to you.
"We're finding out what the Bible says about itself.
"And I guess my job is try to present it as clearly as I can,
"and your job as a student is to say,
"'I understand it' or 'I don't.'" I said,
"The question here is not whether I believe it or not,
but the question is, 'Do you understand it.'"
He said, "Oh, yeah, I understand it."
I said, "Well, then lets go on."
And what I did there was I took his framework and I
kinda hung it up and I said, "Let's just
leave that there for a while."
Later on, he said,
"John, do you remember that time where I kinda mocked
you a little bit for the story of Noah and that stuff?"
I said, "Yeah, I remember that."
And he said, "You know, I wasn't believing any of it
"up to that point. To me, it was just a bunch of myths
and stories. I wasn't believing any of it."
But he said, "What happened… as I went on, through the
"story, I began to say, 'You know what?
"'This just couldn't happen.
This had to be planned from the bottom up.'"
And he said, "I went back and believed
all of this here that I had rejected."
Now what we're going to do is, we're going to take a look
at the different aspects in God's Word that God has
built right in there to the architecture of His Word,
that causes a person to come to a point in saying,
"This just couldn't happen. This just couldn't happen."
And where the veracity--the truthfulness of God's Word--
just comes through like an extremely powerful hammer.
And either a person out of emotion has to just
reject the Word of God, or because he's a thinking
person, he says, "You know, it's gotta be true."
But there's no such thing as a thinking person
looking at it and saying intellectually,
"This can't happen."
No, he's got to do it as an emotional response
to the truth; it's so powerful.
Let's take a look at it. First of all,
the prophetic events in the Scriptures verify the message.
Now how does this work?
I want to just take a look at the books of Moses.
If you were to take a look at the lifespan of Moses here,
Moses wrote what we might want to call some
'must-know' information.
He wrote about the origin of the universe
--this is critical stuff.
He wrote about the origin of mankind, about the origin
of evil and sin, origin of death,
how to escape sorrow, the source of joy.
He wrote about eternal life.
And this is all critical information that Moses
either touched on or developed out quite a bit--
that is either what you might want to call
'must-know' information.
And he recorded this in the last third of his lifespan.
And you find this information in the books Genesis,
Exodus--on through to Deuteronomy.
And as we look at this information here,
we can ask ourselves,
"How do we know that what Moses wrote was right?"
I mean, back in those days there, the people that lived
in that 40 years of Moses lifespan, that knew him--
as they were seeing this material written, they say,
"Well, how do we know this is right?
"What is, what sort of reality do we have here
that can verify this information?"
Well, Moses not only wrote 'must-know' information,
he also wrote Prophetic information.
And this has some really severe consequences.
Now listen to this--tell you a little story here.
I first used this in India here a couple years ago.
I said, What would happen if somebody was to
call a press conference?
Now nobody knows this guy, but he calls this press
conference, and he says, "Listen, I have some very
"important information I have to pass on.
"What's going to happen (now this is Friday)
"what's going to happen is, on Monday, the Ganges River
is going to turn to blood."
And you can see a little handful of scattering, smattering
of reporters sitting out there, and they're write--
"What? Say that again?"
"The Ganges River is going to turn to blood."
"To blood?" "Yes, that's what I said.…
That's what you need to write down."
Well, if it even hit the newspapers at all,
you know the Saturday edition--if it even got there
at all--it probably got to page forty, little column in the
bottom, and it would say, "Crazy man,"
or "Kook says, 'Ganges river is going to turn to blood.'"
Well, what if on Monday, the river actually did
turn to blood? Whoa!
Monday's afternoon edition --***--big letters:
"Ganges turned to blood, forecast by--"
"What was that guy's name? I didn't even get it down."
It's crazy. But it would be up there.
And there'd be reprints of that tiny little column--
"Yep, we did actually say that this man said that."
Everybody would be talking about it.
You'd have scientists down there sampling it, seeing if
it's some sort of reversal of the red tide.
And political pundits would be talking about this--looking wise.
And everybody would be talking about this.
And there would probably be a lot of people saying,
"That guy hit it lucky; it's just some sort of weird
phenomena that he was going to come up with."
Might be some guy trying to sell it on Ebay, who knows?
But, what if he called a second press conference?
That room would be crowded, wouldn't it?
It would, wouldn't it? There'd be cameras running.
There's CNN. Everybody would be there.
They'd all be wanting to arrange to get him
on their talk show and discuss this. And let's say, he said,
"Well, on Thursday this country is going to be
overrun with frogs-- overrun with frogs."
Well, you could imagine the next day, they'd be saying--
scientists would be saying-- "Frogs don't breed this time
"of year, and they don't normally have--
that's just ridiculous!"
There would be all sorts of pundits giving comments
on this, but I can tell you what-- on Wednesday night, about
11:35, everyone would be sitting there very, very quiet.
The windows open, listenting.
11:50. 11:55. Midnight.
Ribbit, ribbit.
Whoa!
And just this noise just permeates the land as they
all being to sing and croak. Whoa, I mean, you can
imagine the next morning-- this guy is being hauled in.
The prime minister of the country wanting to meet with
him and discuss this. And it would be big, big news.
And if this guy then said, "Well, listen,
"just wanted you to get the point here:
"that there's a message that a particular God
"wants to pass on to the world.
"And he wants you to know it's important--he has some
"'must-know' information that you need to know and
"I've been kinda appointed his messenger.
And, oh, by the way, next Friday--lice."
You know what?
Everybody would be listening very carefully.
And everybody would be hanging on
not only for the fact that he's saying next Thursday's lice,
but they would also want to know this 'must-know' information.
You know why? Because all of a sudden,
he has incredible credibility in their eyes.
And the Bible tells us this happened, didn't it,
to a man named Moses?
And it says that God exalted him in the eyes
of the people; he was like a god to Pharaoh.
I mean, it's like, what Moses said, the people
just breathed it in like pure oxygen.
It had to be.
And the way the Scripture's design… it was
this prophetic information was linked together with the
'must-know' information, and it's inserted in such a way
that you can't divide it.
And Moses, all the way through the last 40 years of his life,
we see him saying, "God says this is going to happen."
And guess what? It happened.
There was 100% accurate fulfillment of those things
that he said was going to happen.
It just went down that way.
And so, the people during Moses' lifespan, if they wanted
to know how this 'must-know' information was true,
all they had to think is, "Well, Moses said this
other stuff was going to happen and it happened
just the way it is; well, it's gotta be true."
Now, that works for people in Moses' lifespan,
but what about now?
Well, Moses didn't just give prophecies during his life span.
He also said things that were going to happen after he died.
And if we were to take his lifespan and shrink it down--
like this, into a box--and stick it right at the end of our
timeline there, and extend our timeline down
to 2006 AD, and look at this, we'd see that, yes,
Moses gave prophecies in that last 40 years of his life;
but he also talked about issues and events
that would happen right down to this present day.
And after Moses died, for those people that were
asking that question--"How do we know that this is right?"--
they would be able to just look around and say,
"Well, is it happening the way that
Moses said it would happen?"
Now Moses said that after he died,
the people would be disobedient, remember that?
And he said, "You're stiff necked;
you're going to become disobedient."
And people after would be able to look around and say,
"Have we done that?"
We can read in the book of Daniel.
Look what Daniel said:
Daniel was very conscious that they had rebelled
against the Lord. He labeled it for what it was.
Daniel was very conscious of judgment
being played out on his life.
And so as people of Daniel's day looked around and said,
"How do we know that this information is right?
'Well, we are doing exactly what Moses said we
"would do, we've become disobedient;
we've rebelled against the Lord."
Not only that, Moses had said that because of that,
they would suffer curses.
Remember that? He wrote that--Deuteronomy.
And so the people would be able to look around, and
they would see that--"You know what? Boy, just as
Moses wrote, we're suffering curses."
Look what Daniel continued on in his prayer and said:
(This is a continuation of what we just read.)
The linkage was very clear in their mind between what
Moses had written and what they were experiencing in their life.
And so, when they asked those questions:
"How do we know this is right?" Well, they could
just look around and see there's been 100%
accurate fulfillment of what Moses
said would happen after he died.
We're living it.
Moses also wrote about the Messiah--that he would come.
He wrote that the people would be scattered.
It's interesting reading those chapters
and reading Josephus side by side.
It's just incredible-- the detail that's in there.
He wrote that the people after they were scattered,
they'd be persecuted;
and then also that they'd be regathered.
And so down through the centuries, as people would
ask, "You know, how do we know what Moses wrote here
about the origin of the universe, about the origin
of mankind, about the origin of evil and sin,
origin of death, how to escape sorrow,
the source of joy, eternal life--
all this critical information, how do we know it's right?"
Well, all they needed to do is look around
and they would see what Moses wrote was being
fulfilled in their very lifetime.
And they could look back in history--over a long span--and
they could see, "Yeah, it's just happened--
the way it played out."
And so, what was happening there was that 'must-know'
information was being verified by prophetic events.
And I think it's tragic that we've come to a point
in our church (I'm talking about in a global sense),
where people don't want to talk about prophecy.
You know it's divisive, so we don't talk about it.
We use little jokes: "I'm not a 'a-mil,' or 'post-mil' or
'pre-mil'; I'm a 'pan-mil'--it's all going to pan out in the end."
We do this sort of thing, you know.
But the thing is: what we're doing is we're taking one of
the very powerful pieces of God's architecture in the
Word of God and we're just throwing it out the window.
Now, I don't think we should go around and just nail
dates down and be hyper- dogmatic about some of
some of this stuff. Let's leave it a little open here.
But let's say we can use words like,
"It seems to be..." "It looks like it might...."
And if we disagree, let's disagree without
being disagreeable.
But lets not stop talking about prophecy in Scripture.
I've read that 27% of Scripture is prophecy--
much of which has been fulfilled.
It's a very potent airplane of truth
that we want to have flying in our formation.
Let's go on.
The types reveal and anchor doctrines--
types that we find in Scripture.
We're going to look at this area of what it reveals first.
And what I want us to do is: I want us to start
by looking at the Passover.
And we know that the Passover was--
came as a result of the tenth plague.
Now here's the Israelites: they're in Egypt;
they've been in bondage there;
they're slaves in hard labor.
And God brings these plagues along to cause
the Pharaoh to release the Israelites from Egypt.
Now that's not the only reason.
I think there's more there; we don't have time to go there.
He brought these plagues along, and the tenth one
was to be the death of the firstborn, remember that?
And…how many here are the firstborns?
Put up your hand.
Now, when you heard these instructions, if you were
back then, you would have listened very carefully.
You'd be taking notes. You'd say,
"Hold it, Moses, slow down, slow down, slow down."
First of all, they were to take a lamb.
(We're not going to look at the whole Passover.)
Here's my lamb right here. I know it's small,
but it's cold in Canada, and they don't grow big.
So, here's my lamb.
They were told to take a lamb--
and remember it had to be a male.
That was the gender-- it had to be a male.
And then it was to be without blemish--it couldn't have the
wool falling out. It couldn't have a broken leg
or anything like that.
They were to kill it at the appointed day
and the appointed hour--
there was a time they were to do this.
Now think, this is kind of a strange thing.
Can you imagine the instructions?
I mean, this is to prevent the death
of the first-born child.
Why didn't he just say,
"Go and lay in bed for the full day."?
Why didn't he do that?
No, we're getting this very elaborate--
and like I said, we're not going to look at it all.
This is what they're to do here.
And you're supposed to kill it;
and when you kill it, shed its blood.
Don't hit it over the head with a club. You are to
kill it in such a way that you shed its blood; and
then you are to take its blood and you're to apply
it to the doorposts and the lintel of the house.
So we see this animal to be killed, and the blood
is to be put on--can you see it over there?
It's to be put on the door posts
and the lintel of the house.
Now, that's what they are to do.
Then they're to stay in the house: go inside the door,
stay in the house, and partake of the animal;
and while they do this, don't break any of its bones.
Now, you think about that-- what a strange prescription
of events to prevent the death of the firstborn.
What was going on here?
What we were told--that if they would do this,
that when the death angel came, he would pass over
that house in judgment. He would pass over it.
Now, what was that all about?
Well, this was a picture; it was an illustration.
And what it was a picture of was...
The Passover was a prophetic picture of
something that was going on here.
Now, what was it?
It was the picture of the substitutionary work
of Jesus Christ.
You see, just as they were asked to take a lamb,
the Scripture tells us that John the Baptist, upon seeing
Jesus, he says, "Look, the…
Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world."
Jesus was called the Lamb of God.
And just as the Passover lamb had to a male,
so Jesus was a man.
And just as the Passover lamb had to be without blemish,
so Jesus was without sin.
And just as the Passover lamb was kept until the appointed
time and even the appointed hour,
and then he died, so Jesus died on the appointed day.
I believe it was the Passover at the appointed hour--it was
3:00 in the afternoon, the hour of the evening sacrifice.
Right on schedule.
And then just as the Passover lamb was not to have its
bones broken, when Jesus was on the cross,
they didn't break his bones either.
And just as by staying inside the house, that was
the only place they could find safety, it's so only
in Jesus Christ that we find safety from eternal death.
And just as back in those days (in the days of Moses)
where the Bible says that if they did that,
and by faith they trusted the Lord YHWH,
and believed that His words were true, and they just
put their confidence that-- yes, you know, maybe the
first born was sitting there and he's biting his nails,
and he was worrying away, but he didn't need
to worry--because it was all taken care of.
When the death angel came, he passed over that house.
Why? Because judgment had already come
to rest on the lamb.
In Egypt that night, there was a death in every household.
There was either the death of the firstborn,
or there was a death of the lamb.
But, if they had followed what God had said, and by faith
just trusted God and his word, the Bible says that
when the death angel came, he passed over that house--
wherever judgment had already come
to rest upon the lamb.
And you see, the same thing applies to us--
just as the lamb died in place of the first born,
so the Bible tells us that Jesus Christ died
in our place: He was our substitute.
This is talking about the substitionary work of Christ.
And when God comes in judgment to judge the world,
His judgment will pass over us. Why?
Because it's already come to rest on our Lamb.
The types of Scripture reveal to us certain doctrines,
like the substitutionary work of Christ.
It really nails it down in our mind.
And the interesting thing is, is that this is something
unique to Scripture.
It's also a form of prophecy.
And you only find it in the Scriptures.
You don't find it anywhere else. You don't find it in the
Quran; you don't find it in any of the other scriptures out there.
You can't go to the Gita, or the Vetas--no, it's not in those.
This is something--the whole idea of prophetic text
is very, very unique to the Bible.
And it's extremely powerful.
You know, as we use this in our teaching, we find you
see people sitting there; they're just gripped by it.
It's like a riddle.
You know, when someone gives you a riddle, you
sit there and it's all like-- ah, man, I can't get this.
And then all of a sudden, you get it and it's like--bing!
And it's like your eyes pop open, the scales fall
off and it's like--"Ahh!" "Oh!" And then you're one
of those guys sitting in the room that's got it, and all the rest--
the rest are sitting there and…As we do this, as we
teach, we see people sit there, and you can
actually see in their faces when it pops off.
It just--on this last trip to India, Singapore, and
Korea--I remember when I was teaching there in Korea.
As I was getting to this point, all of a sudden
I tied the types together. This lady started tapping her cheeks.
And she was so excited, she started going
like this with her hands. And then she looked down
each side and she put her hands down.
But you could see it right in her;
you know, it just bubbled out the top,
because all of a sudden they got it. It clicked.
They know what it's all about. They could see it--
Jesus is my Passover Lamb; He's my subtistute.
Very very powerful stuff. Very powerful prophecy.
It's something that we want to have flying
in our armada of truth.
Types not only reveal, but they also anchor doctrines.
And what do I mean by that?
Well, as an example, I'm going to use accuracy
in expression of salvation truths--
the accuracy in expression of salvation truths.
Now, stick with me here.
I want to take you to the tabernacle, and
I want to specifically look at the brazen altar.
Now, if you're visually challenged--and I find
some people just don't relate to something flat on a screen--
here's a 3D model of the tabernacle that you can
get from us and it will really help you in your teaching.
We're looking at the brazen altar right here.
That's what's in question. All right?
And what they were told--and we're just really jumping
forward here--the people back then (if you look in Leviticus),
it says that they were to bring an offering.
It had to be from the herd or the flock--
you couldn't bring a crocodile or a pig or something like
that--it had to be from the herd or the flock.
It had to be a male; it had to be without blemish.
And what they had to do, they had to bring this
to the brazen altar--they were going to make an offering there.
I'll set this down here for a moment.
I want to take this one here--
it's not brazen--but you got the idea, OK?
And they were to bring it to this altar.
And what they were to do is: they were
to place their hand on the head of that animal.
Now, what was going on here I believe, is that what
the Bible communicates is like the person is
saying, "I deserve to die for my sin; but I'm putting
"faith that God's word, what he's given here, is true.
"And it's as though my sin is being transferred
from me to this animal.
And when that happens, this animal dies in my place."
What we see here with this hands on the head, we see
that concept of substitution being brought out here again.
And it's a very powerful picture that you
can elaborate on and deal with.
Now the reason why this is brought out this way,
I believe, is because once again, when we get to the
New Testament, we see that…
We're dealing with a substitution issue here.
And this altar picture here--what we see going
on here--is actually to help us understand what went
on the cross, when Jesus Christ took our sin;
it was transferred from us on to him.
He became our sin bearer, and he died in our place.
It's all about substitution.
And I really believe that's the core issue of the gospel--is
substitution, substitutionary work of Christ.
Now, when we're expressing salvation truths,
we want to couch our vocabulary in that sense;
we want to use vocabulary that communicates
the substitutionary work of Christ.
But do we do that all the time?
Well, you know, what do you do with something like this?
Now, you're driving down the road, an unbeliever;
you're totally paganized, and you see that.
You've heard about this Jesus guy a little bit.
Is he a medical doctor?
Is he into heart transplants, or what?
Now, we have a problem here.
And you know, we use all sorts of little phrases that codify
what it means to be a Christian.
This is just one of them, as you know.
But, we have a problem, because if we go back
to our picture here, here we are--we're standing here.
And just pretend for a moment:
I've brought my sacrifice to the brazen altar.
Here we are. I've come and I'm just very weighed down
with a consciousness and how sinful I am.
And I come, and I look at that lamb.
I put my hand on its head and say,
"I'd like to give my heart to you."
You know, the lamb looks up and says, "Well, I'm
not going to be around here in a few minutes, you know."
Or maybe I bring my sacrifice and I come to the brazen altar.
And I put my hand on its head; and I look
at the lamb, and say, "I'd like to give you my heart,
or I'd like to give you my life."
The lamb says, "That's very nice, but once again, I'm not
going to be around in a few minutes."
It doesn't fit the picture. You get the idea?
What we need to do is-- we need to run
our terminology past the altar.
And we need to be sure that when we do, that it
honestly and sincerely reflects what's going on here.
And the fact is that I'm a sinner, weighed down
with the guilt and the weight of sin. And I desperately
need a substitute, and God has provided it in Jesus Christ.
We need to run our terminology past there.
Now, if we do that, we won't be reflecting
accurately what Jesus Christ did on the cross,
and we'll get into all sorts of things.
I really like the way Trevor McIllwain expressed this;
I just got to give this to you.
I just can't think of a better way to say it.
We got to make sure that we're accurate in expression.
And you know what? The types that we
find in Scripture help anchor the way we express it.
Here, look at another thing.
It not only anchors our expression,
it anchors our content.
You know, I believe that the Scripture tells us that
Jesus Christ--he died for sins once for all--and that when
we put our trust in Him, we are secure in Christ;
we can't lose our salvation.
You come back to this picture here--
the idea of placing your hands on the head there.
It was the picture of identification.
You were identifying with this substitute.
It was though one's sins was being transferred
from yourself to that substitute.
That was the idea.
It was your sins were being imputed to it.
But if you could lose your salvation, now think
for a moment here, if you could lose your salvation,
you would have to somehow reverse this process.
Now, I don't know what that would look like,
but I took a guess here.
You don't see this in the Scriptures. You don't.
We could look at another part of the tabernacle.
You know, here's the veil, that was between the
Holy of Holies, where God's presence symbolically
was exhibited right there over the top
of that mercy seat-- between the two cherubim,
and the Holy Place. And that veil--it held man out.
It protected God's holiness.
But we see there that when Jesus died on the cross,
"It is finished," he bowed his head, gave up his spirit.
And it says in Luke that the curtain of the temple
was torn in two from top to bottom.
And Hebrews explains that what that was: that was the picture
of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ being torn
for you and me, so that a way could be open for us
to enter through that curtain right into God's presence.
It's an incredibly potent, powerful picture.
You know, I remember when I was working
with New Tribes Mission-- this happened a number
of years ago when my son was just
five or six years of age-- just a little boy.
And I was sitting in a leadership conference;
I was doing some teaching there. And they had this
elevated stool that I was sitting on, so I was kinda
looking down on all the rest of the leaders there
in this big conference room--big oval table there,
by the lectern and everything. And we're sitting there and
talking; all these older men are sitting there--
very important individuals.
All of a sudden, the door bangs open--'***!'--and
there stands my son with a glass of water.
And he just marches right in. He walks by all these
important older men, and he walks right up to me
and he holds up this glass to me.
Now, that's the picture here. Because the reason was--
why my son had no fear of coming boldly into their
presence, boldly into my presence--was because I was
his…father.
And you see, that's what we have pictured here.
When that was torn, we has now that have put our faith
in what Jesus Christ did on the cross,
we enter boldly into God's presence,
because he's our…father.
Ahh! Powerful, isn't it? It's great stuff. Great stuff.
But if we could lose our salvation--
if we could lose our salvation--somehow
we'd have to be kicked out of the Holy of Holies,
and then this would have to be stitched back up.
You know what? We don't see that illustrated
in Scripture anywhere. We don't.
And so what we find is that not only do the types reveal
doctrines in the Scriptures, they help us understand the
substitutionary work of Christ, but they also
anchor these doctrines in such a way
to protect us from getting into error.
They keep us from shifting around;
it's like cement when you start studying those types--
you are just locked right down to what they are saying.
And, of course, the Scripture in the New Testament
is so good at just tying back in
and revealing this is exactly what was going on.
Well, I want to look at the third area, and that
has to do with the fact that stories define the words.
Now, we're really facing a crisis in our
human language philosophy here in the world,
and that is in this whole area that post-modernism--
and I'm sure a lot of you have studied post-modernism--
you at least know something about it.
Post-moderns believe that words no longer have…
well, they've never had meaning in their thinking.
And that is because word meaning changes.
At one time, the word 'gay' meant to be happy and
cheerful, but now it means to be…
it has a lifestyle connotation.
And so they say words-- the meanings shift.
You can't write something and expect it
to mean the same thing 50 years later.
Nor can one person necessarily interpret another
person's writing correctly, because the meaning
that is attached to words by another person
would be different from the one written.
And, there's an aspect of truthfulness in there.
Satan doesn't just tell a 100% lie; he mixes
truth in there; you know, he really muddles it up for us.
So post-moderns says that words don't have meaning.
So you can't really tell if something's right or not
because the meaning's been shifted around.
But the Bible actually uses stories to define words.
For example, if we were to look at the word 'grace'
in Scripture, this is the word that we use;
and we understand it to a certain extent.
But, we really--it's not really strong in our minds.
Especially, when you go out into the paganized culture
that we live in, the word 'grace' doesn't necessarily
have a whole lot of depth and meaning to it.
But, you can go into the Scriptures,
and you can tell the story about the children
of Israel being out in the wilderness, as God brought
them out of slavery-- horrible slavery.
He brought them out and he was leading them
to this land that he promised to them. And as he took
them there, he provided them with food.
He provided them water; he provided them with clothes.
They had shoes that didn't wear out.
He did all this for them, and, I think, we would all agree
that this was a wonderful statement of love.
Is that not right? It was.
And the people were so thankful and appreciative.
No. They grumbled and complained.
But what you see there is that God still showed love.
He didn't say, "Oh, you miserable crowd.
"I'm going to stop feeding you.
"In fact, just expect to get food on Tuesdays.
"The rest of the week you'll go hungry.
"And you'll be thankful for Tuesdays."
No, he didn't say that.
He didn't say, "Oh, everyone --barefoot from now on.
You'll be thankful for those shoes."
No, he just kept providing them faithfully--
day in and day out for 40 years.
He continued to show them love.
And you know what? I think we would all agree,
that hey, that was undeserved.
He didn't have to do that. And you know what?
That's the meaning of 'grace'-- it's undeserved love.
The story defines the word.
And now, when you think of the word 'grace,' you think
of that story and you think, "Oh, wow! Boy,
that's a neat God that's like that."
And we find that all the way through Scripture.
You know, where I come from-- Canada, we are running
into issues having to do with this matter of homosexuality.
And in Canada, if you went back 35-40 years ago,
homosexuality was considered a crime.
It was considered a perversion, a sin.
And you could be arrested; you could be imprisoned; you could
face severe consequences for having that lifestyle.
But now, here we are in 2006, and the last government
brought in and said, "Hey, not only is it OK, but we're going
"to sanction it by making it legal. You can get a marriage license,
"and you can become a married couple, and all the benefits
that go along with that can be yours, as a homosexual."
Now the word has been redefined as something
inappropriate to something that is appropriate.
But what does the Bible do?
Well, the Bible says, "Hold on, hold on, hold on here."
What it does is that it gives the definition for ***
immorality and perversion. And what does it use?
It uses a story--*** and Gomorrah.
And it says that these serve as an example to those that are
going to suffer the punishment of eternal fire.
It calls it *** immorality and perversion,
and it anchors it with a story. And the government of Canada
may want to say, "It's just fine,"
but the Bible is going to go on for eternity saying,
"No, and here's a story to illustrate what we mean by it."
And you can't get around the story.
The story locks it down; you can't change it.
You can try to shift the meaning of it, but you just
can't do that, because the story has locked the
definition of the term in place as defined as sin.
And this is all throughout Scripture.
Now, I'm going to throw out a word here,
and I want you to respond to me and tell me the
story that defines this word.
Here's the word....What's the story that defines it?
Hmm?
Abraham. There you are. Yeah.
Abraham defines it.
So, here's the story and it defines--
gives the definition for faith.
Now, if you want to know what faith is and what
it isn't, then what should you do?
Well, I believe, you need to go back and
give a real serious study to the life of Abraham.
And you do that, and you will find that when you do
that, it will tell you just what faith is like,
and what it isn't. Now, I may step on a few toes here in
what I'm going to do here in a moment; but I'm going
to tell you something, and when you do that--
there's a real popular thinking of faith out there
that I don't think is Scriptural--and what you
won't find, you'll find that faith is not a gift.
There's no where in Scripture where God (YHWH)
gave Abraham a gift of faith.
It's just not there.
Fact, you'll find the faith that he exhibited is very
much the sort of faith that you're showing right now
as you sit on these chairs-- hoping that whoever built
this building did a good job with the structural steel,
and the roof is going to stay up.
The stories define the words. And we can actually say
that probably it helps to stay out of error.
Now, we need to look at those stories and see how they
define words, how they are using it and then
that needs to determine our theology.
Well, the fourth one--this will be the last one
that we'll look at-- I believe that the Bible
uses word pictures to anchor doctrines.
Now, what do I mean by word pictures?
Well, an example of a word picture would be redemption--
the idea of being redeemed.
We know that the idea of being redeemed was a word
that came out of the slave market, remember that?
It had the idea of a slave that was chained.
So the picture for us is that we are individuals that
were chained by sin in the slave market of life.
There we are. There's nothing we could do to escape.
We're humbled; we're shamed;
we're stuck. There's nothing that we
could do to save ourselves, and yet the
Bible says that Jesus Christ came and he bought us.
What did he buy us with? His blood.
He bought us with His blood.
He took us out of the slave market and he
broke off those chains and he set us free.
That's the idea. Redemption.
And it's very, very powerful--
the whole idea of this word picture.
And remember, I said I don't believe that
you can lose your salvation; but if you could,
somehow in Scripture you would need a
word picture that says you could be un-redeemed.
We don't find that. Or maybe de-redeemed.
I'm not sure which way you would go there.
But then most people that believe that, also believe that
you could be re-redeemed.
So what you would have is: you'd have, here's your slave
sitting there; he's all chained and tied up. And then
he gets re-deemed; so he's happy. Then he's
un-redeemed; then he's re-redeemed; then he's a
slave; then he's re-redeemed, un-redeemed,
then he's re-redeemed.
You don't find anywhere where there's word pictures
in the Bible that illustrate that.
These word pictures really anchor certain truths.
What about the word 'justified'?
Very, very powerful truth.
I want to just use a visual aid here
that I think will help there.
When we teach on the area of sin,
we talk about sin as being
about our human dilemma-- if you want to call it.
When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, a dilemma
entered into the human race. And this dilemma that
we face is like a coin that has two sides.
You can't divide these issues, really.
The human dilemma on the one side is that we face
a sin consequence; we face a penalty or a debt--
whichever way you want to phrase it--
that we're going to have to pay.
Now, we not only endure consequences in our
lifetime with shame and guilt and suffering and
anger--all those things that go along with that--
but we also face death, in a physical sense.
This is all consequences of sin.
And then the Bible says we face this thing called
'the second death,' which is an eternity in the lake of fire.
And we're facing an eternity of judgment.
And so there's this horrible consequence to our sin that
we're facing. And as we look at it, we see that there's just
no way that we can escape this on our own; we're stuck.
And so we have something here
that we really don't want-- about our dilemma.
But there's another side to our dilemma and that is that
there's something that we need.
If we're going to live in God's presence for eternity,
or even for briefly, we would need perfection.
'Without holiness no man can see God.'
There's--we would need to be as perfect as he is perfect.
We would have to have a righteousness that is
equal to his righteousness just to be in his presence.
And we don't have that. So, we face this problem:
How can I get this that I don't have?
And how can I get rid of this that I have?
You see, it's a two- sides-of-the-coin dilemma
that we face here.
Now, what I believe we can do here is: I believe
we can illustrate this with the doctrine of justification.
Paul, can you come down and help me here?
And, Shawn, could you give me a hand?
If you guys could just face me here. All right.
I believe that what the Scripture tells us is that when
God first created mankind, when we were first created…
(Come forward as far as you can, fellows.)
When God first created us, we were
created innocent of all sin. OK?
We didn't know anything about sin.
All we knew was the goodness of God.
Back in that garden of Eden, the Bible talks
about how God was man's best friend.
He would come and he would walk with man in the cool
of the day. And it's illustrated that there was
a friendship, a communion between God and man.
There was a fellowship. But then something happened.
The Bible talks about how, remember how Satan, in the
form of a serpent, came into the garden,
and he questioned something that God had said.
God had said, "You see that tree over there?
"Don't eat of its fruit,
because the day you eat of it, you will die."
Now, God in his love had given a whole forest,
a whole, a world of fruit they could eat from;
but he said, "Just that one; don't eat of it."
You might want to call it--it was like a friendship test.
Do you trust me? And every day they didn't eat of it,
it was like saying, "Yeah, we do."
But, when Satan came into the garden, he said,
"Did God really say that?
"Ha! God knows that the day you eat of it,
why, you're going to be an enlightened one."
(That's by the way what a Buddha is.)
OK? "You're going to be an enghtened one."
Adam and Eve were faced with this equation here--
and the equation was this: God said, "Don't eat of the tree
because you will die." Satan said, "Go ahead eat of it--
the day you eat of it you'll be enlightened; you'll be like God."
So they had to weigh out in their mind--who's
telling us the truth; who is our real friend?
And you know what?
The Bible tells us that Adam and Eve trusted a stranger.
They trusted someone that they didn't know
his identity, and they didn't know his history.
They knew that God was good.
They knew his identity, and they knew his
history; but they didn't trust him.
They trusted a stranger and they threw aside--
they cast aside their innocence. And when
they did that, when they did that, they took on a sin nature.
They became sinful.
(I knew there was something difficult about sin, but…)
OK. They took on a sin nature.
They rebelled against God; they disobeyed him--
they went his own way. They had trusted Satan instead of God.
And when that happened, God set aside
his mantle of friendship.
He set that aside, and it's like he put on a cloak--
the cloak of a pure, perfect judge.
Put on a cloak of a pure, perfect judge.
There was at that point-- what happened--there was a
separation that occurred between God and man,
because sinful man could not live in the presence
of the pure, perfect God.
{You need the gavel, right? There you are.)
Now, as man stood in God's courtroom, and as God
looked at man, he said, "You know what?
"You are guilty of breaking my law.
Even if it was just that one rule, you are guilty."
And so, we find that God declared man guilty
[crack!] in his presence.
OK, that's the verdict that has come down.
Man is standing there, and he's facing this two-sides-
of-the-same-coin dilemma.
He has this sin consequence that he's facing because
he's a guilty sinner. He's going to have
to pay this forever penalty-- this forever debt.
And he can't be in God's presence,
he can't come back in his presence, because he
doesn't have perfection-- he doesn't have that
righteousness that's equal to God's righteousness.
He's in an awful dilemma. And that's where man is stuck.
But the story doesn't stop there.
What we see is that God set aside his gavel.
He set aside his gavel, and he came to earth as the pure,
perfect person--came to earth as Jesus Christ.
So he came to earth.
OK, there you go.
Came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ.
And for a period of time, for 30-plus years, he walked
on the face of the globe that man could see the fact
that he was indeed the one who was the Lamb of God--
that one without blemish.
The one that was entirely
complete and able to take away the sin of the world.
He didn't just come to live a good example for
man; he came for the purpose of taking
man's sin off himself and on himself.
And that's what he did-- when he went to the cross.
When he went to the cross, what he did is:
he took the consequences of sin upon himself.
He took care of this side of the equation.
What he did on the cross is: he became
the sin bearer and he paid that eternal penalty,
that eternal debt. In one moment in time, as an
infinite God, he took care of it just like that.
And he was able to do something on the cross
that we could have never have done.
If we had tried to pay for the debt,
we would have gone on for eternity paying and paying
and paying and paying; but in one moment in time,
he was able to pay that debt and he said, "It is finished."
It's all done.
But that's not the end of the story.
You see, he took care of the sin
consequences on the cross. But then as a result
of doing that, he could say that, "If you believe that
"when I was dying on that cross, I was taking care
of it for you, I have something more for you."
Do you believe that Jesus Christ died in your place?
You do. Well then, you know what? God says that
if you believe that he died in your place,
then he wants to give you a gift.
He wants to clothe you in his righteousness.
And now, when you stand in God's courtroom,
and he lifts the gavel to look at you,
he no longer sees your sin; but he sees you
clothed in the righteousness of Christ.
And because he's the resurrected savior that's
come back to life, when he stands there and looks at you,
he doesn't say, "I declare you guilty";
rather, he says, "I declare you righteous in my eyes."
And that is the meaning of the word 'justified'--
[crack!] to be declared righteous.
That's the concept of justification.
Now, let me ask you a question.
And this is what I do with my students.
The devil shows up and he says, "Hmmm. Well, I'll fix that.
I'll just tear this righteousness off."
Could he do it?
The Bible tells us this righteousness comes from whom? God.
It has come from God.
The devil has no right meddling with it.
It's something that's been provided by him.
You can't tear it off.
I remember when I was teaching this out in India here a couple
years ago--a young man, his hands pop up
"Can Satan tear that off me?
Could somebody else rip it off me?"
I said, "Well, God's clothed you; he's put it there.
Who do you think would be able to take it off?"
"Oh, only God could."
"Well, he says he's not going to do that."
What he's done is, taken care of the other side of the coin--
he's taking care of the perfection side.
You are going to be able to live in his presence for
eternity not because of your righteousness,
but because he provided you with his righteousness.
And now clothed in his righteousness,
you are what we call "In Him"--"In Christ."
He's taken care of all you need to live with him.
You see, what this does, it shows us that when we are justified,
there's no such thing as being un-justified--
or de-justified.
In which case, we'd have to be able to be re-justified.
No, there's nothing like that out there.
What it shows us is that when we are provided with this,
by God from heaven, and he declares us righteous in his eyes,
then that's a final act.
And that's the word picture we find in Scriptures.
It's very, very powerful.
Thanks, fellows.
As we take advantage of the architecture of God's Word,
as we teach through the Scriptures as we have outlined,
it's a very, in many ways, it's a very condensed outline.
Some have said, "Oh, my, my, that's a thick book.
I don't know if I could ever get an unbeliever to read it."
Well, you know what? You'd be amazed at how it works.
If you're reading it just to yourself,
you can read it in about eight hours.
When we teach it and using the WorkBook and
all the visual aids, we can teach it in about 15 hours.
And, we find that there's a lot more people
that you'd imagine that are quite willing to sit down
and have an objective Bible presentation given to them.
They want to know about these things.
And it's because it's a big thing. And, you know, I
think it's uniquely a very Western thing, that what
we try to do with the Gospel is we try to say,
"How little can I get away with to get the guy saved?"
You know? We just kinda try and shrink it down.
We want to have the McDonald's mindset.
You know, when you drive through the drive through:
"Big Mac, order of fries, strawberry shake. Quick!
Come on, come on, come on, come on! Is this not fast food?"
And we want to have a fast gospel.
And we want to be able to list little things off there--***!
But, you know what? In doing that, we do disservice
to the grandeur and the greatness of this message.
Generally speaking, in life, people that are making big
decisions give a little thought to it.
You know, when you go out to buy a house,
it's not something you get up in the morning
and on the way to work, you buy a house.
You don't do that. No.
You put a lot of thought into it, and you do some research.
Now, what we have found is that people are very appreciative
when you sit down and you are able to explain it through.
And as you do that: as you go from creation
through to Christ, you know what you are doing?
What you are doing is this: you're flying truths in formation.
Prophetic events are verifying the message.
Types are revealing and anchoring the doctrines
in the individual's mind.
Stories are defining the words for them so that they are making
sure that they're understanding exactly what you're talking about
when you're using words like sin, and God, and righteousness.
And the word pictures are anchoring those doctrines,
so you have absolutely no doubt what happened
on the cross and in the tomb.
And, I believe, that's what we want to do.
We want to take advantage of the architecture in the Bible.
We want to have truths flying in formation so that they
will protect each other.
So that it comes out with a very powerful statement
and it screams in the face of the individual: "This is true.
Please believe it."
And, I believe, that what it means when we talked about yesterday--
being an ambassador--when it says it's as though God himself
is speaking through us, and he's imploring a lost and dying world:
"Please, please, be reconciled to me."
If we don't do that, this is what we're doing,
so often. And what we're doing is, we're taking an
extrememly powerful airforce of truth,
and we're leaving most of it on the ground.
And we're sending off this one little truth, to fly by itself,
and we're saying, "Yep, it should do the trick."
When really what we need to be doing is,
we need to be putting our whole air force in the air
and saying, "Now listen folks, when we talk about
"the Scripture being inspired by God, this is what it means.
This is the face of it."
And when you fly this group of information together,
as you do that, it just has a very, very powerful
statement that, "Yes, it is true."
And that's why we do this.
That's why we're doing it.