Psalm 78:1-4 (ESV)
Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;
incline your ears to the words of my mouth!
[2] I will open my mouth in a parable;
I will utter dark sayings from of old,
[3] things that we have heard and known,
that our fathers have told us.
[4] We will not hide them from their children,
but tell to the coming generation
the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,
and the wonders that he has done.
So many people today who maintain that God has a special message to them and they want to share it with the rest of the world. It is where cults come from. It is where many horrifying atrocities throughout the centuries have been hatched. “God has spoken to me and I have a message for you from Him”. The problem with such messages of course is that God has delivered His message once and for all and it has not changed and it does not involve rallying people around some grand project.
We have a message to give the world. The message is the Bible and the Gospel we find revealed in the Bible. Our task is to teach the Word of God. The Bible is the message from God to us. Our God given task is to teach it to the generations that follow us.
There is only one standard by which to measure all the messages that people say that they have received from God. The Bible itself. Does their message agree with the Scriptures? Any religious movements that do not match up with the essential doctrines of the faith are to be disregarded. This would just about put an end to many religious television programming with their interviews of people with their messages from God that contradict the Scriptures.
It is true that the Bible can be manipulated to say just about anything and that everyone claims to be faithfully representing the Word of God. But there is an essential body of truth that has been maintained throughout the centuries as necessary to be considered true to the Word of God. Every false messenger will deny these at some point. 1)The Bible is true, 2) the Bible is sufficient, 3) there is one God and he exists in three Persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, 4) salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone according to the Scriptures alone, to the glory of God alone, 5) true saving faith in Jesus Christ will produce a life of holiness, marked by obedience, 6) all real believers are part of the universal church and all real believers will join themselves to a local assembly of God’s people and put themselves under its authority, 7) we have a mission from God to evangelize the world, 8 ) we are to grow in our faith. All those things and perhaps others come from the Bible and that is the message we have received from God.
The message we have from God in the Bible is sufficient and personal. The desire to hear God and receive personal messages from Him is understandable. But people who do not find God speaking through the Scriptures will certainly not hear Him speak to them personally. And people who find the Word of God’s sufficiency will not need for Him to give them a special message which cannot be gleaned out of those same Scriptures.
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