Tuesday, January 4

God Must Reveal Truth to Even the Most Intelligent




The Bible says quite plainly and frankly that man is totally incapable of arriving at a knowledge of truth by means of scientific theory, and that if he would arrive at a knowledge of truth, he must submit himself to revelation. In other words, he must admit that he cannot arrive at truth unaided. He must cease to have self-confidence; he must cease to trust his own intellect and his power of reason.... The Bible starts by telling men just that.... Man has got to submit himself to revelation. For truth is a mystery, and if man would have any knowledge of it, he must submit in humility, and in reverence....

I always think that one of the greatest statements [of this Bible teaching] is in that picture of Moses at the burning bush. With the typical scientific attitude Moses said when he saw that phenomenon, 'Ah! I will turn aside, and examine this curious phenomenon that I am seeing.' . . . He was about to advance and investigate when the voice came, saying, 'Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground' (Exodus 3:1-5). You do not investigate here, you worship, in reverence and in awe. . . . [Jesus] taught the same truth in His interview with Nicodemus, who was a very able and erudite teacher of the Jews, and who came along desiring to investigate, and wanting to understand. It was to him that Christ said: 'Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.... .The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth. . . .' (John 3:3-8). 

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Approach to Truth: Scientific and Religious, pp. 21-3

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