Bible Lesson 208
WHAT IS TRUTH? (John 1:17)
“The Church of Christ is continually represented under the figure of an army; yet its Captain is the Prince of Peace; its object is the establishment of peace, and its soldiers are men of a peaceful disposition. The spirit of war is at the extremely opposite point to the spirit of the gospel. Yet nevertheless, the church on earth, until the Second Advent must be the church militant, the church armed, the church warring, and the church conquering. And how is this? It is in the very order of things, so it must be. Truth could not be truth in this world if it were not a warring thing, and we should at once suspect that it were not true if error were friends with it. The spotless purity of truth must always be at war with the blackness of heresy and lies.”
C.H. Spurgeon
We will open the lesson for the month with the question that the Roman Procurator of imperial Rome, in Palestine, at the time of the trial of Jesus Christ, the God-Man, who asked Jesus Christ, “What is Truth” (John 18:28-38).
That will be our focus for the month! We will seek to know firmly and finally, What Truth is! We will not seek for anything except God’s Truth and it is vital that we do so; because God tells us that it is the truth that sets us free (John 8:31-32).
Notice as you open your Bible and check that scripture what Jesus says there: He does not simply say that we must find the truth that sets us free, He points us to the source of truth and says in verse 31, that those who believe in Him, and abide in His Word, will be His disciples and they shall know the truth and the truth shall set them free.
What does the truth set us free from’ It sets us free from the failure of Adam, from the fear of death and hell, and free from sin (its power and it’s penalty), and its source the devil.
The truth, and The Gospel, is the power of salvation and we read in Romans that “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:16-17).
Truth which is found in the Bible, sets us free and saves us from the eternal condemnation and the torments of hell forever. So why are so many people today, devoid of the truth’ Why doesn’t everyone know the truth’
Well, I see many reasons, one of the most prevalent ones is that people have gotten lazy or unconcerned. But then many churches are guilty of that same problem, they have stopped teaching the Bible, and begun to entertain the congregations. The Bible was meant to be read, studied, meditated upon, and preached, line upon line, precept upon precept.(Isaiah 28:10). God never intended that we simply lift certain verses, and take them out of context and weave them into feel good sermonettes that would be acceptable to sinners who hear them.
God says of His Word the Bible “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12).
The question now becomes’.If Hebrews 4:12 says that, about the Word of God, then why don’t more people know the truth’ Good question; but the answer is evident. It is because there has been a general drift toward a belief in many churches that the Bible was written by men and men make mistakes, so we are reading something that we cannot trust. Others who have been hardened by the attitude of many preachers and teachers; and they go to read the Bible with the idea that they know what it says because their teacher/ preacher has been telling them what to believe for years; so when they read the Bible, they read it with the idea that they will teach it what they already believe. Many of our seminaries must bear some of the criticism of the ignorance of the truth, because they hire professors who do not believe the Bible or else they believe it on their own terms, and they send out graduates (preachers) who are confused and they come back to luke-warm churches and turn them into synagogues of Satan. The truth always sounds hard and unbending to those who have decided that they are smarter than God, and they know that God won’t mind if they have a little fun or sin once in a while. That is where the problems in the church began, and that is what has exacerbated the problem several fold over the past few years. There are many worldly preachers out there today that will stand and lay aside the truths of God by simply saying that the Bible may say certain things, but that they prefer to state the truth another way, a way that may suit more sinners. Truth is the absence of any thing false! Truth is the ideal, reality, genuine, Pure without any hint of a lie.
In short, Our God Jehovah, our Creator, Sustainer, and Savior is the Standard of Truth. Whatever God has said to man, is based in truth because God cannot lie (John 3:31-33). God stands in contrast to Satan because Satan is the standard of the lie, and Jesus Christ calls him the Father of lies (John 8:44). Whatever God, who is Truth, says to man In The Bible, is always for the good of mankind. God never tells man to do anything that will be harmful to man. Satan never leads man to do anything that will be helpful to man. God calls men to “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets”. We call that the golden rule and we know it is True, because it works. The Devil (Satan) is working every day to make people believe his lies. For every Truth that God has put in place to make our lives work for our benefit, Satan has laid down a lie that contradicts God’s Truth. Every time we follow Satan’s lie, we damage our own lives and the lives of others around us. Often, Satan’s lies attempt to mimic God’s truth, and we must be sure of our Truths to keep us from being confused. Someone has said, and I agree, that “whatever is only almost true, is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because it is so near Truth.”
To prove our point we can look back to how the serpent (Satan) caused Eve to disobey God’s Truth, and follow his lie. What he did was to confuse her by corrupting the truth of God. God had told Adam and Eve, that they could eat of every tree in the Garden, including the tree of life, which was there, but they were not to eat of the Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil. Satan began his conversation with Eve (The weaker vessel), by saying “Has God indeed said, ‘you shall not eat of every tree of the Garden'” Satan’s lie was to question what God had said, and Eve desiring to try the fruit, ate and then convinced her husband to eat. We could go through our Bibles and find examples of these same kind of lies and tricks that Satan uses to trap souls and lead them astray. We have believed a characterization of Satan that show him as a little red man, with a long tail and carrying a pitchfork, and we never see him in that image. Anytime Satan plots to foist his lie upon us as we live in this sinful world, he always appears as the most beautiful, most desirable, and delicious thing in the world. If we look at the sins of our world today we see that one of the hot-beds of Satan’s sin is the problem that the worldly have with sex.
The adulteress appears with her make-up, rings and bracelets, with the sweet smell of perfume (that is Satan in disguise). And the man without the Spirit of God to empower him will fall 99 % of the time. Those trysts sometimes lead to pregnancies, in women who are not prepared for motherhood. God says “Thou shall not kill” but the devil presents life after an abortion (murder) as idyllic, free from the perceived problem of a child to rear. That is the reason that there are children by the millions murdered at the behest of women who think only about their own lives and nothing about the life they have created and desire to rid themselves of. God’s truth says ‘Thou shall not steal’; but Satan makes stealing (taking something that does not belong to you, no matter how small or insignificant it may be), simply a matter of no consequence. If we stop and think about what we have been addressing in these few pages, we will learn that the War between The Truth and the lie, began in the Garden of Eden, and it has grown steadily worse as more and more people have chosen the path of least resistance and decided to follow Satan, rather than the Lord God Almighty. I am sure some will say, without really thinking, well, it looks like Satan is winning the war. To the mind that has not studied the Bible and found that God is simply utilizing Satan to work out His Eternal plan for his Creation and Creatures that may sound true. I know that someone may say to my statement about God using Satan to work out His plan; that the proof is in the pudding. I say to that but the pudding is not pudding until it comes forth from the oven; and when God serves up the pudding at the Judgment, Satan and all of his Children will be cast into hell. Does that sound like Satan wins’ (Jude 5-7; 2nd Peter 2:4-17; Revelation 20:10-15).
This could well be the most important (for the destiny of your immortal soul) lesson that you will ever hear from me, so read it carefully and check it against your Bible. There is an ongoing battle between good and evil, right and wrong, Truth and the lie; in our world today. It began in the garden, but the winner of this battle has always been revealed, even before the first clash occurred. Our God is Truth; and He has an opponent that we call the old serpent or Satan, who was originally created by God as a beautiful angel. He was called Lucifer, but he wanted to sit in the seat of God, and was thrown out of heaven with a band of like-minded angels. From that time until the end of time, God has had Satan and his angels on a short chain. God allows Satan to roam up and down in the earth, but his power is limited to what God allows him. Many ask, well, why did God allow Satan to stay on the earth’ The only answer that I can give you is ‘.because God is God: and He is using everything that happens on this earth to work out His eternal plan for mankind.
That answer may not satisfy you, but that is what I believe the Bible says to mankind. We must remember that we are saved by knowing the truth (John 8:32). The Bible makes is evident that we must not just simply know the truth, we must obey the Truths of God (John 14:15, 21-24). We must remember that Ephesians 2:1-10, reveals some of The Bible’s Truths to us because it reminds us that we were born dead in trespass and sin, that we are under the Wrath of God, unfit to occupy heaven. Satan has many preachers out there that are attempting to overcome that Truth by telling the lie, that says, Oh, we are all sinners and there is no hell. That is Satan’s lie that comes off of the mud-sills of hell and you must not ever believe it. The Truth is that we are all born without anything in us that can connect with God. We desperately need The Savior to rescue us from hell’s fire for eternity; and another truth is that we must gain a knowledge of God before we have any hope of being redeemed (saved) from our sad condition. (Romans 3:23; Romans 6:23; Romans 10:17).
The Truth is, that we cannot be certain that we know the truth, if we gain it from any source except the Bible, or have used the Bible to verify it. Jesus Christ spoke the truth to that Lukewarm Laodicean Church, who was neither cold nor hot, but thought they were rich and had need of nothing; but they were wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked; and counseled them to buy from Him, gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich; and white garments, that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed; and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. Apparently this congregation had bought into one or more of Satan’s lies, and now stood in trouble with God. That should cause us to stop and make sure that our truths are the same as God’s, and that we are not deaf and dumb and blind, and on the road to hell.
I suppose this would be a good place for me to warn those who have joined some church, and have not been reborn and resurrected with Christ and ‘IN Christ’. Church membership has begun to be bestowed on many who do not know the truth, and that is one of the greatest lies that Satan has foisted upon the church, who were apparently agreeable with him. We wanted to make what we read in the Bible come to pass, and we wanted it to happen right away, so we left God out and began to ‘save’ people, so that we could experience church growth. The True Church only grows as God adds people to the church as He saves them and changes them.
Salvation is about Jesus Christ, and we know that because He left heaven and came to this earth through the womb of a Jewish maid who had never known a man. The Birth of Christ was a supernatural birth, planted by the Holy Spirit, which gave Christ the form and flesh of mankind, but without sin. God who is Spirit, put on the form and flesh of the creature, so that He could experience man and so that man could experience Him. The Apostle John wrote about man experiencing God, and said, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life’..the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us’..that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.” (1st John 1:1-4).
Jesus Christ the God-Man, God with us, is the promise of eternal life in heaven, for those who seek to know Him. We must learn of him as we become concerned about our sinful lives and seek the way out of sin, and to reconciliation with God. We do that by hungering and thirsting after righteousness. God will draw us and drive us on the road toward the Cross of Christ. It is not something that we would ever desire on our own, but God will draw those that will obey to the spout where the blessings pour out. Jesus Christ made it clear that He was the only way to God the Father, when He said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6).
So that we keep salvation in its true path for mankind, God left us verses that remind us that salvation is all about God. We just found in John 14:6 that no one comes to the Father except by the Son Jesus Christ. In other scripture we find that we cannot just decide to approach the Son Jesus Christ, we must be drawn to Him by the Father. (John 6:44). That verse says to us, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.” God works, in all three persons of the God-Head, in every man’s salvation. The Father, planned it, The Son, Jesus Christ, paid for it on the cross, and the Holy Spirit,applies the benefits of it to those who are saved. God is the Truth and the Standard of Truth, Jesus Christ, who is God in the flesh, is truth, and the Holy Spirit is truth. God has left us his truths, written down for us, and included in the Holy Bible. So no man will ever be able to stand before God and say He did not know.
In closing this lesson let’s close by restating some truths that we have discovered as we have sought God. First Truth, God is sovereign over everything and everyone in the universe. He created it, He has sustained it and He is sovereign over it all. He is Sovereign in Heaven and over Hell. Satan is not sovereign, but operates under the Supervision of God. God is the Creator, Man and all other beings are creatures. ( Genesis 1:1; Ephesians 1:11; Romans 8:28-30; Romans 11:34-36; John 1:1-18; Isaiah 55:8-9; 1st Chronicles 29:11; Romans 9:9-18). We are all grandchildren of Adam and Eve and as such, we were born with the nature of Adam (a nature of sin and disobedience). We inherited Adams nature and so were born dead in Trespass and sin, under the wrath of God because we followed Adam’s nature to sin (Ephesians 2:1-3)”..
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), And raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-9). In Salvation and regeneration God by His Great Mercy and Grace, grants the one being saved, the New Birth (Ephesians 2:10). These are the Truths that we must be concerned with in order to understand the Grace, Mercy, Love and Power of the Sovereign God who holds our eternal destiny in His hands.
Certainly, there are scores of other Truths that we will deal with in the future. Think on these things, Read the Bible and know, seek and ask’
Until next time,
may God bless and keep you
This is Bro. Bob