If your life is
not in jeopardy for what you believe, you’re probably on the wrong side!
If you don’t believe Genesis 1-11, how can you
possibly believe John 3:16?
“Indeed, all who want to live a godly life united with the Messiah Yeshua will be persecuted.” (2Tim 3:12)
It is what you actually believe that determines how you walk out your faith,
“but avoid stupid controversies, genealogies,
quarrels and fights about the Torah; because they are worthless and
futile.” (Titus 3:9)
This article was originally prepared and delivered as a Sunday-morning
sermon at Mineral Wells (WV) Baptist Church in about 1995.
What is Truth?
So Pilate went back into the headquarters, called Yeshua [Jesus] and said to him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
Yeshua answered, “Are you asking this on your own, or have other people told you about me?”
Pilate replied, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and head cohanim [priests] have handed you over to me; what have you done?”
Yeshua answered, “My kingship does not derive its authority from this world's order of things. If it did, my men would have fought to keep me from being arrested by the Judeans[Jewish leaders]. But my kingship does not come from here.”
“So then,” Pilate said to him, “You are a king, after all.” Yeshua answered, “You say I am a king. The reason I have been born, the reason I have come into the world, is to bear witness to the truth. Every one who belongs to the truth listens to me.”
Pilate asked him, “What is truth?” (Yochanan [John] 18:33-38, CJB)
What is “truth”? What an interesting question for our times.
Without a doubt it is a gross understatement to say that we live in uncertain times. It’s getting harder and harder to know who to believe about almost any subject.
I remember once upon a time if we wanted to know the truth about what was happening in the world, all we had to do was turn on the radio or television and tune in Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, or any one of a dozen other reporters. And if they said a thing, we could be pretty sure that it was at least close to the truth.
Now, it’s not a secret that so-called “news” programs are driven more by ratings than by the truth, and many have gone so far as to actually go out and create events so that they would have something sensational to “report at six” or show “film at eleven.” Now they interrupt the eight o’clock program, the nine o’clock program, and the ten o’clock program with a shot of the “reporter” sitting in front of a bank of television monitors, saying in his or her most conspiratorial voice: “Twenty years after the king’s death, Phyllis Diller is having his baby! Stay tuned for details following tonight’s movie of the week!”
Then after sitting though 57 minutes of editorials and political commentaries, they finally give the details on “tonight’s big story:” “Last night, twenty years after the death of Elvis Presley, the late king of rock and roll, Phyllis Diller had his daughter, Lisa Marie, and her new husband, Michael Jackson, over to her Bell Air estate for a belated wedding reception. Barry Manalow provided the entertainment for the gala event! And goodnight from Babylon!”
Oh, yes … by the way, we don’t have news reporters any more. We have commentators. News reporters used to tell us what happened. Now commentators tell us what they think about what may or may not have happened; and if it did happen, it may or may not have happened the way they said it did.
You might be able to guess that I don’t watch much TV news any more, but I do listen to Paul Harvey once in a while!
Newspapers aren’t much better any more. The motto of the New York Times used to be “All the news that’s fit to print.” Now their motto is “all the views that fit, we print.” If you wanted to read the editorials, you used to have to turn to the editorial page. Now virtually every page consists of editorials rather than news … including the comics page.
Remember the Saturday Evening Post? Now there was a family magazine! I remember every Thursday when it arrived in the mail (I never did understand why they didn’t call it the Thursday Afternoon Post) I would grab it away from my younger brother — that was my right; I was the oldest; and besides, he couldn’t even read yet — I would grab the Post and turn to the jokes and cartoons on the very last page.
Tabloids used to be an oddity to pass the time in the checkout line at the super market. Now it’s hard to tell the difference between the National Inquirer, People Magazine, and US News and World Report!
Not only can you not trust the press any more, you can’t trust many of the folks in our state and national capitals. The Pentagon told us last January that they have finally gotten a satisfactory reckoning from Hanoi concerning all of our MIA’s and POW’s, and now in June they tell us that before they will establish formal relations with the government of Viet Nam they will require Hanoi to provide us with a satisfactory reckoning of our 4,000-some remaining MIAs and POWs. Mark my words, the White House is going to establish full diplomatic relations with Hanoi, and the remaining POWs can just rot in their jungle prisons and slave labor camps! And the White House will then make it official policy that “there are no more unaccounted-for POWs or MIAs.” That may not affect many of you, but if you were over there “in the bush” — as we used to say — I guarantee that makes your blood boil!
And while I’m on the subject of “Who do you trust?” … how about that Supreme Court?!? This august group of men and women are appointed for life for the specific purpose of protecting us from a government that tends to overstep its authority from time to time. The High Court’s job is to make sure that all the players follow the rules as defined by our Constitution. But instead of making sure that our leaders stay within the limits imposed upon them by our wise Founding Fathers, the Court has taken up the occupation of writing their own laws and imposing them upon us, while at the same time maintaining that they themselves are not subject to the limits that the Constitution places on them in the performance of their duties.
It is they who have rewritten the laws of our land to make it unlawful for us to have prayer in our children’s school classrooms or at their graduations, and to make it unlawful for the American citizens to tell their elected representatives that they can serve in office for only half of their life rather than for their whole life.
This same elite group of men and women tell us that is a woman’s God-given right [make that “State-given right” — we must maintain the “wall of separation,” after all] … that it is a woman’s inalienable right to murder her unborn child.
But we must not, under any circumstances, allow God’s Ten Commandments to adorn the wall of any school house, court room, or other public building. Not only does that violate the sacred “wall of separation between church and state”-- which wall, by the way, does not exist in any single one of this country’s founding documents; it is a total fiction invented by corrupt politicians and a corrupt Supreme Court to further their own political agendas-- not only does displaying God’s Law in public places violate the sacred “wall of separation between church and state,” it is also considered a form of child abuse for us to force our “superstitions” upon our children. If you think that I am being facetious, I assure you that I have never been more serious. The United Nations Children’s Bill of Rights, which is scheduled to be adopted by the United States as the law of the land either this year or next, makes it a crime for any parent to “indoctrinate” his or her children with any form of religious or other “superstitious” trailing or education.
On the radio recently I heard a discussion between Dr. James Dobson, the Christian psychologist, and one of the best-known Christian youth workers in the United States. They were discussing the moral state of American adolescents, and the guest made the point that among the thousands of young people that he has worked with in recent years, one of the major concerns of the young people-- remember, this is their concern for themselves-- is that “they do not know the difference between right and wrong,” and that concerns them greatly. Most young people want to do what is right, but without proper guidance, they simply do not know what to do.
So this youth worker started a program of work with these young people to help them learn and apply basic moral values, and he enlisted the aid of their parents. But the parents told him that they were powerless to help, because they themselves simply do not know the difference between right and wrong. In fact, most of them (the parents) had been taught that there are no such things as moral absolutes.
I submit to you that this generation that honestly does not know right from wrong is the product of a political system which removes from our public schools, from our courts, and from our nation’s history books the basic Biblical values upon which this nation was founded.
It’s no wonder that you cannot trust our media or their representatives, it’s no wonder that you cannot trust our courts, it’s no wonder that you cannot trust our military or our President, it’s no wonder that you cannot trust our legislative bodies.
They have been converted in large numbers to the only State-authorized and State-sponsored religion in the United States: Secular Humanism. And one of the main tenets of the Humanistic faith is that there is no such thing as objective truth.
But I have some good news for you. They are terribly, horribly wrong! The message that I have to share with you this morning is that:
- First of all, there is a truth: an absolute, objective truth.
- Second, the truth is, in fact, knowable, and
- Third, God wants us to know the truth.
I. There is a Truth
A. What is Truth?
For 6,000 years of man’s history, that we know of; men have been trying, like Pilate, to answer the question: “What is truth?”
To my ears, the question, “What is truth?” sounds much like the word games that philosophers play, like “Why is there air?“ and “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” It seemed appropriate to seek the answer to a philosophical question by asking a philosopher, so I consulted the Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion in hopes of finding a concise definition of “truth.”
Instead of finding an acceptable answer to my question, “What is truth?” I found a two-page article with a total of thirty-six definitions of truth-- all different! But my book told me that there are five basic philosophies of truth:
First: The coherence theory states that that which is true is the coherent system of ideas. If I understand that theory rightly, it means that the entire collection of our humanity’s ideas, at least those ideas that have not yet been abandoned, constitute truth.
Second: The pragmatic theory says that whatever is a “workable” or satisfactory solution of a problematic situation is true-- that is, whatever makes sense to me and solves my immediate problem is my “truth” for that occasion. “Hey, whatever works!”
Third: The semantic theory states that “assertions about truth are in a meta-language and apply to statements of the base language”-- that is, truth is such a metaphysical concept that it cannot even be intelligently expressed in real language.
Fourth: The performative theory states that truth occurs whenever I agree with a given statement-- that is, whatever I agree with at a given moment in time is truth for me in that particular time and place.
And Finally: The correspondence theory states that that which corresponds to reality is true.
According to the philosopher who wrote this book, “Although in its initial stage, as through most of history, philosophy had proceeded on the basis that there is an objective truth to be found, this assumption was challenged by the Greek Sophists.” In other words, there have been, and still are, many philosophers who hold that there is no such thing as objective truth, no absolute standard by which everything else is to be measured.
This is one of the principal tenets of the religion of Secular Humanism. Nothing exists or can exist outside of man and his known and knowable universe. In order for there to be a God, He would of necessity exist outside of the universe He created. And since we have already determined that nothing exists outside of the universe, then by definition there can be no God.
Additionally, according to Secular Humanism, since we know that everything within our universe is relative, then all of reality is relative. Since all of reality is relative, there can be no absolutes within reality. And since nothing can exist outside of our real universe then neither can there be any absolutes outside our reality.
The ultimate conclusion, then, is that since there is no God and there are no absolutes, then there is nothing or no one to whom we are ultimately responsible or accountable.
Beloved, we are now well into the second generation of children who have been raised in a Godless educational system. They are prohibited from praying in school or from viewing the Ten Commandments or any other representation of God’s absolutes. They are no longer exposed to the study of the founding documents of this country, because the distinctly Christian content of those documents would violate the imaginary “wall of separation between church and state.”
Even history is being rewritten to remove all suggestion of Christian influence on our society. For example, in Christopher Columbus’ recently-published diary of the events leading up to his voyage to the New World we find that he was a devout Believer in Yeshua and he was of Jewish descent-- that is, he was a Messianic Jew! Apparently when he was about 15 or 16 he came to Newfoundland as cabin boy on a Norse ship. In his diary he makes several specific references to his desire to provide the means by which the natives of that new land could be evangelized for Yeshua HaMashiach [the Hebrew name and title which has been arbitrarily translated into English as “Jesus Christ”], and that evangelism was his primary goal in 1492. His diary entries make frequent references to his faith, and in his belief that he was being led by Ruach HaKodesh [the Holy Spirit] in his quest. His ship was apparently blown off course and landed much farther south than he had intended. But the history text books are being rewritten to instruct America’s children that Columbus’s motives were purely financial, and that his discovery of North America was simply a freak accident.
Being deprived of nearly all exposure to the concept of God or to any form of moral absolutes, it is little wonder that we are raising the second generation of Americans who simply do not know right from wrong. [As you are reading this article on the Internet, the third generation is being born into our Godless nation.] Not only are moral standards being removed from their experience, but also the altered history to which they are being exposed studiously avoids all reference to the sociological benefits that have been provided by those who have believed in our accountability to God and His absolute standards.
As Dr. Francis Schaeffer puts it: “What is taught is that there is no final truth, no meaning, no absolutes, that it is not only that we have not found truth and meaning, but that they do not exist.”
If there is no truth, no meaning, no absolutes to our existence, then there is no point to any of this. This was the philosophy that eventually drove Nietzsche insane. Remember that Nietzsche was the modem philosopher who screamed to the world that “God is dead.” But he understood the result of his philosophy: if God is dead, then everything is gone. If God is dead, there are no answers to anything and insanity is the only end.
It is critical for us to understand that without a personal Creator God, without any external, objective truth, eventually we are left with a universe that is the product of nothing but impersonal time plus chance.
Even Charles Darwin, the father of the evolution heresy, recognized the difficulty in explaining the universe in terms of time and chance: “With my mind I cannot believe that these things come by chance,“ he wrote in his autobiography. And in other places he wrote of his own theories, “I know in my mind this can’t be true, but my mind is only a monkey’s mind, and who can trust a mind like that?”
Is it any wonder that despair is epidemic, and that suicide is one of the leading causes of death among American adolescents?
B. Truth Is “That Which Is”
But the good news is that, in spite of all of the vain philosophies, there is a truth: an objective, knowable truth.
If you were taking notes earlier and writing really fast, you may recall that the correspondence theory of truth states that that which corresponds to reality is true.
Aristotle has provided the definitive expression of the correspondence theory. He said: “To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.” Thus, we see that truth is defined by reality, not by what we think or feel concerning that reality.
Francis Schaeffer summarizes Aristotle’s definition quite effectively, “Truth is that which is.”
Shakespeare adds the logical corollary: “Truth is truth to the end of reckoning.”
But we must also remember to add another corollary: the corollary of antithesis. That is, “If a statement is true, its opposite is not true. If there is that which is true (and there is), then the opposite of truth is not true.”
If I were to hold up a bright, shiny, ripe apple and say that it is red, and if it is true that the apple is, in fact, red, then it must follow that if I then say that the apple is not red, then that statement must be not true, that is, it must be false.
So, then, it is abundantly clear that in spite of the incoherent babbling to the contrary by many philosophers, both ancient and modern, there in fact exists within our universe an absolute, objective truth, an absolute standard by which everything else is to be measured; and that objective truth corresponds to reality-- truth is that which is! And the opposite of that truth is false.
II. The Truth Is Knowable
Now that we have established the fact that truth is, we next need to determine whether it is possible for us to actually know the truth, or if, as the “semantic theory” of truth would have us believe, that truth cannot even be intelligently expressed in real language.
The Bible has much to say about truth, with nearly 3,000 direct references to truth and related terms like “to know” or “to believe” something to be true. The Greek word which is translated as “truth” in the Apostolic Scriptures (the so-called “New Testament”) signifies in its primary meaning “the reality lying at the basis of an appearance.” That is, “the manifested, veritable essence of a matter.”
That manifested reality can be known is evident from the very meaning of the words used: manifested means that which is readily perceived by the physical senses and easily understood or recognized by the mind. So when the Bible, particularly in the precise language of the Greek version of the Apostolic Scriptures, speaks of “truth,” it is referring to “the reality of a matter which can readily perceived by the physical senses and understood by the mind.” If language has any meaning at all then, we can be sure, on the authority of the Word of God, that not only is there an objective truth at work in the universe, but also that the nature of that truth is such that it can be readily perceived by our physical senses and understood by our minds.
III. God Wants Us to Know the Truth
Not only is it possible to perceive and understand objective truth, it is evident from the Scriptures that God wants us to know that truth, not just as an intellectual concept, but as an experiential reality.
Theologians through the ages have designated “truth” as one of the primary attributes of God. As most standard theology textbooks state the doctrine of God: “The Godhead consists of God the Father, God the Son, and God Ruach HaKodesh, one in essence and attributes, yet three in distinct Person, work and purpose; each of Whom is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, personal, and perfect in wisdom, power, holiness, righteousness, justice, goodness, truth, mercy, and love.”
As truth is one of God’s primary attributes, all truth then has God as its source. And conversely, since the very nature of God is truth, then all that comes from God is truth.
The language of the Bible is couched in terms that stress our Creator’s concern with our knowing and appropriating the truth. For example, 1 Tim 2:4 tells us that “God our Savior, ... desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
A. General references to truth and knowledge in the Bible
I had my computer do a word search of the Bible looking for terms that referred to truth and knowledge, and I found nearly 2,700 references.
| 1. | Forms of the verb “to know” | know | 893 |
| know[s, -ing] | 88 | ||
| known | 215 | ||
| knew | 48 | ||
| knowledge | 136 | ||
| Total “know” | [1380 | ||
| 2. | Forms of the word “believe” | believe | [152 |
| believe[d, -s, -ing] | 140 | ||
| Total “believe” | 292 | ||
| 3. | Forms of the word “true” | true | 87 |
| truly | [141 | ||
| truth | 206 | ||
| truthful | 4 | ||
| Total “true” | 438 | ||
| 4. | Forms of the word “sure” | sure | 22 |
| surely | 343 | ||
| assure | 7 | ||
| assuredly | 6 | ||
| Total “sure” | 378 | ||
| 5. | Related words | “amen” | 59 |
| “amen, amen” (“verily, verily”) | 127 | ||
| Total “amen” | 186 | ||
| Grand Total | 2674 |
For example, the literal meaning of the Hebrew word “amein” is “truth.” “Amein” is used 28 times in the Tanakh and 31 times in the Apostolic Scriptures. On 127 different occasions Yeshua uses the phrase, “Amein, amein, I say to you…” In Hebrew and Aramaic, the languages with which Yeshua was probably most familiar, a word is repeated for emphasis. Thus, when Yeshua said, “Amein, amein I say to you …” that was about the strongest possible way of expressing that what follows is absolute truth.
B. “You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free”
In John 8:31-32, Yeshua said, “If you abide in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
In this one simple sentence Yeshua makes three important statements about truth. He tells us that:
- First: The truth is knowable
- Second: Those who abide in His word shall know the truth, and
- Finally: The truth found in His word shall set men free
Looking at that statement a slightly different way, Yeshua said that the way we are to know the truth is by whether or not a certain statement or idea is in agreement with His word. For example:
Psalm 119:160 “The sum of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting.”
John 17:17 “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.”
So, if we make sure that we stay within the boundaries that Yeshua defined as truth, then we well be set free from all falsehood. Numerous times Yeshua made statements that let us know that He accepted the entire Hebrew Scriptures as true and reliable. He also said that alter He had returned to the Father, He would send us the Spirit of Truth, one of Whose functions it would be to lead us into all truth. If we can believe what Yeshua said about Ruach HaKodesh, then we can be sure that those men who recorded the Apostolic Scriptures under the direction of Ruach HaKodesh produced a set of documents every bit as true and reliable as the Scriptures in which Yeshua placed His confidence.
And if what Yeshua said about Ruach HaKodesh is true, then the Sacred Scriptures form the absolute standard by which we are to judge-- and then accept or reject-- all other knowledge and teaching.
C. That you may know … that you may believe … that you may understand
Not only does God want us to know the truth, he also wants us to believe and understand:
Isaiah 43:10 “You are My witnesses,” declares the Lord, “and My servant whom I have chosen, in order that you may know and believe Me, and understand that I AM[GN]. Before Me there was no God formed, and there will be none after Me.”
As used in the Scriptures, the word believe is not simply acquiescence to historical facts, but rather it means to rely on, to trust. As we will see in just a few moments, the difference between these two ideas is of eternal significance.
The word understand means to perceive with the mind, not just with the feelings. To understand is to grasp with the whole intellect.
So God wants us to know Him with our experiential knowledge, to believe Him in such a way that we place our entire trust and confidence in Him, and to understand Him with our entire mind, our whole intellect.
D. Yochanan Alef … that you may know
If there still remains the slightest doubt in your mind that God wants His children to know the truth, turn with me to the little book of Yochanan Alef (First John). When you get home today, and take your pen or pencil, and circle or highlight every word in this short letter that refers to our ability to know about God’s truth.
1 John 1, verse 1: What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with oureyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life …
Verse 2: and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us …
Verse 3: what we have seen … what we have heard …
Chapter 2, verse 1: And by this we know that we have come to know Him …
Verse 4: “I have come to know Him” …
Verse 5: By this we know that we are in Him …
Verse 13: I am writing to you, fathers, because you know Him … I have written to you children, because you know the Father.
Verse 14: I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning …
Verses 20, 21: But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth …
Chapter 4, verse 1: … test the spirits to see whether they are from God; …
Verse 2: By this you know the Spirit of God: …
Verse 6: We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; … By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
Chapter 5, verse 13: These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.
Verse 19: We know that we are of God …
Verse 20: And we know that the Son of God has come …
IV. Messiah Yeshua Is the Truth
I think that by now we have adequately demonstrated that:
| First: | There is an objective truth |
| Second: | It is possible for us to know that truth |
| and Third: | God wants very much for us to know that truth |
Now let’s look for just a few brief moments at Yeshua HaMashiach’s claim to be the ultimate truth.
A. Yeshua said: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me.” (Yochanan 14:6)
1. We need to understand that Yeshua is not a way, He is the way!
Sha'ul (Paul), Sila (Silas), Timotheos (Timothy), and Dr. Loukas (Luke) had just crossed over from Troas into Philippi in Macedonia. Lydia and her household had just become Messianic Believers and they were in the process of establishing a new congregation centered in her home.
Acts 16 16And it happened that as we were going to the place of prayer, a certain slave-girl having a spirit of divination met us, who was bringing her masters much profit by fortune telling. 17Following after Sha'ul and us, she kept crying out, saying, “These men are bond-servants of the Most High God, who are proclaiming to you {the} way of salvation.” 18And she continued doing this for many days. But Sha'ul was greatly annoyed, and turned and said to the spirit, “I command you in the name of Yeshua HaMashiach to come out of her!” And it came out at that very moment.
We might wonder why Sha'ul became upset at this young woman telling everyone that the Apostles were proclaiming the way of salvation. After all, wasn’t she kind of doing the work of an evangelist?
We need to be very careful here. The definite article “the” does not appear in the original Greek text. What the girl-- rather the demon speaking through the girl-- was saying, in effect, was, “These servants of the Most High God are simply proclaiming one of any number ways of salvation, all of which are as good as any other.”
That’s the danger with most of Satan’s lies … they sound so good! But remember, if it does not agree with the truth, then it is not truth. If it is not truth it is false, or a lie.
Yeshua said, “I am the way” … the one and only way.
2. Yeshua is not a life, He is the life
The eternal life that we inherit at the moment of salvation is His life that becomes part of us.
1 Yochanan 1: 1What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life-- 2and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us …
5 20And we know that the Son of God has come, and has given us understanding, in order that we might know Him Who is true, and we are in Him Who is true, in His Son Yeshua HaMashiach. This is the true God and eternal life.
3. Yeshua is not a truth, He is the Truth
Yochanan 1:14 And the Word [Logos] became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Greek word Logos (lovgoß), literally means “word,” and is so translated here. However; the meaning of the word goes much deeper, in that Logos is not only the name by which a thing is called, but is also the very essence, or truth of that thing. In this case, the Logos Who became flesh is the embodiment of the Truth of God.
Yochanan 1:17 For the Torah was given through Moshe; grace and truth were realized through Yeshua HaMashiach.
Ruach HaKodesh is often referred to in the Apostolic Scriptures as The Spirit of Truth. He is also referred to as the Spirit of Messiah. For the sake of time I’m not going to read these scriptures to you, but jot them down and be sure to look them up on your own:
Yochanan 14:16,17; Yochanan 15:26,27; Yochanan 16:13; 1 Yochanan 4:6; 1 Yochanan 5:6
4. The Word of God Is Truth
As we noted a few minutes ago, one of the things that
the Bible claims for itself is that is the inerrant and true word of
The God Who is-- that is, the God Who exists-- is the God of Truth. He sent the living Word, the Logos, to earth in real time and space so that we ‘night know the Truth of God, that is Him Who is Truth.
He has also sent us the written word, the Scriptures, which are also called His revealed, propositional truth. They are revealed because they were not written by men, but recorded by men as God revealed them to men. They are propositional in that they are verbally inspired and composed, consisting of real sentences in a real human language, which can be easily understood by all who read them.
God has called his Scriptures “Truth.” Therefore, we must be diligent to remember that whatever is in agreement with God’s revealed propositional truth is true; and, conversely, that whatever is contrary to God’s revealed propositional truth is not true. That is, the Scriptures are the one absolute, objective, and propositional truth by which all other knowledge is to be judged.
God has given us the test by which to measure that which we hear in the world:
1 Yochanan 4 1Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Yeshua HaMashiach has come in the flesh is from God; 3and every spirit that does not confess Yeshua is not from God; and this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. 4You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. 5They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. 6We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
Friends, as I demonstrated to you at the beginning of this message, we are being bombarded from all sides by lies: Lies from the secular press, radio, and television; Lies from a corrupt and morally bankrupt government; Lies from a Secular Humanistic educational system.
And the Body of Messiah is by no means immune from the lies. In fact, there is an entire television network that calls itself Christian; but if you carefully compare what is being taught on most of that network’s programming against what God says in the pages of the Bible, you will find that most of that programming ranges from false and corrupt teaching to downright open heresy! And those corrupt teachers and preachers publicly and in the Name of Yeshua announce that any man of God who tries in love to correct their error are to be eternally damned and condemned to hell!
But you know what? God says that it’s going to get worse! In his second letter to Timotheos, Sha'ul warns of the false teachers that are to come, but he also provides our defense against them and their lies:
2 Timotheos 3 1But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come. 2For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self control, brutal, haters of good, 4treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God; 5holding to a form of Godliness, although they have denied its power; and avoid such men as these. 6For among them are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, 7always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.
8And just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected as regards the faith. 9But they will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, as also that of those two came to be....
13But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. …
4 3For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires; 4and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.
But here is what Sha'ul says we are to do to preserve the truth:
3 14You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them; 15and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Messiah Yeshua.
16All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; 17that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work.
4 1I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Messiah Yeshua, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: 2preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. …
Yes, my friends, there is an objective, absolute truth at work in our universe. It is possible for us to know that truth; and God wants very much for us to know that truth.
That Truth is Yeshua HaMashiach, the eternal Son of God. And He wants you to know Him today.
The lie of the devil is that there is no truth, no objective standard by which the world will be judged. Satan would have you to believe that there are many ways to approach God. But Yeshua said that no one may come to the Father except they come through Him.
Who are you going to believe, Satan or Yeshua? Remember that the opposite of the truth cannot also be truth. Yeshua said that unless you believe that He is God come in the flesh, you will die in your sins. And the Scripture says that it is given to man once to die, and then the judgment.
And what is the criteria by which we will all be judged when we stand before Messiah? We will not be judged by whether or not we led a good life. We will not be judged by how well we obeyed the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Golden Rule, or even whether we kept the whole Torah. There is only one criteria by which we will be judged concerning our eternal destiny, and that is whether or not we believe in truth that Yeshua is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.
It is not enough for us to acknowledge the fact of history that 2,000 years ago there lived a man named Yeshua of Nazareth. It is not enough for us to acknowledge that He was crucified, died, arose from the tomb, and ascended into heaven. It is not even enough to acknowledge that He is the Son of God or even that He is God come in the flesh. The Bible tells us that even the demons believe all that, and it makes them shudder to think what will happen when they are called to stand before Him at the final judgment.
Simply acknowledging the mere historical facts about Yeshua HaMashiach accomplishes nothing.
The Letter to the Messianic Community at Rome tells us that “if you confess with your mouth Yeshua as ADONAI[1] [LORD], and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved, for with the heart man believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”
What does it mean to “confess with your mouth Yeshua as Adonai?” The word “Adonai”, or Lord, means master, and ruler; but more than that, Adonai means the benevolent slave owner who has total control and authority over the life of the slave, and who abundantly provides for every need in that slave’s life, including life itself.
What does it mean to “believe in your heart?” It means to put your full and absolute trust and confidence in Yeshua HaMashiach and in Him alone to ensure that He has gone to prepare a place for you, and that He will come, just as he promised, to take you to be with Him in that place for all eternity.
You cannot receive Yeshua HaMashiach as Savior unless you first receive Him as Lord of your life. Yeshua is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and there is no other Name under heaven that has been given among men, by which we must be saved.
And that, my friends, is The Truth! Will you receive it and believe it? “Behold today is the day of salvation.”
Selah! Meditate on this!
1. If the Apostolic Scriptures were in fact, as I believe, originally written in Hebrew, then what the Apostle originally wrote was: “if you confess with your mouth Yeshua is YHWH (hwhy)…”-- hwhy is the Personal name of God which is too sacred to pronounce. If this is correct, then it is necessary for salvation to confess with your mouth that Yeshua HaMashiach is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob Who wrote the Commandments in stone with His own finger and gave them to Moshe at Sinai. [BACK]
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