RESET: The Ever-Loving Truth

Reset
“The Ever-Loving Truth”
(2 Peter 1:16-21)

“For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was borne to him by the Majestic Glory, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,” we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with him on the holy mountain. And we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:16-21 ESV)

One of the most staggering and memorable images of Jesus Christ’s passion took place in the great hall of Governor Pilate’s mansion. We read about this encounter in John 18, as Jesus stood before Pilate, the representative of all the power of the Roman empire and was being interrogated by him.

“Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose, I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world— to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.” (John 18:37-38 ESV)

A part of the RESET we need to return to as a church and as believers today is an understanding and affirmation of The TRUTH. We live in a culture and among a people who have now rejected the concept of truth as a fixed, objective reality and therefore today we can justify just about anything. We need a reset of our understanding of truth to soak into our thinking as Christ followers that is distinct from the way the world around us sees it.

THE CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING OF TRUTH
1). Truth is relative, or fluid, and therefore so is morality
2). Truth is personal, and therefore allows for our individuality
3). Truth is unknowable, and therefore has no absolute authority

THE BIBLICAL UNDERSTANDING OF TRUTH
1). Truth is absolute, and therefore so is morality
2). Truth is objective, and therefore our preferences are subject to it
3). Truth is knowable, and therefore is not subject to opinion.

When you take the untrue things said about truth and layer them over everything that is happening today, you can see the effects of erosion in everything from morality, to education, to politics, to history, to philosophy and even to religion.

Several years ago, when Stephen Colbert’s show was just getting off the ground, he used a term to describe how people today see the truth. He called our new way of understanding truth, “truthiness.” It became Oxford American Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” in 2006. It beat out “bird flu” and “soduku.” “Truthiness” means that actual facts don’t matter. How we feel is what actually matters. American history is being rewritten today on the basis on “truthiness,” and not verifiable fact.

Again, as Christian people, we need to embrace and drill deeply into the foundation of God’s Word as our grounding of truth more than we ever have. Jesus said, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” In 2 Thessalonians 1, Paul tells us that when people reject the truth, they will believe a lie.

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Heb 4:12)

We desperately want something solid to hold on to. The Word of God is that. But even Christian people have begun to neglect the reading and study of God’s Word in our day. Only about 32% of church going folks say they read the Bible every day. When God’s truth is not flowing through our veins, then lies begin to take root and grow: Lies about how we see God, how God sees us, how we see ourselves, and how we see the world.

Learning truth begins early. The other night, McCail watched a cartoon version of the creation story with her Aunt Allie. Thursday, Logan told me she gave McCail an apple for a snack, and my grand darlin said, “Adam and Eve ate an apple…and they died.”

Some years ago, in the early 2000’s we hosted Dr Voddie Baucham here at Fruit Cove. He did a national launch of some material that became a book entitled “The Ever-Loving Truth.”
One of his sessions was entitled, “How to Know Your Bible is True.” He took his thoughts from 2 Peter 1:16-21 and that’s what I would like for us to do today. How would you answer the question, “So how do you know the Bible is true?” To vaguely answer, “well I know it because it changed my life,” may be a true answer but will not satisfy a critic. A Muslim could say, “I know the Quran is true because it changed my life.”

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17 ESV)

1). We have a reliable collection of historic documents written down by eyewitnesses. (2 Peter 1:16)

The Bible is not “cleverly devised myths,” as some have suggested. With our Bibles, we have 66 books compiled in one cover that were written by over 40 human writers, over a period of 1600 years, on three continents and in four different languages. And all of them testify to a common theme of creation, the fall, and the redemption of humanity for the glory of God.

In addition to it’s miraculous beginning, we have over 5,800 historic manuscripts, documents, papyrus pieces, and other historically valid documents that we can date, and study and we see incredible agreement within these documents. I minored in history in college, and I did learn that there are ways of scientifically dating documents to the period of their writing.

One thing this takes off the table is any possibility that some crazy little monk or person disaffected with Christians somehow changed the Bible. Whenever someone says that, I want to ask, “So he did that on his laptop right?” How would someone have been able to locate all 5800 manuscripts we have evidence of and change every one of them by hand fifteen hundred years before the printing press?

The earliest New Testament document we are aware of dates to 150 AD, or within fifty years of the original manuscripts written down by the apostles or others. That may not be a big deal to hear that.

The best historic documents we have from antiquity, never challenged by historians, are Caesar’s The Gallic Wars. We have only ten copies of that manuscript, the earliest of which was written nine hundred years after Caesar’s death. Aristotle’s Poetics is another example cited by historians. We have five portions of this document, the earliest one written 1400 years after the death of Aristotle.

We have absolutely indisputable evidence of the historic validity of Scripture. But the Bible is not just that.

2). These eyewitnesses recorded supernatural events, which took place as fulfillment of specific prophecies.

There are literally dozens of Old Testament prophecies spoken hundreds of years before Christ even came that predict the events of His birth, His birthplace, His ministry and ultimately even His death. Every prophecy we can locate in the Old Testament was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Mathematically the chances of only a few of these being right are mind boggling. For all of them to be correct is…supernatural. It’s not just a history book. It’s a book that records supernatural…God-orchestrated events.

3). The Bible brings light and transformation.

“Day star dawns.” The light of faith comes by hearing and hearing the Word of God. It’s like a light dawning in a dark place. Lives truly are changed by the Word of God!

For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. (Heb 4:12)

“I don’t know how to explain that miracle where Jesus came to a wedding a turned water into wine. But I know when He came to my house, He turned beer into furniture.”

4). These prophecies and miracles point to the Bible’s Divine origin

The Bible is essential in these days of fake news, and conspiracy theories, and just not knowing what is true and what isn’t any more. If you believe the Bible is the Word of God, be ready to be ridiculed for it. The world and our spiritual enemy, the devil, wants to silence the truth.

But as CH Spurgeon said, “The Bible doesn’t need to be helped, any more than a lion needs to be helped. You don’t help it. You just turn it loose!”