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!”

RESET:  Honor God * Exodus 20:1-3; Romans 1

“And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me.”  Exodus 20:1-3 ESV

“For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”  Romans 1:19-21 ESV

We are in a time of resetting.  We are resetting many things in our life:

How we work, how we socialize, how we go to church, how we do school, and family, and many other areas.  The spiritual reset happening in our day is pretty amazing, though.  People are tuning in to church services in unprecedented numbers.  It’s happened here.  A mathematician in (Jeanette Bentsen) Copenhagen noted a marked increase on internet search engines on the subject of “prayer.” Ninety-three countries showed skyrocketing numbers of people turning to the internet to try to understand prayer!  There is a spiritual hunger… a spiritual reset… happening in our world right now.

We live in a difficult day to talk about religious subjects, especially when THE subject is…God.  It hasn’t always been so, but confusion and chaos and even anger seem to swirl around any conversations about Him.

Some of us remember it not always being so controversial.  There was a day when it was the most natural thing in the world to go to a neighbor and invite them to attend your church with you.  It was just… neighborly, even normal etiquette to do this.

If sharing our faith in that time was like a football game, this would be like taking a ball already at the five-yard line into the end zone for a touchdown.  Easy really.  Even the Jaguars… no I won’t go there.

Then, around the seventies, churches and anything organized began to be suspect.  People were abandoning religious systems by droves.  In that time, talking to someone about God or your faith was more like carrying the ball from the fifty-yard line.  Not impossible, but much harder.

But now in a culture where postmodernism rules and everything solid has become liquid…talking to someone about religious realities is like starting with the ball all the way outside of the stadium.  Today many people have to be persuaded that God exists.  They aren’t even on the field!

To get to a RESET in life means we must return to a Biblically faithful understanding of Who God is.  I don’t think I’m overstating when I say that EVERY problem we are facing today; politically, racially, and personally, comes from our rejection of the truth that there is “one God,” or our belief that there is no God or there are actually many “gods”

So, I challenge you today to think about this important topic with me for about twenty minutes.  It may be the most significant twenty minutes of someone’s life who is listening today.  I no longer assume everyone agrees on what we’re talking about when we say “God.”  They don’t.  I will even challenge some of you who claim to be Christian to examine what you think about when you say “God.”

A.W Tozer said, “What you think about when you think about God is the most important thing about you.”  Your thoughts of God determine your behavior, your morality, and even your mental and emotional health.

The Bible reveals God to us.  In particular, it reveals these three things:

1). God exists.  There is a God.  He made the heavens, and the earth, and all things visible and invisible.  All of creation screams out his glory: “The heavens declare the glory of God….”    “I am the Lord your God.  You shall have no other gods before Me.”  God exists alone.  That does not mean God is lonely.  It means God does not need anything else to exist.

God exists.  He is real.  He speaks.  He creates.  To deny Gods existence is to deny the most fundamental truth of your existence.  You cannot live as a flourishing, contented, fulfilled human being if you deny the very One Who gave you breath and life and purpose. We are incurably religious people.  Every one of us.  It is in our DNA to worship…something. And today you…every one of you…worship something or someone.

Conspiracy theories are not a new thing.  Heard of Area 51?  Heard of Jimmy Hoffa being buried under Giants Stadium?  We kind of laugh these off, but the past six months have birthed so many more conspiracy theories around Covid 19 and the upcoming election.

We believe conspiracy theories about God.  Sometimes the God you have rejected is a god you should reject, since your image of Him is built on lies.  Adam and Eve believed a conspiracy theory about God, and it led the entirety of humanity into sin and alienation from Him and each other.

You see, they believed a lie that some of you also believe.  That, if there’s a God, He doesn’t want you to have joy in life.  He sits in Heaven, makes you miserable, and then laughs at you.  In other words, we sometimes believe God is NOT good… we believe a lie.

The goodness of God is that which disposes Him to be kind, cordial, benevolent, and full of good will toward men. He is tenderhearted and of quick sympathy, and His unfailing attitude toward all moral beings is open, frank, and friendly. By His nature He is inclined to bestow blessedness and He takes holy pleasure in the happiness of His people.  (AW Tozer)

Adam and Eve believed the lie.  While God had opened every venue of food and enjoyment possible in the Garden of Eden, He stopped them from eating the fruit of one tree.  Their belief was God was holding out on them.  He didn’t want them to be fully happy.  He wasn’t truly good.  The tempter lied and told them, “If you eat of this tree, you’ll be like God.”

What they failed to see was they were already like God!  He created them “in His image.”  Eating from the tree would them less, and God knew that.  So, He said, “Don’t.”

We believe lies about God, too.  “God wanted me to suffer, so He took… what… from you?  Your health?  Your job?  Your spouse?  Your money? God just wants to punish me for some little thing I did wrong.”  These conspiracy theories make us push God away or even deny His  existence.

2). God can be known.  He wants to reveal Himself to us.  The first clear revelation of what He expects for our lives to fully flourish before Him was the Ten Commandments.  We think these were rules to stop our pleasure.  He gave them to us that we may know life and not death.

Through the centuries God has revealed Himself through Scripture, and through prophets, and through miracles.  He revealed Himself through creation, but we have worshiped the creation more than the Creator.   “What can be known of God is plain to them,” Romans 1 tells us.  There is no possibility for any person who has ever opened their eyes and had rational thoughts to ignore God as He is revealed through creation.

God speaks.  God is always speaking if you know how to listen.  But His ultimate communication was not through a prophet, and not through a miracle, not through creation and not through a smoking mountain and not even through a book.   God revealed Himself in His Son.

“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”  (Hebrews 1:1-3 ESV)

Jesus was given as the perfect and complete revelation of God.  He showed us God in flesh, so we could see clearly Who He was, what He was like, and how He loves us.  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Jesus came to reveal God’s glory.  There’s a name for people who stare at the sun too long without sunglasses.  They’re called blind.  The glory of a star that is the least brilliant star in our solar system can blind you after only a few moments of staring at it without some kind of protective filter.

Sunglasses.

But in Jesus Christ, John’s Gospel tells us, we “beheld (stared long at it; comprehended it) His (God’s) glory….” Jesus was the Divine filter, the protective lens that God gave us so we could see Him, and touch Him, and know Him and even understand Him.  (“That which we have seen….”)  And it is only through Jesus that we can do that.  No other way, no other means of salvation.

Another lie we believe about God is that He reveals Himself to us in all other religions.  “You call God Buddha, you call Him Allah, you call him Vishnu or some other exotic name… it doesn’t matter.  We’re all talking about the same God, and we’re all going to the same place when it’s all over.  Right?”  Wrong.  That’s a conspiracy theory.

The way of salvation is open to all, but there is only ONE WAY to find it, and that’s through the revelation of Jesus Christ.  He is God’s final Word.  “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time.   (1 Timothy 2:5-6 ESV)

3). We are to honor God.  Are you honoring God with your life?  With your worship?  Do you truly worship God so you can know Him and love Him?Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.”  Does that sound like your pursuit of God?  Do you worship Him with all your “mind, heart, soul, and strength?”  Or is worship half-hearted for you or worse, even ignored?  We honor God when we trust Him as our God.  When we depend on Him.  When we lean on Him for our strength and in our trials.  Do you worship Him?  Do you trust Him?

Do you obey Him?  “If you love Me, you will do the things that I say.”  Do you do the things that He says, or do you pretty much live your life on your own terms, and do whatever your flesh and whatever the world tells you?  Do your friends have more influence on you than God’s Word?

For some here today, or listening online or on the radio, you start by “resetting” what you believe about God.  Let’s start here:  Do you believe that God exists?  Do you believe He made you?  Do you believe that one day you will stand before Him and give account for your life?  “Those who come to Him must believe that He is (He exists!) and that He rewards those who come to Him.” (Hebrews 11:6)

The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul. (Packer)Today you can push the reset button.  You can take a step back and say, “Maybe I’ve gotten this all wrong.  Maybe you’re one of those folks not even in the stadium today.  Is it time for you to step onto the field, and begin moving toward the goal line?  If so, today is the day to take that step by faith.

Contact us through the Connection Card on the web page.

Let us introduce you to the God Who Exists…and the God you need to honor by giving Him your life, and your allegiance, and your all.  Don’t believe the lie that says, “You’re too far gone for God.  You’re too messed up.  You’ve used up all your chances.”