The Principle of Truth

John 3:19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

Jesus has come but most refuse to believe in him. Why? Is it an intellectual problem? Is it an information problem? 

The reason all of our new fangled methods don’t work is because they cannot change the heart of man. The heart is the problem. Man is corrupt. 

The reason people will not believe in Christ is that they love darkness rather than light. Jesus is the light but men hate him and love darkness. Men love the absence of light and the absence of Christ. 

Men hate the light and they love darkness therefore their deeds are evil.   Why is there so much depraved sin in the world? Because men are in darkness and they love it and hate anything that has to do with light. 

Man is like water, always gravitating to the lowest level. We love evil and we love darkness and we hate light and we hate righousness and we hate Christ. 

Men’s affections are on the darkness. Jesus came to save them and they hated him, refused to believe him, they persecuted him, they rejected him, they chose a murderer over him, they crucified him, and they killed him. That is the world exposed for what it really is. 

The nature of man is corrupt. There is something terribly wrong with us. Man loves darkness and he does not choose the light, he hates the light. Man chooses evil and sin always. Because we love, we love, we love darkness. Do you think that affection for darkness affects our choices? You bet it does. All natural man wants to do is sin. 

The reason we sin is because we love it. The reason men, without the grace of God, do evil is because they love to do evil. Men always choose what they love.

The polititions think the answer to man’s problem is better education. Or that man’s problem is poverty and we need to spread the wealth evenly. Or we man just makes bad choices and we need to regulate things to eliminate the possibility of bad choices. 

Men are not willing to give up what they love and they love their sins and they are not going to give up their sins. 

No, the problem is that men love the darkness. So, what happens when you give men who love darkness the glorious light? Ask Jesus what happens. 

Do you realize how horrible and evil this world would be without the grace of God that suppresses our ability to be as evil as we are capable of being. 

The Power of the Lamb

30 This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me. 31 And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water. 32 And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. 33 And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. 34 And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.

The power of Christ is seen in the comparison between John’s baptism and that of Jesus. 

John says that he was sent to baptize with water but on Jesus, the Spirit descended and remained and he will baptize with the Holy Spirit.h

Not only does Jesus deliver us from the penally of our sins but he also sends the Holy Spirit to deliver us from the power of sin. 

This speaks of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Jesus gives us power in the person of the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus has come to take away the sins of the world but He also has come to destroy the works of the devil. 

Jesus came not only to save us on the cross 2,000 years ago but to save us in this present day from the power and patterns of sin. 

John the Baptist says that he saw the Spirit of God descend from heaven like a dove and remain on Jesus. The power of Jesus Christ in his human body was provided by the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the ministry of Jesus Christ was because of the Holy Spirit. 

Jesus received the Holy Spirit without measure. 

John said that he was not aware of many things about Jesus, but when God told him about the Sprit descending and remaining on Jesus and that he will baptize with the Holy Ghost, he knew that this Jesus is the Son of God. This remaining of the Holy Sprit on Jesus was proof of his Godhood. John testifies that Jesus is the Chosen One of God. 

Do not be mistaken. The lamb sacrificed on the cross will be the Son exalted and glorified on the throne at the Father’s right hand.

So, we have two titles in this passage. The lamb of God in which we are to by faith trust and the Son of God in which we are to exalt and glorify. If by grace, God has revealed to our unknowing spiritually dead souls who Jesus is, we should worship him and serve him with all our hearts. And we will tell others what we have seen in Jesus Christ. 

Behold, the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world and this Jesus is the Son of God. 

We will be witnesses of Jesus because we want others to trust him and we want others to worship and glorify him. They won’t know him if we don’t point them to him. 

May God help us command people to Look at the Lamb of God who has come to remove their sins by his death on the cross. 

The Cost of Following Christ

The Bible clearly teaches that followers of Christ will have to endure some sort cost for doing so. We understand that the cost will vary depending on the culture of the follower. Some will lose their lives for following Christ. In Western culture, we are probably not doing to have to physically die for our faith. But still, our walk with Christ will have some type of cost to us.

In Luke 14:25-28 we are reminded of the cost of following Christ, “And there went great multitudes with him: and he turned, and said unto them,  If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.  And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple.  For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?”

The glaring understanding is that being a disciple of Christ will cause divisions in our families, especially among those who haven’t come to Christ. Although we might not be required to die physically, some death is indicated by the need for followers of Christ to “bear his cross.” We are to count this cost and be willing to pay the price so that we will have the will to finish.

Here is the question, Looking back on your walk with Christ, What has your following Christ actually cost you? What have you lost or what have you been forced to leave behind because you are following Christ?

It may be that the absence of cost means you are not really following Christ at all. It could be that you are following Him but at some safe costless distance to minimize the loss.

The individual cost of our following Christ is something worth considering today.

Experiential Exegesis

Exegesis is when a person interprets scripture from what is in the text. Eisegesis is when a person interprets and reads information into the text that is not there. Exegesis is what we are supposed to do and Eisegesis is what we are to avoid. What I have noticed is that preachers often interpret scriptures based on their experiences. People often receive this eisegesis because they have had the same experiences.

It seems that there is a tendency to justify our decisions and lifestyles, good or bad, from the Word of God. Instead of admitting our sin and our moral failures, we manufacture, in scripture, that which would give approval to our conduct.

One of two things must happen for this to come about. The first is that we must reduce the fact that we are as bad as the Bible says we are. In other words, we must deny our total depravity. We must deny our failures and faults. The second is that we must reduce the demands of God. We must deny that God requires absolute obedience, righteousness, and holiness. Instead of God’s will being accomplished despite our sin and failures it sounds as if God’s will is done because of our sin and our failures.

It is too easy to justify our moral failures and unbiblical decisions as God enlarging our territories instead of it being God’s grace and goodness in spite of our sinfulness. They are not the same. It would be hard for us to say that when Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden and refused re-entry it was really God simply enlarging their territories. The consequences, results, and God’s gracious response are not the same as God’s giving His approval to our unrighteousness. God working all things out for good does not mean that what we did was good. We cannot remove the responsibility.

What is often said is that God can do what God wants to do. That is true! One time, he spoke through a donkey but that is not His normal avenue of communication. God overcoming our sinfulness is not God celebrating our sin. God making good come out of a sinful situation does not mean that God approved and orchestrated the sin. We must be careful that we are not making God the author of sin.

The Bible does not justify my sin, it convicts and condemns my sin. He is gracious and He is good as He makes the good result even in our sinfulness. Our sin is still a sin even when God makes good come from it.

Naked and Hiding

And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? 

The promise of the deceiver was that the eating of the fruit would result in the opening of their eyes. And indeed, their eyes were opened. But, it was only to see their own nakedness. They knew they were naked. Naked of God, naked of everything that was holy and good. Naked of the innocence they enjoyed before. Naked of the glory of God. They were naked in both body and soul.

How do they behave now that they know their nakededness? Do they run to God for forgiveness? Do they seek God to cover their nakedness?  Nope! They were now dead to God and became earthly and sensual and instead of asking God for mercy, they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons or coverings.

This is a accurate representation of all mankind since. We see that we are naked. We in some measure confess it. But instead of looking up to God for salvation, we patch up a righteousness of our own making, hoping to cover our nakedness by it. But our righteousness will not stand the judgment of God. It will do us no better service than the fig leaves did Adam and Eve.

Later they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Before this destructive decision, Adam and Eve fellowshipped with God, praised and glorified God. But now, instead of rejoicing at the voice of God, instead of meeting him with open arms and receptive hearts, as before, they now hide themselves in the trees of the garden.

By their fall, they had become an enemy of God. They now hated and were afraid to even speak with God their maker. And the same is true of us. We know our nakedness and we labor to cover it with the fig leaves of our own righteousness. We hide ourselves from God and we will not come and never will come to God on our own.

Notice God seeks Adam and Eve. God calls out to Adam, Where art thou? Adam does not call out to God. Where are you Adam? They were not with God as usual. They were not praising God as usual. They were not exalting God as usual. They were not fellowshipping God as usual. They withheld their presence, they withheld their attendence, they withheld their worship. Why? Because of their sin, their nakedness and their pitiful fig tree religion. A tri-fold embarrassment.

Sin had driven a wedge between man and God. God did not change, he showed up at the cool of the day just like normal. But Adam and Eve were not just late, they were absent. They were no-shows, hiding in the trees ashamed of their nakedness and ashamed of their coverings. Naked, hiding, and separated from God.

The serpent failed to disclose all of this, didn’t he? Adam and Eve begin to discover that they were mistaken. The seprent was a liar and this fruit was not good but it was bad, very, very bad.

Ye Shall Not Surely Die

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

There are dual truths to consider. The devil is a liar and we are so very gullible. The devil is always shading the truth, giving just enough truth to make it worth considering. We are mostly an undescerning lot that gives little thought beyond the present.

The serpent says, “Ye shall not surely die.” God will not be so cruel and inflexable that he would damn you only for eating a piece of fruit.  It is the play of the devil to convince us that God did not really mean what he said. God is only making idle threats to keep us in under His subjection. What a false hope that we can go on in our sin and not surely die.

The serpent adds, “God doth know that in the day ye eat therof, ye shall be as gods’.” So the grand temptation was that she would hereafter no longer be under control and woud be equal, if not superior, to God that made them, knowing good and evil. Satan points out a way which seems right to sinners but does not tell them the end of that way is death.

The Bible says, that when Eve saw that it was good for food. I am guessing here that the reason she saw that it was good for food was that the serpent MAYBE had taken a bite of this forbidden fruit and remarked how delicious it really was.

Satan had now gained quite a bit of ground with Eve. She saw that it was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree to be desired to make one wise. What she saw conceived lust in her heart. She saw and she desired. Her eyes were connected to her heart. The longer she looked at this fruit with her eyes, the more she began to long after it with her heart.

Then we have one of the most disturbing sentences in all the Bible. “She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband, and he did eat.”If we ourselves are good, we will stir others to goodness, but if we are evil, we shall entice others to do evil as well. There is a close connection between doing and teaching. How needful it is for us to take heed that we do not sin, lest we should become instruments of the devil to ensnare, perhaps, the very ones we love.

What Does The Word Say?

“Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.”

I imagine Eve was near the tree of good and evil maybe looking at it and wondering what there was about this tree that made it differ from the others. While there were many trees in the garden, for some reason this tree demanded her attention. What about this tree made it forbidden for her and her husband to take of it.

As she considers this tree, Satan, possessing the body of a serpent, speaks to her. He asks her to remember the words of God. “Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” Satan tempts her to think not about what God has given but what God has withheld. He focuses her what is forbidden.

The first error is having a conversation with the devil at all. She was not obligated to give him an answer. But answer she did. Eve responded, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.”

She begins recounting God’s words correctly, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it.” That is exactly what Jesus said. Her second error was that she adds something that God did not say, “Neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” God did not say that.

Eve may have easily supposed that she would have to touch the fruit to eat it and therefore it would be forbidden to even touch this fruit. However, that is not what God said. The question was about what God said and not what she supposed. Eve had altered the word of God.

This is still a danger today. We have people attributing their thoughts and ideas as if they were the very words of God. God has spoken clearly and completely in the Bible. We must learn and obey what He said but we are not obligated to believe nor obey what man adds to it. We must be careful not to mix our assumptions in with God’s words.

I imagine that the serpent has a piece of the fruit of this tree in his hands. It seems that he was in a different form than serpents today since the fall confined them to slittering in the dust of the ground. So what Eve sees is someone touching the fruit of the tree and not dying. In Eve’s mind, there is the planting of the seed of doubt, not based on what God said but based on what she assumed.

We must be careful to know, believe, and tell only what God has said in His Word. Only His Words are inspired, inerrent, and infallable.

Reaction

I have spent part of the morning reading reactions to the removal of Perry Noble as senior pastor of NewSpring Church. I understand the necessity of the leadership of the Newspring to move based on the apparent refusal of their pastor to repent of his growing dependence on alcohol. Now before you say, “But he did repent, he said he was guilty of sin and was sorry” let me remind you that there is a difference between saying I am sorry for your sins and repenting of your sins. Repentance is a turning from your sin. According to the churches announcement the leadership has been dealing with this issue for some time and Noble had refused to deal with the problem. That is not repentance. What we heard is Noble being remorseful because of being caught and reprimanded. True repentance is granted by God and does not originate with man. An apology is not repentance.

My concern is not that the leadership removed him for his unrepentant behavior but why they did not feel the same way about the way he over and over again mishandled the texts of Scripture and as he mangled Biblical doctrine. From performing secular songs in a church worship setting, to allowing women to preach from the pulpit, to bringing in a Church of Christ Duck Dynasty baptismal regeneration proponent, to changing the Ten Commandments to something they are not, to the twisting of the Word of God every time he stood before the church. Why was the leadership not appalled by his preaching a different gospel than the one that Bible proclaims to the same degree they were about his behavior? Why where they not concerned that a false gospel was being given to thousands of people week in and week out for sixteen years?

My more personal concern is people that I know who sit under Biblical preaching have rushed to the defense of a false teacher on social media. It reveals their lack of discernment, Biblical ignorance, and their inattentiveness. It indicates that doctrine does not matter and the proper handling of Scripture is of no great concern. It proves that they don’t fully understand what the Bible describes as the gospel. This lack of Biblical understanding is terribly disappointing.

Should we pray for Perry Noble? Absolutely! We should pray for him physically and spiritually. Todd Friel posted a tweet desiring that salvation would become a reality in Noble’s life. He was promptly blasted for his judgmental attitude toward a person’s salvation. However, are not those people making judgments about Noble’s salvation being a reality? Are they not making assumptions as well? We can’t know anyone’s heart, whether they are saved or not but the Bible says by their fruits you will know them. Just examine the spiritual fruit. I pray that God will lead Perry Noble to look away from himself, that God will destroy his pride, that God would crush his self-reliance, and cause him to look to Christ alone as his only hope in this life and the life to come. I also pray that the leadership of NewSpring will look for a pastor that will be doctrinally sound, Christ exalting, and gospel centered and not entertaining, cool, and relevant. I pray that God will be glorified in and through all of this.

Giving Account of Ourself to God!

10 But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. 11 For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God. 12 So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.  Romans 14:10-12

The thing I think that we have to remember is that all of us must stand before God’s bar of judgment. Each of us will stand and give account for our own lives. Don’t you think you have enough that you must answer to God for that we really don’t have time to try to straighten out our brother on these disputable matters. What we must remember is not I need to judge my brother but that I will be judged of Christ.

The emphasis here is on ourselves. There is much to do to get my own conscience in line with the Word of God. Too much to do to be consumed on correcting my brother. We should share truth, we should point them to the Bible, but then we need to mind our own business and let God be their master. On that day we will be busy enough answering for our own life; we don’t need to be spending our short life meddling in the lives of others.

Again, if we hold our convictions loosely, realizing they can be wrong, needing confirmed and corrected by the Word of God, and that we will answer to God that will help with our need to make everyone confirm to our convictions.

Conscience!

Our consciences are like snowflakes, there are no two that are identical. While we may have many of the same moral ideals, there will be some areas in which we all will differ. We will notice these differences very quickly and long before we appreciate what areas overlap in agreement.

We must remember that our conscience is prone to error and on its own is not sufficient to unerringly guide us. While all of our consciences are different, all consciences fail to meet God’s standards. Therefore, while we may be fully persuaded in our mind of the correctness of our understanding of third level issues we must hold them loosely and be willing to allow them to be corrected by the Word of God. Our main problem is that our culture shapes our conscience more than the Scriptures. This is further problematic due to our inability to adequately distinguish between which of our convictions are cultural and which are biblical.

One example of this is divorce. The Scriptures explicitly condemn divorce. Yet, living in a culture where divorce is accepted and even promoted in certain cases, our consciences lean toward cultural convictions instead of biblical convictions. So our consciences are subjective and therefore not an absolutely reliable guide. This is why we must hold third-level beliefs loosely and make sure they are submissive to the objective truth of the Bible.

One of the errors we can make is that we help people embrace cultural conversion rather than genuine conversion to God in Christ. We can wrongly lead others to conform to our cultural convictions instead of repentance from sin and faith in Christ as written in the Word. We want people committed to God, Christ, and the Word and not to our set of non-essential convictions. I feel we would rather see people agree with our conviction of eschatology instead of committing themselves to Christ.

This is why faithfulness to church and our own consistent Bible study is so important. We must constantly be subjecting our consciences to God’s standards and not the cultures. It is God who must and who will adjust the conscience. Our consciences are being sanctified by the Word of God through the power of God in the Spirit of God.

Again there are truths we MUST believe to be Christian, other things we must believe to be a unified church, and there are things we do not have to agree about and yet we can love one another and fellowship with one another until the Lord adjusts our consciences.