Truth Goes Begging

Many opponents of man in the White House accuse him of being a liar. I happen to agree with this; the proof is there for all to see. It always has been. The media have ignored it; much of the Republican Party has ignored it; conservative talk shows have skirted the issue, particularly his lack of long-form birth certificate. Chairman of the National Black Republican Association Frances Rice writes:

    “From the moment he stepped onto the national stage to campaign for the presidency, Obama has consistently lied to the American people in order to convince us to trust him with our economic and national security. Since becoming our president, he has betrayed that trust.”

There is something very telling in Ms. Rice’s assertion; “Obama has consistently lied to the American people in order to convince us…” (Emphasis added).

How could a nation be so easily fooled? How is it that a man with only 143 days of on the job training in the Senate sweeps into the highest office of the land? Wednesday night at church I asked a young brother in Christ who is a fireman if he could become the fire chief with just 143 days on the job training and he smiled and said no. Of course he couldn’t. I can’t think of too many jobs where you can get to be the big boss with just 143 days on the job training.

This is not a rant against Obama; it is to show you the state of our union; it is sick…very sick.

Barack Obama is God’s man to lead this nation at this time in our history. Obama was right in one aspect when he said America is not a Christian nation. We are not; we were founded as a Christian nation, however we are an apostate nation today.

How did that happen? Very simple, I tell every radio interviewer I have ever talked with when asked that the number one problem in America is moral relativism. There is no absolute truth the relativists will tell you; truth is what you make it. I know right now many Christians are thinking those darn secularists never believe in absolute truth.

The problem is that born again Christians are just as confused as secularist. In a March 9, 2009 article, George Barna reveals that only 46% of born again Christians believe in absolute truth. Twenty percent of born again Christians DO NOT believe “that the Bible is accurate in all the principles it teaches.” Only 2 out of 5 born again Christians “are convinced that Satan is a real force.” Only 47% of born again Christians “strongly reject the notion of earning salvation through their deeds.” Here is the most startling statistic: “Slightly less than two-thirds of the born again segment (62%) strongly believes that He was sinless.”

We are a very sick nation; our minds are polluted…none more so than the Church.

Jesus promised us:

    “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:31b-32)

If…

The biggest two letter word in spoken language…if.

If denotes something conditional. It means I have to do something for something to happen. Random House Dictionary (I just had to look it up!) defines “if” as “in case that; granting or supposing that; on condition that.”

So Jesus tells us that if we will LIVE in His Word, we are His disciples, but not only that but also that we shall know the truth…the aletheia truth. Aletheia is the Greek word Jesus used for truth and it means “the state of not being hidden; the state of being evident”. So in my mind the problem is not that there are moral relativists in the world; they have always been around. The problem is that too many Christians do not abide in God’s Word and allow the culture to define what is and is not true.

Let’s look at the famous John 3:16 in context:

    “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.” (John 3:16-21)

My sinful lifestyle makes me hate the light of God’s Word and if I am not abiding in God’s Word then I am not a disciple of Jesus Christ. Martin Luther put it this way:

    “Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes begging.”

The first three in America have become very rich indeed; truth…truth is destitute.

Will you seek the truth no matter where it takes you? It most likely will not be a discovery with fanfare worthy of worldly applause. Will you still go there? Or will you do as most American Christians, just go along to get along?

Do you have a pastor who preaches the biblical aletheia truth? When was the last time you thanked him for doing so?

Do you have a pastor who skirts around the truth or worse yet rarely if ever opens the Bible and preaches God’s Word? Why are you still there?

Today absolute truth is homeless; there was once a day when it was the foundation of almost every home in America. And moral relativism, although not so blatantly open and shameless as it is today, nevertheless was present in colonial times are our nation’s founding. The difference is that the leaders then rejected it for fear of Almighty God. John Adams wrote in his diary:

    “We see every day that our imaginations are so strong and our reason so weak, the charms of wealth and power are so enchanting, and the belief of future punishments so faint that men find ways to persuade themselves to believe any absurdity, to submit to any prostitution, rather than forego their wishes and desires. Their reason becomes at last an eloquent advocate on the side of their passions, and they bring themselves to believe that black is white, that vice is virtue, that folly is wisdom and eternity a moment…I dread the consequences. A master requires of me such compliances, such horrid crimes, such a sacrifice of my honour, my conscience, my friends, my country, my God, as the Scriptures inform us must be punished with nothing less than Hell fire, eternal torment. And this is so unequal a price to pay for the honours and emoluments in the power of a minister or Governor, that I cannot prevail upon myself to think of it. The duration of future punishment terrifies me. If I could but deceive myself so far as to think eternity a moment only, I could comply and be promoted.

Beloved I know this was a long devotional, but the Holy Spirit overwhelmed me this morning with a sense of urgency; in fact I lost a paragraph I had written because the power went off for a few seconds, no doubt a mere coincidence. But I feel compelled to cajole if necessary to get American Christendom back into the Holy Word to rediscover or newly find the aletheia truth that will follow about the right sailing of the human fleet.

We as a nation have much work to do.

It begins with you and it begins with me. It also requires that our pastors and our political leaders do the same.

If we are to stop truth from begging we need to be truth.

I pray you will be a wage earner for truth.

Have a blessed weekend and please remember to go to church on Sunday.

In Christ
Dave
Ps. 37:4

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    Copyright © 2009 David Jeffers

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