The Bible gives us priorities for our lives. God’s Word teaches us how we are to live our lives with God’s priorities. When your priorities are in order, then the rest of life falls into place. In our current message series, “Four Priorities for Life” we’re looking at four of God’s top priorities. The first priority was Loving God. Today, we’re looking at the second priority of Loving God’s Word.
My message today is entitled “Loving the Truth of God’s Word.” The Bible is the Word of God. As such it contains God’s truth. We can say unequivocally that God’s Word is 100% true. No other book can make the same claim.
Psalm 119:160 (NIV) All your words are true; all your righteous laws are eternal.
All of God’s Word is true, every last word contained within. And, God’s Word, which is His righteous laws are eternal, they will last forever as God’s truth. What kind of truth are we talking about? The dictionary defines truth as “the thing that corresponds to fact or reality.” Truth corresponds with reality, the way things really are. Truth therefore is absolute, what is true for me is true for you, because truth corresponds to reality.
Truth exists in the physical realm. For example 2+2 = 4, that is true for everyone at all times. The law of gravity is true for everyone at all times, whether you believe in it or not. The truth of God’s Word is a spiritual truth, yet it is an absolute truth as well. The truth of the Bible corresponds to the reality of God, because He has revealed information about Himself in His Word. The truth of God’s Word is an exclusive truth.
John 14:6 (NIV) Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
In other words, no one can come to God by any other religion, it is only through Jesus. Now, this doesn’t make many people happy, they think it’s not fair. So, our culture has come up with what is called relative truth. Relative truth says that one thing can be true for me and another thing true for you with respect to religion. So, they say, you can believe in Jesus and I can believe in Allah and each of us can find our own way to God. Of course, this kind of talk really makes no sense at all. For if God exists, He can’t be the God of Jesus and Allah at the same time, because they are very different. The truth is that spiritual laws are just as real as physical laws. If God’s Word is true, and there is convincing evidence that it is, then all other religions are false. You can’t believe whatever you want to, you must believe in the truth. God’s Word reveals the absolute truth about God, which is true for everyone at all times.
This whole concept of relative truth has permeated the visible church. People say things like “all denominations or churches that call themselves Christian should be accepted as Christian, who are we to judge.” If one church believes that the Bible says X and another believes it says Y, then it doesn’t matter, you can believe whatever you want the Bible to say, God understands. What’s wrong with that view is that we have a standard of truth, which is the Bible. The Bible does not mean different things to different people at the same time. God gave us the Bible to teach us the truth. Through His Spirit we can know the absolute truth of His Word.
In our message today, we are going to look at a letter the apostle Paul sent to Timothy warning him against false teachers in the church. False teachers who thought the Bible taught something it didn’t and who were leading people astray. Paul shows us that the truth of God’s Word is our standard to discern truth from falsehood.