Trading The Truth For The Lie...eschtology pt 5

https://billrandles.wordpress.com/2018/08/01/trading-the-truth-for-the-lie-eschatology-pt-5/ ^ | 08-02-18 | Bill Randles

[pastorbillrandles]

The first chapter of the book of Romans is a Divine analysis of the psychology of unbelief . Man is liable to God’s wrath against sin, because “They suppress the truth in unrighteousness”.

In other words, no one will be damned for what He doesn’t know, rather God’s judgment will be on the basis of knowledge spurned and suppressed. Every human being knows enough about God, creation, right and wrong, and judgment, to render themselves liable to the judgment of God. Jesus put it this way;

And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather han light, because their deeds were evil. For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. John 3;20-21

A necessary outcome of this suppression of truth is that man in his rebellion against God’s revealed truth, subconsciously makes three “exchanges” . Last week we discussed the first one, which is the exchange of the dignity of being made in the Image of God, for a lesser view of human origins, and value. What a difference there is between seeing ourselves as God’s Image bearers, as opposed to just being a highly evolved mammal.

Here is the second of such necessary “exchanges”-

Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.(Romans 1:25)

The Truth, that man is a created being, who owes his very existence to the infinite ,personal God, has been jettisoned by this generation. This is the meaning of the Creation/Evolution controversy, man would like to be autonomous, to break off the shackles of accountability to his creator

The Lie is that man can define himself, he can decide for himself what is true, beautiful, good, that we can be whatever we want to be ,with no reference to God! This is a variation of the lie the serpent told Eve in the garden…You shall be as gods, knowing good and evil…in other words ‘You don’t need God to tell you what is good , or evil you can know for yourself, and even decide for yourself.’

Such is the philosophy of our day, toxic Postmodernism. A radical rejection of the very concept of truth with a capital ‘T’, that is absolute truth. In place of it is a relativistic, ‘everyman for himself’ approach to truth. Platitudes such as “one man’s truth is as good as another’s”, or “Who are you to say that your right and they are wrong?” are common place, especially among academia. But as Ravi Zacharias says, even the most committed relativist , looks both ways before crossing the street.

The collapse in confidence in absolute truth, is a direct outcome of the willful rejection of belief in God as creator, and in the concept of sin and judgment. If there is no God, there can be no absolute Truth, there can be no sure standard of truth, one man’s truth is as good as another’s. If everything is true, than nothing could be true, the end of this road is the societal madness we are seeing all around us, in for example multiculturalism, or the fiction of homosexual marriage.

Witness the war on Truth in our own lifetime. “Truth has fallen in the streets…” says Isaiah, and Hosea agrees, that,” there is no mercy and no truth…because there is no knowledge of God”. When God is rejected, shortly after, belief in absolute truth is also inevitably abandoned.

There is a heavy moral , and even psychological cost for holding onto the Lie. Continual resistance to truth exacts a heavy toll as this Theodore Dalrymple quote attests-

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. ~Theodore Dalrymple

The biggest lie of all, is the denial of God, his existence, our creation by him , and the resulting so-called ‘freedom’ and autonomy of modern man. Coming to Christ is a matter of returning to Truth- affirming it, and submitting to it. It’s a paradox really, that when fallen man wanted to liberate himself from ‘bondage to God’, by embracing the lie, he becomes the most miserable slave of all, but when he goes back to the Truth in lowly submission, he gets set free- as Jesus said –

“… to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”(John 8:32)

[VaeVictis]

Excellent, thanks for sharing that. You could probably even link the idea that being the ‘most evolved creature on the planet’ makes us ‘gods’ as well. Probably another appealing aspect of it.

[Rurudyne]

I’ve thought about Romans 1:18-32 and it would seem to me that those who have known about God but who refuse the retain the knowledge of Him, chiefly forget that He is Holy (Holy, Holy) and not that He exists.

Plenty of people who believe God exists nevertheless seem to be completely out of step that He is Holy.

If I may be so bold, it is as if they —— had they thought it through to reach where they are rather than just sliding into it through compromise and judging themselves by what they see around them —— think were they to suddenly find themselves in Isaiah’s shoes and be confronted with God that far from reacting as Isaiah did they would instead get a pat on the back for beating such great guys.

But what is it to be a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips? While I have my suspicions, speculation aside I think it is safe to say it is sin that you don’t think much of, it’s something in a life that’s so culturally pervasive that you can’t even think of it as sin.

Isaiah was doubtless mighty in the righteousness that could come from the Law. Over that he had a positional holiness that very few Israelites shared in as he was a ministering priest. Isaiah was the real deal.

But when Isaiah saw Him high and lifted up Isaiah despaired of life and confessed that he deserved to die. What his sin was is not what is important. He was standing, as Lewis would much later observe under much less traumatic circumstances, before a infinitely better society than any he had ever known or imagined.

It crushed him.

But God ... I love those words ... but God provided salvation.

Now here we are in a culture that isn’t so much one of unclean lips but one that eagerly seeks after the unclean, that is like a cesspool where everyone gets spattered with its filth even though they might desperately want to have nothing to do with it.

And do we, any of us, imagine we would do better than Isaiah were we to suddenly be standing before Him?

I submit to you that those who think their stuff doesn’t stink simply live like they’d get that pat on the back.

But the truth is that the prohibitions against things like homosexuality are so clear that by the time someone can be an advocate for it in society they’ve long since compromised away from any awareness of God’s Holiness. Even without being turned over to a reprobate mind they are in a terrible place to be, for they presume that they are saved and are okay and so they are armored against calls to repent in horrible and effective ways.