WHAT IS TRUTH?
Pastor Paul Smith
Historically, belief systems and knowledge continue to change, but truth is timeless; it never changes! (Psa. 119: 89 “Forever O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven”, 160 “Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth forever.”; Isa. 40:8 “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand forever.”; Jn. 17:17 Jesus prayed to the Father “Sanctify them through thy truth : thy word is truth”. Truth is what is really so! Biblical truth is stated in propositional form in words that can be understood by man. Truth is not a function of language or sociology (ie. man’s ideas) as proposed by late 20th century post-modernists. The fundamental problem with philosophy, sociology, and anthropology is that: academia begins with man, and man has no inherent capacity to discern truth because he is in a spiritually fallen state. (Gen. 3:17-19 “Because thou hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life …for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”; Jn. 3:3-6; Rom. 3:9-18 from this passage we read: “There is none righteous, no, not one: …there is none that seeketh after God…they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.”).
God and His Word, is the true essence of what really is Truth! (Deut. 32:4 “He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he…” Psa. 25:5 “Lead me in thy truth for thou art the God of my salvation; on thee do I wait all the day”; 33:4 “For the word of the Lord is right; and all his works are done in truth”; 117:1-2 “O praise the Lord all ye nations: praise him all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the Lord endureth forever. Praise ye the Lord.” 119:142, 151; Jn. 1:17 “For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.”; 16:13; 1Jn. 5:6). Many Christians consider all “truth” as God’s Truth and look to other sources of truth beyond the Bible. However, even though all that is True may be said to be God’s Truth, the only reliable source of Truth is God’s Word - the Bible (Psa. 18:30 “As for God, his way is perfect: the word of the Lord is tried: he is a buckler to all those that trust in him.” Prov. 30:5 “Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in Him”; In Jn. 8:32 Jesus said: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” 2 Tim. 3:16). All other sources of truth are fallibleand cannot be relied upon as being true truth. We cannot be sure about other sources besides God’s revealed Word. Man has no inherent ability to discern what absolute truth is and what is not. The only rational epistemology (that branch of philosophythat investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge) is that only God knows what truth is, and He has communicated that Truth to each one of us propositionally, ie.,(God’s truth is offered to each one of us to be accepted or rejected). In Dan. 10:21 we read of his terrifying vision (a vision of Christ in the O.T. saying: “I will show thee that which is noted in the Scripture of truth:” Jn. 17:19 Jesus said: “And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth”. Heb. 1:1-2). Therefore the only way that mankind can know truth is to read or hear God’s Word. God created man in His image as a sovereign, moral, reasoning entity and holds all mankind accountable (Gen. 1:27-30; 2:17; 3:16-19; Deut 24:16 “The father shall not be put to death, neither shall the chidren for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.” Ezek. 18:4; Luke 16:23; Heb. 9:27; Rev. 20:12 “And I saw the dead small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.” In every generation, each person must decide what to believe, either God’s Word (Jn. 3:33 “He that hath received his testimony hath set his seal that God is true.”) or Satan’s lies (Jn. 8:44 to whom Jesus said: “Ye are of your father the devil, the lusts of your Father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.”
Humanism makes man the center of all things and the measure of all things rather than God. The Bible begins with “In the beginning God”! The Bible teaches that what we think determines what we are (Pro. 23:7; 27:19). How we look at life determines how we live our live. Satan certainly is capable of manipulating our MINDS (1Chr. 21:1 “And Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel”. In Acts 5:3 Peter Ananias, “Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost…? 2Cor. 11:3; In 2 Tim. 2:25-26 Paul instructs Timothy “In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; And that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will.”
How a man views truth determines how he lives and how he interprets the Bible. If you can control a person’s concept of truth, then you can control that person.If you control the definition of words in a language, then you can control how a person thinks. This is what has been going on in the media, in our public schools, in the political arena, academia, and now even in the church. Satan has been hard at work trying to destroy God’s Word or the knowledge of it in every generation because the Bible alone is the source of Truth!