Truth

        I attended a course at a hotel once that was conducted by a leading seminary that did a lot of correspondence classes. In the opening remarks, an illustration was given on the importance of correctly interpreting the Scriptures. It started out with a series of statements based on a particular translation of the Bible, using words and phrases from that translation which were all perfectly right and good. In the end, the statement was made that “according to this study, there were deep sea divers present in the Bible. By using phrases that included the words “sea” and “divers” they came to the erroneous conclusion that there were deep sea divers mentioned in the Scriptures. The exercise was given to show how some people can come to wrong conclusions about something or how one can twist definitions and phrases to come up with wrong conclusions. John 1:14 says, “ And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”

        The Bible has much to say about “truth.” It is mentioned some 237 times in the Bible. One can take a series of true statements and still come up with a false result such as in the case of deep sea divers in the Bible. We are certainly living in an age where it is difficult to come up with the truth when a person speaks to you. Interviews of famous people who are skilled at saying a lot of words are great examples of ending up saying nothing or coming up with a lie rather than the truth. Some people feel that if you say one thing long enough and often enough, people will begin believing it. The question must come up at one point or another if the statement is true. Since there is only One Person Who ever said statements that were true, it must be measured by that Person. The opening chapter of John describes that Person and He is the Lord Jesus Christ. Webster's 1828 dictionary defines truth as “Conformity to fact or reality; exact accordance with that which is, or has been, or shall be. The truth of history constitutes its whole value. We rely on the truth of the scriptural prophecies.” When you begin to look at the world's definition of truth your mind almost seems to be clouded with so many different views as to what the truth actually is. When we look at today's passage, we see that the Lord Jesus Christ is full of “grace and truth.” In a world of changing ethics and definition one must establish how they are going to find what is actually true and what is not true. I recall one old phrase that went, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” If you are bothered about the truth of any given matter, just run it through the filter of God's Word. If it doesn't match up with the Scripture, discard it. Praise God today that we can determine what is true and what is false by comparing it to His Word.