The Message

Our recent election was about two core issues – the message (platform) and the messenger (president).  It was about values – those of the red and those of the blue – and about the country’s next leader – Biden or Trump.  While many were voting on the messenger, the message should not have been overlooked.   The message matters!  Words matter!  Truth matters!

The message from both camps had at its core the issue of truth – what is seen as truth.  Is there a universal or absolute truth or is truth variable and changing?  The issue is seen in the take on the Constitution.  Is it the law of the land as written or is it a living document and changing?  With the later viewpoint come activist courts and thus Roe v. Wade and Obergefell and so death to infants and death to marriage as prescribed by God.  The Constitution was front-and-center with the selection of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.  The message of one camp is that the Constitution is the law as the framers wrote it and intended it.  The other message is that the culture and the times require an interpretive approach to the Constitution.  So part of what was being voted on was the kind of truth we as a nation believe in.

The church has been fueling this cultural confusion and drift from the truth by its actions.  I’m not just talking about the liberal or mainstream churches as many evangelical and even conservative churches are at fault.  Six considerations after three truth points:

1. Jesus is the truth, John 14:6

2. God’s word is truth, John 17:17

3. God’s word is unchanging, Psalm 119:89

1.  Many churches still say the Bible is loved.  Is it?  Is it carried?  Is it opened?  Is the teaching line by line – exegetical (clarity from context)?  Is the Bible used to interpret the Bible?  Is the Bible the full truth and nothing but the truth?  Is the Bible God’s word to be diligently obeyed?

2.  In too many churches today the message has been truncated.  That is, the opening chapters of Genesis have been rejected (a literal six day recent creation by a Supreme Being).  And the last chapters have been largely rejected for the talk about a restored Israel, a coming holocaust followed by the reign of Jesus on earth for a literal 1,000 years, is too confusing and too divisive, so skipped over.

3.  And then there is the rejection of the Old Testament.  After all, it is old and was replaced by the New.  Yet II Timothy 3:16 tells us that ALL Scripture is profitable – ALL!

4.  Then there is the rejection of God’s moral law – the Ten Commandments because they are also Old Testament and supposedly the law is out per Galatians.  Well, the Ten are repeated in the New and the Ten are different from the stipulations and ordinances found in the rest of the Law, which indeed is out today.  The baby has been thrown out with the bath water!

5.  Too many pulpits today are even shying away from the four gospels for Jesus talks about Hell, His “tweets” in Matthew 23 are harsh, and His talk is not very PC – politically correct.

6.  The Old Testament reports that God hates divorce, but in today’s church with its emphasis on love, joy, peace and hope; divorce talk has been expunged.  We can do that???

By these actions we have told the world that the Bible is a “living” document to be adjusted or overlooked to fit the culture of the day.  Furthermore, the church has modified key Biblical truths.  The church is to be about the gospel which is about man’s sin and the coming wrath from God which can be only overcome by the blood of Jesus who died and rose from death.  The gospel is good news for men in BIG trouble.  It is not a social gospel – it is the gospel!  There is no adjective before gospel!  We are to be all in with the gospel that “Jesus saves!”

Likewise, we are to be people of justice.  Micah 6:8 reports that God expects His people to “do justly”.  It is not racial justice nor is it social justice – it is justice!  Justice should be granted to all men:  poor, black, rich, white males, women and all.  It is just justice!  We are not to be narrowing what God has commanded!

The church is to be separated from the state so that it might be God’s tool to check the state and the culture.  When the church compromises its adherence to the truth, the culture takes note and follows along and we get the commotion we witness today.  Christians!  To the truth!