Last week we considered the conflict between truth and error. They are opposites and as a follower of God, we must seek the truth: Proverbs 23:23 “Buy the truth, and sell it not; Yea, wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.” Also: Matt. 6:24 “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” We must seek the truth and reject error. God’s word is truth: Jn. 17:17 “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” and we are to seek it out: Psalms 119:151 “Thou art nigh, O Jehovah; And all thy commandments are truth.” In Matthew 3, we see Christ being pursued by Satan, from the beginning of Christ’s preaching Satan tried twisting God’s word (creating error) to tempt the Christ and bring about his fall. In each and every encounter with Satan, Christ used God’s word to counter and stop Satan. Christ knew that truth cannot compromise with error and those that are Godly must thwart error at every turn. We as Christians must do likewise. As is written: Psalms 119:104 “Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.” We are to learn the scripture and use them to stand up to Satan and his devices: 2 Tim. 3:16 “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 17 That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.” It is through knowing, loving and using God’s word that we become strong and can overcome evil: Proverbs 23:23 “Buy the truth, and sell it not; Yea, wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.” Our “buying the truth” comes through diligent study of God’s word: II Tim. 2:15 “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” And being that workman by confronting error. From the error of those who do not obey God and become a Christian to those who teach error. As the Psalmist stated, we are to hate every false way. From those that teach various denominational errors or false doctrine to those in the Church, who should know better, they go about teaching false doctrines. In confronting the Sadducees (Satan) regarding the resurrection, Christ quoted scripture and told them that they “greatly err.” He up front told them that they were wrong and weren’t serving God. Christ never relented, He never wavered, He never dodged, He always, always stood up for the truth regardless of the consequences. He is our example, the pattern for us to follow. Were are to be fearless in defending the truth. Our biggest problem is our lack of Bible study. We fall into the trap of using the devious devices of the Devil to excuse our lack of Bible study. We say “Its OK, I read my Bible last night” (reading the Bible is NOT studying it). There is this show on TV that I always watch. I need to read the newspaper. I am just too tired from work. I just don’t have time and on and on the excuse list goes. The next thing we find that we know almost no Bible and we cannot confront those who teach error, or worse yet, someone comes in amongst us and teaches error and we don’t recognize it and follow the error and become lost ourselves. The writer of the 119th Psalm had a incredibly high esteem for God’s word. This Psalm shows over and over again what our attitude for God’s word is to be: Psalms 119:128 “Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way.” The esteem in which we should hold God’s word, should drive us to seek it, learn it and teach it. We should “hate every false way.” In other words, we should be passionate about learning God’s word, so that we can confront every false way, having the knowledge of the scriptures to teach their truths. From time to time we find those that spring up in the Church that have the need that is taught in Heb. 5:12 “someone teach you (them) the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God”. They start espousing some new strange doctrines. Doctrines which they claim to come from God’s word but are really Satan through them, playing word games. Satan changing the purity of the Bible into some strange false doctrine. If we are not students of the Bible, being knowledge in the scriptures, Heb. 5:14 “even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil”, we may, or we may allow others to fall to Satan’s slight of hand in misusing the scriptures. How sad. Peter warned us about this when talking about the scripture that Paul wrote: II Pet. 3:16 “as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; wherein are some things hard to be understood, which the ignorant and unstedfast wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.” There are those prideful ones who actually are “ignorant and unsteadfast”, that think they know more than they do and become tools of Satan. Dividing and destroying the Church. We must remember that “that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” Jude 3. In the conflict of truth and error, we are to defend the truth. When someone at work or wherever we may be, starts denigrating Christ, the Church, the Bible, God or anything having something to do with the truth, can and do we stand up for that which is right? When we hear someone, especially in the Church, speaking something which sounds strange, uncertain, different. Do we inform the elders? Can we deal the problem can we defend the truth? Or have we spent to many evenings “vegged out” in front of the TV and not studying our bible? When the elders or others confront error, identifying it, discussing it, teaching the truth and exposing the error, do we attack those trying to keep the Church pure? Do we get mad and pout and threaten to leave when a teacher of error is exposed? I certainly hope not. I hope each and every one of us are working daily to better learn God’s word so that we can be faithful teachers and defend God’s word, that we will “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.”
