We live in a world of lies because people have rejected the truth. The condition of Isaiah’s day is much like our own, “And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter” (Isaiah 59:14). God’s eternal truth is forever settled in heaven but it has fallen in the streets where we live!
The problem is not that we don’t have the truth, but rather that it doesn’t have us. God warned about what He would do to such people: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;” (Romans 1:18). Truth is to be the master, not the servant.
Why is truth being trampled beneath the feet of godless men? God’s people have failed to hold it up as we should. The church of the living God is to be “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). When truth does not hold its proper place in our lives it most certainly will not have its proper place in our world.
It starts with us.
- We must not take it for granted. Dr. Luke was excited about what he had received and believed. Read Luke 1:1-4! Never get over the thrill of knowing God and His truth.
- We must not pollute its purity. The Scriptures are all-sufficient. Any addition is a pollution. We do not want to fall short of the truth or go beyond it (Revelation 22:18-19). Be true to the truth.
- We must not fail to obey it. Hearers are not always doers (James 1:22-25). If we believe the truth then it should affect the way we behave every day. “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them” (2 Timothy 3:14).
- We must not keep it to ourselves. What we have heard thousands of times some have never heard once! The leprous men who found divine supply are a good example, “Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king’s household” (2 Kings 7:9). Truth is not simply to be held – it is to be shared. Pass it on!
It is a joyous and sobering thought that God has given us His truth. We are accountable for it. Jesus said, “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:23) We who have received the light of truth must not neglect it. Perhaps lost men would not be so quick to reject it if they saw the power of divine truth at work in us.
