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Beware False
Balances (Talk 2 of 3)
by
(Transcript of
a sermon given by Dusty. The two Bible readings for that meeting were
Psalm 119:1-19 and 1 Tim. 4:1-16. The talk was taped, and transcripts have
also been supplied to the Fellowship.) Introduction Good
morning everyone. Today’s
talk is the second part of my three-part series entitled ‘Beware False
Balances’. For anyone who wasn’t here when I brought the first
part, the transcript for that talk is available from the ‘Honey’
section of the website I write for (i.e. bayith.org). MANY sincere
worldviews Okay,
before I get onto my main subject, there are two quick comments I need to
make. Firstly, this talk, along with the sister talk I gave last time,
are, in many ways, some of the most important – and certainly most
foundational - talks I believe I will ever give. Secondly, I would urge
anyone who is listening to this talk on tape (or is reading the
transcript), and who hasn’t been exposed to the first
talk, to read the transcript (or listen to the tape) of that first talk,
before continuing with this one. What I intend to say today is predicated
on the material from last time, so if you’re in that boat please stop
right here and get hold of that talk. Right, to finally get things moving, here’s a
little conundrum for us… Have you ever noticed how spiritually blind some
people can be? All too often, when you’re talking with a Mormon or a
Jehovah’s Witness for instance, you simply know
you’re never going to get anywhere in your own strength when trying to
show them the truth because they are just so blinded
to it. Seemingly God has veiled their minds, such that almost all of them
are very closed to correction and can get unreasonably angry when aspects
of their worldview are gently challenged or lovingly disproved. Now, it gets worse, because even within what might be
called the realms of ‘orthodox
Christianity’ there are a whole host of differing, but very strongly-held, views about God and His Kingdom - and they
clearly can’t all be right. Indeed, among the many views which
contradict each other, only ONE of them can be right – at
best. Thus huge numbers of sincere, professing Christians are holding unshakeably
to false teachings. Like Mormons and JWs, they are usually blind
to the possibility that they are wrong on those issues. The question I
want to ask here is this: How do you or I know that we too have not become
spiritually blind in one of more areas of our doctrine? We may say “I’m absolutely certain I’m right” - but does that mean we are right? After all, most of the aforementioned folks who hold to different views from us are just as convinced as we are. We may respond “My worldview must be right, because my search for truth is sincere” – but the worldviews held by very many of these other denominations are sincerely held by them too. We may say, “Oh, they’re not as sincere as me”, and obviously there will indeed be people in
various groups who fall into that category, but it clearly can’t be said
of all members of all other denominations and groups – many of whom put their
livelihoods, and sometimes even their lives, on the line for the sake of
their beliefs. The Branch Davidians at I repeat: How do we
know that our worldview is right and that we haven’t been blinded to one
degree or another like these other groups? We may answer, “Because I believe the Bible”. But
many of these other groups
firmly believe the Bible - indeed just as firmly as you and I. A great
many JWs went to their deaths
under Hitler for their understanding of, and for their adherence
to their understanding of,
the Bible. In other words, they
would give the same answer as you or I. So how do we know that our worldview, out of all the hundreds - and possibly thousands -
out there, is the correct one? We may counter with: “These other groups are all
wrong because their views aren’t as
biblical as mine” – but many of them will feel the very same way about
our views! (Try telling a JW
that he doesn’t really follow
the Bible.) We may respond by saying “I must be right, because my
worldview fits together consistently” (and that is
a useful start), but - again - many of these other people believe the same
thing about their worldviews. We
may claim that more people hold to our beliefs than to theirs. But
that’s not actually a biblical mark of truth. In fact, according to the
Bible it is usually not a good
sign. Consider, for instance, that only We may point out that the founder of our denomination
was a wonderful man of God who did wonders for the Lord, but many of these
other groups would claim the same thing just as vehemently - and Paul
warned us against identifying ourselves with a particular individual (1
Cor.1:12-15; 3:3-7). We may insist that the beliefs of these other groups
haven’t been around as long as
ours, but they would almost all claim - just like us - that their doctrine
is the same as the apostle Paul’s. (Regardless of when a given group was
truly founded, I think we have to face the fact that false teachers and
blinding spirits didn’t newly arrive on this planet a couple of
centuries ago. People can have been fooled into wrong doctrines and wrong
practices at any stage of
history.) Let me summarize this section of my talk. Out of all
the millions upon millions of people who hold to different doctrines from
us, there will be at least a few within many
of these differing groups who: (a) have
held these views for as long as you and I; (b)
are as disciplined in their lifestyle as you and I; (c) are as intelligent as you and I; (d) know the Bible as well as you and I, (e) are as sincere as you and I, and (f) are as certain that their doctrine is correct and biblical as
you and I are of ours – and yet they
each hold to significantly different views from you and me (and from each
other). Thus, how do you and I know that WE are right?
And more specifically, since the vast majority (if not all) the people who
fit the bill I’ve just described, and who support worldviews which are
wrong, are therefore suffering under some sort of delusion,
how do you and I know that we are not suffering
under a delusion too? After all, most of us at some time or another in
our lives have had cause to ask ourselves "How can I have been so
blind?" - so how do we know for sure that we are not suffering a
degree of blindness at the moment? Something to ponder! (I plan to list what I consider
to be the best and most biblical tests in my third talk.) (Please Note:
I'm not claiming for one moment that every member of any other
denomination is unsaved! After all, the Bible says we will be judged on
the amount of light we have received, so God will obviously take into
account the degree to which people have been denied access to the truth.
What I am saying is that God requires us to worship Him in
“spirit and in truth” (John Summary of
first talk Okay,
to remind us where we got up to in the first talk, here’s a very brief
overview of it. (Note: Even if
you can clearly remember what I said in my previous talk, it is important
to read this summary because it includes new illustrations.) *
Firstly, in 2001 it was found that there were over 30 thousand denominations in existence within professing Christianity. *
Secondly: even if we assume that these denominations only represent one
thousand different doctrinal outlooks, that’s still a huge number of
conflicting beliefs to have been derived from a single book (i.e. the
Bible). Clearly, there must be lots of ambiguities within Holy Writ for
that unparalleled degree of doctrinal splintering to be possible. *
Thirdly: from my observations, I actually believe that every
true doctrine in the Bible is accompanied by a small, but noticeable,
quantity of verses which superficially point away from the truth. Anecdotally at least, this proportion seems
always to be enough to convince anyone who isn't prepared to put the truth
above tradition or convenience. *
The next point I made was that this principle applies to our practices
as well as to our doctrines. (So if you or I are not prepared, say, to
accept that a particular sin of ours is truly sinful in God’s eyes,
whether it be stealing, or envy, or idolatry or whatever, there will be a few ambiguous passages in the Bible to apparently
‘support’ us in our error. (The first suggestion I gave as to God’s reasoning
behind this extraordinary feature of His Word was that it strongly
encourages sensible people to read the whole Bible rather than just stick
to favoured portions. But we will look again at the main
reason for this unexpected feature shortly.)) *
I also noted last time that this principle actually applies to the Bible
itself. So, if someone doesn’t want to believe in the completeness or
sufficiency or infallibility or divinity of Scripture, then, despite the
great weight of unambiguous evidence which loudly confirms these
attributes, a small amount of evidence can be found to superficially
question these truths. *
What’s more, this pattern appears to be a general spiritual principle
– i.e. it applies to every
aspect of the truth. So it applies, for instance, to the sciences. (I
would suggest that the only exceptions to this rule are those situations
where one is dealing with absolutely
pure logic and nothing else – because it is patently impossible to
reject the truth in this special case.) Now, some people may have struggled to follow parts
of my first talk for one reason or another. Since the principle I’m
discussing is of huge importance, let me give a couple of fresh examples
to hopefully better illustrate the point I’m trying to make… Let’s imagine, to begin with, that a certain person
is uncomfortable with the idea that homosexual practice among humans is
unnatural, despite plenty of biblical data to the contrary and despite
various major health problems connected with it well beyond AIDS. The
principle I am seeking to enunciate would lead us to expect God to provide
a tiny handful of instances where members of the animal kingdom prefer
homosexual practice - so that people who want to believe a lie can ignore
the fact that the overwhelming proportion of the animal kingdom knows
absolutely nothing of the practice. And that’s just what we find. Illustration from history Here’s
a second example – and one which I think shows that this principle does
indeed go beyond faith and practice to EVERY issue. Basically, what do we
think God was saying to To start with,
the fire was obviously in So it seems
clear to me that the Great Fire was a judgment on the (frankly
disgraceful) reign of the King of But let’s
remember the general principle I have been talking about, i.e. the fact
that God always ensures that He provides enough straws for us to clutch at
if we aren’t prepared to accept the obvious conclusion about a given
issue... What God did regarding the Fire
of London was to arrange for the fire to start in ‘Pudding
Lane', thus enabling people to argue that the Fire was merely a judgment
on gluttony rather than on the King and on the dreadful laws brought in
during his reign – because puddings are often a bit of an unnecessary
luxury after a normal meal. Now, some
people who have studied the Great Fire might argue, “Ah, but didn’t
the fire stop at Pie Corner too – confirming that it was indeed gluttony
which God was putting His finger on?”. This is another example of
selecting the minority data and viewing everything else through that lens
– because, not only does such a theory ignore all the other
roads which were devoured before the Fire reached Pie Corner, but the Fire
essentially went in a huge semicircle, so it actually stopped at many
roads around the capital – not just at one! For example, it also stopped
at [Anyone
unhappy with the idea that God would send any kind of judgment on
Rest of Summary Right,
enough of that. Let’s quickly finish our summary of my first talk. This
principle I’ve discussed also means that we can fool ourselves into
believing we are ‘right with God’ when we are not. He enables us to
rationalize away the truth and to imagine we are going in the direction He
wants us to. As I noted last time, this principle we’ve been
looking at also enables us to erroneously accept or reject someone else’s
ministry. (For instance, there’s a brilliant Christian book I know of
which contains thousands of pieces of data all pointing to exactly the
same conclusion, but, because maybe eight percent of the data in the book
is seen as arguable, many people are throwing the entire volume out and
ignoring all the thousands of unarguable data points –
and thus also ignoring the crucial conclusion to which this data
inexorably leads.) Okay, from all that I said in my last talk, and from
what I’ve noted so far today, I think we are obliged to accept the
possibility that God has arranged for those people who don’t genuinely
love the truth to be deceived. (As
far as I can see, this is also the only sensible way to explain how it was
possible for angels to be
deceived into following Satan.) God aligns
Himself with the truth We
now need to return to the big question of WHY
God would ensure that everyone who does not fully love the truth will be
deceived. Let me start my
explanation by pointing out some interesting similarities between God and
His written Word – i.e. the truth (John (1)
The first thing to note is that God seems to have an extreme hatred of lies
- which surely only makes sense if He requires us to be devoted to the truth. To
illustrate His utter abhorrence of lying, let me quote part of Revelation
21:8… It says “murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and
idolaters, and ALL liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and
brimstone”. Few people today equate such a terrible sin as murder with
telling the odd so-called ‘white’ lie, yet God groups them together
here. He does likewise in 1 Timothy 1. And, among only seven things listed in Proverbs 6 as being an abomination to God, one is
“a lying tongue” and another is “A false witness that speaketh
lies”. (Of course, we also remember that God used up one of the Ten
Commandments with “Thou shalt not
bear false witness”.) Plainly, God really hates
lies, thus it follows that He demands we love the truth. (2)
The second observation I want to make is that the Bible lists the word
“truth” nearly three hundred
times. And that’s not to mention the occurrences of related words like
“verily”, “true”, “truthful” etc. I’d encourage you to look
up the references to truth is a concordance. This will confirm that our
attitude to the truth is of immense
importance to God. (Incidentally,
anyone who thinks they can ignore the Bible - because they believe they
can gain the truth through subjective experiences instead - should ask
themselves why so many other people who try this same route end up gaining
conflicting ‘truths’ to
them! They also need to explain away all the many unambiguous Bible
passages about the importance of exposure to God’s written Word –
including several passages that are coming up later in this talk.) (3)
The third main thing I need to note is that God seems to align Himself inextricably
with the truth. For instance, the Bible says we are to seek God
like a pearl of great price (Matt. But
let me reinforce this with perhaps the most telling evidence: (4)
God says that the whole of the Old Testament hangs on the first two
Commandments, i.e. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and with all thy
soul, and with all thy mind…
[And] Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments
hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22). But the Old Testament
law is also summarized, in
Ecclesiastes 12, with the words, “Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man”.[2]
Taking these two
statements together it appears that loving God equates to keeping His
commandments. And indeed, the second Person of the Godhead, the Lord Jesus
Christ, said (in John The
point I’m trying to make here is that God equates loving Him with loving
His commandments – i.e. loving the
Bible, the truth. This is something the Psalmist plainly understood
very well, as we can see from Psalm 119. In verse 142 he says to God
“Thy law is the
truth”, thus, elsewhere in that Psalm, he says “Thy law do I love”
(v113), and “O how love I Thy
law! it is my meditation all
the day” (v97). It seems
that the Psalmist loved the law because
it was the truth. Staying in Psalm 119, he acknowledges to God that
“all Thy commandments are truth” (v151) so it will come as no surprise to
learn that he also says “I love
Thy commandments above gold;
yea, above fine gold” (v127).
He apparently loved God’s commandments because he loved the truth - and
they were the truth. Verse 163
confirms this when it says “I hate
and abhor lying: but thy law do I love”.
But this law that he loves so much tells him to love GOD with all His heart and
soul and mind! What’s going on here? Well, let’s return to the second
Bible reading we had this morning, i.e. 1 Timothy 4. Specifically, let’s
take a look at verse 13… It
reads: “Till I come, give attendance to reading,
to exhortation, to doctrine”.
Then, just two verses later, the Lord, through Paul, says: “Meditate upon these things; give thyself WHOLLY to them;
that thy profiting may appear to all. Take heed
unto thyself, and unto the doctrine;
continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them
that hear thee.” I think it’s remarkable
that the Holy Spirit would say “give thyself wholly”
to reading, exhortation and doctrine (i.e. to the gaining and sharing of
the truth). Not “give lots of
thyself” but “give thyself wholly”.
We are to give ourselves to God,
yet here someone is being told to give himself wholly to grasping true
doctrine. Again, we observe this profoundly
inextricable relationship between God and the truth - and we must patently
be devoted to gaining (and then
obeying) the truth if we are to please God. (I intend to discuss the idea
that God is truth in the next
talk.) What is paramount
is love of the truth. It
wouldn’t require much effort on our part to find the truth if it was all
laid out perfectly clearly. God
requires us to seek Him diligently,
not think we can make seeking Him some sort of part-time hobby.
Hebrews 11:6 has it clearest: “without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that cometh to God must
believe that He is [i.e. that He exists], and that He is a rewarder of
them that diligently seek him”. (If
you’ve ever wondered why God doesn’t settle the matter and prove His
existence once and for all beyond any shadow of doubt, this passage is the
explanation - and hopefully my talks are also helping us to understand.) God Tests Let’s
summarize where we’ve now reached. Time and again in Scripture, God
allies Himself intrinsically
with the truth. It surely now becomes obvious why God has made a small
percentage of every aspect of the truth appear to point in the wrong
direction: He is testing
us and our love for Him! If anyone wants to disrespect the buckets
full of grain God offers, He will supply a few ‘misleading’ straws
to clutch at. (And what’s more, He will give enough of these straws to
enable us to convince ourselves we’re grasping the truth.)
The bottom line is this: The reason God enables us to
believe a lie if we want to – i.e. the reason He has provided a small
percentage of evidence which, at face
value, points away from the truth– is as a TEST.
He is testing our love for Him – an entirely biblical idea. For
instance, Christ Jesus tested Philip’s faith in John 6; God also tested
the Israelites during the forty years in the Wilderness by deliberately
sending more manna than they needed to collect - in order to test their
obedience (by seeing if - aside from the Sabbath - they would illegally
try to store some manna up for the next day). In both these examples, we’ll find that the word
“test” in the parlance of the Authorized Version, becomes the word
“proved”. To show that these words can indeed be essentially
synonymous, and to reinforce the idea that God tests us, I just want to
read the first three verses from Deuteronomy 13. So, verse 1: “If there arise among you a prophet,
or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, [2] And the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake unto
thee, saying, Let us go after other
gods, which thou hast not known,
and let us serve them; [3]
Thou shalt not hearken unto the
words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the LORD your God proveth you, to know whether
ye love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your
soul." (Note: Obviously,
God has always known how we would respond to any tests.
These tests show us
- plus those around us - what we are really made of.) I think we can see here both that God does test us
and also that the consequences of failing
tests like this one could be catastrophic. (If anyone still doesn’t
believe that the word “prove” in the Bible often basically means
“test”, please take a look at Deuteronomy 8:2, or Judges 2:22 or Psalm
17:3.) Here’s a little analogy to illustrate what God is
doing. Now, I don’t recommend this, but I have heard that some men
occasionally test their fiancées by allowing an interested male
acquaintance to spend a period out on the town with their betrothed. The
idea is that, if the girl doesn’t go after this other man then both she
and her prospective husband can be more confident that she truly loves
him. I believe this analogy, although not perfect, does in essence
describe what God is doing. Indeed, on one occasion Paul says to the
Corinthians that he is testing the sincerity of their love. Another
biblical example is the way in which God deliberately chose not
to drive out various pagan nations from the vicinity of (It’s important for me to acknowledge here that God
tests us but never tempts us.
However, as part of our testing, He does allow Satan to tempt us!) In closing this section, I’d just like to return to
an example I cited in the first talk – viz. the age of the Earth.
Without getting into whether I personally
believe the Earth is young or old, I want to relate a conversation I once
had on this subject. I was talking about the issue with a friend who
readily accepted that God could
arrange for some rocks to look (at face value) older or younger than they
really were, but he was not prepared to accept that God would
do such a thing. Yet we have surely now seen that this is exactly the sort of thing the Lord would do in order to let those
people who don’t want to believe the majority of the evidence be fooled.
In fact, it would be out of character for God not
to create some ambiguous evidence like this. Conclusion Okay.
To sum up my earlier analogy, if someone does not love the truth then God sees it
as not loving Him!
And if we do not love the truth with all
our heart, then we do not love God
with all our heart – and we are therefore breaking the first and
greatest Commandment. Doctrinal errors directly affect our view of the
Lord and our understanding of His ways. What sane man would be prepared to
marry, and spend the rest of his life with, a woman who didn’t
particularly care whether she rightly understood him or not? Well,
that’s how God feels too. Personally, I think those last few sentences should
tell all mature Christians that this matter is of the utmost importance,
but, if anyone here doubts that statement, let me just finish up today by
offering a couple of unambiguous Bible passages showing that this matter
is absolutely essential: (1)
Firstly, see Psalm 19:7-14. We don’t have time to do so now, but on the
basis of what I have been saying today, all true Christians listening to
this talk will surely want to look it up when they get the opportunity. (2)
Secondly, let’s take a look at Proverbs 11:1. It reads “A
false balance is abomination
to the LORD”. If we maintain a false balance in our doctrine then
this is an abomination
to God, and we know what will ultimately happen to people who hold to
abominable things (Rev. 21:10,27). Consider too that, if we hold a false
doctrinal balance we are effectively lying (if only to ourselves) – and
we saw earlier where all liars will go. (I should also observe that, given
the cohesive nature of truth, an error in our doctrine - when followed up
fully and consistently - will inevitably subvert our other doctrines and
lead us to a false view of God. This is clearly a deadly serious matter.) (3)
Finally, consider 2 Thess. 2. Verse 10 speaks of people perishing
“because they received not the love
of the truth”. (Note that it’s not just any old love of the truth,
but THE love, the all-our-heart-and-mind-and-soul variety.) The passage
goes on to say that God will
send these people “strong delusion” and that they will all “be damned”. But, to return to my opening question today: Does not
the fact that God sends spiritual blindness to those people who do not
adequately love the truth amply demonstrate just how unimaginably important the truth is?
Spiritual blindness is a terrible thing, and it is crucial to
avoid, so it is imperative we avoid it by loving the truth above all else. Thank you very much for your time.
Endnotes
[1]
Some folks
today argue that the Fire of London was actually a blessing
- because it stopped the bubonic plague that had so ravaged [2]
See also
Deut. 8:6; 13:4 & [3] Other verses explicitly saying the same thing include Exodus 20:6, Deuteronomy 5:10 and John 14:15.
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