If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. John 7:17
What you don’t know doesn’t worry you, though it probably should. You couldn’t be out of money since you still have checks in your checkbook, right? That lump that you have on your neck, as long as you ignore it, it can’t hurt you, or can it? It’s not only your bank account or your health which is an issue; it’s your spiritual life as well. Strange, is it not, how we prefer to ignore issues rather than confront them.
I often think of the instruction manual for a small single-engine aircraft; it said something like this: If you are flying at night and you lose power, try to restart the engine. If that fails, when you reach an altitude of 200 meters, turn on your landing lights. If you don’t like what you see, then turn them off again.
The sad fact is that a lot of people have turned off their landing lights when it comes to some very important things in life. Some do it in a high school or college classroom. Some do it simply because they don’t like what the Bible says—too confining, too limiting, well, puritanical. They like what they’re doing and don’t want to change, so they just “turn out the lights.”
When ignorance is demolished by truth, it is alarming, perhaps devastating. Knowing that the lump on your neck is cancer may shake you up—but it could save your life. Of course, no one likes thinking of the surgeon’s knife, or chemotherapy or radiation, yet losing your hair or your appetite is widely preferred to losing your life.
Now, going back to the issue of truth and God, how do you know what is truth or prejudice? How can you be sure? Do you simply take someone else’s word for it or do you want to know for yourself? When Paul did a speaking tour of Greece, he came to a place identified today as Berea. There he went into the synagogue and proclaimed Jesus Christ as the Son of God, who lived, died and rose again.
And the Bereans quickly accepted what Paul said, right? Not exactly. Dr. Luke says that they received the message with great eagerness but examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was truth.
They had settled the issue, however, as to what is truth. They were fully persuaded that the Scriptures were true and that God had revealed Himself through them. Question: Do you have that same assurance? You may answer, “Yes! No problem,” but chances are, you’re not quite sure.
Many intelligent individuals have never gone much beyond the cover of this grand ol’ book we call the Bible. They turned the lights off a long time ago, they accepted the mindset of teachers or professors, our culture, and our society. How do you know the Bible is true? There are rational answers which dispel any doubt that you may have, including the abundance of manuscript evidence that says the writings of Scriptures have been preserved without corruption over the years, the unintended but powerful testimony of archaeology, the element of the supernatural which includes amazing prophesies given hundreds of years before their historical fulfillment, to say nothing of the personal connection with God which comes by testing the promises of this book, the Bible.
Ignorance is not comforting and faith is not blind. Turning on the lights may require some thinking, some investigation, asking some hard questions about your personal life and being willing to accept the truth which God will reveal to you. But through His Son, God gave a promise. Jesus said, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
Resource Reading: John 8:31-47
