lies

With All Your Mind

“The Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron.”

1 Timothy 4:1, 2

None of us like to hear that someone we love and care for has taken on board teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ that we know is false. We like it even less when that person is someone we have prayed for and shared the truth with. However, denying that they are deceived doesn’t help. It is the truth that sets people free, not lies.

We live in a world that gives false hope. Many churches that claim to be “Christian” also give false hope. The doctrines (teaching) they give is contrary to truth and no matter how moral an organisation may be, if it teaches contrary to the Bible then it is leading people into hell.

We would do well to heed Paul’s warning. Hiding our heads in the sand will not help. Paul’s exhortation to Timothy was to give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine” (4:13). The Bereans were commended for doing just this so as to protect themselves from erroneous teaching.

In the past few decades, in churches, there appears to have been a move away from absolute truth in favour of appeasing the ideologically perverse world or having a good feeling in “worship.” For many, worship has become an experience in which the truth of the Bible is inconvenient. The cry in many churches has been to cut back on teaching the Bible and have more bland songs that touch the emotions and not the intellect or mind. Jesus said we are to worship Him in spirit and in truth. Worship without sound teaching is not worship and it must involve the mind. Jesus said that we are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37, Luke 10:27, Mark 12:30) One of the saddest things is to see someone we care for reject the true Gospel and accept the lie. The best thing we can do for them is to cling to the truth, not water it down or compromise it. Love and truth go hand in hand and are inseparable just as worship and sound teaching go hand in hand and are inseparable. These are foundational aspects of the Divine Nature of our God and essential for our fellowship with Him (1 John 1:3).

Hiding Behind a Lie

“Surely you have things turned around! Shall the potter be esteemed as the clay; for shall the thing made say of him who made it, ‘He did not make me’? Or shall the thing formed say of him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?”

Isaiah 29:16

It seems Isaiah had a vision of our present world, for this is the great lie of our time. With the coming of the theory of evolution we have done just as Isaiah has said. Mankind is endeavouring to esteem himself as equal to God and also claiming to have better knowledge than God.

Those who believe the evolutionary lie are in effect saying that man created himself and that is frequently the inference made in public presentations such as television documentaries. If the creature created itself, it is as a god. When people attempt to discredit the biblical account of creation they are saying they have a better understanding than God of how the creation came into being.

Because people know that they are sinners before a holy God they must build a wall of lies behind which they try to hide their consciences. Isaiah foresaw this when he wrote, “For we have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood we have hidden ourselves” (28:15). Hiding behind man-made lies has got to be one of the more foolish things people do. God is not mocked or deceived. He is well able to discern the hearts of people.

Just as Eve blamed the serpent and Adam blamed the Lord (albeit disguised as blaming Eve), so people who have swallowed the lie of evolution will think they can, on judgment day, blame someone else. They cannot. The truth is available for anyone who desires to know it and Jesus Himself guarantees to reveal truth to anyone who really wants to know (John 7:17). In Romans Paul writes, “For since the creation of the world His visible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20). God’s creative and sustaining power are available for all to see but “professing to be wise they became fools” (Romans 1:22).

Let us all faithfully proclaim the truth of God so that He is able to deliver more people from the man-made lies and the overriding lies of Satan: “I will be like the Most High,” (Isaiah 14:14) and, “you will be like God” (Genesis 3:5).