I was typing some sermon notes earlier tonight and I glanced away from the screen for a few seconds. When I looked again at what I had written, it seemed as if I'd stopped typing in English and begun recording notes in some very foreign language! Evidently, my hands had moved one place to the left and had carried on typing in the correct pattern, but with absolutely the wrong letters, causing an incomprehensible jumble of unpronounceable syllables on the screen.
When you start from the wrong position in life, it has a profound effect on the things that you think, the opinions you hold, the principles on which you base your life choices. You may have very strong convictions about things and you think you can justify them. You just keep on churning out ideas in the way you speak and the way you live, but unless those things are rooted in the only real truth that exists, all your rhetoric is just as foolish and nonsensical as my typed gibberish.
Our world today is full of many opinions. It seems that everyone is constantly arguing about politics and religion, morals and values, judgment and mercy. Even in the church world, there is great compromise and a rejection of the very Word of God by people who think they are being more loving and compassionate by changing the gospel to fit the culture instead of letting the Jesus of the gospel transform the culture. There is one constant in all the changing landscape of our civilization and it's not pop culture, the media, or anyone's personal opinion. It's the authority of an Almighty God who doesn't need to "get with the times" or update His Word to fit modern sensibilities. When we start thinking that we know better than our Creator, we've got our fingers on the wrong keys and everything that we say or do beginning in that position is flawed.
The thing that everyone seems to be missing is this - it's not that God set down some arbitrary rules just so He could be in charge and make everyone toe the line or else. It's the fact that He designed us and He knows what will bring us the greatest fulfillment in our lives and what will cause our lives to be a blessing to others and not a heartache. He's a loving Father who could control every aspect of our lives but allows us the choice to accept or reject His plan.
No matter how intelligent someone is by the world's way of measuring intelligence, he or she is no match for God. The best-laid arguments that begin by setting man in a position as more "with it" than the God who created him are just so much babble and nonsense.
1 Timothy 2:4, in talking about the people of God praying for all men, expresses God's heart on the subject of truth and how He views it. It says, .... who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." Please notice that the scripture says the truth, not "one of the many truths" or "your truth" as the world says these days. He loves us and He knows that only His truth will really set us free.
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