“Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?” (Gal. 4:16)
I’m not sure you realize this, but this world is built on lies, to quote an old song, “We cover ourselves in lies.”
The perception of a thing is what matters, few today will do the in-depth research to discover the truth about any subject, and therefore rash decisions are made on misinformation, opinions are formed on unverifiable evidence, and truth, when it is revealed, is rarely accepted as such.
“And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” (Luke 16:31)
When all those who met the Lord Jesus Christ after He rose from the dead, those who saw Him die died themselves, there were no more eyewitnesses to this fact, this truth. Their witness was gone, and the truth went from truth to hearsay to what it is today for most people, superstitious nonsense.
The truth of 1st Corinthians 1:18 is why we struggle with them.
“For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.”
We speak of what we have not seen, we have faith in that which we cannot prove, we live our lives for One we have never met in person, and in their minds there is no doubt, we are fools. When we speak to them about our Savior, when we offer to them the truths of the Scriptures we are preaching, as we do so they are convicted every time, though rarely about those truths. Their convictions are based on one of their five senses or on what they feel, and we cannot change that.
This is why in so many of these short letters to you I caution you to search your heart, to look past those emotions, to see within yourself if indeed 2nd Corinthians 13:5 is a truth.
“Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?”
That truth spoken of has nothing to do with our emotions whatsoever, they are an offspring of it once the truth is revealed to us, but they are not the foundation of our faith, our faith itself is.
Though He slay me, in that dry and thirsty land, when the storms approach, trials and tribulations, sorrow, grief and suffering, even the possibility of persecutions and death cannot cause our faith to falter. The same heart that deceives us is the same heart that we offer our love to the Lord, that with which we offer the sacrifice of praise to Him, but it is not the foundation of our trust in Him. It is the truth of our faith that we attempt to express to those we meet, and it is in part why they hate us when we speak truth to them.
We cannot be moved, we cannot be shaken or swayed, we are never on the fence, we are always on the Rock of our salvation. We never agree to disagree, because we have been blessed with the knowledge of the truth.
“Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.” (1st Cor. 13:1)
That charity, that love is revealed when we speak the truths of the Scriptures to them, it is not the false love that our adversary is spreading far and wide that proclaims we are to love everyone no matter what, this love we offer comes not only with the truth of eternal life but of eternal suffering if it is rejected, and we offer it because He first loved us.
Consider these truths the next time your emotions begin to overrule your faith, what was the love that the Lord Jesus Christ exhibited for the Father?
“And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” (Phil. 2:8)
Love is an action exhibited because of faith, and that faith rests in the truths of the Scriptures, which we reveal to those who call us fools, who hate us for telling them the truth. And so, we let the world hate us, and it does not bother us at all.
What does bother us is knowing their end if they do not repent.
