PREVIOUS SERMON  (sorted accordingly,starting from recent )

As we keeping reflecting on our text of last week which is that we are designed and Made For Truth and the issue raised, namely that the Apostle Paul in Romans 1 summarizes and summed up our whole sinful predicament as ‘Believing a lie’. Due to sin, Paul says, we suppress the truth and replaced truth with lie living in lie and false life as if it is the normal thing. In other words, we sense and know what is true but don’t respond to it. We try to keep truth hidden, not just from others but also from even ourselves. Now from the brief understanding we have just acquired from Prophet Isaiah’s divine statement above is it not what we are doing today which is why it is said that the Bible; the Word of God is a living book and truth which transcends the ages and time but in spite of the Bible being at our disposal, how many of us know it to the extent of using it to discern the truth and follow the divine truth by living and practicing it in our daily life? A statement that was made for the people of Isaiah’s people time is as true for us just as it is true for them, even true for our Lord Jesus time and will remain true even for the ages to come till eternity it will not change which is why every true human should practice and live by the word of God in the Bible. People go away on holiday and return with their camera full of pictures that capture the most beautiful and awesome scenery. But when they look at the photographs once they are home, do they give thanks to God for the glories of His creation? Rarely! They have glimpsed the truth behind their splendour, they have heard sound of their Creator’s voice in the garden of His beauty, but they have failed to respond with gratitude and praise and wonder! They ‘suppress’ the truth –push it down into their subconscious and bury it under their need to get on with their lives; this is exactly what we do making us an ungrateful people especially to the issues concerning Lord God Almighty, too bad. The reason people tend to push truth behind down their subconscious perhaps may be they fear that God would ask or demand too much of them if they were even to consider His appeal to their hearts to love Him and obey His commands for it to be well with them, and so they divert their attention to gods of their own making occupying themselves with frivolities and things that fails, proving we are fools. In some ways, self-made gods are much easier to live with than the God of the Bible as some fools think, but self-made gods are often cruel and unpredictable. Recall that we have been dealing with God’s questions and why He asked them; today we have come to fully understand that the true God asks questions that strike at the roots of our problem which are –self-centredness and self-interest chasing only things that benefits us. In other words, wanting things our own way without realizing that there is a Creator to whom all creatures must obey and respond to all His dictates not because He is a dictator but because He has fashioned all things in love for the good of His creatures and there is no lie or deception in Him. But consequence of suppressing truth is disastrous. When we don’t love God, we fall in love, Narcissus–like, with our own reflection or our own self-made gods, and end up with a false love with our self-made gods that tends to put self–interest before the very interests of others. The meaning of NARCISSUS is a beautiful youth in Greek mythology who pines away for love of his own reflection and is then turned into the narcissus flower. Nothing is more tragic in the history of the world than the fact that humanity has believed a lie and living in false life as if it is normal. Nothing!

One of the great truths of Scripture is that God created the world through Christ. John in his Gospel says, ‘In the beginning [before all time] was the Word ([a]Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God [b]Himself. 2 He was present originally with God. 3 All things were made and came into existence through Him; and without Him was not even one thing made that has come into being. 4 In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men.’ as seen in John 1:1-4. Colossians, puts it like this: ‘For it was in Him that all things were created, in heaven and on earth, things seen and things unseen, whether thrones, dominions, rulers, or authorities; all things were created and exist through Him [by His service, intervention] and in and for Him’ as seen in Col.1:16. Does this mean that all things have the stamp of Christ upon them? Is His will wrought into their very structure? Will they work in His way and in no other way? This was and is the expectation, and as such: Surely the answer must be ‘Yes’. The way of Christ is crafted into everything –not only into the texts of Scripture, but also into the very texture of the personality which the Deity true living God has given us. Designed, as we were, and created by Christ (who is the truth), we are built for truth, and when we lie we go against the very grain of our personality. ‘We were not made for lies’, said Dr E Stanley Jones. That is why, more often than not, a lie detector can tell if you are lying. The design of the inner being, made in God’s image, is for truth and righteousness, and our inner being protests when truth is intruded upon and ignored and replaced by lie. The apostle Paul in the passage before us today, tells us that the ungodly choose to suppress the truth by their wickedness, “For God’s [holy] wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness repress and hinder the truth and make it inoperative” as seen in v 18 and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie. Notice the phrase ‘repress and hinder the truth and make it inoperative’ that is they suppress the truth. Truth, fashioned, and formed and moulded into the structure of our beings, has to be suppressed when a lie is lived by or told. The worst thing about lying,’ said a philosopher, ‘is to be the one who tells the lie.’ So let us choose truth; let’s co-operate with our design, and with our Designer by upholding truth and righteousness in everything that we do.

You will remember that I have always said that it is very important for people to try and find out the present age definition and meaning of whatever that is said or done in the olden days; for example today we say ‘it is well when it is not actually well’. Today we continue meditating on the fact that ideas have consequences –for good or ill or bad. We who name the name of Christ are surrounded by ideologies or thought of people past or present which shape our culture but which are sometimes diametrically opposed to biblical principles. In Britain for instance, they have one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in Europe. One social commentator in that country has said, ‘It’s not just a matter of handing out more contraceptives but of changing the ideas in young girls’ heads.’ On the surface this sounds like a sensible comment, but when it came to specifying what those ideas might be, this particular commentator had nothing to offer, falling back instead on the suggestion of handing out the morning –after pill and making abortions more readily available. How sad when astute commentators see the need to change bad ideas for good but the good ideas they come up with show a lack of moral content or reference to anything outside of themselves. In other words, people say things with reference to what they will gain, it is only in the word of God that you get sincere suggestions that is selfless and does not lead to ruin. When is even sadder is when social commentators bemoan the fact that society is heading for destruction, but fail to see that their own ungodly ideologies are contributing to that destruction. Many of today’s social commentators (though not all) are like the foolish priests referred to by Jeremiah in the passage before us today, who attempted to put spiritual Band –Aids on wound that required more serious attention as seen in Jeremiah 6:13-14 “13 For from the least of them even to the greatest of them, everyone is given to covetousness (to greed for unjust gain); and from the prophet even to the priest, everyone deals falsely. 14 They have healed also the wound of the daughter of My people lightly and neglectfully, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” How desperately our world cries out for truth in the midst of so much spin, light in the midst of darkness. Where can it be found? Only in One who said, ‘I am ...the truth ...I am the light of the world’ as seen in John 14:6; 8:12. So much deception just to amass wealth!

Back to the questions of the Lord God that we have been following all this while: We are saying that the question ‘Who told you’? is the great ideological question –the truth question which our first parents Adam and Eve cannot but answer; but can they answer it truthfully and if we are to be involved even as we are involved, will we and can we answer it truthfully? It reminds us that our thoughts and ideas, which lead to action, have consequences –for good or ill or bad! Ideology is a system of ideas and ideals born out of thoughts, especially those thoughts and ideas which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy; which is a set of opinions or beliefs of a group of people or an individual. From this can we now see that the Gospel and the Scriptures are very vital if we are to be truthful? It is only God’s word that can help people to be able to discern the thoughts and intents of man’s mind to know when you are being deceived or when you are told the truth. Consider, for example, the poisonous ideas of the group of people who introduced the ideas and beliefs which the Nazi people operated that festered in the minds of those who are pioneers of Nazism. Fester is of a wound or sore that become septic; suppurate. The Jewish thinker Abraham Heschel, reflecting on the fate of his people, said, ‘Instilled with the gospel that truth is mere advantage, and reverence, weakness, people succumbed to the bigger advantage of a lie – “the Jew is our misfortune’”. Heschel went on, ‘The roar of the bombers over Rottendam, Warsaw, London, was but the echo of thoughts bred for years by individual brains, and later applauded by entire nations’. Remember that last week we came to know that the crusade is a miscalculated fight by Europeans to recover holy lands from the Muslims, a form of provocation. Today we are hearing of the roar of bombers on Rottendam, a port in SW Netherlands known for Architecture, Warsaw, in Poland known for flashing neon lights, and London we know: are evil thoughts and ideology of people bred over years. The psychiatrist Leo Alexander, who led the US medical team at Nuremberg trials, explained that ‘it all began when it was believed that there was such a thing as a life not worthy to be lived’. Nuremburg trials are series of trials held in Nuremburg, Germany in 1945-46, in which former Nazi leaders were indicted and tried as war criminals by the International Military Tribunal. Do you see that the word of God clearly told us that there is an idea, an ideal and a thought that is not Godly and the big question is ‘who is it from’? From God or from the devil? The word of God told us that all good thoughts are from God! Of course, it works the other way too. The Czech president, Vaclav Havel, said that what enabled him and his friends to survive under communism and eventually overthrow its oppressive system was that the Soviet regime was shot through with lies and propaganda, whereas Havel and his friends were determined to tell the truth, and live by truth, come what may! Against that Truth the Soviet system had no defence. Solzhenitsyn, the Great Russian writer, said it well when he made the point that ‘One word of truth outweighs the world’. Our text for today puts it even more forcefully when it tells us that we cannot do anything against the truth but only for it. Truth always triumphs. Perhaps not today, but always tomorrow! The problem of many nations that are not doing well is nothing but a lack of the truth in their systems and structures! So if you want to fight such evil systems and structures that are erected to oppress and suppress the freedom of man; you can only do so by telling the truth which is why the word of God says ‘thou shall tell the truth and it shall set you free’.

We saw earlier something of the serpent’s intellectual craftiness. Consider also what we might call his common sense craftiness. In the words ‘You will not surely die’ as seen in Genesis 3:4 he the devil introduces a thought that at first sounds plausible. Here we see the devil has intellectual ability just like humans and can reason wisely by introducing thoughts that can twist your understanding and sway you if you are not well grounded in wisdom. ‘Surely that can’t be the case. Surely God didn’t say that ... it doesn’t make sense.’ Do you see the kind of argument the devil is presenting aiming to deceive? This is or this sounds like the voice of the ordinary man in the street who says, ‘Surely God is too good to allow people to go to hell ...it doesn’t make sense’. This is a voice you have heard from childhood. It may not directly be the voice of the devil, this time around it might be your relation, your friend but that argument began with him the devil which is why the Lord Jesus calls him the father of all lies. However plausible the thought, God had spoken plainly and clearly for he or she who wants to hear, and to counter His instruction as the devil did in deceit was a direct contradiction of the divine word. Think, too, about the serpent’s religious craftiness. So far we count these craftiness of the devil: intellectual, sense, and religious. He pretended to have a privileged insight into what God knows and thinks, and to possess inside information on what God’s real intentions were. Now from the devil’s intellectual, sense and religious craftiness, we see how he has landed on the presumptions that he has insight to what God knows and thinks which means he possess inside information on God’s real intentions. ‘You will not surely die ... For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened ...’ as seen in Genesis 3:4. The devil displays craftiness so deep that we humans have to be very and extremely careful! The serpent’s beguiling voice offered Eve, and Adam who was with her, insight into God’s motives and suggested that at heart God was not good because if He were He would not have prohibited them from eating the fruit. What presumption! And these are some of his devices that we ought to have known! As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, ‘The serpent claims to know more about God than man who has to rely on God’s Word’. Do you hear that? We human whom the words of God are meant for and we are under obligation and command to implicitly rely on it instead we doubt it just in a twist without reasoning, why? Remember that we are still dealing with ‘do you hear voices? The voice heard in the Garden of Eden is a voice to which we are all still exposed to. We should beware of those who claim to have superior spiritual knowledge and mystical understanding not available to the ordinary man and woman who sits humbly before God’s Word. Every day we are surrounded and confronted with voices and thoughts suggesting this or that; but God’s Word is always with and before us to rely on so that you will not be misled in life, be wise!