NB - Truth

I have entitled my final series here at St Matthews, NB!

As you will know, NB is short for the Latin, Nota Bene, which in English means Note Well.

NB is usually put next to something that is very important and needs special attention.

And in this series, I want to put before you some very important things that you must note well, must pay special attention to.

They are very important ideas that come from God’s Word and as such are very important to God and should be very important to us in our thinking and living.

For them to be very important to us we need (and are promised) the help of the Holy Spirit. So, before we start, let’s ask for that help.

[Pray]

The very important idea that I want us focus on this morning is truth.

The idea that some things are true, correct and right … and some things are false, untrue, incorrect, wrong. And that you can know the truth about what is true and false about the most important things in life.

And that you can find the truth about all the most important things in life in the Bible.

The bible doesn’t contain all truth there is to know, but what it contains is all true and the most important truth that God wants us to know.

How do I know the Bible is completely truthful in what it says?

The Bible itself tells us (all ESV / all on screen):

• John 17: 17 “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” (the word is not true [conforms to some standard of truth] but is the truth [to which every standard and everyone must conform])
• 2 Timothy 2: 15 “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” (God’s word of truth as opposed to the teaching of the false teachers that was different from God’s word)
• Psalm 119: 160 “The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.”
• Proverbs 30:5 – 6 “Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar.” (all truth / all true / doesn’t need our adding to)

And what adds weight to the Bible’s claim to be the truth is when we remember how it is that we got the Bible:

• 2 Timothy 3: 16 – 17 “All Scripture is breathed out by God (origin and authority) and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work”
• How that happened … 2 Peter 1: 20 – 21 “Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture (OT prophecy but principle applies to all Scripture too) comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

It is interesting to note that the word Peter uses when he says that the prophets were “carried along” by the Holy Spirit is the same word that Luke uses in Acts 27: 14 – 15, “But soon a tempestuous wind, called the northeaster, struck down from the land. And when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, we gave way to it and were driven along.”

The direction of the boat was controlled by the wind in the same way that the message of the prophets (and all bible writers) was controlled by the Spirit. These men did not control the message; the message controlled them. It came to them from God like a mighty wind… so that what they wrote was exactly what God wanted them to say. They went in the way he directed.

And what adds even more weight to this is that the God who breathed out his word through men is himself truth:

• John 7: 28 “So Jesus proclaimed, as he taught in the temple, “You know me, and you know where I come from. But I have not come of my own accord. He who sent me is true, and him you do not know.”
• John 8: 26 “I have much to say about you and much to judge, but he who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.”

Now you may not like the fact that I use the Bible to authenticate the Bible as truth … but a moment’s reflection will show that it has to be like that.

If the bible is God’s revealed truth to us on the most important things, then surely something as important as it’s truthfulness would have to be covered by itself.

To have the Bible ultimately validated by something outside of it would immediately make it insufficient as a book of truth on something as important as its own truthfulness.

Now obviously there are many people who don’t believe the bible is truth from cover to cover. How does anyone come to the point of fully believing it is?

While the Bible is the most authenticated book in the history of the world, it takes more than that to have the faith to trust in it being the truth.

1 Corinthians 2: 10 – 14 “… these things [wisdom of God / truth of God / word of God] God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. *Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God… The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned…”

The Spirit not only reveals God’s truth but helps us understand it (need both). It is only those who have been born again by the Spirit of God (regenerated / eyes opened / brain and heart changed) that will have the Spirit to see the truth that the Bible is truth, even with all the difficult things to grasp in it:

John 3: 3 “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

And so, it is true that when it comes to the most important truths recorded in the Bible for us seeing is not believing … believing is seeing. Which is why in Hebrews 11 faith is defined as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen”.

And once you believe (by God’s grace) you begin to see just how true everything the Bible says is…

Not least of all that the central focus of the Bible is Christ Jesus (God the Son in the flesh), who describes himself in John 14: 6 like this, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

So that in the Bible all that is true, correct and right … all that is false, untrue, incorrect, wrong is so in relation to belief in and obedience to Christ or not.

What are the implications of all of that for us?

It is NB to remember that on the matters that the Bible deals with, it is always true, correct and right … And if you or anyone else holds a contrary view it is always false, untrue, incorrect and wrong, no matter how much that view makes sense to you and how strongly you believe in it.

Of course, sometimes Christians differ on what the Bible says on some things and that definitely complicates matters … but it doesn’t change the fact that the Bible is still truth, it just means that on some issues there is a difference of opinion that will eventually be sorted out even if only in heaven.

And actually, all true Christians do agree on the central doctrines of the Bible:

• That there is one God who is three persons (Father / Son / Holy Spirit) with certain characteristics and work.
• That God created everything.
• That people were created in his image in a special relationship with him.
• But that people rebelled against him, and now as sinners were under his eternal judgement
• That the Father sent the Son to become a man (Christ Jesus) and through his life, death, resurrection and ascension he made the only way of salvation for sinners (all human beings) to be saved from judgement and be reconciled to God and have eternal life.
• That the Father and Son sent the Spirit to work out the plan of salvation on earth, save people and transform them increasingly into the image of Jesus, all while bringing glory to God.
• That the Son will come back again one day to fetch his people to be with him for eternity and wrap up history.
• That the truth of all of this and a whole lot more would be written down by men inspired by God and then published in the Bible so that we would know the truth.

Now, at the same time people sometimes hold very strongly to views that the Bible doesn’t say anything about. Don’t hold strongly to them. Leave room for the fact that you may be wrong and someone else is right.

The Bible is God’s Word all the rest is just human data, use it or lose it 😊.

If it was as important as you think, God would have put it in the Bible, but he didn’t.

At the core of our Christian lives, is the ongoing pursuit of coming to grips with the truth of God’s Word, what it means, what it means for our lives, what we will have to change in our thinking and living.

Are you living according to the truth or are you making it up as you go and maybe living a well-meaning lie?

You need to regularly check your thinking and living to make sure it is biblical, because only when it is biblical is it truthful.

Questions:

1. In your opinion, what is the world’s understand of truth?
2. What is a biblical understanding of truth?
3. Is the Bible truth from cover to cover? Give a reason for your answer.
4. Discuss the following quotes from Sunday’s message:
   1. “It is NB to remember that on the matters that the Bible deals with, it is always true, correct and right … And if you or anyone else holds a contrary view it is always false, untrue, incorrect and wrong, no matter how much that view makes sense to you and how strongly you believe in it.”
   2. “At the core of our Christian lives, is the ongoing pursuit of coming to grips with the truth of God’s Word, what it means, what it means for our lives, what we will have to change in our thinking and living.”