Truth

July 7, 2020 (Tuesday)

I was pastor of the First Baptist Church of Rockport when Dale Pogue became Minister of Youth and Education. We enjoyed working together. We did a lot of serious work, but every once in a great while we had a little fun with each other by creating letterheads of famous people and writing make-believe letters to each other. It was all in fun and each of us knew immediately that the letter was a practical joke. We knew who the real writer was. It had to be one of us. We did not mail anything–we just put in on each other’s desks. It was just a little “game” for the two of us.

Sometimes, however, people write tongue-in-cheek letters and create a situation that backfires. As I browsed the web recently, I came across a story about Bush41’s father, Prescott Bush. He was an artillery officer in the First World War, enlisting immediately after college graduation. Before he experienced any combat, he wrote a joke letter to his mother, telling her how he saved the lives of three generals by batting away a cannon shell with his machete-like bolo knife. He took for granted that the entire description of his heroics was so preposterous that readers would know it was not true. His mother took the letter seriously and passed it on to newspapers. You can imagine the repercussions. After that, he always maintained a very serious look on his face, or so the story goes.

There are incidents, however, that never happened that are passed off as true stories. A certain television news anchor person comes to mind. He enhanced a story to make himself look good with outright lies. It cost him his job. I’m sure he’s wondering to this day what possessed him to do something so outrageous.

From my own personal experiences as a child and from observation of the children I’ve been around through the years, I have come to the conclusion that one of the first sins we knowingly commit is lying. The offense usually is minor, perhaps taking a cookie after being warned not to do so. When confronted, the child will usually deny having done it. Depending on what happens next, the child can learn a great lesson through this experience. He can learn that it’s always best to tell the truth.

The greatest thing about telling the truth is not having to remember what you said the last time you were asked about something. You just tell the truth each time and you don’t begin weaving a web of lies in which lie upon lie is necessary to cover up the truth. That never ends well.

Jesus told the Roman governor, Pilate, that he had come to bear witness to the truth, to which Pilate responded, “What is truth?” This was a subject familiar to the philosophers who debated each other every day about such things.

Jesus said of Himself, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” There was nothing false about Jesus. He never claimed to be anyone but himself, and he never told a lie to anyone. Every scripture in the Bible is true. We can trust the Scriptures to tell us truthfully that Jesus is the one and only Son of the living God, the one who gave his life to atone for our sin, and the conqueror of death itself when He rose from the dead. Every scripture that informs us that Jesus will some day come again to this earth is true. It has not happened yet, but the day will come when “every eye shall see Him, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord.”

Shakespeare again steps forward and offers us a thought worth having: “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, that thou canst no be false to any man.”

The first three stanzas of this hymn explore both the contrast between the glory of heaven that Christ came from and the suffering He endured on earth, and the mystery of the love that motivated Him to make that journey. In stanza four we are reminded how God brings us to salvation in language that reminds us of Peter’s experience in Acts 12:6-11, where God sent an angel to open the prison doors and loose Peter’s chains, yet it is a faithful metaphorical description of the soul coming to Christ. The final stanza is a jubilant celebration of our new state in Christ and the privilege of communion with God that we enjoy. AND..IT..IS..ALL..TRUE!