Do You Treasure Truth?

PRAY OVER THIS

“Buy the truth, and do not sell it, also wisdom and instruction and understanding.” Proverbs 23:23

 

PONDER THIS

In our time, it is not values that we desperately need, but virtue. We must be able to differentiate truth and fact. We acquire facts, but learn truth. Facts deal with knowledge, and knowledge can double, but truth never changes and is settled for eternity. We must make a habit of treasuring truth.

We must prize the truth, for it is indispensable, absolute, and attainable through the Word of God. It is not enough just to know it; knowledge without transformation avails nothing. We must see the transforming power behind it, through the Holy Spirit.

Salvation is free, but truth is costly; you pay a price to have truth. John 8:31-32 says, “Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, ‘If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’”

Have you learned the difference between facts and truth?

Why must the Word of God be the foundation of truth in our lives?

PRACTICE THIS

Take time to journal today some ways that the truth of God has set you free.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Why We Don’t Lose Heart

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:16–18)

Paul can’t see the way he used to (and there were no glasses). He can’t hear the way he used to (and there were no hearing aids). He doesn’t recover from beatings the way he used to (and there were no antibiotics). His strength, walking from town to town, doesn’t hold up the way it used to. He sees the wrinkles in his face and neck. His memory is not as good. And he admits that this is a threat to his faith and joy and courage.

But he does not lose heart. Why?

He doesn’t lose heart because his inner man is being renewed. How?

The renewing of his heart comes from something very strange: it comes from looking at what he can’t see.

We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)

This is Paul’s way of not losing heart: looking at what he cannot see. What, then, did he see when he looked?

A few verses later in 2 Corinthians 5:7, he says, “We walk by faith, not by sight.” This doesn’t mean that he leaps into the dark without evidence of what’s there. It means that for now the most precious and important realities in the world are beyond our physical senses.

We “look” at these unseen things through the gospel. We strengthen our hearts — we renew our courage — by fixing our gaze on the invisible, objective truth that we see in the testimony of those who saw Christ face to face.

“God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). “The light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” We see this as it shines in our heart through the gospel.

We became Christians when this happened — whether we understood this or not. And with Paul we need to go on seeing with the eyes of the heart, so that we not lose heart.

John Piper 

Bible Study

Romans 7:22-24

[22] For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, [23] but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. [24] Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Isaiah 40:30-31

    [30] Even youths shall faint and be weary,

        and young men shall fall exhausted; 

    [31] but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;

        they shall mount up with wings like eagles;

    they shall run and not be weary;

        they shall walk and not faint.

Romans 12:2-3

[2] Do not be conformed to this world,(3) but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.(4)

[3] For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

Footnotes

(3) 12:2 Greek *age*

(4) 12:2 Or *what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God*

Acts 20:24

[24] But I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

Submission and Obedience are Not the Same

PRAY OVER THIS

“And Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’”

(Mark 12:17)

 

PONDER THIS

Suppose you work for a person and he or she asks you to do something dishonest. Someone asks you to cook the books, to juggle things, to steal for them, and you try to be in submission. Suppose the government enforces upon you an unjust law and asks you to do something that is contrary to the will of God. Suppose the government was to tell us that we could not proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is important to understand that submission is not always the same as obedience. Your ultimate loyalty belongs to God. You’re to render unto Caesar the things that belong to Caesar and unto God the things that belong to God, but never give to Caesar the things that belong to God. Our ultimate authority is God and we must always submit to Him above any other.

When was a time you faced a conflict between honoring God and honoring man?

When was a time you faced difficulty for choosing to honor God over man?

PRACTICE THIS

Make a list of ways you currently are called to honor human authority. Ask God to reveal to you any way you might be honoring people over Him and to help you change your course in this area.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

If You Don’t Fight Lust

Abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. (1 Peter 2:11)

When I confronted a man about the adultery he was living in, I tried to understand his situation, and I pled with him to return to his wife. Then I said, “You know, Jesus says that if you don’t fight this sin with the kind of seriousness that is willing to gouge out your own eye, you will go to hell and suffer there forever.”

As a professing Christian, he looked at me in utter disbelief, as though he had never heard anything like this in his life, and said, “You mean you think a person can lose his salvation?”

So, I have learned again and again from firsthand experience that there are many professing Christians who have a view of salvation that disconnects it from real life, and that nullifies the threats of the Bible, and that puts the sinning person who claims to be a Christian beyond the reach of biblical warnings. I believe this view of the Christian life is comforting thousands who are on the broad way that leads to destruction (Matthew 7:13).

Jesus said, if you don’t fight lust, you won’t go to heaven. “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell” (Matthew 5:29). The point is not that true Christians always succeed in every battle. The issue is that we resolve to fight, not that we succeed flawlessly. We don’t make peace with sin. We make war.

The stakes are much higher than whether the world is blown up by a thousand long-range missiles, or terrorists bomb your city, or global warming melts the ice caps, or AIDS sweeps the nations. All these calamities can kill only the body. But if we don’t fight lust, we lose our souls. Forever.

Peter says the passions of the flesh wage war against our souls (1 Peter 2:11). The stakes in this war are infinitely higher than in any threat of world war or terrorism. The apostle Paul listed “immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness,” then said it is “on account of these the wrath of God is coming” (Colossians 3:5–6). And the wrath of God is immeasurably more fearful than the wrath of all the nations of the world put together.

May God give us grace to take our souls and others’ souls seriously and keep up the fight.

John Piper 

Bible Study

Colossians 3:19

[19] Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.

Ephesians 4:31-32

[31] Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. [32] Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Colossians 3:8

[8] But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.

Ephesians 4:29

[29] Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.

Submitting to the True Authority

PRAY OVER THIS

“Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors...” 1 Peter 2:13

 

PONDER THIS

What is biblical submission? Submission is one equal voluntarily placing himself or herself under another equal that God may therefore be glorified. Submission is simply getting under the authority that God has established, not for that authority’s sake, but for God’s sake who established the authority.

When you submit yourself to a governmental authority, you’re not doing it for their sake; you’re doing it for Jesus’ sake. And that makes a difference. God has established authority everywhere. And God is behind all authority. So when you submit, you’re not merely submitting to a human being, you’re ultimately submitting to Almighty God. And when you do that, God begins to invest in your kingdom authority.

How does today’s devotion challenge your thinking on submission to authorities?

Where is God calling you to submit to an authority you have a disagreement with?

PRACTICE THIS

Take practical steps of submission to authorities in your life this week, remembering that you are ultimately submitting to God and not to man.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers