We Are To Be Humble But Not To Degrade What God Has Made

How can we know anything about anything

To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald

Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible?

NO!

That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about.

Take science as an example. How can we know anything about the created material world around us?

How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences?

We all see the same things in the material world, but we don't come to the same answers.

Why is that?

How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches? Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read.

Why is that?

Same scientific facts. Different answers.

Same Bible. Different answers.

Why is that?

The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get from what we can see through science or what we can read in the Bible?

How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible?

How do we analyze what we have seen and read?

How do we interpret what we have seen and read?

We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock. That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation. There are also the false foundations of the ungodly.

An example might help.

Question: Why do believe in evolution?

Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact.

Question: Why do you believe your science teacher?

Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read.

Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice.

If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts.

When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered. So where to the foundations come from?

There are three possibilities.

things that we make up, pulled from the air
demonic lies
divine revelation

Question: Why do believe in creation?

Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith so that I could believe Him.

See how quickly we got to the foundation. This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved.

In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air, are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan. So these are one and the same.

Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ. So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices? Because God has revealed this truth to us.

The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God and the lies of Satan?

The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know.

Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me"

The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem.

Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you: For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened. *

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Matthew 7:7-11 *

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe those things that they don't want to submit to. They have to want to obey God.

How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32)

"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"

Lies appear to have no price upon them. They seem cheap and they abound everywhere. But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay.

[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness. And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31).

"There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48)

That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus. When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject. Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own.

"When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19)

Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university. On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them, but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true.

In listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning, the unbeliever finally came to his foundations.

They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air. When asked why he believed his basic assumption, the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out, “I guess I’m making the whole thing up.” It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions. However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn’t want God to rule over him.

Looking into 1 Corinthians 13 in the fourth verse, it says, charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up." That is to say, love is humble; it doesn't brag; it has no pride. Understanding just who you are in reality has a lot to do with understanding the exact function of faith, hope, grace, and love. By the way, humility does not imply that you must beat yourself up and think of yourself as something less than God thinks of you.

Since the world, the culture, has conditioned us to a kind of unbalanced concept of self-esteem, there is an apparent a conflict between what we have been taught by the world, and what the Bible is saying. From many sources, there has been tremendous emphasis on loving ourselves and having self-esteem. We are told that we need to learn to love ourselves, but then the Bible says, in 2 Timothy 3:2, that in the last days there will be those who are lovers of themselves, and it is obvious from the context that this is not a good thing. So how should we think of ourselves? Brother Art Wagar said that we are not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought, Romans 12:3. Then he went on to say that we are not to think of ourselves as less than we are either. He explained that we are to think of ourselves according to the ministry that is in us, and he showed us that Romans 12:6 says that we have gifts differing according to the grace (free gift) of God. We are to think of ourselves according to the grace that is in us, Christ in us the hope of glory. Every Christian has and is a ministry, which is Christ in you. We are to think of ourselves according to the gifts and ministry that was prophesied over us. In other words, we are to think of ourselves according to reality.

We are not to know any person according to the flesh, 2 Corinthians 5:16. We know each other after the ministry that is in each one. And that is also how we need to know ourselves. We know that we have flesh, but we are not that flesh. That flesh is the old Adam and it must die.

When we are born again, we become two people. We were just the old, sinful man, but now, we also become the spiritual man, Christ in us, Colossians 1:27-29. Christ dwells in us, Ephesians 3:17. It would be impossible that Jesus would sin, 1 John 3:9. Of course, we have a will that we can turn toward the seed of Christ who has been born within us or turn toward the sinful nature, the old man. We not only have sin in our sinful nature, but we do sin, 1 John 1:10. If we sin, we have an advocate, Jesus, who says, I died for that sin-the price is paid." So we are two people, the flesh and the spiritual man, Christ. Christ and the flesh cannot be reconciled, and we must identify with one or the other. We identify with Christ.

We have two natures that cannot coexist, and we must choose one that we will identify with. We choose the Christ nature. So much is this true that the apostle Paul said that, when he sins, it is not he who does it, but sin that dwells in him, Romans 7:16-20. That almost sounds like a cop out, but the reality is that if we identify with our fleshly nature, we will then do the works of the fleshly nature. Rather, we make no provision for the flesh, Romans 13:14. We are to identify with the Christ who is in us. The ministry that is within us is Christ. He is the only one capable of doing good works, Galatians 2:20, 1 Corinthians 15:10. This is how we ought to think of ourselves. We are not the fleshly nature, Romans 7:17. We are not the self. We are ministries, the Christ in us, the called out people, the light of God, Ephesians 5:8. We are born sons of God who still have sin dwelling in us. We are not fleshly people who have Christ dwelling in us.

When we identify with Christ, we see Him as He is, and so we become like Him, 1 John 3:2. God is love, 1 John 4:8 & 16. When we see Him in our brother and sister, this actually opens the door for us to minister by the Spirit, 2 Corinthians 5:16. When we see our brother and sister after the flesh, we tend to also see ourselves after the flesh. We need the veil removed from our eyes. As we all, with the veil removed from our eyes, see the glory of the Lord as if in a mirror, we are transfigured into that same image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord, 2 Corinthians 3:18.

We Are To Be Humble But Not To Degrade What God Has Made

How can we know anything about anything

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