Where is your hidding Place

Isaiah 3:13-15

In whom or what do you take refuge as a follower of Christ?  Would you proclaim to your neighbors, as did Alamoth in Psalm 46, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.”  If our Creator is our refuge and strength, and everything around us, job, family, friends are taken away; will you absolutely fear not? 

But that is not what the Jewish nation has done, and Isaiah 13 states the following; “The Lord has taken his place to contend; he stands to judge people.”  Do you believe that God who is unchangeable will not judge His Church?  This writer believes in absolute truth, God is truth, and Jesus came to testify to that fact and did so in front of Pilate when he ask Jesus if He was a King.  We find the account in John 19:37, “You say that I am a king.  For that purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth.  Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.”   Church listen to Pilate’s reply, for it is the response of 2014, both in and out of the Church, and this is Pilate’s reply; “What is truth?”

But this writer is not in the majority, in or outside of the church, look at what Lindy Keffer, of Focus on the Family has written; “Whatever happened to the truth?" In our world, the idea of ultimate truth — something that is true at all times in all places and has relevance for our lives — is about as extinct as the dinosaur. In fact, nearly three out of four Americans say there is no such thing as ultimate, or absolute, truth. And the numbers don't look much better among those who claim to follow Jesus.”  It should be worthy to mention that to say there is no absolute truth, is to make an absolute statement, and then it comes down to do you believe God or man?  Josh McDowell gives us these polling facts, “Another study, added McDowell, showed that only six percent of all teenagers in America, including Christians, said there isn’t any truth apart from myself. There was a difference of only five percent between believers and non-believers, he noted. Moreover, less than four percent of evangelical born-again Christians believed the Bible was infallible in every situation, and 63 percent of them believed He is “a” Son of God and not “the” Son of God, he added.”

As you read Isaiah 3:14-15, ponder on these words written by the prophet Hosea who was God’s spokesman in Israel, between 786-746 B.C.  “Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel, for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.  There is no faithfulness or steadfast love, and no knowledge of God in the land; there is swearing, lying, murder, stealing, and committing adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.  Therefore the land mourns, and all who dwell in it languish, and also the beasts of the field and the birds of the heavens, and even the fish of the sea are taken away.” (Hosea 4:1-3, ESV)  Could this be spoken by newspapers of our day?  It will not, for they do not understand truth, they as a whole are the progressives who promote the lie of no absolute truth.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice