“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8:32
A promise that fills us with anticipation. If only we can find the strand, the truth that runs through all of life, we can unlock its secrets. Like that modern parable The Matrix, we want to take a pill and see the world through new eyes.
But here is an inconvenient truth: You are not Neo. You are Cypher. Many of us, most, will hear the truth and reject it. This is not just a function of our current truth averse society; it was the same in Jesus’ day.
“The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now something greater than Jonah is here.”
Matthew 12:41
Frequently exposure to the truth only serves to harden the cement that holds our falsehoods fast. As Jesus points out, heaping the truth upon people, rather than helping them, can have the effect of adding to the burden of judgement that is coming later. Not that this keeps Him from preaching and proclaiming the gospel, but it does take some of the rose out of our glasses.
The truth can sometimes be like a partial inoculation. Having heard it, we become inured to it. We think by understand but not obeying it, we have somehow moved beyond it. But however blithely we wish to live out our lives, if we think we have moved beyond the revelation of the Messiahship of Jesus, there is another thing coming.
“…the final condition of that person is worse than the first.”
Matthew 12:45
So how is the truth moving you today? Does it still create a restlessness in your hands to serve? An itch in your feet to go? Does it still put words on the tip of your tongue to speak? A hunger after righteousness? Or does it lead you to passivity and apathy?
Lord, waken our hearts.
bonaccordcommunitychurch.com 