S144P3 – When worlds collide: the true word is revealed

Mt. 4:5-7

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.’ ”  Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ”

The man was crafty, so I had to pay attention to his words very carefully.  I listened to a portion of his sermon only because I had heard that he was twisting the word of God for his own purposes.  He spoke about what happened in the garden of Eden, but he did not read much scripture.  There was some truth in the facts he recited.  He at least got the names of the parties correct.  Then, he started to draw conclusions from those events, and there was the great problem.  The conclusions he drew completely contradicted the biblical account.  Of course, that was why his sermon did not reference the scriptures much at all.  There was no way to reconcile his interpretation of the fall of mankind with what the bible actually says about it.

There are two ways people will use the scriptures to deceive others.  The first way is to completely misquote them, and I would wager that we all have experienced that.  For the listener who is not very wise or knowledgeable, this is a ripe trap.  It is no wonder the scriptures themselves tell us to weigh what we hear against the word.  The other way to deceive people with scripture is to quote it correctly but distort its meaning.  That is what the devil tried to do here with Jesus.  His words were accurate, but his intention was deception.  With no point of reference, those words as he used them might seem valid and true.  However, when weighed against the totality of the scriptures, it is clear that the message he was trying to convey is wrong.

The bible serves many purposes.  One of those purposes is to qualify and verify itself.  God cannot contradict himself, and his word cannot contradict itself.  While some scriptures stand alone clearly, other scriptures become clear when viewed with complementary passages.  And when apparent contradictions arise, we can trust that the answer to reconcile those issues again will be found in the scriptures.  Regardless of the type of biblical deception coming our way, the bible will reveal its own truth, and the true word will expose the lie.  Father, thank You that your word is self-confirming and self-explaining, and gives us wisdom to know when the scriptures are being used to deceive us.