John 8:12-32 – The Truth

Scripture teaches us that unbelievers suppress the truth in unrighteousness. But the operation is not effortless. In order to sin, and in order to persist in it, we have to fight against something that is true about ourselves.

Therefore unbelievers who suppress the truth of God expend a good deal of effort to hold a beach ball under water. Periodically it gets away from them. When this happens, what follows is often a rowdy flailing and splashing about in order to get the ball back under the water and out of public view.

When it becomes apparent that we are struggling to keep the ball under, the next thing to watch for is some kind of moral crusade that will help compensate for it. This is the meaning behind our yelling and splashing. It’s their to keep you from seeing the ball.

Like the ball, the existence of absolute truth is inescapable. Whenever men set aside the truth of God they will soon bring forth standards they can successfully keep. And the more they reject God’s truth, the more things begin to look like the beach-ball-under-the-water-thing.

We see this in our own idiotic customs and laws. Having suppressed the truth of God regarding murder, its acceptable, and even laudable, to take your six month old unborn down to the clinic to have it terminated.

However, should the same woman be caught smoking at the bus stop in her third trimester we begin to splash and yell about her cruelty to her unborn child. That would not be respectable.

Its perfectly acceptable to dispose of your unborn if he has a disability. But because they are so precious to us, we will also organise any number of Para Olympiads. To do otherwise would not be respectable.

The point is, that when men suppress the truth they don’t leave a vacuum. Having bottled their Gin in a soft drink can, they then nobly offer to run courses on how to keep young pie hooks out of the fridge. They try and fill the void and hide the beach ball with something equally respectable. And that something else always looks ridiculous in light of the beach ball.

Truth doesn’t go away that easy because truth ultimately resides in a Person. They have already tried to bury that Person. They held Him under for three days – but He wouldn’t stay down.