Promised land day 2

These days, few people seem to believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth. Fewer still believe we can know it.

Obviously, we’ve all been influenced by the presence of sin in the world, and that influence has rendered us incapable of absolutely understanding absolute truth. Because we cannot grasp it exhaustively, however, does not mean it doesn’t exist.

The truth about us is that whether we express it or not, we all live with a set of beliefs that we take to be “the truth.” But how we define truth makes all the difference in how we live.

Moses sent a group of 12 leaders into the Promised Land to gather information. He was going to use the information to formulate his plan of attack. After spending 40 days behind enemy lines, however, 10 of these leaders returned with a bad report, suggesting that there was no way they could accomplish the task of invading and displacing the people who currently occupied Canaan.

Several huge mistakes were made. First, Moses was the one who commissioned the team, but they returned and reported back to all the people instead. They were merely asked to bring back information, but they went beyond that and made a recommendation, “Let’s stay out of there!” Most importantly, the report brought back by these leaders failed to consider what God had to say about the situation. And that is precisely what made their report “bad.”

Truth is not merely facts. These men reported facts. The land was good. The inhabitants were large. The cities were fortified. Those are all facts. But factual information is only one part of the truth.

Neither is truth popular opinion. In fact, it is often in the absence of an understanding of real truth that opinion polls take on a weight and authority they do not deserve. Neither is real truth what is doable. Real truth is not our perception. Real truth is higher and deeper and broader than any of that. Real truth is what God says about a particular situation. Real truth corresponds to reality from God’s perspective. Only He sees the whole thing, and only He is in a position to make a judgment about it.

Truth is hard sometimes. Truth can be costly. Truth, for these people, would have meant war. It would have meant giving up some of their evenings at home in their tents, some of their peaceful (if nomadic) existence. Because they were afraid, because they had forgotten who they were and how great their God was, they chose to consider only the facts and go with popular opinion rather than doing what God had called them to do.

God’s truth would demand too much of them. It was unmanageable. It was impractical, they thought. But whenever a group of God’s people chooses to follow the path of practicality instead of listening to and obeying the call of God, they run the risk of spending years wandering about in aimless and fruitless work.

The people had a choice to make. They said, “Let us die in this desert rather than deal with these fierce enemies” (Num 14.1-2). And that is exactly what God allowed them to do.

Because the people failed to live by God’s truth, they ended up dying by their own.

 

God, I know that truth is what You say about a thing. You alone are the wellspring of the true, the beautiful and the good, and Your unchanging character is the absolute basis for truth. But I live in a culture of growing relativism in which people have increasingly abandoned the idea of objective truth. By Your grace, I choose to stand against popular opinion and affirm that Your Word is truth. May I resist the temptation to define truth in terms of my own subjective feelings, a majority vote or pragmatic results. Instead, I want to make choices that are based on sound judgment, knowing that wisdom is derived from Your inspired revelation. Illuminate my path with Your truth and empower me to walk in it. Then I will interpret the obstacles and opportunities I encounter with a biblical orientation.

In Jesus’s name, Amen