New Salem Baptist Church

Speaking the Truth by Refuting Lies

November 26, 2023

1 Paul, a slave of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the faith of God’s elect and the full knowledge of the truth which is according to godliness,

    2      in the hope of eternal life, which the God who cannot lie promised from all eternity,

    3      but at the proper time manifested His word in preaching, with which I was entrusted according to the commandment of God our Savior,^[1]

We considered these verses last week and we saw the importance of both knowing faith and truth, as well as proclaiming the faith and the truth.

What is faith?

Faith is certain knowledge accompanied with resolute trust.

Verse 2 states that the faith and the full knowledge of the truth have everything to do with our hope of eternal life.

Verse 3 says that this eternal life is made known by preaching or, more simply, by faith and truth being proclaimed.

Not everyone can preach. But every follower of Christ can proclaim the faith once for all delivered to us. Every follower of Christ can and ought to speak the truth. The truth that we are to speak has to do with godliness, that is, living in a godly way.

Thus, we do not need to spend much time on the truths of politics, the truths found in the news, the truths of sports, games, or anything else. The truths of godliness are what men and women need to hear. They are what children need to hear.

We are in a war. It is a warfare of ideas. We are called, all of us, to wage war. We are called to destroy arguments and opinions!

³ For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. ⁴ For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. ⁵ We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ,^[2]

We should all be destroying arguments and opinions that are against the knowledge of God or the knowledge of what He has revealed in his word. This passage is in the context of “waging war!” Paul’s words!

(See also I Timothy 6:12; Ephesians 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:7; I Cor. 9:7)

Even though we are in a war, we still need to be gentle in our approach with opposers:

²⁴ And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, ²⁵ correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, ²⁶ and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will. ^[3]

See in verse 26 that the unbelievers are captured by the devil and are in his snare. What is his snare? The devil’s snare is a network of lies that keeps people deceived into holding on to their autonomy and self-will as opposed to the good, joyful, and freeing will of God. God’s will is always for our good but the devil portrays God’s will as being against us, as raining on our parade. A lie!

When Jesus dialogued with Jewish leaders, he told them:

⁴⁴ You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.^[4]

The devil has many lies that he perpetrates but there are four great lies that he appears to specialize in and which, by and large, society has embraced. We must be ready to refute these lies.

What does it mean to refute? To refute is to prove something false. When Paul tells Titus, also in chapter one, what the qualifications for elders are, he includes this – they should be those who are:

9          holding fast the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict.^[5]

We are not all called to be elders, but certainly these qualities are attributes that we should all be striving for. We are not all called to be leaders in the church, but we are all called to engage in battle for the Lord. So we should, to the extent that we are able, refute those who promote lies.

We read this about Apollos, who was a great proclaimer of the truth, a companion of the apostle Paul, and whom Paul considered his equal (I Cor. 4;6):

²⁷ And when he wished to cross to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples to welcome him. When he arrived, he greatly helped those who through grace had believed, ²⁸ for he powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus. ^[6]

Apollos refuted lies! This is part of our calling as those who are in a battle of ideas.

The first lie of the devil that I wish to address is the lie that we are not created. The devil has been promoting this lie since Charles Darwin first popularized it in his book, On the Origen of Species, in 1859.[7] So, for well over 150 years the lie that we were not created but just evolved from a pre-biotic slime by chance has been drilled into us through public education, through movies, through television, and through almost every media outlet.

What are the results of believing this lie? If we are the product of blind chance and natural selection then we have no purpose for our life and there is no meaning of life itself. It’s all an accident. Can you see how such a belief would rob one of hope and leave one feeling worthless?

On the other hand, if we are created then the Lord created us for a purpose and our life has meaning. Those are the two alternatives and there is no middle ground. One view is hopeless and the other view is full of hope and positivity.

One characteristic about a lie is that, if you examine it carefully, you discover that the evidence exposes the lie and supports the truth. So it is with the lie of evolution.

How should we refute the lie of evolution? We can say that there is no possible way for life to begin by chance processes. The simplest form of life so far identified is a bacteria by the name of Mycoplasma. It has about 124 proteins each consisting of about 400 amino acids. Even the production of amino acids through purely chemical means is nearly impossible because amino acids come in two forms (L & D) but the only form found in living cells is the L-form. Yet, when amino acids are produced in a lab under ideal conditions there are always an equal number of L-form and D-form.

But, assuming that amino acids could be formed, the chances of having just one protein (and a protein is not alive!) is about 1 out of 10 to the 30^th power! That is the number 1 with 30 zeros after it! To get 124 proteins (the simplest living thing known) would be 1 out of 10 to the 14,000th power! This number is so small that it is beyond our imagination to conceive of it. Further, proteins easily breakdown unless they are in a protective environment like a cell. So, how could all these proteins be produced by chance, not break apart, and exist long enough to form a living cell? Its all impossible.

The second lie that is perpetrated by Satan is the lie about what we are. What are we? According to the prevailing view in the West, we are nothing more than a physical thing. That is, we are purely physical. Just chemicals functioning. We do not have a soul. There is no immaterial aspect of who we are. This view is known as materialism.

If this is true, what does it mean? It means that the most important things in life are just an illusion. Love does not exist if we are just chemicals in motion. Love is just a sensation caused by chemicals in your brain. Mercy does not exist. Since mercy is not physical it cannot exist. Compassion cannot exist because compassion is not physical.

How can we refute this lie? We can refute it by simply stating the obvious: the most important things in life are immaterial…love, mercy, forgiveness, tenderness, kindness. But, if materialism is true then these things don’t even exist. They are just feelings produced by chemicals in our brains. Yet, we know love is real and that kindness is a virtue. Therefore, materialism must be false.

If materialism were true then other things would have to be true also. There would be no free will (it’s just dominoes all the way down to your choices). There would be no true consciousness, just a feeling that seems like it. There would be no good or evil since good and evil are not physical.

But, we know that we have free agency. We know that we are self-conscious. We know that there is both good and evil. Therefore, materialism cannot be true.

The third question that everyone wishes to know and to which the devil promotes another lie as an answer is: Who Are we?

According to the world, we are just evolved monkeys. We are just animals and nothing more. Who Are We? We are either evolved animals or we are made in the image of God. We are image-bearers!

It is because we share in the image of God that we are able to understand what it means to say that God is:

• loving
• just
• merciful, and
• good

How can we refute the lie that we are animals and nothing more? We can say that, if we are only animals then our rule is survival of the fittest. There is no objective morality. Its not immoral for a lion to kill and eat a zebra. If we are just animals there is then no objective right and wrong. There are only personal preferences. You don’t like killing people and some people do. Its just a preference.

But we know, everyone knows, that there is a God in heaven. That there is right and wrong. We know, everyone knows, that we will be called into account for our deeds (Romans 1:32).

If we are just animals and nothing more, then our destiny is as a rotting corpse in the ground and our future is non-existence.

We were made in God’s image and are noble creatures even if we have acted in ways far less than noble.

The last question which people wish to know but for which the devil gives another lie is: How should we live?

According to the world, we only need to live according to our own desires. Put another way, truth is not out there. Truth is within. We make our own rules according to this view.

This is what happened to Eve in the garden. She was faced with the choice of embracing God’s truth or her “truth.” Truth is either objective, outside of us, or it is subjective, inside of us.

If we are just animals then its all about what is best for us as an animal. If we are image-bearers of God then we seek the objective truths that God has revealed and we live by them. As soon as we start to do that, we discover that is what fulfills us! (Because God’s revealed will is always what is best for us.)

How should we live? We live by God’s revealed will in the power that God grants to those who come to Christ.

If we are to speak the truth by refuting lies, this means that we are to expose the lies that abound in our culture that promote the denial of the truth. For example, consider the lie of so-called transgenderism. This is an incredibly destructive lie.

Doctors are performing surgeries on young children so that their bodies will supposedly match what gender they think they are, even though many children only experience such confusing thoughts temporarily and outgrow them by the time they are in their late teens. It’s nothing less than mutilation and child abuse!

What do the Scriptures teach? God made only two sexes, male and female (Gen. 1:27). And, he ordained sex to occur only between them in a marriage (2:23-24). Jesus endorsed the account of only two genders in Matthew 19:4-9.

According to the Bible, our gender identity[8] should match our biological sex and taking on the gender identity of the opposite sex is a sin:

⁵ “A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God. ^[9]

            9          Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals,^[10]

Science confirms what the Scriptures teach. Human beings are either male or female. We know this because there are only two gametes. A gamete is the sexual cell that unites with the sex cell of the opposite sex in order for reproduction to take place. There are only two gametes: sperm and egg, male and female gametes.

Performing so-called sex-reassignment surgery on otherwise healthy persons is a terrible travesty. Consider these facts:

• You can be mistaken about your sexual identity, but you cannot be mistaken about your biological sex.
• Your biological sex is immutable…it cannot be changed. All surgery can do is make you look more like the opposite sex.
• Sex re-assignment surgery entails amputation of healthy sex organs.
• Gender dysphoria (thinking you are the opposite sex of what you are) persists after surgery and often reverses (the victims of surgery sometime think they are their original sex even though their bodies were mutilated).

How do we refute the lie of transgenderism? Simply by speaking the truth. Cite Scripture and review the science facts. Those who have gender dysphoria are still image-bearers of God and need healing and compassion.

What did we learn today? The devil promotes four[11] lies:

• We are not created
• All that there is in the world are physical things. That’s all we are: just a bag full of chemicals.
• We are only evolved animals.
• We make our own rules.

Our calling, your calling, is to speak the truth. When Pontius Pilate interrogated Jesus he replied this way:

For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth.^[12]

But we are to follow his example! We, too, must bear witness to the truth.

“Lord, help us to bear witness to the truth at every opportunity. Help us learn how to refute the lies of the spiritual forces. Grant us boldness and your presence when we speak. Amen.”