|
WHY SOME PEOPLE REJECT THE BIBLE
The Word of God is clear about the minds and hearts of people as they are naturally born. First of all, lost individuals think contrary to what God thinks. Proof: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts,” (Isaiah 55:8). Those persons not born of the Spirit may believe their thoughts and what they have figured out with all their hearts, but the heart of sinners is not a safe guide for anything. God says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). Mankind, then, is in a fix. He is bad off. He cannot think correctly and he cannot trust his heart to love the right things and be a guide in what he believes or does. In dealing with the matter of God's revelation which we now call the Bible Paul wrote that there are two reasons lost men and women cannot believe that Book nor understand it. He wrote, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned,” (Colossians 2:14). First of all he said lost sinners do not receive the Bible because it is foolishness to them. They do not see themselves as hopelessly and helplessly lost unless God be pleased to birth them spiritually. They do not know they are spiritually dead since they have never experienced spiritual life. The second reason lost men and women do not welcome the truth of the Bible is because they lack the proper equipment. The Word of God is a spiritual book – it is as Paul wrote “of the Spirit of God.” Men and women who are lost do not possess the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the Author of the Bible and it is He who alone enables those in whom He dwells to understand that Holy Book. John wrote, “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life,” (1 John 5:20). The understanding given us by the Son of God comes with the Spirit which He sends to make spiritually dead sinners alive spiritually. Jesus said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.” (John 3:6,7). So it was that John wrote, “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life,” (1 John 5:12). The question is, do you have the Son?
|
