When I was a child, I was a fairly typical boy. I was not too keen about washing my hands or taking a bath.
Rather than arguing with me, my mother devised a more effective way of convincing me of the importance of being clean. She would regularly remind me that it wasn’t just important to her, but it was important to God. She would say, “Remember what the Bible says, ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness.’”
It wasn’t until many years later, I thought, “I should look that verse up in the Bible and see where it is.” After much effort and the use of a good concordance, I finally concluded that it was not actually a verse in the Bible.
Instead, I found a passage that said, “You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence . . . First clean the inside of the cup, so the outside of it may also become clean . . . You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and every impurity. In the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:25-28, (HCSB).
I found another passage, “Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts . . . Humble yourselves before the Lord, and He will exalt you.” (James 4:8, 10, HCSB).
God is not concerned with how loudly we profess to be righteous, how clean we are on the outside. He is interested in whether we actually are righteous, clean on the inside.
God cares more about our heart, about what is inside of us, than He does about whether we wash our hands before we eat. He also cares about what we do and say, because these things reveal what is truly in our hearts.
How many things have we been taught that sounded really good, and seemed to make sense. We have just accepted someone’s word that they were true. We never took the time to check them out to see if they really were true according to the scriptures and whether the application we were taught was according to the truth of scripture.
Because we did not have the love of the truth, we never bothered to test to see if what we were being told was actually scriptural. We just blindly accepted it. Eventually we even found ourselves passing it on to others, with the assurance that it was true.
This is how false teachings spread. We blindly accept what we are told as being true because it sounds good, or because we regard the person speaking to us as trustworthy and therefore do not feel the need to verify the truthfulness of what we are told. We just accept it, ingest it, and pass it on as truth.
Paul warns us, “Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered to Him . . . Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way. For that day will not come unless the apostasy comes first . . . They perish because they did not accept the love of the truth in order to be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2, 10, HCSB).
Before the Lord returns, there is going to be a great falling away, an apostasy. There is going to be a defection from truth. This defection from truth is going to come about because people have itching ears. They want to hear things that sound good, things that make them feel comfortable. They do not have the love for the truth, and therefore are easily deceived.
“For the time will come when they will not tolerate sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, will multiply teachers for themselves because they have an itch to hear something new. They will turn away from hearing the truth and will turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4, HCSB).
How is it with you? Do you have the love for the truth? Do you care if the things you are being told over and over again, week after week, are really true? Those that did not have the love for the truth perished.
Just because something is popularly accepted as true, does not make it true!