God’s revealed truth makes sense. I claim neither brilliance of intellect nor unusual clarity of perception. But everything I see, hear, and feel coincides with convictions based on what God has revealed, not not only about this world and man, but also about himself and his relationship to time and eternity.
It all makes sense because these revealed truths satisfy the needs of the hearts and minds of those who are willing to be taught. We can look at men and events and see that they are just as God has told us and that everything either stands or falls according to what men do about his Son and his Cross.
When I read, “In the beginning God,” it makes sense to me, because without him there can be no logical explanation of anything. And when I read that in the beginning he created the heavens and the earth, I know it is true, for on every hand I see the perfect work of a perfect Creator, and I experience and see evidence of the fact that the One who created all is infinite in wisdom, power, and love.
The Book he has given us explains many things for which we could not find answers in any other place. Genesis—beginning with God the Creator—ends with a dead man “in a coffin in Egypt.” Even as we ask the meaning of this, the answer comes. God said “You shall not,” but Satan said, “Go ahead and you will become wise.” And from that time on there is unfolded the drama of man’s disobedience to God and God’s yearning love and desire to restore him to fellowship.
From there on to Malachi, as one reads of God’s warnings and instructions, there is a growing consciousness of God’s holiness as well as an understanding of the terrible consequences of man’s rejection of God—and of the alternative God has ever offered to those who are willing to believe and repent.
While God’s revelation of truth (and The Truth) has been available, man has deliberately turned from it to fables and his own vain imaginations. Little wonder that the Old Testament ends with the warning that, unless there is a reconciliation, God will “come and smite the land with a curse.”
It makes sense when I read that God’s love was so great that he was unwilling to leave man in his self-caused predicament, and that because of this love he sent his own Son to reverse the whole direction of life—for both time and eternity—for those who put their faith in him. There is a breadth and depth in the simple words, “should not perish but have eternal life,” that man could wisely ponder for a lifetime.
Even as one reads of the cause of man’s predicament (sin, disobedience and rebellion), he can see that the Creator spoken of in Genesis 1:1 is also the Redeemer of the New Testament, and that, having opened the gates of eternal life for all who will believe, he will in his own time ring down the curtain of human history and merge time with eternity. He leaves the written record of divine truth with these words, “Surely I am coming soon” (Rev. 22:20). For the Christian this is the “blessed hope,” but for the unbeliever it is the harbinger of doom.
The truths revealed in the Bible and the consistency of their application all make sense. Created in the image of God, we have given to us the inalienable right of decision; we exercise this right, with all that is implied, for time and for eternity.
We can choose to go our own way, disregarding the pleadings and warnings of a loving God, and for the time being we may be accounted successful by the world’s standards. But there is no word in the Bible that bespeaks more truth than the Lord’s affirmation, “The LORD sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7). Jesus gives us the significance of this divine insight in the words, “Out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a man” (Matt. 15:19).
Surely it makes sense when we are told that with all these inborn evil proclivities we “must be born again.” To be fit for fellowship with God, as he was at his beginning, man must become a new creation, and that transformation comes through Christ and in no other way.
The Bible makes sense to me, not only because of my personal faith, but also on the basis of my experience and observation. I read: “For our fight is not against any physical enemy: it is against organizations and powers that are spiritual. We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil” (Eph. 6:12, Phillips). And I know that Satan and his agents are real and very active!
How very much it means to me to know that God has provided a two-way communications system by which I may talk to him and he to me. As the pilot of a plane flying blind in heavy clouds finds safety and comfort in his two-way radio connections with the ground, so we find our safety, comfort, and guidance in talking with God.
Then too, it makes sense to me to know that my heavenly Father never requires anything of me for which he does not at the same time supply the necessary wisdom and strength. Only a great God can so order the affairs of this world as to make “all things work together for good for those who love him” (Rom. 8:28)—fulfilling this promise to millions of his children at the same time.
Finally, it makes sense to know that God has a timetable and that we are moving inexorably to “that day” when the world as we know it will be destroyed and when God will set up his kingdom, “which shall never be destroyed” (Dan. 2:44). It was given to the Old Testament saints and those of the New to look beyond the horizon of time to that eternal city “that cannot be shaken,” and to us today there is given a similar vision and an unshakable hope.
The God of creation and redemption, of time and eternity, has not left himself without a witness. He continues to extend his patient offer of a new life in and through the person and work of his Son. That is why the Gospel makes so much sense. It offers the only way out of the human predicament and provides all that we need to live and die by. We can have assurance in our hearts that we are following not “cleverly devised myths” (2 Pet. 1:16) but the testimony of “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word” (Luke 1:2). Like the Apostle Paul we can say, “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day” (2 Tim. 1:12).
