Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own.  John 7:17

Ignorance is a wonderful thing!  What you don’t know doesn’t worry you, though it probably should.  You couldn’t be out of money since you still have checks in your checkbook, right? The lump that you have on your neck can’t hurt you as long as you ignore it or can it?  It’s not only your bank account or your health which is an issue; it’s your spiritual life as well. Strange, is it not, how we prefer to ignore issues rather than confront them.

I often think of the instruction manual for a small single-engine aircraft which said something like this:  If you are flying at night and you lose power, try to restart the engine.  If that fails, when you reach an altitude of 200 meters, turn on your landing lights.  If you don’t like what you see, then turn them off again.

The sad fact is that a lot of people have turned off their landing lights when it comes to very important things.  Some do it in a high school or college classroom.  Some do it simply because they don’t like what the Bible says–too confining, too limiting, too–well, puritanical.  They like what they are doing and don’t want to change, so they just “turn out the lights.”

When ignorance is demolished by truth, it can be alarming, perhaps devastating.  Knowing that the lump on your neck is cancer may shake you up—but save your life.  Of course, no one likes thinking of the surgeon’s knife, or chemotherapy or radiation, yet losing your hair or your appetite is highly preferred to losing your life.

Going back to the issue of truth and God, how do you know what is truth or prejudice?  How can you be sure?  Do you take someone else’s word for it or can you know for yourself?  When Paul did a speaking tour of Greece, he came to a place identified today as Berea, and there he went into the synagogue and proclaimed Jesus Christ as the Son of God, who lived, died and rose again.

And the Bereans quickly accepted what Paul said, right?  Not exactly.  Dr. Luke says that they received the message with great eagerness but examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was truth.

They had settled the issue, however, as to what is truth. They were fully persuaded that the Scriptures were true and that God had revealed Himself through them.  Question:  Do you have that assurance?  You may answer, “Yes!  No problem,” but chances are, you are not quite sure.  If so, this is just for you.

Many intelligent individuals today have never gone much beyond the cover of this grand book we call the Bible.  They turned the lights off a long time ago, and ceased to think for themselves, accepting the mindset of teachers or professors, our culture, and our society.  How do I know the Bible is true?  There are rational answers which dispel any doubt that you may have ever had including the abundance of manuscript evidence that says the writings of Scripture have been preserved over the years, the unintended but powerful testimony of archaeology, the element of the supernatural which includes amazing prophesies given hundreds of years before their historical fulfillment, to say nothing of the personal connection with God which comes by testing the promises of this book, the Bible.

Ignorance is not comforting and faith is not blind.  Turning on the lights may require some thinking, some investigation, asking some hard questions about your personal life and being willing to accept the truth which God will reveal to you.  But through His Son, God gave a promise.  Jesus said, “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

Resource reading: John 8:31-47