When You Want the Truth

Daily Reading: Isaiah 8

Scripture Focus: To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. (Isaiah 8.20)

Devotional Thought: "If it's on the internet, it must be true."  I was doing a little web-surfing this morning, and came across an article, "Coronavirus in the Age of Warming."  I didn't click.  I saw other headlines, too: "Worst Cities in America: Johns Island Is on the List"; "New York Times Does It Again..."  I didn't click on those either.  I want the truth.

Where should you go when you want the truth?

The people in Isaiah's day said they wanted the truth, but they were looking for it in all the wrong places: mediums and necromancers (people who attempt to speak to the dead).  Isaiah asked them, "Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?" (v. 19).  Those people, Isaiah said, "chirp and mutter."  I think Isaiah was making fun of them!  He compared their advice to the senseless chatter of flighty birds or the angry growls of wild animals.  How can they be taken seriously?  They're in the dark - "have no dawn" - just as much as you are!  (For some reason, those descriptions remind me of many of the voices I "hear" on Twitter and Facebook...)

Where should you go when you want the truth? 

Isaiah had the answer.  The most reliable source of truth is "the teaching and the testimony" - the Word of God.  Instead of consulting the dead, we can go to God's Word which is "living and active" (Hebrews 4.12).  The Apostle Peter described it as "the living and abiding word of God" (1 Peter 1.23).

Where should you go when you want the truth?

Go to the Word of God!

Prayer: “I want to know one thing - the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore. God Himself has condescended to teach the way; for this very end He came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God!”  Amen.  (John Wesley)

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 42.1-7

1 As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.

2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God?

3 My tears have been my food day and night, while they say to me all the day long, "Where is your God?"

4 These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I would go with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God with glad shouts and songs of praise, a multitude keeping festival.

5 Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation

6 and my God.My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.

7 Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterfalls; all your breakers and your waves have gone over me.