Hidden in Plain Truth - Part 1
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It’s Safe on the Rock
It’s Safe on the Rock
Have you ever been looking for something important and could not find it no matter how hard you tried? Then, when you do finally find it, you discover that it was right there under your nose hidden in plain sight. Some say this only applies to us men. The truth be told, it applies to most professing Christians today. So many are still looking for something in their life as if Christ was not enough. All the while, all they really need is hidden in plain truth.
Therefore let everyone who is godly offer prayer to you at a time when you may be found; surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance. Selah I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
What does it mean to be “godly”? The word is chasid חָסִיד meaning faithful and holy to the Lord.
Think on this concept for a moment. Will God hold a dog responsible for sexual promiscuity? Will every predator among the beast of the field stand before God in judgment for murder? If not, then why has the Creator of all things chosen to hold you responsible for His commandments?
The answer is “Hidden in Plain Truth”. You will never see an elephant make a political speech nor a donkey use diplomacy. You will never see a dog write hymns nor a cat invent a new electronic device.
According to Rabbi Abraham Twerski, the sum of it all is this, only mankind was created with a purpose beyond self-gratification. It was given to man to seek out, know and understand the ways of the Lord God. Short of that, he is deceived and driven by the yetzer hara (his evil inclinations).
See, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many schemes.
Life becomes extremely complex when lived outside the will of God. Outside of the will of God man has to plot, excuse, and creatively justify his own way. Prior to his disobedience to God, man instinctively followed the way of the Lord. His instructions were clear, take dominion over all that has been given to you that God may be glorified in it. But instead, man chose an intellect that went contrary to his innate apprehension to go against the will of God. The Scripture refers to it as ones conscious conviction of which man chose to suppress and listen to another worldview. It was really less the fault of a serpent and more the fault of self-deception. Today, no man or woman need a snake in the grass to lead their heart astray, they do it quit well themselves.
Apart from the will of God, what is the point of this life? Often the preacher speaks of our eternality. But what of your existence? Our eternality and existence are inseparable. You do exist and you will exist eternally. You cannot separate one from the other but you can do something about them both.
I endured heart surgery because I knew it had a purpose of healing and restoration in the end. I have endured grueling pains of military training to gain a rank on a collar. I have endured many long hours of study to earn accolades of man. I have endured being thrown on the floor to earn a small piece of white tape on a black belt. But what of the pains and hardships in life that seem to have no purpose at all? These are the times we find it most difficult to assign some sovereign purpose of a divine and loving Creator.
But I assure you, that no matter what life brings in this world upon a son or daughter of the Most High, there is safety on the Rock.
For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock.
In Genesis 1:1, the last letter of the first three words spell “truth” in Hebrew.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
Likewise, with the last three words of Genesis 2:3 we see the same summing the evidence of creation having been signed by incorporating the name of the Creator Himself as a seal (Rabbi Abraham Twerski).
Rabbi Twerski states, “To the extent that a person lives with truth is the extent one identifies with God. Any falsehood distances a person from God” (Twerski, Abraham J., M.D., Twerski on Chumash; Shaar Press, Rahway, NJ, 2003).
Jesus said it this way, in the book of John:
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
Jesus uses the “truth” in two contexts: one being emet אםת meaning trustworthy, enduring, and faithful as well as tsedeq צדק meaning righteousness, deliverance, vindication and justice.
If Jesus Christ is indeed “the way, the truth, and the life”, then there is no Christianity apart from the truth of Christ. You cannot be a Christian but choose your own idea of truth. You cannot truly “know” (yada) Him and follow Him any other way than His. You cannot mix His truth with any form of untruth or unrighteous living and yet say that you are indeed His in Lordship.
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.
And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.”
Indeed, if you fully embrace truth and shake from your life that which is contrary to truth, in opposition to truth, contradictory to truth, then you shall find safety on the Rock.
For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea,
and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ.
“The spiritual Rock that followed them.” That Rock who was the Messiah, the deliverer of Israel in the wilderness; that delivered them from the hand of Pharaoh; that brought them through the towering waters of the Red Sea; that conquered their enemies time and time again; that feed them from heaven and brought forth water from stone; that same Rock you now stand on. As the Apostle Paul exclaims in Romans 8:31:
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
On days when things in life seem to have no sense of purpose, remember where you stand in this life. Ensure you stand firm on the Rock who is Christ. Build your life on this Rock. We know that in the good days we have evidence of our hope in the goodness of God and in the bad days the good days remind us of His faithfulness to hope in another day of His mercies. Ours is to stand firm in our faith knowing that God has a good plan through it all.
The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil.
The Apostle Paul states,
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
The best place to live is hidden in plain truth. There is only one safe place in this life, it is to surely live on the Rock of Truth.