I recently read Psalm 40, which includes this verse:

Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie!

Psalm 40:4

Very often, when we come across a verse like that, we tend to focus on being ‘blessed’ – and how we should trust in the Lord. Rightly so.

But I got to wonder about the other part of the verse.¹

It’s is saying that we are blessed if we place our trust in the Lord, but not if we follow a lie. Put another way, we are either trusting in God or following a lie – the two are mutually exclusive.

This is, of course, fairly obvious. One definition of Truth is ‘that which in accord with reality’, so a lie, or untruth, does not. It follows that anyone going after a lie is moving away from reality.

There are Consequences

This is not just academic, but has an impact on the way we live our lives. Whether we follow truths or lies, they each have consequences.

Jesus said in John 8:31 that ‘the truth will set you free’, while lies lead to enslavement, which is what Jesus went on to say (‘everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin’).

I got to think about what kind of lies we are prone to follow these days. Here are some that we meet everyday, to the extent they have become ‘normalised’:

• The universe is billions of years old and came about as some sort of cosmic accident.
• Human beings appeared very late in this timescale and are the cause of most if not all environmental problems. The earth’s ecosystem was working very well until human beings came along and spoiled it.
• Changes in the climate are largely humanity’s fault so humanity should, and can, correct this. Otherwise, we face an unprecedented catastrophe.
• Our identity is based on how we feel, not on objective facts.

There are lots more, but these seem to be the ‘big’ ones.

Addressing each of them in turn would take up too much space, but underlying them all is the idea that we don’t need God. We can explain things and run our lives exactly how we want without any reference or need for a Creator. Romans 1 speaks about how we suppress truth and exchange it for a lie – the inference being ‘the’ lie that God (if he exists) is not good, so we need to become independent from him (See Rom 1:18, 25); an idea that came from the devil right from the beginning.

But that idea has consequences. No Creator means no purpose or meaning to our lives, or for that matter, anything. If the world now is how it always has been, there is no hope for the future – wrongs will never be put right. If we can choose who we are, we lose real identity as we become subject to the fickleness of our feelings. If we are solely responsible for the state of the world then we will live in fear and guilt.

Thinking that we don’t need a Creator leads to loss. We have lost purpose, justice, hope, identity and peace.

On the other hand, the Bible presents truth in the form of a person, Jesus, who said that he was the Truth (John 14:6). Of course, anyone can say that – but he is the only one to demonstrate it by predicting his crucifixion and resurrection, then three days after a brutal execution comes back from the dead, just as he said (and just as had been prophesied for centuries beforehand). What he says is true. More than that, he is the incarnation of Truth.

Jesus is Truth

John 14:6

He is the author of creation – all things were made by him John 1:3. The account of the creation is given in Genesis 1 and 2. It was declared to be ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31).

Human beings were part of that creation, from the beginning, made male and female (Matthew 19:4).

The Genesis account goes on to describe ‘the Fall’, an act of rebellion by the first couple resulting in catastrophe for the whole creation. In Romans 8, Paul explains how the whole creation is subjected to futility and is in bondage to corruption (Romans 8:20,21).

It’s interesting to see how a good lie contains elements of truth. Humanity is the cause of the problems in the world, but as a result of our rebellion, not simply our nature.

But God has not abandoned his creation. Speaking of Jesus, Paul writes how he holds all things together (Colossians 1:15-17). Similarly in Hebrews 1:3. Not only that, but he works out everything according to his will (Ephesians 1:11), so all things have a purpose.

While on earth, Jesus demonstrated his power over creation when, for instance, he controlled the weather Matthew 8:26.

And because the world now is not what it originally was, there is the hope of restoration. There is the promise of a ‘new heavens and a new earth’ where the old things are put away (see Isaiah 65:17 and 2 Peter 3:13), described more fully in Revelation 21:1-4.

These are all big topics, but in summary, God made everything good with men and women being a high point in creation. We have rebelled against him, but in Jesus he has made it possible to recover that lost relationship, and at some point in the future he will restore all things. Paul addressed the philosophers in Athens in much the same way – see Acts 17:22-31.

The consequences of following the truth are clearly the opposite of believing a lie: there is meaning, there is a purpose to our lives, we can know who we are, there is a future for us and the creation which gives us hope.

Of course, we have to be careful – finding and living by the truth is not always easy in a fallen world. Interestingly, we had a sermon recently which emphasised the importance of critical thinking and how we need to ‘test every spirit’ (1 John 4:1, see also 1 Thess 5:2).

God has not left us alone though. He has given us his Spirit, who guides us into all truth (John 16:13), and the Word (the Bible) John 17:17 and 2 Timothy 2:15.

And back to Psalm 40:4 – the one who makes the Lord his trust is truly ‘blessed’!

1. It’s known as ‘antithetical parallelism’, a device in Hebrew poetry where a truth is emphasised by stating the opposite. [↩]