Face it! - An Introduction To Our Content

I played on my first little league football team in the third grade. Those were fun days, with early life lessons about winning, losing, teamwork, and enduring pain. We lost every game. Our team was struggling on one particular Saturday morning, which was normal. In that kids' league, the coaches were on the field calling plays in the huddle. Our team was a mess in performance and behavior, and my coach walked off the field in frustration, leaving us to call our own plays. In the next play, we scored a touchdown. I saw that as an outstanding achievement by our underperforming offense. 

In the car on the way home from the game, with the audacity of a cocky third grader, I said, "The coach left the game and we scored on our own!" Obviously disapproving of my assessment, my Dad said, "You scored because you wanted to." He then proceeded to lecture me about attitude and effort. 

Dad saw things differently than I did as a third grader. He was right. This incident in childhood and others like it initiated a lifelong effort on my part to see the world the way my father saw it. I wanted to see through his eyes. For the believer, seeing the world…Facing It!…by viewing all things through the lenses of God's absolute truth is essential. Our own carnal, selfish perspective will tarnish everything we try to do without the purifying effect of God's word. The Psalmist understood this. He said, "Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way" (Ps. 119:128). When we begin with complete submission to the authority of God's word, we start with an advantage. We are protected from the negative outcomes of "every false way." Solomon understood this. He said, "Have not I written to thee excellent things in counsels and knowledge, That I might make thee know the certainty of the words of truth; that thou mightest answer the words of truth to them that send unto thee?" (Pr. 22:20, 21). God's word provides the only certain counsel. By viewing our world through the filter of the absolute truth of God's word, we can judge with insights beyond our ordinary capacity. Paul understood this. He made it clear. The inspired scripture is profitable to the extent that it furnishes (supplies and equips) the man of God throughly (wholly) unto all good works. God's word is perfect (Ps. 19:7), sufficient, and effectual (1 Thess. 2:13). 

Another way of describing this matter is what philosophers call a "worldview." The Germans, Kant and Hegel, used the word Weltanschauung. The basic idea involves a "conceptual scheme" or paradigm through which we view the world, determining what we believe and how we interpret everything. For the Bible-believing Christian, our worldview begins and ends with what the scripture says. Carl F. H. Henry said, "Our theological systems are not infallible, but God's propositional revelation is." Because I believe the Bible to be the word of God, I reject naturalistic evolutionary humanism. That does not mean I can single-handedly triumph over the skepticism of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. It does, however, ensure that I trust God's word over theirs…every time and in every way.

The 1689 London Baptist Confession begins with these words:

The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience, although the light of nature, and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God, as to leave men inexcusable; yet they are not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and His will which is necessary unto salvation. Therefore it pleased the Lord at sundry times and in diversified manners to reveal Himself, and to declare (that) His will unto His church; and afterward for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan, and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing; which makes the Holy Scriptures to be most necessary, those former ways of God's revealing His will unto His people being now completed.

In a later paragraph, the confession says, "The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself; and therefore when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which are not many, but one), it must be searched by other places that speak more clearly." These historic Baptists were saying "We believe the word of God and trust its interpretation of itself above all other sources and impulses. While the confessions of historic Baptists are only as reliable as they are biblical, the determination of those Baptists to believe God's word alone to be binding on the conscience, prevented the kind of hysterical error that currently infects popular Christian expression. 

Traditions shared along cultural, familial, or religious lines may be meaningful, but they often hinder facing our world biblically. The Bible must be the arbitrator when our traditions are in question. Sadly, feelings and internal impulses are the guiding therapists for so many Christians today. God has spoken only when you can identify the message biblically. No one is to "follow their hearts." Self-authenticating, inner-guide mysticism is the ruin of discernment. Even the conscience can only hold you to the highest level of good and evil that it has been educated to know. Christian scholarship can be a tremendous help, but even the most brilliant voices can be wrong, thus the injunction to "…let God be true, but every man a liar" (Rom. 3:4).

Faith is believing what has been revealed. THE faith is what is known by revelation. When the Christian speaks of revelation, he refers to the collective truth that God has made known to us. Therefore, we understand that Christianity is a revealed religion. Man did not find it or invent it. God spake unto the fathers (He. 1:1, 2). The fathers did not wake up one day and say, "Let us find the Creator." D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said about Romans 1:17:

There is no Christianity apart from revelation. And the Christian church is as she is today because men have forgotten revelation, and have been putting philosophy in its place. They have been trying to find God. They have been trying to reconstruct a Saviour, a 'Jesus of Nazareth.' They have been making a gospel of their own. We have heard so much about the quest for truth, the 'search' for reality. Now that is the exact opposite of the gospel. The gospel is not something that invites us to join in a great search or a great quest. It is an announcement. It is revelation. It is an unfolding, and unveiling of something. It means 'making manifest' or 'making plain and clear.' That is the meaning of revelation - the exact opposite of what has been so popular for at least the last hundred years. And the apostle says he is not ashamed of this gospel because it is the revelation of God's righteousness 'from faith to faith.’

Through revelation, inspiration, preservation, canonization, translation, and daily illumination, the believer can hear from God - he can Face It - by viewing the world through the lenses of God's absolute truth. Charles Spurgeon said, "If your creed and Scripture do not agree, cut your creed to pieces, but make it agree with this book." I say amen. I also say the same about traditions, emotions, family preferences, and any other expression of human opinion. Our new work with Face It media content is an effort to encourage a biblical approach to seeing the world - a return to sound, theological presuppositions. Face It seeks a revival of scriptural faith and practice that would value theology and exposition over pop Christianity and superficial spirituality. No one, especially me, has all the answers. My primary goal is to help struggling saints and sincere preachers re-value God's truth in all matters of faith and practice.