“Reality, Revealed”

"Reality, Revealed"       

    

    What is reality?  The answer is everything that exists, beginning with God, of course, and including everything He made.

    "From everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God" (Psalm 90:2).

    "By Him all things consist… I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before Him" (Ecclesiastes 3:14).

    God alone is eternally real, in the sense He has always existed.  However, the things He made are also real because a God of genuine substance and existence cannot create mere illusion.  This includes both spiritual and earthly beings, or angels and humans.  We all had a point of beginning, including physical conception for human beings, and an unrevealed process whereby God made the angelic host.  Thus, we exist both now and forevermore as personalities who must not only be, but must also believe in the reality of who and what God is, who and what we are, and the nature of the created universe.

   The existence of sin clouds our ability to discover and evaluate reality.  "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" declared the Lord Jesus Christ to Nicodemus (John 3:3).  No effort on our part can penetrate the fog to view reality as it actually exists.  Thus, our Creator must reveal Himself and His truth in ways  that open our eyes to the true nature of the Creator and His creation.  By the physical universe, by His Spirit, by His Word, and by His personal involvement in our lives, God presses upon us the Great Fact of Himself, and the subsequent facts that bear witness to reality.  "He left not Himself without witness" (Acts 14:17).

   "And He cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto Him, and besought Him to touch him.  And He took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when He had spit on his eyes, and put His hands upon him, He asked him if he saw ought. And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees, walking. After that He put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly" (Mark 8:22-25).

   As created beings damaged by sin, we see enough to function to one degree or another as human beings in a fallen world.  The view is greatly distorted, however.  Salvation in the Lord Jesus forms a new creation, spiritually birthed and given the capacity to clearly perceive reality.  First, we see the kingdom of God, and more literally, the King.  This leads to life and our proper role as servant sons and daughters of the Lord.  Then we are enabled to see "every man clearly."  The love of God known and understood enables us to see other people as souls made by Him, and for whom the Lord Jesus died (Psalm 100:3; I John 2:2).  Reality thus presents to us right relationship with God and with other human beings.  We also view the world and the universe as God's domain, and the scene of His working to fulfill His eternal purpose in Christ - "the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof, and they that dwell therein" (Psalm 24:1).  This is reality, properly seen and understood as we perceive God, people, ourselves, and the world in terms of Truth, as revealed by our Lord.  

"In Thy light shall we see light." 

(Psalm 36:9).

Weekly Memory Verse 

    Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

(John 14:27)