Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - John MacArthur - Is Truth Objective?

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the BibleIn this episode Pastor John MacArthur from Grace Community Church answers the question: “Is Truth Objective?”Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial In. If you haven't already, if you would subscribe and rate the Dial In podcast, that helps more people hear about the show. Well, in this episode, I sit down with Pastor John MacArthur and ask him, is truth relative? Is truth objective? You're not going to want to miss it. Let's Dial In. dialing. Pastor John, many people today believe that truth is relative. So I often hear people say, well, that might be true for you, but it's not true for me. Oprah said, you know, a couple years ago, speak your truth as if truth was subjective and relative to individuals. My question is, what is truth and why is truth, especially biblically, is it something objective and not subjective and not relative to individual feelings or opinions?

Well, just take a look at the world. The world can be viewed in physical terms. It can be viewed in spiritual terms. When you view the world in physical terms, truth is absolute. You may not believe in the law of gravity, but if you jump off a 10-story building, you're going down. I mean, these are inviolable laws. They can shoot a guy into space, and they can put him on a satellite and let him go around the world again and again and again, get off, get on something, and come back to Earth because there are fixed laws that are inviolable. And based on those scientific absolutes, all of that space travel works. When you talk about science,

we talk about molecular science, or you talk about medicine, all the things that come in the field of healing people's bodies. It's all based on fixed science, the things that never vary. When you talk about computers and media and nanotechnology, it's all hard science at its foundation. So the whole world, in terms of its physical reality, operates on fixed laws. Why would we assume that the God who created the world on

fixed laws, when he got to the spiritual side of things, just said, hey, I don't care. Do what you want. The same God of order and the same God of absolute truth manifest in the created world is going to be just as firm on what is true in the spiritual world. Look, you see Psalm 19, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament chose his handiwork. And he talks about how the sun drags our solar system from one end of heaven to the next. I don't know if everybody knows that, but our solar system is in orbit, dragged by the sun. That's what Psalm 19 says.

And then it flips and says, the law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. So when you go to the spiritual side, God is just as absolute. God is just as immovable. God is just as unchanging and has set his law down as true. And that's what we have in the Bible. That's where you go to find what is true. What's the significance then, Pastor John? So Jesus says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Why do you think Jesus defines himself as truth? Because he was the true God, the one true God, God incarnate. Because when he spoke, he spoke nothing but the truth. And because he told the truth about everything, he revealed all truth. In other words, he's in the scriptures as everything, he revealed all truth.

In other words, he's in the scriptures as the, I guess you could say, the creator. He created a world where truth is made manifest physically. And then when he came into the world, he spoke spiritual truth, again, that is fixed and absolute truth. When he says, I am the truth, he means I'm the source of truth. Everything about me is true. Everything I am, everything I say is true. Yeah. No, and I, one of the things that, you know, I think about is often people view the truth of the Bible and the objective reality of it as, and they kind of remove themselves from it as if it's obscure and ambiguous and hard to understand. Can we just,

as you close, talk about the clarity of the truth that Christians believe in. Well, first of all, the Bible is revelation, not obfuscation. God didn't write the Bible to make it hard. He wrote it to make it clear. The Bible is clear. However, it's only clear to people who know him. It's only clear to those who have the Spirit of God living in them as their truth teacher. So I get it. If you're not a believer and you pick up a Bible, it looks hopelessly impossible. The second thing I would say about that is people who say the Bible's hard to understand are mostly people who've never read it. They draw these ridiculous conclusions out of ignorance. You know, Thomas Sowell had a great statement. He said, you may not be able to know everything, but at least you can know what you're ignorant about.

And to make any kind of statement about the Bible until you've read it all and exhausted the effort to find out if it's true is really folly. No, that's so helpful. Thank you so much, Pastor John. Thank you.