By Lisa Wilmore
Scripture: “And Macaiah said, As the LORD liveth, what the LORD saith unto me, that I will speak (I King 22:14).
My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
In our recent Sunday School Lesson, we learned a valuable lesson on the importance of speaking the truth no matter the consequences. In fact, the Bible teaches us that Jesus is truth. Jesus made this declaration to His disciples noted in the book of John (John 14). Everything about Him is right and everything that is opposite of Him is a lie. Therefore, we must “Stand for the truth and speak it in love.”
The noted scripture in this message is taken from an account in 1 Kings 22 (recent Sunday School Lesson). Macaiah is God’s prophet, and he delivers the truth to Kings Ahab and Jehoshaphat about going into battle with the Syrians. He tells King Ahab that he will be killed during the battle. As a result, Macaiah is imprisoned because of his commitment to telling the truth as given to him by God. To make mention of, there were 400 false prophets who lied to both kings. They told them that they would defeat the Syrians. Of course, the Kings listened to the lie told by the 400 men and acted on it while ignoring God’s truth. As a result, King Ahab was killed as God had planned because of his wickedness and disobedience.
Have you ever told a lie and discovered that the lie you communicated really was not necessary? Did you correct it or did you find yourself in a web of more lies after telling one simple untruth? Interestingly, we live in a world where people practice lying and do not think anything about it. Actually, the world encourages it and accepts lies as truth. Since the world accept lies as truth, people are despised who practice telling the truth, especially Biblical truth.
It is important that we stand for the truth even when we have to deliver some hard truth. When delivering hard truth, speak it with a heart of love. Paul reminds us as we walk as believers in Christ Jesus, we must speak the truth in love. “But speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ” (Ephesians 4:15).
Many individuals are deceived by what they want to hear rather than what the Word of God says. As believers in Jesus, we must not deceive people with a forest of lies but speak the truth even when it hurts us.
