Contradictions

I was speaking with someone on the telephone the other day and they were telling me about an experience they had with someone else. That someone else was quite negative about the Scriptures because he felt some of the things in the Scriptures were not right, that there were contradictions. One thing in particular he had a problem with was the story of Job, and also with the scripture where Jesus says that unless you hate your mother, father, sister, brother, homes, land even for My sake you cannot be My disciple (Luke 14:26). So, I was thinking on these things and there is a number of places where there seems to be contradictions. They are not really contradictions, but they appear to be. If you arere only looking at things as they are naturally speaking, then it becomes a contradiction, and here is the reason why.

We are going to look at a scripture in Galatians and then we’re going to Exodus 20 and Matthew 10.

Galatians 5:17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other; so that you cannot do the things that you would.

That is King James English, but basically it says that the flesh nature of man opposes the Spirit and the Spirit opposes man. The two are warring against each other. Romans 8:7 says the carnal mind is enmity against God. It is not in submission to Christ. Not only that, but it is impossible to be. In other words, the world of man and the world of God are opposites, and in this case opposites do not attract. The world of man is in opposition to the world of God, and the world of God is in opposition to the world of man. They cannot be brought together as one. So, we must move out of the world of man and move into the world of God. In other words, we have to learn how to think in terms of the Spirit world, because God is Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. That is where real truth and real reality lies.

Paul talks about it in I Corinthians 4:18. He says that the natural realm of man is temporary. What seems to be real really isn’t real, so I want to give an example of this contradiction.

Exodus 20:12 Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God gives thee.

It is not only God’s will for us to honor our father and mother, but He makes it commandment. This is what you are to do: Honor your father and your mother that your days may be long on the earth. In other words, if you do not honor your father and mother there is a good chance that life would be shortened. In order to honor God, there must be honor to your father and your mother. That’s simple to understand.

Now turn to Matthew 10. We are moving into the New Testament and this is what Jesus has to say about it.

Matthew 10:34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

Of course, a sword is used for dividing. You remember Hebrews 4:12: For the Word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit. The sword is a divider.

Matthew 10:35-37 I am come to set a man at variance against his father and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
36 And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.
37 He that loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me: and he that loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.

Then Jesus continues talking about taking up the cross, following Him and things like that. But that seems to be a direct contradiction to what we find in Exodus where God says, “Thou shalt love your father and your mother,” and because it seems to be a contradiction some have said, “Well, the God of the New Testament is a different God from the God of the Old Testament.” We know that’s not true. It is the same God, but when you come to the New Testament you are dealing more with the realm of Spirit.

There was one occasion where Jesus gave a parable. After He gave the parable the disciples said, “Master, the people don’t understand what You are talking about. Why do you talk to them in parables for they’re not getting it?” Jesus answered, “It’s not given for them to know, but it is given for you to know” (Matthew 13:10-11). So, we learn that the Scriptures are written in such a way that only those who have a heart to walk with God, to love Him and to know Him, have an awareness and insight into the Scriptures that the natural man does not have. Paul talks about that somewhat in the I Corinthians 2.

Let’s look at Matthew 10:36 for example: And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. When you get to I Corinthians 5, Paul talks about our body being our house. Our physical body is the house in which we live. Our house then involves us physically, soulishly, and spiritually – body, soul, and spirit all involved in this house of what I am. Jesus said a man’s foes shall be they of his own household. When you begin walking with the Lord, it doesn’t take long for you to realize that the things that hinder you the most are found within your own self. Your foes are within you.

Then Jesus talks about having to make a difference, a separation from your father and your mother. Now what Jesus is talking about here is not your literal father and mother, but He is talking about the father, for example, as being all of the things that you have been involved with – your experiences, your environments – all of the things subtotal that have made you what you are. That has to do with education, environment, people who have shaped your thinking and your outlook, all of these type things. These are things that have fathered you.

In the same sense, there are many, many things that have been brought to birth within you that causes you to be the way you are. So, when Jesus says that you are to hate your father and your mother, He is not talking about your literal father and mother; He is talking about all those things of man’s world that have caused you to become what you are. It is those things that hinder your walk with God. These are the things that will oppose the Spirit realm, so it becomes quite necessary to be divided or to be separated from them. It is not our literal father and mother that God has a problem with, because He expects us to love them and care about them. But it is all those other things of this world that have birthed things in us and caused us to be something that God is not pleased with.

There are a lot of people who do not understand that because they only see things in the natural, so they tend to reject the Scriptures because they don’t grasp the true meaning.

Over in the first part of Genesis it says that the serpent beguiled Eve. “Ah, did God really say that you are not to eat from that tree?” (Genesis 3:1). In our natural way of thinking, a serpent is a snake. We think of a literal serpent. Does a serpent or a snake or a reptile talk? I’ve never seen one talking, but here we are presented in the Word of God, which only presents truth, speaking of a serpent talking. It is talking to Eve and Eve talks back to it. Eve doesn’t seem to be startled at all about this serpent talking. That seems a little farfetched and so again people tend to turn away from the Scriptures because of that. They reject many things that the Scriptures say.

However, when you get to the New Testament, the Pharisees were a people who were very, very religious. In their religiosity they were turning people away from God in such a way that they had control over the people. When the Lord Jesus spoke to the Pharisees He called them serpents, “You serpents and you brood of vipers” (Mathew 23:33), because what came out of their mouths in the teaching of the people was like the venom of a serpent, to lead them astray from the will of God. Now, these Pharisees were not literal serpents crawling on the ground. These Pharisees were people, but the serpent of them was their teaching. It was descriptive of their spirit, the fact that they were deceptive, subtle, and leading the people astray. That is the serpent.

So, you go back to Genesis and begin to look at it in that light and say, “Well, the serpent here. Was that really a snake that talked or could it have been something of the Pharisee spirit that was also in Eve leading her astray?” The Scriptures don’t necessarily have to present actual fact in the natural. The important thing is not whether there was a serpent in the garden, did it speak, and was there a literal tree they were not to eat of its fruit. The important thing is: Can you hear what God is saying in the story? What is God speaking?

The biggest problem of the person I was told about in the telephone conversation was the story of Job. He couldn’t understand why God would allow everything Job had to be destroyed, his children killed. What it speaks about as being his children doesn’t necessarily have to be his literal children. But everything that is produced by us, by our own natural abilities as a result of the way we think and our carnal mind, that is our sons and daughters. Those are the things that we have produced. They are of us and when they are born of us in our natural humanistic ways then God wants to separate them from us so we can be one with Him. Then that which is produced in us by Him becomes things of reality, things of a divine nature. So, it’s not people that the Lord is trying to separate us from, but He wants to separate us from the things that have made us as we are that are against Him and the things that have come forth from our lives that are not of Him. Then when someone looks at these things just naturally, it appears to be a contradiction and many times they just reject the whole thing.

There are many more of them. Whenever we see a contradiction, that is the time we need to look to the Lord and look for an answer, look for a way, because what we have presented to us in the Scriptures, and most particularly in the New Testament, are spiritual truths and spiritual truths are never one with truths of the natural realm because they come from a different world. Amen.