Turning Towards Truth
April 9, 2006 (Palm Sunday) John 18:28-38
Intro:
Today is Palm Sunday, where we celebrate Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem, where the people welcomed Him and celebrated Him as a King, singing hosanna’s, laying palms and even their cloaks on the ground for His donkey to walk over. It is a high point, a time of joy. But it is short-lived. This acknowledgement of Jesus as a king by the people leads, later on in the week, to this conversation between Jesus and Pilate. From John 18:28-38:
“the Jews led Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness the Jews did not enter the palace; they wanted to be able to eat the Passover. 29So Pilate came out to them and asked, "What charges are you bringing against this man?"
30"If he were not a criminal," they replied, "we would not have handed him over to you."
31Pilate said, "Take him yourselves and judge him by your own law."
"But we have no right to execute anyone," the Jews objected. 32This happened so that the words Jesus had spoken indicating the kind of death he was going to die would be fulfilled.
33Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?"
34"Is that your own idea," Jesus asked, "or did others talk to you about me?"
35"Am I a Jew?" Pilate replied. "It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it you have done?"
36Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews. But now my kingdom is from another place."
37"You are a king, then!" said Pilate.
Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."
38"What is truth?" Pilate asked.” (John 18:28-38).
Turning Towards
This year, as we have walked towards Easter, we have focused our theme of repentance around the idea of turning towards: we have turned towards forgiveness, towards joy, towards love. My hope and prayer has been that these good things would be so attractive, so desirable, that we would be motivated to turn away from our sin, and live in the goodness of the things of God. This morning, I want to pick up Pilate’s question, and reflect together on turning towards truth.
What Is Truth?
At the end of this exchange about whether Jesus is claiming to be a king or not, which is a fascinating conversation, Jesus says, “for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” (vs. 37). It is a little cryptic… what does Jesus mean? Pilate’s question sort of makes sense after hearing Jesus say that, we might wonder also: what is this “truth” that Jesus is testifying to?
The answer becomes clear after Jesus dies and is resurrected. The truth is simply this, and I’ll borrow Paul’s words from Rom 5:8: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” The “truth” that Jesus is speaking of is that God loves humanity – deeply, permanently, steadfastly, perfectly. The truth is that the love of God is so strong for humanity that Jesus would come and die for our sin, so that our relationship of love with God could be restored.
The truth is that God loves you.
The truth is that God forgives you.
The truth is that God saves you.
The truth is that God accepts you.
The truth is that God adopts you.
The truth is that God welcomes you.
The truth is that God changes you.
The truth is that God lives in you through the Holy Spirit.
The truth is that God works through you by the Holy Spirit.
A World of Lies:
Ever since the beginning of history, the battle has been about truth. At the very beginning, in the garden of Eden, the devil deceives, he manipulates, he twists, he spins, and he questions. “1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, ’You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?"
2 The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ’You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ "
4 "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. 5 "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."” (Gen 3:1-4).
The lie comes, and the heart of the lie was then and still is today something very simple: God can’t be trusted. God is trying to keep something from you, God is playing games with you, God is messing with you, God is manipulating you, God is the puppeteer and you are a puppet who exists for God’s simple amusement. Lies, every one – and at the heart is that same lie, that God can’t be trusted.
I see it everywhere today. God can’t be trusted to love us unconditionally, we have to earn his love. It is a lie, which leads us to try to “be good enough” and ends up with us frustrated and disillusioned and wanting to give up. The truth is this: “8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Eph 2:8-9).
Another lie is this: God can’t be trusted to take care of us. That lie leads us to see every challenge and hurt and struggle in our lives as evidence that God doesn’t love us and can’t be trusted to take care of us, INSTEAD of seeing those things as opportunities to see how God really does take care of us through those challenges and hurts and struggles. The truth is this: “28And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (Rom 8:28).
A big lie: God can’t be trusted to forgive us. We hear this one a lot – we sin, again, and the lie comes that maybe we went too far this time, maybe God is fed up with us and has run out of patience, maybe we have used up the allotment of grace that He has for us and now, too bad for us. The truth is this: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9).
Here is a lie that is huge in our culture: God can’t be trusted to love us for who we are. Everywhere around us we see commercials, magazines, billboards, all screaming as loud as they possibly can this message: own this, look like this, wear this, drink this, act like this, AND ONLY THEN WILL YOU BE LOVABLE. It screams this, and through sheer repetition we end up believing the assumption – that we are NOT lovable the way we are. We aren’t good enough, pretty enough, thin enough, athletic enough, either hairy enough (if we are talking about the top of our male heads) or smooth enough (if we are talking about any part of the female body other than the head), we aren’t cool enough or hip enough or funny enough – AND THEREFORE, WE CONCLUDE, WE ARE NOT LOVABLE, and how could God possibly be trusted to love us. The truth is this: “16"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17God did not send his Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.” (John 3:16-17).
Turning Towards Truth:
Sometimes these lies are subtle, and they go deep down. They are rooted in painful experiences of hurt, of rejection, and the antidote is to discover what God’s truth says to those lies, and to hear that truth speak to those experiences. That takes a courageous journey, because it requires that we dig through those lies, bring them out into the light, and see the truth that combats those lies.
That courageous journey is a part of the whole process of repentance, and the whole process of lent. The goal is that we would be prepared and free to stand at the cross and the empty tomb, worshiping our Lord Jesus who loved us enough to die for us and who loved us enough to pay the penalty for our sin, and who proved Himself victorious over sin and death and the devil when He rose from the dead.
What better act of worship is there than this: to believe that love, accept that forgiveness, and live in truth as a whole, restored, forgiven child of God. And to do so at those deep levels, where the lies that God can’t really be trusted hide away in the shadows, and where we can allow the truth to pour in like light flooding into every dark corner and sending those lies screaming in anguish. That is an offering of worship with which God will be extremely pleased!
Then, the next step, is to retrain ourselves to recognize the lies as soon as they appear, and to immediately combat them with the truth. Memorizing Scripture is by far the best tool here, because then you are already to fight the lie with the truth. Being accountable to someone else you trust, who can help you identify the lies and can help you find the truth that combats those lies, is another excellent tool.
And believe me, as you fight the lies you will be victorious. After a while, they will be so obvious and so obviously false that they will sometimes even be laughable. Let me give you a personal example: some time ago, I was feeling needy and selfish, and so interpreted a number of petty, minor things at home as deliberate acts on Joanne’s part to ignore me and my needs. It was completely false, but in my frame of mind at the time I didn’t see that. I listened to and believed a number of these little lies, and inside felt a little “ooh, poor me…”. One day, all the little lies added up in my head and suddenly I had this thought: “your wife doesn’t love you.” That is exactly the way the thought came – “YOUR wife”…, which is interesting. I stopped, and then in my mind thought, “what? my wife doesn’t love me??” And instantly, I saw how ridiculous that lie was – and I actually laughed out loud. I realized that thought was the most ludicrous thing in the world, and understood what had been going on.
Wear Your Belt:
Back in my youth ministry days, we were on a “picture scavenger hunt”, and one of the things on the list was to get a picture of one of your team members being arrested. PRETEND ARRESTED! My group went to the police station at West Edmonton Mall, and as I was joking around with one of the constables he told me that his favorite part of the job was arresting kids whose pants were about 10 sizes to big – that was a fashion craze for a while – and the law required that he confiscate their belts. He chuckled as he described these kids, handcuffed, yet desperately trying to hold up their pants.
In Eph 6, Paul tells us to put on our “spiritual armor” – and includes what he calls “the belt of truth”. You see, for the Roman soldier the belt was the part that held it all together – the sword hung on it, the breastplate tucked into it, the shield could rest on it, and there was a spot for a hidden dagger and for the money pouch. Without the belt, the rest would fall apart, be out of place, or flap around uselessly.
That is how truth is in our spiritual lives. We need the truth, we need to turn away from the lies and embrace the truth.
Conclusion:
Let me close with this: we’ve all heard the old cliché, “the truth hurts”. Some of what I have described is a challenge, and might at times be painful. But rather than that cliché, I prefer a different saying: one of Jesus, one hanging on the plaque in front of our Christian Education wing, which comes from John 8:32. Jesus said: “the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).
