Did anybody happen to see the news story about the 11-year-old boy from MN who was given the opportunity to win $50,000 if he could hit a hockey puck through a 3.5-inch hole? Did anybody hear about that? The good news is that the young man made the shot. He nailed it from 89 feet. The bad news is that he wasn’t the one that was supposed to make the shot. It was his twin brother Nick who was supposed to make the shot. They had this raffle at this hockey game and a drawing. Nick Smith was on the name of this ticket. Nick was outside playing so his dad encouraged Nate to take the shot. He made it and there was this big roar. They lost track that there was a switch going on there. This promotion company that set the whole thing up was ready to give out the $50,000 until they received a phone call from the parents. They informed them of the switch. The company didn’t know what to do. It didn’t matter that the company didn’t know what to do. All the parents knew and the boys knew that they had to do the right thing. That is what they did. There was a poll that followed that and a lot of public opinion. Some people felt that the company should have still given the boy the money. Others felt he shouldn’t get it because he didn’t take the shot. I thought I would take an informal survey here. How many of you think that the little boy should get the $50,000? How many think he shouldn’t get the $50,000? About half and half. It doesn’t matter what we think. All that matters is that the parents and kids felt the need to do the right thing. They did according to them what they felt was the right thing. Out of that, fruit came out of it. They didn’t get the $50,000 but the two hockey leagues got $20,000 each and the boys got scholarships. Even more importantly, they got a life lesson that is going to yield fruit for years to come long after that money would have been spent.
Today, we are going to address this idea of truth. We are going to look at it from a biblical perspective. If you have your Bibles, open up to John 8:42. We have been looking at the gospel of John. Last week, Chris addressed the first part of this particular passage. You may recall that there is this ongoing dialogue between the Pharisees and Jesus. Last week, Chris talked about the idea where Jesus told the Pharisees if you just would hold on to my teachings, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Of course, they took offense at this. We have never been enslaved to anything. We are Abraham’s descendants and God is our father. This is where we pick up the story here at John 8:42. (Scripture read here.)
There is a lot of information here. Too much to go through in one week. It starts out by Jesus letting them know that if God were really your father, you would love me because the father is the one who sent me. Then Jesus is thinking why is it that they don’t get this. He goes on to say “Why is my language not clear to you?” Why are you not getting this? Then he goes on to say “Because you are unable to hear what I say.” Keep in mind he is not talking about physical hearing. They could hear the physical words. He is talking about a spiritual discernment. A spiritual understanding. A spiritual hearing. The man without the spirit is not able to hear the words of God. In 1 Corinthians 1:14, Paul speaks of this. He says “The man without the spirit does not accept the things that come from the spirit of God for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” What he is saying is you don’t have the spiritual discernment. Then he goes on to say the reason you don’t have the spiritual discernment is pretty much because you have the wrong father. He goes on to say “You belong to your father, the Devil.” These are pretty strong words here. I don’t have time to go into a theology of Satan, but the bottom line is when it comes to the Devil people seem to either believe in him or not believe in him. They believe in him too much or not enough. In the introduction to “The Screwtape Letters”, C.S. Lewis writes “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to believe in their existence. The other is to believe and to feel an excess of unhealthy interest in them.” We don’t want to fall in either one of those extremes. It really doesn’t matter what we think about the devil or Satan or the demons. What matters is what Jesus thought about them and whether or not Jesus believed in them. He believed in them. He would often find himself confronting them. In this particular situation, he felt that he was confronting the devil directly, at least their children. He is basically implying that they belong to the father, their devil, so they are devil children. Not only that, but that they want to carry out his desires. The underlying word here for desires has a sense of lustful, covenant, evil desires. That is what we are talking about here.
You say what is the Devil’s desire? We could skip ahead a couple chapters in John and we could see it very clearly. You may recall this passage in John 10:10 that says (Jesus is talking about Satan here) “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.” That is Satan’s objective. Steal, kill, and destroy. That is his agenda. On the other hand, we know that Jesus came that they may have life and they may have it to the full. If you ever want to know the difference between what Jesus is up to and what Satan is up to, it is right here in this verse. As we turn back to John 8, we see that Satan has the perfect résumé to carry out his agenda. In fact, Jesus goes on to say “He was a murderer from the beginning.” Meaning way back to the beginning of time. We can look in the garden but two steps out of the garden he incited Cain to kill his brother Abel because he was jealous of him and then on and on and on. He was a murderer from the very beginning. Then it goes on to say “Not holding to the truth for there is no truth in him.” Satan doesn’t have one iota of truth within him. He is a liar to the core. I was thinking about this and really you could say that Satan has integrity. I know sometimes we think of integrity as a good thing, but really integrity can go good or bad. You can have moral integrity but you can have evil integrity. The whole idea of integrity is where we get the word integer from. It has a sense of wholeness. Satan was consistent through and through. He had integrity but it was integrity that was based on lies. Consequently, he spoke his native language and his native language was lies. He was a murderer from the beginning. There was no truth in him. He spoke this native language of lies so he earned the title Father of Lies. He is good at this. It only makes sense that his way that he would work would be through lies. That makes perfect sense. If Jesus is the way and the truth, and Satan is against Jesus, he is going to use lies to attack Jesus. We think about the situation with the Pharisees and what Jesus is saying is you have gotten so caught up in lies that you can’t even hear the truth anymore. You have lived in this world of lies. You are the line of Satan. You are one of the Devil’s children so you are not able to even hear what I say. In fact, at the very end of this section, he summarizes it all back from the beginning. “If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? He who belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.” He has recapped that whole section right there. The reason they don’t here is because they don’t belong to God. They belong to the Devil. The Devil’s language is lies so they are not able to hear the truth that would come from God.
That is really the only part of the passage I wanted to hit on today. But the question is how does that pertain to us today? How does that pertain to the world? In many ways, we are kind of all in the same boat. At least the non-believers are in the same boat. They go through life, and they are not able to hear from God because they are bombarded with all these lies that come at them 24 hours a day. You say where do those lies come from? Anywhere and everywhere. Through the media. Through the TV and the movies. What is the message we hear through the TV and movies? Do whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want, to whomever you want. Isn’t that the message we hear? What about in advertising? Buy this. Drink this. Smoke this. Wear this. Drive this. And you will be happy. That is a lie because we know people that do that and don’t end up very happy. The bottom line message is we are told by culture to do whatever makes you feel good. You deserve it. People pursue what they perceive as happiness and what they have actually done is swap the truth for a lie. This has been going on for 2,000 years. There is a passage in Romans when Paul is speaking about how bad the world has become 2,000 years ago that is very applicable today when he says “They (meaning the pagan world) exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worship and serve created things rather than the creator who is forever praised. Amen.” That is still true today. They have exchanged the truth of God for a lie. People know the truth. The truth will set you free, but they chose to accept the lie. What happens is we go after that. We think it is going to give us happiness. Those things become things that become worship and what we are doing is worshipping a lie. Back in Romans, as you go through Romans, you see that the punishment is not necessarily the fire of hell and everything else. It is God giving them over to their desires, their lust, all of it. To the point where they destroy themselves. C.S. Lewis says don’t think about hell as the fire and brimstone. Think about hell as the place where everyone gets what they want, even a life without God. You want it, go for it. Then you become consumed by your passions, your desire, and it is a life without God. We say hell is not fair. Why can’t everybody go to heaven? Well, they didn’t want God on this earth. Why are they going to want him when they get to hell? That is what is going on here. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie.
On the other hand, Christians supposedly, at least on paper, made another exchange. They, in theory, exchanged the lie for truth. The passage in Colossians says that when you become a Christian there is a spiritual thing happening. It says “You have been transferred from the dominion of darkness to the kingdom of the Son.” That is the exchange that happens. Yet some people say I don’t feel like that. Why do I sometimes feel like I am caught up in these lies of the world? I think it is really the churches fault. We give the impression that if you become a Christian, life is going to be all merry and puppy dogs and flowers. It is not like that. In fact, when Jesus stepped out of the water of baptism, where did he go? Into the desert to be tempted by Satan. How did he tempt him? With powers and riches and worship. He tempted him with lies. Why would we think that we are immune from that? In fact, we are a threat. You are not a threat if you are not a Christian. Satan just says you go enjoy yourself. You will be consumed by your own desires. I don’t have to do anything. Once you are a Christian, you have become part of God’s army and you become a threat. Of course Satan is going to continue to probe you and try to get you to mess up. That is a scary thing, but the good news is what we know is that his mission hasn’t changed. He is still all about stealing, killing, and destroying. We also know that he uses the same tactics. The same tactics is lies. We have to be on guard in lies no matter what form they come in. They come in many different forms.
Keep in mind, as a side note, I am not talking about what I would call white lies. Those lies we tell almost on a daily basis just to preserve someone or something. The example is like on Sunday morning you come in and you ask somebody, “How are you doing?” and the person says “I’m great.” All the while the person knows, no I feel lousy. People say how are you feeling today Chuck? I feel great because the pastor is always supposed to feel great. Sometimes I don’t feel great. I feel lousy. So I guess you could technically say that is a lie right? Another example is you are getting ready to go out on a nice date with your wife. She is all dressed up and she turns to you and says “Honey does this dress make me look a little bit plump?” She is waiting for an answer. You are thinking, yes it makes you look a little bit chunky, but instead you say “No, you look fabulous.” What you are trying to do is preserve that person. You are trying to preserve your life in my case. Once again, your intent is not to deceive in an evil sense.
Really, a lie in its purest form as defined by Webster is to make an untrue statement with an intent to deceive. Evil intent for your benefit. I would say that generally speaking, most people would believe that those types of lies are not good. I was trying to find some evidence of this. I was looking through the internet and I ended up at the British Broadcasting system. There was an article on their front page about lying. It was an ethics article. I glanced through it. It talked about why lying was not good. There are a couple points they bring out. They say “Lying is bad because a generally truthful world is a good thing. Lying diminishes trust between human beings.” We all agree. Would that be true? That is one reason. “Lying is bad because it treats those who are lied to as a means to achieve the liar’s purpose rather than as a valuable end in themselves.” True? I think so. “Lying is bad because it makes it difficult for the person being lied to to make a free and informed decision about the matter concerned.” If everybody lied, it would be hard to make an informed decision. “Lying is bad because it is a basic moral wrong. Lying is bad because it corrupts the liar.” Those are good reasons why it is bad to lie and I think we would all agree. This is not a religious article. This is secular ethics. They started talking about what do you do when you are tempted to lie. What do you rely on? They make this statement that caught my attention. It says “In most cases of personal small-scale lying, there is no opportunity to do anything more than consult their own conscience, but we should remember that our conscience is usually rather biased in our favor.” In other words, our conscience can lie to us. Our very own conscience is not going to be truthful because it is always geared towards our favor. It doesn’t take into account the other person. The difference is, for Christians, we have this built-in lie detector. The lie detector is called the Holy Spirit and also called the Spirit of Truth. We have that spiritual connection. We have this lie detector. We have that person within us, the third person of the trinity that is connected directly to the source of truth, to God. But you say why do we still get caught up in lies or hear lies or repeat lies or do deceptive things? I think a lot of times we just unplug it. We don’t feed it. We don’t encourage it. We don’t listen to it when it is trying to teach us the difference between truth and lie. We don’t listen to it when it is trying to speak with us. What happens is we get in a situation where we are tempted to lie or fraud or whatever, and the lie is stronger than the truth so the lies take over. Many times, we respond to the lie. At that point, what is happening, we are giving the devil what they call a foothold. Some of you may be familiar with the verse in Ephesians 4:26 where Paul says “Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the Devil a foothold.” The underlying word here for foothold is topos. It is where we get the word topography. It has to do with a sense of place. When you get caught up in a lie or do anything that is really advancing the agenda of the enemy, you are giving him a place in your life. You do that enough and he is going to just consume you.
It is so subtle though too. He doesn’t usually give us the big things. The big things are obvious that we know we are not supposed to do. It is the little things. It starts so subtle. Like he stated back in the garden, he said to Eve did God really say that you can’t eat from this tree? Did God really say that it is wrong to fudge on your timesheet or your expense report? Did God really say that it is wrong to go out and have a lunch with someone from the opposite sex that you have a liking for already? Did God really say that? Did God say it is wrong to cheat on your spouse? Did he really say that thing? So he plants the seed of doubt and you start thinking about it. Pretty soon you are rationalizing that maybe it is okay. In fact, rationalization I would say is the best ally of Satan. Rationalizations are usually on the side of Satan. What happens is you say it feels so good. How could something that feels so right be wrong? You start taking those steps and you give footholds. To be honest, nothing ever happens out of them. But you do one lie and you do another lie and pretty soon you are going down a trail toward death or stealing or killing. In fact, one of my favorite verses comes out of Proverbs 14:12. “There is a way that seems right to a man (or a woman), but in the end it leads to death.” This is one you should stick everywhere. Give it to your kids going off to college. There is a way that seems right. It seemed to right at the time. It seemed so right when President Clinton invited Monica into the office for quiet time. It seemed so right but it almost led to the death of his office. There are so many examples I could put it. It seemed so right at the time but it leads to some form of death. That is the logical conclusion. If you are trying to figure out if something is right or wrong, just think it through. Try to think it through to the logical conclusion. This is not just pertaining to lies of words or lies we speak or deceptive practices that we do. Sometimes it pertains to the lies that are spoken about us. You come out of the baptistery and you are all excited about your new conversion and somebody says you aren’t a Christian. You are never going to change. You are a loser. You are a failure. You have no value. They remind you of the past. Those are lies too that you can only counter by knowing the word.
That really brings me toward the end here. How do we know that we can hear God’s word and how do we go about hearing it? The first one should be obvious. The whole book of John is written so that those may believe. The first step in anything here is believe. The whole step is making sure that you belong to the right father. Once again, Jesus said if you say God is your father, then you love Jesus. If you don’t love Jesus, then God is not your father. It is as simple as that. In fact, he actually says that if you don’t believe that God sent me, then you make God out to be a liar. He writes in 1 John 5:10 “Anyone who believes in the son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar because he does not believe the testimony God as given about his son.” So when you don’t believe the word of God, when the Pharisees didn’t believe that Jesus was who he said he was, you are basically saying God is a liar. I have no nice way to say it. You are saying God lied about this whole thing. This is just a big hoax. That is not a good thing. You better be sure of that one. Once again, we have to know that we belong to the right father.
The second one is that we need to know the truth because it is the truth that is going to set us free. As Jesus says, “If you hold to my teaching you are really my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” People don’t know the truth. They think they are just going to get the truth on Sunday morning, but they never want to get involved in Bible studies. They don’t even want to get in their own quiet time. In a few weeks, we are going to be really pushing small groups, home groups, men’s Bible studies, women’s Bible studies, because we want you to know the truth. To be honest, you cannot know enough of the truth just coming on Sunday morning that is going to protect you through the week. You need to be in a relationship because it is so hard to be objective about yourself. You could be living a lie. When you are by yourself, you can convince yourself that it is okay. But get yourself in an accountability group, home group, men’s group, women’s group, or whatever, and they are going to confront you on the truth. You need to know the truth. You need to hold to his teachings. By doing so, the teachings will set you free. It doesn’t stop there. You have to act on the truth. John says it also that if you don’t act on the truth, you are a liar. Because you are saying I know God, but you don’t carry out his commands, you are a liar. It makes sense. He writes “The man or woman who says I know him but does not do what he commands is a liar and the truth is not in him.” When you say yes I know Jesus. I love Jesus. But then you are given a command or a prompting to do something and you just say I’m out of here, you are a liar. You don’t know God. You don’t know Jesus because if you knew Jesus you would try to follow his ways. That is what you would try to do.
In closing, I was trying to think of a practical example. I think a good example is the one I started with; the illustration about the kids and the hockey stick and the $50,000 prize. I don’t even know if they are Christians, but they knew the right thing to do was not to take that money. I was thinking maybe I need to get it down to more of a personal level. So I decided I am going to share a story about myself. You want to listen to this one. To be honest, when I was first prompted to tell this story, the first thing that came to my mind was I was just being prideful. You just want people to think how neat you are and how honest you are. So I never planned on telling this story. To be honest, I told it to two people, my closest friends. Then I started thinking, or God told me, you may get half the people thinking you are a cool person and the other half are going to think you are a complete idiot for doing what you did, so the two will balance each other out, so go ahead and tell the story. So I am going to tell the story.
About three weeks ago, I was trying to sell my daughter Natalie’s car. It is a 2001 Pontiac Grand Am. Bought it two years ago. Paid too much for it. Nothing but problems since owning it. A week I had the car and it blew an engine. The car was in the shop more times than it was on the road. She was going to the Air Force and I decided I didn’t want to send her away with a used car, so we got her a new car. But I had to get rid of this car. I don’t want to mess with it. I don’t want to put any more money into it even though I know the car didn’t run well at all. I knew it was having engine problems again. I took it up to Goodyear and they told me it was going to cost another $700-$800. I am just going to cut my losses. So I put an ad on Craigslist. I put it in there for $2,000. To be honest, that is what Natalie still owed me on the car. I am thinking I want to at least get that out of it. I put it in there and I said it needed engine work. I got a few responses. I got a guy who said I am coming down from Erie and I want to see the car. He sounded sincere. He came in and I showed him the car. He was a really nice guy. Probably in his 30s or 40s. Looks at the car all over the place. Inside and out. Looks for water damage. Looks at the engine. I show him the paperwork. I tell him it had engine problems. By the time he is done, he is ready to offer me $800 for the car. I finally said what about $1000. He said good and we made the deal. He said I will be back next week to pick it up. He goes back to Erie. He comes down again I think with his father, an older man. He is looking at the car again. We are getting ready to go to the title place over on Perry Highway because that is where you do the title transfers. He wanted me to do it with him so it could go quickly. We are getting ready to go. He was going to take his car and leave Natalie’s car. I was going to take my car and meet him over there because once he was done I could leave. We are getting ready to leave and he says you don’t mind that I would tell them that I bought the car for $500 instead of $1000. Right then a little antenna came up and I said I will be honest with you I am a pastor and I really don’t want to do that sort of a thing. But once you buy that car, you can do whatever you want. You can report whatever you want. He said no problem. We get over there and I get out and say once again, don’t ask me to do anything to do anything that is not honest. Don’t ask me to compromise my integrity here. He says no problem, no problem. I will take care of it. We get in there and wait in line. There is a long line. We are called up and the lady asks this guy how much did you buy the car for and he says $500. I just turn my back because I didn’t say it. I thought I was done. She is filling out the title and she wants me to sign the title. I didn’t realize in the state of PA but you have to put the selling price on the title. So there is $500 and I am signing my name to that. I am sitting there the whole time just stewing and thinking and part of me wanted to say you need to change the paperwork. There is a line there. She already has half the paperwork done. What do I do? Do I embarrass this guy? So I panicked. I signed the title. I committed fraud. That is the only way to put it. He is finishing the paperwork and I am leaving. I knew he was going to meet me back at the house and that is when my mind starts going. Oh Chuck, you just committed fraud and you are a pastor. Aren’t you preaching this Sunday on truth? You committed a sin there. I said to God there has to be some way out of this; you can redeem this God. Just like that, on the way home, God said I can fix it just like that. Give the guy $500 back. In other words, make the title match the reality. Then my mind says no way. That is $500. I already lost $3000 on the car. You are telling me to lose another $500. I am not going to do it. Satan is sitting there having a field day. Yeah, you have done this kind of stuff before. But I knew the right thing to do was to give him that $500 back. So I went back to the house. Saw him pull up. I brought the original receipt that I had drawn up that said $1000. I crossed it out and initialed it. I gave it to the guy and said I want you to initial this. I changed it to $500. He said no problem. Then he gave it back and I gave him $500. I said now everything is right. He said no I don’t want to take this. I don’t need your money. No you take it because I said my sleep is worth more than $500. Then, if you know me, I start preaching to people. His dad is standing right there. I said is this your son? He says yes. I said did you teach him right from wrong? He says I think so. You obviously didn’t. What he is doing and what he continues to perpetuate, because this is his business of selling cars, he continues to lie. I said what makes the man is the little things. It is not the big things. It is the little things. He said I don’t want your money. I said just take it and do what you want with it. Give it to your church. Give it wherever you want. They hurried up and got out of there thinking this guy is crazy, but we got $500. I am upstairs and I am starting to get mad. I am thinking these guys are probably laughing all the way to the bank. They got that car for $500 less. But that didn’t last long. What I initially got was what Chris talked about last week with the fruit of the Spirit. I got peace. That $500 didn’t mean anything. That peace meant everything. I could go on. I could work on my sermon with confidence. Without it nagging at me. I had peace. It didn’t matter what those guys did with the money. Just like it didn’t matter what the promotion company did with their money. All that mattered was that I felt at that particular moment that I did the right thing and I had that peace. You can’t put a price on that peace. That was the fruit of being honest. I thought about taking a survey here and asking how many of you think I did the right thing and how many of you think I did the wrong thing. I really don’t want your hands because, to be honest, it doesn’t matter what you think. All that matters at that particular moment is what I thought was the right thing to do. Once again, some of you are going to think I am an idiot. Some of you are going to think I am incredibly honest. It doesn’t matter.
In closing, we are encountering these things all through life every single day in the classroom, the workplace, out in the street when the clerk hands us too much money, even if it is only a couple bucks. Those are the things that test the Christians. Those are the things that test us and determine whether or not we have that truth detector on and whether or not we are really going to begin to respond to it or whether we are going to ignore that. It is hard because it is not all that clear. A lot of it is these grey areas. Sometimes, we are going to make a mistake and we can’t fix it. Then we just grab on to Romans 8:1 that says “There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus.” I confess my sins and I move on. Occasionally, we are going to be very clear on what the right thing is. A or B and B is very clear and usually you know it is clear because there is something attached to it. There is a cost. It could be a financial cost but it could be a cost of your ego. Maybe you are forced to go back and tell somebody that you lied about something. It could be a cost to your own pride and ego. When you do that, when you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you did the right thing, you will bear fruit. You may not see that fruit, but you will bear that fruit. The better thing is that you are going to know beyond a shadow of a doubt which father you belong to. Let us pray.
