INTRODUCTION
A husband stepped on one of those penny scales that tell a person’s fortune and weight. "Listen to this," he said to his wife, showing her a small, white card. "It says I’m energetic, bright, and resourceful." "Yeah," his wife nodded, "and it has your weight wrong, too." Sometimes the truth hurts.
I want you to imagine for a moment a world that did not contain truth. I want you to think with me about a world where all truth is relative (in other words, no truth is firm, what is truth for you is not truth for me). What kind of world would that be?
I want you to think about what the world would be like if there were no standard of truth, in other words, truth is whatever you want to make it.
Think about how it would be to drive down the road if there were no standard of truth. What would happen if you came to a stoplight or a stop sign? Some would stop some would not. What if you did not believe that you had to drive on the right hand side of the road? What if all the people could decide to drive on whatever side of the road that they wanted to? There would be chaos on the roads if there were no standard of truth.
Think about a society in which parents would no longer teach their children that there is absolute truth? They would not want to impose their beliefs on their children.
Think about how our kids would turn out if mom and dad would no longer teach what is right and wrong, what if they said there really is no truth?
What kind of society would we have if there were really no standard of truth? What kind of society would we have if we all just made up our own truth? What kind of people would we be if the truth were something that we could not possibly understand because “there are many different interpretations”?
The disastrous consequence is that without any absolutes, the world becomes a place of unbounded cruelty and anarchy. We are seeing the fruit of this in our society today.
Before we get too far into this, I want to take some time do define what truth is. If we understand what the word means, then we can better understand the importance of knowing it.
One idea is that of “firmness,” “stability”, hence “constancy,” “faithfulness.” Webster’s pocket dictionary defines truth as, conformity to fact or reality, integrity: consistency, exactness, verified fact.
The truth is the foundation from which we build our thoughts and ideas and lives. The truth is something that transcends time. Truth is the thing that we can anchor our lives to. If there were no truth, then we have no foundation from which to build our lives. If the foundation is moving, the foundation will come apart and the building of our lives will come tumbling down.
We are living in a society that is increasingly intolerant of truth and we are reaping the fruits of that. Increasingly society is tilting to the point that there is no absolute truth from which you can base your lives and even if there are absolutes, you cannot know them because they are too complex and life is easier if I do not have to deal with absolute truth.
Today I want to take you down a path that will show you that one of God’s attributes is truth. As we journey further down the path of truth, you will see that God wants you to know the truth and we will finish our journey looking at why God wants you to know the truth.
SERMON
I. GOD IS TRUTH
Intro remarks
Have you ever been around a person that could not seem to locate the truth about many things? It reminds me of the young mother who encountered her son on the street when he should have been in school. When the boy finished explaining why he was not where he was supposed to be, the mother replied, "I’m not accusing you of telling a lie. I’m just saying that I have never before heard of a school that gives time off for good behavior."
We would call a person who has a hard time with the truth, a liar.
Many of us know people that are very honest people, we would say that one of their attributes was that they were truthful.
When we look at God, we find that God is not only truthful, but the bible says that He the GOD OF TRUTH. Listen to these passages: Truth is presented in Scripture as a chief element in the nature of God as shown in these passages.
ISA 65:16 "Because he who is blessed in the earth will be blessed by the God of truth; And he who swears in the earth will swear by the God of truth; Because the former troubles are forgotten, And because they are hidden from My sight!
PSA 31:5 Into Your hand I commit my spirit; You have ransomed me, O Lord, God of truth.
God is also full of truth.
PSA 86:15 But You, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, Slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness and truth.
Implications
Concerning God, truth is never given as an abstract teaching, but only as qualifying God in His relations and activities.
It is a guaranty of constancy (Dt 32:4; Ps 100:5; 146:6; Jas 1:17); especially a ground of confidence in His promises (Ex 34:6; Ps 91:4; 146:6). It is right dealing with men without reference to any explicit pledges (Ps 85:11; 89:14).
It is a basis of security in the correctness of His teachings (Neh 9:13; Ps 119:142; Isa 25:1); of assurance within His covenant relations (Ps 89:5; Isa 55:3).
God’s truth is especially noteworthy as a guaranty of merciful consideration of men. This is an important element in theology of the Old Testament, as it is a point guarded also in the New Testament (Ps 25:10; 31:5; 61:7; 85:10; 98:3; Jn 3:16; Rom 3:23-26).
The truth of God is an assurance to men of righteous judgment in condemnation of sin and sinners (1 Sam 15:29; Ps 96:13; Rom 2:2, 8).
In general the truth of God stands for the consistency of His nature and guarantees His full response in all the relations of a universe of which He is the Maker, Preserver, and End.
The big implication is that we can trust that God is going to do what He says, both positive and negative.
Since God is truth and the God of truth, what He says can be a trusted standard by which we can live our lives in consistent way that is pleasing to God.
HEB 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. God’s standards will not change, His truths are timeless, and they transcend culture and situations.
God’s truth will never go out of style, God’s ways will always be the best for you. I have said this before and I will continue to repeat this theme until we understand it. God’s way is the best for you.
There is a bumper sticker that says, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” That is bad theology. What is should say is “God said it, that settles it!” it does not matter if you believe it or not, truth is truth.
If there is no truth, then there is no God because His word says He is truth and is full of truth. Methods of communicating God’s message change and they must change, but God’s message NEVER is to be changed. PSA 119:160 The sum of Your word is truth, And every one of Your righteous ordinances is everlasting.
This passage says that when you add it all up, God’s word is truth.
In John 14:6 Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” Jesus is not one of many truths out there concerning God, but He is THE truth of God.
II. GOD WANTS YOU TO KNOW THE TRUTH
Here is a concept that we need to understand. God wants us to know THE truth.
Truth is personalized in Jesus Christ. He truly expresses God, presents the
true ideal of man.
In Himself He summarizes the harmony of existence and becomes
the agent for unifying the disordered world.
God sent Jesus so that we could know the truth, God sent Jesus so that we could get to know Him.
God has not hidden Himself so that we could not know Him, we are offered an invitation to know Him through Jesus His one and only Son who died on the cross for your sins and mine so that we can go to heaven and spend eternity with Him!
PSA 25:5 Lead me in Your truth and teach me, For You are the God of my salvation; For You I wait all the day.
READ JOHN 17:25-26 Jesus’ ministry in part was to show people God, many times He would say that if you had seen Him, you had seen the Father. John 5;36; 14:7,9; 12:45,; 15:24
III. WHY GOD WANTS YOU TO KNOW THE TRUTH
God wants you to know the truth because it will benefit you
Why have teenage pregnancies gone up over 500% over the last 30 years? Is it because we have not educated our kids enough? It is because we are not teaching our kids the truth about love, marriage and sex. We teach our kids today that when it comes to promiscuity, you have to make your own choice, we are reluctant to tell them that activity outside of marriage is WRONG ALWAYS.
We are afraid to tell people the truth about things such as the devastating effects that abortion not only has on the unborn child, but also on the mother who has to live with what had happened.
WE do not want to tell the homosexuals that homosexuality is wrong ALWAYS because we do not want to make them feel bad. We need to share the truth in love.
Whenever we live outside of the truth, we are in bondage. READ ROMANS 1:18-25
JOHN 8:34 Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin.
ROM 6:16 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness?
In 2 Peter 2, Peter is talking about how the false prophets (teachers) were promising all kinds of fun and freedom, but in verse 19 Peter says “promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved.”
You may think you are free, but when you are tangled up in sin, you are fooling yourself.
God wants you to be free and the truth will do that. Jesus said in John 8:31-23, So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."
Did you catch that; the truth will make you free. Ask a person who is addicted to alcohol, drugs, or tobacco if they are free?
God wants the best for you, He has paid a great price for your salvation.
Too many people have reduced Christianity to rules; it is about freedom in Christ.
Take a little child. If you have a nice fence up in the back yard that they cannot get out of, they have the freedom to roam about, take away the fence and most of us would not allow our children to go outside.
The gospel of Christ frees you, the boundaries set by God in the word give you freedom to enjoy what God has given to you. Parents, your children and teens are begging for boundaries because those boundaries give them security.
The truth will give you security; it will remove doubt about the future.
CONCLUSION
When Jesus stood before Pilate, Jesus and Pilate had a conversation, Pilate asked Jesus if He was the king of the Jews and Jesus said He was a king. READ JOHN 18:37-38
Pilate wanted to know what truth was. He did not hang around long enough to get the answer.
Today we are answering the question the Pilate asked by saying that there is no truth.
There is truth, God is truth and since God is truth, all He says is true and can be trusted and followed.
God wants us to know Him and He wants us to know the truth. We can know the true God through Jesus.
Do you want to know Jesus today?
