Advent 2008 #4 Truth
During our advent season we have considered
The joy of the Lord,
The peace of God,
And the vital need for personal encounter with God.
Today let’s consider the incredible power Jesus has for revealing truth.
We’ll take a stab at defining what truth is.
I hope to demonstrate to you that tolerance and truth don’t mix.
Then we’ll finish up thinking about why Jesus is the cause for either the
recovery or fall of many,
ending with the challenge to align yourself with the truth.
A baby has been born in a stable,
Angelic choirs have sung,
Shepherds have seen and are telling everyone,
Let’s pick up our reading of the scripture at
Luke 2:21-35 (MSG)
When the eighth day arrived, the day of circumcision, the child was named Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived. Then when the days stipulated by Moses for purification were complete, they took him up to Jerusalem to offer him to God as commanded in God's Law: "Every male who opens the womb shall be a holy offering to God," and also to sacrifice the "pair of doves or two young pigeons" prescribed in God's Law. In Jerusalem at the time, there was a man, Simeon by name, a good man, a man who lived in the prayerful expectancy of help for Israel. And the Holy Spirit was on him. The Holy Spirit had shown him that he would see the Messiah of God before he died. Led by the Spirit, he entered the Temple. As the parents of the child Jesus brought him in to carry out the rituals of the Law, Simeon took him into his arms and blessed God:
29 God, you can now release your servant; release me in peace as you
promised. With my own eyes I've seen your salvation; it's now out in the open
for everyone to see: A God-revealing light to the non-Jewish nations, and of
glory for your people Israel.
33 Jesus' father and mother were speechless with surprise at these words. Simeon
went on to bless them, and said to Mary his mother,
This child marks both the failure and the recovery of many in Israel, A figure
misunderstood and contradicted— the pain of a sword-thrust through you— But the
rejection will force honesty, as God reveals who they really are.
Simeon, obviously a man of encounter,
A man who regularly conversed with God because his heart was set on one
Thing, knowing God and doing God’s will,
tells Mary, that Jesus will cause the spiritual destruction or
the spiritual recovery of people
because Jesus will force people to be honest.
People will either accept or reject Jesus,
Their choice will reveal their inner most thoughts.
Their choice will reveal who they are.
I can only think of one way that Jesus can force honesty.
For Jesus to be able to force honesty He has be the Truth.
Not just a teacher of the truth, but truth incarnate.
Truth with flesh on.
Absolute truth.
He told us as much when He was asked who He was:
John 14:6 (NIV)
Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
What is truth?
For something to be true it must correspond with reality.
We have many philosophers today who will tell you that you can’t know
reality.
Simply defined, Reality is what is real.
Reality is what exists independent of human thought or
observation.
The head game is that you are never an objective observer,
Everything you know as real is filtered through your
Experience, so you can’t know the truth.
Therefore your truth is relative to your experience.
But down in the streets of everyday living,
Don’t you have a pretty good idea of what is real and what is not?
“The world contains facts,
which are, what they are,
regardless, of what we may choose to think about them.”
(Josh McDowell The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict, P 587)
Outside of the ivory tower there’s a lot of things that are self-evident facts
For instance, we know, instinctively,
that something either is or is not,
that something can not both exist and not exist at the
same time.
In our day to day lives we experience stuff as either/or not both/and.
If it wasn’t so how could we communicate to one
another anything of meaning.
How was the movie?
Well I totally thought it was the best film ever made,
And the worst film I have ever seen.
We immediately want clarification to make sense of what we just
heard.
The movie can’t be both good and bad at the same time.
It can have good points and bad,
there can be segments we liked or didn’t like,
but overall, it can’t be both good and bad at the
same time.
We all agree that the judgment that the movie was either good or bad
is the subjective opinion of the observer,
One person may say the movie was great.
And another may say the movie was horrible.
But the same person cannot say the movie was both great and
horrible, their opinion, their belief is either/or not both/and for
it to make any sense.
Back to the original question: What is truth?
Truth is what correspond with reality.
Truth tells it like it is.
Falsehood tells it like its not.
(Josh McDowell The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict, P 588)
Personal belief or disbelief that something is true, has no impact on whether
or not that something exists or doesn’t exist.
That “something” either is real or it is not real,
But logically it can’t be both at the same time.
A statement, or fact, or belief is true when it conforms with reality.
A statement, or fact, or belief is false when it does not conform with
reality.
Truth is what conforms to reality.
For something to be true it must be consistent with what is real,
Tolerance pushed to its logical extreme is inconsistent with truth.
Have you heard someone say: “Well that’s your truth but its not mine”?
Such a statement doesn’t make any sense.
If truth is telling it like it is---
How can my truth not be your truth as well.
Reality can be either/or but not both/and
Someone can say “well that is your belief about the truth,
But it is not my belief about the truth”
We can have different beliefs,
but we can’t have different truths.
Have you heard someone say: “All religions are equally valid”?
That’s a statement that makes no sense.
Religions have differing concepts of reality.
Religions tell us “this is how things are.”
And since religions teach different things,
Often contradictory things about reality,
They can not be equally true.
It’s either/or not both/and
You’re free to pick your favorite and say that your religion is true,
But when you do, you are also saying that the other religions
are not true.
Tolerance pushed to its extreme states that every one has the right to think and to
do as they please and no one has the right to judge anyone else.
Back in the ivory tower everyone has the right to determine what is truth for
themselves because there can be no objective truth because we can not
know reality as it really is.
The Tolerance doctrine proclaims that there is no universal standard of right and
wrong.
Therefore the tolerance doctrine makes any discussion of truth
meaningless, since truth can not be known.
This is not a new idea.
Genesis 3:4-5 (NCV)
But the snake said to the woman, “You will not die. God knows that if you eat the fruit from that tree, you will learn about good and evil and you will be like God!”
The tree in question is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
In the original language the tree of tob and ra.
Tob, is the pleasureful, the good, the beautiful.
Ra, the painful, evil, mean, impure.
Knowledge doesn’t refer to knowing per se,
it is more a way of existence.
By eating this fruit, Humanity in Adam, left the world where everything is shalom,
where there is peace, harmony and righteousness and clarity
and entered a world where everything is on a continuum of
tob and ra.
Picture a number line with the greatest great good on one
end, and the most vile worse evil on the other.
Between the two extremes is
the continuum of good and evil.
Tob and ra, good and evil,
are assigned a place on the continuum relative to the individual’s own
experience.
Thus you and I become the arbitrators of morality.
We individually decide what is right and what is wrong.
We are the judge.
We are the authority.
Our personal experience the standard for
truth.
Good, evil, and truth are now determined by each individual.
“There is no absolute "Truth," big “ T ” truth,
only truths that are valid within the individual's reality.”
(http://www.wiman.us/jesus.html)
The tolerance doctrine says truth is individually determined,
But on the streets we know that truth accurately reflects what is real,
Since reality is either/or not both/and
The two views are inconsistent with each other.
You can have truth,
Or you can have tolerance,
But you can’t have both.
And this is the reason why Jesus is such a controversial figure.
Not only does He teach that there is an absolute, universal standard of truth by which everything is creation is judged to be righteous or not,
He claims that He is that Truth.
Jesus claims that He conforms to reality.
He invites everyone one of us to look at Him to understand what reality is
like.
Jesus says that the way He lives His life is the only right way to
live life.
Jesus proclaims Himself as the standard for determining
what is right and what is wrong,
what is good and what is bad,
what is moral and what is immoral.
Jesus says: “I am the truth.”
We hear someone say that Jesus is the truth
And egoism screams,
I am God,
I determine reality,
I define truth,
I judge what is good and what is evil.
I am going to do what I want to do.
“I reject your reality and substitute my own.” (Jamie Hyneman)
I reject your truth and substitute my own.
But that’s an impossibility.
“Truth is disgustingly indifferent to what we believe.
Truth is what it is, regardless of my feelings or beliefs.
We can choose our beliefs,
but we can’t choose what is truth.”
(http://www.seanmcdowell.org/media/articles/teaching/whocaresabouttruth.asp)
“We are currently entitled to our own beliefs”
I have often said everyone is entitled to their own opinion no matter how
wrong it may be,
“but this does not mean that we each have our own respective
truths.”
“A belief is a personal view of how things are,
but truth is the way things actually are in the real world.”
(http://www.seanmcdowell.org/media/articles/teaching/whocaresabouttruth.asp)
Jesus forces honesty,
Honesty means telling the truth.
Because He is the truth.
The absolute universal truth,
A person’s reaction to Jesus reveals what motivates their
lives.
People will either align themselves with Jesus or reject Him,
Their choice will reveal who they are, what they are.
Spiritually alive, or spiritually dead.
They will fall or be recovered according to their choice about
the Truth.
Truth is what corresponds to reality.
There can only be one Truth, either/or
That’s why the multiple truths of tolerance are meaningless.
Making truth and tolerance incompatible.
Jesus is the revealer of the Truth,
Who provokes honesty in each individual.
A person either accepts or rejects Jesus claim to be the Truth,
Effectively separating the sheep from the goats.
We have defined truth.
We’ve looked how tolerance and truth are incompatible.
Now lets look at aligning our lives with the truth.
When you are constructing a wall,
You start the job off right by using a plumb line.
A plumb line will create a guide that is said to be true.
The wall will be straight as long as it is built in correct relation to that
line.
Any deviation from the plumb line will result in a
crooked wall.
What’s true in construction is also true in your spiritual life.
If the plumb line of your worldview is true,
The result will be living your life to the full.
Deviation from true produces inadequate results.
Jesus is like the plumb line,
His life, His teachings, His world view,
His way matches up with reality
Align your thinking, your behavior, your world view
with His and the result will be a life well lived.
Being a believer you have access to the truth.
The Holy Spirit is your guide as to where to place anything on that
continuum of tob and ra, good and evil.
If your behavior aligns with the plumb line laid down by Jesus
You will live a righteous life,
One that is in tune and instep with reality.
If your behavior is out of alignment then I afraid it will be the
school of hard knocks to encourage you to reconsider.
When I think about alignment I can’t but help think about my car tires.
If my tires are out of alignment,
My car tends to drift out of the direction I need to go.
I’m always fighting to keep the car straight.
Unseen damage is occurring the whole time.
The tires are wearing off an edge dramatically
decreasing their life span.
That’s what happens when you are not aligned with the truth
You’re constantly drifting
Hebrews 2:1 (NIV)
We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away.
Put what you have been told into practice,
That’s aligning yourself with the truth
If not
You’re constantly fighting to do what you know to be right
Galatians 5:17-18 (MSG)
For there is a root of sinful self-interest in us that is at odds with a free spirit, just as the free spirit is incompatible with selfishness. These two ways of life are antithetical, so that you cannot live at times one way and at times another way according to how you feel on any given day. Why don't you choose to be led by the Spirit and so escape the erratic compulsions of a law-dominated existence?
Seek God’s great gift of a rectification of that sin nature.
Egoism, the self centered on itself, can be crucified,
You need to be led by the Spirit not those
attitudes, inclinations and propensities to
do your own thing,
The Holy Spirit will lead you as you practice the spiritual
disciplines.
If not
You’re life is taking unseen damage
1 Corinthians 9:26-27 (MSG)
I don't know about you, but I'm running hard for the finish line. I'm giving it everything I've got. No sloppy living for me! I'm staying alert and in top condition. I'm not going to get caught napping, telling everyone else all about it and then missing out myself.
If the Apostle Paul was concerned about missing out on God’s plan,
Because of sloppy living—How much more should you?
You align yourself by fixing your eyes on Jesus,
Exalting God to the place of eminence above all else in
your life.
How do you align yourself with the truth, so that you can be empowered to live your life to the full?
Put into practice what you have already heard.
Follow the Spirits lead
Fix your eyes on Jesus.
We’ve talked about the Joy of the Lord,
We’ve talked about the Peace of God,
We’ve talked about encounter with God,
Your desire to align yourself with the truth of God,
Hastens encounter with God,
Which results in Peace and Joy.
As you celebrate Christmas,
Take some time, and think about how you are living your life.
Don’t buy into the latest philosophical fad that Truth is up to an
individual to decide for themselves.
Truth is truth, for Truth corresponds with what is real.
Jesus reveals to us that He is the truth.
Ask God to reveal to you any area of your life that is out of
Alignment,
And then seek His help to set you right.