Truth In Love

Deuteronomy 13: Testing Prophets and Purging Evil

Please stand in honor of God's Word. The Old Testament scripture reading is in Deuteronomy chapter 13, reading to verse 5. If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you and gives you a sign or wonder, and the sign or wonder that he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, let us go after other gods, which you have not known, and let us serve them, you should not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams.

For the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear him and keep his commandments and obey his voice, and you shall serve him and hold fast to him.

But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death because he has taught rebellion against the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you out of the house of slavery to make you leave the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk.

So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

Colossians 2: False Spirituality and Holding Fast to Christ

New Testament reading is Colossians 2 18 and 19. Let no one disqualify you insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments grows with a growth that is from God.

Introduction to Ephesians 4 and the Call to Patience

Good morning. I ask you to open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter. Ephesians chapter 4 please, Ephesians chapter 4. I think it was Wednesday morning I was at the breakfast table, and I saw Titus and Josiah with their miserable-looking faces because they were sick.

And I started doing the math in my head, and I said there's a good chance I will get that when I'm preaching. Last night about an hour before I went to bed, I got that same sickness. So I asked for your patience.

I kind of snuck in late, and I'll sneak out. I snuck in early. I'll sneak out late or.

And.

So I asked for your patience as we open God's Word together. In Ephesians chapter 4, let's read from verse 1 to the end of that section there, which is Lord willing we'll stop today. Ephesians chapter 4 verse 1, I therefore a prisoner for the Lord urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace.

There is one body and one spirit just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says when he ascended on high, Jesus led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men. So in saying he ascended, what does it mean?

But that he also descended into the lower regions, the earth. He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things. And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

This is where we'll be at this morning. So that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

Rather,.

Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way and to him who is the head and to Christ. And it's from this head, from this Christ, from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly, that is speaking the truth and love to one another, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Prayer for Help to Proclaim Truth in Love

Oh God in heaven, I thank you for your word. Your word is sweet. It is good. God, I'm thankful that you use weak vessels to declare it. God in heaven, it's an amazing thing to me that Lord, you can even use the most weakest vessel to proclaim truth in which people can hear it and grow from it.

And I'm relying upon that truth now. I'm relying upon that promise that you will build your church and that the gates of hell cannot stand against it. And I just pray God that you would help me with my words now.

Let me proclaim truth and I pray God that I would do it in love. And I ask Lord that the people before me would hear with a desire to change after the image of Jesus and forsaken the falsehood that we are born into and we so much want to gravitate to.

Help them to listen well. Let the spirit work in their hearts and minds so that it changes them to first off come to Christ and then find the nourishment and life and joy in him. So Lord help us this morning we ask in Jesus name.

Amen. Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way to him who is ahead. It is a marvelous thing to see things grow up into maturity. To see it from an infant stage to a full totality of a growth of an adult person.

To see that process taking forth from a little thing to a full mature body. And I remember holding my firstborn son in my arms and just thinking and saying over and over again you are my son, you are my son.

And it was an amazing thing to hold my firstborn child in my hands. And now I consider 10 years later and we're playing chess and most of the time he's beat me in the middle of the game until I start giving him good advice and then I turn the tables with those good advice.

But it's just amazing to consider the growth that God's creation, every one of us living organisms go through from being a baby to a mature man or woman. And this is what Paul is pointing out here now in the text of chapter 4.

He's saying that we are to, in light of the fact that Jesus Christ works unity in the church, we are to grow together after the same image of Jesus Christ and grow after his image. We are to grow into the mature man of looking like Christ.

And here in verse 15, he kind of gives what the body needs to be doing in order for that to happen. Right now, present tense. He returns to the present tense right now. What does the body need to be doing right now for us to be attaining that maturity that is glorious, that reveals the glory of God?

And he says in verse 15, we are to speak the truth in love. That is like the hinge of these verses. That's the hinge right there because when we're speaking the truth in love, we will then grow up into the full image of Jesus Christ in mature manhood.

But when we are not, he says in verse 14, he gives a negative of what we will look like if we're not speaking the truth in love. And so speaking the truth in love becomes the nucleus of what we must be doing in order for us to receive the positive things of growing after the image of Christ and avoid the negative of staying like children.

And so what I want to do to start this sermon is I want to look at the speaking the truth in love first and then kind of look at verse 14 in light of that, of what happens when we're not doing that. It looks like verse 14.

And then seeing what verse 15, what happens when we are doing that, what that does look like as a church, as a body of Christ. And so look again and look at verse 15. Rather, speaking the truth in love.

Speaking the truth. That's the one Greek word there. And it really, not every single version of your Bibles, everyone, if you have the ESV or whatever you have, it's going to say speaking the truth. And so when everyone's doing it, in this case, it's probably correct.

So I don't want to kind of go against what all the people making translations have said. But that's actually kind of more specific than what the one Greek word that denotes speaking the truth means. It's actually a very general word, Greek word, that just simply means doing truth.

Now in context, Paul probably had in mind speaking the truth, but really it's a general way of saying the church needs to be doing the truth or speaking the truth. One way we can perhaps look at this is if you want to turn there, just listen to me.

In 1 John, John uses this, he kind of speaks in this way quite often. In 1 John 3, verse 18, he says, You see the general nature there, the truth just in general, doing truth, loving and truth. So here Paul is saying speaking the truth or doing the truth.

The church of Christ are people of truth. In a land filled with falsehood, the church stands as one that is of truth in general. And of course, I don't think it's wrong to specifically apply that because the context fits it for him to say speaking the truth.

So the church, if we are going to grow up to the image of Jesus and avoid the negative of staying like children of verse 14, we are to be people who speak the truth to one another. Now, I think it's rightful for us to be like pilots asking Jesus, what is truth?

What do you mean by truth? Truth, a good way to define truth is.

Is.

Actual reality. It's actual reality that is dictated by God. That's what truth is. It's actual reality that comes forth from the God who is, who exists above. Paul says in Romans 11 that all things are made by him and through him.

So God is the creator and sustainer of all things. So therefore he is the very definition of truth. We want to know what truth is. We can see it for coming forth from God of actual reality, what reality actually is.

That's why truth in our day and age is very offensive, isn't it? In a day and age in which this world wants to reject the idea that there's a God who exists, they want to reject the idea that there is one truth because it denotes a one God in which truth comes forth from.

And so we see speaking the truth is speaking actual reality. Now, I think we can parse that out a little bit more though, because there is a just general nature of truth. If I wanted to quickly get to the food line, because I'm really hungry after service, and I want to quickly get to the food line, I can't just say I'm just going to run through the walls and just, I don't care.

I'm just going to run. I don't have time for entryways and getting around people. I'm just going to run through the pews and everyone. I'm just going to go. You would say you can't do that. Well, why can't I?

It's because the nature of God's creation, it is not true that you can just go through things, right? God has creator, maintainer. He has established creation to be a certain way, and you would be defying truth by trying to do that, right?

Another one is, we'll get to that with the nature of truth, what Paul's saying here though. The nature of truth that Paul is saying here is one of a moral character, moral truth. Just like God has created creation and it functions in a certain way that we cannot avoid unless we want to die, right?

If I'm up at a skyscraper, I can't just say, well, I'm going to get the quickest way down and jump out the window. I got to go down the elevator because God has made reality that way. But there's a moral truth that we can transgress and get away with it for a while.

You see what I'm saying? A moral way that things are to operate by the same God who exists, who created, who maintains, a moral way to live, moral truth. And this is what Paul has in mind here. And maybe a good way to look at this to get our minds on it is if a person wanted to have a baby, they would have to submit to certain truths that God has established for having a baby.

I don't need to get into that. You guys know what I'm talking about. He would have to submit to it. He can't just do it any other way, any way he wants, any falsity. He's just going to do whatever. He would have to submit to certain truth regulations that God has ordained.

But for that same person to be a good father, to be a good husband to that person that he had a baby with, that is a truth, a moral truth that God has ordained as well that we can transgress for a while that is equally death inducing.

Do you get what I'm saying? And so the truth that Paul is laying out here is that moral truth that we are to speak to one another of God's commandments, of Jesus's commandments that he has given for us to do, the moral truth that is presented here.

And so Paul says that if we are going to be people who are growing after the image of Jesus and becoming a mature man in Christ, then we need to be speaking moral truths to one another. Truths of how we are to live, how we are to love our neighbor, how we are to live our lives.

We are to be speakers of truth in a world that hates truth. Notice he says though in verse 15, we speak truth in love. And so we're not just robots in which you just feed data to a machine and it just takes it all and it's good.

We are relational creatures, aren't we? We're very deeply relational. So we are to speak this truth, this one truth that comes forth from God, but we are to do it with love for one another. Now a good way to look at love, to define love, it's agape love here in the Greek and it is a a warm regard for your neighbor that desires his or her best.

That's what I think a good definition of love here is. It's a warm regard for your neighbor that with that warm regard you desire the best for your neighbor. And so you're speaking the truth of God's world, of God's moral commandments, of what he says, how you are to live.

You are to speak that to your neighbor, to the church, to the body of Christ next to you. But you are to do it in a way that has a warm regard for them, that wants their best. Just like it'd be a folly to jump out of a skyscraper because I want to get to the ground as fast as possible, I would die.

It is just as harmful to live this life in disregard of God's good moral commandments. And so a church that's building itself up after maturity of Christ is one in which they love their neighbor, they love the body of Christ so much that they want to, with warm regard for them, with a desire for their good, speak that truth into their lives.

And you can see here, that's the community of the saints. You can see how polarizing that is in our world, how offensive it is that you would tell someone the truth instead of letting them live according to their own desires that we're about to get to.

But this is what Paul is saying. This is what we must be doing.

And so.

With that grounding us of what speaking in truth, speaking the truth in love means, I think we can then look at the negative. What happens when a church is not doing that?

Right?

What happens when a church is not speaking the truth in love with its neighbor consistently? And we see in verse 14, the negative, this is what happens, So that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

Right? And then that negative name goes on in verse 15, but rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up, as we'll see the positive of what it does look like when we are doing that. But nevertheless, verse 14 details what a church looks like when it's not speaking or doing the truth in love with one another, and it looks like we are still just children.

He says that we may no longer be children. If we are not speaking the truth in love with one another, we will remain babes in Christ. That is where we will stay.

If a body,.

You know, you think of your child, for them to grow up, they need to eat their Wheaties and they need to drink their milk, right? And then they'll grow strong and healthy. Well, Paul is saying for us to grow strong and healthy, we must be speaking the truth in love with one another.

And if we are not, we are going to be anemic. You see pictures of children that are not being given its nutrition. It is a sad, sad sight. And a church that is not speaking the truth in love with one another will be like that.

They will still just be children. Now, I know what you're saying. I know what you're thinking. What did Jesus say about children? He said that the kingdom of God is made up of children, right? We see that in the gospels.

Jesus says, right, that the kingdom of God, the church, is made up of children. So why is Paul hating on children here? And I think it's very clear, is that there's a different, you know, we got to know context, context, context here, in which Jesus is simply saying that you will not enter in or find your life in the church if you don't first become children or humble yourselves before the Lord Jesus Christ.

Right? And that becomes vital. It becomes very important. Because Jesus, when we're in his kingdom, he doesn't just sit there and say, well, I'm going to let you kind of do your own thing. He loves us too much.

He speaks truth to us in love. And what he does is he says, you are going to change. You're not going to remain the same. You're not going to hold on to your childish ways, but you're going to change.

And the one who is a child in the kingdom will say,.

Okay.

All right. Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good. But the one who's not a child in the kingdom will say, nah, I want my own way. Like, I can convince my child of anything, and they'll believe me. Like, anything.

I can convince my child that we, this is insane, that we evolve from apes. It's the craziest thing you've ever heard in your life. But I could convince my child that we have evolved from apes, and this is who we are now, that we are not body and soul.

We're just simply body. I could convince my child of that. You know why? Because they have a childlike faith in their parents, that they'll believe anything. And Jesus, when he says you must become children in order to enter the kingdom, he says, you must submit to me in every single way like a child submits to his parent.

Right? And so that's, in that way, we are to be children in the kingdom. Humility, believe in whatever Jesus says, no matter how much it goes against the grains of our desire, we submit to Christ. But here, Paul's saying, do not be like children.

Do not stay like children. And what he means is that progressive sanctification in the church life in which we're growing more and more as a unit to look like Jesus. And he says that when we're not speaking the truth in love, we will remain children instead of maturity in Christ instead.

That's what we will look like. We'll be malnourished, and we will just be stunted in our growth. And notice what it looks like. He gives very, very vivid imagery about a church that's not speaking the truth in love with one another when he says it's like being tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine.

You know what that is? It's a church without truth. There is no grounding of truth that causes the boat to go a specific direction despite the waves, despite the winds. Instead, it just gets carried wherever the wind and the waves are taking it.

This is like a church that has no truth that just says, well, that sounds all right. Let's just go with that. And we've seen many churches in our day today that's like that. Whatever the winds are going, whatever the waves are going, whatever doctrine is popular today, that's the direction we're going to go.

And it's like a boat that's just being tossed, right? No direction, no clear direction in sight. It's just kind of being tossed to and fro. This is what it's like to not have truth. This is what it's like to not have truth that's guiding and directing us despite what's going on with human emotions or circumstances surrounding us, whatever.

They say that's what dictates our movements instead of having a focus upon the truth in Christ. He says, it's interesting, he says carried about by every wind of doctrine. Well, he goes on to say by, notice then it's driven by people that dictate this lack of truth, this lack of truth in the church by teachers, by false teachers that come in and they do not have groundedness in truth.

Instead, they are teaching whatever is popular. He says, of these people, he says, by human cunning, if you see in verse 14, by human cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes. So instead of having people coming up and proclaiming truth to the church, instead of having people within the church that's telling each other truth, what instead is going on is that there is human cunning, craftiness, and deceitful schemes.

These are people that are not telling the truth. They're telling falsehoods because they do not love their neighbor, but they love themselves. So you notice the hinge, if we're speaking the truth in love with one another, we will grow up.

But notice the negative here, those who are not speaking the truth in love with one another, they're just going with the wind and everything and they're led by people. They hear people just simply say whatever is good for their own selves, not caring about love for neighbor.

This is the person who is more, you see, by human cunning, right, by human cunning. The cunning there, it's a Greek word for dice, and it's denoting playing the game of dice in which people playing dice, they typically don't care about playing by the rules or playing by truth.

They simply just want their own way, right? Or we see the same kind of thing by craftiness, right? They don't care about truth. They don't care about love for their neighbor, about building them up in truth.

They just care about crafting the narrative in their own direction for their own gains. They don't have a love for others, right? And of course in deceitful schemes, the same idea, right? It is not true, but it's deceit and schemes.

It's the same idea of craftiness. And so this is the negative, right? Whenever we are not telling the truth to one another in love, we will be aimless and we will be led or we'll hear falsehoods by people who do not love each other, but instead love their own passions and desires.

Jude talks about this. I think it's worth going to. Look at Jude. Talking about these same people who do not care about truth or love for their brothers or sisters. He says in verse 10 of Jude, Balaam did not care about truth.

He cared about his own pocketbook, right? He didn't care about truth. He cared about himself. He didn't have a love for others. He cared about himself.

He says,.

A shepherd in love should feed the flock, right? But again, since they have no love for the flock and since they're for their own gain without truth, they simply just want to feed themselves.

He says,.

Feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted, absolutely useless for what is actually true and life-giving. He says in verse 13,. This sounds very similar to the waves beating up on the ship, bringing in any way the waves decide or the winds as well.

It just goes a random direction instead of being grounded in what is true. So when we're not speaking the truth in love to one another, when it's not coming forth from the pulpit, we will be like this sad imagery that we have before us in Ephesians 4 verse 14.

Christ the Head Who Gives Growth to the Body

But then look at the contrast though in verse 15. He says, In verse 15 of chapter 4, We are to grow up in every way into him who is the head that is in Christ. So notice the direct contrast imagery. Think of your head as a ship that's just kind of being taken by the waves, by the wind, and it's just going whatever direction.

But then notice the contrast here that we are to instead be constantly going to the same truth, to the same direction that is Jesus Christ our head. That is the unity that we can have in him. That is the direction we are always going.

So no matter the waves, no matter the wind, we will utilize whatever we have in order to get to that same direction, that same truth. It's an amazing thing how you can use the wind even when it's going against you and sailing, right?

When the wind is going against you and sailing, it's not like all is lost and you just kind of have to be pushed by it in the wrong direction. You can zigzag with the wind to get where you want to go, right?

You can't get there directly. You can't just go straight to where you're trying to get to, the truth that you're trying to get to. You kind of have to zigzag in order to get there. Use the wind to your advantage.

And so the point is that the ship is not to be tossed in random directions because of the waves and the wind. Instead, they use those circumstances because they are dictated by truth to go to the one direction where Christ is.

And you'll notice, right, things that are just being blown with the wind, they just seem to be just going random directions. But yet when there is a resolve that's beyond themselves, right, there's a purposeful direction.

There was a windy day yesterday. And I was sitting on the porch and I could see a bird and it was just fascinating. You know, I have chickens, so I don't want them to kill the chicken, so it's kind of scary.

But it's amazing to see the bird use the wind to its advantage to really quickly move down on its prey and everything. It's not just casually just being lifted off into space with the wind. He uses the wind, the circumstances, in order to really hone in on where he's going.

And the church who has truth and love as its practice will utilize the waves and the winds of circumstances to go in the positive direction that truth dictates. When truth is their desire, passion, whenever we see that Christ is on the other end of truth, he is there.

We cannot help but to utilize those things, not to go wherever it takes us, but rather to utilize it to get to our objective. We are to grow up in every way to him who is ahead and to Christ. It is a fascinating thing to see someone go through a major trial, but yet they go through it looking more like Christ.

And then you see the contrast of someone who doesn't have Christ or maybe is forgetting Christ and that, and then just see it just being blown away like chaff in the wind. We see, we see the contrast there.

The church is to be the type in which we are constantly speaking truth to one another in love so that when the waves and winds come, we are looking more like Christ in light of them and not moving in a false or whatever direction.

Truth Without Love and Love Without Truth

And there's something though to be said about truth and love. You can have truth without love and you can have love without truth. You see what I'm saying? You can speak truth in a way that's not very loving in the church, and you can, in the church, be loving without speaking the truth.

And we see both sides of this, right? I think one of the, one of the very negativities of our day of social media is we see the church on display and social media being very truthful, but yet not in love for one another.

Not a warm regard for them, wanting to see their best, but instead just wanted to pulverize them with the truth. But you see that the practice that we are to do here within the local community is that we are to see and understand the truth of the commands of Jesus and to, in love and desire for one another, tell each other, especially whenever this person is going the wrong direction.

The love aspect becomes very important in that moment, doesn't it? That when someone is going the wrong direction, that is not, that is falsehood. It looks tempting. It looks good. He's starting to go with the winds.

We rather, in love for them, I want what's best for them. I'm going to speak truth to them. Those things come together. But far too often, it's very easy for us to get irritated at the falsehood and give truth without love.

And that does no one any good. But of course, the other side of it, right? It's very easy for us that we have a compassion, a love, a warm regard for someone, and we're willing to dispense the truth as to not to hurt them, right?

Very easy to do. Growing up in high school in that era, a lot of people were coming out of the closet. Because when I went by that, I mean coming out as gay. Before that, it was still a, you don't do that kind of thing.

But through high school and through that time period, it became, you know, a very popular thing. And so it was very fascinating to see how many people coming out as gay and then seeing Christian parents, how they reacted to it.

And what they were so, they're desperate. They wanted to love their child so much, they had a warm regard for the child, and they thought that the best thing to do was just to accept them as they are.

And so they can throw it or dispense with truth in order because I have such a warm regard, I don't want to hurt them, right? And in the church, there's like two types of people, right? We can fall into one of those camps where we give truth without love or we love without truth.

I tend to be the former, right? But there's an equal regard of people. They can be the latter in which we can love without truth. But Paul, again, he's saying if we want to mature in manhood, we need to be faithful to the commands of Jesus Christ and do it in tender love for one another.

Because there is nothing more easy than for us to just simply not fight the waves, but just go with it. Not fight the wind, but just go with it. And if you're, I think it's my jumbled mind right now, if you are a person who is not a believer in Christ, aren't you tired of being tossed with the waves?

Aren't you tired of being just wherever society tells me to go, whatever feels right, I'm going to do it. There's no consistency. And what a great thing it is that you can be part of the people of Christ that says, I am not going to hate you and allow you to do such a foolish thing.

Instead, in love, I'm going to give you the truth. This is what the church stands for. This is what the church does. Does it do it perfectly? No, but this is something that we are practicing together so we can grow up after the image of Jesus.

Speaking truth in love. So the question, before we finish off with verse 16, the question I have for you are, are you putting yourself in positions where you can have someone know your life and speak truth in your life and love?

Are you putting yourself in positions of fellowship, of discipleship, where you recognize that the things of this world is falsehood and it's bad, just like jumping off a skyscraper is the same thing of not following the good commands of my Lord Jesus Christ in light of the gospel?

Are you, because you love Christ and his truth so much, are you putting yourself in a position where people can know you intimately and speak truth in your life and love? Because it's not just the major things.

It's even to the most minute details of your life can be spoken truth in life and love to. That's one of the great benefits of being, in my estimation, married. Well, sometimes it can be hard, but to have a wife that sees me in every single aspect of my life and can speak truth and love to me in every single minute detail of my life that she has done, and I have grown because of it.

Well, it's the same thing with the church. We are to desire the deep-rooted fellowship with one another so that someone can know you so intimately and see in what ways you are putting up with falsehood, because it's easier, and speak truth to you instead.

This is what the Lord has said, brother or sister, and to do it with love. Are you putting yourself in a situation where people can see you intimately and speak truth in your life? Are you putting yourself in a situation where you can do the same for your brother and sister?

That you are opening up yourself to deep fellowship with one another so that you can edify or benefit someone in love to help them with truth. It is so much easier to, and said, recluse, as I am gonna hit the same thing as I hit last week or a couple weeks ago, that we need to be people that are intentional on our fellowship with one another, because he works in our fellowship in unity to look like Jesus Christ, and one of the ways he does it here, a major way, something that should be our healthy diet, is that we are around people that will speak truth to us, especially when we're in falsehood and love, so we can be corrected.

This is the diet of the church that we all need to look more like Christ.

And if you are a Christian,.

You want to look like Christ. You're tired of your sin, you're tired of the waves, you're tired of the wind, but you want Christ, and the church is here to help you with that. Are you intentionally seeking fellowship.