What is Truth?

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I want to invite you to open up your Bibles with me and turn to the book of 1 John.
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Not the Gospel of John, but the small letter of 1 John which comes towards the back of your Bible.
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And we're going to go to chapter 3 and verse 18 and look at just this singular verse as the introduction to our message today.
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1 John chapter 3 verse 18, Little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you that even this small verse is so compacted with truth and information that can be mined that we could never fully reach its depths.
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And I pray now that as I get this opportunity to stand behind your pulpit and preach your word, that it would be your truth that is proclaimed.
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I pray that you would keep me from error.
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I pray that you would keep me tied to the post of the word.
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And I pray that ultimately, Lord, that this would edify your people and glorify your name.
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For that is the reason why we exist, to glorify you.
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And that is the chief end of our existence, is to glorify you and enjoy you forever.
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So Lord, may it be that today we do.
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And may it be, Lord, that as the preaching of the Gospel goes out, that those who have already come to Christ by repentance and faith through the work of regeneration of the Spirit, that they would be edified and exhorted.
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And Lord, God, possibly even corrected if necessary.
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And Lord, for those who have not yet bowed the knee to Christ, that they would see in Him today one who is not only a Savior, but is also a Lord.
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And it's in His name we pray.
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Amen.
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If there be two words, descriptive attributes, which can and should describe the Christian faith, they are certainly the two words truth and love.
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In our opening today, we read from the Gospel, or rather the letter of 1 John.
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And we see that love and truth in this letter are not mutually exclusive, but instead they are meant to stand side by side in the living out of the Christian faith.
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He says in this verse, little children, let us not love just in our words, but that we love in our deeds and in the truth.
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And we see that actually, if we go through the Bible, we see love and truth combined in several places.
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In fact, John himself in 2 John, in the opening verses, it says, the elder to the elect lady and her children whom I love in truth.
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And then you go to 3 John and it says the exact same thing.
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It says the elder to the beloved Gaius whom I love in truth.
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So for the Gospel writer John, the Apostle John, there was a connection between these two attributes, these two important realities.
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There is love and there is truth.
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And one cannot be without the other in the Christian life.
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Paul connects them for us as well.
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He tells us in Ephesians 4.15, we should speak the truth in love.
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Truth and love are two separate, but rather inseparable aspects of the Christian life.
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I want to put a quote up for you.
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This is from Warren Wiersbe, who is a preacher.
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Some of you may have heard on the radio or maybe have read some of what he has written.
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But Warren Wiersbe said this, Truth without love is brutality and love without truth is hypocrisy.
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Tim Keller, another pastor of some notoriety, said it a little differently.
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He says, truth without love is self-righteous and love without truth is self-indulgent.
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And I tried my hand at an analogy.
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I am no one, but I tried it myself.
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And I said this, I said truth without love is a mere exercise of the intellect and love without truth is a mere exercise of the emotions.
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And the reality is that both truth and love are essential and necessary in the Christian life.
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But this leads us to two questions.
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And maybe it is already the questions that you have thought of.
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Maybe you have already begun to formulate these questions in your mind.
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If we say that truth and love are both necessary Christian attributes, truth and love are two necessary realities in the Christian life, what is truth? And what is love? And while those may seem to be rudimentary questions that do not even need to be asked, we know that in our world today the answers to those most basic questions have been greatly distorted.
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You go to any philosophy department on any college campus in the United States or for that matter anywhere in the world and you walk up to some graduate student in the philosophy department and you say, what is truth? You take any ten students, you will get ten different answers.
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Likewise, go up to a person at a parade in San Francisco and ask them, what is love? And you might also get any arrangement of answers to that question.
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So over the next two Sundays, and this is the shortest series I think I have ever done.
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I normally preach through books.
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I am doing two Sundays on this series, truth and love.
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And then I am going to preach on Father's Day.
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And then the week after Father's Day we are going to begin a series called Foundations for the 500th.
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This is the 500th anniversary of the Reformation.
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For many of you who already know that, October 31st, 1517 is when the Reformation began with the nailing of the 95 theses to the castle church of Wittenberg, thus sparking the fire that would become the flame of the Reformation.
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This is the 500th anniversary of that.
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So beginning after Father's Day I am going to preach a series on the doctrines of the Reformation.
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And it is going to take us through at least October.
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But in the interim time we are going to do this two part series on truth and love.
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And I want to tell you what sort of spawned this series.
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Not that I am getting away from my notes a bit, I have to be careful because I have a lot to say today and I don't want to waste time.
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But I want to tell you why this is on my heart.
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For those of you, how many of you, you don't have to show me your hands, but those of you who have been coming on Wednesday nights.
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Or maybe you have been watching it during live stream.
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Or maybe you have been listening to it because you can't be here on Wednesday night, you have been listening to it on our website.
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We have been talking about the subject of apologetics.
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Apologetics is making a reasoned defense of the faith.
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I consider this week and next week on Sunday morning to be the sister to that series.
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Because the two things that apologetics rests on is truth and love.
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We speak the truth and we speak the truth in love.
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So this series is really sort of birthed out of that.
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But if you haven't been coming on Wednesday night, we have been dealing with everything from atheism to false religions to all kinds of things.
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And I encourage you to be here.
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But that's what sort of gave birth to this.
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And so today, that was the introduction to the introduction.
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Now let me start the actual introduction.
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Today we are going to be looking at the question, what is truth? What is truth? Earlier this morning, Brother Mike came up and read to us the opening scripture.
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And the opening scripture that we have is from John 18 verses 33 to 38.
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That was our call to worship this morning.
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And it's the scene which we all probably have in our minds.
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We know what happened.
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Jesus is taken before Pilate.
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He has already gone through several courts.
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He has been put through before the Sanhedrin.
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He has been brought to the house of the high priest.
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And now he has been brought before Pilate.
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And he is placed before Pilate.
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And Jesus said those very important words.
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He says, this is the purpose that I was born.
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And the reason why I came was to bear witness to the truth.
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Jesus said, that's the whole purpose of my coming is to bear witness to the truth.
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And Pilate, in a sense of haughty derision.
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The text doesn't say that, but I can almost hear it in my mind.
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The derision of Pilate.
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He looks at Jesus Christ.
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And he says, what is truth? As if to say, you say you come to bear witness to the truth.
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I don't think such a thing even exists.
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What is truth? And the question that Pilate asked has reverberated down through the ages.
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And still rings out as loudly today as it did 2,000 years ago.
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When it was first uttered.
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There are still people today in our world who ask the question, what is truth? It has been said that we live in a post-truth society.
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Have you ever heard that? You've heard it? Okay.
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A few of you.
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Let me tell you this.
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The Oxford Dictionary's word of the year for 2016 was a hyphenated word.
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Post-truth.
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That was the word of the year 2016 in the Oxford Dictionary.
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It is described as an adjective.
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Defined as an adjective.
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Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.
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Let me say it in a different way.
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We live in a world that by and large believes that it is no longer governed by any form of absolute truth.
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You understand that, right? We live in a world where people are governed by their emotions.
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They are governed by their feelings.
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They are governed by their sense of right and wrong.
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Not any objective sense of truth, but it has all become subjective.
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We live in a world of, quote, alternate facts.
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Right? You've all heard that? A world where it is expected that each person is allowed to choose what is and what is not truth for him.
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Consider this.
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I know many of you are on social media.
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I'm on social media.
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And I see some of you on social media.
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So nobody can leave and say, well, I'm not on social media.
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I see you out there.
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Not all of you, but some of you.
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Do you realize that social media is being used to affect the way people think about what is and what is not true? Sites like Facebook have algorithms that are designed to not only put things in your news feed that it knows you will agree with, but it will also keep things out of your news feed that it knows you will disagree with, so as to put forward the idea that the world agrees with you.
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Because that keeps you coming.
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It's like a drug for your intellect.
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You think you're right? Well, everybody else thinks you're right.
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And we log in so that the world will agree with us.
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If you don't believe this, find your most liberal friend and go through their page and say, why have I not seen any of this stuff on my page? This has greatly affected the way people apply logic.
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Many people have an insulatory mindset.
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They're only willing to hear the things that they agree with.
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And people begin to think that if an expert, a scientist, or a political activist, or anything else agrees with me, then he's a genius.
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If he disagrees with me, he's an idiot.
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And who's the standard at that point? The all-powerful I.
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And let me tell you something.
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This is not a liberal or conservative problem.
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This is a human problem.
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And the church is not immune.
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You've all heard me reference George Barna.
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George Barna, the Barna Research Group, does studies, and they specialize in doing studies among churches.
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And they do these polls among people who identify as Christians.
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And I want you to hear what this study resulted.
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This study was on the subject of truth.
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And this is what it said.
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Only 17% of practicing Christians who consider their faith important and attend church regularly actually have a biblical worldview.
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When they were asked questions about biblical worldview, only 17% answered in the affirmative.
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38% of practicing Christians are sympathetic to Muslim teachings.
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54% of practicing Christians resonate with postmodernism.
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36% of practicing Christians accept ideas associated with Marxism.
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29% of practicing Christians believe ideas based on secularism.
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19% of practicing Christians strongly agree with this statement.
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No one can know for certain what the meaning and purpose of life is.
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That's 1 in 5 practicing Christians say no one can know what the meaning and purpose of life is.
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23% of practicing Christians strongly agree that what is morally right or wrong depends on what an individual believes.
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That's more than 1 in 5 believe that morality is relative.
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15% of practicing Christians, that's less than 1 in 5, but 15% of practicing Christians agree that if your beliefs offend someone or hurt their feelings, they are wrong.
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We live in a post-truth society.
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And the sad thing is, that society has made its way into the church.
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The subject of truth is a problem today because there is no consensus as to what truth really is.
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As I said earlier, we are like Pilate 2,000 years ago still asking the question, what is truth? And when you ask the question, all you hear is silence.
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Now from a philosophical standpoint, and this is where I was afraid.
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I actually spent, I want to tell you what I did last night.
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I spent an hour with my son going over my sermon because I wanted to make sure it made sense.
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I figured he's 16, he's bright.
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If he can understand it, hopefully most everybody can understand it.
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But what I'm about to say though, I don't want anybody checking out on me.
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If you were checked out before, check in and listen.
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Because this is important.
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Because I want to talk to you about what truth is.
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But I want to talk to you about the world and how the world sees truth.
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Because there is a philosophical paradigm by which the world judges truth.
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It is called the correspondence theory of truth.
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The correspondence theory of truth basically says this.
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Truth is what corresponds to reality.
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How many of you know who Dan Barker is? Dan Barker is the head, well of course you do.
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We listened to a debate last night.
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My wife raised her hand.
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We listened to Dan Barker last night.
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He's the head of the American Atheists here in America.
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And he does debates with Christians, mocking their faith.
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And last night we listened to a debate.
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Did he or did he not, and I wrote this sermon a week ago.
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Did he or did he not use this definition when he was describing what is true.
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True is what corresponds to reality.
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So this is the way the world sees what truth is.
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Here's the problem with this definition.
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And by the way, this is not only what the world has said, this is what the church has said.
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If you go back to men like St.
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Thomas Aquinas.
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St.
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Thomas Aquinas was out, you know, defining truth.
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And he defined truth as this.
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He said, a judgment is said to be true when it conforms to the external reality.
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Truth is what corresponds to reality, is what he said.
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So this is well understood.
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This goes all the way back to Aristotle and Plato.
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How do you understand what truth is? Truth is what is real.
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Truth is what conforms to reality, or what corresponds to reality.
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Everybody with me? I haven't gone over your head.
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You with me? It's not hard stuff.
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Because here's where it becomes hard.
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That is not an argument.
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Because when you say truth is what corresponds to reality, what you are saying is truth is what corresponds with truth.
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And you have just dug a circular hole that it is impossible to get out of.
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Because what is reality? It's what's true.
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So you could say reality corresponds to what's true.
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It's just a circle.
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It's a vicious circle.
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Because you have to add something for this to be true.
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Because reality, and this is, hang with me, because what I'm about to say may sound kind of controversial, especially for me.
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Reality is a perspective.
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I'll give you an example.
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Any men in here color blind? Really? Really? A hundred people and there's not one color blind man among us? Maybe there's a dog in here.
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Dogs are color blind.
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So if a dog looks at a car that's green, what will the dog see? Some shade of gray or blue.
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A different shade.
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Somebody who's color blind goes out on a winter's day up north and they see a blanket of white snow, they may see it as a gray blanket of snow.
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You understand that that to them is reality.
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And to try to describe to them any different would be useless.
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In fact, what was funny last night was Dan Barker in the debate, he actually said, we determine reality by observation.
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Because he said truth is what corresponds to reality and we determine reality by observation.
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And my hand goes, of course I'm not there, so I'm in my bedroom raising my hand saying, Mr.
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Barker, what if what you are observing is different for someone else? How is your observation absolute? It's not.
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In fact, it's an interesting story about some missionaries.
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There's some missionaries that went to a tribe in Africa and they were trying to translate the Bible for them.
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And as they were translating the Bible for them, they came across that verse that says that God will wash us white as snow.
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We all know that verse, right? And in America that makes sense.
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Because when you wash something, you wash it white, you don't wash it black.
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But in this culture, white was dirty.
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Because ash would get onto their skin, and if their skin had ash on it, it would be white, not black.
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So when you told them you were going to wash them white as snow, it didn't make sense.
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So the missionaries had to transliterate the term so as to make it make sense to them.
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Because the reality that they lived under was that white was dirty.
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And black was clean.
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You understand what I'm saying? I am not saying that all reality is relative.
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But what I am saying is that how we perceive reality is relative.
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How we perceive reality is different.
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And it's different for people.
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So if somebody says the truth is what corresponds to reality, they cannot stop there.
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They have to add this small phrase.
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Truth is what corresponds to reality from God's perspective.
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That is what is true.
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Truth is what corresponds to reality from God's perspective.
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Because guess what? You can tell me, well I think that's wrong, that's my perspective.
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It doesn't matter what your perspective is.
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It doesn't matter what your position is.
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In fact, I want to say, because some of you might say, well what do you mean God's perspective? Let me say it a little differently.
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Truth, did we get the next sentence on there? And that is truth is truth because God determines it to be.
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That's what I meant to, I want to make sure you understand.
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When I say God's perspective, I'm not saying God looks at something and perceives it.
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What I'm saying is God looks at something and determines it.
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God determines what is and is not truth.
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Truth is truth because God has determined it to be so.
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And thus truth is true because of God's perspective.
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And you might say, well that sounds very simplistic.
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It's really not simplistic at all.
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Because God has established all truth.
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You understand something, and please hang with me here.
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Don't get off the rails, because this is important.
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Do you understand that there is no such thing as a natural truth? Because when we say natural truth, what we're saying is there's some kind of a truth that's above God.
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God is the standard for all truth.
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Now you can say what is his nature is natural, but even in him, it's not nature.
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In the sense that we think of creation as nature.
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What am I trying to say here? The laws of physics, are they immutable? Unchanging? Why? Because God determined them to be.
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The laws of mathematics, are they immutable? Why? You know there are some scientists who believe that there could possibly be a universe out there where 2 plus 2 doesn't equal 4.
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They believe there could possibly be a universe somewhere, a dimension somewhere, where 1 plus 1 doesn't equal 2.
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Because the entire laws of mathematics and physics are different.
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Why does 2 plus 2 equals 4? And I'm not trying to be simplistic when I say this.
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2 plus 2 equals 4, because that's the way God decided it would be.
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God does not have a mathematical standard above him that he has to reach.
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This is so important.
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All truth is God's truth.
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See, that's what bothers me.
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People will say sometimes, well, are you afraid to talk to somebody who is an atheist, because they might share with you something you don't know about science.
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And I know a lot I don't know about science.
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They might share with you something you don't know about, you know, gravity or the age of the earth or something.
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They may share with you something that doesn't comport with your world view.
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Are you afraid of that? No.
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Because if it's true, it belongs to God.
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So I'm not afraid of truth.
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Because all truth is God's truth.
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And if it's true, it belongs to God.
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And so, I don't care.
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Atheists tell me something I don't know, great.
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Here's the funny thing.
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You know there are still people who believe in a flat earth, right? And I'm not going to ask for a show of hands.
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But if you do believe in a flat earth, eh, whatever.
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That's fine.
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I don't want to argue with you.
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Because that is an argument that I have seen people go down, and it gets really, really weird.
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But is the earth being flat necessary for the Bible to be true? No.
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The Bible says the earth hangs upon nothing.
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Actually speaking of a cosmology that wasn't even understood at the time.
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The Bible talks about seasons, and the water cycles, and all kinds of things that weren't even understood until many, many years later with the scientific method, but were understood by primitive people.
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But there are some people who try to make the argument that the Bible says the earth is flat.
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The Bible doesn't necessarily argue that the earth is flat.
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It really doesn't take a point on the issue.
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But here's the reason why I'm saying this.
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If the earth is round, or whatever shape, I mean, it's an oblong, whatever.
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If it's a sphere, then that's God's truth, and I can hold on to that, and I can believe it, because it's God's.
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You understand that? If the earth revolves around the sun, and we actually do live in a heliocentric universe, rather than a geocentric universe, which was the big Copernican revolution that happened several hundred years ago, because before that, they believed the earth was the center, and everything revolved around the earth, but then they found out that no, the sun is the center, and everything revolves around the sun, and went from geocentricity to heliocentricity, and that became a big issue for everyone, and the Pope and everyone else had a big field day over the issue of the science.
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If it's true, it's true, and it's God's truth.
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It's the way He designed it to be.
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Am I making sense? I see weird looks.
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Because here's the next step in this conversation about truth.
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We ask, what is truth? Truth is what corresponds to reality as perceived by God, or truth is what God has determined it to be.
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Okay? So now let's go to the next step.
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If truth is what God has determined it to be, how do we know the truth? I want you to turn your Bibles with me to John 17.
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If truth corresponds to what God has determined it to be, go to the Gospel of John chapter 17, because this is huge.
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This is very important.
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Jesus is preaching, I'm sorry, rather praying.
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This is called the high priestly prayer of Jesus Christ.
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He's praying for His disciples, and by extension, He prays for us.
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He says to His disciples, I'm praying for you and all who will believe on Me based on your testimony.
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So He's praying for you, because we believe on Jesus based on the testimony of the disciples.
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That's what we have in the Bible.
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Right? So Jesus prays for us in this passage, specifically.
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And He says this.
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Verse 17 of chapter 17.
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Sanctify them, that means make them holy.
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Sanctify them in the truth.
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Your Word is truth.
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This is Jesus talking to the Father.
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God the Son talking to God the Father.
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About His people.
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And He says to God the Father, He says, sanctify them.
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Who are them? Your people.
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Sanctify your people in the truth.
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But He doesn't just stop there.
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He could have just said sanctify them in the truth and been done, but He didn't.
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He adds the qualification for us as to what is the truth.
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Beloved, what is the truth? Your Word is truth.
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Last night listening to Dan Barker mock the Word of God.
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I really felt bad for him.
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My heart breaks for him.
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Because he hates God.
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The God of the Bible.
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He clearly said it.
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He said if I faced the God of the Bible I would tell him to go to hell.
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It's exactly what he said in the debate.
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Blasphemy.
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Blasphemy.
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But, when I look at Dan Barker, I know that he, unless the Lord so sees fit to save him, will one day face the Lord of glory and he will be judged on the truth of the Word of God.
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And this will be the standard by which he is judged.
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And that which he mocked will become the sword by which he is judged.
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The Word of God, the Bible, is truth.
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It doesn't contain truth.
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It doesn't point to truth.
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And it doesn't witness to truth.
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It is the truth.
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Because some people say, yeah, the Bible contains truth and it contains error.
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Or it points to the truth but not in every place.
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Or that it witnesses to the truth but not in every passage.
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No.
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The Bible is truth.
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And that has radical implications on the way Christians ought to understand the world.
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And should have radical implications on how we live.
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If this Word is truth, it should radically affect us.
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I want to give you three things about the truth of Scripture that you should remember.
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I've taken a lot of time so I'll make these brief.
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But three things about the truth of Scripture that you should remember.
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And I asked Miss Pam to put them up on the screen in case you wanted to write them down.
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They're somewhat lengthy.
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But I'll go through them.
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Number one.
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Scripture is not multiple choice.
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The Bible declares itself to be theanoustos.
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Theanoustos means God breathed.
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That's another way of saying God spoke the words that were written in the Bible.
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Were they written by men? Yes.
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But they were written by men who were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
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This is what 1 Peter tells us.
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The Scripture is God speaking, God superintended its writing, and it is all true.
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Many people, including those who identify themselves as Christian, want to treat the Bible as a list of propositions that they can choose from or not choose from.
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Sort of like you go into a cafeteria and I can have the Jell-O or I can have the pudding or I can have the salad or I can have the toast.
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I can have or I can have not.
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We call that cafeteria-style Christianity.
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But if that is you, I want to share something with you.
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If you go to Scripture with that attitude, you are at that moment making yourself the standard of truth.
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Because you're saying I'm going to take the parts that agree with me and I'm going to leave the parts that don't.
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And by that, you become your own standard.
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There are those who believe the Bible is only true when it speaks to issues of faith.
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But in other areas, it can err.
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As a result, when the Bible makes a claim about science, people balk.
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Oh, you can't listen to the Bible.
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It's not a scientific book.
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Well, it's not a scientific textbook.
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I'll admit to that.
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But the Bible does make claims about the truth of science that we have to take seriously.
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And when the Bible makes a claim regarding ethics that don't agree with people, they mock or they sneer.
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But the Bible does speak to us about ethics.
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And when the Bible points to realities which are beyond our comprehension, people object.
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In fact, one of the biggest objections that people have to the Bible is the concept of hell.
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Hell is an actual reality where people's souls will reside forever is a difficult truth to understand and imagine.
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And I know I've tried.
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I really have.
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I've tried to imagine hell.
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I can't do it.
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I've tried to consider the reality of it.
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I cannot wrap my mind around it.
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But you know what else? I can't wrap my mind around eternality either.
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I can't wrap my mind around the fact that God's eternal.
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I've tried.
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I really have.
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I've sat, like, still, like, trying to get, like, all, like, you know, like, really focused.
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I'm going to make sense of this.
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Nope.
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Because I've really tried, though.
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Like, I'm going to really, really, I'm going to understand this.
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I really, I haven't gotten it.
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So when somebody says, well, I don't understand hell.
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Okay.
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I'm with you.
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It's difficult.
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But to say it's not true.
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You realize there's whole denominations based around the idea that hell isn't true? Advent Christian Church, based on the idea that when a person dies who's not saved, their body's in the ground, they die, and their spirit also dies, and they become annihilated.
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It's the doctrine of annihilation.
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There is no eternal perdition.
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It's simply eternal non-existence.
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And that's what they call hell.
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That's not what the Bible describes as hell.
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The Bible describes hell as eternal, conscious torment.
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It's hard to believe, but that is what it says.
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When the Bible points to realities that are beyond our comprehension, we must not object, even if we don't understand them.
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Another thought in this regard to multiple choice, and I'm going to be speaking on this on our Wednesday night series, is the subject of Darwin's theory of evolution.
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There's no way to reconcile man as a special creation of God made in the image with the belief that we evolved from some lower form of life over billions of years of time.
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It just doesn't correspond to each other.
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And the Bible simply does not allow for such a worldview, yet there are denominations that promote various forms of theistic evolution, that we are not created by God in the image of God, but rather we were adopted by God because through the evolutionary cycle at some point God saw the hominid and he said, okay, the hominid is special and I'm going to take that hominid and grant it the imago dei, which is the image of God.
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That's theistic evolution.
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So we were not specially created by God, but God chose us because we were the highest of the evolved forms, or in some expression like that.
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Again, that's multiple choice Christianity.
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That's cafeteria Christianity.
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That's not how you determine truth.
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That's not how you live by the truth.
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That's taking a truth you want to believe and forcing the Scripture to agree with you and by that you make yourself the standard.
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The second thing on the list here, just things to consider, the truth of Scripture is our only firm foundation when addressing our culture.
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I believe we should address the culture.
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Now, how we do that may differ and we may differ in how we address the culture.
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But I do not believe that we're supposed to build a compound with giant walls and hide within it.
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The Bible says we are to be salt and light in the world and salt and light are preservatives, or salt is a preservative and light casts out shadows.
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So we are called to be salt and light in the world.
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We are not called to take our light and put it under a bushel, right? So we're called to engage the culture.
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But I don't have to prove to you that the world is filled with depravity.
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So addressing the culture is hard.
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Mike, you go out and preach on the street.
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You see depravity all the time.
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People spitting, people cussing, people taking the tracts you give them and tearing them up right in front of you and throwing them down at your feet.
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Right? It happens.
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We realize the world we live in hates the God we believe in.
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We understand that.
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Just a week ago, there was a hidden video of an abortion conference.
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These abortion doctors had come together for a conference and they were talking to one another about the subject of abortion and they had a person went in with a hidden body camera and in the video, you see the abortion doctors laughing about the things that they do in abortions, the ripping off of limbs and all of these things.
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Just laughing about it.
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A famous comedian recently opened his act with a routine about abortion.
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That was the subject of his comedy routine where he said unashamedly that abortion is 100% killing a baby.
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And that's okay.
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It's 100% killing a baby.
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So how do we address depravity? Some people say, well, we shouldn't.
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It's unloving to address sin.
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But that's not true and this is what we're going to talk about next week.
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Because today we're talking about what is truth.
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Next week we're going to talk about what is love.
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And not addressing sin is the most hateful thing that we can do.
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If you know a person is in a burning house and you do not warn them that their house is on fire, that is not love.
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In fact, it's one of the worst forms of hatred that you can express.
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Others say, well, we can address the culture but we can't use the Bible.
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This is garbage, folks.
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Every time I hear an apologist, Christian apologists say, well, I'm going to address culture but I'm not going to use the Bible, that is repugnant.
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Because we are claiming to speak the truth without any foundation for the truth.
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Apart from a transcendent truth that supersedes all human opinion, we are all just bantering about our personal perspectives.
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Like if I go up to somebody and say, we need to talk about abortion, we need to talk about the subject of the sin of abortion because abortion kills a baby.
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Okay, we can have that conversation.
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But why do babies matter? Where does dignity come from? Where does human life find its value? Because according to the evolutionary atheistic perspective, a human is nothing but a biological machine.
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In fact, Stephen Hawking, theoretical physicist and genius, would not say Hawking is not a genius.
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He is a genius.
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But he also disbelieves in God and he says some pretty ungenius-like things such as, he said, I have a quote where he said that gravity is the force that allows the universe to create itself out of nothing.
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I didn't want to get into that, but if you think about that long enough, it will make your head spin because gravity has to be something for it and it didn't create itself out of nothing because gravity preexisted.
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Gravity is a something, not a nothing.
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Anyway, the point is, the point is this.
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Hawking basically says that we are biological machines and even our free will is an illusion because all it is is the exercise of chemical reactions in the brain.
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Is that all you are? Is that all you are, is simply a set of chemical reactions? Well, what do you say when somebody says I believe in abortion? It's just cells.
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Do you know what I say when somebody says it's just cells? I say, what are you? You're just cells.
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If your perspective is that the baby in the womb is just cells, so are you, just cells.
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The Bible says that God forms the baby in the womb and before it's ever born, He has fashioned her days before her or him.
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That that child is an image bearer of God and that's the foundation I stand upon if I'm addressing the subject of abortion or anything else because the Word of God is the truth upon which we stand.
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And the Bible isn't true because I believe it.
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It doesn't become truth when I believe it.
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It is true, the only sure foundation.
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Now, let me finish with number three because I know time is never my friend.
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We've said that Scripture is not multiple choice, it's not cafeteria Christianity.
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It's all true.
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The truth of Scripture is our only firm foundation for addressing the culture.
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If you come to me and say, I want to address my unbelieving friend, but I don't use the Bible, don't ask me because I'm going to tell you that it's foolhardy.
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But third, the gospel is the infinitely great scriptural truth.
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And you say, now, what do you mean by that? All truth is God's truth, but not all truth is equally valuable.
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I'm going to say it again.
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All truth is God's truth, but not all truth is of equal value.
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There are great truths and there are greater truths and there are greatest truths and this is the greatest truth.
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The gospel is at the heart of the truth of Scripture because the Scripture is actually what we call meta-narrative.
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Yes, you have the book of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and all throughout the Old Testament.
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Then you get into the New Testament.
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You have all these books of the Bible.
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But the Bible is one big narrative.
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And here it is.
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It's very simple.
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Creation, fall, redemption, and consummation.
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That's the meta-narrative of the Scriptures.
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Creation, God creates man in His image.
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Fall, man denies that image, rebels against God, and leaves himself in a state of depravity.
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Redemption, God sends forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, whereby He takes upon Himself God's punishment and keeps the law on our behalf.
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And then the consummation is in the end when He takes all those who have by faith in His Son received the redemption into His kingdom and a new heaven and a new earth is formed for us.
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That's the meta-narrative of Scripture.
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That's the big idea.
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And the heart of that is the Gospel.
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So when I engage the world, when I engage the unbeliever, do I have to address subjects like abortion? Maybe.
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Do I have to address subjects like evolution? Maybe.
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Do I have to address subjects like the sin? All kinds of various moral sins? Maybe.
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But what I know that I have to address because it is the infinitely great Scriptural truth is I have to proclaim the Gospel.
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And that's where love comes into the picture.
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And that's where we're going to go in our next lesson.
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Because truth by itself is incredibly valuable, but truth without love is incredibly brutal.
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So the Gospel allows us to provide the truth in love.
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When Pilate faced Jesus, he asked, what is truth? And the irony was he was facing the truth.
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He was nose to nose with He who is the truth.
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And if you came here today looking for truth, I would point you no further than to God's Word.
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His Word is truth.
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His Gospel is truth.
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And He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
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And no one comes to the Father except through me.
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Father in Heaven, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the truth.
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I thank You for the power of the Gospel that is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes to the Jew first and also to the Greek.
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And I pray, Lord, that today, I pray that if there are those here who have never heard this truth, that they have been confronted by it and by Your Spirit's power that they will be saved by it.
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I pray also, Lord, for the believers that have come, that they have been challenged to think more deeply about what is the truth and to understand, Lord, that You are the foundation for all truth.
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I pray this in Jesus' name and for His sake.
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Amen.