Speak Truth - Brandon Scalf

Heritage Church Tulsa

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All right, everybody, grab your Bibles and turn with me to the book of Ephesians, particularly

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Ephesians chapter four, and we will begin looking at verse 25 today.

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Ephesians chapter four, verse 25, and the title of today's message is

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Speaking the Truth. Speaking the

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Truth, and if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy, infallible, and all -sufficient word.

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For the sake of context, I'm going to read from verses 25 and 26 all the way through verse 32.

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A new thought has entered the equation, and so I want us to make sure that we have that in our minds as we examine verse 25.

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So beginning in verse 25, this is the word of the Lord. Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth, each one of you, with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

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Be angry, and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity.

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He who steals must steal no longer, but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need.

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Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for building up what is needed, so that it will give grace to those who hear, and do not grieve the

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Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and anger and wrath and shouting and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.

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Instead, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, graciously forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has graciously forgiven you.

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The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever, amen? Amen.

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Amen, go ahead and have a seat, and get your eyes back on verse 25.

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Verse 25 of chapter four. In the late 1500s, there was a

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English reformer by the name of Hugh Latimer. And there is a famous story, well, there are lots of famous stories about Hugh Latimer, but there's one in particular, where he was standing before King Henry VIII.

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And he was standing before him because he had been summoned to preach a sermon, and he decided that that sermon that he would preach would be one where he was going to address the sins of King Henry.

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The problem with that is King Henry had quite a fiery temper. And if he were to be truthful in everything that he said, it would likely mean the end of his life.

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And so Latimer famously began his sermon by addressing himself first.

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And he did so aloud, which is why we know about it. He said, Latimer, Latimer, be careful what you say, for the king is listening.

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He needed to be careful because the king, who was above all in that place at that time, was right before him.

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And then he continued on. Latimer, Latimer, be careful what you do not say, for the king of kings is listening.

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What this story teaches us is a couple different things. One thing it teaches us is that Christians have a radical trust in truthfulness.

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Not only that, but they seemingly think that truthfulness must be pursued, must be proclaimed, must be had, even if it means the end of one's life.

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The second thing that it teaches us is that truth is ultimately

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God word. And what I mean by that is, truth is something that comes from God because God is truth and he governs truth and it's his truth that we must proclaim.

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Not our truth, whatever that means. Unless our truth accords with the truth of God's very word.

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And this is an important thing to consider. And the reason it's an important thing to consider, especially in the church, is because our culture at large has, in fact, fallen prey to the idea that truth is simply relative.

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Instead of fearing God, we've convinced ourselves that we must fear man and their opinion of us and so we're not allowed to have objective truth or promote objective truth.

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Truth is trampled underfoot everywhere we look and it's been this way from the beginning.

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And what I mean by that is, if you remember, in the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter three, the serpent whispered into the ears of our first parents, lying to them as the father of lies.

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And as we just read in Romans chapter one at the beginning of our service, this is the thing that we desire most, to believe lies.

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We suppress truth because of what it means about who God is and what it means about who we are.

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Politicians lie, they're deceptive. Our media lies and it dominates us with false narratives.

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And oftentimes, the church is ate up with lies. Lord willing, that would never be heritage, but we don't have to look very far before we see things like pulpits being weakened because they're afraid that their objective truth and the

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Bible is gonna bump up against the objective truth or the subjective truth of the people sitting in the pews.

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And so they soften the gospel. If not, they get rid of it altogether. They don't talk about hard truths.

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They choose comfort over conviction and they choose fiction over fact and they price feelings over fidelity to the scriptures.

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But God, God's word and God's people stand opposed to falsehood at every turn.

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And if they don't, they ought to. And this is what

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Paul is saying in Ephesians chapter four, verse 25. That a changed heart that has been regenerated by the

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Holy Spirit because it has been purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ is one that prizes, prioritizes and promotes truthfulness and rejects falsehood.

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For the regenerate believer then, truth is not simply optional. It is not something that we can maybe utilize sometimes, but truth is something that must govern the pattern of our life.

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And the Bible tells us repeatedly over and over and over, liars will not inherit the kingdom of God. If your pattern of life is one where you do not value the truth and tell the truth, then

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God has nothing to do with you. That is the truth of the matter. Why is that?

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Because regeneration transforms liars or truth forsakers into truth tellers.

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In other words, a redeemed tongue declares and promotes truth because it flows from a heart transformed by the truth himself, himself.

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So we do not traffic in deceit. We traffic in the truth.

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And so as we look here in context at verse 25, we are brought into a series of imperatives.

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This series of imperatives exists with a negation on the one hand and then a positive assertion on the other.

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So for instance, if you look at verse 25, he says, we must lay aside falsehood, that's the negative and speak truth.

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So it's a twofold imperative, if you will. You're doing one thing and it's already been done and you're doing another.

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And this is going to exist all the way through verse 32. In other words, what

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Paul is doing is saying, look, we've been here before. You've seen what

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God has done in Christ to transform a people for himself. And if we even look back just to the text that we looked at last week, he's talking about how our former conduct was one way as the old man.

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And now that we've been converted, now that we've been regenerated, now that the Holy Spirit is working in our life, we are now new, we are a new creation.

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We are essentially the new man. We have the new man put on us and we are putting on the new man as we are being renewed day by day.

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And the reality here is that if that has happened, if the old man has been put away and the new man is here, then this is how you are to live your life.

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And that's important in context because what are we talking about? What have we been talking about in Ephesians chapter four? The church, we're talking about the church, how the church is to function, what's important about the church, how our church members supposed to act toward one another based on what has happened, namely that God has made

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Christians and he has made Christians to dwell together and he has made Christians to dwell together in the household of God.

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And he's given gifts to each individual member to make sure that they can serve one another, minister to one another, and he has given church men gifts, pastor, teachers, and evangelists to equip them for the work of the ministry.

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And so now Paul is transitioning once again from doctrine to duty and he's doing so as to help us do what?

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Protect the unity that has been given to us, right? Remember chapter four, verse three,

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Paul says that we are to be diligent to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

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And what you should be concluding at this point is since not lying, which is what's going on here, is the first imperative that he's going to give us really in terms of how we are to interact with one another, there's probably a reason for that.

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And that is this, that lies destroy every relationship you will ever be in.

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It will destroy any community that you are in because lies are of the devil.

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And God is truth and in him there is no darkness at all.

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So the body must be one that are truth tellers. I want you to think about it this way.

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If we're thinking about the church as a body, which we are because Christ is the head and we are members of it, which we'll get to here momentarily, then you need to understand this, that lying is such a big deal because it's like the body, if it would give off false signals to other parts of the body.

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I mean, could you imagine, for example, if the eye deceived the hand about the position of a hot stove, for example?

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Well, if that was the case, you might wind up burning yourself and you would suffer. In the same way, falsehood in the church body fractures trust and it diminishes the witness to the world and it makes

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Christ a liar and assaults him. However, truth telling is not just, as we will see for the individual, but for the corporate body as well.

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It is the lifeblood outside of gospel blood of what we're doing here every time we gather.

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And so as we look at our text, the first thing that I want you to note is the putting away of falsehood. The putting away of falsehood.

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If you look with me at verse 25, it says, therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth.

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Speak truth. Here we are given quite a few things.

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The first one is this word therefore. And of course, children, if we see a therefore, what should we ask ourselves if we want to understand what the next thing is going to say, right?

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We need to ask, why is the therefore, therefore, right? Why is the therefore, therefore?

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It's signaling to us something very important. One, it is signaling a change in idea.

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Paul is going to give practical applications of how the new person in Christ lives day by day.

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But more than that, it's also pointing backward. It's attaching itself to a previous argument.

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And what is the previous argument? Well, if you look back in verse 24, it says, put on the new man which is in the likeness of God, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth, right?

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Because you in the body, Christians, seemingly, right? That's who he's talking to,

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Christians. Because you have been converted, regenerated, since the old man has been put to death and the new man has been put on, because that new man is in the likeness of God and has been created in righteousness and holiness and truth, speak the truth.

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Speak the truth, you live in accordance with the reality of what has just come before. Now, I wanna pause here for a second because I want you to consider something.

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I want you to consider where we're at in the book of Ephesians and I want you to understand that when we see this therefore here, much like we do in many places in the

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Bible, it's teaching us a very important truth. And that truth is this, that in order for us to live the

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Christian life, in order for us to be faithful members of a body, we must have a deep and a robust doctrinal foundation.

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And the reason that's important is because we can't actually live the Christian life unless we understand who

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God is and what he has done. We can't actually follow the imperatives of the Bible if we don't believe the indicatives and we don't trust the indicatives and we don't know the indicatives because if pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps and just knowing what to do and how to do it was enough to fix us, well, we wouldn't need

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Jesus, would we? And so when he's saying therefore, he's saying because of these theological realities, because of the things that I've been talking about for the last four chapters, now, the first thing that I want you to do is be truth tellers.

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So being truth tellers is at the floor of what it means to be a

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Christian, right? God promotes truth, Jesus is the truth, the gospel is truth, and for us to not be a truthful people would be for us not to be

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Christian. It would be for us not to be Christian. What I'm trying to get at here is the commands of the gospel are rooted in and flow out of the grace of the gospel.

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The gospel doesn't make it possible or it doesn't just simply give us the roadmap of how to live life, but rather empowers us to live that life righteously.

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Where God's commands are dislocated from the soil of his grace to us in Christ, they are simply clinical and metallic, legalistic demands that really mean nothing.

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But in Christ, they mean everything. And this is important to consider because most people just want to know what to do.

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Most people just want to know how to essentially live out a particular doctrine so that they can check their boxes and essentially appease their legalistic heart.

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In other words, many people want to cut to the chase because they just want to know how to live.

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Well, living is irrelevant unless it's living unto God. And the thing that this teaches us as we look at the book of Ephesians is that God doesn't desire to, nor does he want to cut to the chase.

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He does not want to do that. We can see that because Paul has been going on and on and on and on about who

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God is and what he has done. And he very sparingly even offers even a little bit of advice.

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What he's doing here is he's saying, I want you to understand. I want you to understand some things before you do understand what to do.

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In order for you to know what to do and how to do it, you need to know who God is. You need to know what

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Christ has done. You need to know who you are in Christ and how you were made one with him.

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And it's only in as much as we grasp these realities that we actually can live holy lives to begin with.

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And so I'm all about application just as much as the next guy, but application divorced from doctrine does nothing but produce proselytes of hell who are checking their boxes, who are living according to their legalism and their desire to do and make much of their own righteousness.

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But I'll promise that you this, if you understand God, if you understand his Christ and you understand what it means that you are saved in him, you're not gonna need a 10 -page paper on how to handle yourself in any particular situation because you'll know how to please

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God because you know what God values and you know what he's done to save you and propel you into a life of Christ likeness.

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We don't forget that we need to do, right?

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The Bible says in the Old Testament, God says that my people perish for lack of knowledge. And in context, it's knowledge of God.

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So people perish and people fall into sin and people lie, why? Not because they didn't know they weren't supposed to lie, not because they weren't supposed to do these things, but because they don't have the proper knowledge of God.

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They do not have the proper knowledge of God. So therefore, because these things are true, because you have been regenerated, because God in eternity past has

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Trinitarianly worked to save you, raise you from the dead, to cause you to respond to spiritual stimuli,

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Ephesians chapter two, verse one, right? And then because he has given you this new heart and this new attire as the new man, therefore, because of that, because it's been created in righteousness and holiness and truth, lay aside falsehood, put it away.

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Now, what you'll notice is if you're using the legacy standard Bible, it's the same word in the English, but every other translation doesn't do this. But laying aside here is the same exact Greek word that is used just a little bit beforehand.

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And he says this, you are to lay aside falsehood.

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Well, what is falsehood? I can say falsehood, I can say lies, I can say, speak the truth, but at the end of the day, we gotta ask, well, what in the world does that mean?

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Well, falsehood is simply, you know, is simply that which is not genuine or real.

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Like when you look it up in an Oxford dictionary, you get something like that. Augustine or Augustine, depending on which tribe you fall into,

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I suppose, says this about what falsehood is or a lie rather.

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He says, a lie consists in speaking of a falsehood with the intention of deceiving.

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That's helpful, right? Because it opens up this idea of what falsehood is. It's not simply just like I said

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I was going to go to the store, but actually I went to the pool. But it's anything that we do that deceives anyone from viewing reality as it is.

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What this means is things like exaggeration, that falls underneath falsehood. Or painting a picture of somebody that maybe you don't even have a clue whether is appropriate, right, or not, right?

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In this way, slander and gossip and these sorts of things are engaging in falsehood in many ways, right?

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Because what they do is you don't have all the facts and yet you're presenting an alternate reality. You're deceiving people, even if you quote unquote mean well.

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But we are to literally forsake, put off, get rid of, you know, this thing.

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Verse 22 says we are to lay aside in reference to our former conduct. We're to lay aside the old man.

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And in laying aside the old man, same Greek word like I said, right? We are to lay aside falsehood because that belongs to the old man.

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So truth is the foundation of everything that we do as the church. But he goes on and he gives a command.

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So he tells us to lay aside because it's already been laid aside. And now he tells us to speak the truth.

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Well, the Ephesians to speak the truth and us by extension. Speak the truth, he says. Lay that aside and speak the truth.

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Now, one of the things you will notice if you see this in your legacy standard Bible is that it is written in all caps. And the reason for that is because it is an

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Old Testament quotation. Paul here introduces an exact quotation from the

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Septuagint in Zechariah 8, 16. In the

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Zechariah context, God informs the remnant that he purposes to do good to Jerusalem and to Judah.

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And the first command he utters, and I want you to catch this, there is, quote, every one of you speak the truth to his neighbor.

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So you see here, the response that God has to his people when reminding him that he is there with them, that he has saved them out of something is to say, be truthful people.

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And that should take this and drive it to the top of importance, right?

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I wanna read for you just a few passages of scriptures to help you understand that truth is super important to the

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Christian life. It is at the top of the list. First Timothy 2 .4 says, God desires all men to be saved and to come to a full knowledge of the truth.

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Second Timothy 2 .25 says, with gentleness, correct those who are in opposition if perhaps God may give them repentance leading to the full knowledge of the truth.

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Truth is a big deal. Second Peter 2 .12, put these like unreasoning animals born as creatures of instinct to be captured and killed, blaspheming where they have no knowledge when the destruction of those creatures also be destroyed.

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First Timothy 3 .15, but in case I am delayed, I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living

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God, the pillar and support of the truth. So we exist as truth tellers.

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The truth exists to be a pillar and support of the truth. Truth is at the heartbeat of everything that we are.

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First John 1 .8 says, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. First John 3 .19,

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and by this we will know that we are of the truth and we will assure our heart before Him.

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Second John 1, the elder to the elect lady and her children whom I love in truth, not only

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I, but also all those who know the truth. And I mean,

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I could just keep going on and on and on and on and on and on and on. First Corinthians chapter 13, verse six, it does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth.

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Romans chapter 1 .18, of course, we just read that. John 13 .7, Jesus says, if you know these things, speaking of the truth, you are blessed if you do them.

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And James 1 .12, he says, but become doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves.

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So not only are we to believe the truth, know the truth, but we're supposed to behave in what?

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Conjunction with the truth, in light of the truth. And so we see here that Paul's words are not merely a moralistic admonition, but a gospel charge to love the truth.

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And the reason for that is because we have been regenerated. We've been transferred from one head to another.

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We've been transferred from one father to another. And what I mean by that is, John chapter eight, verse 44,

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Jesus says, you are of the father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.

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He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth. And so when we do not engage in truth telling and truth speaking and truth living, we are telling the world that our father is in fact the devil.

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Let me pause here and just ask a few probing questions for you to consider as we look at this first point here.

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I want to ask you, how much do you value the truth? Truthfully, in your heart of hearts?

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Do you only employ it so long as you stay out of trouble? So long as it doesn't make you look bad if you think you can skirt around it?

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Do you justify small lies? Well, the truth of this passage is that regenerate hearts make no peace with falsehood of any kind, of any measure.

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No matter how trivial it may seem to you, it is still damning because it's presenting a false reality and it's calling

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God a liar. Second thing that I want you to see is the practice of truth.

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The practice of truth. This command goes on and he says, look at me at verse 25, "'Langus, I have falsehood.'"

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Speak truth each one of you with his neighbor.

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Now here, Paul is moving from principle to practice. He's moving from the ethereal to the skin.

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He's moving to the concept to how you actually live it out.

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You're to speak the truth to who? To the world outside. Oh yeah, sure.

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But obviously in the context of the passage, it's the church. And so everything flows. I hope you see this as we work through the book of Ephesians.

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Everything starts in the church and flows from the church. And so that's how it works.

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God died for his church. His church is the only quote unquote organization that he has promised to prosper.

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The church is the only one ultimately protected. It's the church, friends.

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And it starts here. And so who cares if there's truth being told outside of our church walls, if there's not truth happening in here?

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Outside the wall is burning. But here, this is the pillar in support of the truth.

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And so there are many people. And look, I love evangelism. Heritage is involved in evangelism. I hope to be involved in more evangelism.

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But the truth is many evangelists and many people like that would do well by quitting that and actually understanding the truth first and actually being a part of a church because they have nothing to offer anybody outside of the church if they reject the church, hate the church, and they don't understand that it actually begins, like the

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Bible says, even judgment begins in the household of God. But here is the idea.

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There is a corporate church -wide expression of this truth, but also a personal one.

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You, each one of you are personally responsible to speak truth to one another.

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That's why it says in verse 25, each one of you, lest you think that it was talking about everybody but you.

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Right? Paul narrows the command and makes the truth -telling nature of Christianity to be not optional for any believer.

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And this Greek word here is in the present imperative. That means it is an ongoing action.

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It must mark our everyday conversations. We must always be truthful.

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We must always be truthful. It's kind of like a soldier or a

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Marine who must clean his weapon daily because if he doesn't do that, he neglects the very thing that his entire life is built on.

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And this neglect leads to failure in battle. And if we are not truth -telling people, then we are not ready for discipleship.

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And it's not only something that we are to do here, it's a public way of life. With his neighbor points to our relational context.

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The regenerate Christians, the converted, the ones who are called to truth -telling are not called to do truth -telling in isolation, but with every neighbor that they have.

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This builds trusts instead of destroying and sowing discord.

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Are you marked by truth, by speaking truth? Or do you make

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Christ, his church and his truth look bad by always being the person that can never be relied upon about what you say?

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Saying things that aren't true, engaging in slander and gossip that may be like 20 % true, coming up with conjecture and ideas and promoting it as truth.

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I mean, we can keep going down this road and seeing all types of ways in which it is, but the question is, is that you?

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Are you known for being a truth -teller or a half truth -teller or a quarter truth -teller or a 99 .9

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% truth -teller? Because the truth is everyone's the same in that regard. The third thing that I want you to see is the preservation of unity.

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The preservation of unity. Paul is going to continue on here.

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And he's gonna give us the reason why this is so important in the context in which he is saying it.

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He goes on in verse 25. He says, therefore laying aside falsehood, speak the truth, each one of you with his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

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So we have this purpose clause for we are members of one another.

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That's the reason. This is important. And let's take this kind of word by word in a way.

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I want you to consider this word members. This word members.

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The word member here is essentially used 34 times in the

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New Testament. It's used 29 times by Paul. So Paul loves this word, especially in relationship to speaking about Christ as the head and us, the church, as his body.

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Two of the times that Paul uses this, which I'm surprised, honestly, he doesn't use it more in Ephesians. Two of these are found in Ephesians, but comma.

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I'm surprised it's not more than that. And what this signifies for us is members of a human body.

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You know this already. We went over it in time past when we look at Ephesians chapter four earlier on.

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And members of the body of Christ. And so when he uses this word, he's trying to conjure for us this picture of literally us being one gigantic body, a spiritual body where some of us are hands and some of us are elbows and some of us are arms and legs and some of us are eyes and some of us are eyelashes and some of us, you get the point, right?

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He roots the truth telling and the reality of our unity in Christ.

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It's not rooted in the fact that you just should, although he could say that. He hasn't even said up to this point that you should do it because God is truth, although that's true.

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He says, because you are members of one another. It's like lying to yourself. It makes zero sense.

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Why would you lie to yourselves? Children, would you look at me for just a second?

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I know it's been a second, but I want you to think about this. Think about this.

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Have you ever been in a situation where you had maybe a cup sitting on the table and it was a blue cup and you saw it and you looked at it and you saw that it was a blue cup, but for some reason you thought to yourself, you know what, that's a pink cup.

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That's a pink cup. Have you ever done that? No, you've never done that.

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You've never done that because we do not lie to ourselves in that way. Now, there of course are ways in which we do lie to ourselves, but it's another topic for another time.

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But something like that, that's what he's saying. It's like that. You do not continue to lie in the body or to engage in untruth.

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Why? Because it's like lying to yourself. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

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The church is one body. And if we lie to one another, if we're not engaged in the truth, then we fracture its fellowship.

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We destroy it. We crumble its very essence. Imagine if you were walking and you saw some sort of pothole.

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And for some reason your brain went, hey, that would be really good for you just to kind of fall into that. And you listened to it.

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You'd be in a world of hurt. You'd roll an ankle. In a much larger way, if we deceive one another, we're pushing each other off of a cliff, pushing each other into hardship.

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Not to speak the truth to a fellow believer is to despise them as well.

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And it's to despise Christ's body. And that means Christ himself.

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You don't value that person enough to tell them the truth. You don't think that they're owed the truth. You don't think that they need the truth.

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And you think that you will be better looked at, loved, and delighted in if you don't tell the truth lest they find out the actual truth.

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But in so doing, we harm and mar Christ as well. That's why when

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Paul is kicked off his horse in his conversion for persecuting the church,

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Christ says, why are you persecuting me? When you hurt the body, you hurt its head.

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When you assault the body, you assault its head. When you lie to the body, you lie to its head.

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And lies are like cancer that cause the body of Christ to shrivel, to putrefy and lose credibility, not just here, but out there, right?

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It's horrible. It's horrible when things happen in the church and sin happens in the church because people lied about something and then the whole world knows about it.

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A mentor of mine. Things that we've been experiencing as a church.

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Yes, sin can be forgiven of, but it makes us look like in the world that we are liars and it tells a lie about God.

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So we must be vigilant. We must be vigilant to be truth -telling people because our words have communal consequence.

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Conversely, truth -telling strengthens the bond of peace within the church.

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So liars and lying destroy and maim the church.

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Truth -telling actually strengthens the church and it builds it up. It builds it up.

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Why? Because truth unifies its members. It fosters trust and it deepens fellowship, right?

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Truth reveals sin in the body. Lies cover up sin, but the truth exposes it and it leads to, hopefully, if we are in Christ, where the old man leads to repentance.

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This is why 1 John 1 .9 says, "'If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous "'to forgive us our sins "'and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.'"

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We confess the lies that we believe or engage in.

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Not only that, but truth is a weapon against the enemy. Because Satan is the father of lies, the church wields the sword of truth and it does so and defeats him as the gospel is proclaimed and the truth is pressed on to the people of God and the world and it also is a witness to the world.

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A truth -telling church shines as a beacon in a culture of deceit. I mean, the world is crazy right now and it's ran by lies and, of course, we are increasingly being, you know, mocked and ridiculed for believing the truth, but who will get the laugh on the last day and who actually is the one who is going to be standing here when the world blows up or when the nation blows up and is able to actually move forward in truth?

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Christians. Right, we look at this nation, for example, a little history lesson for you, and we think, oh no, this is the most horrible thing that's ever happened in the history of the world.

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No, it's just the worst thing that's ever happened to you. Civilizations have done this over and over and over. There's nothing new under the sun and there was a greater, more vile empire that stood opposed to God at one time, the

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Roman Empire, and it fell. It fell because stupid doesn't win in the end. Sin doesn't win in the end.

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Deceit doesn't win in the end, and who was there to pick up the pieces? Christ's people,

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Christ's people. So yes, yes, we are to do our best as people, as Christians, to engage the public sphere and politics and so on and so forth for the glory of God and the good of others, while at the same time, we need to understand that we're not promised for this thing to get better right now, and what we must keep doing is tell the truth anyway, because God is truth.

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That's what we're about. In fact, that's what Jesus says in Matthew 5 .14. You are the light of the world.

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A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. The church is the light of the world, sitting on the hill.

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It's the thing that everybody's looking to, whether they want to or not. That's something incredibly important to consider. Everybody's got their eye on the church, even atheists, even people who hate

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God. Why? Because as soon as you start talking about God, what do atheists say? Besides God's not real and all that sort of stuff.

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Yeah, but look at the church. Look at all the ways the church is failing. Look at all this, that, and the other things.

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It's like, oh, you're paying it, yeah, because you can't help it. You can't help but stand in and look at God's plan of redemption in the world because it's that mesmerizing.

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But the last thing that I want you to see before I completely run out of time is the person of truth.

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The person of truth. The person of truth.

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Children, would you look at me for just a second? Did you know that truth is not just a thing or it's not something that you tell?

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But here's a weird concept maybe you've never considered before. Truth is actually a person.

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He's actually a person. Jesus Christ himself doesn't just tell the truth.

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He doesn't just possess the truth. He doesn't preach the truth. He doesn't just extend to us truth through his word.

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But friends, he is truth. It is one with him.

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It is one with him. He is the truth. So when I say the person of truth, I'm speaking about Christ who is the

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God man. He is the God man. He is God having put on flesh.

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The reason that we love truth is because we love a God who is truth. For instance, in Hebrews chapter six, verse 18, we are told that it is impossible for God to lie, which means it's impossible for God not to tell the truth.

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Everything that God says is truthful. And so as his image bearers, as those who have been recreated in the likeness of God, as those who have been created in righteousness and holiness and truth, we must tell the truth because our

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God is truth. Not only is he the truth, or not only is it impossible for him to not tell the truth, it is also important to understand that he is the truth, as I have already mentioned.

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In John chapter 14, verse six, Jesus says, and you know this,

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I am the way of the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father, but through me.

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What does that mean? It means that he, his person, is completely truthful and the truth about him is completely true.

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And he is the reason that truth exists in the first place and every lie contradicts his very nature.

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He also gives the truth. Christ sanctifies his people through the truth of his word.

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John chapter 17, verse 17, Jesus says, sanctify them by the truth.

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Your word is truth. So how in the world are we sanctified? By the truth of God's word.

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By the truth being spoken to one another. Not by lies, not by lies. But most importantly, and in closing, he forgives truth forsakers.

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So he is the truth, he gives the truth, and he forgives truth forsakers. I have said it already.

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And I could point you to many places in the Bible where it's true. Liars do not inherit the kingdom of heaven.

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Lying is not something that men and women who bear the name of Christ ought to engage in.

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It is literally one of the most vile things you can do as a

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Christian is to present false reality, thus presenting a false

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God by not being and not speaking the truth. But friends, the good news is, the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that Christ forgives truth forsakers.

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And the truth is, prior to being converted in Christ, we were all truth forsakers. We were truth forsakers, we were truth suppressors, and yet here we are being reminded that we have been changed.

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This is an assumption, do you see that? Therefore, laying aside falsehood, speak truth, each one of you, his neighbor, for we are members of one another.

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Paul is assuming that what he's already said is true, that you have been changed, which means you have been forgiven.

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You've been forgiven of your truth forsaking. And if you are even given in this very moment to truth forsaking, to lying, to exaggerating, to manipulating, to saying you'll do one thing but not another, to do all of these things, or hiding unconfessed sin and not repenting of it, the

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Lord can forgive. The Lord does forgive.

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All you need do is confess to the Lord Jesus Christ, and maybe to other people if you've sinned against them, repent and believe the gospel.

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First John 1 .9, which I mentioned in passing earlier, says if we confess our sins, if we confess our sins, if we confess our sins, even if it's truth forsaking and lying, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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Do you hear how scandalous that is, friends? If we confess our sins, even if it's truth forsaking and lying, he is faithful.

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He is faithful and he is righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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The wrath absorbing, death destroying, cleansing death of Jesus Christ the righteous is one that does away with our sin before the sight of God.

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And it doesn't do it so that we can continue to sin, to continue to live a life of lies, but to free us, free us to live a life that is honoring to God.

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Paul's entire argument up to this point, Paul's entire argument here is what? Look what

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God has done for you. Why would you want to live any other way? Look what God has done in Christ.

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Look what he's done to procure a body for himself. Look at the way he has helped all of these people love you and the church, how he's brought all these people together, how he has washed away every single sin that you could have ever committed, ever will commit.

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And how can you live if you've been given a new wardrobe as a new man and the same old dirty, nasty clothes?

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Why would you want the grave clothes when you've been given wedding garments? Live this way.

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Hate lies, hate lying, love the truth because our God is truth and look what he's done to make sure that you love the truth.

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Live this way. So you see friends, Paul's imperative here is not just how to live and tell the truth, but rather why you should, why you should.

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And why you should is equally if not more important than the how you should.

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Because I promise you when you're looking temptation and sin in the face, the thing that will not get you out of that situation is, well, if I had a 10 point, you know, get out of this situation, note card,

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I'd be out of here. No, no, the only way you're gonna slay that sin is by looking to Christ, by loving

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Christ, by meditating on Christ as the embodiment of all truth.

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In fact, you can kind of trace sin back to really being a belief in lies.

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Every time you sin, you believe a lie. You believe you'll be happier. You believe that you'll be more sane.

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You believe that things will be more faithful. That's probably not one that pops in most people's head, but there's interesting people out there, right?

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That there's something better on the other side of this or no one will find out or it's lies that we believe.

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This is why truth is so important. So let your words reflect

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God's glory in such a way that others are drawn to them.

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This is we close this morning. Let us, and I do mean this, examine our own hearts.

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Are we walking in the truth? Are we walking in the truth together as a body?

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Are we walking in the truth in relationship to one another? Are we walking in truth to our families?

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Are we walking in truth to ourselves? Because regeneration produces truth -telling lips.

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And so as we close, I wanna pray that the spirit of truth would purge the deceit from our hearts and empower us to live as bold witnesses of Christ here to the church and even to the outside world, which is a world of lies.

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And I want you to remember that you are to speak truth to one another. Speak truth to your neighbor because you belong to the one who is truth and only tells you the truth.

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And he knows telling the truth is at the base.

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It's Christianity 101. And so pray with me. Father, we thank you. We thank that you've given us your son.

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We ask that you would, as I said, purge deceit from our hearts and that you would empower us to be truth tellers, truth livers, truth embracers, and that you would help us to see the truth of your son,

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Jesus Christ, that we might walk in a newness of life as the new man. And we ask this in his name, amen.