Gb Buy Truth & Do Not Sell It — George Verwer

Good morning everyone. It's nice to be here today. I've been in this building a number of times because when they were doing some reconstruction work at Forest Hill, we used to have our OM prayer meetings here on a Tuesday, and I often used to come and look around and wonder what it was like on a Sunday, and now I know.

So it's great to be here. My name is Gareth Bolton. My wife Malou, from the Philippines. We're with Operation Mobilization. We're part of the International Coordinating Team, and I have a sort of a speaking ministry, so we're more out of the country than we're in the country.

We've just been to France. That wasn't with OM. That was with a group called Oak Hall Expeditions, and I don't know how many of you have been on Oak Hall, but we had an excellent time. Very, very hot in the south of France.

And then two weeks today I'll be in, we'll both be in Colombo, in Sri Lanka, and I'll be speaking in a church there. I don't know quite how with it I will be, because the airplane arrives at twenty past three in the morning, having come all the way from England, and I'm preaching, I think, at a ten o 'clock service.

So, just imagine what I'm like, know what I'm like this morning, and then sort of multiply it by ten times of badness, and you'll get some idea of what it is. Yes, of course, we have books with OM. I've been in full time with OM eight years.

I was a school teacher for twenty-two years. I only ever taught at one school. I couldn't get into any other school. It was the primary school that I used to go to, so in a sense I never left primary school.

Just this one school, it was in the road where I lived, it was fifty yards from my front door. Went with junior school in Dartford. It's one claim to fame, apart from the fact that I taught there as well as being a pupil, was that two other pupils who were there before me, one was called Mick Jagger and the other was called Keith Richards.

Books and Resources for Christian Growth

It's the school with the Rolling Stones. Keith and Mick actually met in the sand pit of the infant school, which is now hallowed ground, of course. Well, what books have we got here today? Calvary Road, an absolute classic.

Don't hear much of this book these days. It used to be required reading for those who joined Operation Mobilisation, but it's an excellent book on the meaning of the cross and the way of brokenness in the Christian life.

Then, of course, Mr Verwer himself has got his own George Verwer collection. Three books in one, so this is a real bargain. Revolution of Love, No Turning Back and Hunger for Reality. One of these books, No Turning Back, a friend of mine went to the bookstore and started reading it.

She got as far as Chapter 3 and at the end of Chapter 3 she recommitted her life. So, if you haven't got any money this morning and you're a quick reader and you need the touch of God, just go straight to the bookstore afterwards.

It will probably be there long enough for you to get to the end of Chapter 3. Thank you very much. And then a book that covers a particular subject. It's the subject of bullying and what can parents do.

I wonder if you have a child who is a bully or who is being bullied. Here's the only book I know, a Christian book on this whole matter, and you might find this very helpful. Help your child break free.

Bullying is a widespread social problem, both in school and at home. It doesn't just involve a minority of children, it affects all of us in one way or another. I remember bullying was an issue at the school that I was at, particularly it seemed in the later years where we had trouble.

So, it's good to have a book on that subject. Then, Being OM, the Logos story, the Doulos story, if you haven't read about the ships, then there's two books, both about them. Logos 2, hopefully, will be coming here next year, I mean here to Bromley, that would be a miracle.

It will be coming to the Port of London, we hope, sometime next year. Riding the Storm, Pioneer Missionary Adventures with OM, if you want a good night's sleep and some exciting dreams, read a chapter of that every night before you go to sleep, and you'll read about some of the incredible things that go on in Russia, Iraq, Canada, Egypt, India, Hong Kong, and Jakarta, plus a tour of the Mediterranean on board the Doulos.

Then what do we have here? Ah yes, God, That's Not Fair. I think this is the best book I've ever read on the whole issue of eternal punishment and the Christian's urgent mission in the light of what the Bible says about these things.

Written by a man with a great deal of experience, Dick Dowsett was a missionary for many years and now has an international preaching ministry himself. Superb book. And then the best book I read last year, this one, The Church is Bigger Than You Think.

How many people have read this book? Good, well that's obviously a big hit in this place. It's an indispensable companion, it says here, to Operation World. It's an extremely well written, very informative, challenging picture of the situation of the world today, vis-a-vis the unfinished task of world evangelism.

By Patrick Johnston, who also wrote Operation World, you will love this. It's full of the most amazing statistics and facts. It's both encouraging and also very challenging on what needs to be done. Enough said, we've got a good few copies of that around, and of course Operation World.

I hope all of you have a copy of Operation World and are using it. If you are, you've just been praying for Nigeria, Africa's largest country. And again, although written some years ago, and we are waiting for the next book, and Patrick Johnston told me that he hopes to have the next edition out by September of 2001.

He'd hoped to have it out by the beginning of 2000, but probably because he was writing the other book, he hasn't got around to finishing this one. So we look forward to the next edition, but this is still very relevant and very challenging and helpful.

And of course there's the children's edition of Operation World, You Too Can Change the World. Actually it's not just children I find who read this, I've found a lot of older people also are learning about countries like Saudi Arabia and Syria and Vietnam.

If I was still in teaching, I'd definitely have this book in my class library, so the children could come and read about the nations and maybe even get inspired to pray for the nations. We actually used to run a prayer meeting in our school, can you imagine, for primary school children praying for the nations.

I don't quite know how I got away with it, but it ran, and it was great to hear them crying out for lands they'd never even heard of five minutes before they were praying for them. So, great book, You Too Can Change the World.

Free Literature and Missions Information

And then for the penniless, we have some free literature. We have our own current prayer letter, we have a whole stack of these, please feel free to take a copy of that and read about the tour of West Africa that we did on the Logos 2.

We also send out monthly updates, there's this month's and last month's. I've also been handed a whole load of leaflets on the November Missions Conference in Freiburg in Germany, featuring Reinhard Bonnke, who appears on the magazine that my wife is just reading, which she picked up from the vestibule there, that should be great.

And India Link Ministries and many other things, that's on the right of the table, do have a look afterwards. By the way, we have a very simple pricing system here, large books £5, small books £3. If you're not sure if a book is large or small, you just pray, God will show you.

Chuck Colson's Story and the Emptiness of “If It Feels Good”

We had a great time at Amsterdam 2000 with some key speakers from around the world and I always like Chuck Colson because he always starts off with a very good story. And he was telling us that he was in a car with a Christian, they were driving along and the car in front of them had one of these little bumper stickers, you know, little funny, provocative things.

And this one with its double entendre said, if it feels good, do it. You've probably seen similar stickers here, you know. Well, the car in front drew up at the traffic lights and so did Chuck Colson's car.

And the driver in Chuck Colson's car, instead of stopping, drove gently into the back of the car in front, actually hit the bumper and slightly shunted the car forward. So the driver got out, very annoyed and said, what on earth do you think you're doing?

Romans 1 and the Exchange of Truth for a Lie

What did you do that for? And the driver said, it felt good. Shows you the emptiness of such philosophy, doesn't it? Very brave, wasn't he? Romans chapter 1. Romans chapter 1. I'm going to read from verses 21 to 25.

Serious, powerful passage here. Romans 1, 21 to 25 says, for although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.

They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator, who is forever praised. Amen. Now would you turn back to the one verse I'm going to speak on this morning.

Proverbs 23:23 and the Command to Buy the Truth

It's in the book of Proverbs. I don't know if you've ever heard a message on this proverb, but you're going to this morning. Proverbs 23, 23. Proverbs 23, 23. Buy the truth and do not sell it. Get wisdom, discipline and understanding.

Let's just pray shall we. Father we want to thank you that we're here this morning not just because our friends are here, not just because we enjoy the singing, not just because of fellowship, not just because it's a tradition or a custom we do on a Sunday, but because Lord we believe that you are the truth and it's the truth that set us free.

Lord as we consider this important matter in the light of society in the 21st century we pray that you would really speak to our hearts and our minds in Jesus name. Amen. Buy the truth and do not sell it.

Get wisdom, get discipline and understanding. Now the Ten Commandments which were delivered as you know to Moses by God on stone tablets on Mount Sinai are considered the backbone of historic Judeo-Christian belief.

In the Ten Commandments both our relationship to God, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and our relationship to one another, you shall love your neighbour as yourself, are defined.

Long before the church was founded or established the Ten Commandments were accepted as the timeless standards by which we should judge all behaviour and in fact by which we should regulate our society.

Sin of all types is exposed by the Ten Commandments, whether it's adultery or murder or stealing. But they weren't only given as rules by which we should live, but they were also given to us to demonstrate our complete and utter inability to keep them and to live by them.

They are God's standards and our failure to keep those standards simply proves that we're all sinners. They are unchanging truths that we believe we've been given by God. Now in the 23rd chapter of Proverbs Solomon's wisdom has given us a command to be obeyed.

We are told to buy the truth. So truth clearly wears a price tag. It comes at a price, a high price which to acquire may well involve some self-sacrifice. But it's completely worth the cost that is involved in obtaining it.

Once you've obtained the truth it must not be resold, it must not be exchanged for anything else, it is not negotiable, it cannot be bartered, its value is completely beyond estimation. For with it comes wisdom, discipline and understanding.

They are the inseparable partners of truth. Truth is always true, it is unchanging, it is unchangeable and it is eternal. However, over the last hundred years or more, particularly here in Western Europe and the so-called developed or first world, a slow insidious change has been taking place.

The Rise of Relativism and the Loss of Objective Truth

You see at the turn of the 20th century a shift occurred from which we're still feeling the repercussions. Man began to turn and put his faith in the belief that scientific advance was the hope for the future.

And so the truth was put up for sale. It was sold, still being sold, in exchange for other ideas and philosophies. So the truth that we are here commanded to buy and not sell has actually been handed over for a price.

And what a price! Because you see today truth is now a matter of opinion, it's a matter of feelings, it's a matter of your own personal circumstances and situations. To state today that something is true or to state that something is wrong because it contravenes or goes against God's law is no longer acceptable on either a personal level or a judicial level.

The final arbiter about any situation is now no longer God or his word, but it's man. So can you see the goalposts have been moved? Clive Calver wrote this recently, he said,. So man has replaced God.

Feelings have replaced facts and personal opinions have replaced scriptural standards. But you see once absolute truth has been sold our reference point, our foundation, it's gone. And what are we left with?

We're left with what happens to be true for you as you feel it's true and what happens to be true for me as I feel it to be true. It's a tragedy. Once truth is sold or abolished society is left with a major problem.

On what grounds do you now judge if something is right or wrong? You're left only with our opinions, our subjective reactions, our individual ideas. And so what we have now is what's called situational ethics.

Don't let that worry you. But it's become the order of the day. In other words, something is judged to be right or wrong depending on all sorts of different factors at the time. So objective truth has ceased to exist.

Today we're told you must have an open mind. Tolerance is the order of the day. This is the great virtue. This is the sign of enlightenment. Gone are the old attitudes of saying if something is right or wrong based on the authority of God's word.

For instance, think of the words of Jesus Christ as recorded in John's Gospel. Your word is truth. That sounds very archaic, very strange to modern man. Freedom is the order of the day. Absolutes of right and of wrong have been abolished.

We are free, is the cry of the modern philosopher, the politician and sadly even the liberal theologian. We are free to both reinterpret the Bible or reject it if we can't understand it or agree with it.

I wonder how many of you have heard of Bishop Spong. He's an Episcopal cleric in the US Episcopal Church and he's published 12 theses of the Christian faith. I won't bore you by reading them all. But number 9 says this.

There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behaviour for all time. So, what have we lost when the truth has been sold? This verse tells us three things.

Losing Wisdom When Truth Is Abandoned

Wisdom, discipline, understanding. Firstly, when you sell the truth you will always lose wisdom. The two go together. Wisdom is a most coveted and desirable virtue. I counted in the book of Proverbs the word wisdom comes 52 times alone.

I have no idea how many other times it comes in the rest of the Bible. But wisdom isn't just about having knowledge. It's not about knowing a lot and having lots of facts committed to memory. Wisdom is about the right use, the correct application of that knowledge.

The wise person is the one who when presented with a variety of choices makes the right choice. And if he or she continues to do so consistently he or she is considered a wise and mature person. But the Christian wisdom of the Bible speaks of even more than that.

Christian wisdom is about making the right choices that result in a life that is lived according to God's expectations. Every day we are faced with choices and all of us are the results of the choices that we have made.

The opposite of wisdom is foolishness. And in Proverbs chapter 1 it says that fools despise wisdom. So the abandonment of God and of Christian truth is only going to lead in one direction. See I've noticed something.

The church and the western world, especially here in the UK, began the 20th century in great optimism. The world was excited and fascinated by scientific advance. Aeroplanes were taking off, the Titanic was built.

And the church itself was thoroughly engaged in social issues, evangelism and in mission. Then came two world wars. The optimism in the church was replaced by pessimism and introversion. Evangelicals retreated and liberal theology occupied the vacuum they left.

So to continue to believe literally in the Bible was disdained. It was considered the act of someone who jettisoned or discarded their brains. Religion was seen as a private matter. And the Bible was quoted less and less in public or political circles.

When did you last hear the Bible quoted by any politician? A hundred years ago frequently the Bible was quoted in the House of Commons. No part of society has remained unmoved by this move away from God's wisdom to man's wisdom.

The slow slide from truth to error. For years the law of our land has been shaped according to God's eternal truth. The ancient law of God handed down to man on Mount Sinai on tablets of stone called the Ten Commandments.

But now a change is taking place. Paul wrote to the Romans and we read the verse earlier. Although they claimed to be wise they became foolish. And nowhere was this felt more than in the way justice and the legal system operated.

For instance it's come to be conceived that anyone could live by the law which says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. How barbaric. How primitive. Modern man is much more compassionate. Modern man deals far more sensibly with those who are guilty of committing an offense.

But an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It's God's truth. It's never been declared obsolete. It has never been rescinded. What does it say? An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It says this.

It says that the punishment must always fit the crime. It's completely fair. It ensures that the penalty isn't too severe on one hand or too lenient on the other. So what has happened? Well you know as well as I.

Almost daily the law is now found to be unjust and unfair. Wisdom has fled with the truth. I read recently about a man who'd been burgled so frequently he set a trap in his house so that anyone breaking in would receive an electric shock.

A burglar broke in one night and received an electric shock. The burglar took the owner of the house to court and successfully charged him with assault. The burglar received compensation for his injuries while the house owner was found guilty of a criminal offense.

You know more than once the book of Proverbs says this. Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent. The Lord detests them both. And of course I was out of the country at the time when a farmer shot a burglar and that seemed to have caused quite a lot of consternation in terms of the law perhaps not being fairly dealt with in that instant.

But I wasn't around so I can't really comment on it. But when you lose the truth you will inevitably also lose wisdom. But wait a minute. I hear somebody cry, yes but didn't Jesus say we had to turn the other cheek?

Didn't he do away with the old law? Surely he removed that when he said we must turn the other cheek to our enemies. But it doesn't say that Jesus came to abolish the law in the Bible. It says he came to fulfil it.

When Jesus said we should turn the other cheek he was seeking to prevent a Christian from retaliating against another Christian who has upset him. The Christian principle, hard though it is, is that we should love our enemies.

Malou and I have just come back from Liberia. A country that saw 10 years of civil war. And we found there are some Christians who are painfully trying to put this biblical truth into practice. To turn the other cheek.

If you want to know more about it read one of our updates there. We have an actual example of a man who is having to love those in his church. Some of whom previously had tried to kill him before they come into the church, that was, before they become Christians.

They are now part of his congregation. How we handle personal conflicts is very different from the way the judicial process in a country should operate. There isn't a contradiction. Appropriate retribution and punishment are for the courts to decide.

Losing Discipline Through Rejection of Biblical Standards

If you sell the truth you are going to begin to lose wisdom. Society is going to become very, very unbalanced. Secondly, when you sell the truth you lose discipline. Discipline has two sides to it. On the positive side it's simply instruction or training.

On the negative side when we don't live according to God's instructions we can experience correction. I noticed the word discipline comes 21 times in the book of Proverbs. I don't know how many of you have had the chance to visit the ships Logos II or Doulos or even maybe some of you in the past have stayed on them.

But if you've spent any time on our ship you'll know that they are very good at imposing all sorts of external disciplines on you. For instance, there's a curfew. You have to be in your cabin, I think it's by 11 o 'clock at night.

And woe betide anybody who's found walking around the ship and they're not in their cabin, they're sent before the personnel manager I think the next day. You walk in the dining room, you see the food.

And what do you see written beside the most beautiful tasty dish? One scoop only. And you walk a little further and you discover that this is the girls' section. No guy is allowed in a girls' cabin, not even in a girls' section.

It's completely separated. However, when you leave the ship after you've spent two years there you can do exactly what you want to do. You can go to bed at any hour you like or no hour at all. You can eat as much as you want to.

And you can have whoever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want in your home with you. See, it's one thing to be disciplined. It's an entirely different thing to be self-disciplined. And there's poles apart.

You see, when a building's being constructed initially it's supported by scaffolding. Scaffolding is an external support system that prevents the building from collapsing while it's being constructed.

However, as the building rises inside the scaffolding it's strengthened internally, maybe with reinforced concrete or whatever until finally scaffolding is taken down because it's rendered unnecessary.

Why? Internal strength has replaced the need for external support. The building can stand unsupported as its inner strength is sufficient. Now I have to say, it worries me, if all our ships do and the rest of OM and other mission works is just to give some external structure which is never really internalised it'll be more or less a waste of time.

I came to the ship after 20 years of teaching. I learnt as a teacher, and I'll pass this on to teachers here I began every day reading the Bible and praying and said, Lord, you go ahead of me today through those school gates, into the staff room, into the classroom I give the day to you.

And I learnt to spend time with God each day so that as the day unfolded, I reminded myself throughout the day, already I've given this day to God. And unless we can learn to strengthen ourselves and be self-disciplined the whole exercise of the ships or whatever other organisation you're in will be futile and ultimately it'll be pointless.

Once you sell the truth discipline will be seen as unnecessary, even as bad. When I mention the word discipline sometimes in a company of people there's a negative reaction. Yet it's a biblical word. And one area where this has been observable in the 20th century and now in the 21st century is in the whole area of sexual morality.

See, a hundred years ago the vast majority of society observed the law of God they honoured marriage, and they despised adultery. Generally speaking, self-discipline was taught and practised in the area of sexual relationships.

I mean, living together was unheard of or it wasn't even a phrase that would have been understood. And to be illegitimate or a bastard was considered a terrible social stigma. What happened? Truth was sold.

When you sell the truth, you lose discipline. Discipline became to be associated with negative behaviour and some psychologists even associated discipline with repression. They said, oh, this is physically and mentally harmful.

We were told that if you wanted to do something, as that bumper sticker said if your body was urging you to a particular course of sexual activity just go ahead, there's nothing wrong as long as nobody gets hurt.

Few realised the psychologists were pulling the wool over our own eyes and that wasn't the right word at all. Yes, of course repression is bad. But that's not what the Bible says we're to do. The Bible doesn't talk about repression.

The Bible talks about suppression, which is something very different. Suppression means control. It means restraint. It means obedience. It's the self-discipline which is good for everyone and good for our own positive development.

When Paul wrote to Timothy, he said this each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honourable. Few recognised the terrible consequences of this sexual abandonment when God and the truth of his word has been completely removed from the equation.

Let me read you a report written 11 years ago now which says this talking about the statistics in Britain in the whole area of marriage or non-marriage relationships. Divorce is now over six times what it was in 1961 and is the highest in the European community.

Over a third of all British marriages now end in divorce. 70 of second marriages also end in divorce. A quarter of children under 16 will experience their parents' divorce. The average age of divorce in England and Wales is 38 for men and 35 for women.

Cohabitation, that's living together, has doubled since 1981 and a fifth of all non-married women now living in what was formerly regarded by many as sin. Over a quarter of British women getting married for the first time had lived with their husbands before marriage.

The consequences on the birth statistics are that more than one third of all pregnancies in 1987 were conceived outside marriage resulting in a quarter of births being illegitimate. That compares with just 6 in 1961.

That comes from, of all places, the NatWest money care magazine. I can't quite understand why they featured it but I did notice they used that phrase what was formerly regarded by many as sin living together.

Peter Maiden, who's the Associate International Director of OM said this in a recent article. He said, 30 or 40 years ago we lost the argument on divorce. Are we losing the argument on homosexuality right now?

You know the British government was on the verge of changing the law so that the age of consent for homosexual acts could be lowered to 16. And Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London is committed to the legalisation and registration and authorisation of gay and lesbian marriages.

And there in Amsterdam 2000 as we were enjoying that tremendous festival was the great gay celebration going on at exactly the same time there in Amsterdam. 1992 was my last full-time year as a teacher.

That year I had a number of teenage girls whom I'd taught only, well a few years previously coming back to visit me, their former primary school teacher. Each one proudly holding a baby in their arms.

They wanted to show me the latest addition to their life and they expected me to rejoice with them. I tell you this friends, my heart broke as I thought of the future of these fatherless children being brought up by those who were still very much children themselves.

Losing Understanding and Meaning Without Truth

This is all because of an abandonment to biblical truth. The consequences are very serious. You lose wisdom and you lose discipline. And thirdly and finally when you sell the truth you also lose understanding.

35 times I counted in the book of Proverbs where the word understanding appears. Life is quite meaningless without truth. I'm a Christian today not because as I said in my prayer I enjoy singing choruses or I've got Christian friends.

I'm a Christian because Christianity is true. Because Jesus is the truth. Because his word is truth. That's the foundation. That's the reason. That's the apologetic I have as a believer. But without truth, well, life has no point.

It has no reason. It doesn't make any sense. And many people who've honestly considered this who are not Christians and who have denied the existence of God and the truth of the gospel have been forced to admit that the fact of their existence leads them to a hopeless despair.

Jean Paul Sartre said this Now God has gone, what have I left to cling to? I cling to nothing. So what happens if you do not buy the truth or if you decide, having once possessed it, to sell it? Tell me, what do you exchange for the truth?

What do you get in exchange for the truth? Well, I hear someone quoting behind me. We've already read it in the Paul's epistle to the Romans. It says this Those who exchange the truth of God for a lie.

Once truth is abandoned whatever you're left with, there's only one alternative. There'll only be one thing. If you don't have truth, then you have a lie. Those are the only options. So how does this embracing of a lie manifest itself?

How can we recognise when people are living a lie? Well, what did the people do that Paul was speaking of here? See, the answer's all in the scripture. The verse goes on to say this. They worshipped and served, created things, rather than the creator.

Man, and not God, in other words, became the centre of the universe. Man's achievements, rather than God's achievements, became man's concern. I read a quote from a woman called Gloria Steinem. I don't know if you've ever heard of her.

She was the founder of MS Magazine. But years ago she said this By the year 2000, we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God. And do you remember how much talk there was and how much discussion there was in the media as we approached the millennium about what would be the best and most fitting way to celebrate it?

Everything I heard, or everything I read, revolved around man's achievements and man's progress. I didn't see one article outside of Christian magazines that suggested that perhaps we might just consider God's faithfulness over 2000 years and God's goodness.

It was all man-centred. Despite the fact that the date 2000, of course, is looking back to an event that's absolutely pivotal in the whole of world history. Those who wanted to include God as an integral part of the celebrations had to fight very hard to keep their corner and not be completely marginalised.

If you do not buy the truth, not only will you have no understanding but you'll also buy a lie, a deception and an untruth. Now our world is full of those people who admit that created things have not satisfied them have not brought them peace, have not brought them meaning or understanding.

One man said this, listen to his words. You can have everything in the world and still be the loneliest man and that's the most bitter type of loneliness. Success has brought me world idolisation and millions of pounds but it's prevented me from having the one thing we all need a loving, ongoing relationship.

Those words were spoken by Freddie Mercury, one time lead singer of the rock band Queen. Here's a quote from somebody else who you'll also know. He said this, there remains deep in the soul, if I dare use the word a persistent and unconscious anxiety that something is missing some ingredient that makes life worth living.

Those words were spoken by Prince Charles, the heir apparent to the English throne. They're admitting if you don't have the truth then you don't have understanding, you don't have meaning to life. Augustine who became Bishop of North Africa was as a young man extremely immoral searching for the truth.

Towards the end of his life he recalled his search these were the words he wrote down looking back on his youth. Oh truth, oh truth, how intimately did even the very marrow of my mind sigh for you. And then one day as he read Paul's epistle to the Romans God broke through and he discovered the one who said I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the father but by me.

Friends the truth has a value that is beyond calculation. Its cost simply cannot be estimated. You and I should consider very carefully the implications of owning the truth before you buy it and after you have possessed it and obtained it you should spend much time contemplating your valuable possession because never forget for us the truth was purchased at a most incredible cost.

Buying the Truth and Knowing Its Freedom

Buy the truth, do not sell it. And with that comes many precious promises and perhaps none is greater than the one which assures us you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Father we thank you that we can have 100 confidence in your word and in your truth and in Jesus Christ your son who said I am the way, the truth and the life.

Lord as we go out into this week, into this world where truth is not considered as any absolute unchangeable reality may we show through our lives and through our words that it's the truth that's changed our life and it's the truth that is alone the only hope for our society and for our generation.