(Radical Jesus) 10 Radical Truth — Glenn Meldrum

This message by Glenn Meldrum was originally produced by In His Presence Ministries for the Radical Truth Podcast. You can listen and subscribe to the Radical Truth Podcast by going to www .ihpministry .com.

You are welcome to reproduce this message for free distribution. This message is part of a series entitled The Radical Jesus. In our continuing study on the Radical Jesus we have for the last few weeks been looking at the Radical Truth.

The Revolutionary Nature of Truth

Last week we examined the fact that truth is under attack. The truth has been under attack for a very long time, ever since the serpent tempted Eve, so this is nothing new. We should not be shocked at that right now.

People are aggressively attacking the truth all the time. Today I want to look at the flip side. I want to look at the revolutionary nature of the truth. Anyone that knows me to any extent knows that I'm not into watching sports.

I do not know what is going on in the sports world, nor do I care. Nonetheless, I want to use an example from football. So if I do not use the right words or phrases, don't shut me off. You can laugh at me if you want, but keep listening to what I'm trying to say.

I know that sports stories and themes have been part of sermons for a very long time. We have such notable preachers that use sports stories as illustrations in sermons such as the Apostle Paul. So it is not inappropriate to do so.

A football game consists of two teams that are striving to score points on the opposing team, and the team with the most points at the end of the game wins. Each team consists of two parts, defense and offense.

Both the offense and defense have as their ultimate goal to win the game. Though the goal of the offense and defense is the same, to win games, how they accomplish it is very different. The defensive players on a team predominantly labor to protect their end zone, so the opposing team cannot score points.

The offensive players predominantly strive to score points against the opposing team. What happens if a team only endeavors to defend their end zone? They lose the game because they are never trying to score points.

I do not doubt that such a team would hope to score some points somewhere along the way, but since it is not their agenda to do so, it happens only by chance. This is the posture of the majority of churches in the West.

We are so busy protecting our own lives and interests that we have no desire to aggressively win a lost world to Christ or advance the truth in a world immersed in lies. We hope the loss will come into our churches, but we do not often compel them to come to Christ outside of the four walls of the church.

What happens if a team predominantly focuses upon the offense? It is good that a team aggressively tries to score points, but if they do not effectively defend their own end zone, then they will in all probability still lose the game.

The opposition will aggressively defend their end zone, so they will make it very hard for the team to score any points. The only way such a strategy could work if you had one team that consisted of players the size of Goliath and the other team was the size of high school freshmen.

A good team must have trained players to effectively defend their end zone and others to aggressively strive to score points. In the book of Hebrews chapter 4 verse 12, Paul declared, For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword.

It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. This verse clearly speaks of the offensive nature of the truth of God's Word. The Word of God is living and active.

It is not dead and lifeless. It is aggressive, searching, and confrontational. It penetrates deep within a person, exposing the realities of the inward life, the spiritual, moral, emotional, and intellectual condition of an individual.

The truth judges, not in a passive sense as if it was waiting for someone to come to it, but it seeks after people and judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart so they might see their sin repent and be saved.

The truth does this whether we like it or not, whether we welcome it or not, for it is what the truth always does. When we look at Jesus, we find he was the truth in flesh and blood, living and incarnate.

He fully and completely lived the truth that he preached. No person in all of human history, past, present, and future, can truthfully make such a claim except Jesus. Jesus never sinned in thought, word, or deed.

He perfectly obeyed the Father and his commands. There is not a single preacher that has fully lived out what he taught, for we are all flawed. That is not an excuse, just the reality. Jesus not only lived the truth, but he also spoke the truth.

This means that every word Jesus spoke was absolute truth. These thoughts may be difficult for us to comprehend, and that is reasonable since none of us have ever met a perfect person. Since we do not have a point of reference among ourselves of how a perfect person acts and talks, we cannot do it ourselves.

We are forced to look outside of the scope of average humanity and study the only perfect person this world has ever known and make him the point of reference of what it means to be human and what humility really means as well.

Of course, all of you know that I'm talking about Jesus who was and is the timeless Almighty God. Every word he has ever spoken or will speak is absolute truth, whether it is when he walked this planet or before time came into existence or whether it is when time will cease to be.

Jesus spoke only truth, so we know that we can trust everything he speaks. When Jesus walked this earth, he aggressively proclaimed the truth. After his death, resurrection, ascension to heaven, the Holy Spirit was sent to this world to aggressively proclaim the truth so people could be saved.

Wisdom Calls and Convicts

Solomon said it this way in the first chapter of Proverbs. Wisdom calls aloud in the street. She raises her voice in the public squares. At the head of the noisy streets, she cries out. In the gateways of the city, she makes her speech.

How long will you simple ones love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? If you had responded to my rebuke, I would have poured out my heart to you and made my thoughts known to you.

But since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, since you ignored all my advice and would not accept my rebuke, they will call to me, but I will not answer. They will look for me, but will not find me.

They will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. Wisdom here is the Holy Spirit speaking the Word of God through divine power to the hearts and minds of men, women, and children.

We can clearly see that the truth is searching, speaking, calling people to flee from the foolishness and madness of sin and rebellion by running home to Jesus. The Holy Spirit uses the truth of God's Word and of our God-given conscience to reprove us of sin and call us to himself.

The Lord is not passively sitting by watching humanity rebel against his ways and his laws. He is not blind to the fact that people have forsaken the knowledge of God to pursue the insanity and madness of evil.

He is active and aggressive in the saving of mankind in ways we cannot even fathom. God only takes the offensive stance in dealing with humanity because that is what is needed to reach our hard and stubborn hearts.

But look at the consequences that befall those that reject the wisdom of God. We are told they will reap what they sow by eating the fruit of their wicked ways, and it does not take long after looking at people to see that this is the case.

The most tragic judgment that could fall upon those that reject the truth is that they would call out to God, but he would not answer them. They would look for him, but would not find him. To be rejected by God is the worst of all judgments, and hell is the ultimate expression of this.

After the Spirit has wooed, called, and pled with mankind, and they persistently spurn his efforts to save them, he will give them what they wanted. The absence of his presence, he will leave them to their own ways and passions.

In this life, men can choose to reject God. In the next life, it will be God choosing to reject men. We must ask how the Lord calls aloud in the streets, raises his voice in the public squares, and at the head of the noisy streets, and at the gateways of the city, he makes his speech.

The Spirit's Witness in Romans

The aggressive nature of the gospel is revealed in two ways, through the Spirit and through the true church. The first way the truth is aggressively advanced is seen in the working of the Spirit that convicts people of sin.

Paul addressed this issue in Romans, the first chapter. Paul is addressing the reality that God has given all of humanity a conscience to know right from wrong, and a testimony of his existence in nature.

The Spirit uses both of these in helping people to come to a knowledge of God's true nature. When people violate their God-given conscience, the Spirit convicts them of sin. And when they reject a testimony that creation gives of an intelligent, powerful, benevolent Creator, the Spirit is there to convict as well.

David declared in Psalms 19 .1,. The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim the work of his hands. The Lord has left us enough testimony of his existence and nature so that we are without excuse if we do not seek to know him.

Our conscience convicts us of sin, which tells us that there is a lawgiver to whom we must give an account, and creation speaks of a Creator that should be loved, feared, and obeyed. Paul goes on to say in Romans 1,.

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 to the sinful desires of their hearts, to sexual impurity, for the degrading of their bodies one with another. Whenever people reject the Spirit's conviction, the Lord will eventually turn them over to the evil passions for their own ruin.

Yet we see in these verses that the Lord was seeking them out, that wisdom was calling, wooing, and warning them. But they rejected those warnings and chose to continue to practice sin. The second way that truth is aggressively advanced is through true followers of Jesus that are obeying his commands.

The Word, Spirit, and True Church

I must make a very important point here. The truth can only be advanced through the power of the Holy Spirit operating through the lives of those who are genuine followers of Jesus, which is evidenced in Christ-like character.

The strength and wisdom of man is powerless to build the spiritual kingdom of God. They may build a kingdom, but it will not be Christ. If people speak the Word of God without the Spirit of God, then they have stripped the truth of the power that can transform lives.

The Word and the Spirit must never be separated. Actually, they cannot be separated. To endeavor to separate the Word and the Spirit is to forsake both the Word and the Spirit, to disobey the Word of God.

Such is man's endeavor to build the spiritual kingdom of God without God. Unfortunately, this is done all the time, and this is the primary model of the modern Laodicean Church of our day. But God designed that truth can only flow through the church through the power of the Holy Spirit.

The truth must be lived, preached, spoken, and read. It must aggressively flow in and through the church to win a perishing world, and it can only flow in and through the church when the supernatural power of the Spirit is present.

When the church becomes a fortress, all she is striving to do is survive. They are on the defensive. She has become a defensive institution that exists for personal fulfillment, not to win a lost and dying world for the glory of God.

This is where a vast number of churches are in their actual everyday existence. They are living for self. They are living a defensive life. They have forsaken the aggressive, revolutionary nature of the truth that relentlessly strives to rescue those enslaved in the kingdom of hell.

Jesus' Revolutionary Mission

The truth that Jesus is, and the truth that he taught, is revolutionary. Not with violence and inflicting pain and suffering on people, but through the laying down of our lives for others so that they might be saved.

This is the model Jesus gave us through his example. Plain and simple, Jesus did not come into the world to leave it in the same condition when he left it. He did not come into this world to put a little band-aid on the supposedly little boo-boo of mankind's rebellion.

He came to revolutionize a world enslaved by the kingdom of hell with the radical truths of the kingdom of heaven. Nothing else could accomplish it. Nothing else. Do not turn Jesus into a good teacher or a passive rabbi, wanting to bring the world a positive, motivational message so people can feel better about themselves.

That may be the pop message preached today, but it's not Jesus. It's not what he taught. It's not the Word of God, rightly divided and taught. How arrogant we can be to think that the message Jesus preached is not what people need today, so we alter his message by softening it or removing those portions we deem to be offensive.

The truth Jesus preached is not some passive pop teaching subject to the whims of men, but an aggressive reality that neither men nor demons can stand against. When people fight against the truth, they will surely be on the losing side.

Jesus never ran from a fight. When his antagonists attacked him, he did not cower in a corner as if he did not know how to respond to their attacks. As the Lamb of God, Jesus was silent before those that called for his death and those that crucified him.

Yet he was not passive, but extremely aggressive in ways we barely understand. Though men and devils attacked, beat, and crucified him, the greatest battle for the souls of men was taking place, and there was no way that Jesus could lose the fight.

The Lamb of God is a conqueror, and the cross was the greatest weapon ever wielded to effect deliverance for mankind. Satan and the hordes of hell tasted the sharp blade of the infinite power of Almighty God that was unleashed through the cross and the power of Christ's resurrection.

Never, absolutely never, was Christ under the thumb of Satan or wicked men. As Paul declared in 1 Corinthians 1 .25,. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

Jesus has always been and will always be the unconquerable conqueror, and nothing can change that fact. When Jesus was led as a lamb to the slaughter, both men and devils were ignorant of the infinite power that resided in the radical Jesus, the one and only God-man.

Paul told us that if they did, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. To quote Paul again, Oh the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable his judgments and his paths beyond tracing out, who has known the mind of the Lord, who has been his counselor, who has ever given to God that God should repay him?

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. Do not think for a moment that God is weak or that the faith he created is weak. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds.

Jesus told us in various ways that a servant is not greater than his master. He is the example we are commanded to follow. Since Jesus never cowered before lies and evil, then true followers of Jesus should never cower before them either.

Advancing Into the Battle

Jesus did not hide away in his local synagogue waiting for the populace to come to him, when the time that was decreed by the Father had come, Jesus labored day and night to preach the truth and set captives free.

What right do we have to hide in our churches, hoping and praying that a lost and dying world will come to us when Jesus left all the glory of heaven to rescue a perishing world? Jesus went into the thick of battle, right into the hottest skirmish, and he emerged victorious.

Victory over Satan in the world and our sinful nature will never be obtained striving to live a safe, comfortable life. Victory is found in the heat of battle, not cowering in some corner because we have been hurt by the world or hurt by the church or we are in love with pleasure and comfort.

There was no one more wounded, abused, and afflicted by men and devils than Jesus, and the wounds went deeper in him because as the Creator God, he created the very people that cried crucify him. True believers should never hide in their churches or strive to blend with secular culture so they can supposedly be relevant.

Our commander-in-chief ordered us to advance the truths and principles of his kingdom in the hostile territory of this fallen world while remaining unspotted by its filth. To disobey such commands is nothing less than raw disobedience and insubordination.

Jesus' Purpose in Making Disciples

Jesus had a very purposeful agenda when he gathered around him disciples. He was not trying to copy the way other teachers did things. The agenda he advanced was determined before all that is came into existence.

He is the originator of the idea of discipleship. Jesus was not a follower, but the truest and greatest leader this world has ever known because there has never been nor will there ever be another Almighty God in human form.

What was the agenda that Jesus had in making disciples? Was it to make some weak-minded, weak-willed, fearful disciples that selfishly live for personal happiness? No, a thousand times no. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost and by rescuing the lost he was out to so transform their lives that they would become radicals just like him.

So he preached the radical truth to infuse into the disciples hearts and minds what it means to be one of his followers. He did not impart to them a weak and wimpy religion, but a victorious faith that could conquer the hearts and minds of men and nations.

Jesus wants the life and truth that he is and that he gives to be pulsating in and through us, defining us, liberating us, empowering us. The one true faith leaves no room for half-hearted devotion. You cannot see it in Jesus, nor can you find it in Scripture.

Wholehearted, uncompromising, on fire, Holy Spirit devotion is the only kind that is acceptable to Jesus. Jesus gave us infallible truths and principles that are to define our lives. They are only found in the Bible, the Christian scriptures.

He also sent us the indwelling Spirit so that everything we do can be done through the power of the Holy Spirit who is living, active, powerful, victorious, and confrontational. When the Word and Spirit operate through genuinely surrendered vessels, they will turn this world upside down like Paul, or they will die trying.

This is what America needs most, on-fire, Spirit-filled followers of Jesus that fearlessly and lovingly take the good news to a dying world. The need is tremendous, the call glorious. Multitudes of perishing immortal souls are in desperate need of men and women who will fearlessly live and proclaim the truth no matter the cost.

Where are such disciples though? Can you not hear Jesus pleading with his disciples today? Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

This command is for us today, for all believers, no exceptions. Christians know this command, but how many are living it out? How many are spending themselves for Jesus so his fame is known throughout their neighborhood, community, nation, and world?

We think ourselves good Christians because we don't do the bad things that the bad people of the world practice. Are we good Christians if we fail to put into practice this command to take the radical truth to a perishing world so men, women, and children can be liberated from the bondage of sin and know the wonder of sweet fellowship with Jesus?

Are we good Christians if we fail that? Are we good Christians when we are silent, when we keep the radical truth to ourselves? Just imagine for a moment what would happen if Christians really believed, loved, and lived the truth.

We would not find the practice of sin in the church. We would not see rebellion rise up against pastors or gossip devastate a local congregation. We would not see greed and selfish living in the church, nor do we see a lukewarm religion defined by half-hearted devotion.

What would we see? We would see saints living holy, joyful lives. We would see the church ablaze with love for Christ and love for one another. We would see saints learning the joy of brokenness and the power of surrender.

We would see spirit-filled, spirit-empowered believers that hell cannot stop and that the world will take note of. We would see authentic revival transform our lives, churches, communities, and nation.

We would see genuine followers of Jesus become spiritual revolutionaries whom hell would hate and heaven praise, declaring that the world was not worthy of them. Am I only portraying a fantasy church here?

Acts as a Model of Spirit-Empowered Christianity

One that can never come into existence nor has ever been? Then what do we do with the book of Acts? There we see the faith lived out that I am speaking about here. Study the book of Acts. Live the book of Acts.

And you will see what Jesus commands is actually obtainable when his truths are lived out through the power of the Holy Spirit. Was Jesus wrong to teach us that when we pray we are to ask that his will would be done on earth as it is in heaven?

Is this prayer impossible in this life to ever be fulfilled? If so, then Jesus lied to us. And if he lied, then he is not the way, the truth, the life. This means that we are left in our sin because he could not then be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

In heaven, truth is an uncontested reality. Angels and saints do not have debates over whether or not the truth is knowable because truth sits upon heaven's throne. Sin is nowhere to be found because the redeemed have been set free from the love and bondage of sin and now know the fullness of joy dwelling in the Holy Presence of God.

Rebellion does not exist there because all of God's rational beings taste the heavenly bliss of loving obedience and know the joy that comes from submission to a good, benevolent God. All the residents of heaven love God with all of their being and by loving God with a consuming desire they have experienced the wonder of what it means to love one another.

All this and so much more should be the reality in the true church while on earth. Such love, victory, and fulfillment is available to mankind, but only through Christ and the truth he has given us. On this rebel planet, the truth is positively radical.

Becoming Lovers of the Truth

The radical Jesus demands that his followers be lovers of the truth. This is not an option. We will find that as we strive to conform to his truth, we will be transformed in Christ's image to an ever-increasing degree.

This is the plan of salvation as revealed in the word. It is the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our Lord's agenda has not changed since he walked this planet. He is still calling people to be his disciples and his definition of what it means to be a disciple has not changed either.

The radical Jesus is laboring to take hell-deserving sinners, clean them up, and fill them with the spirit so that they can be radicals just like him and so turn this world upside down for his glory, honor, and praise.

To this we are called.