Equipping Eve Episode 7: What is truth?

Is the church today doing everything it can to provide women a firm foundation of truth in Christ Jesus?

Well, it's true, there's no shortage of candy -coated Bible studies, potluck fellowships available to ladies, but beyond Sunday morning, are

Christian women being properly equipped to stand against the same deceptions that even enticed

Eve in the garden? In an attempt to address the need for trustworthy, biblical resources for women,

No Compromise Radio is happy to introduce Equipping Eve, a ladies -only radio show that seeks to equip women with fruits of truth in an age that's ripe with deception.

My name's Mike Ebendroth and I'm pleased to introduce your host, Erin Benzinger, a friend of No Compromise Radio and a woman who wants to see other women equipped with a love for and a knowledge of the truth of God's Word.

Well, hello ladies, welcome to Equipping Eve, the show that seeks to equip women with the truth of God's Word so that we can stand strong in the face of all of the lies that are running rampant in the world today, and not just in the secular world, but sadly, lies are more and more prevalent in the visible church.

And when they are Christianized with a few good spiritual -sounding words, sometimes they are easy to believe, and so it is important for us to know the truth so that we can recognize the error, and that's what we like to do here at Equipping Eve, is dig into the truth, which is

God's Word, the 66 books of the Bible. My name is Erin Benzinger, I am the host here at Equipping Eve.

You can visit us now on Facebook, there is a Facebook page for the show, and please stop by and like Equipping Eve on Facebook.

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or .com, both addresses will work for you. And you can always email me, equippingeve at gmail .com.

So did you get all of that? Okay. There we go. Let's see how fast I can say all of that.

Thanks all of you for tuning in. We're still really early in the life of the show, but we've gotten some really great feedback, and so I'm really encouraged by all of the ladies who have been listening, and I hope you'll continue to listen, and I'm anxious to see what

God will do with Equipping Eve in 2015. We are now in the new year.

It's kind of crazy to think about. So as we're sitting here today, why don't we ponder just a very simple question.

What is truth? What is truth?

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the 1970s heretical blasphemous rock opera

Jesus Christ Superstar, but there is an interesting line in one of the psalms there, and it's spoken by Pilate and actually kind of taken from John 18, and we'll get to that text very quickly here because we don't want to dwell on a

Broadway show instead, but the line in the psalm there that Pilate sings as Jesus stands trial before him is,

What is truth? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?

Now that line, as I said, is kind of taken from John 18. John 18 doesn't have quite that much conversation in it, and we know that God's word is the actual account of what happened and not the

Broadway musical that heretically and blasphemously portrays our

Lord, but when I hear the question, What is truth? I think of that song for some bizarre reason, and it takes me back to that passage in John 18, and I would love for you to open your

Bibles now, and let's go to that. I'm going to start in verse 33, and ladies, what

I'd like you to do when you're listening, what I would encourage you to do, I can't order you to do anything.

I don't want to order you to do anything other than to encourage you to open

God's word with me as we're looking at it with every show. If you're able to open the word and follow along with us,

I may not always give you enough time to turn to the passage, so maybe you want to jot down whatever passage we're talking about so that you can look it up later.

Feel free to hit pause and find in your Bible where we are, because it's really important as we're studying

God's word that we see it for ourselves, and nothing is more helpful than seeing it in your own

Bible. So I really encourage you to do that, and I think you will find it really helpful. So right now we are at John 18, and I'm starting in verse 33, and this is where Jesus is standing trial before Pilate.

And verse 33 reads, But as it is, my kingdom is not of this realm.

Verse 37. And Jesus answered,

Pilate said to him, What is truth? And that takes us back to exactly what

I want to talk about today. What is truth? Pilate asked a very profound question in that moment, and the pilot of the heretical, blasphemous

Broadway show, Jesus Christ Superstar, may perhaps have been an early postmodern.

As he said, we both have truths, are mine the same as yours? And that's what we see in the world today, isn't it, ladies?

That the truth is relative. That I cannot say that something is objectively, unchangingly true, because it might offend somebody to say that.

And so what may be true for you may not be true for me, and that's okay, we'll both go along with our truths.

But when we take that to its logical conclusion, it's utterly ridiculous, isn't it?

I mean, think about it. If my truth is that green means stop and red means go, but your truth is that green means go and red means stop, well, we have a pretty big problem when we both come to the same intersection coming opposite directions, don't we?

This postmodern idea that truth is relative, we can't sustain ourselves on such a lie.

And I think those who hold to that concept would agree with that, but when it comes to things like religion and faith and God, the world needs the truth to be relative.

Because it's the only way that the world can continue to just wallow in its sin and enjoy its sin.

Because if God is true, and if what God has said is true, then what

God has said about his judgment is true, and the world doesn't like that. But what does

God say about the truth? What is truth?

Well, we need a knowledge of the truth in order to be saved. First Timothy 2, verse 3 says,

This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

For there is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony given at the proper time.

God desires that all would come to a knowledge of the truth. And that passage there in First Timothy 2 says

God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. A knowledge of the truth leads to salvation.

Your knowledge and response to the truth is deeply connected to your salvation.

John MacArthur wrote a book years ago called The Truth War, and if you haven't read it,

I encourage you to read it. And in that book, he says that God and truth are inseparable.

What a statement. What a statement that God and truth are inseparable.

And yet, doesn't Jesus himself say that in John 14, 6 when he says that I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me. And what a contradictory statement to someone like Friedrich Nietzsche.

And let me give a hat tip to No Compromise Radio for bringing this particular quote to my attention.

Nietzsche says, what then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms.

Metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power. Coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.

We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from. For as yet, we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist.

To be truthful means using the customary metaphors. In moral terms, the obligation to lie according to fixed convention, to lie heard -like in a style obligatory for all.

Friedrich Nietzsche had no concept of the God of truth. The urge for a sense of truth comes from what

God has placed inside of all mankind, and that is a knowledge of him.

We see that, don't we, in Romans 1, verse 18. Paul writes, for the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

Men in their sin seek to suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Why? Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them.

For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

God has made it evident within men that he exists, that he is the

God of all truth, but men in their sin seek to suppress that truth. That's why so many so -called atheists so readily deny a creator.

They are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. But as John MacArthur says, God and truth are inseparable, and again,

Jesus made that very clear when he said that he is the truth there in John 14, 6.

So what is the truth? Definition that John MacArthur gives in his book,

The Truth War, is that, quote, truth is that which is consistent with the mind, will, character, glory, and being of God.

Isn't that a huge definition? I mean, just try to comprehend that, that truth is that which is consistent with the mind, will, character, glory, and being of God.

And that is why men seek to suppress the truth in their unrighteousness, because God is truth, and truth is consistent with all that God is.

But the postmodern mindset wants to say that we can't know objective truth, we can't know anything with certainty, we can never say anything with too much conviction.

It's like we see Romans 1 lived out in front of us every single day.

And then how many lies, ironically, are there running around about the truth?

How do we find the truth? You know, we don't want to say that anything is definitively true. What's true for you may not be true for me, and vice versa.

So how do you determine truth? Well, one of the more mystical ways that people like to seek for truth is to go inside of themselves.

You know, if you just meditate for a few moments and get into the silence and go inside of yourself and look for that inner spark of the divine, this

Eastern meditation type thing that has been Christianized and is prevalent in the churches today, tells us that we can find truth inside of us, tells us that maybe there's a little spark of divinity inside of us that we can kind of channel, and that's how we can muster up the truth, and that's how we can know the truth.

Others might say, well, truth is what is consistent with my experience and my emotions, and if I've experienced it and I've lived it and it makes me happy, then it's true.

But we know, don't we, we've discussed this already in the short life of this show, that we can't trust our emotions.

We can't trust our wicked, deceitful hearts. We can only trust the objective word of God that tells us what we can know to be true.

Still quoting from the Truth War, John MacArthur writes, truth exists outside of us and remains the same regardless of how we may perceive it.

Truth, by definition, is as fixed and constant as God is immutable. Truth and meaning are not determined by our intuition, experience, or desire.

The true meaning of scripture, or anything else for that matter, has already been determined and fixed by the mind of God.

And that's what we have to come to understand, is that truth exists outside of us.

You can believe something with such conviction, but that doesn't make it true.

You can believe till the cows come home, whatever that means.

You can believe with the strongest certainty, with every fiber of your being, that there is no

God. That does not mean that there is no God. The truth exists outside of us and it is true regardless of whether or not you believe it.

I recently heard a sermon preached by Dr. Steve Lawson out at Grace Community Church, actually, one of the fellowship groups there.

And it was called, What is Truth? And it was actually when I heard that sermon that I thought, ah, that would be a great topic for Equipping Eve, and that's why we're doing this show today.

And he actually took us his text to launch from. He took that passage from John 18 that we began with, where Pilate says,

What is Truth? And launched into a wonderful sermon there. And actually,

I will link to that sermon at the Equipping Eve blog. So if you go to equippingeve .org

or .com and then click on the blog tab at the top, you'll be able to find some links to some of the resources that we're talking about today.

And so, in this sermon, Dr. Lawson talked about the reality of truth and that truth is reality and answered the question,

What is truth? By giving eight, I think it's eight, let me check my notes, eight, kind of eight descriptions and characteristics of the truth.

And how can we know these things are right about the truth? Because they're found in the Word of God.

And Jesus not only was truth, he came to testify about the truth. He said that to Pilate in that very same passage.

Jesus Christ came to testify about the truth, and the truth was himself. And our understanding, knowledge, and response to that truth, as I said before, that has eternal consequences.

So it is vital that we understand the true answer to the question,

What is truth? What is the first characteristic that Dr. Lawson said about the truth?

He said that truth is divine, and is not from culture, society, media, or government.

We don't get our truth from any of those things. Now that doesn't mean that those things can't say things that are true, but they don't generate truth.

They don't decide what is true. As we read previously by John MacArthur, everything that is true has already been fixed in the mind of God.

It's true because God deemed that it would be true. Truth is divine. It must come from God.

God is the author of truth. He is the source of truth. He is the determiner of truth.

Truth is whatever God says it is, whether you like it or not, whether it gives you the warm fuzzies or not, it is true.

That is because God is truth. Let's go back to our

Bibles here. We already looked at John 14 .6. Let's look at Ephesians 4.

We're going to look and see that God is truth. In verse 17, I'm going to start back a little earlier than where I'm ultimately going.

Ephesians 4 .17, Ephesians 4 .17, So this I say and affirm together with the Lord that you walk no longer just as the

Gentiles also walk in the futility of their mind, being darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardness of their heart.

And they, having become callous, have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity with greediness.

But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard him and have been taught in him, just as truth is in Jesus.

That in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

John 15, verse 26, go back to the book of John chapter 15, 26.

Jesus says, When the helper comes whom I will send to you from the father, that is the spirit of truth, who proceeds from the father, he will testify about me, and you will testify also because you have been with me from the beginning.

John 16, verse 12, Jesus said, I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.

But when he, the spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak of his own initiative, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will disclose to you what is to come.

God is truth. Truth is the self -expression of God.

That's something that Dr. Lawson said in that sermon that, again, just hit me in kind of a fresh way, an important way of thinking about this, that truth is the self -expression of God because God is truth.

Romans 3, Romans 3, verse 3.

What then? If some did not believe, their unbelief will not nullify the faithfulness of God, will it?

May it never be. Rather, let God be found true, though every man be found a liar.

And ultimately we are all liars, aren't we? But by the grace of God, we are saved and transformed out of that old life, transformed by the truth, the truth of the gospel of the

Lord Jesus Christ. So the truth is divine. The truth is also absolute, in spite of what the postmoderns say.

Truth is absolute. It is perfect. It is without limits. It is pure. It's interesting how when

Jesus spoke about the truth, he used a definite article.

The truth is the truth, the way, the truth, and the life. This means that the truth is exclusive.

It is discriminatory. The world doesn't like that. That's why the world does not like the truth of God and the truth of God's word, because it sets boundaries that the world does not like.

The truth is never relative. It is never arbitrary. Whatever contradicts biblical truth is false.

And because it is false, it comes from Satan, the great deceiver, the father of lies.

John 8, 44, you are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him.

Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

But because I speak the truth, you do not believe me. John 8, 47,

Jesus said, he who is of God hears the words of God. For this reason, you do not hear them, because you are not of God.

Those men who love the truth, hear the word of God, believe it, heed it, whether it appeals to them emotionally or appeals to their senses or not, they are men of the truth and they love the word of truth and the

God of truth. But men of the world hate the truth and hate the

God of all truth, because they are of their father, the devil. So truth is divine, truth is absolute, and truth is objective.

It is fact, not feeling. This is what we were talking about before, that truth is outside of ourselves.

You cannot gaze at your navel and go into some altered state of consciousness and some weird meditative practice and come out knowing any concept of truth.

The truth exists outside of you. The truth is concrete. We need the truth to exist outside of us, don't we?

Because if it's inside of us, well, what else is inside of us? I mean, yes, if we've been saved, we have the indwelling

Holy Spirit who guides us into all truth, but we are still sinners and the human heart is wicked and deceitful and desperately sick.

Who can understand it, says Jeremiah, Jeremiah 17, 9. This is why we don't want to go in and sit in the silence and see what kind of words and thoughts pop into our head in order to glean truth.

We glean truth from the one objective source that God has graciously given to us, and that is

His Word. Galatians 2, Paul so clearly talked about the importance of proclaiming the truth in spite of what anybody thought, regardless of how it made people feel.

Galatians 2, verse 5, he says, we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

That's why the truth is so important for us to know and important for us to proclaim and just to stand upon and to defend.

The truth is singular. This goes along with the fact that truth is absolute, but all truth fits together.

Dr. Lawson said in his sermon that Christianity is not a series of truths, it is one truth.

It never contradicts itself, it will never say one thing to one group and something else to another. So this completely undoes the notion of postmodernism, that what's true for you may not be true for me.

The truth of God, the one true truth, is singular.

It presents one consistent worldview, which is so contrary to everything else that we see around us and, sadly, contrary to what is taught in so many churches today.

The teachings just are not consistent because they are not submitting themselves to the authority and the truth of God's Word.

The truth is immutable. And this is where we see how it is that truth is consistent with the character of God.

God never changes. And we read that quote from John MacArthur earlier, where he said that the truth is as immutable as God himself.

It is timeless, transcendent. God does not change, and thus truth does not change.

Any new truth that comes along is nothing more than a rehashed old heresy.

In Psalm 119, verse 89, the psalmist writes,

Forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven. Isaiah 40, verse 8, The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our

God stands forever. The word of God, the truth of the word of God is immutable.

It does not change. Truth is authoritative. This is because it comes from God.

God is sovereign. And his truth is sovereign. And as we said, the life of every person depends on his relationship to the truth.

Relationship and response to the truth. Why? Because Jesus Christ is the truth.

Truth is powerful. Think about it. You find truth in the word of God.

Think of how powerful the word of God is. It convinces. It convicts. It converts. It challenges.

It comforts. It encourages. It can bring us to tears. Tears of joy. Tears of repentance.

The truth is powerful. And the truth is determinative because, as we just said, your response and your relationship to the truth.

The truth of Jesus Christ and of the gospel of Jesus Christ Christ, that you are a sinner, that you cannot save yourself, that Jesus Christ lived perfectly, died the death you deserve because you have sinned against a holy

God, and He never did, but He died and bore the wrath of God for those who would believe.

He died and He rose again because His atonement sacrifice was acceptable to the

Father. That truth, that if you repent and place your faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation, that determines your eternity, how you respond to that truth.

It is imperative, ladies, that we understand the truth. It is imperative that we share the truth with those we love and even with those we don't really know.

God gives us many opportunities in daily life, doesn't He, to share His truths with strangers.

And we don't know if we're just casting seeds for someone else to come along and water them. But let us be faithful to proclaim the truth.

And let us be faithful to submit ourselves to the word of truth, the scripture, the

Bible. Psalm 119 verse 160 says, the sum of your word is truth.

Every one of your righteous ordinances is everlasting. We have been given a great gift in scripture.

It reveals to us the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, the Master who bought us, who purchased us with His own blood.

And I dare say that those who are unwilling to fight against error, those who are unwilling to call out error where they see it, in an appropriate manner, of course.

I'm not trying to incite anyone to cause unnecessary controversy, but we must defend the truth.

Because if we don't, are we no better than the enemies of Christ? We're no better than those who hate the truth.

Charles Spurgeon once said, he who hates truth soon hates its advocate. We will be despised by the world if we stand firmly upon the truth of God's word.

And he who hates the truth not only hates its advocate, but hates its source, God Himself.

Spurgeon also said, men cannot see truth because they love falsehood. The gospel is not seen because it is too pure for their loose lives and lewd thoughts.

And don't we see that in 1 Corinthians 1, 18, where Paul said, the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

This all goes back to how men in their sin suppress the truth and unrighteousness. So let us not suppress the truth.

Let us glorify God for it and revel in the fact that we have truth at our fingertips in the scripture.

In the garden was the first time that we saw God's truth questioned. Did God really say?

Satan questioned and distorted and contradicted God's word, but Christ came to testify to the truth.

If we are His, we will never shy away from that truth. We will not hide ourselves from that truth.

We will embrace it even in those times when it's a little bit painful because ultimately

God will use the sanctification that comes from accepting and submitting ourselves to that truth and He will use it for His glory and ultimately even for our good because He is

God and He is a good God. All right, ladies, let's see. Before we close here, last time

I read to you a little blurb from this little daily devotional thing that I have called

You're Already Amazing. We're not going to read from this every time, but I was flipping through it again today and came across this one interesting entry from September 25th.

Holly Gerth, the author of this little ditty, writes, If you're loving

God, others, and yourself, then you're already doing enough. That's right, and you're already amazing because you are

God's creation, His child, and He lives in you. Sounds scandalous, doesn't it?

But it's true. What's wrong about that? She says, If you're loving

God, others, and yourself, you're already doing enough. Ladies, can we ever do enough? We can't, can we?

We can't do enough. We cannot love God enough. We cannot love Him well enough. We cannot love

Him rightly enough. We cannot love others well enough.

It's not about us doing enough. We can never do enough.

Christ did what we cannot. Christ is the one whose work saves us.

Not anything we can do. But if we have been saved by God, we strive to walk in a manner worthy of that calling, don't we?

We seek first His righteousness and His kingdom. Matthew 6, 33. It's not about us.

It's about the Lord Jesus Christ. And so Holly Gerth wants us to think we're so amazing because we're doing enough.

Ladies, I encourage you to get on your knees and praise the Lord Jesus Christ for what

He has done because He is the only one who did enough. He did it perfectly.

And it is because of Him that we may live. Okay, ladies, as usual,

I am way over my time. Thank you so much for listening. And until the next show, ladies, get in your

Bibles, get on your knees, and get equipped. Thanks for listening. You've been listening to Equipping Eve, a no -compromise radio production.

If you'd like to get a hold of Erin, you can reach her at equippingeve at gmail .com, or you can check out one of our two websites, do notbesurprised .com