Moral Madness: Loving Truth in an Age of Unreason

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Have a seat and take out your Bibles and turn with me to 2 John.
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As many of you know, we for a while now have been doing a verse-by-verse study of the book of Acts.
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However, after Mother's Day on our church calendar, I tend to do a short series outside of whatever the longer, broader series is that I'm doing.
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I tend to do a short series between Father's Day and Mother's Day.
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And then after Father's Day, I'm going to do a summer study.
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This year's summer study is going to be on the subject of the biblically functioning church, an issue that we haven't visited now for several years.
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We're going to be revisiting it because we are, in fact, we have our elders and the executive committee together looking at the Constitution to make some changes this year that we're going to be putting towards the congregation for affirmation.
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So I'm going to be preaching through a biblically functioning church again, starting after Father's Day.
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But because I have five Sundays between Mother's Day and Father's Day, I wanted to do a short series, a short four- or five-week series, and I wanted to keep doing a verse-by-verse study.
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So I said, what book could I do in five weeks? And I thought, well, there's a couple of books that are less than a page long.
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I think they were sent out on postcards in the first century, you know, the first century postcard.
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And one of those books is 2 John.
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And I have to imagine, and again, this is just my own opinion, but I have to imagine of all the books in the New Testament, if I were to walk around and ask you which one is your favorite, I would imagine probably very few of you, if any, would say, well, 2 John, that's the one that really speaks to me because most of us probably haven't spent a whole lot of time with it.
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It's not a lot of writing.
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And yet, God in His omniscience and omnipotence has seen to it that the church has recognized the inspiration, the fact that this is a book from God, and that it was included along with the other 27 books of the New Testament.
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So it bears as much weight as does Romans or Hebrews in regard to its authorship.
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It is from the Holy Spirit of God.
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It comes to us as one of four books, well, five, from the hand of John himself, the beloved apostle.
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We have the Gospel of John, we have three epistles of John, and then, of course, we have the Revelation, which comes to us also from the pen of John.
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So, it comes to us as part of a body of literature from a man who was greatly used by God in bringing about the Word of God to His people.
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So, we're going to spend the next five weeks on 13 verses.
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And we're going to be looking at what God has given to us in this very short, but still very powerful epistle.
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And the title of today's sermon is actually longer than what it says there.
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I don't know if it's in the bulletin.
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Yeah, it is in the bulletin.
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The full title is Moral Madness, colon, Loving Truth in an Age of Unreason.
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We only have on the screen Loving Truth in an Age of Unreason.
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But really, the title is Moral Madness.
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That's the series title.
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Because we live in an age of moral madness.
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And if there was ever a time I should have gotten an amen, it was right then.
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We live in a time where morality and the search for truth and the love of the truth have gone by the wayside.
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And they have been replaced with absolute inanity and foolishness, which men call wisdom.
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As the Bible says, the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God.
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And certainly it is.
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And we see it all over.
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So that's the subject of what we're going to talk about in this series.
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Because the theme of the book of 2 John is a love for the truth.
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A desire to live the truth.
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And a willingness to stand against those who bring falsehoods.
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So as I said, it's a short book, but it says a lot.
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So we'll begin with this study.
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I want to give a short introduction, and then we're going to read verses 1 through 3.
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Let me begin.
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That was an introduction to an introduction, by the way.
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We live in a world full of skepticism.
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And rightly so.
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There are many people in the world that seek to deceive us.
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And it would be foolish at best to simply pull the wool over our eyes and begin accepting everything we hear as truth.
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If we did that, it wouldn't be long for most of us to become broke, sick, or possibly dead.
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If we just believed everything people told us.
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We have to exist with a certain amount of skepticism.
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And if you lived with naivete all the time, just believing everything everybody told you, you wouldn't live very long.
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At least you wouldn't live very healthy very long.
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We all have to be a bit skeptical to get by in a world filled with deception.
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Almost as long as mankind has existed, lies have accompanied his experience.
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And a degree of skepticism has had to be brought into our life because simply to be able to function and not being taken advantage of.
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And we call it something different in the church.
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We don't call it skepticism.
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We call it discernment.
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Alright? You've heard that word? Well, discernment is just a form of skepticism.
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We want to look at something and not take it at face value.
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We want to discern whether it's right or wrong.
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And when we look out at the world, we have to do that.
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We have to make a decision whether something is right or wrong.
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We have to be skeptical, discerning, whatever you want to call it.
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But while discerning the truth is virtuous, and it's something the Scripture tells us that we're supposed to do, there is a way in which all of the deceit that we've had to deal with and all of the lies that we've had to deal with have caused some people, and many people in fact in our society, to believe that truth no longer exists.
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They become so jaded by a world of deception that it's impossible for them to imagine that there is in fact objective, absolute, moral truth.
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In fact, you go on to college campuses and you start talking about the truth, they'll tell you there is no such thing as truth.
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And guess what? They're not saying anything new.
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Because when Jesus Christ stood before Pontius Pilate, He said, I came to bear witness to the truth.
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And 2,000 years ago, Pontius Pilate, the good relativist as he was, because relativism didn't come about in the last century, relativism has been here since the beginning, because Pontius Pilate, 2,000 years ago, looked at Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, He who Himself is the truth, and he said, what is truth? What do you mean you've come to bear witness to the truth? There is no such thing as the truth.
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Yet when we turn to the pages of Scripture, we're confronted with the idea that not only does truth exist, but truth is paramount in its importance.
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The Bible declares without hesitation that absolute, objective truth does exist and it shows us that there are few things, if anything at all, that's more important than the truth.
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It is considered the virtue of virtues and it is a virtue that is perfectly in accord with the character of God and one that God expects to be consistent in the lives of those who believe in Him.
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So this morning, as we turn to 2 John, let us remember that the focus of this short epistle is the focus on the truth.
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And as I said, in the next few weeks, we're going to see the responsibility to stand for the truth, to walk in the truth, to love in the truth, to obey in the truth, and to discern the truth.
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And in the end, I pray that we will see that we as believers have a great responsibility regarding the truth which has been given to us by God.
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So let's stand together.
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We're going to read just the introduction, the first three verses, and then seek to understand what it is saying.
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2 John verse 1 The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever.
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Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father's Son, in truth and love.
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Father God, I thank You for Your Word.
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I thank You for the truth.
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And Lord, when we say the word truth, we mean more, Father, than just the opposite of a lie, but we mean the very substance and foundation of who You are because You are the truth.
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In You there is no falsehood.
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In You there is no deception.
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You are God and You are truth.
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And Lord, today as we seek to study this subject, I pray that You would keep me from error.
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I do not want to be one who propagates falsehoods or misunderstandings or outright lies of Your Word.
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Father, keep me from that for my sake, for the sake of my conscience and the sake of my hearers.
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For Your people, Father, that You would protect them from that is my sincere prayer.
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Father, also I pray for unbelievers who are always with us.
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God, as we look out in a congregation of this size, we know that there are those who have yet to bow the knee to Christ and we know that there are those who maybe believe that they have and they have with their mouths, but they have not yet with their hearts.
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We pray today, Lord, that You would break hearts, open eyes, unstop ears, that they might hear and see and believe the Gospel.
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And in all this we pray in Jesus' name and for His sake.
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Amen.
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As I noted already in my introduction, the theme of the book of 2 John is the subject of the truth.
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The word truth in Greek, aletheia, means it can be taken two ways.
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It can be taken objectively and subjectively the same way that we do use the word truth.
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We have things that we say are true objectively and then we have things that we say are true subjectively.
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Objective things are things that do not change person to person but are always the same.
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And subjective things are things that are true for some people and not true for other people.
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And there are those types of truth.
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If I walk into this room and it happens all the time, I walk in here and someone says, Pastor Keith, it's cold in here.
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And I'll say, no it ain't.
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And for them that's true and for me it's not because I come with an extra layer of insulation so it keeps me from getting as cold as some other folks.
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So when I walk in and they say it's cold and I say it's not, well that truth is subjective.
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It's not a lie, it's not false, but it is different.
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And it does change from person to person.
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So we don't deny the reality of subjective truth and the word alatheia carries with that the idea of you can have a personal experience that can be true.
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But also it carries the idea of the objective and that is true no matter the situation, no matter the person, no matter the idea.
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The root of alatheis, the Greek word here, is something that is true or truthful and it's actually a negation.
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It begins with the alpha negative.
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And we know what the alpha negative is.
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I've explained it several times.
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The alpha negative is when you put the A on the beginning of a word and it changes it to the opposite.
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If I put A on the word theist, it becomes an atheist, a person who doesn't believe in God.
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And so that's the alpha negative.
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So in this word alatheia actually comes from the root lanthano, which means something that is to be secret, hidden, without knowing or ignorant.
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Lanthano means to be ignorant or not knowing.
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Alatheia means to know or to understand or to be able to be true, something that's right or correct.
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It's no longer hidden.
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It's the truth.
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It's what it is.
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It's how it actually is.
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Not obscured, not hidden, not in the shadows.
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It's out in the open and this is the way it is.
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We see the writer of 2 John who is John the Apostle.
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He writes to us in the first three verses of his letter and he uses this word four times.
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He says, "...the elder to the elect lady and her children whom I love in truth." That's number one.
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He says, "...but also all who know the truth." That's two.
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"...but because the truth that abides in us." That's three.
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And then later he says, "...from Jesus Christ the Father's Son in truth and in love." That's four.
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Four times he uses that word ensuring that we do not miss the focus of this epistle.
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The subject he's going to be basing all of his arguments on is the subject of the truth.
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Now, who is the writer? We've already said it is John the Apostle.
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It doesn't say that in the text.
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It says the elder.
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However, we can, based on some internal and external evidence, understand that who he's talking about is John the Apostle.
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He doesn't call himself the Apostle, though, because John was also an elder in the church.
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He identifies himself as an elder.
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And when we look to history and to the place which these books ended up in the canon and we deduce with a good deal of accuracy and certainty that it was actually John who wrote this epistle.
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He is writing during his ministry in Ephesus in the later years of his life.
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And it could be that he refers to himself as elder rather than apostle because at this point in his life that's where he is serving and that's how he is serving.
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And he identifies himself as the elder with a definite article there which is interesting by itself because we understand that in churches there is never a single elder in the New Testament.
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It's always a plurality of elders.
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But he does use a definite article to identify himself which may mean, and we don't know this for absolute certainty, but he may be indicating himself as having a special class because he may be the only living apostle left.
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This is being written at a certain time in history where he is older now.
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Most of the other apostles have died of martyrdom.
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He is the only one who is living to an old age and he identifies himself with a definite article to identify himself as a particular type of elder.
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He is the elder, the only one that remains among the apostles.
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We know Peter himself also identifies himself as an elder because Peter served as an elder.
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But John identifies himself as the elders.
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And who is he writing to? Well, this becomes more of a question because he says, the elder to the elect lady.
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Now, this has led to some debate in the Christian church because people want to know, well, who is the lady that he is speaking to? And it's not really a big deal but it does raise a question because there are those who would say, well, the lady in particular that he is talking to is not a specific woman but is the church.
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Is the church ever referred to as a lady? Oh, yeah, all the time throughout the New Testament.
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The church is called the bride of Christ, right? Jesus says, I lay down my life for the church and he says, husbands, love your wives.
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Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.
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So, we have the female article or the female pronoun they use for the church.
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So, the church is often described as the bride of Christ.
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So, could John be writing this as a general epistle to the church? Yes, that is certainly a possibility.
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It is also possible that he is writing this as a direct statement to a specific woman that he knows.
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And if you compare this, and I know most of your Bibles you have already got it to 2 John and 3 John is right there with it.
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If you look over to 3 John, he says the elder, same construction, right? The elder, both the same, to the beloved Gaius whom I love in truth.
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Gaius is an individual man who is receiving the third letter.
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So, we know that the third letter is going to an individual man.
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And some have made the argument, well if 2 John was going to an individual woman he would have named her because he named Gaius.
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Well, there is an argument there.
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But it could also be that he is not giving a specific name but there is so much familiarity with this woman that he is speaking to her simply as the elect lady and other people would know who she was because again there is a context here that we no longer live in.
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There is a context of people who knew who he was writing to and what he was writing about.
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So, at the end of the day if you said to me, Pastor, do you think he is talking about the church or do you think he is talking about a lady? I would say it doesn't really change the application of where he is going to go with the letter.
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And because of that I don't think it is necessary that we nail down one side or the other.
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I do look to the later part of the letter and where he starts talking about someone coming to you, bringing a bad teaching, letting them into your home.
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I do think that that tends to sound to me more like it is a personal correspondence with an individual where he is telling her specifically not to open your home to false teachers and things like that.
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But, of course, that could also be true for the whole church.
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So, at the end of the day I am not going to nail it down for you.
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I will let you come to the conclusion on your own.
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But, as I said, ultimately we do know this.
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John is writing this letter.
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He is concerned about the truth and he is writing to the elect lady.
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And here is something I do want to stress.
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I know some people have issues with Reformed theology.
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Reformed theology is, of course, our theology.
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We are a Reformed evangelical church.
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We believe that God is sovereign over all things, including salvation.
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And so we use words like elect and people get offended by that.
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And I say, but it is in the Bible.
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It is right there.
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He doesn't call her the free will lady.
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I am just saying.
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He calls her the elect lady.
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Elect simply means chosen.
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That is an important thought for this because he says, the elder to the elect lady and her children.
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And this is another reason if I were going to make the argument that it is an individual woman, it says and her children.
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So, if you say the church and her children, what does that mean? Well, you can say it is the universal church, her children being the local churches.
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But in that, I think you may be stretching it somewhat.
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If you just say it as it simply, he is referring to a woman and her children.
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His concern is she, and it could be that her house is the house church where people are meeting.
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And if her house is the house church where people are meeting, that creates a whole other because there are going to be itinerant ministers who are coming and bringing false teaching.
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And he is telling this lady, you need to be careful about the truth.
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You need to put truth as paramount because there is going to be people.
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Have you ever had somebody come to your house and bring a false teaching? If you live around here, you have because the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are off the chain around here.
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They are always out.
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I try to be gracious when they come.
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But it is difficult because they are always coming to the door wanting to bring this false teaching.
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And he tells us here, don't open your door.
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Don't bring them into your home.
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We are going to get to that in the weeks to come.
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So again, we have here a correspondence which is going out, whether it is going to the Universal Church, whether it is going to the singular lady, we know what the focus is.
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The focus is on the truth.
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There are four times we see the word truth.
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Truth is the overarching theme of the epistle.
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Truth is the key.
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It is the heart of what he is trying to say.
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And this morning, because truth is so vitally important, I want to answer a few questions regarding that specific topic.
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Because I want to answer this question first.
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Why is it that we would argue and we would say that truth is so vitally important to the Christian faith? There are a lot of people now who don't say that it is.
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I mean, you have Christians who don't really argue or talk about doctrine anymore.
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And they will say, well, doctrine is not important.
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It just matters how you feel.
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They will say, as long as you love Jesus, it doesn't matter what you believe about him.
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That is foolishness, guys.
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It is dangerous.
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It is dangerous thinking.
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It is dangerous teaching.
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Because we have abandoned truth and we have sacrificed it on the altar of feelings.
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So I want to answer the question, why is truth so vitally important? Well, first thing, because of its relationship to God.
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If you wanted to make notes, here's a few things to think about.
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One, God is a God of truth.
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Deuteronomy 32.4 He is the rock.
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His work is perfect.
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For all His ways are justice.
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A God of truth and without injustice, righteous and upright is He.
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That is who God is.
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God is a God of truth.
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Isaiah 65 says, so that He who blesses Himself in the land shall bless Himself by the God of truth.
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When we talk about God, we're talking about a God of truth.
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But also, Jesus Christ is the truth.
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What did Jesus say about Himself? In John 14.
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We all know this verse.
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When He's talking about Himself, He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
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And no one comes to the Father but by Me.
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I am the truth.
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You know when Jesus will go around and in your King James Bible, it will say, Verily, verily.
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Right? And in the more modern versions, it might say, Amen, amen.
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Because that's the Hebrew there.
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Amen, amen.
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Verily, verily.
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You know what He's really saying? What I am saying is the truth.
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I am speaking the truth.
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I am telling you the truth.
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Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am speaking truth to you.
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God is truth.
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Jesus Christ is truth.
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And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth.
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John 14.
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And I will ask the Father, and He will send you another Comforter to be with you forever, even the Spirit of what? Truth.
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This is the God we worship.
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This is the God we serve.
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And not only is God intimately related to the truth, but His ways are always in accord with the truth.
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Christ bore witness to the truth.
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As we already said, when the Pontius Pilate asked Him, what are you here to do? He says, you're a king.
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Jesus answered him.
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He said, you say that I am a king for this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world to bear witness to the truth.
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The Spirit leads into all truth.
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John 16.
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When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.
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For He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak.
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And He will declare to you the things that are to come.
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He will speak the truth to you.
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And of course we've already read in Psalm 96 this morning in our opening, the Lord judges in truth.
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Thus we can say that truth is of vital importance to the Trinity.
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God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, all have intimate relation to the truth.
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Thus this subject is vital to the believer.
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If we believe in the God of Scripture, which is the Trinity by the way, because that is also truth, and just in case you're interested, during the summer on Wednesday nights I'm going to be teaching a series on the Trinity.
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That is one of the doctrines.
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Not only does it cause so much misunderstanding in the church and confusion, but it is one of the doctrines that I think has been abandoned in this new age of absolute adherence to the truth.
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People abhor the truth and they don't want to deal with it.
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I sat in on a pastoral ordination service.
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This guy was being ordained to the ministry and he invited me to sit in on his ordination panel.
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And all of us got to ask one question.
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So I asked him the question.
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I said, hey, let's say you had a Jehovah Witness come to your church.
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They just married a church member or something and they're converted from Jehovah Witness to Christianity.
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They've been taught their whole life that God and the view of the Trinity is false and that it's unbiblical.
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Tell me how you would explain the doctrine of the Trinity to that person and help them come to a knowledge of the truth.
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And you know what? No one in the room wanted to answer that question.
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In fact, the guy beside me got mad at me.
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He said, why would you ask such a hard question? I said, because we're ordaining this man to the ministry! It's the most important job in the world to preach the word of God, and you're asking me why I'm asking tough questions? What, are you out of your mind? Sorry, I got a little upset.
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What are you talking about? This is the truth! We bear witness to the truth! You must be able to stand for the truth! Especially if you're going to stand here! So absolutely, the Trinity is vital.
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And the Trinity is a Trinity of truth.
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God the Father is the God of truth.
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God the Son is the God of truth.
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God the Spirit is the Spirit of truth.
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We know this.
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This is not an option.
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So how, then, does this become applicable to us? How do we apply this? Well, I want you to look at a verse.
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We've looked at 2 John, and we're going to be there for the next few weeks, but I want you to look at a verse in the Old Testament.
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If you would just hold your place in 2 John.
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Turn back to Psalms.
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Psalm 51.
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Psalm 51 is David's prayer of repentance.
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After Nathan the prophet went to him, called him out for his sin with Bathsheba.
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You remember that story? You are the man.
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David then repented of his sin because he realized what he had done to Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba, and having him killed.
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David then broken over his sin, he cries out, Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.
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And he cries out for a clean heart.
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Well, in the midst of this cry, this prayer of confession and repentance, verse 6, he says to God, he says, Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being.
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You realize that God desires that the believer have truth in his inward being.
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What does that mean? That means that the believer yearns passionately for the truth.
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You delight in truth in the inward being.
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God wants us to have a passion for the truth.
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I wonder sometimes if we do.
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I wonder if our passion is for the truth.
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And here's how we know.
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When we hear the truth, do we love it or do we hate it? You see, that's when you talk to the world.
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And I haven't had a chance to talk to Mike yet, but I know yesterday we had our evangelism booth out here.
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He said he had several good conversations.
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I'm looking forward to hearing how those conversations went.
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But having been a part of evangelism here for years and we've been talking to people, I know that when you tell the truth to unbelievers, they don't love it.
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When you tell the truth to an unbeliever, their immediate response is the recoil to it.
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They want to get as far away from it as you can or change the subject.
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That's one big thing.
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You start talking to somebody about Jesus.
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You start talking to somebody about the truth.
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What do they do? They want to talk to you about anything.
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Anything in the world.
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Love to talk about anything.
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Fishing, hunting, hanging vinyl siding.
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I don't know.
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Pressure washing a floor.
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Anything other than the truth.
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You know, I sit with believers, people who confess faith.
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Maybe I should say that.
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And I listen to how much they even want to talk about the truth.
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How much they even want to engage the subject of the truth.
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And often times that's a good barometer where someone is spiritually.
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Because if they have no desire for the truth, is the spirit really within them? If a person has no desire for the things of God.
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Now I'm not saying everyone is called to be Charles Spurgeon.
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Not everybody is called to be a scholar.
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You know, God calls plumbers and God calls painters and God calls whatever it is you do.
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Funeral people.
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Bobby is here.
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I don't know.
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Say something.
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God calls people to do all kinds of stuff.
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But what is the motivation in our heart? It's motivation for God and for His truth.
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And when we don't want anything to do with that, that tells us something about our heart.
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When we have no desire to hear the Word of God, to read the Word of God, to talk about the Word of God, to ask questions about the Word of God, to have people ask us questions about the Word of God.
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I've heard Christians, somebody ask them about the Scriptures and they will change the subject themselves.
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An unbeliever will come and they'll ask them something about the Scripture and they'll change the subject to the last vacation they were on.
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Because they have no desire for the truth.
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Beloved, that cannot and should not be.
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God delights.
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God delights in truth in our inward parts.
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But if there is truth in our inward parts, it comes out in our words.
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If there is truth in our inward parts, it comes out in our lifestyle.
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If there is truth in our inward parts, you can't keep it down.
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I used to have a professor, you guys know, Dr.
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Powers.
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He said, what's in the well does what? Comes up in the bucket.
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What's in the well comes up in the bucket.
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Is there truth in our well? Is there truth in our inward parts? Well, we know what's coming up in the bucket.
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Do you love the truth? Has the truth changed you? And does the truth matter to you? So much so that it's the light for your path and it's the words of your song.
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Do you love the truth today? I think that I'm going to end there because that's a good question.
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Because if you don't love the truth, I would ask you to examine your heart.
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If you don't love the truth, I would say, why not? If you have no desire for the truth, I would say, search your soul and say, God, why is it that I care about everything else so much more than I care about your truth? Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth.
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I do pray, oh God, that the truth would be our song, that the truth would be the very joy of our hearts and that it would come out in our words and in our lives, that we would have a passion for the truth and that we would understand that you are the ultimate source of all truth.
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God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, truth in Trinity.
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And we love you and we thank you, Father, for all that you've done and are going to do.
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And Lord, if there are those today here who do not love the truth, who have not been converted by the work of your Spirit, I pray that today you would change hearts and lives, bring your people to yourself through repentance and faith.
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And Lord, for the believers, I pray that you would give them a heart which yearns even more fervently for the truth.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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Let's stand together and sing.
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Prepare our hearts for communion.