“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Jn. 8:32
There is a time coming when the truth will no longer set people free but result in damnation. Praise the Lord that you know the truth now.
“Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: 35But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.” Acts 10:34-35
Quite a bit of the Christian church today has a hyper view of grace. They deny that righteous living has any part of our salvation. No doubt they would call the apostle Peter a false teacher because he said that those who “worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.” Works don’t save, but saved people do works out their salvation with fear and trembling.
“Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath.” Lk. 12:44
When someone says to you, “what I am going to say now is really the truth,” they are in a way saying that they don’t always say the truth. Jesus made this statement, “of a truth,” four times in the KJV bible. However, when Jesus said this, he wasn’t like man that says many things that aren’t of truth. You can be sure that anything and everything that Jesus said was, “Of a truth” and that it is the truth.
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness;” Rom. 1:18
I like how the NKJV says the last part of this verse. “men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” The word “hold” means to hold down. We learn from this verse that unrighteousness keeps truth from being promoted. You can certainly see that in society today. As our nation grows more unrighteous by the day, truth and absolutes are mocked by the leaders and teachers in this nation. If you are one that holds to the absolute truth of God, then our society will look at you like you like you come from a different planet. Well, we aren’t from a different planet, but we are from a different kingdom, a kingdom where truth reigns.
“The high priest then asked Jesus of his disciples, and of his doctrine. 20Jesus answered him, I spake openly to the world; I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort; and in secret have I said nothing.” Jn. 18:19-20
Cults are notorious for telling you one thing when they are sharing their religion with you, but then when you join up with them they tell you something different. It must not be so for Christians. We must always speak openly the truth of this gospel. The secret to the mega / seeker sensitive church is they don’t speak the truth openly. They don’t tell it like it should be told. I guess it all depends if you are looking to gather people or if you are looking to save people and strengthen saints.
It was not my intention to follow up my last article, “The Truth About Truth†with another message about truth, but after reflecting more on this subject, I figured there is not a better time than now to bring out some more thoughts about truth.
Last month I shared how truth is more than something factual, truth is a person by the name of Jesus Christ. If you love Jesus, you love truth. If you downplay truth, you downplay Jesus. I also brought out how truth is what sets men free. So why in the world would the church ever mess around with the truth by trying to skirt around it? Proclaim the truth and let it, or I should say, let Him do His work. Another point I made about truth is that we can never really worship God unless it is in Spirit and truth. If your life is a lie, don’t think singing, shouting and raising your hands during a song service is going to be received by a holy God full of grace and truth. Then the very last point I made was that one of evidences of love is that it “… rejoiceth in the truth;†(I Cor 13:6). Real love, love for God, loves truth. If truth is diminished in a believer’s life, then understand, so is their love for God.
Now on to some more teaching about truth, right from the book of truth, and taught by the Spirit of truth. The Spirit only knows truth; He only speaks truth and fits the description as being the Spirit of truth. When we become born again believers, God freely gives us His Spirit of truth to dwell inside us. Joh 14:17 says, “Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.†What a privilege, saints of God: We get the very Spirit of truth living in us Who will work in us and bring forth a living manifestation of truth. Everything we say must be true, and the life we live must be true. The Spirit accomplishes this in us when we cooperate with Him. Paul, writing to Timothy, called the church, “the pillar and ground of the truth†(I Tim. 3:15). Truth is what settles and establishes the church so she cannot be moved from the Rock she is founded on. Truth is the root that that goes down deep to anchor the church. Lies and deception dig away at the roots. If you disturb the roots of a tree, that tree becomes unstable. If Christians start downplaying and avoiding the truth then the church becomes susceptible to everything the devil will throw at her.
Joh 16:13 “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.†What a promise we have from Jesus. God will never leave us stuck somewhere between the false and the truth. As long as you brother and sister in Christ, have the desire and determination to walk in the truth, the Spirit of truth will guide you into all truth. It will be a lifetime pursuit, but all along the way the Spirit will be revealing the truth to you in a greater measure. There is never an excuse that we can come up with that will justify our ignorance of truth. We all are responsible to make sure we know, embrace and walk in the truth. We are warned over and over in our bibles to guard our hearts and to take heed that no man deceives us. As long as we are yielded to the Spirit of truth, it is impossible to be overcome by deception. There can certainly be moments when we can be deceived along the way, but that is when the Spirit of truth does His work. He reveals any deception we may be falling for as nothing other than a lie from hell. When the Spirit reveals to us things we believe to be false, we must then reject those beliefs immediately. If we refuse to, we then have willingly started down the path of deception and we are not only rejecting truth, but we are also rejecting Christ.
It is apparent that much of the church in America is bankrupt of truth. Be mad at me for making such a statement if you want, but consider this: If all the Christians in America would set their hearts and minds to really know the truth, the Spirit of truth would then guide us all into all truth. That alone would demolish our denominational separations; that would cause countless numbers of Christians to abandon dead truth rejecting churches to unite under the Spirit of truth. Sure, most churches believe and agree on many doctrinal issues. In fact I believe that they agree on more than they disagree on. However, Jesus said the Spirit of truth would lead us into ALL, let me say that again, ALL truth. Therefore church, we must believe and walk in ALL TRUTH. No excuses will be accepted.
Every so often you will meet believers that have faithfully served the Lord for many years, and yet have testimonies that they worked (or strived or endured) through all the confusion and worldly influence that had been so much a part of their church experiences. How did they do that? How did they have the ability to discern what God is in and what He is not? How did they know what was true and what wasn’t? It is by none other than the Spirit of truth. Saints, we have no excuse for any blindness we may have toward the truth. Let the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth, guide you into all truth. When He reveals the truth, you are then accountable to that truth. Be brave, be bold and rise up with other saints all across this country to believe God and our bibles the way we should.
It is apparent that many of our politicians and most in the media have lost their ability to tell the truth. It wasn’t too long ago that one of our presidents became famous for lying. Jokes were made about his dishonesty. Instead of making jokes, this country should have been repenting. Today, the current man in the oval office has no sense of true or false anymore. He can go to an event and say one thing, and then go to another event and say the opposite and get an applause every time. It is not just him, who has mastered lying, but many others have made an art out of being dishonest, and then to have the press give a free pass to whatever they say is a source of major frustration. I often say, I am sure glad that the kingdom I belong to is an eternal kingdom that has a righteous King. Hallelujah! Now Paul tells us that we are not to judge the world, for they are judged already (I Cor. 5:12-13), so my purpose in even mentioning the bankruptcy of truth amongst the leaders of our nation is to lead up to an even more grievous situation that has to do with the church of Jesus Christ. Many times, the things that prevail in our society make its way into the church, and when it comes to this subject of truth, it seems there is a growing resistance towards it. I don’t know if saints really comprehend just what truth is and its connection with the kingdom of God.
For starters, the absolute most important thing we must understand about truth is that truth is more than just something factual. According to John 14:6 Jesus said, “…I am the way, the truth, and the life:..” Sometimes, we hear a verse so often that we never pay close attention to what it really says. Jesus said some very significant things in this verse. First He teaches that the “way” is more than just a path to follow, the way is the person, Jesus. To get to the Father you follow the narrow way, which is nothing other than being in Christ. When Christians proclaim the truth that Jesus is the only way, the world views them as very narrow minded. However, those of us that are in Christ know there is nothing narrow about Him. He is infinite! Jesus continues on to make a proclamation about truth. Jesus told His disciples more than just true things; He told them that He Himself is TRUTH. So the very first thing we must understand about truth is that it is more than a fact, it is a person by the name of Jesus Christ. That understanding alone should change the way every Christian thinks about truth. Whenever we downplay truth, we are downplaying Christ. If truth is rejected, Christ is rejected. If truth is exalted, Christ is exalted. Since Jesus is also the word of God (Jn1:14) and the word of God is truth, you therefore cannot reject the truth of the word and still claim that you accept the Lord Jesus Christ. I have seen this happen many times, where for the sake of unity, Christians will so easily lie down or compromise some elements of truth. It is impossible for true unity of the Spirit to spring forth from Christians agreeing to compromise truth. True and false will always be at odds with each other just like right and wrong. Jesus referred to the devil as the Father of lies because his kingdom is built on lies. He lied to his own heart and said 5 times in Isaiah 14, “I will.” He lied to man in the garden and he has continued to spew lies all the way to this present day. Hell is for liars; heaven is where truth lives.
Another important fact about truth is again found in John; “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Jn. 8:32. What a wonderful effect truth has on mankind; truth can take a sinful bound up man and make him free. If you are a born again believer you can be certain that the truth is what made you free. So with this wonderful thought in mind, I ask, if truth is what sets people free, why does the church tinker around with truth? Why do believers think they have to cover it up when they preach to people? Why do saints think that avoiding the truth, so as not to offend anyone, is going to save them? If the truth sets people free, then let’s proclaim it from the house tops. Let’s hold it dear to our hearts, let’s promote it at all times, and most of all, may we never compromise one jot or tittle of it.
There is even more to say about truth that we learn from the gospel of John; “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.” (Jn. 4:24). Here again we can see another serious problem. If truth is absent or diminished in a believer’s life, God will not receive worship, whether it is a time of singing and shouting, or an offering of your life to Him. Again I say, if truth is rejected, then Christ is rejected. If Christ is rejected then there is no worship to God.
I want to bring out one more aspect of truth that is overlooked. There is something Paul says about it in the love chapter 13 of I Corinthians. Since the chapter is about love, it is possible to easily gloss over the word “truth” which is found in verse 6, regarding love. “Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;” There are some ministers and believers who consistently resist the truth and proclaim false doctrines. I have had discussions with other believers about why they would listen to them or follow their ways. One reply I have heard many times is something like this; Well, I know they might be teaching or preaching wrong things, but I know they love the Lord. With that, let me ask you reader, if love rejoices in truth, and a Christian resists, downplays, neglects or even denies the truth, are they really someone that loves the Lord?
“Thus saith the LORD; I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem: and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth; and the mountain of the LORD of hosts the holy mountain.” Zech 8:3
The politicians here in America have lost the ability to tell the truth. I know that is a major frustration to many of us. Zechariah tells us what is going to make Jerusalem to be called the city of truth, is when the LORD returns to that city and dwells among the people. The only way any city or nation can be called a city or nation of truth is when the Lord is there dwelling among the people. America has rejected God and therefore has no ability to be a truthful nation. Pray that Americans repent and turn back to God, and that truth will go marching on.
“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” Rev. 12-9
The unredeemed inhabitants of this world all have one thing in common; there is one thing that unites them all; they are deceived by the devil. They all believe what is false. This should teach us believers that we should have one thing in common that unites us, we are enlightened to the truth. We must all believe what is true.
“Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: 23Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.” I Pe. 1:22-23
Christ only, can justify us before God, but when it comes to purifying our soul, it is our responsibility. We purify our souls by obeying the truth. Of course, we cannot do this without the Spirit’s help. Since we have His help, let’s obey the truth and walk in purity.