Truth

The Good News of Christ is, first and foremost, a statement of truth. A commitment to Christ is both a commitment to the truth of the gospel and to being a truth-teller and truth-seeker in the world.

Note: This transcript was auto generated and may have errors.  If you would like to volunteer to review and edit our sermon transcripts before they are posted, contact Gail Peterson, gpeterson@calvaryefree.church.

Well, early in my Christian walk, sometime in my college years, I picked up a book entitled Love Your God with All Your Mind by J.P. Moreland. He’s a professor of philosophy at the Talbot School of Theology. And if you read a lot of books, you know that they are not all deeply transformational. You you can’t be profoundly impacted by everything. Right? But this book had a very big impact on me. It made the case for why my thought life is vital to my spiritual development. I never really thought that way before. I’d never really thought of Christianity like that before. That book, I didn’t think of Christianity as an intellectual pursuit of God. I didn’t, I didn’t I didn’t really think of it as a, as a an intellectual journey with God. My, my view of was that Christian faith had more to do with emotions and and behavior. So it was more, more be fervent in worship and pray a lot and don’t do bad things. That was Christianity to me. That’s kind of how I thought of it. It’s basically my understanding of vital faith. And Moreland, in that book challenged me to think about how I think. In fact, in that book, he points out that fervency of belief is not more important than content of belief. We tend to think that that passion and rigor that people have for their beliefs is the most important thing about them. You. But the content of your beliefs is far more important that you can be passionately wrong, or you could be rigorously incorrect.

Terrorists are sincerely passionate and committed to their beliefs. Right. The problem isn’t their zeal. It’s the content of the doctrine that they believe. Some would say that they just need to change their behavior, that there’s nothing wrong with the thoughts, but it’s the behaviors of those who commit violence. But their behavior comes from their beliefs. It comes from their thought life. In fact, all behavior starts in the way you think. Everything you’ve ever done starts with the way you think. Our thoughts and beliefs drive behavior. No one can change what they do until they change how they think. Everything you do has its origin story first in a thought that you have, that you conceived in your mind and heart. And what’s so interesting for me was that once I read this in Moreland’s book, I started to see it all over Scripture, everywhere in Scripture. Romans 12 be transformed by the renewing of your mind, right? That’s where it starts. Matthew 12 Jesus said to us that out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. Everything you produce in this world starts with what’s happening in your mind and heart, which makes it makes the thought life of a Christian the most important area for us to cultivate for our discipleship.

That’s what’s happening in our minds. So if that’s the case, what then should a Christian be thinking about? The average human brain weighs £3. Do you know how large? How much weight there was to Albert Einstein’s brain? £2.7. It’s not how much brain you have, it’s how you use it. It’s how you fill it. What should we be putting into our brains as Christians? To cultivate Christ like lives that we’re longing for? Well, here we’re going to turn for the next six weeks to a short list at the end of Philippians where Paul tells us about what to think. He even writes the phrase, think about these things. It’s unambiguous. I love it when you find that in the Bible you say, wait, Paul, what should I be thinking about? How about this? Think about these things, and he gives us a list of them. Back in 2022, when I preached through Philippians here with you, we covered this this list very quickly in part of one sermon. I want to go back to this list and explore it more deeply, drawing on more Scripture to discover what Paul is telling us to put into our minds. What he’s telling us to think about. The list gives us categories, not specific things to think about. So, for example, he doesn’t say think about geometry. What he does say is think about whatever is beautiful. And so we look at the angles and the shapes in our in this creation that we’ve been placed in.

And we find beautiful things that can be studied through geometry. And so geometry is beautiful. Here’s the full here’s the full list. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there’s any excellence, if there’s anything worthy of praise, think about these things. You can see the repetition of the word whatever. We are meant to fill in the categories with whatever specific items we see in God’s creation. The contents of the Christian mind fall into these categories. Now, this list here is probably not exhaustive. There are probably other words you could use to describe categories of God honoring things in this world, but I do think that this list is expansive, covering the full range of things that should shape our thought life. I feel very comfortable saying that any God honoring thought can be described by one of these categories. There are technically eight items that are mentioned here in the list, but there’s enough semantic overlap between the last four that we will cover those in two sermons. Now you can see in the list it starts off with whatever is true. The first thing he tells us are to think about the things that are true. And for a Christian, this would have to be the first item on the list. It would have to be. The good news of Christ is first and foremost a statement of truth.

A commitment to Christ is both a commitment to the truth of the gospel, and to being a truth teller and a truth seeker in the world. I mean, everything else in the list requires truth to be first in the list, and to see that all you have to do is ask whether lies and falsehood would fit the description of everything else in the list. Can can lies be honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise? Can they be? Of course not. No misleading people. Lying to people it’s not. Lies are intended to deceive. They’re not honorable or commendable. Hey, you’re super great at lying, right? And the only person that would say that would be a person who is dishonorable themselves, every God honoring thing in the world that should shape our thought lives first, has to pass the test. Question is it true? Is it true? So here’s how we’re going to explore each of these categories throughout the next six weeks. First we’re going to define each word. We’re not looking for a dictionary definition here. We want to know what Paul means when he uses this word. I’m hoping while we do this that you’ll catch a little bit of good Bible study while we go through this, so that you can use some of these skills whenever you’re reading the Bible. Knowing the range of what a word can mean is helpful, but discerning how it’s being used is just as important, if not more so.

If I say something in my home that is witty and sarcastic, which happens all the time. Actually, my son will respond bruh. I am not his brother, but I know what he means because of the context. I know he means good one dad, you’re my hero, right? I know that. That’s obvious. When Paul says to think about whatever is true, what does he mean by true? What’s the biblical definition of truth? That’s the first thing we’re going to do. Second thing we’re going to do is we’re going to describe what thinking like this looks like. And here we’re going to turn to God’s book of instruction and wisdom, the Proverbs. Now, godly wisdom can be throughout found throughout the Bible. But we don’t have time to cover everything in the Bible. So we’re going to hone in on a passage or two in the book of the Bible that you might call God’s handbook for thought. Uh, Proverbs is a catalog of thought shaping instruction. You will hear Proverbs read in every week of this series. And then the third thing we’re going to do is we’re going to look at how this thought life is displayed in Jesus, how he lives these categories out, how each is a vital component of the gospel itself. Uh, and so each category then is, is going to be defined, described and displayed. I don’t alliterate very much, but this one worked out.

So define described and displayed. So first let’s turn to truth. Whatever is true, the the word for truth in the New Testament is Alathea. We named our daughter Alathea, better known as Ali, because of the importance and the beauty of this word in Scripture. There’s nothing in this list that tells us what Paul means when he says that something is true. He assumes that the Philippians know what he means when he says the word true here. The best way for us to know what Paul means is to look at the other places where he uses this word. Now, here’s that little tip for Bible word studies that I mentioned earlier. First, first thing to do, if you ever want to know what a Bible word means, is look to see if the word is used elsewhere in the same book. Okay, look it up in the same book. You might identify a theme that builds throughout that that gospel or that that letter. The second thing to do is to see where the word is used in other biblical books that are written by the same author, because you might find consistency in the use of that word. In this case, the author is Paul, and so there’s plenty of written material for us to study. Now, beyond that, there are other tools that that you can use, but if all you want to do is get a quick sense for what a writer is, means by a particular word, just study the sentence and the paragraph where you find that word, and then look at the other uses of the word by the author, and you’ll get a pretty good idea about what that word means.

You don’t even need to have fancy software like Bible nerds like me use. You can simply go to ESV. Org. This is a write down. This is a great website. Good ESV. That’s the translation that we use here at Calvary esv.org. You can go there and you can type the word true into their search bar and it will pop up all 61 uses of the word true in the New Testament. You can go to each one of them and check it out. You can do the same thing with the word truth and find those references as well. Here’s what happens if we use that method that I just described here. And by the way, I’m not going to talk about Bible study skills every week of this series, but I thought I would a little more today so that you can see what I’m doing. Paul uses the word one other time in Philippians 118. He’s describing other people in the city who are preaching the gospel, some who have true motivations and some who have ulterior motives. And he says, what then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed. And in that I rejoice. These preachers are out there and they’re all preaching the same thing.

They’re all preaching the gospel. They’re preaching salvation through Christ. But some are doing it sincerely, wanting to spread the gospel. Others are doing it to cause Paul some kind of harm, probably through mental anguish. But what matters here for our purposes, is that there is a moral component to truth that goes all the way down to the motivations of a person. It goes right down to what’s happening in a person’s heart. Now, that by itself won’t give us Paul’s definition of truth, but but when you combine it with a few other uses in his other letters, then a picture of truth starts to emerge. Listen to this passage. This is from Ephesians chapter four, verses 17 to 24. Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They’re darkened in their understanding, alienated from the. Life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality. Greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ. Assuming that you have heard about him and were taught him as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on new on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

And here’s the application for the one who learns Jesus and is in Jesus. Ephesians 425 therefore, having put away falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. So you learn Christ, because the truth is in Christ, which causes you then to speak truth to other people, speaking lies, and is an indication that you do not have Christ operating in you. Because if you have Christ operating in you, that’s that’s Jesus who is true and contains truth. If you have Jesus, the truth then will be operating in you. So when Paul says to think about whatever is true, there are at least three components to defining a true thing. The first is is the objective component that aligns with reality. True things are the opposite of false things, I know. Write that down. You’re going to want to remember that one. But it’s true. True things are the opposite of false things. Just watch any episode of jeopardy to learn that there are right and wrong answers. Right? But Paul means more than just think about the facts. He’s not just saying think about facts, he’s saying he’s saying more than that. The second component is the moral side of truth truth, as opposed to lies that come from evil. Motivations in the heart John 844 Jesus tells calls the devil a liar and the father of lies.

He says, those who don’t have the Lord as their heavenly father, have the devil as their father, and that they do their father’s desires, meaning they will be liars too. And this gets to the third component of of Paul’s understanding of truth, that the gospel component in Ephesians 113, Paul refers to the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. The good news of Christ is a message of truth. It’s the truth that undoes the lies of the devil. Satan says you don’t need a god because you can be your own God. That’s that’s the first lie, right? That was that’s the that’s the garden lie. That’s the one that broke the whole world. And the gospel mends it with the truth that you can’t be your own God. You need a relationship with the one true creator God, and you can have it through faith in the one who came to take your sin away and to set your mind free of sin. That’s how the gospel of salvation is the word of truth. So let me venture a definition here about Paul’s use of the word true. True things are factually correct, morally righteous reflections of God and His creation. That’s how I understand it. Based on the way Paul uses this word. True things are factually correct. Morally righteous reflections of God and His creation. True things undo moral evil in our world, calling it out for what it is lies intended to turn us from God.

Since the since the gospel is the truth that undoes the greatest lie and all subsequent lies, it’s the greatest truth and the source of all subsequent truths. We’re going to we’re going to come back to that in just a few minutes. But for now, what does it mean to think about what does it look like to think to to think about things that are true? And here I want to turn to Proverbs 22. We’re going to describe it. This is Proverbs 2217 to 21. Incline your ear and hear the words of the wise, and apply your heart to my knowledge, for it will be pleasant if you keep them within you. If all of them are ready on your lips, that your trust may be in the Lord. I’ve made them known to you today. Even to you. Have I not written you 30 sayings of counsel and knowledge to make you know what is right and true? That you may give a true answer to those who sent you. This passage in Proverbs falls right in the middle of a long list of proverbial sayings intended to help us see the world the way that God sees the world. That’s what that’s what the biblical Proverbs do. As I mentioned earlier, you could call Proverbs the God’s handbook for thought. In the middle of this, this listing of all the ways of thinking and acting, the author here pauses and reminds us what we’re supposed to be doing with all of this stuff that he’s saying, and he says, incline your ear to it.

Listen carefully to it. Apply your heart to this knowledge, he says. You need to hear this truth, but you have to also commit your heart to being changed by this truth. See, truth does not change, but truth changes you. You incline to it when you when you hear true knowledge about the way the world actually is, and you conform your heart to it, and you apply it to the way you think, which changes the way you speak and act. What happens when you do that? He says it’ll be pleasant. Do you see that there? It will be pleasant for you, for it will be pleasant if you keep them within you. If you want a better life, you want to be have a more pleasant life. Apply your heart to the truth of God’s Word. God’s word is a is a gift to us, so that by hearing it and trusting in its good news, we can escape the lies that destroy life, that make life unpleasant. I love the author’s rhetorical question here in this passage. Have I not written for you 30 Sayings of Counsel and knowledge to make you know what is right and true. He’s saying, it’s all right here. It’s all it’s all right here. Paul says something very similar about Scripture. He says that it’s God breathed and useful for teaching and reproof, correction and training and righteousness, so that we will be complete and ready for everything that we may come across in life.

The reason we apply our hearts to factually correct, morally righteous reflections of God and His creation is that by doing that, we become people, that God intended us to be free of lives and living an abundant, God honoring life. You know, I feel so badly. I feel so badly for those who are mired in sin, who are feeling the terrible effects of struggling under the weight of their sin. I’m sure you have people in your life like that. You may be like that right now. Certainly we all have known people or do know currently people who are mired in their sin right now, who can’t see the lies that they believe and that are keeping them from the joy of a of the truth of Christ, a life freed by Christ. Very often in those cases, the man or woman wants the unpleasant effects of sin and the consequences of sin to be gone, but they won’t hear and apply the truths that would change the way they think, that would lead them to the life they want. The very thing that would lead them out is the very thing they will not take. Many people who have bought into the idea, uh, some, some people have bought into the idea that that math and science are absolute truths in the world, but ethics and religion are relative to the person or to the culture, right? So there’s some hard facts out there, but it’s all in the science where it’s all in the math world, religion and ethics.

That’s, that’s that’s up to you. They think that when it comes to beliefs and choices, the thing that is true is the thing that works best for you. But but the truth is that we are designed by God. We’re designed by God for his purposes. And life only works well when we operate the way God designed us. And to know that design, we have to listen to and apply to our hearts, to the knowledge that God has given us in His Word. By the way that is. That is how you can tell the difference between good counsel and bad counsel. Bad counseling says, let’s figure out some way to solve your problem and make the pain go away. Let’s just let’s figure out some way to solve the problem and make the pain go away. Everything is on the table though. If you if you don’t want scripture, fine. Let’s let’s use the solution that works best for you. That’s bad counseling. Good counseling says let’s get to the bottom and find the lies that you are believing so that you can call them out for what they are. You can repent of them. And then let’s apply your heart to the gospel of Christ and be transformed in the renewing of your mind.

That’s good counsel. That’s addressing the issue when Paul tells. Tells us to think about whatever is true. He’s telling us to consistently weed out the lies that are all around us and bathe our minds in the in our hearts, and the truth that God has revealed to us. You know how every January is January now? So you probably have heard this. Every January, people start talking about how they’re going to do their read through the Bible in a year plan. You ever you do that and by February like I didn’t want to do that really. The reason people do that right. It’s not just to see if you can do it. It’s not like a Christian TikTok challenge, okay? There’s a reason for it. It’s discipline to get your thought life fixed on the truth in a daily way. You know how we talk about the importance of being in a small group? We do that because Christian community is vital to identifying the lies and reinforcing the truth from God’s Word. Sharing truth with with each other is vital to spiritual health and growth. So you’re close. Christian friends will be able to see the ways that God’s Word needs to be applied in your life in a way that you will not be able to see, right. They’re going to be able to see how you’re not measuring up to, or where you’re believing things that are not true and show you Scripture.

That’s what good friends do. The very passage of Proverbs that we are looking at right now is one godly person writing to another. Did you notice that it’s written as as a as a person guiding someone else that your trust may be in the Lord? I have made them known to you today, even to you. So we are truth listeners, truth Appliers truth sharers. We both tell the truth and we stand for truth. So you need to find yourself surrounded by a church community that’s doing just that. That’s why you need a group of people. Now that we’ve defined truth as factually correct, morally righteous reflections of God and His creation and have described why it’s important to think on truth from the Proverbs, now let’s turn to Christ, who displays truth to us. In John chapter eight, Jesus makes the audacious claim, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life, not the light of the church. Not the light of people who like religion, not the light of good people. Not one of the lights in the world. He’s claiming to be the one light for the whole world. You either are in this light or you are in darkness, Jesus says. Now, this claim either means that he is one of the most pompous, self-deceived lunatics of all time, or it means that nobody can live without him, including you and me.

If I make this claim, if I say this, it means nothing other than maybe I need to seek help, right? But. But Jesus made this claim accompanied by miracles of healing and wholeness testified to by eyewitnesses, which is what your Bible that you’re holding is. It’s the testimony of eyewitnesses who saw and walked with Jesus, his miracles validated and illustrated, his bold teaching that he is the Son of God, and that his salvation will open our blind eyes and hearts. He made this claim, and immediately his detractors questioned his claim. You’re bearing witness about yourself. Your testimony is not true. You see that? See, they understand the category of truth that Jesus is using here. He wasn’t making a a spiritually relative claim. He was making a claim about who he actually is and what actually is for everyone. After a bit of talking, Jesus said to them, look, let me explain this reality to you. You are from below. I am from above. You are of this world. I am not of this world. I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he, you will die in your sins. So while Jesus became a man like us, he certainly was not a man. Just like not just a man like us. Because worldly, frail human beings like us, we are lost. We are lost in sin. We are surrounded by darkness, which is a metaphorical way of describing the sin that we’re stuck in and the lies that we believe that keep us from seeing our way out of that darkness.

But Christ isn’t from below like us. He he isn’t of this world like us. He came into the world to be the light of truth by believing that Jesus is the light. By putting your trust in his death and resurrection for your sins, you will be set free of your sin. That is objectively true for everyone who will trust in him. You will be set free of your sin. The truth is, unless you do that, you’ll die with your sins still hanging over you. You’ll be judged for everything that you’ve done. A lot of those listening still didn’t understand him. So Jesus explained, when you’ve been lifted up, when when you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he. He’s saying, when I, when I go to the cross, when I physically die and put into a sealed tomb, and then objectively walk out of that tomb, physically walk out of that tomb, then you’re going to remember what we talked about here, and that’s that. That’s the physical truth that will testify to the spirit of truth. He’s like, you don’t believe me now you’re going to believe me then. And he was right. Far more people did come to faith in Christ when he died and rose again. But it says in verse 30 that many believed him right then and there.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, if you abide in me, or if, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. How do we how do we how do we walk in the light of truth, free of sin? How do we how do we achieve the transformation that renews our mind? We abide in the gospel of Christ. We soak our minds and hearts in the Word of Christ and in the Christ, who is the embodiment of the Word of God. When Paul says, think about whatever is true, he means primarily think about the good news of Christ, the salvation that we have in him, and all those right ways of thinking that now come about because we are walking in the light of Christ. I’ve got one application for you today. It’s it’s very simple to understand. It’s very hard to apply. I want you to begin thinking about how you think. How do you think? What’s in there? What are the thoughts that occupy? All your mind. Are you cultivating your your thought life like a garden? Are you are you watering the thoughts that honor the Lord and cause you to rejoice in Christ and to cling to Christ? Are you pulling the weeds of the lies that spring up and choke out the truth? There will be more to say about our thoughts as we move through this series. Let’s pray.