1/29/23 What is Truth?
What Is Truth?
John 18:33-38
What is truth? It’s a question that has been asked since the dawn of our existence. Interestingly however, it seems as though the more technologically advanced man has become, the further away we have drifted from really understanding what truth is.
Here are a few quotes from certain individuals who have wrestled with the reality of truth:
“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth” – Henry David Thoreau
“Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away” – Elvis Presley
“Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act” – George Orwell
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything” – Mark Twain
“Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light” – George Washington
“There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth” – Maya Angelou
“There are only two people who can tell you the truth about yourself – an enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly” – Antisthenes
“Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it” – Emily Dickenson
“Country Music is three chords and the truth” – Harlan Howard
“You can’t handle the truth” – Col. Nathan Jessup in A Few Good Men
The above quotes are from a wide range of people: thinkers, poets, politicians, soldiers, musicians, and, if you look closely at them, they all have something in common. They all are based upon a belief that truth can be known.
There has also been the belief among certain individuals throughout history that truth is something that man will never be able to find. To these people, the search for truth is nothing more than a chasing after the wind, a practice in futility, a fool’s errand, a snipe hunt, if you will.
Today we begin a sermon series on truth, and our passage for today is one of the most important conversations to ever be recorded.
Why? Because we learn from this passage that not only does truth exist, but that it can be known!
John chapter 18 begins with the arrest of Jesus and we read on through the chapter as Jesus is taken before Annas (A highly esteemed former High Priest) and tells him in verse 23 that what he preaches is simply the “truth.”
When Jesus speaks of telling the truth in this passage as well as in numerous other passages of scripture, we realize that 1) the truth is real, it exists. And 2) that Jesus came to reveal the truth to mankind.
Aligning with their evil plan to have Jesus killed, Annas sends Jesus to his Son-In-Law, Caiaphas who was the current reigning High Priest of Israel. When Caiaphas is finished with his part of the plot, he sends Jesus to Pilate, the current Governor of Judea to be interrogated.
This is where our passage for today picks up. Jesus is being questioned by Pilate regarding the fictitious and false accusations brought against him of sedition and insurrection against the Roman Government. These were completely made-up charges since Annas and Caiaphas knew that Pilate would not sentence Jesus to death for simply claiming to be the Messiah, therefore they needed to make up charges that would “stick”, charges that would force Pilate to interrogate Jesus.
It is in this exchange between Pilate and Jesus that we learn 2 very important lessons about Jesus, and 1 very important lesson about mankind.
1) In verse 37, Jesus tells us that the reason for his coming into the world was to “Testify to the truth.”
Jesus was truth incarnate; he was the embodiment of truth. Every thought, choice, deed, action, word, and emotion that Jesus ever experienced was rooted in truth. There was no dishonesty in him, no falsity, no lies. He was truth all the time.
Awhile back, there was an NBA basketball player by the name of Paul Pierce. His nickname was “The Truth” given to him by another basketball player after Paul had played a great game.
Well, we know who the real truth is, and its not Paul Pierce. Jesus represented the absolute truth of God in the flesh during his 33 years on this earth. Can you imagine that? Jesus never told a lie, Jesus never had a lustful thought, Jesus never stole anything. He was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!
2) Secondly, Jesus further states in verse 37 that “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
This comment is full of deep spiritual meaning.
It teaches us that truth is black & white, there are no grey areas when it comes to truth.
Have you ever been to a large sporting event, like a Green Bay Packer Game? Say, for instance, the Packers are playing the Chicago Bears. If you look at the uniforms of the players, every player for the Packers will be in a certain color and every player for the bears will be in a very different color.
Likewise, If you look around the stadium, its very easy to distinguish who is there to support the Packers and who is there to support the Bears. Packer fans will generally be wearing Green (or Gold) and Bears fans will usually be wearing blue (or white, or orange…Bears fans can’t make up their minds what colors they are! 😊) There are two sides, and it is very easy to distinguish between them.
Jesus tells us that when it comes to truth, there are only 2 sides. There is the side of truth, and there is the side of non-truth. That’s it. It’s black and white. As much as we would sometimes like there to be more options, there is no grey “truth-gradient.”
Those “grey areas” of scripture that we sometimes talk about? In reality, they really aren’t grey. They appear grey to us because our limited and finite minds cannot fully grasp an unlimited and infinite God!
For instance, If I asked you “what color is the sky”, you would you say Blue, right? It definitely appears to be blue.
The truth, however, is that the color of the earth’s sky is violet!
The sky appears blue to us because of the way our eyes work in detecting light from the sun. If our eyes were not naturally “biased” to see blue in this way, the sky would actually be a purplish-violet color, like a permanent sunset….wouldn’t that be cool?
Someday when we get to Heaven, our “spiritual eyes” will be recalibrated to understand the truth behind those “grey areas” of scripture. Fortunately, however, those passages that are difficult to understand are few and far between. Through the life of Christ and His Word, God has revealed the perfect measure of truth that we need in order to be saved and live for Him.
In John 14:6 Jesus says that “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Notice that truth is singular here, not plural. Jesus doesn’t say that he is the way(s), the truth(s) and the lives. He is The Truth! There is just one truth.
If you are on the side of truth, you listen and obey the words of this book (The Bible), because this book is truth.
In John 10:27 Jesus says “My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me”
The voice of Jesus is truth. Those red letters in your Bible that make up the words uttered by Jesus are truth.
Are you living in obedience to his voice? To The Truth?
Jesus says that if you truly know him, you will follow him, you will obey him.
Do you know Jesus? And, more importantly, does Jesus know you?
Matthew 7:21-23 is a sobering passage because it reminds us of the eternal, salvific importance of truly knowing Jesus as our Lord and Savior. It reads: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles? Then I will tell them plainly, I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!
Brothers and Sisters in Christ don’t be deceived into thinking that you have a relationship with Jesus when the truth of the matter may be that you really don’t. Satan specializes in getting us to believe that we have a healthy relationship with Jesus when, in reality, we don’t know him at all, and even worse, he doesn’t know us.
My plea to you this morning is that if you have been deceived into believing the lie, the non-truth, that your relationship with Jesus is on solid ground when it really isn’t, there is still time! There is Hope!
Jesus loves you and he wants to know you as one of His children, a lamb from HIS pen, a member of HIS bride – the church.
If you haven’t already done so, won’t you give your life to Jesus today. Won’t you trust him with your eternal destiny. If you aren’t sure how, please see me or one of our Deacons/Deaconesses after the service today and we will be happy to take you through a prayer of confession and repentance so that you can truly know the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ!
Everyone on the side of truth listens to HIS voice, to HIS word, to HIS authority.
Lastly, verse 38 from our passage this morning reminds us of how many people throughout history (and certainly today) respond negatively to the notion of an absolute truth.
In verse 38, Pilate responds to Jesus with the rhetorical question “What is Truth?”
What is truth?
Since around the mid-twentieth century in the U.S., we have lived in what many people refer to as a ‘post-modern’ world, or “postmodernism.” Unlike modernism which took root in the late 19th/early 20th century and was based in idealism and reason, a post-modern world is characterized by skepticism and suspicion of reason and logic.
In modernism, truth was thought of as being a singular entity independent of man that could be realized through the practice of rationalism, logic, and reason. In this worldview, truth is objective, it is static – it doesn’t change, it is described as being the way things really are.
In post-modernism, however, truth is seen as subjective. Truth is relativistic. Truth is changing. Truth is in the eye of the beholder. Truth is malleable. Truth is pragmatic. Truth is subject to emotion and feeling.
In short, for post-modernists, objective Truth is unknowable!
Pilate was a ‘Post-Modernist’ – he would have fit very well in today’s secular society.
Our world is saturated with post-modern thinking.
How many of you remember Walter Cronkite? Walter Cronkite was a news anchor who was an example of a modernistic mindset, he would tell the news in a way that attempted to tell the truth by way of rational analysis of the facts.
Many news programs today prefer to tell the news utilizing an agenda rather than trying to logically analyze the facts. This agenda, usually a liberal one, attempts to color the facts with commentary and spin that is meant to confuse people to the point of indoctrinating them with the idea that truth can never be arrived at or defined.
The mantra of our world is chaos and confusion.
Who do you think is behind this? Who does the Bible say is the author of chaos and confusion? Who do you think is laughing with delight over the millions of people who have been deceived into believing that truth cannot be ascertained?
Satan has been doing this since the beginning of mankind - remember his conversation with Eve in the garden?
In Genesis 3:1 the Devil says to Eve “Did God really say, ‘you must not eat from any tree in the garden?’
Satan and his demonic legions have been practicing deception from the beginning of human history!
Satan knows that if a culture gives up on finding truth, then they will have given up on finding Jesus – because Jesus is truth!
And if they don’t find Jesus, they don’t find salvation. They will spend the rest of eternity along with Satan and his angels of darkness – in pure torment and pain.
Pilate’s famous words “What is truth”? resonate today perhaps louder than ever before in human history.
If objective truth doesn’t exist, then who gets to decide what’s right and wrong? ….. yeah, that’s right, each individual person – and that is very appealing to people’s sinful nature!
If there is no objective standard of morality, then each of us is free to make up our own morality, our own code of conduct, our own truth as it were.
This is why we have men claiming to be actual women, and women claiming to be actual men.
This is why we have elementary school teachers taking their classes on field trips to drag shows.
This is why our government and public schools are indoctrinating our children into believing that a lifestyle choice is a civil right – and that if you don’t agree with & celebrate this lifestyle choice, you are hateful & bigoted.
This is why our nation endured 50 years of murder in the womb, and unfortunately continues to happen in many states.
This is why we have an ever-escalating drug epidemic in this country – both recreational drugs and overly-prescribed medications.
This is why so many people don’t see the point in collecting a paycheck from a steady job but would rather sit at home and collect a check from the government.
Brothers and Sisters, it really all comes down to this: When an individual, or a society, believes that objective truth cannot be known, then everyone is free to determine their own truth. When people begin determining their own truth, confusion and chaos will always reign while morality, modesty, and sanity will be thrown onto the next train leaving town.
This is the world we live in, but thank God we are not of this world, Amen?
If Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, your citizenship is in a kingdom not of chaos and confusion, but a kingdom of order. A kingdom of morality. A kingdom of love. A kingdom of light. A kingdom of goodness. A kingdom of faithfulness. A kingdom of beauty. A kingdom of peace. A kingdom of truth!
Jesus says in verse 36 “My kingdom is not of this world” and that his kingdom is “From another place”
Folks, that place is heaven. And If you know Jesus, and Jesus knows you, that is where your home is as well.
Let’s Pray.