A Right View of Truth

[00:00:00] This audio sermon is provided by AnabaptistSermons.com and may be freely copied and distributed. You may not sell or edit this sermon. Our prayer is that you would be blessed by this ministry. There's a portion of scripture here in Ephesians 1, and I think I'm going to read this as an opening text this morning. Ephesians 1, where Paul is talking about the prayer that he made for the Ephesian church. And that was my prayer in coming in here this morning. [00:00:33] I think I'm going to read verse 17 and 18. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. And I don't profess to understand all that, but my thought was that we as God's people this morning [00:01:04] would have our eyes enlightened, that we would know what God wants from us, is the thought that really struck me, that really jumped out at me. And that's kind of in the same vein, and I don't know, maybe you get tired of me talking about this subject, and I'll just tell you the title of this message is, I've titled it, A Right View of Truth. I don't, you probably don't remember what I talked about in my last message, but I felt like this one should come before the last one. [00:01:39] I think I preached about three weeks ago and I think the title of that message was, or the question was, how do we maintain foundational truth? And so I would like to address this in some fashion, and I don't profess to have the answers to this about having a right view of truth, but it's essential. I believe all of us would agree to that. I don't think this is anything new. I think there have been many preachers that have tried to address this and have in the past. [00:02:15] But what is our view of truth? Do we know and understand where we stand on the issues that we face in our day? In order for us to be in right standing with God, we have to have a right view of truth. It's about the only way that we can be in right standing. We have to be familiar with Scripture, but also we need God's view of truth. Not just my interpretation of what I think should happen. [00:02:50] And in this thing, we live in a well-churched area where there's many different churches in this area. We can choose just about any level of commitment that we want to choose, and then we can find a church that suits that. So what is God's view of truth? What is a right view of truth? And I'm not sure how to address this properly. I'll just admit to you I had some trepidation about this. [00:03:24] But I think I'm going to simply look at some examples in scriptures of churches that started out right and then they moved. They left that. And I think I'm going to be reading first of all in Galatians. If you would like to turn with me to Galatians 1, we just studied this in our Sunday school, so this should be fairly familiar. I think I'm going to read from verse 6 to verse 10 in Galatians 1. [00:04:02] And remember, maybe some of the background on this particular church or setting, Paul came to them with some admonition. Verse 6 of Galatians 1 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel, which is not another, but there be some that trouble you and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. [00:04:38] As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you, then that ye have received, let him be accursed. For do I now persuade men, or God? Or do I seek to please men? For if I yet please men, I should not be the servant of Christ. This is just a brief snapshot of what Paul is saying to the church at Galatia. and but he's very pointed and the heading above this in my Bible at least says there is no other gospel [00:05:16] and I think all of us are aware of that there is no other gospel but then the verse six there he marveled that that people that had been so on fire in correct standing with him would so soon Turn away and would head a different direction. And if we study this group of people, they were probably people similar to us. And I think, well, let's just say this. They were many of them were reverting to the Old Testament laws and rules. Circumcision was one. [00:05:53] But that's not really, that's among the things that they were going back to. They were leaving the gospel in Paul's mind. But that's not really the point. Paul was alarmed that they were so soon moving away from truth and they had developed a wrong view of truth. And verse 9 is especially strong. If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have already received, let him be accursed. [00:06:27] Well, that puts some responsibility on us as preachers, but not only on us. But I would like to say this morning, all of us are preachers in some sense. As we go in and out the doors here, as we go to our job, you are carrying a message forth. So, in a free society now, we can choose to worship just about however we please to, or obey God. But you know what? God doesn't accept man's alternative. [00:07:02] He just, it's, it's not, God just simply won't accept that. And I don't know, sometimes it's easy to get this view of God or this idea that what this easy Christianity but the reality is we have to conform to God's commands, to His truth for us. [00:07:34] We have no choice. If we desire to see God in glory someday, we have no choice but to pay attention. Now, I'd like to turn next to 1 Corinthians, and here again, and I hope you don't get the idea that I'm picking on these people, but I think the scripture is, the story is here for us to, for admonition to me and to all of us. [00:08:05] We may face different issues today, nevertheless we face things that would try to lure us away from a right view of truth. 1 Corinthians chapter 5, I'm going to read from verse 1 to verse 8. It is reported commonly that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, [00:08:38] that one should have his father's wife, and ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you. For verily I say, as absent in body but present in spirit, have judged already as though I were present concerning him that hath so done this deed. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when ye are gathered together and my spirit with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ to deliver such in one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. [00:09:18] For your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven that you may be a new lump as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast not with old leaven, neither with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Now, I know that we could make application. He may be talking about communion here, but I would like to focus on something else here. He is addressing the sin that is among them. And of course, it was terrible. Fornication was among them. Even the Gentiles, he says, wouldn't accept that. [00:10:10] Even the Gentiles wouldn't accept the sin that was there. And then he goes on in verse 2 and he says, You are puffed up. They were arrogant about it. They had this thing in their midst and they tolerated it. Not only did they tolerate it, they were arrogant about it. It was as though they condoned it. And their own view of truth led them to that kind of that behavior, that kind of acceptance of that behavior. [00:10:45] And I read, I studied this a little bit, not in depth, but one commentator at least said that the church at Corinth was surrounded by evil, By evil influence that was making its way into the church, how about our day? I think you would agree with me that we are surrounded by all types of sin, all types of sin. And the question is, how do we allow that, or do we allow that to creep in amongst our church or among God's people? [00:11:29] You know, this is just a simple illustration, but have you ever noticed how you pull a frog off a tree and he's a certain color? I don't know what kind of frog it is, but maybe it's a tree frog. And he may be hanging on to the bark of a tree and you put him down in the grass and all of a sudden the same frog turns a different color. You know, we have to be very careful that we don't change to suit the environment that we're in. And, you know, it's an ongoing thing and it has been since the beginning of time. to make sure that we as God's people don't conform to the world. [00:12:18] As born-again believers, we have a different set of values. And may I say that we clash with the world in many, many different areas. Our way of thinking versus their way of thinking. It could be a message in itself, but the burden on my heart is, are we allowing that to influence us? The world's teaching, if we tolerate some of the sin that goes on around us, it doesn't take very long at all, not long at all, to bring us, or it will bring us a wrong view of truth. [00:13:04] I am not here this morning to judge other settings. I think the word of God takes care of that. It is our responsibility to, I think Paul says later on in this chapter, it is our responsibility to judge the people within the church, within our church. But I think you would agree with me that in this community, there are groups that have, in the last 25 to 30 years, or maybe even longer than that, have changed dramatically in dress and practice. [00:13:46] And again, I'm not here to condemn these people. At the same time, the Word of God did not change. And so, I would tend to believe that our theology, our view of things can change. But I do know this, the Bible still stays the same. We can always depend on truth. It will never change. And some of these things have just been tugging at my heart. [00:14:20] I was listening to the CDs, Melvin Lehman was talking, and most of you were here when he was here, and I remember some of these things. How does this society, this community, where we're at, influence us? And I don't know if you remember what he said about the, he said, there was, trying to get it together here, He talked about the lady, the immodest dressed lady had a glowing testimony. [00:14:55] How do we deal with some of those things? How do we maintain our integrity, our truth in light of these people that have these glowing testimonies? And I guess in thinking about having a right view of truth, I came to the conclusion that we are speaking to professing Christianity this morning. People that have never named the name of Christ, have never cared, have never made a commitment, they are deceived. [00:15:31] They have no concept of truth. So therefore, I guess you could say I'm targeting the professing Christianity this morning. Again, I want to be very careful not to pass judgment that is in God's hands. I would just like to notice one more thing here in first Corinthians in chapter five, verse six. And the thing that's behind this is, well, let me just say, verse six, know ye that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump. [00:16:07] There is this, we say it's a Protestant idea that, well maybe we should say it's not a Protestant idea, maybe we should say it originated with Satan. That what I do doesn't affect, it doesn't affect you. I can just, I answer to God and you answer to God and we all go to the same church. But you know what? Paul is coming down hard on that. [00:16:39] We cannot, we cannot, Paul is simply saying this, a small amount of sin will affect the whole body. If it's just left right there, and we just wink at it, we just keep going, it stays there. Now I know I'm not talking this morning about, that's a whole different subject, how we deal with sin in the body. It's very important that we deal with sin among us if there is sin. Sin, if left unchecked in the body of Christ, brings confusion, it brings division, and it gets to the point where sin is no longer dangerous. [00:17:23] It no longer appears dangerous to us, and we keep going until finally we've lost it. We're still going to church, but we've lost it. I would like to read some more scripture here. This distorting of truth is just about as old as mankind, and I think I'm simply going to look at the first sin in Genesis 3. Genesis 3, I don't know, sometimes I hesitate to read, it seems like I'm always turning to old scriptures, but I would like to notice some things here, at least one thing, and I wouldn't have to read 15 verses of Genesis 3, but I think I'm going to read from verse 1 to 15, I think I'm going to have you stand here, I feel like I'm losing you. [00:18:12] Genesis 3, verse 1. Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made, and he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. [00:18:54] And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat. and the eyes of them both were open and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons and they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and Adam and his wife hid themselves in the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden [00:19:29] and the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him where art thou I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself. And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to me to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? [00:20:02] And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and thus shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise her heel There's really not much that I'm going to say, but there's one phrase that I would like to notice here [00:20:34] Anyway, the serpent said, yea, hath God said, questioning, came questioning You know what? The devil does the same thing to us today He comes and he questions us Is it really important that I wear plain clothes? Is it really important that I have a good relationship or try to have a good relationship with my neighbors when they actually may be mistreating me? Is it important? You know, we get tempted to do things, but it's just when we take a hold of that temptation that we actually have lost a proper vision, a proper view of truth. [00:21:14] And I guess the thing that I would like to notice here is Satan's inroads that he makes on our constituency, on our congregation. And I'm not, I am blessed in being here. I just want you to know that. And his sole purpose is to mislead souls, to distort, to distort to the point where we no longer see clearly where we're going. And it's so easy. [00:21:46] If we just allow that drifting along, it's so easy to do. He's a master deceiver. He's the author of confusion. And I noticed something here. His deception was in some way a progressive thing in the garden there. Because first he got them to do it. And well, they chose to do it. But he came to them. He came to them. And I guess we could, we could, there would be several messages here probably, but I just want to notice that the next thing that happened is he, they, they no longer, they were no longer in tune with God. [00:22:37] So they were deceived. They tried to hide from God. They tried to cover themselves. That is Satan's way of doing things. You know, when there is sin, what do we want to do? What's the first thing that the natural person does? We hide. We hide. We don't want to come out and confess sin. It brings some shame to us. It keeps us from being open with God. We somehow become misled to the point where we feel that we can hide or certain things just don't matter to God. [00:23:16] You know, it doesn't really matter to him who he misleads. It doesn't matter. And I sometimes think that we ministers are a prime target for Satan. If he can get leadership in any congregation anywhere to walk the wrong path and to teach easy Christianity and what have you, that's where he goes. That's where he wants to be. But all of us have that responsibility. All of us have to withstand Satan. [00:23:51] There are many people in our, well, in many churches, I should say, in many across the face of the earth. And maybe I should just say here that there are vibrant churches around and there are many people that I appreciate. I just struggled with this so much. This seems to be a negative thing to say, but we have to recognize that there are many people in churches across the world, in our community, that are absolutely correct in one thing, in truth, in their view of truth. [00:24:32] But the same people are confused on other issues, the same people. And while they hold strongly to that one thing, they may be losing it in another area. And I wish I could just give you a pat answer this morning and say, do this and that'll never happen. But you know what? We have to daily work on that thing. We have to to search the scripture. And I would like to say this. God is not the author of confusion. [00:25:05] If there is confusion, if we don't, I know that there's some verses, there's some scripture that are a little more obscure to me And I don't really understand everything, but if we do what we know to do, if we do what we understand and we cling to that I'm sure that God will enlighten us, God will help us to see that I'm just going to give a brief snapshot of some of the things that we have observed. [00:25:37] It's not just what I have observed, but all of us, I would guess, have observed some of these things where people get involved in things and it distorts their view of what God actually wants of us, of me, of all of us. There are some that read God's word and they read it from a legalistic perspective. And let me just say ahead of this, I'm not prepared to go in depth with some of these things. [00:26:10] I am just giving a rundown and there are many things, there are other things that happen that people hang on to a wrong view of truth and it leads them down a wrong road. These people that view this thing in a legalistic view believe that somehow they can work their way to heaven. And then there are those that read the Bible and live by faith alone. [00:26:44] And there's nothing that they can do, or they feel that there's nothing required of them, that they can do whatever they want. We know, I think we're not ignorant of scripture. I'm blessed in this setting. We are taught well. The Bible does say, James says, Wilt thou know a vain man that faith without works is dead? We all know those things. Was James confused when he said those things? I don't think so. If you would search that out a little bit [00:27:16] and look at his position when he was on the Jerusalem council, So you would see that his view of truth, his view of faith and works meshes with Paul's view, what he says in Galatians. I think we would clearly see that James would support the idea that works are not the source of our salvation, but they are the fruit of the salvation. And that's just one thing. That's one area that I know that I have struggled with in this community. [00:27:56] I have had opposing forces come and talk to me and try to somehow guide or impress their position upon me in these areas. And I don't know, maybe there's some more of you that have had that. But truly, we do what we do because we are saved. We have been saved. What about inconsistent living? How does that affect us? Jesus was very harsh with the scribes and Pharisees. [00:28:29] He said this in Matthew 23, verse 24, Ye blind guides which strain at an ad and swallow a camel. And I'm not going into detail this morning about what the scribes and Pharisees did, but there again he was pointing out an inconsistency. They were correct, right on target in one area, and then in another area they didn't care. They winked at sin. We have to be consistent. They were hypocrites, I guess you could probably call them. [00:29:02] They wrongly assumed that a public show of righteousness would somehow save them. Now these are just some thoughts that I had. The Bible does say that we will be judged by our works, and it does matter what we do or don't do. I want to be clear with that. But how, in this thing of having a right or a correct view of God and of Scripture, How do we view ourselves? So many times I'm afraid that people of God are trying to see or try to find out what can I still do and still belong in this thing? [00:29:41] What can, how can I get by? And I again just got a little bit of a rundown here of things that I've observed and by no means it's all inclusive. But, you know, I've observed people that can be in a certain church or setting and for years they can hold that that grudge or they can slander this person and they can say, did you did you notice that? and yet feel satisfied that I belong, I'm a member in good standing, I belong to this congregation. [00:30:22] It's Satan's way of getting his foot in the door. And it somehow gives us, it soothes our conscience when we're still with the church. And I'm not sure, well let me just go on here. There are people, of course, and I would hope that this is not true in our setting, but we've all observed people that drink and smoke and are dishonest and slanderous, have evil things to say, and yet they belong to a church and they feel good about that. [00:30:55] There are people that continue in hidden sin or have hidden sin and maybe put a little extra money in the offering basket and try to soothe that conscience by I'm alright, I'll take care of it over here but you know God doesn't, that's a wrong view of truth that will take us down a slippery slope There are women that wear and support the headship order veiling, yet they totally regard or fail to even understand what it all entails or what is involved in that. [00:31:35] Maybe practice immodest dress in other areas or maybe even immoral behavior, but they still feel justified in doing what they're doing. It seems that we have this tendency to think that if we're correct in one area, we are alright, we're going to make it. And I'm not here to shake your confidence in your salvation, but I guess just a word of warning that we would be very careful [00:32:05] that we would understand the whole of this book, that we would take all of it together. You know, it's amazing how Satan can mislead us into thinking things that are just so far off course, so far away from truth. And I hesitate in sharing this. I did not want to share this at all. But I remember, as a young man, in a drunken stupor, somehow thinking that God, this is what God, it's all right. [00:32:45] He provided this drink, and somehow it's going to be all right, because I still belong to this church. My friends, it'll never work. It won't work. We won't make it. And I know, I, now that was my experience. But let's be very careful. There are sins that look kind of all right. There are things that we do sometimes, but we have to be measuring it up with the truth of God's word constantly to make sure that we're where we should be. [00:33:19] The Bible gives direction on nonresistance. It says, love your enemies, do good to them which hate you. It's active. It's another thing that we have to. It's something that we're called to do, to do good on a continual basis. And it's of absolute importance. You know, sometimes we can say things and nobody's going to find out that I said this unkind thing. But God knows. God knows. [00:33:52] It's a wrong view of truth if we think we can be unkind to someone and get by. You know, if the truth of God's word is no longer guiding us, we are hopelessly lost. Just as the children of Israel were when every man did what was right in their own eyes, we just kind of go, when we get to that point, we've already acquired a wrong view of truth. We need to get back on solid ground. If we are doing what seems right, what seems, what feels good to me, we are as, I think James says it, I don't have the scripture reference, but we are as a man that is tossed about with every wind and wave of doctrine. [00:34:33] And we just keep going this way and that way. The next whim. I don't have time to look at this, I've taken far more time than I thought I would. But there is first Romans, the first chapter, I think if you would look there, at least a part of that one verse says this, you know, maybe I should just turn to that. I think you're familiar with this scripture. It's talking about the perversion that they were practicing. [00:35:05] People were professing themselves to be wise and they became fools. And sometimes I think that happens. I'm not. I want to be careful. I don't want anybody to become discouraged this morning, but we have to be very careful that we are standing on truth for whatever we do. Some of this easy Christianity around us looks so easy. Actually, it looks wise. It just looks good. But really, when you get to the heart of it, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. [00:35:46] I would just like to say this. Our God will never change, and His truth will always stand. James 1, 17 and 18 say this Every good gift and perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights With whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning Of his own he begat us with the word of truth That we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures We can rest in that [00:36:18] We have a God that will never change, never It doesn't matter where we are in life. God's plan of salvation is the same. His requirements stay the same. His principles are always the same. We have a God that always cares about us. It never changes. And that could be a message in its own, in itself. But let's make sure that the life we live today and what we do tomorrow as we go to work is showing that we have a right view of truth. [00:37:01] We have a correct view of what God wants from us.