What is Truth?

Read James 1:12-18

Almost 50 years ago, a man by the name of Johnny Cash wrote a song by the name of What is Truth.  One of the lines in the song is Can you blame the voice of youth for asking what is truth?  The song’s final line is You had better help the voice of youth find what is truth.

For the most part, that didn’t happen.  Following a decade—the Sixties—of rebelling against everything, people started embracing just about anything.  Today, we live in an age of apathy and ambivalence.  We would rather fix the blame instead of the problem.

We don’t care or we think one thing is as good as another are the thoughts that define this age. We can be offended or outraged by so many things that our lives say we don’t really care about, but it’s what we do.

Good old-fashioned civil conversation is a lost art.  It seems that we can’t have discussion without argument and vitriolic volleys of replies.  Facts are elusive and almost always disputed. 

George Orwell nailed it when he said that History ended in 1936.  He was referring to the Spanish Civil War in which large numbers of causalities went unreported and elsewhere great battles were reported where no blood had been shed.

It was the beginning of an age of propaganda.  We are in the ninth decade of this age.  Social media has put this age on steroids.  Whether your social and political leanings are left, right, or centrist, you can likely find a media source that will include, exclude, or otherwise paint the news with your preferred bias.  The truth is hard to come by these days.

You can find programs, posts, more programs, and persuasive propaganda that appeal to your version of Christianity.  There is no shortage of information promoting itself as the truth.  You can find people claiming to be Christians simply because they are Americans. 

You can find Christians who will tell you that one religion is as good as another.  What’s the big deal about Jesus being the way?

I remember helping Fredrick when we hosted him for a few days.  He had come from African for a month and only had one place to preach.  He gave me some of his Facebook contracts that he said were preachers and pastors, and I helped him find his next venue.

One of these pastors promoted that there was only Jesus.  He proclaimed that there was no Father and no Holy Spirit.  He had a large following.  I told Fredrick that he should just scratch this one from his prospect list.

Think back to the Johnny Cash song.

Yeah, the ones that you're calling wild

Are going to be the leaders in a little while

This old world's wakin' to a new born day

And I solemnly swear that it'll be their way

The Man in Black was prophetic in more ways than one.  My generation and those that have followed have let the truth slip away.  This current generation is perhaps the most gullible of modern times.

What are we to do?

We could be like Solomon as he began his writings in Ecclesiastes.  Meaningless, Meaningless, it’s all meaningless—at least that was his hook for the rest of the book.

We could just throw in the towel.  How do you recover from living in an age that has lost touch with truth and reality?

We must return to the one true God.  That’s going to mean that we will break some ties with the world of deception in which we live.

We must commit to following Jesus and knowing the word of God.  We must put more of those words into practice than ever before.

James tried to awaken his fellow Hebrew followers of Christ.  Hey!  Get this and get it straight.  God is not and never was in the deception business. 

Every good gift is from him.  He is the originator of everything good.

While we may go through trials, God will never tempt us with evil.  If we wrestle with evil, we are either up against demonic forces or we have invited evil into our lives by seeking and giving into our own selfish desires.

It is the latter of these two that we contend with most often.

The world as we know it in this age is configured to appeal to and to gratify our selfish desires.  The world does not want us to know the truth.  The world wants intimacy with us but the world can only give us a transactional relationship.

God wants us not only to know the truth but to live in it.  James puts it this way.

He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

We are born of God out of this world of deception.  God’s word delivers us from this world.  His word that is Jesus and his word that does not return void deliver us.

The truth delivers us.

We are first fruits.  That tells us that there is a greater harvest to follow.  We should not give up on those who have sold out to the world.  While the world is lost and blinded to the truth, we have words of life that will set so many free.

Born again is a common term for most Christians.  We are born of the Spirit, of water, of blood.  James says we are born through the word of God.

What does that mean for us?

God wants you with him.  He has given us his holy word.  He has given us the only sacrifice that could truly remove our sins.  He has given us the baptism of the Holy Spirit, a Spirit that now lives within us as Counselor and Comforter.

God has given us eyes to see the truth in a world governed by deception and propaganda.

But we must seek his kingdom and his righteousness before anything else.  We must desire not only with our minds but with our hearts to live his way.

We must hunger for and read his holy word.  It should be the mainstay of our daily conversations.  We should talk about it with our children, when we get up and when we go to bed, when we are out on the job or sitting at home, and we should post some reminders of what God’s word says.

We should remember that God gave his word to his chosen people for their own good.  It’s good for us too.

We must do more than sing, I have decided to follow Jesus.  We must commit to following him.

We must live as people of love.

We must live as people of faith.

We must live as people of hope.

We must set aside our own understanding—so much of which comes from this world that does not know God—and trust him fully, with everything we have.

Last Sunday, I said something, I affirmed something that I think most already knew.  I don’t think it was breaking news to anyone.  We are not of this world.  We do not belong to this world.  We belong to God.

We know God through Christ Jesus and through his Spirit that lives within us. 

God chose us to know him and to love him and to serve him.  He chose us.  He loves us with an everlasting love. 

We are born out of this world into God’s kingdom by the word of God and we need to convey this to the youth of this land by our word and deed.

Where deception in word and speech seem to prevail, our lives must convey the truth.

When self-gratification seems to be the order of the day, the example of our lives must convey love for one another.

In a world of acrimony and argument, we must bypass the fray and speak the truth.  We are not commissioned to win arguments but to win souls.

We must teach the truth that is the word of God that brings us to salvation in Christ Jesus.  Most of that is done person to person.  Most respond to personal invitation. 

Here is the truth that is tough for many of us to swallow.  Our commission is not about inviting people to church.  It’s about inviting people to know salvation in Jesus Christ.  It’s about helping those who receive him, know him.  We can call this part discipleship.

We have the word of God.  We are born out of this world.  We are made holy before God by his truth and we are sent back into this world with his message of love.

We are the first fruits of this harvest.  Take heart, more will come out of this world that has been deceived.  We must not be discouraged.

More will receive the word of truth.

Amen.