Reformation
Sunday October 26, 2014
John
8:31-32 God’s
Pure and Simple Truth
Dear
fellow redeemed,
There’s
only one kind of truth: God’s truth which is pure and simple.
*
It’s pure in the sense that it
stands on its own; it does not contradict itself.
And it’s simple in the sense that
the very simple can understand it.
* However, hypocrites have no tolerance
for this truth.
And
we pick up on this in today’s Gospel.
* Jesus had gathered around him a number
of Jews.
To
those who believed in him he said, “If you abide in my word . . . You
will
know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
*
He spoke of the truth of God’s
grace which frees a person from sin.
True
freedom comes from receiving Christ’s forgiveness.
To know the truth is to know how
you’re freed from the curse of sin and how you’re freed
from
death and are given eternal life.
* But the majority of the Jews could
only think to themselves, “You will know the
truth?!
. . . The truth will set you free?!”
Who did this Jesus think he was
preaching about the truth to them.
* They were children of Abraham whom God
had promised, “I will surely bless you and
make your descendants as numerous as
the stars in the sky . . . through your offspring all
nations on earth will be blessed.”
But what the
religious Jews made of this promise was anything but the truth.
* The prophecy of a coming Messiah, they
believed, assured them that sin had no relevance
for them. They were already free and they’d always be
free despite the persecutions of
the government and the pretentious
talk of some want-a-be prophet.
*
But then the Messiah came and
suddenly it was very easy to identify sin.
The sinner was this fraud who
fancied himself as the Son of Man and the keeper of the
truth.
God couldn’t possibly reveal his truth through this man!
* It was the height of hypocrisy. They
accuse the one who’s righteous in order to conceal
the truth about themselves. They
were the sinners.
And
sadly, many of today’s so-called religious are just as hypocritical.
*
They don’t want to talk about sin
unless it’s someone else’s sin and it gives them an
excuse against hearing the pure and
simple truth.
*
Interestingly, as with the
unbelieving Jews, it works in two stages.
First, we don’t need to hear the
truth. Our sin is not so great that we must rely strictly on
God’s
grace. There’s no curse from which we need to be freed, for sin is not a
condition
which
corrupts the entire being.
*
Sin is more like an inclination
or a tendency.
It’s what we give into if we’re not
careful, causing hurt to those around us.
But as
long as God can see the good we do, sin isn’t that relevant . . .
* . . .
unless we can pin it on someone else who’s so bold to tell us the truth about
ourselves.
And
suddenly man’s deficiencies are extremely relevant.
Because
man is imperfect, sinful if you will, you surely cannot expect what he’s
recorded
in
Scripture to be reliable in every case.
* No. For now
you’ll have to settle for something less than the pure and simple truth.
* It’s really quite convenient for the
sinner who doesn’t want to hear the truth.
First the truth is irrelevant.
You don’t need to hear it.
And secondly, when the truth gets
too personal, the truth it’s unreliable.
You’re not able to hear it.
Over
the course of time the argument really hasn’t changed a lot.
* Apparently God is incapable of
communicating the truth to us.
He’s simply not able to find a
suitable instrument through which he may relate to us his
pure
and simple truth.
* You’ve heard the argument. The warring
factions in the church make it impossible to
know
who’s telling the truth!
1 One
church says you should baptize babies, another says you should not.
2 One
church says that the body and blood of Christ are truly present in the bread
and wine
of
the Supper, another church says they aren’t.
3 One
church says you can be absolutely certain about going to heaven.
Another says, “Oh no. Nobody can be certain
until they die.”
4 One
church says Christians go to heaven the moment they die.
Another says you must first do some
more penance.
5 One
church says Jesus said everything the New Testament attributes to him; another
church
says it’s doubtful whether he said any of what’s been recorded.
* So how can you know who’s
telling the truth?
Many
will say, “I’m not sure we can, and I’m not sure it really matters.”
And
so when all is said and done, many have are of the opinion that the pure and
simple truth
can’t
be known!
* “One church says this. Another church says that. And we’re supposed to choose and
then
say this is absolutely true? You can’t
be serious!
* “The Bible isn’t that clear. We can know
some truths, but not all truths.
Scripture’s doctrines are a matter of interpretation.”
Did
you know that 66% of Americans do not
believe there’s such a thing as absolute truth.
53%
of evangelicals and 57% of church youth don’t believe in it.
*
In many cases, the church has let
our society determine what truth is.
As
a philosopher once said, “Truth is what one’s peers let one get away with.”
*
Or there’s the postmodernist
thinker who puts it this way: “truth is a worn out
metaphor,
a coin which has lost its picture.”
*
In other words, in our modern
world, we’re not to think of truth as something
objective.” Rather, truth has decayed and disintegrated
and we must settle for an
assortment
of “disconnected truths,” all equal to each other but unrelated to each other.
* A well know
feminist of the day has said “only when we hear . . . all the stories will we
finally
arrive at the truth.” Now that’s
profound!
Needless
to say, we’re fighting a much different battle than some years ago.
* Today we’re
no longer arguing which doctrine is true.
We’re arguing whether there is such a thing as true
doctrine.
Can we ever know the truth?
*
Today’s cynicism even affects why
people join churches these days.
It’s not because other people there will believe the same
thing.
*
It’s more like who’s got the best
selection at their smorgasbord?
After all, I can be a Catholic and also believe in
abortion.
I
can be a Baptist and believe the Bible contradicts itself.
Or
I can be a Lutheran and believe in Open Communion!
*
In any case, people just don’t
want to believe there’s such a thing as pure and simple
truth.
“So
what about in Jesus’ day? Were people so
cynical about the truth?
* Well, one
thing we can say for sure is, the debate wasn’t as sophisticated as it is
today.
Either
you were a Jew or you were not.
*
Either you were related to
Abraham and you knew the truth, or you were a
pagan and you didn’t know the truth.
*
True, you had certain
disagreements between the Pharisees and Sadducees.
But even so, they did believe there
was such a thing as truth.
*
And therefore, as for the
unbelieving Jews in today’s text, it wasn’t so much that they
didn’t
want to know God and his truth.
They didn’t want God to know them and
the truth about their sin.
* That’s how
the Pharisees had gained such influence.
By their
meaningless traditions and their modifications of the truth, they believed they
could
keep God from seeing into their heart.
* Jesus
talked about the truth setting them free.
Through Christ, they could “know
the truth”; the pure and simple truth.
Jesus was the world’s Savior. Through him was forgiveness and salvation.
* But all they wanted to do is lay claim
to being Abraham’s offspring in which case they
didn’t
need to be freed. They didn’t need the
truth because their sin wasn’t an issue as far
as they were concerned.
So,
how different are we today?
*
What is the truth that frees
you? Is it the fact that you’re Missouri
Synod?
You were baptized and confirmed in a
Lutheran Church.
Or
everything got better when you attended that information class and converted.
*
You’re a part of this heritage
that has in its possession all the different truths of the
Christian faith. You know the true doctrine and cherish it.
*
But let’s be honest. As well as you know the doctrine, do you know
what the doctrine has
to do with you?
* Do you know the pure and simple truth
about your sin? Did you bring your sin
with you
this
morning so that you might uncover it for you to see and for your Lord to see?
*
It’s sad but true. People don’t want to know the truth, because
don’t want to face the truth
about themselves.
*
Maybe it’s not part of our
confession but it’s become a part of our thinking.
The pure and simple truth in my case
is not black and white.
It’s not absolute in the sense that
I’m absolutely convinced God sees everything, including
my darkest secrets.
On
the other hand, what if there were such a thing as absolute truth, but it went
further than your
secrets
and included the secrets of a gracious and saving God?
* Would that be cause for alarm? Or would it be cause for thanks?
“If you abide in my word…,” Jesus
says, “you will know the truth.”
* We can actually be quite thankful for
such truth. When it comes to being freed
from sin,
after
all, pure and simple truth isn’t something we have to speculate about.
It’s not some obscure idea that’s
out of our reach.
*
It’s as close as God’s Word which
the Holy Spirit caused to be recorded for us in
Scripture
and which we may truly cherish.
* It’s what
kept Luther going until he found what you might call a missing but crucial
piece
to the puzzle.
* Remember his tireless efforts to live
a righteous life?
For
years he was faced with a paradox: On
the one hand, God demands perfection.
On
the other hand, sin makes it impossible to be perfect.
* “What
gives?” Luther asked. “This can’t be the way God would leave things.
Scripture
must contain some other truth to help us through this predicament.”
* So
Luther searched and searched until he found the missing truth.
He
came across Romans 1:17: “The righteous will live by
faith.”
* And he
learned that becoming righteous in God’s sight does not happen as a result of
doing
our
best. God’s righteousness and salvation are received strictly as a gift by
faith in Jesus Christ.
* Finally the words of our text would
begin to make sense.
“And you will know the truth, and
the truth will set you free.”
* In his search for the truth, not only
would Luther discover God’s grace and
forgiveness,
but this same truth would set his conscience free.
* His guilt
was removed, not by keeping up with the latest law imposed on the people by the
church.
Sin was taken away by the blood of Christ.
Five
hundred years later, of course, nothing’s changed.
*
We still have in our possession
God’s pure and simple truth.
And
that means God’s Word can teach us every truth he wants us to know.
*
That’s why we still study
Luther’s Catechism and the Lutheran Confessions.
We
believe God’s Word is pure and simple; it can and does communicate truth!
* As
we read from 2nd Peter: “And we have the word of the prophets
made more certain.”
What
God’s word means is certain. And you and
I can learn what it means for ourselves, instead
of
wondering whether anyone is right.
*
Imagine not knowing whether
babies should be baptized for the forgiveness of sins, or
not knowing whether Christ’s body
and blood are truly present in, with and under the
bread and wine!
*
Imagine not knowing whether
you’ll go to heaven when you die, and that you’ll go to
heaven
the very instant you die!
Imagine
not knowing whether Jesus said what the Bible says he said?
* But of
course we do know! We know there’s such
a thing as God’s pure and simple truth
and
we happen to know what this truth is!
You
know why so many have trouble believing that God can communicate the pure and
simple
truth
to us?
*
They’re judging God according to
man’s limitations.
The
thinking is, men are sinful. Therefore
God can’t get them to write his Scripture and
expect
it to be true from beginning to end.
*
Furthermore, God can’t expect his
Scripture to remain unchanged from generation
to
generation. Sinful man’s going to want to touch it up.
And it’s going to become increasing
uncertain over time what God meant.
*
But here’s the truth. If Jesus
can be both human and divine so can his Word.
If
Jesus can become human without becoming corrupt and sinful, so can his Word
become
human without becoming corrupt and sinful.
*
Whether or not Scripture is true
and we can understand it as God wants us
to,
hasn’t to do with how deficient or imperfect we are.
It comes down to who God is.
* Ask
yourself: Is God smart enough, powerful enough and gracious enough that he can
cause
his Word to be recorded for our hearing and learning?
*
Is he wise enough, masterful
enough and loving enough to produce a written Word which
happens
to be absolutely true without any errors of any kind and also happens to be
absolutely
understandable?
* And finally does our same God have the
ability to use the very same truth to free us from
sin
both in this life and the next?
*
Yes?! Well, guess what? That’s just what he’s done!
He’s given us his pure and simple
truth right here in his Word! Amen.
May
the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ
Jesus.
Amen.
