Our world has insulated itself from any adherence to objective truth. This has been a slow, deliberate and subtle deception. Christ’s followers are called to pursue Justice with a clear proclamation of the truth, especially to a world that has deafened itself to the gospel.
Preliminaries:
- Biblical Justice sees Truth as always objective
– Truth requires:
(1) Exclusivity
(2) Authority - Biblical Justice views Truth is always ordered toward shalom
– Truth either:
(1) Preserves shalom
(2) Restores shalom - Biblical Justice requires that Truth is never neutral
– Truth serves to both:
(1) Maintain Order
(2) Correct / Repair Disorder
Observations & Conclusions:
- Jesus is the truth
- Truth reveals the heart
A. Truth to the receptive is redemptive
B. Truth to the resistant is condemnation - Truth will risk your relationships
Application: To “say the true” you must…
- Stay close to Jesus
- Ask the Spirit for help
- Speak the truth modeled after the love of the Father
John 14:6
“Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Zechariah 8:16-17
“These are the things that you shall do: Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace; do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the Lord.”
Romans 1:18
“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness.”
John 4:15-18
“The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
John 4:39-42
“Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
John 9:39
“Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
Matthew 10:34-36
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn “‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law— a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.'”
Proverbs 27:6
“Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.”
Ephesians 4:15
“Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”
1 Corinthians 13:1
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”