The Moment of Truth

The Bible speaks with one voice. It sets forth one plan of salvation. It makes one diagnosis of the problem of the human condition. It presents one history of redemption. It presents one self-consistent worldview.

Our teacher, Dr. Stephen Lawson, is looking at five characteristics that define the truth. Let's join him now. I want to invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me to the gospel of John, John chapter 36. And I'm going to begin in verse 36, our Lord is standing trial before Pilate. Of course, the day is coming when Pilate will stand trial before the Lord Jesus Christ. And as Jesus stands before Pilate, it is the day before His crucifixion. He is standing trial.

He will be sentenced to death before Pilate, and the sentence will pass down that He is to be crucified before Pilate gives the final verdict. In this one-on-one conversation beginning in John chapter 18, in verse 36, we read, Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews.

But as it is, my kingdom is not of this realm. Therefore, Pilate said to Him, so You are a king. Jesus answered, You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born, and for this I have come into the world to testify, note this, to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice. As Jesus represents the truth here in John 18, He speaks of the truth, definite article the, not a truth, not some truth, but the truth. And when He says the truth, not only is He stating that it is objective and authoritative, but He is saying that it is singular. All truth from the mind of God perfectly fits together, and there is never any contradiction. God never speaks out of both sides of His mouth. And what God says to one generation is true for every generation. The truth fits into one body of truth, one system of truth, one body of divinity.

It's the truth. Truth is never at odds with itself. Francis Schaeffer wrote years ago, Christianity is not a series of truths in the plural. The Bible never represents the Scripture as containing truths, plural, but the truth, singular, in that it all stands together.

It's all or nothing. James Montgomery Boice, the great expositor, states truth is singular. He says it is not in fragments that would require us to speak of truths, plural, in the sense of unrelated facts or items. Boice says truth holds together. Therefore, there is no phase of truth that is not related to every other phase of truth, close quote.

That is a profound quote. What Boice is saying is that all truth is wired together. You tell me what you believe about one truth, I'll tell you what you believe about forty other truths, because what you believe about this truth is inseparably connected with forty other truths. It all stands together.

It is indivisible. It is one truth. The Bible speaks with one voice. It sets forth one plan of salvation. It makes one diagnosis of the problem of the human condition. It presents one history of redemption. It offers one Savior of sinners.

It offers one remedy of eternal life. It presents one self-consistent worldview. When you pick up Genesis and look through the lens of Genesis at the world, it is the same lens. When you pick up Revelation and look through that lens and look at the world, every one of the sixty-six books in the Bible, they all hang together.

They speak together. There are threads running through all of Scripture. You pull a thread in Genesis, your Bible crinkles in Revelation. There is the golden cord of God's sovereign rule over the world. There is the red cord of redemption that runs through the Scripture. It all presents one consistent presentation of the truth. Truth is singular.

When you pack your suitcase, and sometimes you can't get that last sweater into the suitcase, and an arm hangs out, and you get some scissors and just cut it off so that everything will pack nicely. You never have to do that with the Bible. You're never cutting off a few chapters of Leviticus because it just doesn't square with Ephesians. No, though there are forty plus authors writing over a period of sixteen hundred years on three different continents, most of whom never met the other authors.

Nevertheless, as you pick up the Bible to read it, there is one author, capital A, one primary author who used secondary authors, lowercase a, to record what is in this book. It is the infallible truth of God. Not only is truth singular, truth is immutable. Truth never changes. What was true in the Garden of Eden is true throughout the Old Testament, is true in the times of Christ, is true in the expansion of the church, is true down through the centuries, and it is true today because God never changes. I am the same forever, says the Lord, yesterday, today, and forever, the God who was and who is and who shall be forever. And it is this eternal, immutable, unchanging God who speaks truth, and when God speaks truth, it flows from His own nature, and what God says never changes. The truth is always the same from generation to generation.

If it's new, it's not true. Right is always right. Wrong is always wrong.

Society may try to redefine morality. Culture may try to reclassify right and wrong, but truth never changes. Truth is fixed. Truth is established. Truth is constant. Truth is unvarying. Truth is transcendent over the generations. Truth is timeless. Truth is permanent. Truth is anchored. Truth is eternal. Psalm 119, verse 89, forever, O Lord, your word is settled in the heavens. Isaiah 40, verse 8, the grass withers, the flower fades away, but the word of our God abides forever. Don't you just love that? The verses that you memorized as a child have never been more relevant in your life than they are today.

There's no augmentation that is needed. After I graduated from college, I went to law school. You would spend your entire semester studying case law, constitutional law, and your entire grade would be the final exam. At the end of the semester, you never knew how you stood until you took the final exam.

I would stay up nights memorizing the law, studying case law, dissecting case law, and then come to the final exam and write your answers. And one thing that I discovered that was so discouraging to me is that after I would study the law and memorize the law and learn the law, by the time I came to the final exam, they changed the law. And I had invested all of this time in a changing law.

How frustrating that was for me. And as I was first beginning to preach and as I was first beginning to minister God's Word, it struck me. The beauty of God's Word in part is that it is immutable, that truth never changes. And all the investment of my time in studying the Word of God, it is with me forever. I will never wake up one day and suddenly something that was true will be untrue or that there will be a new truth. Jesus said in Matthew 5, verse 18, "'For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the law until all is accomplished.'

Later He said, "'It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the law to fail.' Therefore truth is always up to date." Truth is always contemporary. Do you want to have a contemporary ministry? Do you want to have a contemporary church?

Great. Preach the Bible. Nothing is more contemporary than the Bible. Every little new trend that blows onto the scene of evangelicalism by the time it is incorporated and put into practice, it's old news and it just fades off the scene. But the church that holds forth the Word of God has the truth of God to every generation, to every age group, and it will never change. Truth is always relevant. It has an eternal shelf life. It is never outdated. It is never archaic.

It is immutable. Truth is authoritative. When the truth speaks, God speaks. John Calvin used to say, quoting Augustine, that when the Bible speaks, God speaks. Sometimes I meet people who say, I want to hear the voice of God. I say, you want to hear the audible voice of God? They say, yes, I want to hear the audible voice of God. I tell them, read your Bible out loud.

You will hear the voice of God because God has spoken, and God has spoken in His written Word, and His written Word is authoritative. It makes demands upon our lives. Truth is never just interesting. Truth is never intended to provoke our curiosity. We're never to come to truth and just tip our hat at truth and say, well, that's nice.

That's interesting. No, truth is assertive. Truth is authoritative. Truth is sovereign. Truth is commanding. Truth is imperative. Truth has the right to make demands upon our lives because it is the truth of God. Truth possesses the right to rule our lives. Truth is powerful. Truth alone convicts. The Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and able to pierce the division of soul and spirit and to expose the innermost thoughts of man. That's what truth does. Every other statement just lays on the surface.

It massages the ego. Only truth can bore down and penetrate into the very hearts of a person and expose their hearts before God and allow themselves to see themselves as God sees them. Truth saves. 1 Peter 1, verse 23 says that, We have been born again, not of seed which is perishable, but imperishable by the living and abiding Word of God.

There is in truth the very germ of life. And when that seed of truth is received into the heart by faith, it germinates by sovereign regeneration, and there is life. Truth sanctifies. Truth conforms us into the image of Christ. Truth encourages. Truth comforts. When I go into a hospital room, I don't read A Dying Saint, the Wall Street Journal.

There's nothing wrong in reading the Wall Street Journal. I read it this morning. But there's no anchor for the soul there. Only truth can comfort. And finally, truth is determinative. Your eternal destiny is determined by the truth. Thank you. Okay, R.C.

said, me too. Your relationship to the truth will determine where you will spend all eternity. Your relationship to the truth will determine whether you are in heaven or in hell forever. Your relationship to the truth will chart the course of your life in this world. Your relationship to the truth will define your family.

It will direct your business. It will be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path. Truth is determinative, and your entire life is marked by the truth. That is the reality of truth. And I want you to know everything that does not measure with the truth is a façade, and only once the truth has spoken may we understand what true reality is. Now finally, the reception of the truth. What is necessary in your life and in anyone's life to receive the truth of God because we have a natural aversion against the truth? The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

Who can understand it? We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each one of us has turned to his own way. There is none who seeks after God, no, not one. We all have an aversion against the truth. What is necessary to receive the truth?

Jesus tells us in verse 37, and I'm finished. Why does not everyone who hears the truth receive the truth? Why do some people reject it? Why do others receive it?

Is it an IQ matter? Note verse 37. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. What is it to be of the truth? To be of the truth is to be birthed by the truth. It is to be born again by the truth. It is to believe in the truth. It is to belong to the truth. To be of the truth means to be sovereignly regenerated by the Spirit, and to be illumined by the Holy Spirit of God to light up our understanding, to see the truth where we were previously in darkness. God gives us eyes to see the truth. He gives us a new mind to understand the truth. He puts His resident truth teacher inside of us, the Holy Spirit, to guide us into all the truth.

Everyone, therefore there are no exceptions to this, everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. This speaks of the effectual call of God. It speaks of the sovereign drawing and calling of God the Holy Spirit, by which the truth comes crashing home in our minds, in our hearts, and suddenly in a moment we see what we were previously blind to.

I once was lost, but now I'm found was blind, but now I see. It is the work of God the Holy Spirit in the heart that enables one to hear the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said, My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish.

Neither shall anyone pluck them from My Father's hand, for My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all, and no one shall pluck them from His hand. I and the Father are one. It is the sheep, it is the sheep who hear the voice of the Good Shepherd speaking the truth.

The goats remain deaf to truth. How we are dependent entirely upon the giver of all truth to teach all truth. Are you of the truth? Have you been born from above? Have you been born of God? Are you converted to Jesus Christ? Have you come to believe upon Christ and believe the truth that He says?

Have you come to believe the truth of what He says? That we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That the wages of sin is death, but that upon Calvary's cross, the truth is that Jesus died in the place of sinners. And that all of our sin, all of us who would believe upon Christ, has been transferred to Christ.

And Him who knew no sin, God made to be sin for us. That is the truth. And those who believe upon Christ, His righteousness is given to us. And we are clothed from the top of our head to the bottom of our feet with the perfect obedience of God in Christ.

That is the truth. And if you will call upon His name, if you will commit your life to Him, if you will deny yourself and take up a cross and become a true follower of Christ, He will lead you all the way to His Father's house. And one day you will be before the throne of God, singing the praises of Him who is the author of all truth, who is the revealer of all truth. And you and I will come to understand in even fuller and greater measure the truth that is in Jesus Christ. As we live in this world of lies and falsehoods, as people are saying, what is truth? We who are of the truth know that Jesus came into this world to testify of the truth and that you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. Apart from the truth, one will always be bound in sin and by Satan. Only the truth is so powerful to unlock those chains and to set the prisoners free. As our culture runs headlong away from truth, it is important to remain anchored to it.

Apart from truth, we will always be bound in sin. We're glad you've joined us today for Renewing Your Mind. We've shared a message from Ligonier Teaching Fellow, Dr. Stephen Lawson. This is from a Ligonier conference that we held in Seattle back in 2014. And after the message, he sat down next to Dr. Sproul, who leaned over and said, we need to turn that into a book.

And we did just that. It's titled The Moment of Truth, and we would like for you to have this hardbound edition. And when you contact us today with a gift of any amount, we also include a digital download of that 2014 conference. Our theme was Overcoming the World.

There are 11 MP3s included in that digital download. So make your request and give your gift at renewingyourmind.org. You can also call us at 800-435-4343. Dr. Lawson's message was drawn from Pontius Pilate's infamous question, what is truth?

We live in a society that asks that same question, and as believers, we need to be equipped to provide an answer. The Moment of Truth is more than 230 pages of content from Dr. Lawson's messages. So again, request it along with the conference audio messages with your gift of any amount today. Our phone number again is 800-435-4343.

You can also give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org. As we look ahead to tomorrow's program, let me pose a question. Where would you begin to learn about God's grace in the Bible? Would you turn first to the New Testament? Well, Dr. Lawson will show us that we can go all the way back to the beginning, to Genesis, and discover the foundations of grace. We hope you'll join us Wednesday for Renewing Your Mind. .