Truth in a Truth-Distorting Culture

I came because Jesus sought me. I came because Jesus bought me. I came because Jesus sent His Spirit into my heart. I came because I'm alive in Him. I came because I heard Him. And He made me believe Him.

It wasn't my wisdom. It was His goodness. And we've entered into a wonderful reality. We've entered into the fellowship of truth.

In a world where truth is under attack, where it's distorted and suppressed, isn't it a humbling and joyful reality that we as God's people not only know the truth, we know the one who is the truth? This is the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. It's a special week this week on Renewing Your Mind as you're hearing messages from this year's Ligonier Ministries National Conference on the theme, The Way, The Truth, and The Life. And today you'll hear W. Robert Godfrey's message on truth in a truth-distorting culture. Dr. Godfrey is the chairman of Ligonier Ministries and a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow. He's also a church historian, and he produced a 73-message overview of church history. Today only, you can request this monumental six-part teaching series on DVD along with digital access to all 73 messages and the study guides when you give a donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org.

This special resource offer does end at midnight tonight, so be quick. Well, here's Dr. Godfrey on the importance of truth and the sweet truth that we know the one who is the truth. It is wonderful to be here with you. It is wonderful to think about the theme of truth. We are all so aware of the importance of truth for us, for our churches, for our families, and for our culture, and what a great struggle truth is becoming in our time. And I thought, as I reflected on addressing this subject, that the place to turn was the Gospel of John. John has been described as the apostle of love, and there's a great truth to that. It may well be that the most famous verse in the New Testament, in our time at least, is, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. John 3.16, John is the apostle of love.

But I was reflecting how true it is that John is just as much the apostle of truth. And John, of course, would insist that we mustn't put any tension between truth and love. Love is always truthful.

Truth is always loving. There's no tension. There's no contradiction. There's no struggle between those two.

But they are utterly harmonized. John, in his first letter, wrote, 1 John 3.18, little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth. Let us love in truth. That's what we're called to by John, and it's what John recorded for us as the sentiment of Jesus. If you love me, keep my commandments.

If you love me, keep my commandments. Truth and love go hand in hand. And some of the greatest statements about truth that we think about in the Scripture are statements that are contained in John's Gospel. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. He's full of the grace of truth and the truth of grace.

He's full of truth. That's who Jesus is. Or we can think about how Jesus tells us that those who will worship him in the New Covenant must worship him in spirit and in truth. Jesus always connects to us in truth. He speaks the truth to us, and we speak the truth to him. Or we think about his great word in John 8, the truth will set you free.

The truth will set you free. Or we can think of his great statement about himself, I am the way, the truth, and the life, the theme of our conference here. He is the truth, and he promises that he'll send the Spirit of truth to guide us into all truth. And he promises to consecrate us in the truth and declares that his Word is truth. And he promises to consecrate us in the truth and declares that his Word is truth. See how the theme of truth recurs over and over and over again in this gospel, how central it is, how vital it is. And equally famous, I think, is the conversation between Pilate and Jesus.

Just hours before Jesus is led away to be crucified, we find that in John 18, at verse 36, Pilate has been questioning Jesus. We read John 18, 36, Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to the Jews.

But my kingdom is not from here. Then Pilate said, So are you a king? Jesus answered, You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. Pilate said to him, What is truth?

What is truth? Jesus came into the world to tell the truth. That was one of the prime purposes for which he says he came into the world, to bear witness to the truth, to tell people the truth.

And it's a significant part, isn't it, of why his life was such a struggle? Because lots of people don't want to hear the truth. We're told in Psalm 116, All men are liars. That means they don't love the truth. They don't tell the truth. They don't seek the truth.

Or Psalm 4, All men, how long will you love vain words and seek after lies? That could almost be the banner headline of the time in which we live, couldn't it? I have news on my cell phone. Apparently we're told that large numbers of people these days only read news on their cell phone. And I'm appalled what comes up as news on my cell phone. There's more news about celebrities than there is about politicians. Maybe it doesn't matter, all men are liars. The trouble being my age is I've never heard of one of those celebrities. I thought celebrities were supposed to be famous. I need an interpreter.

I need someone who can be a cultural interpreter for me. Paul's great evaluation of the trouble Paul's great evaluation of the trouble with fallen mankind is they exchanged the truth about God for a lie. Jesus came to bear testimony to the truth because people were caught up in the lie.

People were caught up in deception. People were caught up not knowing what is real, what is true, what is liberating, what is enlightening, what is life-giving. And the reason that Jesus faced opposition wherever he went was because people didn't want to hear the truth. And John's gospel leads us as Jesus moves from truth to truth in his teaching. I sometimes feel that John late in his life looked at the other gospels and said those gospels are really good but they left out some really good bits.

So I want to write a gospel that adds the bits that have been left out so far. And I think it is so powerful what John writes about how Jesus bore witness to the Father. He does that, of course, so many places in the gospel, but I think particularly of those words in his high priestly prayer, John 17, where Jesus is speaking to his Father and says, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, the only true God. That's what Jesus came to tell us about, the only true God. What a challenge that is in our day to declare before the world that there's only one God, only one true God, there's only one truth about God.

And it's the truth he tells about himself, not the truth we would like to believe. One of Calvin's great statements is that the human mind is a factory of idolatry. We're pumping out gods all the time. We're manufacturing gods, we're producing gods, and those gods are all produced in our own image. The great lie that mankind believes is that we can decide what God is like.

We can project ourselves into God. And the whole message that Jesus came to bear is that God is God, and he has to tell us who he is. We don't know it automatically. We don't know it on our own.

We don't have the wisdom to find it out. He has to tell us, and he gave his own son to tell us. That's why John's gospel begins with those powerful words, in the beginning was the beginning was the word. And that word really could be translated, in the beginning was the message, in the beginning was the declaration, in the beginning was the sermon.

I've said that once or twice, and I always find it discourages little children. You mean sermons are all we ever get? In the beginning, God had a truth about himself, had a message about himself. And Jesus came into the world, as we read in John 1 18, to make that God known. Jesus is the word. Jesus is the message. Jesus is the truth teller.

And we need that truth. We need to be told about the one true God. And Jesus tells us the truth about his spirit, doesn't he? He says, it's good for you that I go away, because if I go away, I can send my spirit into the hearts of each one of you. And that spirit being the spirit of truth will draw you to the truth.

You're not here today because of your own wisdom. You're here today because the spirit has been at work in your hearts, so that you have a longing and a desire to know what Jesus is telling us about the Father, what Jesus is telling us about the Spirit, what Jesus is telling us about ourselves and our need, what Jesus is telling us about the redemption that he is working for us. We see that so powerfully, don't we, in John 6, where Jesus is really opening up his heart about who he is and so powerfully testifying to what salvation is and what it demands of him. And I think it's not too much to say that John chapter 6 is one of the great chapters in the Scripture about Christ alone, grace alone, faith alone. It's what the Reformers discovered as they came back to the Bible.

It's what we need to discover over and over again. It's Christ alone who is the bread of life come down from heaven to give life to the world. That's what Jesus says in chapter 6. And he says that, and what happens?

Some people leave. And then Jesus says, and you can't believe that I'm the life of the world. You can't believe that I'm the bread of heaven. You can't believe that my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink unless my Father drags you into believing that truth. It's by grace alone.

It's by grace alone. And what happens? More people leave. And then Jesus says, this is eternal life, that you believe me.

It's faith alone that connects you to me. And more people leave. They wanted to save themselves. They want Jesus to give good advice.

They don't want to be told they have to depend utterly and exclusively on him. And so many have left. Jesus turns to his own disciples and says, will you two leave me?

And I think John must have taken great joy in recording that for once Peter got it right. Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. That's the truth that Jesus came to teach us. That's the truth Jesus came to bear witness to. He tells us the truth about the Father. He tells us the truth about the Spirit. He tells us the truth about ourselves. He tells us the truth about himself. That he is the truth. It's a famous statement attributed to Dostoevsky, the second best Russian novelist. Dostoevsky, who was a very determined Christian in a mystical sort of way, once said, if I was absolutely persuaded that there was a difference between Jesus and the truth, I would follow Jesus. Well, I'm channeling R.C. Sproul right now who would say, that's terrible.

That's terrible. Jesus is the truth. He asks you to follow him because he's the truth. He doesn't ask you to put your mind away.

He doesn't ask you to enter into some mystical darkness. He comes with light. He comes with the light of the truth.

He comes to make the world bright and wonderful by his truth. And that's the Jesus we follow, the Jesus of truth. And the tragedy of the world in which we live is that not everyone hears the truth.

Not everyone wants the truth. And here in John 18, we have this very famous confrontation or conversation between Jesus and Pilate. Do you notice Pilate is all concerned about politics?

Pilate could have been living in 2024. It's all about politics. It's all about who will be king.

It's all about who has power in this world. Jesus, I only care about you being here before me, says Pilate, to find out if you're a threat to Caesar. If you're going to cause trouble for me as a political rabble-rouser, are you a king? Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world.

My kingdom is not of this world. I'm not here about politics. I'm here about truth. I'm here about truth. And Pilate makes that famous, famous, famous response, what is truth?

Now there's been a fair amount of speculation over the ages, what does Pilate mean by that question? Is he sincerely interested in the matter of truth? Is it a sincere question? Is he expressing a kind of deep-seated, skeptical philosophy? What is truth?

Who could know? I suspect that really Pilate is just sort of annoyed. What is truth? What does truth have to do with anything when politics is involved? We're talking about something important here, politics, and you're trying to distract us with truth?

Give me a break. I think that's very much the way John writes the scene. Pilate is just annoyed that he might have to give a moment's thought to truth when he has a country to run, when he has obstreperous Jews to control. There are crowds when he has obstreperous Jews to control.

There are crowds in the street. There might be riots. There are important things to be done. What has truth got to do with anything? When it comes to truth, Pilate is just annoyed. Have you ever faced that when you've tried to tell people the truth?

Oh, give it a break. There are other people who are not interested in truth in John 18. There's Peter. Peter was asked a question by a little servant girl. You're one of his, aren't you? Never knew him.

Don't know him. Why did Peter say that? Because he was afraid.

That's true, isn't it? That's why sometimes people don't tell the truth. Sometimes people don't want the truth. They're afraid.

They're afraid of how others will react to them if they affirm the truth. And then there are the Jewish leaders in this chapter. They've brought Jesus as a prisoner to Pilate, and Pilate says, what has he done wrong? And the Jewish leaders say, we wouldn't have brought him if he hadn't done evil. What's the attitude of the Jewish leaders?

It's the attitude of arrogance. We know the truth. We know the good. We know what's necessary. We know the good. We know what's necessary. Just do as you're told, Pilate.

Put him to death. And that captures a lot of the world's response to the claims of truth. Some are afraid of the truth.

Some are arrogant and claim to know the truth, don't need to listen to the real truth. And some by Pilate are just annoyed. Pilate knows part of the truth, doesn't he? Over and over he says in this passage, I find no guilt in this man. I find no guilt in this man.

I find no evil in this man. But Pilate's not willing to stand up for that truth. The annoyance of politics leads him to embrace the lie, take him and crucify him because we just want peace in the streets. This is the world we live in, a world when truth is raised, some are annoyed, some are afraid, some are arrogant. But Jesus came to say, don't be those things.

Don't be those things. Rather be those who hear the truth. Did you notice that really remarkable statement Jesus makes? We sort of rush on to Pilate's question, what is truth? But what does Jesus say? Just before that he says, everyone who is of the truth, everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.

Isn't that interesting? Who listens to Jesus? People who are already of the truth, people who have already heard the truth, people who have accepted the truth and known the truth, who are following the truth, they're the ones who listen to Jesus. Jesus is almost saying to Pilate as he said in John chapter 6, you can't hear the truth because you're not of the truth. You haven't been given the truth.

The truth doesn't come from you. But Jesus really is taking us into the mystery of election, isn't He? And the mystery of election can to some people be disturbing, some people be confusing. But Jesus says the mystery of election is so important because it humbles us the way we need to be humbled. The mystery of election says to us, we are not wise enough to find the truth on our own. We are not good enough to find the truth on our own. The truth must be given to us, must be given to us by a sovereign act of God's grace. Our ears have to be opened. Our hearts have to be softened. And our reception of the message that Jesus bears has to be imprinted on our hearts by the Spirit of God. And that's why it's so crucial that we gather as a confident people but not as an arrogant people.

What do you have that you have not been given? And when we contemplate that, when we reflect on that, we realize how amazed we must be that God would have been so good and so kind and so loving as to tell us the truth in a way that we would hear the voice of Jesus and respond to Him and accept Him. This year marks an anniversary that I haven't heard people talk about much. Historians are given to anniversaries, and a lot of them people don't talk about much. This is the 75th anniversary of the writing of a very famous novel by George Orwell that was entitled 1984. 1984 was written in 1949.

The Second World War was just recently over. Communism seemed very much on the advance. Cold War was breaking out. Stalin seemed to be the powerful man of Europe. George Orwell for a time had been a communist, and he was reflecting on the limits and dangers of communism in writing this novel, 1984.

The limits and dangers of communism in writing this novel, 1984. And I got to thinking about it because in 1984, 40 years ago, another anniversary, in 1984, James Montgomery Boyce organized a conference, a session of the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology to talk about the book 1984. And I was part of that conference.

I was five. I was part of that conference, and it suddenly dawned on me as I was getting ready for this conference that I had not read 1984 since 1984. And I got a copy of the book. It's very readable. I was surprised. I don't know what I remembered about it. It was very engaging.

I commend it to you. With the warning, it's a nightmare. It's intended to be a nightmare. It's intended to keep us awake at night, worrying about a future in which the lie becomes dominant. And there are so many phrases that have come out of 1984. Big brother is watching you. 1984, big brother is watching you.

There are screens in 1984, but those screens not only speak to you, the screens watch you, the screens hear you, the screens know what is happening to you. And one of the great powers of the party of big brother is a bureaucracy called the ministry of truth. Ministry of truth.

And the sole task of the ministry of truth is to produce lies. Lies in the realm of education, lies in the realm of entertainment, lies in the realm of media. And what is striking is how sort of prescient this book is about the power of these institutions to influence the way people think.

Education and media and entertainment. One of the little subsections of the technology that informs this book. He sees technology as becoming a greater and greater power in human life. And one of the technological advances in the book is the versificator.

The versificator is able to write music with no human involvement. We're almost there. We're almost there.

And I thought this morning, what a glory to be able to gather as the people of God to sing the truth, to sing the truth as it comes from the Scripture, to declare the truth by song. And the book ends on a terribly depressing note. The one man in the book that we're aware of who was resisting big brother, who tried to protect some human individuality, who tried to protect some human freedom, is ultimately defeated by torture and terror. Room 101. You're taken to room 101 if you're suspected of thinking on your own. And in room 101 you confront your worst terror. They know what it is.

They've found out about you. And Winston is taken to room 101 where he confronts rats. He's afraid of rats.

And in room 101 they have a cage attached to a mask and the mask can be attached to his head with the rats inches away from his face with a little fence that can be raised so the rats can eat his face away. And in the face of that terror Winston is destroyed as a human being. And in Winston's life is fulfilled what Big Brother's representative had predicted. What the party wants, what the future holds, is the picture of a military boot stamping a human face forever. That's the nightmare.

That's the future. And Orwell wrote this book as a warning, not as a Christian warning, but as a warning about the power of the lie, the danger of the lie, the destruction of the lie, the destruction of the lie, the destruction of everything good and everything human. And we as Christians have to rejoice in a Savior who came to tell us the truth, to tell us the truth that enlightens, to tell us the truth that enlightens, to tell us the truth that enlivens, to tell us the truth that unites us to one another while at the same time it divides us from error, to tell us the truth that consecrates us to the service of God, to tell us the truth that guides us into the life that we're called to live. How wonderful it is that we are a people who have been given the truth to whom God has spoken in his Son. And as Jesus tells us in John 10, he has come that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly. As you've listened to the voice of Jesus, has that been your experience? That life has become more abundant, more blessed?

If you were not a Christian, would your life be better? Sometimes I think the truth we need to tell is not what other people need to do, but just tell the truth about what Jesus has done for us. How blessed our experience of the Savior, how blessed to know that we live not for this life only, but for an eternal life of blessedness. How wonderful to know that we live in a world where God is in control, where God is in control of all things, where God is in control, where God is in control of all things, where we may be interested in politics, but no matter what happens politically, God will work all things together for good for those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. Because Jesus is King. Jesus is King of this world. Isn't that wonderful that we as Christians know Jesus is not just going to be King, Jesus is King. He reigns today, now.

Now the visibility of his kingdom will be much brighter, much more glorious, much more evident one day. But already now we have the promise, already now we have the truth that he reigns, that he's sovereign, and he calls us to trust him. That's what belief is, isn't it? Belief is trusting Jesus to tell us the truth, to do what is right, to make our lives whole in him. He hasn't made us perfect yet.

I know some of you pretty well, so I know that for sure. He hasn't made us perfect yet, but he's made us his own, and he's called us to trust him, to trust him when he says what this world is about, to trust him when he says what is important, to trust him when he says he is the way, the truth, and the life. He's the way to God. He's the truth of God.

He's the life in God, and we cannot find life in any other. And what a blessedness that he calls us to himself. And even as he reveals the mystery of election to us, at the very same moment he says to each one of us, so even though you can't come on your own, come. Jesus never says to anybody, wait. Let's see about you. Are you one of the elect?

Are you one of the elect? Well, you just wait and see. Jesus never says, wait. The apostles never say, wait. Jesus says, come. Come. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden. And I promise, I promise I'll give you rest. I'll give you rest right now. I'll give you rest that will go with you through your life. I'll give you rest that will be eternal. And everyone who comes, I will in no way cast out.

Do you believe that? And so the doctrine of election is preeminently for those who have come and are able to say, and are able to say, I came because Jesus sought me. I came because Jesus bought me. I came because Jesus sent his Spirit into my heart. I came because I'm alive in him. I came because I heard him. And he made me believe him.

It wasn't my wisdom. It was his goodness. And we've entered in to a wonderful reality. We've entered in to the fellowship of truth. You know, there are those little letters by John that we usually don't read. Even John Calvin did not write a commentary on 2 John or on 3 John. And if John Calvin didn't write a commentary on them, I mean, what would the rest of us do then? But what do we read in 3 John?

There's a wonderful little phrase that I had not really noticed before. 3 John 8 says, we are fellow workers for the truth. We are fellow workers for the truth. We are fellow workers with Jesus. We are fellow workers with the Spirit. We are fellow workers with the apostles. We are fellow workers for the truth. And Jesus is sending us out in the world to tell the truth.

In his high priestly prayer, he prayed, didn't he? Father, as you sent me into the world, so I send them into the world. As you sent me into the world to tell the truth, so I send them into the world to tell the truth. We go as fellow workers for the truth. We go in a profound sense as a fellowship of the truth. I like to think of Ligonier as a fellowship of the truth. Ligonier is dedicated to truth-telling in as many ways as we possibly can, truth-telling by distributing Bibles, truth-telling by distributing lectures, truth-telling by distributing lectures, because all we want to do is tell the truth that Jesus told to us.

That's why you come to this conference, isn't it? So that you can go out with more truth and more encouragement and more strength to glorify Christ. I'm so glad we're fellow workers for the truth today, but I'm even more glad that Jesus came to tell us the truth, and we've heard him, we've believed him, and we have the life in him. That was W. Robert Godfrey, chairman of Ligonier Ministries, on this Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. Dr. Godfrey described Ligonier Ministries, the producer of Renewing Your Mind, as a fellowship of truth. If you'd like to support this outreach and help further the proclamation of the truth, then I invite you to become a Ligonier ministry partner. Your monthly support fuels our outreach, and you'll be serving as a theological lifeline, a lifeline of truth, for countless Christians around the world. Plus, we'll send you discipleship resources every month to help you and your family. You can learn more at ligonier.org slash partner, or by clicking give monthly when you respond to today's resource offer at renewingyourmind.org. We'll also place links for you in the podcast show notes. Today's resource offer, ending at midnight tonight, is Dr. Godfrey's complete six-part, 73-message overview of church history, plus digital access to those messages and study guides. You can request this while there's still time with your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org, or by calling us at 800 435 4343. And if you'd like to become a ministry partner, simply click give monthly when you request this offer. Thank you. The Christian life can feel overwhelming at times, so we need to be reminded of the good news of the gospel, of gospel truths. Tomorrow, Sinclair Ferguson will join us to remind us of the glorious end of our life in Christ, here on Renewing Your Mind.