Build a House of Truth - Breakthrough Courage

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

So we've been talking about Breakthrough Courage.

We're talking about my book, and we're coming down to the end of it.

I'm not doing every chapter.

I'm just cherry-picking a few aspects of Breakthrough Courage.

If you don't have the book, encourage you to get the book.

So it's nine habits.

And I don't know how many of you realize that we are in right now an ideological civil war in America.

We are in an ideological civil war in America.

It is a bloodless, so far at least, it's been a bloodless civil war.

Not unlike a civil war that occurred in the 16th century, starting in the early 1500s through an Augustinian monk named Martin Luther that took 95 grievances that he had with the church, posted them on the Wittenberg door, and a revolution began.

So you have this businessman billionaire who's lived quite a sordid life, who comes to Washington and is creating upheaval with some things that we would think most people would agree with.

Graft, fevery, and all kinds of evil happening with your money in Washington, DC.

That there might actually be a deep state that's involved with the destruction of our nation.

There's an ideological civil war happening in America.

Most of us probably don't understand this very well.

So I woke up this morning changing my message around to bring a few thoughts today.

Two competing worldviews.

There's two competing worldviews.

The worldview that almost 50% of our nation holds to is what I will call, write this down, the big word, big title, the Enlightenment Humanist Marxist Worldview.

The Enlightenment Humanist Marxist Worldview, which by the way, all four of those, excuse me, all three of those are separate worldviews, but for the sake of the brevity of time, I'm lumping them together.

The Enlightenment, which began in the 1700s, the Enlightenment under Voltaire, French philosopher Voltaire, Enlightenment, which led to humanism, which led to Marxism, which led to communism.

I'm going to call it the Enlightenment, Humanist, Marxist worldview.

It's the utopian dream of the Enlightenment can be summed up in five words.

They all sound really good.

Here's the five words: reason, nature, happiness, progress, and liberty.

Let me say it again.

Reason, nature, happiness, progress, and liberty.

Those words are peppered all through the Enlightenment, humanist, Marxist worldview.

Three main points that follow this worldview.

And it's most strong in our universities and with professors in our universities, and the strongest places in our universities would be most of our Ivy League schools, if not all of them.

Number one, man doesn't need God and God is silent.

Number one, man does not need God and God is silent anyway.

Number two, man is evolving, is on an evolutionary state, and he will progress toward perfection.

Man is evolving and will be perfected over time.

And then number three, man will eventually create a utopia on earth.

Man will eventually create a utopia on earth.

The result of the Enlightenment was a bloody French Revolution.

After that, the Russian Revolution.

After that, present-day communism all over the world.

This Marxist militancy is rapidly overtaking Western thought in our schools and in our universities and in our politics.

It always starts with professors and moves into politics.

The Democratic Party is saturated with it.

Don't be fooled.

The woke culture penetrating gender and trans studies and philosophies are of a Marxist origin.

This is the Enlightenment, humanist, Marxist worldview.

In America, we might call it soft totalitarianism.

I don't think in my universities I learned about communism that way.

Nope.

It's soft totalitarianism, built largely through gender studies.

The other worldview that, by the way, is gaining ascendancy again in America is the Reformation Christian biblical worldview.

Again, I'm lumping a couple worldviews together.

The Reformation, meaning the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, the Reformation Christian biblical worldview.

This worldview believes that the ideals of the Reformation are the best way to build men, women, children, families, and culture.

It's what we believe at this church.

It is belief that there is a firm foundation for the individual and society founded upon the Bible.

Men are free only when they know Christ and the boundaries found in the Bible.

We build a society based on true freedom.

That true freedom has limits.

That there is right and wrong, good and evil, truth and falsehood.

These are truths that are found in our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights.

The words of Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence describe it best, and I could do a whole sermon just on the exegesis of this first sentence.

We hold these.

That they're endowed by their what?

Creator with certain unalienable rights, that we do have rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

So habit seven in my book is build a house of truth.

That's what I want to talk about.

How do we build a house of truth?

And by the way, you have three options.

You're either building a house of truth, or you're building a house of falsehood, or you're building nothing.

Your choice.

God's not going to build a house of truth for you.

You've been given the ability, Genesis 1, the great commission, the first great commission, to take dominion.

You're created in the image of God.

You're created, male and female, to have dominion upon the resources of this earth.

And you have a choice every day to build a house of truth, build a house of falsehood, or build nothing.

And at the road, church, I want us to be, starting with me, to be building a house of truth in my life.

Pope Benedict the 16th once described the worldview challenge of Marxism by saying there is a worldwide dictatorship of humanistic ideologies that pushes dissenters to the margins of society.

Benedict called this the spiritual power of the Antichrist.

So when we read about the Antichrist in 1 John, which is the only place that the Antichrist is mentioned, it talks about even in the first century, 2,000 years ago, there was a spirit of the Antichrist at that time.

Well, that spirit of the Antichrist has not left because Satan controls the earth until believers stand up and are strong and we push back darkness.

We're the only ones who can push back darkness.

American conservative editor at large, Rod Dreer, writes we cannot hope to resist the coming soft totalitarianism if we do not have our spiritual lives in order.

And that's what this chapter is about.

You've got to have both truth that you believe in, but you have to have your spiritual lives in order.

And that's why when I talk about these eight habits that lead to breakthrough courage, it's physical, it's mental, it's emotional, and it's spiritual.

It's all of that coming together.

Such was the prophetic voice of the Russian dissident, Nobel laureate, anti-communist activist and orthodox Christian Alexander Solsenitsyn.

On the eve of his forced exile from his beloved nation, he wrote a final message to the Russian people, an essay entitled Live Not by Lies.

During COVID, we lived by lies.

And all the conspiracy theorists chose not to, including this church.

And so we had people criticize me, criticize some of the decisions that we made, and it was really, really fun.

I loved it.

Solsenitsin was not the only dissident who refused to live by lies under a communist government.

Czech playwright and future president Vaclav Havel coined the phrase, live by truth.

So he was taking what Solsenitsyn, the great Nobel Prize-winning author about, don't live by lies, live not by lies, and he said it in a more positive way.

He said, live by truth.

And so, in the same spirit, we determine how we're gonna live our lives.

Are we gonna live by the lies of the culture?

Or are we gonna live by the truth of God's word?

So turn in your Bibles to Proverbs 24.

Look at Proverbs 24.

One of the most ancient books of wisdom.

Book of Proverbs, written by Solomon, King David's son, and considered at that time the wisest man in the world.

He uses a metaphor, and that's where I pick up this chapter, and that's why I call it Build the House of Truth.

Proverbs 24, 3 and 4.

Through wisdom, a house is built, and by understanding it is established.

By knowledge, the rooms are filled.

So the picture Solomon, some 3,000 years ago, is giving us is that pursuing wisdom in your life is like building a house.

It's like building the rooms of the house by being a pursuer of truth.

Habit seven involves building a house of truth in your life.

To do this in a culture of unbelief, deception, and fake news is no easy task.

Fear of facts inundates our mainstream media and political orthodoxy.

To develop a habit of building truth into your life takes uncommon courage.

Remember what I said earlier.

You're either building a house of truth, building a house of untruth or deception, or you're building nothing.

Hardest thing to get people to do in the church is think.

It's the hardest thing.

The hardest job I have here is not my staff team, it's not building leaders, it's not preparing a sermon.

It's getting all of us in the room here to think.

Think biblically.

Think reformationally.

Think revivalistically in your heart.

Because we tend toward not thinking.

So look at John 8.

So turn in your Bibles to John 8 and look what Jesus says on this topic.

And he's our expert.

John 8, 31.

John 8, 31.

And you do well to, like in Proverbs 24, the first passage you might write in the margin, John 8.

And when you come to John 8, you might write Proverbs 24.

So that when you come to that, you'll remember to go back to the other.

So Jesus is saying, this is how you build a house of truth.

This is how the house is built.

If you abide in my word, underline abide.

If you abide in my word, you're my disciples.

So you ask, well, how do you know if you're a disciple?

Well, you're abiding in God's word.

How do you know if you're not a disciple?

You're not abiding in God's word.

I don't care how many times you've walked, you know, the aisle of a church and received Christ, or you prayed the prayer and the four spiritual laws.

If you're not abiding in God's word, you're not a disciple.

He says, if you abide in my word, that's the first thing, you're my disciple, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

And everybody, you can hear the truth, and that does not make you free.

You can understand intellectually the truth, that does not set you free.

You can read the Bible and read about truth, it does not set you free.

You shall know the truth.

That means intimately exchange an intellectual and emotional, spiritual connection to truth.

That begins to set you free.

And it begins with abiding in the Word.

This is what Jesus says.

So I want to give you this morning five building blocks.

This is in my chapter.

Again, I'm not covering a lot that's in that chapter.

I'm just gonna give you a cursory look with the amount of time we have here.

Five building blocks of truth.

Building block number one is the most important.

The Bible is your foundation.

The Bible is your foundation.

It is the book of books.

Every year it's the best-selling book all over the world.

Isn't it amazing that when Marxist communists come into power, the first thing they ban is the Bible?

You guys realize there's two things that a dictator does when he comes into power.

Do you know what they are?

The first one, they take your guns.

Number one, they take your guns because they don't want any opposition.

And then number two, they censor free speech.

They censor free speech because they don't want you to be talking about and seeking after and speaking of truth.

Johann Sebastian Bach, often considered the greatest musician and composer of all time, faithfully read and drew inspiration from the Bible for his music.

He saw it as foundational for his music.

Bach wrote in 1 Chronicles chapter 25 these words when he was a young man.

1 Chronicles 25 · chapter mention

This chapter is the true foundation of all God-pleasing music.

So in my Bible, my study Bible, and in my teaching Bible, on 1 Chronicles 25, I wrote, and I quote Bach in the margin.

One scholar indicated that Bach was, quote, a Christian who lived with the Bible.

A Christian who lived with the Bible.

Abraham Lincoln, arguably the greatest president of all time, him and George Washington, said, the Bible is the best gift God has given to man.

All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this book.

Billy Graham, the greatest evangelist of the 20th century, said, the Bible is God's book of promises, and unlike the books of men, it does not change or get out of date.

Do you read the Bible, church?

Do you read the Bible every day?

Do you take time to meditate in God's Word?

Do you take time to eat the book?

Remember, that's one of my habits.

Eat the book.

Do you do that?

Or is the only time you open it on Sunday morning?

And even then you forget it half the time and you just bring your phone.

By the way, I'm not a fan of phone Bibles.

And it's probably because of my age, I know.

Because I know you guys love the Lord and I see you with your phones, and I'm just glad that you know where the app is.

But I still like the good old book that you carry with you wherever you go.

Take it to work.

Read it every day.

Because the storms of lies, the floods of falsehoods, and the winds of shifting culture are coming your way.

So Liz had a vision, a dream of a black wave coming.

You remember that?

It's coming.

It's coming.

It's coming under Trump.

Are you ready?

Because it's going to shut down everything for a period of time.

It's coming.

I don't have time to get into our thoughts on that, but you've got to be grounded, men and women, in God's word.

Don't take anything I say as fact or truth unless you weigh it according to God's word.

Okay?

Building block number two.

Building block number two, follow time-tested precedent.

Follow time-tested precedent.

So not just God's word, but church history.

Know what great men and women have said in the past.

I'm concerned, but I've never been overly vexed over the trans stuff and the homosexual stuff that's been out there because it goes so against nature, I knew it would not last.

It will eventually crumble.

Now, culture gets it wrong all the time, but there's always precedent to look back on that gives us wisdom about what the culture is saying.

I love what Neil Ferguson writes the dead outnumber the living 14 to 1.

And we acknowledge.

Nor the accumulated experience of such a large majority at our peril.

So when I've been asked questions related to any controversial issue, if I don't know exactly what the Bible says, because the Bible doesn't speak to everything, it may speak to principles, but it may not speak to a specific question.

I look at what Luther wrote.

What did Calvin say?

What did Origen say?

What did Gregory say?

Knowing history is so important.

So the American church of the 21st century faces a predicament.

The willingness of pastors to accommodate culture rather than confront it with God's truth has weakened it.

Not unlike the Lutheran Church in Germany during the time of Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s, who stood idly by as the Jews were exterminated.

The American church is unwilling to confront sin in society for fear of losing popularity or upsetting the status quo.

The result is a weakened pastorate and a demoralized church.

So, you know, when you look at universities, you ask, well, how could our universities move toward an enlightenment, humanistic, Marxist worldview?

It's the professors.

How do churches move from being vibrant, fired up, excited, to losing all joy and all power and all witness?

It's in the pastor.

You go to any church that we might classify as liberal today, and I'll guarantee you, where the conservatism is, is in the pews.

And where the liberal ways are are in the pulpit.

So if you want to pray for revival, pray for revival among professors in the universities to get back to truth.

Pray for the pastorate, pray for the pulpits of churches that those pastors would meet God.

The real God.

Not the fake God they got in seminary, but the real God.

That's where revival begins.

Building block number three.

Seek the uncomfortable truth and be curious.

Church, seek the uncomfortable truth and be curious.

Don't be intellectually lazy.

Simply parroting what we've heard, even if it's coming from me, if you're parroting what I say, I want it to be your truth.

I want you to make what you hear a stimulation for you to do your research and you have that truth in your life.

Seeking truth involves work and effort.

It creates lust, but it's not lust, it's boredom.

So if you're in this room and you're addicted to porn, it's because you're bored.

Listen to what I'm saying.

I want to create a life of stimulation in you, of intellectual, mental, emotional, and spiritual stimulation that you get so excited about truth that that's what you spend your time with rather than looking at images on the screen.

That's exciting.

That'll get you up in the morning.

But to but to ask yourself, God, would I want to learn about these things, I want to grow in these things.

I don't want to be intellectually lazy.

You're either building a house of truth, building a house of falsehood, or building nothing.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he's actually the father of the God is dead movement of the 60s.

Said this.

In his famous book, Animal Farm, George Orwell made a similar statement: quote, if liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

We will often settle for believing in the comfortable lie rather than seeking the uncomfortable truth.

And that's what happened with COVID around here.

We drank the Kool-Aid at the road church for about three weeks.

And I don't know if it's because we got tired of packing in toilet paper or we actually decided to study truth, but a group at this church got together and had some unconventional wisdom.

They had this novel idea, this crazy idea that this virus could be stopped by building your immune system.

What a novel idea.

That actually healthy people get COVID and don't die.

And now we know as the conspiracy theorists that we were at the road that it was a conspiracy, not a theory.

And so we opened up our doors and we, I think we went two weeks with the uh social distancing thing, and we said, you can wear a mask.

We don't care if you don't wear a mask, you can wear a mask, you can screen stream, you can come.

We don't care.

Total liberty, total freedom, but we're opening up our church.

And I tried to communicate that to other pastors as best I could because I thought if I get arrested by polis, I want some friends.

You take heat when you live by truth.

If you don't like the heat, definitely don't come in the truth kitchen.

And I had people say, we're not coming back to your church because of this stuff you're doing against the going against the governor.

And these are believers.

We had a difference of opinion.

I'm fine with that.

And I wanted them to go haunt another church because this is what we were gonna believe.

We built up through Pam Holloway and others this this protocol that was all about building up your immune system.

And we began to smuggle it into hospitals.

Over 3,000 people in El Paso County were healed of COVID.

I think it became known maybe around emergency rooms.

Like to ask the people when they came in with COVID, what church do you go to?

Because if they went into the road, they suddenly just got better.

It was usually in the dental kit that we smuggled it in because it was all illegal.

That was fun, man.

Okay, building block number four, learn the art of listening.

Learn the art of listening.

So we live in a country of ideological echo chambers.

According to MPR, Google, Facebook, Instagram, and X all use algorithms that, quote, steer us toward articles that reflect our own ideological preferences, and search results usually echo what we already know and like.

Now, I do that, I like that.

And of course, I'm sure MPR is saying it negatively to conservatives, but positively to liberals.

But the truth of the matter is that if we want to be intellectually well-rounded, if we want to be spiritually, emotionally, and mentally true to all that God's given us to understand and grow in, it's good to know the other side.

It's good to understand that.

I grew up in the Jim Crow South.

I grew up with a dad that marched with Martin Luther King.

I have more black pastors in our house than white pastors.

And I remember when I be when I came to know, really came to know the Lord as a freshman, it was new to me to be around white Christians who thought that the civil rights movement was wrong.

I just couldn't believe it.

But because I understood both sides, I could bring some brevity to the discussion whenever it came up.

Build a house of truth.

Church, build a house of truth.

There are people in this county that don't like me.

And I don't like them that much either.

But I've always tried to reach out.

I've always tried to reach out to those with a different viewpoint.

I mean, we're, I'm talking about fundamentally, we don't agree on hardly anything, but I've reached out, and it's always turned out positively.

Because I'm not gonna leave my Christianity at the door to go into debates about truth.

I'm bringing Jesus with me, and that means we love our neighbor as we love ourselves.

So learn to listen.

And then building block number five, develop a passion for reading.

Develop a passion for reading.

So I brought some books, and they're just, these are just a little example.

I I spent just 30 seconds practically just throwing some stuff together here.

But in my book, I talk about the importance of reading authors as much as subjects.

So I am a big fan of H.W.

Brands who wrote one of my favorite biographies, TR, on Teddy Roosevelt.

This is a book of the timeless writings of C.S.

Lewis, Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudom.

Everything that Grudham has written, I agree with.

Loved his stuff.

We in Manchester, I love everything he's written.

The Last Lions series.

I gave this series of three books all about this size to Dr.

James Dobson.

At one time I was at his, I was doing something with him, I was doing a broadcast with him, and he had this massive picture of Churchill.

I said, Are you a fan of Churchill?

So you must have read Manchester's works, and he hadn't.

So I got him the whole uh volume.

But we in Manchester also wrote on Kennedy, really good stuff on John F.

Kennedy.

And then kind of an oldie but goody is Francis Schaefer on Worldview.

And I'm reading Schaefer again right now in my own readings.

Um and then there's this other author.

So I think Breakthrough Courage and Worshiper Warrior are excellent books to help us grow.

I hope you've gotten the book, and uh and I hope it'll help you grow.

Thank you for listening to the Forn for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.

God bless.