Truth and Truthfulness (Ephesians 6:14)

Good morning, afternoon, or evening Grace House Church listeners,

whenever this episode is finding you.

Just a quick editor's note before you listen to this episode.

There was a baby in the room while this was recorded, and though we

love having the children sitting in and this particular baby really does

enrich the environment in person, he does provide a lot of, let's say,

background praise in this episode.

So fair warning.

Thank you for joining him and listening in, and we will try to

ensure he is imprisoned somewhere far away during future recordings.

Just kidding.

But truly, thank you for your understanding and enjoy the sermon.

Joshua Kehler: In John 1837 to 38, famous place of scripture,

Jesus is before Pilate.

You remember, he's about to be crucified and here's what it says.

Then Pilate said to him, so.

You are a king.

Question mark.

Jesus answered.

You say that, I am 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.

And pilot said to him what is truth?

What is truth?

Now that was 2000 years ago and it held significant relevance

for that historic moment.

But honestly, it holds just as much significance for our historic moment.

I've seen in the span of my lifetime, which is really short and young, just a

few number of years, just kidding, 46.

But I have seen.

, the dissolving of believing in absolute truth.

It's eroding.

And even a Barna and the statistics, those who claim and identify with

Christian, evangelical Christian, 75% don't believe in absolute truth.

Which is bonkers.

It's what our whole thing's based on is a historic truth.

An objective reality that interprets everything else.

And so, as the foundation Paul is saying at the start of the armor,

you need to put on the belt of truth.

And there's so many people nowadays saying, what is truth?

What is truth?

How can you truly know what is true?

and they say, respect my truth.

I have to be true to my truth.

I have to lean into my truth.

I have to live my truth.

And so all of a sudden truth has become this subjective thing,

like, flavors of ice cream.

I could prove to you with all my might and every bit of evidence that I could

muster that, a dark chocolate and peanut butter ice cream from Baskin

Robbins is the best, but my kids will just as vigorously to my utter horror.

I kid you not, I'm horrified.

Say vanilla as the best.

And I'm like, how?

It doesn't have a flavor.

I don't understand.

So anyways, those are subjective things.

But what's crazy is people are battling over subjective things

like their objective reality.

And really to be tolerant in this day and age, you have to

believe my subjective truth.

And you have to embrace it, and you have to almost treat

it like it is objective truth.

Our world is filled with opinions and now everybody's a professional because

of the access we have to information.

And so many in our world is saying, what is truth?

So Christians can be struggling with that same thing.

What is truth?

What is truth?

What is truly true?

I wanna look at today, ready, set, go.

Truth and truthfulness and Jesus the hero.

So, ready, set, go.

Let's go to verse 14 and 15.

Ephesians chapter six.

Stand, therefore now he said stand quite a few times having fastened on

the belt of truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness and as

shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel.

Guys, I'm not gonna dive into the whole spiritual warfare.

Again, we've talked the past couple weeks about that, but just a

reminder, we're in a battle constantly.

Number two, it's not against flesh and blood, People are the occasion for

our sin, but they're never the cause of it, Heat comes into our life and

our response to the heat can either be one from the cross or one of thorns,

So, traffic, when I'm in traffic and this is something the Lord's working

with me on, I mostly stay in the right lane cuz I'm like, oh, get there.

It's cool.

I just chill and it's so good.

The drive's so good.

I follow a semi and I just I just kick it sometimes a little, like I'm in a hurry

and I'll get over on the left and then all of a sudden I'm like, in this different

world, the difference between the right lane and the left lane is astronomical.

I kid you not, now people are cutting in front of you, weaving in, out, slamming

on their brakes, break checking you.

And then I find myself, I'm like, oh, no, you don't.

And I'm, and then I'll make sure somebody can't pass.

He gets behind me, then I'll slow down.

You like that, and then pretty soon I'm like, what am I doing?

What am I participating in?

And so often, what's happening, God allows the heat, right?

God allows the occasions for our response, and we can respond in grace, right?

Or we can respond in a sinful way, right?

With the thorns.

And so we wrestle not against flesh and blood.

Ultimately there's another, there's an enemy behind people.

And so it's not that they make me do it, it's that, that's the occasion

and it's often revealing what my heart and how my heart responds to that.

So we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but we are in a battle

constantly, and it's a fierce battle.

Paul gives the image of the wrestling, and again, he's not

using two different metaphors.

My son wrestled at the Stockton Arena this last weekend.

I don't really have a point to that, but just to say that as a proud dad,

anyways, but the idea of wrestling is he doesn't take one image, soldiers fighting

and then two wrestlers at the Olympics.

No, he's saying, The battle is so desperate that when it gets

to that hand in hand combat, that's how desperate it is.

Where arrows don't work.

You're too close.

Where you are in the mud, in the dirt, you are, pounding

and pouncing, on one another.

That's the image he wants to strike in her minds.

That's how, ever present the battle is, right?

That's how ever present.

And what is the goal of the battle from the enemy side steal, kill,

and destroy, What is the battle?

Why does God allow the battle from his perspective?

that we have life, right?

That we have victory, that we stand in that victory, that we see his glory,

that we see his strength, that we see his might as we lean into him.

That we stand still and see the salvation of the Lord on a daily basis.

We see him do the impossible, which is often partying and softening

my own heart toward people.

So this thing is in tense, The reality of the battle on the victory.

Remember what we said?

You don't concentrate on what the devil's doing, but what you're doing.

Remember, there's, it's not about, the focus isn't on the devil.

It's about standing in the strength of the lord's mind.

It's on being strong in the Lord and the power of his mind.

It's on you abiding and appropriating what Jesus Christ has done for you.

That's where the victory is.

Amen.

Not going out in our own strength.

Amen.

And trying to tackle him ourself.

It is appropriating and standing in Christ's full work.

It doesn't matter what tack the enemy takes.

Amen.

What path?

If he's crawling on his belly like a snake or flying overhead like

a bird trying to snatch the seed.

Stand.

Are you ready?

If the armor is on, you can handle it.

Stand in the day.

If you are appropriating Christ, then no matter what he throws at you, you'll

be able to stand in the evil day.

the belt is different than all the other pieces of armor, than

the breast plate, the helmet, the shoes, the shield of the sword.

, the belt wasn't something you used to defend yourself with.

It wasn't a piece of armor like the others.

The belt of truth is the foundation of the armor.

It's what held everything else together.

Belt brings order to the attire, right?

It holds things in place.

Most of us men have belts in here, right?

We're wearing them, perhaps as we celebrate more birthdays, those belts

become more of a necessary thing.

I don't know, is for me, Now, the belt that he's talking about, he's not just

talking about, keeping your pants up.

He's talking about keeping everything together.

And keeping you clutter free.

So in those days, the soldiers would wear almost like kilts, You guys

have seen Gladiator, what they would do is when they went to action or

they were going to battle, is that they would then take up their tunic.

They would take up their rope, and they'd tuck it into their belt.

Because what that meant is it meant I don't want to trip, I

don't want it to catch on anything.

One of the fascinating things, and this is a point about wrestling,

is how tight those uniforms are.

, holy smokes, you can snap somebody really bad.

Those things are why, because they don't want somebody to get a hold of me.

It's different than jiu-jitsu, right?

You have the big GH and you're grabbing hold of their GH and

you're doing the moves and putting 'em in the arm bar and stuff.

The wrestling that is don't grab any part of me.

I don't want you to be able to grab anything, but to use, the technique.

So it holds things in place.

It brings order to the attire paul is using a, the physical body, the idea of a

soldier to communicate a spiritual truth.

When the belt is there, I'm ready to move.

You never leave home without it.

It will hold things together.

The reason you need a belt, the soldier would wear that long flowing

rope and then he, when he would get ready for action, would tuck it in.

It means to move unencumbered without tripping, move with freedom.

No stumbling or falling.

The other armor was attached to it and it held everything together.

Now, that's the soldiers, and that's something practical.

As they went to war, they would do that all through scripture.

This metaphor is coming back and back again and again.

Remember where it says, I think it's king James or New King James?

Peter says, GERD up the loins of your mind.

That's the idea.

It means tuck it in.

Get ready, right?

I'm gonna read a couple verses for you.

Exodus 1211, it says, and this is on the night of the Passover.

This is where they're getting ready to leave Egypt.

Then start the Exodus out.

Moses says to them, and thus, shall you eat with your loins, gerd, your shoes

on your feet and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste.

It is the Lord's Passover.

So the night they were going to eat, they were to take those robes

and they were to tuck them in.

and They were to eat with their shoes on their feet, which

remember dirty in those days.

Dusty, that was unusual because the table was super low, lower

than this table right here.

And you'd recline and you would, lean on your elbow to eat and everybody

would be laying around each other.

So it was very unusual to not take your sandals off, put 'em at

the door, wash your feet, anoint them with oil, scented oil.

And so he was saying, be ready to go.

Okay.

Luke 1235.

Keep your shirts on.

This is the message.

So he's saying the same thing.

Gerd up your loins, but he's speaking to servants.

Keep your shirts on, keep the lights on.

Be like house servants waiting for their master to come back from

his honeymoon awake and ready to open the door when he arrives.

And.

Lucky the servants whom the master finds on, watch, he'll put on an apron, sit

them at the table and serve them a meal, sharing his wedding feast with him.

It doesn't matter what time of night he arrives, they're awake and so blessed.

So he is saying about the second coming.

Remember the whole point of the second coming in scripture, there's a lot of

obsession about the end times, but the point in scripture, the main thrust of

it is not how to find the second coming, but how the second coming finds you

watching, waiting, ready, sober, vigilant.

Jeremiah one 17, when Jeremiah's being commissioned, remember he's a kid and

he's like, I'm a youth, I can't speak.

God says, don't say that.

And he tells Jeremiah, thou therefore gerd up th loins and arise in speaking

to them all that I command me.

Be not dismayed of their faces left.

I confound the before then.

And then Peter chapter one, verse 13 and 16.

So, roll up your sleeves.

Get your head in the game.

Doesn't he sound like a coach?

It's like halftime, right?

Be totally ready to receive the gift that's coming when Jesus arrives, don't

lazily slip back into those old grooves of evil doing just what you feel like doing.

You didn't know any better than you do now, as obedient children, let

yourselves be pulled into a way of life shaped by God's life, a life

energetic and blazing with holiness.

God said, I am holy.

You be holy.

And so the whole first point of this, take up the belt of truth.

Gerding your loins, putting that belt, tucking that thing in.

Being ready for battle is that we are sober.

And aware and ready, unencumbered by the affairs of this life.

In fact, second Timothy chapter two, verse four, speaking of this warfare,

Paul writes, no soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is

to please the one who enlisted them.

Point number one as, talking about the belt of truth.

Gering it up as he saying, we are here for a reason.

That his kingdom would come, that people would see the reality that he's our

treasure, that everything else would be filtered through that one pursuit.

Paul says in one Corinthians nine, they do it for an imperishable crown.

They'll go for it.

They'll just, for something that's gonna wither and die a reef that's gone.

We do it for an imperishable.

He's saying, number one, as you're talking about greeting up our loins and in this

battle is he's saying, the thing that entangles us so often is the affairs of

this life is that we make God a pie and we have a pie chart, and here's work.

Here's marriage, here's family, here's vacation, here's hobby time, and

here's Jesus time hall saying, no.

You see all of life through your relationship with Christ,

everything is filtered.

he is your worldview.

You remember in the story of the soar and the seeds, right?

That, soar went out and he scattered seeds.

Some were stolen away by the birds of the air.

What about the ones that grew up?

But then were choked out?

So immediately they had root.

when the disciples ask Jesus, what does this mean?

He said, it's the cares of this world that choked out the good seed.

You remember in Hebrews 12, since we're surrounded by so great a cloud

of witnesses, let us run the race that is set before us, like laying

aside every weight in the sin, which so easily snares us or entangles us.

The idea there is being tripped up, is having something out, It's not being

gerd up, it's not being single minded.

It's being tossed to and fro by the cares of this world.

Jesus says in the sermon on the mountain, right?

Don't say, what am I going to eat tomorrow?

Or What are we gonna have?

What am I gonna wear?

he's saying, that can take all our energy and time that we are obsessed on.

How many of you have thought.

I'm gonna be generous when I have enough.

classic, right?

Or I just have to get this, or I just need to do this.

The cares of this world.

So, GERD up, put on the belt of truth.

Be ready, be sober, be unencumbered.

So let's just ask ourselves a question.

Are there things right now happening in this world, in your life where you feel

entangled, where you feel keep you back or strip you away from what is primary?

Let the Holy Spirit search that.

So back to take up the belt of truth.

Now in Greek, the word is, a Lithia and it can be translated

truth or truthfulness.

And commentators go back and forth on what does it mean?

Is he talking about like truth as far as objective truth?

Truth or is he talking about truth as far as integrity?

Truth is content, truth as opposed to falsehood.

Truth is defined as the revelation of God.

Or it can be defined as an attitude of truthfulness or non hypocrisy,

sincerity or honesty or integrity.

And honestly, I think the ambiguity is planned.

I love planned ambiguity because I think it means both, right?

So we're gonna hit both.

Number one, objective truth.

truth.

Is what is true in any, matter under consideration.

It's reality not what I feel is real or what circumstances tell me is

real, or what culture says is true, But what God declares and his word is

true and real truth is an objective standard by which reality is measured.

Truth is a fixed standard.

Truth is, reality in its original norm and it's origin.

Something that doesn't change.

Plane pilots, if you got on the plane and they left their mic on

and you're in the air and they're like, George, what are you doing?

It's this way.

He's like, ah, I really think it's this way.

He'd be like, what?

don't think.

He's like, but I really feel this is the way we should go today.

No, don't.

That would be terrible.

You'd be like, did anybody pack a parachute?

I don't want to be here.

Pilots are taught to go by their instruments, not their feelings.

Not what's popular.

Why?

Because those instruments are objective measurements of what is

true, of gravity, of barometric pressure, of all these things.

The instruments tell them what is true and inform the way that the pilot should go.

Not what I think, not the, here's what I feel like we should view today.

Let's take 'em around this way.

The control tower, most of them, the control towers have been in the news.

Yikes.

Planes have almost crashed into one another cuz someone fell

asleep in the control tower.

Thank the Lord.

The control tower of heaven never misses a beat.

But the control tower gives you an objective perspective

because your sight is limited.

You are a finite, limited human being, and you need objective

reality from someone who can see.

We are children, right?

Children in the kingdom.

We need that objective perspective from our father in heaven who sees it all.

Who can see when that plane's come in or tells you what is truly

true even if you can't see it.

That's where faith starts again.

Do I trust the control tower?

Do I trust that they have a perspective?

I don't.

Electricity is objective, right?

I have been blown off an eight foot ladder like the kid in Jurassic Park,

not as, my hair didn't stand up.

On my arms it did, but I have grabbed the electricity and I have flown off.

I've been under a switch gear where all the power comes into a building

and I've lifted my arm a little too high, holding onto a ground rod.

And I've had it slam me on the ground, like I was dropped from

10 feet and I was literally laying on the ground, couldn't move.

They had to pull me out.

now, I don't care what it's working on.

I check with every instrument, is it on?

I treat.

Even I was telling somebody, they're like, why are you doing that?

Why are you using your strippers that way to strip the wire?

There's no power in the building.

I said, train like there's power everywhere, Because you know because

there is an objective reality, and when you run headlong into it, it

doesn't matter how you feel that day, what she ate for breakfast, how many

friends you have, how many people believe it with you, it's dead.

There's no power.

It will bite you, It will bite you.

objective, truth.

Objective, reality.

I think one of the problems with objective truth is we don't like it.

I went to the doctor, a couple weeks ago and I kept asking her about

all these things I found online.

I'm like, what about this pill?

And she's all, don't even bother with that.

That's ridiculous.

And I was like, oh, okay.

That kind of hurt my feelings.

I did a lot of research, . I could be a doctor too, and she was just

like, put me in my place a couple times on a couple different things

and I got out of there and I started looking up like other doctors.

I'm like, I don't need this.

and I was like, wait, what am I doing?

Isn't that how so often we are with truth sometimes that we're like, I

don't like, I don't like the truth.

Let's just find another, let's find another truth.

Let's find a truth that agrees with our truth.

. And that's the culture of the day that's ever present.

People leave churches over that.

We don't like that truth.

Was it true?

Was it glorifying to Jesus?

Was it Jesus centered?

Maybe it's not.

Jesus isn't the problem.

Maybe it's our hearts didn't like what Jesus was calling

us to what he was saying.

I know.

I have kids that struggle.

I have seen it.

I've struggled in my own heart.

Culture is saying this is true.

And Jesus is saying, no, I am the way, the truth in the life.

No man comes to the Father except by me.

That's not popular.

It goes against the grain, it goes against what's popular in spirituality.

You say No one comes to the father except through mean.

The enemy takes ground through lies.

Satan will come with his wildes, right?

His schemes.

I love that word, wildes.

We don't really use that anymore.

Ah, he's so wily, right?

But that's why we named the character Wily Coyote,

He's the scheming coyote, So he comes with his schemes, which is

the same word, translated cunning craftiness in chapter four verse 14.

Here it is, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro.

By the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning,

by craftiness, in deceitful schemes.

The same idea And the point there is that doctrine, that false

doctrine, the wrong ideas about God.

The enemy loves to tell us wrong ideas about God.

It goes back to the garden.

Has God really said?

. There's so much in that, Did he really?

Did you mishear him?

Was he not clear enough?

Man, I thought a God of all power would be really clear for you.

That he'd be understanding.

It seems like he doesn't trust you.

Why is he putting the border around this?

He wants this to himself.

He wants the best for himself, Is he really looking out for your best?

Can you really trust him?

Why is he holding this back so much in that wrong ideas about God?

Chiefly, The idea that you can, in your own strength, appease God, that in your

own might and in your own trying, you can draw yourself and make yourself

righteous enough to be pleasing to him.

That is the falses doctrine.

That of all, that is carried about.

It's Kain Abel.

Remember, Abel approached the presence of God through a substitute, a sacrifice.

But Kane the inventor of religion, He's like, no, I will grow the best vegetables

I will grow the best produce.

Yeah.

My dad, mom told me stories about the Garden of Eden and

how great the food was there.

I'm gonna even better that, And he comes to God on his own efforts thinking

his best will make him acceptable in the presence of a holy God.

it's every single religion that you do something to make

yourself acceptable to God.

It's through your own effort, your own willpower, your own ingenuity,

your own wisdom, your own strength, your own might that you are saved.

That is false.

That is false.

Beyond false, we cannot, in the presence of a holy God, remember, God is holy.

He's other.

He's not like us a little better.

He's other.

You remember just his presence like, like just the presence of God, whatever

dimension that heaven is the fourth or fifth dimension interacting with

the atoms and the molecules at Sinai.

The rocks could not handle it and shook like the electrical charges in the sky.

It says there were thunderings and lightnings.

They all bowed to his omnipresence omnis.

Remember, he's not just a little better than us.

And to think that we can make ourselves pleasing to a holy

God is buying the ultimate life.

That's why Jesus came.

That's why we have to be rescued.

That's why we needed to be saved.

It would be like if you're drowning and you don't know how to swim, you fall

over the side of a boat and somebody throws you a manual on how to swim

that's like insult to injury, right?

That's horrible.

Paul is saying the only way for you to escape the deception of the enemy.

Is to let the word of God interpret reality for you.

Satan will bombard you constantly with lies From the very beginning,

Satan's strategy has been to get people to discard the word of God.

His first question was, has God really said this?

Or number two, he'll make you try to neglect it, number

one, to doubt God's word.

Number two, he'll try to make you neglect it.

And that's really a challenge.

We have so many versions of the Bible and so much access to it that it

can almost be like, I'll get to it.

Yeah, I'll get to it.

Not that you doubt the word of God, that's not the issue or the problem, but

maybe it's that we just don't know it.

Have you ever prayed with somebody where they're praying and all of a sudden

you're like, I think that's a scripture.

I think that's a scripture.

I think that's a scripture.

I think that's a scripture, and it's just So powerful just knowing

the word of God and the word of God, knowing you're searching it

out and knowing it to be students.

the best sermon can do for you is tide you over, You know what is a sermon?

Because you need meat, That's an image given that we need to eat meat.

The meat of God's word.

What is a sermon?

It is meat that is passed through the digestion of somebody else.

It's milk.

It's milk, In fact, Matt, what did you eat three weeks ago for lunch?

Yeah, you don't know.

That's like sermons, right?

You don't know what you ate three weeks ago, but you know at the time you needed

it, But the point is that you have to get into the word You have to study it,

you have to know it, you have to let it know you, you have to let it search you.

You have to let it contradict you.

You have to let it like, wound you.

When it talks about that sword that cuts deep, it often cuts deep

into us, man, to my absolute shame.

I I used to listen to radio on my way to work that really cemented

me in my leanings that weren't necessarily in line with Jesus.

And I say necessarily with air quotes because they weren't

at all in, line with Jesus.

And I remember.

being so angry at like immigration and like just taking jobs and, just this and

caricaturing an entire group of people.

And then reading the scripture that says, be kind to the foreigner because

you were foreigners, you were exiles.

And I can't tell you what that did to my heart.

it destroyed me.

It was like, oh wait, I am.

In mcg, grand, I'm a pilgrim on this earth passing through.

Like

I wasn't part of Abraham's family.

I wasn't part of this.

I've been grafted in, I'm a gentile, that God has pursued and reached out and

said, and all of a sudden it transformed.

But it cut, it wounded, it started cutting off.

These things, these foundations, these weird things that I built in my life.

it pruned my worldview and how I saw the world, how I looked at the world.

And scripture will do that as you let it search you, as you let it transform you.

And then, that becomes a foundation is word is the rock, that we build it on.

Now, when I make future decisions, it's through the lens of scripture and not

through my own bias, not through my own experience, not through what's happened to

me or this experience or that experience.

I let scripture and form my worldview and who I am.

. You can find any church who will tell you what you want to hear.

And that's what a lot of us want.

We want just somebody to say back to us what we want, cuz we want to make

sure we're believing the right thing.

It's so good to be challenged in those things.

It's so good to hear other perspectives.

To not sit in one camp To see something greater.

to see a bigger, picture.

Thomas Quais, he wrote a 38 volume set on, he was gonna give an answer to

every question that a man could ask.

And he was set to it, and then he went to a worship service and this one

was different and he stopped writing.

He never wrote again.

. And his guy who was taking his notes for him said, aren't you gonna

write or aren't you gonna finish?

And he said, I've glimpsed eternity.

And I feel like what I've written is so much straw, God's

so big and transcendent, right?

That he's so great, he's so infinite.

We are not, we're finite.

And so he's constantly growing us.

Every day.

He's constantly conforming us to his truth.

He's saint the fine us in his truth.

We have to grow until glory.

And then guess what?

We get to keep growing in glory.

But without all that curse.

So objective truth.

The way to resist is with truth.

He is a liar and the father of lies our enemy.

The one of the main things the enemy does is come with lies.

So we must know truth.

So he either makes us doubt God's word, or he wants to make us neglect God's word.

Now this is amazing.

Listen to how this works in two Corinthians 10, verse four and five,

for though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to

the flesh for the weapons of our warfare or not of the flesh, but have

divine power to destroy strongholds.

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the

knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

I've heard that verse so many times and I've never really sat with it.

Let me just sit with you for like two minutes.

The idea when it says that we destroyed strongholds, is that the enemy?

Wants to put something in your way.

In fact, the word destroy every lofty thing is the word.

We get our word for partition.

Have you ever partitioned a hard drive?

I know I'm nerding out a little bit.

partitioned a memory card.

What does that do?

You are keeping data in one place and not allowing it to go to the other.

You've partitioned it.

I mean that what a picture of what the enemy tries to do.

He tries to partition you from the truth of God.

He doesn't want the truth of God getting through to your head.

He wants to wall it off.

He wants to build a fortress there of lies.

He doesn't want the light getting in.

He wants to keep you partition.

He says, we dismantle speculations.

The idea is that you're like destroying, you're laying siege to speculations.

What are speculations?

Assumptions?

there's this part of Nehemiah where at one point as they're building the wall,

there's people from the east, the west, the north and the south, and they all

run, and they all tell Nehemiah, the enemy's coming, the enemy's coming.

And he's like, tell me more about it.

Did you see him?

And he's like, no, somebody told me It's speculation.

It's this thing that's urgent that feels like the truth, but isn't the truth.

How often does God's timing not line up with your timing I've witnessed it myself.

We were getting ready to move out of our house.

I was a kid.

And, there's one house we looked at and we're like, this is the one, the

owner of the house, we're gonna rent it.

He went on vacation to Mexico and then the people said, you've gotta

be out of the house tomorrow.

somebody else is moving in.

So my dad being the man of faith that he is, amazing.

He said, get a truck.

God's gonna provide us a house.

Wait a minute.

That's out of order.

That's not how that works.

You don't get a truck, we have to have somewhere to go.

we loaded the truck halfway nowhere to move to.

We're gonna sleep at a friend's house.

We keep our truck loaded up and it's not that we like, didn't look anywhere else.

There was nowhere else.

Everything was, we could not find a place.

As we're loading the truck, the owner of that other house and

his wife drive by, they found the address on the rental application.

They see the truck, they're loading it up and they say, you got the house?

And my dad was like, Hey, I didn't think you were supposed to come home yet.

I thought you had another week.

He said, my wife had a dream two nights ago that you were in trouble.

So we quit our vacation early and came up to see what's happening.

God's timing is not our timing, but often what we do is we lean into

speculation because we only see from our perspective and what we

see is we see God doesn't love us.

God, you haven't paid my billing time.

God, you haven't provided, you haven't done this.

You haven't met my needs.

All the while He's pulling a million strings.

To provide in a way that will blow your mind, that you'll never forget that will

be etched into your brain because the Lord knows that as much as we needed

to know what house we are moving into us, kids needed to learn that he's

a miracle worker and that he can be dependent on, and that he can be trusted.

When God moves, he's, we think He's playing checkers.

He's playing fifth dimensional chess, like he's doing a thousand things

at once to graft into your heart, to etch it into your memory that he

can be trusted, that the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.

That is promises are yay and amen So guys, I just think what a picture

of what the enemy does that he tries to partition you from God's truth.

and God is saying, use truth to dismantle everything that exalts

itself against the knowledge of Christ.

He even says, and this is amazing, guys, take every thought captive to obey Christ.

Do you know what that means?

It means your thoughts are people you need to capture and interrogate.

You need to interrogate them.

And you need to say, why are you here?

What are you trying to do?

Are you smuggling anything across, that I need to know about?

That's what we're supposed to do with our thoughts.

Is this obeying Christ?

Is it glorifying Christ?

That's insane.

That's amazing.

In another way, in Philippians, he says, whatever's true, whatever's

lovely, whatever's a good report.

thank on those things.

Those are the ones you let through.

Let the praise and the thanksgiving, let the adoration, let the wonderment

at his works and his words, let them through and keep at bay.

Those who bring speculation, those who bring that doubt, those who

bring that thing that wants Del lures into its spell to put us to sleep.

Get rid of anything that blocks God's point of view from getting through

your point of view, your parents' point of view, your friend's point

of view, like only God's point of view is what we let through,

And , man, Paul is saying that this is the foundation.

The belt of truth is a little different than the sword of the

spirit, which is the word of God.

The truth of the Bible used offensively, not offensively , although there are

people who do that and need to repent.

But the belt of truth is the objective truth used subjectively.

And so now we just turn briefly to use it inwardly.

So truthfulness, to take the truth and apply it to the n-word parts.

Unless you take the truth of the word of God and take it deep inside you, the most

private, intimate parts of your soul, you can't put on the armor of God to take

the truth of God and to embrace it, to digest it, to make it part of yourself.

Embraced, believed, used in daily life.

This belt of truth must encompass our whole life.

That should encircle us leaving no gaps.

Remember, we're standing in Christ in what he has done.

We're standing in his truth.

What he says is truly true about reality.

What he says is true about your identity, not what you feel is true.

Think of anxiety and worry in Matthew six.

Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, what

you will drink, nor about your body.

What you will put on is not life more than food in the body, more than clothing.

Look at the birds of the air.

They neither sewn nor reap, nor gather into Barnes, and yet

your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not of more value than they?

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his lifespan?

And why are you anxious about clothing?

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.

They need their toil in their span.

And I, I tell you, even Solomon and all his glory was

not a raid like one of these.

But if God so close the grass of the field, which is today alive and

tomorrow's thrown into the oven, will he not much more Clothe you,

owe you of little faith suffering.

Romans eight 18 for, I consider he's accounting.

He's taking account, he's taking stock.

He's weighing things, putting it in the balances for, I consider that the

sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory

that is to be revealed to us suffering.

So Paul looks and he goes, yeah, it's hard.

It's brutal.

I'm hungry.

Sometimes I'm shipwrecked.

Sometimes I get stoned and left for dead.

Sometimes I get beaten with rods.

I get lashed.

I'm naked.

I'm in constant peril and constant threats.

That's hard.

But what's coming?

What's coming is insane.

It's amazing.

It's gonna make all that look like an ampi.

, I consider, I weigh it in the moment of my struggle and the moment of my turmoil,

I consider I take hold of that thought.

I take it captive and I make it obey Christ.

Focus yourself.

Talk to yourself about the truth.

Your mind is running in a hundred different directions.

Focus your mind.

Gerd up the loins of your mind.

Think nothing has changed, but you have a new perspective and now

you have rearranged your thinking.

The truth has come in, take the armor and look at the world through these things.

Go up to the watch tower of the gospel, and look at true reality.

The belt of Truth makes us able to use all the other pieces of armor

that holds it together, an objective truth thing, and then that inward

reality sanctify them in your truth.

Your word is truth.

John seven 17.

17.

honesty and integrity and reality.

Inwardly, Psalm 51, 6 says, behold you delight in truth in the inward being.

So it's not just what I believe, it's also in my heart how I live.

It's who I am.

It's letting the objective truth permeate me till it has an impact and shapes me.

First John 1, 5 7.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is

light and in him is no darkness at all.

If we say we have fellowship with them while we walk in darkness, we

lie and do not practice the truth.

But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with

one another and the blood of Jesus, his son cleanses us from all sin.

He's saying that the truth of the good news impacts and changes the truth of

your character, who you are being who you really are, walking in the light.

be real.

Don't pretend.

No hypocrisy.

The old, word, sincere I heard, I think it's Latin, comes from

the word meaning without lax.

And the idea behind that was when they would carve, statues

outta marble and stone.

You'd work for days and months on that.

As somebody commissioned you to do that, you're down to the nose, you're doing

the flare of the nostril, and you hit the chisel just a little too hard and the

whole nose clumps off and you're like, no.

And so what you do instead of being, forthcoming and truthful and saying,

Hey, what do you think about the

The sinks, that's pretty cool.

Is you would ground up some, granite or ground up some rock and mix it

with wax, and then you'd put it on.

. And, and then, they'd see it and they'd be like, oh, sweet.

It's done.

But in the heat of the day, a month, as it's sitting in the atrium or whatever,

the sun would beat on it, and that nose would just start to slide down that face.

And so the stone masons would advertise sincere statues without wax.

Without wax.

And so Paul is saying, don't, he's saying We need to be without wax.

That idea of sincere and integrity, that idea of what is what you get.

That's why it's so important that church is a hospital and not a

museum where we display works of art.

We need rescue every day.

I need rescue every day.

I need your prayers every day.

I struggle every day.

I don't think, I don't know how all of us have done this last week.

Did any of us make it without stumbling, falling flat on our face?

But what begins to happen is we feel like we can't be sincere because we have

something to prove to one another or worst of all, something to prove to God

that, oh God, I'm really not like that.

God desires to rescue you every day.

It's his business.

Like he said, he came for those who were sick.

They needed rescue, And so it's so important that we continue to cultivate

that in this culture brokenness.

ongoing brokenness about our marriages, about our friendships,

about our struggle with forgiveness.

Man, I still wrestle with the struggle to forgive so hard guys.

And I know it.

and it gets rescued a little bit, but man, somebody said something to me this last

week on a phone call, and it brought back this whole wave, like every feeling I've

ever had, every tear that had been poured.

I couldn't take it.

I was so overwhelmed.

And I literally, it was like I got punched in the stomach

and I didn't know it was there.

I thought I'd moved on.

I thought I'm good.

And it was like this one thing, and it was like everything was back.

The struggle's back.

and, I need his rescue.

I need that on a daily basis.

we need to be a culture where we're encouraging one another, where

we're holding up each other's arms.

And not weighing each other's arms down by some perfectionism

And then, you'll be okay.

There was a pastor, my son actually showed me this video.

He said, dad, this really made me think.

And this pastor, asked if this person lived this life, would you

let them, in, into church, basically?

And the pastor said, yeah.

And the guy was like, what?

And so the pastor asked him, do you clean yourself up before you get in the shower?

He's like, no.

Why should we expect people to clean themselves up before they get to Christ?

Who's our rescuer, who changes things.

It's not us, it's not church that changes things.

Is Jesus Christ the head of the church that does it.

He's the only one who can raise the dead right in that way.

So man, a real honest look at the death of sin and then

Elong gazing at the Savior.

I was reading through Psalm one 19 a little bit and in Psalm one

19, it's all about the word and it's all it starts off when I was

first like getting grace and stuff.

I read Psalm one 19 and it tripped me up cuz it's God, you favor those who are

clean and of a pure heart who have kept themselves this and kept themselves that.

And I was like, ah, but if you keep reading in verse 1 76, it took a

while, and this is my, his, this is my testimony it takes a while,

is the psalmist writes and says, I have gone astray like a lost sheep.

Seek your servant for I do not forget your commandments.

He's saying, I don't mean these, I don't match up to them.

I need to be rescued like a sheep that's gone astray.

I'm just a sheep.

What am I need a shepherd in my life.

Who are we really?

The Bible declares that we're broken individuals who need God every

step of the way, but we can so often pretend we can play church.

And, but when we're in a battle that doesn't work, God asks us to be real.

Some of the hardest persons to be honest with for some of us is God himself.

Some of us just need to say, God, I'm broken.

I need you.

Hypocrisy will destroy a church, creates a whole false culture.

We can never be real, never be weak.

And if you can't be those things, you can't be healed.

Jesus spits everyone who is weak and we are and tired to come hi to him for a rest

if you're heavy laden and have burdens.

So let me just, finish this.

Truth is not.

To be an abstract thing.

The most important dimension of the belt of truth is the truth about Jesus.

Jesus said, I am the truth.

To know me as to know truth, to not know me as to be totally deceived about

life, Jesus is to be our worldview.

Even as we read other scripture, we lead it.

Read it through the lens of Jesus.

Paul repeated that in Ephesians 4 21, assuming that you've heard

about him, and were taught in Him as the truth is in Jesus.

In Jesus, you see the truth about yourself, that we were created for

God, and that's why nothing in the world could ever satisfy us because we

were created to know him and love him.

And in the cross of Jesus, we see that we are sinners who have separated ourselves

from God and stood condemned, and in the cross of Jesus, you see the truth

about God, that he loved us so much, that he took that punishment for us.

Yes.

And so Paul praise in Ephesians one, verse 16 to 17, I do not cease to give

thanks for you remembering you and my prayers that the God of our Lord

Jesus Christ, the father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and

revelation and the knowledge of Him.

Not just truth, but the truth as it is in Jesus.

Paul is praying that we might know him who is truth, personally and intimately,

and Ephesians three 14 to 17, for this reason, I bow my knees before the Father

from whom every family in heaven on Earth is named, that according to the riches

of his glory, he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his spirit

and your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that

you being rooted and grounded and loved.

So he's praying that they might have strength.

Why?

To go out and to know everything, to go out and to conquer every lie.

He's praying that they might be rude and in grounded in his love, that Christ

may dwell in their hearts and that he is true, might be at home and our hearts.

He who is truth encompasses our whole being, making every part true.

Dr.

Martin, Lori Jones tells a story that he was on a train.

Dr.

Martin Lou Jones, before he was a pastor, was a doctor and a really good doctor.

Somebody on the train, turned blue in the face, started frothing at the

mouth and fell down in the aisle.

Everybody got up and panicked.

They said, stop the train.

Stop the train.

Somebody called a doctor.

Dr.

Martin Lloyd Jones was a doctor.

He got up and he said, stop, this man is having an epi epileptic fit.

Look at this.

Look at this.

These are the symptoms.

Look at this and this.

All you have to do is this.

Don't panic.

Do this and this.

It'll be over pretty soon.

We probably don't even need to take him to the hospital.

Just do this and this.

What happened in the car?

When that authority spoke, the panic turned to peace.

It turned to cooperation.

It turned teamwork.

Everybody calmed down why?

Somebody had the truth.

Somebody knew the truth.

As soon as he began to tell the truth, everybody instantly knew it

was the truth, information, insight into the real nature of things.

That's what's in the word of God.

And that kind of note of clarity and authority needs

to be operating in our lives.

Jesus is the authority in our lives, or we talked about it last week.

I delight in your law.

I meditate on it day and night.

What does he say?

And he's saying, you are my authority.

I thrive and flourish when you are my authority and I'm not.

That's what I was made for.

The truth is more than information and facts, John eight.

And you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Doesn't matter how many people voted for it, if it disagrees with the

divine point of view, it isn't truth.

The truth that's revealed in Jesus is what we're after.

God's truth.

Jesus' truth, not man's truth.

And the enemy can't handle that truth.

You see that right?

When Jesus is being tempted, you said over and over.

It's written.

It's written.

I written this on the way it's written.

Thank you Siri.

That's awesome.

Okay.

She found it for me.

Wow.

She found truth, she found, Matthew chapter four.

The enemy had to leave in the face of that truth.

Stand on what he's done, what he says.

You are your new identity.

that you are hidden him and as the father adores him, because you're

hidden Christ, the Father adores you.

The Father celebrates you as if you've obeyed as perfectly as Jesus, as if

you've done everything as right as Jesus.

That is crazy.

Could you imagine if you faced the world with that truth, that

reality that is incredible.

so how did this come about?

How could a holy God come to sinful man and exchange his righteousness

for a sinfulness and Haus in him?

The story of, Joshua and Jericho, you remember, as they are planning

out their strategy, Joshua, goes to, the captain of the Lord of Host.

He sees a pre-incarnate appearance, a theophany of Jesus as a soldier, right?

and, and Jo, Joshua asked him, he says, are you for us or for your, for our enemy?

And that it's the best answer in the world cuz it's only one God would give.

He says, neither , it's so good because what he's saying, no, I'm not a God.

You sprinkle onto, your divine, plate like salt.

You're either for me or you're against me.

I'm the captain of the Lord of Host.

You remember, he gives them the plan, right?

And they march around Jericho, seven ti or for seven days.

And then they march around on the seventh day, the seventh time, and then they

all blow a trumpet and shout, and the whole walls come crumbling down, right?

And the enemy's defeated, right?

Not one of, the Israel lights perished.

Now, early in Stockton, I went on a prayer retreat with a bunch of different

pastors who know it was amazing, but they actually taped out on the ground.

The city of Stockton, like on a map.

And at one point we all marched around, seven times and I felt a

little, out of place, but it was amazing to be with my brothers.

But the point of the story is in Jericho and the walls that came crumbling down

and the enemy that perished that day is who we are in the story that the

captain of the Lord of Host had every right to put us to death with his

just wrath at the edge of his sword.

That we have not only been misguided, deceived, but that

we are actually enemies of God.

You see when two kingdoms try to occupy the same space, there's war.

God says, all creations mine.

And we said, not me.

, this is mine.

This is my world.

So there was war, there was conflict, there was entity guys.

Our biggest problem in life was not how are we gonna, make it or will I

be recognized or will I ever stop this bad habit That is so far down the list.

Your greatest problem in life, and don't ever forget it, was that the

God of the universe stood opposed to you and you had nothing to stand on

because your righteousness the best was a filthy rack in his holy sight.

So who were we in the story?

We're definitely not the captain of the Lord Host.

We're not Joshua.

As much as I'd love, you'd love the namesake, guess who we were,

we're the ones in the city.

We're the ones that the wrath of God is coming against.

No hope.

And this circle of God's judgment is growing, inc.

Increasingly more near till we start to feel the ground.

And some of you remember your testimony.

The ground beneath us was shaking and hell of itself is ready to swallow us up, up.

But our God is so good that he let the wall fall on him to save

everyone in the city, his enemy.

He was crushed, he was bruised, he was crushed for our sins.

And in our place, the righteous judgment that was far greater and

those walls were thick and Jericho.

You could write two chariots, archeologists say on top of the wall.

That's how thick it was to bring those walls down is nothing comparative.

As Jesus looked into the cup that he was gonna drink, The wrath

that I deserved coming upon him.

The sinless lamb of God who took away the sin of the world.

Guys, he loves you.

He went for his enemies.

He didn't just say, love your enemies to his disciples.

He did it, and he reconciled this to him, and he made peace

where there was no peace.

He brought us back to the Father.

He brought us back to the garden, walking with God in the cool of the day.

He said, that's not enough.

Just walking side by side.

I want to come and live inside you.

I don't make my home with you.

I want to indwell you by my very presence, the spirit of the living God lives in you.

I don't want to just live in you.

I want to give you a new heart, a heart made of flesh.

I want to inscribe my law on it.

I want to decorate it.

I want to make it into something far greater than you could ever ma

imagine, guys, the greatness of the gospel says that we were his enemies

and now he's made us his friend.

At least made us part of his own body.

That's the truth.

That's the objective truth.

That's the objective from historical truth.

Jesus is our truth.

Jesus is truth.

And and so we don't wanna be entangled with anything that's keeping us

away from looking under Jesus.

The author and perfective faith.

We look to him, we run to him.

We don't take our eyes off of him.

We see another brother and sister who have their eyes off of Jesus.

We do not go.

I can't believe so-and-so has their eyes off of.

But Jesus, we come alongside them.

We say, look at Jesus.

Look at what he's done.

Look how great he is.

Isn't He's so worthy of our praise isn't.

He's so good.

Remember your story.

Remember what he's done.

and we're healed a little more.

We're changed from one degree of splendor a little more, and we're

able to stand against the fortress and the lies and the doubt and the

speculation, of the enemy as we keep locked, focus on Jesus and what he's done.

Jesus.

Thank you for your word.

Thank you for your truth.

God, we do.

There's so many things to be students of nowadays.

We don't wanna leave off the primary thing,

Lord, rescue our hearts.

Glorify yourself right now in this time, Lord, as we break the bread,

your body broken, like those walls that fell your blood poured out.

For our forgiveness.

A life exchange for a life absolutely incredible.

Lord, may that truth anchor and have its home, Lord, may everything be

held together by that in our lives.

So Lord, bless this time now as we celebrate, you and what you've done.

We love you Jesus.

Thank you for loving us first when we are far off.

Thank you Jesus and Jesus name.

Amen.