(Enter wearing a military style outfit and address the audience as a drill sergeant might raw recruits. I even looked at one of our men and told him to “suck that stomach in soldier”)
OPEN: You are gathered in this assembly hall this morning to begin your basic training as a soldier of Jesus Christ. Over the next few weeks we’ll be addressing the basics of your faith that you need to understand in order to make you the best that you can be for Jesus Christ.
Our objective this morning is to help you understand the enemy – his tactics, objectives and motives.
Turn with me in your manual to the Gospel of John, chapter 8 (read text)
You are soldiers of Christ and you have an enemy.
His name is Satan and he is a dangerous opponent.
But he has one basic weakness: Satan can’t handle the truth!
He is a liar. There is NO truth in him.
Every time he opens his mouth he lies, because… when he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
And he is our enemy.
We are at war with him.
Ephesians 6:12 says “… our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil…
Satan is our enemy and his weapon of choice is deception. He uses ½ truths and outright lies to tempt us and destroy us.
He tempted Eve in the garden
And Jesus in the desert
He tempted Judas with gold
And Peter with fear.
He is the deceiver and the destroyer of all that is good, and his objective is to undermine all that is truth because Satan can’t handle the truth. And because Satan can’t handle truth… truth becomes our principal weapon against him.
APPLY: But, what is Truth?
We live in a society that is increasingly convinced that truth doesn’t exist. A number of survey have found that a high percentage of Americans aren’t even sure they know what truth is. Our secular colleges teach that absolute truth is a myth and that morality is an elusive goal that depends on what we want and feel rather than on what is right or wrong.
That’s why Ephesians 2:1-3 tells us
“As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.”
What Ephesians 2 is saying is - before we became Christians, we were without God and thus there was no real truth in our lives. We merely lived by our own standard of right and wrong, which actually were the standards of the “ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient” – Satan.
Thus, it shouldn’t surprise us that since our nation rejected God nearly 50 years ago our society has increasingly rejected truth:
• Prayer became outlawed in our schools
• And the Bible was banned.
• The 10 commandments were shredded
ILLUS: Back in 1996, Paul Harvey’s (1/31/96) told of a preacher who prayed at the State House in Topeka, Kansas. No sooner had he finished praying, than several angry congress men hurried to the microphone to object. His prayer had offended them!
His name was Joe Wright, and he was the preacher at the Central Christian Church in Wichita. He said he never "in my wildest dreams ... expected what the response would be."
But this was his prayer:
"Heavenly Father, we come before You today to ask Your forgiveness and seek Your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, ’Woe to those who call evil good,’ but we that’s exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and inverted our values.
We confess that:
We have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and called it moral pluralism;
We have worshiped other gods and called it multiculturalism;
We have endorsed perversion and called it an alternative lifestyle;
We have exploited the poor and called it the lottery;
We have neglected the needy and called it self-preservation;
We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare;
We have killed our unborn and called it choice;
We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable;
We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building esteem;
We have abused power and called it political savvy;
We have coveted our neighbors’ possessions and called it ambition;
We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it freedom of expression;
We have ridiculed the time honored values of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.
Search us, O God, and know our hearts today; try us and see if there be some wicked way in us; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.
Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent here by the people of Kansas, and who have been ordained by You, to govern this great state. Grant them Your wisdom to rule and may their decisions direct us to the center of Your will.
I ask it in the name of Your Son, the living Savior, Jesus Christ, Amen."
Rep. Delbert Gross considered the invocation gross, saying "He can’t talk to us like that" … and calling the prayer "divisive," "sanctimonious," and "overbearing."
Rep. David Haley called it "blasphemous and ignorant."
Now, we can be offended by that response by supposedly responsible elected officials… or we can realize that this is exactly how a world controlled by Satan would respond. You see “… our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil…”
It’s against Satan.
Satan’s biggest weapon is deception… and his greatest weakness is truth - absolute truth/God’s truth. And so he’s going to fight truth every chance he gets. He is desperate to destroy it.
But II Cor. 10:3-5 says “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
But how do we “demolish arguments & pretensions”?
How do we contend against those who set themselves “up against the knowledge of God”?
Well, we get to know what truth IS.
We familiarize ourselves with it.
We value it as our most powerful weapon.
We stand beside it and use it whenever we can.
And that’s what we’re going to focus on over the next few weeks. We’re going to examine exactly what real truth is!
But first (in today’s sermon) we’re going to touch on some basics, and in so doing, we’ll hopefully begin to understand why knowing truth is so important.
1st – we need to understand WHY Satan has a problem with the truth.
Remember, Jesus declared that “there is no truth in (Satan). When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”
Satan can’t handle the truth.
Truth offends him.
(pause…) But why?
Well, because Satan wants to be in control and truth won’t allow for that.
Truth – real truth – is absolute. It has no wiggle room.
There’s no place for “broadmindedness.”
For example:
• There is no room for broad-mindedness in the chemical laboratory. Water is composed of two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. That’s truth, you can’t change it just because you want to.
• There is no room for broad-mindedness in the concert hall. A skilled director will not permit his performers to be as 1/2 note off, because when performing a great masterpiece there is… truth. It’s written on the music page. It’s absolute.
• There is no room for broad-mindedness in the mathematics classroom. Whether it’s geometry, calculus, nor trigonometry there is no allowance for any variation from exact accuracy. The solution of the problem is either right or it is wrong (no tolerance there).
• And there is no room for broad-mindedness in the garage. Your mechanic will tell you piston rings must fit the cylinder walls w/in 1/000’s of an inch. That is truth … at least if you want your motor “to run smoothly."
AND when it comes to absolute truth the same is true. There can be no broadmindedness.
ILLUS: For example, a philosophy professor began each new term by asking his class, "Do you believe it can be shown that there are absolute values like justice?"
Most of the students had already been exposed to the moral relativism of other professors and began to argue that everything was indeed relative, and no single law can be applied universally.
Before the end of the semester, the professor devoted one class period to debate the issue. At the end, he concluded, "Regardless of what you think, I want you to know that absolute values can be demonstrated. And if you don’t accept what I say, I’ll flunk you!"
One angry student got up and insisted, "That’s not fair!"
The professor smiled and said…
"You’ve just proved my point. You’ve appealed to a higher standard of fairness."
When I attended a secular college years ago, I was exposed to professors who rejected absolute truth. It was unsettling at the time, but over the years as I’ve had time to ponder what they taught, I’ve come to the conclusion that these teachers hadn’t rejected TRUTH.
They weren’t rejecting truth.
They are rejecting someone else’s truth.
They are rejecting someone else’s right to decide what was right and wrong.
These professors wanted to be the authority.
They wanted to be the ones who would decide what was moral and what wasn’t.
As long as there was absolute truth these professors would always be subject to a higher law. They wouldn’t be allowed to be the arbiters of morality, and they didn’t like that…
And neither does Satan.
Isaiah 14:13 quotes Satan and tells us “You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of the sacred mountain.’”
Absolute truth comes from God.
And God’s truth stood between Satan and his goal of power and authority.
In order to move God off His throne, Satan had to undermine the power of truth, and that’s why he’s a liar and the father of liars” – he needs to destroy truth.
And those who reject God’s truth are Satan’s children. They are his disciples.
That’s why Jesus said to those who rejected Him: "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now am here. I have not come on my own; but he sent me… You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire.” John 8:42&44
What was their father’s desire? To DESTROY TRUTH!
2nd – whether we accept God’s truth or reject it, that decision will influence how we live.
Proverbs 23:7 declares “… as (a man) thinks in his heart, so is he…”
If I reject God’s truth… I have to replace it with something else.
If God isn’t the authority in my life the next best person to run things – IS ME!
I’ll make my decisions based on what “I” think is best.
But the Bible tells me – that’s a fool’s game.
Jeremiah 17:9 rightly tells us “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked…”
My heart will only tell me what I want to hear… not what I should hear. The standard will not be to a high moral calling, but will only ascend to right here (my head), and it will fit only what I find to be convenient and comfortable.
That’s why (throughout the Bible) you find that as God’s people tried to live that way, God condemned their sin and selfishness. Their standard of truth had slipped from God... to themselves. From heights of heaven… to the depths of their depravity.
ILLUS: Commenting on the Watergate scandal, Former Presidential Aide Jeb Stuart Magruder, said "We conned ourselves into thinking we weren’t really doing anything wrong, and by the time we were doing things that were illegal, we had lost control. We had gone from poor ethical behavior into illegal activities without even realizing it."
And many of our news media – who see themselves as the guardians of our nation’s morality -
have fallen into the same trap.
Dan Rather once said: "I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things."
And Peter Jennings said: “I have become convinced there is no one truth, nor two; there are often several truths."
It’s little wonder our nation has slipped into depravity.
These are the self-appointed watchers of national ethics and they can’t even get it right!
Turn with me to Ephesians 4:17-19
So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more.”
That’s how people live who’ve come to the ultimate consequence of a life lived without God’s truth. But then Paul continues:
“You, however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the… (what’s the word here???) TRUTH that is in Jesus. Ephesians 4:20-21
You’re never going to arrive at a satisfactory understanding of truth until you come to Jesus. And Jesus told us that we would receive a powerful and trustworthy guardian of truth.
In John 16:13 we’re told “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth…”
And what is the basis of that truth?
Look at 16:8 “When he comes, he will convict the world of guilt in regard to sin and righteousness and judgment.”
Here’s the basis of truth for us:
The Holy Spirit objective is to convict us of the truth that
1. We are sinners
2. We need to be righteous in our lives
3. There will come a time of judgment when God will judge the living and the dead.
In other words… we don’t have the right to DECIDE what is true and false.
We’re sinners.
We struggle to be righteous by God’s standards.
And if we fail by those standards – there’ll be a judgment – and we’ll lose out.
But we’ve been given God’s Spirit to help us understand those truths and
In Acts 2:38 we’re told "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”
For those of us who’ve enlisted in God’s Army… who’ve repented of our sins and have been buried in the waters of baptism – we’ve got God’s Spirit of truth living inside of us.
And once He comes inside He begins to teach us right from wrong, He begins to help us understand what is true and false. And what’s more important – God’s Spirit of truth begins to remove the roots of our sin, teaches us to be righteous, and makes it so – in the judgment - we’ll be safe.
Satan can’t handle the truth… but you and I who belong to Christ have God’s truth living within us and changing us so that we’ll become acceptable to God.
