(I spent a couple years as a student at Purdue University, and this is one of the jokes I heard there) There were a couple of students - one from IU and one from Notre Dame - standing beside a flagpole discussing something. About that time, a student from Purdue walked over and asked “What ya doing?” “We trying to figure out the height of this flagpole,” said one of them, “and we can’t agree on what formula we should use to calculate its height.” The Purdue student thought about that for a couple moments and then he walked over and lifted the pole out of its holder and laid it on the grass. He pulled out a tape measure, measured it, and said, “Exactly 24 feet.” Then he put the pole back up… and walked away. The other two students stood there for a minute and then one said to the other: “Isn’t that just like a guy from Purdue! We ask him for height - he gives us length.”
Now, why is that funny? Well, it’s funny because - however you measure that pole - it’s always going to be the same. You could take it out of the ground and measure its length, and it would be the same distance as its height! That truth doesn’t change no matter how you measure that pole.
(PAUSE) And that’s how we tend to think about truth. Truth doesn’t change. And, because Truth doesn’t change, we learn to depend upon it. That’s why our text this morning advises us: “Buy truth, and do not sell it; buy wisdom, instruction, and understanding.” Proverbs 23:23
To paraphrase an old saying “Truth is a bargain at twice the price." Buy Truth! You could pay twice as much for truth as you might pay for anything else and it would still be worth it, because truth has such a great value that it’s a bargain.
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ILLUS: WE value truth. If a person lies to us, if they don’t tell us the truth, then after a while we don’t trust them. In fact, eventually we’ll even avoid them. We value truth in relationships.
Albert Einstein once observed: “Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.”
When a person testifies in court they’re asked: “Do you swear to the tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.”
You’d think that because we rely so heavily on truth… that truth would be highly valued in our society. But – too often - it’s not!
I saw a cartoon recently that said it this way. “Do you swear to the tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth even though nobody has any idea what that is anymore?”
Does anybody really NOT know what the truth is anymore? Well, when “experts” won’t tell you whether a MAN can get pregnant or not - they might not know what truth is anymore. Or when sports authorities won’t tell men (who identify as “women”) that they can’t compete in women’s sports - they might not know what truth is anymore. Or when libraries allow cross-dressing men to read stories you'd never dream of reading to your kids to elementary kids - they might not know what truth is anymore.
As it says in Romans 1:22–25 “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them up … because they exchanged THE TRUTH about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator …”
We’ve actually reached the point where a lot of folks agree with this t-shirt (I showed it on the screen) “I reject your reality and substitute my own.” It’s meant to be a funny saying… but it’s not funny anymore.
For Bible believing Christians that kind of thinking is absolute nonsense. Bible believing Christians believe (hold up the Bible) THIS IS TRUTH! In fact, when Jesus prayed what’s called… His High Priestly prayer in Jn 17 He said: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word (The Bible) IS TRUTH.” John 17:17
ILLUS: One man compared the Bible to the jigsaw puzzles he used to put together at his grandmother’s house when he was younger. She’d buy these jigsaw puzzles and then throw the box away, and he’d try to put the puzzle together, but he had no idea whether the puzzle was of a barn/ an antique car/ or sailing ship. Without the picture he had no idea how the puzzle fit together. He explained that like the box of Jigsaw puzzle “The Bible gives us the picture, so we know how the pieces fit together.”
The Bible is the will of God in written form, and it is IN the Bible that you find TRUTH. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Abraham Lincoln said: “take all of this book (the Bible) upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live/ and die/ a happier and better man.”
But how’s that possible? How is it possible for the Bible to help us live a happier and better life? It’s possible because the Bible IS the TRUTH of God. The Bible is the box that helps us know where all the pieces fit together.
And the Bible is also truth because it points us to Jesus. Jesus said “I am the way, the TRUTH, and the life. No one comes unto the Father except through me.” John 14:6
Everything we know about Jesus is right here (in the Bible). In the Bible we read all we know about how Jesus lived; and what Jesus taught; and how He cared for people; and we learn about the miracles He performed. We learn about how He was arrested, beaten and nailed to the cross; and how He died on that cross; and was buried in a grave… that He shouldn’t been able to get out of! (PAUSE) But then the Bible says the grave couldn’t hold Him because… He rose from the dead!
Someone once said that “The empty tomb declares that you can put truth in a grave, but it won’t stay there.” (Clarence W. Hall – I altered the quote a bit)
You see, the Bible can change our lives, not only because it can give us guidance in how we ought to live but because it tells us about the ONLY ONE who has the power to change our lives and to heal the damage that sin does to us. Jesus is the ONLY ONE who can fix what’s broken in our lives. And the Bible tells us all about Him. So buy truth - buy God’s truth, and it’ll change your life forever.
Now, everyone inherently believes in Truth. Deep inside of everyone there’s an understanding that there IS a standard of “right” and “wrong.” You even hear it from children on the playground: “That’s NOT right. That’s NOT fair!”
But, too often people only want truth on their terms, and because God’s truth doesn’t always tell them what they want to hear they don’t want to BUY INTO God’s truth. They want truth on their terms.
ILLUS: Most of these folks (who don’t want to buy into God’s truth) have bought into a philosophy that’s been taught in secular universities for about 60 years. It’s called “RELATIVISM”. Relativism is the belief that standards of truth, rationality, and ethical right and wrong vary greatly from culture to culture, and across historical eras and that there are no universal criteria of what is right and wrong. Thus, to impose your morality on someone else is seen as intolerant and bigoted.
Just to show you how bizarre this kind of thinking is, there was a professor named Robert Simon of Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. who reported that “10 to 20% of his students (who’d bought into relativism) acknowledged the Holocaust happened (the slaughter of Jews in the Nazi death camps), but they couldn’t bring themselves to say that killing millions of people was wrong. One student told the professor ‘Of course I dislike the Nazis, but who is to say they are morally wrong?’”
The Chronicle of Higher Education noted that there were many students who were UNwilling to oppose large moral horrors, such as human sacrifice, ethnic cleansing, and slavery, because they thought that no one had the right to criticize the moral views of another group or culture.” (John Leo in U.S. News; 7/21/97)
THESE PEOPLE ARE CRAZY! And they’re crazy because someone talked them into accepting something other than God’s truth.
Back when I was at Purdue University I was introduced to the concept of relativism (or “relative truth”) and I began to realize the professors there were VERY dogmatic about this. They particularly focused on undermining a student’s religious belief. They went out of their way to attack the ideas of God and morality, and Right vs. Wrong. It occurred to me that these professors weren’t rejecting truth. They were rejecting God’s truth. They were rejecting God’s right to decide what was right and wrong. These professors wanted substitute THEIR TRUTH so that they could be “the authority”. They wanted to be the ones who’d decide what was moral and what wasn’t.
But as long as there was absolute truth (God’s truth) these professors would always be fighting a higher law. They wouldn’t be allowed to be the authorities to decide right/wrong, or what was moral and what wasn’t… and they didn’t like that. So they rejected the truth that came from God and tried to replace it with something else. THEIR TRUTH.
You see, if God’s truth isn’t the authority in my life, the next best person to run things would be… ME! I’m the one to make decisions based on what “I” think is best. So what is moral for you might not be moral for me. I’ll reject God’s reality and I’ll substitute my own!
But the Bible tells me – that’s a fool’s game. Jeremiah 17:9 tells us “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” “My TRUTH will only reflect the deceitfulness of my heart. And I’ll justify what I want to do… rather than what I know I ought to do. And that’s where I’ll end up getting in trouble.
Now bear in mind: we’re talking here about “truth” not necessarily FACTS. You see, you can go on the Internet and find all kinds of “FACTS” there. But you have to be careful about those facts. Some of those facts can be dishonest, or distorted, or slanted to a particular point of view. It all comes down to what you use as your “filter.”
When you consider the “FACTS” you hear or read, what filter do you use? Do you filter the “facts” with your emotions and with your heart? Or do you use God’s truth??
In John 8:31-32 Jesus proclaimed, “If you abide in My word (use that as your filter), you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” NKJV
If you rely on Jesus’ words, you can filter out the bad stuff.
ILLUS: Just as an example: everybody depends upon water to survive. But not all water is the same. Some of it tastes bad… and some of it IS bad. So a lot of people use water filters in their homes. And that filter purifies the water they need. In the same way - if you learn to rely on Jesus… and on His WORD (the Bible) you can filter out and purify what this world tries to convince you of, and you won’t be as easily taken in by folks who misrepresent the truth.
Ephesians 4:17-21 says “you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But that is not the way you learned Christ! — assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, AS THE TRUTH IS IN JESUS.”
CLOSE: The point is: Jesus and His Word change people. When we abide in HIS WORD, we’ll know the truth… and the truth will set us free.
I want to close with a news report by a war correspondent named Clarence W. Hall) during WWII. It was early in 1945 and this war correspondent on Okinawa – along with a contingent of soldiers, came upon Shimabuku, It was the strangest and most inspiring community he ever saw. It was a remote village of some 1000 souls in the path of the American advance, and the village had been hit with several artillery rounds.
But when an advance patrol swept into the village compound, the GI’s stopped dead in their tracks. Barring their way were two little old men who bowed low and began to speak. The sergeant, afraid it might be a trick, summoned an interpreter. The interpreter listened to the old men… and then shook his head. “I don’t get it. Seems we’re being welcomed as ‘fellow Christians’. One says he’s the mayor of the village, the other’s the schoolmaster. That’s a Bible the older one has in his hand...”
Guided by the two old men, they cautiously toured the compound. They’d seen other Okinawan villages, uniformly down-at-the-heels and despairing, but by contrast, this one shone like a diamond in a dung heap. Everywhere they went, they were greeted by smiles and dignified bows. The two old men proudly showed them their spotless homes, their fertile and neat terraced fields, their storehouses and granaries, and their prized sugar mill.
After the old men talked some more the interpreter said, “They’ve only met one American before, long ago. Because he was a Christian they assume we are, too – tho’ they can’t quite understand why we came in shooting.”
Thirty years before, an American missionary to Japan had stopped at Shimabuku. He’d stayed only long enough to make a pair of converts (these same 2 men), teach them a couple of hymns, leave them a Japanese translation of Bible and exhort them to live by it. They’d had no contact with any Christian since.
Yet during those 30 years, guided by the Bible, they had managed to create a Christian democracy at its purest. They’d adopted the Ten Commandments as their legal code; the Sermon on the Mount as their guide to social conduct. In their school the Bible was the chief literature; it was read daily by all students, and major passages were memorized.
Nurtured on this Book, a whole generation of these people had drawn from it their ideas of human dignity and of the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. The result was plain to see. For years Shimabuku had had no jail, no brothel, no drunkenness, no divorce; AND there was a high level of health and happiness.
The reporter and his driver attended a worship service, and after it was over the driver whispered to him: “So this is what comes out of only a Bible and a couple of old guys who wanted to live like Jesus!’ Then, he glanced at a nearby shell-hole, he murmured, “Maybe we’re using the wrong kind of weapons.” (Clarence W. Hall, “Together” Magazine, October 1960)
Those old men bought into God's truth and changed the life of that village.
This morning the question is: have you bought God's truth? Have you allowed His truth to change your life?
The way you begin is believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
You need to accept that you've sinned and fall short of God's glory and you need to change - you need to repent.
You need to confess that Jesus will now be your Lord and Master and you give Him permission to run your life
And you need to allow yourself to be buried in the waters of Christian baptism and rise a new creation in Christ.
INVITATION
Footnote: I was a little shocked to find that the quote about the empty tomb and the story about Okinawa were both from the same author: Clarence W. Hall.
