How to Know the Truth
John 8:31-32
In the world that we live in today it is almost impossible to know what is true and what is false. With the desire of the media to be the first to report and make the most money from advertisements there are not any that are truly credible today. And with computer generated images and the technological advancements of the day it is nearly impossible for the average man to tell what is truth.
But in our text for this sermon we see that Jesus Christ gave us some help for this matter. Note the more time we spend with the word of God and doing the word of God the more we will be able to recognize what is true.
How to know the Truth:
1) We must have the truth (Psalm 33:4 ; 119:160 ; Revelations 21:5)
- The word of God is true and all of God’s judgments are righteous.
- We will not always like the truth that is found in the word of God or maybe we will not understand why God does things the way he does them but we can still know they are true and know that he is righteous.
2) We must have the right attitude toward the truth (John 19:38)
- Here we see that Pilate asked Jesus, what is truth? But he is questioning what Jesus said as if one cannot know what is true and then does not wait around for the answer.
- Our attitude must not be like this but we must approach God’s word as the truth and that we can find truth in his word.
3) We must search for it harder than we search for riches (Proverbs 2:1-13)
- This is a challenging passage for it shows us that if we truly desire the knowledge and wisdom from God and in his word we are going to have to put more effort into reading and studying God’s word than anything else.
- When we find ourselves struggling for truth we should ask ourselves do we word as hard as learning God’s word as we do at making money?
4) We must buy the truth and sell it not (Proverbs 23:23)
- Have you ever heard someone say, “I don’t buy that”. It means they do not believe something.
- Once we find truth in God’s word we must buy into it and never sell out on it.
- Paul bragged on the Thessalonians because they received the word as the word of God and not the word of man (1 Thessalonians 2:13)
5) We must judge everything by the word of God (John 17:17)
- The word sanctify means set apart. The word of God will set apart truth from lies.
- What we must do with anything in life is to judge it by the word of God (Example: mark of the beast, ssn, bar codes, microchips etc.)
6) Abide in the truth (John 8:31-32)
- We must believe and do God’s word for it to really have effect in us as God intended it to have.
- Think about a bank teller, it is easy for them to spot a counterfeit bill because they handle genuine bills every day.
- The more familiar we with the word of truth, the easier it will be for us to spot a lie.