Allen Jackson - Let's Choose Truth - Part 1
I wanna start a new study with you. This session we're gonna talk about "Let's Choose Truth". I know you know enough English on this one. "Let's" is just a contraction, two words: let us. It's an interesting study. We're gonna do a bit of it together. I don't know how much we will do, but some things the Bible instructs us to do corporately, collectively. And one of the instructions we're given is that to let us choose truth. We've learned a little bit. We've learned that "let us pray". We've done "let's pray" and "let's read" and "let's talk," and we're gonna add some things to our portfolio.
But I wanna start this little journey with this notion of the significance, the importance, biblically of choosing the truth, holding the truth in high esteem, valuing it. Recognize how important it is to be in a place where the truth is told. We'll start with Proverbs 23, says, "Buy the truth and do not sell it; get wisdom, discipline and understanding". Pretty straightforward verse, "Buy the truth. Don't sell it". The simplest observation is that there is a cost to the truth. You know that intuitively if you haven't really even thought about it consciously. There are times, the truth in your life, if you are a person of truth or you stand with the truth, will come with a cost.
The biblical counsel we're given is buy the truth. Pay the price. Buy the truth. We've become a nation of deception. Oh, we have fancy words. We call it spin or marketing or PR. And I didn't say all marketing is a lie or all PR is deceptive. We call it speaking evangelistically. Unfortunately, we even have religious words that have become code for lying. We have lost trust and faith in so many places that once upon a time we imagined to be trustworthy. And it's because we've recognized that they are no longer arbiters of the truth. We've chosen the convenient, what gets us to the objective most quickly, what enables us to get our way, what we think will give us an advantage.
So in all of those arenas, we will sacrifice the truth. We call it a competitive advantage. Everybody does it. No, everybody doesn't. And if even if everybody is doing it, you'd be better not to participate so that Almighty God might bring his best to you. Buy the truth, and don't sell it. Secure the truth. Don't release it. And then we're given the outcome. Hebrew poetry is often written in couplets, two ideas put together, and to get the full meaning, you need both halves. The beginning of this is "Buy the truth and don't sell it," and then it says, "Get wisdom, discipline, and understanding".
Derived from the truth, derived from that decision, you will begin to accumulate wisdom, discipline, and understanding. Wisdom is the best use of knowledge. You can know a lot of things but not have the wisdom to do the right thing with it. We've all known some of those people. Discipline is the essential component of being a disciple. You cannot be Jesus's disciple without discipline, you cannot. It's impossible. Linguistically, it shows us that. And discipline, by definition, means that we will engage repeatedly, consistently, as a matter of habit, in things that may not be pleasant, things that will require perseverance, endurance, could be sacrificial. Discipline at almost any level will put you in a minority position. Discipline is not fashionable these days.
And then we're told that if we buy the truth, it'll bring understanding. Understanding is insight. It's revelation. It's not just information. It's beyond that. It's an awareness of outcomes, consequences, benefits, a person who understanding. Understanding can come many ways, but one of the ways it comes to us is God gives it to us. He grants us understanding. Imagine the Creator of heaven and Earth giving to you or to me understanding. That's the point of the Book of Proverbs. Let's go back to that first phrase: "Buy the truth, and don't sell it". Question. Important question. What resources are you currently investing in buying the truth? Do you give time to it? I mean, valuable time, not left over time, irrelevant time, time you were gonna waste anyway.
What resources are you currently investing in securing the truth for yourself and your family? It's very important. I brought you a passage from Matthew. It's two very short parables that Jesus gave us that speaks to this point. He said, "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy, he went and sold all that he had and he bought the field". He found something so valuable that he would liquidate so he could secure what this thing was that he had found. Same idea. A little different story. "Again," this is Jesus, "the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. And when he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and he bought it".
It's this principle that there are some things of such significance, such great value, that anything we might accumulate in time pales in significance to what those things are. Jesus described it as the Kingdom of God. He said, "There isn't anything on this planet that we could currently secure that would be of more value to us than the principles of the Kingdom of God". In Proverbs it said it just a little more directly, a little more plainly: "Buy the truth. Don't sell it".
So I'm gonna suggest to you, I mean, we've been working together for a few weeks to put together some principles, some ideas, and some practices that will bring spiritual momentum to us in this year, a year that I believe is going to be earmarked by disruption and some attempts to create confusion. And I believe it will require of the church some wisdom, and we'll have to understand our source of truth. So we've been trying to put some ideas and principles and patterns in place to strengthen us so that we could lead a triumphant life this year. And I believe this one is essential. Let's choose the truth. Let's decide, even if it's uncomfortable.
See this notion that the truth is always fun or encouraging or hopeful. Baloney! I was in school long enough. Not every truthful response I got to a project or a test or a paper was encouraging. I thought for awhile I was keeping the supply of red ink underwritten with my own personal academic career. If you're old enough to have been to the doctor for something more than an athletic physical for high school, you probably received some news that wasn't encouraging. It may have been nothing more than "you're too fluffy". Actually, I'm the perfect weight. I'm just a little short. If I was about 7'4", that'd be ideal. The truth is valuable. It enables you to make the necessary course adjustments to get the better outcomes. Let's choose God's truth.
I asked you to begin to watch and listen. Remember that? To think. That we were living in a time of confusion and a lot of deception and many things and the encouragement was to watch, to listen, to think, and to act, to not just be a spectator. Well, I think that's a helpful tool for the season that we have entered into. I was reflecting on that a little bit. I was looking back through some notes. It was 2020. I have several places where we began as a community of faith to pray that the truth would be made evident. It was about this time four years ago, a couple of weeks from now, and we got plunged into a global crisis. And there was so much which was hidden, or unknown, from us as that began to unfold.
We were left to make decisions with just a bare minimum of information and insight. We were being told what to do, but the background for it was not obvious and free speech was under assault, and if you didn't agree with the public line, there were very few ways to communicate those things. Well, you know, to my frustration, we prayed for truth, and the answers did not arrive the day we prayed. Don't you hate that? Have you ever asked God to do something? And I meant like now. I wasn't praying for tomorrow. Well, when we prayed that God would let us know the truth, I believe he's answered those prayers, but he didn't do it the day we prayed. But in the intervening months, God has brought so much to the light that was hidden.
And I think it's worth just a moment's reflection. I believe it will give us hope for what is ahead of us, not that the truth we see is always a great victory, but when you don't know the truth, you are victim to what's happening in the darkness. The value of the light is to help you see what's happening in the darkness, and we've been called to be light. So that's the reason our choosing the truth is so important. I mentioned COVID. We could start there. It was about four years ago now.
You know, we weren't, you couldn't really say in public anything about Wuhan. If I said "Wuhan" online and if you mentioned a lab in Wuhan, yeah, you were a xenophobic, bad human being. Then we started to hear about following the science, and I'm a complete advocate for that. I want to be on the record. I'm an advocate for science, but not all science. Not everything that goes under the label "science" is good, like not everything that goes under the guise of "faith" is good. And we were introduced to some junk science. It wasn't a abundantly clear at the time. We knew we were facing a great threat. We were told that by every possible outlet that was available, but even Dr. Fauci has recently acknowledged that that "6 foot thing" about social distancing that really wasn't grounded in science.
Just an idea. We know at this point that bandanas and a flimsy paper mask will not protect you from a virus. Who knew? I thought I was playing Roy Rogers again. It worked for me. We understood that quarantining healthy people is not a great idea. Sending our children home from school does not really facilitate their learning. We learned that pharmaceutical companies were making enormous profits from a global pandemic, and that they were refusing to give any significant consideration to available medicines. It would have diminished their profit but could have possibly helped people. But it wasn't just COVID where we've had a great deal of truth revealed.
I believe since 2020, the moral decay and depravity around us has become far more clear to us. The determination to redefine institutions that have shaped our culture and our civilization, things like marriage, there is a determined effort underway to confuse things as fundamental as our biological sex. Even more troubling is the targets that we have seen that have been placed on our children. It wasn't nearly as apparent in 2020. Today it's far more clear. I'm certain that all the truth is not yet into the public arena, but it's much more clear than it was. Pedophilia, the abuse of children, the trafficking of children, the sexualization of children, that is very much a part of the culture in which we live.
The Jeffrey Epstein drama seems to continue in our media. But I assure you, as uncomfortable as it is, it's just the tip of the iceberg. The awkward reality is we're in the midst of a culture which indulges in the sexual abuse of our children. For anyone willing to look, it's blatantly clear that the most powerful, wealthy, and often influential among us have been preying on our children. And if that isn't uncomfortable enough, the larger truth is that neither the justice system nor the media was willing to address the behavior. Beyond that, transgender surgeries on minors, hormone therapies, other life-altering procedures being performed on our children for profit. It was happening before 2020.
I, for one, didn't know it. I was woefully unaware. We've been watching locally, but it's not just locally. The struggle with libraries in our schools, in our cities, providing pornography to young children in our public schools. The determined effort to sexualize young children. And the discussion is so inappropriately framed. Someone said to me, "I'm not an advocate for banning books". Baloney! Keeping pornographic books away from 7-, 8-, and 9-year-olds is not about banning books. It's about acknowledging appropriate and inappropriate material. We've got to be a little bit more aware. Then we've seen a lot of truth about the fragile condition of the church across our nation and beyond. It's been uncomfortable. It's been difficult, but the only way to get to a healthier place is to recognize our current condition.
We've been reluctant to embrace biblical authority. We have waning influence, a culture that for generation upon generation upon generation has been held together, in spite of being a nation of immigrants coming from the countries of the world. What bound us together was a commonality of our faith and our worldview. That influence has been significantly diminished to the point that the church, to a frightening extent, is unwilling to speak regarding biblical morality. It's almost as if we've locked arms and trying to avoid our responsibility to be salt and light. We have to change. Then we have witnessed since 2020, or at least to me, it's come into the light, it's been made clear in the unprecedented and politicalization of our military, our law enforcement, and our justice system.
We've seen the intentional betrayal of our citizens and our national sovereignty. They've opened our borders without apology. They look in the camera, the people responsible, and say, "Our borders are secure". We've been witnesses to globalist agendas that are prioritized over the needs of our citizens. You don't have to be particularly sophisticated on an international level to get this. We're spending hundreds of billions of dollars to secure the borders of Ukraine, and we won't secure our own. We're watching competitive advantages be given to factions within China while we put our own citizens at disadvantage. The list goes on and on. It's uncomfortable. It's not always necessarily something to be celebrated, but it is a celebration that what was being hidden in the darkness has been brought to the light.
We can address it. We can respond to it. We can begin to pray about it. We can say we don't intend for it to continue on our watch. And as difficult as it may be, we will respond. Only God could have brought it to the light. I never thought I would thank God for a pandemic, but it seems that in the midst of all the threat that that brought and the suffering that it brought, God began to move in a new way. I've never seen on a consistent basis so many people hungry for the things of God as we see today. It's time for God's people to "buy the truth and not sell it".
Let's be candid for just a moment. We have sold the truth for other opportunities. We have. And now we'll have to find the courage to buy the truth. And I think the ultimate motivation is to do so for the generations who are following. Let's talk a minute about the courage it will take to serve the Lord because it will take courage. You see, we've had this shallow gospel presented to us that the great display of courage in your faith is when you'd walk the aisle of a church and say, "I need Jesus". And that takes a modicum of courage. I won't deny that. But to imagine that's the greatest expression of courage that will ever be attached to your faith is grossly misleading.
That's our entry point. And when you're standing on the outside of something, that first step is always more difficult. This is your first visit to church. That's a scary place. We're glad you're here. I hope we're not as scary as you heard, but the service is young so we'll try to live up to our reputation. And I understand that those first steps towards the Lord can be frightening because there's a battle that takes place within all of us. And we're concerned about what might be required of us or what we might have to forfeit or what limits it will bring. But growing up in the Lord takes courage. Serving the Lord takes courage.
I brought you a rather well-known passage. I thought it was easier to illustrate the principle with something that was familiar. It's the commissioning of Isaiah, one of the greatest of the Hebrew prophets. And he gives us the historical context. It's Isaiah 6, he said, "In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on the throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple". The Book of Revelation. It's not the only place in the Bible where we get scenes of the throne room of God. Isaiah said, "I saw the Lord". Can you imagine?
"And above him were seraphs, and each with six wings; two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two, they were flying. And they were calling to one another: 'Holy, holy holy is the Lord God Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.' And at the sound of their voices the doorposts and the threshold shook and the temple was filled with smoke," and Isaiah understandably is intimidated. He said, "I cried, 'Woe to me! I am ruined! I'm a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.'" That's worse than your first visit to church.
Isaiah says, "What am I doing here? What am I doing here"? "And then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he'd taken with tongs from the altar. And with it, he touched my mouth and said, 'See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.' And then I heard a voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?' And I said, 'Here I am. Send me!'" Wow! We read that like it's normal. Suppose this is your first visit to our church and I said, "Listen, we need somebody to work in the nursery". How many of you think if it's your first visit, you'd jump up and say, "Here I am"!
Not a chance. You'd be sitting there going, "Oh, I'm glad I'm a visitor. Go in there with all those ankle biters, not a chance! Let somebody else go. I raised mine. Let somebody..." I mean, we read that like it makes perfect sense, like there's a logic flow in there, but there's something being expressed from Isaiah and it's given to us, I believe, to help us imagine. You see that with an appropriate revelation of God, remember what we talked about that? That if we'll buy the truth, it'll bring understanding to us. All of a sudden, Isaiah has understanding he had not had previously. And his response was: "Absolutely. Here I am".
Folks, we need truth that will bring understanding that will result in activity. We've had our Bible studies. We've had our covered dish dinners. We've had our fellowship meetings. And I'm not opposed to any of the above. But I'm telling you, there's an activity that is going to be needed from the church in order for us to see the name of Jesus exalted and our schools changed and the truth be celebrated again in the public square. The pattern we have had has not been adequate. Can we have the courage to tell that truth?
I wanna pray with you before we go. Almost everybody I talk to these days is battling discouragement in one way or another. We're tired of the pandemic. We're tired of politics. We're tired of the economy. We're tired of something. Well, I'm gonna pray that God will give you an awareness of the good news around you. I don't want to forget his deliverances, those times and places where the faithfulness of God has changed the outcome of my life and yours. He's real and he's helping us. We can't afford to lose sight of that.
Heavenly Father, I pray that you will give us an awareness of your abiding presence that's more real than any threat we see. Remind us of those places where you have brought deliverance or hope or health or strength that you are faithful in walking us through every season. I thank you for it. In Jesus's name. Amen.