Discerning Truth in a Post-Truth World (Part 1)

I'll make it so that he would have to completely change everything around in order to do anything with it. Well, brethren, if you kept track of the news this week, many of you might have noticed we're in the midst of an impeachment trial. I say that's somewhat in jest. It seems like that's just about everything. Anything that's on the news this week, I popped on to CNN periodically throughout the week, and it's kind of a quick check to see where we're at.

Yep, still going. Yep, still going. And it will continue for a while. I am going to talk just a little bit about that today, because I mentioned before, I do try to generally avoid politics. I do. In fact, what Mr. Lippincott was talking about today, when we come to services, it's nice to have that peace and that break from that sort of thing. But at times where politics and the truth collide, and where politics and God collide, it's worth, at times, bringing those up in those moments of relevance.

So we are in the midst of an impeachment trial of the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. He's been accused at this point in time of abuse of power, and obstruction of Congress as a result of a phone call that was made to the President of Ukraine, and accusations that he withheld aid in order to wield political influence. The Senate trial, so we've reached this point, it's been building for what feels like months. I mean, and I guess it kind of has been months. I guess it's been going since July, as things have been beginning to build and beginning to build.

The House went through and did their aspect of things, and now we are at the point where the trial itself is unfolding in the Senate. Now the rules that were set forth was that both sides would be given 24 hours over a three-day period to make their case, either for or against. The prosecution, in this case a series of seven impeachment managers selected by the House of Representatives, as a result of their prior legal and law enforcement experience, people that had some familiarity, at least, with law and a courtroom, were chosen to be the ones to go in and serve as prosecutors.

And that's if you've been paying attention over the last little bit or have noticed, those are the individuals, the same seven people that you see continuing to get up to make their case in various ways. Those are the impeachment managers from the House. And so they've spent the past three days building their case against the President. Mr. Trump's lawyers picked up this morning and began their beginning of their defense of the President. Now most political analysts that you read and look at have mostly all agreed that the trial is really nothing more than a show.

And the reason for that is because there's 53 Republican votes available in the Senate, and they only need 51. And so what has been said by most political analysts is that it's really nothing more than a show, and that Mr. Trump's removal from office is not likely. In fact, it is expected that the Senate will acquit him on all charges. Now as individuals who believe in the truth, as individuals who believe in Scripture and who believe in the immutability of God's nature, and that truth is one of the aspects of God's nature, frankly, a vote that could run down party lines should be concerning to us.

That a vote could run down party lines regardless of the facts or the evidence that's presented should be a concern. Now, is there a good chance that we're going to see actual, real evidence that's been compiled that is completely objective? So far it doesn't appear that that has been the case. And so we have situations on both sides here, which is illustrating the point that I'm trying to make today. Mr. Adam Schiff, who's the congressional representative from California that has led this impeachment process since the beginning, made his closing remarks on the second day of deliberations in an emotional speech Thursday night.

In his closing remarks to that speech, he made the following statement, and I quote. He said, well, let me tell you something. If right doesn't matter, if right doesn't matter, it doesn't matter how good the Constitution is. It doesn't matter how brilliant the framers were.

It doesn't matter how good or bad our advocacy in this trial is. It doesn't matter how well-written the oath of impartiality is. If right doesn't matter, we're lost. If truth doesn't matter, we're lost. The framers couldn't protect us from ourselves if right and truth don't matter. His comments electrified his base. He received a great deal of support and a lot of airtime as a result of that speech from the various commentators on the number of networks. The hashtag, "#rightmatters," began trending after his remarks, with many grabbing a hold of that concept and running with it on various social media platforms.

I'll be perfectly frank. I appreciated Mr. Schiff's comments. And I wholeheartedly agree with the crux of his point. Now, the crux of his point. Right matters. Truth matters. And therein lies the problem. Because we are living in what is now known as the post-truth era. I don't know if you knew that or not, but since 2016, we are officially in what is being described as the post-truth era. And this concept, post-truth, actually began in 2016 and kind of took center stage, but it's been around for hundreds of years prior to that.

It's been kind of a concept of philosophy as to whether facts are truly facts or whether they're simply interpretation of facts. And that's been bantied around for a whole lot of years. But we've reached a point now in 2016 where Oxford Dictionary chose post-truth as the Oxford Dictionary Word of the Year.

Was it really? There were some real contenders in 2016, but anyway, Oxford chose that. Basically post-truth is defined as relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. That's the textbook definition of post-truth. In other words, what that means is that people today are less likely to believe facts than they are to believe their own feelings, their own emotions, and their own personal belief.

And I think if we're being honest, we look in the world around us, I think we can say, yeah, that's kind of the way we see society around us today. According to Sean Elling, though, it's a little bit different. And I found his definition fascinating because I think this is what really gets at the core of the issue here.

Sean Elling, who's a professor of politics and philosophy at LSU, he also writes for Vox online, he said, post-truth has come about as a result of, and I quote, a disappearance of shared objective standards for truth, that the post-truth era has come about because of a disappearance of shared objective standards for truth. In other words, the gap between people's beliefs and values and morals, their worldview, has been increasing and increasing and increasing and increasing, and now suddenly you've got people over here and people over here that cannot understand how each other see the world.

That that gap has widened so much because what they used to hold as a shared objective standard for truth is no longer held. When this nation rejected God and God's law, because before we had Democrats, we had Republicans we had everybody that agreed that was how the world works. And we are now in an era where that is not the case.

We can pinpoint where that happened. Sorry anybody born in the 1960s, but it was the 1960s that really kind of started pushing that. Now the seeds of that began before, but it was the 1960s when that exponential jump occurred. When everybody started throwing out everything from before and saying, I don't think we believe this anymore. In fact, we believe the exact opposite of this now. And we're going to go forth and we're going to go forward in this particular way.

So we have entered what is referred to as the post-truth era. We have entered a time in human history where falsehood is passed off as fact. We've entered a time in history where hearsay and conjecture have become admissible in the court of law as evidence. We live in a time where fact checkers are necessary, but we question whether we can trust the fact checkers. Right? Kind of the era in which we live. We live in a time of AI-generated articles.

I don't know if you've seen this or not, but you can take with certain systems of AI, enter a beginning sentence and a concept, and then hit go, and the AI will fill in the rest. And it's seamless. You can't hardly tell sometimes that it's been written by artificial intelligence. In addition to that, we live in an era of fake news.

We live in an era of deep fakes. For those not familiar with deep fakes, it's when somebody edits and alters a video or an audio to make someone look as though or sound as though they said something they didn't say. I saw one. There's one online of an interview at a, it's like a late-night talk show or something, and the guy's talking to the interviewee, and he morphs into three different celebrities over a period of about three minutes.

And it's nearly seamless. I mean, you can still tell it's fake, but it's nearly seamless.

If you didn't know, if you didn't realize that what you were looking at was fake, you could have believed that it was Tom Cruise sitting in that chair and still a bill, instead of Bill Hader. Which is insane to consider. I mean, we're at a time where technology has reached a point where we can't even necessarily always trust what we see or what we hear with our own eyes. It's been said for some time that journalism is the last bastion of truth, but again, in a fake news era, even that's become suspect, as many of the major news networks and newspapers really wear their bias on their sleeve. I mean, they're not even trying to hide it anymore in many cases. In fact, some it's a badge of honor, it seems. We also entered a time in history where in the race to get the scoop, in order to be the first one to put that story out, stories are run without all the facts. Some of you saw the night of the Iran rocket attack.

Initial reports came back, multiple Iraqis dead. A little bit later, no Iraqis dead. A little bit later, no one injured. A little bit later, some people were injured. No, they really weren't. Yes, they really were. And now that's where we are right now, by the way. If you've been following that story, they were injured. No, they weren't. Yes, they were. No, they weren't. And that's where we're at right now. But the story ran with multiple Iraqi fatalities, which wasn't true.

At least as far as we know at this point. The end result of what this does in society is it creates rampant skepticism and distrust. It puts us in a place where we have a tendency not to trust anyone but ourselves and our own interpretation of what we see. In other words, our own worldview, because who knows who or what you can trust. What this has led to is a rise in what has been called in culture your personal truth. You may be familiar with that concept, your personal truth. Or people are encouraged to live their truth. Not somebody else's truth, but live their truth. To search for their own inner truth. And then once they find it, to embrace their truth. In today's post-truth society, truth is subjective. We have entered a time in which truth is defined by each and every person who is defining it for themselves. Even Mr. Schiff's comments during his closing remarks on Thursday evening when he said, if right doesn't matter, we're lost. If the truth doesn't matter, we're lost. That is an absolutely true statement. If that doesn't matter anymore, we're in trouble. He's right in that regard, but the problem is that statement is inherently subjective.

Who's defining what's right? Who's defining what's true? By way of example, this past Wednesday was the anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion in the United States.

January 22, 1973 was the date of that, and this last Wednesday on the anniversary of that, Mr. Trump declared that date National Sanctity of Human Life Day. We'll see how long it lasts as to whether that gets changed at some point in time, but Friday we had a march for life that took place in Washington, D.C. just yesterday. Representative Nancy Pelosi, who is a Democratic representative from California, made the following statement about recent state-by-state efforts to ban abortion at an NARAL 50th anniversary dinner. It's a pro-abortion activist group.

She said the following. She said these bans, speaking of the states taking action to prevent the law as it's written, said these bans violate the Constitution. They ignore basic morality. She went on to say, but we all know the truth to this room of individuals. We all know the truth that every woman, everywhere, has the constitutional and moral right to basic reproductive care.

Now, what she should have said in there, I mean, yes, basic reproductive care, she is talking about other things than just abortion, but abortion is included in that process because she's standing in a group of abortion activists. Basic morality. We know the truth. That which is considered right and true by many on the Democratic side is considered to be an abomination to many on the Republican side, and likewise, that which is considered to be right and true on the Republican side is considered to be an abomination by those on the Democrat side. And I think as we take a look at things and if we really analyze it, much of what is believed to be right and true on both the Democrat and Republican side is an abomination to God. And so, in the absence of a shared objective standard of right and truth, man has no option but to define it for themselves.

But in reality, as we'll see today, and as we go through the remainder of this message, there really is only one opinion that actually matters. The title of the message today is Discerning Truth in a Post-Truth World. Would you turn over with me, please, to the book of judges?

The book of judges. Judges is a fascinating read. It really is. It is a fascinating read. It's a heartbreaking read. It really is. It's a heartbreaking read in addition to being very fascinating. The book of judges takes place at a time in which Israel is in transition.

Many of the elders of Israel had died in the wilderness, as we know from the end of the Exodus story. Aaron dies atop Mount Orr. Moses dies atop Mount Nebo after giving an opportunity or getting an opportunity, I should say, to view the Promised Land. The mantle of leadership at that point passed to Joshua, who had been kind of mentoring under Moses for a time, and Joshua led those of Israel, who remained into the Promised Land. Now God, and as we know from reading the book of Joshua, God worked incredible, mighty, mighty, mighty works through Joshua and the children of Israel, especially as they came into the Promised Land. You know, as they were listening and obeying God, God worked some incredible miracles. You know, the walls of Jericho fell outward, right? That doesn't just happen. That's not... you can't chalk that up to an accident, right? That's purposeful and done in a way for God to show, hey, I'm fighting your battles for you.

And so for a good portion of the book of Joshua, that was the message.

Joshua was a strong leader. If you look at Judges 2 verse 7 and verse 10, it kind of gives us an idea of just how strong. Judges 2 and verse 7 says, so the people served the Lord all the days of Joshua and all the days of the elders who outlived Joshua, who had seen all the great works of the Lord, which he had done for Israel. So during the time that Joshua was alive, during the time that he led Israel, certainly with God's blessing and God's, you know, providence, the people served the Lord. They served God while Joshua stood in that role as a leader for Israel. But not only that, and I think this is the big, like, kind of... I don't know... uh... the word's escaping me. The, uh, the... ah! Hate it when words just go, weee! Anyway, it's one of those things... it's a situation where this is a method by which we can judge Joshua's effectiveness as a leader. Because not only that, during the time of the elders who outlived him, Israel obeyed. Now, they had seen the works, they had seen the wonders, they had seen those things, but they also had opportunity to see God work through Joshua. And so they believed, and they served. Now something happened, something bobbled in the transition of leadership from those elders to the next generation, because we see in Judges 2 and verse 10, when all that generation had been gathered to their father, speaking of those elders that had served alongside Joshua, another generation arose after them who did not know the Lord nor the work which he had done for Israel.

So we have a group of individuals that didn't have a strong relationship with God, that didn't have knowledge necessarily of the works that he had done for them. And as a result, we see a decline in the people of Israel throughout the period of the Judges, and it's a cyclical decline. In fact, you take a look at that general cycle of the period of the Judges. It was a time of great chaos.

It was a time of great chaos in Israel and in the Promised Land at that time. The people would disobey, they would rebel against God, they'd be punished for their actions, you know, often at the hand of their neighbors who would come in and oppress them. God would raise up a judge to then turn around and deliver them from their affliction. They would obey for a time until they got comfortable again, until they got, you know, kind of maybe a little bit full of themselves from a standpoint of this oppression isn't really a big thing anymore. We're good. The judge would die, and then they would cycle right back into rebellion against God. And this cycle just churned and churned and churned for 450 years. Scripture mentions 12 to 13 or so specifically named judges. Other passages named some others that may have been involved in some way. It's kind of hard to classify it perfectly, but the book of Judges culminates. So as you read this story and you see this cycle of up and down, and you see Israel rebel and then turn back to God and then rebel and turn back to God, the book of Judges culminates in an absolutely horrific story in Judges 19, 20, and 21. Now we're not going to read that today. You can read it on your own. But it was a sin of magnitude that it nearly resulted in the extinction, nearly resulted in the extinction of the tribe of Benjamin. Both from the the level of the transgression and the magnitude of the transgression, but also as to Israel's response. So we have a situation here where that particular story, when you start to end the book of Judges, when you get to that final statement in Judges 21, 25, if you go ahead and turn over there now, that statement answers the mental question that you have when reading the book of Judges. You see that cyclical up and down, constant back and forth, and then you get down to the very last three chapters.

And the question that you ask in your head is, how, how could something like this happen?

How could something like this happen? How could they go from what we saw with Joshua to this? And 21, 25 answers the question. It says very specifically, in those days, there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes. The children of Israel, we might say, defined their own personal truth.

There was a loss of a clearly defined, universally accepted objective standard of truth, and instead, every man defined it for himself. When there is no objective standard, when there's no agreed-upon set of laws to govern oneself in a nation by, it leaves it up to personal definition.

God is very clear of the danger of this in the book of Proverbs. If you turn over to Proverbs 14, Proverbs 14 and verse 12, Proverbs 14 and verse 12 says, there is a way that seems right to a man. There is a way that seems right to a man. In other words, our initial thought process, our proclivities, you know, our, well, you know, this is the way that it should work, seems right to a man, but its end, the scripture goes on to say, is the way of death. Its end is the way of death. In other words, we as humans think that we know what's right. We think that we understand the way that we should govern ourselves, and we believe that we, say we personally, we believe that we are just and right and true as humans. That's our general belief. The problem with this line of thought is that as humans, we are not inherently objective. We're not inherently objective. We tend to side with our own opinion. We tend to side with our own desires. We tend to side with our own wants, and we tend to justify our position to turn around and fit those things. We tend to operate in such a way that we believe what we want to believe.

By way of example, if there's nothing governing my behavior, there is no objective standard of law that is governing my behavior, and I want something that is yours. What's to stop me from taking it?

Just you. But I can justify taking that because there's no objective standard to compare to.

It's something that I desire. It's something that I want. You have it. I want it. Right?

So when we take a look at this concept, God is clear. That way is the way of death. That way is the way of death. Let's go over to Genesis 6. Genesis 6. Just kind of build this concept. I'm just going to let you know up front, this is a two-parter. I got most of the way through it and realized there was no way I was going to be able to finish it in the time that I wanted to be able to finish it in. And so this one is going to kind of define the problem. Get into just a smidge of the application and then the next one we'll explore a couple of other concepts that are wrapped into this concept itself. Genesis 6. We know God created the earth on the eve of the first Sabbath. God looked back on all that he had made, and indeed it was very good. He said, what he had made was good. Earth was fantastic. You know, the heavens were fantastic. You know, God created this incredibly good thing. Now, things went downhill from there, right? I mean, you take a look at the rest of the story. Things went downhill from there. We see the temptation of Adam and Eve. See their subsequent removal from the garden. We see the murder of Abel. Continuing rebellion of people until we reach a point in Genesis 6 where God says, enough is enough.

Genesis 6. God says, enough is enough. Let's pick it up in verse 5, and I want you to see the words that are recorded here. I want you to see the words that are recorded here. Genesis 6 and verse 5, Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. And so the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air. For I am sorry that I have made them. But Noah, as we know the remainder of the story, found grace in the eyes of God or in the eyes of the Lord. When you dig into the numbers on this, when you go back and start running the genealogies back, it's about 1,600 years from creation to this point, about 1,600 years of human history to reach the point where God's ready to pull the plug.

Enough's enough. Now that doesn't tell the whole story, because 1,600 years, I don't know, to me, still feels really long, you know, clearly, right? 1,600 years is a long time. That's only 10 generations, though. These guys lived a really long time. It's only 10 generations of individuals before God was ready to pull the plug. Now again, we know the rest of the story. We understand that, you know, that there was a plan and there was a process here, but that's it. 1,600 years, 10 generations for man to reach the point where every intent of the thoughts of his heart were only evil continually. You know, Jeremiah wrote about this. You want to flip over to Jeremiah? Jeremiah recognized man's proclivity to error. Jeremiah was given a burden of prophecy from God that must have just been very difficult to carry. I don't know if you've really considered the human side of Jeremiah. You know, Jeremiah, this is his people. This is his nation. This is, you know, he's seeing all the idolatry and he's seeing all the other things that are coming up. He's seeing the corruption in the people and the corruption in the government and the corruption in the priesthood. He's seeing all this stuff happening and he's powerless to stop it. He's powerless to stop it. And then God tells him what he's going to do to his country, to his countrymen, to his people. It must have been an incredibly difficult, difficult burden, quote-unquote, to bear. It must have been tough. But as he saw Judah descend further and further into idolatry and he watched all of this happen, you know, God told him what he was going to do and Jeremiah recorded the following under inspiration, but he recorded the following. Jeremiah 10 and verse 23. He said, Oh, Lord, I know the way of man is not in himself. It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps.

Now, Jeremiah makes the point that humans, we require direction. We require direction. We require a relationship with our Creator. We are hardwired that way. And in the absence of that relationship, people will fill it with something, right? People will fill it with something, begin to worship the creation instead of the Creator, but they'll worship something in the absence of that relationship with God. But we require God to help us to understand the way to go, to understand which path we're supposed to take in life, which direction we're supposed to go.

It's his spirit that takes our wicked heart, which we just read about in Genesis 6, a heart that's been at the core of human suffering for 6,000-plus years, and begins to change it, begins to incline that heart toward God, begins to soften that hardened heart to the point where people will listen and they'll recognize there's something here, there's something to this whole God thing. And then they begin to listen and they begin to understand.

It's that spirit of God working with us and in us that causes that to occur.

Now, when we harden our heart due to rebellion and sin, or we harden it through inaction or spiritual lethargy, it becomes more and more difficult to see the way that God wants us to go. It becomes more and more difficult for us to understand, more challenging for us to see the path or hear his voice. Instead, yielding to God's spirit and submission and obedience is necessary. Let's go over to 1 Corinthians 2. 1 Corinthians 2. We'll see what the Apostle Paul writes here regarding this concept of God's spirit and how it teaches. You know, the Apostle Paul had an incredible understanding of the illuminating nature of the spirit of God. And I think partly when you consider his life and you consider his calling in the quite miraculous way in which he was called, I think that kind of explains some of that. You know, prior to his calling, the Apostle Paul was, as he stated, a Pharisee of Pharisees. In other words, he thought he had it all figured out, just do these things and I'm good. That's all it's going to take. In fact, when he saw people coming up and becoming, you know, followers of Jesus Christ, he said, that's not the right way to go. Uh-uh. I'm going to persecute him. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to arrest him because that's not the way to go. We know he was present at the stoning of Stephen. There's actually some evidence.

It's speculative, entirely speculative, but there's some evidence that he may have been a part of the Sanhedrin because he was casting his vote and approving of the death of Stephen and as well as, you know, some other aspects in there that have just a little bit there. We don't, we can't prove it for sure, but it's kind of an interesting concept to think about. But for him to have that light switch flipped, for him to reach the point where he has this aha moment, where he realizes that everything I thought I knew, I don't know anything. In fact, he says in another place, he says, everything that I had that I counted worth anything is trash compared to Christ and compared to the knowledge that I was given. Now we know he had an opportunity to be instructed in the time, for a time in the wilderness by Christ. It must have been eye-opening, just absolutely eye-opening, to go from thinking that you had it all figured out to realizing you knew very little in the scheme of it and that there were certain aspects of things, sure, but you just missed the boat and the picture. It's an interesting concept to think about. And many of us, you know, and many of you that were that were called out of the world came out of religious backgrounds, at least had some understanding of certain things in certain ways. You know, this is a quite a 180 in some ways with regards to how the Pharisees believed to the keeping the law was the way that they the way they believed in keeping the law. I would say if anyone is qualified to talk about the difference between a mind that is closed and a mind that has been opened by God's Spirit, it's the Apostle Paul as a result of that magnitude of his calling. 1 Corinthians 2, 12 to 15, he talks about this.

He says, now we have received not the Spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, nor can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.

But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one, for who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him, but we have the mind of Christ.

Discerning the truth in a post-truth world requires God's Spirit in our life.

We can't judge rightly with just the Spirit of man. It requires that upgrade, so to speak, that interface of God's Spirit in our life to help provide us with that discernment. In fact, you take it one step further than that, I'll just reference the passage. You can jot it down if you'd like. John 16 in verse 13 says, and it's again the way the translators write it, it's all male pronouns here, but it's speaking of God's Spirit. Whenever it, the Spirit of truth, I'll just change it, has come, it will guide you into all truth, for it will not speak on its own authority, but whatever it hears, it will speak, and it will tell you the things to come. God's Spirit guides us into truth. It guides us into understanding. It helps us to understand the things around us. It helps us to understand and discern things that we hear and that we see as being true or not. I don't know if you ever noticed this before, but you can be out talking with people out in the world around us sometimes, or even sometimes here at services, and somebody will say something, and you'll have a little thing in the back of your head that goes, that's not right. Nope. I mean, you hopefully do it better than that. Hopefully that's not your immediate response, but you're hopefully a little more tactful than that. But, you know, there are times where you just hear things and you go, nope. It's that Spirit of God that's working with us and working in us that gives us the ability to do that. God's Spirit illuminates the truth in the world around us. It helps us to discern what is true and what is fake, what is patently false from what God commands. Our young people, and young people, if you're listening, I'm talking to you, our young people are facing more difficulties and challenges in this regard than any other generation in human history. From a standpoint of what is true and what is false, we have basically taken what we have understood to be true for centuries and then threw it all up in the air, and now you look around and it's hard to tell sometimes which way is up. And especially for our youth growing up in a world like this, it is a challenge to know what is right and what is true. For thousands of years there were certain objective truths in our society, biological truths in our society, things like marriage and family, you know, continuing the species, things like gender, certain expectations that could be counted on. Yet over the past couple of decades, really the last decade especially, these things have been questioned, they've been redefined, they've been shifted, and it causes confusion, causes a lot of confusion socially. Now we have people that are uncertain of which gender pronoun to use when referencing someone. In fact, you can have legal action taken against you if you accidentally have the wrong one, and the person decides to be litigious. You walk up to somebody who looks to be a biological female, and you make the mistake because that's not their desired pronoun, and you can be in a world of trouble. We have individuals where, or we have situations now where marriage is no longer what God has intended. This has led to other issues like polyamory, which is on a huge increase, which is where individuals marry, or not marry, sorry, live with up to two to three different people, have situations of polygamy. There's a push for all kinds of other marriage scenarios as well, but brethren, God is not the author of confusion. Satan, on the other hand, thrives on it. He is the father of lies, and in a world where it is difficult to determine what is true as a result of all of this rampant deception, in some ways, at that time, Satan's able to hide in plain sight.

And brethren, the crazy part is the playbook hasn't changed. The playbook hasn't changed a bit.

Perfect example here. Adam and Eve knew what was true. They knew what was true. God told it to him. He told him flat out. Mr. Miller went there first thing today. He said, don't eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

Period. End of sentence. That was truth.

But then Satan comes along and goes, but is it? Will you really? And this pattern has just continued throughout time. I'll give you a couple of other examples. Genesis 2, verse 24. You don't have to write these down. You can if you want. A man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and they shall become one flesh. Satan comes in and says, should they?

Should they really? What if—I mean, let's just hypothetically say here—what if they wanted to be joined to another man? What if they wanted to be in an open relationship with two or three other people with no commitments? What if they'd rather not enter into a marriage covenant and instead just fornicate? What do you think? That's what Satan says. Genesis 1, verse 27, says, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Did he? Did he really? What if they don't feel male? What if they don't feel female? What if they don't want to be male or they don't want to be female? Genesis 2, verses 2 through 3, On the seventh day God ended his work, which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it he rested from all his works which God had created and made. But what if something really important's going on on Saturday? What if I feel like resting on Sunday instead, or I feel like worshiping God on Sunday instead? Now, I've chosen the low-hanging fruit as an example here, but this concept runs through every facet of our faith. God said one thing, Satan said the other, who's right, who's true? That's a rhetorical question. Hopefully you all said God. No, I'm sure you did. But our young people are going to face these things if you haven't already. It's coming. You will face these things. You will come across these things. You will have to deal with and understand these things. And I'll tell you, it's crazy, because the arguments that we see for these things and how they're framed, they seem good at first. They seem reasonable when you listen to the argument. After all, who wouldn't want somebody to be happy? Who wouldn't want someone to feel loved? Who wouldn't want someone to be comfortable in their own skin, to find love, or to find a spouse? When you hear those arguments, they sound good at first. 2 Corinthians 11, verse 14 to 15. 2 Corinthians 11, verses 14 to 15.

Young people, if you're listening, turn over here. 2 Corinthians 11, 14 through 15.

At first, these arguments sound right. They sound true. It's hard to argue them at times. When your friends push you a little bit and say, well, what's the big deal? Who are they hurting anyway?

Why does it matter? Why can't they be in love with this person? Or why can't they become this? Or why can't they do that? 2 Corinthians 11, verses 14 to 15. Breaking into the context here, says, And no wonder. For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light.

Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers, his demons, those who are with him, also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.

That which Satan presents, at least at first glance, can seem pretty good. It can seem pretty right. It can even seem reasonable at times. It can even seem true. But you know what's fascinating about this passage? The bigger danger here is Paul's not talking about the world. He's not talking about the world in this passage. He's talking about the church. He's talking about situations in which untruth, falsehood, lies come from within because Satan and his demons can disguise themselves as angels of light, which is why discerning, proving from Scripture that what you hear is so crucial. That is why it is so important. From this pulpit, from any other pulpit that you're in front of, you should be going home and making sure that what you heard was true.

Because the only truth that really matters is God's. And we have to ensure that we can identify falsehood when it comes. We have to. We have to be there. We have to be able to understand that. Now, what complicates this is certain aspects of our faith which lie kind of firmly in a gray area.

There are places where God is absolutely emphatic about certain things. Thou shalt or thou shalt not. Those places in Scripture are fantastic. There is no question. There is no debate. It is no, no, no, no, no. Look at this, right? But in those places where Scripture is silent, or in those places where Scripture is somewhat ambiguous—certainly not ambiguous, but our interpretation can be—principles have to be examined and decisions have to be made. And these areas of our faith, we sometimes refer to them as matters of conscience. They can be a challenge for the individual as well as those who interact with that person. We are not going to open up this subject today. We're going to dig further into that in Part 2. What I'd like to do with the time that we have left today, though, is give you just three quick points as to how we can kind of grow in discernment in order to best navigate this post-truth era in which we live. You know, once God's begun to work with us and open our mind to His truth and provide us with understanding, there are three specific things that we can do to better grow in discernment and understanding. Point number one, ask for it. Ask God for it. King Solomon took the throne of Israel and recognized soon after he took the throne that he was severely outmatched. Let's go to 1 Kings. 1 Kings 3 and verse 7.

I have so many random kid pictures in my Bible everywhere.

It's kind of nice, but it makes it hard to find stuff.

It keeps opening to a picture of a flower or whatever it might be. Or a flower. There's literally a pressed flower in here. 1 Kings 3. We'll go ahead and pick it up there. 1 Kings 3. And we'll pick it up in verse 7.

1 Kings 3 and verse 7 says, Now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king instead of my father David. And he acknowledges, he says, but I am a little child. I don't know how to go out or how to come in. Solomon was a young man when he took the throne. Verse 8, he said, Your servant is in the midst of your people, whom you have chosen, a great people too numerous to be numbered or accounted. And so he recognized the magnitude of what lie before him.

King Solomon could have asked in this prayer for anything. He could have asked for riches. He could have asked for more power. He could have asked for a number of different things. But instead, what does he ask for? Verse 9, Therefore, give to your servant an understanding heart, some translations say discerning heart, to judge your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to judge this great people of yours. Solomon asked for wisdom. He asked for discernment. He asked for the ability to rightly judge right and wrong, truth and falsehood. And God heard Solomon's prayer, and he was pleased. And he granted him that. In fact, it was such that his wisdom was highly regarded as a gift of God. The Queen of Sheba came to visit. Dignitaries from all over came to visit to see this incredibly wise man. God provided him with that wisdom because he asked. And of course, he was also the king of Israel, and he needed it, right? None of us are in that position of being the king of Israel, but you know, all of us can use a little more discernment.

And our God is a wonderful Father. He gives good gifts. And if we ask with the right attitude and the right, you know, approach, he tends to grant us what we ask for. Provided, of course, we ask for it in the right heart. So, brethren, let's pray for discernment. Let's ask for it. Let's ask for additional discernment. For God to really help us and to help us to see and to be able to hear his truth in this world that is increasingly getting harder and harder to tell. The second thing that we can do is we can immerse ourselves in the Word of God so that we know what is true.

We can just immerse ourselves in the Word of God so that we know what's true.

There's only one way for us to understand the Word of God, and that's to put ourselves in it constantly. I know a number of you guys are doing the Bible reading program, a little chronological reading, and so you're getting little blips of it each and every day, but put yourself in there. Immerse yourself in that Word. Scripture is one of the things that convicts us of right and wrong in our lives. You want to turn over to Hebrews. It's Scripture in God's Spirit that convicts us and helps to instruct us and helps us to understand what is right and what is false. Hebrews 4, and we'll pick it up in verse 12.

Hebrews 4 and verse 12.

It says, For the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and of joints and marrow. And notice this, is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart. Verse 13, There is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him, to whom we must give account. You know the Word of God, Scripture that God has provided to us.

This Word helps illuminate our lives. It helps us to understand what we need to be doing. It helps us to motivate us and push us in the right direction. It helps to guide us in the right direction. Sometimes, we read certain translations and they've got the these and the vows. It can seem, at least when you're reading those translations, that the Word of God is somehow outdated or somehow just really, really old and just decrepit. That's not the case at all. These words are living. They are powerful. The Gospel message is just as valid today as it was when it was written. The principles that are contained herein. There are times you go through and you look at the world around you and you see the news and different things and you realize this different people, different actors, but it is straight out of Scripture because humans are humans and they have been for 6,000 years. We see what they do and we see the different aspects of human nature. But God's Word, if we allow it to illuminate our life, will reveal our motivations. It will reveal our desires and help us to realize what is true and what is not. So when it comes to proving what is true, when it comes to being able to kind of counter those falsehoods in the world around us, we have to know God's Word. We have to be versed in it. Mr. Armstrong used to put it, blow the dust off your Bible, right, is what he used to say. Ensure that you are in that Word constantly. Ensure that you are immersed in it and that you are learning to be able to wield that sword effectively. You know, with most of the things we see from society, more often than not, it's a pretty simple, like, no, that's not right. Most of the time. Most of the time. And it doesn't take, you know, really extensive parrying or lunging or whatever with the sword to be able to push those things back. But it's when it's doctrinal or it's this or it's that, when you really need to know your sword. You really need to know how to wield that thing and be able to parry and lunge as needed. It requires a level of training and immersion beyond just a fundamental understanding, so we have to be immersed in that Word. Thirdly, the final point here today is that we have to practice. We can't expect to be a professional at discernment immediately. You know, God certainly does give us with His Spirit that ability, but it's a learned skill that comes with practice, even with God's Spirit. And as time goes on, you get better at it, theoretically, as you use it. Hebrews 5, verse 13, just a page or so over there, Hebrews 5 verse 13.

I keep jumping three pages here. Sorry, they're all stuck together. Ah, still stuck together.

Okay, there they are. Verse 13 of Hebrews 5 says, For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled, and the word of righteousness free is obeyed, but solid food belongs to those who are of full age. That is, those who by reason of use, by reason of use, have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

It develops and grows by reason of use, by practice, by being in circumstances in life where we have to make a call based on Scripture about how to proceed forward.

And at times, again, that's very easy to make that call because some of it's very clear at other times, there's some principle on principle that has to be put together to understand why something is right or something is wrong. It's a process, and it's a growth process as we learn to navigate this life. And frankly, brethren, it is a process that we are not going to do perfectly.

And that's part of the learning process, is that you do make mistakes, and we are so thankful that God is merciful and that He works with us as we learn and as we grow.

But a large aspect of what we would call spiritual growth is learning that discernment, understanding how to apply these things in our lives. You know, in our society today, it's not just an expectation of God, it's a necessity that we develop discernment. It's become more and more difficult to determine what is truth or what is falsehood in the world around us. We are on a cusp of a time. For those of you that are keeping track of, once again, technological advancement, we are on the cusp of a time in which it is becoming increasingly difficult to trust what you see and what you hear. And that is scary, because if you can't trust what you can see or what you hear, what can you trust? Right here.