The Unleavened Bread of Truth

Just for planning purposes, here. How many had Mexican for lunch? Okay. How many had salads? Oh, okay. They're going to be awake. Oh, good. I've written off the Mexicans. Okay, very good. So, just again, to know how long to speak and who to write off and who to be patient with. I heard all kinds of comments about, hahaha, you get to speak, you get to stay awake, and all this kind of thing. Well, we'll see. It's good to see everybody here. Mr. McNeely did mention about how all these people from Illinois passed by our building and came here. Well, guess what? They stopped at the building. Quite a few of them did. And they said, well, we have our own place now, so we'll just have services there. So, some of them who are really far away, or over two and a half hours, the ones from Charleston, met there. So, there's probably a group of 17 or so that met there. Some did come here, but the people are so happy about the place that's kind of their own. We can meet there any time. We don't have to ask permission. We don't have to get the key. We don't have to do anything. Just show up in our own place. Last Sabbath, I talked about the subject of Levin and one of his manifestations as being lies and falsehoods, deceit. And certainly, probably one of the best representations of Levin is just that. Levin is everywhere. Lies, deceit, misrepresentation is very subtle, and everywhere as well. And perhaps we're involved in misrepresentation in the way that we talk and say. There have been movies that have tried to depict lying, like Liar, Liar, which is not necessarily a very good movie, but, you know, this man had to speak the truth for a day and how difficult it was for him to do that. I've received a number of comments about the sermon, which I didn't think was anything particularly special. I just thought that might be a good subject to speak about. But I did get quite a few comments about that subject, and I said that what I would do today is to give a sequel, not about lying, but about the truth. Because telling lies... Oh, this is a ladybug.

We'll see where he goes. You know, some bugs I kill, but not ladybugs. I like them.

Where was I? I'll keep the Mexicans going here, too.

I did receive one insightful memo that talked about the seriousness of lies, those that are lies of convenience to just protect yourself or to keep from being embarrassed, such as maybe Abraham's lie about his half-sister. We didn't really have to lie to say what he did. He was just trying to protect himself against an eventuality. But there are those lies that spread ill will and false accusations. And then the worst of the lies are those that cause people to turn one another with slanderous comments. They can be deadly. They can be very, very evil.

Last week we spoke about the kinds of lies. Lies simply just a misrepresentation or just saying something that is false. A lie could be spin, you know, where you put information in such a way that you create an opposite impression from truthful facts. There's contextual lies or lying by omission where you leave out very, very pertinent information, but it's for the purpose to deceive. There's dissembling. You know, Psalm 26, verse 4, I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with the dissemblers.

That's the way it comes across in the Old King James. Those are hypocrites, people who live a life of a lie, of presenting one impression, but really being something else inside. There's exaggeration where people just simply make something to be a lot bigger than what it was. Usually it's adventure stories, fishing stories, you know, and the like. There's also puffery used in advertising, the highest quality for the lowest price.

Well, nobody can prove them wrong, but really is it right? Is it the truth? There's fabrication, and some psychologists have actually given names to two different types of fabrication as potential diseases, pathologies of lying. One is pseudologia fantastica, which is a term applied to the behavior of habitual or compulsive lying. The kind of people who would lie, as I mentioned, even if the truth fit better.

And then there's mythomania, where you just make stuff up! You just tell stories, you just can't help it. But you just tell these fantastic, outrageous stories, and you, in a sense, believe what you're saying. But you don't think of it as lying, it's just part of your nature and your character. There's denial, too. There's one that I actually saw in a respected source. It was spelled out, but I won't spell it out for you, BS. It just called it a certain type of lying. We kind of are familiar with that. There's psychological manipulation, and I gave a number of other types of misrepresentations and lies that can be deception.

Some that you can, in good faith, feel like you're telling the truth. But there are things that you left out that gave people an entirely different impression, and perhaps you didn't even intend it to go that far. But, unless in your mind you feel like, I haven't lied, but if the purpose is to create a misrepresentation, to protect yourself with carefully worded language that you feel protected in, but it's left a false impression. That is not the truth.

When I was preparing the sermon last week, I thought that I could just add one more point, and that would be, what is truth? And if I was preparing it, it was towards the, you know, getting close to the time of coming here for services, and did a concordant study on the word truth. Whoa! As I hit with many, many dozens, perhaps over 150, 200 references to the word truth.

I simply ran the word truth. With lying, it's kind of hard to get everything, because you have to use different words to find lies. You know, lie, lying, deceit, you know, just different synonyms to get the whole subject. With truth, it's pretty easy. T-R-U-T-H into a concordance, or into online sources of that nature, and boom, you get them all at once.

I was just really amazed as to the importance of the subject, the frequency of how truth is described, and some very, very special ways in which the subject is dealt with in the New Testament. So this sermon may or may not be what you are expecting as a follow-up to lying, because I'll be describing truth in a way that relates to the way that Jesus Christ spoke of the truth, as the body of knowledge and reality that he brought to the earth.

Because I was actually surprised in looking up the subject of truth as to what disciplines there are into understanding truth. Because some people think about truth as consensus. If we can get 75% or 80% of people to believe something a certain way, that is truth. The question is, is it absolute truth? Speaking of absolute truth, what is absolute truth? What is relative truth? And what is subjective truth?

There are all kinds of truths. There's logical truth. There's pragmatic truth. And believe me, there are so many other disciplines of how people come to truth. One is truth in logic. And under that section, there were nine different categories of what kinds of truth in logic, plus another subset of disciplines for that.

There was fuzzy logic. There was logical value. There was modal logic, multi-value logic, the principle of bivalence, truth conditions, truth functions, and truth tables. Whoa! Do we have to go through all that to know what truth is? Fortunately, we do not. I had one of our members in Minneapolis, who was a professor of mathematics at the University of Minnesota. He was a very interesting person. He actually moved to Pasadena, and one time we stayed with him while we were there for a conference.

And we talked about the truths that are found in mathematics. It was very interesting because he said that 99.9% of the work of mathematicians has totally no relevance to real life. It's just discovering equations and things as they come up. You know, maybe some way that some aspects could be used, but they look for certain truths, relationships of quantities that are of importance. They get very excited about that. Aristotle made the comment of what is truth. To say of what is that is not, or of what is not that is, is false. While to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true.

So be sure to get that on tape, and you'll get Aristotle's position. But truth is a question that was asked between the government of God and the government of man. In the final confrontation between Jesus Christ and the world, the one who represented the strongest and most powerful world government, which was Pilate, we have this.

In John 18, verse 37, here is the ultra-confrontation between one symbolizing the kingdom of man and the dreadful beast, who was Pilate, and here was Jesus Christ representing the kingdom of God. And Pilate asks the question, in verse 37, are you a king then? And Jesus responded and says, you say rightly that I am a king, for this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.

As we get into the writings of John, who was as much the apostle of truth as much as the apostle of love, you have the word truth come up not as many times as love, but it sure comes up often. Often enough to take a look as to this as something that was special on his mind. It was a body of, quantifiable body of beliefs in reality that Jesus Christ brought to the earth.

So Jesus Christ said that came to bear witness of the truth. In the sense he did not come to bring a new religion or a new movement, he came to bring the truth. He came to bring in a certain absolute that was beyond all sectarianism and anything else. It was a reality of what he brought to this earth. And everyone who is of the truth, in other words, everyone who can accept, process this information, here's my voice, gets it.

He says this to Pilate. Pilate smirks in verse 38 and says, what is truth? That's a question that I believe is one that's worthy of answer. We ended last week with 1 Corinthians 5 verse 8 and 9, which applies to this season of the year. As Paul wrote, therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness. It might say that every sin there is. But let's keep the feast with unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. He's meant much more than just, let's just make sure that what we say is right.

Let's keep the feast with unleavened bread that represents this truth, this quantity, that is the one that we espouse, that we believe in, that we took Monday off to come here to services, to be with one another. John chapter 8 verse 31. John chapter 8 verse 31, we'll have a number of passages here in the book of John. Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And here's the benefit, verse 32. And you shall know the truth, and a truth shall make you free. That one thing that if you stick with Me, hey, bear with Me, you will know the truth, and that truth will give you freedom, will give you freedoms in your life and mind.

He continues in the context here, verse 34, Jesus answered them, Most assuredly I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin, and a slave does not abide in a house forever, but a son abides forever. A slave opposite of a free person. Therefore, if the son, capital S, makes you free, you shall be free indeed. Now some of this may sound cryptic to a certain extent, but the more you really see why Jesus Christ came, what values He had, what values He espoused, and what eternal quantities He gave to people, you see that He came and brought with Him something extremely special.

It's more than just telling the truth. It is the truth. It is something which makes us free. It is something that only His disciples really hear and understand. It is an absolute, spiritually, that we need to cherish and honor. And even, I won't get into the logic of it, but we can't help but get into some of the logic. If some people believe that this is the day of unleavened bread, some do not, one or both is wrong.

One is true or not, or both are false. And so the things that we do, the things that we say, we need to quantify and say, is it absolute, spiritual truth? And how can we know it's the truth? What sources can we go to? Now, we have, oftentimes in our inside language, which, unfortunately, sometimes people make fun of us for, in-speak. You know, some of our in-speak is absolutely correct to speak as to what it sounds and what it is. You know, people say, use the expression, when I learned the truth, you know, kind of synonymous with I came into the church, or I was baptized, or I heard the program, when I came into the truth, it describes a special value the person had towards the knowledge that they had, but we describe it in those terms.

And actually, that's the way that disciples in the New Testament church described it, the way that it's described in the book of Acts and in the writings of the Apostle Paul, and mostly in the writings of John, or when I came into the truth, or when I left group XYZ, it could be church, it could be atheism, it could be a body of, you know, discipline or thinking that you were in before, and I accepted the truth. It has a very, very special meaning, and that's what I'm talking about today. Now, Jesus Christ, in his last moments of privacy, before he was given to those who would torture and ultimately kill him, spoke to his Father in heaven in John 17, in the passage that we use often.

John 17, to describe a source of truth. Sanctify them by your truth. Make them special. Set them apart. Give them a special place by your truth. And then he says, your word is truth. Your word is truth. That is not just a statement that kind of glazes over in kind of a nice place to have a repository for everything that's truthful. But believe me, what other absolute sources do we have for truth? It's not me. It's not somebody who claims to be an apostle or special leader. Anything that's human, finite, philosopher, church historian, or for that matter, even one of the apostles themselves, can they be spoken of as the generators of truth, as the source of truth?

Well, God is the source of truth, obviously, but how are we going to find it? How are we going to dig it out? How are we going to understand it? Truly, our churches, as some churches, disciplines of theology, call themselves solo scriptura, or scripture only. In that sense, we are scripture only, as far as bedrock and core beliefs. We try to understand the word that is written to us, and there really is, as the Apostle Peter said, nothing else that's more spirit, life, and truth than in this little book. We have nothing else. There's been no other body of literature that's been so preserved, that has been so protected, that has an amazing history of accuracy, considering that it's gone through so many centuries, different cultures, to still come through with a very clear message for those who can hear it. There's nothing more than the Word of God that is truth, and that's what Jesus Christ held up. As he said, preserve my disciples. In this prayer to our God, to his God, our God, our Father in heaven, he said, hold them together, sanctify them, separate them. How are we going to use the term sanctify? By your truth. This is your Word, is truth. Hold them together with the words that are found here. As you have sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And for their sakes, I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth. They continue to press on forward with this body of knowledge that is truth. When we come into believing the truth, what was the first time that you came to believe something that was, hey, this is true, and what I believed before on this subject was false? I'll tell you what it was for me. It was when I was in ninth grade, actually between eighth and ninth grade, and I was listening to the radio program, and I began to think. I listened to the radio program because it happened to be on a rock and roll station where the programming shifted very, very draconianly from a rock and roll format, K-A-A-Y, the mighty 1090 from Little Rock, Arkansas. It was a top 40 station, but at 7.30, it came on this religious program, and I kind of just basically turned it off until eight o'clock, until when the rock and roll format came back on. But then I got to thinking about some of the things that kept coming at me about, have you ever questioned where you came to understand this, or where you came to understand that? And the question was asked, the first question that made me think about the truth was, did you know that Christmas was celebrated 2,000 years before Christ was born? Well, it's an impressionable 13-14 year old. That was certainly a question that caught my attention.

Because once I began to explore the subject, which I did at that point, and saw that Christmas, and this is just my thing, yours could be something totally different, when I saw that Christianity was adopting a false pagan custom as Christ's birthday, when Christ wasn't born, I felt deceived. I felt that somebody should have told me that. Should have given me both sides of the story. Should have given me a historical narrative. Should have made it something that doesn't matter to you or not. And somehow that particular experience made me question more things. Because I said, if that wasn't true, what else isn't true in life? And that led me to understanding the next thing, which was what happens to us after we die. And the fact that we don't go to heaven was something else that really struck me. Of course, when you get two strikes at you, then you say, okay, where's this game leading?

And I couldn't get enough information from the church as I compared it with what was in Scripture. Because that was the admonition. Don't believe me. Look it up for yourself in the Bible. And I saw these things. And I called my priest. I was an altar boy at that time.

And I really liked my priest. He was a real good man. And he was one that was very good with our youth group in church. And I really could communicate with him. I sat down with him and turned to the Scriptures in the New Testament where the apostles were observing the Sabbath. I told him, how is it that this fourth commandment that we read in church that have up on the wall says, keep the Sabbath day. You know it's Saturday, don't you? Don't you? Don't you? I asked him that it's Saturday. And then to see him try to get out of answering the question with tradition and other explanations that just didn't seem to hold water, my eyes were becoming open to the truth.

To absolutes. And I was beginning to distance myself from the church that I had been a part of because they were not preaching the truth. And what I was finding was this truth.

It began to explain a lot of things. You know what? Probably the greatest truth. And I use this oftentimes in my sermon on the last great day. One of the greatest truths of all is the truth about the last great day. Because when you take a look at Christianity and how it fares in this world, as the true religion of our Savior Jesus Christ is not really having its market share that it's due. The Muslims have it all over us. Christianity really is not... it doesn't have a reason to have that great a record. And you take a look at Christianity in France and Italy and see, you know, what you saw on Easter Sunday in St. Peter's Square, 100,000 which is really way down. They've squeezed it up to a million people into St. Peter's Square all around. But, you know, when you go there on regular Sundays, like I've been there on a Sunday morning, nobody was there except people selling T-shirts. I mean, you just don't have that fervor in religion. Christianity didn't seem like it really was going, you know, anywhere. And yet others are doing better. And then you see babies die. You see people who never get it. Opportunity. People who, like all my cousins who were born in the USSR, you know, they never had a chance. I've got just tremendous opportunity of freedom here. Why me? Why not them? I'm no better person and they're no less a person than I am. I thought about the unfairness, the lack of equity. And, you know, when I began to understand the meaning of the last great day and that article that came to me, is this the only day of salvation? I cannot believe the euphoria that I had. Because it really made a plausible explanation that was biblically supported for the fact that God is not trying to save this world right now. That was a fantastic truth. It explains about the fact that a baby can die, a little child can die before coming to repentance. It could explain degenerative diseases, you know, where a person never has a chance. It explains where religion is barred and, you know, not allowed. I get the Voice of the Martyrs publications. I really admire the work that they do, although they're certainly masochistic about going into countries where there's horrible persecution of religion. You know, and in Muslim countries, in China, in other places where, you know, Christianity is not allowed to be propagated. They, you know, go into those places. But are those people dealt with unfairly? The Great Equalizer is what the last Great Day is about, in the way it fits into the whole plan. When I took a look at what the truth was, it was hooray for truth. Hooray for this whole body of knowledge that's all intertwined. It makes sense. When we worship here on this day of an oven bread, we worship with a purpose. We'll be keeping the Day of Pentecost, which has its purpose in explaining the Holy Spirit and its functionality. It all comes together in a very, very wonderful and beautiful way. It gives me freedom. It gives me a great sense of relief and triumph of understanding this. When my father died suddenly, which was one week after Mrs. Armstrong died, and when I was a student at Ambassador College, we had many prayer sessions for Mrs. Armstrong. We had Bible studies about life and death. We had a lot of talk about that subject because of her illness and her ultimate death. Then, a week later, my father, aged 42, suddenly dies of a heart attack.

I came back home. My mother was a widow. She was 40 years old. When I think of passages that Paul writes about such as, we grieve, but not as others who have no hope, I was filled with hope. I was 19 years old at the time, freshman, at college, just finishing my freshman year. I had a sense of hope and understanding and a sense of knowing where my father was, what the plan and purpose of his life was about the resurrection, that he wasn't in heaven floating around looking at me, that I had hope even though we sorrowed, but not as the world sorrowed. I had all those Bible study notes from Pasadena, and I sat with my mother and my siblings. I was the oldest of five. I was 19. It went all the way down to my youngest brother, who was three. We sat there in several days. We talked about these things. Certainly it was painful. It was a horrible shock to the family. It didn't make any sense in one sense. But then we could make sense of it from the standpoint of the purpose of life. And there was a certain unburdening...

I know that my relatives in Ukraine commented when they saw and heard from people who were at our funeral that, you know, my mother didn't cry as much as they thought that she would. You know, Slavic funerals are big productions. You know, people want to see... get their money's worth out of seeing the family grieve. You know, when they throw themselves on the casket and everything, oh, they get their money's worth.

But they saw that, you know, we dealt with it in a respectable and dignified manner. And when I went back to visit my relatives for a family reunion, only one in 1988, that's the question they asked me. Why didn't your mother cry more at the funeral? I said, because we understand the purpose of life. They had no religion. They grew up under communism and didn't accept anything. I said, we have hope. We'll be back with our dad. We understand that death is a temporary enemy, and we told them about the hope that was within us, because we had the truth. And believe me, we were free. I was free to express that.

A person who doesn't know and is hopeless is a slave, and he doesn't know where he's going. Understanding the truth is having your eyes opened to it. Let's take a look at the book of John. Take a look at a number of passages. John 1, verse 14. And the Word became flesh, talking about Christ, the Logos, and dwelt among us. And we beheld his glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. And the subject now keeps being repeated over and over again. It was not a particular body, organization, or movement of that time. It was in Judaism. He was full of Judaism, or he was full of whatever came to Abraham. He was full of truths, he was full of absolutes that supersedes everything that could be classified as religion. John 3, verse 21. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God. Just taking a look at a number of passages here as they roll off a concordance. John 4, verse 23. But the hour is coming, John 4, verse 23. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. And John puts together spirit and truth a number of times here, which is a premonition here as to the source of where that truth comes from. God is spirit. His words are spirit, and they are life. And it takes the Holy Spirit to comprehend, to get it, to understand what it's about.

Verse 24. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.

Those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth. But His true followers and true believers. Are you one of them? Now, I hope we are, as our eyes have been opened. We have accepted the truth, we uphold the truth, and we live the truth. We do other things with it, which we'll get to here. John 5, verse 32. There is another who bears witness of Me, and I know that the witness which He witnesses of Me is true. You have sent to John, and he is born witness of the truth. Talking about John the Baptist. And of course, the passage that is, again, quoted often, You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. But John 8, 44, John 8, 44, throw back here to Satan, the devil, who again has brought up more times than we think during these Passover days of the 11 bread season. Jesus contended with Satan right there, and wrestled with him that last week. John 8, verse 44, talking to the Pharisees, the reporters of His age, those who were harassing Him and trying to trip Him up, the different sectarians, the Pharisees, Sadducees, they had other sects as well. Some were more religious than others, some were almost secular. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in Him. The devil has lost it. The devil has lost the truth, which is another interesting point.

You know, one thing that's interesting in Facebook is that you can reconnect to a lot of old people that you hadn't seen a long time ago, people who had the truth at one time. Now I see happy Easter greetings, Merry Christmas. Now people who had the truth at one time, and have lost it, they've gone back into the world, they've gone back to those things that to me were deceptions, that were a masquerade, that were a perversion, or something that came from paganism. And now they have gone back to those things, they have lost the truth. It's possible to acquire the truth, it's possible to part the truth, it's possible to worship God in spirit and truth, and it's also possible to forget. People who leave the truth forget when the Holy Days are. They think they know, but they kind of don't, because they don't really follow the Roman calendar too well. And with us, we know exactly when the Holy Days are. We rely on that little holiday calendar that we have. What we do is not a holiday calendar! That's truth!

But if you didn't have that, if you could have left it, you'd forget which weekend was Pentecost, you'd forget when the Passover was observed, you'd forget certainly when the feast is. Is it early? Fall? Is it late? When is the feast this year?

But when we're connected all to the truth, we have knowledge of this. This keeps us together, this keeps us focused. This keeps us looking at those things that are core teachings. There's no truth in Him and the devil, part of verse 45. When He speaks a lie, He speaks from His own resources, for He is a liar and the Father of it. One thing for sure, that anything that comes from the devil is devoid of truth, and is intended to misrepresent, to deceive, and throw you off the track. But because I tell the truth, you do not believe Me. You hear Christ is saying, I'm telling you the truth and you don't believe Me. You know why? Because your Father is the devil. Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me? He who is of God hears God's words. Therefore you do not hear because you are not of God. Wow, that's a tremendously, you know, untactful statement. That's exactly what He was dealing with. People who had left God, people who were of the devil. John 14, verse 6. And you have the word truth come up a lot in the readings that we have, Passover evening, from chapter 13 through 17. Jesus said to Him in verse 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

Now we need to think about these terms. Sometimes when people read John they think He's kind of flowery. Well, He may be, and we can have a component that we kind of place with John as He took liberties in, you know, being expressive and with a lot of metaphors. But it's not wrong to kind of strip the metaphors out and just say, take these literally. Jesus is the way of life. He is the truth, embodiment of actuality, of reality, and the life of eternity. No one comes to the Father except through Me. And believe me, this is a big truth. No way to the Father unless you have our advocate, our lawyer, Jesus Christ, who helps us get through to the Father, who cleanses us from sin because God does not hear the prayer of sinners. But when we have our lawyer at our side, who paid for our sins, that's how He advocates for us, that He comes before God as clean, and He does hear our prayers. Chapter 14 and verse 17, The Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him, but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. Now, I'm going to give my little two-minute linguistic lecture here. I've done this, sorry for the people in Lafayette, Terhut, and probably all of you know it too. Talking about Him as the Holy Spirit. Well, in many, many languages outside of English, there is a gender assigned to almost any noun. I mean, Karl Rothenbacher knows this about German. The der Tisch table is male. There's nothing male about a table. Male, female, what's the difference? Well, the same is true in languages like Russian, Ukrainian, Greek. And certain genders are assigned to certain words. And it's completely random. I mean, some things are it, are neuter. Some things are female. And some things are male. The Holy Spirit gets a male designation. A male gender designation. It does not mean that it's male, but that's the gender assigned. Those of you who take a foreign language class, if you go through a German class, the first thing you will learn, what is the gender of the noun? In English, what are you talking about? What do you mean the gender of, you know, flower or woods or book? Well, many languages, I can't speak for all. I speak about the ones that I have familiarity with, have genders assigned to them. And that's why we have this matter of the Holy Spirit being a he. There's nothing he about it from the Greek, except for the fact that there's that designation made to it. John 15, verse 26. But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit is a Spirit of Truth. Now, last week we talked about how God cannot lie. The Holy Spirit is just about a bubbling source of truth. It cannot put out anything that's a lie. The devil is the Father of lies, the inventor of lies, and there is no truth in him. So everything that is connected to God is truth. And like I said last week, aren't we glad it is a truth? That the things that we understand about what's going to happen to us after our death, the resurrection, the kingdom of God, aren't we glad that it'll turn out that way? And we'd rather wonder about, is this some kind of a prank, or is this some kind of a game that God is playing? Absolutely not. He couldn't do it. God cannot lie.

Because God is love, God is truth, and he wouldn't allow that to happen.

The Spirit of Truth who proceeds from the Father. Verse 12, Chapter 16 of John. I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot hear them now. However, when he, the Spirit of Truth, has come, he will guide you into all truth. For he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will tell you things to come. He will glorify me. He will take of what is mine and declare it to you. So the Holy Spirit, as we receive the Holy Spirit, continues to be a source, seems to be a beacon of truth, of truthfulness. As we come to closer understand and better understand the Word of God, abide in Christ by being close to him, and are imbued with the power and more the intellect of the Holy Spirit, we understand those things. And believe me, one of the things that I have seen from people who have lost that, who have lost the Holy Spirit, also lose the truth. And they go back to where they were. That's very, very sad, because the truth is something that we should cherish as a special treasure, the special treasure that we have for ourselves.

Romans 1.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Again, this body of core absolutes is something that the world challenges.

In verse 25, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator who is blessed forever. I have the movie, Expelled. I really enjoy seeing it. I've seen it probably ten times. And if somebody came over and said, let's watch Expelled, I'll watch it again, because I think it's one of the most interesting and in some ways entertaining ways of showing the great scientists of this world in the biases that they have towards the truth. Because they hate the truth. They hate those things that come from God, and they will find any way to speak against God, or intelligent design, or, oh, Creator, you know, they just absolutely tense up and can't handle that. These people who should be those who can understand logic and cause an effect, and are people who are brilliant and intelligent, want to suppress the truth. It's interesting that under communism, in talking to my cousins, only a certain percentage of young people could become part of the Communist Party. Actually, it was a very small percentage. It was like 10-15% became true, card-carrying party members. But if they became members of the Communist Party, they were given all kinds of privileges. Mostly better jobs, favors, you know, trips to Crimea, you know, just, they got the perks. Non-communist party members were in second place. But one thing that every member of the Communist Party had to do was to write a paper. This was part of their young adults' education. A paper disproving the Bible is true. I thought that was interesting. I mean, why did they seem to want to attack this book? That they weren't even allowed to print in the Soviet Union. But students had to come up with new thesis or new angles or new anything to show that the Bible was not valid, that it was myth, and that it was just not something that was the truth.

As Paul said, the wrath of God is revealed against those that work against the truth. The Communists at one time felt that they were really on top of the world. They controlled through the Iron Curtain a great percentage of the world's people in geography and balanced the power against the West. They collapsed overnight. It was just almost awesome to see how fast the whole system collapsed from within because it had no values. It had no truths. It had no absolutes. It was a nation that couldn't be a worse nation to accept communism. Lies was a way of life. And they imploded. God's Word and God's truth continued. 2 Corinthians 13, verse 7, the Apostle Paul makes commentary about the truth. Now I pray to God that you do no evil, nor that we should appear approved, but that you should do what is honorable, that we may seem disqualified. For we can do nothing against the truth but for the truth. The truth will always prevail. No matter how you cover up or lie, the truth will always come out on top. The truth does set you free because when you tell the truth, you don't have to remember what the story you told about the incident before or how you explained it because it's always the same story.

And like I said too last time, it doesn't take as long to tell the truth as it does to tell a lie. That's what we're going to tell if a person is telling a lie. You have to say a lot more words and explain it far more if you have to cover up than if you tell the truth, which is usually straightforward. This is the way it happened. Boom, boom, boom.

Galatians 2, but when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, one of the manifestations of truth is the gospel message. Everything about the gospel message is true. It's an absolute. The life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ, the kingdom of God. All that is true. Galatians 3, verse 1. O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you that you should not obey the truth before those eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? And then in chapter 5, verse 7, He has hindered you from obeying the truth. One thing about a Christian, and one thing about the fact that when we get the truth, it's more than just an academic perk. Oh, I know that. Sure. No, there's responsibility attached to when you do get the truth, to obey the truth, to apply the truth, to act on the truth, to become an evangelist of truth, to pass it on to others.

The truth is something that is to be obeyed. And is there anybody who's stopping us from obeying the truth, the things that we know should be done? Because a lot of things about Christianity are action plans of what you do, conversion, repentance. All that is acting on the truth. We don't just accept it as just something juicy to understand in our brains. It is something that we act on, and something that we practice.

In Ephesians 4, in verse 14, the armor of God.

The armor of God is protection, but there's also more than just protection. There's equipment, and even a defensive weapon, the sword. But stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth. This is kind of like what you get dressed in the morning, and what you put on. You have the helmet of salvation, you've got the shoes that are shot with the preparation of the gospel of peace. But our belt is what is called the truth. We wrap ourselves in the truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, which is application of that truth.

Colossians 1, verse 5, Because of the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, of which you have heard before, in the word of truth of the gospel. Let me see this word, truth, come up by different writers in different decades. It's something that Jesus Christ came to the earth with, with grace and truth.

Something that we espouse. We keep these days, O love and bread, in sincerity and in truth. We need to value that inspeak that we have. You know, God has called us into the truth. He sure has. We should be very, very respectful and appreciative for the truth that we have been called into. Colossians 7, 6, Which came to you, as he has in all the world, and is bringing forth fruit, as it is also among you, since today you heard and knew the grace of God in truths.

So this was the buzzword among the Christians of the New Testament church. The buzzword was, we have the truth. In 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 13, the conversion of the Thessalonians is described in accepting the truth. For this reason, we also thank God, 1 Thessalonians 2, 13, without ceasing, because when you received the Word of God, which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the Word of men, but as it is in truths, the Word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe. It's a truth that does something, does a work. It starts making you do things, perhaps things that you hadn't done before. It motivates you. It directs you, guides you. 2 Thessalonians 2, verse 12, 2 Thessalonians, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren, beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification, by the Spirit and belief in the truth.

Tonight, thank God for the fact that we have the truth. And when we keep these days of love and bread with sincerity and truth, we thank God for that body of absolutes, that body of spiritual knowledge. In 1 Timothy 2, verse 4, Paul writes to Timothy, who desires all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth.

I find it interesting that even though Christianity and Christians, the word kind of just came up as followers of Christ or followers of that way. The big word used to describe their movement was, these are people of the truth. These are people who have the truth. These are people who act on the truth. Again, Christians were something that was assigned to this movement of those who follow Christ. Don't sense they were the ones who were the ones emboldened and embodied of the truth. In James 1, verse 18, of his own will, he brought us forth. Talking about our begettle, our coming into the truth, is by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. You see, the word truth kind of spans everything. It's kind of the denominational name, so to speak. In 1 Peter 1, verse 22, again, the fact that you have to comply with the truth, since you have purified your souls, verse 22, in the obeying the truth, through the Spirit, because you know when Jesus told his disciples before he died, that the Spirit of truth, the Spirit will come to you, it will bring things into remembrance. It will guide you, and you need to follow. In sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart, obeying the truth through the Spirit. In 2 Peter 2, verse 2, reading a lot of Scriptures, but I mean, this was pounded home so strongly, when you take a look at it, you know, biblically, that many will follow their destructive ways, because of whom the way of truth will be blasphemed. God calls his followers, the ones who follow, the truth. 1 John 1, verse 6, this is John again, more of his writings, if we say that we have fellowship with him in work and darkness, we lie, and do not practice the truth, practicing the truth, living it. In the next verse, verse 8, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. Chapter 2, verse 21, I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and that no lie is of the truth. 1 John 3, John, beloved, actually verse 3, for I rejoice greatly when brethren came and testified of the truth that is in you. This is 70 years after Christ was on the earth. They still talked about their movement as the ones who had the truth. Just as you walk in the truth, you testified of the truth that is in you, just as you walk in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. He's glad to see people follow that body and core of beliefs.

Truth is from God, and it's of the Spirit. It comes from these words that we read, and that's what we're told to study the Scriptures. That's what we're told not to leave them behind. The truth of God comes from His Spirit, which only is a source. The only thing it can do for us is things that are the truth that hype it, magnify it, and make it bigger. Truth is sure. Truth is reality. And once it is truth to you, it will be the pathway to faith. You have faith in things that are true. When I learned about certain things that were true now, as opposed to not being true, I began to have faith. I began to look for more things that were true, and I had even more faith. Our faith is conditional, in one sense, on finding out what's true and right. We don't have faith in things that are untrue, or that we don't have enough information about. We have a certain lack of knowledge, a lack of assurance, a lack of this and that, where we don't feel confident about it. But when we know it's the truth, we have faith. And that actually builds faith, a faith builder. When you have the truth and you know it's for real, that faith is a belief structure that holds solid. Then it's to be obeyed.

Faith is something that leads us to obedience and following the instructions that are in it. The obedience of the commandments, to the building of relationship between us and our God, us and our fellow man, us and our families.

That leads us to that, obedience. Truth is all about salvation, the rules of life, the future, the kingdom, the gospel itself. We can be very, very grateful to that. One of the commandments, now going retro, is the ninth one, not to bear false witness.

Because it's really a commandment directed directly at the devil, who is a source of falsehood, deceit, and giving people away from the truth that God has for us. See, one time there were no lies. One time there was just truth. God is love and God is truth.

And so God warns us against anything that takes us away from that beautiful truth and leads us astray. We should not allow anything to take us away from the core beliefs that have given us joy, have given us a sense of surety, faith, and belief. And that's the beauty of these days of Unleavened Bread, is that they do point out, through the leavening that we are to purge, the wrong aspects. But in one sense, even more importantly, the building of the Unleavened Character, which is not only ourselves, but those sure things from God, sincerity and truth. So let's be grateful to God for these days. Thankful to Him for the very core things that He teaches us, to give us encouragement, and give us everything that we need to move forward towards the Kingdom.

Thank you.