Sermon Tone Analysis

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Yesterday I was visiting with one of our members who previously led a team of employees at his job.
I asked his permission to share what he said about truthfulness.
He said he told all his team, “Rule #1 is ‘don’t lie to me.’
It is inevitable that you will fail from time to time and we can work through that, but Rule #1 is ‘don’t lie to me’.”
Why is it so hard to forgive someone who has lied to you?
Why is it that one lie can crumble a wall built of many truths?
It is because God knows how devastating a lie can be that He warns us…
Last week I concluded by contrasting Satan as the one who steals and God as the one who gives.
Similarly, the Bible tells us that Satan is “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).
Titus 1:2, on the other hand, states that God is the one who never lies, and in John 14:6 Jesus claims he is the truth.
What we are going to talk about today doesn’t only affect your spiritual life, it has direct application at school, at work, in your home, and in your personal relationships.
The most precise application of today’s text is in a court of law.
Do you know why in past times people placed a hand on the Bible when promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
It was a symbol that “If I don’t tell the truth, I invite all the curses of this book to happen to me.”
False legal testimony is exactly what the religious leaders did to Jesus leading to his crucifixion.
Lying happens whenever people are willing to say whatever is necessary to achieve a desire result.
Transition: Perjury may be the last station on the Truth line, but there are many other stops on that route as well.
Stations on the Route
There are many ways we speak towards a desired result.
Today we hear phrases like “I’m just speaking my truth” or “it’s just a white lie”.
A white lie in God’s perspective is an oxymoron; it’s like a clean sewer.
Flattery
1. Someone has described flattery as "saying to someone's face what you would never say behind his or her back!"
2. Flattery happens when you want to make a good impression, so you say what you think another person wants to hear even if that bears little relation to reality.
Exaggeration
1.
In your attempt to make an impression, you overstate what you said, did, or accomplished, taking credit that really belongs to someone else.
2. Or, if you are looking for sympathy, you may overstate the wrong that was done to you because you want the person who hears your story to feel sorry for you.
3. Telling your story in a way that misleads a person by hiding or excluding what they would need to know to make a balanced judgment is a form of lying.
Gossip
1. Gossip involves passing on news about another person that may or may not be true with the intent of harming that person.
2. The lie may be in your words or it may be in your motive; passing on information under the pretense of being helpful when your real aim is to alter perceptions about the other person.
3. Gossip is like nailing flyers to a fence.
You may remove the handbill and the nail, but it will always leave a scar in the wood.
The reason that we are prone to lying is that we are more deeply committed to ourselves than we are committed to the truth.
Transition: The entire human experience has been blemished due to a lie in the Garden of Eden that creates a wide freeway leading leads to the destruction of all liars in Revelation 21.
Jesus stands with a placard that says “I am the way, the truth, the life.
Take this exit” Let’s take a look at the map and see where these two roads lead.
The Wide Freeway
From Garden to Jungle (Gen 3:1, John 18:37-38)
1.
Before the earth was created, Satan conceived the idea that instead of him serving God, that God should serve him.
This rebellion got Lucifer and all of the heavenly beings who followed him to be ejected from Heaven for eternity.
Ever since that mutiny Satan has been trying to convince others to join him in opposing God.
2. Satan's first strategy was to question God's truth.
"Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" (Genesis 3:1).
3.
Many are still asking Satan's question: Can you really know or trust what God has said?
Discrediting Scripture has always been Satan’s first strategy.
This week America’s 2nd largest protestant denomination will be meeting in St. Louis to debate the question “Should we believe what God has said or replace it with progressive, modern notions?”
4. The doubt and confusion generated by Satan's lies were obvious when Pontius Pilate was asked to pass judgment on Jesus.
Pilate asked Jesus many questions, and Christ answered plainly.
5. Jesus made it clear that His words were the truth and that the first evidence of a person dealing in truth is that they follow His teaching.
6. Pilate's response was terse: "What is truth?"
(John 18:38).
Pilate was a politician.
He knew that people would say anything to get their way, and he had come to the conclusion that what people call "truth" is only a way of speaking about what they want.
It was the ultimate miscarriage of justice.
A man who believes that truth is nothing more than a personal perspective or opinion cannot bring justice.
Judgments can only be made if there is an objective truth to judge.
And if truth is merely opinion, then it cannot be tested because there is no objective standard by which you can measure a personal opinion.
8. Ultimately the loss of truth leads to a society in which the most powerful opinion wins--that's the law of the jungle.
By questioning the reality of truth, Satan takes us from the beautiful garden that God intended to the jungle where the most powerful dominate.
Transition: Jesus invites us to an alternative to this jungle, this wide freeway based on a lie.
The Narrow Trail (Matthew 7:13-14)
Hearing/Believing the Truth (Romans 10:17)
1. Matthew 13 tells us that the God’s kingdom is like unto a farmer spreading seed.
And 1 Pt 1:23 describes that seed as the “living and abiding word of God”.
But that good seed yields 4 results.
2.
You may have seen this in your own witnessing.
Sometimes you share truth and it seems to fall on deaf ears, other times people respond with “tell me more.”
This “tell me more” response is evidence that the Spirit of God has removed the blinders that Satan has put on eyes, so that they are capable of responding to the truth in faith.
3. The truth that leads to Faith is the Word of God.
That is why it is so important that we read and study God’s Word more than books about the Christian life.
Obeying the Truth (John 8:31)
1. Progress on the Narrow trail of Truth involves more than just listening or believing, it requires obeying.
2. It is one thing to sit in church and believe that Jesus is truth.
It is quite another thing to speak and live according to that truth when your friends say it is outdated and obsolete.
3. Jesus says true disciples are those who believe and obey the truth.
Knowing the Truth (John 8:32)
1. John 8 goes on to talk of another step beyond obedience.
John 8:32 (ESV) — and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
2. It's as we put His truth into practice that our knowledge of it will grow and we will experience its power in our lives.
Allow me to tell you two stories that illustrate the type of knowledge I’m talking about.
Ever since my days in Boy Scouts as a teenager in the late 1970’s I have been certified in CPR.
I understand how compressions will force blood through the passages of the lungs to receive oxygen and carry that oxygen to the brain.
But I have never been in a situation to use this training.
In 1994 our youngest child was born 6 weeks pre-mature.
Even though Ann had been hospitalized and received intravenous drugs to develop Sarah’s lungs, she was having trouble breathing after delivery.
She was transferred to a NICU unit in Oklahoma City and put on a ventilator.
She was given the first dose of a drug and we were told it would take 48 hours before it would show appreciable difference.
Well, it was Wednesday when she was given the drug and I was sent home to check on Ann who was still recuperating on our small town hospital.
On the way back to Weatherford I called ahead and asked all my pastor friends to pray for Sarah at prayer meeting.
When I arrived at the NICU the next morning, she wasn’t on the ventilator.
I was told that after only 1 dose of the medication she began to wean herself off the ventilator so that by morning it was removed.
To this day, I believe that CPR saves lives.
But I know that the faithful prayers of God’s people healed our little girl.
Transition: The Wide freeway follows a lie.
The Narrow Path believes, obeys and knows the Truth.
And when we know the truth it is natural to Share the Truth.
Share the Truth Wisely (reference)
Some Christians are confused about what is appropriate when it comes to speaking the truth.
So allow me to provide 2 examples where wisdom/caution is needed.
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