Well, in John chapter 18, the ruler and the judge of all the earth was standing trial for his life. Pontius Pilate was questioning Jesus about why the Jews would want to put him to death. In verse 37 of John chapter 18, Pilate asked Jesus, "Did you really consider yourself a king?

Are you sure that you're a king?" And Jesus responds with this remarkable declaration, "You say correctly that I am a king. For this I have been born and for this I have come into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice." Pilate heard Jesus' emphasis on the truth and he responded with a question.

Maybe he was asking rhetorically or dismissively, but certainly incredulously, John 18, 38. What is truth? May not be an exaggeration to say that no one has ever asked a more fundamental question than that. What is truth? In every era of human history, people have wrestled with the nature of the truth, and rightly so, necessarily so.

The truth speaks not merely of that which is true, but of the standard itself by which all truth claims are measured. Concept of truth is absolutely foundational to the concept of knowledge itself. What we know, as well as how we know what we know, depends on our understanding of the nature of the truth.

The truth is what distinguishes the genuine from the counterfeit. Is this a true $100 bill or is it fake? It's what separates fact from fiction. Is this a true story or is it just a myth? It's what separates reality from fantasy. Is this truly happening or am I dreaming?

It even separates the moral from the immoral. Is this the truth or is it a lie? In Pastor John's book, "The Truth War," he writes on the first page, "Every idea we have, every relationship we cultivate, every belief we cherish, every fact we know, every argument we make, every conversation we engage in, and every thought we think presupposes that there is such a thing as truth." The idea is an essential concept without which the human mind couldn't function.

And yet, as fundamental as the truth is to every aspect of human thought, there has been historically and there is today widespread confusion regarding the very notion of truth itself. Three different approaches to the concept of truth characterize the three broad epics of history. In the era of premodernism, which spans from the beginning of civilization through the mid-17th century, it was generally accepted that truth could be known and that any truth that was known was given by divine revelation.

Whether the true God of the Bible or any combination of false deities from the pantheons of the pagans, premodern peoples believed that only a being with knowledge that transcended human limitations could reliably reveal objective truth to mankind. The era of modernism, which runs from around 1685 to 1989, was spawned by the so-called Enlightenment of the 16th and 17th centuries.

There were great strides being made in scientific discovery and man's understanding of the natural world and the result was that mankind became overly impressed with his own intellect. Philosophical advances caused thinkers to become skeptical of religious claims, skeptical of the reliability of the Scriptures, skeptical even of the very existence of God.

Reason replaced religion and philosophical rationalism demanded the rejection of claims that couldn't be squared with the reasoning of modernity. The test of truth became whether it was rational, whether it made sense, which is a good canon as far as it goes. Problem is, when it's divorced from the Bible and when it's subjected to the natural fallen human mind, it leaves no room for the supernatural claims of the Gospels.

A virgin-born, miracle-working, prophecy-fulfilling Savior who bore the sins of His people and the wrath of His God by His death and rose bodily on the third day simply could not surmount the bar of naturalist rationalism. Then into the 19th century, further scientific advancements along with the Industrial Revolution gave birth to positivism, which was a form of empiricism that held truth could be known through the scientific method.

If we design well-run experiments and if we make the proper observations and inferences on the basis of the data, we can know what's true. In short, modernism held that man was able to discern truth for himself through what he could observe with his senses and what he could understand by his reasoning.

But the 19th century seemingly unbounded optimism in mankind's limitless potential was followed by the bloodiest century in the history of the world, two world wars, the consistent threat of nuclear destruction, the emergence of several dictators throughout the world. That all provided a more realistic view of human nature. All the philosophical and scientific advancements of the Enlightenment, all of the innovation of the Industrial Revolution only led to devastation and suffering.

And with the fall of the Soviet Union, typified by the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, the modernist era gave way to what has been called postmodernism. Premodernism held truth could be known by divine revelation. Modernism held that truth could be known by the rigorous testing of the natural world and making rational deductions.

But postmodernism is doubtful that absolute truth can be known at all. Some versions of postmodern thought allow for the existence of objective truth but they rather dogmatically reject the notion that human beings can arrive at such truth with any certainty. They're quite certain that no one can be certain of anything.

Sure, there may be truth out there somewhere but it's far beyond our ability to comprehend. But then there's another stripe of postmodernism that's becoming increasingly popular which asserts again rather certainly that absolute truth does not exist at all and all truth claims basically boil down to mere opinions. And in these days of critical theory and cultural Marxism, it's become popular to say that those claiming to speak truth are just persons from privileged groups aiming to impose their opinions and preferences upon marginalized groups so that the privileged oppressor classes can preserve their own power and influence over the oppressed.

When you look at the world today, it doesn't seem that truth is triumphing. Illustrations of the postmodern rejection of truth are ever present. A couple of years ago, a conservative apologetics ministry produced a video series called Road Trip to Truth and they traveled to local university campuses and interviewed college students about their views on truth and morality and authority.

And then they invited Christian professors and theologians to offer biblical responses to the students' claims. And though they asked these students questions on a variety of topics, there was one question they always asked everyone, whether they believed that absolute objective truth exists. And almost every one of them said no.

You may have your truth, but I have my truth. And if my truth contradicts your truth, how could either of us be so arrogant and oppressive as to claim that one of us must subject our truth to the other person's truth? One young man who was interviewed even said, "Anything can be true, even a lie, if enough people believe in it." Now that is not consistent with reality, but it is consistent with postmodernism's rejection of absolute truth, which is to say postmodernism is not consistent with reality.

You see, if there is no objective standard by which we can measure truth claims, both morality and reality descend into pure subjectivism, and the result is absurdity. For example, if we can't say that there is an objective standard by which to judge an action to be truly good or evil, then morality itself is denigrated into nothing more than competing personal preferences.

It's popular today for people to say that morality is subjective, that it's socially constructed. Certain societies sort of socially contract an agreement upon certain things that are virtues and others that are vices. But what falls into what category differs from culture to culture and across time. But if that were true, if morality were subjective and socially constructed, by what consistent standard could we condemn the evils of chattel slavery, or of the Holocaust, or of race-based segregation laws?

Were not the societies of antebellum America, Nazi Germany, and the Jim Crow South living their truth? If truth were nothing other than a social contract where certain values, we people just decide that certain values are right and others are wrong, who are we to tell the Nazis their culture was wrong?

Wouldn't that just be us arrogantly trying to force our own worldview and moral standards upon others? If there were no such thing as absolute truth, we couldn't consistently say, "It is absolutely true that it is always wrong to kidnap people and enslave them as if they were property." The most a consistent post-modernist could say is, "I find race-based chattel slavery to be unpleasant, and I don't think it should be allowed.

But I can't say that it's always wrong in all cultures. It could be morally right if enough people agree that it is." And those students in that video series on those campuses said that very thing. Well, I guess the Nazis' culture agreed on it. No clear-thinking person would ever dream of saying anything like that.

It is absolutely true that slavery, the Holocaust, segregation were moral evils in every society no matter what the majority agreed upon. But you see, when a consistent application of your worldview prohibits you from denouncing such obvious wrongdoing as objectively evil, your worldview has been proven wrong. It can't account for reality.

And that's where I'm going next. The post-modern theory of truth not only upends morality, but it undoes reality itself. Matters of fact are reduced to mere opinions. You know, sure, you believe the Bible, but I believe the Koran, or I believe the Talmud, or I believe the Bhagavad Gita.

Well yes, I understand that we believe different things, but it doesn't matter what we believe, it matters whether what we believe is true. Well we can both be right. Well no, we can't both be right because we're making mutually exclusive truth claims. And if mutually exclusive truth claims can both be right, well then we would transgress a fundamental axiom of all rational thought, which is the law of non-contradiction.

The law of non-contradiction states that a truth claim, call it A, and the negation of that truth claim, call it not A, can't both be true at the same time and in the same relationship. The law of non-contradiction is that A and not A cannot both be true at the same time and in the same relationship.

And if that is not a sound principle of thought, we lose all rational basis for knowledge and nothing means anything. If you are listening to this sermon and you are not listening to this sermon can both be true at the same time and in the same sense, then there is no consistent logical basis for either statement.

The statement, even a lie can be true. If that's true, then that statement can be a lie and there's no reason to believe it. Thought and communication are rendered impossible. The claim, "There is no absolute truth," is itself an absolute statement. There's as much rational basis for using words to say, "There's no such thing as words." Saying it proves that it's false.

You should always ask somebody who claims there's no absolute truth if it's absolutely true that there's no absolute truth. Because you see, if it is absolutely true that there is no absolute truth, then there is absolute truth. And if it's not absolutely true that there is no absolute truth, then there is absolute truth.

If the claim is true, it's false. Now of course, not everybody who makes these self-defeating arguments openly embraces the absurd conclusions that necessarily follow from them. The point is simply that when a consistent application of your worldview leads to the absurd denial of reality or to self-defeating and contradictory claims, it's a surefire indication that your worldview has failed.

And that is where our society lives right now. The choice has always been the God of the Bible or absurdity. And our culture has long ago rejected the triune God of the Bible and they are coming down now to the end of the slide of absurdity. The consistent outworking of that rejection of God was the choice of the absurd, of self-contradiction, of fantastical denial of reality.

And at the present time, there's no greater popular level illustration of post-modernism's descent into absurdity than the transgender movement. There is no more brazen denial of reality than to suggest that a man can be a woman if he feels like it. Not long ago, the notion of a pregnant man was a comedic fantasy.

Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger made a movie about it in 1994. It was called Juniors. Schwarzenegger gets pregnant. Everybody understands it's a joke, right? It's make-believe. It's like Santa Claus. Today, 30 years later, that's it, 30 years later, if you deny that men can get pregnant, you're a transphobic bigot who should be banished from the public square, who should lose your job, who shouldn't be welcomed into polite society.

When the newest Supreme Court Justice, Kintagi Brown Jackson, was being interviewed for the position by Congress, she was asked whether she could give a definition of the term "woman." She said she couldn't because she wasn't a biologist. What is that but the consistent application of a denial of the absolute truths of basic biology?

In fact, in a recent documentary called What is a Woman?, a conservative commentator interviews several people who've embraced transgender ideology seeking an answer to that very question. If you can be a woman, if you feel like it, what is a woman then? And during one interview with a gender studies professor, he says that, the interviewer says, he wants to get to "get to the truth." And the professor responds, "I'm really uncomfortable with that language.

It sounds deeply transphobic to me." Then the professor threatens to stop the interview saying, "You keep invoking the word truth, which is condescending and rude." You see, truth is inimical to those who wish to embrace absurdity and deny reality. And they recognize it. You keep talking about truth and we're going to stop the interview.

But it's not that truth is transphobic. It's that trans is truthphobic. I don't mean to be triumphalistic about that. I mean to take the mask off of the lies. Why is our society so eager to embrace transgenderism? You ever ask yourself that question? It's not as if there's a huge transgender constituency in the United States.

The entire LGBTQ population in America is still estimated to be only a little over 7%. Why is the transgender cause part of the Democratic Party platform when it embraces only 1 to 2% of all Americans? See, our society is so eager to embrace transgenderism because it is so eager to deny the absolute truth and the objective standard of morality that are incompatible with transgenderism, that relegate transgenderism to the realm of the delusional and condemn it as immoral.

And why would that be? Paul writes in Romans 1:18, "God's wrath is revealed from heaven against sinners who suppress the truth in unrighteousness." You see, the truth has been sufficiently revealed to mankind. Romans 1:19, "God has made it evident to them," and verse 20, "His attributes have been clearly seen through what's been made so that men are without excuse." And if they were to admit that there is an objective standard of truth, they would be forced to admit that every one of us is accountable to the God of truth, whose law condemns them for their own sins, whatever those sins may be.

And so they suppress the truth of the very existence of truth. If there's an absolute standard by which transgender perversion is judged to be immoral, well then there's an absolute standard by which my perversion, whatever it is, could be judged to be immoral. I'm accountable to the God whose law sets that standard.

No, no, no, no, that can't be. Sure, men can be women, anything, so long as I can sin in peace, so long as I can sin without the pangs of a conscience informed by the Word of God. Transgender ideology isn't pressed on us solely by transgender people. In many cases, they're the victims of a corrupt society seeking to undermine the foundations of truth, not to serve those folks, but to serve their own sinfulness.

Jesus explains the phenomenon in John 3, 19 to 21, this is the judgment that light has come into the world and men loved the darkness rather than the light. Why? For their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed, but he who practices the truth comes to the light so that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God.

People reject the truth, both that which is true and the standard of truth itself, not for intellectual reasons, it's intellectually bankrupt, if it's true, it's false, right? But for moral reasons. Pastor John says again in the Truth War, "Sinners love their sin, so they flee from the light denying that it even exists." Now straight talk like this is no longer tolerated, right?

The culture that castigates you for not being tolerant of drag queen story hour simply will not tolerate being told the truth. It's derided as unloving and anything that is unloving is violently opposed to the ethic of Jesus who preached that love was to be his followers' cardinal virtue. Love is love, they shouted us rather unlovingly.

Well, yes, love is love, but love, 1 Corinthians 13:6, does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth, which means that a culture that revels in unrighteousness and rejects even the existence of truth can have absolutely no idea what love is. Love and truth are inextricably bound together.

They're bound inextricably in the nature of God himself, Exodus 34, 6, "Yahweh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth." They're bound inextricably as the sustenance of the worshiper of God, Psalm 40, verse 11, "You, oh Yahweh, will not withhold your compassion from me.

Your loving kindness and your truth will continually preserve me." They're bound inextricably in the Christian's life of conformity to Christ's likeness, Ephesians 4, 15, "But speaking the truth in love," literally truthing in love, "we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ." And they're bound inextricably as the sphere in which the Christian life exists, 2 John, verse 3, "Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Son of the Father in truth and love." You can't separate love from truth, and any society that rejects the truth will inevitably find itself not only unloving, but in chaos.

And one telltale sign of such chaos is that they celebrate hatred as if it were love, and they denounce love as if it were hatred. They call evil good and good evil. Homosexuality and transgenderism are soul-destroying perversions. Again, you don't say that triumphalistically. You can say the truth unlovingly, of course, but that's not what we're aiming at.

The truth of the matter is that if not repented of, those sins, those pattern of sins, just like your precious pet sins, end in eternal punishment if not turned from. And affirming or celebrating or even refusing to warn against such sins is evidence of hatred. Maybe malicious, maybe just cowardly, but it's not love.

It is not love to see someone careening toward a cliff, and because they're having the time of their lives in that car on the way to that cliff, you say, "Oh, I wouldn't want to interrupt their fun. Look how they're enjoying themselves. I don't want to get in between them and that." That's a level of apathy that really only deserves the name hatred.

It's in fact self-love that refuses to incur the ire of sinners because we don't want them to be mad at us for telling them what they're doing is wrong. "The world can't receive me." Why? "Because I testify of it that its deeds are evil." We love like Jesus loves when we warn of sin's mortal danger and proclaim the gospel of truth by which sinners can be rescued.

And so, my fellow ministers, don't be deterred from issuing those warnings and proclaiming that gospel because of accusations that you're just full of hate. Don't be full of hate, but don't fall for the trick that if you say the truth, you're automatically hateful. Should be no surprise to us that a culture that has no idea what love is also has no idea what hate is and sees the loving act of truth-telling as hatred.

When you reject the truth, all you can do is accuse as hateful those who would dare disturb your delusion. So what do we do with all that? We live in this world that is under God's judgment to such a degree that they've been given over to a reprobate mind, to a mind that doesn't function, to such a degree that they've embraced this failed worldview of post-modernism, have denied reality and have descended into absurdity.

So what? Well, friends, it's not enough to diagnose the problem. It's not enough to accurately discern it. It's not enough to lament it or decry it or mock it and then long wistfully and nostalgically for the good old days. And yet neither is the proper course to coddle post-modernism's uneasiness with truth by toning down the definitive and right-angled claims of the biblical worldview, by trying to compromise in order to contextualize the gospel to a culture that has set itself against the very fundamentals of knowledge and rational thought.

No, the proper response is not to compromise with the culture nor to retreat from the culture. The proper response is to boldly confront the culture by unashamedly proclaiming the truth that triumphs, the truth of biblical Christianity. Understand you are here and where you are when you will not be here, when you return home later this week, to be the salt of the earth.

We are here to be that preserving and seasoning influence upon a world that is rotting and decaying. We're here in 2024 to be the light of the world. We're to shine forth the light of the truth into a world that is lost in darkness. And you remember, salt that isn't salty is useless.

No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket. And so we need to be equipped to engage these errors with the word of the living God. So let us resolve to be salt and light to this dying culture by graciously yet boldly confronting its lies with the truth of Christ and Him crucified, and by training the saints we are responsible for to do the same thing.

And that starts by considering how supremely central the concept of truth is for the Christian worldview, especially against the backdrop of a society that's rejected truth altogether. In an effort to equip us to do that, I want us to consider five pillars of the truth of the Christian worldview.

Five pillars of the truth of the Christian worldview so that we might be able to sound forth to the world and to the church a clear answer to Pilate's question, "What is truth? What is truth?" First, consider the value of truth. The value of truth. So far from finding the concept of truth to be offensive or rude or condescending, absolute truth is essential to the Christian worldview.

What is truth? First of all, it is inestimably valuable. Proverbs 23, 23, "The sage exhorts those who would gain wisdom to buy truth and do not sell it." Truth isn't a stock you get into, get a little bit, it goes up, okay, sell it quick and make a profit.

No, this one is one you hold on to. Buy truth and do not sell it. Truth is to be regarded by Christians to be such a precious treasure that we exhaust all lawful means to get a hold of it, and once we've got it, to never let it go.

By nature, all mankind is born in captivity, enslaved to sin and doomed to reap its deadly consequences. But John 8, 31 and 32, Jesus says, "The truth will free us from the bondage of sin and death. If you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free." Without the truth, we lie helpless in our slavery.

Just several verses after that, John 8, 44, Jesus says, "The truth stands in mortal conflict with Satan. The devil does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies." So lies are satanic and evil and wicked.

Truth stands against such wickedness. The teams are clear, aren't they? Satan and lies on this side, God and the truth on this side. When you hear criticisms of truth as a concept, guess which team that's coming from. And then as a result, to stand against the truth is to court the wrath and indignation of God.

In Romans 2, Paul speaks of the righteous judgment of God who will render to each person according to his deeds. Romans 2, 8, "Those who do not obey the truth will receive a judgment of wrath and indignation." In Thessalonians 2, 10, Paul characterizes the followers of Jesus as those who received the love of the truth so as to be saved.

If you're going to be saved from sin and the judgment to come, you have to be one who loves the truth. And then similar to the comment in Romans 2, he says, "Those who don't love the truth will perish under the judgment of God." So essential is the truth to Christianity that Christ himself summarizes the entire purpose for his incarnation and mission from heaven in terms of the truth.

It was the verse I began with, John 18, 37, "For this I have been born and for this I have come into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who's of the truth hears my voice." Now, who hears the shepherd's voice? Romans 1, 10, "Those sheep who were given to him by the Father, out of whose hand no one can snatch them." The elect hear his voice.

And so here's another instance in which the people of God are defined as those who are of the truth. First Timothy 3, 15, "The church is the pillar and support of the truth." And 2 Corinthians 13, 8, "Truly a text for our times." You talk about binding words on your forehead and putting them as frontals in Deuteronomy 6.

Here's a text for us. Paul says of true believers, "We can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth." That is your motto. We can do nothing against the truth, but only for the truth. Why can't you just call him the name he wants to be called?

Why can't you just use his preferred pronouns? Why can't you just attend the wedding? Because we can do nothing against the truth and reinforcing someone's delusion like that is acting against the truth. It is impossible to exaggerate the centrality of the concept of truth with respect to Christianity. These passages show that Jesus and the apostles saw the truth as identical to Christianity itself.

But more than the system of Christianity or the Christian worldview, Scripture goes on to identify the truth with the nature of God himself. That brings us to our second point, not only the value of truth, but number two, the God of truth. In Psalm 31, 5, David prays to God for rescue from his persecutors and he writes, "Into your hand I commit my spirit.

You have ransomed me, O Yahweh, God of truth." Isaiah repeats that title for God in the latter portion of his prophecy, Isaiah 65, 16, "He who is blessed in the earth will be blessed by the God of truth, and he who swears in the earth will swear by the God of truth." This is who God is.

There's no middle ground. There's no way to be antagonistic to the idea of truth while also not being antagonistic to the idea of God. If you don't like the truth, you don't like God. And further than that, since God is a trinity, since the Bible reveals one God subsisting in three coequal consubstantial persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Scripture identifies each person of the trinity with the truth.

John 7, 28, Jesus speaks of the Father when he says, "He who sent me is true." John 14, 6, we learn the Son is truth incarnate. Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me." And then we hear the same thing of the Holy Spirit in 1 John 5, 6, "The Spirit is the truth." What is truth then?

In short, the triune God is the truth. Speaking metaphysically, Yahweh is the one true God, the only genuine God that exists as opposed to the counterfeit deities of the pagan nations, right? The Thessalonians turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God. Speaking logically, the God of the Bible is incapable of erring or being mistaken for his understanding is infinite, Psalm 147, 5, and he knows all things as they actually are, 1 John 3, 20.

And then speaking ethically, the triune God is opposed to all lies and deceit and duplicity. He is, Titus 1, 2, the God who cannot lie, who is perfectly and unfailingly faithful, whose faithfulness reaches to the skies, Psalm 36, 5. Hermann Bavink said, "God is the truth in its absolute fullness.

He therefore is the primary, the original truth, the source of all truth, the truth in all truth." What is truth? Truth is that which is consistent with the mind of the triune God of truth. And the culture is in chaos because its people have rejected this God from being Lord over them and they've exalted themselves in his place.

They've exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator. And God has graciously revealed his mind to mankind through the inerrant scriptures, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. That brings us thirdly to the word of truth, to the word of truth.

Because God is the God of truth who cannot lie, his words which he has breathed forth into the pages of the Bible by the agency of human authors, those words are pure and unalloyed truth. 2 Samuel 7, after God gives the Davidic covenant promise, David responds to that revelation by declaring, 2 Samuel 7, 28, "Now, O Lord Yahweh, you are God and your words are truth." Proverbs 30 in verse 5 says, "Every word of God proves true." And then Psalm 119, 160 says, "The sum of your words is truth." Both individually and collectively then, we must confess what Jesus says to the Father in John 17, 17, "Your word is truth." The word of God, the inerrant scriptures are not merely true as if their content happens to cohere with an external standard of truth.

No, as an expression of God's own nature and mind, God's word is truth itself. It's the very standard by which all truth claims are to be measured. It is, as 2 Timothy 2, 15 says, the word of truth, which is to be accurately handled by the servants of God who labor in preaching and teaching.

And so if anyone desires to know the truth, they must measure every truth claim against the teaching of the Bible. What is truth? Truth is that which is consistent with the word of God as revealed in the inerrant and sufficient scriptures. And the culture is in chaos because it's rejected God's unchanging word and has exalted in its place man's own twisted reasoning and fluctuating feelings.

And what's the message of those scriptures? That brings us number four, to the gospel of truth, the gospel of truth. The Bible is the word of truth, but the central message communicated to mankind in the Bible is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of forgiveness of sins by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, apart from works.

It is the message that although all people have sinned and fall short of the glorious standard of perfection that a holy God demands for fellowship with him, nevertheless, God the Son took on a human nature so that he could live and die in the place of the people his father had given him to accomplish their righteousness and to pay for their sins.

And then having risen from the grave in victory, he welcomes all to lay hold of the forgiveness through repentant faith in him alone. And so I say to you who are here this morning, and yet remain a stranger to God's grace, today is the day to turn away from your sins, to turn away from the absurdity and fruitlessness of a failed worldview and a righteousness which cannot surmount the bar of God's justice.

And then to trust with your whole heart in the blood and righteousness of Jesus for rescue from that just judgment of God. Repent and trust in Christ this morning, you who do not yet know the sweetness of justifying grace. That message, the gospel of your salvation, is called in Ephesians 1.13 the message of the truth.

In Psalms 69.13, David speaks of the "saving truth of God." Galatians 2, Paul speaks twice of the truth of the gospel. And in Colossians 1.5 and 6, he says the gospel is that word of truth that bears fruit throughout the world. James 1.18, James says the same word of truth, the gospel, is what brings sinners forth out of death unto spiritual life.

You're regenerated by the gospel of truth. And the gospel of truth is exclusive. The apostles declare in Acts 4.12, "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved." John 14.6 again, "I am the truth and no one comes to the Father but by me." That means every other proposed way to God, every other religion, every other philosophy, every other way of life in the history of the world stands opposed to the truth.

Christ alone is the door of the sheep. All others are thieves and robbers. What is truth? Truth is that which is consistent with the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. The culture is in chaos because it has rejected this wonderful news. Light has come into the world but men love darkness because their deeds are evil.

Now to say that truth is what corresponds to the mind of God is to say that truth is that which corresponds to reality. This is because God, who possesses all knowledge and perfect wisdom, can't know what's false. He can't say, "I know this," and it not really be so.

He can't be mistaken. Reality itself is a result of God's universal decree whereby He has ordained whatsoever comes to pass. And so God can never be deceived or mistaken or misled and therefore His mind is identical to reality as it is. This brings us, number five, to the reality of truth.

The reality of truth. It means that truth is that which corresponds to reality. Nothing can be true that manifestly contradicts what is real. That's actually called the correspondence theory of truth. And, of course, no text of Scripture explicitly says the people of God subscribe to the correspondence theory of truth.

Perhaps it presupposes the correspondence theory of truth on every page. So for example, Proverbs 12, 17 states, "He who speaks truth tells what is right, but a false witness deceit." What does it mean for a false witness to speak deceitfully? Well, it means he testifies of a version of events that does not comport with reality.

He claims words were spoken which weren't spoken or that events took place which didn't take place. His testimony does not correspond with reality and so it's not the truth. By contrast, the witness who speaks truth tells what is right, which means what? That he reports words and events as they really happened.

His testimony of the truth corresponds to reality. Another example comes from Paul's testimony to Festus in Acts 26. As Paul testified to the suffering and resurrection of Christ as predicted in the Old Testament Scriptures, Festus accuses Paul of being insane. Acts 26, 24, "Paul, you're out of your mind.

Your great learning is driving you mad." My students tell me that sometimes. But Paul responds, "I am not out of my mind, but I utter words of sober truth." You see, a man who's out of his mind mistakes fantasy for reality. He believes things that are not so. But the truth here is sharply contrasted with falsehood and fantasy.

The truth is sober. The truth is consistent with reality as it is. Similarly, Titus 1, 14 says, "Those who turn away from the truth pay attention to myths and commandments of men." This means that the truth is neither man-made nor mythical. It's divine, and thus it is in accordance with reality as God has made it.

And all throughout Scripture, we observe a consistent contrast between the truth and lies. Ephesians 4, 9, 3, "Lies and not truth prevail in the land." Romans 1, 25, "They exchange the truth of God for a lie." Ephesians 4, 25, "Laying aside falsehood, speak truth to each one of you to his neighbor." 1 John 1, 6, "If we say we have fellowship with him and yet we walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth." 1 John 4, 6, "By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." It's plain that the biblical authors presuppose the correspondence theory of truth.

So contrary to that young man's claim that anything can be true, even a lie, if enough people believe it, the Word of God declares emphatically, 1 John 2, 21, that no lie is of the truth. Truth is not variable from person to person or from society to society because reality is not variable from person to person or society to society.

We all inhabit the same world under the same God who governs providence by the same inviolable laws of nature and logic. If someone doesn't believe in the law of gravity and jumps from a five-story building, the effects of gravity will not be suspended because no gravity is his truth.

Gravity exists. It is reality, no matter who believes it or not, and the truth is the same. God is God and we are not. His moral law is revealed in the Bible as the rule of our lives. If we disobey, we are liable to His judgment. The only way of escape is faith in Jesus Christ.

Someone may not believe those facts, but those facts are true, the truth is true, no matter who believes or disbelieves it. What is truth? Truth is that which corresponds to reality. And the culture is in chaos because it's rejected reality and exchanged it for subjectivist fantasy and self-determination. They've rejected the truth, not only the truth of the gospel or the truth of the Bible or the truth of God's existence, they've rejected truth altogether.

And the fruit of that rebellious, failed worldview is the chaos we observe all around us, where people self-identify as cats, in which Supreme Court justices can't define what a woman is, and in which math professors say that insisting upon two plus two equals four, and this is a quote, reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.

Our culture has exchanged the truth of God for a lie, Romans 1:25. God has given us over to the lust and impurity we see in Romans 1:24, to the homosexual perversion we see in Romans 1:26 and 27, to the depraved mind that embraces the absurd, Romans 1:28. But as John MacArthur has said, if our society has come under the judgments of Romans 1, we must follow the prescription, the mandate, and the commission of Romans 1, and that is the proclamation of the truth of the gospel by which sinners can be saved from divine judgment.

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God. It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it, the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith as it is written, 'The just shall live by faith.' Though the things of the spirit are foolishness to the natural man, 1 Corinthians 2, 14, though the natural man suppresses the truth in unrighteousness, nevertheless God still opens the blinded minds of the unbelieving and shines the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

And he does it by the proclamation of the very word of truth the unbeliever so hard-heartedly rejects until he doesn't, until the spirit of God blows over that heart and says, 'Mine, Christ will have, the lamb will have what he is worthy of.' Faith comes not by philosophical speculation, not by cantankerous bickering.

Faith comes by hearing the message concerning Christ. And so my plea to you brothers, both for yourselves and for the people you serve, is do not retreat from this culture. Touch right in to this culture, engage, have the difficult, annoying conversations, answer the hard questions, equip your people too with gentleness and reverence, give the Bible's answers to the lies of the age.

Friends, be salt and light, proclaim the truth, the truth of God, the truth of God's word, the truth of the gospel. It's true. We don't have a lasting city here. And the truth seems to suffer under the assaults of the prince of the power of the air. But the truth will triumph.

At the last, the truth incarnate will take his stand on the earth, and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as waters cover the sea. And amidst the joy and the triumph of that day, you will be glad that you stood firm and resisted in this evil day.

You may weep, you may lament now, while the rest of the world rejoices, but your sorrow will be turned into joy, because you will see him ruling the nations in righteousness and truth, then who shall fall on bended knee? All creatures of our God and king. Lift the eye of faith, brothers, to behold him in that day of consummation, and trust him, and rest in him, and fight for him, and labor for him.

And if it comes, suffer for him. Do all for the truth. Let's pray. Father, we can only rejoice in those realities because of the conquest of the truth incarnate. Lord Jesus, we thank you for bearing the awful wrath in our place, for setting your face like flint to go to Jerusalem, for getting up from Gethsemane and going to the cross, and staying on the cross, and then rolling the stone away and coming out of the grave.

On that resurrection morning, truth triumphed once for all time. And we walk in that triumph, not as consistently as we'd like, but we do. We are free from the penalty and power of sin. We have seen your grace at work in our hearts. We have seen sinners saved and saints sanctified.

Would you refresh us with the reminders of those things, the tastes of fruit that we see in the ministry, even when it gets difficult and wearisome. And Lord, we pray that you would just break the back of the lies of Satan in this world, in our culture, even especially in this city, which seems to be the hub of so much of it.

We pray that you would use the people of Grace Church, of the churches represented by the men in this room, to be faithful witnesses to the truth. The truth needs to be testified to. A faithful witness to Christ is desired each and every day in the workplace, in the neighborhood.

Oh, would you satisfy the hearts of your people to send them into that battle, ready to suffer, ready to die, ready to lay down their lives for the sake of proclaiming the truth. What you could do for the faithful ministries of the men in this room, be zealous for the glory of your own name and accomplish it, not for our sake, but for the sake of Christ.

We pray in his name. Amen. Amen. Amen.