Best Gifts Ever - Week 4 - The CORE - Pastor Michael Ewart
Best Gifts Ever
Week 4 - The CORE
Pastor Michael Ewart
Again, thanks for being here for part four of our sermon series, Best. Gifts. Ever. We're taking a look at God's amazing, eternal, glorious gifts. Gifts that are outlined in John, chapter 1, verse 14 which we'll look at it in just a moment. But we live in a world where there is a shortage or a deficit or a struggle to recognize truth.
Honestly, it's not a new thing, 2000 years ago, when Jesus was on trial before Pontius Pilate, Jesus said to this Roman ruler, “the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of Truth,” Jesus said, “listens to me.” To which Pilate replied. “What is truth?”
Think we can kind of understand him. Can't we kind of get his skepticism? You ever been tempted to ask “what is truth?” is so hard to determine these days, isn't it? Oh, actually, not that hard. All I have to do is Google it. Look on the internet there, you'll find the truth, right?
Okay. Uh, maybe not. Well, actually, you're that famous quote that “everything on the internet is true. Abraham Lincoln said that.” So I think we recognized. Yeah, there are lies on the internet. What is true? What is false? We don't really know if you heard about the Deep fakes. So they can actually create videos. Now, a politician, a celebrity, whatever. There's one about Tom Hanks, that was out relatively recently. Where it looks like them. It sounds like their voice. They are saying words, and yet, that's not actually them. They didn't actually say these words. So you you can see this and you have to wonder is that really them? Is this a deep fake? Is it something that's made to look like this person or this celebrity? What is the truth? It's really hard for us to know. But hey, at least we have AI now, right? Just go to Chat GPT, ask your question. It'll spit out a beautiful nice answer, which, of course, is truth, right?
Wrong. See, the problem is that the the AI was made by flawed human beings and it was trained on data created by flawed human beings. And so it's no more accurate than we are is the problem. And if that's not bad enough, sometimes it's less accurate than we are. Have you heard of AI hallucinations yet? I don't know how this works. They didn't program it into it but every once in a while the AI will spit back something that Is false and it will defend itself if you push back or you type back some “alternate” facts or truth. It'll defend its answer to you because it's called a hallucination. It's sure that what it's saying is true. So, you know, you can't even try. That is out there. So whether it's partisan politics and you know, after every time there are some debates the next morning, the news media, they review what the people said, they do their fact checks and find out that a lot of the facts don't check out that there wasn't actual truth said or it was a partial truth, or it was just an outright lies that happens, no matter what persuasion of political party. You might like, they don't always speak the truth. In the classroom, the teacher who reads the students essay, “did the student really write it?” Or was it produced by Chat GPT? What is the truth? We're not sure.
When you listen to your favorite news outlet, do they have a bias? Do they have an agenda? Do they have a backer? Do they have something? They're trying to push a product they ultimately want to sell? What is the truth?
Who really knows.
So “what is the truth?” is a valid question today. It's no wonder that it seems like most people in our world today have switched to a relative truth or a moral relativism. In other words, most people in the world today think because truth can't truly be known. You need to decide what is true for you and then live according to your authentic self, your truth. And they need to do that. And you need to do that. And she and he, everybody needs to think through what is their truth? What is their standard of right and wrong? What is your own morality live? According to that? And that's just about the best you can do. Truth is relative. Which, when you think about it, doesn't that really sound a little bit more like opinion than truth, right? So “What is truth?” How can we know the truth?
So here's the irony people today, every bit as much as people in the past, do yearn for truth. They want to know what the truth really is. An absolute standard. And yet, it evades us, right? The word of the Year Miriam Webster released this a week or two ago, the word of the year is interesting. “Authentic”.
Authentic is the word “not false or imitation”? That's what an authentic means. Not false or imitation, true, right? Authentic, self-authentic, truth authentic, whatever you want to fill in. The blank with authentic is a word that was used and looked up probably more than any other this year. People are yearning for the truth. So what is truth does it even exist? What if it did? Can you imagine just for a moment that there was absolute truth that it was revealed to us and we could know it would that not be the best gift ever?
The truth of the matter is God does reveal absolute truth to us.
And that truth of God is revealed to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. So we've been looking over the last few weeks at a single verse from Scripture that is so deep, so rich. It takes five sermons to truly cover it. And that verse is John, chapter 1, verse 14, where we read this: “The word became flesh.” Just talking about Jesus. “And he made his dwelling Among Us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. You'll notice I underlined the words for you because that's been the topic of each one of our sermons over the last few weeks. If you've missed any of those, you're going to want to go online on YouTube and listen to it. Um, and there's one more, by the way, I didn't underline it because I got to keep you guessing. Otherwise, you won't come back next week for Christmas Eve. But there's one more and I bet you could probably guess what it is, but I'm not going to tell you. But today, we're going to be focusing on that last word. In this verse the word, truth.
Jesus came full of completely full of grace, which we ever heard about last Sunday, and truth. What we're talking about today. So what is truth? I think we kind of need a working definition to be able to discuss this further. So let's use this one. I've got a two-part definition, the first part of my definition of Truth is: this truth is the way things really are according to God. It’s that overly simplistic. I like simple. What is truth. Truth is the way things really are according to God,
Did you know that our perceptions are assumptions? The way we view the world is imperfect and incomplete? Our perceptions are not always accurate.
When I was a kid, actually even still, I love optical illusions. Anybody like those? I had a whole book of optical illusions. I think I got it from Scholastic in like seventh to eighth grade and loved looking at the optical illusions. They're interesting because to your eyes things appear, one way, but then you read the little paragraph description that says, no, actually what you're seeing isn't there or isn't real. Or isn't quite like, it appears, and it's actually like this. For example, maybe you've seen the optical illusion with two parallel lines, and then the way it's designed, it looks like it's bulging out in the middle and then you read the paragraph and it says they're not bulging. Those are actually two perfectly straight, parallel line. Get out a ruler and check. I did. They were perfectly straight. Like, wow, that blows my mind. They look crooked but they're not. The way things really are is that those are straight parallel lines where you look at these dots and they appear to be moving. But the truth is they're not moving. Go ahead, push pause on your YouTube video that's showing this optical illusion. They still look like they're moving. But the reality is that they're not, it's just an optical illusion, a mistake in our perception, the way things really are. Are different than the way they appear. So what is truth? Truth is the way things really are according to God. God reveals to us. What truly is and we can trust him.
So we have this group at 922 Ministries, meets three different times a year. I start this group called Starting Point. Its for anybody that's kind of checking out the Christian faith. Checking out the CORE. What do we believe and teach here? I've had a subtitle for that that it kind of changes every once in a while, I've called it Starting Point, Basic Bible Christianity because that describes what it is. I've called it Bible 101, that kind of describes what it is. But I think I thought about this several times actually I thought about putting the subtitle starting point. Reality 101.
The way things really are, according to God, is what we are looking at, in this Starting Point group, as we go through the Bible and we see the way we are the way God is, who Jesus is what happened at the beginning. What happens at the end, we look at what God says about reality. So just a quick plug for that next one, search January 14th. If you haven't gone through that yet, I invite you to join the next round. Just write Starting Point or check the Starting Point box on your communication card. Okay. So the way things really are, what is the other? I've got a part two to this definition, it kind of just completes it a little bit better and that is this truth is God's unchangeable standard by which all things are measured. God's unchangeable standard by which everything else is measured. If you have a ruler in your home, it's 12 inches long and it doesn't matter what you are measuring with your ruler. It is 12 inches long and thats the standard, you can measure anything against it to see its length. God's truth is the unchanging standard by which everything else can be measured. Which is amazing. Because we live in a world of changing standards.
The world's morality is constantly shifting.
If you would have asked, or polled or spoken to the culture, the people of the 1800s in America, the early 1800s, in America and asked them about slavery, you would have heard one opinion about slavery. If you would have done the same thing at the end of the 1800s. The majority would have said something different. The standard changed. We're glad it did. If you would ask people in the early 1900s how human sexuality should be expressed and what is the right way. You would have gotten one answer. If you would have polled people at the end of the 1900s, the 20th century, the end of the 20th century. You would have gotten a completely different answer. Things have changed completely, but here is the truth about God's truth. It doesn't change. His standard revealed in the Holy scriptures. Is unchanging.
And that's actually a good thing. But here's the thing about God's truth. There's two basic things I want you to know about his truth before we end today. And the first one is this: God's truth is harder than you ever imagined.
Okay, so as we study God's truth, when we look at his holy expectations when we see what God considers right and wrong, the truth is that God's truth is harder than we ever imagined. We would like to think that instead of God's standard being here let's just say it's here instead. And instead of comparing ourselves to what God says is right and wrong, it's so much more convenient for us to compare ourselves to others or to compare ourselves to our own standard. Would you agree? Like am I, perfect? Oh no, of course, I'm not perfect. But let me tell you about my brother.
I am so much better than him. I've actually got two. I'm not saying which one. Or, what about you might say? Well, am I the perfect neighbor? No. But let me tell you about my neighbor and what his dog does in my yard all the time. I don't let my dog do that and comparing ourselves to other people, we can feel better about ourselves. Or if we compare ourselves to our own standard? Am I perfect? No, of course not. But oh man, you should have seen me in college. I was a mess and I have come so far. And I've changed so much over the years, I am so much better than I was. And so we compare ourselves to ourselves. We compare ourselves to other people and we start to feel better about ourselves. Except God says you're not using the right standard.
My truth says, compare it to my standard. There's a passage in the Bible that says be holy. There's another version of it that says be perfect as how perfect be as perfect as your neighbor. No, that's not what the verse says be perfect as your heavenly Father is Be holy as I the Lord your God am holy is what it says. His standard is the absolute and when we measure ourselves against that standard don't we have to admit? This is harder than we ever could have imagined God's truth is perfect and it is absolute.
Let me share some scripture with you. John chapter 3, 19 to 21. This is one of Jesus closest friends. He wrote this. This is the verdict. Light has come into the world. But people love Darkness, instead of light because their deeds were evil. Jesus, the light of the world came into the world and people preferred to not hang out with Jesus, for the most part. They would, they wanted to separate themselves from him. They ultimately condemned him because they knew That compared to God's standard. There is evil in their hearts. And they preferred to remain in the dark.
Everyone who does evil hates the light. And will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed, but whoever lives by the truth comes into the light. So that it may be. So that it may be seen plainly that what they have done. Has been done in the sight of God.
Living in the truth of God requires coming into the light and that is harder than we ever imagined.
My wife and I were on a trip to Africa back in October. And we were staying, at a missionaries house for the evening and having a great discussion. Its finally time to go home for the evening. They're going to take us back to where we were staying and we go out to the car to get in and he says, wait, before you get in the car come to the front of the vehicle here. I'm going to turn on the headlights. Let me show you what something that you're going to see. And I thought there might be a little Critter scurrying by or something he turns on the headlights into my horror. There were hundreds of cockroaches. This big that just went scattering away as soon as he turned on the car headlights. I had walked out of the house not looking much at my feet or caring what was around my feet. But as soon as those lights went on and I saw the Cockroaches, scattering, the whole rest of our time in Africa, when I was outside in the dark. I was always doing this because I was sure there was going to be a cockroach crawling up my leg at some point. Um, but that light exposed, it sure it showed. What was already there? And it was scary to see. What was there? AJ Swoboda is the author of a book called “A Glorious Stark”. He said this light is scary. It exposes the monsters. Or you might say it exposes the Cockroaches, right? That's scary. He said it's impossible to accept this love of God. Yet simultaneously reject the truth of our unfaithfulness. We would love to accept the grace of God. The love of God, the Forgiveness of God. Yes, I want that. But it would be convenient if we could just ignore the fact that we are unfaithful, that we've got cockroaches. Crawling around in our heart that we are sinful people. I don't want that. I do want this in this author and the Bible agrees that's not possible.
There must be both.
You see the challenge for us is that it's so easy for us to see the sin in other people's lives. And to stand in judgment of that. Into all the while be ignorant or ignore, or justify or rationalize, or blame the sin that's in our own hearts in our own lives. For example, it's very easy for us to think or see think about the person that's struggling with alcohol. Just can't seem to get past that they're an alcoholic or the person that's a drug addict that keeps going back to it or the person that has a gambling addiction and they're blowing through their life savings or the person that's got to pour in addiction and just can't seem to stop that. And if you don't struggle with those things to say, but why do they do that? They're such an evil people. Um, how could they? Because I could never.
So, I've been a pastor for many, many years now. Whether you believe this or not, it is true.
That every single one of you and me are one step away from destroying our lives.
We are one step away from a complete disaster.
Because I've seen it again and again, and again. But instead, we like to feel confident in ourselves and will cross our arms and will say that “I had an affair.”
They're in the midst of a divorce.
Those kids are so poorly behaved.
I can't believe it. I could never.
Where you hear about the student caught cheating. Or the accountant, caught cooking the books.
Or the employee fired for cause.
Or somebody in jail for any reason. Well, I could never. I can hardly believe what they did. I would never.
Careful. We're all one step away. Because those cockroaches are in each one of our hearts.
And when we step into the light, when we step into God's truth, it's harder than we ever imagined and it all comes to light.
In the Bible, there's a verse that says this: “If we claim to be without sin, We deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us.”
So, what's in your heart?
It's a tough question, right? That's not what's in their heart, what's in?
What are you struggling with? What attitudes are lurking there that nobody else knows about?
What thoughts, go through your head? What words have come out of your mouth. What is your addiction that you struggle with that sin that you keep going back to?
I was bringing us into the light this morning. I know, it's uncomfortable.
But Jesus says, I got to tell you the truth. And it's harder than you would have imagined.
It leads us to do what we did earlier in this service and that is to fall before our God and without excuse. Acknowledging what's in us, each of us individually, we say to him, Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner. I don't deserve it. I haven't earned it. But have mercy on me, a sinner.
And I don't want you to leave without heaviness in your heart. So I got a share part two with you here. And that is this. God's truth is also better than you ever hoped.
And this is where it's just simply impossible for us to cleanly separate Grace and Truth. So last week Pastor Mike teached a beautiful sermon on Grace, go back and listen to it. That I told A+ for that sermon. I don't grade his sermons, but for me it was an A+, but go back and listen to that sermon on Grace. So beautiful, but the truth is, he talked about truth. If he couldn't help it, he had to. And I'm talking about truth today but I can't help but talk about Grace because the two are connected and I can't separate them. And the truth is that God's truth is also about His grace. And his grace is for you.
You've heard this verse before, but I gotta share it with you again. John 3, 16 and 17 says this: “For God so loved the world… For our God so loved, what's your name? Fill, in the blank, put your name in there for God so loved you. That he gave his one, his one and only son. Well, what did he give? His one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world. That would be the only truth. And it would be right if he did. But he sent his son into the world to save the world through him.
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And that's the part of God's truth. That is better than you ever could have imagined.
You are forgiven of that sin. God. Forgave you even though he saw the Cockroaches.
He didn't get grossed out and run from you. He didn't banish you as he could have, he ran to you, he embraced you and he found a way to get rid of the Cockroaches for you.
And that's what the Lord Jesus did appreciate his sacrifice when Jesus went to the Cross. Can you imagine him covered in cockroaches? For every one of your sins is a cockroach, it's it filled your heart. Jesus said, I will take them from you. He was covered in them, he went to the cross and he paid the penalty. He cleansed you, he exterminated them all and so you stand before. God clean pure. Holy beautiful, child of God that is the truth that God wants you to know through the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's beautiful and it's better than you ever could have hoped.
God didn't love you so much that he changed his unchangeable standards. That's how some people view the gospel. “God so loved the world that he doesn't require as much from you. He just requires as much as you can give. So give it your best shot.” That's not the gospel.
God so loved the world that he gave His one and only son not to lower his bar, but to keep the bar exactly where it was but to raise you up. So you meet his holy standard. In Christ, you are clothed in him. Holy blameless and pure in God's sight. You are perfect. You are a saint in the eyes of your God and that is so incredible truth that God shares with us. And when you know this and when you believe this and and when you are cleansed of your sin and you know, Jesus did it, and you know what, it cost him, that gives you a new view of God's truth. It's not something scary anymore. It's not something that makes you run. It's something you embrace. It's something you seek, you recognize the beauty of it. The truth is that lies hurt, lies destroy lies separate people and ruin things. And that's why the devil is the father of lies, but the truth will set you free. The truth brings you into the light. The truth is beautiful. The truth restores. The truth heals. The truth is what we embrace as we follow Jesus. If this is Jesus, and that is sin, you cannot say, I love Jesus and I want his forgiveness, and I'm going to keep on sinning and doing all the wicked things that he hates. That's incompatible. Jesus came full of grace and Truth. Both of them. Complete.
So, this final truth. Jesus is full of grace and truth.
And we can't separate them and we can't take one without the other. And yet we sometimes do that and when we do, we run into problems, let me just explain that. What happens if you have Grace without truth? And what happens if you have truth without Grace, both are bad. Both do damage, both our harmful. If you have Grace without truth. What you get is permission to sin.
Grace without truth is permission to sin. I'm forgiven of it all anyway, right, that means I can continue and live. However, I want to live. Jesus forgives it. Anyway, we're going to see how that skews our perception of God and we don't see him accurately but just as damaging as the second one that truth without Grace is permission to cancel.
Truth without Grace. If you only have truth, that's permission to judge other people, cancel other people, not forgive other people. And that's also reflecting on your view of God. If that's how you think of him. So to help us visualize the two errors here, the two problems. If you if you miss one or the other, I've got some pictures. Two of the three are created by AI that actually work pretty well for me. So, the first one, I'm going to put a picture of a grandfather playing with his naughty grandchildren.
Grace without truth is permission to sin. Grandpa goes over to the kids house, Mom and Dad are off on date night. They are monsters. They are destroying the house. They are literally damaging the house that will need repair once they return home and Grandpa say, “oh, they're so cute. Look at what they're doing. Isn't that special, isn't that precious?”
That's Grace without truth. And I find it very interesting that in the Bible. I never heard a single passage in the Bible that refers to God as our heavenly grandfather. I am one. Yes, we are permissive and we embrace Grace more than truth. But that's not how our Heavenly father is described in the Bible. He is Grace and truth and this is not an accurate picture of what God looks like. And if we embrace that picture of God, then we're going to remain in our sin. And I've heard so many people do this? Yes,I know this is wrong, but I know I'm forgiven by Jesus, therefore, I can continue in the wrong and I continue to do these things that Jesus hates because he forgives me anyway. Wrong. You can't pursue Jesus and do what Jesus hates at the same time. His grace forgives you.
And he empowers you for Godly living in line with his truth. Truth and Grace go together. Okay, so what is the image of God? Then if you have truth, but you miss the grace?
I would say it looks something like this. This is not an AI generated image. I could have picked from thousands of images because in medieval times, this is actually an 11th century mosaic that comes from Athens, Greece. Eastern Orthodoxy has all kinds of icons where Jesus looks a whole lot like this angry, mad, scowling because you have not kept his truth and you better try harder or you're going to hell for goodness sake. You better try harder. That's what happens when you have truth without Grace. And it makes Christians start to look the same. Do you know any Christians like that, that get really judgmental, that are really proud of themselves? They think that maybe they've started to get pretty close to this standard, but they sure haven't and let me condemn them. And they get angry and they get mad at everybody and they start wagging their fingers at people because they hold to the truth, but they fail to see the grace of God for themselves or the grace of God that he wants us to apply to others. So we get this skewed perception of God with truth without Grace.
So what does Jesus really look like? And I did I wasn't sure what image of Jesus to put up on, on here for, for this last one. So I went to AI, I didn't think I would get anything usable, and I put in “create an image of Jesus full of grace and Truth.”
Here's what came out.
Honestly, I kind of like it. I think I see both. Okay so you see those golden rays coming out from Jesus? Does that remind me of his truth, his Holiness, his power? OK he is God, he is truth.
But look at look around the heart of Jesus there. See that red amulet? I'm not sure what that is. But behind it, I see a cross, right? In the cross, reflects the grace of Jesus. I like it that at least he's not scowling so maybe this is a good image of Jesus. Full of grace and truth but is that to cross of Christ that the truth and grace of God come full bear? And both are fully reconciled, so Jesus could be fully grace and truth. The truth of God: sin is ugly. It must be paid for at the cross of Christ. It was.
God loves you. He's full of grace. He wants to forgive you at the cross of Christ. He rightly can. Because Jesus took your payment and he paid for it in full.
So friends, I pray that you grow in your love and appreciation for Jesus, who is full of grace and truth. Is that truth harder than you ever imagined? Yeah, I think it is. At the very same time, is that truth more beautiful? And is it better than you ever could have hoped for in Christ Jesus full of grace and Truth? Yes. Yes, it is. So God bless us with a lifetime of study and absorption and love and praise to our Great God and Savior. Jesus Christ, full of grace and Truth. Best. Gifts. Ever.
