A Biblical Look at Truth
Randy Peterman · Oct 9, 2005
Apologetics, No. 02
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4826233353795

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

This morning we're going to be talking about truth. Frankly, this is something that can get really technical and philosophical and lead to a distraction. We really need to look at what God's Word says about truth because, well, He's the source of truth.

When I was in college, I took a poetry class. It wasn't quite a cop-out. I wanted to learn how to write better song lyrics. took a poetry class, and poetry class has a lot of philosophers. If you've ever experienced poetry, you'll notice that some people wax eloquent and some people wax deep, or at least try to be deep and end up sometimes being shallow or silly. That's a nice way to say it.

I didn't understand people like Sylvia Plath, who was rather stuck on herself and whatnot, but I had a Another student in the class, we were walking out of the classroom together towards our cars, and he had said something in the class that made me think, and one of his poems had profanity in it. It didn't make sense why he would use profanity in the first place, but it really wasn't in context to his poem from a pagan perspective.

So I asked him, I said, do you believe, or would you agree with the statement that there is no absolute truth? And he hardly agreed. He was like, yeah, of course I don't believe in absolute truth. And I said, okay, That's self-contradictory. If you believe that there's no absolute truth, then the statement that there is no absolute truth is an absolute truth statement. And it's self-contradictory.

And he was puzzled for a little bit. He thought about it for a bit. Well, another student had been walking behind us who was a little more older and mature and also really didn't like the idea. And he said that instead of even contemplating truth, he preferred to contemplate another profanity. So why you would sit and meditate on that, I don't know. But the thing is that the world does not like truth. Well, they like truth as long as it doesn't apply to them in a way that's inconvenient.

We need to talk about four vocabulary words here. First, you'll notice them at the top of the page. First is Philosophy. The classical definition of philosophy, the roots of the word is a love of wisdom. Unfortunately, when you say philosophy now, a lot of people, their eyes tend to glaze over simply because they're afraid that we're going to be so deep that your brain's going to hurt or it's going to be useless.

I was talking with Craig Kays yesterday. He's got a degree in philosophy. And he said that right before he took his last class, he talked to one of his professors. He said, Professor, what am I going to do with this degree when I'm done with it? And the professor thought for a minute, he said, well, hopefully you'll know a little bit more about yourself. He's like, I've spent years, two years of my life studying philosophy and I get this, hopefully I feel better or know more about myself. We're going to talk about this from a philosophical perspective very briefly.

The second word there is epistemology, which is a branch or the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, It's presuppositions and foundations and it's extent and validity. Does everybody know what a presupposition is? If I say presupposition, it's an assumption. To clarify, it's an assumption. It's something you presume to be true.

The ability to discern or judge. Wisdom. There we go. Wisdom is the ability to discern. Thank you very much, Steve. The ability to discern or judge what is true. You might want to write that down, right or lasting. I missed the word for some reason. I didn't proofread myself enough.

Who can tell me off the top of their head, what was it that Solomon prayed for when he was told he could have anything? God said, you can have anything. What do you want? What did he pray for? Wisdom. Okay. Obviously, we have the book of Proverbs and the book of Ecclesiastes due to that wisdom. How many of you have read Ecclesiastes out of curiosity? First time I read it, I was like, this is the most depressing book I have ever read. It's because it's supposed to point you to Christ and say, hey, philosophy is man trying to find wisdom on his own. If you just try to look for wisdom without God, you've got nothing.

All right, how about logic? Everybody familiar with logic? I'm a programmer. I deal with logic every day. Well, not every day, but most every day. When I deal with my three-year-old, sometimes I have to put the logic down. You know, Daddy, play old man and old woman. There's no logic in that. I don't understand. So logic is the study or use of reason. That's an important thing.

Do you need a hand out, Wayne? Or a binder? You going to look at his? His has got notes in it. So those are the four definitions of things. I may use those at any time today and I don't want to drop those words and cause any confusion. If I say anything else, sometimes I slip in vocabulary words that I assume too much about. Do ask. Alright, so then we need to ask the question, and this is famous. Everybody remember the first person who ever asked this question? It's Pilate in the Bible. Just kidding, it was probably asked long before that.

But what is truth? We want to talk about the characteristics of the Christian definition of truth. We could spend a lot of time talking about the secular or pagan definition of truth, but frankly, they end up dancing around a lot of things. So we're going to talk about the Christian definition of truth so that you have something to compare with everything else you're going to come across.

First, truth is a characteristic of God. It exists only because God created it in the universal realm. It is part of who He is, and we don't have truth as an outside word that we apply to God. We have God who has truth that we can apply to things outside of Him.

If you'll take a look at your chart, the black and white photograph that's there, you'll see a diagram of what I'm trying to explain there. God, part of his characteristic is truth, and he reveals that to man. In contrast, man seeks reality and tries to turn that into truth.

I'm going to go ahead and read the quote at the bottom of that page. One of my favourite Christian philosophers, even though we disagreed on some of our theology, is a guy named Cornelius Van Til, and I think this is a really great quote to put everything we're going to talk about in perspective. If one does not make human knowledge wholly dependent upon the original self-knowledge and consequent revelation of God to man, then man will have to seek knowledge within himself as the final reference point. So instead of God being the final reference point, man is self-referencing. Then he will have to seek an exhaustive understanding of reality. First let's ask, who believes in unicorns? Come on. It's in the 1611 King James. Unicorns. Okay, nobody. Alright, who here doesn't believe in unicorns? Alright, a few people don't believe in unicorns. Wayne's not sure.

If you are God, you can absolutely say unicorns do or do not exist, because you know everything and have been throughout all time. If you're a man, you don't know all of reality. Anytime somebody says, I'm an atheist, I don't believe in the Bible, I don't believe in God, ask them if they believe in unicorns, and if they say no, say, prove it, to which they can't, because they're the reference point, and they can't be at all times, in all places, to absolutely say there is no unicorn, or has never been a unicorn, because it's possible that there was in the past, or there will be in the future, from a non-Christian viewpoint. And even in a Christian viewpoint, if God decided in the new heavens and the earth to make a unicorn, he could.

So, moving on, as an exhaustive understanding of reality, then he will have to hold that if he cannot attain to such an exhaustive understanding of reality, he has no true knowledge of anything at all. So truth cannot be known absolutely. Either man must know everything or he knows nothing, if man is the center of what is reality or truth.

At the top here is Romans 1.25, for they exchanged the truth of God for a lie.

We're going to talk about Romans 1.25 and the verses preceding it in just a moment. If God is the source of truth, then we have faith in God and truth which gets its definition from Him. It's important that we recognize that God is the source of all truth. Epistemology is the study of truth and how much we can really know what we know. You can take whole books and read them on the subject.

When mankind tries to find truth in himself, he's going to come up with a system that still falls short, because he is a creation. We're going to talk about the difference between the Creator and the creation. That's a major distinction in your theology. When you look at God's Word all throughout it, We're going to see here, Paul writes that mankind trades looking at God and who He is and all of His glory, and instead trades it for humans and animals, which is really silly. And we're going to talk about that a little bit further here. I'm going to go ahead and read this out here. Read along with me, Romans 1, 18 through 25.

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth and unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them. For God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes, his eternal power, and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

For even though they know or knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed animals, and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonoring among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

Okay, I've got some questions on your handout here. You didn't already take a peek at it. The first one I have here is, what does this say about the starting point for the non-believer in being able to define and clearly articulate truth? If the propositions that Paul stated in here are true, what does it say?

Let's go ahead and take a look at verse 18, and then I'll read it again, and then you can go ahead and answer that for me if somebody wouldn't mind. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. What is mankind doing to truth in the flesh? They suppress it. When you are in any situation in life and you suppress the truth, what happens? You either have a lie, or you have sin, which is still because you bought a lie.

I'll tell you a personal story. When I was 16, I had my permit. I didn't have my driver's license like some of the kids did in school, which is probably safer for everyone else on the road. We were driving to Southern California. We were in my parents' suburban and we were all listening to music and talking and enjoying ourselves and I had the pedal all the way to the floor.

This may be my dad, he's going to be a little afraid now. The needle went past the 85 mile per hour high end on the Suburban speedometer. This is a big confession here. My dad's probably a little nervous. Highway patrolman flips on his lights, he was in the sagebrush, didn't even see him, whips around, he comes up behind me, and I thought, oh, I'm so dead.

I'm going to go to jail in California. young and now you didn't realize that they would just, you know, kill me. Well, he pulls me over. It was like Easter Sunday or something like that. No, it wasn't Easter Sunday. It was some holiday. And I'm thinking, this is like the worst thing that can happen today. He's probably already hating to be out here on this holiday having to work. Well, he comes and he looks. He comes around the passenger side, which is where my dad's sitting. My dad rolls down the window.

And he says, do you know how fast you were going? And I answered honestly, no. didn't go past 85, I don't know how fast I'm going. Well, the truth of the matter is that I had lied to myself that it was alright. The speed limit was 55, this was before some of the more recent legislations and traffic laws, and so I didn't know how fast I was going, but I didn't lie to them, right? Because I did know how fast I was going, but I did know that I was breaking the law, and I had bought into, I was suppressing the truth that 55 was going to be fast enough.

So anyways, when the carnal mind that doesn't have the Holy Spirit is involved with truth, and they suppress it, do they recognize that they're suppressing it necessarily? What do you think the answer is to that? No? Let's take a look at 19. He says, Because that which is known about God is evident within them, for God made it evident to them. God revealed Himself to them. All mankind, inherently, because they are His creation, know that He exists. But what does verse 18 say? They suppress the truth, or their knowledge of Him, in unrighteousness. So they know God exists, but they suppress it, even though God revealed Himself to them.

Let's ignore that. Let's put that away. I was talking to Cheryl earlier, and she said that one of her co-workers was upset because he couldn't have offensive material at his cubicle and he made some comment about, but the Christians can have their offensive material at work. That's not right.

Well, there's a fantastic example of suppression, suppressing what is God's truth. We surely couldn't know that God is real, but we can know everything else. Mankind will buy anything else but truth because they suppress it. The next question that we have there is, what are some of the, oh sorry, I'm jumping ahead of myself.

That was verse 19, verse 20, for since the creation of the world his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. Is anyone familiar with Genesis chapter 6, where okay, yeah, we get introduced to the Nephilim, but we also, we meet Noah. And what does God say about mankind at that point in time?

Does anybody remember? Yeah, they were doing only evil continually. When man divorces his knowledge of God from real life, they can only do evil. And it's a downward spiral. I'm sure you're familiar, or some of you are familiar with Judges, the book of Judges. is an example of Israel divorcing their knowledge of God from their lives. And it's a downward spiral. It's a really depressing book. I'd rather read Ecclesiastes than the book of Judges.

So, God revealed himself in his invisible attributes. We're created in God's image. Genesis chapter 1 says that we're created in God's image. His invisible attributes are his character, who he is, was given to us as human beings. Parts of that, obviously it's a finite version. God's infinite, we are finite. But he revealed to us the ability to have truth, the ability to understand righteousness and justice, and all of those attributes, they're revealed to us in his character, his invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature. That's obvious when we look at creation around us. We can't create this.

How many of you remember back in the 80s, this was when I was a little kid, Computers and how cool they are with those big fat floppy disks. I think they're like eight inches big I Remember the first time I saw one I was doing a fundraiser collecting money for school And I walked in and this cow is pushing a floppy disk and I'm like oh my gosh That's eight inches. I thought that must hold a lot of data boy was I wrong okay, but The thing is that man's creation is finite. You look at that.

We've progressed now. We have DVD and blue laser DVD. We can hold lots of data. We can store terabytes of data. It's still finite. God's infinite. So we have all of these creations. We look around and we go, wow, we can't create this. This sure as heck couldn't have happened on its own. So anyways, at the end of 20 there, so they are without excuse.

Go ahead, Tom. I'm going to skip around a little bit, because that's not the main. It is equipped to understand and appreciate infinity and its inadequacy to grasp it. If you look towards the environment of the galaxy, you want to really fly through the way. Just with the Mark I eyeball, you don't need to use a telescope. You can see that split in the sky. Yeah. Yeah, I'm as we can comprehend. Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to restate that on the microphone because people won't be able to hear that if they're listening to it on CD or mp3.

Tom just said, you know, man is capable of comprehending infinity as a concept, but really doesn't know it and understand it because it's beyond our system of evaluation of things. Infinity is obviously without end, but God is infinite. Verse 21, for even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man, and of birds, and four-footed animals, and crawling creatures. Okay, so we see a big slide here. We see going from knowing God down sliding into idolatry, basically is what it is.

I wanted to briefly discuss and just have you guys shout out, well don't shout, you don't have to shout, but share ideas. What are some characteristics of God and their worldly counterparts that people traded for? Let's compare and contrast God and corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. What is mankind trading?

For example, I'll use a non-God and animal creation. It's kind of like if you had a Hummer, and you had to go climb over the Rockies, and you had a Yugo. And somebody said, you know what, I bet you I'll get better gas mileage in the Yugo. And they traded the Hummer for the Yugo, so to speak.

What are the characteristics of God and what are the manly or worldly characteristics? Using, in this example, God is true and has truth, and what does man have? Pardon? Falsehood, lies. justice and righteousness. What does man have? Yeah, we're politically correct. We have vengeance. God has love. What does man have? Lust, hate, tolerance. That's one of my favourite things. I love it when people say, well, we need to tolerate something. Tolerate? The biblical command is to love one another. I can tolerate Abigail doing something for so long in the store, but if I love her, I'm going to discipline her.

There's something that goes on and beyond endurance. Tolerance runs out eventually. I remember hearing about Chinese water torture. They drip the water on the forehead, or maybe somewhere else, but let's say the forehead. After a while, you kind of go crazy because it's too much. That's how tolerance is. Little things happen at work. I had this happen before, where the co-worker comes back and keeps being, you know, irritating. There's tolerance. But God has love, which is why we have grace. God's gracious. God's merciful. What do four-footed animals do? Let's look at pagan practices in the Old Testament time. They were, and even stuff Dad's been talking about, in some of the New Testament times, where you don't know what's going to happen.

I've got to appease the gods so they won't be upset at me. Because those gods are not true, are they? They don't know truth. They don't understand truth because they're man-made. They traded God for man-made things and they had to worry about Zeus coming down and sleeping with their wife because he's not very reliable. And his wife never knew what he was doing, because he was constantly hiding what he was doing. So man-made gods were always scary, and it's easy to see why people rejected them.

Here's the third question I have down on your handouts. Is there hope for these corrupt people? If we stop here, it's frankly sad and depressing and yucky. Is there hope? Okay, yeah. If they learn the truth of God, there is hope. And that is the critical thing.

We can stop here, we can say, okay, Romans 1, 18-25, and actually if you read all the way to 32, it's nasty. If you read 26-32, which I recommend you do at home, it's a long list of yucky things that humans are capable of. Homosexuality, and then a long, I mean, graphically describing sexual shifts, and then just a long list of things that humans do in the flesh. So when they rejected truth and went for man, it suddenly made it possible for them to justify all kinds of corrupt behaviors. But there is hope. The Holy Spirit can draw them and call them in.

John 3.16 says, God so loved the whole world. That's everybody.

So we can be a light out there and we can share the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ and offer hope to people. to end on a discouraging note. That would be not so good for you. So the conclusion there is that mankind, due to the corruption of sin, is incapable of finding truth on his own. God revealed truth, but mankind rejected it. So it's been rejected and suppressed, but that's outside of us.

That should cause us to evangelize, but that also means that we need to look at here within the church body. That's the next step. We've looked at what the world says about truth, Now we need to see what the Bible says about truth in the body of Christ. Ephesians 4, 11 through 16 here. I'm going to go ahead and read this out loud. And then 4 through 21 and then 25.

And he gave some as apostles and some as prophets and some as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

As a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ, for whom the whole body, being fitted and held together, by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. But you did not learn Christ in this way, if indeed you have heard him and have been taught in him, just as truth is in Jesus. Therefore, laying aside falsehoods, speak truth, each one of you, with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. What has God done to preserve the truth within the Church? What has God instituted for the Church body to preserve truth? Anyone? The teaching of the apostles? Teachers and apostles? Okay. And what else? Evangelists? Pastors and teachers?

Further on that, He has clearly given us truth, hasn't he? It's not like he says, OK, I am truth, figure me out. He says, I am truth, and here I am. And he gives us his word, which gives us truth so that we can learn and know him. We can know truth, absolutely, because he revealed it. It is in him. But in the church body here, the next question there, how are we supposed to deliver the truth? What does it say specifically? Speaking the truth in love. Have you ever been guilty of speaking the truth and not love? My dad could tell stories of all the times I have not taught truth in love or spoken truth in love.

Anyone? Okay, I guess I'm alone in this. The thing is that sometimes in the name of honesty or truthfulness, we kick people in the shins. Here, how about a nice knife in the back? So the thing is that it says we need to speak the truth in love. How are we able to speak the truth in love? There's actually two parts to that question. Go ahead, Tom. Where do we get the truth and how are we able to speak it in love? So first, where do we get the truth?

From the Word. From the teachings of the apostles, prophets, and the pastors and teachers. And then, how are we enabled to speak it in love? The Holy Spirit. So, we've been given truth, God has revealed it, and we're able to speak it by the power of the Holy Spirit. That means that when we go, How do I communicate this to somebody? The Holy Spirit will help us.

He will answer that prayer and He will help us to communicate those things in love. Sometimes lovingly telling somebody that they're in sin is going to be a bluntness, but it's going to be the truth and it's going to be delivered in love. It's one thing to say globalized blanket statements I can think of a few televangelists who've said some humdingers. But instead, we need to be speaking truth and love. What is the result of that truth within the body? What does the end of this passage here talk about as far as the result of truth being spoken in love?

People get built up, okay? It's edification. So truth, sometimes when we think about doctrine, You ever hear people talk about doctrine divides? Has anybody ever heard that phrase? I heard it a lot in seminary, but I have a biased opinion, or a unique experience maybe. Doctrine, I keep moving Tom, because it's fun to watch your head go behind Aaron's. Sorry, I keep moving and he's going, Randy, will you hold still? Doctrine divides, doesn't it? Is that a problem? Is that an issue, Tom? Perfection because of the flesh is impossible. However, we are being perfected in our doctrine, in our theology, should be in the process of growth and development because we have been given truth. This last week, I didn't print out a copy of it. I could do so for any of you who would like it.

The Catholic Church in England, this last week or in the weeks before it, released a packet, a booklet of information talking about the fact that the Bible is not all true. It's not all accurate. Now, it didn't come out of Rome, so I don't know how Rome feels about that, but I didn't ask.

The thing is, they were saying, listen, there's a list of scriptures that we know are not true. So they had a list of scriptures. These are wrong. For example, the creation account in Genesis is 100% completely wrong and off. It's not scientifically accurate, We're done with that. But, ha ha ha, it's Rome, or Catholicism, the virgin birth is accurate. That's preserved, obviously.

But the thing is that as soon as the Bible as a whole is unreliable, that's when it's like erosion. It starts degrading and falling apart. The Old Testament prophesies things that are going to happen in the New Testament, and in the future, some of them. And the New Testament grabs things from the Old Testament and quotes it. Christ quotes things from Genesis and first things about the creation that require those things to be true and reliable. If they're not true and reliable, then Christ is at least erroneous or confused. So the whole foundation of our faith in Christ, it becomes useless because truth is not there.

However, and we see here in Ephesians, God gave the prophets and He gave the teachers and He gave the evangelists that started the church so that we may know and have the truth and use it and learn and grow as a body. So I think it's important that we recognize, and we'll be getting into that at the end here where we're going to talk about did God reveal truth, and how do we know? Last question I have here on here, and I kind of got off track on it, but we need to really answer it.

What does this say about denominationalism and separation of believers based on doctrinal differences? It says in verse 13, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

Denominationalism, the pursuit of, well, I don't agree with you, so I'll just start my own church, that way we'll just agree to disagree, or I can hate you because we disagree and we'll just move on, is wrong. It's erroneous. However, a lot of churches are not teaching doctrine, they're not equipping the saints so that they can grow into Christ, into the maturity that is Christ. So that's obviously a challenge Holly Hills share.

We really try and strive for that purpose, to equip each saint. So doctrinal disagreements and denominational separation is definitely not a biblical concept, because truth is one, and it's absolute, and we can grow in it. That means that we're going to have to dig through God's Word together as believers and find and understand God's truth more completely.

So, 2 Timothy 2.15 says, I'm getting close to my time frame, or time limit, Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth. Now, I pulled this one little verse out of context to ask the first question, who is this written to? Does anybody know? This is a quick and easy one, you just have to look at the reference. Timothy. Alright, it's written to Timothy. However, there's a principle behind this to leaders in the church, that they need to be diligent to present themselves approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.

So, if the Lord ever calls you to Nebraska, He's going to have to bring a desert fish, kind of like Jonah, to grab me to take me to Nebraska. Sorry, I'm a little distracted there. But when someone goes to find a church, they need to know God's word and they need to know truth so that they can discern what is a good church to go to. You need to be able to look and see, is the leadership accurately handling the word of truth? That's pretty darn critical there. That's another part of the responsibility as we are edified and grown.

2 Timothy 4, 3-4 here, we'll jump through because I'm running out of time. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths. When did or does that time come, that it says a time will come? When did that happen or when will that happen? Right now for sure? How many of you were in the church history class the first or second time it was taught?

Okay, some of you. Actually a good chunk of you, that's good. How many of you actually can... This definitely, I believe, happened in the past tense. Does anybody recall how soon after the apostles died, people started wanting some ear candy and some tickling and all that stuff? How long did it take? Anyone? It wasn't very long at all because...

Go ahead, Steve. Well, that's right. Yeah. It was happening immediately. So if we were to say, when did it happen? I think Steve really nailed it. It happened immediately. Why do you think that happened? What are some good guesses? We can only guess. The sin nature. That's right. That's the ultimate rule. We don't have to guess about that.

But you can see that in other places, Paul writes about leaders wanting to gain power. They used it to enter into homes. And it's pretty amazing. But people want their ears tickled. I love it. How many of you, when you watch the politicians on television, you know that they have their feathers out and they're just tickling those ears.

And when you flick through the channels and, God forbid, you stop on one of the I once heard a famous painter, whom I will not name, he said, when I send out my original paintings, I feel like the Apostle Paul sending out his cloth, and I hope that it impacts the homes that they go into. And I was just like, you're not the Apostle Paul! And you may be the painter of light, but you sure as heck are not sending out some miraculous painting. When you charge a quarter of a million dollars for a painting, I don't think it's a miraculous painting. I think you're making some cash.

So, the idea is people want their ears tickled. They don't want truth if it's going to nail them right where they are, often. Unless the Holy Spirit is in our lives, And then in that case, the truth is freeing, it's liberating. When I understand how corrupt my flesh is, when I understand how corrupt the sin nature is, then I am able to go, wow, Lord, thank you for the truth, so that I can learn and know and understand it, because He revealed it. The last thing on your handout, we are running out of time, but I want to make sure that we go over it.

You will see The four truth questions, these are questions that either my dad came up with or has used for a really long time. Did you come up with these, dad, or did... Well, okay, we'll say the Bible came up with it, but you were not presented these by anyone else. By the way, if you're listening to this on tape, my dad is Vernon Peterman. Or you could be listening to it on MP3 or CD, or some other future version of technology.

Is there absolute truth? That's the first question. When you're talking with somebody, and I'm going to leave this to your homework to go over these verses because we're out of time, is there absolute truth? We say yes, but when you're talking to somebody, listen to the words that they say carefully because they're going to make an absolute statement. Even if it's, I don't believe in absolute truth, do you believe absolutely that you don't believe in absolute truth?

And the thing is, people, when they use broad generalizations, they're going to give away, next week we're going to talk about worldviews, they will give away their worldview. They will tell you just when you're talking with them. Even if they try to be dancy and squishy and never really commit to something, they're going to communicate where they stand. Whether or not they believe in absolute truth, they do.

They have to at some point in time because language demands an absolute system. So at some point in time they have to believe that there is such a thing. otherwise they ain't going to be able to communicate with you all very well. So you need to, being in Texas for so long, you start picking up on those things like that's not the absolutely best way you could speak English. Number two, is that truth that is absolute singular? Is there one absolute truth or is it your truth is absolute and my truth is absolute?

The answer for that from a biblical standpoint, and I said that at the beginning, is that yes, truth is singular. It is revealed by God, who clearly clarified it and stated it. Three, has that truth been given? I just said yes. A lot of people may agree with you that there is absolute truth, and they may even agree that it's singular, but they're afraid to commit to God revealing the truth. Why is that? We talked about that. They have to change and they suppress their knowledge of God. As soon as they confess that there's a God, then they're going down the slippery pathway of having to deal with sin. And how do they have a relationship with God?

Fourth question, is that absolute, singular, given truth knowable? Can you know that truth? And we of course say yes, Tom. Okay, so the CIA's motto is the truth will make you free, but they've left the first part out from the scriptural context. So if somebody says no to that answer, that truth is not knowable, but God revealed it, where would they find that truth? How does mankind go about finding that truth? This is a throwback to my chart I gave you.

They're going to try to find it within themselves, and they're going to have to be comprehensive in their reality, that they would be able to know all reality of all time, which they cannot do. But God does, and he gives us truth. Steve? Steve said that the truth is knowable, but even though it's infinite, we can't know it exhaustively, but we can know it because God knows it and he's shared it with us. And I think that's, if I were to summarize what I was trying to say, that's how I would say it. We need to, yes, we have faith. Yeah, if they try to pursue it any other way, they're going to find it empty.

When I was living in Texas, we actually had a friend who was an engineer who liked mathematics, who got a hold of a book by a mathematician back in the 30s by the name of Kurt Godel. He was a German fellow. Anybody heard of him, maybe? Okay, so my dad has, but he doesn't count. No, he's teaching.

Kurt Godel presented to a mathematic association, and this caused huge waves in the mathematics community, the fact that mathematics as a system is based on faith. I remember learning as a kid, okay, the teacher says, learn your multiplication tables, 2 times 2 is 4. Okay! You're actually being taught something that is faith-based, simply because mathematics is a system in and of itself. at some point in time, you have to believe that one is one. That's a critical issue. No matter how far you go, it's still one. And it's important to realize that truth is based on faith, whether it's faith in man and what man can figure out, or faith in God. Anybody who...

I specifically ignored and have not gone into the classical arguments for God that are used. Things like, if you go back far enough, there must be a Creator because we can't go back infinitely. And so there must be a God. Well, the secular person argues and says, well, then how come If everything has a creator or something that came before it, how come God doesn't have a creator or something that came before him?

The thing is that you either have infinite regression in logic and reasoning, or you have circular arguments. Why? Because it's faith-based. You have faith at some level in something. You have faith in truth revealed by God, or you have faith in mankind. And that's kind of a zinger to leave you with. I shouldn't have done that. I apologize.

But where your faith lies is where you're going to see people's worldviews come out. And next week, we'll talk about worldviews in more depth. We're going to talk about the Christian worldview and all that goes along with that in an overview sense. We're going to talk about the atheist worldview. And we're going to talk about the humanist worldview. And we may talk about some other things. But that's a little teaser for next week.

Let's close in prayer and then we'll be done for this morning. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the truth that you reveal to us. Lord, and thank you for the relationship that we have with you. We ask that you would open our minds as we study your word so that we may learn more and more of who you are and learn your truth. Lord, we do want to lift up the prayer request to you again and ask that you would continue to draw people to you in all of the situations. We thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.