Articles
What Is Truth? Rejecting the World's Images, Voices, and Models--Transcript
I would love to expand a lot more on that song that we just sung.
I would like to see if you would turn with me to the Old Testament passage of the book of Isaiah.
We will look at chapter 44 verses 6 through verse 11.
Glad that we could all be together this morning and appreciate very much Daniel Leaghan, that song.
That song just seems to encompass every possibility of what's happening in our life and what it is that God is willing to do, wants to do, and has done to help us in the midst of all that is going on to help us recover, redeem us, bring us whole again, all of his grace that is put into that.
One of the most interesting things about that is do you believe that everything that you just were singing in that song could be heard by the voices that are being spoken in the world and wherever those voices are coming from today? Or do you see there's a model to that? Do you see that there's some image that encapsulates everything that we just sung just a moment in that song? And I would doubt that you can.
I doubt that there's any voice out there, any kind of image or any kind of model out there that just encapsulates everything that that song just really revealed to us.
Psalm 44 verse 6 says, Thus says Jehovah, the king of Israel, his Redeemer, Jehovah of hosts.
I am the first and I am the last.
Besides me there is no God.
Who as I shall call and shall declare it and set an order for me, since I established the ancient people and the things that are coming that shall come to pass, let them declare it.
Fear you not, neither be afraid have I not declared unto thee of old and showed it in your eyewitnesses.
Is there a God beside me? Yea, there is no rock.
I know not any.
They that fashion a graven image or all of them, vanity and the things that they delight shall not profit.
Their own witnesses see not nor know that they may be put to shame.
Who is fashioned a God or molded an image that is profitable for nothing? Behold all his fellows shall be put to shame and the workmen that are of men.
Let them be all gathered together.
Let them stand up that they shall fear they shall be put to shame together.
To read a little bit more in the context of what's going on in Isaiah's prophecy here, there's a lot about the foolishness of idolatry that's all mentioned all through this, but the declaration that verse 6 to verse 11 has to say, well really verse 6 to verse 8 says, there is a God, but I should say not just a God, but there is no other God other than the God of which has ruled over and cared for the people, God's people, the people of Israel.
And all the voices that the people of Israel would have heard, either from the workmen that made their images or maybe from what they were thinking they heard from the images or the idols, would not really provide for them everything that they were going to need.
Who's going to deliver them from captivity? Of all the idols that they put together, who's going to deliver them from all that? Who's going to deliver them from the wickedness and the chaos of which they were experiencing at the time that this was written? I mean who's got a real good voice out there that can declare to us, is it going to be the next governor? Is it going to be the next priest? Because the priests were definitely in many cases false teachers.
They were deceiving us.
What image out there is going to really declare to us the deliverance from captivity? Who's going to keep us from going there? What model do we look at and say, okay, that's what we all need to help us realize that will help rescue us from our problems? There's been times where we may not necessarily realize what really truth is, but there has been a definition that has been mentioned by voice, by an image or a model of really what life is.
Let me give you just a few.
First one is this one.
What is life? A lot of times it's based on what your body is experiencing at the present time.
Health and vitality.
Cancer, disease, sickness.
Even when you begin to lose track of what happened yesterday, all those mental capabilities that just can't recall everything.
So therefore you begin to define life based on the image, the voice that you're telling yourself of what's going on in your life at this moment.
So therefore to you, you define your life to say, well, I've got this and that's what my life is.
And that's your truth.
You live that because of the circumstances that are going on in your life, whatever that may be.
And you could go on, etc., etc.
and define that.
But then there's some people.
But here's the interesting thing.
In spite of all that is that people used to define life as truth and their body experience, I know of a lady, Diane, I know of a lady who is blind, has been blind all her life, but she doesn't talk about her blindness.
She talks about the grace of God, a woman of joy, a woman of truth, a great, wonderful woman of meek and quiet spirit.
That's her life.
All that truth doesn't come from what she's experiencing.
That comes from what God's told her.
Megan Ferris.
Everybody in here that knows Megan Ferris knows clearly the conditions are not the definition of who she is.
It's her love, her spirit, her dedication.
The body experience is not defining the truth of your life.
But then there's some people that talk about it from a social experience.
It's the likeness that they receive from others or the dislikeness.
It's the acceptance or the refusal or the isolation that people put them in.
Their identity, what position they've got in life, how many friends they've got, their associates, their social values, their correspondence, how many people send them messages, how many people write them cards, how many people call them on the phone, all those social interactions.
As a result, this is what really defines life.
In other words, this is their truth.
This is their identity.
This is where they stand.
This is their truth.
I'm going to say something about this.
I'm going to refer to something here in the book of Isaiah.
There are people, and I will say there are people that are Christians, that have these two experiences as a definition of truth in their life.
We would first of all say we are not idol worshipers.
There are people that would find themselves identifying this, that form of which their life is taken, that truth, that image, that voice of which they've been telling themselves over and over and over again, that becomes to be their truth.
But they will not say they're idol worshipers.
A little bit further in this text in the book of Isaiah, chapter 44, we don't have time to go through all this, but if you notice beginning in verse 12 to about verse 17, the person who is the smith and the carpenter and the one that hews out the cedars and makes these images for the people or even for himself, it is interesting to me that the same individual will take the wood that's left over and will burn the wood of which he's made the image out of and take it and say, oh, this feels so good.
I'm warm.
Or they will roast their meat with it in verse 16 and say, boy, that meat sure does stay good because the fire that I made out of the wood that comes from the idol that I made.
And even verse 17, the residue thereof, he makes a god, even his graven image, he falls down and worships and prays to it and says, deliver me, for thou art my god.
Deliver me.
Deliver me.
This is so interesting.
How many of the people of Israel would say, we're not idol worshipers because we're saying this is our god.
But then in verse 18, they do not know, neither do they consider, for he has shut their eyes that they cannot see, their hearts that they cannot understand, and none calls to mind, neither is their knowledge or understanding to say, I burned part of it in the fire.
Also, I baked bread upon the coals, I roasted flesh and eat from there, and I shall take the residue thereof in abomination, shall I fall down to the stock of a tree.
He summarized it all and says, he that feeds on ashes, a deceived heart has turned him aside, and he cannot deliver his soul, and says, is it not a lie in my right hand? The people that will take their body experience that is in their right hand, or their social experience in their right hand, and define their truth and define their life by that, he says, what value is it? Because what's in your right hand that you hold is your truth of which you're experiencing life, that's not really true.
Now let me say this before I go further.
I'm not dismissing reality.
I'm not dismissing reality, people who have lost their leg because of diabetes.
I'm not dismissing the idea of high blood pressure.
I'm not dismissing the idea of heart problems.
I'm not dismissing the idea of people that are paralyzed and all the disease.
I'm not dismissing that.
But have we been able, or have we not been able, but have we taken all of our body experiences and our social experiences and saying, that's really the truth of my life.
That's really what you're serving.
So therefore, we've got to ask ourselves the question, what is truth? Is it our body? And it's really what's happening to it? Is it all the social engagements and all the social experiences of which you're facing? And all the likes and the dislikes? Is that really the truth, or is it really more misinformation? Are we really being lied to? Have we really come to the wrong conclusion about what really life's all about, but yet we've adopted it as somewhat of an idol in our life? And we've been misled and come to the wrong conclusion, and we've got this in-house idol with this creation of expectation.
And in many cases, we are frustrated because we haven't found ourselves overcoming all the things that are going on in our life.
But we're listening to the voice, and we put forth the image, and in many cases we're watching the models that all the world is telling us.
Let me give you an example of a few things here.
What is truth? What's true about the weather? Cloudy, sunny, hot, cold, hail, storm.
What's really true about the weather is the basis of how often we are tuned into it and how much we're listening to the forecast of it dictating everything that we do.
Therefore, we're not going to go anywhere.
We're staying home or we're going to go to the gym.
We can or we won't.
From all the things that we have heard, from all the images that have been put in front of us, all the models and all the voices, this is the weather.
And if it doesn't turn out to be exactly what we'd like for it to be, or we're told that it was, then we're upset.
We're critical of the weatherman because he didn't predict it right.
And so we're going to be upset.
We're going to be upset because we're going to be upset.
We're critical of the weatherman because he didn't predict it right.
We're critical of the people that tell us this is what's going on.
Ten percent chance of rain? Well, right here it's a hundred percent.
And all of a sudden we downgrade their expectation of the truth.
Yet that's the truth we live by.
Listen to this.
Psalm 147 verse 16.
He gives snow like wood.
He scatters the frost like ashes.
He casts forth his ice like morsels.
Who can stand before his cold? It's too easy to turn the TV off.
It's too easy not to look at the phone.
It's too easy not to listen to the radio.
But we do.
So therefore we can keep up with this source of truth that dictates all we do.
But talk about your grades.
Talk about your job, your friends, your relationships, the church.
Grades, a grade, whether it's a scale from one to ten, or it's a scale of A, B, C, D, and F, all those grades are a measurement.
And as a result of looking at that measurement of which we are graded, then we see that's the truth of who we are.
We're just average, we're C people.
Oh, we're A plus people.
Because you see, we're not just 4.0, we're about 4.5.
You see, now we've increased the scale.
But then when it comes to job, we get these performance evaluations, or we get the pay raise, the scale of who we are truthfully in our job is based upon all those grading scales and all that payment that we're given.
Our friendships, how many we've got, how many we don't have, how many we wish we have, all that's the scale.
All that's a scale of determining truth.
And they become the in-house model, they become our value system, along with even the church.
This church is great.
This church is terrible.
You don't want to go there.
So therefore, we're putting everything on a scale of numbers.
We're putting everything on a scale of feelings.
But this is the truth.
We're mixing all this together, and we've removed our mind from the God of whom we should be serving.
It's a great offense to God that we don't see His grace that describes us who we are, as to who we are.
But what's the truth about your physical appearance? I don't know who came up with AI.
It really boggles my mind.
But you could take your picture, put it out there to AI, and it just glorifies it.
I mean, it just makes you into somebody that you can just post anywhere and say, look at this.
I never thought I could be forecasted to look this good.
No blemishes.
Hair.
Teeth.
I mean, all the things, all the integral ingredients of which, according to the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 12, that you're missing.
The hair, the teeth, all those things.
It's got you walking good.
Whereas right now, I'm kind of lifting through life.
But the voices and the images and the models can take an individual in this world and put hair on a billboard and say, that's the kind of person you need to look like.
That's your self-worth.
So therefore, all of you that don't have hair, go out there and make a go of it.
Physical appearance is the thing that dictates all that you're going.
Women, girls, same way, the examples of the physical appearance, the images, the models, the no blemishes, no defects, right size, right beauty.
So all this does is just move you up the ladder.
Move you up the ladder and therefore you're captured by that image.
You're captured by the model.
You're listening to the voices.
So what about lifestyle? Social lifestyle.
Married, single, racial, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Indian, all those.
There's a tendency to take all the voices of what we're hearing, all the models, all the images, and saying that's the truth about those people, that age, that lifestyle.
Younger and older, all those kind of things.
Everything has got a model, it's got a figure, it's got an amount, it's got a percentage, it's got everything to it that determines how this choice is what truth is.
How much money you've got, how much money you don't have, how much you spend, how much you don't spend, all those kind of figures.
Therefore, the pressure is to become to be that same individual.
So whatever the norms are, you want to match that.
You don't want to go down, and you sure don't want to go up because you're extremely better than everybody else, so therefore we're all going to be kind of a normal.
But let me just address something here about physical appearance.
I'm just going to take one of these.
Physical appearance, instead of looking at it from a standpoint of the voice and the image and the model of the world, listen to the appearance of which the Scripture presents to us beauty and adornment.
In 1 Peter chapter 3 verse 3, speaking to the woman who is married to a man who is an unbeliever, he says, well go back to verse 2, behold your chaste behavior coupled with fear.
Whose adorning, let it not be thou ward adorning a brain, the hair, wearing jewels of gold, or putting on apparel.
Not to say that any of those might not be significant, but watch this.
But let it be the hidden man of the heart in the incorruptible apparel of the mink and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of a great price.
What you put on outside has a lot to do with what you're doing on the inside.
That's the beauty.
That's the truth.
If you look in the book of Proverbs chapter 11, the beauty of the woman that he states here in verse 22, as a ring of gold and a swine's snout, so is a fair woman that is without discretion.
A fair woman that is without discretion ruins all the beauty that God could present to her through the voice and his image and his model.
But then you get to chapter 31, the very last chapter of the book, and you read this description.
Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman that fears Jehovah, she shall be praised.
There's the biblical, truthful character, a model of beauty and attraction.
What a wonderful picture that is, which is opposite of what you would see in most images and models and or hear in voices of the world.
If none of these biblical descriptions mean anything to you and of value to you, and you continue to listen to the voices and the images and models of the world and everything it's presenting to you about a man or woman, racial norms, physical, social, all those kind of things, then there's one major challenge you're going to have to deal with, comparison.
For there's always going to be the means by which you're going to compare all the voices, all the images, and all the models to actually what you're dealing with at that point in time.
It's going to affect your value system of all that you're doing.
When you look at it biblically, all these human differences that exist in this world have become to be part of God's working.
What's the truth about human differences? In the Bible, the small, the great, the able, the disabled, the believer, the unbeliever, strong and weak, there's a place for them to be in God's plan, not a curse, not a curse because they're weaker than the other person, but stronger physically.
But there's going to be an understanding that there's going to be differences.
As Romans chapter 2 verse 11 says, God being sovereign as he is, is not partial.
There's no partiality with God.
All the human differences that we see is God's making of who we are.
And in the making of who we are, he's put his image within us.
Therefore, behold the God, the God of truth, not the gods of which you made in reference to your social, physical, or your own personal means of attraction and beauty.
Listen to what God's saying about it.
But here's the most interesting thing about that I think you might not even understand here.
God takes turns in Scripture that are usually low before he can take you to the heights of which he wants you to be.
So therefore, let's talk about being poor.
Let's consider sojourner.
Let's talk about stranger.
Let's talk about foreigner.
Let's talk about being weak.
Let's talk about transgression.
Let's talk about all those terms of what you see in Scripture that talks about you being dead.
All those terms are way down here that nobody in the world wants to talk about.
Nobody wants to have an image like that.
No one wants to talk about those kind of models.
But yet God presents them not in a way to say, okay, you're always going to be down.
You'll never get back up.
That's the way you were.
And that's it.
But scripturally, you will see him giving you an understanding that that is a sign of how you and I need to be the ones that come to him to develop the relationship that we need.
The relationship that helps you understand the truth.
So let me just say, for example, let's talk about the social norms of the wealth and the poor.
What Jesus did in the book of 2 Corinthians 8 verse 9 is he came from heaven and became poor so that we could be rich.
And God sent his son Jesus to the world from heaven and Jesus came to the world to be like a man and shed his blood and give everything for us.
And then God exalted him into the image of which Philippians chapter 2 verse 5 says, have this mind in you, which is also in Christ Jesus.
To me, that's a wonderful thing to say this is the truth.
So therefore wealth, you lose it.
Intelligence, you lose it.
Possessing, you get rid of it.
You're the one that takes all this athleticism and the beauty and you lose it so that you deny yourself and come and take up your cross and follow me.
You lose all that so that you will be the one in James the fourth chapter verse 10 that God will exalt.
That's where the truth is.
That's where the real image and the real model is all right there in Scripture.
You take the form of the image of Jesus that saved you and become to be who God asked you to be.
That's why when you read in Scripture the idea of redemption that comes by Jesus the Christ, there's the truth.
Yes, you've got high blood pressure.
Yes, you've got a heart problem.
Yes, you may be poor.
You may be in poverty.
Yes, you might be in a situation where the disease is overwhelmed.
But yet the truth is redeemed by Jesus the Christ the Son.
Now here's the most interesting thing about that that you've got to understand.
This truth that you're redeemed by Christ is what 1 Corinthians chapter 1 says others would call it foolish.
That is absolutely foolish that anybody would think that there's any kind of redemption, any kind of truth, any true model, and any kind of good image in the cross.
And Paul was preparing the people by saying the very same thing.
People call that foolish.
But the redeemed power for our souls is right there in that, which brings us eye to eye to what God wants us to understand and value.
In spite of what the world labels you and what you label yourself, this is who God labels you to be.
And when you look at the book of Ephesians chapter 4, when these individuals at which he presents in verse 11 are to be the teachers and apostles and the prophets, he says they're to deliver a message that perfects the saints in verse 12 to the work of the ministry, to the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, until a full grown man to the measure and the stature and fullness of Christ.
There's your truth.
There is your truth.
None of us would probably be on the cover of a magazine.
I mean a very popular magazine that's known all over the world.
We may never be the owner of a CEO of a Fortune 500 company.
We may not be the heroes that save the world or save a nation because we diverted a bomb that kept her from blowing up a certain section of the United States.
We might not ever be this.
We might not own a lot and we may never win the championship.
But we can all be redeemed by Jesus Christ and come to be in his model image by listening to his voice.
But here's one thing about that that you and I have to ask.
Do I trust that truth? John 17, 17 when Jesus left his apostles or about to leave his apostles, he said, sanctify them in a truth.
I worry it's true.
He said the world's going to give you all these things that let you know you're not worth much.
They'll hate you, despise you, criticize you, throw you in jail, maybe even kill you.
But he says sanctify them in a truth or word is truth.
Trust has become to be a very, very crucial thing.
And this is something that Trace was leading us a while ago in.
It won't be very long until this short life shall end and all the things are going to decay.
But then there's his trust in the one that's on the throne.
He has not forgotten me.
And folks, I'll tell you what, it takes a while to get that through your mind that he's not forgotten me.
When my body is not what I think it ought to be or when I've had friends criticize me because of the way I look and because I'm not at the same social standard as everybody else, you start putting all those things together that I look at and I consider to be trustworthy, they'll all decay.
So therefore the big question, do I trust the truth? But then maybe the second is do I trust God? And looking at Titus chapter 1 verse 2, he cannot lie, number one.
But then there's two immutable or unchanging things about God in Hebrews chapter 6 verse 17, one of which is God does not lie.
Therefore, what, who do I trust? What voice, what model, what image do I trust? And I might even ask what God do I trust? Is it the model or the image or the voice of the world or is it the God which speaks to me and says it's impossible for me to lie? I'm going to give you two verses real quick.
In the book of Psalm chapter 119, just to give you an understanding about how truthful God is as well as how trusting he can be, Psalm 119 verse 11, thy word have I laid up in my heart that I might not sin against thee.
That's the Psalmist saying that.
The world would say stick with me, you'll be okay.
We won't get caught.
You won't get in trouble.
Hang with me and we'll be okay.
And God's word says, thy word have I laid up in my heart that I might not sin against thee.
Same chapter verse 28.
My soul melts for heaviness.
I got to get me a new job.
I got to move into a bigger house.
I got to get more possessions.
I got to change the way I look.
My soul melts for heaviness.
Strengthen thou me according to thy word.
And we can go on and on and on through the book of Psalm chapter 119 and just see so powerfully that the voice of God, the image that which he presents, and the model of all those that followed him were exactly the way he needed them to be.
Exactly.
Amazing grace.
How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I'm found.
I was blind.
That's exactly what the idol people did in the book of Isaiah.
I once was blind, but now I see.
There's not a voice in the world.
There's not a model out there.
And there's not an image that will match what God provides.
Bring Christ your broken heart just like you are.
To change your life, be transformed, and let him be the one that makes you into, as it says in James chapter 4 verse 10, mourn, therefore let him exalt you in due time.
Let us help you come to Jesus.
Do what's right.
While together we sing this song.
