The Truth Shall Set You Free

[00:00:00] If you would like to turn to just a few scriptures in 1 John chapter 5, 1 John chapter 5, and verse 19 and 21 John 5, 19 and 20. [00:00:28] We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the evil one. [00:00:37] And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. [00:01:04] And then in Ephesians and chapter 4, and verse 20, 21, Ephesians 4, 20, 21. But ye did not so learn Christ, if so be that ye heard him, and were taught in him, even as truth is in Jesus. [00:01:41] And then in the Gospel according to John, chapter 16, and verse 13 and 14 and 15. [00:02:03] Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he shall guide you into all the truth. For he shall not speak from himself, but what things soever, he shall hear. These things shall he speak. And he shall declare unto you the things that are to come. He shall glorify me, for he shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you all things whatsoever the Father hath are mine. Therefore said I, that he taketh of mine, and shall declare it unto you. [00:02:47] On Thursday evening I spoke about a subject that I believe to be one of the greatest needs amongst the people of God. [00:03:06] One is often asked by different ones who are at work in the interests of God. Truly, what do you consider to be the greatest need amongst the people of God today? [00:03:22] And I almost unhesitatingly reply, spiritual vision. [00:03:33] Because unless we really see the Lord and see his significance, and unless it is not just a sentimental conception far off, but has very real relationship to the life that we're living to our circumstances personally, locally, nationally, internationally. It means we haven't seen the Lord. [00:04:02] Now this morning I would like to take up another matter that I believe to be as important as spiritual vision. I can only touch upon it in the time that we have. But I believe that the Lord himself, by the Spirit, can put his finger on something and make every one of us aware of another area of need in our lives today. [00:04:28] It is the matter of truth. [00:04:32] Woe betide us if in the movement of the Spirit, which has been given to us so graciously in the last decade, we should devalue truth as if it is not important anymore. [00:04:55] It is unfortunate that as soon as most Christians hear the word truth, they immediately think of doctrines. [00:05:07] Now doctrine is true, pure and sound. Doctrine is true. We cannot do without it. [00:05:18] But Doctrine is only, if I may put it simply, is only an expression of the truth. The truth itself is bigger. [00:05:31] I feel sad when believers always think of truth when Jesus said, I am the truth as something to do only with doctrine, to do with a creed, to do with a statement of faith. [00:05:48] It is better, of course, when people consider it as the Word. [00:05:53] At least that's fuller. [00:05:57] But I think that if we were to think of this word truth with another English word, it would bring us to the heart of the matter immediately. [00:06:11] And that word is reality. [00:06:17] Jesus said, I am the way and the reality and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. [00:06:32] John said, we know him that is real, that is reality. And we are in him that is reality. [00:06:44] The apostle Paul spoke of the reality as it is in Jesus. [00:06:52] The Lord Jesus himself said in that great prayer, thy word is reality. [00:07:02] He said, the spirit of reality himself shall lead you into all the reality. For he shall glorify me. He shall take of the things of myself and declare them to you. They will be real to you. They will be your possession, they will be your experience. [00:07:23] Not some concept, not some ideal, but the spirit of reality will bring you into all the reality so that you begin to taste of the reality. [00:07:41] Oh, what a need there is amongst us of reality. [00:07:49] How much sham there is, how much facade, how much unreality, how much artificiality, how much superficiality. [00:08:02] Oh, what a need there is of reality. [00:08:08] Of course I have to travel, as you well know. [00:08:12] And when you travel, you see an awful lot. [00:08:17] You are introduced into problem and all kinds of things that lie behind a seemingly beautiful facade. [00:08:31] We need reality. [00:08:36] There is so much that is unreal amongst us, even in our relationships with one another. And because of that, the Holy Spirit cannot commit Himself fully. He cannot commit himself to untruth. He cannot commit himself to unreality. It belongs to another realm. [00:09:08] This matter I could give you. I could keep you here for an hour telling you just stories just to illustrate this terrible need amongst the people of God, every one of us. I myself have areas of unreality that unless the Holy Spirit shines upon us and we see the reality, we are never freed from them. For the truth makes us free. [00:09:36] You shall know the truth, you shall know the reality, and the reality shall make you free. Isn't it true when you were mixed up with some kind of way of earning your own salvation, and suddenly the reality of the fact that Jesus was the Lamb of God and had paid the whole price of our sin dawned upon you, that other thing fell off you for the sham that it was when you were mixed up in some erroneous way, something like transcendental meditation or some other way of finding peace and so on. And then you really found the Lord Jesus, who is the prince of peace. And for the first time you tasted real peace. [00:10:16] Then the other thing shriveled. [00:10:21] Reality always frees us. It always delivers us. It delivers us from the false. It delivers us from the artificial. Suddenly what before seemed to be so pleasant and so nice. When the sun shines in, it's dirty, soiled somehow. It is substandard. [00:10:40] We can put up with it so long as the light doesn't shine in. But when the light shines in, suddenly we are spoilt. We can no longer be happy with it. [00:10:50] Like many a housewife with her windows so clean on a cloudy wet day. But then comes a day without cloud of clear shining after rain. And suddenly the windows are filthy. [00:11:13] How come they were the same windows? [00:11:18] It's just simply that the light is shining in. And the light you see the reality before it was not the real story. [00:11:30] Now you're face to face with the facts. [00:11:37] Oh my, the things sometimes we get mixed up with. In this whole matter of unreality. I think of so many dear groups of the Lord's people who. You know, it's all this structure of the church and no experience of it at all. None. The whole thing is an unreality. It becomes an imposition upon the life of God and his people. It kills everything. Even when the spirit comes in with either the thing has to be broken or it kills it finally, because it is unreal thing. [00:12:12] It's play acting. It's. It's a charade. [00:12:16] It. It is not true. [00:12:20] Of course. It comes right down to personal things. I remember years ago having a letter from seeing a letter from a gentleman to another friend of mine who we had known for quite a few years as one of the most bumptious and arrogant men whom God had saved. [00:12:43] I will not mention any names, but I know for a fact that any here who had anything to do with the said brother knew that this was his weakness. I saw a letter from him in his own hand, in which he said, you know that I am the most humble man in the world. [00:13:07] Like another friend of mine that I was saying to this last year, you're so big headed. And he immediately said, yes, but I'm ten times more humble than when I was last with you. [00:13:21] It is incredible how we don't unknow ourselves. [00:13:25] The truth often gets out of Us before we can hold it back. [00:13:31] I remember another lady, known also to some here in this town, that if any one of us wanted the whole town to know a matter, all we had to do was to go and tell her in confidence. [00:13:49] Now you had to tell her in confidence, but providing you told her and added, now, this is for you alone for prayer, you knew that within 24 hours the whole Christian community, enrichment of all the denominations would know. [00:14:07] But this same lady, many of you who knew her will remember, was always used to open any conversation with her. Now you can tell me, because I know how to keep competencies. [00:14:21] You see, she was blind to the reality. [00:14:26] It is incredible how blind we are to ourselves. [00:14:31] One of the great values of fellowship, of honest, real fellowship. One of the great values of the church is that what we really are becomes apparent to us by the reactions of others. [00:14:45] Oh, the church is very impolite. [00:14:48] It treads on all our corns and bunyans. [00:14:54] And sooner or later, if we're prepared to go through, we come to face the fact of what we really are. [00:15:00] I remember a brother, I'm glad to say that he is no longer welcome in the Pentecostal churches of Scandinavia, Europe, and, as far as I know, here in Britain as well, who came to this country, into Scandinavia and swept everybody before him, even got to the House of Parliament, House of Commons, Christian fellowship. [00:15:26] Everyone was so excited. [00:15:28] Oh, the things he did and the miracles and signs that followed him. And yet he had a woman in nearly every capital city of Europe. [00:15:40] And when finally he was challenged with it, he said he didn't see anything wrong at all, for Solomon had 800 wives. [00:15:51] Can you believe it? [00:15:56] Unreality. [00:15:58] I remember another occasion when a very dear brother said to me, our boy is going through such great problems. He was in the Lord's work in Sweden, and he said, you know, we're so concerned. He's just going away and away and away from the Lord. [00:16:18] Then this boy, after I'd been staying in the home for a few days, got me one day outside of the house. He had obviously planned it. He knew I was going out. So he met me outside and said, could I have a talk with you? But not at home. So I made an arrangement to talk with him. And then he said, do you mind me asking you? Now, this was a boy of 16. Do you mind me asking you, he said, a few personal questions. No, I say, he said, do you live by faith? [00:16:48] So I said, what do you mean, do I live by faith? I don't find the phrase in scripture, all of us live by faith. So he said, no, I mean, you don't. You don't get wages. So I said, no, that's quite right, I don't get wages. I said, I believe that the principle is not to be a burden to God's people. It's not living by faith. [00:17:08] So to be not a burden to God's people. If anyone wants to help me, that's a different matter. But we won't take anything out. Perfectly legally entitled to take good wages. [00:17:17] You shall not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the correct an ox and corn much of it. [00:17:29] But if he wants to forego his right, he is perfectly entitled to do so. I said, and I have let go of my right on this matter. [00:17:41] Well, he said, he said, you dress in such a nice way. Well, I thought that was very nice of a boy of 16 telling me that I dress nice. Yeah. I said, really? You mean I'm contemporary? Well, he said, you know, you're not like the others. He said, you dress quite. But he said, you see, he said, I got a real problem. He said, my mother goes on to my father continually about his clothes and especially about the holes in his shoes. [00:18:10] But he says to her, no, if I get my soles, my shoes sold, the believers won't be reminded that we live by faith. [00:18:25] And he said, my father always kneels, whereas it isn't our custom to kneel, he said, in the particular group. But he always kneels so they can see the two souls. [00:18:39] You see that dear family longed above everything else for the salvation of their boy. [00:18:45] But there was an unreality that they weren't even aware of right in themselves. [00:18:55] And as those children grew up, they saw something that worried them. On the one hand, a profession that they were living by faith and dependence upon God. And the other, they could see that it was really a kind of subterfuge. It was really living by hints. [00:19:17] Unreality. It is a terrible thing. I told you on Thursday about the occasion when we had a great bust up in the church meeting of which I was once a member, all on whether there should be, whether the church should support non faith missions. [00:19:36] I never could understand that great controversy we had since only the month before we had had another heated church meeting to put the wages of our pastor and caretaker and deaconess. [00:19:50] Wasn't it strange that we were only going to support faith missions? At least that was the proposal. [00:19:56] And we ourselves as a church weren't living the same way as we expected everyone to do once they'd crossed the English Channel. [00:20:07] You see? Unreality. [00:20:10] Oh, dear child of God, there's such a need in my life and your life a reality. It is that which the world is hungering for. Why do you think the world is going after things like Transcendental meditation? Why is it going after strange cults like the Jehovah's Witnesses, Russellism or Mormonism? Because it feels that traditional Christianity as such is unreal. [00:20:38] But for the most part, there is not the reality in our lives. [00:20:44] We all have weaknesses and blemishes. But part of the reality is to relax and to accept what we are in the Lord. Like the apostle Paul, I am what I am by the grace of God. [00:21:08] It's a great relaxation to suddenly feel that with your brothers and sisters you can be yourself, instead of having that permanent theatrical smile from ear to ear of the risen triumphant life, when everyone knows that you're the most irritable person in the whole world. Once you get out of the meeting, one sits there with a seraphic look. [00:21:34] But at home, there is nothing seraphic at all. [00:21:40] In the office, there is nothing seraphic at all. [00:21:46] Now, part of reality is not that we inflict one another with our blemishes and faults, but we at least come to see ourselves for what we are and accept, Accept ourselves for what we are in Christ. [00:22:04] Upon that basis, the spirit of reality can lead us into all the reality. [00:22:23] If you turn to Matthew 7 and verse 24, we read these. Every one, therefore, that heareth these words of mine and doeth them shall be likened unto a wise man who built his house upon the rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon the house. And it fell, for it was founded upon the rock. [00:22:52] And everyone that heareth these words of mine and doeth them not shall be likened unto a foolish man who built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and smote upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof. [00:23:07] From a simple reading of Matthew's account of this parable of our Lord, this story of our Lord, we would understand that one man built his house probably in the valley, where there was quite a lot of sand, and it was very pleasant, fertile. [00:23:31] And the other man climbed up somewhere on the hillside and found rock and built his house upon the rock. [00:23:41] But it is to Luke, as so often, that we're indebted for the key to the whole story. Being a doctor, it seems to me that he had his eye on certain details which he felt to be the clue and key to the whole. And in Luke 6:46, listen to his account and see if you get the little phrase that spells all the difference. And why call ye me Lord? Lord. And do not the things which I say, every one that cometh unto me, and heareth my words and doeth them, I show you to whom he is like. He is like a man building a house who digged and went deep and laid a foundation upon the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream brake against that house and could not shake it because it had been well builded. But he that heareth and doeth not is like a man that built a house upon the earth without a foundation, against which the stream brake and straightway it fell in, and the ruin of that house was great. Now the key to the whole parable was this, that these two built their houses side by side. [00:24:51] You get it? [00:24:52] Only one built his house immediately upon the topsoil. [00:24:57] The other went to all the laborious work of digging right through the topsoil till he hit the bedrock underneath. Then he laid a foundation on the bedrock and then the house. [00:25:14] Now can you just imagine when you saw those two houses? Outwardly they would have looked the same. Very nice, very pleasant. Pretty little curtains, brightly coloured front door, everything so nice, probably the flowers, all beautifully looked after and so on. Outwardly it looked as if there were two houses. The only difference was that one man had gone on with the job. It seems far more quickly he was in his house while the other was still nowhere to be seen. Somewhere down in a hole. [00:25:47] Poor old slow coach, like British workingmen don't know anything about work. [00:25:59] We're in our house, we have had the at home, we've blessed it, we've consecrated it to the Lord. [00:26:13] While poor old slow coach is still all mud and whiskers down in the hole digging. [00:26:25] How very easy it is to manufacture our own Christian life. [00:26:33] It can be done quite easily, quite quickly. We are all adept at imitation in some way. That's how we learn language. [00:26:47] We listen. We listen and when we're little we start to almost repeat words. We don't know what they mean. [00:26:56] And so it is with us. It's very, very easy to get a self manufactured Christian life. [00:27:02] But after a while we find that it doesn't quite work. [00:27:07] We're put into situations where we're supposed to love people and we don't. We're put into situations of teamwork with other believers. The most difficult thing of all. And we find that somehow or Other we can't get on with them. [00:27:22] So and so just has a wonderful almost God given knack of rubbing me up the wrong way. [00:27:30] You know, I come all triumphant to this bit of service that I'm going to do, ready to pray, ready and suddenly he only has to look at me, he only has to do something, say a word or two and he says I'm finished. [00:27:48] A self manufactured life is so much easier to begin with. [00:27:59] And it's the same with service. Oh the amount of service that is just self manufactured. The whole atmosphere worked up, the whole thing somehow or other engineered so that you've got a false atmosphere, a false sort of million unreality. [00:28:29] Much harder to dig through the top soil. [00:28:33] Who can do that? Naturally, I don't know whether any one of us can dig through the topsoil of our own nature, our own talents, our own resources, our own strength. [00:28:50] It's not so easy. [00:28:57] But unless we are prepared for God to do a deep work in us by the Spirit and the cross, there will be no foundation laid upon the rock in our lives, in our service, or in our life together as a company of God's children. [00:29:18] Sooner or later the storm will come. [00:29:22] And when the storm comes we suddenly find that we are all in a state of confusion, of disorder, of collapse. [00:29:35] How then can you dig upon through the topsoil and lay a foundation upon the rock? How glad I am that the Lord Jesus has simply put it in a few words, why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the thing which I say. [00:30:04] You and I can talk till we're blue in the face about the crucified life. [00:30:12] Once we've got the doctrine or the baptism and fullness and power of the Holy Spirit. [00:30:19] But unless you and I are prepared to call him Lord with meaning, there can be no digging deep. [00:30:35] So don't get into a whole theological complex about this matter and say, oh dear, dear, dear, dear, dear, what am I going to do? What am I going to do? I feel that I'm all topsoil and nothing else. [00:30:49] What am I going to do? [00:30:53] I tell you what you've got to do in your life. There is an issue and you have been resisting it for years. [00:31:02] Settle it. [00:31:06] Upon that issue is hangs a whole universe of spiritual value and usefulness. [00:31:19] Maybe very small, very small. [00:31:24] Sometimes it's just going to apologize. Oh, do you know, I know people who know that they should have apologized to someone and 10 years later they're still talking about it. [00:31:39] I once went to a station where there were three ladies, two of them old timers, real missionaries responsible for a large Muslim area. [00:31:56] And these three ladies, well, two of them had not spoken to each other for 14 years. [00:32:09] They actually lived in the same mission station. [00:32:13] They tried to arrange their furloughs that they didn't go off together. [00:32:22] Isn't it amazing? [00:32:26] The situation had got so out of hand and they were so close to each other and so hemmed in with no other believers that they felt it was an impossible situation. But it is a strange thing that when we find it difficult to apologize or humble ourselves before somebody else, it's always an impossible situation, isn't it? When you really. You sort of say, well, I know he can talk. He can talk, but it's impossible. He doesn't know so and so. But our Lord washed the feet of Judas. [00:33:02] If he can wash the feet of Judas, you can do really virtually anything. [00:33:10] You see, upon such a small issue. Now, I'm not just saying it's apologizing, but there are other issues, too. I know. Other issues upon which people, you know, some small thing. Sometimes, you know, it's just a question of being responsible. The Lord's been talking to you about just being responsible in small things, but you've sort of rolled on. [00:33:28] Just leave it. You wait. If you settle that issue and do what your Lord has been telling you for years, you will suddenly find that a whole lot will start to happen in your life. [00:33:41] Years to come. You'll look back and say, that's where it began. [00:33:44] Suddenly, a very simple issue. I said, yes. [00:33:50] Sometimes just opening our mouths in a time of prayer. [00:33:56] Oh, dear, we have such a battle about it, don't we? And then we bring up thousands of reasons why we shouldn't. Women should keep silent in church. [00:34:05] It's one good one for all the sisters. [00:34:09] And a few other things like this we bolster up and say, well, you know, this and this and this and this and anywhere. We've got so many wonderful brothers. I mean, there's no need if you're a brother. I mean. I mean, why should I open my big mouth? [00:34:23] They'll say it anyway. [00:34:27] But you know, when you suddenly get through, you suddenly find that for the first time you are in the flow of the spirit. [00:34:38] This matter of reality. Oh, dear child of God, how we need to go deep, don't we? How we need to dig deep and lay the foundation upon the rock. Whether it's personal, whether it's to do with our personal life, whether it's to do with the service of God, whether it's to do with our ministry. Whether it's to do with our life together as the company of God's children. Oh, how we need to get to allow the Holy Spirit to get through all that's sham and facade and unreal and merely a profession of our lips and nothing else. [00:35:14] May God help us. [00:35:18] You know, it is a wonderful thing when truth frees us. And our Lord has given us a promise. [00:35:27] You shall know the truth. Isn't that wonderful? Abide in my words, so shall you be my disciples. He said, you shall know the truth. Truth and the truth shall make you free. [00:35:45] And if the sons of.