Hi Everyone!
I’m doing a sermon series of through the Bible. The Transcripts to these sermons are attached to the video that is up on my website. However, for those of you who only look at my Blogs, here’s what I have been preaching on since September of this year.
As you go through this series with me, always pray for eyes to see and ears to hear, and pray for 24/7 protection by using the Ephesians 6 Armor of God!
Before we get started, I want you to know that I will be reading from the Septuagint Version of the Bible, which is the oldest Greek Translation of the Bible that we have today. This is the “Bible” if you will, i.e., the scrolls that Jesus and the Apostles quoted from in the New Testament. Basically, “the laws of the Israelites” were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–247 B.C.) by 72 Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel; hence, the term, Septuagint, which means “70,” as well as the King James Version of the Bible.
You will also note that I will be using Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary, which is Biblically based, and Oxford’s Etymological Dictionary, which is secularly based, to define the original meanings of the words used in all of my sermons this semester.
Today, we will define what TRUTH is and then proceed over the next two weeks with an overview of Father YAHWEH’s Holy Word, The Bible, which is THE TRUTH. Here are some quotes to help us understand what TRUTH is:
My People are destroyed for lack of knowledge:
Because thou hast rejected knowledge,
I will also reject thee,
That thou shalt be no priest to me:
Seeing thou hast forgotten the Law of thy God,
I will also forget thy children.
Father YAHWEH punishment to His Children for not knowing THE TRUTH in Hosea 4:6
This is a hard saying; who can hear it?
Many disciples (not the 12) confronting YAHSHUAH the Christ for telling THE TRUTH.
Even in His day, hardly anyone believed what Jesus told them; history is repeating itself even today as there are many who oppose THE TRUTH from Jesus Christ.
I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Light:
No man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.
YAHSHUAH the Christ – John 14:6
No one can come to Father YAHWEH unless they accept YAHSHUAH the Christ, i.e. Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior
Am I then become your enemy,
Because I tell you truth?
The Apostle Paul – Galatians 4:16
The people in Galatia did not like what the Apostle Paul said to them, which was THE TRUTH.
All Truth passes through three stages.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
This is evidenced by the recent events with regard to recent events in our world today.
Truth wears no mask,
Seeks neither place nor applause,
Bows to no human shrine,
Yields to neither fear nor favor,
All she asks for is hearing!
Charles A. Jennings
With regard to the above quotes, I will always you to tell THE TRUTH and let it do its work and go where it will! As we say in America, everything will come out in the wash!
So, are you ready for the TRUTH according to Father YAHWEH and His Son, YAHSHUAH the Christ, in their WORD?
Now, let’s talk about TRUTH in the Bible. In John 18:37, “Pilate therefore said unto Him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto THE TRUTH. Every one that is of THE TRUTH heareth My voice, to which Pilate replied in John 18:38, with the question, “What is Truth?”
According to The Eerdmans’ Bible Dictionary, Pilate’s question was probably conceived in abstract terms, thus having an ironic ring because the governor was in the position of judging the One who is truth itself and who calls each person to an existential decision regarding the truth.
According to Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of The English Language, the word truth means:
- Conformity to fact or reality; exact accordance with that which is or has been or shall be.
- True state of facts or things. The duty of a court of justice is to discover the truth. Witnesses are sworn to declare the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
- Conformity of words to thoughts, which is called moral truth.
- Veracity; purity from falsehood; practice of speaking truth; habitual disposition to speak truth; as when we say, a man is a man of truth.
- Correct opinion.
- Fidelity; constancy.
- Honesty; virtue.
- Exactness; conformity to rule.
- Real fact or just principle; real state of things.
- Sincerity.
- The Truth of God is His veracity and faithfulness. (Psalm 71).
- Jesus Christ is called the Truth. (John 14).
- It is sometimes used by way of concession.
According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, the word truth means: Quality of being true, faith, loyalty, something that is true.
According to The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, the word truth (Strong’s #G225 aletheia is used 109 times in the New Testament) means: truth, true, truly, verity.
According to Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words, the word truth is:
Perhaps the most common use of the noun aletheia and the two corresponding adjectives is to refer to something that is accurate…Truth is not only something that we believe; it is also something that we are called upon to speak and even to practice. This connection between truth and action is found throughout the New Testament.
According to most expositors,
The term “right” must mean something, and the term “wrong” must mean something. “Truth” must be objective if it is going to “set us free” according to John 8:32. Word meanings must be standard and consistent.
Our words must be based on reason and honesty, not left to individual whimsy, emotional preference, or serendipity inspired by an individual’s mood at any given time. Without standard definitions, our words become completely meaningless, and no one knows what the other person is talking about or thinking.
In modern America, this is a huge problem. Today, people in general are losing the ability to communicate or to know what is meant by their words. For example, the concepts of “right” and “wrong,” “good” and “bad,” “male” and “female,” are no longer of any use in America. Today’s culture is losing its ability to know anything definitively.
While we are losing our words, we are losing our intelligence and our ability to reason for anything at all. This phenomenon is a reflection of a past time, thousands of years ago, when men sought to build a power center referred to as The Tower of Babel. However, in today’s instance, the operation of the principle is somewhat reversed. Today, it is the men who are confounding words, whereas back in Babylon, the words were confounded by God for the destruction of men’s power. In both instances, we can see the power of word meanings, and the confusion that can come from changing or confusing the words.
Today, word meanings are being confounded by philosophers and professors who teach Americans that words have no standard meanings. According to this new philosophical movement, called Postmodernism, words can mean whatever you wish them to mean – as it was with Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll’s strange book, Alice in Wonderland, 1865. In this book, Humpty Dumpty says that when he uses a word, it means “just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.” He used words in a way that had no standard or consistent meanings.
So, it is today. When words can mean anything, you wish them to mean, it causes total cultural breakdown of intelligence and connection – a disconnect with reality. Any generation that suffers such a devastating blow, falls back into a stone-age status. Learning is no longer possible. Truth is no longer accessible to that generation.
We read of this precise problem in the book of Revelation, which tells us that something called, “Babylon The Great” (a system of confusion reflecting the earlier Tower of Babel) will dominate the world – our world.
In Genesis 11:1-9, we read about the Tower of Babel:
NOW when the whole earth was of one lip and all had one voice, it came to pass as they were moving from the east that they found a plain in the land of Sennaar and settled there. And they said one to another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them with fire. Now the bricks served them for stone and their mortar was asphalt. And they said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower, the top of which shall be up to heaven; and let us make a name for ourselves before we be scattered on the face of the whole earth.” And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men were building. And the LORD said, “Behold they are all of one race and one lip. And this they have begun to do; and now nothing will fail of all which they may determine to do. Come, let us go down and there confound their language that they may not understand each other’s voice.” So, the LORD dispersed them from that place over the face of the whole earth, and then left off building the city and the tower. For this cause, the name of it was called CONFUSION (BABEL), because there the LORD confounded the lips of the whole earth and dispersed them thence over the face of the whole earth.
So, the “Earth” where the men were living, was of one language and had determined to do what was on their mind. That is what we call PRIDE! But how could they think that they could build a Tower to reach into Heaven, and why would they do that?
Well, we find the answer in Jasher 9:26:
And all these people and all the families divided themselves in three parts; the first said, “We will ascend into Heaven and fight against Him (The LORD);” the second said, “We will ascend into Heaven and place our own gods there and serve them;” and the third part said, “We will ascend to Heaven and strike Him (The LORD) with bows and spears.” And God knew all their works and evil thoughts, and He saw the city and the tower which they were building.
So, AFTER the Flood takes place, which wiped out mankind, Nimrod, who was the grandson of Ham, one of Noah’s three sons, decides that he and the people will build a tower to invade Heaven, kill Father YAHWEH, take over Heaven, and worship their own gods up there? To you and me, that plan is INSANE, however, the Bible clearly states that Father YAHWEH (The LORD) believed that they could do so. That’s why He confounded their language and sent them all over the face of the whole earth.
The simple question to ask is, “Where did they get this idea from?” That answer can be found in Jeremiah 17:9, which states, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
The LORD clearly states what He will do to people with that kind of heart in Ezekiel 12:21, “But as for them whose heart walketh after the heart of their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their way upon their own heads, saith the LORD God.”
Jesus Christ clearly confirms what Jeremiah and THE LORD said in the above verses, in Luke 6:45 which states that, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart bringeth forth that which is evil: for of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.”
So, as we can see, what Nimrod and his people were thinking came out of the abundance of their evil hearts, they rebelled against The LORD God, and were planning to take over Heaven and kill The LORD God. WOW!
So, going back to this situation, we can see that the Tower of Babel basically represented one man’s (Nimrod’s) ambition to control the masses by controlling communication as well. Through his propaganda and verbal programming, he was exercising great control over the minds of his people – to such a degree that they thought that they could conquer and kill The LORD God of Heaven and Earth.
However, The LORD God stopped them by confounding their words. Thus, we see that power over words (definitions) equates to power over the minds of the people. Since Nimrod’s intention was to use his power over words to enslave and oppress the masses, The LORD God stopped his power over the people by causing a confusion of their words and word meanings. Thus, the language was confused and the politicians and mediacrats of that day were stymied, and thus, Nimrod lost his power.
This story illustrates that without a consistent and accurate standard for word meanings, men are unable to communicate. Today, our culture is awash in words which have been confounded. Their meanings are being twisted, and this is crippling our culture. The world’s intelligence and its ability to solve problems is now in deep decline. The world no longer possesses the ability to discriminate or to know right from wrong.
For instance, let us look at the word “discrimination,” for a minute. “Discrimination” used to be a good word; it was a positive word. However, in today’s modern culture, this word is being changed into a bad word.
Historically, when someone was told that he had a “discriminating” mind, it was meant as a compliment. It meant that he had a good mind that could differentiate between truth and error. But, in today’s world, this term has been turned on its head. Discrimination now, in most quarters, is an offensive insult that implies racial hatred and could bring an arrest and/or a lawsuit.
So, what has happened? And what is the actual meaning of this abused and misused word?
DISCRIMINATION is “the ability or power to see or make fine distinctions, discernment. The making of distinctions; the act of observing or marking a difference; recognition and understanding of the difference between one thing and another, as in “discrimination between right and wrong.”
Well, that doesn’t sound so bad, does it? So, what has happened to change a once glowing compliment into a modern abusive epithet?
Our words are being changed and redefined in order to be more “politically correct.” In the modern mindset that is infecting society as a whole, words no longer have meanings. This mindset that is infecting the world is the philosophical movement called Postmodernism, and it has changed the very nature of life and intelligent inquiry in the world. In essence, Postmodernism has destroyed honest intelligence and knowledge everywhere. In particular, it has also altered the very use of the English language. People are no longer using words to learn and gain wisdom, but rather for self-aggrandizement.
God doesn’t reveal His truths to people looking for “easy.” You need to ask yourself just how important THE TRUTH is to you. Where does truth rank in your list of priorities? According to Matthew 13:46, Truth is like “the pearl of great price” which a man finds and then sells all that he has to buy it. Today, there isn’t one in a thousand with that kind of thirst for truth, or who can navigate the Greek New Testament. Thus, they are left to place their trust in church-hired translators. How will they answer their Lord for their lack of effort to find truth? Truth is available to anyone who hungers and thirsts for it and will strive to find it. But ONLY the sincere find it. Truth is not inherited. It is not like the lottery…it is not acquired by luck. Truth is found and kept ONLY by the man who values it over all other possessions. That is the nature of truth…only the sincere find it!
The LORD commands us in Proverbs 23:23 to, “Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.”
So, are you doing this? Are you searching for THE TRUTH of ALL things with all of your might everyday? Can you discriminate between right and wrong? What is THE TRUTH and what is FALSE?
According to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in John 8:32, “And (we) shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make (us) free.” TRUTH can ONLY be found in our LORD and SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST, so please take some time in your busy schedule to get to know HIM, for HE IS THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE!
To conclude this matter, please remember that the original meanings of words as per the Etymological Dictionaries do NOT change just because culture redefines them or says so! Facts are Facts – and that is what we will be talking about during this semester.
One day, we will be judged for our words…so please remember what Jesus told us in Matthew 12:37, “For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” So, please be mindful…
YAHWEH Bless!
Justin