Core Values - Part 1: What is Truth?
MATT CHANDLER, April 13, 2008
Very quickly I want to try to answer the question this morning, really the very difficult question of “Is there Truth?” And
I don’t mean small “t,” plural truth—“Are there things that are true?” That’s easy. If you throw gas on a flame, it’s going
to ignite. If you stab yourself in an artery, you’re going to bleed out. These are things that are true in any culture. Go to
any culture in the world and throw some gas on a flame, and it’ll still work. Go to any people group on the planet earth,
stab them in the artery, they’re going to bleed out. These are things that are true, small “t,” plural truths. That’s not the
question I want to try to answer. It’s very easy, and it’s not philosophically debatable. I want to try to address the question:
Is there capital “T,” a Truth? Is there a way that the universe just is? Is there a Truth that sits on all men and all women
regardless of race and ethnicity and religion and socioeconomic background and past and present? Is there a Truth that
sits over and on everyone? Is there a way that ultimate reality just is? Now in the West, in Europe and North America,
the answer for the most part is, “Absolutely not. Whatever truth is, is in the personal realm.” So whatever you believe to
be true, that’s okay as long as that truth is not binding on anyone else. And the moment your truth becomes binding on
anyone else, you become intolerant and the reason that all wars have ever been fought. And so that’s basically relativity.
It’s the idea that truth is relative, which means there is truth, it’s your truth, but you cannot put your truth on anyone
else; or you are a bigot; you’re intolerant—you can just go down the list. Now, I wish I could spend more time addressing
relativity as a philosophical system. It’s wrought with errors. If you put the same rules on it that you try to put on the
three major religions of the world, it completely unravels and falls apart. It’s wrought with hypocrisy. Let me give you an
example. A friend of mine was protesting something, and a group showed up to protest what he was protesting. So he’s
protesting this, they’re protesting his protesting of that, and the people who are protesting the protesters are handing
out pamphlets that say that my buddy who’s protesting has no right to put his belief on other people. And at the bottom
in giant block letters of the pamphlet against my friend’s protesting is this sentence: “Intolerance will not be tolerated.”
Relativity says there’s no truth that governs everyone. And in that, they just laid down a truth that must govern everyone.
It is a comical philosophy that just makes everybody feel warm. Most of us operate in it without much thought, honestly.
And then I’ll just throw this one out. I’ve never met anyone who believed in full on relativity who randomly got punched
in the face. Ever. Never met that guy.
Now, let’s move forward. It is intrinsic within humanity to try to figure out what’s behind everything. Why do we do what
we do? Because we can’t answer the question. We don’t know why some things really make us angry that probably
shouldn’t make us angry. We don’t know why we want this so, so, so badly. We don’t know why we don’t want this so,
so, so badly. We don’t understand what drives us and what’s behind us. Men have been trying to figure it out for really
thousands of years. Let me just walk you down the last 150 years. In Marxism, the Marxists believed that all of human
behavior is basically shaped by and molded by economic forces. And so the economic forces, the economic temperature
around you is what shapes you, molds you. It’s why you love your dad or hate your dad. It’s why you love your country or
hate your country. It’s why you like this or don’t like this. It was economic forces that shaped you. Freud—if you like crazy,
you’ll love Freud. Freudians assume that everything is shaped by repressed sexual instincts. And so we are what we
are because of repressed sexuality. Behavioral psychologists view us simply as stimulus-response mechanisms, which
means everything you do, you did because a stimulus was entered into your world, and you responded to that stimuli.
In fact, every one of you in this room have walked into this place with a set of convictions about how reality works. You
have walked in here with that set of convictions. Some of them are conscious, some of them are subconscious; but you
have walked in here with an assumption on how reality functions and how the world works. Everybody has. You have
already answered with your life the questions, the big ones: Who am I? Why am I here? What is my purpose? You have
already answered those questions. Now, if I gave you a piece of paper and said, “Why are you here? Why do you exist?”
you might not be able to write it down, but if you would pay attention to how you live your life, the answer is there. You’ve
walked in here with set convictions.
Now, the Bible, our sacred literature, is going to disagree strongly with the Marxists, and the Freudians and the
behavioral psychologists. I always want to be clear on this. I’m not saying that a behavioral psychologist can’t deeply
love the Lord and operate in that world while deeply loving the Lord. In fact, it’s just been a deep, deep passion of
mine that our sharpest and brightest go into the business world and the different domains of society and quit just
becoming pastors. Pastor is a noble role, and it’s a noble title. But in the end there are far too many people with just cute
personalities who end up becoming pastors. The Bible’s going to disagree with those three, which are the big three over
the last 150 years. The Bible’s going to teach this: that you are shaped by, molded by and walk in whatever you hold to
be ultimate. I’ll use religious words now. Whatever you hold as your god, that then determines and shapes everything
else in your life: how you respond, how you function, what your relationships look like, how you walk, what you do. All of
that is shaped by whatever your god is, whatever you have made as ultimate. Even the most staunch atheist is religious.
He has something that he is worshiping. It might not be an historic god, if you will—little “g”—but it’s something. So you
are shaped by, molded by, defined by whatever is your ultimate. So if safety is your ultimate, if your ultimate goal, that
ultimate thing you’re after, is just safety, then the relationships you have, where you live, where you’ll travel, what you’ll
eat, almost every area of your life flows out of what you hold as ultimate. If wealth is ultimate to you, if happiness is
ultimate to you, whatever your ultimate is will absolutely shape every other area of your life. So it’s imperative that you
know what’s ultimate. The danger and the death of Evangelicalism is that we do not hold Jesus as ultimate; we hold
something else as ultimate but think Jesus can get us there. And so we put Jesus’ name on what we’re actually pursuing,
and then we’re frustrated when it doesn’t work out like we want it to. So most of us don’t have Jesus as ultimate. We have
something else as ultimate, and then we attach Jesus’ name to it because we think He gets us there. And that’s always
going to unravel on you. Because Jesus is not the means by which you get something; Jesus is what you get. He’s the
gospel. Yeah, that’s different.
And so with all of that in mind, I want to look at this phenomenal dialogue between Jesus and Pilate right before Jesus
is crucified. It really is tremendous. John 18, we’re going to pick it up in verse 33. Jesus has already been arrested,
beaten pretty badly by the high priest, and now He’s drug before Pilate. “So Pilate entered his headquarters again and
called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this of your own accord, or did
others say it to you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests have delivered you
over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world,
my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the
world.” Then Pilate said to him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was
born and for this purpose I have come into the world...” Now I want to stop there just briefly, because there’s a couple of
things happening here that I need you to see. One is that there is a lot of debate and a lot of talk about what Jesus was
doing while He was here. What was He after? What was His purpose? Well, we’re going to be able to hear it from His
mouth. “For this reason I was born, for this reason I came into the world.” And so we’re about to see kind of what Jesus
is doing, but here’s the second thing that I need you to see. This is so important. Jesus is going to say something here
that no one else, no human that has ever lived could say. Here’s what He says: “For this reason I was born...” We can all
say that. But here’s the second part of that sentence, “...for this reason I came into the world.” Nobody else can say that.
This phrase holds in it, specifically in the Greek, this idea that He is outside of time, that He is outside of history, that He’s
outside of the normal ebb and flow of the world, and looking down at the world said, “I’m going in now.” Nobody else can
say that. You had no say in the time and place in which you were born—zero. Your daddy came home with some flowers,
some Marvin Gaye, maybe. I don’t know when you were born. Maybe no Marvin Gaye at all. Maybe Elvis. I don’t know. The
Beatles. I don’t know. But your dad came in. You had no say, you had no planning. Jesus and Jesus alone as God says,
“For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world.” The thing that’s weird about how many
people are quick to say Jesus was a good teacher, is over and over and over again He claims to be God. So He can’t be a
good teacher if you don’t want to give Him deity. Because He says, “I’m outside of history. I’m outside of this planet. I’m
outside of this universe. I’m outside of time. Tomorrow isn’t a place I know about; it’s a place that I am.” He’s either loony
or God. So this is a pretty profound statement.
Now, look what He came to the world to do. “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the
world— to bear witness to the truth.” Not a truth—little “t,” plural. Not “I’ve come to you to reveal a series of moral,
religious truths that are right.” That’s not what He just said there. If that’s all He said, then He would not be controversial
at all. He would not create such heated debate. That’s not what He says. He did not say, “I have come so that you might
know some truths, plural.” Not a truth of many. That’s not what He’s saying. He says, “I have come so that you might
know the, capital ‘T,’ truth. I have come to bear witness to how the universe is for everyone.
That’s what I’ve come to bear witness to.” Now, how is this even possible? I mean Jesus is from Galilee. That’s like El
Paso, San Angelo, something like that—not known as a hot-spot for world transformation. Think about the United States.
Every region kind of has what it’s known for. You get up into the northeast, and you’ve got the Ivy League schools. You’ve
got Manhattan. You’ve got the intellectuals. All of that happens in the northeast. In the northwest you’ve kind of got
this anti-corporate essence where Microsoft and Starbucks originated from. You’ve got a lot of people up there that
love trees—I mean literally love them and name them. And you’ve got the west coast that’s known for liberal sociology,
liberal government. You’ve got the south that’s kind of conservative, sweet tea. You’ve got Texas that I think we’re known
for crazy stuff. Like when I tell people where I am, they’re like, “Wow! Really?” Like we’re all from a cult. It’s just a weird
feel. Nazareth is not a hotspot of intellectual thought, which is why over and over again you’ll find in the New Testament
they’re going, “Can anything good come from Nazareth? Seriously, He’s from Nazareth? The guy from Nazareth?” So
how can this man from Nazareth say to Pilate, “I’ve come to bear witness to the truth, the way the universe is—for Rome,
for Israel, for the American Indians, for people you don’t even know exist yet—I’ve come to proclaim the truth and bear
witness to the truth that sits on and over all of them.”
Let me show you how. Go to Colossians 1:16. “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and
invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him.” I
love the Spring. I think I love every season right at the beginning of it but particularly Spring. I’d talk about Fall, but
you wouldn’t know what I was talking about. Something happens when it’s like it is today. At some point, in that three
weeks of that that we get, we just have that day that’s euphoric. It’s just that day where all of a sudden we just want to
roll down our windows, and it feels like the world’s right. It actually stirs up emotions in us, and then it just feels right.
That feeling came from somewhere. Taste came from somewhere. The warmth of the sun on our skin, that feeling
came from somewhere. That weird thing that happened when you kissed your girl for the first time, that feeling came
from somewhere. Jesus is able to bear witness to the truth because He’s the creator of everything. Once again, you’re
confronted with the fact that He’s either a teacher, or He’s God in the flesh. You can’t play this game where you go,
“He’s a great philosopher.” He’s the creator of all things. So who else can bear witness to the truth except for the one
that wired everything, designed everything and created everything on how it flows? Who else can do that? Go back and
read Genesis 1. The triune God’s in a conversation with Himself and He said, “Let Us make man in Our own image.” You
learn in another place that the Word came forth. Jesus is the Word. God is speaking things into being. Jesus is creating
what God the Father spoke into being. This very beautiful, harmonious relationship flowing out into creation created
marriage, created children, created sex, created food, created money. He created it all so He and He alone stands
outside of it all and says, “Here’s how.” This is why He can say, “I am the way, the truth and the life.” It’s why He can say,
“You shall know the truth—capital “T,” Me—and the truth will set you free.” Because He’s the creator and the sustainer.
The book of Hebrews says He continues to hold all things together with the word of His mouth. Even now you exist right
now because He’s saying, “You exist.” That’s why He can say, “I’ve come to bear witness to the truth.”
Here’s the second way He bears witness. He bears witness just with His life. You can read about His life, but I don’t think
I need to make this point long. You can go read about the life of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but here’s
something I want to harp on you or with you on. Not only can you read about Jesus in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
but let me be very clear to you. The entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is about God’s redemption through Jesus
Christ, our redemption through Jesus Christ. The entire Bible is about Jesus, all of it. And preachers and teachers
have failed you until they show you Jesus in the text. They have not performed their God-given job until they show you
Jesus in the text. What happened to us? I mean there’s a lot of things that I tend to teach on this stuff more in pastors
conferences than I do here, but there are shaping forces that got us to today, everything from the Enlightenment to the
cultural shifts of the 60’s and 70’s. There’s liberalism. Liberalism sent us into a tail-spin, honestly. There was this kind
of reaction to liberalism that really made us goofy. And one of the things that we do now is we pull like a chapter or just
a passage out of the Scripture, and we remove it from the metanarrative, the whole story, 66 books of the Bible but
one story. And so we pull it out of the metanarrative, and we separate it; and we exegete it. And then we teach it as if it
stands alone. It doesn’t stand alone; it’s part of a big story. It’s the equivalent of watching fifteen minutes in the middle
of a movie. Have you ever done that? Have you ever opened up a book to chapter 7 and then just read it and then put it
down and then like, “Let me tell you what that book’s about. An old man caught a fish. It was a big fish. It’s going to feed
his whole village. Great book.” Somebody else has got to go, “Don’t they eat the fish before they get back to the thing?”
And so what’s happened in response to liberalism is we’ve become pragmatists. We’ve become mathematical. We want
to just go, “Okay let’s take this verse out.” But if you lose the metanarrative, you lose the story of redemption. That’s why
we’re so particular about who we put up here. If they can’t show you Jesus in the text, then they’re not ready. If they can’t
stand up here and in any book, any passage not show you Jesus, then they’re not ready yet. Jesus is the greater Moses.
Jesus is the greater David. Jesus is the greater Elijah. Jesus is the greater Abraham. Jesus is the greater Jeremiah. You
can just keep going. In Genesis, He is creating. In Deuteronomy, He’s laying down the law. The Bible is about Jesus. It
just is. It’s not about you. I mean, you’re in there, but your part is not attractive. You are not uppermost in the affection
of God. Sorry. I mean you’re just not. That’s why when anybody’s like, “Got the road map to life,” I’m like, “It’s a horrible
map.” If I’m trying to get from Dallas to Abilene, should I go there, this is not going to help me. “Should I marry Lauren
Walker?” It’s not going to help me. It’s got great maps in it, but in the end saying stuff like that is just not true. This is a
book about God. It is God’s self-disclosure of Himself to us, which leads me to the third way He testifies, the third way
He bears witness.
Not only does He bear witness in His life, but listen to this. His life bears witness to the truth in those who believe.
That’s what He says to Pilate. Look at what He says right after He says He came to bear witness to the truth. “Everyone
who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Let me read you this verse from 2 Corinthians 3:18. “And we all, with unveiled
face...” Great video today, huh? One of the things we want to do is every week when you come in is show you a video
of somebody’s life that’s been touched and moved by the gospel. You could hear it in his testimony. He was so great
he might be a preacher and just not know it yet. He gave this great explanation of where so many of us are. He said he
grew up understanding religion to be these rules, and he would continue to break these rules; and he didn’t know what
to do with it. It was either that he wasn’t a believer, or he just needed to ask for forgiveness and keep living however he
wanted to live; and he would just have to keep asking for forgiveness. What a great wrestle. And one of the things you’ll
see is there was a shift in there, wasn’t there? This is how he had been living, and then all of a sudden it was like the
veil had been lifted and now all of a sudden there’s growth. There’s sanctification. There’s hope. All these things start
occurring. What it means is that no one can grasp the gospel unless the Lord enlightens their heart. You might be able
to cognitively grasp it, and it do nothing to your heart. It’s when the veil has been lifted. When we’re no longer veiled,
and we can see God, that’s when transformation really begins to occur. And so that’s what this verse is all about. “And we
all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of
glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” So here’s what he’s saying. Once we’ve been unveiled,
we see the Lord, and we begin to be transformed. It’s slow. For some people it’s fast, but for most people it’s not. It’s
a progression. It’s slow. It’s much more painful than anybody told us about, but we become more and more like Him.
Which is why if you read the rest of the New Testament outside of the gospels, you’re going to find Paul over and over
saying things like this, “You were once blasphemers, promiscuous, drunkards, violent...” He’ll have these lists, which is
“disobedient to your parents.” He always throws that randomly in there, like between sorcery and murder. “You didn’t
clean your room.” You’re like, “What? Seriously? Murder—I didn’t make my bed.” You didn’t listen to your parents. He’s
got these lists. He’s like, “You were these things, but you’re not anymore.” And that’s that kind of transforming power of
the gospel. And so our lives bear witness to the truth of Jesus Christ by being transformed from what we were to what we
are now. It bears witness. This is why I have spent very little time here at the Village in my five years preaching on right
and wrong. Now, where the Scriptures say it’s wrong, I want to say it’s wrong, but what I think the question is, is not “Is it
right, or is it wrong?” but, “What stirs your affections for Jesus Christ and what robs you of those affections?” I think if you
can tap into those two things, then transformation will begin to occur at a quicker pace than maybe you’ve historically
known. Because if this verse is true, by beholding Him and seeing Him and being near Him, we are transformed. So
when you say, “This is right, and this is wrong; and I’m going to do what’s right. I’m going to avoid what’s wrong,” then
you’re almost living by the law versus “I want to press into the Lord, and I want to press into Jesus; and I want to know
Him fully.” So if you will figure out what stirs up your affections for Jesus—because it’s going to be different for all of us.
There’s going to be some traits that are the same for all of us, like the Bible’s going to be in there and prayer’s going to
be in there for all of us. What stirs your affections for Jesus Christ? What robs you of those affections? And the reason
why I think that one’s so important is there are morally neutral things that are devastating to me spiritually. There are
things that are not necessarily wrong that, when I’m around them and in them, they really rob me of a joy in and a desire
to know God deeply. So what I need to do in my life is, as much as I can, fill my life with things that stir my affections for
Jesus Christ, and I need to avoid those things that would rob me. I think that’s got to be the thing that’s constantly on
your mind, constantly on your heart. Because it’ll change. What stirs your affections? What robs your affections? If you
tap into that, I think transformation begins to happen at a faster rate than if you’re just going, “I don’t want to do wrong
anymore.” Because if you go right/wrong, what you end up doing is spending all your vitality on not doing wrong, isn’t
that right? So all your energy’s like, “Don’t do that. Don’t do that. Don’t do that.” And you’re trying to control morality
versus being transformed. And I think that’s another big problem that happens so often with people who have grown up
in church. They’ve been conformed to a pattern of behavior, but they haven’t been transformed by the power of the Holy
Spirit. And those two things are very different.
Now let’s look how Pilate. I’ve just been agonizing over Pilate here for three weeks now. “Pilate said to him, ‘What is
truth?’” And look at this. “After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, ‘I find no guilt in him.’”
That’s just been haunting me. I just keep wanting this to end differently. Historically, this Pilate will take his own life in
three years. He kills himself three years later. I’m speaking historically. I’m not preaching to you right now; I’m telling
you. Go to the library. Pilate is going to kill himself three to four years from now. And so I found myself in this text just
wrestling with him. Like I just want it to end differently. Have you ever done that?
Have you ever watched a movie, you know the end, and you’re just like, “Oh, come on!” Several weeks ago, “Titanic” was
on, my girl was there watching it, and she’s nervous. I’m like, “She’s not going to make space for him on the door. I mean
she can. There’s room. She’s selfish. He’s going to die. It’s how this movie ends.” And I got back to work. Now, that’s
what it was like for me. This is what it’s like here in this text. Because I want to plead with him here. I want to talk with
him. I want to have a drink with him. I want to have a chat with him, because I kind of get where he is. Pilate’s not born
and raised in Jerusalem. He would have had to earn this position, which means he’s seen the empire, which is pretty
much the known world. And he had seen religious sects and all the weirdness that was out there. In fact, do you know
how many gods Rome has at this time? Hundreds. I mean, they’ve got the god of thunder, and they got the god of fire;
and they got the god of wheat. And this god slept with this god’s wife and got her pregnant, and she had a baby. Then
the other god was furious about it so ate the baby, and the baby came out of his stomach. I’m not making that stuff up.
They’re constantly having to give sacrifices to hundreds of gods. He had seen the bloodshed over religion. He’d grown
cynical. He’d grown hard. And I can understand how it can happen. It wasn’t three years in before this thing almost lost
me. Before, I was just like, “I can’t. This is just crazy.” Not grace, not Jesus, not the Bible but so much of Evangelicalism
has this really weird thing to it. So he’s just got this really hard heart, and he just doesn’t want to hear; but he’s hurting.
And so Jesus says, “I’ve come to bear witness to the truth. I am truth. I’m the capital “T.” I am the way things are.” Pilate
can’t hear anymore. “What’s truth?” It’s standing in the room with him. It’s right there the whole time, but he just gets
confused; and he thinks, “Oh, religion. Oh great, this crazy group of people,” and he misses it. It’s standing in the room
with him, and he misses it.
And so I have to believe that there’s going to be Pilates here today, cynics here today. I promise you, I get cynicism. I
get it. But truth can be had. Almost all of us feel compartmentalized. Almost all of us feel torn in these different pieces.
And the gospel is that thing that sits over and above all of it. It affects how I love my wife. In my flesh, I am a selfish
person who wants what I want. But when the gospel comes in there, and truth comes in there, and God shows me how
the world is and where I fall in line—now all of a sudden I can be gracious to my wife. I can be loving to my wife. I can
serve her and do it in such a way that I don’t need it returned. Some days I need it returned. Some days I have to plead
with the Lord for strength. When I get home at night, my kids never understand that I just worked ten hours. My twoyear-old’s not going, “Father has worked ten hours. Let’s just give him a few minutes.” They don’t. They don’t understand
that. The way we spend our money. The way we work on a relationship. The way we walk with our kids, what we believe
about marriage, what we believe about sex, what we believe about all of it, the way even we work here—I don’t read my
Bible and play golf—I don’t play golf—even how we approach our role here. We work long. We work hard, because this is
what God’s asked of us. This is the lenses by which we see the universe, because Jesus is tapping us into how things are.
And when you begin to flow and function in how things are, then there’s greater joy in it—not necessarily happiness but
joy. And joy is much more sustaining than spirit sprinkles. There is truth that sits on all of us. And Jesus says in the end,
it’ll set you free.
Let’s pray. “Jesus, I thank You for our time together. Would You stir up our minds and stir up our hearts and really every
aspect of us, that we might be worshipers of You and that You might be our ultimate? Maybe that’s another question
we have to wrestle with: What really does sit as uppermost in our pursuits and our affections? Help us. Tap us into how
things are. It’s for Your beautiful name. Amen.”
© 2008 The Village Church