John 18:37-38 “What Is Truth?” Cross-Examination Sermon Series #4 March 17, 2004 “You are a king, then!” said Pilate. Jesus answered, “You are right in saying I am a king. In fact, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” “What is truth?” said Pilate. Why did Pilate ask the question “What is truth?” Well, the Bible doesn’t really tell us exactly why, does it? But we can imagine any number of reasons he might have had for doing so and any number of attitudes with which he might have asked. We can imagine those reasons and those attitudes because we see the same reasons and attitudes today. Perhaps Pilate thought that the truth, while interesting, was ultimately unimportant. Secular history does not paint Pilate as a particularly fair ruler—it does not portray him as someone who was particularly beholden to the truth or to the ideal that truth must prevail. Pilate had seen enough politics and perhaps even presided over some trials which made it clear that truth wasn’t as important as power. The verdict Pilate handed down just a few minutes after asking this question indicated that Pilate hardly considered finding the truth and acting upon the truth to be his #1 priority. Perhaps Pilate would have accepted the possibility of absolute truth existing and being reached in a court of law, but maybe on a spiritual level he would have thought that absolute truth was unreachable by and/or incomprehensible to mere mortals. Or maybe he even thought that absolute truth did not exist at all. Maybe Pilate believed that there were any number of truths out there—that truth is whatever the individual says it is, that my truth and your truth may not agree—but somehow they’re both still true. Maybe Pilate then instinctively distrusted someone who would make the claim—as Jesus did—to be testifying to the truth (as though there could even be such a thing!). All these ideas still exist today. People still believe that who is on the side of the truth is not so important as who is on the side that has power. People still believe that no one can know spiritual truth—if indeed it even exists at all. People still believe that we each create our own equally valid truths by believing them strongly enough. And people are still instinctively distrustful of anyone who claims—as Jesus did—to have the truth. And yet the truth does exist—and finding it is not that hard. When Jesus prayed on Maundy Thursday, he said to God his Father, “Sanctify them [his disciples] by the truth. Your Word is truth.” (John 17:17) Not “Your Word has an element of truth in it.” Not “Your Word contains the truth (but it perhaps contains some other things as well).” Not “Your Word is a truth.” Rather, “Your Word—all of it—is truth.” Jesus’ words here are quite plain: If you want to find the truth, look in God’s Word, for God’s Word is the truth. Perhaps we also ought to mention this. Not only is God’s Word the truth, but it is also clear truth. Don’t buy people’s claims—and sadly, also the claims of some churches—that God’s Word isn’t particularly clear and that no one can be sure of what it really means. Don’t buy people’s claims that since even churches can’t seem to agree on what God’s Word says, that’s proof that there’s no way of knowing what the truths of God’s Word are. That claim is not the truth, and it is in fact a lie born in the depths of hell by the father of lies. No, Peter says that the truth of the Bible is clear and ought to be attended to “as to a light shining in a dark place” (2 Peter 1:19) and the psalmist called God’s Word “a lamp to my feet and a light for my path” (Psalm 119:105). So what exactly is that truth that we find in God’s Word? What is the truth to which Jesus said he had come to testify? Do you want the truth? First, let me give you the same warning that Jack Nicholson gave to Tom Cruise in “A Few Good Men—“You can’t handle the truth!” Really, you can’t. But since you asked… The truth is found in God’s Ten Commandments. As has so often been pointed out, the Ten Commandments are not the Ten Suggestions. They are not God’s suggestions of truths by which we might want to consider living—but we’re free to choose or adopt other truths if we want. No, they are God’s absolute truth that apply to all people of all time. “You shall not steal” is absolute truth that can not be changed by the fact that you might feel poor compared to others or by the fact that you are stealing from what you consider to be a soulless company with deep pockets. “You shall not commit adultery” is absolute truth that applies even to your thoughts. You can protest that your truth is something considerably different and that in your truth everything is OK as long as two people are consenting and as long as two people love each other or as long as you look but don’t touch. But creating your own truth does not change the real truth. “Honor your father and mother” is absolute truth. There are no exceptions made for people who believe they were given poor fathers or poor mothers, and there are no exceptions made for people who believe that they were given poor governments. And that’s the truth. Do you want the truth? Go to Exodus 20 and read the Ten Commandments. And then go to Matthew 5-7 and read how Jesus explains those Ten Commandments. What you will read there is absolute truth whether you like it or not. And here’s the part of the truth that you really can’t handle. Because you’ve rejected these truths, because you’ve chosen so many times to not live according to them, you are condemned to spend eternity in hell, where the only real truth will be agony of body and soul such as you have never ever felt here on earth. How do I know that’s the truth? It’s in God’s Word—and I know that his Word is truth. It says, “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law” (Galatians 3:10). And the truth is that there is nothing you can do to change the fact, the truth that you are guilty of sin and condemned to death. There is nothing you can do to erase your sins, to pay for their guilt. There’s nothing you can do to change or manage this truth. There is nothing you can do to handle this truth. That’s not to say, of course, that people don’t try. They do. They try furiously. They try to wish away the truth by asking the question, “What is truth?” or by saying, “My God would never do such a thing.” They tell themselves that this cannot be the truth, because nothing so horrible could possibly be true. They tell themselves that since God is loving, he would never punish sin. But they deny the truth that he is also just, righteous, and that he must punish sin. They deny the truth, but when Judgment Day comes, they won’t be able to deny—or stop—the truth. And they won’t be able to handle it. Maybe you are inclined to try to create new truth, new mathematical formulas such as “1 good work cancels out 1 sin”—but that’s new math, not true math, not God’s math. God’s math is “1 sin = death.” We know that formula to be true because God stated it in his Word, which is truth—“The wages of sin is [or “equals”] death” (Romans 6:23). Faced with that sort of truth, faced with the sort of truth that breaks you down, proves you guilty of sin, and condemns you to eternal death in hell, faced with that sort of truth, it’s no wonder that some people choose to reject the truth and to reject God’s Word as the source of truth. And that’s too bad because then they miss out not only on the truth that they can’t handle, but they also miss out on the truth that they can’t imagine. Yes, not only can you not handle the truth of God’s law, but you also can’t imagine the truth of God’s gospel. The truth of God’s gospel—the most important truth in the Bible— is something that you could not imagine on your own. The solution to our problem of sin and eternal death is nothing that we could imagine on our own. Everything that we could imagine on our own turned out to be nothing more than our truth, nothing more than flawed ideas and wishful thinking, nothing more than lies and delusions. Paul writes, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared…” (2 Corinthians 2:9). No matter how long you dreamed, you could never ever have dreamed up the one who called himself not only the Way and the Life, but also the Truth. You could never have imagined the one standing in front of Pontius Pilate as he asked, “What is truth?” Pontius Pilate was staring the Truth right in the face as he asked the question. Because here is the truth—“God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). That’s something that you never could have imagined—maybe even still have some trouble imagining or fully comprehending—because that sort of giving love is unimaginable, incomparable, surpassing all understanding. But it’s the truth. And please don’t misunderstand when I say that you can’t imagine the truth. I mean that you couldn’t have come up with it on your own, so God had to reveal to you. But I don’t mean that it’s so complicated that you can never understand it. In fact, it’s not very complicated at all. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, telling them that they could take their stand, that they could absolutely count on the truth that he had preached to them—and then he summed up the truth for them quite simply, saying “What I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…” (1 Corinthians 15:3-5). That’s the truth on which you may firmly rest your faith. That truth has been taught by Jesus and lived by Jesus. That is the truth about which Jesus himself said, “Hold to my teaching…Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31,32). You know the truth, and as a result you been set free. You know the truth that Christ has died for your sins, and so you are set free from the fear of hell. You know the truth that Christ has destroyed the devil’s work, and so you are set free from the fear of the devil. You know the one who John describes as “coming from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). But a lot of people don’t. A lot of people are like Pontius Pilate, saying, “What is truth?” Maybe they’re saying it because they don’t want to admit the truth. Maybe they’re saying it as a way of avoiding the truth because they’re afraid that they can’t handle the truth. Maybe they’re saying it because they can’t imagine truth that will set them free from their guilt. You’ve got the answer to their question, the answer to Pilate’s question. You’ve got the truth of God’s Word. Share it. You’ve got the Truth in the person of Jesus. Share him. Amen.