TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES: DOING TRUTH

We continue our series Truth or Consequences with the sermon Doing Truth. In our world of individualized truth, we get confused about boundaries as well as consequences. More and more this confusion continues to shape our society and our nation. We can see the problems this has created. A person’s moral outrage allows them to mistreat someone and respond to them in a vicious manner. It can be used to justify anger and hatred. People feel increasingly justified, due to their “righteousness,” to act in ways that contradict what God desires. God’s truth should create a vibrancy of love and joy. Even Christians can be vicious and uncaring, how does faith help us? The solution is to do God’s truth but how is this possible? In John 3, Jesus begins the conversation with Nicodemus by saying, “you must be born again!” Nicodemus response is, “How can this be?” It is still our question. We are to be born again but what does it mean for our living? Jesus’s explanation to Nicodemus occurs in John 3:9-21. It helps us to understand the power of doing the truth.  We pray as you prepare your heart for worship that John 3:9-21 will cut through the fog of confusion in your life and share with you a clarity of God’s presence and care. John 3:9-21: 9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. 10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven– the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” 16 For 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. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.