Today is the day that the Lord has made. So let us rejoice and be glad in it. And everyone said, amen. Amen. Well, if we haven't met yet, my name is Ryan Kimmel. I'm the lead pastor here at Peace.

And my family, I'm married to Tiffany. We've got four kids. We have two boys and two girls. Our girls are our oldest and our youngest, and we have boys in the middle. And this past summer, my family and I, we did something for the first time. This past summer we went to family camp together. Now I should actually preface and say it was the first time we did family camp where I wasn't the speaker. We just got to go as a family and just hang out with each other. We went down to Camp Mishawanna. It was a great week of fellowshipping with other believers and worshipping the Lord and having a lot of fun together. The only thing was we decided to family camp during the hottest week of the entire stinking summer, to be honest with you. It was incredibly hot.

Now we stayed in a cabin that had kind of air conditioning, but we don't go camping to stay in a cabin, right? We go camping to hang out and do camping stuff. And if there's one thing I'm gonna do when I'm camping, no matter what, is I'm sitting around a bonfire, because that's what you do when you go camping.

Except it was like 95 degrees. And so I still sat around the campfire ring without a campfire, enjoying the heat, and our campsite had zippity-doo-dah for shade. The sun was just beating down on us, and I'm sitting there, absolutely miserable, but telling my kids I'm having a wonderful time, I'm sitting there sweating around a campfire without a fire and I'm seriously questioning my life choices at this moment. And so I am sitting there trying to enjoy what I could, sun beating down on me, and

I look over to the picnic table and I notice that my youngest daughter's little princess princess umbrella is sitting right there. And because I have no shame, and because my identity is in Jesus Christ, because I was hot, I grabbed that umbrella and opened it up, sat there, my feet upon the fire ring, and joined my week at family camp. Because I'm secure in my manhood, as you can tell here. And I look up and I'm like, no surprise there, Elsa and Anna, yep, you guys know who Elsa and Anna are, you know, from Frozen? If you said no, you just became my hero. Elsa and Anna from the Disney princess movie Frozen. And I'm sitting here with a little shade, a 95 degree summer day, and I look up and I notice that there is something written on this umbrella, and it's written all over this umbrella. Joel, can you tell me what that says? Live your truth.

Live your truth. And I looked at that and I said, live your truth, live your truth, live your truth, live your truth. And I realized we can't escape the cultural lies. Live your truth is a cultural lie and we're gonna explain why.

Here's the reality, I think for many of us, we think live your truth, especially when you put it on a Disney princess umbrella, it seems so sweet, right? But here's the reality. It seems so innocent, but it's not. It seems innocent because we think that it means you be you and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

We think it means fight the system and pave your own way. And to our American ears, that just sounds so inspiring, doesn't it? But this little statement, live your truth, which is accepted by so many. It's extremely, extremely misleading. It's founded upon lies and falsehoods that keep us in a worldview that we think is empowering, but I'm going to argue today is actually extremely detrimental to ourselves and to our culture. Because here's the lie that's actually underneath this little pithy statement. The lie that's underneath it is, is truth is what you make it and make truth fit for you. Live your truth is the meme version of truth is relative. Live your truth sounds heroic. It sounds inspiring. It even sounds freeing to people who want to throw off the shackles of old traditions, right? It feels freeing, but I'm telling you right now, it's the opposite.

It keeps us from freedom. It keeps us from true freedom, and the culture is buying it, and we're giving it to little girls. And it's time it's called out. And that's what this series is all about, calling out cultural lies that so many in our society have bought into.

But I want to underscore something real quick. I really want you to hear me on this, because we're gonna hit it hard in this sermon series. But I want you to know that everything we do in this sermon series is done in love. This is a sermon series that's birthed out of love.

See, Jesus calls us and commands us to love people, and as Christians we do. I love people. I may not always agree with them, I may not always like them, but I love them.

I love people.

And I don't know about you, but I hate it when people who I love are lied to. And people I love, the people in this world, they're being lied to. And so you may hear some righteous anger come out during this sermon series, but I'm telling you, it comes from a place of love that wants to protect people from lies so that they can know the truth. And to tell someone to live your truth is telling them to do something that's based in a lie. Truth, my friends, truth is not yours to define. It's actually better than that. It's to be discovered. Truth is not fabricated inside our mind. It's found outside of ourselves. Author Elisa Childers says that live your truth is the mantra of the day.

And it's because this is the lie that supports and validates all the other lies that we believe. It's very symbolic that I found live your truth on an umbrella as it covers, because that's what this lie does. It covers all the other lies and validates them. And so, I'm going to encourage you, if you have your Bibles, as we look at the lie of live your

truth, would you turn to John chapter 8, the gospel of John chapter 8. As you're turning there, here's what we need to understand, that if truth is ours to define, then we can believe whatever we want. But we know this isn't the case, deep down we know this isn't right, but we hear it all the more. Especially with the election coming on right now, you know that the internet is flooded with debates going on right now. And I was listening to this one debate happening between these two groups of people, and this one woman said to this other woman, in the midst of a debate, this one woman said to this other woman, she said, your truth may not be their truth. And I sat there thinking to myself, what? How are we supposed to discern right and wrong if people respond with your truth may not be their truth.

How are we supposed to ever have any sort of social cohesion when everyone is just running in their own directions with their own truth? And so this series is about calling out the lies that our culture has bought into so that we can know the truth and by the truth, as Jesus so famously said, we could know the truth and the truth will set us free. That line is quoted all the time. The truth will set you free, the truth will set you free. It's even quoted in Marvel movies. But what we do is we ripped it out of context to make it mean what we want. What we're gonna do here this morning is we're gonna put it back in context from the one who actually said it to see what he actually meant. So John chapter 8, we find Jesus in the temple. He's debating and he's discussing and he's teaching. And there's his followers there and there's religious leaders there.

And the religious leaders begin to challenge Jesus and what he's saying. They're challenging what he's saying and they're challenging his identity, his claims of who he actually is. And when they start turning up the heat on Jesus, do you know what Jesus does? Do you know what Jesus does? Do you think he backs down?

No, because Jesus never backs down. This is why I love to follow this King Jesus, because he never backs down. In fact, when the heat gets turned up, you know what he does? He doubles down.

That's how amazing Christ is. And so they start challenging him, and rather than backing down, Christ presses in even harder. And so that's what we're going to pick up in our story. John chapter eight, would you hear the word of the Lord?

John 8:31-36

31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 33 They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?”

34 Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave[a] to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

How is it that you say we will become free? And Jesus answered them, "'Truly, truly, I say to you, "'everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. "'The slave does not remain in the house forever, "'the son remains forever.

"'So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

Amen. This is God's word. Let's take a moment. Let's pray and then we'll continue together. Let's pray. Father, we come before you, Lord, and we want to lay claims to the promises and to the teachings of Jesus here that we'll know the truth and by it we'll be set free. So Holy Spirit, we ask that you'd be with us here and now. Open our hearts and minds and ears as we open up your word. Help us to know the truth so that we will be equipped to know when we are lied to and also so that we will be set free for it's in Jesus' powerful name we pray these things and everyone said amen. All right, so I mean at first glance when you start reading this passage here there's some things that immediately jump out that fly right in the face of this mantra of live your truth. One thing that is so clear is that live your truth is not compatible with following Jesus.

Jesus, he's so kind to us. Jesus does not place the burden of truth into our hands to discern ourselves. See, he does not put it into our hands for us to make up on our own. The notion of coming up with,the notion of inventing truth, that's too weighty of a thing for us. To tell someone to live their truth is an incredible burden that you place upon people. No, no, no, Jesus doesn't do that. He doesn't put it in our hands. He keeps it in his own hands.

He's saying you don't get your own truth. Jesus is saying I will reveal it to you. But here's the reality. We, you and me, you and me and the person next to you, we like live your truth. We like that short, witty, pithy statement. Why? Because we're simple people and we like simple statements, whether they are true or not. This is why so many people's political opinions are formed by memes rather than by reading actual policy. See, we are prone to believe short statements that inspire us rather than the detailed ones that actually make us think. And so the challenge here, the challenge for us this morning, you got to follow me on this. The challenge is this. See, the culture says, live your truth and we eat it up. But if we, the truth bringers, if we want to counter that argument, then it's most tactful if our counter argument is as short and catchy as the lie is.

But that's really hard to do. But the beautiful thing is, I think Christ has already done it for us. I think Christ delivers here. The culture says, live your truth, but Jesus responds with this epic and eternal line, no, no, no. The truth will set you free. So we're going to look at our passage to see exactly what Christ means as we look at all this.

So our main point here this morning as we think about this, we think about this lie, this lie of live your truth that we said is the lie that validates all the other lies. Here's our main idea here this morning, that truth is not fabricated, truth is found. As we look at our passes, we're going to pick up three things here this morning. Truth is found in the teachings of Jesus, that we'll look at verses 31 to 32. The next thing we'll look at is truth is found in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, that's verses 33 and 34, and then we'll close it

up with verses 35 and 36 by looking at how the truth is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. So let's get into it. Truth is not fabricated, it's found. And the first thing we're going to see is that truth is found in the teachings of Jesus Christ. So back to our Bibles.

John chapter 8 verse 31. Keep your Bibles open, please. So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Okay, now listen, I know that when you come to church, it is much easier just to sit and listen and even doodle on your phone. But I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to think of an answer. I'm going to ask you to share it with the person next to you. And this is for Christians and non-Christians alike. I'm going to give you a question. I'll give you a very brief moment to think, and then I want you to share your short answer with the person next to you. So here's the question. What is a defining characteristic of a true Christian? Think about it. Share your answer with the

neighbor next to you.

Okay, now I'm hearing a lot of talking going on because my assumption here, and I think

I was just proving, was that everyone has an answer for that. Whether or not you're a Christian, everyone has an answer for what you think a Christian should be like. And so, you know, I went to the place that answers every question. I asked Google, Google, what is the defining mark of a true Christian? And here's what the great prophet said.

According to the Bible, a true Christian is someone who has received Jesus as their Savior, who trusts in Jesus' death and resurrection for forgiveness, has the Holy Spirit living within them, and lives their life in a way that reflects their faith in Jesus, one who is not ashamed to say that Jesus is Lord, and has a genuine love that rejects evil and seeks peace, and grace to others. Score one for Google.

Now, hold on a second here. Before you go and make Google your pastor, let me just say one thing. I wonder, I wonder what you said. Because here's the truth. When you search the Bible, and certainly the New Testament, there are clear defining markers that are said in black and white about what it means to follow Jesus. Pick up your cross and follow Him, and these sorts of things. But while we definitely could pick things together and search Scriptures and point to verses, I wonder what Jesus actually said about it. I mean, the red letters, what does it mean from Jesus' point of view to be a true believer in him? Because if you

noticed, he says it in our verse. Jesus tells us what it really means to follow him. He said, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. You are truly my disciples if you abide in his word. If you abide in the word of Christ, meaning if you keep his teaching, if you remain in his teaching, if you stay and stay connected to his teaching, because Christ teaches us truth and what truth is.

And so, as we think about this, and we think about what Jesus said, it's not just how you live. It's not just that you believe in the life and death and resurrection of Christ, although those are absolutely mission critical. To be a true Christian, a defining marker of what it means to follow Jesus is that you abide in His word. His word, not your word.

His truth, not your truth. I'm sure you notice this, but when Jesus begins this, there's a sequence of things that He says that compound on one another. That's very important. We got to follow what He says here. He says, if you abide in His word, you are truly His disciples.

And then if you are truly His disciples, you will know the truth. And if you know the truth, then you are set free. Why? Because the truth is not found within ourselves. It's not fabricated based on how we want to live. Truth is found in the word, in the teachings of Jesus Christ.

And a true follower follows his teaching. And what does Jesus say? That this person walks in freedom. But this begs the question, freedom from what? Freedom from what, Jesus? That's a great question.

And the people who are standing there, listening to Jesus as he was saying this, they asked the exact same thing. Look what they say. Verse 33, they answered him. We are offspring of Abraham. Again, this means they're of Jewish descent. We are offspring of Abraham. We've never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say we will become free? And Jesus answered them. Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. So what does the truth set us free from?

From sin. When you hear people quote that, that the truth will set you free, now you know the answer to that. Free from what? Free from sin. So if your truth doesn't bring you to a freedom from sin, if the truth that you listen to doesn't bring you to a freedom from sin, it's not truth. Because truth brings us freedom from sin. Truth is not found within ourselves, it's not found within our grand personal vision for life, it's not found in anything the world has to offer. It's found in what Christ teaches and how he teaches us to live. Because truth is found in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. So here, here's where it starts to get really thick. Live your truth is a mantra. Now follow me.

Live your truth is a mantra for those who want to live their life any way they please. Live your truth is the great rebuttal for a prideful people who don't ever want to be told that they are wrong in their beliefs. Now right there when I said that, I'm willing to bet there are a number of people who can hear my voice. You just, you kind of had an emotional reaction to that. Something just came up within your gut.

It was like, wait a second, no, we can't tell people that what they believe is wrong. Let me tell you something, my friend. That's not moral goodness speaking out of you. That's cultural conditioning. You've been culturally conditioned to think you can never tell someone they are wrong in their beliefs. And I know you know it. I got no problem telling any Nazi I meet that what they believe is wrong. We can tell people they are wrong in their beliefs if they are wrong.

Now, listen, of course, we need to, as Christians, do this with the utmost charity and love and wisdom and strength and kindness, of course. But if your knee-jerk reaction is, oh, wait, I just can't, oh, no, we can't tell people they're wrong, my friend, you are culturally conditioned. And let the truth bring you to a freedom, a freedom from this. And so, for some of us, that was like a whisper into our hearts. And if you heard that whisper that you can't tell people they're wrong, I'm telling you, that is the spirit of the live your truth mantra whispering to you. But some of you, you don't need that spirit to whisper to you because you openly embrace it and promote it yourself. Live your truth is a guiding principle, not just for those who don't want to hear they're wrong, but it's for those who actually want to live apart from God. But life apart from God is sin, and sin is slavery. Like, shouldn't we, as people, be trying to save people from slavery? Like, isn't that a morally good thing to do, to snatch people out of slavery and save them from that?

There's no way for us to do that without some point expressing to them what you believe is wrong, what you believe actually keeps you in sin, and it keeps you enslaved. And I know that's not a culturally popular thing to do, but as Christians, we have to bring the light, and the darkness will recoil from it. But we have to bring the truth, we have to bring it. If we wanna save people from slavery, we need to bring them the truth of Christ, because the truth of Christ is the only thing that'll free us from this. Sin is slavery, but righteousness, righteousness is freedom. See, sin is brokenness, but righteousness is when things are made right, unbroken. And the irony, oh my friends, the palatable irony in all of this is that live your truth, that mantra, that mantra is the straightest path away from truth. And it moves us towards a worldview that is full of lies and dangerous and destructive. So what I want to do for just a moment is I want to take the live your truth and I want to show you how it doesn't even hold up against its own weight, let alone the truth of Scripture.

Let's take just a few moments and explain why this lie is so destructive. So firstly, the lie of live your truth, it may excite us, but it keeps us separated. If we are all just living our own truth, then we're not coming under one unifying truth that can bring us all together. And again, I get, I get the whole to each his own mentality, but I happen to think a culture and a people are stronger when we are united. For it was Jesus who said a house divided against itself cannot stand. And as I think about what's going on in this world, I just have to tell you, I think the live your truth, that lie, it sounds like just the type of lie a devil would want a people to believe to keep them running away from each other. Second thing, the lie of live your truth may motivate us, but it keeps us immature. Here's what I mean. We can't grow if we're never told that we're wrong.

We cannot grow if we never face opposition or never actually have to defend our own beliefs. And let me just call out my brothers and sisters in Christ here. This is why you need to be sharing your faith, because you're going to come up against some opposition that actually will help you grow in your faith. As people come to you with questions that you may not know how to answer, and you've got to go and find out. But, the live your truth is a lie that keeps us immature.

Now, there's so many videos of this on right now, especially right now with our political

climate.

I know you've seen them, these street side debates, where you've got these two groups debating and you've got one group, one group is presented with reason and logic and facts and all the other group can do is scream. I know you've seen those videos. Do you know what that is? That is a product of the live your life mantra.

The product of the live your life mantra is immaturity. Because it's immature to sit there and scream in the face of a healthy debate. Next thing I'll say is this, is that the lie of live your truth may inspire us, but it keeps us lost. Now, let's say you decide to go on vacation to a major city. I don't know why on God's green earth you'd want to do that, but let's just say you go to a major city for a weekend away, and you decide to go out for a stroll and see the city lights. You go out and you start walking around and you realize at one point you're lost. You know you can't just make up your own way back to the hotel. If you try to do that, you'll stay lost and get more lost. Live your truth is just as helpful as make your own path. It sounds inspirational, but it will just keep you lost. Next thing is this is the lie of live. Your truth may influence us, but it keeps us in sin. And that's Jesus whole point here. You do things your own way. You keep following your own path. You keep living your own truth, then you will not know the real truth and you will not be set free. You'll be kept in sin. Live Your Truth is so influential, we even put it on princess umbrellas. It influences us, all right. It influences us to stay in our sin, in our brokenness. And lastly, the lie of Live Your Truth may embolden us, but it keeps us rather than frees us.

Live your truth may speak those sweet nothings to your pride, but you will not be led to where you truly want to go. Living your truth is not freedom from family, religious, or cultural expectations. Live your truth is a lie that keeps you from the freedom that your heart truly needs, freedom from sin, because sin is brokenness, but following Jesus sets us right, because that's righteousness. Now, please, my friends, please don't hear righteousness and think of stuffy religious people. Righteousness simply is about living the right way, the way that we were designed to. We are creations made by a Creator who has designed us to live. That's righteousness. Again, simply put, righteousness is about living right according to His design. And I know, I know that flies right in the face of the live your truth, the live your truth mantra. That flies right in the face of that, but all I can say to you is exactly. Amen, brother. Following Jesus leads us to truth, and truth sets us free from sin.

Freedom from what? Freedom from sin. And that's called righteousness. Church, but as we think about closing up here, please, you cannot miss the foundation of this. This is the most important thing that everyone misses who loves to quote the truth will set you free. The foundation here is Jesus himself. Jesus said, if you abide in my word, if you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples. Jesus Christ is the fundamental principle of truth that is revealed to this world. Jesus made a bold claim in John 14 when he said, I am the truth.

He said, I am the alatheia, the truth. Jesus is the wisdom and the truth that has come into this world. And listen to me, think about it. Just think about it for a moment. What better way for God to make wisdom and truth knowable than through a person, through the person of his son, Jesus Christ, who calls us to abide, abide in his word.

Do you know abide is a connection word? It's a relational word. We're meant to have relationship with the one who is himself truth. And this leads to the last part of what Jesus said about how truth sets us free, and it's the gospel.

If you don't know what the gospel is, please, please hear me, because truth is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And what Jesus says here in verses 35 and 36 helps us to know what the gospel is all about. So when Jesus is talking about those who are enslaved to sin, he paints this picture of a household. And let me ask you, here's how I want you to think about it. What is a household other than a series of relationships? Jesus says in verse 35, the slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever. But then he kind of takes a weird turn in verse 36, and almost seems like he's going in a different direction. But you're going to see here in a minute, he ties it all together. So verse 35, he says, The slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever. Verse 36, So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. So what's going on here?

So Jesus is using this to point to heaven, to God's house and God's household. He's saying on earth, a slave isn't truly part of the family, but a son is. Now listen to me, the son has the rights and the authority of the home, but a slave does not. The slave doesn't have the right to set himself free, but the son does. The son can set the slave free. But we, the Live Your Truth people, we are enslaved to sin, and we have neither the power nor the authority to free ourselves. We need the master of our existence or his son to set us free. And God has sent his son to do just that. To give you freedom not to live out your own desires, but something even better. To live out how you were designed. We've talked about this before.

When you follow your desires over God's design, you're choosing something lesser. The better thing is to follow God's design. When you choose your own desires over the way that God has designed us, my friends, you are choosing a lesser version of yourself, and God wants more for you than that. We have to follow His design, the way we're meant to be. Life that's free. Let me end with this question.

How do we know that Jesus is the one who can do this? How do we know that Jesus is worth putting our trust into? How do we know that Jesus can make good on his claims? How do we know that Jesus is this Son who can set us free? Christians, you know the answer. You should know the answer to this.

What is the key point of validation that Jesus is the truth? What is the thing that validates the claims of Christ? I'm telling you, it's not found in rock-solid logic. It's not found in social acceptance.

It's not found in majority opinion. The thing that validates the claims of Christ is found in a historical moment. Something that actually happened, a concretely real moment that actually occurred in a real day in history. The thing that validates the identity and the claims of Jesus Christ is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

That is the thing that is the authentication of the true identity of Jesus. The resurrection proves that Jesus Christ truly is the Son of God, that He truly is God incarnate, that His death on the cross really was a sacrifice that atones for our iniquities, and that His words truly do bring freedom from sin. And this is the gospel, and this is where truth is found, that Jesus Christ died for our sins, and on the third day He rose again. That is the actual, objective, factual, historical, and eternal truth. It is such a profound truth, you can hang your entire eternity upon it.

And because of this, I'm going to ask you to let go of the lie of live your truth, and place your faith in the Son. The one who the Son sets free is free indeed, because the truth sets us free. Amen?

Amen. Amen.

Would you please stand?