Set Free by Truth

Today feels like one of those days when we ought to be sitting together in the kitchen, just talking.

I don’t know about you all, but wow—this past Wednesday was crazy. It was just crazy. And the world is trying to sort it out, to figure it out. Everybody wants to know, “What in the world? Why?” The question comes up a lot: “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Some say he wasn’t a good person; some say he was a great person. I know that Charlie Kirk was a man who spoke the truth about his Lord, who spoke in terms of the truth of Scripture, and was killed because he spoke truth.

My first gut reaction to all of that was, “Wow. Lord, would You touch the heart of Charlie’s killer so that he might be saved?” That was my immediate response: “Lord, touch the heart of his killer.” But people still ask, “How does this even happen in the first place?”

Let me take you to a couple of places in Scripture. Turn with me to 2 Timothy. If you have your Bible, please open it; if not, there’s one in the pew. If you don’t own a copy of Scripture, there are at least five brand-new Bibles on the back table on this left side. We would be honored for you to take one home and make it your own.

In 2 Timothy 3, Paul is speaking to Timothy, training up a pastor to serve and teaching him about the days in which he lived. You see, nothing is really new under the sun. We’ve been dealing with things like this since the dawn of time. Since Cain and Abel, folks have been killing one another—most of it senseless.

Listen to what Paul says: “But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness but denying its power.” And he says, “Avoid such people.”

Then over in chapter 4, verse 3: “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.” We are in those times—when people seek “knowledge” and what they perceive as truth that pleases their own desires. That is why Charlie is dead: because he spoke against ways in our society that are contrary to how we are called to live.​

All of us are sinful. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. So what is really happening here?

Turn with me for a moment to Romans 1. This lack of truth—or half-truths being told to satisfy our own desires, or twistings of truth being taught in some houses of worship, some denominations, some classrooms, on college campuses—what is going on?

One of the things that lets us drift so easily into those areas of the mind and heart—where we start grabbing hold of half-truths or trying to make everything fit so we can have the best of “both worlds”—is this: we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the God of Exodus, the Creator who made all things and all people, who had a way and a plan. We went against that plan at the tree in the garden. We refused to wait on Him at Sinai and said, “We’ll make our own god.” Even though He fed Israel, gave them drink, and kept their clothes from wearing out for forty years in the wilderness, they said, “It’s not enough.”

We’re like that today. We want everything right now. We don’t want to work, we don’t want to wait. “I want it now.” That’s how they were. “We’re not waiting for Moses to come back. Aaron, make us our own god. We’ll do it our way.” That’s exactly what is happening in our society today: “We’re going to do it our way.”

Romans 1:18 says, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness.” That’s where we are: we have lost the fear of God. We’ve forgotten that the One who created us has made two places for us to land in eternity—heaven with Him, or hell and destruction. Those realities don’t weigh on our minds anymore. We don’t fear God.

In the past 20–30 years the church has often softened that phrase “fear of God” into “just a healthy reverence.” No. We truly don’t fear the One who can take us out. We don’t fear the One who can bring our ultimate destruction. He doesn’t want to; He loves us and has made a way through Jesus Christ for us not to experience that, but to have forgiveness and to grow. That’s not His end goal. But if we are hard-headed, if we don’t listen and we refuse Him, what choice does He have? He is righteous.

Back to Romans 1: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth.” There is a lot of truth-suppression going on. “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes—namely, His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”

Even people who claim to be atheists stand on mountaintops looking across valleys at a sunset on the Blue Ridge and say, “Look what God has made. No way man could do this.” Or they stand on a beach looking at the ocean and think, “Somebody must have made this.” Creation itself gets into our hearts and minds, and we stand in awe of the Creator. So we have no excuse, even if we haven’t heard His Word, for not knowing there is Someone bigger than us.

“And although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Futile—incapable of producing any useful result. Their thinking became incapable of producing any useful result. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, “and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” So God “gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity,” because “they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”

That’s exactly what we see today. People are exchanging God’s absolute truth for lies, and those lies are destructive. For example, we are told, “Men can have babies.” That is a lie. There are absolute truths in this world. Men cannot give birth. A woman may say, “I feel like a man; therefore I am a man.” A man may say, “I feel like a woman; therefore I am a woman.” Feelings do not change biological reality. You can claim, “This boiling water is cold—that’s my truth,” but your burned hand will say otherwise. Your truth doesn’t change absolute truth. God designed the world in absolute truth.

To justify worshiping the creature rather than the Creator, people deny God’s truths. It happens on college campuses, in high schools, in lower grades. God’s absolute truths have been exchanged for lies to appease ourselves.

That’s why, in His infinite wisdom, before time began, God determined that there would come a time when all that He created would need to be set right, and that He would set it right through Jesus. That was His plan from the beginning. That’s why Jesus died on the cross and why He rose again: because victory is truly in Jesus. Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life.” No one comes to the Father except through Him.

Truth is necessary. We have to know the truth. We can’t twist it or reshape it to fit our desires. One of the dangers in today’s world is the constant pull of screens and social media. After seeing the flood of responses, opinions, and outright falsehoods online this week, I almost brought my smartphone here to lay it on the pulpit and smash it with a hammer. I still might go back to a flip phone.

Those screens are in our hands for hours every day. We say we’re checking up on Christian artists or good content, but in between the good posts the reels pull us into everything else happening in the world—sometimes very ugly things. People you don’t know show up in your feed pushing their views into your mind. Even God’s people can become chained to these devices until they are almost an idol. Every time we hear the notification ding, we “bow down” to the phone, afraid of what we might miss.

Children of God, I know in my life I have to deal with that. I can’t let the phone keep taking up space in my mind that belongs to truth. It has to be truth—God’s truth.

Another set of lies today centers on artificial intelligence. We’re told that AI will become a self-governing intelligence we can’t control. But no computer in this world has information that did not first come from people. If it ever “runs away,” you can pull the plug. A computer cannot run without power; a machine cannot run without energy. Yet we’re being nudged to hand over everything to screens, to phones, to “smart” systems.

What happens when all your Bibles are digital and you don’t own a physical copy anymore? Over time, subtle changes could be made so that what appears on your screen no longer says what God originally said. Don’t let a phone become your only source of Scripture. Don’t trust technology more than truth.

Jesus said in John 8: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” I don’t care what you’re dealing with, what has you down, or what seems unfair. If you get into the truth of God’s Word, that truth will get into you and set you free.

In John 12:44–48, Jesus cried out, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in Him who sent me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge: the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.”​

Do you see why we need to be in the Word of God? One day, many will stand before Him and try to justify living by “their own truth.” But the judge will be the Word we already had and refused. God will say, “You had my Word. You refused to hear it, refused to receive it, refused to let it guide your life. I gave you everything you needed to know, and you turned away.”

That’s why truth is needed in this world, and that’s why we must be truth-tellers—witnesses of God’s absolute truth.

So what do we do, right now, with all that has happened? There are people who didn’t know Charlie personally but were deeply affected by his ministry and are now saying, “We’ve got to do something!”

The first and most important thing we must do is hear Jesus’ own words from the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” People who are lost in this world, doing things like this, do not know the truth. They really have no idea what they are doing. We must pray: “Father, forgive them. Father, touch their hearts, open their eyes. Let them see You. Let them see the truth so they might be saved.”

“What if someone comes against me in conversation like that?” you may ask. “If somebody gets in my face, maybe I ought to knock them out.” But Jesus said, “Love those who hate you. Pray for those who persecute you.” If they can get you to bend to their way and pull you back to your old life, they’ve won a victory. If you stand firm in the truth of Jesus, love them like Jesus, and remember, “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord,” then you leave vengeance to Him. It is not ours to take. Our responsibility is to walk in His ways and know that one day all will stand before Him and He will do what is right.

So today, where are we—honestly—in our walk with Christ? Do we give Him just an hour a week and call it done? Do we truly seek His truth, get into His Word, and let it soak into us so it shapes our lives? Or does the Bible sit tucked away, forgotten? Are we more chained to our phones than to His Word? Do we give screens hours a day but won’t spend fifteen minutes in prayer?

If we want to see real change, if we want to make a difference in the climate of our society, the best thing we can do is draw closer to God, soak in His truth, and carry His truth wherever we go. I agree with one thing being said all around this country: we will determine the outcome. We have choices to make.

So I ask you today to make a choice. Even if you’re doing a lot of things right—maybe you’re in the Word, you pray, you serve—if God is still nudging you, I challenge you: grow closer to Him than you are now.

We’re going to sing a song—a heavy song—but it speaks truth: “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide.” I’m going to ask you to remain seated while we sing. I know some don’t like to come forward, so here’s what I’ll ask: if you need to change some things in your life and you want to commit to that change while we sing, simply stand where you are. No one is going to think badly of you. If you’re willing to say, “Yes, I will grow closer to God,” stand up.

If God would say, “That is a stiff-necked person—I am having a hard time getting them to move,” and you’ve never accepted Christ as your Savior, I challenge you: come and pray with me.

But if you don’t mean it—if you do not truly wish to change or grow closer to God—don’t stand just because someone else does. Be honest with yourself before God.

Father, move in our hearts. Bring honesty and truth to bear before You today. Accomplish Your will in our lives, for Your honor and glory, in Jesus’ name. Amen.