24-1204wc Transcript

Teacher: Scott Reynolds

(0:04) Okay, I’ll be showing a video shortly. (0:08) I’ve decided to start trying to do the video in two parts, 30 minutes. (0:15) That way we do one tour every two weeks.

(0:20) Just so you have an idea, I thought I’d do this first. (0:24) In the email that’s sent out, there’s links to the Wednesday night program. (0:31) You’ll see that there’s a number of links.

(0:34) That are applicable to the class. (0:37) You can get to this by going to our website. (0:40) And then you go to the education page and scroll down a little bit to current Bible classes.

(0:47) And under the current Bible classes, you go to the notes. (0:53) And today’s December 4th. (0:55) And here’s the Truth Project that we’re doing from Focus on the Family’s Truth Project link.

(1:04) There’s materials available from them. (1:07) You can get the video. (1:09) And then there’s a study guide also.

(1:13) And they are, I think they’re like 10 bucks. (1:16) You can go there and buy the study guide. (1:19) Then Del Tackett’s website is there.

(1:22) And he’s got the engagement and also the Truth Project. (1:27) The Truth Project, this is where I got all the materials that I’m using. (1:31) And all of this is available for use free with this stuff.

(1:37) So, that’s where you could get the stuff that I’m getting. (1:42) And then what I’ve tailored for our class is on links to our classes. (1:48) Tonight, I put in the slides for this.

(1:52) I’m going to hand out here the leader’s guide to the lessons. (1:59) Because it’s going to be us that move this forward. (2:05) Okay, in the lesson guide, I’m going to talk about a compass.

(2:10) This is the compass that he talks about. (2:14) The four points of the compass are, north is truth, God, social order, and man. (2:25) This is a mnemonic.

(2:27) It’s a memory device. (2:28) It’s to help us remember the four main areas that Truth Project’s going to focus on. (2:37) We’re going to build a world view on what God has to say about truth, (2:45) what he has to say about himself, what he has to say about the social order that he designed for man, (2:53) and to discover the social order he talked about.

(2:56) And then what God has to say about man. (3:01) Those are the four main things. (3:03) And all these subtopics come off these four points.

(3:09) The leader guide, he’s talking about the world view compass and the four fundamental issues (3:16) are truth and God, man and the social order. (3:21) Our ultimate goal is not simply to gain knowledge, but to look upon the face of God (3:27) and be transformed in the process. (3:31) Okay, so he talks about the cosmic battle a little bit there.

(3:35) Then points to watch for. (3:39) It concludes that in almost every case, the perspective of contemporary culture (3:45) stands in direct opposition to the truth-centered world view presented in the Bible. (3:52) In the process of making this case, he advances the bold claim that not only is our culture (3:58) filled with lies, but it’s actually heading in the direction of social insanity.

(4:05) He said that 19 years ago. (4:08) What can you call our culture today other than insane? (4:14) And what is truth is the most important question facing our society today. (4:21) In the end, lesson one, challenging his audience with this all-important question, (4:26) do you really believe that what you believe is really real? (4:31) And then one last thing, and then we’ll start the video.

(4:37) Because if you’re astute, you’ll recognize that veritology doesn’t exist in the dictionary. (4:43) And he said, there’s a good reason why I made it up. (4:48) I made up the word because he needed a word for study, the study of truth or truth about truth.

(4:55) And he used -ology, which means study of. (5:00) It’s a Greek derivative from the word logos, which is what Jesus was called. (5:05) The word used, John used to describe Jesus.

(5:10) And that means word. (5:12) In the beginning was the logos. (5:15) Or the word when combined with other words, such as bio meaning life, you get the word biology.

(5:24) Which is the study of living things or theology fields, meaning God. (5:33) And so you get the idea, psychology, geology, sociology, anthropology, and it goes on and on. (5:39) Okay, so it’s a made up word.

(5:42) He took the Latin term for truth, which is veritas, combined it with the Greek derivative (5:48) logos and came out veritology or the study of truth. (5:55) That’s how he got the word. (5:57) Okay, with that in mind, we’ll start up the video.

(6:06) Okay, that’s the 29 minutes. (6:08) All right, that took us through on our outline point three E.

(6:15) And we’ll pick up with the battle of worldviews in opposition to God’s truth. (6:21) God’s truth claims and the lies of the world, flesh, and the devil.

(6:25) I like the idea, you know, when we ask what’s truth and people try to tell us what truth is, (6:36) what they’re actually telling us, and what we’re proclaiming are truth claims. (6:45) I like the idea of thinking of this conflict between truth and lies as a battle of truth claims. (6:57) Evolution and creationists both look at the same set of facts. (7:06) Facts are the same. (7:08) Evolutionists say those facts say this. (7:11) Those are truth claims.

(7:13) Creationists say that with the Bible’s help, it says this. (7:18) These are God’s truth claims or the creationists' truth claims trying to express God’s truth (7:25) claims because the creationists may or may not actually be stating God’s truth claims. (7:32) The only place that we can get objectively God’s truth claims is in the scriptures, period.

(7:40) We passed out the leaders' guides. (7:43) Let’s take a quick look at that. (7:45) On the back, and the reason, another reason why I gave you the leaders' guide, (7:50) and this is the last thing we’ll do tonight.

(7:53) And then we won’t actually go through the questions. (7:55) We might read the questions. (7:57) But on the leaders' guide, the answers, their answers, these are focused on the family’s (8:04) questions, and these are focused on the family’s answers.

(8:07) These are focused on the family’s truth claims. (8:11) I’d like you to look at it, look at the questions, go out to the link and bring up the slides (8:19) because all the slides he showed as he was presenting, and it went through number 34. (8:26) The first 34 slides are this, and you can go back and use the slides to help, you know, (8:33) he’s got all the scriptures that he presented, the arguments, you know, they’re there in the slides.

(8:40) And go over, look at the questions real quick. (8:45) Number one, Jesus stated plainly that he had come into the world that testifies to the truth, (8:51) John 18, 37. (8:53) Exactly what did he mean by this, and how is this claim connected with those other aspects (9:00) of Jesus' mission? (9:03) Because when he was asking the crowd why did Jesus come, none of them came up with this (9:11) aspect of Jesus' mission to testify to the truth, or that the truth was even an idea (9:19) of importance to God.

(9:21) But I hope we recognize that the actual battle that’s going on and why Adam and Eve is such (9:30) an important event is the same choice that they were confronted with. (9:39) Every single one of us has to make the same choice. (9:46) We are presented with God’s truth claims, and we are being presented, if you watch the news, (9:54) if you listen to your friends, if you listen to your family, if you listen to the experts, (10:00) especially the experts, you are being presented with all these other truth claims.

(10:08) Scripture says God created heavens and the earth in six days. (10:15) How does that truth claim play today? (10:20) That is a major contested truth claim, and this is the battle. (10:27) What’s the truth, and what isn’t? (10:30) And if you remember going through Hebrews in chapter 5, that when the writer was chastising (10:40) his audience, by now you ought to be teachers, you need the milk all over to be taught the (10:47) milk again, fed the milk again, because you’re not ready for meat, and anyone that’s only (10:55) acquainted with milk doesn’t know the doctrine of righteousness.

(11:03) Those who are mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish between (11:13) what is good and evil, right and wrong, truth and lies. (11:20) We are not innately knowledgeable as to what the truth is and what lies are. (11:29) The only way we know what truth is from God’s truth claims is what He claims is true, (11:36) or what, if we choose to believe man, what man says is true, which changes by the second.

(11:45) By the way, what man believed even just a decade ago isn’t necessarily what they believe now, (11:55) let alone a hundred years or a thousand years ago, (11:59) what they believe. They’re constantly changing their truth claims. (12:05) So God hasn’t changed His truth claims.

It’s a good thing. (12:10) All right, so he came to testify to the truth, and you can look at what they were talking about there. (12:17) How does one’s concept of truth affect and determine one’s concept of faith? (12:25) And he showed you a connection between truth and being saved.

(12:32) What is the key point of number three? What is the key point of distinction (12:37) between biblical concept of truth and popular cultural ideas? (12:42) Some of these we probably didn’t actually get there, (12:46) because he didn’t talk about the Webster 1828 dictionary. We will next week. (12:53) So the first two questions is really all we need to look at, but do look at the rest of that, (13:05) and that’s where I’m going to finish for tonight.

Okay, so let me close with a prayer. (13:16) Holy Father, we ask that You be with us. Help us, Father, through constant use of Your Word.

(13:22) And living and acting on Your Word. Help us then become discerners of what is right and wrong, (13:33) good and evil, and truth, Your claims, and Your truth, versus the lies of Satan and all those (13:44) that follow him. We pray, Father, that You’ll bless our effort to learn more about You, about (13:51) the ways You see things, that we may then be transformed from the thinking of this world.

(13:58) Let us no longer be deceived by the world’s truth claims, that we may see Your truth claims, (14:06) and that they are true and real. And help us then act on Your truth, and we ask that You let us (14:17) then become a useful tool for You in helping others escape from the snare of the devil that (14:26) has taken them captive. These things we pray in Jesus' name.

Amen. That was another thing I did (14:33) want to talk about, but we are past time, and that is the idea of how to look at those that the (14:42) Scripture calls outsiders. It’s easy to feel contempt for vileness and those that perpetrate it (14:54) in our society, but I’m more and more thinking, pity, because they are deceived.

They’re acting (15:04) on lies. They’re deceived. And only God can bring them to their right mind.

He can use us (15:16) in being purveyors and speakers of His truth, because it’s only the truth that will set you (15:24) free. Only God’s truth claims that are going to make the difference. And that transformation comes (15:32) about when we stop conforming to the world and start the transformation through a renewing of (15:40) our mind and learning what God’s truth claims are and then living them.

So keep that in mind as we go on. (15:49)