When Truth Ain't Truth and Love Ain't Love

1 John 2:15–17 ESV

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

Prayer

Introductory Video (“Rev” Brandon Robertson)

I. THERE IS ONLY GOD’S TRUTH.

The dumbest sentence in the English language is the following, “Truth is relative.”

The second is nearly equally dumb, “That may be your truth, but it is not mine,” or “That is my truth.”

THERE IS ONLY ONE TRUTH!!! AND THAT IS GOD’S TRUTH.

This is a non-starter! There cannot be your truth and my truth. What if they contradict?!?!

If you say to me, that your truth is that LGBT lifestyle is good and acceptable to God, and I say “Well, my truth is that the Bible condemns it and God hates it,” we are at an impasse aren’t we?!?

Whose truth wins out? You could both be wrong, but if your so-called truth statements contradict, then they CANNOT both be true. It simply doesn’t make sense.

But you see, we have the Word of God as our objective standard of TRUTH and of all that is RIGHT and WRONG!

Jesus said in John 17:17

John 17:17 (ESV)

17 your word is truth.

Psalm 119:160 ESV

160 The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.

Psalm 25:5 ESV

5 Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all the day long.

Psalm 86:11 ESV

11 Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.

John 1:17 ESV

17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

John 14:6 ESV

6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

But you see here is the problem: too many people sitting in the pews and too many so-called preachers in pulpits in America today don’t even believe this.

According to the random telephone survey of 1,007 American adults (May 2022),

only 40% of those identifying as evangelical hold the entire Bible as the “actual word of God”

51% consider only parts of the Bible as the “inspired word of God.”

8% of evangelicals stated the Bible was “an ancient book of fables, legends, history and moral precepts recorded by man.”

Recent Gallup Poll data shows:

Only 30% of Protestants say the Bible is literally true, while just 15% of Catholics do.

The data from the Gallup poll comes less than a year after a study from Arizona Christian University found:

Of an estimated 176 million American adults who identify as Christian, just 6% or 15 million of them actually hold a Biblical worldview.

In 2015, data from Pew Research showed: 

Just under 60% of evangelical churches espoused a literal interpretation of Scripture.

In 2019, Pew Research also noted: 

61% of Southern Baptists accepted the Bible as the literal Word of God.

IF THE PEOPLE SITTING IN THE PEWS OF CHURCHES DON’T BELIEVE IN THE TRUTH OF SCRIPTURE AND DON’T DEMAND THAT OUR PASTORS DO THE SAME THEN HOW THE HECK ARE WE TO FULFILL THE GREAT COMMISSION AND TAKE THE DISCIPLES OF ALL NATIONS BAPTIZING THEM IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER AND OF THE SON AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT!!!!!

You see we have failed as a church body.

We have failed as followers of Christ. We have failed to read our Bibles. We have failed to believe in the promises of God and trust in His Holy and Inerrant Word.

You may be thinking to yourself, “Wayne, what does this all have to do with the passage we read?” Well, I’m glad you asked. Stick with me and I’ll get us where we are going.

II. THOSE WHO LOVE THE WORLD ARE AT EMNITY WITH GOD.

The Bible teaches in Romans 12:2 that we are not to be conformed to the world but instead are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

Just look at what our passage today really says:

All that is in the world:

The desires of the flesh

The desires of the eyes

And pride.

THE WORLD AND ALL THAT IS IN IT ARE PASSING AWAY!!!

Just look at the month we just came out of—The holiest of all months in America today—LGBTQMNOP+-/ Pride month.

And lets talk about how these three things that are warned agains by the Apostle John are on FULL DISPLAY during that and really EVERY MONTH in that camp.

First, there is the DESIRES OF THE FLESH

Let’s face it, this is the root of all of this alphabet soup rhetoric.

And it is here that all of this “my truth” and “my lived experience” garbage takes its starting point.

How many times does the Bible have to outright say, as it does in both the Old and New Testament that it is a sin against God for a man to lie with a man as a man lies with a woman.

Yet so called preachers like Brandon Robertson will go through Olympic level mental gymnastics trying to defend their position that not only does the Bible not condemn homosexual and ALL types of sexual perversion, they will at times go so far as to say that the Bible outright condones these behaviors. I have even seen the so-called Reverend Robertson come out and say that Jesus had to repent for something he had said and done.

And how many times does the New Testament need to tell us as believers to put away the desires of the flesh and allow the Holy Spirit to live within us an drive our desire for true Godly behavior?

But you see that’s why I started with my first point, and that is that the Radical Left both outside of and inside of the church only picks and chooses what it wants out of the Bible based on those things that make them feel good about themselves.

And sadly, yet again, far too many of us who call ourselves Christians are either too Biblically illiterate or too scared to stand up and speak out against those whose desires are an abomination to the Almighty God!!

The bottom line is that if you do not believe that Jesus Christ is the sinless Messiah, fully human, fully God, sinless in every way, then you believe in a Jesus that is NOT the jesus of the Bible, and that so-called Jesus you believe in CANNOT save, CANNOT be the Christ, and is NOT the Jesus of the Bible. PERIOD. END of DISCUSSION!!!

Second, there are the DESIRES OF THE EYES!

I find it interesting here that John is working backwards through these sins.

While he started with the actual sin of the desires of the flesh, in reality these sins START with the desires of the eyes.

A thoughtless glance turns into a second look.

A second look turns into a few seconds of staring.

A few seconds of staring turns into an unhealthy desire, and that desire grows, and that leads to lust, and lust turns into action.

Let’s face it, marketing companies have known this forever. Why do you think so many product commercials have scantily clad models in commercials.

Sex sells!!

And it sells because the desires of the eyes lead to the desires of the flesh. And desires of the flesh lead to men and women acting on these desires in an ungodly fashion.

Jesus himself taught that if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out! for it is better to enter the Kingdom of Heaven with one eye than to burn in the pits of hell because you failed to cut out the cause of sin in your life.

But at the root of all these is PRIDE.

Pride - the top of the list of deadly sins.

Pride - the sin that led to the fall of Satan.

Pride - the sin that (as one blogger writes) makes you want to eradicate everything that bothers you and keeps you from being exalted over every person, thing and circumstance.

If this isn’t the essence of the Alphabet Soup mafia, then I don’t know what is!!!

They even name an entire month for it!!

In other words, PRIDE is that which leads most directly to the sin of idolatry!!

PRIDE is the sin that puts oneself above even God thereby breaking the first commandment of

Exodus 20:3–4 ESV

3 “You shall have no other gods before me. 4 “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

But I do have a piece of good news in all of this.

There are many signs this year that people have finally had enough of all of this pride garbage.

In a recent poll, the number of American’s who are affirming of even same-sex unions decreased by 7% compared to the same poll one year ago.

III. THE ONLY TRUE LOVE IS GODLY LOVE.

As Christians, we are taught to love each other.

After all, Jesus taught in Matthew 22:37-39

Matthew 22:37–39 ESV

37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

But that does NOT mean what the LGBTQMNOP camp thinks it means.

And again, we as a church are not Biblically literate enough to know that, let alone express it.

So just for Brother Dave, I’m gonna sneak a little Greek lesson in here for a second.

See the Greek verb there in the statement “Love your neighbor as yourself” is the word AGAPAO

agapáō – to love

for the believer, preferring to "live through Christ" (1 Jn 4:9,10), i.e. embracing God's will (choosing His choices) and obeying them through His power.

preeminently refers to what God prefers as He "is love" (1 Jn 4:8,16).

With the believer, /agapáō ("to love") means actively doing what the Lord prefers, by His power and direction.

True agapáō ("loving") is always defined by God – a "discriminating affection which involves choice and selection"

1 Jn 4:8,16,17 for example convey how loving ("preferring," 25 /agapáō) is Christ living His life through the believer.

LOVE, in other words, means living our lives increasingly in the manner in which Christ lived His life.

See in America, both inside and outside of the Church have whitewashed the Bible and painted a picture of Christ that conforms to OUR image rather than us conforming to HIS image.

So called “Progressive Christians” that are Alphabet Soup confirming like “Rev” Robertson love to invoke the NAME of Jesus but pick and choose only the passages they like.

After all he and others in his camp openly state as you saw in the video that they DO NOT believe that the Bible is the complete and inerrant word of God so they feel free to select what they want and cut the rest out.

They LOVE the Jesus that said let the little children come to me, but the HATE the Jesus that called the pharisees a brood of vipers.

They LOVE the Jesus that ate with tax collectors and prostitutes, but they FORGET that when He did this He called them to repentance and a changed life !!

The LOVE the Jesus that healed the sick, but they HATE the Jesus who had righteous anger in the temple when he knocked over the tables of the money changers.

See I save this example for last for a reason: The money changers in the temple THOUGHT they were doing the will of God when in reality they were following the WILL OF MAN.

AND THOSE IN THE PROGRESSIVE LGBT AFFIRMING CAMP WHO TRY TO TELL US THAT TO LOVE MEANS TO AFFIRM THEIR LIFESTYLE ARE FOLLOWING THE WILL OF MAN AND NOT THE WILL OF GOD. IT IS A DOCTRINE STRAIGHT FROM THE PITS OF HELL AND IT WILL GET YOU NOWHERE!!!

Affirmation of an un-Godly lifestyle is NOT loving. It is in fact the exact opposite.

I ask you, as a parent, if your child was abusing heroine, would it be loving to affirm what that child was doing? OF COURSE NOT!!

The LOVING parent would look their child in the eye and say, “Son I love you, but you are killing yourself with what you are doing!” The Loving person would go to the ends of the earth to save their child from the earthly hell that addiction brings.

And in like manner, the LOVING Christian, does as Christ did.

The LOVING Christian speaks Godly Truth, the ONLY REAL TRUTH, to those that are following a lifestyle and a wordly, carnal, secular religion and calls them to repentance.

The LOVING Christian, says to the member of the LGBT community:

Put away your pride!!

Put away the desires of the eyes.

Put away the desires of the flesh.

Do not love the world or the things in the world!!

Cast your eyes upon Jesus.

Fall on your knees at the foot of the cross.

Beg for forgiveness.

Pray and accept the Mercy of a Righteous and Holy God who, yes, condemns the wicked, but who also 2000 years ago offered Forgiveness and Mercy and Grace by the sacrifice of His Son, Our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Ending Prayer