Well, when He, the Spirit of Truth, cometh, He'll guide you into all truth. That's a great transition right into the message today. Thank you very much for that. I'm Peter Latrous, if you haven't known or seen me before. And, of course, I've known Mr., we call him Mr. Andrews at the school, but Kelly has been a friend of mine for many years, going back, and it's great to be here today. I like your sign, it said the first noun and verb in the Bible, God created, and that's such an important truth that people need to hear today. Always has been, of course. But I was looking and I saw you had Pastor Joe Montgomery here for a couple of weeks. He's another one, good friend for years and years, and just a tremendous blessing. And someone, I don't know of anybody personally who has more of a burden to reach lost people with the gospel than Pastor Joe. And in the ministry that I serve in, often in Cambridge, Two of his disciples were in there. One of them passed with COVID recently, but his wife is still there. They were led to Christ many years ago by Pastor Joe Montgomery. And like I said, I think you were blessed to have him. And I have one bone to pick with him. How can a guy 82 years old have that much hair? And someone like me go around like this. I think that's something wrong there. But I'm glad you got to minister to him. And I've gotten to know Pastor Shoaff a little bit over the last year. And you're blessed to have him. And I'm praying for your church and excited. God, through all this chaos we have out around us, God is still there. Has God changed? Good, everybody said no. God doesn't change. We'll see that today even a little bit. But like I said, it's a privilege to be here, and I'm excited about opening the Word of God for you this morning. Now, we read a passage in 1 John, verses 1 through 10. which that would probably take me about four hours to go through, so I'm only focusing on a few of the verses out of there, just so if your timer's set for some lunch today, you're not gonna have anything to worry about. A friend of mine sends me his outlines, and he's a senior pastor out in San Francisco, California, of all places, Pastor Dan Pelletier, and he sent me his Ezra notes for this afternoon, and that chapter is 70 verses long, And I said, may God help you get through 70 verses in your 40 minutes or whatever. So we're not going to have anything long like that. But today, I'm going to talk about living in the truth. And I put a little, don't usually do this, but I put an AKA, also known as walking in the light. The Bible, the Lord Jesus, Apostle Paul, the Bible in general has a lot to say about the light and the darkness. It's such a picture. When you open the door to somewhere, when it's brightly lit, what a nice feeling. When it's dark, it's kind of scary. When you have a room that is dark, you turn the light on. Years ago, my father's sister from Island Pond, Vermont, picture that, which is Island Pond is almost in Canada. Somehow, the French-Canadian married an Italian guy from Brooklyn. So she moved to Brooklyn, lived in Brooklyn. And one time my father and my uncle were down there, there was a funeral in the family, and they were not used to the city life, especially that type of city life, and especially my father, who's always lived in Vermont. So it was dark in there, and my uncle and my dad were sleeping in this room. And they had to get up, turn the light switch on. Now, this is in Brooklyn, mind you. And they turned that light on, and all these little creatures just went, phew, just like that. Cockroaches. Vermont, we didn't know what a cockroach was. But when you get into the city, you find that out. And that's what the light does. It exposes darkness. Darkness is a synonym for sin, for error. And error and sin abound. Now, it's nothing new. They always have. It just seems like the world I grew up in in the 1960s and 70s was so much different. There was sin and darkness, plenty of it. But today, we have an onslaught. So the first thing I want to look at today living in the truth, walking in the light, is this. Truth is foundational. Truth is foundational. For some reason, I don't know what led me to do this, but I have like a little additional statement to each point. Truth is foundational, and kind of our thing to think about is to accept the truth. Accept the truth. Now we're seeing around us in the nation we live in, Many of our foundations are being destroyed. They're being done away with. The Word of God says about God's things, the psalmist said, Psalm 113, if the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? Well, we know what we have to do, stand for truth and for righteousness. But there must be a foundation. The Lord Jesus himself said there are two foundations that two different people built. One built his beautiful house. I'm embellishing it a little bit, but his beautiful home in Malibu on the sand. And the winds raged. The storms came. The rain pelted that house and that foundation. And guess what? It did a slide right down the cliff. But there was another man, and he built on a foundation of rock. He built on a strong foundation, a foundation that wasn't going to be moved by the wind and the sleet and the rain. And that house withstood the storm. We're living in an age where it's very apparent that if you're not building your life on the right foundation, your life isn't a mess. And we can see that. Truth is foundational. And when we talk about truth, we handle truth. We read truth this morning. God's word is absolute objective truth. It's absolute objective truth. If you're taking notes, that's sub-point A. God's truth is foundational. God's word is absolute objective truth. As we study the Bible, and I hope you do every day, 24 times people asked questions of Jesus and He responded with a little phrase, it is written. I heard someone quoting that already. It is written. When Jesus said it is written, what was He referring to? The paper? Socrates? Someone knows, I mean you all know probably. The Old Testament of the Bible. as the New Testament hadn't been written yet. But he referred to the Bible, the Jewish Tanakh, what we call the Old Testament. That's what he said. It is written. You can go look it up. This is the truth. Jesus made it clear to us that God's Word, the Bible, was and is His authority. And this is so important. It's the authority we have. And God's Word is absolute. And we live in a world that's in a malaise of relativism. Your sign out there says, whoever did it, kudos to you. But it says that God created. That's an absolute propositional statement. There's no room to wiggle around it. God created. God said, God created. That is absolute truth. Absolute truth. It's not relative. It's not dependent on anything else, nor is it cultural. One of the many things to learn from reading the Bible and studying the Bible, and one thing I think is people who get to be my vintage, which is a few of you there and a few have passed me, but as you grow in, let's see, chronologically we'll call it, You start to see that the people of the Bible, of the Old Testament, going back to Adam and Eve, right through the whole history of Israel, right through when Jesus was here, right through when Paul and Peter and John were writing to churches and working with churches and working with people, of course, is what they were doing. We notice that people have not changed. Yes, the technology has changed. Different things like that have. But as far as what we are inside, It comes down to are you in the truth or are you in error? Do you love God or do you not love God? You can read a lot of writings from antiquity from pagan people that rejected God, rejected the God of the Bible. It's not cultural, it's truth. And if it's God's truth, it transcends any age, any culture, any group. It transcends technology. All technology is really done when you boil it all down. It has its good points, like we're streaming this right now into people's homes who cannot be here. People can watch it later via technology. But all technology does is enable us to do things we would do anyways. And we think about that. When you think about the sin that's out there, it just makes things more accessible to people. But what causes people to do it has never changed. And I'll talk about that maybe in a little bit longer here, but it's not cultural. God's word is absolute. It points to an absolute reality who is God. And when we know that about God's truth, In our passage, I want to look at mostly here today, it's in verses five through seven. It says, this then is the message which we have heard of him and declare unto you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. That has the idea that we are not practicing, we're not doing what is true. We're not walking in the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. In the blood of Jesus Christ, his son cleanses us from all sin. God's word is absolute. It points us to the absolute reality, which is God. But along with that, God's word is objective. We live in a whole maze of subjectivity out there where everybody says, well, how do I feel about it? Look at something, if you're online and you look at an article or something somebody has done, sometimes even a church video, you'll see comment after comment after comment. I think some people, it's all they do. The last church I was pastoring, we had a Facebook page. We'd put things on. And there are certain people that I knew, as soon as that announcement was put up, they'd be liking it or whatever. I'm glad they liked it. Don't get me wrong. But it's like, well, what are these people doing? They must be living on this phone just waiting for something, the notification to come up so they can do it. But truth, God's word's objective. It doesn't matter how I feel about it. You understand that. matters as far as my walk with him a lot. But as far as God's truth being true, he doesn't say, well, take a poll of Faith Baptist Church this morning and say, how many people agree with this from my word? Well, hopefully it's 100% because it's God's word. But that's not the point of it. God's word doesn't require our approval. It doesn't require anybody's approval. It's given by God, and that's all that matters. But we live in a world that loves subjectivity. How many times have you heard somebody say or seen it on the television or the news, and they say, well, you have your facts, and I have my facts. You know what the problem with that is? If what the two of you are saying does not agree, someone or both of you do not have the facts. And that is a fact. You understand what I'm saying? If I say, it's raining out, and you say, no, it's bright and sunny out, they both can't be true, as far as I'm concerned. Well, this is what happens with truth when it's subjective. And it boils into this that God's word is not opinion. God's word is not opinion. Today, we have a society in the world that confuses opinion with truth, opinion with facts. God's word is absolute, objective truth. God has spoken. It is true, whether I agree with it or not. And I do agree with it. And we'll get into that in a moment also, more for all of us. But it's not opinion. So many people just want to share their opinions today. We have an old phrase for that. It's called pooling your ignorance. In other words, what you don't know. And this is something else we need to have humility about. But here comes God's word, absolute objective truth, and God's word does not change. God's word does not change. We have a word for this called immutability, and actually it's immutability. Something that God had said in Hebrews 6, 18, with two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us. But immutable things, things that can't change. In Titus chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, we read this. Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect and the acknowledging of the truth, which is after godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began. Amen. In hope of eternal life that God, which God that cannot lie. God's word does not change, and the first part of that is, because it's based on God's person. Based on God's person. They used to have a saying where if someone wanted to do a transaction, they'd say, oh yeah, he's good for it, he'll pay it, his word is good, his character is good. I was in West Texas back in 1982 through 1984. So you're all doing math to figure out how old I am. And divide it by three and add four, whatever it is, just like doing the temperature. Almost fell there. But anyhow, I was out in West Texas. And in 1984, you could buy a car in West Texas. Shake your hand and say, yep, I'll be in tomorrow to pick it up. And there everything would be, that's all you had to do. Now today, in my lifetime, what used to be to get a mortgage and buy a house is now about the same amount of paperwork that 30 years ago, that amount of paperwork is now what you fill out to buy a car. So things have changed. But there was a society where people, character and integrity mattered. You also did a weekend in jail if you bounced a check down there, so that helped keep the check bouncing down. Anyhow, it's based on God's person. God is perfect. God doesn't change. God is eternal. Now, we get a gift of eternal life. God's always been there. He's eternity past, he's right now, and he's eternity future. Each one of us had an origination point. We're not eternal past. We had a point where our life began. It's another confusing thing for so many people, but it's very simple today. Life begins at conception. That's when we started. That's when we became human beings. And God knows that. He knew us before because he knows everything, but we had to start. But we are eternal beings in that we have eternity ahead of us. And something that's so important to understand is we have eternal life, which talks about both the quality and the quantity of it. But every single person that's conceived is around for eternity, one or two places. And that's not popular to say in some circles these days. But there's an eternity with God in heaven, and there's an eternity without God in the lake of fire. And that is so true. That's God's truth. But God's eternal, He knows, it's based on His person, whatever He said. In fact, He's talking about right here in Titus 1, verses 1 and 2, the hope of eternal life. And it says that God cannot lie. I can have full, 100% assurance that I'm going to heaven, that I'm forgiven, that I'm a child of God, because God said so. And there's no better reason you could possibly have. And then we have also, of course, God does not change based on His person, who He is, but in that same Titus chapter 1, verse 2, it talks about that He promised this. It's also based on God's promise. God doesn't change. God is forever. God always has been and always will be. In 1 Peter chapter 1, verses 22 to 25, which contains a quotation of Isaiah chapter 40, verses 6 through 8, But in 1 Peter 1, verses 22 to 25, it says this, seeing ye have purified your souls and obeying the truth through the spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently. And I love verse 23, being born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible. By what? By the word of God that liveth and abideth forever. Boy, if that doesn't get you excited this morning, Someone said, I used to be in the South there years ago, and someone said, I would make an Episcopalian yell. Well, I don't know about that, but definitely if you're a born-again believer, it'll make you want to yell. Because we have eternal life being born again. And it's not a corruptible seed. When we read, not to pick on anybody, but like the newspapers, that's corruptible seed, isn't it? Some of it's good for lining the birdcage and wrapping the fish. That's about all it's good for. And there are others maybe that are better. But we're born again, not a corruptible seed, not of things that are rotting. and going away, but incorruptible. Something that's perfect by the Word of God. Then we have the quotation of Isaiah 40, verses 6-8, For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man is of the flower of grass. Now I see one of your goals here is to get some new lawn equipment. Cut the grass. Maybe do some other things. But that old grass, that just comes and goes, doesn't it? This last year, I'd never seen a time when people were still mowing in October. So that's something else. But flesh is like grass. It comes and it goes. But then it says, the grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away. But the word of the Lord endureth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. God's word is forever. Oh, we have God's person, we have God's promise. We can know that He's forever. I love Psalm 119, verse 89. Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. Isn't it nice to know we have something right here that doesn't change? I shouldn't say it, but everyone knows this, but two years ago we were told, yes, stay inside for two weeks and it's all going to be good. Well, I guess it's still happening. Some people are still inside. And some people need to be, I guess. But here's the thing. God's Word doesn't change. It doesn't. God's Word changes us. So with this we can conclude that God's Word is true, whether we believe it or not. I hope every single person here believes every word of it. I was looking at this Bible here. It was given to me when I was ordained years ago at Beth Eden Baptist Church in Fitchburg. And see, I believe the whole Bible. I even believe the cover, because it says Peter Latrous right here, Reverend Peter Latrous. And I believe he's around. But anyhow, of course, if you like academic jokes, There was this freshman class at college in metaphysics. Metaphysics is kind of the study of what is real and what isn't real. So at the end of the semester, they had a final exam. So all the students come in there, get the paper and pencil. This was back in my time. Pencil and paper, ready to go. So the professor just takes and puts on top of the desk in the front, puts a chair. And he said, prove the existence of that chair. So everybody's sweating it out, and they start writing. One guy just took and wrote something down, turned his paper over, put his pencil down, and walked out of the room. So a professor walked over there and said, boy, how could he explain and prove the existence of that chair that quickly? The professor picked up the paper, and all that was written on there is what chair, question mark. So that did it quick. That'll sink in. Well, that's kind of what some people are. But God's word is true whether we believe it or not. And you know, sometimes it scares, especially young Christians or younger people. They say, well, I don't have all the answers. I don't know everything. You know what? I am 61 years old. And the only thing I've found out in the last five or 10 years is I know a lot less than I thought I did. And I think that continues. God didn't ask you or me to understand and know everything. If we did, we'd be him. But what he does ask us is to trust it. and trust his word. If I don't understand it, I believe it. I say, Lord, help me to understand it. And sometimes it might be years. Maybe I'll never understand it. But I believe it because it's God's word. Accept and believe the truth. So our first major point there this morning is that God's word is foundational. It's absolute objective truth. The second part of this, I kind of built on that the most, so the next two sort of make more of an application to this. Truth is relational. And I put know the truth. Truth is relational. Know the truth. And we can know the truth, kind of the first sub-point, we can know the truth intellectually, with our minds. God made us. The Hebraism for it is body, mind, and spirit. God made us into these tripartite beings. That's how we interact with our surroundings physically, with our soulish nature, with each other. That's why fellowship is so important. And I'm seeing a good crowd of you out here today in person. And that's vital. And I'm also glad for people who couldn't make it and are tuning in. That's vital, too, that you're at least with us that way. But we need to react with each other, fellowship, be with one another. But we can know the truth intellectually and then spiritually. That's the eternal part that is so vital. They used to say, American Express, don't leave home without it. I'd say, salvation, don't leave Earth without it. It's that serious. And God has made us so we can understand truth intellectually. The technical theological word for this is called perpiscuity. And you probably haven't heard that said this week. But what that means, it's clear. It's understandable. It's lucid. And he's even gone further. He's given the believer the Holy Spirit. In fact, the Holy Spirit is active even before we believe. He's the one who convicts us of sin, righteousness, and judgment. John chapter 16, verses 7 through 11, you can look that up. But the Holy Spirit is there to teach us and convict us and to show us his word. But in this particular book of 1 John, John is writing to the believer. It's amazing how many places I've been and people don't believe that, but he said in chapter 2, verse 21 of 1 John, I have not written unto you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and that no lie is of the truth. We have the truth. We can know it. Jesus said, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. Error and lies and man's bromides never saved anyone. They never made anybody free. Only God can free us from the bondage of sin, therefore ourselves. And that's what we're saying. So we can know the truth intellectually. But we also, and this is what's so important, there are people out there, I've literally known people who were friends of my parents and others over the years who read the Bible every day. Every day. And they can tell you the Bible stories. You can go to a lot of liberal churches that don't preach the gospel. I hope you don't, but you're here, so let's solve that problem. But they tell Bible stories a lot of times, but they don't know the truth intimately. People can tell you anything, like I know some people who have passed on now, but they could tell anything. They read the Bible, they knew what it said intellectually, but it never became personal. You can know the truth intimately. And it's an amazing thing because when you receive Christ as your Savior, when you're born again, the Holy Spirit of God takes up residence in you. Paul said, what know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? And the Holy Spirit, as we sang about the final instrumental song here today, the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. And he guides you into truth. And that is so important. But we can know the truth intimately. In John 14, verses six through seven, I think John 14 is one of my favorite chapters among many, but Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also. And from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. You see, Jesus was there with the disciples. He was there with Philip, and Peter, and James, and John, and the whole crew. They knew him as a person intimately. Most of you, if you came in with someone in your vehicle today, you know that person intimately. You know your family. You know your children. You know your spouse. You know whoever it might have been, your friend. You know them well. And we can know the truth intimately through Jesus. We know him who is the truth. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth. He said in John 15, He said, I am the true vine. And my father is the husband. But he is truth. He doesn't just tell truth, even though he does. He is truth. Now, none of us in this room, or none of us who are listening anywhere else, or none of us on this planet can say we are the truth. We all know ourselves. And we're far less than that. But we do know Jesus, and he is the truth. In John 1.17, we read this, For the law was given by Moses. Moses was the receptor of the truth from God. Go back to Mount Sinai. For the law was given by Moses. But grace and truth came by through Jesus Christ. Grace and truth. The longer you live the Christian life, the more you see that both are so vital. Jesus embodied both. Jesus was both. And that's what we need to do. Yes, we need the truth. Speaking the truth in love. But Jesus is here in grace and truth. And we have a message of grace to this world. Yes, you are a mess. Just like I was. Just like I am, in a lot of ways. Knowing Christ, I know the right way. I know how to walk in light, but I have problems doing it. And that leads me to my third point. Truth is foundational. We need to accept the truth. Truth is relational. We need to know the truth. But then the third thing here, I guess I'll get into my engineering side a little bit, but truth is functional. Walk in truth. Truth is functional. Truth has legs. Truth can be lived out. And in 1 John 1, verse 6, if we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. We're not doing what is true. Walking in darkness is walking in error. This whole passage makes it clear. Error is not truth. And in verse 8, he said, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. It's terrible to be self-deceived, isn't it? It's bad enough like the old saying, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. But it's very bad when we deceive ourselves, when we lie about ourselves, when we look at other people and judge them with a set of standards that we don't have. on our own life. We should be looking at ourselves first. Jesus made it very clear. Don't pull that old toothpick out of somebody's eye and have the telephone pole coming out of yours. That's my paraphrase. But that's what Jesus said. And we have truth. I want to say it this way. Truth ignored is truth rejected. Truth ignored is truth rejected. When we know what is right, Hebrews chapter 10, the second half of that chapter, I won't go there this morning, but that's one of the so-called three warning passages in Hebrews. And it talks about if we sin willfully after we receive a knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin. Now some people jump on that about salvation. He's not talking about salvation, he's talking about living. And when we reject the truth, when we ignore the truth, we're rejecting it. When we have one way that we live and we criticize others who are doing something that we're doing, we're being hypocrites, we're ignoring the truth and we're rejecting the truth for us. There's never been a time when it's more important. I shouldn't say it that way because that's really not a good thing to say. This time is as important as all times, to be living the truth, not ignoring it. It was prayed this morning about, with all this COVID stuff going around, and it's going around. Oh, what a time for us to live as Christians and show others what Christian concern and love and charity and grace really is. You know, God didn't say, agree with me. He said, love me. And we give him to others. They may receive things differently. You know, we can't control that, so why bother? The truth is, this is a time for us to reach out and to love people. There are people out there who are hurting tremendously. There are people living in great fear to the point of being irrational sometimes. There are people who are living in denial of different things. I watched a little bit, forgive me for this, but there was an auto auction on for like five days. So I watched a little bit of that, just a little, couldn't afford anything. And I was shocked because the prices they were getting for these cars and trucks was so high. And again, I couldn't tell you a percentage. You probably don't even know that yet, because it's not even over yet. But I'll put it this way. $300,000 wasn't buying you a whole lot. And it wasn't like these were really extremely rare cars in every case. And all I could think about is in Revelation chapter 6 and verse 6. It made a spiritual application, so it was all right to watch the car auction. Revelation 6.6 says, the hurt not the wine or the oil. And those were symbols back in the day when the Bible was written of wealth. And I'm thinking, look at this here. All these problems in this world and country. Some people aren't eating. Different places around the world, even here. We could go through a whole list of things, and here's a bunch of people spending a million dollars, or two million dollars, or one Shelby Mustang went for 3.7 million dollars, and it's only because of who owned it or something like that. It's like, you know what, it's a car. Moth and rust are gonna corrupt that car. In fact, if you even throw a mouse into it sometimes and chew up your wiring, that's really bad. But that car is not going to be forever. And I like having a nice car, and I'm sure many of you do. But the thing is, we have to have it out of balance that that car is something that's going to come and go. And I've heard it said many times over the years, and I've said it. There are only two things that we know from the word of God that are truly eternal that we deal with every day. The first one we're talking about today, the word of God. Forever, oh Lord, your word is settled in heaven. The second thing I've also talked about, and that's the souls of every boy and girl and man and woman on this planet. They're going to be around forever, and we deal with them every day. We deal with different people. And that causes you to look at the truth a little different, which brings me to my final point. And I'm serious. Truth is functional. Truth ignored is truth rejected. But here's the good thing. Truth obeyed is truth believed. Truth obeyed is truth believed. Walking in the light is walking in truth. In 1 John 1, 7, but if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship, one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we walk in the light as He is in the light, Truth obeyed is truth believed. Yes, believing an act of faith is not a work. It's believing, it's trusting. That is so clear. But the way we can look at ourselves and say, do I really believe it? Jesus said, if you love me, keep, to rail, obey, observe my commandments. That's what Jesus said. There are people who can talk high, lofty Christian ideals all day whose lives are not that, anywhere near that. Hopefully it's not us. Truth obeyed is truth believed. If we walk in the light, because he is in the light. Oh, I want to challenge you today. Truth is foundational. Every person who's here, by nature that you're here or watching this, you at least believe something about the truth being foundational in your life because you're taking an hour or so on Sunday morning and exploring the truth. But we need to accept that truth. Accept it. If you wait until you know everything about everything, you'll still be waiting because it'll never happen. But God is true. Jesus Christ came and died for our sins, was buried, and the third day He rose again to prove that God accepted that. He was raised for our justification. We know that truth. We have a Holy Spirit who will guide us into truth. God's Word is not up to vote. It is absolute, objective truth. And it's based on him. It doesn't change. It's based on his person, who he is. It's based on his promise that he will do what he says. If you have any financial products or seen ads for those things, stocks and bonds and mutual funds, they always have this little disclaimer, don't they? Past performance is not indicative of future returns. Now that's true in the financial world. Boys, it's never true. But with God, his past performance, in our eyes, 100% guarantees his future performance. He's done it. He's said it. It's completely true. We can rely on it. We can trust our very lives. And every one of us who's received Christ in this building has trusted our lives to Jesus forever. We can know the truth relationally through him. and it's functional. We can walk in the truth. We can walk on God's side. We can walk in the light. Truth ignored is truth rejected. Maybe you're struggling. I know with this amount of people in this building and others that may be watching either today or later, I know that there are people who are struggling with certain things. There are many who have lost loved ones, who have sick loved ones. It's hit everybody. And they question and say, why, why, why? Well, I can't answer that. All I know is I know the one who does know. I had, in Bible college years ago, I had an assignment, and it was to take the book of Colossians. And throughout that book, to try to see every single doctrine that was taught, that if the people only had that book and say the Gospels at the time, which is what would have been in the city of Colossae back in the 50s AD, what they could know. And you start looking at that. Then I found something interesting about knowledge. Now, I don't want to make this into a Greek lesson, so don't worry about that. But there's a few different words for it, for knowledge. And Ido, of course, means that's kind of something you learn by experience, that you know by experience. But gnosis is another word. And it's a word that's used more prevalently. And it just means knowledge, things to know. And then the Book of Colossians was written to combat a heresy that became what was called the Gnostic heresy. And pretty much they taught that, yeah, you had truth and spirit was one thing, and the flesh was bad. And if you read the Book of Colossians, you'll see that. But the interesting thing to me is that when you read that book, when it talks about this knowledge that the others had, what they called it, Paul uses their word for it. And it's... A word that's a little greater than, it's like, well, I shouldn't use this example probably because I don't believe in gambling. I think it's from the devil. But you have bucks and you have megabucks. Well, this is where you have knowledge and you have epignosis or epi-knowledge. A P is a preposition that means over and above or greater, things like that. So that's the word that's used in there, the over-knowledge. And Paul uses the God's knowledge because, of course, that's what God's knowledge is, that God's truth is. And somebody wrote a quote about that. And it's always stuck with me. And it's simply this for the Book of Colossians. Next to knowing is knowing where to find out. Next to knowing is knowing where to find out. You know, there's none of us in this room who can know everything. The last person who was accused of knowing everything was Erasmus in the 16th century. And he didn't know everything, believe me. But he was such a scholar, that's what they would say about him. But you know what? We know who does. through Jesus Christ. We know the Creator. We know God, who's the same thing, of course. We know all that. So I want to challenge you today. You say, well, I don't know everything. I have questions. I'm struggling. The truth is the answers are in God's words. And we can know intimately the person who not only knows truth, but is the truth, Jesus Christ. Let's bow our heads. I just want to have a word of prayer. And Lord, we've talked about a lot of things this morning, but the most important thing is you, that you are true. You're the one true God. You're the only God. And Lord, we seek to honor and glorify You. And in this passage we looked at, it talks about the fellowship we have with each other. It talks about how we can walk in the truth, we can walk in the light of God's Word. We don't want to walk in the darkness. Oh yes. Lord, truth ignored is truth rejected. Even as Christian people, we often ignore things we know to do things we like. And Lord, that's basically saying we don't believe your truth. But Lord, the good news is that when we obey your truth, when we act on it, when we walk in it, we're showing that we truly believe it. There's a children's song, obedience is the very best way to show that we believe. And Lord, I pray today as we just think about what we've heard in our own lives and the situations that we're in. Lord, the most important thing before any of it is, once we accept it's your truth, is it has to be personal. And Lord, no one looking around, nobody thinking about anybody else or someone watching via video, Lord, are you completely sure that if you were to go from this life to the next, right now, would it be eternity with God, through being born again, knowing Jesus personally? Or would you be lost? And Lord, again, no one looking around, this is something, it's between the person and God, because who knows? But we'd be happy to open the Bible and show anyone who needs to know, either Lord, during this invitation song or whatever, open the Bible and show exactly what you've said, your truth, not what Baptist Church says about going to heaven, not what Pastor Peter says about going to heaven or anyone else. What do you say? And you've made it so simple. So Lord, I ask if there's anybody who's not sure that they would not let this time pass by. I don't believe in accidents. I don't believe in coincidences. I believe that we have a God who puts people in the place to hear what they need to hear when it's being spoken and being read. And Lord, maybe there are others that just have decisions that they'd like to make, or Lord, just and recommit to following and walking in Your truth. It's so easy when we live in an upheaval world like we do right now just to get lazy, get complacent. To start just doing things that we... Lord, it may not always be bad things, but just taking the place of what's good. And Lord, if we obey Your truth, we know that its truth believed. So Heavenly Father, we just ask now you bless each one. Lord, if there's any need that can be met, we're here up front. People of this church are here to pray, to help. And Lord, also feel free anyone that's outside of this building right now to contact and let us know. So we ask your blessing, Lord, be with the closing of this service. And we ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen.