Welcome to Unveiled Faces, a Redeemer Presbyterian Church podcast. Please enjoy our feature presentation. The first one to plead his cause seems right until his neighbor comes and examines him. This concludes a reading of God's word. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, you are a righteous God, and you have given to us the principles of truth and righteousness by which we can discern those qualities, those virtues. And so, Father, we pray that as we unpack the wisdom of this proverb, that we could understand more fully what you require of us, what you demand of us, And Father, how we can accomplish that through your grace and through your son, Jesus Christ. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, the year was 1776. A notable publication was circulated amongst the public. Can you guess what publication I'm referring to? You may be thinking of the Declaration of Independence that was adopted by the Second Continental Congress in 1776, but that was certainly a notable publication, but it's not the one that I'm thinking of. The publication I'm thinking of, ironically, was published in England in 1776. At the same time that our nation was declaring its independence from England, Edward Gibbons wrote a history of the Roman Empire that was published in England. Do you know which history I'm referring to, which publication? Chances are you've heard of it, and you may have even read it, or at least read portions of it, but do you remember its name? Many people mistakenly believe that this publication was called The History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, but that's not correct. It's not the rise and fall, it is the decline and fall. The actual name is the history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. Because Gibbons wasn't so interested in the period of time in which the Roman Empire grew, instead his focus was on the decline and the inevitable collapse of the Roman Empire. The thought of writing about the decline and fall of a kingdom is not new or did not originate with Edward Gibbons. He was only following the lead of Jeremiah. The book of Jeremiah is essentially the same thing. It describes the decline and the fall of the southern kingdom of Judah. And the inspired author, Jeremiah, wrote how God was using Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian army to bring judgment against the kingdom of Judah. And it's because Judah was living in rebellion to God and refused to repent of her wicked ways. So Jeremiah was given the task of chronicling the decline and the fall of Judah from the prosperity that she was first established with and to chronicle this for all posterity including ourselves to read. I want to call your attention to the statement that Jeremiah makes in chapter 9 verse 3. In the context of describing all the big and major sins that Judah was guilty of, things like adultery, idolatry, backsliding, Jeremiah adds this, they are not valiant for the truth on the earth. They are not valiant for the truth on the earth. So one of the sins that God was bringing judgment upon Judah for was their low regard for truth. God's expectation is that his people would be valiant for truth, that they would pursue and defend the truth, that they would embrace it. And so let me ask you, are you valiant for truth? Do you have a zeal and a passion for truth? I hope so, because being valiant for truth is the calling that God has placed upon you. God expects the people, his people, the people of Judah, he expected them to be valiant for the truth, and he expects us to be valiant for the truth as well. Our sermon text from Proverbs 18 and 17 is a wisdom principle God has given us to guide us as we are being valiant for the truth. The wisdom principle needs to guide our minds, it needs to direct our judgment whenever we hear information reported to us about a person or about a situation. If we're really truly going to be valiant for the truth, then we need to be constantly discerning between what's true and what's not true. But what our sermon text is impressing upon us is that people don't always provide entirely truthful representations of a situation. And therefore, hearing only one side of the story is insufficient information for knowing what the truth of that situation really is. The first one to plead his cause seems right. until his neighbor comes and examines him. As I deliver this sermon today, I'm going to be applying the teaching of this proverb to, in general terms, two different sets of people. The first will be the people who are pleading their cause. And the second would be the people who are listening to those who are pleading their cause. And both sets of people have a responsibility to be truthful. That's a significant point right there. Both sets of people have a responsibility to be truthful. The person who speaks must speak truthfully, and the person who listens must discern what he's hearing truthfully. And this proverb focuses mainly then upon the responsibility of the person who listens. But implicit to this is the understanding that the truth is often obscured by the person who speaks. So that's where we're going to begin, with the group of people who speak. We live in a fallen world, we live in a sinful world, a world that's inhabited by sinful people, and that means that the truth is often obscured by lies and deception. People allow their self-interest to influence the way that they communicate. And this is seen in the way that people quote unquote plead their cause, to use the terminology of our sermon text. We can detect this, we can discern these things. Self-interest often drives what a person chooses to tell as well as what a person chooses not to tell when describing a situation. Take the familiar playground skirmish. As an example, when called into the principal's office, boy number one tells the principal that boy number two hit him. And boy number one points to the swelling and the blackening of his eye as proof that yes indeed, boy number two did in fact hit him. But what boy number one does not tell the principal is that he was the aggressor in this situation. He was bullying boy number two and he actually threw the first punch. Boy number one conveniently leaves out this part of the story. Well why? because of self-interest. Boy number one knows that he'll incriminate himself if he admits what really happened on the playground, and so he frames the situation in such a way that boy number two appears to be the aggressor. Boy number one may tell a very convincing story. After listening to boy number one plead his cause, the principal might be inclined to believe that boy number two needs to be disciplined. But the principal wasn't born yesterday. He knows there's always two sides to every story. And so he gives boy number two the opportunity to fill in the missing details, which then provides the principal with a much different perspective of what really happened in that situation. How many times Have you been told something about a situation only to learn later from some other source that important details were missing from what was reported to you? The police officer pulled me over because of the color of my skin. Yet if you speak to the police officer, you'd learn that the driver was pulled over because he was going 80 miles per hour through a red light. That was conveniently left out. The restaurant, that restaurant is rude to their customers. Yet if you spoke to the restaurant manager, you would learn that the man who's saying this drank too much alcohol and had become so belligerent with the other patrons that he had to be asked to leave the restaurant. I won't shop at that department store because they have terrible customer service. Yet if you speak with a department store manager, you'll learn that the customer is really upset that he was unable to return an item without a receipt, even though at the time of purchase he was told the store policy is that all returns must be accompanied with a receipt. The man who's more valiant for his own self-interest than he is for truth is the man who will obscure the truth in order to make himself look better. Do you hear what I'm saying? The man who is more valiant about his own self-interest than he is about truth is a man who will obscure the truth in order to make himself look better. He's a man who will be selective in the details that he shares, leaving out the things that don't necessarily promote his personal agenda. He's the man who will twist the facts in order to deflect any wrongdoing from himself, fully willing to allow other people to suffer the fate or the fault that rightly belongs to him. And this is sin. It's the sin of pride, amongst other things. And the sin of pride almost always leads to the decline and fall of personal relationships. It's the same sin that was prevalent during the decline and fall of Judah. It's the sin Jeremiah exposed when he wrote, they are not valiant for the truth. And the people who are valiant for the truth will demonstrate this by their willingness to take ownership of their mistakes. That's just one of the many ways that they can demonstrate that they are valiant for the truth. To them, it's more important that the truth be upheld than their own self-interest be upheld. And so if truth requires that a person who's valiant for the truth be humbled, then he's going to be humbled. He's willing to do that. If truth requires that this person confess his sins and seek forgiveness from another person, then that's what he's going to do, because he's valiant for truth, not himself, not his own self-interest. We begin to understand why God is so displeased with those who are not valiant for truth when we understand what truth is, that it is an attribute of God. It's an attribute of God's character. It's not like truth is some man-made coat of honor. It's not like truth is some virtue that's just floating around out there that's always been there. that even God himself must submit to, if this was the case, that truth was a standard of righteousness outside of God, then that would make God subordinate to a standard of righteousness which is higher than he is, which is greater than he is. That would mean that God is not the ultimate authority in creation. The Bible reveals to us that truth originates within the character of God. God is truth, it would be appropriate to say. In fact, that's exactly what Jesus said of himself in John 14, 6. He said, I am the truth. I am the way, the truth, and the life, Jesus says. And identifying truth in this manner has profound implications upon our sermon text. It means that the man who's willing to set aside truth is the man who's willing to set aside Jesus. It means that the man who values his own self-interest more than he values truth is a man who thinks he's more important than God. The man who's exalting himself while failing to glorify God is the man who is not being valiant for truth. He's not glorifying God in the way that God ought to be glorified. Conversely, the man who is valiant for truth is the man who's valiant for Jesus. He's valiant for Jesus because he's been delivered from his bondage of sin by Jesus, and therefore the truth has become a beautiful asset to this man. Remember what Jesus said in John 8, 32 about truth? You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. What Jesus was talking about here is freedom from sin, which includes freedom from lying, freedom from deception, freedom from spinning and twisting and omitting the facts of a situation in order to serve one personal self-interest. And here's what it comes down to. If Jesus is the truth, and the truth is what sets, what frees a person from bondage to sin, then the only person who can actually be valiant for truth is the person who has experienced salvation in Jesus Christ. You can't have one without the other. The person who's valiant for truth is the same person who's valiant for Jesus, and vice versa, because Jesus is truth. But then the opposite must hold true as well. The person who has never experienced salvation in Jesus is a person who cannot be valiant for truth. According to Ephesians 4, 17 and 18, the unbeliever's mind remains futile. His understanding is darkened. His heart has been blinded from the truth. He's alienated from God and filled with ignorance. Truth is foolishness to this man. And the only thing that really matters to him is his own self-interest. There are a lot of people in this world who have never experienced salvation in Jesus Christ. And therefore, there are a lot of people in this world who will quote unquote plead their cause in a manner which is not truthful. This is the reason why God gave us the wisdom principle of suspending judgment until we've heard both sides of the story. But the problem is really not so neatly divided along the lines of believers and unbelievers. Sadly, there are people in the church who profess to be believers but still behave like unbelievers. These people will sometimes plead their cause in an untruthful manner as well. and all the more reason why this wisdom principle identified in our sermon text needs to be understood and applied in our lives. As a listener to those who plead their cause, you cannot just assume that the person you're listening to is telling you the truth, even if that person is a professing Christian. If you're going to be valiant for the truth, then you must be wise in discerning truth. You do not have the option of just choosing to believe whatever it is you want to believe. You do not have the option of just hearing whatever you want to hear and going with it. or listening to only what you want to listen to, your obligation is to know the truth. And that means that whether you're involved in a formal or an informal judicious process, right, you know what I mean by that? Whether you're a juror in a court case, or whether you're listening to your children, describe what happened in a conflict, or whether you're part of that conflict, you have the responsibility to suspend conclusions until you've heard all the facts of the case, both sides of the story. That's your moral responsibility. Now going back to the fight on the playground, imagine how foolish it would be if the principal were to listen only to boy number one and then issue a detention to boy number two. Wouldn't that have been foolish? Yet that's exactly what some of us do some of the time. We render judgment too soon. For example, suppose someone says to you, I can't believe how hateful Betty is to me. Jane told me that Betty told Julie that I'm a lousy excuse for a wife. Can you believe that? How will you as a listener respond to this? Well for starters, it really depends upon your relationship with the person who's telling you this. For many people, the proper response will be something like, I'm sorry to hear that you're upset with Betty, but why are you speaking to me about this? If Betty sinned against you, doesn't God require you to go to Betty in private? It's not appropriate for you to be speaking to me about this situation, and I have no desire to engage in gossip. That's the answer that every Christian ought to be ready and willing to give when confronted with gossip. And the listener who's valiant for the truth will want to put an end to gossip as soon as it's identified because gossip destroys reputations as well as relationships. Gossip is the enemy of truth and it should have no place in the Christian's life either as the speaker of gossip or as the listener of gossip. But suppose the person who's telling you about Betty is your wife. She's coming to you as her husband in order to express her hurt and to seek your counsel. Well, then how do you respond? Well, you apply our sermon text. If that's what you do, you apply our sermon text. You say to your wife, I understand you're hurt by what Jane told you about Betty, but what does God say about discerning truth in these situations? You heard from Jane that Betty said something mean about you, but have you confirmed that? Is it possible that Jane is mistaken about what Betty said? Why don't you go and speak with Betty about this and get to the bottom of it? What this answer is really saying is, you've only heard one side of the story. Now, you need to hear the other side before you draw a conclusion. Matthew Henry had a really nice way of saying this. He said, we must remember that we have two ears to hear both sides before we give a judgment. It's unfortunate that we live in a time when certain accusations seem to carry an immediate conviction. There are certain sins, whether those are biblically defined sins or socially defined sins, there are certain sins which, when accused of, render the person guilty until proven innocent. An obvious example of this sin is, or this type of behavior is the sin of molestation. How many people have been crucified in the court of public opinion before the one who pleads his cause first was able to be examined by his neighbor? It happens all the time. This is a direct violation of the proverb that I'm preaching on this morning. The first one to plead his cause seems right until his neighbor comes and examines him. And even when circumstances are grave and emotions are running strong, God requires that we withhold judgment until the biblical criteria for evaluating evidence has been satisfied. And a significant part of that biblical criteria is the ability to cross-examine witnesses. That's really what our text is establishing. If we want to put this in forensic terms, Proverbs 18, 17 is establishing the value of cross-examination. This is why the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was added. The Sixth Amendment gives the right to cross-examine all in-court testimony in criminal cases. It's often referred to as the Confrontation Clause because it provides the accused with the right to confront his accusers. And Christians who are valiant for the truth need to embrace and encourage the right for the accused to confront or examine his accusers, not because the Sixth Amendment says so, but because the Bible says so, because our sermon text says so. When Christians refuse to allow the accused to examine his accusers, then tragic circumstances develop. Friendships are destroyed. Marriages are wrecked. Family ties are broken. Churches are split. All because the reconciliation process that God has ordained has been derailed, has not been allowed to run its course. And that's not how it's supposed to be. Allowing the accused to examine his accuser is a process which leads to truth. It provides a framework for biblical reconciliation. It's the type of activity all Christians who are valiant for the truth will want to engage in, not because it's fun, but because it produces peace within the body of Christ. It's how we glorify God, even glorifying God in the wake of our own personal sins and failures, as this process inevitably will, I should say, most hopefully lead to repentance and reconciliation. When a Christian is willing to lay aside his own self-interest for the sake of living in peace and in reconciliation with others, he's doing something quite extraordinary. He's imitating Jesus. After all, it was Jesus who showed us what it means to set aside your own self-interest. It was Jesus who did not count it robbery to be equal with God, but made himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, humbling himself and becoming obedient to the point of death. That's what it says in Philippians 2, verses 7 and 8. It was Jesus who did not live to please himself, but was willingly and voluntarily, to willingly and voluntarily receive the reproaches of those who reproached God. That's what it says in Romans 15.3. It was Jesus who was rich, yet for your sake became poor so that you, through his poverty, might become rich. That's what it says in 2 Corinthians 8.9. It was Jesus who was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. That's what it says in Isaiah 53.3. And it was Jesus who was cut off from the land of the living and was stricken for the transgressions of his people, not of his own, but of his people. That's what it says in Isaiah 53.8. It was Jesus who demonstrated his great love to his people by laying down his life for them. So amongst many other things, the earthly life of Jesus is an example of what humility and self-sacrifice looks like. And that's why Philippians 2.4 holds Jesus up as the model of humility, and then instructs you and I to have the same mind, to look out not only for our own interests, but the interests of others. The man who sets aside his own self-interest as an imitation of Christ is the man who is living out the gospel. This is a man who is evidencing the grace of God in his life. This is the man who is demonstrating through his attitude and through his behavior that he doesn't simply understand the gospel or truth, not that he just simply agrees with the truth, or not that he is even an advocate for the truth, but that the truth has made him free, is what he is demonstrating. The truth has actually made him free. He's been transformed into a new creation who is valiant for the truth. 2 Timothy 3.13 warns the evil men, it warns that evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. You hear that warning? Evil men and imposters will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived. And this highlights the need for Christians to be valiant for the truth. Evil men and aposters, who are they? This talks about the fact that the church will contain people who say that they are Christian, but they really aren't. These are people whose hearts remain evil because they have not been set free by the truth. These are wolves in sheep's clothing. They're fakes. They present themselves to be something that they are not. Paul wrote that these evil men and apostates will grow worse and worse. Well, worse and worse at what? Persecution? The statement that immediately precedes the verse that I just read is 2 Timothy 3.12. It's Paul's warning that, quote, all who desire to live godly in Christ will suffer persecution, end quote. And so what Paul is warning is that persecution is coming from these evil imposters and it's gonna grow worse and worse. But how will this persecution be accomplished? What this means by asking this question is that the evil men and the imposters who are persecuting the people of God, what means will they use for that persecution? Or how would we even identify them? And the answer to that is deception. Deception. They will make all sorts of attempts to deceive people, the people of God. and they will tell lies, and they will be the first to plead their cause, and they will sound very convincing when they do it. But listen to how Paul says Christians are to respond to these evil impostors. Evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived, but you must continue in the things which you have learned. And then Paul makes that often cited declaration about the sufficiency of scripture for all matters of life and faith. All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. And so the instruction Paul gives here concerning the evil impostors, as to how to respond to these evil impostors, is to continue in the things that you've learned from the scriptures. He assumes that the readers of the scriptures, or that reading of the scriptures contains everything necessary for living a righteous and godly life. And this includes, of course, the wisdom necessary to discern truth. Proverbs 18, 17 is one of the places in the Bible that we get that discerning, the wisdom to discern truth. When somebody is first to plead their cause to you, you must determine whether the person you're listening to is telling the truth, or is telling what he believes to be true, yet is not really true, or is actively attempting to deceive you. Those are basically the only three options. And don't think it's strange that when you discover that somebody is actively trying to deceive you, that this would be the case. Remember Paul's warning that all who desire to live godly life will suffer persecution from evil imposters within the church. And so, ask yourself the question, do you desire to live a godly life? Is that how you walk your Christian walk? And if so, then expect evil imposters to try to deceive you. This is why it's so important that Christians remain valiant in the truth. This is why we must always be on guard against all forms of deceit, lying, omitting facts, exaggerating facts, gossip, slander. These are all instruments of deception. And these are the tools that those who are not valiant for the truth will use in their attempts to deceive those who desire to live a godly life. We want to be valiant for Jesus Christ. And so we put off deception and we put on truth. We put off ignorance and gullibility and we put on discernment. We put off the fanciful idea that every person who says he's a Christian is really a Christian, and we put on the knowledge that evil imposters will grow worse and worse. Remember when we went through the book of Jude, back at the beginning of 2015? That entire book was written about evil imposters within the church. Jude began by writing, Beloved, I found it necessary to write to you exhorting you to contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints, for men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men who turn the grace of our God into lewdness. In Galatians 2.4, Paul describes how false brethren came into the church in Jerusalem by stealth, he says. and in how they were able to deceive many of the members of the church there in Jerusalem with their lies. And to the Ephesians, Paul writes about those who engage in, quote, trickery of men in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. Do you hear that? There are people in a church who engage in trickery and the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting. You can read that in Ephesians 4.14. In 2 Peter 2, verses 1-3, Peter writes about how the church had false teachers in the past and that it will have false teachers in the future. Isn't that assuring? He says that these false teachers secretly engage in destructive ways to exploit the people of God with deceptive words. And these are warnings that are all throughout the Bible. I've just picked a couple of them. But in calling your attention to these warnings, it's not my intention to scare you, nor is it my intention to cause you to begin to doubt the salvation of the person that's sitting in the pew in front of you, or behind you, whatever the case might be. My intention is the same as Paul's, and Jude's, and Peter's, and Solomon's, and Jeremiah's. It's to speak candidly about a topic that's very real. It's to speak candidly with you, reminding you that evil imposters do come into the church on Sunday. We know that the world is full of all sorts of dangers. Cancer, for example. We know that cancer takes thousands of lives every day. Every day there's people dying of cancer. But somewhere in the back of our mind, we're telling ourselves, assuring ourselves, it won't happen to me. I know it happens, it's not gonna happen to me. We know that thieves break into homes and they steal, but we tell ourselves, it won't happen to me. We know that false brethren sneak into the church and secretly engage in trickery and deceptive ways, but we tell ourselves, it won't happen here. It won't happen to us. Yes, it can happen to us. Let me repeat. My intention in saying these things is not to scare you or to cause you to doubt the specific salvation of any given person here. My intention is to exhort you to be valiant in the truth. And so understand the wisdom principles for discerning truth that God has revealed to you in the Bible. And then use those principles in your daily life. Don't learn them, read them, learn them, and then stick them in a drawer never to be seen again. Implement them. Listen to both sides of the story when forming a conclusion. Encourage dialogue amongst those who are expressing disagreement. Allow those who plead their cause to be examined. Put away sinful interests that would drive you to compromise the truth. And don't be surprised when you detect deception. That's to be expected so long as you're living in a fallen and sinful world. But here's the encouraging part. The truth is able to free even the most evil imposter from their bondage to sin. When deception is detected, whether that's in ourselves or in others, there must be a call to repentance. If the sinner responds in faith by repenting in the name of Jesus Christ, then forgiveness and reconciliation will follow, and that's a good thing. God's glorified in that. But if deception is detected and a sinner refuses to repent, then the church can deal with that person in the manner in which God prescribes. And hopefully this will have the effect of encouraging this person to eventually come to repentance. But even if it doesn't, even in the most extreme situation where the unrepentant sinner must be put out of the church, it's still a good thing. It's still a good thing because God's truth has been upheld and God's people have been alerted and protected from evil. The greater tragedy would be for us, the church, for Christians to do nothing in such cases. It would be devastating to the health and the peace of the body of Christ to allow deceptive and divisive people to continue their activity unopposed. And that's why the condition during, that was the condition during the decline and fall of Judah, remember? God, speaking through Jeremiah, charged them with not being valiant for the truth. So let's not make the same mistake. Let's not compromise the truth because of our inability to apply God's wisdom or because of our unwillingness to call sinners to repentance. Rather, let us be valiant for the truth, knowing that being valiant for the truth is being valiant for Jesus, because Jesus is the truth. Psalm 145, 18 reads, the Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth. So may God's grace give us the faith necessary to call upon him in truth and to be valiant for truth. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, we live in a dangerous place, and you know that. You have warned us of that through your word, through your apostles, and through your prophets. And Lord, you not only warned us, but you've given us the means necessary for detecting, deterring, in dismissing and Father dealing with these kind of situations. Father we pray that we would have the faith to seek you in truth and that we would know what your word says and that we would not only be hearers of the word but doers of the word and as such we would discern truth and we would be valiant for truth. Father, first and foremost, we pray that you would remove from us any elements of pride and arrogance that would cause us to allow our own self-interest to dictate what we say and to compromise truth because we think that we are more important than you. Lord we confess and repent of this sin and we pray that your grace would be given to us so that our faith might increase and that we could mortify these sins, that we could put them off and put on righteous behavior, that we could put on humility, put on love, that we could seek other people's interests before our own. And Father, we pray that you would also give to us the wisdom of discernment, that we would be able to detect deceit and lies and that we would be able to know the truth when it's either presented to us or not presented to us. Father, may we be just as quick at detecting falsehood as we are at truth and discerning between the two. And may we never be guilty of calling good evil or evil good, but that we would always make these distinctions and that we would cling to the truth and seek only the truth. Father, that we would call sinners to repentance and then demand their repentance. And Father, Father we pray that we would always be willing to be reconciled and in so doing Father that we would be able to examine one another, particularly as justice would require that the accused would be able to examine his accuser. And Father we continue to pray that your grace and your protection over your flock would continue to increase that as evil imposters grow worse and worse that our strength within the body of Christ might grow stronger and stronger to resist these things. As Jude reminds us, Father, we need to be diligent in protecting the truth and opposing unrighteousness. And so, Father, give us able and competent minds to be able to fulfill this calling and hearts that are willing to walk the road that you have laid out before us. We pray in doing all these things that we might glorify your son, Jesus Christ, your name upon the earth, the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It's in Jesus' name that we ask these things. Amen. This has been a presentation of Redeemer Presbyterian Church. For more resources and information, please stop by our website at visitredeemer.org. All material herewithin, unless otherwise noted, copyright Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Elk Grove, California. Music furnished by Nathan Clark George. Available at nathanclarkgeorge.com.