The Discipline Of Truth

140112AM ESH-2 Truth.docx

ESH-02

Biblical Exercises for Spiritual

Health & Fitness in 2014:

The Discipline of Truth

1 Timothy 4:1-6a

Transcript

Transcript

So, let’s open to 1 Timothy 4. What we’re looking at is what we started last week, for those of you who braved the storm last week. We’re looking at the disciplines that God instructed Paul to write to Timothy. So, this is very fascinating. In fact, if you want to know what I’m talking about, look at verse 7. It says that you are to discipline or train or to exercise yourself for godliness. So, the core, the center this whole chapter is built around is God telling the apostle to tell his son in the faith, Timothy, that for Timothy to be able to be useful for the Lord, for lifelong useful living for God, he needed to start therapy, training, gym time, exercises. He needed to get this regularity of personal seeking godliness. That’s what we started last week. This whole chapter is actually built around, if you look carefully, about 10 different disciplines or exercises that God instructed Paul to write to Timothy. So, we started that, and I call that biblical exercises for spiritual health and fitness in 2014.

So, if you want to be spiritually healthy, you want to be spiritually fit. God says here are some exercises. Now, what’s amazing is that these are timeless and powerful. If you know anything about Christian culture, we’re always riding the latest. I remember when it was the prayer of Jabez. Don’t you remember that? Everybody had. Are you old enough to remember that? The Prayer of Jabez. Then, after the Prayer of Jabez, I don’t remember what it was, maybe it was A Purpose Driven Life. Then it was, I don’t know what the next thing was. Now, out in California, everybody’s on the Joshua or Daniel diet or something like that, and it’s like a Christian fad. Everybody who’s really with it is, and it’s like people kind of survey to try, and it’s like riding the waves. They’re looking for the latest, and they’re always wanting the newest and nothing old. That’s old. I’ve already heard that. I want something new.

In fact, people always say they want to hear something never heard before. Wow. If it’s once and for all settled in Heaven, if you’ve spent the proper amount of 72 hours to read the Bible, you should never come across something you’ve never heard before. I hear from people all the time. They say, oh, we are at this wonderful church, and every week we hear things we’ve never ever heard before. I thought that’s scary because there are different ways of saying the same thing, but as Solomon said, there’s nothing new under the sun, and certainly all truth that needs to be taught and followed and lived and inculcated into our lives is already written down. It only takes 72 hours to read the whole book.

So, it’s rare, but this is old. This is timeless. This is something God invented, and He gave it to His apostles who were passing off the scene. Paul, by the time he’s writing 1 Timothy, has already been imprisoned once. He’s going to get out for a little while, then he’s going to be imprisoned the second time and executed, and it’s going to be all over. So, this is the changing of the guard, and as I shared with you last week, Timothy was no apostle. Timothy didn’t write scripture. Timothy wasn’t inspired. Timothy had never met the Lord face-to-face personally and had been to Heaven like Paul. Timothy was just like us. The Lord said this new group, and all who are going to follow, the only way that they’re going to make it to be spiritually healthy and spiritually fit is this way.

In your Bibles, you have one of these. Exercise yourself, it says in the New King James, toward godliness. Notice what’s in all of them: yourself. We talked about that last week. This is divine sweat. This is gymnastics for believers, personal training. Train yourself, the ESV says, for godliness. On the other hand, discipline. In fact, all the books on the Christian disciplines all harken back to the rendering from this word we’re looking at that the New American Standard captures. Discipline yourself. In other words, follow the disciplines that have the purpose of godliness. And then the NIV puts it rather to train yourself to be godly.

I remember, in fact, I told the first service, I always have to try and remember to say the same thing in both services. I have real trouble. In fact, I have a couple of friends who go to both services. They don’t miss anything. But my mind is wired the same way that the house I grew up in is. I think something happened to me there. But my dad built our house. When I grew up in Lansing, Haslett, Clinton County, Michigan, my dad wanted to build a house, get us out of this ratty place we used to live, which was just a little tiny 700 square foot thing. He wanted to build his own house. So, we had the basement that was cement blocks, and then he capped it off, put lots of plastic on there. We lived in the basement while he slowly built the house for years. He built it. He worked all week long at General Motors, and he would come home and buy one board, and he’d put it up, and then he worked and he’d buy another one. That’s how slow it was.

He even wired the house all on his own. He bought a book, How to Wire. When we had our open house for our new house after I was about 30. No, not really. When we had it, and my dad was so proud of it, it was at night, and all the church people were coming over, and my mom said to my dad, oh, I want to turn on the outside light. How is it again that I do that? Now, see, my dad did something wrong with the wiring, and he says that’s the switch that’s in our bedroom. So, my mom went in there and went like that, and the garage light came on. It was really neat. But he had done something that was novel back in the 60s, it was called low-voltage wiring. It just looked like a spaghetti factory of all these wires. But it was better back then. He got them crossed. So, the bathroom light was a combination of turning on one in the kitchen and somewhere else, and it came on in the bathroom. We still don’t know how that worked. I always thought after we sold my dad’s house in 2007 about who the poor person was that bought it was stumbling down the hall at night trying to find the bathroom light, and realized they had to go to the kitchen to get to the bathroom. But why I said that is that certain things, crossing my mind, remind me of something somewhere else. So, you can call that scatterbrained.

But, basically, these disciplines, as we turn there and we’re going to read the first six verses, have a magnitude that should deeply impress us because God Himself sets down and whenever you attach God to something, God has set down how He wants us to train ourselves. It’s not going to be someone else going to train us. We have to train. You’ll notice what it said in every one of those; yourself, yourself, yourself, yourself.

When I had knee surgery last year, I was assigned therapy by Bronson. I got to therapy and I thought, this is going to be so nice. I’m going to sip tea, I’m going to lie on those machines, and they’re going to work me over. It’s going to be like an endless day spa all day long. I got there, and they said, okay, put on that rubber band. I said, rubber band? It was this tight rubber band, and they gripped it around your ankles, and you had to push your ankles apart with this rubber band pulling them together. Then they said, now crouch down like you used to when you were doing exercises in football and basketball. I said, I can’t remember that far back. They said, do it anyway. So, you crouch over like this, and then you do this kind of duck walk, trying to do all these things; hold the rubber band apart and keep all slouched over. They said, do three laps of that. I said, I thought you were just going to rub me or something, put oil on me under a sun lamp.

They said, I’ll never forget. We have supervisors of Bronson here, so you can’t talk about medical stuff, so you can’t repeat this. But I told them, I said, this is hard. They said, you’re only going to get as much out of this as you decide in your heart that you’re going to put into it. They said, all we do is guide you. That is one of the best descriptions of the Christian life. Jesus Christ has done everything, and He offers us the rubber band and the laps that will make us keep fit, healthy, and what we were designed to be. But because of the world and the flesh and the sin around us, we’re not.

Let’s get into it. Instead of me introducing it, in chapter 4, we’re going to read the first six verses, and we’re going to ask the Lord to speak to us. So, stand together with me, with your Bible. Follow along. As I’m reading this think of Timothy as he’s facing the challenge of living in the Roman world in the 1st century, having this written to him and knowing it wasn’t Paul writing it. It was God communicating directly with him, using Paul. You can hear, just like Timothy, God communicating directly with you and with me, because verse 11 says, this is supposed to be for everybody, not just Timothy.

So, here it goes, chapter 4, verse 1. Now, the Spirit expressly says that in the latter time, some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons. Speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it’s received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified by the Word of God in prayer. Verse 6. If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine, which you have carefully followed.

Let’s bow for a word of prayer. Lord, I pray that this morning here among the gathered body of Christ, as that’s what the vast majority of those who are here are; they’re saved, called, fellow followers of You. Together we come to worship You, to love You. But now we come to hear You. And as we read Your Word, we hear that we are to know doctrines so well that we spot and smell and know that it’s false and it’s incorrect as soon as we get a whiff of something that doesn’t correspond with Your Word. That’s how you want us to be. That’s how we’re supposed to discipline and train and exercise ourselves to be; disciplined in truth. I pray we would understand what that means this morning, but not just hear that, but that all across this room, that believers would decide I am going to pursue the training, the exercises that make up the discipline of truth. Lord, I pray that we would be different in the days ahead as we follow the discipline of truth in our lives for Your glory. In the name of Jesus, we pray, Amen. You may be seated.

As you’re seated, biblical exercises are amazing, but the question is, what was the first one? In everything, you always wonder what is first? What is most important? Most people, when they hear a presentation say, let’s get down to the essence. In fact, I have a little friend who is a high schooler in the top row of the choir. I was watching him, and he loves to come to me after service and say, distill down into one sentence your whole 57 minutes. He’s a real encouragement in that way to think of crystallization. And this is the essence, the first exercise that all believers, if you miss the rest, this one is the one you don’t want to miss. This is the core, this is the heart of the matter. In fact, the discipline of truth, the Bible says in 2 Thessalonians, that in the last days it says many will not be saved because they never received the love of the truth.

Do you understand? As the world is coming to an end and as all the horrors of Revelation unfold, the people who are lost and swept away in the destruction and go to eternal destruction in Hell, it will be because they never received a love for the truth? Did you know that one of the central features of what salvation does to us is that we love the truth?

Now, for Timothy, Paul’s systematic plan was for Timothy, you need to expose false doctrines and teachers. That’s what we just read. But the essence of that is that exposing the faults means the truth. A lot of times, I think Christians think that we’re all just supposed to be saying, that’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s bad, that’s bad. That’s not what Christianity is about. Christianity is about so knowing the truth, so exposed to the truth that you can.

In fact, I have spent a lifetime collecting all the books in my library. 40, 40, whatever hundred I’m on now, books. I go to book fairs. I go to book sales. I go to garage sales all the time, and everyone always points out. They say, oh, there are some theological books over there. I’ll go over and I’ll pick one up. In a matter of seconds, you can tell where the book is theologically. Do you know how? You look at whether they believe in inspiration, whether they believe the Bible is inspired, whether they believe Jesus Christ is divine, whether He is deity, whether He is divinity, whether He is God in human flesh. And whether or not they believe in miracles. You just read a little way, and they don’t believe in Jonah and the whale. They don’t believe in the parting of the Red Sea. They don’t believe that Jesus fed the 5,000. They just said those are stories. They’re not real. They didn’t happen. There’s no historicity that’s reliable in the Bible. So, you know that’s a liberal book or you have a conservative book, which means they believe in inspiration, the deity, and they believe in the reliability of the history. So, what we need to do is we need to expose ourselves to know that’s a bad book. Instead of just studying bad books, you need to know what’s true, and that’s the essence.

So, let’s go, let me give you a little example of how we do this. Go to the Gospel by John with me, chapter 1. The fourth Gospel, John chapter 1, verse 14. Because exposing the faults means knowing the truth. And I want to explain what truth is before we do the discipline. Let’s explain what it is. Okay. Let’s find out what the Bible says the truth is, and this morning, in essence, I want you to know, when you leave, what the truth is. So, we’ll start in John 1:14, and this is what it says. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Now we know in context and from our understanding, the Word there is talking about Jesus Christ. He is the Word. He is God who became flesh. He lived on Earth for 30-plus years. John is saying, and we beheld His glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father. So, Jesus is the only begotten Son of God, the Father. So, He is the second person, the Trinity, God, the Son.

Then, look at verse 14. It describes Jesus Christ this way: He’s full of grace and truth. Now, I love that He’s not full of grace. That would’ve been nice, but if He was full of grace, He would’ve seen the woman taken in adultery and said, that’s okay. His talking to her would’ve ended right there, because that’s what grace does. Oh, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. That’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. But it doesn’t say He’s just full of grace. He says He’s full of grace and what? Truth. Now, some people are full of truth. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. There’s no grace, just truth. The other people just grace, no truth, or it’s suppressed. See, Christianity has gone back and forth like a pendulum between grace and truth. And the truth was in the Puritan times, and everybody was wearing black, and nobody smiled. And then there’s now. Everyone smiles, and there are no boundaries at all. Everything’s okay. Jesus was full of both. So, when He looked at the woman taken in adultery in John chapter 8, He said, I don’t condemn you. That’s grace. He said, go and sin no more. That’s truth. He’s full of both.

But it doesn’t stop there. Look at chapter 4. He starts applying this. Keep going to chapter 4, verse 23. Jesus Christ, as He’s speaking, the context of chapter 4 is a personal evangelism moment with Jesus, the woman at the well. She was a Samaritan, and you’ve all heard the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke. This is the bad Samaritan, okay? This is a bad woman. She’s lived with five men, been married to some of them, and is currently not married. She was a moral derelict. She meets Jesus, and they start having a conversation, and it moves to her religion. The ecstatic Mount Gerizim, which is still going on today. They still do what they did back then, and it’s still a viable religion.

So, Jesus says, oh, you want to know about religion? Look at verse 23. He actually starts earlier, but I don’t want to get stuck here. So, verse 23, the hour is coming and now is when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. He was implying she was not a true worshiper, and she wasn’t correctly worshiping God. Then He says, for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. Verse 24, God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship. Notice there’s this again, a nice stereo quality here. A nice two-part quality. There is spirit in worship, and the Gerizimites, by the way, were very spirited, the Samaritans. They were loud and jumping and excited, but they were just neglecting the truth. The truth was that it was supposed to be done in Jerusalem, and it was supposed to be done the way that the Bible said, but they did it without the truth.

Boy, isn’t that what’s going on all over the world in the name of Christianity today? People are ecstatically doing all kinds of stuff and don’t even know what they’re doing that the Bible says is wrong. So, Jesus said, true worship that gets to God has to be in the Spirit. He’s implying not just enthusiastic, but in the power of the Holy Spirit. And whenever it’s true worship that the Spirit prompts, it will correspond with the truth. So, Jesus explained to her truth is central. His grace is understood by balancing with truth. Worship is understood by balancing it with truth.

Now, He doesn’t stop there. Now, go to chapter 14 and verse 6, because this is really the point. What Jesus is trying to say is this: that the discipline of truth is knowing Jesus Christ, He is the truth. You all have memorized this verse. Jesus said, I am the way. I am the what? The truth. So, the first point is this: truth is a person. It’s Jesus Christ. The discipline of truth is knowing that person. That’s why Paul says people don’t get saved because they never received the love of the truth. That means they never loved the Lord Jesus Christ.

I remember in the 80’s when I was sent out from Grace Community Church to go to a little church up in New England. It was an old church; it was 165 years old when I got there. I think most people were, too. But it was very New England. Everyone sat in the same chair that their parents had bought, that pew, right after the Mayflower came over. It was a very exciting place.

But what I remember is my first day. I came into the office. I sat at the desk and right there, right where the first thing was, was this very nice envelope, typed out with my name on it, and in the corner, it said it was from the Rhode Island Ministerial Association, RIMA. I thought, oh, a welcome letter. So, I sat down and used the 165-year-old letter opener, and I opened it, and I pulled it out, and it said Dear Reverend, whatever, they had a lot of nice titles. They said, welcome to your new parish or whatever they called it. They said you, because you’re a historic church, it’s on the main drag of Rhode Island, which isn’t very big, and it’s been around, it was one of the largest churches in the forties that were in all of New England. They said, you’ll be involved in many public events and we, the Rhode Island Ministerial Association, would like to advise you that it is offensive to use three words in your prayers. Do not use these if you’re ever in an official service for the Rhode Island Ministerial Association. You may not say these three words in your prayer. Do you know what they were? There weren’t any four-letter ones. It was Lord, Jesus, Lord is four letters. Lord, Jesus, and Christ.

Do you know what they said? Those words offend people. You may not say that He is the only way and that Jesus is God in human flesh, divine. They said that it is divisive. People don’t agree on that, especially up here in New England. Don’t use those three words. I thought, look at John 14:6. Salvation starts by knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only way to God. I don’t think that was just in Rhode Island. A lot of the crowd that is the religious establishment is offended by what the Bible would call orthodox doctrine.

Where does it all start? Where does truth start? Truth starts with who Jesus Christ is. Truth is who He is, what He has said, and how He wants us to live. He’s written it down. So, the first element of truth is that it’s a person. It’s Jesus. It’s God who came down in human flesh, lived on the Earth, and revealed. If we’d have kept going in chapter 1 of John, it says in verse 18, and throughout the chapter, that Jesus has revealed. He is the one who explains God. If you, right off the bat, say you can’t say His name, there’s no salvation in any other. So, number one, Jesus Christ is the truth. That’s the first thing. If you want the discipline of truth, the discipline of truth is that Jesus Christ is the truth. By the way, if He has said anything, it’s absolutely reliable. That’s very interesting. In fact, I’ll wait till we get there. Okay.

Secondly, go back to John chapter 8. You’re in 14, back up to 8. Because the second element of the discipline of truth is knowing that Christ’s power sets us free from the imprisonment to sin. Jesus is the truth, and when you know the truth, knowing Him personally, experiencing Him sets us free. John 8:32 it’s an amazing verse, and what He says to a group of very religious people. He said to them, I’m sorry. Let me turn the page. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Have you ever thought about the fact that Jesus Christ is the truth that liberates us from the bondage, whatever form of bondage of sin we’re in? That’s one of the nice things about the Gospel. It’s very exciting to preach the Gospel because even though you don’t always see outward responses, I know that the power of God unto salvation and the liberating power of the Gospel is always there.

I started out preaching when I was 13 years old. I used to be called by the Lansing City Rescue Mission. I don’t know how they got my number, but when I was 13, my parents used to drive me over there. So, I would preach to the men when the local speaker didn’t show up. They always knew they could get me out of the garden, and I’d come over with my little Bible and give my little sermon, and I would preach at the rescue mission to all of those men. The Rescue Mission on Michigan Avenue, in Lansing, used to be crowded, at least when I was little; it looked crowded. But it was crowded with just hopelessness. I got to know what alcoholism and despair, and homelessness looked like. It was amazing. But I knew even though I was 13 and didn’t know hardly anything, I did know the truth. And I knew as I looked out at those men with their bleary eyes and their yellow skin from their livers failing, that the power of the Gospel could liberate them. When we share the Gospel, we’re not just powdering people. It’s not like cleaning up people and putting talcum powder on them. It’s having them radically changed, liberated. That’s what the Gospel does.

In fact, back to, remember my 165-year-old letter opener church. About the third month that I was in that church, I was just preaching the same thing. In fact, I rarely preach anything new. It’s all old, it’s all 2000 years old at least. Some of it is 3,500 years old, and some of it’s even older than that. I was preaching the same Gospel there. I’ll never forget, my secretary was 85 years old. She had been the secretary of generations of pastors at the same church. In fact, it used to be so disheartening. She’d say that wasn’t a very good sermon. She said, someone spoke on that 60 years ago, a lot better than you did this morning. I said thanks a lot, Kay. But she said I just want to give you perspective. Don’t get proud. So, that’s how you keep out of trouble in the ministry: have an 85-year-old secretary. She was spry.

I could hear her outside, a little kerfuffle outside, so I opened my door one day, and a man was standing there trying to get in. She was only this high; she was pushing him and keeping him from my door. I said, Kay, what are you doing? She said this man does not have an appointment. I said if they’re here, I’ll talk to them. Then I got sight of him. The guy was only wearing these little shorts. Have you ever seen men wear shorts that are disgusting? They’re way too short. That’s all he had on, jogging shoes and those disgusting shorts. He was huge. He was just one of those weightlifter types.

Kay was going like this; she was trying not to look and she didn’t want to look at him. It was like he wasn’t even dressed, and I said, let him in. So, she let him in. Long story short, I knew who this was. If you lived in New England or in Rhode Island, you would have seen this guy because he wore those shorts all the time. That’s all he wore. He would have 20 pounds, or I don’t know how many pounds they were, but these big dumbbells, and he just went like this, and he just glistens with sweat. His muscles looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s looked 40 years ago, and it was just Mr. Power Walker. So, all of us knew who he was, but I didn’t know why he was here.

So, I said do you want to sit down? He said I don’t want to sit down. I said what would you like? He said, I just want one thing. He said, I power walk all over North Kingstown. He said I power walk on Sunday mornings, especially. It’s quiet. He said I power walk through every church parking lot in the area. He said, what are you teaching here? He said when I power walk through your parking lot, when I power walk among those people coming into the services here, he said I feel something. He said, I would like to know what it is because I would like it. I said, really? That’s why he came in. His name was Douglas Visnayan. I’ll never forget him.

I said, okay, I’ll tell you. If you want to know if you have a semi-nude man sweating in front of you, and he asks you a question, I took him right to Titus 3. And I shared the Gospel in Titus 3:3-5. When I got done, I told him about the power of God and the forgiveness of sin. I’ll never forget what he did. He dropped to his knees right in the study, in front of the coffee table, and he said, I want it. I said, you want it? He said, I want that. I said that is a person. He said I want it. I want Him. I want that. I want whatever it is. I just went through the simple Romans Road, shared the Gospel, and tears were running down his face. He got saved.

Now, the long story is this: this was a former Navy SEAL kind of guy. I don’t know what degree of black belt he was, high up there, who was so consumed with immorality that his favorite passion was to go to the bars and to find the cutest young lady, snuggle up next to her, and have her boyfriend, or husband, or whoever was with her, try and challenge him. He said not one of them didn’t go unconscious. He said I excel in knocking people out. He said with one blow, often, they’d get in a fight and he’d knock them right out. He said, I always got the girl. He said I’ve gotten everything I’ve ever wanted, and I have nothing. He was just empty.

So, this is what he read on his baptism. It’s Titus 3:3. He got up to be baptized about two weeks later. He put his Bible on the baptistry and said, for we ourselves also were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice, that’s knocking people out in the bars, envy, hateful, hating one another, but then the kindness and the love of God our Savior toward man appears. Not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according to His mercy, He saved us through the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ, our Savior.

He put down his Bible, and he said, I’m ready to be baptized. There wasn’t a dry eye in the place because that was the most clothes they’d ever seen on that guy. He was wearing a robe, and he was radically changed. Until his last day, he was a radiant man; he married one of the ladies in the church and was just such a godly person. He wore clothes from then on. He never went back to the bar. No one told him all those things. He was liberated from bondage. He believed God enough to walk before His throne and say, Almighty God, I believe what You said. This man, you ought to have heard him. He said, I’m a prisoner of, and you should have heard what he said. I ask You to set me free. You know what? Jesus Christ is a person. The truth that he presents is a power that sets us free from anything. I could tell you endless stories, I could, of homosexuals, lesbians, and witchcraft people. I’ve met them all over the years, and Jesus Christ equally can overcome any bondage.

Thirdly, look at John 17:17 because this is the third element of the truth. It’s a person, and the person has power if we believe His truth. Truth is a person, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the truth that is the power that liberates us. But thirdly, the discipline of the truth is knowing the Book. Jesus Christ is the Word of God. He is the Scripture. He is the Word of God. He is the Truth of God. The truth of God is a book that God wrote, which, if we will just spend time with it – it changes us. John 17:17, Jesus is praying, and He says, sanctify them by Your truth, Your Word is truth.

You know what Jesus says: is I want you to exercise and transform your life by feeding on the truth of the Word of God. I want you in My Word, I am the Truth. My truth liberates you from the power of sin and death and darkness, but then I’m not done with you yet. I want to transform you.

See, the goal of life is not just to get our sins forgiven, but to get us sanctified. Do you know what the ultimate is? Being the most useful to God possible. That’s what God wants. He doesn’t want us healthy. That’s not His primary goal. He doesn’t want us to be wealthy. It’s not His primary goal. There’s nothing wrong with being healthy or wealthy. He just doesn’t want; that’s not His primary goal. He wants us to be useful. God’s primary desire for us is that we be useful for Him. That’s how we glorify Him.

So, do you know what He does? If He wants to get our attention, He’ll do it in the health department, or He’ll do it in the finance department. He’ll do it in some department to get our attention so that we will start getting into the sanctifying Word, the Word of Truth. The Word that transforms us. Jesus Christ wants to transform us into His image. He’s the only one who can liberate us from the power of sin. We can only live a spiritually healthy and fit life by daily feeding on His Word. When we eat it, we’re sanctified.

A lot of people, it’s interesting, the digital age, what it’s done is people say, oh, I have the Bible. I have an app for that. I don’t need to study. I can look anything up. I can find any word I want. Oh, that’s really nice. It’s out there somewhere, in the cyber world, and it’s just sitting out there. If they need it, they go to it, and they get that Word, and they come back, and then they go through 90% of life without it. It’s like digitally, the Bible has been removed, and we know it’s there and it’s out there, and we know it’s all good. The Lord says, no, no, you need to be like Jeremiah; Thy words were found and I did eat them. That would be like someone starving to death on a desert island, and you give them an app on cooking, or on Locavore, so you know where local produce is, and you just give them an app. Don’t give them any food. Give them an app. What good does it do? It’s just out there wherever. You have to actually eat it yourself. Jesus wants us to be exercised by feeding him the truth, the sanctifying Word of God.

In fact, biblical illiteracy is where we’ve come to in our country, and it leads to defeated believers. The longer I live, the more I’m alarmed at the growing trend of biblical illiteracy and the lack of biblical discipleship in today’s church. It used to be, it was just a decline in church attendance, and then it was a decline in church Bible reading, and then even Bible carrying in every new generation. But what has correspondingly declined is the decline in even knowing the Bible. That’s biblical illiteracy, and I think it’s that whole; I got it. I can find it anywhere in the Bible. I don’t need to spend hours. Someone has already spent hours; they’ve already studied. I’ve got that, I’m linked to everything. It’s not that. It’s actually so being in the Word and so mastering that, that it gets written on my heart.

Dave Scheffers, one of our elders, is over in the hospital, and you know how they take everything away from you when you’re there and awaiting surgery and everything, but you know what, they can’t take away from him? Because I know him really well. He’s full of the Bible. He has studied it. He has memorized it. He has read it throughout his lifetime. He has meditated upon it. You can just bump into him and out comes some scripture because he doesn’t just have it on his iPhone in the desk over there, or maybe somebody might steal it, so my wife has it at home, or she’ll bring it to me. It’s on an app. No, it’s inside him. Biblical illiteracy leads to defeated believers. Why?

Now, one more and then we’re going to be done. Look at John 16:13 because the fourth element of truth is surrendering to follow the Spirit of Truth. Truth is Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ, the truth, is the power that liberates us, and the truth is in the Word of God. But all of that culminates in the fact of what chapter 16:13 says, and that’s this; however, when He, the Spirit of Truth, that’s the Holy Spirit’s name. He is the Spirit of Truth. When He comes, He will guide you into all truth.

I’ve talked about this many times. Remember, I’m a guide. I’ve led 2,500 people on Bible tours. Two kinds of people go on the tour: the people who follow you, and the people who have their own agenda. You know if they’re following the guide by whether they’re following you. Did you know the Holy Spirit wants to guide us? Look what it says in verse 13. When He comes, He will guide you into all truth. Boy, that is so full. He will guide you into understanding the Bible. You bow before Him and say I’m in my time in the Word. Will you open my mind? Will you teach me? Will you guide me? And He will. Then, when you leave that you say, Lord, will you guide me in living this truth? And it’s the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Advocate. He is there.

But how does He work? He only works for those who know the person Jesus Christ, have been set free from the power of sin by the truth, and spend time in the Word of Truth so that He can guide them.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth, and the Holy Spirit of Truth has inspired and recorded the Word of Truth, that’s the Bible, so that we as believers can exercise ourselves in the discipline of truth. All of this is connected. You get saved. You see the power of God radically transform your life. You begin to allow God to transform us daily by the sanctifying work, and we surrender more and more to the Spirit of God guiding us. When He guides us, do you know what we look like? We have what’s called the fruit of the Spirit. That’s for those who know the truth, have been liberated by the power of the truth, are being sanctified by the Word of Truth, and they’re following the Spirit of Truth, and they have the fruit of that Spirit of God.

Okay, let’s go back to 1 Timothy, lest you think we really weren’t studying it. 1 Timothy chapter 4. Because I want to show you how Paul ties all this together, and start in chapter 1, if you want, in verse 10, because I want to illustrate something for you. In 1 Timothy 1:10, on our way to chapter 4, this is fascinating to me. This is almost a way to see our culture through a lens. Verse 10, the second half of it says if there’s any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine. Now, see the whole theme of 1 Timothy, Paul is really getting on Timothy about knowing the truth and teaching, and doctrine. Here he opens the book in verse 10 of chapter 1, talking about sound doctrine.

Now, that’s an interesting Greek word. It’s the word hygiaino. You know it in English as hygiene, hygienic, proper hygiene. But it came to mean something healthy, that is, flourishing, that doesn’t have any rottenness in it. So, it’s hygienic. Look what he says. Anything contrary to hygienic, healthy, sound doctrine. In other words, doctrine that’s the way God sent it down without being rotted by anything bad being added to it.

Now, let’s look at the beginning of the verse, because this is what’s really interesting. For fornicators, do you even hear that word anymore? Oh, yeah. I guess it’s the name of a cable show. I think there’s a California Fornication show, so it is an amusement thing. But does anybody really know what fornication is? Do you know that fornication, the word porneia, means anything that is sexual that someone who is not married is involved in with someone that they’re not married to. So, a single person or someone who’s married to someone else that is involved in any sexual activity. Pornographia, graphe means writing about, porneia is immorality between unmarried people. I’ve just described for you most of People Magazine. I don’t even read magazines. The whole stardom, who’s living with who, and divorcing and running off, or they never even get married anyway. That’s our culture. That’s most shows. That’s most music. Listen to what the music is saying. And God says, fornicators, that’s people who are entertained by, involved with, read, whatever about sexuality outside of marriage. That’s almost describing college, isn’t it? We are such a debased world that we’re living in now. So, nobody even knows what fornication is. It’s a television show.

How about the second one? Sodomites. This is in the New Testament. I thought that was only in Leviticus, and it wasn’t on us anymore. No, that’s God. Homosexuality, either male or female, either lesbianism or homosexuality, has always been, in God’s book before Moses, a sin that if never repented of, the people who commit that sin will never dwell in God’s presence. They will dwell separated from Him, suffering forever. We’re only two words into the tenth verse, and we’re already in stuff that nobody agrees with nowadays in churches. We have churches ordaining sodomites. Oh, they call themselves gay, but they’re sodomites, and they ordain them. We have whole churches of ordained, led, whatever. Why is that? Because look at the end of the verse, people don’t even know sound doctrine. They don’t even know that the Bible teaches that.

But let’s get to chapter 4 because I want to show you what it says. Chapter 4, verse 1. There are going to be people following deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons. Look at verse 13, give your attention till I come. Give your attention to exhortation and to doctrine. Look at verse 16. Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine.

What he’s saying is you need to know the essential truths of the Bible. Don’t trust that Paul knows them because Paul is going off the scene. Don’t trust that Peter knows them. Peter’s going off the scene. Timothy, you need to know it and don’t think you got it on your app. You need to know it. You need to so understand the truth of the Word of God, that when you see or hear error, you know it’s error because you know what truth is.

Now, let me just give you an example. What are some essential truths? How about this? I said this at the beginning, and I’ll close with this. Some of the most foundational truths that are most being abandoned in these last days are the very truths that Jesus Christ Himself held, taught, and defended. You can’t get closer to the source than Jesus Himself. Now, let me just give you some doctrines that Jesus held and taught. And as you listen to me, many Christian colleges, Christian seminaries, and Christian churches don’t believe these things. Yet, today they’re Christian, and we send our money and our children and are involved with them, but they don’t agree with Jesus. It’s like the Rhode Island Ministerial Association. They don’t agree with Jesus. You can’t say His name. It’s offensive.

Number one, Jesus taught the doctrine of inspiration. He taught that the Bible could not be broken, as He put it. The Scriptures cannot be broken. He affirmed the inspiration and the reliable historicity of the Bible. Now, what I just said about the doctrine of inspiration is not held by half of our Christian colleges. They don’t believe in the inspiration of the Bible. They believe that what Paul said was, was just his opinion when he talked about the role of women. Oh, and homosexuality. Oh, that’s cultural too. That was a Jewish thing. Oh, and no. Marriage? No. And oh! And Jonah and the whale, are you kidding? And creation? Are you kidding? They don’t believe the Bible is historical or reliable. Jesus did.

How about the doctrine of creation? Jesus taught that Adam was the first human and that He created him. He said, I know because I made him. You know? When He was talking about marriage, He said from the beginning I was there. This is how it was. He made them male and female. Jesus believed the doctrine of creation, and I’ve told you enough times, I think there are only six Christian colleges left in America that teach it, out of 300 million people, six are left.

Jesus believed and taught the doctrine of prophecy. He taught everything in the Bible about the future, including Heaven and Hell, and the Church and the future of Israel, was going to happen exactly as the Bible said it was going to happen. He said, not one jot, not one dot, not one cross. Peace is not going to be fulfilled. Jesus believed that.

He believed and taught the doctrine of depravity. The reality of sin. He affirmed mankind is fallen, not basically good. In fact, this is how Jesus defined it. He says, when you’re born into this world, your father is the Devil, and the lusts of your father, you will do. Every human born in this world, our father is the Devil, and we from birth are sinners by nature and choice, and divine decree. It’s not our housing that ruins us, and it’s not our parenting. It’s not that uncle that warped us. We were born warped. Is homosexuality genetic? You bet it is, and so is every other sin. It’s part of how we came into this world. We just practice. We kind of pick which one we want to practice.

Jesus taught substitutionary atonement, imputation, and claimed to be divine. He says, I’m the Son of God, the Creator of all. I’m the only redeemer for sins, and I’m the judge that you’re going to have to stand in front of if you die with your sins.

So, what is truth? It’s a person, a person who has power, and if you really know Them, They change you from the inside out. That power is written down in a book. If you spend time in that book, it will make you look and act, and be more like Christ, which will lead to following the lead of the Holy Spirit. He just guides us through life.

Let’s stand for a word of prayer before we go this morning and ask the Lord to help us to be doers and not just hearers of His truth. Father in Heaven, I thank You that You, Lord Jesus, are full of grace and truth. And we come before You believing that You are the way and the truth and the life. Every one of us here who is born again has received the love of the truth from You, and that truth has set us free from the strangling imprisonment of sin. And then You want to keep us free from the bondage to sin by sanctifying us through Your Word. Then You want us to go through life being useful for You, following Your Spirit, bearing the fruit when You’re leading us, the fruit of the Spirit that shows up in our lives because You’re there. How I pray that we would choose this year to be men and women who discipline ourselves for godliness, starting with the discipline of truth. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray and ask all these things. And all of God’s people said, Amen. God bless you as you go.

Notes

Last week we began our opening series of the year: an examination of the Spiritual Exercises Paul was inspired to write to Timothy in 1^st Timothy 4.

As we turn there, think about the magnitude of what we are about to do. We are downstream twenty centuries from the first giving of these exercises, but they still work. These were the disciplines or training patterns that were invented by God to deepen and strengthen His hold upon my life. These are:

Timeless & Powerful Disciplines

They are as powerful as they were in the glittering temptations of the Roman World, Century One. They have trained generation after generation of God’s servants, and now, they are ours to use or neglect. This year, so fresh before us, can be used most effectively for the Lord by those believers who follow the words of v. 7:

Each of you should have one of these before you:

“and exercise yourself toward godliness.” (NKJV)

“ Rather train yourself for godliness;” (ESV)

“ On the other hand, discipline yourself for the purpose of godliness[1];” (NASB)

“rather, train yourself to be godly.” (NIV)

Paul packages these spiritual truths in the form of present tense or ongoing athletic “exercises”, or “disciplines”, or “training sessions”, as the various translations of the Bible render the Greek work in v. 7. We can see the key idea of this passage through this word that God chose to use to describe what He expects from us. Remember this word can be translated as: “Gymnasticize (exercise, work out, train) yourself for the purpose of godliness”. That is our goal, start practicing the:

Biblical Exercises for Spiritual Health & Fitness in 2014

Please stand and follow along in your Bibles as we hear God speaking through the Apostle Paul.

1 Timothy 4:1-6 (NKJV) Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, 2 speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, 3 forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. 4 For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving; 5 for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. 6 If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed.

What was the First Exercise?

In Paul’s systematic plan for Timothy to stay healthy and fit for God. Paul first instructed Timothy in these six verses, with an ongoing exercise. That first spiritual exercise is:

Timothy: Expose False Doctrines & Teachers (4:1-6a)

Now before we examine what the extent of this first exercise or discipline may be, why would we think in terms of v. 1-6 even as being an “exercise”? Where is that in the text? Look back at v. 7.

Each of these lessons Paul taught to Timothy in this chapter are built around, and surround the message of v. 7. In that verse, Paul teaches Timothy that he was writing to him a series of choices. These choices were then to become ongoing, not just single use. In fact, as we look more closely, the Spirit of God inspired Paul to use a word from the arena of sports as very graphic illustration.

So what is first in this list of disciplines, or exercises? The Discipline of Truth is the exercise God wants all of His children to be well practiced in.

Truth is such an amazingly vital starting place for this series of Disciplines that Paul set down for Timothy twenty centuries ago, and for us also today.  Because:

Exposing the False Means Knowing the Truth

If Timothy is to expose false teachers and teachings, that means that Timothy was to be well prepared in the Truth. The only way to expose what is false is to know what is truth.

Hence this exercise or discipline is the discipline of knowing, understanding, loving, and defending the Truth. This morning, go back with me to Christ’s ministry, the living and breathing One who perfectly explains what God the Father desires, and shows us the invisible God in human flesh.

Have you ever thought about how often Jesus used the word “truth”? Turn back to the Gospel by John and look at John 1:14 (NKJV):

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus came filled with truth, and explained that worship was only possible through truth. Look at the pathway to God in worship that Jesus reveals in (John 4:23-24)

“But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. ²⁴ God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

This first discipline is foundational to everything. Everything we are as believers today is tied to the Truth. Think of the connection we all are to have to the Truth today:

First, the Discipline of Truth is Knowing Jesus Christ. Listen to a verse most of you already know by heart. Jesus said:

John 14:6 (NKJV) “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”

Jesus Christ is the Truth

Jesus Christ is the Truth. He is the basis of life, truth, and all that matters. So the Discipline of Truth is all about a Person of immense importance to us. More than anything else, the Truth of Jesus Christ, who He is, what He has done, and what He wants is more important than anything else.

This first lesson of the Discipline of Truth is:

To know WHO Jesus Christ is.

To understand WHAT Jesus Christ has said.

To want to love Him by choosing to live HOW Jesus Christ has clearly instructed us to live.

So this first discipline is a check on the place that the Lord Jesus Christ has in our life as our source of Truth. Everything starts with Jesus Christ as Truth. Jesus tells us that further into the Gospel by John as He says:

John 17:3 (NKJV) “This is life eternal”

So first, the Discipline of Truth starts by knowing Jesus Christ as the most important Person of all. That starts everything. Knowing Him is salvation. But when we know Him, what happens?

Second, the Discipline of Truth is Knowing His power that sets us free from the imprisonment of sin. The Discipline of truth continues in the life of a believer by liberating us. We want to know the truth and live the truth. Before we can ever defend the truth we have to know it and live it. Listen to what else Jesus personally teaches us about this discipline of truth. When we apply His truth to our lives, something supernatural happens:

John 8:32 (NKJV) And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

Jesus Christ the Truth Liberates Us From Bondage

How does sin imprison us? Fearfulness is a form of sin that imprisons believers. This type of fear is not from God. Paul told Timothy that “God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a strong mind”. Truth liberates us from the prison house of fear where we are captives, and liberates us to trust, follow, and walk in the newness of life in Christ.

Are you exercising yourself in the Discipline of Truth? The Discipline of Truth starts by personally meeting Jesus Christ by faith, bowing before Him as Lord and Savior. Receiving by faith His salvation. Then living each day asking Him to liberate us from the imprisoning power of sins like fear, impurity, bitterness, or jealousy.

The Discipline of Truth sets us free from living under the imprisoning power of fear. Fear imprisons us, but Christ the Truth liberates us.

Sin can also imprison us with impurity, with pride, with doubt, with jealousy, or with any other of the sins of the flesh. Sin imprisons, but the truth of Jesus Christ sets us free. How? By asking for freedom. It is that simple.

Believing God enough to walk before His Throne by faith and confess: “Almighty God, I believe what You say. I am a prisoner of fear, or impurity, or bitterness, or whatever. I ask you to set me free.”

That instant God responds. We are freed. That is the power of God, the supernatural work of God in us. But, why are we not then free from that particular sin, or even all sin from then on? Why do we go from the spiritual bliss of forgiveness and liberation to defeat and coldness towards God after a while? Simply stated, it is because we neglect God’s Word.

Look back at John 17:17 with me, because there we find another dimension of the Truth.  We have already seen:

First, the Discipline of Truth is Knowing Jesus Christ.

Second, the Discipline of Truth is Knowing His power that sets us free from the imprisonment of sin.  But now:

Third, the Discipline of Truth is Knowing the Book God wrote that Sanctifies us.

In  John 17:17 Jesus Christ explains to us the heart of the Discipline of Truth:

John 17:17 (NKJV) “Sanctify them by Thy truth. Thy Word is Truth”.

Our growth in Christ, which is called sanctification, is based upon the Word of Truth the Bible. The Truth that saves, liberates, and keeps us is the Bible.

The Bible will keep us from sin; and sin will keep us from the Bible.

Jesus Christ Wants us Exercised by Feeding on Truth

Jesus said that we can only live in a spiritually healthy and fit way, by daily feeding upon the sanctifying Word of Truth (Mat. 4:4). We have to eat His Word each day or we grow weaker that day.

How many days are going by between your feedings upon the liberating and sanctifying truth of God? That will measure how weak you are spiritually today.

But there is more. Jesus added another dimension to the Discipline of Truth. Truth is also the Spirit that guides us through life. Jesus shared with His disciples on that last night before the Cross, that when He sent His Spirit to indwell each believer of the New Testament church, that He would come into us as the Spirit of Truth.

Biblical Illiteracy Leads to Defeated Believers

The longer I live, the more alarmed I get at the growing trend of Biblical illiteracy and the lack of Biblical discipleship in today’s church.  Just as the decline in church attendance, Bible reading, and even Bible carrying can been seen in each new generation—the corresponding decline in even knowing the Bible (Biblical illiteracy), and obeying God’s Word (Biblical discipleship) is showing up in the woefully powerless lives of so many believers[2]. This is because of the link between the sanctifying Word and the Spirit of God.

Fourth, the Discipline of Truth is surrendering to follow the Spirit of Truth. To desire each day to know and follow the way of Truth, led by the Spirit of Truth, based on the Word of Truth, so that we are walking as the followers of the One who said He was the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Truth

Truth is a Person that brings Life, a Power that liberates us from sin’s imprisonment, a Book that feeds and keeps our lives healthy and fit, and a Way that we follow that is guided by the Holy Spirit. Listen to John 16:13 (NKJV):

“However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth;”

How do we know the Truth? It is written down. The Word of Truth of the Bible is God’s Word and it is central to everything.

The Holy Spirit of Truth has inspired and recorded the Word of Truth so that we as believers can exercise ourselves in the Discipline of Truth!

Only by receiving this Word of God can we be saved because “faith comes by hearing” the Word of God (Romans 10:17); and by allowing God’s Word to enter our being as the “implanted Word” (James 1:21).

That Word feeds our spiritual lives (Mt. 4:4), and lights our pathway so we know where to go (Ps. 119:105).

That Word is our only defensive weapon (Eph. 6:17) against the wiles of the attacks from the savage beast called the Devil that prowls around seeking to devour us as believers (1 Peter 5:9).

The Exercise of Sound Doctrine

Now back to the Discipline of Truth. In 1 Timothy 1:10 Paul calls the truths contained in the Bible sound doctrine.

1 Tim. 1:10 (NKJV) for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine,

The word “sound” means healthy. When we know, and feed upon the true doctrines of God’s Word we are healthy.

Look at how often here in 1 Timothy 4, Paul mentions proper, orthodox, or sound doctrine, and the imperative to know those true doctrines so that we can protect ourselves from false, deadly, unhealthy “false” doctrines.

1 Tim. 4:1, 6, 13, 16 (NKJV) Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, ⁶ If you instruct the brethren in these things, you will be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed. ¹³ Till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. ¹⁶ Take heed to yourself and to the doctrine. Continue in them, for in doing this you will save both yourself and those who hear you.

When we know and surrender to the Truth of God’s Word we want to know, follow, live, and defend the truth.

Knowing the Essential Truths

Some of the most foundational truths that are most being abandoned in these last days are the truths Jesus Christ Himself held, taught, and defended. Here is their list of the seven essentials, and the guide to use to uncover when someone is a false-teacher and on a course of “falling away”.

Jesus Believed & Taught the Doctrine of: INSPIRATION: Jesus taught and affirmed the Inspiration and Reliable Historicity of the Bible (Jn. 10:35).

Jesus Believed & Taught the Doctrine of: CREATION: Jesus taught that Adam was the first human, and that He created Him and everything else that Genesis 1 says that He did (Mark 10:6-7).

Jesus Believed & Taught the Doctrine of: PROPHECY: Jesus taught that everything the Bible says about the future including Heaven, Hell, Israel, and the Church were true and going to happen exactly as the Scriptures say (Mat. 5:18).

Jesus Believed & Taught the Doctrine of: DEPRAVITY: Jesus taught the reality of sin and affirmed that mankind is fallen and not basically good, but we are all born as sinners (Jn. 8:44).

Jesus Believed & Taught the Doctrine of: SUBSTITUTION: Jesus taught that He was the only way of salvation for those who received by faith that He became sin for sinners to save them (Jn. 12:32).

Jesus Believed & Taught the Doctrine of: IMPUTATION: Jesus taught the damnable errors of every religion of human achievement and works righteousness (Lk. 16:15; 18:13).

Jesus Believed & Taught the Doctrine of: DEITY: Jesus taught that He was God the Son, the Creator of all, the Redeemer for sins, and the Judge before whom all would answer who die in their sins (Jn. 5:28-29; 10:30).

So how do we stay healthy minded, sound in our doctrine, and followers of Jesus Christ the Truth? By:

Getting Started in a Weekly Plan of Exercises in Truth

Like physical exercise, spiritual exercise requires discipline, daily effort, and ongoing commitment. Just like daily exercise strengthens our muscles, so our daily spiritual disciplines can strengthen our “spiritual muscles.”

The five classic Biblical disciplines are exercises that ought to be part of every Christian’s life:

The Discipline of Bible Study: Reading the Truth of God’s Word

The Discipline of Communication: Praying the Truth of God’s Word

The Discipline of Memorization & Meditation: Applying the Truth of God’s Word

The Discipline of Worship: Attending public worship built upon the Truth of God’s Word

The Discipline of Surrender: Giving time, money, and abilities to God’s service based on obedience to the Truth of God’s Word

[1] “godliness” is a key word in 1 Timothy, occurring seven times: 3:16; 4:7,8; 6:3, 5, 6, 11.

[2] Research, that points to Biblical illiteracy and ineffective discipleship keeps getting published. Here is what Christian researcher and author George Barna reported, as he surveyed people who considered themselves to be “Christians”:

• Less than half of all adults can name the four gospels. 
• A majority of professing Christians struggle to identify more than two or three of the disciples.
• 60 % of Americans cannot name even five of the Ten Commandments.
• 40% of Americans believe that when Jesus Christ was on earth He committed sins.
• 50% believe that anyone who is generally good or does enough good things for others during their life will earn a place in Heaven.
• 40% believe that the Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon are all different expressions of the same spiritual truths.

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