Sermons

#6 Supernatural Transformation
Nothing But the Truth
Acts 5:1-11 & Ephesians 4:25 

I’m continuing the series on Supernatural Transformation. As a recap we’ve looked at Jesus replacing our heart (spirit) with His. Second, we looked at being stuck, trapped and forgiveness. Third we looked at the touch that heals. Clothing ourselves with mercy, compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Fourth, The Listener. Do we listen or just hear? Fifth, Focusing on what matters. Discovering God’s secret place. And today Nothing But the Truth.

Some Bible stories we read often seem so different from our experiences because so often we don’t involve the Holy Spirit.

We want the results but without the power of the Holy Spirit to be involved in our situation.

The early believer was absolutely aware and dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit to make it in daily life, so they involved the Holy Spirit.

The supernatural was natural to them! We are so unaccustomed, uncomfortable and have so little dependence on Him that the supernatural now seems odd or even scary.

Infrequency has produced fear. That’s our fault not God's. We don't expect it or participate in it!

So, before we go any further, I want us to understand that we need to become desperate and totally dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit in our daily lives.

We have become scared of Him when the truth is we should be more scared without Him.

I remember hearing this account when I was young and fearing the Holy Spirit. Especially because in Verse 11. . . Great fear gripped the entire church and everyone else who heard what had happened. I understood the fear part when I heard it.

I want us to notice that whether you adhere to the idea that Ananias and his wife were believers or not trying to impress those in the body the fact is, they were involved in deception.

They intentionally attempted to deceive men and worse God. Peter makes it clear the money wasn't the issue. The truth was.

As a side note I think it is very ironic and interesting that Anaias means - “Jehovah has been gracious." This makes the intentional deception even worse for me.

He experiences the gracious nature of God; he is blessed and then sins against God and the meaning of his own name because he and his wife were greedy.

Today, I’d like to speak about something that I think all of us are challenged by at one level or another. We all have faced times where we’ve had the choice of being honest or being dishonest. 

But to be honest, we don’t really call it a lie, after all it causes no real harm. We merely call it, an 
exaggeration, a story, or a joke. 

“I swear it’s true!” We live in a world where it is

becoming increasingly difficult to take someone’s words as truth! In fact, it is expected that a person is lying (I mean kidding) unless they indicate by some exclamation that what they are saying is the truth.

Truth is an interesting concept. We know that we need to hear it, but we don’t always like to hear it.

A small-town prosecuting attorney called his first witness to the stand in a trial - a grand-motherly, elderly woman. He approached her and asked, “Mrs. Jones, do you know me?’

She responded, ‘Why, yes, I know you, Mr. Williams. I’ve known you since you were a young boy. And frankly, you’ve been a big disappointment to me. You cheat on your wife; you manipulate people and talk about them behind their backs. You think you’re a rising big shot when you haven’t the brains to realize you will never amount to anything more than a two-bit paper pusher. Yes, I know you.”

The lawyer was stunned. Not knowing what else to do, he pointed across the room and asked, “Mrs. Williams, do you know the defense attorney?’

She replied, ‘Why, yes, I do. I’ve known Mr. Bradley since he was a youngster, too. I babysat him for his parents. And he, too, has been a real disappointment to me. He’s lazy, bigoted, and he has a drinking problem. The man can’t build a normal relationship with anyone, and his law practice is one of the shoddiest in the entire state. Yes, I know him.’

At this point, the judge rapped the courtroom to silence and called both counselors to the bench. In a very quiet voice, he said with menace, if either of you asks her if she knows me, you’ll be jailed for contempt!

As we look at the heart of God, we are going to understand that He is a God of truth. If we are His people, we will speak the truth.

Daily on television we are confronted with commercials that would convince us of the validity of their product in solving all life’s problems, from the perfect automobile to weight loss, we’re swamped with the message that buying this product will magically increase our satisfaction in life. 

Speaking of weight loss there’s a commercial running on TV that says, “I’m losing weight and keeping it off.” Every one of the fifty plus people on the ad are overweight. 

The truth is, there is never any good reason for lying, and the voice in your head that’s telling us otherwise is itself lying! 

This too, then, is where a supernatural transformation needs to take place in our lives. If we are to have lives as God intended them to be then we need to be transformed into honest people. 

But remember, as with all the other things we’ve talked about in this series, the key is that this transformation can only be supernatural in nature. It is not something that we can become ourselves. 

To become and continue being honest people we must seek to exchange our lying heart with the honest heart of Christ. 

Now, the question is an obvious one. “Why the need for honesty?” or in other words, “What is so important about not lying”? 

Answering this question provides the foundation for the answering of so many other questions about honesty, such as, “Surely there is nothing wrong with the little lies that protect someone?” or “Is telling only half the truth really lying?” 

To answer this question, we will look today at the standard for truth, the Bible. Let’s look at three important observations. We begin with the first.  

The case for truth                                              

 As we have discovered in this series, Supernatural Transformation begins to take place when we uncover the heart of Christ and grieve over the difference between His heart and ours. 

It is then when we freely admit to God that our heart needs to be changed, even more, exchanged, with the heart of Christ and that we WANT it to happen. 

So, as we look at the heart of Christ, in regard to honesty, there is something astounding that can be 
noted. Jesus Christ NEVER lied. 

In a prophetic word regarding Jesus, Isaiah wrote, Isaiah 53:9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. 

As you look through the New Testament, you’ll find seventy-eight times where Jesus says the phrase, “I tell you the truth?” Honesty is something that Jesus placed a great emphasis on. 

His every word was accurate; His every sentence was true. He didn’t cheat on any tests; He didn’t ever stretch the truth or shade it or avoid it. He simply told the truth. No deceit was found in His mouth. 

If God has His way with us, no deceit will be found in our mouths. His plan is that we would all be supernaturally transformed, and in the process, He seeks to not decrease or minimize our deceptive speech and deceptive ways but to ELIMINATE them! 

Looking through His word you find that God is blunt about dishonesty. 

Psalms 101:7 No one who practices deceit will dwell in my house; no one who speaks falsely will 
stand in my presence. 

From the beginning of His Word to the end, from Genesis to Revelation, the theme is the same: God loves truth and HATES deceit. 

It’s interesting to find that among the people listed in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 who will not inherit the

kingdom of God are those who lie about others. Included amongst those who sin sexually, worship idols, take part in adultery, sell their bodies, get drunk, rob people, all are LIARS. 

It is important we realize that fibbing stirs the same heavenly anger as adultery and aggravated assault! God views fudging on income tax the same way he views kneeling before idols, look at some of the other things His word says about His opinion on dishonesty: 

Proverbs 12:22  The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in men who are truthful.

Proverbs 6:16-17 There are six things the LORD hates, seven that are detestable to him: 17 haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood.

Psalms 5:6 You destroy those who tell lies; bloodthirsty and deceitful men the LORD abhors. 

“Why? Why is there such a tough stance taken on this? The answer is very simple: Dishonesty is contrary to the character of God. 

It’s not that God has chosen not to lie, God cannot lie. It is NOT His nature. For God to lie is for a dog to fly. It just can’t happen. 

Titus 1:2 a faith and knowledge resting on the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time, We need to grasp that our understanding of the 
need for honesty MUST begin with the fact that our God is an honest God and He is TRUTH!

A lie keeps the presence of God away. 

The cage of dishonesty                                     

There is another point to be made; God’s nature contrasts very sharply with that of Satan. Whereas God is truth and cannot lie, Satan finds it impossible to tell the truth and is called the “father of lies” (John 8:44). 

If we go back to Genesis and the drama unfolding in the Garden of Eden, we find Satan using deceit as the first tool out of his bag. 

If you turn to Genesis 3:1-4 you find that Satan wasn’t discouraging Eve, he wasn’t seducing her, he wasn’t twisting her mind. He, very simply lied to her.

Genesis 3:1-4 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You(we) must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” 4 “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. 

With his lie, Satan cast the first seeds of doubt, and as those seeds blossomed the fruit which was 
sin (disobeying God) entered the world. 

From the moment Eve entertained the lie (and later Adam) a cage was closing down on them. It is the cage of dishonesty. 

Notice that only a few verses later we read that Adam and Eve heard God walking in the garden; (this is significant: they could HEAR God walking in the garden, their relationship with God up to this point was such that He physically interacted with them.) 

They heard and ran to hide from Him. Why? Because they feared what God would do! They knew the truth, of what God had told them, “If you eat of the fruit from this tree YOU WILL DIE!” They were afraid of what would happen. 

Isn’t it ironic that they were willing to believe the lie of Satan only moments before, yet the same lie didn’t carry any weight when they heard God? 

But here we have Adam and Eve cowering in a bush and God making His way through the garden when another significant thing happens. 

Genesis 3:9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” 

Do you think for one moment that God did not know where Adam and Eve were? And yet, He called out this question! There is much that can be said about this incident, but I’d like to focus on one thing. 

In the asking, we see that God cannot be in the presence of a lie. In this question we find the first instance of the terrible gulf that from that day forward separate man from an intimate relationship with God. All because of a lie! 

God could have gone where Adam and Eve were hiding. But He stopped and called out. What a wonderful example of the love God has for us. He chose to refrain from destroying Adam and Eve 
with His presence. 

Here we see the most terrible consequence of dishonesty. It puts a cage around us that keeps us from the presence of God. 

What is even sadder, perhaps, is that this cage is not limited to our relationship with God. Lies ruin relationships in marriages, relationships in families, relationships with friends; lies effectively sear off our conscience. 

The tragedy of the second lie is that it is always easier to tell than the first. So, why do we tolerate it? Why do we find ourselves justifying lying? 

Perhaps it’s because we don’t like the truth. Remember Adam and Eve ran away and hid from God because they knew the truth, even though they had believed a lie! They didn’t like the truth and in fact, they were afraid of it!! We still find that today. 

Max Lucado, in his book Just Like Jesus, says “Our credo is You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you squirm” Everyone of us can probably think of a lie we told to keep from getting caught in something! 

So, we don’t like the truth, but also, we don’t trust the truth. We live in a society that seems to hint that telling the truth is no fun and won’t get you what you want. 

The story goes, When President Cleveland’s second child was born, the doctor asked Cleveland for a scale to determine the baby’s weight. Cleveland searched through the house without success. Finally, he remembered that he had an old scale in the basement which he always used on his fishing trips. He got it and brought it upstairs. Carefully, the doctor placed the infant on the scale and was amazed to learn that the newborn weighed 25 pounds. 

We want people to admire us, so we exaggerate. We call it stretching the truth. God calls it a lie. We want people to respect us, so we live in houses we can’t afford, and charge bills we can’t pay. We call it keeping up with the times. God calls it living a lie! 

So, we tolerate dishonesty because we don’t like and don’t trust the truth; we must come back to the harsh reality of the consequence of deceit. 

Lying places us in a cage of its own making, that cripples our relationship with God, our relationship with others, and quite simply OUR LIVES! 

The cure in Christ                                             

We find ourselves with a gloomy picture. God demands honesty because He is truth. Yet we are dishonest, and this deceit is ingrained into us because of its entrance into the world in the Garden of Eden. 

Think about it for a moment. I know there have been times in my life where I catch myself telling a lie. In fact, there are times where I lie without even thinking and only realize it after an amount of time has gone by. There is only one way out of the cage of a lie, TRUTH. 

Quite simply, the cage of a lie is destroyed by truth. Its power over us is broken only by truth! 

When we are faced with a dilemma of whether to tell the truth or not we need to remind ourself of the answer to the following questions:                                                     

“Will God bless my deceit?                                

Will He, who hates lies, bless a policy built on lies?

Will the Lord, who loves the truth, bless the business of falsehoods?                                        

Will God honor the career of the manipulator?     

Will God come to the aid of the cheater?            

Will God bless my dishonesty?” 

But then, you say “I just can’t help it, no matter how determined I am, I still lie! So now what am I supposed to do?” 

The answer is still the same, the power of the lie is broken only by truth. And this is where we return to our first observation. Where do we find the truth? In God! 

And more specifically, John 14:6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

John 8:32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” 

The TRUTH of the matter is that the CURE FOR THE LIAR is THE TRUTH found in JESUS CHRIST!! 

To be honest, we need to first recognize and come to grips with our dishonesty and repent of it, make the decision to TELL THE TRUTH, but secondly, and more importantly we NEED TO KNOW THE TRUTH found in Jesus Christ! 

Are we ready to be honest. God wants to supernaturally transform us into an honest person! Away with the lies and on with the TRUTH! Today Fix your eyes on the TRUTH! And witness as you are set FREE from the cage of your lies! 

Amen!