(This transcript was generated by AI. Apologies for any inacuracies)

I wanted to begin today, today I want to talk about the importance of God's truth, the importance of us as the church proclaiming, holding onto, and living out God's truth in this world.

And it is something, as we move into this next chapter of Valorous Church, what God is going to do here among us, you guys, we have to be ready for.

And so that's what I want to talk to us today about and get us ready in our hearts and our minds and our faith for what God is going to do through his people here at this church.

And so I want to read today out of the Gospel of John chapter one.

And if you want, take a moment, close your eyes, and I want you to hear the words of this apostle who walked with Jesus, who loved Jesus, and this is what he wants the world to understand.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made.

Without him nothing was made that has been made.

In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Let me pray.

God, we come before you today as your people, and Lord, we know that you are not done with us.

We know that you're not done with this church family.

And so, Lord, what that means is that we have more to learn.

We have more opportunities to step out in faith.

We have more things that you want to reveal about yourself to your people.

And Lord, today we pray that you would open our ears, our hearts, our minds, our eyes to where you are and what you're calling us to.

And Lord, may we step out in faith as you are leading us.

We're excited for what you're gonna do, God, and we just wanna be there front row to see you change lives and change this world through your people and in your power.

And it's in your name we pray.

And all God's people said, amen, amen.

Well, as I mentioned, this is it, you guys.

This is the last time.

Next time, if you get here late and you're like, oh, I gotta sit in one of those black folding chairs.

Nope, every chair in there has a cushion to it.

And for all of us who are getting older, they all have a little bit more width to them as well.

All right, so we are gonna be good.

But as I mentioned, this week as I was preparing it, God just put it on my heart to make sure that we are ready to truly understand why we are here and what God is calling us to as his church.

And obviously, it's not to necessarily wow people with this beautiful, brand new building.

It's not to wow them with our amazing worship team or all the lights and the bells and whistles that we're gonna have when we move into the arena.

It's not to impress them with this atrium that's going, I mean, the floors, you guys, this week are gonna be polished up.

We're gonna have incredible furniture in here.

And this is gonna be an awesome place for people to come and fellowship and study God's word and just be together as the family of God.

It's not about any of those things, right?

Those things are all part of it.

Those things are tools that God has blessed us with, things that we can use to bring glory to his name.

But what we have been called to, what God desires of us is to be a place and a people where anyone and everyone who shows up not only hears the truth of God, but sees the good news of Jesus Christ being lived out.

All right?

So I'm gonna take a page out of Pastor Clay's book, slap your neighbor, tell him it's time to live it out.

It is so much fun to do that, right?

And we all love it, don't we?

Like, oh man, yeah, I get to slap somebody.

This is great.

But church, and I know I've mentioned this before, but I have such a passion for what the church could be, right?

What it could be.

And I think about this all the time, right?

And imagine this with me, to be a place where the darkness of the world not only can't enter, but it gets pushed back.

Amen?

To be a place where people flock because they know they need restoration, grace, and forgiveness, and this is where they know they're gonna find it.

Amen?

And all of that happens not because of all the amazing stuff and all of you amazing people, but because we are a church that only allows the truth of God that is found in scripture to be proclaimed and preached from our pulpit, to be taught at our Bible studies, and to be lived out in our life groups and in our lives outside of the church.

Amen?

And I cannot express the importance enough of this, because we live in a world where truth is relative, right?

That's what the world believes.

And if you don't know what that means, what that means is that people believe what is true for one person isn't true for every person, right?

That's what truth being relative means.

And we've heard it said that you have to discover your own truth, or you have to live and be true to ourselves, right?

Our own truth.

And yet what we proclaim here, right, what God has called us to proclaim as his church is that there is only one truth, right?

There is one universal truth that applies to everybody.

There is only one truth that changes lives.

There is only one truth that forgives sins.

There is only one truth that restores marriages and heals broken hearts and heals people's physical bodies.

There is only one truth.

And that truth is that we are sinful beings separated from God, our loving creator.

And the only way to restore that relationship is by accepting the fact that Jesus, God's own son, came to this earth, died on a cross, resurrected three days later, conquered death and all of our sin so that that relationship with God could be restored, right?

This is it.

That's the basics, right?

If I walked away now, that would be the sermon, right?

Some of you are like, please, please.

But what we see in scripture also is that if you accept this truth, if this truth becomes the reality that guides your life, we become changed from the inside out, right?

It's not just a list of rules.

It's not just some orders that I have to follow.

This truth comes into my heart and all of a sudden, things start changing.

Those things that once tempted me no longer tempt me.

But not only do they stop tempting, they stop becoming a source of shame, right?

My sin, I will stand up here boldly and proclaim.

Why?

Because I have a God who came into my life and redeemed me from that sin.

We find purpose and peace and joy and contentment and then, right, an added bonus, right?

That contentment and peace and joy and forgiveness that we feel that God works in our lives.

All of a sudden, it starts spilling out into the lives of people around us, into our family, into our neighbors, our coworkers, the people we meet on the street.

And all of a sudden, that work that God was doing in us, he's doing in everyone around us.

That is the truth and that is why we are here.

And yet, our world, we have so many people trying to tell us who Jesus is and what Jesus said, right?

So many people in the world will tell you, no, Jesus said this, but not that.

And you have to believe this and not that.

And we have to be ready as God's church to see through those lies and to boldly proclaim the truth that we find in Scripture.

Because I will stand up here today and tell you the Jesus that we believe in is not the Jesus of Mormonism.

It is not the Jesus of the Jehovah's Witnesses, right?

It is not the watered down Jesus that the world tries to put before us, right?

The reason that we know this truth is important is because if we don't know what Scripture tells us, if we fall for these lies, these lies can make their way into the church and tear apart that good work that God is doing.

And so we have to be ready.

We have to understand what God is trying to do.

Because if we hold on to God's truth, what we find is that we will become unified, right?

If we were all on the same page, as far as who God is and what we believe and what we profess, all of a sudden, we are on the same page.

We are unified under God.

If we learn about God's truth, we gain wisdom and discernment.

If we live out God's truth, the world sees his light in us.

And if we mash that all together, right, if you mash it all together, what happens is we become an unshakable movement that even the gates of hell cannot prevail against.

Amen.

I'm telling you, I get passionate about the church, y'all.

I'll talk for hours.

No, I'm not really going to talk for hours.

Don't worry.

I want to share a folk tale from India.

And I think this is probably a story that some of you have heard before, maybe in longer forms, maybe in shorter forms, but I think this is going to help us to understand what we're talking about with truth.

And it says this.

It says, long ago, six old men lived in a village in India.

Each was born blind.

The other villagers loved the old men and kept them away from harm.

Since the blind men could not see the world for themselves, they had to imagine many of its wonders.

They listened carefully to the stories told by travelers to learn what they could about life outside the village.

The men were curious about many of the stories that they heard, but they were most curious about elephants.

They were told that elephants could trample forests, carry huge burdens, and frighten young and old with their loud trumpet calls.

But they also knew that the Raja's daughter rode an elephant when she traveled in her father's kingdom.

Would the Raja let his daughter get near such a dangerous creature?

The old men argued day and night about elephants.

An elephant must be a powerful giant, claimed the first blind man.

He had heard stories about elephants being used to clear forests and build roads.

No, you must be wrong, argued the second blind man.

An elephant must be graceful and gentle if a princess is to ride on its back.

You're wrong.

I have heard that an elephant can pierce a man's heart with its terrible horn, said the third blind man.

Please, said the fourth blind man.

You're all mistaken.

An elephant is nothing more than a large sword of cow.

You know how people exaggerate.

I'm sure that an elephant is something magical, said the fifth blind man.

That would explain why the Raja's daughter can travel safely throughout the kingdom.

I don't believe elephants exist at all, declared the sixth blind man.

I think we're victims of a cruel joke.

This is like people talking about in the world today, right?

Finally, the villagers grew tired of all the arguments, and they arranged for the curious men to visit the palace of the Raja to learn the truth about elephants.

When the blind men reached the palace, they were greeted by an old friend from their village who worked as a gardener in the palace grounds.

Their friend led them to the courtyard, and there stood an elephant.

The blind men stepped forward to touch the creature that was the subject of so many arguments, and each felt a different portion of the elephant.

The first blind man reached out and touched the side of the huge animal.

An elephant is smooth and solid like a wall, he declared.

It must be very powerful.

The second blind man put his hand on the elephant's trunk.

An elephant is like a giant snake, he announced.

The third blind man felt the elephant's pointed tusk.

I was right, he decided.

This creature is as sharp and as deadly as a spear.

The fourth blind man touched one of the elephant's four legs.

What we have here, he said, is an extremely large cow.

The fifth blind man felt the elephant's giant ear.

I believe an elephant is like a huge fan, or maybe a magic carpet that can fly over mountains and treetops, he said.

The sixth blind man gave a tug on the elephant's coarse tail.

Why, this is nothing more than a piece of old rope.

Dangerous indeed, he scoffed.

The gardener led his friends over to the shade of the tree, and he said, sit here while I grab water for the long journey home.

And while they waited, the sixth blind man talked about the elephant.

An elephant's like a wall, said the first blind man.

Surely we can agree on that.

A wall?

An elephant's like a giant snake, said the second one.

It's a spear, I tell you, insisted the third one.

I'm certain it's a giant cow, said the fourth blind man.

Magic carpet, there is no doubt, said the fifth blind man.

Don't you see, pleaded the sixth blind man.

Someone used a rope to trick us.

Their argument continued, and their shouts grew louder.

Wall, snake, spear, cow, carpet, rope.

Stop shouting, called an angry voice.

It was the Raja, awakened from his nap by the noisy argument.

How can each of you be so certain you are right, asked the ruler.

The sixth blind man considered the question, and then knowing the Raja to be a very wise man, they decided to say nothing at all.

The elephant is a very large animal, said the Raja.

Each man touched only one part.

Perhaps if you put the parts together, you will see the truth.

Now let me finish my nap in peace.

You see, we live now in a world where everyone is like these blind men, but instead of figuring out what an elephant is, we're trying to figure out who God is.

And so many people are sure that they know the answer.

They're absolutely convinced that they have the whole truth.

But what we have to understand is that the only person who knows fully what God is and who God is, is the one whose eyes are opened, right?

In Matthew 11, 27, Jesus says this.

He says, all things have been committed to me by my father.

No one knows the son except the father, and no one knows the father except the son, and those to whom the son chooses to reveal him.

So church, if we are going to go anywhere other than to scripture to tell us who God is and what God is like, we are going to be led astray.

We are going to fall for the world's lies.

And here's an example.

The world today loves to quote this portion of the Bible.

God is love, and you Christians are called to love your neighbor.

And they say this in order to convince us that we need to allow people to do whatever they want, including sin in their lives.

Now, while it is absolutely true that God is love, right?

I'm not denying that scripture says that.

This is like the blind man in the story, right?

It's one facet of who God is and how God has revealed himself to us.

He said, because God is also a redeemer, right?

And what a redeemer does is a redeemer takes things that are lost and broken, and he restores them, and he gives them value, right?

And so while God does love us in the midst of our sin, he is also very clear that he doesn't want us to remain in sin, right?

God's love heals.

Many of us in this room know that.

God's love heals.

It draws us into his holiness, and it makes us more like him.

God's love does not allow us to keep sinning.

But so many people get silenced and led away by the world shouting, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't say that.

You have to preach this Jesus that we talk about and nothing else, right?

Or else they say you have some kind of phobia, right?

Whatever the first portion of that is, phobia.

No, it's not a phobia.

I'm just preaching the truth, right?

And so we see that if people are shouted down by the world, all of a sudden we become timid, and that's because we aren't always sure about all of the things of God.

And it's easy for us to be fooled sometimes.

And I'm here to tell you that this happened in the early church as well, right?

We have this story, this book from one of the apostles, John.

I started this morning reading the gospel of John.

Well, the apostle John grew, he actually lived to be one of the oldest of the apostles.

And in his old age, he kind of formed this church around him as one of the fathers of the church.

And he dealt with those of his church when false teaching of others started coming away and pulling his people away, right?

He wrote this letter, we call it 1 John today.

And so that's where we're gonna be.

If you got a Bible, you can flip to 1 John, but I wanted to give you a little background about this because it always helps us to know why they wrote these things.

But the letter of 1 John was probably written around 90 AD, right?

And at this time, the people of John's church were under attack from two groups from within the church, not the world.

These are lies that had gotten into the church and were affecting the unity of what God was trying to do.

The first group were Jewish Christians who accepted that Jesus, the man, was the Messiah, right?

But they still followed the regulations of the law of Moses.

And they had a real hard time with saying that Jesus was the divine son of God, right?

So that's the first group.

The second group were a group of Greek Christians, and they didn't believe that Jesus could be both human and divine.

See, they believed he was divine.

They believed that he was the son of God, and they had no problem with that.

But they had a real hard time with the human side of Jesus.

And so they started to believe in this truth that they called it, these lies that we would call it, that only the spirit of a person mattered.

And so if I accepted Jesus as my savior, my spirit was made pure through that knowledge.

And if my spirit was made pure, what I did with my flesh didn't matter at all.

And so these people were like, hey, you want to go party?

Go party.

You want to go sleep around?

Go ahead.

It's all right.

This flesh, it wastes away.

All that matters is the spirit.

And then there was a third group of people who were trying desperately to hold on to the truth that John and the other apostles proclaimed about who Jesus was and what he had come to do.

But what was happening and what John was noticing is that some of these people who were trying desperately to hold on to the truth were being swayed and pulled away.

And John was having none of it.

John, who walked with Jesus, talked with Jesus, saw Jesus' miracles, heard Jesus' teachings, and witnessed the resurrection, he was not going to allow this to happen to the people that God loved and the people that he loved.

And so he decided to write a letter that I think speaks to us today.

And this is how it begins.

This is 1 John 1, verses 1 and 2.

John writes, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched, this we proclaim concerning the word of life.

The life appeared, we have seen it and testified to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.

And so from the very get-go, John makes it absolutely clear, this is the Jesus that we are proclaiming.

This and nothing else.

If you are talking about some other Jesus other than this Jesus, you're wrong and you're lying to yourselves and you're lying to others.

This is not the Jesus that the world proclaims.

This is not some Jesus that was just a man.

This is not some Jesus that was just a spirit.

This is the historical, factual, actual, accurate Jesus that John knew that he saw, that he heard, and he touched.

And John makes this clear to both of these groups that were proclaiming these lies, that Jesus was divine, right?

We read in those two verses, he was from the beginning, he is the eternal word, and that he was human.

He appeared to us, we heard him, we touched him, we saw him.

So from the very start, John let his people know, this is the truth where all faith comes from.

If you are putting your faith in anything other than this, it's not gonna take you anywhere.

It's not gonna change you.

There's not gonna be any transformation.

And so church, as we move forward together into this new chapter at Valorous Church, we are committing that this is the Jesus we proclaim.

The Jesus that is only found in scripture, not something that the world tries to cram down our throats, but the actual Jesus that history tells us was real, that died and rose again, right?

And this is what we have to hold onto and proclaim.

Because as John believed, faith in anything else or anyone else is worthless, right?

I can't have God in my heart if I'm not actually believing in God.

I can't invite Jesus to be my savior if I'm not actually following in faith the actual savior, Jesus Christ.

John goes on to say in verses three and four, he says, we proclaim to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us.

And our fellowship is with the father and his son, Jesus Christ.

We write this to make our joy complete.

This encounter that John had with Jesus, it causes him to want to share it, right?

It causes him to want to tell other people about it.

And it's just like us today.

I might not have all the answers, but here's what I do know about God.

Here's what I know God did in my life.

I was this way once and God came into my life and now I am something brand new and nothing can take that away from us, you guys, nothing.

This is John's testimony, right?

And here's what John understands about the power of a testimony.

When the good news is proclaimed in faith, it invites others to be a part of that, right?

There's no locked doors.

There's no secret handshakes.

It's the reality of if God can do it to me, he can do it to you, right?

I don't care how far away you feel, God is here and he's moving because he moved in my life.

Faith in God invites other people in.

And what John tells us is this fellowship that we have is with the father and his son, Jesus.

And this fellowship changes lives.

It frees people from sin and it draws us closer to God.

But this fellowship is only possible when the message that people put their faith in is the message found in scripture.

That's it.

We don't put our faith in a particular church, a particular worship leader, particular pastor.

Our faith is in the scripture that God has revealed to us.

These other things that these other groups were trying to teach, they don't allow other people to experience God.

The only way I bring in that fellowship with God is if I believe in that truth.

They don't, these other things don't allow me to access the benefits of fellowship with God that come through Christ.

And what John says is the reason he does this, it's not to get another notch on his halo, right?

It's not to have more people at his church.

He says it is that so his joy is complete.

For those of you who have ever helped someone come to know God, you know exactly what he's talking about, right?

That moment that the light goes on, right?

That moment that the chains come off, the moment that the tears come down their face.

There's no greater feeling than that, sharing in that fellowship.

I used to take a group of high school kids to Mexico over spring break for a missions trip.

And it was so great.

I love taking people for their first time because there was this taco stand that we would always stop at.

And we would go out to these little villages and for eight or nine hours, we would be doing vacation Bible school with these little kids, running around, playing games.

And on our way back to the camp, we would stop at this roadside taco shack.

And I'm telling you guys, like, do you think the pollen's bad?

This dust flying through the air, bugs flying, like this would not pass health inspection in the United States.

But we would stop there.

And the first time kids would be a little leery, right?

Because most parents, and they're right to do so, hey, be careful what you eat in Mexico.

And most of the time as a youth pastor, I was fully okay.

Like, hey, you need to listen to your parents.

But this time I was like, hey, I'm not going to tell your mom.

Oh, I don't know, Richard.

Come on.

Hey, if you don't like it, all you got to do is take one bite.

I'll eat the rest.

But if you do like it, when you go back for more, you have to buy me two more tacos.

I mean, they were 50 cents.

It wasn't anything expensive.

So, and you guys have to remember, these were California kids, all right?

So we get there, he gets a taco, he takes one bite, and here's the interaction.

Dude.

And here's my response.

Right?

Dude.

Right?

Dude.

I know, right?

And oh man, he would hug me and I said, you know, go give me some more tacos.

But I share this because there was such joy in it, but that was only a taco, right?

That was only a taco.

What we're talking about is faith in the living God.

And that is so much more exciting.

And you guys, I am here to tell you that I love watching God change lives too much to not preach the truth, right?

That's what I'm, I'm going to stand here and proclaim that to you.

And finally, for us today, what we see, John addresses how we know if we are truly living in fellowship with God.

He writes this in verses five and six.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you.

God is light.

In him, there is no darkness at all.

If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son purifies us from all sin.

So today church, here's what we have to ask ourselves is our existence.

The way we live our lives.

Is it governed by God or is it governed by the world?

Because if I am living in darkness, my face is turned away from God.

And when that happens here, here's what goes on.

I find reason to justify my sin, right?

I try and convince myself that, Oh, it's not that bad.

Or at least I'm not as bad as so-and-so, right?

I find, I find reasons to push God and his people away, right?

The people that could help me most, the God that could help me most.

I keep them at arm's length.

And if I'm honest with myself, the more reasons I find to keep God away and to hold onto my sin, the more empty I feel.

I've been there.

And what I find is that that's the more I walk in the darkness.

Some translations of the Bible, instead of walk in the darkness, they use the word live in the darkness.

And that's because this Greek word means to make darkness your domain, right?

Every aspect of my life, what I do, what I live and breathe, how I sleep, where I walk, where I socialize is all in the darkness.

And that's not what God's truth does.

God's truth brings us into light.

It lets us know that our sins and our struggles do not define us.

God does.

For those of us who have lived in the light for a long time, right now we are being called to stand up and proclaim what God's truth has done for us.

We are being called to peer into the darkness, right?

And to draw other people into the hope and life that we have through our faith in God.

That's what we're called to do.

We're called to continue to stand up for the truth found in scripture against the lies of the world and those who would try to lead people astray.

So church, as we close today, I want to encourage you, know your word, read your Bible, study it, meditate on it because it is the word of God.

It will guide us.

It will strengthen us.

It will protect us, not just as individuals, but as we move forward as the body of Christ here at Valorous Church.

And if you are new to this journey, if you're sitting here today and you are just struggling with, do you know God?

Do you not know God?

I want to encourage you with this, that every step, even the smallest step towards God is a right one.

I'm here to tell you that there is no perfect person in this church, that God is redeeming all of us.

And if you were here today and struggling with sin and thinking that maybe you were walking in the darkness, but you also know that something in your life needs to change that very little bit of conviction means that God has called you into the light.

That very little portion of you that says, I need something different is God calling you right now out of the darkness and into the light.

You might not know everything about God.

You might even feel like one of those blind men from the story, but here's something to encourage you.

Even with our eyes closed, we know when the sun's shining on us.

Even with our eyes closed, we know when the sun is shining on us.

And so church today, let's not only open our eyes, but our ears and our hearts as well.

And not just be hearers of the word, but doers of the word, because here's the last thing.

Here's the last fact I want to leave you with the fact that we proclaim God's truth means nothing.

If we don't live it out church, we've been called to live it out in the darkness of this world.

And let's do that with boldness.

Let's do that with joy and let's do it together.

Let me pray.

God, we love you.

And we thank you so much.

Father, you have called us when we didn't deserve it.

You have brought us out of the darkness and into the light and not just that Lord, but you've given us fellowship with you through your son, Jesus.

And Lord, I pray for this church right now.

I pray for each and every soul that as we go out in the world, we would let the world know what you have done for us.

That we're not going to fall for the lies of the enemy or the lies of the world, but we are going to hold on to your truth that we find in scripture.

Lord, help us to be people of prayer and people of your word.

God, lead us and guide us.

And for those people in here today, God, who for the first time have said that they need you in their lives, may their hearts prayer be this, God, I walked in the darkness for too long and I'm ready to come into the light.

Come into my life as my Lord and my savior and teach me what it means to walk with you.

Bring me into that fellowship, Lord God, not just with you, but with your people.

And may I walk with you the rest of the days of my life.

And so father God, thank you for this church.

Thank you for these people and what you have done, what you are doing and what you will do as we move into this next chapter.

It's in your name.

We pray.

Amen.