The Truth You Know Shall Make You Free.

Introduction

The truth you know shall make you free. The truth has an ugly aspect, which I will now share with you. Many people are unaware of the ugly side of the truth, and many others are unwilling to recognise it. I will recite it to you from Proverbs 27:5-6, “Open rebuke is better than secret love, faithful is the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful.” What kind of friend would hurt you?  The kind who will tell you the truth even if it is painful. Even though the truth can be painful at times, you can find comfort in knowing that Yahweh is the source of all truth. He even refers to himself as the God of truth. So, according to His admission, Yahweh is the God of Truth who cannot, has not, will not, and does not lie.

And the reason Yahweh cannot lie is the nature of Truth. Yahweh’s word is a covenant that He made with Himself, as evidenced by Genesis 15:12-15 in the story of the covenant ceremony with Abram. Then, Yahweh puts Abram to sleep and delivers the speech to him. Yahweh said, “I will bless you; I will make your seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand by the seashore. I will take them into a strange land and afflict them with bondage for 400 years. And after 400 years, I will bring them out with great substance.” So, why is Yahweh talking to Abram while he is asleep? Because Yahweh is showing us a principle, He does not keep his word to us because we know what He said; He keeps his word to us because He knows what He said.

When you walk with integrity, you are walking like Yahweh. The character of Yahweh is that He is holy. The nature of Yahweh is that He cannot lie. Sometimes you have to talk to people you care about things that are difficult to say. I wish I had some assistance here. Here is what you need to understand about the truth: sometimes it will hurt you to help you. And if you are not willing to hurt someone to help them by telling them the truth, you do not truly love them. “Open rebuke is better than secret love,” the scriptures say. In other words, if you see someone on the path to destruction—someone you claim to love—and they are on the path to destruction, and you do not open your mouth and say, “That bridge is out,” you do not love them.

You do not do it because you do not want to go through all of that drama; perhaps you do not. But if your love is true, you will speak the truth. In love and faith, you will speak the truth. You will proclaim the truth in the face of error and the truth in the face of danger, and you will stand firm in that truth even if it means dying where you stand. But most people do not live honourable lives in which they would rather die in honour than live in dishonour; can I get a witness? So, what you need to do is get to a point in your life where you are willing to speak the truth, even if it means hurting someone’s feelings. Now, I have said it before, and I will say it again: the intention should not be to hurt someone’s feelings.

If you dislike me because of my temperament, that is my problem to solve; if you dislike me because of my position, that is your problem to solve. As a result, we have essentially created a society of moral failures who are unwilling to speak the truth in the face of obvious lies. Because you are afraid of being called names, having a label put on you, or being ostracised, here is what you must understand: at the end of the day, you can silence the trumpet, but you cannot silence the truth. It is not permissible for you to take your brother’s wife, declared John the Baptist to Herod.

So, Herod’s wife was his brother’s ex-wife, and because she did not like the truth, she plotted to have John the Baptist killed. So, Herod could silence the trumpet, but that did not make the truth any less true.

We live in a world where, if I do not want your viewpoint to be heard, I just claim it is hate speech. Okay, let me rearrange the furniture in your head for a minute. Love speech, hate speech. We just discussed the law of polarity. What is the polarity law? It states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; thus, could you have hot without cold? No, that would be abnormal; could we have wet without dry? No; could we have up without down? No. Do you understand that the human brain learns by contrast? Concepts are formed by contrast, thus, if there is no contrast, there is no concept.

So, to talk about love is to talk about hate, so if you love the truth, you will despise error, but if you love error, you will hate the truth, and when you hear the truth, it will look like hate speech. What about freedom of expression? Why don’t we let everyone’s ideology stand on its own and stop being chicken-livered, watered-down cowards afraid to speak our minds? When you believe something, I do not mean being offensive or calling people names; I mean stopping capitulating to the minority with the loudest voices and standing up, speaking the truth, and protecting our children because I am going to tell you something.

These individuals who embrace political correctness despise your children; is that too strong? See the ugly side of the truth, which is that the truth will harm you to help you. If you smoke, you do not want to hear that your breath stinks, your clothing stinks, or your car stinks. And if you fail to stop smoking, you are more likely to die from cancer. Is that a form of hate speech? That is how it works: I want you to stop drinking because I love you so much. Because I adore you, I want you to get in shape because you have gone a little too far. Do you get what I am saying? Sometimes the truth will help you hurt someone, but almost always, a lie will help you harm yourself.

See, Yahweh will sometimes hurt you to help you, but he will never harm you, because hurt is just a temporary pain, whereas harm is ill intent, malevolence, and the desire to harm. Truth has no wish to cause harm. The truth desires to cure you. People in our society are reluctant to open their mouths and share the ugly side of the truth that can make the people they care about free.

What did the Apostle Paul say? “Am I, therefore, your enemy because I tell you the truth,”, and you must respond. You have become my enemy because you have told me the truth; what you must do is get to the point in life where you are willing to stand on the truth. You believe strongly enough to open your mouth and discuss it, and it is so fascinating that people are terrified to hear an alternative viewpoint. What kind of environment would you choose to live in? Did you know that one of the reasons Hitler was able to do such evil for so long was that he made it illegal to speak out against his government, murdering millions of people?

Child slavery was sustained for hundreds of years in the United States of America, whose slogan is “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” It was against the law to speak out against it, no matter if you are white, black, orange polka dot, or pinstripe. So, if you make it illegal to speak out against something, that thing will eventually become tyrannical. It is the nature of the beast of a lie to become a festering monster and have to tell another lie to make the first lie right. Then another lie, and to make that lying right, do you know what is so wonderful about being honest? You do not have to remember what you said, but if you are going to lie, you better have an excellent memory because it will come back to haunt you.

How many of you understand what I am talking about? Stop being a coward in your societies; stop being a coward in your families; and stop being a coward in your churches. You must stop acting like a coward in your government. You must cease being so terrified of what other people may say that you do not express the truth, which is as obvious as day. Guess what? You can learn to speak the truth in love and season your words with grace and salt. If I have to tell you something painful, I do so with love in my heart and a smile on my face.

I have to confront the falsehood that you are living or the deception that you are believing because I love you. I cannot take joy in it, but I also cannot remain mute. Because if I am, you will be enslaved to the lie you believe in.