Truth is a Person

Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

“Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”

“Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”

Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

“What is truth?” retorted Pilate.

- John 18:33-38

In the penultimate commandment of the Ten Words, Israel is told that they should not bear false witness against their neighbours. God is a God of truth, and his people should be people of truth.

Everyone agrees - in theory. Truth is a good thing. We want to know the truth. We like to think of ourselves as searchers for truth. But we all live under the power of the first lie: did God really say? (Genesis 3:1). The problem seems particularly acute in this age of truth decay. How can we become truthful people?

In John 18, Jesus stands before Pilate in one of the most striking scenes in Scripture. The Jewish leaders bring Jesus to the Roman governor because only Rome can authorize what they want - his execution. Pilate questions Jesus about their central charge: “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus answer seems to be something like 'yes and no'. Yes, a king, but not in the way they think - a kingship of coercive power, violence and compromise. His kingdom is “not of this world” and he is a king that rules through speaking truth: “Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

Pilate’s reply—“What is truth?”—is the final time the word truth appears in John’s gospel, which is full of talk about the truth and how the truth comes to us. From the opening chapter (“the Word… full of grace and truth”) to Jesus’ promise that “you will know the truth and the truth will set you free,”... the truth is not an idea or ideal. Jesus is the truth.

When Pilate asks his question, it not clear whether it is cynical or genuinely searching. Perhaps he views truth as whatever is politically expedient. Perhaps he feels trapped between competing claims—Jesus’ truth, the leaders’ truth, Rome’s truth. His ambiguity mirrors the questions of our own age, in which truth can seem contested, subjective, or unreachable.

The tragedy is not that Pilate cannot discover the truth, but that the Truth is standing in front of him and he cannot recognise it. Joy Davidman said, "Pilate chooses to doubt reality rather than accept his own sin".

The irony is - the truth is! - that Jesus is not the one on trial. Pilate is on trial. Will he listen to the voice of the one who is Truth? And we all stand behind Pilate - we are on trial! Will we prove ourselves to be on the side of truth? Will we listen to voice of Jesus?

The command not to steal is rooted in the positive vision of God’s goodness and provision. It’s (usually) easy enough not to steal, but the real call is to a life of generosity rooted in a trust in God’s generosity.

God’s Spirit is given to us to transform us from. We are sometimes people who look good on the outside, but are trapped by our desire to take what seems good in our own eyes.

The Spirit can make us into people that truly reflect the image of God. We can reflect His abundance and generosity. We can become more and more like Jesus.

This is my prayer for you:

Soften our hearts by your Holy Spirit.

Expose where we would hold onto lies, that we can achieve security through seeking financial control; hoarding and accumulating.
Help us have the freedom to accept your beautiful invitation, so generously and freely offered, to life - true life.
Make us people who are not devoured by our desires, to do what seems right in our own eyes, but people who devour your word.
Put us in community with one another so that the enemy, who prowls around like a hungry lion, won’t pick us off and devour us.
Thank you that you have promised that you will never leave or forsake us.
That you are preparing us, your Church, to be ready for your return.
That you promise not even the gates of hell will prevail against your Church.

At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”

- John 8:2-5

Sex: our culture seems obsessed and confused by it all at once. If Christians are often accused of being hung up on sex, maybe it’s because the stories and words of Scripture expose our pain and our longing for a better way.

On Sunday, we looked at the seventh commandment: do not commit adultery. When the Bible talks about faithfulness, it paints a picture of deep, faithful love. Marriage, in the Bible, mirrors God’s relationship with His people: a bond of promise - a covenant. When we’re faithful to our spouses, we’re reflecting God’s own steadfast love. And when that faithfulness breaks down it points to a deeper unfaithfulness towards God. So when it comes to adultery, God seems to take it personally.

Jesus takes the conversation deeper still. "But i tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:28). He doesn’t just tighten the moral rules, but calls for a recognition of our brokenness and radical action for transformation.

That’s why the story of the woman caught in adultery resonates so powerfully. The crowd was ready to stone her. In such an act of collective punishment, no-one could be identified as guilty for her death. Jesus turns this round, and asks if any single one of them would dare to step forward and claim the kind of moral integrity that could qualify them to execute justice. All of them turn around and walk away.

The irony is, of course, that Jesus is qualified to execute judgement. But he doesn't condemn her. Instead, he releases her and invites her into life. Such mercy doesn’t excuse sin, and it does something far more than punish it. It breaks sin's power and releases the offender from death.

This is for us too. None of us can stand without need of grace — and that grace is always ready to meet us. Jesus still stoops low, still writes in the dust, and still offers new beginnings.

Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
Exodus: 20:12

This is the first commandment in the list of the ten commandments about loving others. And not only is it the first commandment about loving others but it's the first commandment with a promise. Honour your parents "so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you".

God wants to bless his people. After generations of slavery in Egypt, He is giving them their own land, a beautiful garden land. And if God’s people want things to go well in the land It starts with correctly ordered family relationships.

We the church can live in a way where we are a sign of restored familial relationship that showcase God’s faithfulness and point to the hope of fully restored human relationships. I pray that is particularly hopeful for you if you come from a family of origin where your parents have not honoured you as they should and that maybe it has become the case that the way to honour them best is to have boundaries so that no one is dishonoured.

You have a new family and God will call us all to honour our earthly parents in a way that is safe and appropriate. But we can receive from God, our good Father, all that we need to be able to do that. The healing and transformation we encounter today points in hope to when one day God fully dwells with his people and all broken family relationships are fully restored.

To give us a clearer idea of what lies behind the idea of “the name of the Lord” in the bible, fast forward to the dedication of the temple. In 1 Kings 8 King Solomon dedicates the temple with a prayer. He prays: As for the foreigner … will hear of your great name and your mighty hand and your outstretched arm—when they come and pray toward this temple. ‘The name’ is completely linked to the actions and intentions and reputation of the owner of the name. The point was that anyone should be able to look to the temple and learn of the character of God and respond in loyalty.

The verb before “the name” is actually two words and it literally means ‘to lift up (or carry)’ - ‘in vain’. In Exodus 28 the robes of the high priest are described. On his chest he was to wear 12 precious stones each with the name of a tribe engraved on it. It says he was to lift up or carry (same verb) these stones as he went before Yahweh. As the priest went into the holy place of the temple he would carry the names of the tribes. He would represent all the 12 tribes to God.

To bear the name of someone in vain is to be a bad representative of that person. It means to misrepresent someone, to give a misleading idea of the character of the person or organisation we are claiming to represent. God was saying to his people that others should be able to tell just by looking at us who we belong to. To carry the name in vain is to claim we are in a covenant relationship with him but for that claim to make no difference to how we live.

At Sinai, Yahweh claimed a nation as his very own and released them to live out their calling. Our calling is to bear Yahweh’s name among the nations, to represent him well. At Sinai, he warns the people not to bear his name in vain. Keeping this command, then, involves much more than not saying gosh or OMG. Keeping the command not to bear Yahweh’s name in vain changes everything about how we live."

Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, “You must be born again.” The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.’
- John 3:5-8

When people hear the words “born again,” a lot of us think of that as something for other Christians. Maybe for the ones who’ve really messed up—people with addiction stories, people who hit rock bottom, and then found got religion. But if we actually look at John 3, the very first person Jesus says “you must be born again” to is Nicodemus.

Now Nicodemus isn’t a failure. He’s not on the margins. He’s a respected leader, a teacher of Israel, educated, stable, religious, moral. In other words, if anyone didn’t need to start over, it would have been him. And yet Jesus looks him in the eye and says: “Amen, amen… no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.”

That’s what baptism is all about. Not just a symbol, not just a ritual. It’s death and resurrection. It’s saying: the old life is gone, and a whole new life begins. When we watched Dami, Ren, Abraham, Solomon and Jennifer go down into the water at their baptisms, that wasn’t just a nice ceremony. That was them dying with Christ and being raised into new life.

The image is shocking—because it is meant to be. Think of that Mission Impossible moment when Ethan Hunt has a bomb in his head, and the only way to save him is for his wife to stop his heart and shock him back to life. It looks like death, but it’s the only way to live. That’s baptism. The only way to live is to die.

Why does Jesus make it so drastic? Because small tweaks won’t cut it. You can’t just polish up your life and hope it’s enough. An apple tree can’t grow oranges no matter how much you prune or fertilise it. To bear different fruit, you need a new root. That’s why Jesus says, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.”

Here’s the best part: you don’t make yourself born again. Babies don’t give birth to themselves! Birth is the work of another. And in our case, it’s the work of Christ—lifted up on the cross, suffering so that we could have life.

So whether you’ve been in church for decades or you’re just exploring faith, the call of Jesus is the same: you must be born again. Not just reformed, not just improved—renewed.

Idols bring death but Jesus brings life.

Jesus’s invitation to follow him,
Is an invitation to put our faith in him.
To put our faith in the fact that
He entered into our humanity with us,
went into death for us
And that if we want believe that and accept that invitation
the same power that rose Jesus from the dead.
The power of the holy spirit is at work in us
As a deposit of what is now our inheritance
The inheritance that one day we will fully be like Jesus,
we too will pass through death into new life.
And that each day we can walk the beautiful way.
Becoming more fully human.
A person who is being transformed and renewed
Into someone who can truly love God and love others.

Jesus’s invitation
Is an invitation to be set free from the lies of false gods
that promise us freedom and security
but enslave and destroy us.

Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, ‘This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites.’
- Exodus 19:3-6

Last Sunday we started a series on the Ten Commandments - or, to be more precise - what the Bible calls the Ten Words. But before diving in, we need to get something straight.

When most people think of Christianity, they imagine rules: a moral code, a list of dos and don’ts, a cosmic scorecard. Be good, and you go to heaven. Slip up, and you’re out. But Exodus 20 – the famous “Ten Commandments” – tells a very different story.

Before Israel ever received the commandments, God rescued them: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Ex. 20:2). Salvation was not earned by good behaviour, by either ritual practice or moral practice. God carried them “on eagles’ wings” before they knew the law.

In other words, grace comes first.

And the opposite of grace is not judgment but transaction – the assumption that a covenant is the same as some trade. In a teaching about the Law, Jesus tells the Rich Young Man to give up his bargaining power (whether his money, or his behaviour - "what must I do to enter eternal life") and follow him empty-handed. It comes right after Jesus' encounter with children, where we learn that faith like theirs is required to enter the kingdom; they don't tend to come with wealth, or status, to trade on. They can only trust.

So why commandments at all? They are not conditions of God’s love but invitations to live out a calling. Israel was chosen to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex. 19:6). Their obedience was meant to reveal God’s character to the world: they should be a people of peace in a violent culture, a people who rest in a world of endless striving, a people marked by gratitude instead of envy.

When Israel failed, it wasn’t about breaking arbitrary rules but about failing their vocation. That same calling continues in Christ. Jesus fulfils Israel’s role, becoming the true priest and mediator, and now the church is described as “a royal priesthood” (1 Pet. 2:9). The Ten Words, then, are not a cold checklist. They are a vision of flourishing – boundaries that make us more human, not less – lived out as a response to grace and as a witness to God’s goodness in a broken world.

Are there times when you’re seeking to enter a transaction with God - trying to earn His love or blessing - instead of resting in His grace and living out of your identity as His beloved child? Take a while to ask what Jesus is asking you to put down, so that you can be ready to hear what you should take up.