Buy the Truth and Sell It Not

Buy the Truth and Sell It Not!

October 30, 2005

Introduction

In Proverbs 23:23, we find these words:

23 Buy the truth, and do not sell it,

Also wisdom and instruction and understanding.

How do you “Buy the truth and sell it not?”

Body

I. What does it mean to buy the truth?

A. You have to want it before you will buy it.

1. Jesus compared it to hunger

Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.

2. He compared it to a man seeking goodly pearls, or a man finding a treasure.

Matthew 13:44 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 45 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls,46 “who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it.

B. You cannot buy something until you can recognize it.

1. We need to spend time studying the Bible for ourselves.

a. We need some kind of plan reading through the Bible, or something.

b. We need a time for our study

c. We need first hand knowledge of His word.

2. Will you be able to recognize the truth when you find it?

Escape to Freedom

by Sergei Kourdakov

Guideposts, July, 1972

I hesitated at the rail of the plunging trawler and wondered, What impels a man to jump from his warm safe ship into a stormy ocean thousands of miles from home? Freedom! I had material Freedom in the motherland Russia where at 19 I was attending a Soviet naval academy. Future? As secretary of the Communist Youth League, my success was assured.

What was it then that made me want to escape! Could it be that strange light in the eyes of the old woman I had Been about to strike that awful night so many months ago? I trembled as I again saw her quiet upturned face. Then gripping the ship's cold rail, I prepared to vault over it, into the dark churning waters Below..

One thing I Knew: No family would grieve for me. My father, an NKVD officer under Stalin, had been shot when Khrushchev took over. My mother died a few months

later. I was then age four and became a child of the state in an orphanage . . . . in western Siberia

Nursed on Marxism, my religion was communism. Our savior? Lenin. Three times I lined up, in Red Square to pay homage to his mummified body.

After entering the naval academy. . ., I became a champion swimmer, weight lifter, and an expert at beating up people who held illegal meetings.

These people who called themselves Christians, were tolerated by the government if they held their meetings under state supervision. But they had this strange habit of secretly gathering in homes, barns, even out in the forest.

And, of course, through police intelligence we always knew where they would gather.

A number of us big fellows at the naval school were paid by the local police as “volunteers” to break up these meetings. Thus the action was not “official” but “of the people.”

And it was fun. When alerted to a “secret” meeting, we’d get together, laughing and joking. We’d each down a liter of vodka, pick up heavy police truncheons and head for the gathering.

After breaking through the door, we’d grab the Bibles and handwritten hymnals and rip them up. Any cry of protest was our excuse to wade into the people with truncheons flying. After all, they had broken the law and were enemies of the state.

The police told us. “Faith will fly out of their heads when they see your stick.”

But I never forgot Natasha, a blue-eyed blonde of about 18 with long flowing hair. We found her in a worship meeting in the little town of Petropavlovsk. One of our group, Viktor, was a giant whose arms seemed the girth of telephone poles. He picked up Natasha by her hair and threw her out the door.

“It would have been nicer to have been friends with her,” he laughed.

A week later on nearby Nagornaja Street we made another raid. And there she was! We beat her so hard with truncheons that we boasted, “She won’t be able to sit down for a week!”

Three days later we found her again at another meeting. We just ignored her. What can you do with someone like that?

After the raids, we’d haul the literature to the police station where we’d burn it in a potbelly stove.

I don’t know what made me do it. Perhaps it was remembering Natasha and wondering what it was that made these people so stubborn. As I shoved the literature into the stove, I slipped a booklet into my pocket.

Later, I read it in a quiet corner at school. It was a hand-written copy of the Gospel of Luke. In it I read about a young man who’d turned on his father, and ran off to a far country where he squandered himself. Yet, when he crawled home his father welcomed and kissed him!

As I read on, I was flooded with a strange emotion--part disbelief but mingled with it a fascination with what this book called love. Something within me was touched and I trembled. I sensed this wasn’t a human philosophy but something far greater. I felt like a man who’d spent all his days in a cave and had finally staggered out to see the sun for the first time. I compared the love this God had for us with the coldness and materialism in which I’d been living.

I tore the book into shreds.

On our next raid I followed through mechanically. As I raised my truncheon at an old woman, she said something. I hesitated and heard her praying: “Oh, Lord, save this young man.”
Someone or something held my arm and I spun around; there was no one there! I dropped the club and left the melee in a daze, remembering nothing until I was five kilometers away. I went to the police director and told him I was through with the activist group.

He didn’t say much, but three days later I was called before a Party meeting for unseemly behavior. They dressed me down but let me off lightly since I was secretary of one of the largest Communist youth groups in Siberia. They said I was young and would “rethink.”

I rethought all right. And the more I thought, the more disillusioned I became. Here, innocent people were being persecuted only because they believed in something that Marxism could never offer. As I looked around with new eyes, I began to see that what our leaders promised and what was reality never seemed to match. It was a repressive system, and despite the lofty ideals of the revolution, it didn’t practice what it talked.

I felt I could no longer exist under these conditions and made my decision to leave.

-- To summarize the rest of the story, he did jump ship, swam for two hours, and swam into some huge dark object. It was his ship. He almost gave up, but made it to the shore of Canada and was rescued a survived. He would have come to the United States if it had not been for our treatment of the Lithuanian sailor that our government returned to Russia.

But what is truth? This is the story of a young man who recognized it when he heard it.

Here is the story of a young man who bought it. It cost him what it has cost many others, everything he had.--As he made his final three mile swim to shore in a storm, he had to pull off his boots, and cut off his pant legs to make it.

C. How are we doing at buying the truth and selling it not?

1. Many are like Pilate, they never find the truth.

John 18:37 Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king then?” Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”38 Pilate said to Him, “What is truth?” And when he had said this, he went out again to the Jews, and said to them, “I find no fault in Him at all.

a. Why did Pilate not recognize truth?--was he too busy to consider?

b. Was he too cynical to be able to believe?

c. Was he too wrapped up in his own power to think?

d. Was he just too distracted by the Jews and all that was going on?

3. Jesus said that he was the truth.

(John 14:6 NKJV) Jesus said to him, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

a. Do we recognize Him as the truth?

b. De we make His truth our way of life?

C. How much does it cost? What’s the price we pay?

1. The price of seeing who and what we really are.

James 1:21 Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.22 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror;24 for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.25 But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does..

2. The price of persecution and trouble.

John 16:33 “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

3. The price of discipleship.

Mark 8:34 When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.35 “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.36 “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?37 “Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

a. Being willing to pay the price.

Luke 14:25 Now great multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them,26 “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.27 “And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.28 “For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—29 “lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,30 “saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’31 “Or what king, going to make war against another king, does not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?32 “Or else, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks conditions of peace.33 “So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.

b. The price of keeping down the weeds—keeping God first in our lives..

Matthew 13:22 “Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful.

II. . . .Sell it not” -- How do we sell the truth?

A. Compromise--like Pilate

Matthew 27:24 When Pilate saw that he could not prevail at all, but rather that a tumult was rising, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of this just Person. You see to it.”

B. If we are afraid, or unwilling to live it.

1. Demas loved this present world.

(2 Tim 4:10 NKJV) for Demas has forsaken me, having loved this present world, and has departed for Thessalonica; Crescens for Galatia, Titus for Dalmatia.

2. Buying the truth is not a one time purchase--we must continue to live it.

(Mat 10:22 NKJV) "And you will be hated by all for My name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.

a. Don’t give up along the way.

(Luke 18:1 NKJV) Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart,

Conclusion

I. Will I buy the truth and sell it not?

Will I put forth the effort to study and know the truth for myself?
Will I not sell it by giving up along the way, or letting down?

II. Have you committed your life to your Lord in baptism?

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