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1. This is one of Christ's many testimonies to the integrity of the Scriptures. What is the value of that testimony.

(1) Does He speak as man? If so He was in a better position for knowing the truth of the Old Testament than "modern critics"; and if He knew, as they profess to know, that the ancient record is partly fictitious, then this wholesale authentication is an impeachment of His own integrity. If He did not know, and accepted the truth of the Scriptures on trust, then He was credulous and forfeits our confidence in Him as the supreme Teacher and Guide. But His fearless championship of truth, by lip and life and death, forbids us to suppose that He said, "Thy Word is truth" without good grounds, and what He believed we may safely hold.

(2) But He spoke as Divine; and if the Word of God were not truth, as of so many other matters, He "would have told" us. How believers in Christ's divinity can reject this testimony is marvellous.

2. The Bible is not simply true, but the truth, and embraces under the promise of the Spirit of Truth, New and Old Testament alike. "Holy men of God spake as they were moved" by Him; He guided the apostles "into all truth." God's Word —

I. HAS ITS ORIGIN IN TRUTH. God is its author. He knows everything, has no interests to serve in perverting the truth, and by the laws of His own Being "cannot lie." What He reveals, therefore, must be as it really is, and what He has revealed is in the Bible. And as a pure fountain will send forth a pure stream so the Bible, being God's Word, must be true. A good man will tell the truth as far as he knows it; and shall we doubt the same power in God?

II. ITS SUBSTANCE IS TRUTH It contains —

1. True doctrine. As far as nature goes it coincides with the teachings of nature, contradicting them nowhere: which is a presumption that when it goes beyond nature it is still on the same line of truth.

2. True morals. The ten commandments command man's universal assent, and the Sermon on the Mount forms the only true basis of society, and true society will be one day constructed on that basis.

3. True history, and corroborative evidence is being discovered year after year.

4. True poetry. No better interpretation of nature and man's higher moods is to be found than in the Psalms.

5. True promises. How many millions have verifed them.

6. True threatenings — the Flood, Sodom, the Jews, &c.

III. IT REVEALS HIM WHO IS THE TRUTH.

1. All the Old Testament points to Christ.

(1)  He is the Truth of its symbols.

(2)  "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy."

2. The Gospels are the story of His life, and show how He was the Truth in —

(1)  His character;

(2)  His influence;

(3)  His teaching;

(4)  His death. "To this end was I born," &c.

3. The Epistles expound various aspects of His truth, making Him the centre and inspiration.

IV. ITS OBJECT IS TO MAKE TRUE MEN.

1. Men true to God, to self, to man; in the home, business, society, state, Church.

2. Lovers of the truth.

3. Disseminators of the truth.

(J. W. Burn.)

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KJV: Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

WEB: Sanctify them in your truth. Your word is truth.