Asking for a Friend 1

NCAA Results

Leaders

6th place: Aydan - 53 points

5th place: KayMarie - 66 points

4th place: Kasey - 68 points

3rd place: Jamie - 87 points

2nd place: Matthew - 110 points

1st place: Jonah - 112 points

Students

11th place: Montgomery and Braxton - 51 points

10th place: Sarah - 60 points

9th place: Emry - 66 points

8th place: Addison - 68 points

7th place: Carson, Cora, Brayden - 72 points

6th place: Rylan - 73 points

5th place: Mallory - 82 points

4th place: Truett - 90 points

3rd place: CK - 96 points

2nd place: Kate - 108 points

1st place: Libby - 136 points

Next Steps

Grow Group? Nah rGroup!! We will start in May! it will still be every other Monday, both guys and girls will be at 6:00 PM!

Serve Day! Winston-Salem Rescue Mission this Saturday at 9 AM! Sign-up on the REVO Church app if you are interested!

Women’s Tea! Ladies if you’re interested you can get all dolled up, drink some fancy tea and worship Jesus together! Guys if you are interested Jenna could use some help getting things set up and serving during the event!

Intro

In this series we intend to answer your questions

You guys submitted questions to us and over the next 7 week we intend to answer them!

If you have questions, or thoughts that pop up, you can always submit them in the bucket in the lobby, or by scanning the QR code in the pre and post service slides!

I always love doing this type of series because it allows for us to really dive deep into the questions that you and to show you that Jesus is truly the answer to every question we have

Body

The Question

Here is what we are seeking to answer today:

“Why are people so fake?” “Why are people hypocritical?” “Why do people have low standards for life?”

Each week in the series we will present you with the question(s) that we are using as our reference

Today we are looking at the idea of why people are so fake and hypocritical in life

I want to give you the simple answer to the question right now, but then I want to dive deep explaining it, and then give you a biblical example of the answer

Short answer

The short answer to the question of why are people so fake?

They have no identity

They don’t understand who they are or what they are meant to do

When people don’t know their purpose or place in life they tend to be fake, hypocritical, they tend to not know what is the correct thing to do

Think practically, whenever you are faced with a problem you don’t know the answer to, are you consistent in your response? When a new shred of “evidence” gets put in front of you do you flip-flop your answer?

When you don’t have an identity you start seeking whatever sounds good

Listen to what Paul says

2 Timothy 4:3–4 NET

3 For there will be a time when people will not tolerate sound teaching. Instead, following their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves, because they have an insatiable curiosity to hear new things.4 And they will turn away from hearing the truth, but on the other hand they will turn aside to myths.

When you don’t understand you start to look for answers anywhere and everywhere

You start to get in a think tank and only listen to things that make you feel good

So to put it quite simply people are fake or hypocritical because they don’t have an identity

Long Answer

The long answer to this is quite simple as well

People have an identity, but they don’t follow it

The long answer is that we have an identity — a purpose — something we should be living up to, but for a lot of people they don’t know this, or they don’t follow it

Listen to how we are described when God created us

Genesis 1:27–28 NET

27 God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply! Fill the earth and subdue it! Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and every creature that moves on the ground.”

We have an identity!

Our identity is the image of God

As humans we are meant to be the very image of God — a living representation of God

That means that when we read things about God being truth, love, light — we as humans are meant to be those things because are the very image of God

Yet we aren’t

That’s because of sin — when sin entered the World everything got cursed with the sting of death

But more importantly mankind could no longer get to God

Genesis 3:21–24 NET

21 The Lord God made garments from skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not be allowed to stretch out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God expelled him from the orchard in Eden to cultivate the ground from which he had been taken. 24 When he drove the man out, he placed on the eastern side of the orchard in Eden angelic sentries who used the flame of a whirling sword to guard the way to the tree of life.

Mankind was driven out of the garden of Eden — driven out from the very presence of God

No longer could man walk with God in the cool of the day as Adam was described as doing — now mankind can only be with God when God comes to Him

This leads us to loose sight of God — to forget what we are meant to be

We were created in His image to bear His image

We were created to show God to all the people — and yet listen to what Paul says happened to us

Romans 1:21–23 NET

21 For although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give him thanks, but they became futile in their thoughts and their senseless hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for an image resembling mortal human beings or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles.

We exchanged God for the things we saw on this earth

We stopped worshipping the creator and instead worshipped the creatures

We lost sight of our identity and seek to find our identity in anything and everything that brings us some sense of happiness or fulfillment

When we are without God we are tossed to and fro

Listen to how Paul tells us

Ephesians 4:14 NET

14 So we are no longer to be children, tossed back and forth by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching by the trickery of people who craftily carry out their deceitful schemes.

Without God — without Jesus — we are tossed back and forth

We have no identity, we aren’t bearing God’s image — the thing we were created for — so we seek anything that will make us happy

That is what causes people to be double-minded

That is what causes people to be fake

That is what causes people to be hypocritical

Not because they necessarily want to be those things — but because without God we have no image to bear

Without God we are seeking anything and everything that will offer us some sort of satisfaction

Biblical example

Now with the time remaining I want to look at a story in the Bible that you might be familiar with and show you how without Jesus we have no sense of Identity

We talked about this story a couple of weeks ago, but I want you to look at it from the example of no identity to finding our identity — and see how that changes

That we are fake, hypocritical, lost

But once we find Jesus and follow Him we have an identity, an image we are meant to show

John 4:7–26 NET

7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.” 8 (For his disciples had gone off into the town to buy supplies.)9 So the Samaritan woman said to him, “How can you—a Jew—ask me, a Samaritan woman, for water to drink?” (For Jews use nothing in common with Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered her, “If you had known the gift of God and who it is who said to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”11 “Sir,” the woman said to him, “you have no bucket and the well is deep; where then do you get this living water?12 Surely you’re not greater than our ancestor Jacob, are you? For he gave us this well and drank from it himself, along with his sons and his livestock.” 13 Jesus replied, “Everyone who drinks some of this water will be thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks some of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again, but the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”16 He said to her, “Go call your husband and come back here.”17 The woman replied, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “Right you are when you said, ‘I have no husband,’18 for you have had five husbands, and the man you are living with now is not your husband. This you said truthfully!” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you people say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”21 Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You people worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews.23 But a time is coming—and now is here—when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such people to be his worshipers.24 God is spirit, and the people who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (the one called Christ); “whenever he comes, he will tell us everything.”26 Jesus said to her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”

John 4:28–30 NET

28 Then the woman left her water jar, went off into the town and said to the people,29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Surely he can’t be the Messiah, can he?”30 So they left the town and began coming to him.

This is the story of the women at the well

We talked about it during the last message where I challenged you all to go and share the Gospel — just as this women did

But I want you to notice three things when it comes to identity and what this leads

No identity

The first thing I want you to notice is this:

Without God she had no identity

Without God this woman had no identity

We know that from a few key details we are told in the story

For starters she went to the well at midday — being in the desert no one would travel outside during midday

All the work that was done was always done during the morning and evening when it was cool

You never traveled during the day — yet this woman did

We also see that she had five husbands, and was now living with a man that was not her husband

She continued to chase men in an effort to find fulfillment and joy

She continued to seek what she thought was best in her eyes because she had no basis or identity

She even didn’t have identity in being from Samaria as like she noted Jews and Samaritans didn’t get long — yet she spoke to Jesus

If she had identity in being Samarian she would never have spoken to Jesus — yet she has no identity

She is constantly looking for approval

She was made in God’s image yet wasn’t showing God

Questions authority

The second thing we notice she does is

She questions Jesus’ authority

She questioned the authority of Jesus — or truth in that matter

People who have no identity and are far from God will challenge authority and truth from the Lord

Did you notice what she did?

She recognized Jesus as a prophet, someone from God yet she challenges what he says

She challenges which mountain to worship on

She challenges if He can provide water greater than their ancestor Jacob

She hears Jesus talk but rejects the truth that He speaks multiple times

Instead of accepting that He is the Messiah from the first time He is speaking she goes back and forth with Jesus

People who have no identity or those who are not following Jesus and missing out on the Image that God is calling them to be constantly rally against the truth

They look for anything that will validate their claim, and reject what goes against what they want to believe

Jesus gives identity

The last thing I want us to notice about this story is that

Jesus gives identity

When she accepts Jesus as Messiah she leaves the encounter to start calling everyone into town to hear what Jesus has to say

To acknowledge who Jesus is

When we meet Jesus and accept Him as savior we receive an identity — we are able to fulfill the image that God created us for

Paul says it this way

Galatians 2:20 NET

20 I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the life I now live in the body, I live because of the faithfulness of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

We are no longer ourselves

Instead we are God’s

We are meant to represent His nature and His glory

This is what happens to the woman — her questions are gone and she is simply seeking to have other people experience who God is

Conclusion

The reality is people are going to be fake or hypocritical

That is a reality of life that we cannot escape

But the easiest way to deal with that is to help them see that they are made in God’s image — they are created with a purpose

The easiest way to handle it is by sharing the Gospel with them

If you feel like you are constantly being tossed here and there by life stop and remember that you are God’s

You were bought with a price, given a job, and an identity

You are mean to bear His image