Who We Are: Week 3 - You Hypoctite!

ICEBREAKER

So as you guys have pretty much guessed I am a MASSIVE NERD. I love Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Anime, and of course Comics. One of my favorite comics besides Green Arrow is of course …

Batman (show slide).

Batman would go and serve justice and make sure that the evil guy never got away. But see one of Batman’s main villains was a this man, who goes by the name of Two-Face. (show slide)

Here is the thing about Two-Face, as his name suggest that he had two different faces and each face represented two different personalities and the problem was you never knew which one you would get. The good side or the bad and when it came to make a decision it came down to the flip of a coin.

Sounds pretty crazy right if you run into Two-Face you never know if you will get Harvey Dent or his alter ego Two-Face, but here is the thing how often could the same be said about us.

MAIN MESSAGE

Here’s the thing if someone were to come up to you outside of church would they even know you were a Christian. And I’m not just talking about if you wear a shirt that has a cross on it, or an I Love Jesus bumper sticker, if you would interact with someone outside of church would the light of Christ shine through? Or would you be someone who looks and acts just like the world?

ARE YOU REFLECTING CHRIST IN YOUR LIFE?

Jesus talks about this very idea on what we like to call the Sermon on the Mount when we says this: Matthew 5:13-16

Matthew 5:13–16 NLT

“You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless. “You are the light of the world—like a city on a hilltop that cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a basket. Instead, a lamp is placed on a stand, where it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.

Jesus loves to use imagery to put his point across, especially using items that mean a lot to the people He is speaking too. In this case it is salt and a lamp.

I mean what is the big deal with salt, we just use it to make food taste good, but see back then salt was so much more important. Salt was a necessity. See they weren't fancy like we are today, they didn’t have a fridge or freeze to keep food from spoiling, but they have salt. See they could use salt to to help preserve their food especially their meat to make sure that it did go bad. So when Jesus started talking about salt losing its flavor everyone’s ears perked up because if salt were to lose its flavor that would be a very bad thing, because salt was so important that people would even use it to buy things. But here is the thing salt cant lose its flavor it’s just not possible.

And I mean we do understand the importance of light, while we have electricity , they had oil lamps and if you had an oil lamp if you were to put it under a basket, not only might it make the whole room go dark, but odds are that the very dry and woven with very flammable martial would then catch on fire which would lead to another problem.

See Jesus used two two very unrealistic ideas or in the one case impossible idea to help prove a point. The point is what we see in verse 16: Matthew 5:16

Matthew 5:16 NLT

In the same way, let your good deeds shine out for all to see, so that everyone will praise your heavenly Father.

Jesus is proving the point that if someone is one of His followers than just as it would be crazy for salt to lose its flavor or you were to put a lamp under a basket, a Christian’s good deeds should be able to be seen, because they are living their lives reflecting Christ.

So I have a question for you: Are You Reflecting Christ in Your Life?

This very question may seem harsh to think about, but it is one that honestly we should be asking ourselves daily. And as you guys know I was just at a conference in Lynchburg called Refuel, one of the speakers named Greg Surratt had this to say:

Our country is in need of more reflectors of the image of God

Greg Surratt

Greg was talking about our identity as ministry leaders, but he also made a very clear point, that just because you might not be a pastor or serve in full-time ministry that does not mean you are not called to ministry. This because we are all called to share the Gospel with others and one of the best ways we can do that is by being a reflector of the image of God.

APPLICATION

Now I know that this is not an easy message while you might be thinking Jordan this is a tough message to hear, it is just as hard to preach because while there might be some thinking, “Are you just preaching to me right now” I am also preaching directly to myself.

This idea of acting one way in church and the other in the world is one I wish I had heard when I was a student. This is because I was that person. I would go to church and act one way and then go to home and to school the next and act completely different. See I would go to church and act “holy” yet that was just one day out of 7, then the other 6 days I would give into sin and my addictions. See when I was a student and not a high school student by the way, but a middle school student, I had an addiction to pornography and on top of that I never stood for those who were in need or even just act like a Christian. I would tell some pretty bad jokes, wouldn’t stand up for those getting bullied, or I got even better one I would judge other Christians when they were not acting like Christians outside of church, when I was doing the exact same thing, but maybe not as bad as they were.

See this message is two fold: One is the idea that we shouldn’t act one way at church and another outside of church, but the other one is this, we shouldn’t judge others for their mistakes.

WE ARE NOT PERFECT

Look how Jesus responds to a situation regarding this very issue: John 8:2-11

John 8:2–11 NLT

but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?” They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust. When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?” “No, Lord,” she said. And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

Before we even get into the hypocritical nature of the Pharisees, look at the fact that there is only one person brought before Jesus, the woman. But if she was caught in the act of adultery, the thing is adultery takes two, yet they left the man their and only brought the woman, which shows they didn’t even care about the sin they just wanted to stump Jesus.

Yet Jesus knows their hearts and knows what they are trying to do yet He flips it right back to them. He challenges their own sin. He calls them out for focusing and judging this woman instead of take a hard look into their own lives and taking care of the sin in their lives. How often do we do the same though, we look at the sin of others completely ignoring what we have done in our own lives. Look at this quote by Martin Luther, a man who yes was the namesake of MLK, but also was a man who challenged the status quo of the church during his life.

Therefore he does not tolerate the hypocritical Christians who consider it sufficient for them to believe that they are Christians, remain in sins and filth, and are not changed.

Martin Luther (Founder of the German Reformation)

And while Luther has a great quote what does the Bible even say about this idea: Matthew 7:1-5

Matthew 7:1–5 NLT

“Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye.

Then if we go near the end of the Bible, look what it says in 1 John 2:3-4

1 John 2:3–4 NLT

And we can be sure that we know him if we obey his commandments. If someone claims, “I know God,” but doesn’t obey God’s commandments, that person is a liar and is not living in the truth.

See this whole idea is extremely important because when someone see any one of us out in the world and they know that we are Christians, they are going to watch us very closely, but not to see the good that is happening, but to watch and see when we will slip up because that will then confirm how they view Christians, hypocrites that don’t follow the standard that they hold others too.

Now I am not saying that we are not going to make mistakes and that we need to act like a perfectionist, because there is only one person who could do that and it was Jesus. So if you slip up it is OK, but John shows us exactly what we need to do when that happens: 1 John 1:8-10

1 John 1:8–10 NLT

If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.

So this idea that we get from 1 John is something that I really want you guys to understand: We Are Not Perfect.

See because we know that we are not perfect means that we should then not expect perfection from those around us. We will slip up, but it is how you respond to that slip up that matters. What will you do when you sin again?

CHALLENGE

So as you might have noticed at the beginning the notes don’t look like they normally do and that was on purpose. See I have these questions with blanks next to them and I want you to fill them out as we finish out tonight. See because as we just talked about with the last point, we are not perfect and even though we are not perfect does not mean that we should stop trying to be reflectors of Christ. So these questions are going to help you take an inventory of your actions just this past week or so and I want to challenge you to be honest with yourself because if you would say that you have not sinned even this past week, I want to say the same thing John did and that’s to stop fooling yourself.

So while you are taking time to get the filled out to help get you ready for your small group there is this video that I want to share with you. It is a spoken word done by Jeff Bethke and it is titled “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus”. This challenged me when I was a student about how I viewed Christianity and my walk with Jesus and it changed how I viewed everything.

(Show Video)

So before we break for small groups let me pray.