Christian Posers
Christian Posers
Acts 5:1-11
1. INTRO:
Ø Hello, my name is Stephen Feild, and I am a poser.
Ø What is a poser?
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, PG, Ch.19, Start: 1:02:54, End: 1:07:38
The Big Idea: Are we who we pretend to be in every way, or are we at times posers?
Scene Setup: The Book of Peace has been stolen by the goddess of chaos. Sinbad is framed and sentenced to death. Proteus offers himself in exchange for Sinbad, who has ten days to return with the Book.
Scene: Eris will return the book if Sinbad will answer a question truthfully. It boils down to “will he return & die heroically if he fails. He lies to protect his heroic image. Sinbad says later in the scene that he was trying to "pass himself off as someone I'm not."
Application: Do we present ourselves as we want to be seen, or as we are? If you just told yourself that you present yourself just as you are, is there nothing about you that might surprise me if I knew?
Ø Opposite of being real is to be a poser, and doesn’t everybody hate Christian posers!?
2. Scripture, Acts 5:1-11; Mt 23:25-28
3. The Real Issue Isn’t Money, It’s Posing
Ø 1st let’s get clear on what this was NOT about.
Ø Not $$$, Nor their salvation (dying doesn’t remove redemption)
Ø What was the sin of Ananias & Saphira?
· “Lied to the Holy Spirit” – Who is the head of the church? Jesus! So to deceive His body is to lie to God.
· “Test the Spirit” – How far will God’s grace allow me to go? How close to self-lordship can I live?
· They’re Posers!, pretending 2B more sacrificial than they were.
Ø Would it have been different if they had lied about their QT’s, or exaggerated their fruit or their spiritual experiences, all to gain a rep they did not live out?
Ø Jesus called the strict leaders hypocrites. Strictness wasn’t the problem in itself. It was wanting to appear so “right.” Mt 23:25-28
Ø There was a clear & present danger that the church would become pharisaical; big on externals & lip service, short on real godliness.
Ø Is there any question that God’s concern was not well founded considering the state of the church today (& through her history)?
Ø A top core value found in some of our dusty official docs: Lives that reflect personal convictions that are shaped by the unerring truth of the Bible, seeking to minimize hypocrisy.
4. Why We Pose, and the Costs of Being Real
Ø Why do I pose? Ok, yeah, to gain that rep, but why? What does it reveal about the priority of values in our lives when we do that?
Ø I believe some of the things it reveals in my life are a preference for approval from men over approval from God, for ease over healing, (Confess… that you may be healed.).
Ø If you want people to think of you in a certain way, do you know the best way to achieve the reputation that you want? Be the kind of person you want them to think you are.
5. Responding to Our Hypocritical Posing
A. Recognize the Cost of Spiritual Posing
1. It harms the church
Ø Cancer kills more people than bullets. This is also true in the church through posing and it’s buddy legalism.
Ø Posers can become influential, meaning the wrong people are modeling faith for the rest of the church and for the world.
2. It robs us of life to the full
Ø Matthew 6:1, “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
Ø When we do it for men, what we receive from them is all the reward we get, and it is never enough. It wears us out and does not satisfy. God satisfies, but his timing and manner are harder for us to predict and to trust.
B. .Let’s Determine to Be Real With God & Each Other
Ø Do we hide our sins of commission & omission to gain a better rep than we deserve? Is that not the rot of Ananias & Sapphira?
Ø Do our lives back up our professions of faith? Do our actions give legs to all our prayers?
Ø What will the costs be to quit posing? (accountability, real change, loss of pet sins, embarrassment, ridicule by those who continue to be posers) Let’s decide to pay the price.
Ø “Great fear seized the whole church.” That is 1 desire I have for us today. Fear of being posers. Fear of that cancer in our church that would rob us of authenticity, making our “realness” just posing and leaving us following poser leaders. Fear that being a poser church would leave us powerless in the world which will never be impressed with gestures of service and hints of love, leaving them starving for a place where they can be truly fed spiritually, but quickly recognizing that we are not that place.
Ø If God killed everyone here who was pretending to be tighter with God than they really are, more devoted to His cause than they really are, would there be anyone left alive to bury the dead?
Ø I have a 2nd desired outcome today. That we would praise the God who as long as we live gives us unlimited chances to start anew, and reduce our hypocrisy gap. A Savior who loves us no matter how large that gap is. If we have realized today that our gap is larger and uglier than we imagined, then what does that say of God, who loved us just as much before we realized it?
Ø This leads me to another desired outcome for some of us. Maybe this has caused some to realize what the rest already have, that we will never be good enough for God on our own; that they need a Savior today.
Friday Night Lights, PG-13, Ch.27, Start: 1:28:51, End: 1:30:39
The Big Idea: What kind of perfection can we achieve in this area?
Scene Setup: In the town of Odessa, Texas, there are few opportunities in life. As a result, nothing is more important than football. It is halftime at the State Championships, and Odessa's Permian Cougars are being pummeled.
Scene: Coach Gaines explains the seriousness of the task, and then what type of perfection he asks that they can actually achieve no matter what their opponents do.
Application:
It is not the result, but the will to give it your all and tell the truth about what you have done.
We will never completely close the hypocrisy gap. We will grow in understanding what God’s holiness requires, and will constantly be trying to bring our lives into line. The question is this. Will we determine to give it our all and tell each other the truth about how we are really doing? Will we determine to quit posing?