11/12/2006 Authentic - Being the Real Deal!

One year ago here in this pulpit, I spoke about becoming a triple AAA church, and a triple AAA Believer! It was my goal to define a way of living as a follower of Jesus Christ that God has impressed on my heart as pleasing to Him. I am using that term as it would be used about a quality bond in the investment world. A savvy investor looks for the rating and chooses the best! These concepts are so important, I am going to talk about them again! Some of you will remember some of these ideas. A few of you might remember most of them, but most of you will have forgotten most of them. I will be talking about being Authentic, about being Accepting, and about being Accelerating.

Would you say those three words with me, please?

• Authentic - a Believer who has integrity.

• Accepting - a Believer who loves others like Jesus,

• Acclerating - a Believer who encourages growth in others.

Pretending is fun when we’re kids, right? With minimal props, a little boy can become Superman or the Lone Ranger. If he’s a little older, he can slip into the cool mode and become a rock star, at least in his own eyes. Of course, we big boys get tempted to do that every now and then, don’t we? Put me behind the wheel of my new red car with a pair of sunglasses and I can become Dale Earnhardt, Jr. Just ask Bev! But I know I’m not a NASCAR driver and don’t really try to make anyone think that I am.

The issue of pretending, while harmless in our childhood and our daydreams, is deadly when it invades everyday life. Jesus called pretending in real life by an ugly name - hypocrisy. He pointed out this sin in the lives of some religious leaders of His time, and His words still carry their sting. Take a look.

Text - Matthew 23:1-11; 23-24, 25-26

Integrity, that is a unity of person, is a basic quality of an authentic person. We admire integrity and we want those who are around us to be honest people, don’t we? We realize that a person who allows himself to be a fake in one area, is not trustworthy in any area!

Last week when we learned of the sins of Ted Haggard, the pastor of the mega-church in Colorado, we knew his dismissal was justified, even though he was a great preacher. The man behind the message could not be ignored. His lack of integrity was reason for dismissal.

The fact is that we live in an age when many people confuse image with integrity. Often the greater desire is for looking good, rather than actually being good! We live in a culture that is focused a great deal on ‘image,’ on external appearances. We want to wear the right fashion, drive the right car, send our kids to the right schools, to look good... But Jesus says that has no place in His Church or in the lives of those who are his followers!

The challenge I’d like to present to you today is a call

∙ to live counter-culturally,

∙ to become a person who strives to be authentic,

∙ to be the ‘real deal.’

Text- Matthew 6:1-8; 16-18

READ

The Message says, “Be especially careful when you are trying to be good

so that you don’t make a performance out of it!”

The number one criticism of Christians, both fairly and unfairly, involves HYPOCRISY - the very opposite of AUTHENTICITY.

We are not hypocrites because we fail and sin! If that were true then we’re all done in! I sin, you sin. “There is none righteous, not one!” the Scripture says.

Hypocrisy results when we fail to live up to what we profess and won’t admit it.

I don’t think most people expect Christ-followers to live without mistakes or even inconsistencies. We are working out the implications of what we are taught by Jesus all the time. The accusation of hypocrisy arises when our pride stops us from admitting our sins and our mistakes. Believer, if we want the value and trust that comes from authenticity, then when our rhetoric is unmatched by the reality of our day to day actions, we must admit our inconsistency and commit ourselves to closing the gap!

Jesus wants us to be AUTHENTIC, faithful and honest, not only before our world, but also in our relationship to God. That is underscored time and again in His teaching. As I pointed out in the introduction of this message, He reserved his strongest condemnation, not for those who were outwardly the worst sinners, but for those who carefully hid their sins under outward pretense of goodness! He preferred to spend his ministry time with those who were honest about their spiritual need and he was attacked for it!

Matthew 9:9-13 As Jesus was going down the road, he saw Matthew sitting at his tax-collection booth. “Come, be my disciple,” Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed him.

That night Matthew invited Jesus and his disciples to be his dinner guests, along with his

fellow tax collectors and many other notorious sinners. The Pharisees were indignant.

“Why does your teacher eat with such scum?” they asked his disciples.

When he heard this, Jesus replied, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do.” Then he added, “Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to be merciful; I don’t want your sacrifices.’

For I have come to call sinners, not those who think they are already good enough.”

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Jesus was ‘soft on sin!’ His intent was NEVER to excuse one sets of sin while denouncing another. He was concerned about the dishonesty of the tax collectors and the immorality of the prostitutes. He confronted them about the need to change their ways and extended the grace of God to them with the challenge of learning to live differently in the power of the Holy Spirit.

But Jesus was deeply offended by anyone who was more interested in making a good impression than in actually being good! He was critical of the Pharisees, not because they were scrupulous about being good, but because they were content to let their hearts remain full of sin, under cover of a great religious act! He noted that they saw their own financial dishonesty, for example, as being merely ‘shrewd.’ They despised the poor and the weak, believing that their plight was the result of God’s judgement! Jesus condemned them for their willingness to misuse their authority to oppress the poor, to exploit the weak; sins to which they were completely blind.

I am concerned that I might easily become a 21^st century Pharisee!

What might Jesus say to those of us who are so careful about external things but so unconcerned about having holy hearts?

For example--

∙ We would never sleep with another woman, but we’ll watch TV and virtually drool over the women on the screen in the privacy of our living room.

∙ We wouldn’t think of robbing a bank, but we’ll cheat on our tax return.

∙ We guard our speech against profanity - but talk angrily to people who don’t serve us as we think they ought to!

∙ We will make a great show of attending church, but criticize and attack other people in the church or the Pastor the moment they disappoint us.

Those things and a hundred like them are evidence of a failure of authenticity, a lack of integrity.

THINK - We have not necessarily reached the level of ‘authentic Christianity’ just because we are socially acceptable even to our church friends.

Authentic faith reaches the core of our being, to our very values system. We will not be living an authentic Christian life IF we are content to measure ourselves on the scales of comparison to others! The only evaluation that really matters is that of God Himself. We are foolish if we comfort ourselves by saying, “I must be a good disciple, an authentic person, for I’m better than this one, or that one. I don’t do this or that!”

Jesus told a story about a man who measured his spirituality wrongly.

(Luke 18:9-14, The Message)

"He told his next story to some who were complacently pleased with themselves over their moral performance and looked down their noses at the common people: “Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax man.

The Pharisee posed and prayed like this: ‘Oh, God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, crooks, adulterers, or, heaven forbid, like this tax man. I fast twice a week and tithe on all my income.’

“Meanwhile the tax man, slumped in the shadows, his face in his hands, not daring to look up, said, ‘God, give mercy. Forgive me, a sinner.’ ”

Jesus commented, “This tax man, not the other, went home made right with God. If you walk around with your nose in the air, you’re going to end up flat on your face, but if you’re content to be simply yourself, you will become more than yourself.” "

An authentic Christian is a work in progress - always learning, always responding as the Lord leads him/her into a deeper place of devotion. It is intensely personal!

What is the catalyst for this growth?

Authenticity never flows from a need for the approval of other people. It must come from a heart deep desire to know and to please God!

Authenticity is accomplished in us by a combination of factors.

∙ We must experience God’s grace. Through faith in Christ we are born anew, and a process of transformation of our person begins. We can never be authentically living in the image of God until His Spirit life gives us life!

∙ Flowing from that desire there will come a lively conversation with the Holy Spirit.

“Lord, what are you asking of me today? Lord, speak, for I am listening!”

In Romans 8 Paul tells us that [13-15]

... if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”

Believer, God, the Spirit, wants to guide you and me on an ADVENTURE, every day presenting us with

new opportunities, steadily deepening our relationship.

∙ We will also be engaged in the study of the Bible, the Word of God. Our study won’t just be about accumulating knowledge about the Bible as important as that might be. It will be about knowing the Bible well enough that God can use it to speak to us about Himself, His purposes, His plans.

James 1:22-25 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 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; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was.

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.

∙ To protect us against self-deception, God calls us into community. We are to live among other Believers, sharing our lives, our hearts, our thoughts, and our worship. From this regular interaction, we urge each other to greater devotion - or at least we should! Proverbs says that we ‘sharpen each other!’ Hebrews 12:15 says- "Look after each other so that none of you will miss out on the special favor of God.’

∙ Authenticity demands humility that allows us to admit our failures - to God and to others! That humility, the Bible says, is the doorway to re-creation! In 1 John 1:8-10 we find this great promise:

If we say we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and refusing to accept the truth.

But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong. If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.

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A Christianity that is authentic, that really effects our day to day lives, is not only God’s will for you and me.

It will make His church beautiful!

Believer, God’s desire for Washington Assembly is this kind of authenticity. Nothing we do, individually and as a church body, should be done to impress anyone, or because ‘it is a good way to attract a crowd.’ I want us to be people who do everything solely for the glory of God - to the extent that imperfect human beings can live that way.

∙ I am calling on each one of us to commit ourselves to an examined life that let’s the Spirit reveal our blind spots!

∙ I am urging each on us who lead ministries in this church, to re-examine the motives of your ministry. Do you do what you do to lift up Jesus Christ, and to encourage those to whom you minister to be open to God’s great and exciting work in their lives? Ministry done for any other reason will be flawed.

I believe that God has set it in my heart to lead us, as a church, to AUTHENTIC Christianity! It’s an adventure, not something to fear. Living real will certainly have the appearance of being messy, but the results will be beyond challenge, for lives will be transformed by the Spirit, the Word, and the Fellowship.

Are you willing to let God put you to service in His work?

Are you willing to let yourself be worn, used, and - in the process - lose the pretensions that keep you from being

an authentic Believer, loved and loving?

In that ‘real-ness’ an indescribable beauty is released.

God make us real! Amen