Be Honest! Series

Be Honest

1 John 1:8-2:11

Be honest with yourself about sin (1:8)

Be honest with God about sin (1:9-10)

Be honest about the Remedy for sin (2:1-2)

Be honest with yourself about your relationship with God (2:3-11)

Test yourself (2:3)

Test your Actions

Test your Affections

Slide

How honest are you?

I think most people think they are pretty honest.

But what if I hooked you up to a lie detector and asked you questions?

Would you be confident of your honesty then?

Moment of Truth Game Show

About 7 years ago there was a game show on called “Moment of Truth,” that did just that. They would hook people up to lie detectors and ask them questions and if they answered 21 questions honestly, they would win $500,000!

Sounds simple enough, no.

Well it turns out that there was nobody on the shows that aired that answered all 21 answers. They either stopped and took the money or the polygraph indicated thei response was false.

There was even one contestant that truthfully admitted to

cheating on her husband, and

admitted to thinking she should have married her ex boyfriend,

all while her husband was sitting there watching.

Obviously she wanted to create a crisis point in her marriage and make a lot of money doing it. But after answering those questions truthfully, she was asked the question,

“Do you believe you are a good person?”

Listen to how she responds and what the lie detector says.

Moment of Truth Video

Go back to first slide after video

And after cheating on her husband, after ruining her marriage, after saying she believes she should be married to her ex boyfriend, she answers the question “Does she believe she is a good person with…“Honestly, I think I am a good person.”

And the lie detector says False!

How can you get that wrong? I think the reality is that she was trying to convince herself of the lie that she was a good person, but in her subconscious she knew the truth, she was not a good person.

Transition to us

I think we all have to start being honest with ourselves at a deep level and stop believing lies that we may even be telling ourselves

Just like this person on the game show was outwardly believing a lie, but deep down knew the truth, but she was trying to convince herself otherwise.

I believe the lies we try to convince ourselves of are the source of many of the problems we see in our society. The depression, the anxiety, the addiction issues we face.

Now I am not saying this is the only source, but as our society says certain actions and lifestyles are alright, we try to believe them and convince ourselves they are ok, but at a deep level, because we have been created in the image of a holy God, there is a part of us that knows the truth, and living the lie and trying to believe the lie, has detrimental effects on us.

Jesus said that if we are truly his disciples and follow his teachings

Slide

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:32)

We need to start being honest with ourselves and believing the truth so we can be free.

Transition

Today, we are continuing on in our Series called Genuine Faith that is taking us through the letter of 1st John and we are going to see that John tells us the same thing, we need to

Be Honest

Slide

What do we need to be honest about?

We need to be honest about sin.

I think it is important for us to be honest about what sin is so we can believe truth and find freedom.

If we don’t recognize sin in our life and the destruction it causes, we will not be free and we will continue to be in bondage.

So let’s be honest about sin and be free from the bondage it brings.

Transition

Ok, so what is sin?

I think this is part of the problem. We have not identified sin correctly. Sure sin is the things we think are sin – murder, stealing, etc.

But sin is not just those things.

Sin is any disobedience to God and it does not just happen in our actions, but even more often it occurs in our heart.

We will talk about that more in a minute, but even beyond our acting wrong and thinking wrong, sin is also NOT doing the good things we know we should have done.

Slide

James 4:17 - Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.

Wow, if we include all of that in the category of sin, it sure becomes a lot easier to see that we are all sinners, to the very core of who we are.