Fracture
Part 2- The Revival of Authenticity
Sermon #141
Pastor Ryan Akers
As the Scriptures say, “No one is righteous—not even one. No one is truly wise; no one is seeking God. All have turned away, all have become useless. No one does good, not a single one.” “Their talk is foul, like the stench from an open grave. Their tongues are filled with lies.” “Snake venom drips from their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” “They rush to commit murder. Destruction and misery always follow them. They don’t know where to find peace.” “They have no fear of God at all.” Obviously, the law applies to those to whom it was given, for its purpose is to keep people from having excuses, and to show that the entire world is guilty before God. For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are. Romans 3:10-19
What a powerful truth to the depravity or the sinfulness of man and his need for a Savior. None of us are righteous, meaning none of us are right with God. Our natural sinful nature does not and cannot seek God and His salvation. All of us are guilty of sin. And there is nothing we, by our own abilities, can do about it.
Some will push works. That if you have works, if you are a good person, if you serve others and pay your taxes then you will be saved. As if by the works that you do will somehow impress God or cause him to have sympathy for you. This scripture is clear. Without a savior we are lost. “For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands.” The law or the commands of God that are laid out before us in the old and new testaments are impossible to follow perfectly. The law is there to help us realize our sinfulness. It wakes us to the truth that without the cross we are condemned. Without the gift of grace and forgiveness, regeneration and repentance we are doomed to suffocate under our own sinfulness. Sounds bleak. And it is for those who refuse to be hearers and doers of God’s Word. But it is also incredibly powerful and wonderful and freeing. It is wonderful that I no longer have to try to get to heaven by what I do. It is not by what I do, it’s not by the works that I perform. It’s wonderful that God is offering me eternal life as a free gift. That if I repent and believe in Jesus I am saved for eternity.
When the righteousness of Christ is imputed or put on me then the result is faith. The Holy Spirit now dwells in me guiding me, convicting me, granting me spiritual gifts, which are to be used to edify the body of Christ. With faith comes obedience and the desire and the drive and the longing or however you want to say it to do good works not for our own personal glory, or to get another crown in heaven but for His glory. And so that the gospel message can be spread at your jobs, and through out Warren County and through Missouri and America and to the ends of the earth.
The world says, “I don’t go to church today because the church is full of hypocrites.” To which I would say, “you are right.” The church is full of people who are play-acting. They preach one thing and live another. They sing songs about God’s redeeming love, his amazing grace, and his victory at the cross. They cry out Change my heart o God, but then they live a life outside of this building that causes God to weep.
Mark 7:6 Jesus says, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote, ‘these people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”
Christ gave the Pharisees a really hard time because these guys were stuck on the law. The law was king. They loved the law so much that they didn’t think God had done enough so they added 600 more laws on top of the laws that God commanded them to obey. They believed they were righteous and they were holy but they wouldn’t believe that someone else outside of their circle could also be made righteous.
They prayed publicly, not to glorify God and to come humbly before His throne but to be seen by men. They added the laws to look good. They believed in works more than faith. They believed they were made good in God’s sight because of their works.
But this is where Christ and His church differentiates between Mormons, Jehovah’s witnesses, Judaism, Hinduism, Islam on and on. Christianity is different because it doesn’t begin with man’s goodness but with man’s wickedness. The word of God is a testimony of our sin. That none of us are righteous, none of us are good. (Go Back to Scripture).
Article- California gay marriage vote still undecided- example of our natural depravity.
So let me get this straight. Homosexuality should be legal, babies can be aborted, people can be helped with assisted suicide and possession of drugs is now okay as long as you don’t get caught. All of that is okay and good, but dog racing and keeping chickens in cramped cages is a crime? Does anyone else see how perverse and backwards this is? Family, life is this way because of our sin. These kinds of decisions and policies are put in place because of our sin. Because we allow our sin to control the decisions we make to run a country instead of letting God and His authority and his wisdom run it. Man is inherently evil not good. None of us are righteous no not one.
Ephesians 2:1 says, “Once you were dead because of your disobedience and your many sins.”
Christians are looked at as hypocrites from the world’s eyes because we do the same thing with God’s truth. We take the commands of God and turn them into principles. Preaching from the pulpit that if you obey these commands you will now be a good person. The law of God is not there to reveal to us how holy we are it is there to show us how evil we are. One pastor says, “This is the purpose of the law: to kill us, or better, to show us how dead we are.” We are getting it wrong. We are taking the laws of God and saying, “God is giving you 5 ways to better your sex life, 6 ways to be a better parent, 4 ways to better your finances.” We have turned it into a book of life principles rather than what it really is, a picture into the deceitfulness and evil of man and his sin but the hope and the assurance that sin has been overcome because of what Jesus did on the cross. That he took on sins so that none would perish but all who call on his name would repent and believe and will be saved. We cannot attain holiness by our own efforts. We cannot get close to God because of our works. We are holy only because of what Christ Jesus did on the cross.
Before we were believers we were sick without knowing it. Mark 2:17 says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” We began as sick but Christ made us holy. Does that mean we no longer are sinners. No, we are still sinners. Here is another area where we are getting it wrong. When we believe in Christ and our blinders are lifted there is a great temptation to now declare ourselves holy. We are righteous and what that does is it build’s pridefulness in us. We begin to say you are not holy because you look like this and dress like this and smell like this. You are not worthy to come here and be in our presence. We begin to, like the Pharisees did, elevate the law of do’s and don’t above the gospel of grace and peace.
And when we become like that we are looked at as hypocrites. Our faith is shallow. We may be saved but we have fallen back into sin because we have not understood that the righteous person must continue to seek repentance everyday of their lives. We are only righteous because the righteousness of Chris is on us but we are still sinful and must seek repentance. Every Sunday we come together to make the public declaration of our sinfulness. We pray together, “Father I have sinned against you in thought, word and deed.” We recognize that without Christ we are nothing. A church that lives like that is a church that the lost will be drawn too. To avoid hypocrisy we must confess sin everyday.
We don’t speak like we are holy and act like we are not, we confess sin and then rejoice together that we are forgiven of our sin. And then when we rejoice in the Lord’s forgiveness you know what happens? We begin to act and do good works of love for our neighbor. We begin to elevate others above ourselves. Phil. 2:3 says, “Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.” They will be genuine and God will bless them because we are working to be the light and salt in a way that glorifies Christ instead of ourselves and the Holy Spirit will do a work in our lives through those works that we cannot help but do because of Christ and the Spirit will draw men to himself through our obedience. It is a beautiful thing. The church will be filled not because men were drawn by gimmicks and rock concert music and giveaways and technology but because they were drawn by the Holy Spirit of God through men who recognized their sinfulness.
They will be drawn to how we live our lives not for our glory but for the glory of God the Father. They will want what we have. And God will give us opportunity through our obedience and the Spirit moving through us to reach out and share the gospel message and to help lead sinners to salvation. It works perfectly. It is the best growth strategy there is for the church. I promise when we put it into practice no outside man made church growing methodology will ever be needed. And it is what James was desperately desiring for the believer’s of his day to understand. It’s why we desperately need to go deep into this letter. Eventually. ☺
The author of this book, James, was the brother of Jesus himself. Why is that significant? Because we know that Christ own family denied his divinity. Mark 3:20-21 says, One time Jesus entered a house, and the crowds began to gather again. Soon he and his disciples couldn’t even find time to eat. 21 When his family heard what was happening, they tried to take him away. “He’s out of his mind,” they said. And John 7:5 says, “For even his brothers didn’t believe in him.”
This truth makes the fact that James is now not only a disciple of his brother Jesus the Christ but James is also believed to have been one of the main Christian leaders in the Jerusalem church. A powerful conversion took place in his life after the ascension of Christ. His faith in his brother and Lord would see his life end by being thrown from the temple, stoned, beheaded and beaten with a club. James had a heart for the poor. He took on controversial social issues of his day and was very outspoken against the wealthy and religious elite.
This is a book that speaks to Wesleyan’s since the Wesleyan denomination was birthed through social issues. Where the united Methodist Church was pro-slavery and anti-women’s rights and other social issues, a group of believer’s separated themselves to form what would become the Wesleyan Church because they felt slavery was a sin against God and women had rights equal to men among other issues. Wesleyan have historically gravitated towards this book as James is the self appointed caretaker of the poor and was an outspoken person on the social issues of his day. He was not afraid to take on and challenge the religious elite so that the gospel of Christ could be preached.
James had great concern for the church and he was concerned about the problems that were facing the Christian community of his day. These problems brought about a shallow faith in other believers. James writes this letter in order to give Christians of his day and Christian’s today practical instruction on how to live as Christians. The poor were greatly persecuted by the rich and the church was made up primarily of the poor. Also the command was to help those who are poor such as the widows and the orphans. This belief caused persecution from the wealthy religious elite who saw the poor as basically worthless. James wanted the Christians to trust God fully by giving and living their lives for Him completely in practical ways.
He writes this letter to stress authenticity in matters of faith and practice. He urges his readers to actually be what they claim to be. He teaches that authentic faith is likely going to be greeted with poverty, suffering, and severe trials in the present world. And that these circumstances are part of the test of our faith to determine its authenticity and to enable us to mature and grow in Christ.
One author says, “James calls the bluff of any who claim the mantle of religious faith but whose lives fall short in living it out. James fearlessly confronts the hypocrisy and pretense of his own day, and in so doing confronts those of the modern church as well.”
He earnestly fights against what is known as “double-mindedness.” Double mindedness is basically the combination of half-hearted commitment to God with the presence of human desire. So James wants to get us back to “true religion”. What does an authentic believer in Christ, a humble believer in Christ look like? Over the next weeks we are going to tackle that question by doing what James did. Confront the sins or the barriers that are causing us to right now have a half hearted commitment to Christ. If you want to know why God feels so far away then lets talk about the sin that is controlling your life. God cannot be where sin is and if sin is gripping you right now then you are either not saved or you have backslid and you need to confront the barrier that is hurting your relationship with the Father. What are the barriers we will be tackling over the next 11 weeks? They are the barriers of trials, hearing and doing, favoritism, easy faith, the tongue, double mindedness, judging others, presumption, materialism, impatience, and impiety.
Finally, what do I need to do right now? Repent. Repent and ask God to come back into your life. And pray a very difficult prayer. “Father, please reveal in me the sins that are separating me from you.” That will be difficult because it means we have to confront our own weaknesses and cut them out. If you don’t know Christ today I would love to pray with you and speak to you about having a relationship with Jesus after the service. His grace is enough. He will forgive us all sins. These next weeks will be challenging to hear. I pray God will reveal things in us, sins in us that have been locked up and buried for years. That they will be revealed and we will, by the grace of God overcome them. That we will be free to live our lives without the burden of sin because we will have finalized realized that our sins were conquerored on the cross. Now we can live our lives not as hypocrites, play actors, but authentic. We need to pray for a revival of authenticity amongst God’s people so that the spirit will use us to draw men to him. Have you let him forgive you today? His grace is enough. His grace is amazing. Would you stand?
Prayer
Closing song- amazing grace- chris tomlin
