SERIES TOPIC: Reality

SERMON TITLE: Let’s Quit Pretending

SERMON TEXT: Genesis 3:1-8; Revelation 3:14-18; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

 

Have you ever experienced a disastrous victory or a magnificent defeat?  In my thirty plus years of serving God, I have experienced some soul-diminishing successes and some life-enhancing failures. [Restatement of something written by Brennan Manning]

                                                                                                     

There have been times…

  • When the presence of God was more real to me than the clothes on my back;
  • Times when the Word penetrated my soul like lightening and thunder;
  • Times when it seemed I could do nothing wrong.

There have been other times…

  • When I couldn’t seem to get anything right;
  • When, in spite of all my efforts, failure prevailed;
  • Times when the Word was as bland as unseasoned sausage and
  • God seemed a million miles away.

It is my observation that when things are going well we tend to think of God as being interested in us and taking pleasure in us.  In such moments we feel the warmth of His smile.  On the other hand, when some important project or endeavor goes south…

  • a great Sunday morning  is followed by a devastating Sunday evening;
  • a satisfying accomplishment is eclipsed by a devastating loss;
  • a peaceful evening is shattered by a life threatening crisis.

In those moments we tend to feel that God is displeased with us and that He is expressing His displeasure by withdrawing His blessings and His presence.   

 

Without realizing it we project our attitudes and feelings about ourselves onto God—this is how I feel about myself, so this is how God must feel about me.

 

Blaise Pascal said it this way: “God made man in His own image and man returned the compliment.”

  • If we dislike ourselves, then we assume God dislikes us also. 
  • If we view ourselves as failures, then we assume that God views us as failures. 

We are wrong to presume that God sees us as failures or dislikes us because that’s the way we see ourselves.

 

The incarnate Christ revealed to us what God is like and what He thinks about us.  He revealed that God is passionately in love with us—not in spite of our sins and faults, but with them. 

 

 

Please note, I am not suggesting that God condones sin.  What I am saying is that He does not withhold His love because of our sin!

 

ILLUS: Daniel, a lively five-year-old boy, was misbehaving in front of the pastor.  His embarrassed mother didn’t want to make a big scene, so instead of applying the board of education to the seat of learning she said, “Daniel, God doesn’t love you when you act like that.”

 

The pastor called Daniel over and after giving him a big hug, he said, “Daniel, God doesn’t always like the way we behave, but He always loves us!”

 

God didn’t save us so He could love us.  No!  God saved us because he loved us.

 

Paul tells us that “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Ro. 5:8; NLT).

 

How would Daniel’s mother’s statement affect us if we believed it?  What if we believe that God only loves us when we do right?

                                                        

Well, we would feel loved and accepted when we are on top of our game and in control; when our life is together.  But what happens when life falls apart? 

  • What happens when we sin and fail God?
  • What happens when dreams shatter?
  • What happens when we realize we have participated in gossip?
  • What happens when we are forced to face our human condition with all of its frailties, failings and faults?

I have found that even the most optimistic optimist can be positively pessimistic about pessimist. 

 

It’s always easier to reject that which is flawed.    So we…

  • We abort our baby on the chance that it may be hydrocephalic or have Downs Syndrome!
  • We major on the failures in others and do our best to distance ourselves from them!
  • We escape to our little kingdom where everything is neat and tidy.

But what happens when the fault or failing is found in us and not someone else?  What happens when…

  • It’s your marriage that is falling apart?
  • It’s your son that is rebelling against his parents and God?
  • It’s your daughter that has come home pregnant?

Like the couple from Eden, we may choose to wear fig leaves and hide behind trees.  In contemporary terms, we flee reality by manufacturing a false self which is admirable and superficially happy.  We put on spiritual makeup that is designed to cover our flawed condition and make us presentable.  We impress ourselves by talking the language of faith and love and joy.  We call those things that are not as though they were, while all the while refusing to acknowledge those things that are.  We work and labor and sweat and toil and war against the unholy lest we be found wanting.

 

Thomas Merton said, “The reason we never enter into the deepest reality of our relationship with God is that we so seldom acknowledge our utter nothingness before Him.”

 

Fake it ‘till you make it Christianity doesn’t impress God and robs us!

 

God is not impressed with our fig leaves.  He is not impressed with…

  • our reputation in the Christian Community;
  • our wealth;
  • our attempts at faith!

To the contrary, the Psalmist tells us that…

Psalm 34:18 The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saves such as be of a contrite spirit.

Psalm 51:17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

 

Jesus declared…

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness for they shall be filled. (Mt. 5:3, 4, 6)

The “poor in spirit” and the “mourners” are pretenders who have come to the end of themselves and are aware of their great need.  Those who are satisfied will never mourn and neither will they hunger and thirst.

 

Peter exhorts us to…

1 Peter 5:5 …be clothed with humility: for God resists the proud, and gives grace to the humble. [God sets himself against the proud, but He shows favor to the humble.]

 

It takes humility to put off our self-made coverings and stand naked before Almighty God, but this kind of ruthless admission is the key to God’s favor. 

 

Some of us are one moment away for our greatest encounter with God and that moment will commence with simple honesty!  It will fall on us like a spring downpour when we take our fig leaf off and step out from behind the tree where we’ve been hiding.  It will come down on us when we admit…

  • I’m not God!
  • I’m not perfect!
  • I am weak, but Thou art strong!
  • I am wretched, poor, blind and naked!
  • Apart from you I can do nothing!
  • I admit my unbelief!

God isn’t impressed with our fig leaves or the bushes we hide behind.  Besides, we are foolish to believe that He cannot see past all our self-made coverings.  If anything, He is saddened by our foolish attempts at faking

  • faith and
  • love and
  • holiness and
  • worship and
  • prayer. 

 

Like the couple in Eden, we would do well to drop our fig leaf and step out from behind the bush where we have found cover. 

 

We must come to see and acknowledge that…

  • Covering our sin with religious deeds is not the same as standing in His righteousness.
  • Hiding behind the language of faith isn’t the same as having faith.
  • Giving our body to be burned doesn’t necessarily mean we are filled with love.

 

God’s word to the Church is “Get Real!” 

 

·         David, after his affair with Bathsheba, lived in the grip of tremendous emotional pain until he confessed his sin to God.

·         Peter lived in a weeping place until Jesus dealt with the festering sore caused by his denial.

·         The Church at Laodicea remained needy until it acknowledged its need for God and His provisions.

 

The exhortation of Scripture isn’t, “fake it ‘till you make it,” but, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1Jn. 1:9).

 

We cannot change what we do not acknowledge. 

Whatever we deny cannot be healed. 

God cannot touch what we conceal.

Jesus cannot walk into our midst until we admit He is absent and we open the door.

 

Hiding doesn’t change our condition.  It keeps us from the One who can bring healing to our life.

 

It is when we admit our poverty and emptiness that we create the free space into which Christ can pour the healing power of His presence.

 

The decision to come out of hiding is a good one.  It is the beginning of a lifetime of healing and joy.  According to Brennan Manning, it enables us to “stand in the Truth that sets us free and live out of the Reality that makes us whole.”

 

Christianity is not about pretence, but about humble admission of our need for God’s grace provisions.  When we put off our fig leaves and abandon our hiding place, God offers to cover our nakedness with white raiment so that the shame of our nakedness will not be seen. (See Rev. 3:18.)

 

So what do we lose if we finish life as a successful pretender?  It would mean that…

  • our happiness was a fantasy;
  • our joy was imaginary;
  • our faith was make believe;
  • our hope was pie in the sky;
  • our love was a charade;
  • our righteousness a cheap costume;
  • our crown a worthless piece of plastic with glass jewels;
  • and the fruit in our life was nothing more than paste on imitations.

In his 1965 song, Positively 4th Street, Bob Dylan sang:

 

You've Gotta Lotta Nerve To Say You Are My Friend

When I Was Down You Just Stood There Grinnin'

You've Gotta Lotta Nerve To Say You Have A Helping Hand To Lend

You Just Want To Be On The Side That's Winnin'

 

I Know The Reason You Talked Behind My Back

I Used To Be Among The Crowd You're In With

But Do You Take Me For Such A Fool, To Think I'd Make Contact

With The One Who Tries To Hide What He Don’t Know To Begin With?

 

You Say I've Let You Down - Ya Know Its Not Like That

If You're So Hurt, Why Then Doncha Show It?

You Say You've Lost Your Faith, But That’s Not Where Its At

Ya Have No Faith To Lose - An' Ya Know It

 

Succeeding as a pretender would be a disastrous soul-diminishing success.  It would be the equivalent of the prodigal succeeding in business and being able to sustain himself in the far country.  The best thing that happened to him was the poverty that brought him to his senses.  It was a life-enhancing failure that brought him home to Father.

 

What about you and me?  Isn’t it about time we quit living make-believe Christian lives? Isn’t it time to put off our fig leaves and quit pretending? 

  • There’s no need to fake faith when God is willing to give us the real thing! 
  • There’s no need to pretend we are filled with the Spirit.
  • There’s no need to imitate the gifts of the Spirit, when God is more than willing to manifest himself in our lives.

If we are willing to humble ourselves and admit we have been faking it, then God will draw near to us with His provisions and give us…

  1. real hope and
  2. real peace and
  3. real faith[1] and
  4. real love[2] and
  5. real gifts and
  6. real fruit and
  7. genuine joy.

In the words of Soren Kierkegaard, “There are…only two ways open to us:

  1. to honestly and honorably make an admission of how far we are from the Christianity of the New Testament, or
  2. to perform skillful tricks to conceal the true situation.” [3]

PRAYER
God, I’m an imposter.  I’ve been faking faith and love and holiness and peace and tongues, and all the while pretending I’ve had the real thing.  I now stand before you naked and blind and poor and miserable. I ask you to cover my nakedness, heal my blindness, and give me gold tried in the fire.  I realize that it is not your will for me to live a life of pretence, but that you want me to know

·         real peace,

·         real faith,

·         real joy,

·         real love,

·         real righteousness,

·         real justification,

·         real communion with you,

·         real empowerment of the Holy Spirit and

·         real revelation of your word. 

I refuse to live for the approval of men or myself!  I want to express the genuine love and faith that pleases You and blesses others!  I deny the sham and give place for the impartation and development of the reality of Your provisions!

 

 

[1] KJV 1 Timothy 1:5 Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:

2KJV 2 Corinthians 6:6 By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned,

3 Soren Kierkegaard, "What Madness," in Provocations: The Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard (Plough, 1999), p. 180

 

Major Source: Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child and Posers, Fakers, & Wannabes.

 

 

 

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(C) 2004, by louis bartet. 

 

 

 


[1] KJV 1 Timothy 1:5 Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned:

[2] KJV 2 Corinthians 6:6 By pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned,

[3] Soren Kierkegaard, "What Madness," in Provocations: The Spiritual Writings of Kierkegaard (Plough, 1999), p. 180; submitted by Mark Galli, Glen Ellyn, Illinois