Authenticity

When we read Paul's letters to Timothy, we forget sometimes how personal those letters were. Paul was writing to a man who he had mentored, a younger man, a man that he had great personal affection for. And you see that throughout the letters, that there's a personal connection. We read sometimes these letters, and we read them for doctoral issues or historical reasons. We miss the personal things that are happening here between people. And there's a statement he makes to 2 Timothy. Let's go to 2 Timothy 1. 2 Timothy. Oh, I forgot to give the cue and look for the cue. I'm sorry about that. I do that on TV sometimes. I forget the cues, so sorry. I was supposed to give her a cue. I was about to begin. And she was supposed to tell me it's okay. Talk to Mr. Eddington afterwards. He will tell you horror stories about me missing cues. 2 Timothy 1, verse 3. And so there's a personal part of this, and that's about what he says to Timothy here. He says, I thank God, whom I serve with a pure conscience, as my forefathers did, as without ceasing. I remember you in my prayers night and day. I pray for you all the time, personally. Timothy, I pray for you all the time. I'm always saying, God, please help Timothy. He's got this burden of trying to pass, or he's trying to follow you. He's got people that oppose him. He's got these issues. Please help him, guide him, give him strength. Night and day, greatly desiring to see you. Man, I wish I could see you. You know, I mean, we would set up all night and talk. Talk about the Bible. Talk about... He would pass on to him, you know, the training that Christ had given to him. He said, Being mindful of your tears, that I may be filled with joy, when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother, Lois, and your mother, Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also. Now, that's an interesting statement. And we read through this and say, wow, it must have been remarkable to have a mother and grandmother like that, and that he sees this in Timothy also. But I've often thought, what is it that he saw?

They had a genuine faith. You know, genuine means that it's not fate. It's not, you know, we're not pretending here. You can see it. So then that sort of leads to a question. If someone saw you and me, say a new person walked in, and they saw us, how would they know our faith is genuine? Now, some of you have probably been in the church for a long time.

You can remember the first time you showed up. You were probably nervous. These people are perfect. I'm going to go in here. They're going to know I'm not perfect. And then after a while, you figure out, hey, they're not perfect. And some people actually get discouraged and leave church. I thought these people were perfect and found out they weren't. In fact, whenever I invite someone new to the church or someone calls me and says, hey, I'd like to maybe come to your congregation.

One thing I tell them is, I need to tell you this. If you're looking for a perfect congregation, perfect group of people, you'll be very disappointed. Actually, I've had people tell me, oh, good, maybe I'll fit in. So if someone walks in here, or the people you work with, the people you go to school with, how would they say that? That person has a genuine faith. That's real. It's not faked in any way.

Is it because constant miracles are happening in your life? Oh, I know that person has a genuine fight. They just walk around and people are healed all over the place. Every time they pray, they get an answer. God, I need 10 bucks. Thanks. What is genuine faith? What does it look like to an outsider?

That's the question I have today. What does genuine faith look like to someone who is outside of that, who doesn't have that, who would be attracted because you have genuine faith? Now, what I'm going to talk about is not what you would normally think we're going to talk about. Because we're going to talk about what it is to be authentic, what it is to be genuine in our faith, and it appears to somebody else. Because if you fake your faith, they'll figure it out. So we can pretend to be something we're not. So let me give you a few things we can do to show genuine faith to someone who is being introduced to who we are and who you are.

That's one of God's children, as a Christian. They say, ah, that person, there's something real about them. First point, we are being genuine when we acknowledge to others our own struggles with faith. You know, if you've known people that you thought that person was such a great person of faith, you know, one of the greatest people of faith I've ever met was my dad.

To this day, I can honestly say in my whole lifetime, he was the greatest man of faith I ever met. That man had great faith. And I can remember when he was in his 70s, him saying to me, Gary, my mother had been very sick. He said, I thought I had great faith until your mother got sick. And he explained to me what she was going through. She, for a number of reasons, she literally was losing her mind. And he took care of herself for months, not letting anybody know what was happening. And he explained to me these horrible things they were going through.

And he said, they reached a point for the first time in my life, it was always, God will take care of it, I don't worry about it. For the first time in my life, I said, I have nothing left. God, I have nothing left. I have no faith left. I have no hope left. I have nothing. He said, then I learned a whole new lesson in faith. He said, it took me into my 70s to get that one. I said, so that you're telling me something?

He says, yeah, there's going to come some time in your life still when there's nothing left. Nothing, except you and God. He says, it will happen. You know what? When people meet us and they say, I don't know what to do about the Sabbath. I'll lose my job. I've been working there for 25 years. I'll lose my pension.

I'll lose everything. And what's easy for us to say? Well, you've got to obey God. Wow, you're such faith. Or do you say, I know, I went through that too. I struggled with that. And to tell you the truth, I worked for six months knowing I shouldn't, but I struggled. See what I mean? That's real. The reality is, I know where you are because I've been there. Now, maybe you've never had struggle with your faith.

If you haven't, please come talk to me because I could use your advice. Genuineness is, I understand, I know, been there. And I'm still there once in a while. I still once in a while think, what are you doing, God? Now, I have a favorite scripture in this context in Mark 9. Mark 9. In fact, we did an entire Beyond Today program on this passage. Mark 9.

Verse 14. Speaking of Jesus here, it says, When he came to the disciples, he saw a great multitude around them, and scribes disputing with them. So imagine the scene here. He walks up, here's the disciples, disused maybe hundreds of people gathered around, and the scribes and the religious leaders are having an argument with the disciples and with each other.

He walks into this scene of conflict and confusion. Oh no, what have the boys done now? I bet you Peter picked this one. Now, what have they done? Immediately, when they saw him, all the people were greatly amazed, and running to him, greeted him, and he asked the scribes, What are you discussing? What are you talking about? And one of the crowd answers said, Teacher, I brought you my son, who has a mute spirit. And whenever it seizes him, it throws him down, and he foams at the mouth and gnashes his teeth and becomes rigid. So I spoke to your disciples, but they could not cast it out, or to cast it out, but they could not do it.

And he said to them, O faithful generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to me. Now that's got to make the disciples feel pretty bad, because it's like, pick on the scribes. And he just throws everybody in here. You just don't get this. Then he brought him to him, and when he saw him immediately, the spirit convulsed him. He fell on the ground and wallowed, forming at the mouth. And he asked his father, how long has this been happening to him?

And he said, from childhood. And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us. And Jesus says to him, verse 23, If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. And so we can look at people and say, well, I understand the health problem you're going through. Just believe. I can understand the Sabbath problem. Oh, I understand that you're having marriage problems, and you know the scripture says this, but it's so hard. Just believe.

But you know, this man was told just believe. And what he said is so profound. You know why? Because it's genuine. He could have said, Lord, I believe. No problem. But what he said was real. It's what he actually felt. It's what he actually thought. Verse 24, immediately the father of the child cried out. This wasn't just he cried out. It was just it was from the depths of who he was, from deep inside who he was. This came out. He cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.

I believe, but I can only go so far. You know, a genuine faith accepts I can only go so far. You have to take me the rest of the way. You have to take me the rest of the way. So when we meet people and here we are, the spiritual giants, really in their lives, we're spiritual giants. And we simply say, well, just trust God. And we don't tell them there's been times I've struggled with that. That we're not being real. Oh, we're being very religious, but we're not being real. So we're not being real. If people come in and we make them part of our congregations, congregations are a commanded part of the New Testament Church. We're communities. We're communities. And for people to become part of that community, we have to be real so that they can come in and learn with us. And I think the first part of that is, yeah, I understand. I have been there. I have struggled. I was sick one time for a month and I kept asking God, I thought I was going to die. Please heal me. Please heal me. And you know what? I'm alive today, but he still hasn't completely healed me like Paul. You know, I went three times. But I understand now. I've learned from it. I've grown from it. And every once in a while I still go to God and say, I don't understand this. That's real. Now, maybe you haven't experienced that, but for the rest of us I can guarantee you I still go to God sometimes and say, God, would you explain that to me? I don't get it. I don't understand. Now, respectfully, don't be real careful while you ask that. But he lets us come and ask. Genuine faith. We must be rooted in our trust in God and be willing to admit, I can only go so far myself. And so you tell the other person, he carries you the rest of the way. You must believe, but you have to let him carry you the rest of the way. The second point is we're being genuine when we don't pretend to be perfect.

I love doing marriage counseling, and I, of course, if I say this, none of you ever come to me for marriage counseling. But sometimes I'll actually pick a fight. I mean, I'll have the couple get into a fight. You know why? They come in, and they've been around the church long enough, and talking to them is like reading an article from Beyond Today magazine. They're acting exactly like they're supposed to act. Well, why are you here? But they're pretending. So you find a soft spot, say something, and let them get in an argument. Oh, now we know what's real. Ah, so you're saying this, and you feel this, now you figure out what's going on? We all pretend a little bit, don't we? I mean, there are people that go to church for 20 years and don't know anybody else in the church. Except the caricature that we become. We can't be caricatures. We've got to be authentic. We have to be real. That means we have to be real with each other. There's no use pretending we're perfect. Now, that doesn't mean that everybody has to know all your deepest, darkest sins. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about just being real.

You know, there are people who are one way six days a week and another way at church. And that's hypocrisy. That's hypocrisy. So we have to be genuine. You can have no hypocrisy. Now, look at Luke chapter 13. Luke chapter 13.

So, okay. I'm going to be able to admit that I struggle with my faith sometimes, too. But you know when you admit that you also do something else. You can tell them all the times you know God intervened. Yes, I've struggled with that, but let me tell you a time when I know God intervened. And I saw God do this. And we actually encourage them because we can share with them the times God did intervene. But you know, the only time you can really do that is when you're willing to admit, but boy was it hard. So it's the same way with pretending. I'm going to pretend to be perfect. Everybody says, you know, the problem I have is, I want you to know I'm perfect, but then you can go talk to my wife. Not that she goes around saying bad things, but I'm not perfect. We're not. We're all struggling together to move towards the Kingdom of God. When a new person walks in, you've got to say, welcome to the struggle. Let's struggle together. It's one reason why congregations have a hard time staying together sometimes. They're not genuine. Everybody's pretending to be something else.

But when we become family, we become family. That's what we're supposed to be.

And you know, with family, you do what? You accept everybody. Even though you know, well, Uncle Joe over here has an anger problem. And Bob and Mary, I hope there's nobody here named Bob and Mary, but they have a marriage problem.

And that's it. That's us, too. But we want to pretend that's not happening. And so we build barriers between each other. We really aren't real. Look at Luke 13. Luke 13, verse 10. Once again, an example of Jesus. He was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. There was a woman who had a spirit of infirmity 18 years. She was bent over and could no way raise herself up. But when Jesus saw her, he called her and said to her, You are loose from your infirmity. Think about this. 18 years. She was all crippled over. And I gripe and complain because I get two screws in my knee and I limp every once in a while. And I can tell when the weather's going to change, right? Yeah, but I'm not like this. And he laid his hands on her and immediately she would be made straight and glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation, because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath and said to the crowd, There are six days in which men ought to work, therefore come and be healed on them, and not on the Sabbath day. Now this seemed very right. He's quoting one of the Ten Commandments. So this seems very right. Why would he work on the Sabbath? Can't he do that any other day? This is disrupting the Sabbath. It's disrupting services. People are now not coming to the synagogue, they're not singing correctly, they're not worshiping correctly, they're not listening to the rabbi, because all they're talking about is this healing. It's just messed up the whole Sabbath day.

Verse 15, the Lord then answered him and said, Hypocrite. You think he said, well, you don't understand. He looked at him and said, you're a hypocrite. Now why is he a hypocrite? He says, Does not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it away to water? So what? Not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound. Think of it! He just looks and says, think of this, man! Can't you see this? You knew her! Eighteen years she was like this. For eighteen years, be loose from this bond on the Sabbath. And when he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame. Why'd he call him a hypocrite? He was pretending. See, I'm pretending. Look, I'm religious. And Jesus said, think of it. This woman suffered eighteen years, and God chose on this Sabbath day to show his great work. God chose on this Sabbath day to show his great work, and you're upset because it's not religious enough for you. That's pretending. Now, one of the main reasons that you will see teenagers and people in their twenties leave the church is because they look around and say, they're all a bunch of hypocrites because they're not perfect. Let me explain the difference between imperfect people and hypocrites. Inperfect people are all of us trying to follow God, and in our weaknesses we fail sometimes. Hypocrites fail and try to pretend that they don't. They hide it. They are something that's not real. So when you see adults fail, when you see your parents fail, it doesn't mean they're hypocrites. It means they're human, just like you. Welcome to this human condition where we struggle all the time. That's real. So let's just lay it all out. It's real. And for you to obey God is a struggle. It sure is. You think, well, I'm 15. Nobody understands the struggle I go through at school. Yes, we do. Been there, done that.

We have. For us to pretend that it's not a struggle, that's hypocritical. To say, yeah, it's a struggle. Sometimes you mess up. Sometimes I mess up. But we're all headed in the same direction. We're all going where God's taking us. We're going to have to stop pretending. And let with each other. And then we can stop pretending with new people. A third point is that we have to be honest with the severity of God's judgment. One thing that really discourages people about Christianity is they read things like Sodom and Gomorrah. How can a loving God kill everybody, including the children? In fact, I read an article once where a man said, Christians who stand up against abortion are hypocrites. God killed unborn babies in Sodom. And that was his argument. Which is a, when you break it down, it's a ridiculous argument. But what people do not realize. When we look at God's grace, it is enormous. That when people refuse to respond to God's grace, he does not live with evil. And he will judge on repent and evil. And his judgment is severe. There is a lake of fire. Mercy. You know what grace is? There is no everlasting burning hell. God will not torture people forever. It is not in his nature to do so. But he also won't let people live insane forever. To bring corrupt human nature into eternity, you know what we'd be? We'd create hell. We would create it.

We would create an insane asylum. That's exactly what Satan is. He's insane and he's created insane asylum. That's what we live in. We live in his insane asylum. And that's what we would do. So we need to emphasize God's grace. But we should never back down from the severity of God's judgment on unrepentant evil. And that's a struggle. Once again, I've seen people, oh yeah, they want God to punish everybody. I can't wait until Christ comes back and that fire comes out and those people melt and their eyeballs pop out. I can't wait for that. God grieves. God judges. But he grieves. He wants repentance. He wants reconciliation. So you know what? If we're going to be genuine, we have to admit we struggle with that. Have you ever struggled with how God judges something? Think of Abraham. Because this is exactly what Abraham's dealing with and what we have as a man who's being genuine. Ah, Lord, you're the judge of the universe. If there's 50 good people in Sodom, you would kill them too? And of course the answer is, shut up. I am God. I'll do whatever I want. Now the answer is, because you know what? He's supposed to struggle with this. You and I are supposed to struggle with this. This is real. We're supposed to say, God would you dare? And God's answer was, oh no, I wouldn't do that. Okay. Can I ask another question? And he's working down through it. And God isn't upset with him at all. God's saying, you're getting this. What if there's 10? Oh no, I'll let all the evil live for the sake of the 10. Now what did God do? He found one family, and he saved them. He wasn't going to let Lot and his family die there. It's only because his wife tried to go back that she died. He wasn't going to do that. He was going to take all the righteous out. And if there had been 10, you know what? Sodom would have survived for the sake of the 10. And Abraham had to work that through. You and I have to work through all the time, God's judgments. That's part of being genuine. It's part of being real. We're supposed to be on our knees sometimes and say, I don't understand. It's okay. Now to go accuse God is a dangerous thing. Don't do that. But it's okay to go say, why are you doing this? I don't understand this. He doesn't answer you right away. I do believe this. You ever have an argument with a two-year-old and explain over and over again, and finally you say, do it because I said so. I think God gives us a whole lot more answers than we know. And finally, after arguing with this for a while, he just says, look, do it because Dad says so. She just, your little brain isn't understanding what I'm saying.

Okay. Okay, Dad. I'll do it because you say so. I still don't understand. I know. Right? Would you punish? I have a three-year-old who just did, what was it, 18,000? How much damage to the house of her daughter? What was it? Do you remember? $14,000 worth of damage to the house. He decided to wash his matchbox cars. So he got up early in the morning before anybody else and was washing them, and then in the sink, in the bathroom upstairs, and then walked off and forgot to turn off the water. So I guess they're all downstairs, all of a sudden the chandelier water is pouring through the chandelier and it's down into the basement. And it's like, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars worth of damage. Now, is that three-year-old? He's almost three. He's not even quite three. Can you hold him morally responsible? No. You tell him it was wrong. He can't figure out why washing his cars flooded the basement. Now, if he was 10, we have a problem. Oh, he thought it was really cool because they brought in all these big machines. They were drying things out. He got to watch the people working. He thought it was really cool. This was fun. Now, let me bring that up to say God understands sometimes they're like three-year-olds, and he's just shaking his head saying, oh, you little kid. And then we generally say, I don't know. It's okay. In fact, if we don't, we're either pretending or we're not thinking very deeply. If you've never gone to God and said, I don't understand, either you're pretending or you just haven't thought it through because I don't know what God's doing half the time. I'm always asking, why? The answer I get, I think most of the time is, just do it. You'll figure it out later. When you get a little older, this will make sense. But we have to be willing to accept, yes, God does have a lake of fire. Yes, God did kill the people in Sodom, and that doesn't make him an unloving God. It doesn't erase his grace and his mercy. What it does is show he hates evil, and he will not live with evil. He will not live with evil. We're in a country that's getting more and more evil all the time. There's going to become a time where God will not bless this nation at all. It's coming because he won't put up with it. Because he hates everybody? No, because he won't live with evil. It's against his nature. My last point is, we're being genuine when we acknowledge that we really don't understand his ways. This sort of ties into what I just said about God's judgment is real. We don't always understand it. Well, we don't always understand his ways, either. I've had people say, I don't know, I just can't worship a God I don't understand. I couldn't worship a God I didn't understand. Because that's what it means, he's as small as me.

And if God's as small as I am, you're all in real trouble. Right? We're all in real trouble here. If he's little like us, we're all in real trouble. You want to read something that's genuine? Psalm 139. Now, this is genuine. Psalm 139.

I won't read all of it, you can read it.

David says, Oh, Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down, my rising up. You understand my thoughts. He said, you don't even know what I'm thinking. You comprehend my path and my lying down, or acquainted with all my ways. There's not a word on my tongue, but behold, oh Lord, you know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before. You have laid your hand upon me in verse 6. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I can't attain it. I can't even go there. There's times we must look at God and say, I'm just overwhelmed.

Have you ever watched a hummingbird? And not thought, how does he do that?

How does that work? How do you even think that up? This is higher than me. This is bigger than me. We are finally genuine when we realize God's that big. It's too high for me when we reach this point. Verse 7, he says, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in hell, behold, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me and your right hand shall hold me. He says, how do you do that, God? Every place I go, you're there. Explain that to me. And then he finally says, it's just too big for me. He accepted it. But this is a genuine expression. That's what makes David so amazing. In spite of his sins, he's absolutely genuine. He's real in everything he does. And it's out there for everybody to see. He just writes it down and people start singing it. He writes about his own sins so people can sing about it. Now, I can't go there. I'm not that genuine yet, okay? I don't want to write down all my sins and everybody sing about it. He did! There's just something so authentic about this man. And that's why God said, that man has the heart I can work with. He's real. There's no pretense to him.

When Paul wrote that he witnessed this genuine faith in Timothy, his mother and his grandmother, these were people who were not trying to show off their faith. They would not have known they were being genuine. Oh, I'm going to try to be genuine today. So I'm going to fake being genuine. You say to me, they didn't know they were being genuine. They were just real. They were real in their relationship with God and they were real in the way they treated other people. And you would have seen in them what we need to do. The four simple points that I brought out today. Share with others your trials and struggles with your faith. Share it! And share the victories with them. Tell them, well, God helped me here. God healed me here. God did this here. We all have those stories. But also share, and there's times I've been in such despair, I thought God had abandoned me.

Just share it. Share your faith with others, the high points and the low points, too. Don't pretend to be perfect. But admit, I'm headed there. God's taken me. This is where I'm going. And I'm following, and every once in a while I fall flat on my face. And He always picks me up again and says, Man, that had to hurt. And then dust me off and I move on.

I can remember doing that with my son. Stop crying. It wasn't that big a thing. It's a little scrape. Think about it. Take a big breath. Is it hurting now? No. Okay. Move on. See, that's what God does with us. Fix us up. Move on. Don't pretend. Just say we're headed there. This is where we're going. Come on. Why don't you come join us? Why don't you join me in the journey? Because I haven't arrived, but that's where I'm going. Three. Know God's justice and love. And you know how you understand God's justice and love? In the life of Jesus Christ. You study the life of Jesus Christ. Ah! You see Jesus doing all this mercy and telling people about God, telling people about God's love. And then you see Him saying to others, when I come back, I won't know you. Because you think you're very religious, but you're not real. This is all fake. Do you understand God? Do you understand the Father? When we see Jesus saying, let me represent, let me show you what this is like, and you inform so you can get it. And then the fourth one, admit that there are times you don't understand God's ways. And every once in a while you do, the light bulb comes on, and it makes sense. Those are wonderful times. And there's times we don't. And it's okay to say, I don't know, we'll have to wait and see what He's doing.

I always tell people this, the one thing I figured out, there's not too much I figured out in life, but this is one. God is not going to ask me for my opinion. I've been waiting for decades.

Never am I going to wake up in the middle of the night, and God's going to be sitting in my bed, take care of it, I have an opinion I'm going to ask you. The phone's not going to ring. It's not going to happen. Now, there's lots of times the answer is, just follow along, you'll figure it out. You're just too little-minded to get it. Okay, Dad, I'm too little-minded to get it. So I'll follow along, even though I don't always understand. And then sometimes you get it and you think, ah, that makes perfect sense, I see what He's doing now.

But sometimes you don't get it until after you do it. It's like understanding the Holy Days. You don't understand the Holy Days after you do them. Oh, you might have head knowledge. But it's not in here until after you do it. And it's like, oh, I get this.

Admit that we don't always understand, we're just going to follow. This is the basis of genuine faith. This is what it looks like. We can fake being religious. We can't fake genuine faith. Because underneath genuine faith is a remarkable humility that acknowledges, I'm just muddling along here because this is bigger than I am. The problems are bigger than I am, and God is bigger than I am. And once you come join me in the journey, come join me in the journey. If we can have that kind of thing, not only will our lives be better as we follow God, but as congregations we will be closer. Because once you expose that to somebody, there's a bond that builds. We will also be a place where other people can come and not be intimidated, but say, hey, those people are real. I want to go be part of that.