Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection

Transcription

1 Transcript August 31 & September 1, 2013 Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection Aaron Brockett Acts 5:1-11 Good morning. It s good to see you all. If you would please, grab a Bible and get to Acts 5. Acts, chapter 5 is where we are going to be this morning. As you are turning there, I m curious about something. How many of you have ever told a lie? Just go ahead and throw up your hands if you have ever told a lie. Now you are in church. Thank you for your honesty. Those of you who did not raise your hands, you just joined us! So, welcome to the liars club. How does it feel? All of us have told lies at different times in our lives and we ve then tried to go and cover it up. I can remember the very first significant lie that I intentionally told, that I then tried to cover up. I was in the 5th grade and my dad had just bought me my very first BB gun. My mom protested about it, so he gave me the gun (I remember, in the kitchen) and he gave me the safety speech. He said, if you shoot any living thing, I m going to take the gun away. And so then, of course, I said can you define what you mean by living? So we got that definition out of the way. I was real good for about the first week. Then one afternoon while I was waiting for him to get home from work I was in the side yard shooting empty soda cans with my BB gun, when an innocent frog started hopping by. This was such a temptation for me, so I justified it. I said, okay, I m not going to aim directly at it. I will just shoot in its direction 25 or 30 times! One of the stray BB s ended up hitting the frog in the leg and it immediately began to bleed. I immediately felt awful about it. Now I m trying to decide what to do. Should I just ignore it and just act like I don t know what happened and hopefully it will just kind of hop away? Or, should I do something about it because my dad was going to be home at any minute. I didn t want the frog to go hopping across the driveway, leaving a blood trail and have my dad ask questions about what happened, so I decided I had to get rid of the frog, so this time I shot to kill. Little did I know that I was dealing with the toughest frog to hop the face of the planet. Man, this thing would not die. It was like robo- frog! Finally, after several minutes of trying to put it out of its misery, it finally died. I was looking to dispose of the body. The only good place I could find was underneath of one of the gutter drains. So I lifted up one of the gutter drains, dug a little hole and dropped some of you are shaking your heads in disgust right now I m sorry, this was a long time ago! So I dropped it in the hole, covered it back up, and then I felt so guilty after that. Every time I saw that gutter drain, I would think, man, I really hope nobody finds out. I buried that secret and carried it with me, really all the way to today. This is like the first time I m coming clean with this. And I just have to tell you it feels really good. Okay, it feels good to get that off my chest (applause). Thank you very much. You know, every one of our lives, if it s not a frog it s something else. Sometimes it s something as silly as that, but sometimes it s a much deeper issue, in which we try to cover up, we try to conceal, we try to bury those things in our lives that maybe we are ashamed of. Something that maybe we are Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved.

2 Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection August 31 & September 1, 2013 embarrassed by, something that if others found out like if the person sitting next to you really knew everything about you, they would think less of you. There is this tendency for all of us to camouflage. There is this tendency for all of us to hide what is really inside of us. From the time that we were very young, from the time that we first began to talk, our parents and teachers have taught us the lesson to never lie, right? Ever since we learned to talk, [we ve been told] you should always tell the truth, you should never lie. Yet, all of us have grown up to tell lies, as evidenced in this room. We all raised our hands. The issue with the lie isn t confusion over whether it is right or wrong. It doesn t matter what you believe. It doesn t matter what you believe about the Bible. It doesn t matter where you stand with God. Everybody in this room would say, yeah, lying is wrong. There are other issues that maybe we could debate. We might say, well, I don t know if that is really right. Maybe that is right for you, it s not right for me, or vice versa. When it comes to lying, it s pretty much universal. I mean, that s wrong. Yet we all do it. The reason why we all do it is because there is a short- term benefit from it. You find yourself in a situation that you are going to be embarrassed or get into trouble, or maybe you don t want to hurt somebody else s feelings. So you end up lying in that moment. There is this kind of benefit where we get bailed out, and yet there is always a long- term consequence to our lies. We tell white lies, we tell bold- faced lies; we tell more lies to cover up the lies. We tell people we know; we lie to people that we don t know, and then we justify it. We become masters at justifying our own lies. But when we catch other people in a lie, we crucify them. And we live within a culture that loves to put people up on pedestals, professional athletes, politicians, celebrities. We put them on a pedestal and the minute we catch them in a lie, we crucify them. I came across this article last week called Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire. It was the top 16 most outrageous liars in history. I m not exactly sure that this is a real technical I m not sure what science they used to come up with this but I thought it was fun nonetheless. One of the things I noticed right off the bat, is in this list of 16 liars they are all men. There are no ladies on the list. I don t know what that s supposed to say. Sorry ladies, for the lying pigs that we are. But number three on the list was a guy named Benedict Arnold. I don t know if any of you recognize that name, but some of you are thinking, oh yeah. You never met him! But Benedict Arnold defected to the British Army. He was a close confident of George Washington and he is not a very popular name in our country, because of his lies. Number sixteen on the list was a guy by the name of Charles Ponzi. Yea, maybe you recognize that last name. There is a reason why we get the name Ponzi scheme. An investor during World War I named Charles Ponzi cheated people out of millions of dollars, so we don t like him very much. Richard Nixon ranked in at number nine on the list with the whole Watergate scandal. Surprisingly, Pinocchio came in at number five. I really thought he would be a lot higher on the list. You know, we are all on the list. We all tell lies. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 2

3 Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection August 31 & September 1, 2013 Advertisers lie in an effort to sell product. (Oh, we didn t mean that it was fat- free, we meant the fat was free!) Spouses lie to avoid hurt feelings. (No, that dress does not make you look fat. No, I m not attracted to George Clooney.) Parents lie to make their lives easier. (We re going to be there soon.) Politicians lie to get votes. Lawyers lie to sway the jury. The media lies to sell the story. Children lie to avoid getting into trouble. Job applicants lie to stand out. Socialites lie to impress others. Teenagers lie to hide their insecurities. Businessmen lie to close the deal. Car salesmen lie to move inventory. Church attendee s lie to make it seem as though they are something that they are not. And pastors lie when their charisma outpaces their character. We ve all lied. Here is the definition of a lie, just so we are clear. It is saying something that is untrue, partially true, or leaving out important details, with the intent to deceive others or to save face. Lying is the act of misdirection. So over the next five weeks, we are going to look at the importance of transparency and honesty toward God and toward other people. This isn t just a morality series. What I want to do is really help us to see that this is at the very foundation of the Gospel message. In fact, in Ephesians 5:8, Paul would urge us to step out of the darkness and into the light. In other words, take off the camo. Step out of the darkness and into the light of Jesus Christ and walk as children of Light. So what that is, is an invitation for us to stop hiding; to come out into the Light of Jesus Christ, not to experience condemnation, but to experience freedom and redemption in Christ. Here is the thing for so many of us, even those of us who would call ourselves Christians; we are still hiding in the dark. We like to wave the flag of Grace, but yet we still have this affinity for the dark. There are still these dark recesses of our heart that we hide in. Essentially what the Gospel says is that you don t hide in the light. The light is where you step out and you are exposed, not to be condemned but to be redeemed. We want to look at this together over the next five weeks. Our passage this morning is Acts 5:1-11. I want us to look at a couple by the name of Ananias and Sapphira. We don t know a whole lot about this couple. We do know that they were a married couple in the very first church, because Acts is a recording of the history of the church. Luke is the author of the book of Acts. Luke is also the author of the Gospel of Luke. What he was doing was trying to put together an orderly account for a guy by the name of Theopholis. So Luke is making a great effort to put together an accurate an historical record, both of the ministry of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke and of the very beginning of the Church in the Gospel of Acts. In Acts chapter 1, Jesus ascends into heaven. In Acts chapter 2, the Church gets started. Technically that s when the Church gets started, but you never see the word church until Acts, chapter 5. The word church is the word ekklesia, which means the gathering of the saints. So in Acts 2, the church comes together in this explosion of the movement of the Holy Spirit. Three thousand people from day one. That s more people than is in this room right now. The Spirit begins to pick up momentum; by Acts chapter 4 they have broken into small groups and they are beginning to meet each other s needs. One of the ways in which they would meet each other s needs is, the more fortunate in the church would put up property for sale and they would lay the proceeds of that property sale at the apostles feet. The apostles would distribute it to those who had need. Now understand, they were not forced to do this. This was not an obligation. This is not communism, where we just distribute the wealth among everybody. This is first century biblical community, where those would volunteer to help others in need. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 3

4 Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection August 31 & September 1, 2013 What I need you to do is look in your Bibles in Acts 4, the very end of Acts chapter 4. We see that there is a guy by the name of Barnabus, who puts a piece of property up for sale. Then he gives the proceeds to the apostles to distribute to people as they have need. It was a very gracious thing to do. Right after that in Acts chapter 5, we are introduced to this married couple, Ananias and Sapphira, who do the exact same thing. They had a piece of property that they wanted to sell and lay the proceeds at the apostles feet. We don t know a whole lot about them. We don t know if they inherited this property. We don t know if they had started a successful business. They just wanted to bless the church with some of their generosity. What we do know is they start off with pure motives, but by the end of it, deception begins to creep into their hearts. What we need to understand is that any time somebody was specifically named in the Bible, especially the New Testament, the odds are they are in some sort of leadership position. That is really important for you to understand as we move into this passage. This was a couple that had influence in the church and leaders are always held to a higher standard. Right? We read about that in the book of James; we read about that in Hebrews 13; leaders are always held to a higher standard. What exactly Ananias and Sapphira did, we don t know. My guess is that if Ananias and Sapphira were members of Trader s Point Church, they were probably leaders of a life group; or, they probably wore red Connection Central shirts and worked Connection Central in the lobby; maybe they were greeters; maybe they served communion. They were publically influential in this church. That s really important for you to understand before we read, because what we read is going to make some of you uncomfortable, because it makes me uncomfortable and I ve got to preach it. So, you want to switch roles? Acts chapter 5, let s look at verses But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and with his wife s knowledge he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit Who did he lie to? It s not a trick question, it s right there. You can say this with confidence, all right? The Holy Spirit! You guys are sharp, man! and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? In other words, you could have done whatever you wanted with the property. Hold onto that. That s important. And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to Who? (Congregation response: God) Oh man, you guys are getting better! More confident, more confident. When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last. And great fear came upon all who heard of it. The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 4

5 Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection August 31 & September 1, 2013 I was trying to remember this last week when the last time I had heard a sermon specifically on Acts 5: I couldn t remember. I ve heard it alluded to in sermons. I ve heard it kind of cross- referenced, mentioned briefly, but never as the primary text. I tried to remember the last time I preached on this passage and I couldn t remember. And now, I know why. This is tough stuff. The first thing I think about whenever I read through this is the childhood song that I was taught to sing back in the mid- 1980s. I grew up in church. I grew up in a Christian school and we would have chapel twice a week. We would sing these childhood songs, these children s songs based on Bible verses. Some of you who may grew up in church maybe a similar generation as me, do any of you in this room remember the song about Ananias and Sapphira? Any of you? We ve had someone in at least every service. I see a couple of hands. Isn t it a grand song? It says, Ananias and Sapphira got together to conspire, to plot, to cheat the church, and get ahead. They knew God s will, but chose to ignore it. Tried to cheat the Holy Spirit. Peter prophesied and they both dropped dead! Hey! God loves a cheerful giver. Give it all you got! (Laughter) Hey, hey, be honest! The first part of that song you are thinking, oh no. This is a train wreck right here! We can t believe he is singing! Man, I heard that song as a third grader. I remember the first time, I was thinking, why am I clapping? They killed him! Maybe some of you, this is the first time you have read this passage; you are new to the church or new to Bible study. You are thinking, what in the world!? Some of you, maybe it has been a long time since you looked at this. Maybe it immediately makes you uncomfortable. You think, we are in the New Testament, right? And this sounds like the God of the Old Testament. I mean, we are under Grace. Why didn t God give them another chance? This doesn t seem like it s very fair. Here s the deal. Immediately, our hearts go out to Ananias and Sapphira, and rightfully so. But immediately we want to jump to these conclusions, so many people like to water the passage down to make it say what it doesn t say. We try to take the heat off of God. There have been some people who have said, well, Peter killed Ananias, like it was some sort of Darth Vader- choke hold or something. Like [Peter questioning Ananias], did you lie? Peter did not kill him. I think Peter was just as surprised as anybody. He [Peter] was like, whoa, he [Ananias] just dropped dead! I think some people read this and say, well it s clear, Ananias died of heart failure. You know, he had been exposed; he had been embarrassed. He is thinking he is going to get into trouble, and so he has a heart attack and he dies. That s not what the text says either. This is clearly the divine judgment of the Lord, and that is tough. What I want you to see here is that it says there is a book in here, if you look back in chapter 4:33, if you are an under- liner in your Bible you might underline the words great power and great grace. As the church is getting started it is started with great power and great grace, meaning, the church is beginning to pick up momentum. Then it is bookended here in chapter 5:11, with great fear. We have talked about, if you have been attending here for awhile, we ve talked over and over again about the fear of the Lord as a healthy respect of His position in our lives. So the church is bookended with these two realities, great power and great grace, and great fear; that God is God and we are not. Let s be really clear on what the offense was. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 5

6 Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection August 31 & September 1, 2013 The offense wasn t that he didn t give enough money. I ve heard it preached this way before and it nauseated me. Well, he should have just given more money and God would have spared his life. That is not what this is about. In fact, money has very little to do with this at all. It has everything to do with deceit. The word that Luke uses here is the word is misappropriate. It s the same word as embezzle. It s the same word as pilfer. It s the same word as steal. And all of us have a distain for that in our culture and rightfully so. Have you ever been stolen from? You feel violated, don t you? Have you ever had somebody deceive you? Then it wounds you. So this is essentially what had happened with Ananias and Sapphira. They had deceived God. It says it twice in the passage; lied to the Holy Spirit, lied to God. Here is what went down. Their motives were good. They saw Barnabas sell a piece of property and give it to the church. They thought, you know what, we are going do that as well. So we don t know exactly the details around it. I m guessing this is what happened. They Zillowed their property. They found out what it was worth, what it might go for. So they said, okay, we think we can sell this property for $400,000 and we are going to give all of it to the church, just like Barney did. And we are going to get the glory and the credit for that just like Barnabas did. So they put it on the market and something happened. They either chickened out or maybe two competitors got into a bidding war and drove the price up to $450,000. So they walk out of the Mid- eastern Title Company (think about that a minute). So they walk out of the title company and they look at each other and they think, you know what, this sold for a lot more than what we thought. I mean, nearly half a million dollars! That s an awful lot of money to give to the church, you know, just to one place. We ve got taxes to pay and we ve got real estate agent fees, so let s give $375,000. It s still really, really generous, but then we will hold some back to pay some of our own expenses. Peter says, you have every right to do that. In fact, you didn t have to give a dime. The problem wasn t with the amount that they gave. The problem was they went and they misrepresented themselves. They said we gave it all. The church looked and said, wow, you guys are so generous; they [Ananias and Sapphira] say, yeah we know. I think that they slipped into this, just like you and me. Have you ever misrepresented yourself in such a way to make you look good? Maybe it had nothing to do with the sale of property, maybe just a little thing. Then somebody gives you credit for something really you can t take credit for, but you do, even just in your silence? If you have, then you are guilty of the same sin, and I m guilty of the same sin, as Ananias and Sapphira. They lied. They were deceitful. That s what God has a problem with. Look what it says in verse 11. After an interval of about three hours, his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. And Peter said to her, Tell me whether you sold the land for so much. In other words, hey, did you guys sell the land for this amount of money? And she said, Yes, for so much. But Peter said to her, How is it that you have agreed together to test the Spirit of the Lord? So there the Holy Spirit is once again. This is the offense; it s with the Spirit of God. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 6

7 Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection August 31 & September 1, 2013 Behold, the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out. Immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. When the young men came in they found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband. And (here s the phrase) great fear came upon the whole church and upon those who heard of these things? Now she s been texting her husband for the last three hours, you know? I m being pulled into the principal s office. Tell me what you said, so we get our stories straight. But he is not responding to her. So she walks in and Peter says, uh, tell me what you gave. She basically looks right at him she s got an opportunity here to remove the camouflage and be honest and she tells a bold- faced lie. Then she drops dead right in front of Peter. This time the young men are prepared. They have laid out the plastic godfather- style and they escort her out. Then it says that a great fear came upon the whole church. Now what are we supposed to do with this passage? For some of us, this makes up really uncomfortable, and rightfully so. If this section of scripture bothers you, it should. The first thing I think here is, why am I still alive? If God took their lives because of this deceit, man I am just as guilty, if not more so. In fact, some of my deceit makes their deceit here look like small potatoes. Does it you? And the first thing I think if when I read this passage is, number one, I get a little bit uncomfortable with God. Like, God, how could you do that? Then, right immediately on the tail end of that, I m thinking, why am I still alive? What we need to understand here is that this is the beginnings of the church, the Bride of Christ. This is a unique time in history where the church is getting started and there is great momentum. The church is eternal (we talked about that in the last series). It s the only thing that will last from this side of eternity into the next. And so it is through the local church where you rub shoulders with believers, where through the preaching and teaching of God s Word many of you came to a saving grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Yet many of you have been in a church and it is all traced back to deceit. Any of you ever build a house? If you build a house, what is the most important thing about building the house? The foundation. Some of you are like, the kitchen! Some of you are like, the basement - the man- cave! You know, we have got to get that right. The most important thing about a house is the foundation. So if you get the foundation wrong, you mess everything up. So if you were to build a house, that you were sinking every last dime that you had pinched and saved into building a house and you were doing it independently, and you had a contractor come and they were digging out the foundation, and you found out that the contractor was deceitful. You found out that the contractor was lying to your face, that the contractor was pocketing some extra cash, that the contractor was skimping on materials would you keep them employed, or would you remove them? Yeah, you would remove them. You wouldn t look the other way and say, well, by the time they get up to the second floor it should all work itself out. No, if the foundation gets done wrong, then everything else is going to be wrong. This is the foundation of the church. This is unique. So in other words, this passage here is not prescriptive for how God works in all of our lives. Thank goodness for that! It s descriptive for a time in history. The foundations of the church were being set. Ananias and Sapphira s names are specifically mentioned, meaning they had some kind of a leadership role, and leaders are always held to a higher standard. So God sees the deceit in the leaders of the church and His reflex is to remove it. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 7

8 Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection August 31 & September 1, 2013 As on commentator called it, the reflexive judgment of God. If I walked out of here after the service and saw somebody standing in the corner with my wife, and all of a sudden they started punching my wife, my reflexive action would be to take them out Jason Borne- style. Then I would realize I can t do that and they would turn around and beat me up. Then one of you would have to step in. But my reflexive action would be to intercept that and then ask questions later. In a very similar way, we see deceit among the leaders of the church. In other words, the Bride of Christ is being assaulted by deception. God s reflex is to remove it. Some of you in this room have been diagnosed with cancer. Some of you have close family and friends that have been diagnosed with cancer. What is your reflex? Do something about it immediately! Get it out of there immediately! Let s not just sit on this. And so this is what God does in this passage. Now what about Ananias and Sapphira? Well, we don t know a lot about them. In many ways, we just have to say that this is a mystery in Scripture. But here is what we do know. No where in this passage are they ever condemned to Hell. We never see that anywhere. It just says they died, they fell asleep. In first Thessalonians chapter 5 and in other places in Scripture, often times when a Christian dies, it is described as they fell asleep. Isn t that a fascinating analogy? It s this idea that if you are secure in Christ, this life is not all there is. So this physical, temporary life blends into life eternal. So if you close your life, in- Christ, on this side of eternity, it s like fell asleep and you wake up in the presence of the Lord. Paul would say, in the New Testament, that to live is Christ, to die is gain. I have no reason to believe that Ananias and Sapphira weren t sincere believers; they just let deception into their hearts. So, I believe that if that is true (to live is Christ, to die is gain), they gained that day. They were going to die anyway. Several decades later. Maybe if they had continued (and God in His sovereignty knew), they would have just continued to grow further and further away from Him in their deception who knows what could have happened. I have this is a bit of conjecture. I don t have any Biblical support to back this up, but I don t have any Biblical reason to believe this isn t the case. That when they closed their eyes in death, they opened their eyes in the presence of the Lord. And when they did, you can guarantee, they fell on their faces in gratitude for the Grace of God. Thank you, God. So what this passage does, if you have a low view of the church, and you have a low view of God, this passage really makes you upset. If you have a high view of the church and you realize God is on His throne and you are not God, this passage should humble you by His Grace. This passage is illustrative of God s sovereign Grace over the Bride of Christ. He doesn t want deception to creep in. This passage is evidence of the sovereign Grace of God over the lives of two people He loved; who simply let deception into their hearts. There are four things I want to pull out of this passage that is application for us. These come right out of the text. Here is the first one. Deception is more serious than you think. Deception is always more serious than you think. We like to make light of it. We like to say that it is not that big of a deal. We like to justify little compromises in our character, but it s always a big deal. And it s always connected to your heart. In Jeremiah 17:9, it says, The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. Who can understand it? So when you are okay with a lie, when you are okay with deception, what is essentially happening is that you are okay with your heart continuing on in its sickness. Your heart and my heart, Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 8

9 Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection August 31 & September 1, 2013 they are kind of like an instrument; like a guitar or a piano. You tune it and then you set it aside. All of a sudden its gets out of tune; just through the events of life. Have you ever been surprised at some of the darkness that comes out of your own heart? If you are being honest with yourself you are. If you think, man, I didn t know where that came from! Why did I say that? Why did I feel that way? Why did I just have that thought? It s that idea that our hearts are constantly needing tuning. That s why time in the Word of God that s what that is, tuning your heart. It s time with other believers; it s time with the people you rub shoulders with. It s tuning and shaping your heart. Left to its own devices, your heart will drift and it will go out of tune. I see this crop up in my life; it usually happens when I m tired. It usually happens when I m stressed. It usually happens when I am failing to spend significant time in God s Word. All of a sudden, stuff comes out of heart that I didn t even know was there. I remember about four years ago we took a group from church to Africa on a mission trip. We were in Kenya for about a week and a half and exposed to some things that were really humbling. Any of you that have ever gone to a third world country, you know how humbling it is. You come back and say, man, we have so much and I m so blessed. You just see that contrast. We left the slums of Kenya. We got on the airplane. Anytime I m gone from my family that long, I miss them. I want to get back. I don t remember who all was on the trip, but I do remember two people who were on the trip because they were on our staff. One of them is another pastor on our staff, and then, Sherry El. Some of you know Sherry. Sherry runs our benevolence ministry. She has been around here a long time. Sherry was with us. And we missed our connection in London, meaning we were going to get back a full day later. Immediately, my heart went to a dark place. So this other pastor that was with us, so did his. I don t want to throw him under the bus, but his name is Neil, (congregational laughter) and his last name rhymes with foyer. The two of us together started our own pity- party at the check- in desk. We were talking like, oh I can t believe that they got us here late. I don t remember what all we said, but our hearts we started growing cynical; we started complaining. Man, I will never forget, Sherry, in her sweet disposition, turned around and admonished us. And rightfully so. She said, guys, do realize where we just spent a week? Like, we are going to be delayed by a day, but we are still on an airplane, flying back in the air conditioning, and they are going to feed us, and check your hearts. She was totally right. Do you have people like that speaking into your heart on a regular basis? Our hearts are deceitful. They will drift into deception. What happened with Ananias and Sapphira was that they cracked the door, just a little bit, with deception. And when that happens, it will just feed the next lie; it will just feed the next area of deception. What happens is your heart gets hardened to this. It is interesting to note that Luke, the author of Acts and also the author of Luke, says in Luke 12, the only unforgivable sin is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. I don t know about you, but when I was growing up, I had no idea what that meant. I would hear a preacher say, the only unforgivable sin is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit and I would walk away and I would think, let s not blaspheme the Holy Spirit. I don t know what that means. So it was, Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 9

10 Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection August 31 & September 1, 2013 don t blaspheme the Holy Spirit, don t blaspheme the Holy Spirit I think I just almost blasphemed the Holy Spirit, I ve got to be careful! What blaspheme the Holy Spirit means is a defiance of known truth. In other words, you know the truth, the Holy Spirit has convicted you of truth, and you reject it. The thing that they [Ananias and Sapphira] were wrong in is that they lied to the Holy Spirit. It s not that God can t forgive you, it s that you don t want to be forgiven. It s because your heart has grown so out of tune, you don t recognize your need for Him anymore. Deception is more serious than you think. The next thing that comes right out of this passage: Satan is just more deceptive than you can imagine. Peter says it right here. He says, Why has Satan filled your hearts? This is the same way Judas is described in his betrayal of Jesus. Now when we talk about Satan, I don t know what pops into your mind. I don t know if it s that harmless little cartoon character with the pitchfork and horns, but that s part of the deception. He just wants you to think that he is harmless. However, in Revelation 12:9, it says that Satan is the deceiver of the whole world. In I Corinthians 2:11, it says, we do not want to be out- witted by the schemes of Satan. He [Satan] is crafty in his deception. Before He begins his earthly ministry, Jesus is led out into the wilderness and tempted by Satan on three different occasions. The way he defends all three attempts at deception is through the Word of God. This is why I just always encourage you to be in your Bible and to know it. Not because God is in Heaven seeing who is reading their Bibles, He is not. But because it literally prepares you for the deception that Satan will throw your way. He is smarter than you. He uses bait that you don t detect. I will never forget when I was in college, this became so crystallized for me. There was this class with a professor in seminary, so he was training preachers. This was a class on post- modernism; this was like, the year During one of the classes, the professor decided to show an episode of the cartoon, South Park. I m not going to ask you to raise your hands if you ve ever seen that, but I don t recommend it. He wanted to show us this cartoon full of satire. He wanted to show us this cartoon because of the point that it made. In the cartoon, it was an episode about Jesus and Satan in a boxing match. They walk into town and Satan is all ripped up, six- pack abs, 6 5 ; looks like he could pummel you into the ground. Jesus is a little stick figure, puny guy and they are going to be in a boxing match. So the whole town sizes the two up and decide, they are going to put their bets on Satan. So the whole towns bets all their houses, all their possessions, everything they own, they bet it all on Satan. There is only one person in town that bets on Jesus; nobody knows who it is. The day of the final event comes. They step into the ring. As soon as the bell rings, Satan just falls to the ground. Now Jesus didn t even touch him. Satan stays down for the 10- count, and Jesus is declared the victor. Come to find out, Satan was the one who bet on Jesus, betrayed the whole town, betrayed everyone out of their possessions. So we finish this. (We are offended that he made us watch the cartoon.) Afterwards, we thought, wow, that actually is a great illustration of the deception that Satan employs. If he would go after the Son of God, what makes you think he won t come after you? So you arm yourself with the Word of God because your own rationalizations will let you fall right into the Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 10

11 Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection August 31 & September 1, 2013 deception. So, Deception is more serious than you think ; Satan is more deceptive than you can imagine. This leads us to the third thing; comes right out of the text. Truth is the only antidote for deception. Truth is the only antidote for deception. There are two kinds of lies that you and I tell. Do you know what they are? The ones we planned and the ones we live with. The ones we pre- meditate and we just presume upon the grace of God and say, I m just going to tell this lie and expect that God will forgive me later. Or, the ones we slip into. I think this is maybe true for many of us. We didn t intend to lie, but we were in that conversation and it was just so easy to shade the truth just a little bit. Then we walk away kind of wincing and we think, uh, I kind of misrepresented myself or someone else, and we don t do anything about it. We just live with the lie. Truth is the only antidote for deception. In Proverbs 6, there are seven things listed in that chapter that God hates. Lying is mentioned specifically twice, it s implied on two other occasions. God hates lying, because deception is at the core of our sin and our rebellion. Truth is the only antidote for deception, and here is the last point. Truth is Christ. Truth is Christ. So this begins to make more sense, when in John 14:6, Jesus would say, I am the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the Father except through me. Notice what Jesus doesn t say there. He doesn t say, I have the truth, or, I know the truth, or, I m teaching the truth. He says that He is the truth. So many times we get all bent out of shape. We think, well, how could Jesus be the only way? What Jesus is saying here is that He is truth, so when you invite Him into the dark places of your life, He presses out, through the light of His identity, all the dark places and spaces that we hide in. That in Christ, there is no reason to live with the camouflage anymore. You contrast what it says in I Peter 5:8 with II Chronicles 16:9. I Peter 5:8 says that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. II Chronicles 16:9 says for the eyes of the Lord run to and fro, throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward Him. I have never put those two passages together until this week. That the deceiver is prowling around, looking for somebody to trip up into deception; but in II Chronicles 16:9, the eyes of the Lord are searching the earth for people whose hearts are blameless, meaning no lie, their consciences are clear before the Lord. When He finds them, He backs them up; He gives them support. So when you and I live with a lie, essentially we forfeit the support of God. When we come clean, He says there is no condemnation in coming clean, there is redemption. I m going to back you up. I m going to be your support. So if you come clean, will you have somebody get mad at you? Maybe. If you come clean, will this open up a can of worms that you are going to be in counseling for, for the rest of the year? Probably. Will God back you up? Absolutely! Truth is the only antidote for the deception that we are all living in. You will never be fully free until you come clean; and truth is Christ. John chapter 8, you will know the truth, and it will set you free. Some of you are shackled right now because of something that you just stuffed from a long time ago. When I was in college, I had a professor who told us a story about when he was in college. He lived with three other guys in an apartment. He had a homework assignment that was due that took him six weeks to do it. He put it all up in a three- ring binder; it took him hours and hours to finish that assignment. He got it done a week early because he was an over achiever (we hate those guys, don t we?) and he put it Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 11

12 Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection August 31 & September 1, 2013 on the table of his apartment. He went out on a date with his girlfriend, came back home late that night, and the notebook was gone. Six weeks of work, vanished! So he went to the three guys that he lived with and said, hey man, have you seen my notebook? I set it right there on the table and it s gone. All three of the guys were like, we don t know what you are talking about. Somebody was lying, but he couldn t prove it. It just vanished. So he goes back to the professor and he says, look, I got the assignment done a week early, but there is no way I m going to be able to have enough time to re- do it before the due date, could you give me an extension on this? It sounded like a lame excuse, right? Like, the dog ate my homework. The professor said, the only thing I can do is let you re- do it for half- credit. So he had to re- do the whole thing, all six weeks of work; turned it in; only got half credit for it. Never found out what happened to the notebook. Twenty- five years later, he is teaching and preaching in a youth conference in the northeastern part of the country. After one of the main sessions, a middle- aged man walked up to him, and immediately he recognized him. He hadn t seen him since college; it was one of his college roommates. He said, hey Mark, do you think we could talk for a minute in private? Mark said, oh man yeah, absolutely. It s been a long time since I ve seen you. They go out into the hallway where nobody else is around, and immediately this guy is sweating and his feet are shifting around. He begins to tear up. The first words out of his mouth are, I took your notebook. My professor, my friend said, no, I got my notebook right here. I just got done teaching, it s right here. The guy says, no, no, no. You don t understand. Twenty- five years ago, that big assignment that you did, you set it on the table, then you went out? He says, while you were gone, I stole it, I rebound it in my own notebook. I changed some things to camouflage it, make it look like it was mine and I turned it in. I got full credit for it and let you take the hit. My professor didn t know what to say; he had forgotten all about it. But all of a sudden this memory started to flood back into his mind. The guy, this grown man was standing there, tears streaming down his face, snot bubbles were coming out of his nose. My professor was just speechless. He was like, what do you want me to do here? His friend said, you don t understand. I m a youth pastor now. Every time I tell my kids to be honest, I think about that. Every time I tell them to come clean before the Lord, I think about that. I have been burying it and I ve been carrying it. I ve been thinking, oh man, that was a long time ago, it s no big deal. To bring it up will just cause unnecessary grief. And he said I ve asked for God s forgiveness; I ve confessed it to my wife; I ve confessed it to my pastor, but I ve never squared it with you. I just need to tell you. I m coming clean; I took your notebook. And then he said will you forgive me? My friend put his hands on both of his shoulders and he looked right at him (snot bubbles and all), and said, please know that you are completely and 100% forgiven. Please walk out of here no longer carrying that burden. The roommate managed to squeak out these words. Thank you. I don t know where you are with the Lord, but I know that chances are there are some of you that are camouflaging, stuffing some things that are maybe painful, concealing some things that you don t want out in the open. This isn t one of those things where you ve got to stand up and write an open letter. This isn t one of those things where you need to come down front and confess all of your deep, dark Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 12

13 Camouflage: Lying: The Act of Misdirection August 31 & September 1, 2013 secrets. It s a question of the heart; to ask yourself, have I allowed deception to creep in and now it s beginning to overtake the receptivity of my heart? What I want you to do right now is, I just want everybody to close your eyes if you would. Maybe if that makes some of you uncomfortable, you don t need to close your eyes to be recognized by God in prayer. But you close your eyes to concentrate; you close your eyes for focus. I just want everybody s eyes to be closed in this moment right now. I ask that there wouldn t be a whole lot of moving around in the room if you could, because I just want to ask that the Holy Spirit would meet us in this place. Some of you have a real heavy heart when it comes to this subject. Some of you in this room have yet to fully surrender your life to Christ; you ve just been playing the religious game. You ve been riding upon the shirttails of your parent s faith; you ve been riding on the shirttails of grandma s faith, but you ve never made it your own. You ve called yourself a Christian, but you are still hiding in the darkness of your heart. What I need you to know is, when you step out into the light, you are not experiencing condemnation, but redemption. Jesus took the condemnation upon himself upon the cross. So if there is any of you here this morning and you have never officially surrendered your identity to Christ and asked the Spirit of God to reside in your heart, I want to ask you with boldness and pastoral sensitivity, to do it today. This is not just an issue of well, I think I kind of believe a God exists, this is an issue of repentance. I m going to repent from my affinity to the darkness, to hide in it. [I m going to ask] that you would come clean and that you would ask His Spirit to reside within you. For others of you in this room, you are in Christ, but you ve begun to allow deception to creep into your hearts. Today is the day to do something about it; to repent of it; to ask God to help you come clean. We are going to take communion and respond to this teaching in song. I want to lead us in a prayer, as the ushers come at the conclusion of this. Lord God, we come to you right now and if there is somebody in this room hurting, struggling, or contemplating, I pray that today, September 1, 2013, might become the spiritual birthday of somebody in this room. That they would quit playing the religious game and that they would surrender their life to You. That they would come clean by confessing their sin and turning from it; and clinging to You, who is the Truth. God if there is anybody in this room that has been stuffing, or hiding, or concealing something, that they need to come clean on, I pray that you give them the courage to do it and that Your Grace would sustain them through it. That true and lasting healing can come because we know that Truth is the only antidote for deception. God, may we crucify our reputation, so that true identity in Christ can be birthed up in our character. So the next few moments, would You meet us in this room as we take communion and as we respond in song. We ask this in Jesus name. And the church says, Amen. Intellectual materials are the property of Traders Point Christian Church. All rights reserved. 13