Honesty - Sunday Message

I want to invite you to open your bibles with me to Romans chapter 7, and find with me verse 15. It’s only one verse for today, Romans chapter 7, and find verse 15 with me. Before I read this verse, I just want to encourage you to bring your bibles with you. Whether by phone for physical Bible, and if you need one, let me know. I’ll buy you a really nice one.

But its really important that we as a body of believers, open our bibles together. Romans chapter 6, verse 15.. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. (the law means God’s word, it means what God says is good and what God says is bad.) 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.

18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

(Romans 7:15-20). The last two nights I’ve been out in the middle of nowhere, with barely any internet with roughly 18 pre-teens as the main speaker for their retreat called, “honesty.” And so, this is kind of the afterglow from being with them this weekend. I told them when I left, that I was going to back to my church and tell the people that God is still changing lives. That God is still forgiving people of their sin.

That God is still passionately pursuing people. That relationships can be fixed, that friendships can be reconciled, but theres usually just one thing standing in the way and that’s being honest. Do you wanna know how important honesty is to God? Important enough that one of the 10 commandments speaks on being honest in our relationships. Exodus 20 verse 16 says, "You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” And that’s interesting because who’s my neighbor?

When I think of neighbor, I think of our friends the Baxters who lives across the road from us. Or the young family living behind us. But if we really dig in to what this word neighbor means, what we would discover is that it means everyone and anyone we come into contact with. So that guy or gal walking down the street, that is a stranger, they are your neighbor.

That young kid with purple or green hair, who is different than you, they are your neighbor. The person you work with, who annoys the world out of you, they are your neighbor. And Jesus helps us to understand who our neighbor is by telling us what is the greatest commandment. Remember when the scribe asked, Jesus who is the greatest commandment? And Jesus gave them the Shema? That you should love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength.

And what? You should love your neighbor as you love yourself. So when we read, you shouldn’t bear false witness against your neighbor, Now we can read it is like this… you shouldn’t bear false witness with anyone you come into contact with. You shouldn’t bear false witness against them. But yet, we do sometimes. Sometimes we’re not totally honest. I believe there are three areas in our life where we’re not always totally honest.

And I want to discuss them you. The first area is our personal life. We struggle to be honest with ourselves. I don’t know why, but there are times I feel really guilty for doing something. Or for saying something. Sometimes it’s easier to point out others faults, and other people short comings than it is to look into a mirror and see my own faults. For most of my christian life, it seems to have been a struggle.

I struggled with wanting to read my Bible. I struggled with prayer. I struggled with giving. I wrestled with self doubt. Believing that I wasn’t worth anything, to anyone. But yet, I had a desire to please God, but that desire seems to meet a wall of inconsistency in my spiritual life. In Romans chapter 7, Paul was struggling. Remember he said, I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.

16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. It’s as if there is a war going on in my inner being. Theres this desire to do what is good, but the action never follows that up. Or another issue is that that people try to do good, they try to do the right thing and what is true, but then they begin to sprinkle little lies in.

And if you notice, most often when little lies are sprinkled in, those are lies will always try to make the person look good. We call that being deceptive. Deceptive means, a person is giving the appearance of something being true, but then they’re trying to mislead someone from seeing the real, honest, and full truth of it. And so Paul; writes, theres this war going on within my inner being.

King David writes, God delights when truth reigns in my innermost being. He says, when truth is the king of my inner most being, God is delighting. And so what I’ve found to be true in other peoples lives, and even my own. Is that the hardest part about speaking truth into a heart that refuses truth is a heart that won’t be honest with itself. Our lives improve only when we take chances – and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.

Sometimes, we’re not hones tight ourselves because we have low integrity. Solomon had a lot to say about integrity. Proverbs, 10: 9 says, Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out. Chapter 12, verse 17says, “An honest witness tells the truth, but a false witness tells lies.” And so, I think what we can say is this, Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.

Thomas Jefferson once said, Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. We’ve got to come to a moment in our life where we’re honest with ourselves and where we truly are. The second area where we’re not totally honest with is in our relationships with others. We struggle with being honest with others. God takes honesty so serious that he desires for us to be honest not only with ourselves, but also with others.

James said, confess your sins with one another. It’s really hard to confess a sin to someone else, when were too busy confessing the hurt they caused us to others. Amen? We want to be justified for what wrong has been done to us. We want the other person to come into the knowledge of what we think they’ve done to us. Do you wanna know a phrase I don’t really like.

They’ll get whats coming. Or how about this one, Karma will get them. I just believe those are not very Christlike phrases. I don’t think Jesus ever said, you’ll get whats coming to you one day. I don’t ever read in the scriptures where Jesus goes, Karma’s gonna get you. We’re people of justice. We want to see others get what they deserve. And sometimes, that kind of mentality isn’t love.

It’s not filled with grace. Do you wanna know how one can tell whether or not a heart is growing in Christ, Seeing someone love their enemies. Do you want to know whats hard… Loving those who are hurting you. Loving those who are trying to assimilate your character. Loving those who are believe you’ve caused this ruin, or you caused harm to them. Ya know, most church hurt isn’t really church hurt.

Most often what some might think is a person being hurt by the church, or by the pastor is just the church or the pastor holding that person accountable to what they say or what they do. I’ll never forget the time Alicia and I were going to a church and they pulled me in as the youth pastor and I made it for about 6 months as the youth pastor.

They brought me in prematurely. I wasn’t ready, and the church wasn’t ready. But I do want to say something before I continue… God lead our family there, and it I believe it was God's will for us to go through what we dis. But, bringing me in as the youth pastor without really the church being ready and myself being ready, caused animosity between the pastor, me and one of the members.

I was arrogant, young and naive. The teens went from 5 to over 20, but the person I replaced didn’t know they were being replaced. They weren’t called into pastoral ministry, they were just serving in a role and then one day, here comes our family. Move over, let me show you how this is done… I just spent 3 years in the Denver area where teen ministry thrives… let me show you what I've learned.

Arrogance on my part. Needless to say, within 6 months, the conclusion from the senior pastor was, it’s either you or me, and I was let forced to either be fired, or resign. I had reason to say, I’m done. I moved my family here because you wanted me here. You’re the one that hired me. You’re the one that said I was in charge. And now, you’re firing me. Because the person I replaced was a board member, a heavy tither, and they were bitter over what had happened.

I wanted to leave. I looked at Alicia and I said, if they don’t want me as a youth pastor, well guess what, there a church down the road thats been looking for a youth pastor. Let’s go there… And Alicia said, no. we’re staying here. I don’t think I would be here today if it wasn’t for Alicia saying no. Do you know what happened? We ended up reconciling the relationship that was broken by staying, and being honest with the ones that we’ve hurt, and who have hurt us.

James says, be honest with one another and confess your sins to one another. That takes humility… but it also takes accountability. It’s called being honest with others so that they can be honest with you. Do you know something… even as a pastor, or even a friend, I cant help someone who won’t be honest. Have you ever been around someone like that. The kind of person that is never wrong.

The kind of person that wont admit a mistake. Or how about this… how about when it comes to saying I’m sorry, they kind of say, oh well, I'm sorry you didn’t like, or im sorry you didn’t see it this way, or that wya. They kind of give a false, or fake hearted apology? The reality is, if you can't be honest about mistakes, you're never going to get free from the inner war going on within your inner being.

There are three types of people in the Bible. Wise, foolish and evil. A wise person is one you can correct, and they become wiser. In fact, you can take truth to a wise man, and the wise man will correct themselves to the truth. The second is the foolish person. A foolish person never admits mistakes. A foolish person, many times, will turn it around on you. Instead of being held accountable, they try to show it was your fault.

And sometimes, they will go so far as to hurting others around them, to make sure their foolishness is seen as truth. But they reject truth, and what you recognize is that the foolish person adapts the truth to themselves. Proverbs 9:8 says, "Do not correct a scoffer", a foolish person, "lest he hate you. Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you. Then there is the evil person. This is a person that is either wise or foolish.

They reject truth all together. Their people of deceit. They are people that live one life in public, and another in private. And sometimes they cant help themselves. They’ve got to come to a point where they reconize they’ve got to be honest with where they are. And heres the thing… I can pastor two of them. I can pastor, a wise person and a foolish person… but an evil person, I can’t.

Not until they are honest about where they are. Not until they are honest. They need to be Be fully transparent and vulnerable with God and with others. The last area of our life is that we struggle being honest with God. If we cant be honest with ourselves, and we cant be honest with others… how do we ever expect to be honest with God? I mean think about it…

The god who knitted a person in their mothers womb. David writes, Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:16 The god who knows the heart, and knows what the heart wants. You have searched me, LORD, and you know me. Psalm 139:1 The God who loves us in our sin, and calls us from our sin.

Who pursues us, even when we’re walking away form him, in His great love, and patience he still comes after us. And yet, we struggle to be honest with God. Did you know that when we are honest with God, joy becomes avaible? Turn with me to Psalm 32. David writes, How joyful is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! How joyful is a person whom the Lord does not charge with iniquity and in whose spirit is no deceit!

What David is saying is that there is joy in being honest and being forgiven. Theres no joy in dishonesty... only fear. What are we fearing? Well we fear someone will find out the lie. We fear God wont bless us. We fear losing friends. And so fewer causes us to live in deceit. And theres a key phrase in these verses for when it comes to joy… the Psalm says in verse 2, In whose Spirit is no deceit!

In your spirit. David would write in another Psalm, Psalm 51, “God delights when truth reigns in our inmost being.” Paul, in our Scripture this morning would write, “For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” And then he would go on to say, oh what a wretched man that I am. You see, Paul is being honest and recognizing his constant tendency and temptation to turn from GOd and be dishonest with himself.

It’s like a magnet, or a light to a bug. He recognizes that he has an urge to turn from God and die what he doesn’t want to do. And so, he cries out… God! What should I do. Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? David writes, back in Psalm 32, When I keep silent, my bones become brittle from my groaning all day long.

I’m heavy. I’ve lost the strength. I’m tired… I cant hold this wretchedness in my any longer. I believe Paul and David were both experiencing the same thing… Honesty with oneself, and honesty with others, should always draw us to being hornet with God who saves us. You see, David would go on to say in verse 5, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave me for my sins, Do you remember what Paul does?

In verse 25 of Romans 7 Paul writes, 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! He turns to Jesus. As our worship team comes up… I want us this morning to recognizes that everyone of us struggle with honesty on some level. Maybe it’s being honest with yourself. Maybe you don’t think your beautiful. Or maybe you might not think your worthy. Just this morning I got a text from a friend at the pre-teen retreat thanking me for being there.

I write back… I think I needed to be just as much as the kids. Because I too have been hurt, and told that I'm not as good as someone else, or I’m not doing well as a pastor. This weekend, after the first altar call and all the kids came to the altar, I had to leave. I went outside because theres a tendency to want to take the glory from GOd.

And thats sin. And so, I had to be honest with God and say, God, Forgive me. Maybe you’re not being honest with others. Maybe you’ve struggled with lying about someone. Maybe you just want others to respect you.. or see you as someone that is smart, or beautiful, or better than what you really are. Maybe you’re living one life in public but another at home? Sin that is left unchecked with grow roots not only in your life, but will at some point begin to reach out into the lives of those around you.

And sometimes, we see people with a lot of briars thats been overgrowing for years. Hurting others. Maybe you just need to be honest with God this morning… I’ve always heard this… when it comes to repenting of our sins, or asking for forgiveness, its not you coming and telling God something he doesn’t already know. He knows it already.. Repentance is us coming to a God who already knows, who’s just waiting for us to be honest with him that now, we know and that we understand, and we also know there us only one thing we can do, and that is to come, and to turn to a loving God and ask for his grace and forgives…

so that he can place the Spirit of His Son within us, to care for us, and to guide us, and walk with us… Paul goes, this war that is waging within me… I need it to stop. I need peace. David says, this desire to keep silent, to hide my deceit… I need relief. And so they both turn to God. Will you this morning….. will you turn to him, or will you tune him out…

That decision is for you to make… not me. *