Download Notes - Dave Petrescue

SURFACE SAINTS
TCK’s – D. Pollock coming. Don’t miss it. All of us who are living outside
our homeland are stretched and we become someone different than who we
were back home. This is especially true for our children.
Africans growing up in the west are like coconuts; they are still brown on the
outside but culturally they’ve become white on the inside. Asians growing up
in the west are like bananas; they are still yellow on the outside but culturally
white on the nside. Westerners growing up in Asia are like eggs; they are
white on the outside but culturally yellow on the inside. And so on. After 10
years in Egypt living among the nations of the world I think that on the inside I
just might resemble a fruit salad.
The bottom line is, we can’t always tell where a person has come from or what
they are really like just by looking at them.
This is also true when it comes to the issue of our relationship to God.
Throughout the ages many people have been raised in a spiritual culture that
was not the culture of their heart. They learn the mannerisms, the customs and
the language but deep inside they are very much different than they are on the
outside.
Although this may be perfectly in order when it comes to culture it is not OK
when it comes to our relationship with God. As a matter of fact it is sickening
to him. People who live like that are not eggs or bananas or coconuts. They
are cultural Christians, surface saints. In reality they are deceivers. They are
hypocrites.
I realize hypocrisy is an awful word with a painful stigma. No one likes to be
considered a hypocrite and yet it is the easiest thing to become. All it takes is
when we allow a separation to take place between what we are spiritually on
the outside, or appear to be on the outside, and what we really are on the inside.
The 8 passages and 22 God-size questions we will examine this morning have
to do with hypocrisy. If you want to know what a hypocrite looks like go with
me this morning to the scriptures. The God-size questions we will examine
today seem to imply there are four sections to a surface saint: design,
deception, defilement and destruction. Let’s examine them.
DESIGN
In Ps 50:16 God asks, “What right have you to recite my laws or take my
covenant on your lips?” In Isa 1:11,12 he questions, “The multitude of your
sacrifices - what are they to me? Who has asked this of you, this trampling of
my courts?” In Amos 5:25 he continues, “Did you bring me sacrifices and
offerings forty years in the desert, O house of Israel?”
In other words, you talk the talk, you seem to walk the walk, you have the
accurate appearance, the correct religious design, the right traditions and
outward actions but…. WHY are you saying these things? WHY are you doing
these things? Why do you repeat them over and over again? What right do
you have to say and do them?
With God’s pointed questions he makes it very clear that we can’t tell a true
believer by how they look on the outside, by how they act or by how they talk.
The people he was questioning were doing all the right things but their hearts
were far from him.
In Isa 58:5-7 God selects the religious activity of fasting to illustrate his point.
He asks, “Is this the kind of fast I have chosen, only a day for a man to humble
himself? Is it only for bowing one's head like a reed and for lying on sackcloth
and ashes? Is that what you call a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD? Is not
this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie
the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not
to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with
shelter--when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to turn away from your
own flesh and blood?”
God is saying, I’m not just looking for people to fulfill certain religious
functions, to jump through the hoops, for people to have a nice outward
religious or spiritual design. When it comes to our relationship with God if the
outside does not match the inside we are surface saints, hypocrites. To do the
right thing with the wrong motive is meaningless to God. God isn’t looking
for design; he wants depth. Would anyone be happy to have a marriage
certificate and look happily married but without the joy of the love
relationship? Why then should we be satisfied with that kind of relationship
with God? The outward spiritual design by itself is dry and useless.
DECEPTION OR DUPLICITY
The second section of hypocrisy is deception or duplicity.
When I was in Jr. High I was still far away from God even though I attended
church, youth meetings and Sunday School. My best friend and I were little
devils together. But when we went to church he somehow took on a different
image whenever someone was looking. People knew I was a rascal but they
thought he was quite godly. They actually thought I was a bad influence on
him. He played his saxophone in church and appeared quite spiritual. One
morning in our Sunday School the leader asked him to close in prayer. As he
began to pray with all the nice sounding spiritual phrases, I could no longer
hold in the humor of it. Here was the guy who, the very night before, had been
doing some pretty raunchy things with me now leading the class in prayer. I
burst out laughing. The teacher was very angry with me. But you know
something more important… I don’t think God was as angry with me as he was
with my friend. I was bad and everyone knew it. Somehow he was able to play
the game of deception, live a life of duplicity and seem to get away with it.
Hypocrisy does not just take place among teenagers. As we get older we
perfect the strategies. We can get to the place where the majority are living
that way for so long that it even appears normal.
In Zech 7:5-7 God asks, “When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and
seventh months for the past seventy years, was it really for me that you fasted?
And when you were eating and drinking, were you not just feasting for
yourselves? Are these not the words the LORD proclaimed through the earlier
prophets when Jerusalem and its surrounding towns were at rest and
prosperous, and the Negev and the western foothills were settled?”
Yes, you fasted, but why and for who? Don’t pretend it was for me when it
really was for yourself. Don’t pretend to be spiritual when you’re only doing if
for show. Don’t pretend you know me when you only speak the Christianese
lingo.
One day a county Sheriff had his radar set up outside a little town in the middle
of Arkansas where the speed limit was 55 mph. Suddenly he clocked a man
approaching rapidly at 90 mph. The sheriff turned on the lights and sirens and
pulled over the man to the side of the road. The sheriff approached the car and
looked inside.
"Do you know how fast you were going?” he asked. And then he noticed an
empty wine bottle on the floor of the passenger side, and noted the smell of
alcohol on the breath of the driver.
"Excuse me, you haven't been drinking now, have you?" the officer asked. The
driver looked over at the wine bottle, realized that the sheriff saw it, and
replied, "Oh, no, officer...that bottle was filled with water." The sheriff asked,
"Well then how come I smell wine on your breath?"
The man in the car thought fast, remembered his church days and exclaimed,
"Well praise Jesus! He’s done it again!”
Deception and duplicity are the hallmarks of a hypocrite. We can go through
all the right motions and say all the right things, even quote Bible passages and,
as the drunk in our story, refer to our Savior’s miracles. But in Jer. 23:18 God
asks, “But which of them has stood in the council of the LORD to see or to
hear his word? Who has listened and heard his word?”
I’m not wanting people to fill the slots, to go through the motions, to just do the
right things. I want people who will relate to me personally, who will come
into my presence, spend time with me, share love with me. If you don’t know
me I don’t want you pretending you do. That is deception and it gives me a
really bad name because you misrepresent who I am.
DEFILEMENT
The third section of a surface saint is defilement. When we play the game of
hypocrisy we get stained, corrupted, dirty and twisted.
In Hag 2:11-13 God asks, “If a person carries consecrated meat in the fold of
his garment, and that fold touches some bread or stew, some wine, oil or other
food, does it become consecrated? If a person defiled by contact with a dead
body touches one of these things, does it become defiled?”
Let me change the imagery a bit so you can see clearly here what God was
asking. If you take a white glove and rub it in the ground does the white glove
make the ground white or does the ground make the glove dirty? If we play in
the mud we get dirty. It doesn’t matter how much of a white glove we appear
to be in church, God knows when we’ve been in the dirt because it shows to
him. People may not see it (well actually many do) but God most definitely
notices.
And when we allow inner corruption to remain inside us it’s like allowing
poisons to remain in our bodies. We may appear alive while we are actually
getting sicker and sicker. And the ones who pay the price for our defilement
are usually those closest to us.
In Isa 42:19 God asks, “Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the
messenger I send? Who is blind like the one committed to me, blind like the
servant of the LORD?” How sad that even those who are his messengers, his
servants, his pastors, priests, elders, deacons, board members and leaders will
often allow duplicity to defile them.
In my first year of pastoral ministry in Canada I was visiting the neighbors
around the church. An elderly man invited me in and told me his story. He
was kind but said frankly, “I won’t be coming to your church or to any church.”
When I asked him why he wouldn’t accept my invitation he told me his story.
When he was young he served as an altar boy in the old town church, assisting
the priest with various duties at the church. When he was 15 he and some
friends were traveling home one night from Toronto through the countryside in
a snow storm. They noticed a car in the ditch so stopped to help. Everyone
had their hats and hoods on so it was difficult to tell who was who. The man
whose car was in the ditch was swearing a blue streak and very mad. He also
appeared to be a little drunk. When they got his car out of the ditch he turned
to the boys to say thanks and they noticed that it was the priest.
The elderly man looked at me and said, “I’ve never been back to church since.”
DESTRUCTION
The fourth part of hypocrisy is destruction.
We can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the
time but we cannot fool all of the people all of the time. With God the equation
gets much tighter. You can never fool God. Period.
God wants us to deal with him in honesty. He is not shocked or blown away or
disgusted when we admit honestly who we are and where we’ve come from.
He is not surprised when we honestly admit that we are dirty and defiled. He is
not at all taken back with the depths of our failure. He already knows it. He
just wants us to deal with him honestly.
But when we live in hypocrisy, when we choose to play the game, when we
allow ourselves to become surface saints, not only do we allow deception,
duplicity and defilement to corrupt us; we ultimately bring on destruction.
In Proverbs 6 27, 28 God asks, “Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his
clothes being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being
scorched?” In Jer 11:15 God asks, “What is my beloved doing in my temple as
she works out her evil schemes with many? Can consecrated meat avert your
punishment?”
The person who lives a double life is tormented within. Like trying to walk in
two directions at the same time, there is a tearing in our mind, our emotions,
our will and our spirit and sooner or later our character and personality will
reveal the cracks. Duality within our own person creates internal agony. There
is no one more miserable in life that someone trying to be two different people.
That is why God said, either get hot or get cold but don’t be lukewarm, it’s
sickening to God, to everyone else, and also to yourself.
THE MAN IN THE GLASS Author Unknown
When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day,
Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.
For it isn't your father or mother or wife
Whose judgement upon you must pass,
The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
Some people might think you're a straight-shootin' chum
And call you a wonderful guy.
But the man in the glass says you're only a bum
If you can't look him straight in the eye.
He's the fellow to please, never mind all the rest
For he's with you clear to the end,
And you will have passed your most dangerous test
If the guy in the glass is your friend.
You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass,
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you've cheated the man in the glass.
God does not punish us just because we have failed. He will only punish us if
we won’t deal with our failures honestly. All of us have sinned and come short
of God’s glory but only those who refuse to face up to those failures will be in
line for destruction. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us
our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1Jn. 1:9)
When King Saul was confronted with his wickedness he admitted he had
sinned but said, ‘Please honor me before the elders.” In other words, don’t tell
anyone. Let’s keep it a secret. His kingdom was stripped from him. King
David also failed God miserably, even committing adultery, murder and
deception but when confronted with his sin he not only admitted it, he even
wrote out his confession for the whole world to see. In Psalm 51 he said,
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your
great compassion blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and
cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always
before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your
sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you
judge. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived
me. Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the
inmost place. Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I
shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you
have crushed rejoice. Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do
not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to
me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me. Then
I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you. Save
me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of
your righteousness. O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your
praise. You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take
pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken
and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
When we stop being surface saints, when we put aside hypocrisy and come
clean with God, an amazing thing happens. The chains of deception are
broken. The dark clouds of duplicity are blown away. The stink and pain of
defilement are cleansed and healed and we are restored to wholeness.
That is why God challenged the Israelites through Joshua to quit wavering
between two opinions and simply make a choice. Joshua said, “Now therefore
fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods
which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and
serve ye the LORD. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the LORD, choose you
this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that
were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land
ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD.” (24:14,15)
Today God invites to make a choice, to quit bouncing around between two
ways of believing, two ways of living, to ways of acting. Today God invites
you to come clean, to take off the mask, to quite playing cover-up. Today I
challenge you to get honest with God. Quit being a surface saint. Throw off
the cloak of hypocrisy. Come before God and in complete honesty say, “This
is who I really am.” That act of honesty will not only set you free from your
binding past; it will also guarantee your blessed future.
Pray.