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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.