What would you say is the basic virtue of Christianity? Most of us would probably answer, "Love!" Others would say "obedience." And some might answer "a high standard of morality." Let us see what God says about it in His word.
Greetings to you, my friend. Welcome to our program In Search of the Lord's Way. In the Bible the Holy Spirit commended the people of Berea who heard the apostle Paul preach, because "they were more fair-minded (that is the New King James Version.) The old King James Version says they were more "noble" than others because "they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether those things were so." And you are to be commended, too, for joining in this search of the Scriptures for the Lord's Way to become and to be a Christian today. We are grateful to you-- and feel honored that you have chosen our program from the many programs from which you have to choose.
Sincerity is fundamental to every virtue of religion. It is absolutely essential to a right relationship with God, to building interpersonal relationships in the family, in business, at school or anywhere else, and it is indispensable to peace of mind. Then that will be our subject today. Our Scripture reading will be Philippians chapter 1, verses 8 to 11.
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We are reading today from the apostle Paul’s letter to a church that he loved very much, the church at Philippi. We are going to read in the first chapter and we will begin at verse 8. “For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ. And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, and that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense until the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.” And now let us go to God in prayer. Our Father who art in heaven, we are so thankful for the privilege of coming to You in prayer and we know and we always pray that we do it only through Jesus Christ as our mediator. We pray, Father, that You will be with us in our study of this important quality of Christianity today. Bless our study. Amen.
When I said a while ago that sincerity is fundamental to every virtue of religion, you might have disagreed. Perhaps you are thinking that basic to everything the Savior taught is love. And that is true, but the Scriptures teach us in Ephesians chapter 6, verse 24 that even love can be insincere. So, even more basic to Christianity than love, is sincerity.
And this is true, in spite of the fact that it is nowhere recorded in the gospels that Jesus ever spoke the word, "sincere," "sincerity" and "sincerely." And they appear only nine times in the entire New Testament, and only three times in the Old Testament, and were never used by our Lord. Well, the word “sincere” means "the sunlight" or "to judge." The ancient shopping centers were very poorly lighted and the customer often found it necessary to take the merchandise out into the sunlight and inspect it for flaws or imperfections, before making a purchase of it. If the pottery or the glassware, or the cloth stood the test in the sunlight it was said to be sincere, and that is how the word came into use. You may be thinking it is strange that if this is the most basic virtue of Christianity that Christ never used the word.
But, think for a moment of the vice that Jesus denounced most frequently and in the strongest terms. It is the opposite of sincerity, isn't it? It is hypocrisy. It's interesting that this word is used 26 times in the New Testament and of those 26 times it is attributed to Jesus 23 times. Originally the word "hypocrite" was a good word. It means literally "a reader, a reciter or a play-actor." In the days of Christ, or even before Christ, when there was no printing press, books and plays were not readily available to the public. Copies were rare and very expensive, so the common people often gathered in the theaters to listen to a skilled reader, read or recite or "act out" the best literature of the day. But, by the time of the Messiah, because these actors were found-- not to be the kind of characters they were acting out on the stage, the word had fallen into disrepute, and Jesus is often heard saying, "Be not as the hypocrites," or "Do not do as the hypocrites do," or "Woe to you hypocrites!" He referred to them as "whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but within are full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness." A hypocrite is not the kind of a person on the inside that he parades himself to be on the outside. So Jesus teaches us not to be a play-actor about our faith, but be genuine or be sincere.
Well, Jesus didn't say much about sincerity, but he denounced its opposite vigorously and in the most scathing terms sometimes! We don't like "negative preaching" today. In fact, we prefer the positive approach in all discussions, don't we? But, in this instance as well as in many others, the Master Teacher was a negative one.
There is a lot of play-acting, pretending, deceitfulness, going on in virtually every segment of our society today-- in politics, in business, among families, and-- well, we would like to think that it isn't as common within the church as it is without, but that may be wishful thinking, too. One of the charges most commonly lodged against the church is that there are too many hypocrites in it. And that is true. If there were only one, that would be too many, wouldn't it? We have every right to expect Christians to be sincere or genuine, and the disappointment is so great when just one of them proves to be otherwise, that the problem is magnified in our minds, and all the others become suspect. It would be foolish to try to deny or even justify the presence of hypocrites in the church, but it is equally as foolish to judge all of Christ's apostles by Judas. Wherever we find it, insincerity is recognized for the evil it is. There is nothing about religion that's of any value, if it isn't characterized by genuineness. It simply must be sincere.
When asked by a critic what was the first or the great commandment in the law, "Jesus replied, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and all your mind." That is Matthew 22 verse 37. Love God is the first commandment of religion. And that is the beginning place, and that beginning must be sincere. It is difficult to imagine how a person could love God insincerely, but it can be done. We know it can because in the very last verse of Paul's letter to the Christians in Ephesus, he said, "Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity." That implies that some people pretend to love the Lord, doesn't it?
How can we know if our love for Him is sincere? Well, here is a little test: Jesus said, "If you love me, keep my commandments. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he is it that loveth me." And, "He, who has My commandments and keeps them, is he who loves Me." (John 14:15, 21 and 23). I once had a friend, who is now deceased, who when I went to see him, within a few minutes he would say repeatedly, "Brother Mack, I love the Lord. Oh, I do love the Lord. Oh, how I love the Lord. Brother Mack, I really do love the Lord." And, I believe he did. I believe he sincerely tried to follow Jesus in all His ways, but his persistent telling me so isn't what convinced me of it. I observed from his ways that he loved Jesus. I see bumper stickers that say, "I love Jesus." And the driver may very well love Jesus; I don't know about that. But one thing I do know about it is his love for Jesus is verified, not by his bumper sticker, but by whether he does what the Lord teaches in his Word. The person who says, "Oh, how I love Jesus," and doesn't do what He says, well, he isn't being exactly genuine or sincere about it, is he? We need to show more sincerity in our love for the Lord.
Likewise, we need to cut out the pretense about our love for one another. Romans 12:9 simply says, "Let love be without hypocrisy." The Revised Standard Version translates it, "Let love be genuine." Well, we get the idea, don't we? But, as the case is with the Lord, genuine love for husband, or wife, or child, or parent, employer or employee or friend or business associate isn't measured by how many times we say it, but by our actions. It is good to say it alright and to say it often. We are reminded of the old fellow whose wife, after many years of marriage, asked him if he still loved her. He replied, "I told you when I married you I loved you, and if I ever change my mind, I'll let you know." Well, that is the way many of us live and later, we live with regrets for not having said it more often.
We must never lay our hand on a person's shoulder and say to him, "I love you, brother," while stabbing him in the back with the other hand. In fact, we can't be sincere about our love for another person even by just refusing to do him evil. Genuine love is expressed in doing him good! The Bible says in I Peter 1:22, "Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart." That is the Christian way. It is the Lord's way. It's the best way. Wouldn't it be great if we had more fervent, unpretended love from pure hearts!
And the Bible also teaches us that we must be sincere about our worship. Jesus spoke of those people in His day, who worshiped him with their lips, but their hearts were far from him (Matthew 15:7 and 8). He said by teaching for their doctrines the commandments of men, they had rendered the word of God and their worship vain. In other words, they were going through the motions of worship, but it didn't have any meaning to it. Jesus told the woman at the well that true worship, must consist of two essentials: spirit and truth (John 4:24). In the absence of either of these, worship is absolutely meaningless; the worshiper is not built up and God is not glorified. The truth part of it is doing the way the Lord says. And some people don't think this is important. Others don't see the importance of offering their worship with the right spirit. If you will notice when you are reading your Bible, as in I Corinthians chapter 5, verse 8, there is a close relationship between sincerity on the one hand and truth on the other.
The world also needs to see more sincerity in our preaching. In this same chapter from which we have taken our text (Philippians 1:16), Paul wrote his Christian friends in Philippi and these are friends that he loved dearly and he said, “Some preach Christ from selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to my chains. Indeed preaching Christ even of envy and strife.” If I had said that, you might have thought I was being censorious or jealous maybe. You might have even thought that I was being cruel and unkind, and you might have been right. But these are the words of the Holy Spirit through the pen of the great gospel preacher, an apostle of Jesus Christ. And though they were written more than 1900 years ago, they are as timely today as if we had read them in this morning's newspaper. We preachers must guard against wrong motives in preaching. In the same book (chapter 3, verses 18 and 19), he continues, "For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is their shame-- who set their mind on earthly things." Well, that is an appropriate description of much of the preaching of our day, isn't it?
Well, Paul's prayer for the church at Philippi, with which we began this program, would be an appropriate prayer for the church today. "And this I pray," he said, (1) your love may abound more and more, number (2) that you may approve the things that are excellent, number (3) that you may be sincere and without offense, and number (4) that you may be filled with the fruits of righteousness.
Let us not fall into the mistaken notion that sincerity alone is sufficient to salvation. Many have been, and are sincere, who have been sincerely mistaken in the direction they have taken in life. And there is no better example of that than Saul of Tarsus, who after his conversion became the Lord's apostle to the Gentile world. He said, "Indeed, I myself thought I must do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. This I also I did in Jerusalem, and many of the saints I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them to foreign cities" (Acts 26: 9 to11). Yet, he declared in Acts 23:1, "I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day." Yes, he was chief among sinners (I Timothy 1:15) and lost.
So, sincerity is vitally important, even essential to acceptable, meaningful faith with others and with God. But it isn't the only essential. It is as we said earlier, if we are sincere about our relationship with the Lord, we will hasten to follow His teaching in seeking our forgiveness of past sins and the starting of a new life in Christ. Paul is a good example of that, too. When he saw Christ and talked with Him on the Damascus road, he came to be a believer. Oh yes, he did! And no one ever had any reason to question the sincerity of his faith. He who was the greatest persecutor became the most persecuted Christian. What a change the Lord wrought in Paul's life when he repented! He immediately began to preach the Christ he had previously persecuted. And when Ananias came to him on Straight Street in Damascus and commanded him to be baptized in the name, or by the authority of Him he had been persecuting, to wash away his sins, he asked no questions; he made no quibbles. He asked no such questions as, "Do I have to be baptized." No sir, he "arose and was baptized" (the King James Version says, "straightway" meaning immediately) (Acts 9:18; 22:16). When we are sincere about our faith in Christ, we will get our lives turned around, too, and we will obey His command to be baptized-- no questions asked! Let us pray. Holy Father, how grateful we are to You for this teaching about the innermost parts of our faith, our profession, and our life the idea of being sincere. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
The story is told of a musician who, following one of his performances, wept while the huge audience applauded, but one man very noticeably did not applaud. When the musician was asked why he was so affected by the one man's refusal to applaud, he replied, "He is my teacher."
It will be to our sorrow; too, if by pretense, hypocrisy and deceit, we manage to draw the approbation of the whole world, but fail to gain the approval of the Master. And it is certain we will never gain His favor by saying one thing and doing or being something else, by acting one life and living another. And, we will have problems with the person we see in the mirror every morning as long as we know that our life is a mere charade.
It is impossible to build solid social and business relationships while putting on a front without the quality of genuineness. If you can't depend on my being what I seem to be or I, you, then we have nothing on which to interact and to build.
Thank you for seeing and hearing our program today. We are presented here by caring Christians in churches of Christ, who would also like to have you worship with them in a congregation near you. If you haven't been able to locate a church of Christ in your area, if you will write or call us, we will be happy to assist you. A lady called us recently, looking for a church of Christ near her. We helped her. We sent her the address of one in her very own neighborhood, and she called back a few days later and said she had become a Christian. She was baptized on Sunday--there at that church where we sent her. I don't know if they knew that we had sent her or not.
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