Sometimes People Suck | Week 4

Sometimes People Suck – week 4 Two Faced People

Hypokrites: Stage actor—One who hides behind a mask.

Hypocrites: Do it and act like you don’t.

Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness. Matt 23:28 NLT

1) They don’t know God  yet.

Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. I John 2:4

2) They don’t know Better yet.

…I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. 1 Cor 3:1

3) They do know Both 
.

For you are free, yet you are God’s slaves, so don’t use your freedom as an excuse to do evil. 1 Pet 2:16 NLv

1. Protect Them 
.

Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. Gal 6:1

…if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. Gal 6:1 NLT

2)Protect Myself

…If someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. Gal 6:1

Pride comes before a fall! So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! 1 Cor 10:12

3)Check my Blindspot
-

Whenever you are most condemning is often a reflection of where you are most vulnerable.

David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, “As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die! He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity.” Then Nathan said to David, “You are the man!" 2 Sam 12:5-7

If one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins. James 5:19-20

Discussion Questions:

When you hear the word hypocrite, what comes to mind?

Why do you think hypocrisy is one of the biggest complaints people have about Christians?

The Greek word hypokrites refers to an actor wearing a mask. Where do you see people “wearing masks” today?

What makes loving “two-faced” or hypocritical people especially hard? Where might your strongest criticism of others actually reflect your own struggle?

Have you ever been the one who needed someone to bring you back?

Thank you for listening to the Relate Community Church podcast! Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss an episode. If today’s message spoke to you, share it with a friend or leave us a review to help spread the word. To learn more about Relate Community Church, visit us at www.relatecommunity.com. You are always welcome here, and remember—you are loved

Transcript

Welcome And Series Recap

SPEAKER_00 0:05

All right, everybody. How many of you are excited to be here today? Good, good, good. Awesome. I'm glad that you're here. And um I'm I'm thrilled that you're here, actually. Actually, would you just turn to somebody and tell them I'm glad you're here? You made today better. That's so good. Love seeing all of your shining faces. It's a beautiful day outside and inside, and we're gonna dive right into the last week, week four of a series that I think got everyone's attention. And um, it's it's challenging. It certainly is challenging. It has been fun, but with to today we're changing next week, we're changing gears and uh celebrating the moms and all lots of things are happening as we get ready to go into the summer. And uh just a quick heads up. We're starting a summer series in two weeks, three weeks. Um, and we're gonna be I'm not gonna tell you everything, but we're gonna be, we're gonna be for 10 weeks, we're gonna be looking at the Ten Commandments and just challenging ourselves to dive deeper into God's word and as He shapes us and forms us, and um, it's gonna be fun. We're calling it Summer in the Forge. So we're gonna be forging ourselves and and looking at uh God's commands, and um, it's gonna be fun. Lots of fun, fun, fun things happening uh during the summer. So, this series is designed around the idea that God has asked us, called us, uh, designed us to love people. And um that sometimes is a really difficult thing to do. It's hard sometimes to love people. Some people are harder to love than others. Don't look at anybody, just know that this series has been that series. And so uh week one, we looked at how do we love bullies? How do we love people through uh some of the some of the harshest things? How do we love through people who are judgy and our biggest critics? Last week we looked at uh people who need more than we have to give. That's a really tough situation to be in. Today we're gonna look at two-faced people, people who um they pretend to be one thing and yet they are something come you figure out, you find out, once the mask comes off, you figure out this is you're not at all what I thought you were. And you it's easy to point fingers. And uh, how many of you here raise your hand if you know a hypocrite? Okay, nobody wants to raise up. Raise your hand if you are sitting next to a hypocrite. Okay, there we go.

Why Hypocrisy Hurts The Church

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I thought I'd find some more examples because I need you to know that this is not just the people like the the one in a hundred persons, people in your life who are um, they're just a big hypocrite. No, I think they're a lot more, it's a lot more common than we give it credit for. The the hypocrites, the the hypocritical among us in church is probably a much higher percentage than just the average uh person out there because church people like to pretend they're better than they are. I'll take an amen for that too. I don't know. So I found some examples uh just to get your mind thinking outside of like just the typical um hypocrites. So the first one is like uh you want to sell your house, and so you make you use AI to make your house look a little bit better than it actually is. Not even the same, it's the same house, but it's it's pretending to be better than it is. The next one is for some of you guys out there, when you're pretending to be a good cat, but in reality there are no good cats. And I don't hate cats, I just don't like them. So and the last one is when you're pretending to be a pretty girl, and you're actually just a potato. I that's not even a girl, it's just a potato. There are too many things in reality where we're pretending to be something that we're not at all, and I think this one area, we saved it for last, it's not the best, but it's definitely the one that I think that the church has to deal with the most, it's because it's the thing that the world or the non-Christians, the people who are not followers of Jesus, look at us, and they the biggest the number one complaint they have about the church is that you're a hypocrite. You pretend to be something that you're not, and so how do we see that in ourselves? How do we love each other? How do we love other people through that? And so, first let's look really quickly at what hypocrite is. The word hypocrite actually comes from a Greek word, and I'll try to pronounce it, but it's Hippocritus, and it's it comes from the theater, the the old ancient Greek theater where they would have a mask on, and it's referring to a stage actor who wears a mask, and like they're they're pretending to be someone

What Jesus Calls Hypocrisy

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else, and yet in life, um, when we pretend, we end up acting, and um, it's not a good thing. Jesus, in one ver one short passage, just a couple of verses, Jesus calls out hypocrites seven times, and he's not talking about just all the hypocrites, he's actually specifically referring to the religious hypocrites. And so, seven times he says, woe to the hypocrites. He doesn't say woe to the people who cuss and curse and use foul language and do bad things and go out and sin all the time. He said it's it's not the people who watch bad things and have bad friends and act out all the time. He says, woe to the hypocrites, the people who do it, but then they act like they don't do it. Or they don't do it and act like they do. They're pretending to be something different. So I'm gonna show you Matthew chapter 23, verse 28. He says, Jesus says, outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness. Notice the two inward and outward. There's an inward version of you and an outward version of you. And some of us, there's many more versions, depending on how many social media accounts we have. We have the inward version, the outward version, and then the social media, the Facebook version, the Instagram version, the X version. We kind of have a different persona in each of those for uh what this really looks like. How does this practically look in the church? How does it practically look in the world? Because I want you to think about the world, but I want us to look at the church. I want us to look at ourselves today. It might look like the kid who goes to youth group and tells his parents, Mom, I'm so excited about going to church tonight. And then they pretend like they're a good Christian kid and they they love Jesus, and yet on social media they use different language and they have different friends, and they go to different things, they take pictures of themselves doing other things. Maybe it's not a teenager at all, maybe it's an adult. And they're doing the exact same thing that to this group of people, they're this kind of person, but as soon as they get with another group of people, then they're a different kind of person or different language, different culture altogether, depending on who we're with. Maybe it's somebody that you go to a small group with and uh they're saying all the right churchy things like God is good all the time. So hey, I got somebody right here all the time. We know what to say, but then as soon as it comes, as soon as there's money on the line, they'll just their integrity is out the window. And they're they pretend that they're godly and we have godly values and we do things like Jesus would do, and yet they're the first one to rip you off. Maybe it's a boss that does that or an employee. So how do we deal, how do we love that person who's like, oh, I can't, I can't with you? How do we love that person? How do we not flush them out of the church or flush them out of our lives? I think first we have to look at something um very telling, and it we we have to have the the responsibility is on us to look behind the mask a little bit and to try and see, okay, why are they acting hypocritical? Why are they being a hypocrite? So I'm gonna show you three reasons why, and then we're gonna kind of unpack the third one. The first one is they're being a hypocrite because they don't know God yet. I'll say yet because we're hoping that everybody's on their way towards that, right? They don't know God yet. And so uh 1 John 2, 4 says, Whoever says, I

Three Reasons People Wear Masks

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know him, like I know God, but does not know what he commands, does not do what he commands, is a liar. And the truth is not in that person. Can I just give, let me just let you guys know something. It's possible to go to church for a long time and you still don't know God. You're still not a Jesus father, you're like, you're you have a Christian-themed life. That's good. You're taking a step, maybe in the right direction, you're still trying to figure it out. In fact, I love that we are a church where you can kick the tires. And I I remember when we first started the church and we had people joining the dream team of all kinds. People asked, it was crazy. There were people literally uh people of other faiths, Muslim families joining our dream team. And people would ask me, Pastor Sean, how do we know if they're Christians? How are you gonna let them on the dream team? I'm like, I'm not stopping them. Because they're walking towards Jesus. Why would I get in the way of that? They're gonna get there at some point. They might not be there yet, but they're walking there. And Jesus, even Jesus said, Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. There's a there there are the not all of us are the same at all times. Hopefully, we're all we're all walking towards Jesus. Um, there are things that we just kind of go along to get along. That's the first person. They don't know God yet. Number two, they don't know better yet. So maybe they've made a decision to follow Jesus and they have taken the first step or the second step or the tenth step, and yet they're just not, they don't know better yet. They're trying, they're trying to figure it out. And I'd say that's probably a lot of us in a lot of things. Watch this in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, he says, I could not, Paul says, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit, but as people who are still worldly, mere, everybody say, infants, mere infants in Christ. This is last week when we had the baby bottle, and we just realized uh we suck. This is not everybody. Uh I don't look at an infant baby and say, Why are you making such a mess? I didn't look at my kids when they were a year and a half old and say, Stop throwing your spaghetti everywhere. Because I gave them the spaghetti. And it's reasonable to expect, or chocolate cake all over. I don't look at an infant and ask, why did you do this? Or why can't you use the bathroom and the toilet? And I don't get mad at you, and I don't get mad at the people around me who are just doing the best that they can because sometimes we're not as far as long as we'd like to be. And so this is someone they don't know better yet, meaning that they don't need correction, they need instruction. And so if we can start to see, okay, let me look behind the mask a little bit and start to realize that not everybody in the church who doesn't live exactly like me or subscribe to all the little details that I've learned in my mature walk of faith, just because you're not me, I need to correct everybody. Now we've moved from hypocrite to judgmental and critic. We we're moving backwards in the list here. So we have to take on this instead of um instead of trying to correct them, we're just instruct, we're all moving towards Jesus. I remember again when early on in the in the days of relate when the the team was very a lot smaller. It was uh probably in our first year, maybe the first six or eight months, we had shown up to the movie theater at seven o'clock in the morning. Uh, I brought the trailer and we're unpacking. And there was a new guy on the team, and he showed up excited. He is recently saved, recently said the prayer, committed his life to Jesus, and he's excited to be on the dream team. And so we've got the cabinets and we're pushing them all over, we're getting ready to push them into the building. And so he, in this moment, we said a prayer and it was like, Amen, let's do it. And then he rips his shirt off and says, F yeah, let's do this, and starts pushing his cabinet. And all the other people, like six, ten people, look at me and they're like, What are you gonna do about this? I said, Shh, just let him go, let him go. He's fine. He's an infant, he's just figuring it out. I'm gonna have a conversation with him. We're gonna have instruction, we're gonna learn. Baby steps, everybody. There was some people that wanted to kick him off the team right there. You can't push a cabinet. That's how we are, right? We we we've gotten good enough to push a cabinet. If you're not as good as me, you can't push a cabinet. It's sad. Another day, uh, there was a guy that wanted to talk to me, and he called me and wanted to come visit. He didn't get off work till like seven o'clock, and so he told me that he he could come. I said, Well, I'm having dinner. Uh, why don't you come meet me at eight o'clock? Uh you can come to my house. I gave him my address. I didn't know him that well, but he shows up uh about 30 minutes late. I'm waiting on him. I'm like, I gotta go. He shows up 30 minutes late, he comes in the house, and I could tell he's a little bit nervous, but he comes and sits down, he tells me this whole story about how every time we get to the moment in the service where I'm like, You want to give your life to Jesus? He said he's just shaking and he can't, he has so much anxiety, he can't take, he wants to pray that prayer, but he just doesn't know how he can't do it. And I said, You I talked for the next 30 minutes, we talked through it, and he said, Okay, I'm ready. Can we say that prayer? And so, right there at my dining bar, he said that prayer with tears rolling down his eyes, and I thought, this guy is taking this incredible step. About a week later, I found out the reason he was 30 minutes late is because he was so nervous to come in. He sat out in his car and smoked weed for about 25 minutes to get up his nerve and get his anxiety down so he could walk inside and give his life to Jesus. I didn't, the only thing I told him was, hey bro, let's go have I think we should pray some more. Let's go sit down, let's go, let's talk. I want to make sure you understand what we did the other night. But I'm not I'm I'm not looking to smack anyone to correct anyone for things that may not make sense in the moment. So there's people who don't know God yet, there are people who don't know better yet, and then there's the people who do know both. They know God, they know better, they just they for whatever reason they're living in that moment. And here's the deal as Christians, we get really good at justifying our sin. We get really good at pointing a finger and then like not seeing our own issue at all. First Peter 2 16 says it this way for you are free, yet you are God's slaves. So these are you're committed. You're in, you've signed in blood, you're you haven't signed in pencil or pen. Now you you've moved all the way down the line. You are God's slaves, you are living for Jesus, you're all in, so don't use your freedom as an excuse to do evil. Why would he say that? Because that's what we do. Well, God doesn't care. I'm just hurt, I'm not hurting anybody but myself. I mean, why would God even care? God, God doesn't care if I look at porn, it doesn't hurt anybody else. It's just, you know, and if my wife would take care of my needs, then I wouldn't have to. Or, you know, I don't have to, I don't have to buy everything. I'm not materialistic. I just, I just, you know, I like a few things. Besides, the Bible says in Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He wants me to have everything so that I don't want anything. You're laughing, but it's true. So, this is that third group of people in the church where we're looking at hypocrisy and saying, we know better, we know God, we're committed to our walk and our faith and and uh discipleship and and the process that God wants to put us through, and yet we're still choosing to coexist, doing things that we know that God doesn't approve, doesn't please. We just came through a series about pleasing God, and there comes a moment where you realize something, and it might not be one of the Ten Commandments, it might not fall. Well, God, God doesn't explicitly say that I don't have to do this, or I can justify it by that. Great example I'll give you. I recently became convicted about eating certain things, and I never thought I would be convicted about eating certain things, but there about eating things that have been sacrificed to other gods. You would think that that's not a common thing. I have learned that it is a common thing and that I'm not gonna eat anything that's been sacrificed to another God. It has severely interrupted my diet. And I could easily say, well, God doesn't really care about what I eat, but there's a part of me that says, I know better. And I'm not asking everybody to make that commitment, but when the the Holy Spirit touches your heart and says, Hey, I'm talking to you, and you look the other way and say, Uh, I don't hear anything. Who is it? What's that sound? I don't know. We do that very well. So here's what we're gonna do when we find that person, or maybe it's us. How do we actually love people through hypocrisy or through being two-faced and through that very hurtful, hard to love? How do we do that? We're gonna keep three things in mind. Number one, number one, we're gonna protect them. This is a mindset that we have to have going into this related, going into a confrontation, going into you're a hypocrite and I need to say something because you're a Jesus follower and I'm a Jesus follower, and now we're gonna get this right, we're gonna get this fixed. And this is a really touchy,

Restore Gently And Protect People

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sensitive subject in church because nobody wants anybody to correct me. Don't correct me, don't judge me, judge not. We stop right there. Judge not. There's the scripture actually is longer than that. There's more to it than that. Watch this, Galatians chapter 6, verse 1. Brothers and sisters. So let me just point out he's talking to not just, well, everybody's my brother and sister. No, this is like we're brothers and sisters in Christ. We've all we've signed in blood, we're following Jesus. I'm saying sign and blood not as a weird thing, but as like a you are, you're in it for life. Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should, what does it say? Not confront them and have a big intervention with 20 people gathered around and dump your list of grievances on them and every every every bad thing they've ever done and offended you. Just let them have it. Or kick them out of the church. That's not it says you should restore that person gently. Another version, the the the New Living Translation says, if another believer is overcome by sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. That's it, that is a mindset that we have to embody from the beginning that this is going to be a gentle and humble process where I'm approaching you not as uh your head of authority, and by God, you better listen to me. This is me gently approaching you because I care about you more than anything, and I don't want you to be hurt or offended, and I don't want this situation to hurt anybody else, and I don't want you to take the wrong idea. I want you to know that I love you, and I need to protect you above all things. So that here's that the thing is that I need to present and uh see myself as a guide and not a judge. So if we're looking at at hypocrisy in the church or in a small group or in your um in your team, in your group meeting, you're not the judge of everybody. And I'm not the judge. I'm not telling you that I'm the judge and you're not. I'm telling we're not the judge. He's the judge. We're we can guide each other, we can help. You can either focus on being right or you can focus on helping get someone right with Jesus. It's hard to hear something from someone who's just trying to criticize you all the time. If you if you feel like that person is your critic, it's really hard to take that criticism to heart if you don't think they care about you, and this is not a an act um of humility. And gentleness. So Jesus shows us a great example of this whenever he finds a woman who's caught in adultery. It's actually a situation that's set up by the Pharisees to catch him and to trick Jesus into um into going against himself. And so they ask him a question, shouldn't she die? Because she's been caught in adultery. And they're all surrounding her in the middle of the city, picking up stones, ready to stone her, ready to kill her, and she's just kneeling down to the ground. The Bible tells us the story that Jesus hears this, sees this, and he doesn't, he doesn't fall into their trap, into their trap. What he does is he walks around and he gently kneels down and then he writes in the sand in front of each person. And we don't know what he writes, but I believe that he probably is writing maybe the name of the person they're having an affair with, or something to that effect, because I imagine Jesus writing their name where only that person can see and then wiping it away gently, humbly. I'm not here to embarrass you, I'm not here to call you out or put you in your place, but it says that they all of them leave within just a short amount of time. All of her accusers, he says, Where are your accusers? They've all gone. And I'm not going to accuse you. I don't condemn you either. And he tells the woman, he gives in one statement, he he shows us an a complete act of a hundred percent grace and a hundred percent truth because we think that we, well, if I'm gonna have a hundred percent grace, or if I'm gonna give grace, then I have to compromise the truth and I can do 50% grace. No, Jesus gives a hundred percent of grace and a hundred percent of truth, and he does it with one statement when he says this. He says to the woman, go your way and sin no more. That's I'm not gonna condemn you, you can go. And notice he does the he gives the grace first. He doesn't say, Well, the truth is you shouldn't be sinning anymore. So if you won't sin anymore, then you can go. That would be truth and grace. That'd be truth first and grace. He says, Go your way, I don't condemn you and sin no more. So we can have truth with each other, but we we can have accountability with each other, but we also have to have grace. So we have to protect them. Number two, if you're taking notes, and I hope you are because we're a note-taking church. If you're taking notes, number two, is not only do I have to protect you, protect them, protect the person who I feel like is uh crossing the line, number two, I have to protect myself. This is a spiritual principle. Watch the very next verse in Galatians chapter 1, uh two, it says this if someone's caught in a sin, you live by the spirit, you'll restore

Protect Yourself From Pride

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that person gently. Watch this. But watch yourselves, or you also may be tempted. And this is not like you might be tempted to fall into their problem, but something happens whenever you become a judge. Something happens when you become the one that gets to point a finger. When you point a finger, your pride is elevated. And when pride is elevated, something spiritual is happening that you are destined for a fall. The scripture says it in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, Paul says, Pride comes before a fall. So if you think you're standing firm, be careful that you don't fall. The moment you think you're steady and you're safe, and we have to help this person because they are really messing up. The moment that that uh dynamic begins to come to life in your own mind that, oh, I've got my act together, so I'm gonna start helping other people. You better watch out. This happens to me, even preaching. I can preach a series, preach a sermon, preach a season where I'm speaking about certain things. I have to watch myself because I'll go home and do the things that I've said. We shouldn't be doing this. And I'm like, I'll catch myself. I can't talk like that, I can't think like that, I can't act like that. God forgive me because I it's very easy for us to get caught in the things. So be careful that you don't fall. This is super common. Uh at about 13 years old, I think I joined the middle school band. I became uh shortly after aware that there is something that happens with a lot of new musicians. Um, you spend about, let's say, three months working on an instrument, learning music. I I know I'm just letting you guys know that in the middle school band through high school, I played the trumpet and in the marching band, but I also learned to play the guitar and the drums and the keyboard. And every time I learn something new, I especially guitar, you work on guitar for a little while, and then all of a sudden I know five notes on the guitar, and I watch other professional musicians, and I'm saying, they're not, they could do a lot better than that if they would just play it like they're not even they're not even holding the guitar right. That's not how it's supposed to sound, y'all. I start telling my mom and my dad about how guitars are really played. Something about learning a little about something. You don't know enough to be good, you know, you don't even have it right yet. And we become the biggest critics of everybody else who's doing it. And when we get to church, we start reading our Bible, we love to start pointing our fingers because it makes it feel like we have it together. It makes us feel like, well, I must be doing it right if I can point it out in other people. The Lord probably really pleased with me right now. Okay, so let's let's look at what Jesus gives us a play by play. How do we address this situation among brothers and sisters? Among um He says in Matthew chapter 18, if your brother or sister sins against you, if your brother or sister sins against you, here's a here are your steps. This is the rule. How do you approach someone and

How To Confront One On One

SPEAKER_00 28:25

just recognize that he's saying, if a brother or sister, this has a um an unspoken um he's referring to people that we have an intimate fellowship in faith with. Like we are brothers and sisters in Christ. Not that we're just brothers and sisters with everybody in the world, so we can just correct everybody. This is you and I are walking together. We know each other well enough to have a level of accountability, and so we're not asking non-Christians to conform to the Ten Commandments or any of the other things that God has given me to tell you that, hey, God told me that all men should not have beards or should have beards. Just a thing, right? This is we are walking together. So if a brother or sister sins against you, go to them and between the two of you. So this is not you calling them out in the middle of the church or in the middle of a small group and having an intervention or going online and saying, Oh, you know, pastor's preaching a message on some people suck, and then tagging Pastor Jason or tagging somebody that you think really needs to hear this because they have a problem with hypocrisy, just saying between the two of you implies a relationship, and you're going to that person. And let me just tell you don't text this, don't send them a direct message and just say, hey, bro, you're tripping. Let's sit down face to face because I don't need you to read between the lines something that's not there. I need you to see my face and that I'm sincerely, I care about you. I'm more concerned with you than the thing you're doing. And it's with a desire to restore, and sometimes that can't be seen through a text or a phone call. I need to see you face to face. I need to hear the tone in your voice. I need you to hear the authenticity and the care that I have for you. And so here's what we do there's some options. If they listen, like let's say they respond and they're like, you know what, I've really been struggling with this. Would you pray with me? Let's, I'm gonna do better. If they listen, then you won them over. You're stronger for it, they're stronger for it. Let's walk it out. Let's be that's real biblical accountability, not me calling you out online or shunning you from the church. If they listen, you've won them over. If they don't listen, here's what you do: you bring another person with you. Maybe a small group host, maybe somebody that you both uh a mentor or a pastor or a coach or somebody that can step in who's maybe a little bit further along in faith that you both can trust. And it this is not me saying, hey man, I just want you to know that we've been talking about you. This is not that. This is us saying, Hey man, we really care about you. We've been here for you. Remember what we've gone through. Let's let's get through this. You can you're you're better than this, you're stronger than this, you can make it, let's do it together. So if they don't, then you bring someone with you. And here's the hard part. If they don't listen, once you've brought someone with you, once you've made it a public thing, then you don't kick them out of the church. I love that word church where you can figure it out, but there is a difference. If they continue, then you have to redefine the relationship. You have to reconstruct and say, okay, I'm gonna put a little bit of space between us. I'm not kicking you out of my life, I'm not flushing you out of my life, I'm not unfollowing you or unfriending you, but it what the scripture actually says is that you have to treat them as a tax collector. It's basically like, okay, everything's not okay. There's some things that I'm not necessarily okay with that that you've been making room for in your life, and I'm not gonna be okay with it, but I'm here and I love you and I'm ready. Let's restore this relationship. What it what it can't be though is that we can't be, we can't have intimate, godly fellowship. And so we have to redefine our relationship, which is not a bad thing. I'm gonna love you and we're gonna move together, we're gonna move on together when you're ready, and I'm gonna keep praying for you, I'm gonna keep believing for you, I'm gonna keep loving you, and we'll both be here. So I'm going to protect them, I'm gonna protect myself, and then the last thing I think we have to do as it relates to hypocrisy in the church, and then we'll close, is this, and I'll invite the band to join me back right now, is that I'm gonna number three check my blind spot. I'm gonna check my blind spot. Can I just tell you, if you're sitting in the room right now, if you're a human being, it's really difficult to see hypocrisy in the mirror. It's really difficult to see that you are two-faced or that you have that same thing where you're pointing at other people, it's so hard to see it.

Check Your Blind Spot First

SPEAKER_00 33:40

I talked to a lot of uh even pastors, I talked to tons of pastors. Um it was a few years back, and I remember that I was meeting with a an older pastor, and he was giving me a he was telling me about how the church, the giving was down, and you know, things were not, people weren't being as generous as as they used to be, and he was really struggling with that. Just pray with me about it. And that and I was like, okay, I'll pray with you. And then as we're walking through his building, we're we're we walked into their church gym. And as we got into the church gym, he proudly was telling me all about how they had raised the money and built a gym for the community and the church that could do events in there and there were basketball goals. And he started telling me about, yeah, proudly, when when teenagers and kids come in here, we make them take all their shoes off so that there's no scuffs on the ground in the gym. And I thought, wow. How stingy. That's not generous at all. So then we had to have a talk about generosity, and I thought, man, you are so tight-fisted with the with what you have that God God you saying it's for the community, but it's not. If I can't wear tennis shoes on the gym floor, then that something's wrong. And yet we he expected everybody else to be generous, but he was he was not showing generosity. And we expect, we expect people, you gotta live the way God wants you to, and yet we sometimes have the biggest problem. In fact, Jesus talks about this whenever he says that you can have uh you can point out a speck in someone else's eye, and yet you have a log or a plank in your own eye. It's very dangerous when we become speck inspectors, we get really good at finding the speck in someone else's eye. King David, and I'll close with this. King David had this exact problem, and at one point he's king for a while now, and he's the Bible says he's standing on the rooftop looking out, and he sees a woman on the roof. She's taking a bath, and he decides that he he's gotta have her, and yet she's already married, so he comes up with the bright idea that he's gonna tell the generals in the army, I want you to take her husband, Uriah, and send him to the front line so he dies, and then I can get her. I guess when you're king for a while, you start to stop seeing all of your own problems, but how true is that for us? We become blinded to our own weaknesses and our own shortcomings, and so David, the the prophet comes to see him one day. The prophet Nathan comes in and says, King David, we have a problem. He says, What is it? Tell me what the and Nathan starts to tell him a story that about a man in their kingdom. There's a man who has so many sheep and lambs, and yet this man went to the home of someone who only had one lamb and they loved this lamb like their pet. And this man who had all these sheep took the one from this family, stole it from them, and demanded that he was able to take it. And here was David's response to the prophet Nathan in 2 Samuel 12. He says, It says, David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, As surely as the Lord lives, the man who did this must die. He must pay for that lamb four times over because he did such a thing and had no pity. And then Nathan said to David, You are that man. What an eye-opening moment for David where he has to realize, I have really messed up here. Sometimes the problem it's us. Sometimes we're the one that's walking in hypocrisy and can't see the log or the plank in our own eye. Last verse, James 5:19. If anyone of you should wonder from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sin. I love that we get to be that guide, that help, that person that who in this life, who in this next season could you help coach back and bring the wandering sheep? Maybe the wandering sheep is you, but who could we help bring back? I want you to pray with me today that God can help us love people, number one, love people through the hardest things to love. And number two, if we're that person, help us to overcome our own sin, to overcome our own hypocrisy, the own our own inability to let people love us. So would you just bow

Prayer And Return To Jesus

SPEAKER_00 39:00

your head right now? Let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much. We thank you, God, for helping us to love people through the hardest things. We thank you, God, that you are helping us to not be the hypocrite, to not be the one who is walking around oblivious with blind spot. Lord, we thank you for leading us and guiding us and help us to guide others. Help us to guide others who might be wandering away from the path. In Jesus' name, God, we trust you. In Jesus' name. Would you stand on your feet for just a moment? Let's worship and then we'll pray this mission. If you feel like you are the one, maybe you feel like you've wandered away from where God has called you. Maybe you used to be there and you've drifted away, or today's the I want to give you an opportunity to surrender your life back to Jesus, to make a decision, to realign yourself with his will and his plan for you, because there's no plan like his.