John 12:42-50 (How To Be A Fake Christian In 3 Easy Steps)

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Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

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Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

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Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

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Perhaps one of the most frightening realities about Christianity and about the church is that there is this point that runs through the whole of Scripture that some can belong in one sense of the term, can be a part of it in one sense of the term, but in another sense they can be totally lost.

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Many can look like a Christian. Many can attend church.

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Many can participate in membership or serve on a deacon board or read the Bible and pray. Many can even preach sermons and do all the right things from an external perspective, but still be outside of the kingdom of God.

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Many can belong to the visible church. Many can raise their hands and say,

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I'll follow Jesus and yet not be a part of the invisible gathering of the saints.

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This reality has woven its way throughout the entirety of Scripture.

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You think about the very first family, Cain and Abel. They both belonged to Adam's headship.

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They both belonged to the family of Adam, and yet one of them was a murderer, and one of them was a martyr.

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One of them gave God his very best. One of them gave some of his crops.

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One of them loved the Lord, and one of them hated God. This idea of a mixed multitude shows up in the first family.

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It continues though. The family of Abraham, you'll remember that Isaac was the son of the promise.

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He was the one who's going to inherit the covenant promises of God, but yet Ishmael was a son of perdition, cast away even from the presence of the

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Israelites to wonder, to be a nomad. You remember the next family, the family of Isaac, says that Jacob God loved and Esau God hated.

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There's this mixed multitude among the family of the people of God. You remember the nation of Israel?

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The nation of Israel packs up their bags, they move down to Egypt because of a famine, and after 400 years of slavery, they come back to the land of Israel, and you would think that all of them, all of them saw the waters part, all of them saw the signs, the plagues, they saw the

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Pharaoh weeping over his son, they saw the dead bodies of the Egyptians laying on the shore, all of them saw the majesty and the working of God, and yet not all of them believed.

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There was a mixed multitude of faithful and unfaithful in Israel.

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Look at what Moses says, And now Israel, what does the

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Lord your God require of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, to love him, to serve the

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Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the

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Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good? Behold, the

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Lord your God, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heavens of heavens, the earth, which is with all that is in it, yet the

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Lord set his love on your fathers to choose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, and you are this as you are this day.

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Circumcised therefore the foreskin of your heart and be no longer stubborn. He said this to them because some of them were stubborn.

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He said this to them because some of them had the physical marking of the covenant, but they didn't have the spiritual marking of the covenant.

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There was a mixed multitude within the family of the people of God. This idea goes all throughout the

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Old Testament, all the way to the New Testament. This idea of a remnant, a small group of the faithful among the larger group, so much so that Paul could even say of Old Testament Israel, it's not as though the

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Word of God has failed, Romans 9 6, for they are not all

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Israel who were descended from Israel. This nation was not monolithic.

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It was not unity. There was no unity in who was a part of the people of God. There was this nation who was given covenant blessings, covenant promises, and yet some of them were not

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Israel. They were Israel in name only. They were physical

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Israel, but they were not spiritual Israel. Their bloodline did not actually save them, which is what a lot of them were beginning to think by the time of the

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New Testament. They thought that because they were descended biologically from Abraham, they had the right bloodline, that they were gonna be a part of the people of God, and Jesus looks at them, or Paul looks at them, and he says they were not all

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Israel. Jesus reminds them of this also in John chapter 8, when he says, you are not children of God, you're children of the evil one.

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Look at what he says in John 8. Why do you not understand what I am saying? It is because you cannot hear my word.

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You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.

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He's saying to the Pharisees, this reality now has continued into the New Testament that there is a mixed multitude among the people of God.

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Some get it, and some are children of the devil. Some are children of God, some are children of the serpent.

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This bloodline has worked itself out across the Old Testament so that there's a mixed multitude of people.

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Jesus tells us these things in his parables, if you remember the parable of the four soils that Jesus speaks about.

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He tells us that there's four different kinds of soil that the seed of the gospel will fall into. The first is the soil where the birds of the air come, and they swoop down, and they grab it, and they snatch it away, and the seed of the gospel has no effect.

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That's pagan humanity. That's those who have some idea of the existence of God, Romans 1.

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They can see that there must be a God, but Satan, the god of this world, has blinded their minds, hardened their hearts, and stolen away the gospel so that it has no effect.

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So that they have no relationship with God, no affiliation with Christ, no relationship with the church.

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But what I find interesting is that that's the minority of the groups. All of the rest, the seed of the gospel, goes down and has some effect.

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In three of the four soils, the seed of the gospel sprouts. It produces something, and that might be enough to encourage us if we weren't left with two dead plants at the end of it.

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Which means that the seed of the gospel can have an effect. It can have a blessing.

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It can have some sort of impact, and yet that person still be lost.

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Look at what Jesus says, the stony soil. There's one that the seed of the gospel falls into because the ground is stony, the seed goes down, and because it can't get deep roots, it withers, and it dies.

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There's one where the gospel goes in, and it's choked out by the weeds, which are the cares of this life, and it is choked out.

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There's only one soil, the good soil, which produces its intended effect, and Jesus says that the way that you know that it's been planted in the good soil is that it bears fruit.

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The only evidence of true saving faith is not whether you say with your lips that you believe the gospel.

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Three out of the four soils do this. The only evidence of true saving faith is, is the

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Spirit of God in you, and is he producing fruit? 30, 60, to a hundred fold.

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That ought to be an encouraging truth to some, and that ought to be a frightening truth for others.

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To the believer, you can be encouraged that the Lord of the harvest has planted the seed of the gospel inside of your heart, and he's bringing fruit into you.

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He's bringing life into you. He's bringing love, and joy, and peace, and patience, and goodness, and kindness, and gentleness, and self -control, and he's, and he's growing you, and you're not the same as you used to be.

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You don't look like you did ten years ago, or five years ago, or even one year ago. You are changing. You are growing, and even though it's small, you can see that God is doing something.

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That should be an encouraging thing to you, that your faith, your walk, your life is not in your hands, but it is being cultivated, and it is being grown by the

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Spirit of God. That should encourage you today, but for some, this passage really ought to be terrifying.

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Sixty -six percent of those in this passage who sprouted some sort of effect of the gospel either sprung up quickly, or were choked out and withered away, demonstrating that although they have said with their lips that I love

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Jesus, He is not their all -consuming passion. Even though they've said that I'm a

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Christian, there's no fruit, and Jesus says you will know them by their fruits.

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This is the most important truth that I could ever tell you. This is the most important thing that I could ever share with you, and many will shake their heads in agreement and nod and say, amen.

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This doesn't apply to me, but there will be some who on the day of judgment will hear those dreadful words, depart from me,

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I never knew you. Isn't that why Jesus said that many will come to me on that day and say,

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Lord, Lord, didn't we do any miracles in your name? And He will say, depart from me, I never knew you.

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Many will come to church every single week, many will lead a Bible study, many will walk like a Christian, talk like a

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Christian, act like a Christian, many will deceive themselves and deceive other people, and they will be shocked in eternity when they get to that point, and Jesus says,

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I don't know you. Jesus tells it in other examples.

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He says that the church is like a field, like a pasture, and it's filled with sheep and goats.

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He says that the church is like a field, that an enemy came and he sowed tares, so that it's filled with wheat, which is authentic Christianity, and it's filled with tares which look like it, but at the end will be exposed that it is not it.

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And then the outcome, the destiny of those who are tares are not they're getting into heaven because they tried harder, because they worked harder, because they had good intentions.

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No, their destiny is that Jesus says that they will be thrown into the fire. This theme is pervasive all throughout

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Scripture, which is why Paul tells us to work out our salvation with fear and with trembling.

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This is why Peter says that we need to make sure that our calling and our election is sure, which is

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Peter's way of saying, make sure that you've entered in through the narrow gate. Make sure that you bow down at the right altar, and you're not bowing down at the altar of idols.

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Make sure that you're not trying to climb in by another way, that you've been cut by the rock of ages, that you've not deceived yourself into thinking that you're a sheep when you are a goat.

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Beloved, make sure that you love Jesus. Make sure that you're obeying

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Jesus. Make sure that the reason that you are here today is for Christ and for Christ alone.

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If you're here for anything else, it will be like chaff, and it will be like stubble, and it will burn away.

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Essential is just not even important enough of a word to communicate this. It's just heaven and hell lie in the balance of this thought, this idea.

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If you are not here for Jesus, all the sermons, all the singing, all the reading, all the praying, everything that you're doing is worth nothing.

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It's worth nothing, and I don't want you to be deluded. I don't want you to be deceived.

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If Jesus said, many will come to me on that day, and they will think that they're something that they're not, could we actually presuppose that that many doesn't include even some of us?

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I would be unloving if I didn't share this with you. I don't want you to be deluded.

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I want you to be sure of your salvation, sure of the election that Christ has wrought in you, because the people in our passage today thought that they believed, but they turned out that they were fake

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Christians, which is what I want us to talk about today. How do you become a fake

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Christian? How do you become an imposter? How do you become a counterfeit? How do you become something that you thought you are, but you really aren't?

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That's what I want us to talk about today, because the men in this passage had the same confession as the apostles.

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Many assumed that they were true and authentic disciples of Jesus, but they weren't. So I want us to do two things today.

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I want us to understand what a fake Christian is, and we'll go through three lines of evidence for that, and then

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I want us to understand what a true Christian is, and we'll go through three lines for that as well. So if you will, turn with me to John 12, 42 through 50, as we close out the chapter of John.

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This is the 12th time we've closed out a chapter in John, and it's taken us three years. Praise the

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Lord. Let us read together. Nevertheless, many, even of the rulers, believed in him, but because of the

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Pharisees, they were not confessing him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue, for they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God.

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And Jesus cried out and said, He who believes in me does not believe in me, but in the one who sent me.

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For he who sees me sees the one who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me will not remain in darkness.

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If anyone hears my sayings and does not keep them, I do not judge him, for I did not come in the world.

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To judge the world, but to save the world. He who rejects me and does not receive my sayings, has one who judges him already, the word.

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The word I spoke is what will judge him on the last day. For I did not speak on my own initiative, but the father himself who sent me has given me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak.

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I know that his commandment is eternal life. Therefore, the things

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I speak, I speak just as the father has told me. Father God, I can't imagine a more sobering statement.

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Heaven and hell lie in the balance of our approach to the word of God.

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Lord, there are so many in evangelical Christianity in the West, in America, and all throughout the world who have a shallow, superficial faith.

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And Lord, I don't say that because I have infinite knowledge of such things. Lord, I say that because you say that, that many, many will come and many will leave sorrowful.

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Lord, I pray today that as we examine the things that are in your word and as we examine what it means to be a true

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Christian or a fake Christian, that Lord, we would be cut to the hearts. Lord, I pray if there's anyone in here today, anyone listening who does not yet know

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Jesus, Holy Spirit, I pray that by your electing love that you would wake them up, that you would jostle them out of their slumber and out of their lethargy,

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Lord, and that you would bring them into the kingdom of Christ. Lord, I pray for us as Christians.

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I pray against the status quo. I pray against comfort, familiarity, complacency.

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We go through the motions. We learn how to walk and talk and behave like a

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Christian. We learn how to hold ourself in community and we learn all of these different things.

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Lord, I pray against that auto -piloting Christianity where we think that we don't need you.

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Lord, I pray that we would come back to the cross constantly. Lord, I pray that in every decision we make, we would be blanketing it with prayer.

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Lord, I pray that in every affection that we have that would be rooted in the affections of Christ. Lord, I pray that we would set this church on fire.

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And Lord, I pray that we would set this nation on fire, not just this church, but your church, Lord, because of true authentic faith, which explodes out in song and in passion and in love.

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Lord, I pray against indifference. I pray against apathy. I pray against dead Christianity.

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I pray against all of these things, Father. I pray that your church would be woken up for the glory of God.

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In Christ's name, amen. It's fitting that we would end a section on the kingship of Jesus talking about imposters who are not really a part of his kingdom.

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If you'll remember in John 12, Jesus was anointed to be king. He rode into the city as king. He manifested his kingdom in the fact that the

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Gentiles were coming to him. We saw that some who were coming to him were not his. We saw that last week. This week, we're gonna see a third kind of person who's not an outright unbeliever.

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We tend to look at the world in that sort of binary way where there's Christians and there's pagans.

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There is a subset among the people of God who think they're believers and who are not.

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That's what we're gonna be talking about today is those who have a confession, but their confession is worth nothing.

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Fake Christianity. The first way that this manifests itself is that a fake

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Christian will choose comfort over Christ. Look at what the text says in verse 42. Nevertheless, many even of the rulers believed in him, but because of the

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Pharisees, they were not confessing him. John uses the word many, which often is a negative in the gospel of John.

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He says things like many, the crowd, those who were there.

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When John talks about collectives in the gospel, it usually is a negative here. He's talking about some who were wanting to believe.

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They were wanting to confess their faith, but because the Pharisees, they could not because they were choosing comfort over Christ.

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They didn't want to offend the Pharisees. They didn't want to be kicked out of the synagogue. They were prioritizing their comfort and their position as rulers among the people of Israel over Christ.

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And Jesus says all throughout the scriptures, if you're ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you.

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If you don't love me more than father and mother, you are not worthy to be my disciple. If you don't love me more than your position with the

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Pharisees, you're lost. If something occupies a place in our heart that we bow down and worship to more than Jesus, we're lost.

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If the Pharisees found out at this time that they had had a life changing encounter with Jesus, and if they had the courage to say their confession out loud, they would have either been killed or they would have been cast out of the synagogue and they would have been turned into a social pariah for believing and following in Jesus.

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You'll remember in John 12, the hatred for Jesus has now become murderous.

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So the fact that they are prioritizing comfort can make sense to us.

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We can understand why they would do that. But Jesus says that he must be our all in all.

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We can't choose comfort over Christ and pretend that we're a Christian.

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Prioritizing comfort pulverizes your faith, pulverizes your confession.

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And while none of us today have the curmudgeonly, prickly, pharisaical

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Pharisees breathing down our necks, the hot steam of a million threatening comforts is strong upon our neck.

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It's not just the Pharisees. How many things do we bow down to and prioritize over Christ?

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You think about it. Maybe you have a pharisaical HR department. Every HR department is pharisaical unless you're

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HR and then I love you. Maybe you have a literal boss.

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If you start sharing openly about your faith, you'll be reprimanded. We have a lady in this church.

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A coworker came up to her and asked her what she believed. She told them. She was brought into her boss's office and reprimanded for her faith in Christ.

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You got to count the cost. We got to count the cost. If God really has the cattle on a thousand hill, if God really owns everything in the universe, do you not think he can give you another job?

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If your job is worth more than Jesus and maybe you don't love and hold to Jesus the way that you thought you did, maybe the cares of this world have choked you out so that your priorities, your material wealth, your adventures, your entertainment, food, sex, events, get together schedules, kids, sports, you can list it out on and on and on have crowded out your love for Jesus so that there's little of that left and there's only the cares of the world.

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And this has led me to ask a question this week, why is evangelicalism in the state that it's in in America?

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Why is Christianity limping in America when God is all powerful, when

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God has promised that we would move forward and the gates of hell will not stand against us? Why is evangelical Christianity this watered down affectionless cesspool of dead religion that does not care about anything holy or righteousness, but only produces apathy, indifference, rottenness towards the things of God, lazy slothful indolence towards the church and the gathering.

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Why is it that Christianity today prioritizes everything but the gathering of the saints, everything but righteousness and holiness, everything but Christ?

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Why is it that Christianity finds complacency acceptable, cheers for carnality and entertainment and embraces the kind of vomitous worship that Jesus says he will spew out of his mouth.

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And yet what it doesn't produce is the kind of rich, robust, whole life, wholehearted affection and faith that honors the father.

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Something has bewitched us. Something has bewitched the American church.

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Something has captivated us that is not Christ so that now we are immune to sacrifice.

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The very thing that Jesus did, sacrificing himself for us, now how little we sacrifice for him.

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J .C. Ryle said it like this. There is a common worldly kind of Christianity in this day which many have and think they have enough.

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A cheap Christianity which offends nobody and requires no sacrifice, which costs nothing and is worth nothing.

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He said that in the 1800s. How much more so does it apply today when there are many in the church whose greatest sacrifice for the risen savior who bled and died is to roll out of bed and show up 20 minutes late to church to feign interest until they can go to do the things that they actually wanna do and check off on their list that I did my work today.

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Where's the passion in the church? Where's the fire of God? Where's the church that leaps for Christ and counts everything as rubbish compared to the surpassing value of knowing

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Christ Jesus our Lord? Why is this church empty today?

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It's not because all of our people didn't show up. It's because we have a

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Christianity today that is filled with fake Christians. The reason this building is empty, the reason churches all around the country are empty, the reason why people are not salivating to hear the gospel, desperate to grow in their knowledge of God, longing to be taught the word, eager to meet with the savior at the table, excited to sing the worship of our king, and the reason

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America is failing in moral degeneracy is because Christianity has been polluted with goats, even being led by them in many churches.

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Men and women who are just like these rulers in John chapter 12 who believe in their hearts so long as it requires absolutely nothing of their bodies, unwilling to do even the smallest triflest work to see his kingdom advance on earth.

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That's the first aspect of fake, putrid Christianity is that it prioritizes comfort over Christ, and there's a million ways that that can work itself out.

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The second aspect of fake Christianity is that it lives in dread, but not dread of God, not fear of God, dread of consequences, dread of consequences.

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Look at what the text says. Verse 42, we're gonna read the whole thing this time. Nevertheless, many, even of the rulers, were believing in him, but because of the

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Pharisees, they were not confessing him for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue.

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Fear, when it's applied to God, is a righteous thing. This is a kind of fear that is unholy and is not befitting of a

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Christian. They were afraid of losing a synagogue. They were afraid of being cast out of a building.

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They were afraid of losing access to a trophy of their culture instead of being afraid to lose access to the living

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God. There's so many ways. This plays itself out today.

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Fear that we're not gonna have fun. Fear that Jesus is going to require too much of us.

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Fear that we can't do it. We can't. Fear that people will not accept me.

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People will not understand me. People will think that I'm crazy. What are you afraid of?

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Because the plain and simple truth is, if you wanna follow Jesus, it's gonna cost you. If you wanna follow Jesus, it's gonna make you bleed.

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If you wanna follow Jesus, something in your life is gonna be cut out of you because you don't come to the Savior perfect.

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You don't come to the Savior whole. You come to the Savior diseased and in a coma and he has to take the scalpel and cut out of you all the cancers that are in you.

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If you come to Jesus and you wanna follow Jesus, you wanna be his disciple, you're gonna lose something. Everybody preaches the gospel today that says, come to Jesus and you'll get.

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Come to Jesus and you'll gain. Come to Jesus and your life will be made whole. When you come to Jesus, actually he will cut out of the things that's in your dead life and he will take them away from you so he can make you holy, so he can make you like him.

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You come to Jesus like a unformed block of dead stone that he has to chisel and cut and break and chip and grind and sand into the image of his son.

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People are going to leave you if you follow Jesus because they think you're crazy.

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You're gonna lose status because people think you're not credible. They're gonna say you're not on the right side of history when they're not on the right side of the cross.

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You're gonna be called judgmental, narrow -minded, regressive, exclusive, hateful, intolerant, and a legalist if you prioritize

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Jesus over everything. That's what a Christian does. Prioritizes Jesus over everything but not so for the fake

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Christian. They will deny Christ to have friends. They will deny the savior and cloak him in order to watch whatever entertainment that they are watching that offends the spirit of God.

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They will affirm sin like homosexuality, lesbianism, transgenderism, and you watch eventually it will be pedophilia.

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They will gain favor in society by standing for nothing. They will become the wise ones because they have no solid opinions.

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They won't stand for Jesus. They will bow down to every idol that this culture offers all while rubber stamping it with the name

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Jesus. Is it any wonder today that we have so many people saying,

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God accepts me and my boyfriend's relationship as marriage. We can sleep together all that we want.

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The churches were two or more gathered in his name, right? We can have church in the bedroom. I've heard people talk like this.

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This is why we have open and affirming churches in Massachusetts where nine out of 10 churches have a homosexual flag hanging outside of its door because they've given into the world instead of into the cares, the concerns of God.

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This is why 5 million Christians tuned in every week to watch

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Game of Thrones, which is basically television made pornography. This is why we have a church that is weak and impotent willing to sacrifice for every single thing but Jesus.

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This is why the church is dead and lifeless in the West. We'll sacrifice for family.

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We'll sacrifice for our career. We'll work long hours for it. We'll slave away for the next toy that we wanna buy, for the next trinket, for the next iPhone, for the next whatever.

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We will spend and we will save and we will grind away at the grindstone so that we can go on vacations and have adventures and we will sacrifice.

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We're a sacrificial people, but where have we sacrificed for Christ?

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The cause underneath all of this is the putrency of the heart of man.

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Jeremiah says, the heart is evil, disgusting and wicked and sick.

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Who can even know it? There are many in the church who've not been transformed by the gospel of Jesus.

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They've not been indwelled by the Holy Spirit of God. They are still slurping in the slop buckets of sin all while calling themselves a

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Christian. The fake Christian has no heart. The fake

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Christian has no love for Christ, which leads us to our third aspect.

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They will not only prioritize comfort over Christ and they will not only run away from consequences because they don't wanna face consequences for Jesus.

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The third aspect is that they will clamor for unholy confirmation. Verse 43 says, for they love the approval of men rather than the approval of God.

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Jesus is saying they're not ultimately concerned with God's opinion of them. They don't live for the opinion of Christ.

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They don't wake up in the morning saying, what does God think about me? They wake up in the morning consumed with and they live through their day consumed with and they go to bed consumed with what everyone else thinks about them instead of Jesus.

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They're obsessed with the approval of man and this can happen in a couple of different ways. This can be external.

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Some of you are more concerned with what other people think about you. So family members, friends, bosses, co -workers, spouses, kids, people you go to school with.

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You're more concerned with that, relationships, girlfriends, boyfriends. You're more concerned with that than what Jesus thinks about you.

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That's external approval. But there is a fear of man that I think is actually more pervasive that I think actually afflicts us more than we give it credit for.

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It's not external, it's internal. What about me? I don't want to go to church today because I have something to do.

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I don't want to follow Jesus because I have something else to do. I don't want to submit my life to him in this way because I, because I, because I.

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The fear of man most poignantly expressed is in the heart of ourselves.

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We love ourselves, our opinions, our wants, our desires, our cravings.

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We live our life to satisfy ourselves. That's the way we live.

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That's the way we were born. Think about a child. We're all born in sin, right? A child screams for its wants, screams for its needs.

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And as adults, we've just learned socially how to do that without looking a fool. We've learned how to prioritize our wants and our needs over Christ.

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This is why Jesus died, to reframe our world so that he becomes the most important thing in our life, not us.

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If we loved him with all of our heart and all of our soul and all of our mind, I mean every person who claims that they're a

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Christian. If we loved him like that, there wouldn't be enough churches in this part of the world to hold us all.

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We would have, instead of four or five people every single week on a Wednesday night prayer service, we would have the church overflowing with people to get into the presence of God and to pray.

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Our small groups would be full. Our budget would be big enough to buy a building, big enough to buy a stadium.

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We wouldn't have 50 % of our members gone every single week because that's not healthy.

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We wouldn't have visitors who come and who leave. We wouldn't have an apathy.

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And I'm not just talking about us. I'm talking about the church in general. And I don't say this to shame us.

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I don't say this to make you feel bad. I say this because I want us to think.

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I want us to process. I want us to ask ourselves some really hard questions.

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Are we for real? Are we real? Do we love

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Jesus with our lips when our hearts are far from him? Are we the ones that have been planted in shallow ground?

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Are we the ones that are gonna be choked out by the cares of the world? Are we the ones that have forgotten our first love as Revelation says?

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Are we the ones that have spurned our confession as happens here in John 12? Has something other than the gospel bewitched us as Paul says in Galatians?

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Are we for real or are we dead? I'm sharing this.

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Because I love you. I'm sharing this because I care. I'm sharing this because I would gladly lay my body out as an obstacle for you to trip and fall flat on your face if that meant you didn't accidentally run towards hell and didn't know it.

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My heart is that I want you to thrive for Jesus. I want you to be so emboldened and impassionate for Jesus that your love for him would make winning the lottery look boring.

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I want you to rethrill to wake up in the morning and read your Bible. I want you to crave to be in the presence of God and drawn to him in prayer.

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I want you to be compelled to participate in the local church, wherever that is. If it's not here or somewhere else,

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I want for you the things that the Bible says that you should have if you are in Christ.

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And I also, I take the command seriously to preach the word and to warn you of the perils of this fake

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Christianity. A doctor who comes into the room and won't tell you what's wrong with you should be charged for murder.

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A doctor who tells you you're fine and you go away with terminal cancer is a wicked person.

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The Scriptures say many will come to me on that day and many will be turned away.

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I feel it's my duty to exhort you to flee from fake Christianity, to run from it, to turn towards Christ and have real authentic faith that will turn your life upside down and will turn this church upside down and will turn the entire world upside down.

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That's what I want. That's what I want for you. That's what I want for me. That's what fake faith is.

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Fake faith is choosing comfort over Christ. It's running from consequences instead of loving

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Jesus. And it's having a fear of everything but God, loving everything but God, bowing to everything but God.

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That's what a fake Christian is. And I'm pleading that no one in this room,

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I'm pleading like Moses was pleading with his people, circumcise your hearts and be stubborn no longer.

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That's what a fake Christian is. Jesus ends this section though talking about what a real

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Christian is, what a true Christian is. And he gives three aspects of what true Christianity is.

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It says in verse 44 and 45, and Jesus cried out and said, he who believes in me does not believe in me but in him who sent me.

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He who sees me sees the one who sent me. Unlike fake

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Christianity, true Christianity has intimacy with God. That's the first thing. An intimacy with God.

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They long to see God and experience God and be with God and know God and be in fellowship with God. They don't look at other people who are worshiping, they see

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God. What an amazing statement that Jesus says that if you see me, then you've seen the father.

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A true Christian will look upon the face of God, will see God, will love God, will long to be in relationship with God.

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That's what it means to be a true Christian is that you love Jesus and you love the father and you see him and you want to be with him.

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If these things aren't true, if you have no yearning in your life, if you're just going through the motions, if you have no passion for Jesus, if you're just checking this off the list, like I grew up in the

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South, I'm sure you couldn't tell by my accent. People would say

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I'm a Christian because I grew up in a Christian home or I'm a Christian because my mom and dad are a Christian. Up here, there's the same sort of token

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Christianity. I'm a Catholic because my family's Catholic. I grew up Catholic. If you have no passion for Christ, if you have no yearning for Christ, if your heartbeat is beating for anything other than him, if it's not real to you, then it might not be real in you.

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The second aspect of true Christianity is you not only have intimacy with God, you will choose to live in the light and to not hide in the darkness.

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Unlike the false faith, which continually hides in the darkness and prioritizes comfort over Christ, true faith is not clandestine.

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True faith is public. True faith is authentic and it shines like Paul says in Philippians 2, it shines brightly in the midst of a dark and crooked generation.

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Jesus says, you don't put a lamp underneath a bowl, you let it shine like a city on a hill, shining for the glory of God.

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A Christian looks like Jesus and acts like Jesus because the spirit of Jesus is in us and if Jesus is the light of the world, then he makes

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Christians to be the light of the world. He does not make Christians to be flashlights covered under thick wool blankets.

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We must live publicly as Christians. You know, mold grows in the dark, but it won't survive when the sunlight hits it.

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This world is gangrenous, moldy, infected and broken and we should expect nothing less because they don't have the spirit of God.

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But where's the light? Where are we? Shining in this crooked and dark generation, shining for the glory of God.

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Don't veil the light. If you're a believer, step into it and shine.

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That's the second aspect. The third aspect is obedience to God's word.

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That's even become offensive to say today. What do you mean obey? I'm not a legalist.

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Well, let's read what Jesus says. If anyone hears my sayings and does not keep them,

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I do not judge him. That sounds good. I can do whatever I want. Jesus isn't gonna judge me, but wait, there's more.

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For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. And he who rejects me and does not receive my sayings has one who judges him.

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It is the word I spoke. That is what will judge him at the last day.

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For I did not speak on my own initiative, but the father himself who sent me has given me a commandment as to what to say and what to speak.

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I know that his commandment is eternal life. Therefore, the things I speak,

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I speak just as the father has told me. Jesus is saying in flesh and in body, he was there to save the elect of God, but the words which he spoke will be evidence of whether the elect are elect or not.

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He's saying that there's a judge, that there's a courtroom. He's saying that at the end, when the judge has sat down and the case has been heard and the life of a believer who says that they're a believer is put on trial, the question will be, did they obey his word?

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Not perfectly, but did they have a habit? Did they have a pattern? Did they have a rhythm of obeying the word of God? Did they love the word, cling the word, go into the word to see what was in the word?

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Did they not make excuses for themselves and say, this book is too hard for me, I can't understand it. Did they try? Did they strive?

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Did they yearn for the word of God? If not, Jesus says, that will be what judges you.

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That will be the evidence against you. There will be many who come to me on that day, saying,

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Lord, Lord, didn't we do many things? And he will say, depart from me, I never knew you. He says in here, he who rejects me and does not receive my sayings, and that doesn't just mean agree with them, that means take them into you and live differently because of them.

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He who does not receive my sayings, like we receive a vaccine or a shot in the arm, he who does not receive my sayings has one who judges him, it is the word

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I spoke that will judge him on the last day. You see, the cold hard truth about it is that anyone can pretend.

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Anyone can sound smart and rattle off theology. I've read atheists who speak of the gospel more beautifully than I could ever put it.

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Anyone can fake it. Anyone can read a bunch of Puritans, go to Christian conferences.

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Anyone can go to seminary and get a piece of paper that says you're special. Anyone can preach a sermon, anyone can lead a small group, anybody can go to church.

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Anybody can pretend, we pretend all the time. You think about it, what is our age right now so consumed with?

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Social media influencers, social media influencers, social media, the way that I present myself.

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You think about Instagram, my life looks so good all the time, that coffee and my Bible, it just looks like the picture of tranquility.

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My house might be an overflowing disaster, but that one room looks pretty awesome.

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My kids are smiling perfectly for the photo when they just two seconds later blew up and we had to all leave the park because they were acting crazy.

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We live in a world of being fake. We live in a world of putting forth our best face.

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We live in a world where you put forth a beautiful veneer of mahogany that's about a millimeter deep and the little slightest bit of pressure wears right through it.

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Anybody can pretend. The question is, do you obey His Word? Do you love

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His Word? Do you prioritize His Word? Do you cherish the Word of God? The words that Jesus spoke, the words that are recorded by the apostles?

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The Old Testament and the New Testament, Jesus said in a Bible study in Luke 24, He was talking to His disciples and He opened up the

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Old Testament Scriptures and He said, all of these things are about Me. So it's not just the New Testament. Do you love the Bible? Because it's all about Jesus.

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Do you obey it? Now, maybe you're saying, this sounds legalistic.

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We don't obey to be saved. I know the five solas. Faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, by Scripture alone.

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Amen. I'm not arguing for a faith that will save you. Jesus has obeyed to save you.

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I'm not arguing for an obedience that will get you into God's good grace. As Jesus has done that, I'm saying that His obedience transforms our obedience.

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I'm saying that His obedience to the Christian doesn't make us disobedient.

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His mercy doesn't make us unmerciful. His patience doesn't make us impatient.

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His faithfulness doesn't make us lawbreakers. His love doesn't make us lukewarm and apathetic.

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It transforms us. What the atonement means is that the gospel of Jesus Christ has come into us and transformed us and changed us.

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We're not dead anymore, we're alive. We're not old creation anymore, we're new creation. We have been risen by the

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Spirit of God. That's what the atonement means, that it comes into you and changes you and makes you want to obey.

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You don't obey to be accepted. You are accepted if you're in Christ so that you can obey. He gave you the

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Spirit so that you can love the Word, cherish the Word, obey the Word. If that's not real, if these things aren't real in you, then maybe they're not really in you.

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It's such an important topic and we could go on for so much longer, but I want to conclude like this. For the

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Christian today, it's okay. It's okay that you're being jostled a little bit right now.

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It's okay that you don't measure up perfectly to the Lord. It's okay that you fall short.

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It's okay that you struggle and that you often don't measure up, but it's not okay to stop trying.

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It's not okay to give up. It's not okay to listen to country music in church.

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Although I like country music. It's not okay to have an apathy for Jesus.

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It's not okay. He died to transform your mind and your heart and your body and your soul.

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And if that's not real, you're like a car without gas. You're like a flashlight without batteries.

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You don't have it. But if you are a

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Christian, I pray that this message would just cause you to repent. All of us need to repent, right?

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All of us have areas of our life where we've fallen short of the glory of God and all of us have times where we need to recommit.

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You know how many times Israel recommits to God in the Old Testament? Where they put a statue up and they say, this time we're really going to do it.

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That honors the Lord. Even though he knows 10 years later, they're going to screw up again. Every hour we need him, every hour we need to come back to him.

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That's what Christianity really is, is a humble dependence upon the living God. If you're not a

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Christian, if you can honestly look at your life and say, these things aren't true in me.

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I don't have an affection for Jesus. I'm just here because somebody brought me here, because somebody made me come, because someone offered me a hot pocket and they tricked me and I ended up in church.

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Now I'm too afraid to get up and walk out because everybody will know I'm the fake one. Just kidding. My prayer is a message like this would offend the sinful nature in you, that it would offend the part of you that clings to yourself and clings to your sin and that you would turn to Christ for his salvation.

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Because there's so much that you can do for his salvation and no one else. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, there are many who will come to you and who will be disappointed.

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The way to destruction is broad, but yet the path to life is narrow. There's only one gate that leads to life.

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There's a field full of sheep and goats. There's a harvest filled with wheat and tares.

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Lord God, I pray and I beg that we have not deceived ourselves here.

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But Lord, I also pray that for those of us who know that the spirit of God lives in us and that we're different, we've changed.

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Lord, I pray that we would not accept spiritual apathy. Lord, I pray that we would not accept the status quo day to day, repetitive, monotonous

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Christianity that so many have bought into. Lord, I pray that every single elect brother and sister in this room would shine brightly for the glory of Christ.

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I pray that our love would be radiant for him. I pray that the same spirit that raised

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Jesus Christ from the dead would empower this church and would empower this state. Lord, I pray that Massachusetts would stop being called the darkest place in the country and it would be an epicenter for the light of Christ.

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Lord, I pray that wicked politicians would repent and would stop murdering children.

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And passing policies that prioritize the murder of children. Lord, I pray that this region,

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New England, would scream of the glory of God.

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Lord, I pray that Sudan and China and Australia and Canada would hear of what's going on in New England.

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Lord, I pray that revival would happen here like it has once before. Lord, I pray that we would be real

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Christians here. Not show up on Sunday Christians. Not decide that this baseball game is more important than church

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Christians. Not, I don't have time in the morning to wake up 10 minutes early to read the scripture,

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Christians. Lord, I pray that we would just naturally, out of our deep affections for you, that we would grow in obedience and that we would employ the simple, beautiful, and ordinary means of grace.

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The word, prayer, the gathering, the sacraments. Lord, I pray that we would be like the good soil in your parable that produces fruit 30, 60, and 100 fold.

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Lord, let no one in this room accept anything less. In Christ's name, amen.