Should Christians Wear Masks?

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Exposition of Genesis 2:25 Sovereign Grace Family Church Pastor Keith Foskey www.SGFCJAX.org

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If you have your Bible, open up with me to Genesis chapter 2.
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If you do not have a Bible, there is one in the seat, probably somewhere near or around you.
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We have the Bibles are blue and the hymn books are red.
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So if you see a blue Bible or a blue book, that's a Bible and you're welcome to use it while you're here.
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And we're going to ask you to turn to Genesis chapter 2 verse 25 and in a moment we're going to stand and read it together.
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Now we are all aware of the various life-altering issues which have arisen in just the last few months.
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The threat of a global pandemic has caused our entire economy to be damaged.
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Shortages on goods have caused massive hoarding of essential items and many bare shelves.
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Riots have broken out around the nation because of accusations of bias and systemic racism and privilege.
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Riots have taken many lives, leaving untold billions in property damage.
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And now, as the pandemic continues to threaten, the big issue has become the wearing of masks.
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And the title of my message today is, Should Christians Wear Masks? But I must admit that this title was only intended to be provocative because I'm not going to be talking about whether or not you should be wearing a face covering when you go to the store.
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Our elders have discussed this.
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We believe this is the decision that each of you must make on your own.
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We are not demanding, neither are we discouraging the use of a mask in our building.
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It's up to you.
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So you're not going to have to sit for 45 minutes on a lecture as to whether or not you should wear a face covering.
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Today is not about those masks.
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Today is about the masks that people wear to remain hidden from one another in a figurative sense.
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I saw a post.
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I saw somebody wrote this.
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I don't know who the pastor was, but he wrote it.
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And it so challenged me because it was so real.
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And what he said was this.
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He said, some of you are so upset that we're asking you to wear a mask to church when you've been wearing masks for years.
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He said, you're so upset that somebody asked you to wear a mask to church, but you've been wearing a fake mask for years.
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And I remember reading that and I said, wow, that's pretty insightful.
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Because the reality is so many people do hide their true selves behind a mask.
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And so today we're going to look at four things from this passage.
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We're going to look at nakedness.
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We're going to look at shame.
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We're going to look at hypocrisy.
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And we're going to look at exposure.
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That's the focus of today's message.
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Let's stand together.
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We're going to read.
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We're going to begin reading.
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Even though our passage is verse 25, we're going to begin reading in verse 22, or rather verse 21.
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This is the account of God giving the man a wife.
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He had already created the man.
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He did that back earlier in the chapter.
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And then in verse 21, it says, So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept he took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
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And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman and brought her to the man.
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Then the man said, This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
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She shall be called woman because she was taken out of man.
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Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
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And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.
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May God add His blessings to the reading and to the hearing of His word.
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May God keep us in His will as we study.
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You may be seated.
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Sometimes God can use a sermon to help you see a text more clearly and really forever change the way you see that text.
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And that's the relationship that I have with the text that we're at today.
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Because years and years ago, I had the benefit of sitting under the teaching of Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul and I believe it was a conference that I was attending with Dr.
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Sproul.
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And I heard him preach an entire sermon on Genesis 2.25 on being naked before God.
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And he focused on this passage, he focused on the implications of it.
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And I want to confess to you today, I don't preach other men's sermons.
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But today's sermon is inspired by another man's sermon.
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Is that fair enough? Is it fair enough to say that having heard that sermon so many years ago and it was so influential on me and having impacted me the way that it did, when I got to this passage I said I can't go by without mentioning some of the things because they're so profound and so important.
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And honestly, it not only changed the way I saw this text, it changed the way I saw myself.
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So I have to give credit where credit is due.
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I use commentaries, I use study guides and aids when I'm studying and I certainly listen to other men preach to be a better preacher myself.
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And so I wanted to bring that up as part of my introduction.
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When we arrive at the end of Genesis chapter 2, we are confronted by a very strange phrase.
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Verse 24, seems like it should be the end.
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Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, and he shall hold fast unto his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.
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Seems like that should be the end.
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That's the culmination of the chapter.
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God has made man, he's created man from the dust of the ground, he's breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, he's taken out of that man a rib, he has given that man a wife made from that rib, and he has said now I'm establishing a new institution, and we talked about this last Sunday, I'm establishing the institution of marriage.
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Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother, he shall hold fast to his wife, and the two become one flesh.
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And you would think that would be the end, and it would go right into chapter 3.
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But it's not.
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Instead of ending with the great triumphal statement about marriage, there's a tagline that is added.
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Moses, who is the writer here, writes an additional line under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and he makes an observation about this man and woman.
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An observation which seems a little strange.
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He makes an observation about their condition.
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And their condition is unique in human history.
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This is the only time in human history where we see this particular condition given to men and women.
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And the condition is twofold.
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He says they were naked, and they were unashamed.
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Has that sentence ever caught you off guard? Doesn't it seem just a little bit of a strange addendum? God has brought forth the first married couple.
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He's joined the hands of marriage.
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He's commissioned them as the first man and wife.
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Oh, and by the way, they're naked.
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And they are not bothered by it.
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Now what's interesting, we have the benefit of looking at it from the future.
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We have the benefit of looking at it from the other side.
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And we understand why this is important.
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Because we understand that in chapter 3, there's going to be the introduction of something called sin.
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And when sin is introduced, something else is introduced.
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And that is the concept of covering.
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As soon as sin is introduced, before God comes and pronounces judgment, before God comes and pronounces they are guilty, what happens? I've got to cover myself.
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Because I'm ashamed.
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So now we have an understanding of why Moses points out that they were naked and unashamed.
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Because when sin enters the picture, they become covered and ashamed.
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Everything changes.
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That's why I said never again in human history would man be in that condition.
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Have we been naked? Sure.
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Have we been shameless? Yeah.
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But we've never been in that condition since.
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Where we were naked and without a reason for shame.
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See, that's what unashamed means there.
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It's not that they had a reason to be ashamed and they weren't.
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It's they had no reason to be ashamed.
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They were naked and without reason for shame.
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Genesis 2.25 is the prelude to the loss of Genesis 3.
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Genesis 2.25 is the hinge that takes us from the creation of man to the fall of man.
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And the hinge that takes us from one to the other is this simple statement.
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They were naked and unashamed.
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Because what we're going to see beginning next week is that condition didn't last.
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But before we go into chapter 3, I want us to consider four things about this passage.
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I've given a screen because I know some of you like to take notes.
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So brother, if you'll bring the little screen up.
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These are the four points we're going to look at today from the text.
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We're going to consider nakedness.
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We're going to consider shame.
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We're going to consider hypocrisy.
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You might say, this text doesn't talk about hypocrisy.
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Well, it does in a sense and I'll explain when we get there.
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Because there is a sense in which it exposes hypocrisy.
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And then we're going to talk about what exposure really is.
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So that's the four things.
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Often times when I start writing a sermon, I say, boy, I don't know how I'm going to make a whole sermon out of this.
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And then when I write the sermon, I say, there's no way I'm going to be able to preach this all at one time.
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Because I have a lot to say on each of these things.
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So I'll try to make my statements at least concise.
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Because if I didn't, we'd be here all through the early afternoon.
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But what I want us to see is what we had prior to the fall.
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What was lost in the fall and what is redeemed in Christ.
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I want us to see what we had before the fall, what was lost in the fall and what is redeemed in Christ.
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So let's consider first the concept of nakedness.
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Nakedness plays a key part in both the pre-fall and the post-fall world.
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Adam and Eve were created naked.
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They were unlike all of the other animals because all of the other animals were given coats of fur on their bodies.
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Adam and Eve did not have that.
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Adam and Eve were made man and woman.
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They were not made Neanderthals.
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They were not made some kind of apish creatures.
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They were men and women.
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And while some hair does exist on the body, we understand that we don't have coats of hair on our body as do the animals.
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Years ago there was an evolutionist by the name of Desmond Morris.
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It was 1967.
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He wrote a book called The Naked Ape.
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Now I'm not recommending to you The Naked Ape because it's an evolutionary book and it talks about the origins of man as having evolved and we don't believe that and I wouldn't encourage you.
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But understand what he's saying in the title.
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Man is different from all the other animals because he'd be naked.
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That's the big difference.
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According to Scripture, clothing did not come until after the fall.
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Sin brought a profound sense of inhibition and humiliation.
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Man needed to cover himself in his nakedness.
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But prior to the fall he didn't.
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He was naked.
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There was no problem.
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And do you understand? I think you do.
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We're the only animals that wear clothes, if you want to call us animals.
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We're the only creatures that wear clothes.
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In fact, you might say, well my dog wears a sweater.
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Shame on you.
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Because that dog don't like that sweater.
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You may think he's cute.
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He is humiliated with all the other dogs.
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If there was no people, there would be no clothed animals, right? Because they already have clothes.
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They already have coats of fur.
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Man is the only creature that feels the need to cover himself.
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I'll say that again.
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Man is the only creature who feels the need to cover himself.
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And it's a profound need.
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And it's almost universal.
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I say almost universal because most people are very uncomfortable naked.
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I know you got your nudists.
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But nudists normally live sequestered lives in colonies separated from everyone else.
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Thankfully.
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You don't just see nudists walking around Walmart.
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If you did today, they'd be wearing a mask though.
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But I digress.
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And as Dr.
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Sproul said, I will never forget this line.
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He said, you know, you've heard of streakers.
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You know what a streaker is? It's a person who takes off all of his clothes and goes running.
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He said, but do you ever notice they're called streakers and not strollers? Because it's odd.
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Nobody gets naked and just stands around.
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Unless there's a little something off.
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Because there's something about us that makes us understand that nakedness equals humiliation.
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Throughout history, one of the ways that defeated armies were humiliated by their conquerors is that they would parade them naked in chains.
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So as to demonstrate not only that they were defeated, but that they were humiliated.
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Jesus Christ, when he hung on the cross, most likely hung naked between heaven and earth.
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Because it was a state of humiliation.
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Now in the last century, purveyors of pornography have tried to normalize nudity.
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And they've made many inroads.
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Nudity is available everywhere now.
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But even still, the concept of it still confronts us viscerally.
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Because we hear tales of people who had a naked picture put on the internet.
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What do we say? Oh, how humiliating.
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How humiliating that they were exposed like that.
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And that's what nakedness is.
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Nakedness is exposure.
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When Adam and Eve are in the garden, they were completely exposed.
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There was nothing hidden between them and there was nothing hidden from God.
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Because there was no need.
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There was no need of covering.
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There was no need of hiding.
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Because everything was good and everything was on display.
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Everything was physically and spiritually exposed.
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And it was good.
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And in just a moment, we're going to go back to the concept of exposure.
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Before we do that, I want to look at the subject of shame.
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Because not only do we see the importance of nakedness when we see it says they were naked.
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But it also says they were without shame.
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The text says naked and unashamed.
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And shame is an important word.
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It's a word that's being pushed out of our dialect.
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It's a word that's being pushed away.
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Because shame accompanies a sense of wrongdoing.
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And because in our modern day, we have tried to eliminate the idea of right and wrong.
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We've also tried to eliminate the concept of shame.
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See, Adam and Eve had never done anything wrong.
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Adam and Eve were in a state of sinlessness.
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And they had no reason to feel shame.
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They had done nothing and therefore they had no reason to hide.
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They had nothing to fear.
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There was no fear of exposure.
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There was no fear of uncovering secrets.
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But after the fall, they had to hide themselves.
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They had to cover themselves.
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Not because they couldn't see each other naked anymore.
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But because they were still husband and wife.
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But they wanted to hide themselves.
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And I think, not only from one another in a sense, but mainly from God.
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Because now they have something to hide.
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They didn't have that before.
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And I'm going to talk about this when we get to chapter 3.
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The whole idea of the knowledge of good and evil.
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It's not that they didn't know right from wrong.
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Because Eve tells the serpent, God said don't do that.
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Therefore she understood the concept of wrong.
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Don't do that is wrong.
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But she had not known wrong.
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And when she knew wrong, experientially, her whole world changed.
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Now I have to be covered.
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Now I'm ashamed.
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Now I'm separated.
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They weren't just covering their naked bodies.
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They were trying to hide from God.
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And from that moment forward, men have had to deal with shame.
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And we all deal with shame because we all deal with sin.
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One of the things that modern pop psychologists have tried to do is eradicate the concept of shame.
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I read an article just this past week as I was preparing for my sermon.
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It was an article in Psychology Today.
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And it was 5 ways to silence your shame.
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5 ways to silence your shame.
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I want to say this.
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Our problem is not going to be solved by silencing our shame.
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Because we're already really good at that.
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We are really, really good at silencing the inner voice that tells us that we're wrong.
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The Bible says that.
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In Jeremiah 8.12, if you want to write down that reference.
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In Jeremiah 8.12, the prophet asked this question.
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Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not ashamed.
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They did not know how to blush.
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You look around the world right now.
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And you see a world that has forgotten how to blush.
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You go out to San Francisco and you watch the pride parades.
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While grown men, naked, walk down the street.
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No shame! We have forgotten how to blush.
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We have an entire set of our annual budget in the United States Treasury.
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Dedicated to paying for the legal fees of the sexual exploits of our leaders.
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Because of how many sexual misconduct lawsuits are filed every year.
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We have forgotten how to blush.
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We need to understand that the problem with shame is not that it needs to be silenced.
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But that it needs to understand what it points us to.
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Shame has a purpose.
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See, psychology today and other pop psychiatrists will tell you shame is useless.
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It's a useless emotion.
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Therefore, you need to get rid of it.
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I will tell you this, shame is not a useless emotion.
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It has a purpose and the shame is to point you to the only one who can cover your shame.
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You see, shame tells us we need to be covered.
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What did it do with Adam and Eve? It forced them to cover themselves, right? Their covering was insufficient.
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God made them a covering.
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If you've come here today and you are shamed.
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If you are in shame.
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If you're feeling shame, don't silence it.
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Understand that that's the road that's pointing you to the only one who can cover it.
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You understand the idea of covering is where we get the concept of atonement.
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The word atonement comes from the idea of sins being covered.
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Shame being covered.
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The shame of our sin cannot be silenced by psychology.
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All it can do is be suppressed and eventually it comes back in depression and anxiety and all kinds of other ways.
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When you try to silence your shame, it will never truly go away.
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But if it is covered in Christ, you now can be free.
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Understanding that your sins are covered in His work.
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And that leads me to the third thing, which is the idea of hypocrisy.
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The word hypocrite comes from the Greek and it means an actor.
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A hypocrite is someone who did something because he was being watched.
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And it carries the idea of wearing a mask, incidentally.
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Because it's the idea of not being who you truly were.
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The hypocrite, the Greek word, it was the person who wore the mask on the stage.
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It was the person who wasn't being himself.
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It was the person who was playing the part, playing the position or the role.
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And ever since the fall, people have tried to hide their nakedness.
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Rather than being covered in Christ, they try to cover themselves in something else.
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And it's usually the veneer of their own self-righteousness.
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And that's the masks I was talking about earlier.
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We want to wear a mask of self-righteousness because somehow, someway, somewhere, we believe that's where we're going to be free from our shame.
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Is if I can just hide my failures.
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If I can just hide who I truly am.
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So we hide ourselves behind a mask.
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Not a physical face mask, but a metaphorical covering of who we are not really, but who we want people to think that we are.
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We don't want people to really look at us.
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We want people to look at who we want them, who we think they want us to be.
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Now in one sense, that's natural.
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Because, and I want to say this, I want to get real for a minute.
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In some ways, it's almost necessary to be somewhat hidden from one another because when we expose ourselves to one another, we open ourselves up for hurt.
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I'll be real for a minute.
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The times where I have been most open and honest with people in the last 15 years of being the pastor here, the times I've been the most open and honest with people have at times come back and been the worst thing for me because people have used my fears and my failures as the weapon with which to attack me.
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And therefore, it makes the mask become ever more firm and ever more opaque.
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But I have to be careful that even though I can't be the same with you as I am maybe with my wife because I am allowed to be more exposed to her than I am with you, I have to be careful not to become a hypocrite and not to wear my preacher mask.
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And when I get home, my kids know that's not really my daddy.
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I remember years ago, there was a young man in our church who was having a lot of difficulty at home and he called me one night.
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He was crying.
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He had a horrible home life and it was mainly due to his father who was an abusive man.
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But the father claimed to be a Christian.
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Forced him to go to church.
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Forced him to go to Sunday school.
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Forced him to go to youth group.
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And the young man called me crying.
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He said, if that's what a Christian is, I don't want to be one.
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See, the dad was really good about wearing a mask when he came to church.
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No one knew because the mask was always on when he was around other people.
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You guys ever heard of Casting Crowns? It's a band and I don't know much about them.
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So, if you come to me later and say, oh, well, they sang this song and it's got bad theology.
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That's fine.
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I'm not announcing that everybody go buy Casting Crowns CD.
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I'm just saying they have a song with lyrics that I think is helpful and the song is called Stained Glass Masquerade.
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This is how it goes.
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It says, is there anyone who fails? Is there anyone who falls? Am I the only one in church feeling so small? Because when I look around, everybody else seems so strong and they're going to discover that I don't belong.
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So, I tuck everything away like everything's okay.
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If I make them all believe it, maybe I'll believe it too.
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With a painted grin, I'll play the part again so that everyone who sees me the way I want them to see me and the way I see them.
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Are we happy plastic people under shiny plastic steeples with walls around our weaknesses and smiles that hide our pain? Maybe one day we'll close the curtain on our stained glass masquerade.
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See, hypocrisy streams out of trying to find something to cover your sins other than Jesus.
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That's what hypocrisy is.
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It's trying to find something to cover you other than Christ.
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I'm going to be covered in my goodness and every time Cindy and Gary see me, I'm going to be good and perfect and that's what they're going to think when they see me is that I'm a good man and that's my covering.
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That's not my covering.
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I'm not a good man.
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I am a sinner saved by Jesus Christ and He is my covering.
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I am a failure.
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I am broken and I am flawed.
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And if I have ever made you think anything else of me, I am sorry.
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Because that is not what I want.
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I don't want you to put me on some pedestal and say, oh, that's what righteousness looks like.
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No, Christ is what righteousness looks like.
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And if I do anything for you, I should be pointing you to Him.
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Now, does that mean I'm supposed to live like the devil? No, I try every day to battle the sins of the flesh.
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The Bible tells me that I should live by the Spirit and not by the flesh and that when I live by the Spirit, I won't gratify the desires of the flesh.
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And so, every day there's this striking battle, the Galatians 5.17 battle.
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But the hypocrite says, I've got it all together, I've got my mask on strong, and look at me, my covering is my self-righteousness rather than my covering is Christ.
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If your covering is anything other than Jesus Christ, then you are living the life of a hypocrite.
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Now, finally, I want to look at the idea of exposure because, really, this is it.
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Because now that we've looked at shame and we've looked at hypocrisy, I want us to go back to the idea of being naked and exposed.
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We cannot live as hypocrites.
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Who was it that Jesus most attacked in His words, in His ministry? It was the scribes and the Pharisees.
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And what did He call them? Matthew 24.
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He said, scribes and Pharisees.
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Hypocrites! We can't live as hypocrites.
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But at the same time, God does give us coverings, He gives us clothing.
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You know, we're not all walking around naked, praise God.
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But I do believe there are two relationships in this world wherein we should be absolutely exposed.
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Because, as I said earlier, we need to remove our masks but there's always going to be some discomfort because we're in public and we're together.
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I'm never going to be putting my feet up with you the same way I put up my feet with my family.
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It's just never going to be the exact same.
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And we have to be honest, right? But there's two relationships where there should be absolute exposure and there's often not.
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The first relationship where there should be exposure is God.
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Because, honestly, if there's any being in all of the universe that knows me better than me, it's God.
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And I can't be hidden from Him because I'm always exposed to Him.
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In fact, did you know that's why so many atheists have an issue with God? And I'm not saying that because I think that, I'm saying that because it's written and documented.
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Many atheists when writing about their issues with believing in a God is the idea that there is a being to whom they can never hide from.
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A being from whom they can never escape.
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John Paul Sart, famous writer and thinker and atheist, he said it like this in his book, the book was entitled Being and Nothingness.
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And in Being and Nothingness he talked about how if he were looking through a keyhole through, into a room and he was watching someone through a keyhole that that would make him feel good because he would be in the position of power and they would be in the position of the victim.
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He would be the superior, they would be the inferior.
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He would feel very good.
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But he said if I'm looking through that keyhole and somebody else walked up and saw me looking through the keyhole I would then be embarrassed.
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He said so I'm not only the looker but I'm the lookee.
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I'm not only the one watching but I'm the one being watched.
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And that makes me human.
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I'm not only the seer but I'm the seen.
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He says the reason why I can't believe in God is because I can't believe in a being that I can't look back at.
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Because that would make me less than human.
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This is his words not mine.
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He said it would make me less than human if there was a being who could examine me and I could not turn around and examine him.
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You see the problem that many of us have is we don't want to be exposed.
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Think about this.
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Think about you're sitting in a room.
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R.C.
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gave this example.
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He said you're sitting in a room.
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Somebody walks by and doesn't see you.
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You get a little offended.
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Hey I'm here.
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Are you not even going to say hello? Because everybody wants to be noticed.
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But he said imagine that same person comes into the room, sits down, locks eyes with you and keeps staring.
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That's worse.
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Because if somebody doesn't notice you, okay but if somebody sits down and starts probing you that's a problem.
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And eventually you're going to be like hey what's your deal bro? Get off get out of my face.
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And that's a problem so many people have with God.
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God sees everything.
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If I go to heaven you're there.
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If I go down into Sheol you're there.
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You are everywhere.
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I can't escape.
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This is why most atheists are not atheists.
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They're misotheists.
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Misotheism is the hatred of God.
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Atheism is to say God does not exist.
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Misotheism is to say I hate God.
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I have seen interview after interview after interview with atheists to be asked one simple question if God existed and you found out He truly does exist, would you worship Him? To a man and woman every single one of them said I would not worship Him.
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Even if I knew He was real.
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See they do know He's real.
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The Bible says all men know by nature that God exists.
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It isn't that they don't believe in God.
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They don't want God to be there.
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They don't want the prying eye of the Almighty looking upon them.
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They don't want to be exposed to He who sees all things.
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They want to have that place.
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They want to have the hidden internet search browser.
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They want privacy mode on their cell phone.
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They want the closet with the hidden bookshelf that nobody else can see.
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And God who sees all things is not fooled.
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But here's the thing if you're a Christian you can rejoice in that.
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You can be encouraged by that.
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You know why? Because if you're a Christian you are in Christ and there's nothing to hide.
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Because if you are in Christ your sins are covered in Him.
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Therefore I can have a truly intimate relationship with God because I don't have to be afraid of judgment.
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My judgment has already been decided.
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Now don't for a minute think I'm giving you a license to sin.
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I'm not.
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Because I know it might sound that way.
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I'm not saying go home and fill your bookshelves with awful books and fill your internet browsers with things you ought not look at and fill your mind with things you ought not see and hear.
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I'm not saying that but what I am saying is we should never be afraid of the God who sees everything.
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Because the God who we are exposed to has covered us in the blood of His Son.
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All our unrighteousness have been forgiven.
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That should be a comfort.
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People come all the time and they say I just, I have trouble having peace.
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The greatest peace you will ever find in the Christian life is realizing that it's either all of Christ or it's none of Christ.
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And when you realize that it's all of Christ that your salvation is based in what He has done, not in what you have done but in what He has done you will find peace and you will find a relationship with God that you didn't have before because you're not having to wear a mask anymore.
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You're not having to go before God with a hypocrisy anymore.
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You're not having to stand on your own laurels anymore.
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You're not having to do anything to say God I bring this as the hymn writer said, nothing in my hand I bring only to your cross I cling, naked come to Thee for dress.
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I don't have anything to bring.
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I have to trust in Christ and when I trust in Christ I can be exposed because I'm covered in Christ.
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So the first relationship that we should be exposed and delightfully exposed is our relationship with God.
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I say delightfully.
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Delightfully exposed because Christ has covered our sin.
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The second one though and this one might catch you out of left field, might feel like I'm driving in coming in off the side road and bringing in like a totally different subject but I'm not because this is important.
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If you are married the other relationship that you should have where there is as much as exposure as you can possibly have is with your spouse because if there is a person in the world that you should be allowed to be open with and unashamed it is the person that you are now one with.
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The Bible says the two have become one.
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There is nobody in this world who knows me better than my wife.
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We celebrated 21 years yesterday and brother Andy and sister Candy are celebrating 45 years today.
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Praise God.
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And my wife and I'm sure Andy would say the same of his knows my hopes better than anyone knows my fears better than anyone, knows my sins better than anyone.
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As good as another human being can know another person my wife knows me.
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And in that I believe that if you are married and in a relationship where both of you love the Lord this is as close to Eden as you can get in this life with another human being because this is the place where you can be naked and unashamed.
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Not just physically but you can be spiritually and emotionally naked and unashamed.
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Let me say this men if your wives expose themselves to you it is your job to love them like Christ loves the church not increase their shame.
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Wives if your husbands are honest with you about their failures you love them and don't increase their shame be for them what you would need them to be for you.
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You too have become one.
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My wife's failures I share because we are one.
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My wife's fears we share because we are one.
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And therefore heaping upon her or she heaping upon me shame is not what I'm to do.