"ICHURCH SERIES - THE PLACE OF AUTHENTICITY" 

Look Up: Genesis 3:1-8

                                  Sermon preached by Dr. Wayne W. Poplin, Senior Pastor, Carmel Baptist Church
(Copyright 2006)

INTRODUCTION:  [Video:  The Perfects].  Why is that funny?  Because it is so fake!  Because it is so “not the way it really is.”  I guess the Perfects belong to a Perfect Church.  But there are no such people and no such church.  We know that—so why do we try to act like we are—just not to the exaggerated extreme on the video.  Acting like we are all perfect and the church then is all perfect is a good way to make plastic.  Here is the problem.  To maintain that appearance of what really isn’t true, we have to mask.
            Two weeks ago we talked about this place being the Place of Community.  God made us for relationship and community and the local church should be a place of real community and relationships.  The early church valued community and fellowship so they devoted themselves to it.  We need to do the same—investing, taking initiative, being intentional and involving ourselves.  How can you have real koinonia in the midst of pretense?  You can’t.  Listen to this quote:  “Pretending is the grease of modern nonrelationships” [Yaconelli, Messy Spirituality, p. 27].  With pretending, we try to connect on the basis of who we aren’t.  That makes for superficiality.  That will not create the place of community that we want and need.    

 Beginning of Masking

            How did we get into this masking situation?  Go back to Genesis?  [Read Genesis 3:1-8].  The origin of the mask is found there.  But the mask is not the problem.  It is a symptom of the problem.  Prior to sin, Adam and Eve were open and authentic.  After they committed sin, they masked.  What they did made them feel naked and their nakedness cried out to be covered. So the couple used the biggest leaves they could find, which were fig leaves. Not only that they sewed the fig leaves together and hid as much as they could.  Masking goes way back in our family line.  There is this something that compels me to hide what is really true about me. 
            Here is what happens.  When we sin or when someone sins against us it triggers two responses:
                    1.      Guilt
                    2.      Hurt

God designed us that way to tell us that something is wrong.  Rather than dealing with guilt and hurt correctly [confession, forgiveness, go to brother who sins against you] we hide or override them [TrueFaced, p. 24].  Because we do not allow myself to be covered properly [through His atoning work], I hide myself.  So that calls for a mask.  We hide the fact that we are guilty or that we hurt. The longer the guilt remains and the hurt stays, it festers causing more to mask [more fig leaves]—lying, blame, shame, anger, fear, bitterness, feeling of inadequacy, self-doubt, feeling of unworthiness, etc.  So we have all of this inside and don’t want anybody to know it’s there, so we wear a mask. We say everything is ok. We think that if anyone knew the real us they wouldn’t love us.  So now we are trapped.  If we take it off and people find out who we really are, they won’t love us and accept us. So I am stuck.  I don’t have any choice.  So we have Fig Leaf Baptist Church.  Doing Just Fine Baptist Church.  We are some version of The Perfects.   
        Some of the masks are:

   Kinds of Masking

1. Full-time—it is on all the time
2. Part-time—it is on mostly at church
3. Christian –This is a distinctly Christian mask that makes us appear Christian regardless of how we feel or think.  We do that to protect ourselves but also to protect God.  So we try to appear confident when we are scared, poised when we are shaken, peaceful when we are anxious, happy when we are grieved, devout when we are indifferent.  That is simply called hypocrisy. And some have become really good at this.  It is ok to be honest.  And God doesn’t need us to protect Him.  What He provides is real.  You don’t have to fake it. Faking it doesn’t protect Him at all.   

 Toll of Masking

           Being inauthentic is exhausting, fatiguing, full of pressure, etc., because it is not the way we were created to be.     
            It will keep you enslaved.
            It will keep you from repenting and thus from being forgiven [Prov. 28:13; Ps. 32:4-5; I Jh. 1:9].
            It will keep you from maturing
            It will keep the church from community and revival. 
            It will keep you from accountability.  Because you won’t ask for help, because you won’t admit anything is wrong. 

Desire for Authenticity

 But in the midst of all this masking is the desire to be authentic.  There are two levels at which we feel the need to be authentic [Piper, Sermon—“Jesus IS Precious Because Through Him We Become Authentic]. 
1.      Harmony of my inner and outward self.  There is what I am inwardly and how I act and appear outwardly.  Authenticity is when these two are in harmony.  The opposite is hypocrisy.    
2.      Harmony between my inner self and God’s ultimate purpose. I become inwardly and outwardly what God aims for me to be.  I was made for Him—I am sustained by Him—I live to please Him.  Authenticity is being within what God created me to be.  What a sense of rightness, fulfillment and freedom.

 Authenticity Killers

So what is keeping you from taking your mask off?  We are like the Lone Ranger.  It never comes off [I watched that show as a kid and the mask never came off.  There were episodes when the bad men were going to remove mask but something would happen and the mask always stayed in place].  Some reasons have to do with us and some reasons have to do with others. 

1. Pride—you are trying to protect your image. The truth of the matter is that masks don’t last forever.  Yours may already be cracking. 
2. Your theology—act like you have no sin. I Jh. 1:8.  You think that your primary goal is to please God.  You are expending your energy trying to hold yourself in check, being all that God wants me to be—but if I don’t do enough I will be out of sorts with God and others.  So I will have to wear a mask.  We want to please God—but will never do that by making it our primary goal.  I will please Him by trusting Him and live out who He says I already am.  One puts the responsibility on my resources,  The other puts the responsibility on His resources. 
3. Gossip—they will take my stuff and use it against me
4. Self-righteousness [well I never had to deal with that]
5. Judgmentalism—We are not to suspend all critical faculties in relation to people, or turn a blind eye to people’s sins and faults, or refuse to discern between right and wrong, truth and error. I am talking about not taking the plank out of your own eye [confess, mourn over your own sin first]. before considering someone else’s sin.  We are arrogantly assuming that we are better. 
6. Lack of mercy.  God is a merciful God. He does not excuse sin. But He knew the difference between loving and accepting people without approving their lifestyle.  He could eat with Zaccheus and not approve his dishonesty.  He could treat the adulterous woman with mercy and not approve of her lifestyle.  God gives what I don’t deserve. 

 Authenticity Makers

            Don’t you want to be part of a church where you can be authentic and still loved?  Don’t you want to be part of a church where it is safe to confess and change?  Don’t you want to be part of a church where you could find a confidant to hold you accountable? 
            So what will it take for us to take off masks and have an authentic community?  We desire deep down for authenticity and we want an authentic community.  So what will it take? What will it take for us to have a community where the truth is held up as the standard but we are able to admit that we have fallen short of the standard? What will it take for us to have a community where people can get well because they can admit they aren’t well?  What will it take to for us to be freed up to mature?  What will it take for us to feel love with accountability rather than cold self-righteousness?  What we want will never be achieved by brick, steel and mortar.  It will be achieved by the church—us.  So what are we going to do?
        I choose to be real.
        I choose to allow others to be real.
        I will be forgiving because I am forgiven.
        I choose to show mercy because I have been and being shown mercy.
        I refuse to gossip.
        I will confess my self-righteousness and judgmentalism.
        I submit to the Lordship of Christ.  Thereby, I will not only be in harmony with what God purpose for me but my inner self and outer self will be in harmony as well. 
        I will do this because I want to be able to change, mature and be free to be what God wants me to be and I want the same for others.       

 CONCLUSION:  I am the church and I will be that.