I'm going to come back to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, but go back if you would to the Old Testament to Proverbs chapter number 6.
Right in the dead center of your Bible is Psalms and then right after that is Proverbs. Go to Proverbs 6.
And what I want to preach about this morning is the subject of honesty.
Honesty. Now, I want to give you a few different definitions of honesty in the Bible and a few different things that this entails.
The first obvious thing that comes to our mind when we think of honesty or being honest is telling the truth.
Not lying. That's the obvious thing that pops in our mind.
Look at Proverbs chapter 6 verse 16. The Bible reads,
These six things that the Lord hate, yea, seven are an abomination unto him,
a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood,
an heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief,
a false witness that speaketh lies, and eateth so with discord among brethren.
Among the seven things listed that God hates, twice he lists lying as something that he hates.
And so God emphasizes throughout the Bible the importance of telling the truth.
Jesus Christ himself said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
No man cometh unto the Father, go find me. Jesus Christ embodies the truth.
His word is truth. And God demands that we as believers be truthful, honest people.
The Bible says that the devil is the father of lies. God embodies truth on the other hand.
The Bible says in Ephesians 4.25, Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbor,
for we are members one of another. Go to Revelation chapter 21.
Last book in the Bible, Revelation chapter 21. While you're turning there, I'll read for you John 8.44.
The Bible reads, Year of your father the devil, and the lust of your father you will do.
He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.
When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for he is a liar and the father of it.
And I can show you obviously hundreds and hundreds of verses in the Bible, I'm not going to for the sake of time,
that condemn lying and that tell us that we need to tell the truth.
But here's a verse just to show you how serious this is.
Revelation 21.8, and let's read verse 7 just to get the context.
It says in verse 7, He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers,
and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.
So obviously this is talking about hell, and this is talking about who's going to hell.
Now, a lot of people will twist verses like this in other verses.
For example, in Galatians, where the Bible says that, you know, he lists all these sins, drunkards, adulterers, pornocagers,
and he says that they'll not inherit the kingdom of God.
And a lot of people will use that to say, see, you know, you can't go to heaven if you do those things.
But wait a minute, this says all liars.
Is there anybody here who's never lied before? No way.
If anybody said that, they'd be lying right now.
And so every single person has lied.
And the Bible even flat out tells us, yea, let God be true, but every man a liar.
I mean, there's nobody on this earth who goes their whole life without telling lies.
And the Bible even tells here that all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.
What's that saying? That's saying that without Jesus Christ, that's where we deserve to go. That's what it's saying.
Obviously we can be saved, and that's what verse 7 is about.
Because it says, he that overcometh shall inherit all things.
And he's talking about all the things he's been talking about in chapter 21 and 22, about heaven and so forth.
He says, he that overcometh shall inherit all things.
And I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
But the fearful and unbelieving and the abominable and murderers and whoremongers and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars
shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.
Now some people will try to twist this and say, well, it's only people who lie a lot.
You know, they tell a lot of lies.
But look, God defines it in verse 27. Jump down to verse 27.
It says, and there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth.
And he's talking about entering into heaven.
Neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh, how many lies?
A lie.
But they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.
So what does it mean in verse 7 when it says, he that overcometh?
Go back just a few pages to 1 John chapter 5.
1 John chapter 5. I'll tie this all together in a second.
Go to 1 John chapter 5.
The Bible says in 1 John 5, 1,
Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.
So how is it that you become God's son?
How do you get born again or saved?
It's just believing, right?
Jesus says, whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.
And everyone that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him.
Jump down to verse 4.
The Bible says, for whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.
And that's that word that he said, he that overcometh.
And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our works.
No.
Even the fact that we stopped lying or started living a good life.
No.
In our faith, who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the son of God.
That's how you get saved.
That's how you escape hell.
That's how you get born again is by believing on Christ.
The Bible says that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.
And so salvation is completely by faith.
Salvation is by believing on Jesus Christ.
In Revelation 21, he's explaining that people go to hell to be punished for their sins, including even lying.
Now if lying is listed as something that's going to condemn someone to hell, it must be a pretty serious sin.
Now not to say that we haven't all done it because the Bible says for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
But that's why we need Jesus.
That's why we need to be saved.
If going to heaven were by being a good person, if somehow we could turn over a new leaf and never lie again would get us into heaven,
Jesus wouldn't even have to die on the cross.
The whole reason that he died on the cross is because we're all condemned, we all deserve hell,
but Jesus Christ died on the cross to pay for that sin.
But that should show you how serious it is to be lying.
And so we ought to take it seriously and not just think, ah, it's just a little sin.
Well, God takes it pretty seriously. He is the truth.
Go to Deuteronomy chapter 25.
Let me give you another aspect of honesty.
It's obviously just the basic aspect of, hey, telling the truth, not lying.
That's what we think of when we think of honesty.
Now, think about this.
While you're turning to Deuteronomy 25, why is it that people lie?
Probably the most common time that people tell lies is in order to cover up for themselves.
Let's say you broke something at work and then you say, hey, it was already like this when I got here.
That's lying, right?
Or you try to blame other people or you try to lie to cover up.
My wife is constantly asking, who did this?
In our house, something's broken, something's spilled, and it's like, who did this?
Not me, not me, not me.
Somebody's lying.
And so lying is usually to cover up for your mistakes and cover up for your sins.
Now, here's the thing, though.
God always knows the truth, obviously.
So when you lie, what you're saying is, I care more what other people think about me than what God thinks about me.
Because you're not fully God. I mean, obviously, he knows everything.
So when you're at work and you mess something up and then you lie about it,
you're saying, I care more what my boss thinks than what God thinks.
When you lie to your parents, you're saying, I care more what my parents think than what God thinks.
What's another reason that people lie?
The first one is to cover up for their sins and mistakes.
Another reason that people lie is to brag about things that aren't true.
They'll lie about it.
They'll tell you, I can do five million push-ups, and I can bench-press 400 pounds,
and then, okay, let's see you do it.
You can't do it.
They're lying and bragging about things that aren't true to try to glorify themselves in the eyes of others.
Again, caring more what other people think about them than what God thinks.
A person who is truthful and tells the truth is someone who doesn't care as much about what other people think as what God thinks.
And that's really what's going to come down to for being a truthful person.
It's when you get to the point where you only care what God thinks.
Then you're going to tell the truth.
Preachers who won't preach the truth. Why?
Because the truth isn't popular.
So they won't preach the truth because they care what people think.
They don't care what God thinks about their sermon that's trimming the message, that's censoring out parts of God's Word.
No! They care what the congregation thinks.
And that's why Paul said in Galatians 1-10,
For do I now please men or God?
For if I yet please men, I should not be the servant of Christ.
You have to choose. Are you going to serve Christ or are you serving man?
Are you trying to please your friends, please the church, please your boss, please your parents?
Or are you pleasing God first and foremost?
And when you want to please God first and foremost, you're going to tell the truth because he knows the truth anyway.
And he'll respect you more when you tell the truth.
Even if people around you don't respect you as much because they find out, hey, you did blow it, you did make a mistake, you did do something wrong.
Or the preacher who gets up and preaches the truth, hey, it might cause people to walk out the door, but God is pleased.
So what matters the most?
So you find somebody who's a big liar and somebody who cares a lot what other people think.
Instead of focusing primarily on what God thinks.
That's the source of most lying that I've seen in my life.
And any time that I'm told lies, it was usually one of those types of things.
It was basically usually trying to cover up.
You know, you mess up and you don't want to own up to it.
That's why people lie to you.
But not only that, honesty also entails being honest in business or honest in your work.
Go to Deuteronomy 25, I think I had you turn there. Look at verse 13.
The Bible says, Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small.
Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small.
But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have,
that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.
For all that do such things and all that do unrighteously are an abomination unto the Lord thy God.
What's he talking about here with these divers weights in your bag and divers measures?
What he's saying is that when someone's a merchant, when somebody's selling something,
often you pay by the weight.
You know, you go down to the store, let's say you're buying meat, you're buying produce,
they put it on the scale, they measure it out and they see how much it is.
Well people, back when they actually used real money instead of these pieces of paper,
monopoly money that we use, they actually used coins and those coins were made out of metal.
And those coins had a certain weight.
You know, they were, let's say in our modern vernacular it'd be like an ounce,
like an ounce of silver, an ounce of gold, an ounce of copper.
And so what they would do is they would weigh out the money of what they were paying.
You know, they'd weigh the coins and then they would also weigh the product that they're buying.
You know, whether it's meat, produce, grain, whatever it is, they're paying by the pound.
And so they would weigh it out.
Well what he's saying is that some people would have weights, different weights.
When they're weighing the money, they're using one set of weights that's a little bit heavier, okay.
And then when they're weighing out the food, they get out another set of weights that's a little bit lighter.
So what are they talking about? Short-changing somebody.
You know, let's say you're going to give it to them for $5 a pound.
Well you're actually taking a little more than $5 and you're giving them a little bit less than a pound.
God is saying that's wicked, that's an abomination, it makes them angry.
And so we need to be honest in business, not deceptive.
And we live in a day where most businesses are deceptive.
You know, most people lie and deceive and they don't have any integrity and honesty.
I was thinking about in the business of food.
This is probably where more deception goes on than anywhere else when it comes to food.
Let me give you some examples of this.
I just need to get this off my chest, okay.
Okay, Parmesan cheese. Who likes Parmesan cheese? Oh yeah.
Well I remember one time my wife, you know, we were trying to save a little money or something.
So she bought the Parmesan that was not the Kraft, you know, it was like the store brand Parmesan.
But it's kind of in the same green canister, kind of looked the same.
So she bought that Parmesan and it said right on it, 100% Parmesan cheese.
Okay, sounds good.
So we get the Parmesan and we start sprinkling it on the spaghetti and it tastes like you're just eating flour.
It just didn't have any flavor.
It was just like, it had the texture of cheese but it just had no flavor.
It was just like grains of nothing, you know, white powder, nothing all over the food.
And I'm eating this, I'm like honey, it's not any good.
And we look at it and it turned out it was filled with fillers.
They used literal flour mixed in with the cheese and other substances just to stretch it out.
So that you're not getting, you know, it says on the thing you're getting 12 ounces of cheese or whatever.
You're not getting 12 ounces of cheese, you're getting like, you know, I don't know the numbers
but let's say you're getting 6 ounces of cheese and 6 ounces of worthless filler.
And so you're getting ripped off, you're getting deceived.
Now you say, wait a minute, how is it that they said it's 100% Parmesan?
Because what they're saying is that the cheese that they used, like there's no cheddar in it, there's no Swiss, you know.
The cheese that they're using is 100% Parmesan.
But what they forgot to tell you is that it's not 100% cheese.
It's filled with flour and all this other stuff.
Another thing that I just noticed this less than a year ago is the lemon juice.
There's this brand called Real Lemon and it says right on it, 100% lemon juice.
I mean, I don't know about you but to me that sounds like there's nothing in that bottle except lemon juice.
But then you look at the ingredients and there's all these other ingredients.
And there are three different preservatives in it.
Three different chemicals that have been added to it.
It's not 100%.
Let me just put, this one is the rounding up.
But really it would be nice to say this is 99.9% lemon juice and 0.1% is poison.
You know, all this weird chemical stuff that you don't need.
And then also, I was looking into this also, chicken breasts.
They literally take a syringe.
The chicken breast that you buy at the store, they take a syringe and they inject them with water.
And they go like...
And they make them bigger and they can charge you more because they're charging you by the pound.
So you're paying for a bunch of water.
You know, and you're paying six bucks a pound for water.
I don't know, how much does chicken cost? I don't do any shopping.
What is it?
Six bucks for the organic or else what's the other one?
What's the one where they torture it in a cage?
Anyway, the point is, you know, it's dishonest.
It's lying because you think, you know, you're buying the chicken.
And if somebody had integrity and they're producing chicken, they'd cut that chicken breast.
They'd throw it on the scale and say, hey, this is how much I'm selling it to you for.
They wouldn't pump it full of water so you can buy water for six dollars a pound.
Or buy water for two dollars a pound.
That's pretty expensive water.
And then, you know, there's so much dishonesty.
We can go on and on.
That's just a couple of examples about people.
They're trying to make money at the expense of honesty.
At the expense of telling the truth.
Go to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4.
Back where we started at the beginning toward the end.
1 Thessalonians chapter 4.
Here's another thing that always burns me up too.
The zero grams of trans fat.
What a scam.
Because you get to the package and it says like zero grams of trans fat per serving.
But then you look at the ingredient list and it has trans fat in it.
And here's why.
They round it down.
It's like .49 grams.
So what they ought to be doing, here's an idea.
Measure it in milligrams.
And then you'd actually see how much is in the product.
But instead, I mean, why don't they measure it in kilograms?
You know?
How many kilos of trans fat?
Zero!
I mean like if I said, you know, there's zero tons per serving.
It's the wrong unit of measure.
But they do that because when the average person sees something that says zero grams trans fat,
when I first started seeing that, I thought there's no trans fat.
That's what I thought zero meant.
But it doesn't.
It means, oh, per serving.
And by the way, the serving size is one cracker.
You know, or whatever.
Like you get a candy bar, it's like four servings.
You know, oh, this is only 100 calories.
It's like per serving.
So what I'm saying is, there's a lot of deception out there.
That's how the world thinks they're going to get ahead in business.
But you know what?
We as God's people, we as Christians should not participate in that.
I mean, we should have more integrity than that.
And you say, oh, but how am I going to compete against all of you?
You know, you've got to just have integrity and God's going to bless you for it.
Just pray to God to help you.
But I'd rather not succeed.
I'd rather fail and make less money and be honest about it and tell the truth about it.
Nobody has the integrity, it seems like.
And they just want to lie and cheat and stuff.
And then people compete in sports.
And what are they always doing?
Taking all kinds of drugs.
You know, to try to get ahead, to try to win.
Or they cheat.
You know, they cork the bat or whatever.
I don't even know what that means, but I've heard that so far.
I don't know anything about baseball.
But I'm saying that people are trying to be dishonest.
What's the glory in winning if you cheated?
And even, I hope my children are listening.
Don't ever cheat when you're playing a board game with me.
Obviously.
And you say, oh, that's just a little thing.
It's just a small thing.
But I'll tell you something.
You're creating someone who's going to grow up and cheat and make a bunch of fake parmesan.
You know what I mean?
You're creating a person, seriously.
You're creating a person who's going to grow up and be dishonest in other areas.
And I'll tell you what, I'm not a perfect person.
When I was growing up, I got into all kinds of mischief.
I was constantly getting in trouble.
I was constantly getting detention.
I was constantly writing lines.
I kept writing like a hundred times and stuff.
But I'll tell you one thing I didn't do.
And I'm not trying to lift myself up.
Because I've done my own share of mischief in school.
The one thing I didn't do, though, is I did not cheat in school.
Because I just couldn't justify it.
Because when you do wrong, you try to justify it.
I couldn't justify cheating on a test or cheating in school.
Because it's just so wrong.
And when you're running a race or when you're doing your schoolwork.
I don't even put my kids in school.
I don't recommend it either.
But anyway, you've got to have integrity.
And when you're playing Scrabble or a board game or whatever.
There's no glory in winning if you cheated.
And if you cheat and you win, I hope you just have a sick feeling in your stomach.
Because you know you didn't earn it.
You didn't do it right.
I'd rather lose and have my integrity than to win this hollow victory.
And the joy of winning is when you know that you did it right.
But the joy of winning when you cheated is just, oh, look at me.
It's again, caring about what other people think.
Don't cheat at board games.
And children, even kids, listen to me.
You say, oh, it's just a game.
You better get it to happen to be honest as a young person.
So you can grow up and be honest.
Where did I return to?
1 Thessalonians 4.
This is back to business or work ethic.
It says in 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 11, that you study to be quiet.
And to do your own business.
And to work with your own hands as we commanded you.
That you may walk honestly toward them that are without.
And that you may have lack of nothing.
This is talking about those that are outside of the faith.
You know, I'm talking about unsaved people that are out in the world.
He's saying you need to work with your own hands and be honest.
So that you can not lack anything.
You know, you'll have your needs met to pay your bills, to buy food, to have a place to live.
And also so that you can walk honestly toward them that are without.
So that people that are not saved can look at you and not reproach you for being dishonest.
Or for being someone who doesn't put in a good day's work.
And honestly, when you're on the job, if you're getting paid for 8 hours, you should put in an 8 hour day.
And not be constantly fooling around, you know, cheating the clock, coming in late, going home early.
Because people are going to look at that and it gives a bad name to the cause of price.
You know, people know that you're a Christian.
Or they know that they maybe see you reading your Bible on the lunch break.
Or they see you reading the Bible or talking about the things of God.
Talking about the Gospel, which you should be doing those things.
And then they see you being the worst worker on the job.
Do you think that that's given a lot of credibility to your religion?
When they see you as the most dishonest worker.
The one who's always taking the shortcut.
The one who's always cheating.
You ought to be the one that they look at that's working the hardest.
That's the most honest.
When they make a mistake, you know, when you make a mistake, you'll stand up.
You'll own up to it and be honest about it.
That's going to be a better testimony.
It says in 1 Peter 2, verse 12, you don't have to turn there.
It says,
Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims.
Abstain from fleshly lust which war against the soul.
Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles.
That whereas they speak against you as evil doers.
They may by your good works which they shall behold.
Glorify God in the day of visitation.
Even when people talk bad about you.
Even when they criticize you.
If you're honest and you're the real deal.
Eventually you'll come out like gold.
If you stay honest. If you do what's right.
But go to Romans 13. Let me give you another common definition in the Bible of honesty.
First of all, we saw it's about telling the truth.
Number two, we saw, hey, it's about being honest in business.
Not misrepresenting yourself when it comes to your job.
Or when it comes to products that you're selling or anything like that.
That's all dishonest.
But not only that, honesty in the Bible is often tied in with being what you appear to be.
Being real.
Having integrity.
Now, if you know math, you know what an integer is.
That's where the word integrity comes from.
An integer is a number that's a whole number.
Like one, two, three, four. Or negative one, negative two, negative three.
It's complete. It's a perfect number. It's a whole number.
And integrity can often be referring to something's soundness.
For example, if we talked about the integrity of a gas tank.
We're saying it's not leaking.
Or the integrity of an engine. We're saying that the engine is still operational.
So when the Bible talks about having integrity or being honest, it's talking about being legit.
Being who you say you are.
And it often talks about people seeing you.
Let me show you what I'm talking about. Look at Romans 13.12.
And I think this explains it well.
Romans 13.12 says,
The night is far spent, the day is at hand.
Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.
Let us walk honestly.
And he defines what it is to walk honestly.
He says, as in the day.
Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envy.
But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof.
So what is he defining as walking honestly?
He said in verse 12,
Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.
Let us walk honestly, as in the day.
Now, what he's saying is that people do things often at night that they would not normally do in the daytime.
And he talks about drunkenness, rioting, chambering, wantonness, strife, and being...
There are a lot of things that people will do at night that they won't do in the daytime.
Why? Because at night, they're not going to be seen.
They can hide in the shadows, they can get by with more things, and be a little bit more incognito.
Well, the Bible is saying here that we should live our lives in broad daylight all the time.
Metaphorically speaking.
As in, we should be what we appear to be.
What people look at us and see should be what they get.
Not they look at us and they see one thing, and then we go lurking off in the shadows,
and we're living a totally different life, or living a double life.
We need to have integrity and honesty that says that what I say I am,
and what I show myself to be in public, is the same person that I am in private.
Now look, I'm not perfect, you're not perfect, but we should be real all the time.
Day, night, in church, out of church.
It shouldn't be we just become a totally different person around one group of people.
We come to church, and all of a sudden we put on this holiness mode,
and we're a completely different person.
Then we go out during the week, and we're out getting drunk, we're out partying,
we're out just completely different.
And then we show up here as a different person.
That's not integrity, that's not honesty.
That's hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is when you're an actor.
It's when you're pretending to be one thing, when you're really something else.
Now look, nobody's perfect.
You don't have to put on some show or some facade of being something that you're not.
Just be who you are.
And the Bible tells us, growing grace, and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
We're all growing. We should all be improving.
None of us is perfect, but we ought to be the real deal,
and not pretending to be something that we're not.
And a lot of times people put up a big facade,
and sometimes the biggest facade that they put up is to hide all the bad stuff that they're trying to hide.
So they have to put up this really big facade,
and some of the people that you've noticed that really lay it on thick,
with their religious talk, and they just really lay it on thick,
you know, hallelujah brother, how you doing today, God bless you,
and it just flows off their tongue.
Sometimes those are the people that are not legit at all.
And that's why they have to lay it on so thick to hide what's really going on.
Go to 2 Corinthians, you're in Romans, just a few pages to the right in your Bible,
go to 2 Corinthians chapter 4.
2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse number 2.
The Bible says, you see, it's saying,
We, but have renounced, but we have renounced, he's saying,
the hidden things of dishonesty.
Do you see that?
The hidden things of dishonesty.
So as he said in Romans 13, what's honest is what's out on display, what's open.
Now, I don't know about you, but I like to go to restaurants where I can see into the kitchen.
You know what I mean?
Because you just feel like it's more honest.
I don't know why this keeps coming back to food, okay?
I'm kind of hungry or something.
Anyway, you know, you walk into a restaurant, and you see everything exposed,
you say, hey, this is probably going to be a decent meal,
because they're being honest, they're exposing.
They're not trying to hide it.
You know, you go into a place, and the kitchen's completely hidden away somewhere.
You know, you hope for the best.
You don't really know.
And I've eaten in some places that turned out that my hopes were in vain.
I used to lie at this Chinese food place every day on my lunch break, okay?
And it was this Chinese food, and my first bad sign was that the woman who worked there,
she wore the same shirt every day.
That right there was a bad sign, because I thought to myself, wait a minute,
is that carrying over into other areas?
So it was right next to this hotel where I was putting in a fire alarm system,
and this woman was wearing the same shirt every day.
You know, I'm just hoping that she's running that load every night.
And she was a really nice lady, really friendly, middle-aged Chinese lady,
and she was really nice, really friendly, so I'd go in there, hey, how you doing?
And I'd eat the food, and it was good food.
But, you know, I did notice that my left side of my mouth would get a little sore,
you know, it would start burning.
But anyway, but it tasted great.
Well, I was doing the final fire inspection on the hotel, and I'm with the fire inspector,
and the fire inspector's telling me how they had gone on inspections of health inspections,
and he said, whatever you do, and there were like six Chinese food places
within a quarter mile of where we're staying.
This lady that was the fire inspector, she said, whatever you do,
don't go to that Chinese food.
And I was like, oh, no, you've got to be kidding me.
And she started telling me all these horror stories.
She said they were literally changing the oil in their car with the pan that they,
you know, deep-fried stuff out of.
I mean, that was just one of the examples.
I was like, whoa.
That was back when I was not as wise as I am now about food choices.
Now I'm a little more discriminating with food.
But you couldn't see into that kitchen at all.
But I like to go to places where you see, and if you go to a fancy restaurant,
you can normally kind of see into the kitchen, and they're usually, you know,
making flames go up and do cool stuff, you know, to impress.
But, you know, sometimes you walk up and you see them cutting vegetables,
and you see them actually, you know, you know it's not everything coming.
You know, we went to a German restaurant and sat down, and we order our food.
And you can't see into the kitchen?
A minute later, we hear this sound.
Ooh, the sound of a microwave.
I was just like, really?
You've got to be kidding me.
Like, why am I listening to a microwave?
I'm at a restaurant here.
And so that's the type of thing I'm talking about.
I don't know what that is.
Oh, yeah.
He said we pronounce the hidden things of dishonesty.
See, they're not going to put the microwave right in the middle of the dining room
and heat up the food right now.
They're going to hide stuff like that because it's dishonest.
He says the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness,
nor handling the Word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation.
Manifestation is when something's exposed.
He says manifestation of the truth,
commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.
He said something similar in chapter 8, verse 21,
when he said, providing for honest things,
not only in the sight of the Lord,
because everything is exposed in His sight,
not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men.
You see that?
He's saying being honest is when people, both man and God,
can see what you're doing.
They can see your works.
They know that you're for real.
You're not hiding and crafty and deceiving.
No, you're making it manifest.
You're walking in the light.
You're not hiding who you are.
A great example of this is missionaries.
Actually, I'm sorry.
A horrible example of this is what I meant to say.
Missionaries, because they go around, and I'm not against missionaries.
We support some missionaries.
I've known some really good missionaries
that are doing a great work for God in other countries and so forth.
But these missionaries, I'll tell you what.
They are willing to lie and deceive
because of the fact that they're trying to be supported by so many churches.
In case you're newer to church or maybe you haven't been saved for that long
or you don't really know much about how this works,
missionaries in foreign countries, they'll often go from church to church to church to church,
and they're raising money for support.
So one church will give them 50 bucks a month
or 100 bucks a month or 200 bucks a month.
So they go to all these different churches
in order to raise the support.
And then once they have enough support for a full-time paycheck and their expenses,
then they'll go to that foreign country,
and then they're getting the support from the countries in the United States.
Well, a lot of these missionaries,
they don't care who they're getting their support from.
So they don't go around, and these churches will put them in the pulpit and have them preach,
but they won't preach what they really believe
because if they preach everything they believe,
then some people are not going to like it, some people are going to disagree.
So they kind of want to just become all things to all men.
And kind of just, when they're in this crowd, they're going to go with this way.
And when they get another crowd, it's going to be what they want to hear.
We had a guy exactly like this come through one time.
And this guy came through, and he was one of these
Amen, Praise the Lord, Hallelujah guys.
Like, just, you know, Amen, brother.
You know, just every word out of his mouth is like, Amen, yes, glory.
So, you know, I walk up to this guy,
and, oh yeah, you know, missionary, blah, blah, blah.
You know, he's going to this, you know, place.
And I said to him, I said, hey, do you guys do soul-winning?
Do you go door-to-door soul-winning?
And I've had this, and look, I've had this same conversation,
and I'm going to have to relate with you, with a lot of people.
Now, the names have been changed to protect the innocent,
but let me tell you something.
This story that I'm telling you right now is an exact, true, real-life story.
But literally, I've had probably ten other stories that are almost identical to this
that I couldn't tell.
I'm just telling the most recent one.
So, I walk up to this guy, I said, hey, I said, so, do you guys do soul-winning?
Like, door-to-door soul-winning?
Yes, brother, we believe in soul-winning, you know?
And I said, I said, okay, I said, great.
I said, so, when you go soul-winning, what do you do?
What do you tell people?
Like, you know, if you knock on somebody's door, what do you say to them?
Um, well, uh...
This is something you're doing all the time, wouldn't you know?
Like, I've done it a thousand times, so I know it.
He's like, oh, well, he's like, um...
It's different with everybody.
You've got to build a relationship with that person.
It's like, I don't know about you, but I don't usually have people coming to my front door
and knock on it and building a relationship with me.
You know what I mean?
It's kind of not really the place to build a long-lasting, deep friendship with somebody, you know?
They probably have other things going on, so you might as well just cut to the chase
and give them the gospel, if that's what you're there to do.
You know, preaching the gospel, not just talk about the tulip garden all day or whatever,
to build a relationship.
But anyway, he said, you know, it's different with everybody.
I said, well, give me an example.
And I said, okay, I said, let's do this.
I said, I'm the unsafe person.
You just knocked on my door.
You just asked me if I know for sure I'm going to heaven.
And I say, no, I don't.
What now?
The guy literally started shaking.
He didn't know what to say.
Boy, he's doing a ton of it. He believes this whole way.
He knows all the time, right?
And then he finally, he pulls out a tract, trembling,
and just begins to read for me verbatim off the track.
Like not saying anything, just reading it verbatim.
Wow, this guy's doing a ton of soil.
Then he gets down to the end of the tract, and it's saying how to be saved,
you have to repent of your sins.
Okay?
Which, look, I don't know about you, but the Bible says,
believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
The Bible says, what must I do to be saved?
And they said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.
Look, if you have to repent of your sins to be saved, good luck with that.
Let me know once you've repented of all your sins.
Okay? And then we'll call you Jesus,
because that's the only man who's ever walked on this earth
who repented of all his sins, who lived a perfect life.
Nobody is without sin, okay?
And they say, whoa, it's not being without sin,
you just have to be willing to stop sinning.
Well, how willing do you have to be? So willing that you will?
Or just willing to will-will, okay?
It's stupid. It's just this made up stuff.
I mean, the Bible's so clear.
For by grace are you saved through faith.
And that none of yourselves, it is the gift of God.
None of works, lest any man should boast.
Look, if I'm giving a gift, if I sit there and say to you,
hey, I'm going to give you this gift, okay?
But you know some of the things that you do,
you're going to need to stop doing that stuff.
And I'm not saying you have to stop right now,
but you have to tell me that you're willing to stop doing that stuff.
It's not a gift.
But what if I said, hey, I'm giving you this Bible as a gift.
You believe me? Take it if you believe me. Take it if you believe me.
There you go. I paid for it. It's free.
That's what salvation is. It's a free gift.
But this guy's like, repent of your sins. I'm like,
I said, what does that mean?
Because I was pretending to be the unstable.
Because he asked me if I knew for sure. I said, I have no idea.
You know, because I'm playing the role play.
And so I said, what does that mean to repent of your sins?
And he said, well, it means you've got to turn from sin, forsake sin.
I'm like, have you forsaken all sin?
Oh, well, I don't know.
So the guy got all confused. He got all twisted up, got all confused.
Doesn't know what he's talking about.
He said, oh, give the guy a break. No, I won't give him a break.
He's a preacher. He's claiming to be a pastor and a preacher.
He wants people to give him money so that he can claim
that he's going to some country somewhere far away.
And you know why he's going so far away? Because it's dark there.
Because the people in America don't know what he's doing.
They don't know that he's not really sowing, that he's a liar,
that he's never knocked a door in his life.
Or if he did, he probably just handed him the track
or talked about the tulips with them.
He did not do real sowing.
So he wants to get really far away from everybody's watchful eye.
And that's why people who won't do sowing here, they won't do it there.
If you won't do it when people are around,
your debts are not going to do it when nobody's around.
And so it's dishonest.
And so this guy, he begins to ham and haul,
doesn't know what he's talking about,
and he's saying, you've got to turn from your sin, forsake sin.
That's work salvation.
That's working your way to heaven if you have to forsake your sins
and turn over a new leaf and live good.
The Bible says believe.
So anyway, I say to him, I say, well, I don't agree with that at all.
And I said, let me show you what the Bible says.
And I show him all these scriptures how that's work salvation.
Like where God said about Jonah,
and God saw their works, in chapter 3, verse 10,
that they turned from their evil way.
So I said, see right there, it says the turning from your evil way is works.
Here it says keeping the law is the works of the flesh.
The works of the law, like obeying the Ten Commandments, that's works.
And the Bible says salvation is not works.
And here's what he said.
Oh, I agree with you.
And here's what he said.
I hope you don't misunderstand what I said earlier.
You know, like I thought you have to turn from your sins to be saved.
I was just saying you should do that after you're saved.
I took the paper out of his hand, the little track that he was reading,
his little script, you know.
Even this guy had Parkinson's or he'd never been sold.
You know what I mean?
So the guy's got the, I took the little track out of his hand,
and I said, look, I said, it says right here, how to be saved,
it says repent of your sins, and it says you have to turn from your sins.
And then it says you believe on Christ to be saved.
I said, your name is at the bottom of this.
He was literally the author of it.
His name was at the bottom of it.
He was the author of the track.
I said, you wrote this.
This came out of your heart.
And he's like, oh, but I would have explained to people that that's not really what it meant.
And I said, I said, you know what?
He said, I don't, and he kept reiterating to me,
I don't want you to misunderstand what I said earlier.
I don't think you have to do it.
And I said, you know what, I do misunderstand what you said earlier.
And I said, you know what I think is happening right now?
I think that as soon as you found out I didn't disagree with you,
you're just pretending, or that I disagree with you,
you're just pretending to believe something else.
Because everywhere you go, you tell people what they want to hear.
He said, I can't believe you were so rude to him.
I can't believe that he would come in here and lie to my face
and call himself a man of God.
He's a joke.
I'm sick of it today. I am sick of it.
And look, if God said it's an abomination, if it makes God mad,
if it's what God hates, when people just lie to your face,
why am I supposed to like it when people lie to my face?
In the name of the Gospel.
You know, he comes in and starts to lie to me.
And why is he here? For money.
He wants financial support, so he's going to lie to me to get money.
That's just as bad as somebody who would walk in and say,
here's a pound of whatever for this much money,
and they're really giving you three-quarter pound.
It's the same thing.
Pastor Parmesan with all his billers and all his emulsifiers
and whatever, reservists.
And I mean, we laugh about it.
It's funny, but it's actually sad, though.
It's not really that funny.
When you think about the fact that people actually put money in the offering plate,
and they're trying to support missions because they want people to get saved,
this guy's not getting anybody saved.
This guy's getting no one saved. Period.
And he's sucking up all this money from people,
but he talks the talk, and man, he just looks the part.
I mean, he's got the suit on, and he's got his big King James Bible,
and he knows when to say amen and hallelujah and praise the Lord.
You know what I mean?
But he doesn't preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
He's got some bogus Gospel.
He's reading it off a card.
He can't even read it.
Look, if you asked me to do something that I've never done, I'd be nervous.
Let me just be honest with you.
For example, you know, I've performed, what, four weddings now?
Yours was the fourth, right?
So I performed four weddings as a pastor.
Well, here's the thing.
The first time I performed a wedding, I was very nervous
because I'd never done it.
Now, when I get up to preach on Sunday morning, I'm not nervous at all
because I've preached literally, you know, 1,500 times.
So I'm not really nervous about it because it's something that I'm used to doing.
I'm confident with it because I've done it before.
But when I did the first wedding, which I did, I think, what year was it?
2008?
2008, when I performed my first wedding ceremony, I was very nervous.
I was probably shaking a little bit.
This is something I've never done.
The second wedding, I was still nervous, but I felt a little bit better
because, hey, at least I've done it once.
The third wedding, I felt a little bit more comfortable.
The fourth wedding, it was like, let's do it.
No, I'm just kidding.
But anyway, I was a lot less nervous.
And when you're nervous and shaking and reading off a card,
it's because you don't know what you're doing.
And it's because you haven't practiced.
It's because you haven't done it.
I mean, if somebody asked me to get up here and do something
that I've never done as a pastor, like, I've never performed a funeral.
I'd probably just be nervous just because I'm afraid I'm going to mess up
because I don't know what I'm doing because I've never done it.
And I'd read books about it, watch YouTube videos of funerals
and try to figure out what to do.
But I'd be nervous until I'd had some experience with it.
You see what I mean?
So people are not being honest.
People who say one thing and they present themselves a certain way
and you're not getting the real deal.
That's dishonesty.
That's what God is talking about here.
Job is a great example of honesty and integrity.
This is the last place we'll turn.
We'll finish with this.
Go to Job 27, Job chapter 27.
We talked about Job a couple weeks ago.
Job is the ultimate example in the Bible of integrity and honesty.
Why?
Because people looked at him and the whole book of Job
is people accusing Job of being dishonest.
What they're basically accusing Job of is, hey, you're not the real thing.
You look like you're godly.
You look like you're righteous, but you're not.
You're really sinning.
You're really a deceptive person who's pretending to be godly.
Now, of course, it wasn't true.
Job was honest.
Job had integrity.
Job was right on.
And look what Job says in chapter 27, verse 4.
My lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit.
God forbid that I should justify you.
This should be a motto for us to have.
Till I die, I will not remove my integrity from me.
He said, my righteousness I hold fast, and I will not let it go.
My heart shall not reproach me so long as I live.
And not only that, but he said in chapter 31, verse 6,
let me be weighed in an even balance that God may know my integrity.
He said, till I die, I will not remove my integrity from me.
He said, I'm going to hold on to it, and hang on to it, and hang back,
and he says, my heart shall not reproach me.
Because, you see, when you're dishonest, other people might not know that you're being dishonest,
but you know, and God knows.
And Job said, I'd rather die than to be a phony.
Rather than to be a phony, rather than to be a fraud,
rather than to try to fool people that I'm righteous when I'm actually ungodly,
he said, I'd rather die.
Hold on to it, and that's the admonition this morning.
Hang on to honesty.
And make it your motto that you'll die before you give up your integrity.
Before you become a fraud.
That's how important it is to be honest.
That's how important integrity is. Let's bow our heads and have a word of prayer.
Babu, thank you so much for your word.
Dear God, thank you for great men in the Bible like Job who had such integrity and honesty.
Help us to, first of all, tell the truth.
And to be honest and not lie and to cover for ourselves.
Help us to be honest on the job, honest in business, honest in our dealings with others.
Help us to not pretend to be something we're not.
Help us to be the real deal and not to be deceptive and try to put on a show of spirituality.
When, in fact, we're worldly, we're carnal.
Help us to just be the real thing, help us to grow.
All of us need to grow. None of us is perfect.
But even though we can't be perfect, even though we can't be totally without sin, we're all going to sin.
But God, one thing we can do is be honest.
Help us to just be honest about who we are.
And in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.