How to Become a Fake Christian

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Good morning. Today, if you read articles, if you watch the news, if you listen to people talk, it feels like the winds of Christianity are beginning to shift a little bit. Famous Christians are turning into atheists. So, on the left right there is Joshua Harris. He wrote the book, I Kissed Aiding Goodbye, and now he's a full atheist. He has walked away from the faith. There's other Christians that are leaving the basic truths of Christianity like Jen Hatmaker on the right right there And there's a lot of pressure for it especially for famous Christians There's a lot of famous Deconversion stories now they're very few and far between but The mood of people that have been raised in the church

They think that Christianity is out of touch I've spoken to many people that are in their early to mid-20s. They're raised in church, but right now they're in limbo. They don't really know what to think about Christianity. They don't know what to believe. They have suspicions about Christianity, and sometimes those suspicions are more surface level. Like they seem hypocritical. They seem fake, but sometimes those suspicions run very deep. Like, I'm not really sure I trust scripture as authoritative. I'm not sure I believe what scripture says about the creation of the world. And these suspicions, if they are unaddressed, can erode faith. And so the recurring questions that Christians receive have to do with true Christianity versus fake Christianity. What's true? What's fake? Sometimes it comes out in anxiety like, I need to know for sure that I'm saved. I

need to know for sure that I'm not a fake Christian, that I am a true Christian. Or I need to know my family member is a true Christian. Sometimes it comes out as doubt. How do I know that Christianity is true? What if it's just what you were taught, but you don't really know if that's true. How do you know you're right and other religions are wrong? And this problem, although it feels like everything's shifting on us, this problem is not new. The Philippian Church was dealing with this exact same problem, and it's actually likely that the Philippian Church lacked confidence because there were people that were telling them, you're not a true Christian. So what I want to do is look at Philippians chapter three, verses two through 14. And I want to discuss how to become a fake Christian. And I want to discuss how to become a true Christian, how to become a fake

Christian, how to become a true Christian. Obviously, I don't want you to become a fake Christian. I want you to become a true one, but I think it's going to be helpful for us to see how it happens. And we're going to do that by examining Philippians 3, 2-14. Are you ready? Here we go. Philippians 3, we're going to start in verses 2-4. It says, Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh, for we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh, though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh. Also, if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Okay. So we open up verse two, it's very us versus them.

Them is the dogs, the evil doers, the mutilators of the flesh, and the us is the circumcision. Right? Or metaphorically, we're the true Christians. Right? So it says, look out for the evil doers, the mutilators of the flesh, but pay attention to us. we're the true Christians. So I want to look at us and them and I'm going to start with them. These are the likely the opponents that we read about in Philippians 1, 28. And specifically, Paul is saying that these people are, he calls them dogs and evil doers, but specifically he's saying they're mutilating the flesh. Why? Why does he say they're mutilating flesh? What he's talking about is physical circumcision. Okay, physical circumcision. Today, physical circumcision is a common health practice among boys, but it began as a Jewish religious observance. Right? It began as a commandment from God to every Jewish

family. If you have a boy, then you need to circumcise them on the eighth day. And And it's important to Jewish heritage, it's important, but it was important in the Old Testament because it marked out God's people as God's people. And so in the Philippian church, what's going on? Why is Paul talking about mutilating flesh? In the church, there were Christians that had a deep Jewish heritage, maybe they were Jewish, but then you had Christians that had no Jewish heritage, no, no even understanding for what it was to be Jewish. And so what's going on is these dogs, these evildoers are preaching, if you're not a Jew, if you're a non-Jew, no Jewish heritage, and you want to be a real Christian, then you need to start in Genesis. You need to obey God's law from the Old Testament, and the most fundamental law that they wanted them to obey was physical circumcision. So you had grown men who had not been circumcised,

and now they decided to follow Christ, but you have these teachers that are coming in saying, okay, if you want to be a real Christian, if you really want to seal the deal, then you need to be physically circumcised. This is what Paul is referring to as mutilating the flesh. And Paul deals with this in other places, Galatians 5, 2, 3, he says it quite plainly, he says, look, I Paul say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. This is why it's talking about putting confidence in the flesh. Paul is saying if you want to live this way, then you're putting your eggs in the wrong basket. You're putting your confidence not in Jesus, not in His finished work. You're putting confidence in your own work, in your own flesh. Let's

keep reading verses 4 through 6. Philippians 3, 4 through 6. It says, Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh, also if anyone else thinks he has reason for this for confidence in the flesh, I have more. And then it begins the list. Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law of Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless. So what Paul begins to do here is he begins to list his own credentials but he does it in a way that mirrors the categories or the credentials that these other people were talking about, the opponents. And he does it in a way that trumps what they're saying. So the opponents are saying, well, I'm a circumcised Pharisee, you know, I've kept the law since you. Paul's saying, hey, that's super. See if you can measure up to me. All right? So Paul is listening on

his credentials and if we look at Paul's list, we can begin to see their list. Right? If we see Paul's list, we can begin to see their list and I have that list up here and that list says essentially, hey my parents circumcised me in verse 5. My family history is clean. I follow the right rules. I care more about the cause. I'm zealous for the cause and they're saying I'm a real Christian because I do these things. I'm a real Christian because of all these things. And this is how you become a fake Christian. This is exactly how. You begin with the desire to excel beyond your brothers and sisters, beyond your peers for Jesus. You want to religiously outdo people, right? So in other words, you don't just want to pray, you want to pray more than other people. You don't just want to read scripture, you want to memorize scripture because that's somehow better, right? And it doesn't have anything to do with reading or memorizing

or praying more, praying less. It comes down to motivation. If you want to be a fake Christian, then just start with the motivation of wanting to be better than other people because inevitably that will lead to false holy, holy standards. False standards that appear holy, that appear wise. Here are some common ones. I attend church more than other people. I know more about the Bible than other people I'm better friends with the pastor or the priest or the rabbi. I Serve the poor more I serve the marginalized more I pay attention to them more I vote better than you I abstain from vices that you don't abstain from I handle stress better than you handle it and Just so we can get a clear picture. I want to use the last two as as examples, and the first example is going to be handling stress. If you want to become a fake Christian, then you need to start making rules on how people handle stress, for example.

So if people who are stressed stay very calm, those people are more holy. If people under stress become very physically agitated, noticeably mad, then they're less holy. So if you want to create standards, you can start there, how they handle stress, better Christians up here, worse Christians down here. The truth is, either way, if you're calm or if you're irate, you can still hate. You can still rehearse bitterness. You can still rehearse pride, self-justification. Your heart can be just as black. if you're calm or if you're physically agitated. What fake Christianity does is it takes something good, right? So staying calm when you're angry is good. It takes something good and it makes it a standard by which other people can be judged. I'll do it with something different. Let's talk about alcohol consumption, okay? What a fake Christian is gonna say, is gonna say, if you completely abstain from alcohol,

You are more holy than if you drink in moderation. If you drink in moderation, you're still a Christian, but you're less holy. You're kind of a second-class Christian. The reality is that some people should abstain. Others are free to drink in moderation. Nobody's free to get drunk, just so I'm clear. It really comes down to personal conviction. Again, fake Christianity is going to take something good. Upstanding from alcohol is good to do. Being a T-totaller, however you want to say it, that's a good thing to do. But when you make it a standard by which you judge other people, you are slipping into fake Christianity because fake Christianity takes good things and turns them into weapons.

It says if you want to be a real Christian, then you've got to do these particular good things or you've got to stay away from these particular bad things. And this is fake Christianity and we can slip into it pretty easily. So how do we sidestep this? Well, we pursue true Christianity, right? And so now I want to go back to verse 3 where it talks about us and them and the beginning of verse 3 it says For we are the circumcision We are the circumcision and it means we're the authentic ones. We're the real Christians

Many years ago and there's been several iterations of this this game show but it was a game show called to tell the truth and And like I said, several iterations in the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s and even a couple years ago, there was another iteration of this. It's a game show where there's three people and two of them are imposters. And then they get a panel of celebrities, usually it's four celebrities, asking questions of these three people to find out the real one. So I watched an episode where they were trying to figure out which lady was the real voice of Siri. So they had these three women come out and one of them said, hi, I'm the real voice of Siri and the other lady comes out and says the exact same thing. Third one comes out, they say the same thing. After a couple of questions, they all vote on who they think the real one is and then

they say, will the real voice of Siri please stand up? It's a wonderful illustration for this because I want you to imagine there's these three people and they're all saying, this is true Christianity. Another one comes in, this is true Christianity. Another one comes in, this is true Christianity. But they're all teaching different things. And the church is the panel where the celebrities are. And the church has to figure out which one is telling the truth. And for us today, many of us kind of get bear trapped because people will say, well, how can you say which Christians are the real Christians and which ones are the fake ones? How would anyone know they're the real ones? Don't all of us think that we're the real ones? Isn't it just about power or perceived authority or perceived authenticity? And so if you're a Christian, you might say something like, I follow Jesus and Joyce Meyer

does not. Meyer is a false teacher. But when you get asked why, you can't really defend that statement. You might say something like, well, I just know, well, she teaches false things. Well, here's... And if you can't defend that statement, sometimes you're doing more harm than good. And it makes Christianity feel like it's in this religious tug of war, right? Where we try to determine who the real Christians are without appealing to any kind of authority, or we don't know enough to know how to appeal to an authority. And so when that frustration sets in, people will often say, can't we just say that everyone who claims Christianity is a Christian? Can everybody just be right? Can we just not be divided? And the short answer to that is no, not everybody can be right. A lot of people are going to be mutually exclusive with that. And so there's no way to

to say that everybody's right, but the longer answer on that is, it kind of begins by saying that the standard of true Christianity is difficult, it's harder to detect. The true standard, the standard for true Christianity is harder to detect than just a bunch of rules. There's no measurable thing, there's no, you know, I can't take a breathalyzer And you can see how how much of a Christian I am. Okay, that would be weird actually But I'm so I'm glad there's no measurable thing But still we're kind of stuck because we're saying okay, if you want to become a true Christian, what do we do? Well, we have verses here to look at and I want to investigate them There's two sets the first set is in verse 3. So we're gonna read all of verse 3 it begins with for we are the circumcision So we're the authentic Christians who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no

confidence in the flesh. So how do we become a true Christian? Well we worship by the Spirit of God. We glory in Christ Jesus and we put no confidence in the flesh. Those things are really hard to measure, but there's probably a way that we can kind of organize it by saying that we have a purpose and that's worshiping by the Spirit. We have a joy and that's Jesus's work on our behalf. And we have an identity that's defined by Jesus, not defined by what we can do. Still, there's nothing measurable, but it begins to kind of shape what we can see as true Christianity. This idea is developed much further in verses 7 through 14. And in 7 through 14, it doesn't give a list of rules to follow. But it does begin to describe Christianity, again, not in terms of rules, but in terms of purpose, in terms of identity, in terms of joy. And it's because Christianity, by definition, ruthlessly centers on Jesus, not rules.

And I say ruthlessly on purpose because it is a slippery slope. It is an easy danger in thinking that you've got to figure it out, that you've found this magic bullet, that everybody who does this is a Christian and everybody who doesn't is not a Christian. I found out the rule, the magic rule, there is no magic rule. And when you think you figured it out, that is the moment that you turn into a fake Christian because of the way that we're wired. As soon as you find that out, right? Then you're going to begin to judge everybody else according to that standard. If you start saying all you need to do is say a certain prayer. Uh, all you need to do is stay away from sex, drugs, and alcohol. All you need to do is belong to a certain denomination. You ironically fall into a Christianity at that point because you're creating more rules So let's go back to the game show and let's alter it just a little

Okay, so we're back to tell the truth. Okay, and for simplicity sake I want to have I want to have two people this time There's two people only one of them is a Christian person a and person B and person a will call Andrea because Andrea start thing Person B will call Bethany just so we can have real names here. So Andrea, let me describe Andrea and then let me describe Bethany. Andrea reads her Bible every day without fail. She gives to church, gives to her church all the time. Okay, there's never a Sunday that she misses. Also she's a really nice person. She's very well mannered. She's very responsible, very courteous. That's Andrea. Okay, Bethany. Bethany is hit and miss with her commitments to church. Sometimes she gives, sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes she misses church, sometimes she doesn't. She struggles with self-control, with vices, with sin habits, right? She's

far from perfect. She'll tell you so. She does things that she doesn't want to do, but she worships Jesus authentically. Brenda finds true joy in Jesus. She rejects any kind of confidence in the flesh and she knows where her identity is. Okay, so which one is the true Christian? Andrea or Bethany? The problem is we don't have enough information for Andrea. Andrea fits into the typical description but we don't have enough information to know if she's a Christian. We don't know about her purpose. We don't know where she finds joy. We don't know anything about where her identity is located. All we know is that she behaves like a Christian, but we don't know her heart. And Bethany, even though Bethany misses out on some of the rules on some of the things that she should be doing as a Christian, the position of her heart is toward Jesus. We can do all of these things. We can do all these

religious things and only follow rules in that process. So you can read your Bible, but Jesus doesn't just want you to read your Bible, he wants you to commune with him by reading the Bible. He wants you to know him more, and not just knowledge, but at a hard level, Jesus wants you to know him more by reading the Bible. So it's not just reading the Bible. It's not just attending a service, right? Jesus, like we've been talking about in our series, Jesus wants us to give ourselves away to other people. He wants us to belong on a heart level to our church, not just attend a service. And that's why even though we don't have physical services going on just yet, we can still be the church, we can still give ourselves away to one another. And Jesus doesn't just want us to give our money away actually says in Scripture, Jesus wants to give from the heart. Jesus wants us to give cheerfully,

not under compulsion, right? In other words, Jesus just, he doesn't just want you to read or you to come to a church service or you to give your money. He wants your heart. Why? Because Jesus changes us heart first. Jesus changes us heart first. Rules are not bad. The law is not bad. It is just secondary. To determine true authentic Christianity, it comes from the heart. It begins with the heart. And so what does that involve? Well, it's a good thing that we have scripture here because scripture in verses 7 through 14, it describes what we can call Christianity illustrated. True Christianity illustrated, it describes what Christianity is in qualitative terms, not anything that we can measure. We're not taking the Christian breathalyzer. And really, all of these kind of go together as a package deal. And we're going to start reading in Philippians 3, 7 through 9. So he's just, in verse 7, he's just listed everything, how great he

was, all these accolades that Paul can list out. And then in verse 7 he begins, But whatever gain I had, I counted as lost for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, street trash, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having the righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. True Christianity, it's illustrated here as vulnerable. True Christianity is vulnerable. If you cannot acknowledge your inability to help yourself, right, you cannot help yourself. Why in these verses why does Paul count everything as loss? It's because it can't help him. It does him no good. In fact, it only

distracts him from what does do him good. Knowing Jesus is his only help. Knowing Jesus is the only worthy thing he can do with his life and this is authentic Christianity. It's saying whatever accolades I can build for myself, it It belongs on the trash heap. That my only identity, my only help, my only way forward, the only way to move forward in the midst of upheaval is knowing Jesus. It's a relationship with Jesus. It says, I didn't have a righteousness of my own there. In verse nine, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law. This is the essence of Christianity, is that we are vulnerable enough to admit. We are vulnerable with Jesus enough to worship Him, to find our joy in Him, to find our confidence in Him. And so then putting confidence in the flesh, that's antithetical to becoming a Christian. We worship Him. How to become a true Christian

is if you become vulnerable with Jesus. My very first sermon that our preacher was January 5th, of 2020, and I said in that sermon, And I'll continue to say that 2020 is the year of vulnerability for South Baroque and Baptist Church. And when I, when I opened up for my first sermon, I said, the first thing that we need to change with our church. And I was, I was brought in, I was hired as your pastor to usher in change, not change for change sake, but the change that we need. And the first thing that we needed, the first change that we needed to make was that vulnerability needed to become a hallmark in this church. That it wasn't a renovation of a building, it was the renovation of our soul, both individually and collectively. Vulnerability is the essence of Christianity. If we cannot be vulnerable with the Lord and then in turn be vulnerable with one another, then we are without

both. This is true Christianity and it's displayed, illustrated for us here in verses 7 through 9. The second illustration of true Christianity we see is in verses 10 and 11. And it says this, it says that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. This is the second illustration of true Christianity, and it has to do with giving ourselves away. True Christians give themselves away. This is what we've been discussing through our whole series, are we there yet? That Christian confidence works itself out in generosity. We give ourselves away, and we give ourselves toward suffering, toward believing in suffering, because This is what Jesus has appointed for us, believing in suffering. We give ourselves to that and we suffer with an eye on the future,

with an eye on the cause that when we give ourselves away, we know that Jesus has the power to, to supply us with everything that we need. When we give out of our poverty, like it talks about in scripture, giving out of our poverty means we don't have anything to give, but we're still giving out of that. Where does that come from? It comes from Jesus. It comes from the power that he gives. True Christianity gives itself away in the midst of suffering.

And that resurrection from the dead, it comes from incompetence that God sees us and will reward us. And that in due time, we will reap a harvest. If we want to know Jesus's resurrection power, then we need to know. His suffering, true Christians give themselves away. When we have confidence in the flesh, we're shoring up our life against suffering. We're trying for safety. Our aim is comfort, but that's not what our aim should be. Safety and comfort is not our aim. Jesus is our aim. And if Jesus wants to bring us into an area of safety and comfort, then glory to Jesus. But that's not our aim. True Christians, true Christianity is vulnerable. Christianity gives itself away. And the third illustration of true Christianity is in the next verse, just Philippians 3 verse 12. It says, not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because

Christ Jesus has made me his own. He's saying I'm striving to be like Jesus because Jesus has accepted me, Jesus has loved me. We've seen this as we've explored the book of Philippians, devotion expressed as obedience. When he's talking about, as you've always obeyed, now continue to obey by working out your salvation with fear and trembling. That was last week, we talked about that. Talk about how salvation works itself out in sanctification, being made holy, being made more like Jesus. So we've seen that devotion expresses obedience. In other words, it's not about being perfect. It's the desire. We want to follow Jesus precisely because we love him. We don't want to follow Jesus because there's gonna be a lot of money for us. We don't want to follow Jesus because our life's gonna be easier. We want to follow Jesus because we love Jesus. It's not perfection, it's devotion. It's true devotion. True Christianity is personal

devotion to Jesus. And this is where a few people get tripped up. This is where a few people tripped up because they don't always feel devoted. They don't always they go through a period of rebellion and then after that or in the midst of After that, they go through doubt and shame. They aren't really sure what to think of themselves. After that, they consider themselves second-class Christians. And so they doubt. And maybe this is some of you, maybe this is your children, maybe this is some of your grandchildren, where they go through long periods of time where they don't feel devoted to Jesus. So they don't feel like a Christian anymore. or they do, but they're really defensive about it. They're not living a vibrant Christian life. And if that's you, I wanna answer that now with a question. And it's a question only you can answer. What do you want? What do you want?

Do you want to obey Jesus? Do you want to see other people grow in the Lord? Do you want to live a holy life out of obedience to Jesus because you are devoted to him? Let me, and so here's, if your answer to any of those was yes, Then let me ask you another question. Where do you believe that desire comes from? Where do you believe that that wellspring is in your heart? This is devotion, what we're talking about here. Devotion is not perfection. Devotion is the desire to please Jesus. And it is the mark of a true Christian when you want to obey. Without the Holy Spirit, you would not want to obey Jesus. But if you do, this is personal devotion. And it doesn't mean you don't have problems, But it does mean you can get over that doubt and you can begin to take steps to grow as a Christian because you aren't paralyzed in fear and doubt or shame because you went through a period of rebellion.

True Christians are vulnerable. True Christians give themselves away and true Christians show personal devotion and desire to obey. And then we can see the last one. We can see the last one in verses 13 and 14. 13 and 14. It says, brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upper call of God in Christ Jesus. Christians are on a mission. True Christians have a cause that they are working toward. We push through barriers. We push through difficulty to follow Jesus on his upward call. We go toward the prize. The upward call means we are building God's kingdom. It means we are becoming more like him. We are making disciples. We are working out our salvation with fear and trembling. We are becoming sanctified, becoming like Him. If you say, yeah I'm really

devoted to Jesus, but there's nothing, nothing in your life that looks like Jesus, then you should wonder about your own devotion. Is this just a word thing for you? Or are you just kind of saying that because you want to get out of hell-free, true devotion expresses itself, true desire to follow Jesus expresses itself, however imperfectly, as steps forward, as trying to work it out. True Christianity is on mission, and I know it sounds like double speed because on one hand you're saying all you need is devotion, on the other hand you're saying oh you need to follow this path, you need to work it out. Here's what I would say, just because I feel like we can kind of get lost in this rabbit hole, nail your life to following Jesus and trust Him for the results. Nail your life to following Jesus, trust Him for the results, and those results include your own growth and development.

They include your own spiritual battles whenever you mess up, whenever you're not feeling it, whenever you're deeply frustrated, whenever you have doubts. Look, you can't keep going back and forth on if you're a Christian or not. You need to understand that if Jesus is calling you, then you need to answer that call and nail your life to following Jesus, trusting him for the results, including your own growth and development. Jesus be your all-consuming passion. Don't let rules, don't let boxes to check off get in the way, don't let hypocrites and false teachers get in the way, don't let anybody try to condemn you for a life that you've lived, let your self be judged by your Creator. Let Jesus determine your heart. Let Jesus tell you what you need to do next. Reject fake Christianity where you're comparing yourself to other people and say, oh I don't measure up, and embrace true Christianity, which is

really another way to say. Trust Jesus. Have a personal relationship with Jesus. Trust a person, not a list. We're not trying to be good enough. And if you want embrace true Christianity today, I want you to click on the link below in the comment section where you can fill out a connect card. And when you fill that out, I will contact you however you want to be contacted. You can leave your content information there. And there's a couple of different ways to leave me a message through that. Every week whenever I preach, my hope and prayer is that That scripture would speak, that the Lord, God, and heaven would speak to your heart and that you respond. I want to implore you, consider clicking that if you need to respond in a particular way, if you need help taking steps forward. I know you're in your garage or bedroom or backyard or in the den or wherever you are

and you might even be alone. It's fine. You might even be with your family. It's fine. Click that link, fill it out. I'd love to talk to you. I'd love to even just text back and forth, however you're comfortable, to help you take that next step. We're gonna be having open air services pretty soon. We'll have a date really soon. If you are making a connection with our church online, I would love to see you there. Church online is great for the situation that we have here. Love to see you in person. Obviously, there's people who cannot make it for health reasons, and that is A, okay, we're gonna keep doing online services. But whenever we do open air services, I would love to see you there. I'd love to hear about what the Lord is doing in your heart through these sermons, through the work and the ministry of our church. Let me pray for us. Jesus, thank you so much for all that you do

on our behalf, everything that you have done to bring us to yourself, every way that you've called us to explore who you are, to worship you, to find joy in you, to reject confidence in the flesh, and to find our identity in you. Help us, Jesus. Help us take steps forward in a way that is honoring and glorifying you. And it's your name that we pray, amen.