Almost Honest Christians - Week 1 - The CORE - Pastor Mike Novotny
Almost Honest Christians
Week 1 - The CORE
Pastor Mike Novotny
Welcome to “Almost Honest Christians”. No one expected in late 2021 for this song to take over the charts. This quirky, bilingual English, Spanish mashup, not expect that, it would top the US charts and the UK charts, and the global top 200 charts, but it did. No one thought it would go, triple platinum and sell three million copies but it did. You know the song? No, it was not this by Cito. It's an interesting song to you. That's a little bit older. The song was from the animated movie Encanto, and it was entitled. “We don't talk about about Bruno.” We don't talk about Bruno, just in case you have never seen the movie, it's about a certain member of a certain family that the family doesn't talk about. No, no, not Bruno. They can talk about some things. They probably talked about most things, but there's that one thing, That the families agree, we don't talk about Bruno.
It's got an interesting concept when I think about it. Most churches and most church people that I know have something in common with that song. Most Christians will talk about lots of things. Most things, in fact, many things, but maybe not all of the things. I'm not sure what kind of family you grew up in or if you've been part of a church community but for a lot of Christians and I was here for a huge part of my life. Yeah, we talked about 95% of life but there was one part that was so embarrassing or so shameful or so messy that we just did want to bring it up. A group and if you're taking notes, here's the thing that I think is true for a lot of people in the world of the church. There is a sin that you're not confessing. You're not a total liar. You're fairly honest. You're an “almost honest Christian”. If there is a sin, a struggle that you're not confessing the truth for you. Is there something you've been through way back or something? You're going through right now? What some people call a pet sin you’re the one you just can't seem to change about your behavior, go back to what you're trying to fix and you pray about it and God knows all about it, you know, all about it. But maybe there's not anyone else that knows about it. You really need help, you need encouragement, you need advice, you need someone to be there to put their arm around your shoulder butt. I just something about it that you don't want to bring it out into the open and talk about that thing.
For example, when it comes to your personal life is there, is there anyone that knows right now your relationship with alcohol.
Even that person who is almost always the first one to suggest that we go out for drinks. And you're always the last one to stop drinking. If you ever really say this a lot but you're always hoping that someone else drives you don't worry about how much you drink. Or you say you had a couple of beers but maybe you know they were nine percent double IPAs and a 16 ounce can that's what to buy my mask. You say you had a glass of wine but you poured it in the big glass and it was not a standard Port, I mean, does anyone know like the details of your relationship with alcohol? Does anyone know that you're petrified about death? You know, you shouldn't be. That Jesus didn't just die for your sins but he rose from the grave to conquer death and Heaven is your home. But you're just terrified to get sick that the cancer would come back. But the Bible says, you don't need to be afraid of any of that. But you are, does anyone know how often you forget all about the Jesus stuff and focus on the physical stuff that keeps you up at night?
If you struggle like so many people in our church do with sexual sins, does anyone even know about that?
You have a kind of see of looking into mirrors at your gym so you can take a long look. We're going to your sunglasses at the beach. You can stare without seeming like a creep. The history of your smartphone needs to be erased or He's only thinking about a race. It's if waiting until marriage to enjoy God's Gift of sex is not exactly your strength or if you are married but seeing sex is a great gift to be explored and enjoyed and discussed between husband and wife. That's really difficult for you. If you're struggling with same-sex attraction, if you had a struggle with pornography or prostitution, does anyone know about that? You feel so weak in the face of Temptation, you need so much. Can anyone helping you with that?
Does anyone know what happens in your head? When you scroll on your phone, It's not just TikTok or Instagram or Facebook and it's like this just unspoken depression, this weight of disappointment and despair. When you compare your real life, everyone sells hosted life and you something hate the size of your waist or the shape of your face, or the dated look of the home that you live in. Everyone else seems to have a better marriage and more obedient kids and better vacations. And the OCD, the obsessive comparison disorder, just messes with the joy that God wants to give you a cyst forgiven and loved childhood. That's you, Is anyone praying about that? Checking in on that.
Does anyone know that for some of you who are so successful, so accomplished in life that behind all that passion and drive is a deep, deep insecurity?
Like you, just you, need to be noticed, you need to be applauded. You can't live an average life and it's pushed you to be good at school or good at sports or good at work because you just can go to bed at night feeling less than or below average, anyone know about that.
If your relationship isn't great, not happy right now. It's a marriage just isn't what it was five years ago. And if you fall off a cliff, I just like slowly one degree at a time, ended up in a place that you're not excited about the future of the thought of living together. Until death, does not make your heart thump with joy, is that one helping you guys as a couple Work through those issues. Figure out your sins, teach you how to love and respect each other as the Bible wants you to. Does anyone know that when someone criticizes you that you go into fight or flight mode, you defend yourself tooth and nail, or you just roll over and play dead. No, that struggles and we’ve all got sins. You're a sinner and I'm a sinner. My question for you today is, does anyone really know what kind of sinner you are?
Or is that stuff? He's a small percentage of that stuff just between you and Jesus.
If you answer that question is will know. You wouldn't have to explain to me, why? It means some stuff, especially addiction stuff, or, or sexual stuff, or relationship stuff is just embarrassing. And just a terrifying thought to try to say that out loud, you feel ashamed about it and so you pray about it. You pray about, you don't tell anyone about it. But today, just to remind you and be honest with you that unconfessed sin Is a lot like cancer.
Like all of us, wish it wasn't there. And most of us don't make a confession because just like going through chemo, it's not easy. It's a painful process. And yet and yet I got to remind you that if you don't address that, that thing as they say in a a you are as sick as your secrets, they don't get better and it doesn't go away and thinking that God's going to zap you with some Supernatural self-control. If you pray for the thousandth time about that, one thing that will not change it. Did you believe that? It will get worse. This little problem will get bigger, the shame will not disappear by tomorrow morning. Today, I have to remind you that honesty and God's eyes is the best policy because unconfessed sin grows. It spreads and it hurts people.
And that's why today, I'll grab a Bible and make a bold case for you to stop being an almost honest Christian and step into the lights of complete honesty. Don't panic I’m not going to pass the microphone around church before I say, man, God doesn't want you to tell everyone about what you're struggling with? But God absolutely wants you to tell someone. So today I want to give you a Biblical crash course. On mutual confession not to God. That's important. I'm talking about each other. You're a logical, organized type. Here's where I'm going. First of all, I want to teach you what confession is second. I want to encourage you to whom you should probably confess. And finally, I want to make a push. Why should you do it? What does confession to whom should you confess? Why confess that we're going to cover so we can stop being almost honest Christians. All right. Are you excited that you're here today? You all looking very disappointed and this message, you're going to like it by the end. I can almost guarantee. All right, part 1. What is confession? If you know that the New Testament originally was written in the Greek language and the word that we translate confess in English, is this Greek word Ex Houma, humble ago, can you say that with me? X Houma, one more time Ex Houma look out. Look out. Oh is just the Greek word for two. Say, or to speak. Homo means the same like a homosexual is attracted to the same sex or a homonym has the same sound or if something's homogeneous, so the same kind. So humble the ghetto is to say the same thing and the X means to say it out like, exit, gets you out of the building, so I'll put together X Hummel ghetto is when you say the same thing that happened. Out loud. So confession is when you send them would be admit it or acknowledge it. It's the verb that we find in the story of John the Baptist in Matthew chapter 3 was confession to say the same thing out loud. Here's an example, it's a steeple. Went out to John, the Baptist from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan confessing their sins. There's word X Hummel again showing their sins. They were baptized by John in the Jordan River. So picture, 2000 years ago, John the Baptist is preaching, all kinds of people are flooding to him, you have tax collectors, and prostitutes and religious leaders and Roman soldiers. And before they're being baptized, what do they do? They X Hummel ago. You imagine what that must have sounded like
Hands above your head.
They extract it.
The same thing that they did to the tax collectors. Tax Collectors, interest drive their donkeys, a little too fast on the highways of Jerusalem, they hustled people, Rob people, cheated people, extorted people. They hurt real people and they said those very damaging things out loud. They ex houma out of prostitutes. If they went into detail but their profession was shameful and dirty and yet they didn't keep it in the EXT. It the X. Huh mulugeta what they confess their sins and receive this gift of baptism by John in the Jordan River. And that's a number of passages is what God wants us to do to. We are called to X humble the ghetto to confess. Picture like this Lego.
Imagine This Big. Two, three, four by two oversized, like it's Lego, is your sin. It's a big one, it's an embarrassing one. If this is what you did, it's about this big. What does God want you to say out loud?
The same thing.
Most of us, what we do in the church is we do this. We did this. But we say this. It was this big and bad. But we told her version of it, that's a little less big and bad. We say things like, yeah, I had, I had a little too much to drink And angels are looking at each other. Like what we saw you take like a Tina. Leave the morning after you were. So you had a little too much to drink. That is not what happened. Yeah, my wife and I got in a little argument, little spat. Oh no, no, I gotta say Angels replay the footage but baby, you always you never like blow up, fight like wasn't a little thing. We try to minimize things to hold on to a reputation so no one thinks worse about us but that's not what confession is this has been almost honest God. As if you did this, say this, if it was this bad, don't imply that it was this bad. Someone needs to know about this. If we're going to fix this, change this, if you're going to find Grace for this, Confess.
Which maybe makes you think about part 2 already. To whom. Yeah, I might say this version so all lot of people at church or in my family but the whole, the whole thing, the real thing to whom should I do that?
I love how honest, the Bible is the Bible, especially the Book of Proverbs says, that some people are not to be trusted with this. Gossips. People who have a reputation of talking about others behind their back that they are not to be entrusted With Your Biggest Secrets. They will, they will hurt you. So God isn't asking you to tell everyone. There's no microphone we're going to pass around at church but the Bible. He gives us Direction on to specific groups of people that we should confess to love you to write this down. The Bible says that we should confess to first of all pastors,
And second of all mature Christians see the whole thing, the big thing, the real thing to pastors and to the mature Christians in your life, let me prove that to you in the New Testament book of James. It seems to be Jesus's, half-brother James, who's writing, he's talking about, you know, all the things that you and I go through in life. Sometimes we're happy. Sometimes we're sick, sometimes we're struggling in any says, actually if you're sick and struggling and you're feeling guilty because of sin, what you should do is call the pastors of your church. Pastors find a time to get together with you. And that's when this classic verse shows up James five verse sixteen says this. Therefore, Confess. Example, to go confess your sins to each other. See that. That's just Jesus. Say the same thing out loud to each other and pray for each other, so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective. I don't know why your pastor. I'll be almost honest to impress him or them. That's not the point. Because struggling, if your God brought a pastor into your life, she could tell them you pray together. Jesus has made us righteous people. If you're a person who actually believes that prayer works like I do that. It's powerful and effective. Why would you not want someone praying for the biggest struggle you're going through in your life. Just talked to pastors.
Now, maybe, for some of you have never, ever, ever done that before. There's some people to be honest. They step into my office for the first time and they say, I feel like I'm in the principal's office.
She's an interesting thing to say, is about that. Like no, I got, I don't know. I just can't, yeah. Maybe my best friend but the pastor that seems weird and judgmental if your reaction to that is less than excited, Either, you know, the pastors at our church, are total bozos, who should probably quit tomorrow.
I'm a guitar or maybe you haven't learned what the point of a pastor is
You know, I'm filling out my tax form right now. Do you know what the government? The US government's official title for my job is? Super interesting…minister of the Gospel.
That's my legal title. I'm a minister. I'm a servant not of the law. Like my specialty is telling you how to live and what to do this part of that. But our primary job as pastors is to be ministers of the Gospel. The good news of forgiveness through Jesus. We are trained pastors at our church of dozens, if not hundreds, of Bible passages about forgiveness and salvation and Jesus memorized. So you can, you can put the quarter of your confession into this vending machine and we spit out, “Oh, it's Jesus and His forgiveness.” You need to know like that is the primary reason God gave you a pastor or pastors at your church. Not just a public speech on Sunday mornings, but to give you forgiveness when you need it the most, that's the point of it. And I got to tell a lot of you like you think your story is going to be so embarrassing like oh he's gonna it's gonna get so weird.
What are you going to tell me that I haven't heard before? Pornography? What? Never heard of it? Like come on. Like every third person I meet is struggling with that like adultery. Minister to people: alcoholics, drug addicts. You're in prison. It was a felony, itwas a misdemeanor, you're a registered sex offender, heard it, heard it, heard it. Jealousy, insecurity, probably depression, tried to take your own life, cutting yourself popping pills. Heard it a million times on administered to a woman who's literally shooting Heroin while she was nine months pregnant, heard it. I minister to someone who got caught into, like a cult in her family that literally crucify her? Heard it. What are you going to tell me that's going to make me blush?
Let me save you some thinking time, you can't. So if a devil is holding you back thinking, oh, there's going to judge me if you come into the pastor's office, if you reach out, feeling burdened by yourself. If you're proud of your sin, this can be a different conversation, but if you come in struggling guilty and ashamed, I can already tell you how the script is going to go. You talk about your sin. I talked about your Savior. You talk about what makes you feel guilty. We talked about the Savior who takes guilt away. You tell us that you're so ashamed because of this, this and this and we tell you that Jesus took that shame on his shoulders, when he died for you on the cross. Pastors are perfect. We are not trained to tell you who dates who or wears to work, or what house to buy. We are specialists in guilt and shame because we know exactly what to do with that ex humble the going to whom. Your pastor.
And not just us, but also to mature Christians.
After the first service here at church, I wanted assure you're gonna to have a busy week. That's true of all of you. Actually obeyed the teaching of today, I'd have to schedule some of you out for, like nine months from now. But the truth is 99% of you here today. Don't need someone who's studied biblical Greek and Hebrew. You don't need someone who's good at public speaking or has studied church history. You probably just need someone who loves you and knows the basics about Jesus. In fact, I would say that I'm probably much better up here than most of you. And most of you are much better at this than I am. Some of you just have incredibly empathetic, compassionate hearts. You're great at listening. You're the perfect yield to be a pastor. Professional counselor. Just someone who knows Jesus Christ. I bet people think this all the time, like they just assume the worst about their brother who's a Christian or their life group was a Christian, like they couldn't handle it. I don't see you. My experience has been just the opposite. If someone is a known gossip, stay away from them but otherwise the Christians that I have met at this church, they're so amazing when they hear candid confessions they respond with forgiveness and patience and love, and Jesus. You have to wait months to get into the pastor's calendar. Just help someone. The pastor of our church had a meeting last week and I'll ask them the question, can you think in all of your years here at this church, where someone has really regretted telling their small group, their life group, about their biggest struggles?
Pastor Tim was there. It has been here. 15-20 years, I was there, eight years, fifty years of experience at this church in the room.
And none of us could think of a time when someone opened up about their life and was punished for it, so you're on the right spot.
In fact, I would tell you by the grace of God and His special blessing on this place. When our church was founded, it was founded with a passionate desire, not just to do this on Sunday mornings, but to times humble to go to each other, the founding values of this congregation were to be real and relevant to, you don't have to fake it, we can talk about that thing and we can talk about it with each other, not just silently in our own prayers. And if you're new here, you need to know. Like, this is in our DNA. This is what we do, and it makes us so much better in so many ways. I'm curious how many of you were regular attenders of the Core before the pandemic. Raise your hands nice and high.
I look around for a second. Keep up. And sound. How many of you have come to the Core since the pandemic?
All right, if you're new. You have walked into a gift.
And we need you to keep it that way. You notice like I did, the vast majority of the hands that are here are not a long time, people who grew up in that culture, it's new. And so, when you flood into our community, in our fellowship and our groups, we really need you to ex humble ago. We need you not to play it safe and fake it and try to impress people that does not make anyone stronger. Christianity is not a competition. It is a community and nothing creates community like candid confession. So, I will send you coffee with a friend. But the group that you go to this week, is going to get fun because you sweat. You can wear extra Old Spice and then you're not going to do this. You're going to do this. And, and I owe you five bucks if you regret it. Instead, what's going to happen is you are going to Jesus Judo chop shame in the throat. And it's going to crumble and people are going to love you are going to help you when they're going to pray for you. Confess your sins to each other so that you may be healed.
Maybe I'm getting on to part three already. Why do this? Now in total candid confession, I just wrote a 50,000 word book but half of it is about confession. So if you ask me, why confess I could talk about that for a bit. I can say about my own struggle with sexual sins and how that never really changed till I confess to another human being. I could I could talk to about the community that I've seen again, and again, and again, here at our church, I could talk to you about Bible passages, like Proverbs 28, I could share so many things, the power of prayer, we got time for all that. So I just want to cut to the chase. Why would Confess. Let me keep it simple. Because if you do, if you are a Confessor, a person who makes an honest confession, here's what you get confessors get.
Christ.
If you confess here in the Church of Jesus Christ, what you will get is Christ. You get encouragement? Yes, compassion. Yes, people sharing their own stories. Yes. But more than all of that. What you get is Jesus Christ. I mean, imagine confessing your struggles to a friend who isn't a follower of Jesus? What will they say to you? Sorry man. Yeah, been through that too. You can do it. Oh, what a gift to be a Christian and be able to look someone in the eye and say Jesus died for that one, too. To tell them that they haven't lost out on Heaven, even though it was that bad because Jesus died for that one, too. The blessing is to take someone by the hand, whose head is hanging and walk them right in front of the Cross. And show that there's no fine print on the bottom. He died for that one, till we get to give people the good news of the Gospel. You have to be a pastor to preach it, but Jesus forgives and Jesus saves and Jesus cleanses. And Jesus loves, I love this passage from 1st John chapter 1. Jesus closest friends. Once wrote, if we confess our sins XML ago God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness, all of it. Did you do something wrong, unrighteous? Yep. How much of it is God purifying us from all of it and you and I get to share that with each other. The world will not offer us salvation for free. But Jesus does.
This might be a crazy coincidence, but grab this block out of my office. And I didn't realize that I had written a word on the back of it for another sermon. This big old embarrassing send. You know, what word I saw on the back of this block, it's been staring at me all sermon.
Jesus. Jesus can handle this. Jesus did handle this. That's what you and I get to share to each other.
So, good. What is it? Example to go. To say the same thing you did out loud. Well, to whom, pastors? The Christians that God has put into your life. Why would you do it? So, a whole bunch of reasons, but here's the best one because you get Jesus. Jesus is the best way to sleep well at night. And he's the best way to change tomorrow morning.
You're not long ago. Time of Grace, our media Ministry partner, published this book.
I wrote the contents of the book but I wasn't one of the people in charge of picking a title for the book or the cover of the book. I love the inside was based on a sermon series we did a while back about God's love for all kinds of people. Stress, people, angry people, broken people, outcast people. There's a tab for greedy people, guilty people, angry people. All kinds of people but just recently, I found out what title they picked for the book and I think I loved it more than any other title I've ever seen. Six big words in bold print, question mark at the end. Let me show you a picture of what our team called this book.
“You Know, God Loves You, Right”?
Funny side story. The first copies of this book went to our graphic designer so she could take professional pictures to put on the website but before she could get to him someone stole the Box off our front porch. She saw it happen right there and little video camera on the doorbell which means you've got back to the den of Thieves his apartment and he opened it up. I was staring right at him, “You Know, God Loves You, Right”.
I hope you found the tab that says greedy, some every underneath. Oh man, here's why I love this in my line of work. People say some pretty honest things. And you know, they find the courage to reach out and they can't make eye contact but they say it to finally say it. One of my favorite things to say back. Before I say, I'll pray for them, or I've been through that to favorite thing to say….just stare them down as best I can and say, “I love you.”
And they shake their head so I repeat it, “I love you”, right?
Until that nod turns into this. I'll just keep saying it.
When you're in the Church of Jesus Christ and follow Him. There's nothing in all of creation, past, present, or future that can separate you from His love. So brothers and sisters no more almost honest. Let's be totally honest with each other, because in the end, this Jesus, God gets the last word. You know, he loves you, right?
That's right.
Oh God, I'm so grateful for some of the people sitting here in this church right now who know everything about me. And they didn't take off and they didn't run away. Instead they did what your people are called to do. They heard me, they loved me. And they gave me Jesus. So grateful father that when I'm tempted and struggling, I don't think to keep that secret that there's multiple people, double-digit people that I could reach out to, who would love me and help me in my moment at the end. I got, thank you for giving me that gift years ago, and I want everyone to be able to enjoy it today. We're gonna need some help. Some of us have the people in our lives. Just waiting. We just need the courage to say it. Some of us honestly can't think of who we'd say this to. So we need you to bring those good people in our life who love us and love Jesus. I got the devil loves one-on-one offense. He loves to come at us when we don't have help, he's really good at those situations. So, God, give us two or three, or six or ten. Give us a group that we can do life with help every single group, at this church, to be both real and relational. Let us not hide God. And bless us when we do that, we can pray for each other. Be healed by each other's side and forgive each other in Jesus name.
I, every Christian, is like this, we don't want to be like, every Christian wants to be like this teaching is here today, that we can experience the words and the blessing of Jesus, Through the mouths of his people bless us as we take a step forward today. God, we pray, this bowling confidently as we pray in Jesus name and all God's people said, amen.
