I Quit Lying PDF Print E-mail
I.    We Lie
Last Week I invited you to quit.  Not your job; though I did admit to you that I came that close to quitting mine.  But instead of letting me quit, I heard Jesus say, “Repent, repent and return to your first love.”

So last week I invited you to join me on that journey.  To join me in quitting those things, whatever they are, that lead away from God into weariness and emptiness; and to turn around and go the other way into a life full of the love and joy and peace of God.      Isn’t that what you want?  Isn’t that what we all want, down deep in our hearts?

Well, if it is, then today I invite you to quit lying.  Lying?  Lying?  I don’t lie, not that much, not very often, not in serious ways.  Really?  

May I suggest to you that you lie like a rug?  You are hurt by a friend’s comment or by his or actions toward you but you say nothing.  You push it down inside.  You pretend it didn’t hurt you.  You even put a smile on your face.  Or how about this:  Your spouse says to you, “Is something wrong?” “No, I’m fine.”  “Really, are you all right?”  “I’m fine!  I’m fine!!”  Or, let’s say you go out to lunch with some friends.  Money is tight so you order something inexpensive; and just water to drink.  The bill comes and immediately someone picks it up, looks at it, and says, “Let’s just split it.  I think it comes to $15, plus tip.”  You think, “$15 dollars!” But you smile and say, “Okay.”  Maybe you don’t say okay; you just don’t say anything.  Someone calls you on the phone from church or worse than that, she catches you, face to face.  She wants you to serve in a ministry.  You’re thinking, “I can’t do that.  I’m doing too many things.  Besides, I’m in a bad place right now.  I’m hurting.  But you say, “Okay.”  Or maybe you don’t say okay, you say, “I’d love to.  Really I would.  But I’m doing something that day.”  Then you go home and make sure you’re doing something that day.  Or maybe it’s more serious than that.

You are here today, smiling on the outside.  You are all dressed up, looking good.  Singing the songs.  Listening to the sermon.  But at home your life is a mess and your heart is bleeding.  You and your wife, or you and your husband, are fighting like cats n’ dogs or you’re depressed, or angry, or out of control with anxiety.  But no one knows, certainly not the good Christian people at church.  Maybe you drink too much, maybe you’re looking at pornography on the internet, maybe you are sitting there thinking, as the preacher preaches away at church, I don’t know if I believe all this stuff.  I certainly don’t experience it.  I don’t think most of the people around me experience it either. 

We lie like a rug. We shade the truth, which means, we add darkness to light.  We hide our darkest selves from each other.  In fact, we sometimes hide them from ourselves.  We don’t even admit to ourselves that we’re angry or worried or depressed or lusting or doubting or just feeling so empty.
   
II.    Why We Lie
And why do we lie?  Why do we keep our inner selves hidden under the rug?  Maybe we’re just trying to do what we’ve been taught good Christian people do.  Good Christian people say ‘Yes’ when they’re asked to serve, right?  Good people don’t complain about their troubles.  Besides, good Christians aren’t depressed or angry or struggling with temptation.  They always put others first; you’ve seen the acronym haven’t you?  Jesus first;  Others second; yourself last.  J.O.Y., that’s the key to joy!  Really? 

Maybe we’re just trying to be good.  When that doesn’t work, we’re trying to at least look good.
Like my father used to say to me when I played Little League Baseball, “At least you can look like a ballplayer, son!”  Or maybe we’ve learned that telling the truth is a dangerous thing to do.  If I tell people I would rather not split the bill because I can’t really afford it, how embarrassing would that be?  If I tell people I just don’t have the energy to serve, I’m not in a good place, how weak is that?  It’s not just that telling the truth can be embarrassing or humiliating; Truth-telling is often punished. 

If I tell my husband how I really feel, he won’t understand; he may even get angry; and that will feel worse than keeping it bottled up inside and pretending everything is all right.  If I tell my “friends” what I’m struggling with it will backfire.  Other people I haven’t told will hear about it; Some of those people will judge me harshly or use it against me.  It’s happened over and over again.  We have learned by trial and error that the truth is often not well received or well handled by others, especially the hard truths, the negative truths.  So we’ve learned just to keep them to ourselves.  We lie because we’re trying to be good or at least look good.  We lie because we’ve learned that what you say can and will be used against you.  We lie because we are afraid that we will not be loved or respected or even accepted.  That is the reason underneath every other reason.  If people knew what I was really like on the inside, behind closed doors, if they knew how weak and fragile and sometimes ugly I am, they wouldn’t really love me.  If people don’t love me or think well of me, what will I do?  How can I possibly be happy?  How can I possibly feel good about myself?
   
I received an email this week from someone in the church, and I asked her if I could share what she said with you this morning.  She was baptized in the Yellow Breeches last month at our baptismal service.  She wrote to tell me how hard it was, and yet how freeing, to share her story in front of the people of this church that day, to share the pain and brokenness that led her to Jesus.  She wrote, “I have learned so much about the danger of wearing masks.  We all want so desperately to be loved,” she said.  “We think we have to pretend to be something other than who we are, we put on the mask hoping that others will love us.  But the reality is that others then love the mask that we are wearing, they are not loving us.  The mask is actually keeping us…from being loved.  When we are not receiving love for whom we truly are then we are unable to give love, we do not love the real person next to us.  This is an empty way to live and certainly not the way Christ wants us to love.”  Oh the tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive.

III.    Walking in the Light
May I paint you a picture of a more healthy and satisfying way to live?  Actually, the Apostle John painted the picture 2000 years ago.  Read I John 1:5-10.  John begins with a bold and beautiful declaration.  “This is the message we have heard from Jesus and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”  This is John’s fundamental principle in this passage.  It is the heart of his message; the truth that shapes everything that follows. God is light and nothing but light, which means two things, at least. 

1.  God is righteous.   He does everything right.  Who He is and what He does, in fact, is the very definition of what is right. 

2.  There is no hiding from God.  To be in the presence of God who is light is to be seen for who we really are.  It is to be known, through and through, inside and out.  This fundamental principle, God is Light, has a basic implication.  To experience fellowship with God, intimacy with Him, we must ‘walk in the light’ Verse 6:  If we claim to have fellowship with him, this God who is light, and yet walk in darkness, we lie…It ain’t happening.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light we have fellowship with Him, and not just with him; but also with each other.

So, John is not just talking about how to be close to God in this passage.  He’s talking about how to be close to other people, to the people who are close to God.  The way to be close to God, and to the people close to God, is to walk in the light.  But what does it mean to walk in God’s light? Three things at least.  It means, first, that you and I are genuinely open about what’s wrong with us.  John uses the word, “sin,” missing the mark of God’s righteousness.  If we claim to be without sin, he writes, we deceive ourselves.  We are not walking in the light.
   
But may I suggest that ‘walking in the light’ applies to more than “sin,” or to what we normally think of when we think of sin.  It applies to everything that feels dark inside of us, our weaknesses and vulnerability, our fears and anxieties, even our wounds.  In other words, it applies not just to those bad things we consciously do, but also to the bad things we feel and the bad things that happen to us.  So to walk in the light, what you and I must do to be close to God and to the people close to God, is to allow the darkness in our lives to be exposed to God’s light.  When we try to cover it up, the very act of covering up puts a veil between us and God.  Sometimes it even raises a wall.  Not just between us and God but between us and the people we want and need to be close to.  But how can we do that? 

How can we possibly allow the darkness that is in us to be exposed to the light of God in the presence of others?  The mere thought of it is terrifying.  There is only one way.  That way is Jesus.      Verse 9:  If we confess our sins.   To confess is to stop trying to hide and admit the truth of what God’s light reveals.  If we confess our sins God is faithful and righteous and will forgive our sin and purify us from all unrighteousness.  What a verse! What a declaration!  What a surprise!  You say, that’s not a surprise.  That’s just the truth of the gospel that my sins are covered in the blood of Jesus.  When God looks at me, he forgives me and loves me, sinner that I am.  I know that.  I’ve known that since I was a child and I believe it.  But do we really?
   
Not up here in our heads, but down here in our hearts, in the place where we are fearful and anxious and hurting?  If we believe it, then why do we hide?  Why do we work so hard at hiding our sin and suffering from everyone else, sometimes even from ourselves and from God?  Why are we so afraid and so ashamed?  Could it be that our hiding reveals what we truly believe?  We truly believe that no one could love us the way we really are, not even God, certainly not the children of God.

I want you to try an experiment.  Think of your deepest, darkest sins or think of your greatest weakness.  Think of what you hide from others and keep trying to deny to yourself.  Now picture Jesus looking at you and seeing those weaknesses and sins.  What do you see in Jesus’ eyes right now?  Do you see anger?  Do you see disapproval or do you see love and forgiveness and complete acceptance?  What do you honestly feel?  Do you see Jesus’ eyes of compassion as he hangs on the cross and do you hear him say, Father, forgive her; Father, forgive him…?

To walk in the light of God, to really walk in his light, is to open our heart of hearts to the gaze of God and see the face of Jesus forgiving us from the cross and to walk in the light is also to want, to deeply want, to become righteous.  It is to want to please the one who loves you so.  It is to want to become like Jesus and to want the light of God’s presence to drive every hint of sin from my life.  There is a tension in this biblical text, and in the idea of walking in the light.  It is a tension you will find throughout sacred scriptures.  It is the tension of living as a human being in the presence of a holy God.      On one hand, God accepts and loves you just the way you are but He also loves you so much He will not allow you to stay the way you are.   Of course He won’t.  He is, after all, your father in heaven.  As your father in heaven He is at least as good as the best fathers here on earth.  When you think of a good father, do you think of someone who loves you just the way you are, but doesn’t care about what you do or who you become?      Of course not. 

Love is a determined devotion to another person; but it is a determined devotion for the good of that person.  I love my daughters.  I will always love my daughters.  Nothing they can do will ever cause me to stop loving them, nothing.  But because I love them I am determined to chase from their lives anything that would harm them, or keep them from experiencing God’s best.  Any person, any influence, any pattern of thought or feeling or action.  If there is anything inside of them that is keeping them from experiencing all that is good, I will do everything I can in my power to drive that from them. 

The love of our Father in heaven can be fierce.  It can feel like a burning fire.  But it is the fire that comes from the eyes of the resurrected Jesus who loved you enough to die for you; who went into the very jaw of hell to fight for you.  So try to picture those eyes, eyes full of forgiving love; and eyes fierce in their determination to expose and expel every darkness from your life.  Those are the eyes I want looking at me.  Those are the eyes I want ever before me. 

Those are the eyes I want to please.  Those are the eyes I want to have toward others.  I want my eyes to be full of God’s forgiving grace.  I want people to be able to tell me anything, anything they are feeling, anything they are struggling with, anything that has happened to them or haunts them.  Anything.  When they look up, having spoken things unspeakable, I want them to see eyes looking back that do not condemn them, eyes that shine with tears of compassion and forgiving love.  I want every look I give and every word I say to communicate that nothing, nothing can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, and nothing can ever cause me to say, “I don’t love you.” I also want my eyes to be shining with the truth and the righteousness of God.
   
I don’t want my look of forgiving grace to communicate, Oh, it doesn’t matter what you become.   You can live in the darkness as long as you want.  Because that is not love, that’s apathy.  The opposite of love is not hate, but apathy.  Can you imagine a community in which everyone looked upon each other with the eyes of Jesus, in which every family was filled with His grace and truth?  Can you imagine a church becoming a family of those kinds of families, and a family that welcomed people who didn’t have that kind of family, and became a family to them?  A family in which there were no more orphans and all God’s broken people were embraced in the arms of each other?  That, my brothers and sisters, is what the new heaven and the new earth will be, when the light of God fills the earth like the waters cover the sea.

IV.    So, What Then Should we do?
But what do we do right now, right here, this side of heaven?  We walk in the light.  We begin by being honest with God, which may be harder than you think.  There are reasons why we hide from God.  We may not want our sin and weakness to be exposed, we may not want to know the truth about ourselves because then we may have to do something about it, something painful.

One of my discoveries last summer, up on that mountain in Colorado, is that I was a whole lot weaker and needier than I wanted to admit.  I wasn’t making it.  I wasn’t as strong as I wanted everybody else to think I was.  I wasn’t as strong as I wanted to think I was; as I had convinced myself I was.  I didn’t realize how worn out and weary of soul I had become until Jesus sat down beside me and said, I understand, I know how hard it has been.  And I wept; and I don’t like to weep.  I don’t like to be that needy. I don’t like to embrace that pain.  But I sure needed to weep.  I sure needed to be understood.  I have made other painful discoveries this year that I have had to confess to God.  That I have not been the husband I should have been, that I have not been the pastoral leader I should be, that there are areas of sin in my life that still need serious work.

So let’s begin our walk in the light by turning to God and being honest with him.  Then, let’s take the risk of telling each other the truth but let’s do it with humility and do it in love.  Let’s do it as people who are weak and wounded ourselves.  Instead of saying, “I’m fine” when our husband or wife or close friend asks, maybe we should try to say, “I’m struggling.  I love you; but what you said and what you did really hurt.”  If someone dares to say that to you, and it is daring, that is a moment of truth. If you don’t respond with humility, if you don’t let the light of God shine in your own heart, too, you will not have fellowship, intimacy, with each other.  “I’m sorry I hurt you.  I didn’t mean to.  I am not a very sensitive person.”  Or maybe, “I’m sensitive that I was consumed by my own pain and my own point of view.”

Please don’t misunderstand me.  I am not saying we should open the deepest, darkest depths of our souls to anyone and everyone.  It is appropriate and wise to have circles of intimacy and to share the deepest things with only a few people but we need to be in the light with those people, and we need to be humble and gracious toward everyone we meet.  So let’s cry out to God and ask him to fill us with his grace and his truth. To make each of us someone who is learning to walk in the light to open our hearts to God and others, to receive the grace and the truth of God, to receive others with that same grace and truth.

If we can learn to do this, to speak the truth in love, it will change our relationship with God and with each other.  Do you remember the old commercial that showed a picture of two eggs, and said, “This is your life” then they showed a picture of scrambled eggs and said, “This is your life on drugs?”  Please close your eyes.      This is your life in the dark.  You cannot see and you cannot be seen.  Imagine if you were banished to darkness and to silence and to separation for all eternity.  You would go mad; for you are made as I am made for love.  Now open your eyes.  This is your life in the light.  You can see and you can be seen.  You can live and you can love.  So, let us walk in the light as He is our light; let us have open, honest fellowship and intimacy with each other as the blood of Jesus cleanses all of us from all unrighteousness.