I am world famous for teaching that people who want to call themselves Christians
need to act like the first Christians (who were called disciples) acted.
We need to stop working for money, leave our homes and families
and go (in company with other such people) into all the world preaching the gospel.
That is what I preach. You can hear me saying that on a hundred different videos that I have made.
But, you know, there is something that is more fundamental than that...
something which really makes all the difference in whether you are saved or lost...
in fact, it makes all the difference in whether Jesus even WANTS you to be numbered amongst his followers.
As you would guess by the title of this video, that trait is sincerity. But it isn't always called that in the Bible.
In John's first epistle, he called it "walking in whatever light God has given you".
But in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus called it "hungering and thirsting after righteousness".
This is the quality that Jesus was looking for
and it is why you often hear Jesus saying some amazing things to people who apparently
never forsook all and followed him.
Often Jesus just called it "faith"
but I think that was because they behaved like they really believed
the sort of things that people just SAY they believe these days.
The thief on the cross is often presented as an excuse to do nothing.
All he did was defend Jesus and ask Jesus to remember him when he came into his kingdom.
But what does that mean..."when you come into your kingdom..."?
This guy really believed that Jesus had something that transcends death.
While everyone else... including all those disciples who had forsaken all and left everything to follow Jesus...
while they all believed that Jesus dying was pretty much the end of everything...
All that he had done and taught was falling apart.
Yet this one guy, dying with Jesus, saw something that was bigger than life itself.
We tend to look at it all through our limited human reasoning
and we see in the thief on the cross someone who had reached a point where he had no other hope
so that clutching at one last straw was more or less forced on him.
But I believe that Jesus saw something in that thief which let him know that, given the chance...
given his life back, this thief would have left everything and followed Jesus.
He really was responding in faith.
True, it was too late for him to do anything
but this man saw in Jesus the righteousness that the whole world is in need of
and Jesus sensed that he would never have let go of it, even if his life had been spared.
Jesus could see that. He could see the depth of the man's sincerity.
Any one of us might buy cheap fire insurance if we found ourselves in such a position...
just in case it might work.
We would agree to say a little prayer, make some shallow confession of faith
do whatever it took to increase our chances, on the off-chance that it might help us escape hell.
But Jesus saw much more than that in the thief on the cross
and so he promised him that would be with Jesus in Paradise, despite all that he had done wrong in his life.
The thief never forsook all, but Jesus knew that he would have, if he had had the opportunity.
Call it faith, or call it sincerity; it is what Jesus was looking for.
Let's look at another example... another obviously UNrighteous person...
the woman whom the whole town knew to be a sinner.
She came and poured a whole box of extremely expensive perfume on the feet of Jesus.
This woman did do a sort of forsaking all.
But it was never pointed out or described as such.
We don't know what else she may have owned beside that perfume.
But still, Jesus saw something in her which made him forgive her sins.
This time he called it love.
"Because she loved much, she will be forgiven much," he said.
Maybe it was a history of foolish and naive love for the various men who had used her and then dumped her
that Jesus was commending.
But more likely it was her love for Jesus himself.
And why did she have such love? Like the thief on the cross, she probably had never met Jesus before.
Nevertheless, in some miraculous way, she had seen who he really was.
He was the righteousness of God.
He was the Light of the world, and she reached out for that light.
She hungered and thirsted for that righteousness. And God filled her.
Jesus forgave her sins because he saw sincerity expressed as love for this eternal messenger of God.
And then there is the paralysed man, who got his friends to tear up the roof
in order to lower him down into the crowded room where Jesus was busy healing people.
Jesus told the man straight off that his sins were forgiven, and the Pharisees freaked out at that.
They were fine with Jesus healing people; but forgiving sins? That was something only God could do.
Yet Jesus saw something in that man which others did not see.
I wonder if we can see it even today?
Don't we just see a man who wanted to be healed... like everyone else?
Sure, he was a little more zealous than the rest of the crowd
and he managed to get his friends to do for him what he could not do
but the bottom line is that we assume he just did what anyone would do
if they were in such a bad way physically
and if they believed that someone was in town who could heal them.
I could well imagine that a lot of people in the crowd were less trusting...
just spectators... coming to check it out.
They may have had needs, and selfishly wanted whatever they could get
but they did not want to be laughed at for trusting a con man, in the event that they did NOT get healed.
So they stood back and watched for a bit, waiting to be convinced by what they saw in others.
Could this Jesus guy really heal them? Or was it all hype and exaggeration?
The man on the roof, however...
he had himself lowered right down into the middle of everything, causing every eye to look at him.
He would be the joke of the town if he turned out to be wrong, and if he was not helped.
But he believed... probably because of what he had heard...
that this really was a very special messenger from God.
And so Jesus forgave his sins.
But wait a minute! That wasn't why he came. He came to be healed. Or did he?
See, once again, we look at these stories (and perhaps even the disciples looked at them)
and we see them through our natural human reasoning.
Sick guy. Healer. So, it must be all about healing.
But what if the man was really there because of his hunger and thirst for righteousness?
What if he was there because he saw a Light, shining in the darkness, and he wanted more of that light?
The story goes on to say that Jesus only healed this paralysed man to make a point to the Pharisees
and NOT because that was what the encounter was all about.
What the man had come in search of was righteousness... and that resulted in forgiveness.
That hunger to hear and to learn is more likely what impressed Jesus, and it is why he forgave the man.
A wicked and an adulterous generation was looking for miracles; but this man was looking for righteousness.
Can you see the difference? He hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and so he was filled.
But what about forsaking all?
There is no mention of Jesus even hinting that the man needed to forsake all and follow him.
In obedience to Jesus, the man picks up his bed and heads home.
Can a person really be righteous without forsaking all?
Can they be forgiven without joining Jesus in that great commission he gave to the rest of us...
to go into all the world preaching the gospel?
Can people actually grab forgiveness and then go back to living their life the way they always had...
like happens in the churches all over the world today?
Before you answer, think about this:
In the tenth chapter of Luke, it says that Jesus sent 70 of his followers out, two by two, without any provisions
to travel from town to town healing the sick, casting out devils, even raising the dead.
Seventy people! Where did they come from?
Do you think there may have been a forgiven sinner woman amongst them?
Do you think there was a healed paralytic amongst them?
And if not, then who were these 70 disciples?
You see, we are introduced to several different people throughout the ministry of Jesus
whom we never hear about again... EXCEPT in passing references
such as the 70 people who were sent out to prepare people for the arrival of Jesus.
And such as 120 people fasting for ten days in an upstairs room just before the Day of Pentecost.
And, of course, on that same day, we hear of thousands of people who were swept into this growing fellowship.
And that is when we ARE told what they did.
The Book of Acts says that ALL of them sold their possessions.
Every one of them who owned property, sold it and laid it at the feet of the apostles
so that it could be divided up evenly among everyone... according to what each person needed.
With the exception of the thief on the cross, forsaking all and living by faith became the norm
even though it was sincerity that opened the door to such an amazing lifestyle in the first place.
You see, sincerity makes all the difference between religion and real faith.
Sincerity is going to lead you to more and more truth, while religion looks for some trivial mark of distinction...
something to make you feel more righteous than everyone else.
And then it stops growing. God isn't looking for religion; he's looking for sincerity.
Not man-made trivial rules and doctrines to highlight your superiority, but something quite the opposite.
This hunger for righteousness more or less assumes that you are NOT righteous... that you need to change.
It hungers to be told the truth... to hear what your flesh does not want to hear.
And this is what makes all the difference. Such a hunger is virtually non-existent in the religious world.
Everyone claims to have already found the answer.
And the answer is invariably some totally irrational concoction
that was dished up to them by their religious leaders.
The Pharisees were full of their own righteousness, and that is what they inflicted on all of their followers.
In the same way, religions all over the world tell you
that their trivial rules and doctrines will guarantee you righteousness
even though the doctrines all turn out to be, on closer examination, outright lies.
Only Jesus has true righteousness
but when we listen to him, what he says reveals us all to be nothing but filthy rags by comparison.
Do you hunger enough for God's righteousness to let go of your own counterfeit replacements?
You see, without that sincerity, you are never going to accept the rules as Jesus has made them.
He is looking for that quality in each of us, but it is extremely rare. Call it faith. Call it love. Call it sincerity.
But in each case, it is characterised by a hunger that only God can fill.
A hunger for something more than the counterfeits, and the dissatisfaction that they all bring.
Please turn to Jesus right now.
Ask him to fill that need, and then open your Bible to read what he taught.
Become one of his disciples today. And reach out to others who are also doing the same thing.
My email address is on the screen.
Please write to me, and share your thoughts as you have listened to this video.
More than that... share what you have read when you opened to the four gospels
and considered some of the things that Jesus taught.
Together, let us grow in our faith and grow in our love for this most amazing eternal Messenger of God.
I look forward to hearing from you today.