Truth or Consequences (Chester UMC)

So it was once a husband and wife driving down the road.

The husband was driving and lights flashed behind, pulled

over. The officer came up to the

window and said, I suppose you know why I pulled you over.

The husband said no, I don't. And the officer said you were

driving 75 in a 55 zone. And the husband said, no, no,

no, no, no. I was going 65 at the most.

And his wife said, honey, you were doing 80 now, I've said,

and since I pulled you over, I'm also going to need to give you a

ticket for the broken tail light that you have on the back of

your car. And the husband said broken tail

light, I had no idea there was a broken tail light.

And his wife said, honey, you've been talking about that broken

tail light for weeks. The husband said, woman better

shut your mouth or I'm going to shut it for you.

The officer got upset about that and he said, ma'am, does your

husband talk to you like this all the time?

She said, no, Sir, only when he's drunk.

There can be such a thing as too much honesty, right?

Such a thing as too much honesty, but that's the

exception rather than the rule. Honesty, truthfulness is, is

something it's essential to a healthy family, healthy

relationship, a healthy society, the ability and capacity to

trust one another, to trust the things that we're told and to

say and do and be trustworthy people.

What we see in the scripture today, the is, is the the legacy

of the opposite, the legacy of lies.

And, and it's hard to tell that the actual passage for this was

really, really long. And I tried to pull out enough

of it for it to make sense. I'm not sure I quite did it

because it was too long to read all of it.

But, but here's the reality of it and, and the full context of

it for Laban and his daughters, Rachel and Leah.

That and you remember, we've talked about this a couple weeks

ago, Jacob came into town, fell in love with the younger

daughter Rachel, and and asked Laban, their father, if he could

marry Rachel. And Laban said yes.

Just work for me for seven years.

He worked for seven years. And on the night of the wedding,

Laban switched his daughters and Jacob married Leah rather than

Rachel. It was a lie.

It was a lie. He deceived his future

son-in-law, and he eventually married Rachel as well.

But it stuck and it stung. And now, years later, Jacob is

having that urge. And it's really, we see in the

scripture, it's a divine impulse to leave where he is, to leave

Laban's household and return to his father Isaac, his family of

origin, back in Canaan. And he's concerned that his

wives won't want to leave their home.

And he says to them, that's what I'm planning.

God feel like I've had this dream.

Feel like God's calling me to go back to Canaan to take for us

all to go to Canaan. And they're like, yeah, do

whatever you want. Our dad sold us.

And then our dad wasted what he got for us, so and in.

In the meantime, Jacob's flocks had increased and Laban's flocks

had decreased, and Jacob had gotten wealthier and wealthier,

while Laban got poorer and poorer.

And Laban's lies, which he initially told because it was

good for him, it was convenient. I can marry off two daughters

instead of 1. I can I can make more from this

transaction than I otherwise would have.

I got 14 years of Labor from my son-in-law instead of just seven

years of Labor from my son-in-law.

What he did for a short term gain ended up costing him long

term with daughters who had no interest in maintaining a

relationship with him. And we're now going to be taking

his grandchildren far, far away, and he might never see them

again. It's a legacy of lies.

Jacob can hardly stand in judgement over Laban.

He might be frustrated. He might be wounded by the

deceptions that Laban's perpetrated against him and

against his wives, But he can't really throw stones.

He's living in a glass house, after all.

The only reason he's there anyway is because he lied.

He deceived his father when his father was old and blind, and he

was wanting to give his final blessing upon his oldest son,

Esau. When Esau went out to kill to

get the the meat that that his father had asked me.

Make me that Stew that you make from that that meat that I love.

And and Esau went hunting to get the meat.

And while he was gone, Jacob snuck in and pretended to be

Esau with his mother's help, disguised himself as his brother

and deceived his father and stole his brother's blessing or

stole his father. The blessing that his father

meant for his brother to have. Jacob received instead a

blessing of leadership, a blessing of wealth, a blessing

of the one that would rule over his brother.

All of that was to be given to a Esau.

But Jacob stole it, and Esau became angry.

Angry enough that he threatened to kill his brother.

And so Jacob had to run for his life once again.

A shattered family. Because a lie for a short term

gain, a lie for the sake of convenience, a lie for getting

what I want because I don't really trust God to provide it

for me. That wrecked a family.

That drove people apart. That led to alienation,

estrangement, and threats of about a severe threat of

violence. You can get as you can get in a

family. These are the legacy of lies.

We all know that. Well, yeah, Not as he sold us.

I forgot I included these. But he has used up what he has

paid for us. Surely all the wealth that God

took away from our father belongs to us and our children.

God's dad sold us for money. Now we're going to take all of

his wealth with us and go. It belongs to us anyway.

Do whatever God has told you. And this is what he saw.

Held a grudge against Jacob because of the blessing his

father had given him. He said to himself, the days of

mourning for my father are near them, and I will kill my brother

Jacob. The problem is an ongoing one.

There's an increasing challenge and problem of deception.

It's not that I think people are any more prone to lie now than

they used to be or any more prone to deceive than they used

to be. It's just the tools for doing it

are so much better than they used to be.

Used to be seeing was believing, right?

Missouri is the show me state. You got to show me before I'll

believe it. Now you can see stuff and you

have no way of knowing whether it's real or whether it's true.

We tend to glamorize and glorify certain times of the lying as

well. Abby Ellen in her book Duped

tells how a con artist fooled her and and and robbed her of

dignity and promised relationship, promised marriage

and ended up just taking and taking and taking and the damage

that did to her emotionally and psychologically.

She talks about con artists that have become very well known in

that book. Frank Abagnale Junior, do you

remember that name? It was a movie a few years ago

called Catch Me If you Can. Really good movie.

Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio. It's a great movie.

And Abagnale became famous. He went on the talk show

circuit. There clips out there of him

appearing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson telling about

these amazing cons that he did and he did go to jail.

He spent a few years in prison for passing bad checks in his

book and his autobiography and part of the movie was how he

pretended to be a pilot, I believe it was for United

Airlines. It was one of the major

airlines. He got free rides back and forth

across the country on that airline for years because he he

conned his way on as a pilot when he wasn't.

He claimed to have been a a doctor and conned his way in and

practiced medicine, claimed to have practiced law as an

attorney and passed the bar. Here's the thing, after all was

said and done, and his book was fact checked after he got famous

and after the movie was made, turns out he didn't do most of

that. He passed some bad checks, but

there's no evidence he ever passed himself off as a pilot.

There's no evidence that he ever worked in a hospital as a

doctor. There's no evidence that anyone

ever believed he was a lawyer and that he actually practiced

law. His autobiography was a con, but

he became a hero, a folk legend for telling lies.

There is a bit of irony that he became a hero by lying about

telling lies in all of that. But lying, Lying doesn't make

someone a legend. It can make someone emphasis an

infamous. But lies destroy.

Lies hurt. Lies break families.

Lies break relationships. Abby Ellen in her book says that

statistically speaking, about 15% of women and 25% of men,

married men and women have adulterous affairs, lies and

deceptions that hurt and break families.

The challenge today is that we can't even believe what we see.

We can't even believe what we hear.

The deep fakes are getting very, very good.

And and you know, there are some videos you see on YouTube and

you go, OK, yeah, I don't think a bird can pick up a three-year

old, no matter how big the bird is.

That's probably not real. But there's a great video out

there of of physicist. I want to say fine, I can't

think of his first name. All the sudden Feynman, world

famous physicist and, and, and you listen to it and, and it

sounds just a little bit off. And so went down into the

comments and it was like, yeah, they should put a warning on

this, that this is not Feynman's voice.

This is a synthesized voice. And he only said about 85% of

what they're saying he said. And the rest of it's just

made-up within three or four years, probably now it's just

not everyone has the technology yet to do it.

But within three or four years, those things will be so good, no

one will know. Back when I was first starting

off as a pastor about 30 years ago, there was one of the, these

national consultants, well known people not just in the United

Methodist Church, but in other churches.

Bill Leeson was talking about the future and, and, and, and he

at that point, it was when the information superhighway was

really just kicking off and, and information was the key and

people that had information and could access information, that

was the key to being successful in business.

They claimed that was the key to being successful in churches as

well. But Isom said when you look down

the road and, and, and I don't think not all of his predictions

came true, but he hit the nail on the head on this.

He said within 2025 years, it's not going to be information

that's going to be the key. It's going to be who can tell

what's true from what's false with all of the information

that's out there. We live in a world now in the

Western world where it is nearly impossible to know when we

receive information digitally, what's true and what's false,

what's made-up and what's a lie, what's real and what's a

fabrication. And that's just the reality that

we live in. And, and I have no idea on

practical terms how that's going to be resolved in the future.

As election cycles go on and as videos get more and more

realistic and audio gets more and more realistic, how we will

ever really know for sure whether we're being told the

truth about events or people or politicians or anything else.

It will be so easy to fake and do what there was, I think it

was MSNBC recently with one of the, the people that got shot up

in Minnesota where they, they adjusted the photograph of the

person who was killed to make him better looking so people

would feel sorrier for him, which says a lot about what they

would think if I got killed. I I guessing they would say no

one's going to care and there's nothing we can do with that

picture. Truth and reality in the digital

world are nearly impossible to distinguish now.

And this is a challenge and an opportunity for the church

because the vision that we have, the calling that we have from

Jesus is to follow where he's leading.

And, and it's hard to know where God's leading in this world

right now. It's hard to see what's going to

what the world's going to be like 5 years from now, much less

35 years from now or 50 years from now.

We really don't know where all this is going.

We don't know what schools are going to look like.

We don't know what church is going to look like.

We don't know what politics is going to look like.

We don't know what war is going to look like.

So many things changing so rapidly.

We don't know what media and television and move.

We don't know what we don't know where everything's going.

The next 40-50 years are going to be extraordinary amount of

change and we don't know where it's going.

But that's the real place the disciples were in that night

before Jesus died. Jesus knew where he was going,

and he kept telling his disciples over and over and over

again, I'm going to go to Jerusalem, I'm going to be

betrayed and I'm going to be killed.

I'm going to be crucified. I'm going to die on the third

day. I'm going to rise again from the

dead. It never clicked.

They kept thinking he was talking in parables.

He was talking in riddles. They didn't really understand

until after it was all said and done and the resurrection

happened and they were like, oh, that's what he meant when he

said he was going to die. He meant he was going to die and

come back to life. And then he ascended into the

heavens. And they did not know where all

of this was going, and they couldn't predict where all of

this was going at the moment Jesus ascended into heaven.

His closest followers still thought that Jesus was simply in

this. You know, in their minds, this

was huge, but simply the Messiah for the Jewish people who would

restore the Kingdom of Israel to greatness.

The notion that people like us would one day be followers of

Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah, they could never predict.

They could never imagine. It was not anywhere on their

radar. They had no idea really where

Jesus was going with all of this.

And that's what Thomas said. So, Jesus, we don't know where

you're going. How could we follow you?

We don't know where you're going.

And Jesus's response and Thomas said, Lord, we don't know where

you're going. How can we know the way?

Jesus answered, I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

If you really know me, you will know my Father as well from now

on. You do know him and you have

seen him. I am the way Jesus said I am the

truth. In a world and in a culture

where deception is becoming the norm, where reality is becoming

indistinguishable from fiction, particularly when we receive

that information digitally, the church needs to become and can

become a haven of honesty and authenticity.

We can offer this to the world. We can offer this to the

community. If you're looking for something

that's real, come hang out with us.

We'll be real with you. In a world where people feel

like they have to put on masks and they have to put on an image

and make a show when they don't see themselves as a person, but

they see themselves as a brand. And the brand is all that's

matter. And I can't let anyone see the

real me. We can say come here and be

yourself and we'll be ourselves. Come here.

You can be authentic here because we're going to be

authentic to you. We don't need to put on masks.

We don't need to put on a veneer.

We don't need to be a brand because we know that Jesus loves

us just the way that we are and our brokenness and our flaws and

in our imperfections. Jesus loves us just the way we

are. We do not need to hide.

We do not need to. We don't need to present a false

front. We don't need to Polish up the

brand. We just need to be ourselves.

I'm not sure there's anyone else that's doing that out there

right now. There.

There are a lot of places that say we're going to, you know, we

accept you just as you are. But once you get in there, you

realize there's a whole list of things that you have to be for

them to accept you just as you are.

And a whole list of things you have to believe for them to

accept you just as you are. And a whole different list of

things that you just have to say.

And another list of things that you just can never say.

To be accepted. Just as you are.

But Jesus said. Just as you are, come to me.

Broken, wounded, weary, happy, sad, joyful, successful,

failing, struggling, excelling. Whatever situation you're in

right now, whatever you're feeling right now, whoever you

are right now, come to me. Jesus says.

You don't know where I'm going. That's OK.

I'm the way. You have a difficulty in this

world distinguishing between fantasy and fiction and reality.

Don't worry, I'm the truth. Jesus says I'm the truth.

And that's where the. Life is too in Jesus, in Jesus.

Part of this means is that the church, as a church, we have to

commit to honesty and we have to commit to authenticity.

And I don't mean that kind of honesty that that this sort of

that self satisfied, self-righteous.

Well, I'll be brutally honest with you.

Ha ha, ha. I'm happy to tell you the truth

about all the things that you're wondering about.

It's the honesty that says we're going to be honest with

ourselves and we're going to be honest about ourselves and we're

not going to wear the mask. There's an old Casting Crowns

song from years ago called Stained Glass Masquerade about

all the people who go to church and put on their Sunday best and

pretend to be something that they're not.

In order for people to like and accept and receive them, and to

truly be a haven of honesty and authenticity, to truly be

something different in the world, we have to decidedly and

determinedly not be that kind of church, but instead decidedly

and terminally commit to being honest and authentic so that

when people meet us, they can see something real.

Not something. Pretend not something fake, not

something where we're trying to be a brand, but just be in

ourselves. And that they know.

That when we speak to them that we'll be telling the truth and

not lies. And then they can.

Trust. So hard to trust and a world

where you don't know when someone's telling the truth and

when someone's telling a lie. And I think when Jesus said let

your yes be yes and let your no be no that there was so much

more than giving a rule against taking oaths.

Jesus was saying be real, be authentic when you say a thing.

When you say a thing, people need to be able to trust and

believe you that what you say your yes is a yes, your no is a

no. You're not going to deceive.

You're not going to manipulate. Lies are the tool of the devil.

Jesus is. The truth We cannot follow Jesus

while using the tools of the devil.

We cannot do God's work with the devil's tools and lies and

deceptions and fronts and branding.

This is all just, you know, when it comes to this life, if a

business needs a brand, absolutely that's a real thing.

Everyone knows that human beings need to be human beings.

To be ourselves, warts and all, successes and all, failures and

all struggles and all. To be able to be honest about

that with each other and the people we encounter, there is

and can be such a thing as too much honesty, but it's the

exception rather than the rule. I do a little bit of time, so

I'm going to tell another story. I had two stories in my pocket.

I was open at what time for both of them.

There's a story of a king and a great Kingdom once.

This is a Once Upon a time story, not a historical story.

Once Upon a time, a great king and a great Kingdom, and he was

growing old and he didn't have any children and he needed to

name a successor in his Kingdom. And he had a plan.

I wanted a young person, someone who would live a long time.

And he wanted to be a wise person and a real person.

And so he, he, he proclaimed the day in which he invited all the

youth, all of the young people in the Kingdom to come to the

Capitol, come to the palace. And once they arrived, he gave

every single one of them a seed. And he said, here's what I want

you to do. Take the seed home, plant it in

a pot, grow it and, and, and grow as luxurious a plant as you

possibly can and bring it back here next year on this day and

let me see what you've drawn. So everyone did that.

Took their seeds home. They put them in the pot.

They watered them. A year came and was almost a

year. They came and there was one

young man and nothing had grown. He'd faithfully watered his

seed. He made sure the soil was good,

that all the fertilizer that needed to be in it was there.

Nothing grew. And he told his mom, I'm not

going. This is embarrassing.

I'm not going. I'm not going.

His mom said no, you should go. Just explain to the king what

happened. He'll understand.

Sometimes things don't grow. And when he got there, his worst

fears were confirmed. Everyone else had these huge

plants. Some of them had to have great

big pots and bring them in on carts.

Some of them were wonderful flowers, others were were fruit

trees, others were these tremendous luxurious vegetables.

And, and it was just incredible. And the boy just shrank and

shrank and shrank and shrank and shrank as person after person

ahead of them was going up to present their plants of what

they had grown to the king. The king was looking around, and

he kept looking around, and he finally he saw the boy in the

back. He saw this boy holding an empty

pot. And the king said, Hey, you come

up here. The boy went up.

To the front. Red as a beet.

It's like this is going to get scolded.

I'm going to get embarrassed. The King's going to call me out

in front of everybody. The king said, I see you have an

empty pot. And the boy said, yes, Your

Highness, I'm sorry, I planted the seed and I watered the seed

and I fertilized the seed, but nothing grew.

The king said, I think I found my heir.

The boy looked amazed. The king said, you see, every

seed I gave away last year I had boiled.

None of them would grow anything.

And you're the only. One who's had the courage to be

honest about what happened. And I need.

Someone who is honest and someone who is courageous to be

my successor. This is the way of Jesus.

The courage to be honest, the courage to be ourselves.

I think maybe in this world, the courage to be yourself is is

might be take more courage than anything else.

In a world where it's easy to get cancelled, it's easy to get

crushed, it's easy to get condemned and have that spread

all over. Courage, to be honest, the

courage to be ourselves. This is something that we as a

church can offer this world that the world can't get anyplace

else. No place else.

No matter how good. Our music gets we're never going

to be as good as Beyoncé and Taylor Swift and and Ed Sheeran.

I don't know who the current people are in that crowd.

Jelly Roll, there we go. Not going to be we'll never be

that. We'll you're never going to get,

you know, the best preaching in the world.

We're never going to have the you'll never have the most,

well, quaffed pastor in the world.

But there's one. Thing that we can give that

folks can't get on YouTube and they can't get on TV and they

can't get on TikTok and that's real authentic, honest to

goodness human beings who are being honestly themselves.

Let's do that together in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.