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  A REVIVAL OF HONESTY
  by Richard Sipley
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of living a life of
honesty and truthfulness before God and others. It delves into the
prevalence of lies, deceit, and pretense in various aspects of life,
including relationships, business dealings, and even within the church.
The speaker urges individuals to confront their own dishonesty, make
amends, and seek genuine repentance and transformation.

Duration: 1:14:25

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of living a life of honesty and
truthfulness before God and others. It delves into the prevalence of
lies, deceit, and pretense in various aspects of life, including
relationships, business dealings, and even within the church. The
speaker urges individuals to confront their own dishonesty, make amends,
and seek genuine repentance and transformation.

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CONTENT
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Good morning. Is this working? You can hear? Okay. Well, I don't know
whether you're fortunate or unfortunate, but in recent times God has
changed my ministry.

And you're about to get the first wave of it. I hold in my hand a little
card. It has a picture on it done many years ago, a Duret woodcut, of
Jesus cleansing the temple.

It's quite a remarkable picture of him with a whip driving the
merchandisers out of the temple. And next to it, it says, zeal for God's
house. And of course, this is about the first time when he cleansed the
temple and said, you've made it a place of merchandise.

But he said, and he was quoting from the Old Testament, my father's
house shall be a house of prayer. And every church that is not a house
of prayer is living in open disobedience to God. I don't care what they
preach or all the things they do or the programs or anything else.

And our churches are absolutely cluttered with the cleverness of man.
And they are by and large not houses of prayer. That should be the first
thing.

It should be the overwhelming thing. It should be the pervading thing.
It ought to be entirely through our churches and relax.

I'm not preaching on this. And they remembered that it was written zeal
for God's house has consumed me. So I am being consumed with zeal for
God's house.

And so this morning, I want to begin with this message and the one
tomorrow are brand new. I've never preached them before, so they may not
do very well. This morning revival, a return to honesty.

And tomorrow morning revival, a return to holiness. There is something
very interesting in our society that I knew was there. And I was
conscious of the fact that it was not as it should be, but it never
really got to me powerfully until after my precious wife of 60 years
slipped away to be with the Lord.

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. I went to church the next
Sunday and people came up and said, Brother Sipley, how are you? How am
I? I'm destroyed. I'm ruined.

I'm shattered. What do you mean, how am I? Of course, probably you care
about me and maybe you want to know how I am, but if I start to tell
you, your eyes will glaze over. And I'm just talking about Christians
now.

And I take a walk every morning in a rec center with a number of
seniors, and many of them Christians. And I didn't know whether to laugh
or be angry, but people cruising around the track and I'm just walking,
and they're cruising by me at high speed. And they go cruising by me,
and they have never seen me in their life.

Never. They don't know me at all. I've never seen them in my life
because they're new on the track this morning or whatever.

They go cruising by, and they turn on their way. They're walking, and
they are walking fast. And on their way by, they turn and say, how are
you this morning? And someday, I declare I'm going to tell one of them.

I go say, wait, wait, wait a minute. I can't walk that fast. Come back
here.

I'm going to tell you. If I get frightened, I'll run off the track. You
say, now, Pastor, you're just being silly talking about that.

What I'm talking about is a society and a culture that is totally bathed
in dishonesty. It is absolutely a population of liars. And I found
myself many times in recent years saying with David in my dismay, I
said, all men are liars.

And all men are not liars. Because Jesus said of Nathanael, an Israelite
indeed in whom is nothing false. Wow.

But David got all shook up, and I've been there too when I felt like
yelling, everybody is a liar. Nobody tells the truth anymore. And what's
so hard for me is that I remember the revival in Canada in those early
days when people learned to tell the truth.

When suddenly God broke through on their hearts, and all their pride,
and all their falseness, and their pretense, and their hypocrisy was
swept away. And they became suddenly open, honest people. Honest with
themselves, and honest with God, and honest with other people.

And it was a delight. Oh, it was like fresh air, and a beautiful
morning. It was a delight to be with the people of God who were all
suddenly honest people.

But we're quite a ways from those days. It's awful how easy it is to
slide back into the old ways. And I said, God, are you sure you want me
to talk about this? It's not a nice thing to talk about.

And God said, just mind your own business. Okay. When I was a little boy
attending a country school, a little country school with six grades and
one teacher.

Anybody remember? Most of you aren't old enough. It was quite a school.
And I read about King Arthur and his knights.

And I wanted to be a knight. Of course, I couldn't. So I pretended.

I got some cardboard, made me a cardboard shield, and a wooden sword.
And I got all the other boys to do the same. And we painted dragons and
crosses on our shields, and we fought.

And we all were pretending, and we knew that. And I don't suppose it
hurt anything. We got a few scratches and worried the poor teacher.

But Paul said, when I became a man, I put away childish things.
Children's play is filled with pretending, isn't it? Have you ever
pretended with a little guy? I mean, he's pretending, and so you pretend
with him. And then you get better and better at what you're doing.

And finally, he stops you, almost in fear, and says, I'm only
pretending. Come on, Grandpa, you're going too far. You're getting scary
here.

As children, have you ever gotten tired of playing church? I get so
tired of it. I even have a hard time in services sometimes. I love to go
to church, but I have a hard time.

You know, God gets tired of those who play church, pretend, act. God
gets really tired of it. You say, how do you know? Because he said so.

He said, oh, that there was even one among you whose duty it is to
minister to me, who would shut the doors that you might not kindle fire
on my altar to no purpose as an empty, futile, fruitless pretense. I
have no pleasure in you, says the Lord of hosts. You will accept an
offering from your hand.

He said, I wish there was a man, I wish there was a pastor honest enough
to just shut the door. You say, that's terrible. Well, that's what God
said.

You know, Charles Spurgeon said the same thing. He said, there's some of
you pastors that said, just shut the door and you should nail it shut
and send the people home. And sometimes you'd be better off if you did.

Church pretense. Oh my, they've been having a hard time, you know,
getting ready to go to church. And there are four kids and dad is
reading the newspaper instead of helping mom.

And she's running around and she's losing patience, screaming at the
kids and screaming at him. And finally they all, you know, get their
hair combed and get in. And then Janie went outside to play and she got
to be redressed and have her knees washed.

And everybody is finally in the car and they are really angry at each
other. And they're, they're yelling at each other and fussing all the
way to church. And then they get to church and they get out of the car
and they go in and, good morning Mrs. Jones.

Isn't the Lord wonderful? Yeah, he is. He is. God wants to get his
people honest.

He wants us to give up our pretense. What was it made Jesus Christ so
angry? Scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, liars, pretenders. The leaders,
spiritual leaders of that day.

And you know, the world, I may talk about it in a little bit, but you
know, it's just one great big lie. And the church, of course, when it's
not walking close to God, slowly, slowly, slowly absorbs the world's
culture. Absolutely.

There, I've sort of discussed with the Lord whether I should really name
the pretenses in the church in this meeting. I, should I have you vote
on it? Oh man. Are you ready not to get too angry? Because I may not get
out of here alive, but my wife's in heaven and I want to go there
anyway.

So, hmm. Ooh, here goes. Here's a young man that comes from a nice
family.

He's been a Christian since he was a child. And now he wants to be a
Christian star. So at the moment he has a four-day growth of beard and
earrings in his ears and his hair looks like a bush out in the desert.

And he has a questionable t-shirt on and scroungy blue jeans. And he is
trying to lead the church in worship. And he is one lie from one end to
the other.

Because that is not him and it's not like him. And he is trying to look
like the world so that he can attract the people of the world to the
church. And they just sneer.

And he thinks that he is serving God and leading God's people in
worship. And he is not. Now I said it.

And you say, why are you so upset about that? I'll tell you why I'm
upset about it. Because the people of God are so foolish as to think if
they can do something that looks like the world, it will get them to
come in and their church will be full and they can accomplish the work
of God. And the trouble is they actually believe it.

And you say, well you're just a dinosaur. Yep. But it was a long time
ago, you know, when Jesus came.

I don't go back that far. Oh my. I mean that's just one example.

You can just go through the whole thing from one end to the other and
you just find the people of God pretending and trying to think up
something new to do to attract the world and somehow accomplish for God
what they could accomplish if they were in filled with the Holy Spirit.
Somebody says, well, you just, you know, you're not a pastor anymore.
Yeah.

But when I was a pastor, I want to tell you that it works. Now I won't
talk about that now, but it does work. I don't, I got to a place where I
didn't want any pretense in the church.

No pretension of any kind, nothing false, no lies. I want it straight.
Don't want to twist anybody's arm and get them to do something they
really don't want to do and that God hasn't put on their heart.

And so they're going to go do it because somebody made them feel guilty
and talked them into it. So they go and do it and they are not in the
will of God and their heart isn't in it. And the whole thing is a lie.

You say, well, my goodness, people have to do some of these things. No,
they don't just shut the door. I mean, just, just quit the ministry.

Oh, so good to do that. I mean, we've always done that in this church.
Will God help you? That's the trouble.

I mean, get rid of it. I don't mean the church though. I'd like to get
rid of some, but get rid of that ministry.

See, I had a principle that we never ever tried to get somebody to take
a ministry in the church. If God didn't put it on their heart, forget
it. Shut the door.

Who cares? Oh, and you say, well, Mrs. so-and-so would be offended.
Well, God bless her. Maybe she would get on fire for the Lord then, or
not.

I don't know. My minister of Christian education came to me and he said,
pastor, I don't know what I'm going to do. I mean, I just don't know
what I'm going to do.

We need 350 people to fill the entire educational program of this church
just to do the ministries. And I said, well, he said, I just can't get
them. And I said, you're not going at it right.

And he said, what should I do? And I said, I release you from all
ministry of any kind until you settle this. I want you to go in your
office and I want you to lay a list of the people you need in your
ministry down on your desk. And I want you to pray and ask God who you
should go to.

And I don't want to see you again until you finished it. You don't have
to do anything else until you finish it. And so he went in there.

He looked at me, never mind, he went in there. And because when I tell
you to do it, I mean it. And so he did.

He came back to me, I think it's about three days later. He came in the
office and he, his face shining, he said, wow. He said, that works.

He said, I have 15 people that want to teach Sunday school and I don't
have a class for them. You say you're lying. No, I am not lying.

We are so far off from what God wants us to do. And our churches are so
full of lies, things that are not what, they're not sincere, they're not
what God wants them to be. People doing things that have no burden, that
have not, some of them probably aren't even saved, and they're, I mean,
I found that out in Revival.

People thought they were saved and all of a sudden, my assistant pastor
got saved. I'm not kidding. He got saved.

And the Suteras flew me into a crusade they were in, out in Manitoba.
And so they wanted me to give my testimony that night, and I got up and
I told, you know, how this guy had grown up in a Christian home and he
had gone to a good Bible college. He'd been a pastor for three years.

Then he had gone to a good, solid seminary and had his seminary
education. And then finally he came to our church and he had been there
two years in ministry, and I was having some problems with him. And then
one night he was talking to a young couple, and the lady was ministering
in the church and everything, but she had tried to take her life.

And she was having problems of all kinds. So he was over to the house
talking on a Monday night. And finally he said to her, well Mary, do you
ever remember really personally inviting Jesus Christ into your life?
And she sat there and she said, well really, I guess not.

I grew up in a Christian home. I've always thought I was a Christian.
And he said, you need to do that.

And God said to him, and do you remember? Yeah. And so he went on and
led her to the Lord. And she prayed to receive Christ.

In fact, she called me 10 o'clock at night just almost shouting over the
phone, Pastor, I'm saved, I'm saved. And he went home and didn't sleep
all night because everything he said to her, God said to him. And the
next morning I'm in my office, and the secretary says, whoops, almost
gave his name.

He'd like to see you. And so I said, sure. And he came in, and he sat
down, looked at me, and he said, I know this is going to shock you, but
I don't think I'm saved.

So anyway, he got saved. And I won't tell you then about how the revival
came after that, but I was giving this testimony. So what was really
interesting was the chairman of the board was sitting there, and that's
where I was supposed to stay that night.

So I went home and stayed there. And the next morning at breakfast, big
farm, big table, big family. And he's sitting here, and his wife's
sitting here.

And he said, now that sermon, that testimony you gave last night about
your revival, he said, you don't mean that that young man was not saved,
you just mean that he rededicated his life to the Lord. I said, no, he
wasn't saved. And he said, well, surely after all that he was really a
Christian.

I said, no, he was not really a Christian. And I happened to see his
wife, and she was looking at me going, you know, like give it to him. So
then I did.

I pushed on, and he had a bad time that morning. Anyway, I was called
back to that church a year later to do some preaching there and
teaching. And this man picked me up at the airport, and as soon as I got
in the car, he said, I have to tell you, I have to tell you how I got
saved.

He said, God really got me about that. He said, I got out on the back
40, and God really got to me. It was still during the crusade, and I got
off the tractor and got down in the dirt and cried out to God and got
saved.

A lie. Chairman of the board, living a lie. Living a lie.

Preachers do a lot of it. Over the years, you know, I've tried to go to
our national convention. There'd be 2,000 to 3,000 delegates there.

And so what would happen, of course, when you go to a national
convention, your church sends you. So your church pays for everything.
And they fly you to a city wherever it is, and they put you up in a nice
hotel, and they pay for all your meals, and you go to the national
convention.

And the reason you go to the national convention is to attend the
business sessions, and to do the business of the denomination, and to
attend the inspirational sessions in the morning and at night, and hear
men of God preach, and get your soul refreshed. I mean, that's what the
church is paying for. You got it? I said, you know, it's impolite to sit
and stare when someone asks you a question.

You get that? You got that picture? Yeah. So they bring their golf clubs
along. Now I know some of you started to hate me.

So they bring their golf clubs along, and during the business session,
which can get long, you know, during that time, two or three of them go
to the local golf course, and they play golf. And then one night during
the week while they're there, there's a major league baseball game on,
and somehow they got tickets, and so they go to that. Liars.

Thieves. Oh, you say, come on, come on, come on. No, no, no, no, I'm
talking about an approach to life.

I'm talking about an attitude of deception. And some of you really meet
God, you're going to have to pay your church back for some of that. I
was on a study commission for the Christian Missionary Alliance in
Canada.

We studied for two years the prayer habits of the pastors. And the
pastors in Canada pray an average of seven minutes a day, and I knew
pastors that prayed anywhere from one to three hours a day, and I
thought, well, there must be a whole bunch that aren't praying at all.
I'm talking about evangelical pastors.

And I want to tell you that every time that man gets in the pulpit, he
is a lie. How dare he say he's speaking for God? He hadn't even talked
to God. He has no idea what God wants him to say.

I'm talking about dishonesty among God's people. All kinds of it. We
reek with it.

If God were to strike us dead for our dishonesty, there wouldn't be any
church left because we're filled with it. People who live their lives in
compartments. When they're with the family, they're one person, and when
they're in church, they're a very different person, and then when
they're alone, they're still a different person.

Barna, who does studies of pastors in Canada and the United States, says
that 40% of pastors are into pornography on the internet. My, oh, my,
oh, my. I have spoken to a pastor's group, and I said, do you think that
40% of you sitting here in front of me are into pornography? So they're
living a lie.

Over here, even in their family, they live different than that, if they
can cover it up. Some don't even bother, but if they can cover it up. I
had a fine man come to me.

Well, I've had more than once, but I had a fine man doing a good job in
the ministry, and I knew him really well, and he came to me after we
happened to be in a conference together and great speaking, and he came
to me afterwards. Can I talk to you alone? We went away, and he said, he
said, pastor, I'm into internet pornography, and he said, at night, I
tell my wife sometimes that I need to study, and she goes on the bed,
and I go down in the basement and get on the internet. See, I, I, man,
I'd lot rather preach to you about God being enough like I did in this
pulpit Sunday morning, but I know that many of you hear my voice, and
maybe even in other cities.

I know, because, see, I'm 83, and I've been in the ministry for over 60
years, and I've counseled lots of you, and I know that the lie, that the
pretense, that the hypocrisy, that the white ad sepulcher syndrome is
out there just filling the church, and God is saying, oh, you've got to
get honest. You've got to get honest. You've got to stop this pretense.

Now, I'm too old. Nobody had had me, and I'd be stupid to do it, but if
I were to pastor again, and I've retired three times, so I've done my, I
wouldn't even take too long to do it. The first thing I do is try to get
all the falseness and lies and pretense out of the church, because I
know we couldn't do anything until we did.

You say, well, God will bless anyway. Are you kidding? He will not bless
anyway. He doesn't like it, and he can't get past it.

It's a wall. He didn't like it in the early church. Let me read you some
other statements that he said about it, and I'm going to just read them
fast without references.

If you want the references, send me an email. I promise you there's
nothing on there but cleanness. God says, further shall be done with
every trace of deceit and insincerity.

I hate all your show and pretense, the hypocrisy of your religious
festivals and solemn assemblies. I will not accept your offerings. Away
with your noisy hymns of praise.

I didn't put that in there. He said that. I will not listen to the music
of your harps.

Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, pretenders! For you swallow up widows'
houses, and for a pretense to cover it up, make long prayer. Therefore,
you will receive the greater condemnation in the heavier sentence. Just
so, you also outwardly seem to people to be just and upright, but inside
you're full of pretense and lawlessness and iniquity.

You wear a noble and pious expression in public, but God knows your evil
hearts. Your pretense brings you honor from the people, but it is an
abomination in the sight of God. God can't stomach arrogance or
pretense.

I'm reading Scripture here. Pretense. And God can't be fooled by any
pretense on our part, but always knows a person's heart.

Well, then make a clean sweep of malice and pretense, envy, and hurtful
talk. Jesus then said, I came into the world to bring everything into
the clear light of day, making all the distinctions clear, so that those
who have never seen will see, and those who have made a great pretense
of seeing will be exposed. When I was a little boy, I had lied to my
mother, and I guess I did it quite a bit of the line, and I'd lied to
her, and I was seven or eight, somewhere in there, and it was my turn to
wash the supper dishes, and I broke a glass in the dishwater and cut my
hand, and I knew it was the judgment of God.

I doubt he had anything to do with it, but I was sure. I said, oh, to
myself, this is because I lied to my mother. I went to bed and couldn't
go to sleep.

Finally, I went downstairs where mother was working on the old Singer
sewing machine, and with many tears confessed my sin and was forgiven. I
was learning early that dishonesty is a heavy burden and a terrible
trap. When David said, I said in my haste, all men are liars, he doesn't
mean just men, you know, although I know you ladies think we lie worse
than you do, but he meant people, human beings.

That's what he's talking about, and so you say, what is a liar? Well,
better still, what is a lie? I'll give you God's definition of a lie.
Leviticus 19 11, God says, do not lie, do not deceive one another. Do
not lie, do not, then he gives a definition, do not lie, do not deceive
one another.

Any effort to deceive is a lie. I don't care what kind it is. I had a
young lady say to me recently, I'm so sorry, it was about something
where she made a mistake.

She said, I'm so sorry, I lied, and I said, no, you didn't lie, and she
said, yes, I did. I said, no, you didn't. She said, what do you mean? I
said, you thought you were telling the truth.

She said, I thought so. I said, okay, you thought you were telling the
truth. You didn't intend to deceive me.

You were just mistaken. Now, why did I do that? Because I wanted her to
understand what a real lie is. She said, well then, you know, oh, well,
she was relieved.

I said, if you had intended to deceive me, that would be a lie. Now, you
lay that over your life. Liars are those who knowingly—you should write
this down—liars are those who knowingly convey untruth by word or deed.

It's an intention to deceive. My, my. Satan's, you know, Satan's
principal weapon is deceit, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely, untruth.

And he means to deceive. He intends to. Jesus said about him in John 8,
44, he said to the scribes and Pharisees, you—and they were the
religious people—you are of your father the devil, and you want to do
the desires of your father.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth,
because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks
from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. See,
that's what makes living dishonestly so terrible, because that is
Satan's thing.

He's the father of lies. His main issue is to deceive. I mean, that's
how we got in this mess in the first place, isn't it? Because the Bible
says that he actually deceived Eve.

He deceived her. And because of that, our poor sick world's in this
awful mess. He said Adam was not deceived, dirty rascal.

He was not deceived, but she was deceived. And then he just decided to
go ahead and do what was wrong. So deception, terrible thing.

If a person chooses to practice deceit, that person is choosing to
cooperate with Satan and doing Satan's work. Do human beings practice
deceit? Oh, yes, they do. Even from the birth, the wicked go astray.

From the womb, they are wayward and speak lies. Let me just mention a
few liars. In 1915, the renowned scientist declared the so-called
piltdown man irrefutable evidence of the missing link.

They had a missing link in their heads. The missing link between man and
ape, even though it turned out to be a clumsy concoction made from the
skull of a medieval Englishman and the jawbone of an orangutan. Boy,
that's a combination.

Hitler never wrote his diaries. Nostradamus didn't have a clue about the
future. Bill Clinton really did have sexual relations with that woman.

And John Edwards did have an affair and still ran for president,
declaring that he did not. And now all the world knows it. We were in a
revival with the Souters in Manitoba, and we went down the street for an
afterglow and had two great big circles and a chair in the middle.

And Ralph said, now, if God was really speaking to you tonight, you come
and sit in the chair and some men will gather around you and pray with
you. They were great times. I mean, if you missed it, I feel sorry for
you.

And I say, do it again, please, God. Anyway, there we were. The
conviction of God was heavy.

And a man came and sat down in the chair and confessed his sin, and he
needed help. And three men gathered around him, and one of them prayed,
and the second started to pray. Right in the middle of his prayer, he
stopped and said, oh, God has just shown me that's my problem.

And then he began to weep and confess his sin and get right with God. We
got that man done, and before we get another man up there in the second
row of the circle back here, a man stood up. He said, I've been a deacon
for 15 years, and I'm not even sure I'm saved.

Great times when the Holy Spirit just cut through the pretense right to
the heart. And people, how many people got right with God? There's a
terrible, terrible scripture in the Bible. Not sure what to do with it,
so I'll give it to you, and you'll figure it out.

It says, all liars shall have their place in the lake of burning sulfur.
This is the second death. So I don't know, you work that theology out
for yourself.

Even Christians are very deceived and deceive others. What about Ananias
and Sapphira? Ah, we're talking about the early church right in the
midst of a blazing revival. Greatest revival went on for 300 years.

And Acts 5, verse 1, but a certain man named Ananias with his wife
Sapphira sold a piece of property and kept back some of the price for
himself with his wife's full knowledge. And bringing a portion of it, he
laid it at the apostles' feet. Now Barnabas had done that and brought
the money and gave it, you know, and I guess, and there were other
people, the Bible says other people were doing the same, so that there
was money to meet all the needs.

He had extra property, and they sold it and brought the money. So it was
a good thing. And Ananias and Sapphira did this.

But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the
Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land while it
remained unsold? Did it not remain in your own hand? It's up to you what
you wanted to do with it. And after it was sold, was it not under your
control? You could do what you wanted to with the money. It was yours.

But why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have
not lied to men. He thought he was lying to Peter because he said this
was the whole thing. It wasn't that God wanted him to bring the whole
thing.

It's just that he said it was the whole thing because he was trying to
appear spiritual. And he said, you haven't lied to men but to God. And
as he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last.

And great fear came upon all who heard it. And the young men arose and
covered him up. And after carrying him out, they buried him.

Now there lapsed an interval of about three hours. And his wife came in
not knowing what had happened. And Peter said to her, tell me whether
you sold the land for such and such a price? And she said, yes that was
a price.

And Peter said to her, why is it that you have agreed together to put
the spirit of the Lord to the test? Behold the feet of those who have
buried your husband are at the door. And they shall carry you out. And
she fell immediately at his feet and breathed her last.

And the young men came in and found her dead. And they carried her out
and buried her beside her husband. And great fear came upon the whole
church and upon all who heard these things.

You think God doesn't care? See God, there's two things about God that
we forget. One is he loves the church. It's his bride, right? And he
wants it without spot or wrinkle or any such thing.

He doesn't want it full of deception. He wants it to be true to him. He
doesn't want it full of lies and pretense.

And he doesn't want that because he wants it for his bride. And I was
fortunate to be married to the best woman God ever made for 60 years.
And I never had to worry about her one time that she would do be
unfaithful to me.

And she never had to worry about it with me. People said to her, your
husband travels all over the place preaching. He's gone, you know.

Don't you ever worry about it? She said, never. Isn't that great? Well,
that's the way God feels about his church. Christ feels that way about
his church.

He doesn't want his church out there committing adultery with the world.
And in fact, the word of God says, you adulterers and adulteresses,
don't you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? And
that's why the Holy Spirit yearns to jealousy over you. Why? Because God
loves you, church.

He loves you, loves you, loves you. And he wants you to be true to him.
And he wants to embrace you and have you as his bride.

And he doesn't want you out there playing around with somebody else. So,
well, I really have to get going here, I think. Why do people lie? Well,
I'm going to give you just a few, you know, that are obvious.

People lie for self-exaltation. Ananias and Sapphira lied because they
wanted to appear extra spiritual in the eyes of the people in the
church. Simple.

And God said, I won't have any of it and struck them dead. See, we say,
why is it that, oh boy, should I say this? Well, in the communion
service, you know, in the communion service, it says, you know, that
people don't understand the body of Christ and how God feels about it.
And that's why some are sick and even dead.

Now, please, I'm reluctant to say that because there's a lot of people
sick and a lot of people die that haven't sinned against God. Okay. I
mean, we live in a bad world and we're all going to die, right? Oh, come
on.

Are you? You do plan to die. Well, you will, whether you plan it or not.
I mean, that's just the way it is.

But self-exaltation. Second reason that people lie is for personal gain
or power. Jacob lied and deceived his brother and almost got killed for
it.

He tried—Laban deceived him, so he turned around and tried to deceive
Laban. That's the silliest thing in the whole Bible, is him taking those
pieces of wood and cutting stripes and spots in them and putting them in
front of the sheep. You say, well, it worked.

No, it didn't work. Go back and read it, and you'll find out that it
says very clearly that God did it. But anyway, there was Jacob, you
know.

People lie on their income tax to save money. They lie about a product
to sell it and make more money. Boy, do they do that.

Mortgage companies deceive home buyers. Investment brokers lie to their
customers and lose their entire life savings, and it doesn't bother
them. Companies like Enron lose everything people have.

The entire TV advertising is one vast demonstration of exaggeration,
cover-up, and false comparisons. It is the worst lying mess I have ever
seen—the advertising on television. Have you ever noticed—I don't have
time, but I'm tempted to do this—have you ever noticed the
advertisements for automobile insurance? How could anybody be stupid
enough to believe it? They must think we're all just idiots, and maybe
we are.

I don't know. Maybe people believe it. But I mean, here's an insurance
company, and they all do exactly the same thing.

They all say, now if you'll switch to us, we can save you about $400 a
year, right? And then the next one says exactly the same thing, and the
next one says exactly the same thing, and on and on it goes. It's just
hilarious. In fact, they'll do it within a few minutes of each other.

And I said, well, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go and
switch to one of them and save $400, and then after a little while, I'm
going to go switch to another one and save another $400, and then I'm
going to switch to another one and save $400, and eventually my auto
insurance won't cost me anything, right? How could anybody be stupid
enough to believe that stuff? Politicians lie. That's their life and
breath.

They say what they think you want to hear. Boy, are we going through it
in the United States right now. It's awful.

The president, the new president, trying to choose people to run certain
aspects of his government, and he gets this man just about all approved,
and somebody finds out the guy hasn't been paying his income tax for
years. They even, he even tried to get one guy to handle the finances
who hadn't paid his income tax. Utter total disregard for honesty of any
kind.

People lie about their personal qualifications to get a larger salary.
When I was a pastor in Florida, the seniors there who went to play
shuffleboard with each other that were singles lied to each other,
deceived each other about how much money they had because they were
trying to find somebody to marry who had more money than they did. I'm
not kidding, and the divorce rate there was the highest among seniors
because they would get deceived and marry somebody thinking they had
money, and then they didn't, and they divorced him.

Then they'd try somebody else that thought I had money, and the divorce
rate went up among seniors. Nice, nice, nice. I was in a plane.

I think I was flying to Ecuador, and there was a businessman sitting
next to me could speak who knows how many languages. He was a sales
representative, and we got talking, and he was from Argentina, and at
that time, Argentina was financially in collapse. It was in terrible
shape, and I said to him, well, you're from Argentina.

What is the problem in Argentina that makes it in that mess? And he was
not a Christian at all, and he said, that's simple. Everyone in
Argentina lies and cheats and steals. The assessment of an ungodly
businessman.

Well, people lie because of fear. You've already heard in one of the
messages here, very well presented to you, Abraham's lies, and he did it
twice. If I was Sarah, I would have clobbered him after the first time
if he tried it again.

I mean, Abraham was a great man of God. Amen? You don't know. Abraham
was a great man of God.

Do you believe that? He was, and he did that. You say, well, the church
doesn't need this sermon. Yes, it does.

Abraham needed it. Too bad he didn't get it before his second lie, and
those pagans, what did they think of him and his gods? He lied. Jacob,
of course, he had a bunch of lies, and then he did the same thing with
his wife, the grandson.

Lies, same thing. Exactly. King David married and promised before God
and man that he would be true and never commit adultery.

You know, he'd be true, and then he went out and committed adultery with
Bathsheba, and so that made his marriage a lie, and it made the
relationship with Bathsheba a lie because there was no marriage. So it
was a lie, and then he called her husband home, Uriah, to try to cover
it up and say, well, I'll get him to come home right away, and he'll
sleep with her, and then he'll think it's his child. But he was more
righteous than David, and he wouldn't go in and sleep with his wife.

He even got him drunk the second night trying to get him in there. He
said, no. He said all the men, he was an officer, and he said all the
men under me are out sleeping in the field at war.

I'm not going in there and enjoy my wife. That's wrong. And then David
had him murdered.

A lie, lie, lie, lie. Oh, the tangled web we weave when first we
practice to deceive. Gehazi.

You remember Naaman the leper? And Naaman was a great general under the
king of Assyria, and they made raids into Israel, and they took captives
and made them slaves. And in his household, his wife had a little girl
slave, and she should have been full of bitterness. Probably her parents
had been murdered.

And there she was, and her master got leprosy, and there was no hope for
that. He would—eventually his body would just rot to pieces, and he'd
die. And she said to her mistress, I wish that he were with the prophet
in Israel, because he would cure him of his leprosy.

Wow. What would you preachers do if a member of your congregation said
to somebody dying with cancer, I wish you could go see my pastor,
because he'd pray for you, and you'd get healed. Man, you'd be scared
spitless.

I'll tell you what, in revival, in revival, I saw people get healed,
didn't even ask for it, because God was there. He was there, and he was
flowing through the body of Jesus Christ. He was flowing through the
body.

One night, they were in an afterglow, and all night—often all-night
meetings—they're in this all-night meeting, and the Baptist pastor's
wife had a heart attack. And they called for an ambulance, like they
should have, and then somebody said, well, why don't we pray for her?
Oh, what an original thought. So some men gathered around him, they laid
their—her and laid their hands on her, and they started to pray that God
would heal her.

And she was—she rose up, and she said, no, I don't believe in—and she
said it was like a hand went across her chest, and God healed her
completely, instantly. You see, we say, why doesn't the church have all
these miracles? Because the church is not like it was in the book of
Acts. It's not—God didn't change, the Holy Spirit didn't change,
miracles haven't changed, it's just that we have changed.

If we were clean and filled with the Spirit as a church, and God's Holy
Spirit was flowing through us, and the love and power of Christ was
flowing through the body without all these interruptions and clogs up,
if that were happening, we would see miracles of all kinds. So, well,
the Bible is full of lies. Now don't misinterpret that.

But the Bible tells about many people who lied. Anyway, so Naaman, the
king, his king sent him to the king of Israel, and sent him a note
saying, now when Naaman, my servant, gets there, please heal him of his
leprosy. And the poor king, he tore his clothes and said, he's trying to
start a war with me.

And Elisha said, send him to me, and he'll know there is a prophet in
Israel. And so he did. And you know the story how he went down seven
times, and he got healed, and then he was so thrilled, you know, and he
wanted to give money to the prophet.

I've had that happen and said, no, no, no, no, it burned my fingers, go
away. No, and he said, no, no, no, it was God, not me. Amen? Sure.

And so he leaves, and Gehazi, the assistant pastor, he says, that's not
right. I need a new suit. Watch it.

And so he took off and stopped the chariot, and he said, you know, you
realize that Elisha wouldn't take anything, but he said, since you left,
there have been some young Bible college students come through, and they
need some clothes and a little money to live on and all. And he just
lied, and lied, and lied. He really had a good imagination.

And of course, amen, sure. And he gave him a bunch of clothes and money
and everything, and he took it back and hid it, and he went in and said
to the senior pastor, got anything for me to do today? And he said,
where have you been? Oh, he lied again, said, I haven't been anywhere.
Watch it.

You're getting in deep, buddy. And he said, didn't my spirit go with you
when you stopped the man's chariot? Is this a time to buy or sell or to
get gain? He said, the leprosy of Naaman will cling to you and your
family as long as you live. And he went out from his presence covered
with leprosy.

So you say, well, you're just picking your straws. God doesn't care
about that stuff. God cares about that stuff because it hinders his
mercy.

It hinders his salvation. It hinders him saving lost people who are
falling into hell right now. And that's why God cares about it.

In our day, parents lie to their children. Oh, good grief, how they lie
to their children. A little girl said to me, my father is a liar.

And I discovered she was right. Parents promise their children things.
Parents threaten their children.

Ever hear parents say, if you do that again, I'm going to do whatever,
you know, and then they do it again. They say, well, if you do that
again, I'm really going to thrash you. And then they do it again.

They say, if you do it, are you kidding? My father never even said, if
you do it again. To the woodshed, the old razor strap, boy, razor straps
are awful things. You know, he shaved with a straight razor and they
sharpened it on a big piece of a big leather strap.

You ever seen one of those? Oh, man. He didn't threaten me ever.
Judgment fell.

I knew I didn't have any second chances. Oh, my parents who promise
children things and don't do it, who lie in front of their children
because they don't think it'd be good for the children to know what
they're talking about. All kinds of lies.

They tell, deceive their children, and then they wonder why their
children are deceitful. Marriages, oh, my. Husbands and wives deceive
each other.

Hide things, cover up. I don't just mean adultery. That's awful, and
that's there all in the church.

But, I mean, all kinds of stuff. You know, one of the hard things for me
at this point in life is, I want to go tell Anita. I just, you know, I
was thinking the other day, when I get home from this meeting, I want to
tell her that I saw so-and-so.

I can't tell her because we we love to tell each other, talk to each
other, share with each other. Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Was
I mistaken? No. Oh, they hide money.

Man, tell me that. Oh, he said, I've got all these big savings accounts
I never tell my wife about. She doesn't even know I've got it.

I said, well, don't you share your money? He says, no, we have our own
checking accounts and our own savings, and you're kidding. Why would you
do that? See, when my wife went to be with the Lord, there's no problem
about anything inheritance or anything. I mean, we had wills, but we
both owned everything.

So, mistrust, lies, deceit, cover up. When is the liar not a liar? When
he tells the truth. When is the thief not a thief? When he works, it
says in Ephesians, for laboring with his hand so he'll have something to
give to other people.

That's when he stops being a thief. Well, I've got to wind this down
very quick. What shall I give you before I quit? Oh, my goodness.

I'll give you this. Ephesians 4.15. In Ephesians 4.15, we read, Let our
lives lovingly express truth in all things, speaking truly, dealing
truly, living truly. Speaking truly, how are you? It's none of your
business.

You couldn't care less how I am. Lying and deceiving with our words
becomes a habit. Best place to break a habit is in the middle.

Stop speaking. Say that you're lying to the person you're talking to and
ask them to forgive you. You'll quit fairly soon.

Dealing truly, make a list of all the places in your life where you are
not acting in absolute honesty. Confession or restitution may need to be
made. They had headlines in the newspapers in 71 because people were
going to the stores and the businesses making things right, paying
debts.

I mean, it was so common they had it in the newspapers. People getting
things right, dealing truly. You know one thing that bugs me? To hear TV
preachers who really preach good solid Bible call the named cost a gift
so you can have a receipt for your income tax.

You crooks, liars. Not a gift. You send a gift of $50 and we'll send you
this set of tapes.

And because it's a gift, you get a receipt for your income tax. No
wonder the government wants to cut us off. We're a bunch of liars,
cheaters, churches that raise money by questionable means.

A bunch of young people wanting to go to a big gathering that the
Christian Missionary Alliance calls life down in the United States, and
they'll have 10,000 teenagers there. So they're having cake sales and
had a day when everybody brought in their junk, you know, a rummage
sale. Yeah, rummage sale.

Say, did you go? Are you kidding? I wouldn't be caught dead. You say,
why not? Well, two reasons. Number one, that's not the way to get money
for God's work.

And number two, it's crooked because they don't pay tax because it's a
church. There's no sales tax. There's no income tax.

There's nothing but the guy down the street trying to make a living. He
has to pay tax on it, doing the same thing. And it's crooked and it's
illegal and we do it all the time.

You say, well, how do you raise money? No problem. Just preach the word,
say this is what we need, and the money comes in. And I mean it does.

We had to build a new church building, Campbell River. I think we got it
paid for in about five years. It was 3.2 million and should have taken
25 years, I guess, but it didn't.

So, well, I better stop. Paul confronted Peter. Remember when Peter put
on a pretense because he was afraid to eat with the Gentiles when the
Christians came from Jerusalem? And Paul said, that's wrong.

You're a hypocrite. He was there. Amish hypocrisy.

My son is in business and he does business with Amish and they're
wonderful people, just wonderful people. And I've learned to like them
and everything. And boy, do they make good ice cream.

Wonderful stuff. And they're moral, decent, wonderful people. And I've
talked to their preachers about things of God and all, you know.

But they aren't allowed to own certain businesses because that
particular business uses electricity, you know, for whatever it has to
do. So, what they do is they have, they call them Englishmen, they have
a Gentile, somebody who's not Amish, actually own the business legally.
But everybody knows it belongs to them.

It sounds like the Bible. Pharisees. I mean, I talked to him about it
openly.

I remember sitting in the car talking to this guy. He said, you know,
you're right. Well, this is it.

This is the last thing I'm going to say. A desert nomad woke up in the
middle of the night and was hungry, so he lit a candle and began eating
dates from a bowl he had there. At his first bite, he saw a worm in the
date.

In disgust, he threw it out. He got another date and there was a worm in
it, and he threw that out. Then he blew out the candle and ate the rest
of the dates.

Oh my, oh God. Oh, I'm trying to light a candle. Okay, don't blow it
out, please.

Don't blow it out. Deal with the worms. Get honest with yourself about
your own spiritual condition and your church.

Get honest with God about it. Get honest with people about it. Get in
the open.

I'll tell you what, you'll have a peace and joy and freedom you've never
dreamed of, and it's a step toward revival. Let's take it. Now I'm going
to close in prayer.

Right across the hall, there's a prayer room set up, and we have chairs
set up there, and we've done it purposely so you can have a quiet place
to pray away from everybody. And in a moment, we're going to bow our
heads. We're not going to sing or anything.

If God's talked to you and you just say, hey, right now I really need to
get along with God for a little bit and talk to him about this, then
that's great. There's a place to go do it as long as you want to or need
to, okay? Nobody is going to, like you know what you need to do, and if
you don't know how to make restitution, Ralph Soutera has written it all
out. You can get it from the Canadian Revival Fellowship.

Let's bow our heads. Close our eyes. I'm going to take about one minute,
and if you want to go there and pray, nobody's looking around.

You just get up and quietly go across the hall to the prayer room and
spend whatever time you want to with God. You've only got a minute, so.
Now, Lord, you and I had a lot of discussions about this one, but of
course you're right.

Now, everyone who's been hearing this here in this auditorium and
anywhere in the world, please, in your mercy and love, let your Holy
Spirit put the arms of Christ around that person and draw them to a
place of confession and prayer and surrender. I pray in Jesus' name,
amen.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/_hQ_lUjjQcI.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/richard-sipley/a-revival-of-honesty/
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