I found this illustration in a book I was reading in regards to what we're going to be talking about tonight. This book I was reading said this about the word sincere. It comes from the Latin word sincerus. And the prefix in Latin, sine, or sin, means without, and sere means wax. According to legend, some unscrupulous old world potters made expensive looking clay pots by using an inferior clay that did not have all of the small rocks sifted out. When a pot was finished, these pebbles would fall out, creating indentations on the surface. Rather than reforming the pot, the potter would fill the defects with wax and paint over them. When the pots were used over a flame, of course, the wax melted and ran out. The pot the merchants wrote whose products were made with superior clay and therefore wrote on the base of their pots thin syrup or without wax or Since they were sincere in their honesty and making that pot Well tonight as we continue our godly character series. I like to focus on the quality of being sincere sincere a sincere person is somebody that who has an honest heart before the Lord and other people. And in our passage, we see some helpful thoughts in the significance of sincerity. If you found Psalm 15, we're going to look at the whole chapter or the whole Psalm tonight, just five verses. But it says, Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart, he that backbiteth not with his tongue, nor doth evil to his neighbor, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor, in whose eyes a vile person is condemned, but he honoreth them that fear the Lord, he that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not, He that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent, he that doeth these things shall never be moved. The crux of what we're going to be talking about tonight is actually just at the end of verse 2, but we'll see how it coincides with the rest of this psalm. It says here, And speaketh the truth in his heart. It speaks of sincerity, and tonight we're going to talk about that as far as being sincere. Let's go ahead and have a word of prayer first. Father, we thank you for tonight, and Lord, we thank you for the privilege it is to serve you, and Lord, we pray that we can learn how important it is to be sincere, that you look upon the sincerity of the heart as a major component as you deal with us and bless us and guide us, Lord God. We don't want to be hypocritical. but we want to be sincere. Help us to be that way. In Jesus name, Amen. Webster defines sincerity as honesty of mind or intention, freedom from simulation or hypocrisy. Now simulation is we get the word stimulator from it. You know what a stimulator is? It projects something that's not necessarily real, but it puts on a show, if you would. And that's what stimulation is. It's just putting on a show. And a sincere person does not put on a show or isn't hypocritical. They display an honesty of mind or intention in everything that they do. A sincere person, in essence, is somebody who is the same on the outside as they are on the inside. Because they have a genuineness about them that communicates they are truly what they claim to be. And that's what we want to be, is sincere people. I mean, being the real deal. You know, we had some guests here, I suppose that's been a week ago, it's hard to believe that it goes by so fast, but you know, we've had a guest speaker in here now for six years on prayer. He's one of the most sincere men I know. We've had four ladies singing up here last week. They're some of the most sincerest people that I know. Why? They just want to please the Lord. Now, are they perfect? By no means. And they would be the first to tell you that. But they are genuine, sincere people. And we've had a lot of people who have visited us and preached out of this pulpit are saying that they have the same kind of heart. That's the kind of people I try to bring in. It's people who are genuinely sincere and desire to please the Lord. And they can help us and encourage us to be the same. Again, sincere people aren't perfect, but they genuinely desire to want to please God. That's what they want to do. They just from a heart just say, you know, I just want to please the Lord. That's my goal. Now they sometimes fail and of course they sometimes sin just like we all do, but their goal is that when they do sin, they just get things right. They confess it before God or whoever they need to get right with and they take responsibility. Boy, that's a word that we don't want. want in this society anymore, taking responsibility for our actions. But that's the sincere person, though they will take responsibility. Why? Because they want to please the Lord. And if they haven't pleased the Lord in something, they'll take responsibility to make things right instead of hiding their sin and blame shifting. And we've got a lot of blame shifting that goes on in this day and age. Well, it wasn't my fault. It was my dad's fault. It was my mom's fault. It was society's fault. It was this people group's fault. No! Sincere people don't blame shift. They take responsibility for what they know they're supposed to be doing, regardless of what anybody else does, because their goal is to please the Lord. There are so many Bible examples of people who were sincere though. I think of David, he probably was one of the top people God mentions as having a heart of sincerity. In fact, well after he died in the book of Acts, we see in Acts 13 verse 22, Paul making a reference to David and what God called him. And I think most of us have heard this before. It says, And when he had removed him, he raised up unto him David to be their king, to whom also he gave testimony, and said, I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after my own heart, which shall fulfill all my will. I would say that David had a very sincere heart, didn't he? He was extremely sincere. And as you read the pages of Scripture where it expounds upon David's life, there's no doubt that he was sincere. Now again, he wasn't perfect. He made his mistakes. Aren't you glad it wasn't your life that was put in the pages of Scripture as open as David's was? Amen to that. So we can't give David's fault. He made his mistakes, but overall, God said he had a heart for me. He was sincere. He wanted to please the Lord. He was the king by which all other kings were judged, and only a few actually attained to the quality David had. One, of course, we've seen here recently in recent messages is that king Josiah, the last good king of Judah. And we saw that this is what God says of him in 2 Kings 23, 25. And like unto him was there no king before him that turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might according to all the law of Moses, neither after him arose there any like him. He was very unique because he was very sincere. He had a tender heart for God. And it played out in his life. He was genuine and he was real. These men and other men, and of course women in Scripture, honestly desire to do right and please God. And if there is anything that needs to be found in a born-again Christian, it is honest sincerity. I say that again. If there is anything that needs to be found in a born-again Christian, it's an honest sincerity. An honest sincerity. The worst thing that we can be as a born-again Christian is a hypocrite. That is an ugly word to be called a hypocrite. You and I do not want to have hypocrisy in our lives, because hypocrisy is the opposite of sincerity. The word hypocrite comes from the Greek word hypokrites, If I'm saying that right, my Greek scholarship is coming out here. Hoopoecrite. You hoopoecrite. You may start calling people that. You hoopoecrite. Hypocrite is a little easier to say. But the word hoopoecrite means an actor, a stage player, a pretender. And that's what a hypocrite is. They're pretending to be something that they're not. You know, Jesus really came down on the Pharisees about this. The religious leaders of that day. In fact, if you read Matthew 23, there are several strong rebukes by God, the Lord Jesus Christ, towards the hypocritical Pharisees. This is one of those woes he pronounced against them. He said, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whitened sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead man's bones, and of all uncleanness. Here Jesus pointed out that these people appeared to be a certain way. They appeared really spiritual. They appeared beautiful in regards to the religious garb they wore, the way they could pronounce things ecclesiastically. They had that special tone of voice that you occasionally hear. They probably pronounced gold like gold and that kind of stuff. They knew how to put on a show. They knew the right things to say, at the right period of time, right in the right spot. But Jesus said, what's really inside those, you're dead men. They were lost, number one. But what was on the inside was not reflective of what was on the outside. They were completely two different people, if you would. A show side and then the inside was a lot different. Of course, it was that group that would eventually crucify the Lord Jesus Christ. What really is on the inside eventually comes out, by the way. It eventually comes out in one form or another. Again, they appeared a certain way, but they weren't genuine at all. And certainly Christianity has within it, it's hypocrite. They come to church and they look holy. They know how to say the right words. They know how to go through the motions to make it look good. But the minute they leave the facility, if you would, they're a totally different person. They're a totally different person. They don't talk the same. They don't act the same. They don't look much more different than the world itself. And you wouldn't even know that they were a born-again Christian. Why does that happen? It's primarily because a hypocrite tends to be stuck on themselves. They're self-centered people, is what it is. It's selfishness. What it is, is they don't have a heart for God. They have a heart for themselves. It's all about what they can get for themselves instead of how they can please the Lord. It's a heart problem. Big time heart problem. Jesus called it out in Matthew 15 verses 7-8. You hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips. But their heart is far from me. Their heart is far. You know, God knows where their heart is. and it's not with Him. Oh, they may come to church and they may go through the motions, they may say the right things, they may do certain things, but God knows that it's not real. It's not real within their own hearts. Why? Because within, there's more of a love for self than there is for the Savior. They appear before certain crowds the way they think that crowd wants them to behave. They're people pleasers. Image keepers. But the thing is, they will always get caught at some junction in our life, caught up in their own hypocrisy. And they shame themselves and embarrass themselves. Because it always comes out. You can't hide forever. It always comes out somehow. God will make sure of that, especially if they're saved, because God wants to teach us He does not accept the hypocrisy. He's not pleased with it. And we can run to the ends of the earth, but God is not pleased, because God wants genuineness. God wants sincerity within our hearts. Not to mention, too, the hypocrite tends to get caught up in minuscule details of little value because they are often failing in bigger issues. Matthew 23, 23 says, "...Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin..." In other words, they get so nitpicky on the littlest of things and so forth, "...and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. Be that you have done, not to leave the other undone. When they say forget about the judgment, mercy, and faith side, let's talk about tidying that little bit you missed out on. The hypocrite focuses on the most minuscule things, the most ridiculous of things, the things that really in the whole scheme of things doesn't make that big of a difference compared to some of the weightier things. I've had people get on my case about some of that stuff before. It's like You know, well, you know, you have this wrong with your church, you know, and it's just like this stuff is so silly. It's so silly. But they themselves, not a soul winner, don't pray, you know, can't be faithful in the house of God. You know, it's just one thing right after another. And it's like, hypocrite, you know. Hypocrite we that's a hypocrite. They're usually nitpicking while they're you know, they're straining at mass while they swallow camels That's usually what happens making mountains out of molehills Because what they're trying to do is focus our attention on the little thing so you don't look at what the big thing they're not doing big things usually And it's it's sad but it happens and We don't want to be a hypocrite by any means. Tonight we want to be sincere people who can, from an honest, upright heart, please the Lord, instead of being a hypocritical one whose sole focus is on the self-centered agenda or the self-centered goals of life. First off, as we look into our passage tonight, I want to talk about the fact that a sincere person will have a spiritual closeness. Now in our text, the psalmist writes about a sincere person in so many words. What we'll see as we study this. But in verse 2 again, I want to point out, it says, "...he that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart." He speaketh the truth in his heart. The sincere person speaks truth in his heart, or her heart, and of course backs that thing up with right actions, as we're going to see in a little bit. But what does this bring about? Well, verse 1, "...Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle?" Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? It's the person who speaks truth in their heart. That's where it starts. These are questions regarding how can somebody be close to God? How can somebody be close to God? The rest of the psalm, as we'll see, describes a sincere person who strives to do right in some specific areas and so forth. But it starts with the person who speaks truth in the heart. That's where it all starts. Everything starts within here. And God loves sincerity in our hearts because God Again, he sees what is genuinely inside of us. And that's what he's paying attention to most importantly. Because when the heart's right, everything on the outward will come out right. When the heart's not right, then things don't go right on the outward, no matter how much of a show somebody tries to put on. Back when Samuel was called to find a replacement king for Saul, and of course would go and anoint David, if you remember the story, he went to the house of Jesse there, and Jesse had a number of sons. Of course, the oldest three looked kingish, I guess. They were tall, probably handsome, probably looked the part, but God didn't select any of them, did he? And Samuel, I think, was scratching his head a little bit, like, you know, what's the deal, Lord? And the Lord gave him an insight on what he was looking for, first and foremost. 1 Samuel 16, 7, But the Lord said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature, because I have refused him. For the Lord seeth not as a man seeth. For a man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. You know, in our society, it's all about what you can perform on the outward, and how you look on the outward, and that's all it's about. how much talent you have. But God is looking for a person first and foremost with a heart for him. He is looking at the heart. He is looking at the real person on the inside. Because the real person on the inside is what is going to come out in the circumstances and situations of life. Hence God sees who we are truly all the time because he's constantly looking at that spot. Hebrews 4.13 says, neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. In other words, God is seeing everything. God saw our bad attitudes this week. God saw all the things that we've done. And you know what's crazy? He loves us despite that. But at the same time, too, He wants our hearts to be sincerely seeking Him. And God desires to be close to those who have a sincere heart, that genuinely want to do right for no other reason than a sincere love for Him. Can I ask you tonight, do we have a sincere love for God? I mean, if God could open up your heart What would come out of it? Legitimately? Would you say there's a sincere love for Him in there? There is a genuineness for Him? Or is it, well, only if it's convenient. Only if I don't have to suffer for it. None of us do, but you know what I mean by that. What's really in there? And when we do wrong, do we humbly acknowledge the sin and seek to get things right between him and others? You know, a sincere heart, a sincere person will have a spirit and attitude that will come out of him or her. And it'll be real. I think of what Paul said In Acts 24, verse 16, he says, Herein do I exercise myself to have always a conscience, a heart, if you would, void of offense toward God and toward men. You'd say Paul was pretty sincere, wasn't he? He wanted to maintain his sincerity, and it just kind of came out of him. Sincere people, it just kind of comes out of them. And they don't have to put on a show. It's just natural. You can just see it in their heart. You can see it in their countenance. You can see it in the way they handle themselves. It just kind of naturally comes out. It just seeps out, and that's the way it's supposed to. When we have to tell everyone how sincere we are, it just goes to show we aren't sincere, right? We should never have to. It'll just naturally do it itself. And if we look at a cross-section of spiritual heroes all throughout the scripture, every one of those, what we would call a success, so to say, they all have this common trait. They had a sincere heart. They were sincere people. In some cases, they probably lacked in talent and ability and a lot of other things, but it made up a lot of it through their sincerity of their heart and their desire to want to please God, and God just made up the rest. And it's the same for the valuable characters as it is for us today. Again, they weren't hypocritical people. And that resulted in them having a spiritual closeness to God. Hey, if we want to be close to God, that's not beyond anybody's reach tonight. Every single person here tonight can be close to God. You can be close to God. I can be close to God. God doesn't have favorite sons and daughters. He wants everyone to be close to Him. The make or break is that there are some that are sincerely wanting that, and there are some that are not. Because they're sincerely stuck on something self-centered. Something, whatever it is, is taking their heart away. Again, this isn't beyond anybody's reach. It simply means, though, we need to have a sincere heart that has decided it wants to please Him in every area of life. And what results from it is just a natural closeness. It's just a natural closeness. How could it not? You know what I mean? It's like one of those self-evident truths. If you want to be close to God, have a sincere heart to want to be close to Him. There's an old preacher that was with the Lord, went to Israel with Him years ago. I remember I heard him preach a few times, and he always said this, You know, you and I are as good of a Christian as we want to be. See, I'm not a very good Christian. That's your own choice. That is your own choice. If your spiritual life is in the toilet, it's because you put it in there. It wasn't the church's fault. It wasn't the church member's fault. It wasn't society's fault. It wasn't anybody's fault but yours. Or mine. A sincere Christian says, I just want to be right with God. I'm just going to do everything I can. You just kind of naturally grow close to God. I don't know. It just kind of happens. There will be a spiritual closeness. Secondly, a selfless compassion. What's the result of a sincere heart? That spiritual closeness will manufacture a selfless compassion for other people. Look at verses 3-5. He that backbites not with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his neighbor, nor taketh up a reproach against his neighbor, and whose eye is a vile person, is condemned." In other words, they're not going to go along with those who are against the Lord. They're not going to go with those who are adamantly against Christ and against His principles. But He's going to honor those who fear the Lord. In other words, they're going to hang out with people that are God-fearing, and they're going to respect those people way more. says, "...he that sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not." In other words, even if it hurts themselves, rather they hurt than others. "...he that putteth not out his money to usury, nor taketh reward against the innocent." What you see here are a lot of things that they do for the benefit of another. Right? The sincere person will be others conscious. Their goal will be the well-being of others over themselves instead of constantly demanding their rights and privileges. Their goal is not to hurt anybody, but help in any way that they can. Be that blessing, even at times at the expense of self. And if you're going to be a blessing to others, it will cost you some things of self to be put by the wayside. We have to remember that the root of hypocrisy is selfishness. It is selfishness. A person doing what they think people want them to do so that person can attain something they want from somebody else. That's what's going on with a hypocrite. A person doing what they think other people want them to do so that that person can gain or attain something they want from somebody else. A lot of times it's some sort of inner emotional need, acceptance, or maybe it's some kind of positional gain or material or financial gain. But usually it's some sort of inner emotional need that they're trying to get other people to meet. And I spent a whole series at the beginning of this year dealing with the fact that God is our need meter, not people. God is our need meter. That is the greatest thing you and I can ever learn. I'm disappointed in my spouse. Well, guess what? It's because God needs to meet your needs, not your spouse. I'm disappointed in my whatever. God is your need meter. He meets your needs. You can meet the needs of others. We need Him to do that. But the hypocrite isn't getting their inner emotional needs met by God. They're getting it met by attaining things or getting recognized or being popular or cool or anything like that. And you know what's funny is that they're even still at that point not getting their inner emotional needs met. Usually their hole is getting bigger, their black hole that they're trying to fill. The sincere person, though, recognizes that God has sufficient means to meet those needs and seeks Him to do so. And when God does, and He will, they are free to express selfless compassion to other people. We all have needs that need to be met. Only God's got the sufficient resources to meet those needs. And maybe tonight, if you are feeling a hole in your heart, maybe you need to start asking God, God, can you meet my needs? And He will. He'll meet your need for love and acceptance and self-worth and purpose and hope and all those other things we dealt with here a few months back. Because when He meets your needs, then it's very easy to be selfless and compassionate. But you have to have a sincere desire for Him. You have to have a sincere desire to chase after Him and seek Him. This selfless compassion was the attitude of Jesus Christ. We see this in Philippians 2 verses 3-5. It says, Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in loneliness of mind. Let each esteem the other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus. That selfless attitude for others. The sincere person will become other-centered and desire again their well-being. The hypocrite actually is using others. Do you realize that? The hypocrite is actually using others to get something from them and cares very little for the other person's well-being. That's what the hypocrite is doing. When a born-again Christian is a consistent hypocrite, I believe they are showing some of the worst forms of selfishness. Think through this for a moment. Because they refuse to be a genuine testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, they trip others up from seeing their need of salvation. Because the lost person looks at that person and says, they don't live any different than I do. What do they have that I don't already chase? And they're a stumbling block to the unsaved. They are a stumbling block. They trip others up from seeing their need of salvation because the Christian is more consumed with being accepted by that person than that person's soul. That's why I said it's one of the greatest forms of selfishness we're talking about. I just want to be accepted by them. Yeah, who's benefit are you looking out for? Theirs or yours? Not theirs. What you're doing is you're using their eternity-bound soul to please some need your soul is seeking after. Yeah, that's not good, is it? It's pretty bad. Considering the long-term consequences of this, it's horrible. It's like, oh boy, yeah. If a person doesn't get saved, what happens to them? The pages of scripture speak of an eternity in a place that the Bible refers to as hell. Which is beyond the description. Anything we can really describe, but all we know is that it's bad. It's bad. And the hypocrite is the stumbling stone that often throws them over or can throw them over because they weren't a true friend or a true loved one who truly cared about them. Jesus mentioned this about the hypocrite in Matthew 23, verse 13. But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men, for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. They were tripping people up because of their religious facade. And they were tripping people up from getting into eternal life. But I might lose my friendship with that person. Or that loved one of mine might reject me. Hey look, if we lose our friendships with people by being honest and a sincere person with them, can I say this? That person wasn't your friend to begin with. It was not your friend. Oh yeah, they're my best friend. No they're not. They can't accept you for who you are. They're not your friend. They're just using you. Just like you're using them. What comes around goes around, right? What comes around goes around. They are probably just using you or me for the same things I or you are using them for. The sincere person will see others' well-being as a higher priority than their own and will follow up with appropriate actions. That's what you see in 3-5 in our text. They're going to try to do people right. They're going to try to do people right. They're others' conscience. How sincere or selfish are we tonight? That's a good question for us to look at in our own hearts. How sincere or selfish are we? Thirdly and finally, a steadfast conviction. Look at the end of verse 5. He that doeth these things shall never be moved. He that doeth these things shall never be moved. The sincere person will have a steadfast conviction that will cause them not to change or waver over the course of time. They're going to be steadfast. There's a steadfastness about the sincere person as they have determined, of course, to please the Lord with their lives. I like what Paul said about the steadfast person, or he admonished the Corinthian church members there in 1 Corinthians 15-58 with this verse, Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. It takes a sincere person to be that. They've got to keep on keeping on. And it doesn't matter what happens in their lives. They just stick with God. and with the conviction of wanting to please Him. So they just kind of stay the course, if you will. You know, we live in a day of great compromise of God's Word, don't we? I mean, you look around and the average church is just an entertainment club. They look more like the Target Center than they do an actual church. It's all about entertaining things and dumbing down the standards and dumbing down what God says, so it just makes the Gospel popular, if you would. But why such a compromise, especially from those that knew better, and then they just let it all go? Well, a lot of it comes back to sometimes just a lack of sincerity. Just like in my opening illustration, when the flames of life hit, what appeared on the surface wasn't genuine. Just like you remember when the flames hit that pot and the wax melted out? It wasn't genuine. Well, sometimes some people's lives aren't real genuine when the flames set, or the pressure to compromise starts coming down on them. When the family starts putting some pressure on them, do they buckle under that, or do they sincerely say, I can't go there? Or when society starts putting pressure on us, you've got to conform to what we say versus what God says. How are we going to handle that? A sincere person says, I'm just steadfastly going towards the Lord. It doesn't matter what anybody says or does. I'm just going to do right. And you have to have a sincerity to keep going. There will be a steadfast commission. They will never be moved. Never be moved. You know, trials have a way of exposing our hypocrisies, don't they? And the sincere person, though, will endure the trial steadfastly instead of collapsing into compromises. I know of churches and I know of Christian people who one time claimed to believe the Bible and believe in the fundamental truths of it. And they stood strong, at least from what I saw. And today they live or behave in stark opposition to what they claimed to once have believed. I mean, some people, I'm talking about people who have been deacons, who have been choir leaders singing in the choir, but even pastors in churches that claim to believe the old time religion as we sometimes refer to. We don't want to go that route, because it doesn't help people out there. It doesn't help anybody at all. Now I'm not going to say we're never going to change, because part of growth is change. Growth equals change. But a sincere person is trying to align themselves in the path God wants them to be in. And sometimes there is course correction, and that's fine. You know, I believe a Christian does not want to add to God's Word, nor subtract. We want to live in balance. And sometimes we've added too much, and sometimes we've subtracted too much, and we've got to get things right. That's not the change I'm talking about. I'm talking about when we know what's right, and we change, and we go to something that's wrong. Something that is just a little more in line with the world than it is with God, and continue to go in that direction. That's not right at all. And a sincere person, again, it's just that they want to go in the line, they want to stay steadfast in the direction God would have them to go, and allow those course corrections to take place so that they can stay in line with Him. And as a result, they'll be people who are close to God. They'll be people with a genuine walk with God, and they'll be people that God can use in an effective manner. How sincere are we tonight? Do we have a sincere heart for Him? Or do we find ourselves being the hypocrite? May tonight we be people who determine within our hearts that we want to be sincere.