It Doesn't Matter What You Believe

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. All right, well good morning. It's good to have you here today. Let's pray. Lord God, as we seek you this morning, what's even more important is that you have sought us and we thank you for that, that you sincerely, fully, completely have loved us and shown yourself to us and we pray that you would open us up to that today. Holy Spirit, be working through your word today and use this time. We lift up to you, O Lord, many of our friends and family members who are confused, searching, wondering. We ask, Lord, that you would show the reality of your love to them through us, through others. Help us to know and be, well, convinced of your goodness. We thank you, Lord, that we're not alone here at Thrive by any means, but you have one church throughout this area, one holy Christian church, we confess in that creed, and we thank you, Lord, that there are many and many different expressions around who are sharing your gospel word today, so we thank you, Lord, for them specifically. We thank you, Lord, for Zion and for Hope. We thank you, Lord, for Gulf Coast Presbyterian and for Summit and we lift up to you all the other campus ministries at FGCU as well that share your gospel word. May you have full reign in our hearts and lives and may your one church grow and flourish across this nation and across this world. We lift up to you the church in Haiti as well. We know, Lord, that you are thriving there. You are working there throughout so many people and we pray again for our team that they would just be a part of that and witness to it and share your love in meaningful ways. All this we praise you this day in your name, dear Jesus. Amen. So we're going to be looking at and referencing a text from the book of Romans, a letter that Paul wrote to a church he actually never went to before this. He came there afterwards, but he kind of details out what it means and what the Christian life is all about, what this Jesus thing, if you want to put it that way, is talking about. And so we're gonna look at Romans chapter 3, okay, and we'll be reading now together. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. So today we're looking at this myth. This is our last in the series. This myth, you probably heard it, you might have even said it, you might still believe it, you probably have friends or others who believe it or say it, and that is simply this, it doesn't really matter what you believe as long as you are sincere. Have you ever heard that one before? The word sincere. So we're gonna look at that and honestly it sounds pretty good because let me tell you, we have gotten into an age and a time that I've never expected in my life where sincerity is more important than ever. Honesty, transparency, authenticity, because man you can spin whatever you want. You know I think it was Mark Twain who said there are statistics and there are lies, there's statistics, and you know I mean basically you can use anything to spin, even the spin-free zones. Have you ever heard people talk about that? They are not spin-free zones, let's be honest. Everybody's got their angle, everybody's trying to push their agenda, and we've even gotten fake news that has become big-time stuff where we're pushing really not truth but what I want you to believe, right? Now the Christian Church probably, if there are people who look at the Christian Church, they might say the same thing, I'm sorry to say, and they look at us and go like, yeah well that's your take on it, right? That's your take on it. We're going to look at that today and how important it is to be sincere and we've basically said in the end, even in our personal relationships, because of all the hypocrisy that we see, all the contradictions, all the falseness, all the facades, that sincerity is important and at least if we get people to be honest, to be transparent, to be authentic, then at least we've gotten somewhere. So I understand why people want others to be sincere. I don't know if you know this, the word sincere comes from two Latin words, sine, which means without, and sera, where we get the word serum, but actually in Latin it means wax, without wax. And in Roman times, basically when you had a marble statue like you...