Defending False Accusations Part 1

Pastor Mike will be speaking on Defending False Accusations Part 1. He will be reading out of 2nd Corinthians 1:12-14.

God is not looking for the perfection of your life, but He is looking for the direction of your life. And what is the direction of your life? Is it a heart that is repentant, a heart that is confessing, a heart that is forsaking sin?

This is what God wants out of the believer. Welcome to Hope Worth Having. This is Pastor Mike Sanders, and I am glad that you could join us today as we study the Word of God. We’re going to be in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, and we are covering verses 12 through 14.

So I want you to get that Bible, and let’s begin to study together God’s Word. If you have your Bible this morning, I want you to join me in 2 Corinthians chapter 1. It is essential as you try to understand every verse in this letter to the church at Corinth that you understand the context in which the apostle Paul writes this letter.

The truth is the apostle and the church in Corinth were at odds with each other. And that the apostle is writing this letter in a real way to defend himself. And he is defending against false accusations that have been made.

Why is it that the people at Corinth were so upset with the apostle? It simply is that Paul had planned to visit the city of Corinth and the church at Corinth on his way to Macedonia as he was on his mission trip.

And unfortunately, things had changed. His circumstances had changed, and therefore he had to change his plans. And people within the church at Corinth who were false teachers and they were trying to steer the church away from the teaching of the apostle.

apostle began to use this as a way to discredit the apostle. They accused him of being dishonest, that he was insincere, in that he was trying to take advantage of the people, that he was somehow trying to take money from them.

They questioned his motives. They spend all of his actions, his words, everything that happened. They put it all in the context of something that was negative. And unfortunately, God’s people at Corinth were naive, and they listened to these false teachers who wanted the church to break away from Paul.

And so the apostle addressing some tough issues in the church, you know, in the first letter, that he had to deal with sin in the lives of some of the members. and rather than responding in repentance and responding with rejoicing of God’s grace in their life and the forgiveness that they can find in Christ, rather than owning their sin, they turned on the apostle and decided that they would blame him,

that they would find fault with him and that they would continue to pull away from his ministry and his teaching. And the question is, what are the spiritual resources that kept the apostle going? Because many of us have found ourselves in this situation where things have been mischaracterized, perhaps maybe falsely accused.

Maybe you have been made out to be the bad person. Maybe in some way your motives have been questioned when all you were trying to do was to make things right and help someone or help individuals. How is it that you and I, when we find ourselves where there are misunderstandings in our relationships and even within the body of Christ or within our family, there are misunderstandings.

How is it that we can keep going on? I think the apostle helps us to learn some things that I think are huge in our spiritual life. Let’s begin reading together in 2 Corinthians chapter 1. The apostle says in verse 12, for our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation or our conduct in the world and more abundantly towards you.

Verse 13, for we write none other things unto you than what you have read or acknowledged. And I trust you shall acknowledge even to the end. As also you have acknowledged us in part that we are your rejoicing even as you are ours in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There’s three things that Paul brings up that helps him to keep going when he is being falsely accused. They are the same three things that are essential in your life and my life as we find ourselves and people misunderstanding us or maybe mischaracterizing our actions in our effort to try to benefit.

Number one is that Paul brings up that he has a clear conscience. Look at verse 12 again. Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience. In some translations it says our boasting is this, our conscience and what Paul is saying to the Corinthians is that my conscience is clear before you.

All these accusations, all these things you’re saying about me, they’re just not accurate. And my conscience is clear before you. Paul’s conduct was characterized by these two words. Look at verse 12.

Simplicity and sincerity. He describes it as godly sincerity. Again, the apostle said to Timothy, 2 Timothy 1 .3, I thank God whom I serve with a pure conscience. As my forefathers did, as without ceasing, I remember you in my prayers night and day.

Wherever the apostle ministered, he wanted to have a clear conscience before God, and he wanted to have a clear conscience before others. The conscience is an important part of how God has designed you and I.

And the conscience is used as, if you will, a moral compass in our hearts. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a believer or an unbeliever, everyone has a conscience. How is that conscience trained? How is it nurtured is important in the life of the believer.

And unfortunately, in many people’s life, their conscience can become seared. It can become hard. It can become where they have no conscience, meaning that their conscience does not really guide their heart towards what is right, what is honorable, even what is acceptable within a community or a culture.

Paul says that he conducted himself with simplicity. This word simplicity means singleness of mind. It is the idea of a focus, a purpose. It is that his character was not duplicit. His character was not one way today, another way tomorrow.

His character was not one way in the… public and another way in the private. Paul says, listen, I operated with simplicity, a singleness, a focus in my heart. I was on mission, on assignment, every day, every moment of my life.

Again, Peter reminds us how important the conscience is. He says having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. Peter is telling us, yes, there are gonna be people who say things that are not accurate about us.

They’re going to mischaracterize us, but we need to have a good conscience. Knowing anything that they say about our good behavior could not stand up in the test. And why is this important? Because Paul uses the word sincerity.

He says, I live before you with simplicity, referring to his singleness, there was a connection, there was a oneness with the Apostle Paul. Again, he was not duplicit, he was not a hypocrite, he was not one way in the public and another way in the private.

Paul says, this is who I was, but he says also with sincerity. It means the clearness of mind. It is the idea of holding up something to the light for inspection. This word was used in the Greek when there were potters who would sell their pottery in the market and people would take their pottery and they would lift it up to the sun to see if there were any cracks.

The potter may claim that this was a beautiful piece of pottery with no cracks and that it was perfect, but the consumer would take it and lift it up to the light to see if there was any daylight shining through the pottery, any cracks that were visible.

The Apostle Paul is saying this, that when you take my life and you throw it up on the light, there’s no cracks. This is the kind of life that I lived before you, a godly sincerity, a clearness. My life was ever before you.

Again, the Apostle teaches us in 1 Timothy 1 .9, having faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected concerning the faith and have suffered shipwreck. Meaning that there are believers because they have not trained, because they have not equipped their conscience, they have made shipwreck of their faith.

This is important. There are believers that there have been cracks in their integrity. There are things that are not obvious, you cannot see it, but behind the scenes, there are some major issues. Paul says they have suffered shipwreck.

So I wanna teach you this morning, how can believers enjoy? a clear conscience. Number one, confess and forsake all known sin in your life. The conscience is a gift from God. It is a gift from God, just like when you put your hand on a hot stove.

The fact that you can feel pain is a gift from God. But you see, pain says something’s wrong. There are actually people who are born without the ability to feel pain. And as a result of that, many times their hands and arms have been severed because they have burned themselves.

So it is with the conscience, it is a gift of God. When your conscience bothers you, when the Spirit of God is speaking to your conscience, and your conscience is reminding you that something is wrong in your heart, something is wrong in your life, The answer is not to ignore it.

The answer is not to suppress it, but the answer is to confess that sin to God and to forsake that sin. Hebrews 10 .22 says, let us draw near, meaning near to God with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

When you come to Christ, He washes your conscience. He gives you a fresh sensitivity in your conscience. And your conscience stands before God true, pure, a conscience that is clear. But even as a believer, we know that our lives are not perfect, right?

And we know that we can think, do, listen to things that affect our conscience and rather than being responsive to the conscience, we ignore it, we suppress it. And guess what happens? We start moving towards not only the shipwreck of our faith, but we move towards a conscience that is seared and can be evil.

People say, how could this ever happen? And we question how is it that people could be so cruel? How is it that this could unfold in their life? It is because somewhere in the journey of their life, it could have been when they were children, it could have been when they were young adults, it could have been as a young married couple, whatever it is, but something in their life was beginning the process of transforming their conscience into something that will eventually evolve into being evil.

A conscience that was not nurtured, a conscience that was not cared for, a conscience that was just left. You say, why should I go to church, pastor? Because you need… your conscience trained. Why should you bring your children to church?

Because they need their conscience to be shaped by the Word of God. What you think is tradition, what you think is abnormal, I’m telling you that these are true habits in our life that affect who we are.

When you come to Christ and confess your sin and you forsake it, Jesus is showing us that He is using our conscience to keep us on the path of redemption with Him. Proverbs 28 13 says he that covereth his sins shall not prosper, and we’re not talking about financially, and we’re not talking about your job, we’re talking about your spiritual life.

You should desire to prosper in spirituality more than anything in your life. Your faith is more important than all the gold in this world. He that covereth his sin shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have what?

Mercy. That’s what I want you to understand. That God is not looking for the perfection of your life, but he is looking for the direction of your life. And what is the direction of your life? Is it a heart that is repentant?

A heart that is confessing? A heart that is forsaking sin? This is what God wants out of the believer. He doesn’t call you in here to say, hey this is a place of perfect people. This is a place of messed up people.

Me being number one church. Can you say amen? But God gives us the conscience as an innate ability designed in creation for us to sense what is right and what is wrong. What I want to challenge you is we want our hearts to be sensitive to the conscience.

So we’re not ashamed to come to God and after we praise him to confess our sins. We’re not so prideful that all our prayer requests are simply about what we want or what we feel we need. But our prayer time is saying, God I have issues.

I got problems. My ego is starting to take over again. And I need your help Lord. This is why back in our text you’ll note what Paul says in verse 12 after he says our rejoicing or our boasting is this is our conscience.

And he describes that he’s lived before them with simplicity and sincerity. And it’s not with fleshly wisdom but get this this is where I want you to see but by the grace of God. You see Paul knows that his conscience is pure and clear before the people because of God’s grace in his life.

That it was God’s grace that that kept him humble, and it was God’s grace that kept pouring out into his life. It was God’s grace that kept washing away his sin. It was God’s grace that helped him to forsake sin.

First John 1 .9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to do what, church? And to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Often people respond to their conscience by suppressing it and denying it.

Church, the most important thing you can do is every day confess your sins to God. Even when you come to church this morning, when you come to Sunday school, when you’re in a Bible study, when you are in church worship, you need to be asking yourself, what is it that God wants me to confess?

You see, we come together so that God can expose our heart. It’s not that he’s putting it up on the screens. It’s not that he’s sounding out a loud voice, but in our conscience, in our hearts, and in our minds, he is saying, confess that to me.

Confess it, and see, you don’t have to wait for an altar call. You can be confessing to God right now as I’m speaking to you. God can be revealing something in your life that you need to bring to his attention, and you can be confessing, and our heart should be, as the psalmist says, search me, O God, and know my heart.

Try me and know my anxieties, and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way of everlasting. Now, he says, search me, O God. God searches us as we are under his word. God searches our heart as we open his truth.

God searches our heart as he puts people in our path to speak into our life. Now, listen, not everybody in your path is speaking truth, but God has some godly people in your life that are speaking truth, and you need to note that those are God’s warning signs, those are God’s signposts, and if there’s anything you need to confess, don’t be ashamed to do that.

What’s worse is to hide it, to cover it, and then it affects your conscience, so the first step to enjoying a clear conscience is confessing and forsaking, and let me just say this to all moms and dads, as you are working with your children, this is an essential part of training the conscience of your children, of training the conscience of even your grandchildren, of training the children that God has put in your life, teaching them the power of confession and forsaking sin. It’s just an action. It can be the thought. It can be the motive. It can be the not doing what we’re called to do. This disobedience cannot go unchecked in our hearts, but we must remember that as we are teaching our children to confess and to forsake their sin, that there is a road back to God, that there is a path of redemption for Him, meaning that God provides a path of redemption for your child.

And so it’s essential that we not be ashamed to ask God to search our hearts, that we avail ourselves to opportunities where God can search our hearts. But the second thing I want you to learn in how can believers enjoy a clear conscience is that we must ask forgiveness and be reconciled to anyone that you have wronged.

You must be reconciled to those that you have wronged. Matthew 5, verse 23 through 24. Therefore if any of you bring your gift to the altar and there you remember that your brother has something against you Leave your gift there before the altar and go your way first be reconciled to your brother and then come and offer your gift You see life is about relationships.

I know you’re tired of me saying it, but it really is It’s about your relationship with God It’s about your relationship with others and you can’t be right with God and wrong with others It’s an impossibility.

You can’t be wrong with God and right with others You’ve got to get this right when Jesus said this is the greatest commandment He said love God with all your heart and then he said love your neighbor Why because the most important thing in life is to love God and to love people And if you can’t get that right, you’ll get nothing right in your life now you got to know that when you have wronged somebody when you have been the cause of Somebody’s hurt or anger that it is your responsibility to own it It is your responsibility to confess it to God and to make it right with God But it is also your responsibility to make it right with other Jesus said in Matthew 6 verse 14 and 15 for if you Forgiven men their trespasses your heavenly father will also forgive you But if you do not forgive men their trespasses neither will your father forgive you your trespasses Now I got to teach you something here about relationships and that is this. First of all, I want you to note that he’s not teaching that you can’t be a Christian that God will somehow take away your salvation If you don’t forgive people in your life, but what he is saying that you will never enjoy the enriching forgiveness of God in your Relationship and walk and fellowship with him if you in turn will not forgive others You can’t go around withholding forgiveness from people and expect that your relationship with God is going to be excelling and growing.

You can’t say to yourself, well, God, you need to forgive me, but I’m certainly not forgiving him. You see, it is the opposite. And that is that God wants you to know that you can’t give what you don’t have.

And the same thing is emotionally and spiritually in your life. You can’t give forgiveness if you’re not receiving forgiveness. And the reason that we struggle to forgive others is because we, first of all, are not living under the fountain of God’s forgiveness for our own hearts.

Whether it’s directly or indirectly, whether it’s intentional or unintentional, I do not know in your heart. But if you are not daily confessing your sin to God and asking for his forgiveness to wash you and cleanse you every day, you will never be able to forgive others.

It may be that you have come to the point in your Christian life that you have become apathetic. about your relationship with God. And perhaps you feel like you have arrived and there is no humbleness in your heart and you sense no need to daily be at the altar with Jesus Christ pouring out your confessions to him.

And it is pride that has plugged his forgiveness from flowing down into your life. It is pride that says, God, I’m not gonna forgive others. It is pride that says, God, I see no need to come to you and ask for forgiveness.

Jesus taught us how to pray and he laid out the guidelines and principles for prayer in Matthew six. And he taught us this, that we are to ask God to forgive us of our trespasses as we forgive others who trespass against us.

I want you to know two things about that. I want you to note that they’re in sync together. You can’t have one without the other. I want you to note the order of it. You can’t forgive others until you are receiving this forgiveness in your life.

God wants us to be under this fountain, receiving his forgiveness, and then he is challenging us to humble our hearts. It takes humility to forgive others. And if you say to me, I will not forgive them, you are saying that they are not able to receive that forgiveness and that somehow you’re better than they are and you should get forgiveness, but they shouldn’t.

Friends, the ground is level at the foot of the cross. No matter where you’ve walked, no matter what you’ve done, no matter what you face, God’s grace is more than enough. Do you believe that church?

And so maybe you didn’t act as bad, but you’re still guilty before God. And maybe you didn’t act out your flesh and your sinfulness and your selfishness as much as… the other person, but we still all fall short before God Almighty, amen?

And the best of us, Jesus said, our righteousness is nothing but filthy rags. And so we know that to say I want forgiveness and I want you to forgive me, God, but I’m not gonna forgive that person, is the height of pride.

And all of your relationships with your children, with your spouse, with people at work, people in the church, all of us, there are no enduring relationships without forgiveness. And what I want you to see is this, in your relationships with your spouse, 51 years, we just recognize.

Some of you have been 60, but whatever it is, there are no enduring relationships without what? Forgiveness. How does a couple stay together that long? It wasn’t that everything was wonderful. It wasn’t that everything was perfect.

It wasn’t that everything worked out like they always thought it would be. It wasn’t that great romantic story that they saw in that movie last night. It was that they were forgiving. And if you say to me, I can’t forgive, it is because you’re not under the fountain receiving it.

What relationships do you need to humble your heart? And do you need to reconcile? And do you need to make right? Do that. And in so doing, you keep this list short. Don’t wait. Don’t wait because the wall is built brick by brick.

And so I’m saying to you, whether it’s your children, whether it’s God’s people sitting in this congregation, how can we get along with all these people? We reconcile quickly, quickly. The third thing in keeping a clear conscience is make restitution.

Numbers 5, verse 6 and 7, speak to the children of Israel, when a man or a woman commits any sin to the man, commit an unfaithfulness against the Lord, and that person is guilty, then he shall confess the sin which he has committed, and he shall make restitution for his trespass in full, plus one fifth of it, and give it to the one he has wronged.

You see, this path of redemption is not only confession, it’s not only forgiveness, it’s not only forsaking your sin, it’s not only reconciling the relationship, but it involves restitution. And that however you have wronged, that you would restore, that you would restore back to that person how you have wronged them.

This is a biblical principle, and this is why we must remember that restitution is an important part of this redemptive, disciplined path that God has for us. When Zacchaeus came to Christ, and he gave his heart fully and freely to Jesus Christ, the Bible says that Zacchaeus stood and he said to the Lord, Look, Lord, I give half of my goods to the poor, and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation…

I restore it for bold. One of the true signs of a repented person is the desire for restitution, is to act on this and find ways to make sure that they make it right and that they make restitution for the wrongs that they have brought to other people.

This is the evidence of a changed heart. As we’ve been learning about defending false accusations, we live in a world where people falsely accuse you. The Apostle Paul was facing this within the family of God, but as we look at his life and how he handled those false accusations, we in ourselves can live in victory when others, our enemies, or even within our own family try to find false things to accuse us of.

But I want you to be encouraged and remember and hold on to these principles. to help strengthen you as you walk with the Lord. This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.