Hypocrisy - Part 1

Today on Fellowship in the Word, Pastor Bill Gebhardt challenges you to become a fully functioning follower of Jesus Christ. Do you take advantage of people for personal gain? That comes down to ourselves. Do you ever do that? Do you ever say something as a Christian in the marketplace and say, well, that's business? That's hypocrisy. You see that's hypocrisy, not business. It's hypocrisy.

Do you take advantage of people for yourself? Thank you for joining us today on this edition of Fellowship in the Word with Pastor Bill Gebhardt. Fellowship in the Word is the radio ministry of Fellowship Bible Church located in Metairie, Louisiana. Let's join Pastor Bill Gebhardt now as once again he shows us how God's Word meets our world. As last year ended and the new year has begun, I as your pastor have been thinking and praying concerning you. What is my desire for you in this upcoming year?

And the more I thought about it, the more I prayed about it, the answer became clearer and clearer. I wanted for you the same thing that I wanted for myself. I wanted you and me to be more authentic. It's a great word, authentic. The original article, the real thing, not a phony, not a knockoff, not a cheap imitation. When something is authentic, we expect it to be actually and exactly what it claims to be.

That's what I wanted for you. I'm not talking at all about perfection. In fact, if I could sort of convey what I'm thinking, the apostle Paul told Timothy in First Timothy four, practice these things, immerse yourself in them so that all may see your progress.

Keep close watch on yourself and on your teaching so that all may see your progress. Let me ask you this. How have you changed spiritually in the last year? In the last three years. In the last five years.

Or even 10 years. Have people been able to see the progress that you have made? You have to ask yourself that question. See, I want us to be authentic. But before we do that, we must deal with the enemy of authenticity.

That's what I want to do this morning. Authenticity has an enemy. It's a very famous word. It's a word you'll know and understand.

It's it's the kind of thing that touches all of us a little and some of us a lot. The word is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy comes from the dramatic idea of the Greek stage of wearing a mask.

And so the character portrayed one thing on the outside, but with something else completely behind the mask. That's what I want to talk about. The problem will be clearly is it's very hard to see your own hypocrisy.

We're just going to have to bear with that. It's easy to see hypocrisy in other people, but it's very hard to see it in yourself. Open your Bibles to Matthew Chapter 23. Matthew Chapter 23. And virtually the whole chapter is simply the words of Jesus Christ.

The very first verse gives us the context. Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples. That's the groups that there.

The crowd is there. The disciples are there. In other words, whatever Jesus is going to say in Matthew 23, he wants to say to every body and that includes us as well.

He says this. The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses. Now, what he means by that is these are the people who lead you as a nation. The scribes and Pharisees are your leaders.

They have seated themselves. In other words, just as Moses led the people, these are the people who now lead you. And he makes an interesting statement right after he says that. He says, therefore, all that they tell you to do and observe, he says, but do not do their deeds, for they say things and they do not do them. He's starting to introduce us to hypocrisy.

They are the leaders. They knew the scriptures. He said, if you talk to a Pharisee, he'll tell you what the Bible says.

He's memorized it and you could do what he says. He's not saying that everything they taught was true. You know better than that, because all the way through his life, those three and a half years of ministry that Jesus had, he constantly argued with them about what the scriptures really teach. But what he really wanted to say is, look, you can listen to what they say about the word of God and you need to do it. But don't ever look at their lives.

Don't. Because they don't do anything. In other words, these people are what we will soon see to be hypocrites. He then says, he says, they tie heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. In other words, they take your backpack on your spiritual journey of life and they fill it with rocks. The rocks that they fill it with are the rocks of religion. The Old Testament had 600 laws and ordinances, but that wasn't nearly enough for the Pharisees. They added hundreds and hundreds of other laws and ordinances. And their view was, if you don't do all these things, then you'll never get right with God.

We'll talk about that in a little while. He says in verse six, again, getting to the heart of it, verse five, he says, but they do all their deeds to be noticed by men. If you wanted a really short definition of hypocrisy, that's it. If you want to know if you're a hypocrite yourself, there it is. They do good things so other people will notice. In fact, it's absolutely paramount to the hypocrite that other people know what they're doing.

What a terrible motive. In our day and age, I call those people obituary Christians. These are Christians that do certain things in their life so that when they write out their obituary, you and I can be so impressed by what they did. These were all the things that they did.

That's what they were like. He said that's what they like to do. He said they do all their deeds to be noticed by men for they broaden their phylacteries and they lengthen the tassels of their garments. And we have no idea if you don't understand the tale.

What do they mean by that? Well, they took Deuteronomy 6. And Deuteronomy 6 is about the idea of how important the word of God is. And they made phylacteries. And a phylactery was a little leather pouch and they would put in a really tiny scroll. And then minutely, I mean minutely, they would write out a verse or two or three.

They would write these verses out. They would put in this leather pouch. They had a strap and they tied it around their head.

So when you saw someone in public that had this little leather pouch right in the middle of their forehead. And in it was the word of God. They took Deuteronomy 6 literally instead of putting it in a heart, they stuck it on their head. He said, but the Pharisees didn't just stick it on their head. The Pharisees broadened theirs.

So you and I would walk around and say, hi, how you doing? And we have these little ones. But when you saw someone with a big one, really big one, that's a Pharisee. He wrote lots of verses in there. Well, that's hypocritical. Now, you and I said, but that's not even a problem for us.

How about this? I own like 20 Bibles. Now, I don't read any of them, but I own a whole bunch of Bibles.

Same idea, the same sense. And then he talked about the tassels. In the book of Numbers, the writer, Moses wrote Numbers. He said, look, what God's speaking and he says, what I want you to do is on the four corners of your garment when it hangs, I want a tassel to hang there, just a tassel, because I want those tassels to remind you to keep my commandments. The whole idea of the tassel was to keep the commandments of God. In fact, in Matthew chapter nine, the woman who was hemorrhaging, when it says she touched Jesus, she touched his tassel on his garment. He wore tassels. But the Pharisees didn't want a tassel like this. They wanted a tassel like this. You see, the idea behind it is, look at my tassels.

So now you see a guy with a big phylactery and long tassels. You see, and the idea of it is to draw attention to themselves of just how wonderful they really are. So Jesus spoke out against that. He said in verse six, they loved the place of honor at banquets and the chief seats in the synagogues. They were always at the speaker's table. They were always that kind of guy. They always said at the chief seat.

I mean, how ridiculous is that? I can remember after I first got saved as a layman in Pennsylvania, I used to speak in lots and lots of different churches. And most of them, you know, older churches, old Protestant churches, and they had the same kind of thing there. Right up here, what we would do is they'd put an enormous seat here.

I mean, it's enormous. And then they would tell me to go up and sit there. And I would sit there while we sang and all that stuff. And that was the place of honor, a seat right up front. It's the same thing. That's what they wanted, the chief seat at the synagogue. He said they want to be seen by men. And then he says, and respectful greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by men.

That was a very important thing. If I could give you a modern equivalency to being called rabbi, insisting that you're called doctor. Okay, doctor. My name is not Bill. My name is doctor. That's my name. Don't call me Bill.

Call me doctor. You see, there's a notoriety that goes with that. Rabbi had that. Rabboni is the actual way of saying it. Rabboni.

In other words, that's my distinction. They love to be called rabbi. Notice what Jesus does with it. Jesus then says this. He says, but do not be called rabbi, for one is your teacher.

You're all just brothers. Jesus is saying this. He's going to say it in the next verse as well. And you have to remember this.

This is a great way to stop your own hypocrisy. There's only one celebrity in the universe, and it's not you. It's Jesus Christ. He's the only one. There are no others. We are just brothers and sisters in Christ, all of us. It doesn't make any difference.

There's only one. That's what Jesus is saying. And then he says this. Now, by the way, depending on your tradition, I would say I don't want to offend you, but I'm going to anyway, because that's what Jesus said. Jesus says, do not call anyone on earth your father.

Don't miss this. He's as clear as. Now, he doesn't mean don't call your dad your father. He's talking spiritually. Don't you ever call anyone on earth father. Isn't that astounding that we have a 2,000-year history of people calling people father?

It's astounding. What do you do with these words? How do you ignore these words? Do not call anyone father. And by the way, even in English, if you took the word abbot or the word pope, there are derivations of the word father.

That's what this is. That's your father. Jesus says this as specifically as he can. Do not call anyone on earth your father, for one is your father. He's in heaven.

When it comes to spiritually, I have no spiritual father but my father, and neither do you. That's what Jesus is saying. There is no one else.

Don't do that. Don't give notoriety to men. He says, do not be called leaders, for one is your leader. That is Christ. That's himself, the Christos, the Messiah.

He is the only leader. Jesus said, let me make my point as clear as I can. The greatest among you shall be your servant.

Think of that. Jesus said, if you want to know how God sees humans, the greatest among you is the servant, the one who serves you. If you want to be first, you have to be last. You realize how diametrically opposed our culture is to that, and every culture has been. Human beings don't like this. No, I'm first because I'm first.

You see, that's the notoriety. And he says, no, that sets the seed of hypocrisy in your lives. You start thinking way more of yourselves than you ever should.

He said, don't do that. Jesus says right there, he says, the greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled.

Whoever humbles himself shall be exalted. That's what Jesus is saying. That's the point that he is wanting to make.

The way to be first is to be last. It's a very different thing. And that creates a tremendous problem for a hypocrite. Hypocrites do not like that. Hypocrites want to be first, and they want you to know they're first. Hypocrites want to be seen.

They want to get recognition from people, all those kinds of things. So now for the rest of the chapter, Jesus shows us seven habits of a hypocrite. What are the habits of a hypocrite? How do hypocrites act?

The first one is not one that is really directly for most of you, I believe, but it's certainly one that's been around our world for some time. Notice what he says, verse 13. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees and hypocrites.

You shut off the kingdom of heaven from people, for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in. The first characteristic of a hypocrite is a hypocrite will make salvation as complicated as possible. That's hypocrisy. That's what hypocrites do.

They try to make it. That's what the Pharisees did. The Pharisee says, no, it's just not a matter of keeping the law of Moses. You also have to keep our law. And they added all kinds of Sabbath laws and things like that.

You have to keep all the laws. If you have any chance at all, they had an exact opposite view of the law that God had. God gave us the law to show us that we couldn't possibly do this on our own. They thought the law was, and they even added to it, to show God what we can do. That was the perspective of it. And so they made it as complicated as they could possibly make it. Salvation is not easy, but it is simple.

It costs a great deal, but it's not complicated. Jesus said, even a child can understand it. Even a child understands what it is to believe. I love what the Apostle Paul wrote. He said, I fear that your minds may somehow be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. It's that simple. It's an astounding thing how simple salvation is. It's a free gift, and all we have to do is receive it. But I don't think many of you struggle with that area of hypocrisy.

The second area you might. That is taking advantage of people for personal gain. He says, woe to you scribes and Pharisees and hypocrites because you devour a widow's houses, and for a pretense you make long prayers. Therefore, you will receive greater condemnation.

Wow. They devour a widow's houses. What does that mean? Well, the scribes and Pharisees could often act as jurists, and they would act as jurists, for example, on estates planning and estate settling. And when somebody would die, the man would die.

They would come in, and they would act as jurists to straighten everything out. And what they would do is they would steal the estate from the widow. The exact opposite of what our responsibility should be to the widow is how they practiced it. Jesus said, you did this for your own good. In other words, if you look at the point, though, they took advantage of people.

They took advantage of people strictly for this idea of personal gain. Would you ever do that? The poor and helpless, by the way, are on the earth show that show we can show the love of Christ to them.

Our responsibility is to reach out to them. You say, do you do that? Is that how you respond? You see, he says that sometimes what people do is they end up at a personal gain trying to make this something else. Notice what he says in verse 15. Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. You travel around the sea, he says, and land to make one proselyte. And when it becomes one, you make them twice as much the son of hell as yourselves.

What is that? Well, throughout their history, the Jews' view of the Gentile almost always was the same as Jonah with the Assyrians. The Jews loathed the Gentiles. But about 50 years around the time of Jesus Christ, about before then and on, all of a sudden it became something very important to the sect of the Pharisees to make proselytes out of Gentiles. And that's why he says you'll go anywhere to make a proselyte.

When you read the Bible, you'll find out there's two kinds of proselytes. There's one that's called God-fearing. A God-fearing Gentile is one who worships with Jews. He'll go to the synagogue. He'll listen to the scrolls. He's called God-fearing. The other is a true proselyte. That would mean if he's a male, he gets circumcised. And then once he is, he's allowed to partake of the feast and the festivals of the Jewish nation. And he says, you will go all around the world to get them.

And apparently the reason they did it would be able to brag how many proselytes they have. And then he says something interesting. He said, and you will make them twice the son of hell as you are. What did he mean by that?

He means this. They were already lost. And you went, and now they're really lost. You see, they were already lost once, and now you went to make sure they're lost twice. How did they do that?

By telling them all of the complication ways in which you get right with God. That's what they did. But if you look at it and the nature of it, they take advantage of people for personal gain.

That comes down to ourselves. Do you ever do that? Do you ever say something as a Christian in the marketplace and say, well, that's business? That's hypocrisy. You see, that's hypocrisy, not business. It's hypocrisy.

Do you take advantage of people for yourself? He's not finished or even close. He then says this, starting in verse 16 and all the way through 22. Another characteristic of hypocrisy is squirming my way out of any promise I don't want to keep.

Squirming my way out of any promise I don't want to keep. The Pharisees turned this into an art. Watch what Jesus says.

Woe to you. And what great words here. Blind guides.

Now, I want you to stop for a moment and just think of those two words. What does a guide do? You see, you're going to be a guide.

You're going to be a guide to the Grand Canyon. You're going to be a guide. Whatever, you're the guide. And you just happen to be blind. You see, the one thing you can't be, if you're blind, is likely a guide.

Blind people need to be guided. He says, you're blind and you're a guide. He says, woe to you blind guides who say, whoever swears by the temple, that is nothing. Whoever swears by the gold of the temple is obligated.

This gets funny as you go on. What a Pharisee could do is if you say, are you really sure or are you really sure? Look, I'm telling you, I swear by the temple.

That means nothing. See, I didn't say I swear by the gold in the temple. If you swear by the gold in the temple, you're obligated. But I didn't say that. I just said, I swear by the temple.

They invented all of these different phrases of swearing. I swear by the temple. I'm telling you the truth.

And then I could get out of what I said. Watch what Jesus does with this. He said, you fools and blind men, which is more important, the gold or the temple that sanctified the gold? How about the gold?

Think about, forget spiritually. How could it be that you would say, if you swear by the gold in the temple, you're obligated. But if you only swear by the temple, you're not. The gold is in the temple.

And what makes the gold special is the temple sanctifies it or sets it apart. He says, and whoever swears by the altar, that is nothing. But whoever swears by the offering on it, he is obligated. He said, you blind men, which is more important, the offering or the altar that sanctifies the offering? Therefore, whoever swears by the altar swears both by the altar and everything on it.

He says, and whoever swears by the temple swears by the temple and by him who dwells within it. Come on. See, what are they doing? What does a hypocrite do? What a hypocrite really does is they squirm out of any promise that they've made if it doesn't go the way they'd like it. Now, we would never do that, would we? No Christian has ever stood before God and people and committed their life to another individual and then reneged on it. No Christian would have ever done that, right? No, we do that kind of thing all the time. You see, we do that kind of thing all the time. Remember the vows?

Remember what they're called? Vows. That was the vow you made for the rest of my life.

Well, it's two years and six months. It's not going my way, and I'm out. You see, it's not the unpardonable sin, but it is hypocrisy. You see, that's why authenticity is so important. It's authentic.

It's real about what it is you say. You've been listening to Pastor Bill Gebhardt on the Radio Ministry of Fellowship in the Word. If you ever miss one of our broadcasts, or maybe you would just like to listen to the message one more time, remember that you can go to a great website called OnePlace.com. That's OnePlace.com, and you can listen to Fellowship in the Word online. At that website, you will find on all your social media that you can get a copy of the book and a copy of the Bible.

You can also get a copy of the book and a copy of the Bible. At that website, you will find not only today's broadcast, but also many of our previous audio programs as well. At Fellowship in the Word, we are thankful for those who financially support our ministry and make this broadcast possible. We ask all of our listeners to prayerfully consider how you might help this radio ministry continue its broadcast on this radio station by supporting us monthly or with just a one-time gift. Support for our ministry can be sent to Fellowship in the Word, 4600 Clearview Parkway, Metairie, Louisiana, 7006. If you would be interested in hearing today's message in its original format, that is as a sermon that Pastor Bill delivered during a Sunday morning service at Fellowship Bible Church, then you should visit our website, fbcnola.org.

That's fbcnola.org. At our website, you will find hundreds of Pastor Bill's sermons. You can browse through our sermon archives to find the sermon series you are looking for, or you can search by title. Once you find the message you are looking for, you can listen online, or if you prefer, you can download the sermon and listen at your own convenience. And remember, you can do all of this absolutely free of charge. Once again, our website is fbcnola.org. For Pastor Bill Gebhardt, I'm Jason Gebhardt, thanking you for listening to Fellowship in the Word. . .