Three Good Ways to be a Hypocrite - Life of Christ Part 83

Now, there's something I believe that I wonder if you believe. I believe that God wants us to be students of our culture. You see, I believe that in every generation, we have to speak the message of Jesus Christ with the words and with the cultural sensitivities that the people living in that culture, that it makes sense to them. Cross-cultural missionaries have to deal with this all the time, adapting their message to the culture in which they find themselves. And with America changing as rapidly as we're changing, we've become almost cross-cultural missionaries to our society. Well, where is it that a culture displays its values? Where are we going to find out the cultural sensitivities of the culture that we live in? Well, certainly in its literature, in its clothing, a culture displays what its values are, in its art.

If you want to really know where America's going today, watch Ofra. But you know, I think probably as much as anything, one of the most revealing arenas of the values of a culture is its music. And there's a song that's been popular over the last few years by Sting that I think is very revealing when it comes to where our culture is. I want you to listen to part of it.

We're only going to play part of it for you, and we'll flash the words for those of you who don't follow Sting regularly. I think it'll help you get a sense of where this culture is, and then I'll come back and we'll talk some more. You could say I lost my faith in science and progress. You could say I lost my belief in the holy church. You could say I lost my sense of direction. Yes, you could say all of this still works, but if I ever lose my faith in you, there'd be nothing left for me to do. You could say I was a lost man in a lost world. You could say I lost my faith in the people on TV. You could say I lost my belief in a politician.

They all seem like game show hosts to me. If I ever lose my faith in you, there'd be nothing left for me to do. Now what does this tell us about where we are as a culture? As I listen to this song, I tell you what it tells me. It tells me that we have a serious confidence problem in our culture. We have a serious credibility problem in our culture.

People have lost their faith in just about everything and everybody in our culture, and how did that happen? Well, I'm going to talk to you about that in a second, but first let me take a moment and say I don't know who the you is in this song that he's singing about. He's saying whoever you are, please don't let me down like the rest of the world has let me down because if you let me down, I don't know what I would do. If you want a person who'll never let you down, let me just remind you, Jesus Christ is the only person who fits that bill, and if you're here this morning and maybe you feel a little bit like Sting does and you're kind of wondering, well, what is there anymore to hold on to that's real in our culture? I'd like to suggest Jesus Christ to you as the one who you can count on to never let you down. People will.

He won't. Anyway, how did we get to where we are today? Well, I tell you, I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said, reelect nobody.

What do you think of that one? But this isn't just true with our politicians. You know, 50 years ago they did a survey on who Americans respect the most, what profession. Guess what profession came out number one? Clergy. Yeah. Today 50 years later they did the survey again.

I've got it home in my file from last year. You know who the number one most respected profession in America is today? You'll never believe it. Your pharmacist. That was number one.

Your pharmacist is the number one most respected professional person in American people's lives. Well, what happened to the clergymen in this whole thing? Where did we go?

Hey, we are way down the list. Along with everybody else people used to trust 50 years ago. What happened?

I'll tell you what happened. Lots of hypocrisy happened because, friends, nothing will erode people's confidence like hypocrisy. What exactly does it mean to be a hypocrite? Well, it comes from a Greek word hypokritos, which means to wear a mask. Aristotle and Aristophanes used this word to describe the people who would do plays and they'd put a mask over their face to play one character and then another mask over their face to play another character.

And so by extension the word came to mean a fraud or a pretender or a make believe artist where what you see is not what you get. Now, the sad thing is that so many times we as Christians are accused of being among the worst offenders. And I don't know about you, but so many times when I try to share Jesus Christ with somebody, what I will get thrown right back in my face is, well, I once knew a Christian and she or he and... And they start telling me about all this unauthentic behavior that they saw.

My experience is that the greatest single hindrance to evangelizing our world is the hypocritical behavior that the world has seen on the part of professing Christians. Here in Matthew chapter 23, Jesus is indicting the rabbis of his day for hypocritical behavior. Six times in this chapter, he says to them, you hypocrites. And so from this chapter, I've boiled down a message that's called three good ways to be a hypocrite. And it's also, by the way, three good ways to completely blow your credibility and lose your chance for impact on other people's lives for Jesus Christ. So I want to walk you through three good ways to be a hypocrite and have us talk a little bit about our lives and maybe how we can help ask God to overcome these things in our lives.

So let's look at it. Three good ways to be a hypocrite. Way number one, look at verse one. And Jesus said to the crowds and to the disciples, the teachers of the law and the rabbis, they sit in Moses' seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you. When a ruler in the ancient Near East wanted to make an official pronouncement or an official judgment, he would go sit down in his seat of authority, often a throne, and it would be from this seat or from this throne that he would make the pronouncement.

The seat or the throne was a symbol of his authority. And so he says, you know, the rabbis, they sit in Moses' seat. They have the authority to interpret the law of God. Therefore, Jesus said, since they are people in authority, obey them and do what they tell you to do. But he goes on to say, do not do what they do. Don't imitate their behavior, for they do not practice what they preach.

They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift even a finger to move the loads they put on other people's shoulders. Way number one to be a hypocrite is, don't practice what you preach. Want to be a good old hypocrite?

Then just don't practice what you preach. And Jesus said that these rabbis, they come up with oppressive, burdensome, onerous instructions that they lay all over everybody else, but at the same time, they're not willing to move their little finger towards pushing one of these burdens around. They find all kind of loopholes so they can get around what they lay on everybody else.

They're hypocrites. Now what are some of these things that these Jewish rabbis laid all over everybody? Well, certainly, a big part of it was all of the stuff that they laid on people about the Sabbath.

Remember what I've told you before, some of the stuff that they came up with. For example, they said these are the rules that people had to keep. You couldn't walk more than 3,000 feet from your home on the Sabbath because walking anymore than that was considered work.

They told people that people were not allowed to swat insects because they were doing the work of an exterminator. They told women that women were not allowed to look in the mirror on a Sabbath because if a woman looked in the mirror on the Sabbath and saw a gray hair and pulled the gray hair out, they were doing the work of a beautician, which was not allowed. They told people that you're not allowed to wear false teeth on the Sabbath because if they fell out and you picked them up and put them back in, you were doing the work of a dentist. Sure, so you gummed your food on the Sabbath.

You were allowed to try to resuscitate a dying person, but if the person actually died, you were not allowed to close their eyelids because then you were doing the work of a funeral director. You were not allowed to climb a tree, ride a horse, swim, clap your hands, dance or even spit on the ground on the Sabbath and they laid all of this stuff on all the common people of Israel, but in indicting them in Luke 13, Jesus healed a woman who was crippled on the Sabbath and when the rabbi said, how dare you do this? There are six days during the week to heal people. You shouldn't be healing on the Sabbath. Jesus said, you hypocrite. You hypocrite. You lay all these rules on these people, but isn't it true that you untie your donkey every Sabbath and lead it down to get water and you untie your ox every Sabbath rabbi and lead your ox over to eat because you built nice little loopholes in about how your animals can't suffer because they belong to the rabbi and therefore they belong to God. You hypocrite. You took care of yourself, but you're telling me I can't heal a crippled lady on the Sabbath.

You took care of your donkeys and made up arrangements for them. Now what about us today? I mean, isn't it true that this is exactly what we have thrown at us as Christians today, that we don't practice what we preach? I mean, people tell us about Jimmy Swaggart who goes on television and preaches and rails against immorality and then goes out and hires a prostitute right after the service. We have prime time doing exposés on television of all these televangelists who ask people to live in poverty and like paupers and send them money so they can live in royalty and we can go on and on and on.

You probably know more examples than I do, but the point is what the world is saying to us is you guys are not practicing what you're preaching, you're hypocrites and they got a point. I work out here at Olympus Gym in Falls Church and the guy who's the manager of Olympus Gym is a fellow named Tom and he's a big burly sort of guy and somehow in a conversation one day he found out I was a pastor. So now every time I walk into Olympus Gym, he's near the front door and he almost always is, he yells out at me in a real loud voice, hey pastor, good to have you here today.

Just the way you want to walk into the gym. Hey pastor, good to see you. And he said to me once not long ago, he said, you know, this is really neat. How many gyms, he said, have their own personal chaplain?

This is great. Now do you think I'm on display at Olympus Gym by the time old Tom gets through announcing my arrival like that? Do you think the staff at Olympus Gym is watching every move I make to see what I do there? Do you think all the people who hear him announce my arrival are checking me out?

Friends, I don't even dare burp in a woman's direction at Olympus Gym. I have to make sure my head's the other way. And you know what? Every time you let the cat out the bag wherever you are, whether it's in your workplace or whether it's in your family or whether it's in your neighborhood or whether it's in your school, you let the cat out the bag and you say, I'm a follower of Jesus Christ. I can tell you exactly what happens. People are going to get out their binoculars, they're going to train them on you and what they really want to see is, is this person going to practice what they preach?

Is this a creditable, believable person? And before you will ever get the chance to say one word to them about Jesus Christ, they're going to first make a decision whether you're a believable person. And if they decide you're not, you can forget having an impact on their lives for Christ. They're not going to listen to you or to me. It's tragic how often we end up disappointing them. You say, Belong, I didn't ask for this pressure. Well, I know you didn't, but that's tough.

It comes with the turf. You want the privileges of belonging to Jesus Christ, so do I. There's some responsibility.

We're his representatives. And people want to know, do these people practice what they preach? Does this person, does she, he practice what they preach?

If not, they're going to conclude we're hypocrites and they don't want anything to do with us. Second good way to be a hypocrite is found in verse 23. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You give a 10th of your spices, mint and dill and cumin, but you've neglected the more important matters of the law like justice and mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, justice and mercy and faithfulness and not neglected the former.

You blind guides, you strain out a gnat, but you swallow a camel. That's where this famous phrase came from. You know, the Old Testament required that a person would give a 10th of all their agricultural products to the temple. And that's what Jesus is referring to here. But what he's saying is the second way to be a hypocrite is to major on the minors. That's what these people were doing.

They were majoring on the minors. These punctilious rabbis were bringing a 10th of all, even down to spices. They were bringing 10% of bay leaves and nutmeg and cloves and ginger and oregano and parsley and chives and garlic salt these people were bringing. You say, is anything wrong with that?

Well, no. But Jesus said the issue is that you same rabbis were not as scrupulous, you were not as concerned or as punctilious when it came to the really important matters of the Old Testament law like justice, and like mercy for oppressed people and like faithfulness to God. Jesus said, you measure out your dill weed to the gram, but you're the same people who want us to be so impressed that you're measuring out your dill weed to the gram, but you're the ones who are trying to kill me, you've determined to murder me. And you're the same people who ignore the beggars in the street and step over them and don't do a thing to help them. You're the same people who complain when I heal sick and infirm people on the Sabbath.

You're the same people who have gotten rich at the expense of God's sheep. Hey, where are the majors here, friends? And where are the minors?

Dillweed is a minor. Reminds me of what God said about these same folks in Isaiah chapter one. What are your many sacrifices to me? God says I'm fed up with your burnt offerings and your sacrifices. Here's what I really want. Promote justice, rebuke the ruthless, encourage the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead the cause of the widow.

That's what I'm looking for, guys. And instead of marching around telling everybody how proud you are that you tithe dill weed down to the last gram, instead do the things that really please God. Major on the majors, huh? These guys had a problem majoring on the minors. They were doing what my English teacher in high school used to call placing the emphasis on the wrong syllable, if you pick up what I'm saying. And that's right.

This is the emphasis on the wrong syllable here, which makes us hypocrites. 30 years ago when I was growing up, I wasn't a Christian, but I remember down in my hometown of Portsmouth, Virginia, the church mobilized and churches all over the city mobilized because Blue Laws, they were going to remove Blue Laws. For those of you who aren't old enough to remember, Blue Laws said that stores and businesses had to stay closed on Sunday because it was God's day and nothing was allowed to be open. And when they were thinking about changing that, man, I mean the churches, everybody, they came out, they mobilized by the droves. But you know what? They never mobilized for all the poor bums who were sitting in front of those stores drinking peach wine and needing something to eat.

Is that majoring on the minors or what? You say, oh, but Lon, we've changed since then. Well, I hope, I'd like to think so. You know the story I told you last week about me and the drunk in front of 7-Eleven? Were you here for that story?

I hope you were. It's a good story. And how he was sitting out there drunk and I got him, bought him some cigarettes, took him home, eventually got him to a detox unit and then to a Christian detox center and he gave his life to Christ and God totally transformed the guy's life? I didn't tell you this last week because I was saving it for this week, but you know what's really interesting? I have told that story to Christians before. And so many times, you know what the first response I get back from Christians are?

Not, oh, man, this is fabulous. You mean God grabbed a hold of some guy's life and changed it? But you know what I get so many times? You mean you bought cigarettes? You spent God's money on cigarettes?

What is wrong with you? And matches? No, the matches were free actually, but I did buy the cigarettes, pack of Newports as a matter of fact. And I've had people ream me out for buying cigarettes for the guy and missed the whole point. Is the point cigarettes? No. The point is here was a poor drunk bum whose life was an absolute wreck who Jesus Christ took and transformed his life. And if it took a pack of cigarettes to open the door to minister to the guy, don't you think Jesus would have bought him a pack of cigarettes?

I do. Oh, man. Now that's real heresy. But hey, what's the major here and what's the minor here? Isn't the major that a poor broken down life got transformed?

Isn't the minor that a pack of Newports opened the door? I mean, come on down. Has the church changed all that much in 30 years?

Well, I don't know. But I'll tell you this, dear friends, when the world looks at us doing this kind of stuff, majoring on minor stuff that doesn't make any difference, we look like a bunch of hypocrites. I was talking to a guy not too long ago who was telling me about standing in line and the guy behind him used the name of God in vain and he turned around and put up this huge fuss and confronted this guy and threatened to jack this guy up, you know, and if he did that again, you know, and the guy backed off and said, oh, you know, okay. And so he was telling me the story and so proud of himself, how he'd stood up for God, defended God, and how he'd made an impact for God. Now he made an impact for God.

I'm not sure it was the best one, but he did make an impact. And he thought I was going to pat him on the back and go, you know, that's fabulous that you did that. I said, you know what?

No, I don't think that would have done that. Not at all. I said, that's a minor thing. The fact that somebody is using the name of God in vain, I mean, I don't like that either, but really that's a minor thing. The major thing is here we've got a needy lost person who we need to build a friendship with, whom we need to bring Jesus Christ to bear on their life, who they need to give their life to Christ and meet the living Jesus Christ, and then we won't have a problem with him using Jesus' name in vain anymore.

We've got to major on the majors, not the minors. And I don't know what it is in your life, but I just want to challenge you. Be careful out there, you know, that not every hill is worth dying on, friends.

There are some hills that are worth dying on, and there are a whole bunch that just aren't. Besides, God is plenty big enough, he can defend his own name. He doesn't need you to do that for him.

At least that's how I see it. What he needs us to do is reach out in love and compassion to lost and hurting people and introduce them to Jesus Christ in reality. He'll take care of defending his name.

He doesn't need you to jack somebody up to do that. Third way to be a good hypocrite is in verse 25. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You clean the outside of the cup in the dish, but inside you're full of greed and self-indulgent.

You blind Pharisees. First clean the inside of the cup, and then the outside will be clean also. Jesus said, hey, how is it when you walk in some guy's house and you want a cup of coffee and you look up there on the shelf and here's this coffee cup all shiny and bright, you pull it down and you get ready to pour the coffee in it and you look on the inside and there's old dried up coffee with a little bit of mold in there.

You want to pour your coffee into that? What's more important, how the outside looks or how the inside looks? You're not drinking coffee off the outside. You're drinking it from the inside. Jesus said if you got to make one or the other clean, make sure it's the inside, not the outside.

And look what else he says. He said, verse 27, woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You're like whitewashed tombs, whitewashed mausoleums that look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside you're full of dead men's bones and everything unclean in the same way on the outside. You appear to people as righteous, but on the inside you're full of hypocrisy and wickedness. Third good way to be a hypocrite is to be more concerned about your outward image than the reality that's on the inside of your life. To be more concerned about your outward image than your inner reality. Jesus said, hey, it doesn't matter what a mausoleum looks on the outside, it stinks on the inside.

What's on the inside is what really matters. And these rabbis were going around, going to extraordinary lengths so that they look pious and righteous on the outside. And Jesus said, but your inside behavior doesn't match up with the outside image you're trying to create, you're a hypocrite.

And whenever people see us putting up an outside image and we can't back it up with inward behavior, well, we're hypocrites. And our world is full of this kind of stuff. I was down having lunch with one of the senators who comes here, who's a friend of mine, and we're having a nice lunch. And you say, well, which one was it?

Which one was it? Well, I'm not going to tell you. Because if I tell you it's a Republican, you'll go, ah.

And if I tell you it's a Democrat, you'd go, oh. So I'm not telling you. But anyway, I was down there having a nice lunch with him. And when we were done having lunch, he was getting ready to go do some things he had to do. And I said, you know what?

I've been living in Washington 21 years, and I have never seen the inside of the Senate chamber. I mean, isn't that kind of weird, you know? So he said, hey, that's no problem. I can walk you up there and we can get you right in the visitor gallery. So I said, oh, really? He said, no big deal. I went, really? I said, oh, this is awesome, you know?

This is great. I mean, I watch Home on C-SPAN and I see these guys making these fabulous speeches, you know, and these impassioned speeches, you know, and Henry Clay's desk is in there and all this kind of stuff. So I was just like, wow, wow, wow, wow. And so I go up and he gets me through the visitor thing and he took off and I went into the visitor thing and walked in and my jaw dropped. You could have driven a Mack truck in my mouth because I walked into the Senate chamber and there's this senator standing up giving this incredible speech and he's flinging his arms and he's going on and he's impassioned and he's going, my colleagues, this and my colleagues, this, and I, and there's nobody there.

The place is absolutely, totally empty. I mean, there wasn't one senator except him in the entire room. There were a couple of pages, a couple of high schoolers sitting on the front paying no attention to this guy and a couple of secretaries and the rest of the place was totally empty.

And I stood there and went, I couldn't believe it. I don't know what I expected, but when a guy standing up there addressing his colleagues and there ain't a colleague in sight, something's wrong. Isn't something wrong with that?

It seems to me something's wrong with that. I thought, good golly here, you know, this is a disconnect somewhere. Who's he making this speech to? Well, I think he was probably making it to the people back home. What do you think? So they could see him on TV and go, oh, there he is. Now I know why they never show the seats behind the guy on C-SPAN, why it's such a tight fix on the guy's face.

Ain't nobody there. Is this a problem? I think this is a problem. Is this hypocrisy? Well, I would call it that, wouldn't you?

Man. And you know, sometimes when I walked out of there, I said to myself, sometimes as Christians, we're just like this. We're just like this.

We put up this image of what we are on the outside and we don't back it up with inner reality. And that makes us the worst kind of hypocrite, not a political hypocrite, but a religious hypocrite. That's the worst kind. Mike Pedlow, our student ministries pastor, had a parents' meeting a couple of weeks ago. And here's what he said to the parents of teenagers. He said, you know, there are two classes of teenagers who are the best kind to work with. He said, either a teenager from a totally non-Christian home, the parents don't claim to be Christian, they have nothing Christian about that home, or on the other extreme, a kid from a Christian home where the parents are really sold out and where they really live their Christianity in reality. He said those kids are easy to work with. The ones, he said, who are terrible to try to work with are the ones who come from homes where the parents say they're Christians, bring their kids to church, make them come to youth group. But what the kids see in the home is inauthentic Christian behavior. So those are the worst.

Those are the hardest. Phone rings and Christian dad yells, tell him I'm not here. Kid says something to the dad and dad says, well, it's just a little white lie. You don't understand something. When you grow up, you'll understand better.

Kid confronts his parents about something coming in the house on HBO and the parents go, well, I know that not everything on HBO is so good, but some of it's pretty good and I don't want to give up the good stuff, so no, I'm not going to cancel. Hey, when people see us living lives where our behavior doesn't back up our image, I'm telling you, it produces a cynicism about the size of the state of California that run up and down these kids' backs. And that's why Mike said they're so hard to work with.

They've seen inauthentic Christianity. What if we fail? You say, Lon, nobody can do this perfectly. I mean, nobody can always make the inner and the outer match.

You're right. There's an authentic way to handle it when you don't. You know, teenagers are great at this. I mean, they're great at sensing inauthentic behavior.

They got a cheese meter that is on all the time and they can smell cheese 20 miles away. My oldest son was now at the Naval Academy, but last year when he was home, I was sitting at the table talking to him about something or another and there was a situation where I kind of shaved the corner just a little bit. Not much, but I shaved it just a little bit. And I told him how I was praying that God was going to work this out. And totally deadpan, without cracking a smile, without breaking stride, he said to me, Dad, were you telling me that you're praying and asking God to bless your lying? Is that what you're telling me? And I said, well, it wasn't a real lie. It was just kind of a, you know, just a little shaving of the corner. He said, Dad, it was a lie.

You're telling me you really expect God to bless your lie? Hmm. Okay. So what do you do with that? To remain authentic. How do you handle that?

I'll tell you how. The only way to stay authentic and handle that is to go back and do what I had to do to him and say, you know what? I thought about that and you were right. I was wrong and you were right. And I've gone back to the person I did it to and I've made it straight. And I want to tell you, that was a bad example.

I'm wrong. And you were more godly than I was in that situation. And I appreciate you calling me on the carpet for that. That'll keep you authentic.

But when you justify it away, man, the cheese meter goes off the scale. And friends, out in that world where you and I live and people are watching us, whether it's at the gym, at the office, at the school, wherever you happen to be in your neighborhood, I'm telling you what people want to see more than anything else is they want to see authentic behavior. The greatest single thing you can do as a Christian and I can do as a Christian to help world evangelism, the greatest thing you and I can do to help the mission of McLean Bible Church make a difference in this community for Christ, the greatest single thing you and I can do is go out into that world and live authentic Christian lives in front of the people out there. And when we fail, authentically confess we were wrong and make it right. And if we live like that, I'll tell you, God will help us make an impact. We'll make an impact out there.

Well, I don't know how you did on these three things. But hey, if you're where you shouldn't be, my solution to you is ask God to help you change. And He'll do it if you're serious. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, I thank you for reminding us today that more than anything else, the people in our world when we say we're Christians are not interested in theology. They're not interested in church politics.

They're not interested in doctrine. They're interested in seeing whether we are creditable, authentic people. And Father, you know it's very difficult to live authentically in this world because we're sinners. But I pray you would give us an increased dedication and commitment to that as a result of being here and hearing the Word of God this morning. And Father, I pray that when we do fall short, which we all will, that you would make us men and women of God to the point that we would be authentic in handling our failures.

Authentic enough to admit we were wrong and make it right. Lord Jesus, we want to make a difference in this world for you. Thank you for telling us how. Help us adjust our behavior with your help to being creditable people in the eyes of a world that's watching every move we make and who's willing to listen if we prove to be authentic. So Lord, change our lives by what we've heard here today. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Father, we pray in Jesus' name. We pray in Jesus' name.