Word of Salvation – Vol. 26 No. 36 – June 1981

Where Are The Hypocrites Today?

Sermon by Rev. S. Voorwinde on Matthew 23:28

Scripture Reading: Matthew 6:1–8; 7:1-5; 23:13–28

I don't have any statistics to prove my point: I have no great authority that I can quote, but I'm sure you'll agree with what I'm about to say: that the most common accusation that is flung at the church today is, "Oh, they're just a bunch of hypocrites". Whether a church is large or small, whether it's Catholic or Protestant, whether it's traditional or progressive, in the public mind it is often branded with the stigma of hypocrisy. And when a person becomes a Christian he immediately runs the risk of being called a hypocrite, and he finds that old friends are watching carefully to see if they can catch him in hypocrisy.

It seems that the world has taken the words out of the mouth of Jesus and pinned them onto His followers: "You hypocrites". I doubt whether there are any people here (whose Christianity is visible and who at one time or another haven't had the charge of hypocrisy thrown in their teeth.

Because this is such a common thing we need to think about it, we need to take it seriously. Is the accusation true? Is the world right? Is that the impression we often give? Or is all just thoughtless slander that we can safely ignore? Are they perhaps the hypocrites rather than we? For the Gospel's sake and for Christ's sake these are questions that we must answer.

We need to look at ourselves and we need to look at what the Bible says.

And as we do that we first of all need to know what hypocrisy is. A dictionary definition would be that "hypocrisy is assuming a false appearance of virtue". It is insincerity, inconsistency, sham, pretence. Hypocrisy is make-believe; it is living a lie. Or very simply, it is pretending to be what you are not.

"Hypocrite" is a word that originally came from the Greek language and in ancient times it meant "an actor". So here you have a man who with the clever use of make-up and dress and by the intonation of his voice can be a king in one play, a beggar in another and a villain in the next. He is skilful at pretending to be different people. And that's his job. He's paid to be a good actor.

But of course he should confine his acting to the stage. If he carries it over into real life he becomes a hypocrite. And that's what the Pharisees had done. They were fantastic religious actors not on the stage, but on the street corner, in the synagogue and in the market place. It was all sham and show.

And when Jesus came he pulled their masks off; he wiped the make-up off their faces; and he stripped off their fancy dress and he exposed the rags beneath. All their righteous deeds were but filthy garments. Theirs was a religion that had to be noticed. When they gave gifts they made it obvious. When they prayed they made it long and showy. When they fasted they put on gloomy faces.

Theirs was a religion that was ignorant of the condition of the heart. They could see the speck in the brother's eye, but not the log in their own eye. And of them God said: "This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me". They went through all the motions of religion, but their thoughts were somewhere else. And theirs was also a religion that was thoroughly distorted. On the Sabbath they would approve of a farmer giving water to his cattle, but when Jesus healed a crippled woman they complained. They had it all our of focus, as Jesus said: "You give a tenth of your spices mint, dill and cummin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law: justice, mercy and faithfulness" Mat.23:23. And then he went on to say: "You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel". We would say: they couldn't tell the difference between a flea and an elephant. One Bible dictionary has summed them up well: "Their hypocrisy consists in the jarring contradiction between what they say and what they do, between the outward appearance and the inward lack of righteousness. Their hypocrisy is therefore sin; failure to do God's will is concealed behind the pious appearance of outward conduct.... Their hypocrisy also consists in the fact that they are concerned about their status with men rather than their standing before God". (Kittel, Vol.8, pp.567-8).

Perhaps we find it difficult to identify with these examples. When was the last time you saw someone in your local shopping centre offering up a long, showy prayer? And who here would think of giving a tenth of their garden seeds as an offering to God? And do you ever think when someone has a gloomy face that it must be because he's fasting?

Hypocrisy comes in different guises today but it's nonetheless real: the politician who makes election promises that he has no intention of keeping; the minister who doesn't practice what he preaches; the neighbour who is nice to your face, but cuts you up behind your back; the young man making out with a girl for whom he has no real feelings in his heart.

Hypocrisy is just as real today as it was in the days of the Pharisees. It may take on different forms but it is all still there - the sham, the pretence, the show. It would be easy if all you had to do was to avoid what the Pharisees did. But it's not as simple as that. In fact by a quick rule of thumb you can measure the amount of hypocrisy in your own life. It is the distance between your principles and your practice; between what you believe and how you live; between what you say and what you do. When you look at it this way Christians of course leave themselves wide open to the charge of hypocrisy.

We have the highest principles. We believe in the noblest ideals. What we say and what we preach is 'the very Word of God. And so we are just fooling ourselves if we think that our lives are free of hypocrisy. It's the easiest thing in the world for there to be a gap between our principles, our beliefs and our words on the one hand and our practice, our behaviour and our deeds on the other. And certainly it should be our goal that as life goes on this gap should become narrower and narrower. But let's also be realistic enough to know that till our dying day there will always be a gap; there will always be some inconsistency; our lives will never be a complete example of what we believe. When it comes to this the Bible is very sober and very realistic. It's not only the Pharisees who are guilty of hypocrisy, but some of the early Christians are as well. And these weren't new converts and they weren't believers on the fringe of the church. Those who are mentioned were one of the apostles and one of the first missionaries. Their names are Peter and Barnabas. On one occasion they were visiting Antioch where there were a lot of Gentile Christians. They had fellowship with them, they ate with them. But when Jewish believers from Jerusalem arrived on the scene Peter and Barnabas stopped eating with the Gentiles. When Paul found out about it he called it straight out hypocrisy, because their outward behaviour did not live up with their inward convictions. Here were the holiest of men and yet there was even a time when they were publicly (though lovingly) denounced as hypocrites. And if this is so then surely we would be the greatest hypocrites if we thought we were never hypocrites.

And so the apostles had to warn the early believers time and again: Paul admonished the Romans: "Let love be without hypocrisy" (Rom.12:9). And no doubt Peter had learned his lesson well when he told his readers to "put aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and all slander" (1Pet.2:1).

What Paul and Peter said was also intended for us. And what Jesus said to the Pharisees was intended for us as well. It's sad to say that all the seven woes that Jesus directed at the Pharisees have at one time or other been true in church history. The pomp, the pride, the pettiness - it's all been there. How sad, how tragic! In the days of the apostles some of the Pharisees became Christ's followers. In our own day some of Christ's followers have become Pharisees.

The famous English Christian writer C.S. Lewis wrote about this in a very biting way in his booklet "Screwtape Proposes a Toast". It's a highly imaginative piece of writing. The scene is in Hell at the annual dinner of the Tempters' Training College for young devils. The principal has just proposed the health of the guests. Screwtape who is a very experienced devil and the guest of honour, rises to reply. At first he complains that the food didn't have much flavour just the souls of mediocre sinners. Nothing was really tasty or crunchy. All was rather dull. But when he gets to the wine his tone suddenly changes. It was some old vintage Pharisee. This is what he says: "Well, well, well. This is like old times .....you know how this wine is blended? Different types of Pharisee have been harvested, trodden and fermented together to produce its subtle flavour. Types that were most antagonistic to one another on Earth were mixed together. Some were all rules and relics and rosaries; others were all drab clothes, long faces and petty traditional abstinences from wine or cards or the theatre. Both had in common their self-righteousness and the almost infinite distance between their actual outlook and anything that God really is or commands. The wickedness of other religions was really the live doctrine in the religion of each. How they hated each other up there where the sun shone! How much more they hate each other now that they are forever conjoined but not reconciled.... All said and done, my friends, it will be an ill day for us if what most humans mean by 'religion' ever vanishes from the Earth. It can still send us the truly delicious sins. The fine flower of unholiness can grow only in the close neighbourhood of the Holy. Nowhere do we tempt so successfully as on the very steps of the altar" (p 172). These are chilling words and a grim warning.

But now for a few moments let's come back to those name-calling pagans who shout "Hypocrites! Hypocrite!" They've got one thing going for them, of course. To an extent they're always right. They can never be completely wrong. There's not a single Christian who lives up to all the high ideals and principles of Christianity. There's always some gap between his beliefs and his behaviour. Even the apostles and the early Christians struggled with that one. And yet while the non-Christian is right he is at the same moment so terribly wrong. At that very moment he himself becomes a hypocrite; He falls into the trap that Jesus warns of in the Sermon on the Mount: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye." (Mat.7:3,5).

In pointing the accusing finger he has become self-righteous himself. He may not have Christian principles. He may not pretend to live by Christian principles. But he does have principles and he doesn't live up to them. In his life too there is a gap between his principles and his practice. Now let me prove this to you: On the Day of Judgment God will have to say very little to the unbeliever. All He will have to do is switch on His heavenly tape-recorder. And there on tape He has every moral judgment that the man ever made. God will just press the button and play it all back every accusation, every criticism, every verdict that the man ever uttered. And then God will look at the man and say: “Did you live up to your own moral standards?" And then shame-faced he will honestly have to say: "NO". Whatever his principles were, he too has been a hypocrite.

It is no light thing to take the word "hypocrite" upon your lips and level it at somebody else. In the whole Bible there was only One Person who ever did that and that was Jesus Christ. And He was the only one who was really qualified to make such a judgment. For one thing He could read the mind and look into the heart. We can't. The second reason is that He was the only Person who ever lived who was never guilty of hypocrisy himself. His life was real and consistent. There was no gap between what He was and what He should have been. He was constantly living out His ideals, His principles and His beliefs. He was a visible expression of all that He stood for. He lived up to God's standards. He measured up to the standards He set for others, and He measured up to the standards He set for Himself.

His life and behaviour showed up hypocrisy for what it was ― so much so that the hypocrites couldn't stand it any more. So they crucified Him.

In a world of religious actors it was the only way that one genuine life could end. He was true to Himself and true to God till death.

He had denounced the hypocrites. He had exposed them. And yet through it all He loved them. First come the seven woes against the scribes and Pharisees. But in the end He speaks with tenderness and pity and with tears in His eyes: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings but you were not willing" (Mat.23:37).

How is it with you are you willing? Have you come yet under the shadow of His wing? Have you come yet to the shadow of the cross with all your sins and all your hypocrisies so that Christ could take care of them there? That's the only way to get rid of that plank in your own eye.

Amen.