Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Are We Hypocrites? | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke 12.1

Episode Date: April 29, 2020

The term "hypocrisy" gets misused a lot. Are you sure you know what it means? Find out as https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Keith) delves into https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+12%3A1&version=NIV (Luke 12.1) to continue our series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/how-to-follow-jesus/ (Learning to Follow Jesus). To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. Right now, we're learning how to follow Jesus by working our way through the Gospel of Luke. Imagine that you're walking around with Jesus. You're following him from town to town and just watching him do his thing. So you're seeing him talk to the crowds, but you're also seeing him interact with his disciples. Maybe you watch a few miracles, some people heal.

that kind of thing. But on this particular day, Jesus has the biggest crowd you've ever seen him talk to. They're coming from all over. In fact, there's so many people coming in such a small space that they're trampling on one another, bumping into one another. It's uncomfortable. It's so crowded. Now, Jesus stands up and he's getting ready to teach. He's getting ready to say something to this huge crowd, the biggest you've ever seen him with. What do you imagine he'll be? He'll be able to. He'll say. What do you imagine will be the content of this talk? What will he teach them? I think you're going to be surprised what Jesus taught the people on one of the days that he had the biggest crowds ever. We find out in Luke chapter 12 verse one that the topic that Jesus takes on is hypocrisy.

Let me just read the verse for you. Luke chapter 12 verse one. Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered so that they were trampling on one another. Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying, be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy. That's what Jesus talked to his disciples about, and by extension to this crowd of many thousands of people. And he says to them, be careful. This is dangerous stuff here. Be alert. Be alert. Pay attention. Hypocrisy is dangerous, dangerous to your soul, dangerous to other people. It spreads throughout your life, but it also spreads to infect others.

That's the comparison that he's making with yeast. That this isn't something that stays contained. Hypocrisy spreads. But here's the thing. None of us wants to be a hypocrite. All of us hates hypocrisy. And yet I'm not sure that we know exactly what hypocrisy is. I'm not sure we know what a hypocrite is.

Let me try to explain. In the classical Greek, the word hypocrite meant actor. So in the classical theater, characters were identified by masks. You had plays performed, and they had lots of characters in them, but you only had a few actors. And so each actor would change parts throughout the play by putting on a different mask, pretending to be a different character in the play. Well, as the biblical authors picked up that word, it developed very negative connotations within the context of the New Testament. To be a hypocrite or hypocritical came to mean play-acting, putting on a mask in our relationship with God or our relationship with each other.

So hypocrisy, which is what Jesus is warning his disciples, and again, by extension the whole crowd of, hypocrisy, which he calls the yeast of the Pharisees that we need to guard against, is projecting an outward appearance of piety or spirituality while hiding the truth of who we really are. Now here's where I think we get into trouble. I think that most people think a hypocrite is someone who lives inconsistently with what they believe. But if that's the case, that's all of us all the time. But I think people fall into the trap of believing that a hypocrite is somebody who says, for example, you should eat healthy, but then they don't eat healthy. Or a hypocrite is someone maybe in a religious environment who says, you should read your Bible, but then they don't read their

Bible. Or you should pray, but they don't pray. But that's all of us. That's just what it means to be a sinful human being living in a broken world. A hypocrite is different than someone who simply acts inconsistent with their beliefs. A hypocrite is someone who pretends to be something they aren't. Pretense is an important ingredient for being a hypocrite. They project an image, but they hide the real them. A hypocrite might present themselves one way in front of a particular group, but then when they change groups, they present themselves in a completely different way.

A hypocrite has two lives. maybe a life at church, and then a life at home. It's not hypocritical to say, eat healthy, but I don't. It's hypocritical to act like you eat healthy, but really not. It's not hypocritical to say, we should all eat healthy, but I don't. It's hypocritical to say, I eat healthy and to maybe eat healthy when you're out at restaurants, but then quietly, unbeknownst to anyone else, you're shoving Oreos in your face. that's a hypocrite.

And so what Jesus is doing here, I think, is saying, look, it's easy to fall into the trap of fooling other people. Because to a certain extent, you can fool people. You can make them think you are better than you really are. But he says, that will probably lead you to the illusion that you can fool God. And you can't do that. God can never be fooled. God always knows.

God always sees. So we can fool up. others, we can fool our friends, our teachers, our parents, our pastors. But you can't fool God. A pastor I knew when I was in college said that all the people that you can fool, well, they really don't matter. And the one person who does matter, you can't fool. Of course, that's God. So Jesus is saying to the disciples and to the crowd to not fall into the same trap that the Pharisees had. He's warning us all of this religious gamesmanship. He doesn't want people who practice religion as if they are stage actors in a play.

He's warning us against the practice of superficial external religion that the leaders of his day had fallen into. Before I get to a few of the marks of a hypocrite, let me tell you a quick story. So Christine and I have a friend who I think would describe herself as spiritually confused. She doesn't think of herself as a Christian. And one time she was telling me about how much she hated hypocrisy. And Christine and I had known that. She had made it clear that one of the things that turned her off to church and Christianity and Christians was the hypocrisy she had seen at different times in her life.

And so she was telling me about this one day when we were both at an event that our kids were participating in. And she was going on and on about how much she hated hypocrisy and what a turnoff. it was and blah, blah, blah, blah. You've heard it many times before. And what I said to her was, you know who you sound like? She's like who? And I said, you're sounding more and more like Jesus. Her eyes got big because that's not at all what she expected. And I said, yeah, exactly. You're sounding more and more like Jesus because no one was more against hypocrisy than he is. And so if you hate hypocrisy, then you're on the side of Christ. That might be something you want to keep in mind when you're talking to people who are against Christianity because of hypocrisy. Don't deny it.

I mean, Jesus called it out from the very beginning. So it's not going to do any good to act like Christians aren't hypocrites. Sometimes we are. Sometimes I am. None of us wants to be, but the reality is that we struggle with all kinds of sin, including this one. But instead, you might want to say to people, if you're against hypocrisy, you're starting to sound like Jesus. Maybe you should listen more to what he says. You might like it, just like you like this teaching. But let's get on to a few of the marks that Jesus lists out for hypocrisy. See, right before he makes this warning to the disciples and the crowds, he's been going off, and I mean going off on the religious leaders of his day.

Both the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, he stacks woe upon woe. woe upon woe, he calls them out for their hypocrisy and their sins. I want to take a look at just a few of the examples of what Jesus says about the Pharisees, because I think it helps us see hypocrisy in several forms. The first thing he does is go after them for the outward-inward split. Jesus says, now then, you Pharisees, clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you're full of greed and wickedness. You foolish people did not the one who made the outside and make the inside also?

This is classic hypocrisy. People pretending to be something outwardly that they're not inwardly. It's play acting. Maybe you've seen news stories, read articles about how hotel rooms are so dirty. I saw one particular news story about the glasses that you drink out of in a hotel room. And ever since I've seen it, I've never drank out of a glass in a hotel room. It was so disgusting. But what they showed is kind of one of these hidden camera things, where a cleaning person went in and instead of really cleaning the glass that had obviously been used, she just dumped out the contents, wiped out the outside of it so that it looked clean, although it for sure was not clean.

That's disgusting. Jesus says it's disgusting when we do that with our life, when we clean the outside and our behavior, but inside ignore our heart and the sins that come from our heart. Another kind of hypocrisy is the kind that minors on the majors and majors on the minors. Jesus says, woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue, and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone. It's always easier to follow

outward rules and to follow rules for our behavior than it is really to deal with our heart. Jesus says that it's always a temptation to try to check the boxes of behavior, but ignore what's going on inside of us. In this case, he says, neglecting justice and the love of God. So there's a kind of hypocrisy when we try to conform our behavior in a way that impresses people, but ignore what God really cares about and that is our heart. And yet at the same time, Jesus won't let us get away with saying, well, in my heart I love him, even if I don't obey him with my life. Because the last sentence was, he tells the people,

you should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone. Jesus always sees a connection between our heart and our behavior, and he knows that if we concentrate on loving him and being devoted to him and putting him first and worshiping him, that will eventually flow out into our life. And then lastly, he talks about the kind of hypocrisy that lives for the applause of people instead of the applause of God. He says, woe to you, Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces. All of us are familiar with the temptation to behave in a way

that earns the praise of people, but ignores the praise of God. When we care more about people's approval than God's approval, we will shape our behavior in a way that's really harmful. We will try to do things that human beings value, but we very well may ignore the kinds of things that God values because that doesn't get the approval of people. Paul says in Galatians 110 that he had learned to live for the approval of God, not people. That's something that we all have to learn, and often it takes our whole life. Let's conclude with this. The end of Luke 11, Jesus just lays in to the Pharisees and these teachers of the law.

I mean, he does not spare them at all. He goes right after them and calls them all out. Is that okay? I thought we were supposed to love our enemies, and now Jesus is laying into them. I think that shows us that loving our enemies doesn't mean saying what people want to hear, but telling them the truth, even if they don't want to hear it. Now look, we're not like Jesus. We don't know the truth for sure, and we don't know everybody's heart.

we need to be humble and gracious and kind and patient, but we also need to speak the truth in love. That's hard to do, but it's what Jesus calls us to. And when Jesus goes after these Pharisees and teachers of the law, he reminds us that doing good to those who hate you does not mean being nice in the face of hatred and injustice. Sometimes it means taking action to minimize or maybe even eliminate, hatred and injustice.

Love doesn't mean never confronting. Sometimes love means to confront. Sometimes the opposite of love is indifference, and Jesus was never indifferent. That's why he warns us to be on guard against the east of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. It is dangerous and it destroys. Let's ask God to make us transparent people,

people who are honest with our struggles, people who are open about our own sin, people who seek to live up to God's standard, but who are honest about our failures and how we fall short. That's the way to avoid hypocrisy. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family, member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.