Don't Be a Hypocrite

Seaman first class Roy Robertson served aboard the battleship West Virginia. He was a Christian. One Saturday night, after his ship had docked at Pearl Harbor, Roy and a couple of his buddies went ashore to attend a Bible study. There were about fifteen sailors there, sitting in a circle on the floor.

The leader asked the men each to share a favorite Bible verse and make a few comments on why it was their favorite verse. Roy Robertson broke out in a cold sweat. He couldn’t remember a single Bible verse, even though he had grown up in a Christian home and gone to church three times a week. As he sat there in terror, finally he remembered one verse - John 3:16. He feverishly rehearsed it under his breath as his turn came closer.

As he was sweating it out, the spotlight of attention came slowly around the circle until finally it was on the fellow sitting next to Robertson. Wouldn’t you know it -that guy recited John 3:16. He took Roy’s verse! Robertson sat there utterly humiliated. In a few moments, everyone would know that Roy Robertson couldn’t even recall one Bible verse from memory, even though he claimed to be a Christian. Later that night, Roy went to bed thinking “Robertson, you’re nothing but a phony.”

The next morning was Sunday, December 7, 1941. The ship’s alarm went off at 7:55 a.m. ordering everyone to battle stations. 360 airplanes of the Japanese Imperial Fleet were attacking Pearl Harbor. Roy raced with his crew to their machine gun emplacement, only to find to their utter dismay that all they had available was practice ammunition. For the first fifteen minutes of that crucial two hour battle, a battle that would change history, Roy Robertson could only fire blanks at the Japanese planes, hoping to scare them off.

As he stood there firing fake ammunition, he thought to himself “Robertson, this is how your whole life has been. You’ve been firing blanks for Jesus.” Right then and there, as the Japanese bullets and bombs slammed into his ship, he made up his mind to get serious about following the Lord.

Maybe you’re here today, and as you look at your spiritual life, you’ve got to conclude that, like Roy Robertson you’re been firing blanks. Your life has the surface appearance of spiritual substance, but underneath, there’s nothing. You’re not really making much of an impact, and even more important, you’re not feeling much of a sense of fulfilment in living the Christian life.

Jesus talked about the danger of this happening in the Sermon on the Mount. He talked about the peril of living your spiritual life strictly for appearances’ sake - the danger of just going through the motions.

Matthew 6:1 “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

About 200 years ago, Empress Catherine the Great was the ruler of Russia. It just so happened that her army had won some new territory. The empress ordered that Russian peasants be settled in the area immediately, and soon after, she went on a tour of the area to see that her wishes had been carried out.

Her prime minister at that time was Prince Grigory Potemkin. Prior to Catherine’s visit, he had the army construct fake villages, using only the facades of buildings - something like you’d find on a Hollywood back lot. When the empress toured the area, she saw all those lovely villages, with smiling people waving at her, and she was fooled into thinking that her policy had been carried out. Those villages became known as Potemkin Villages. The expression “Potemkin Village” is still used in Russia to this day to refer to anything phoney that is done just for the sake of putting up a good front.

Jesus warned about this tendency in the spiritual life. He warned that we would be tempted to make out of our spiritual life a Potemkin Village - to engage in spiritual activity, and good deeds, “acts of righteousness” for sole motive of looking good in front of others.

Jesus has just taken us through a long section of the Sermon on the Mount where he contrasted the true righteousness that He taught with the Pharisees’ Brand X righteousness. He’s told us how a citizen of His kingdom will act and react in practical, real life situations, such as when somebody mistreats you, or when you want to get even, when you’re tempted to sin sexually, or when you’re tempted to break your promise.

Jesus said “Now if you’re a Christian, you’re going to act differently in those situations.” People should be able to identify a true follower of Christ by his behavior. He’s different. He’s marching to the beat of a different drummer. He does things that ordinary people don’t do, and he doesn’t do things that ordinary people do. In fact, the difference should be so pronounced that people will see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven, as Jesus said in 5:16. Our behavior as Christians should draw the attention to Him.

But the terrible danger about being a Christian is that we’ll be tempted to use our unique behavior to draw the attention to ourselves. Jesus said in 6:1 “Be careful! Beware! Watch out!” There’s a great spiritual trap that you can fall into. It’s the trap of doing the right thing for the wrong reason. It’s the trap of doing spiritual things so as to make yourself look good in front of other people, so that they’ll say “Oh my, what a spiritual person he is.” This is the terrible, subtle snare of hypocrisy that the devil lays out for us.

The Sermon on the Mount teaches that you should live your life to please God, and nobody else. That should be your goal. Spiritual hypocrisy is when you trade the goal of pleasing God for the goal of pleasing men. And when you try to be a man-pleaser, what you’re really doing is becoming a self-pleaser. Because the only reason you try to gain the approval of other people is to make you feel better about yourself. You like the applause. You like the approval. You like to hear people comment favorably about what a saint you are. It makes you feel good. It’s good for your ego. So pretty soon, you start looking for that, instead of looking for God’s smile of approval. Pretty soon you begin polishing your reputation instead of seeking God’s favor. And when you reach that point, you’ve become a hypocrite.

Satan is pretty intelligent. If he can’t keep you from following the Lord in the first place, he’ll try to spoil your discipleship by turning you into a hypocrite. He’ll take even the acts of righteousness that you do and use them to try to get you to turn in on yourself, in selfish pride. That’s why Jesus says “Beware. Be careful.”

In the first eighteen verses of chapter 6, Jesus is going to take us on a guided tour through the spiritual life and show us how the trap of hypocrisy is waiting for us at every turn. He’s going to tell us that we can become hypocrites in our giving, in our praying, and in our fasting - that is, when we practice spiritual self-discipline. We can engage in those spiritual activities for entirely the wrong reasons. Our deeds of righteousness can become deeds of selfishness if we do them to gain the applause of the people around us. And if we do, we’ll lose our reward in heaven.

“If you seek your reward from men,” Jesus says, “you may get it, but that’s all you’ll get. You won’t get any reward from your Father in heaven.” In those eighteen verses, Jesus says three times about the people who play to the grandstand “I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.”

When he used that word “received”, Jesus was using a word that was used in the marketplace. When you bought some pottery, or a sack of grain, the merchant would give you a receipt marked paid in full. That receipt indicated that there was nothing more owed.

When we play to the grandstand in our spiritual life, we’re trading the rewards that God has waiting for us, for the fickle and temporary praise of men. And we’ve got nothing more coming. There is no reward from God for those who seek reward from men.

And when we fall into that trap, our spiritual life turns into a dry, hollow shell with no substance and no strength.

A couple of years ago, we had to take down the big maple tree in the backyard of the parsonage. It was a great big tree, one of the biggest in the neighborhood. It looked nice, and it gave shade, and provided a home for numerous birds and squirrels. But we noticed that some of the branches began to die. And then we had a windstorm and a couple of those big limbs cracked and came crashing down doing some damage. That’s when we decided that the tree had to come down.

When they cut the tree down, we could see that the tree had been dying from the inside out. The trunk was hollow and rotten. Although the superstructure of that tree still looked impressive, at the core, the trunk was no longer able to support it, and nourish it, and give life to it.

Many Christians are like that tree. They have a superstructure of good works. They may be very active in the church. They may serve and sacrifice, give and pray. But at the core, there’s nothing. No spiritual vitality. No fresh walk with God. They’re doing those good works just to keep up appearances. They want people to think well of them. They’re looking for recognition, or a pat on the back from their fellow man. That becomes their primary focus. They’re seeking to maintain a reputation. Instead of their lives being directed God-ward, they’ve turned in on themselves. They’re suffering from spiritual dry rot.

A few years ago, when the Volkswagen beetle was a popular car, you could buy fiberglass kits to customize them. You could make your Volkswagen into a dune buggy, or a GT Racer. They even had kits that let you put a Rolls Royce grill onto your VW. The idea was to impress people with this wonderful car you were driving. Except that underneath that fiberglass shell, it was still a Volkswagen beetle. It sounded like a VW, and it performed like a VW.

So you ended up with a car with a split personality. On the outside it looked like a Ferarri, but inside it was just a VW.

Jesus pointed at the Pharisees and said “That’s what you’ve got there.” Spiritual split personalities. They look great on the outside. Inside, nothing.

How do you prevent this from happening to you? Well the first step is to be aware that it can happen. It can happen to all of us. We never reach the place in our Christian maturity where we’re beyond the spiritual danger of pride and hypocrisy. In fact, this peril is more dangerous to an older Christian than it is to a young Christian. Because it is usually the older Christian who becomes known for his saintliness, or his prayer life, or his great teaching ability, or his faithfulness in service. He’s had time to build up a reputation in the church, and it becomes very easy for him to begin to cultivate that reputation. His focus gradually shifts away from God to himself and to what other people are saying about him.

How to counteract that? Got to go back to the Beatitudes. The Beatitudes are the foundation for the whole Christian life. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn over their own sinfulness. Blessed are the meek. It is only when we come before God every day in poverty of spirit, mourning over our own sinfulness, meekly regarding God and others as more important than ourselves, that God can direct our eyes back on Himself.

The only way we can take our eyes off ourselves is when we look at the Lord.

Remember when Jesus came to the disciples, walking on the water? Peter said “Lord, if it is really you, tell me to come to you on the water.” The Lord said “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat and began walking to Jesus on the water. But then he began to think about what he was doing, and he saw the wind and the waves, and he began to sink. As long as he had his eyes on Jesus, he was OK, but the moment he took his eyes off Jesus, the moment he became self-conscious, he sank. And he cried out “Lord, save me!” At that moment, Peter was demonstrating what it meant to be poor in spirit, Peter was mourning! And that’s when the Lord saved him.

Back in 1923, the world of archaeology was absolutely astounded by what had to be the most amazing discovery ever made. A team of archaeologists led by the Englishman Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb - the first burial chamber of an Egyptian king that had not been broken into by grave robbers.

Under torchlight, Carter opened the pink granite sarcophagus of King Tut, only to find that there was another coffin inside. Inside that another. And another. The coffins were ornate and covered with gold, with beautiful carvings and precious gems. The workmanship was exquisite. But finally they came to the innermost coffin made of solid gold. As they opened the lid, they saw a golden burial mask over the face of the king.

Carefully they lifted it, and found the mummy wrapped in gold cloth. When they unwrapped the cloth, what did they find? Only the dry, shrivelled body of a dead man who had lain there inside all that gold and all that fine craftsmanship for thousands of years. On the outside was beauty; on the inside, deadness.

Perhaps you’re thinking that this describes your spiritual life. You’ve done some good things for the Lord, you have some spiritual accomplishments, but somewhere along the line, you’ve taken your eyes off Him. And now you feel dry and stale spiritually. You’re just going through the motions. You’re just trying to keep up the appearances of your Christian life.

Don’t be discouraged. This happens, at one time or another, to all Christians. The remedy is as sure as it is simple. Just get your eyes back on the Lord. Get back into fellowship with him, by meeting with Him in the Word, by praying with a poor spirit. Ask him to save you from sinking, and He will.

Oh yes, and, speaking of sinking, remember Seaman First Class Roy Robertson? Well, he didn’t sink at Pearl Harbor. Roy Robertson survived that battle. And he followed through on his commitment to the Lord. Later on in the Second World War, he met another sailor named Dawson Trotman and together, they founded an organization called the Navigators. It’s devoted to helping Christians get to know the Scriptures better.

No, Roy Robertson isn’t firing spiritual blanks anymore. Right now, he’s serving as the director of follow-up for the recent Billy Graham Crusade in Hong Kong - a crusade which has allowed more people to hear the Gospel at one time than any other meeting in history. And in on the very ground floor of that effort is a man who once described his spiritual life in terms of firing blanks for Jesus.

The difference in Roy Robertson’s life now is that he’s got his eyes on the Lord. You can experience that difference too!

Hebrews 12:1-2 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.