Don't Be a Hypocrite

Seaman first class Roy Robertson was a Christian. He served aboard the battleship West Virginia. One Saturday night, with his ship 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 each of the men 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 nervously 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, Robertson went to bed thinking “Roy, you’re nothing but a phony.”

The next morning was Sunday, December 7, 1941. At 7:55 a.m., the ship’s alarm suddenly went off ordering everyone to battle stations. This was no drill—they were really under attack.

While Robertson raced to his battle station, he could see some of the 360 airplanes of the Japanese Imperial Fleet that were attacking Pearl Harbor. The air was filled with smoke and flame and the crash of the Japanese bombs.

Roy ran to his machine gun emplacement, only to find to his utter dismay that all he 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 airplanes, hoping to scare them off.

As he stood there firing fake ammunition while the West Virginia was sinking, he found himself thinking “Robertson, this is how your whole life has been. You’ve been firing blanks for Jesus.”

Right then and there, as the bullets and bombs slammed into his ship, Roy Robertson made up his mind to get serious about following the Lord.

Maybe 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 appearance of spirituality, but underneath, there’s not much substance to it..

Maybe you sense that you’re life is not really making much of an impact, and even more significant, you’re not feeling much of a sense of fulfilment in living the Christian life.

Jesus talked about this very matter in the Sermon on the Mount. He talked about the peril of living life strictly for appearances’ sake—the danger of just going through the motions spiritually, with no real substance.

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 moved in to settle there immediately, and soon after, she would go on a tour of the area to see that her wishes had been carried out.

Her prime minister at that time was Grigory Potemkin. Prior to Catherine’s visit, Potemkin had the Russian 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 from the windows. She was completely fooled into thinking that her orders had been carried out.

Those villages became known as Potemkin Villages. To this day, Russians still use that expression when they talk about something phoney that is done just for the sake of putting up a good front. It’s a Potemkin Village.

There’s a very great danger that we do that in the spiritual life. Jesus warned that we would be tempted to make our discipleship into a Potemkin Village—to engage in spiritual activity, to do good deeds—“acts of righteousness”—just to make ourselves look good in front of others. To keep up appearances.

You see, if the devil cannot keep us from doing the right thing, he’ll try to get us to do the right thing for the wrong reason. This is the subtle snare of hypocrisy that the devil lays out for us.

The Sermon on the Mount teaches us that we should live our lives to please God, and nobody else. That should be our goal. But hypocrisy is when we trade the goal of pleasing God for the goal of pleasing men.

And when we try to be man-pleasers, what we’re really doing is becoming self-pleasers. Because the only reason we try to gain the approval of other people is to make us feel better about ourselves. We like the applause. We like the approval. We like to hear people comment favorably about what a great Christian we 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.”

Jesus is going to use the word hypocrite four times in the Sermon on the Mount. He uses it a total of 20 times in his teaching. It’s a pretty interesting word. It comes from the Greek theater, where it was used to refer to the actors on stage. The word literally means “play-actor”, or “role-player”; someone who is taking on a different identity than who they really are.

And Jesus says, “Beware lest you do that in your spiritual life.”

In the first eighteen verses of chapter 6, Jesus is going to take us on a guided tour of the Christian life and show us how the trap of hypocrisy is waiting for us at every turn.

He’s going to talk about giving, and he’s going to tell us that we can become hypocrites in our giving. He’s going to talk about our prayer life, and he’s going to tell us that we can become hypocrites in our praying. He’s going to talk about spiritual self-discipline—fasting—and he’s going to tell us that we can do that for hypocritical reasons.

It’s possible to do any of 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, Jesus says, then we’ll lose our reward in heaven. “If you seek your reward from men,” Jesus says, “you’ll probably get it, but that’s all you’ll get. You won’t get any reward from your Father in heaven.”

In the next 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 put up a spiritual front— when we play to the grandstand in our spiritual life—we’re actually trading in the reward that God has waiting for us, for the fickle and temporary praise of men. There is no reward from God for those who seek reward from men.

And if you fall into that trap—the trap of hypocrisy—your spiritual life will turn into a dry, hollow shell with no substance and no strength.

I don’t imagine that the name Howard Carter means much to you. But back in 1923, the whole world was talking about him. Howard Carter was the man who made one of the most amazing archaeological discoveries of all time. He was the man who found King Tut’s tomb - the first burial chamber of an Egyptian king that had not been broken into by grave robbers.

After they entered the inner burial chamber, they found the coffin of that pharaoh who lived over 3,000 years ago. Carter carefully pried open the pink granite lid of King Tut’s coffin, only to find that there was another coffin inside. Inside that another. And another. Each coffin was more ornate than the previous one. Each was covered with gold, and beautiful carvings and studded with precious gems. The workmanship was exquisite.

Finally, Carter came to the innermost coffin. It was made of solid gold. As he opened the lid, he saw a golden burial mask over the face of the king.

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

Many Christians are like King Tut. They have an outer shell of good works. They may be very active in the church. They may serve and sacrifice, and give and pray. But deep down inside, there’s nothing but dry ashes. No spiritual vitality. No fresh walk with God.

They’re doing their good works just to keep up appearances. They want people to think well of them. They’re looking for recognition—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.

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. The only problem was 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.

Q. - How can I keep this from happening to me? How can I keep from becoming a hypocrite in my spiritual life?

Well the first step is to be aware that it can happen. It can happen to all of us. You never reach the place in your Christian walk where you’re beyond the temptation to become a hypocrite.

In fact, the peril of hypocrisy is more dangerous to an older Christian than it is to a younger Christian. Because it is usually the older, more mature Christian who becomes known for his saintliness, or his prayer life, or his great teaching ability, or his faithfulness in service.

The older Christian has had time to build up a reputation among other Christians, and it becomes very easy for him to begin to want to cultivate that reputation. His focus can begin to shift away from God and fix upon what other people are saying about him.

How do you counteract that? You have 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. Blessed are those who are starving and dying of thirst for God’s righteousness.

It is only when you come before God every day in poverty of spirit, mourning over your own sinfulness, meekly regarding God and others as more important than yourself, that God can protect you from the snare of hypocrisy.

Beware when you become confident of your own spiritual maturity.

When a baby begins to grow and mature physically, that child begins to become more and more independent of his parents, until one day, he is completely autonomous and able to care for himself. He can think for himself, provide for himself, and decide for himself.

Christian maturity is just the opposite. The more mature a Christian becomes, the more dependent upon His Heavenly Father he becomes. A human baby starts out dependent and grows to independence; a new Christian starts out independent and grows to dependence.

When you read the biographies of the great Christians who have lived down through the years, you soon realize that these were people who took everything to the Lord; every detail of life, every problem, every need, every decision. They lived in constant communion and dependence on Him.

Remember when Jesus came to the disciples on the Sea of Galilee, 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 took his eyes off Jesus and he began to think about this amazing thing he was doing. He was walking on water!

Maybe at that point he turned and looked back at the guys who were still in the boat. “Hey guys, get a load of this—ol’ Pete’s doing the “lake-walk”!” But then he noticed the wind and the waves and he realized how crazy this was to be out there twenty feet from the boat.

And you know what happened next—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 of his own accomplishment, he sank.

And at that point, 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 reached out his hand and caught him. And then Peter was OK, because he had his hand in the hand of the Man from Galilee.

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. He began to live for Jesus.

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.

Roy Robertson isn’t firing spiritual blanks anymore. Right now, he’s serving as the director of follow-up for the Billy Graham organization. This 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.