Baptist Fellowship Church

Fervent But Fake
Proverbs 26:23
Bro. Mark Herbster

Everyone struggles with the issue of hypocrisy. In our lives we are often wearing a lot of masks. It makes us look better than what we are. The sin of hypocrisy is acting and going through the motion in our Christian lives.

How do we know we have hypocrisy?

Why do we want to know about hypocrisy?

To wake you up if you live a live of hypocrisy.
To warn you not to let it happen if you do not live such a life.

The three characteristics of hypocrisy are:

1. Someone who hears God’s Word but does not heed God’s warning.

An illustration is listening to a good concert. At the end of it, one applauds the performers, but the next morning, one would have forgotten about the performance except that it was good and, after a few days, even that memory fades away. Similarly, we should not be taking in God’s Word with rapturous attention and then, the moment we step out of the worship hall, let it all fade away without impacting our lives.

In James 1:21-25, God’s Word is likened to a spiritual mirror. We sometimes look at the mirror, know the problem, but we don’t do anything about it. Similarly, we may know what God says, but do nothing about it.

In the Sermon on the Mount, the concluding statement alludes to this issue exactly. Jesus described the building of a house on the strong foundation of the rock or on sand. It is upon the foundation of the rock that we should build our lives. We should be hearing His Word and heeding it, impacting our lives and building upon it.

2. Someone who professes with the lips but does not practise what he professes.

In Isaiah 29:13, “Therefore the Lord said: “Inasmuch as these people draw near with their mouths And honor Me with their lips, But have removed their hearts far from Me, And their fear toward Me is taught by the commandment of men,”

This statement was used by Jesus to refer to the Pharisees and that was exactly what they did. They paid lip service and never practised when they preached. One should not merely pay lip service but life service to all that is in the Word. Your life must not contradict your talk.

It would be a great disservice to our mission field and our witnessing if we do not walk what we say. One often hears the statement, “I do not want to go to church because it is full of hypocrites.” Life must match the lips or one is living in hypocrisy.

3. Someone who focuses on outward action but forgets the inward attitude.

In Isaiah 58:1-7

They were doing a lot of good religious deeds, but for the wrong reasons. They want men to honour them. They want people to be pleased with their ritualistic actions. They gave no true heart for God. The focus is on outward action but they forget the inward attitude.

We must have a heart for God. It is not enough to do right, but we need to be right.

The story is told of the Boston marathoner, Rosie Ruiz who created a scheme to cheat the system, running only the last mile of the 26 mile run. She did it in a “world record time”. Running the marathon is a discipline of both the mind and body, and our lives is like this race. We do not want to “win” at the end, running only the last mile. We want to complete the whole race with focusing on God. We want to face God at the end of the race of Life to hear Him say “well done”. No laurels from man could ever compare.

Mr and Mrs ET Chua

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 15th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Sermons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.