Good morning and welcome in everybody. Today we are going to take a look at a passage of Scripture, but before we do that I wanted to tell you a little story.
How many of you run your own business? Before I was baptized into the faith, I had been hired by a few different companies to manage their businesses for them. Management has a lot to do with keeping track of the utilization of time, and making sure that your workers are keeping on task with their duties. This obviously helps to increase your profit margin. But sometimes, an employee can appear like a hard worker, but as soon as you step out of the office, the true side of them appears, being lazy and completely unmotivated. There have been many times that some of them would call in sick, coughing repetitively over the phone, and explaining that they needed to stay in bed all day. After hanging up, I would have to open up the Rolodex, and start finding somebody to fill in their shift for them. But occasionally when you took your lunch break, you would see their car downtown, and find them playing games at the local arcade, having a grand old time and in very good health!
This reminds me of the Christian Life.
To pretend means to behave as if something is true when you know that it is not, especially in order to deceive others. Religious hypocrisy is defined as pretending to be what you are not, or claiming to believe something that you really don’t. It is to put forth a false front so as to make it appear that something is the case, when it actually isn’t. It is the pretense of having virtuous character, or morals that one really doesn’t possess at all. Jesus rebuked the religious leaders of his day for their hypocrisy, but everything has gone full circle. In these latter days, there is a huge form of false Christianity on the rise, filled with people who are of the exact same spirit. They profess to believe in the Lord, but live their lives contrary to the things that He taught. They might have the appearance of religion on the exterior, but on the inside their hearts are far from God, filled with pretense, duplicity, and deceit. On the exterior, they appear like sheep but on the inside they are wolves; frauds of the highest caliber and worthy of the greatest damnation.
1 Timothy 4 ¹ Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; ² Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
Matthew 15 ⁷ Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, ⁸ This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.
The Lord Jesus hates hypocrisy, whether it was going on among the Jews or within the church. Hypocrisy is professing to have certain moral standards or beliefs, to which your own behavior does not conform. It is an insincere and deceptive appearance of religion, rather than an inward change of the heart. Hypocrisy is condemned throughout the scriptures.
Matthew 23 ¹³ But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. ¹⁴ Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
¹⁵ Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. ¹⁶ Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!
¹⁷ Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold?
¹⁸ And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty. ¹⁹ Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? ²⁰ Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. ²¹ And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein. ²² And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon. ²³ Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. ²⁴ Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
²⁵ Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. ²⁶ Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. ²⁷ Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. ²⁸ Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. ²⁹ Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, ³⁰ And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. ³¹ Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. ³² Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. ³³ Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?
A hypocrite is a deceiver, and although they might rejoice for a moment, their wickedness will be exposed and quickly punished by God. Watch as it happens,
“That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment? Job 20:5
“Though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not be unpunished……Proverbs 11:21
Luke 12 ¹ In the mean time, when there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. ² For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.
Hypocrisy will be punished by God, both now and in eternity. He will bring all of the hidden things of darkness into the light, and expose it in a public fashion. Like a boss who becomes privy to your deception, hypocrisy will eventually become known, and that should make anybody think twice, before picking up the phone and….
……Calling in SIck
Let’s think about these things for right now. We can be found on your web browser by searching, tlkjbc where you can find our diaries distributed through various platforms. We are not associated, nor affiliated with any other religious goups. You can get our entire podcast feeds directly, along with transcripts at tlkjbc.com or I suppose that you could find us somewhere up here, in the Great Northern Minnesota woods. Peace to you, and Lord willing, we will talk with you some more tomorrow. Till then, bye bye everybody.❤️
tlkjbc.com
Teufer Lake King James Bible Church 