Hypocrisy – Deleted Scenes

Well, here’s another deleted scenes posting. Again, the rules are the same: this pretty much will not do a lot for you unless you heard the sermon. I’ll try to have it make sense, ‘stand alone,’ but it will not be as interesting or compelling without the intended context. And that is EXACTLY the problem with a “deleted scenes” blog-post: it’s not that interesting! These are all the bits of a sermon that did NOT make the cut! The actual sermon was more interesting. So, dear blog readers, here are the scraps and crumbs from the table …

One of the things I discovered when preparing this sermon was the particular, well, “FURY,” that accompanies religious hypocrisy. It may be said that “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned;” yet there is likewise no fury that is like that of the person betrayed by a religious leader. Bill Hybels says that there are ‘high stakes’ to church leadership and this is one of them.

Just to let you know, there is another passage in Matthew 10 that has many of the same ideas. But, for a variety of reasons (that I’m not going into right now) it is likely another occurrence. And that makes sense as when Jesus taught and preached, it is entirely likely that he repeated ideas, themes, and even messages. We saw an example of that when Jesus teaches the Lord’s Prayer on two separate occasions

I’ve noticed that Luke, at this point, is developing a new pattern. He presents some situation or verbal interaction with Jesus, and that launches Jesus into a teaching and even a parable. Here are some examples that we’ve already seen:

• 10:25 – a lawyer asks how to get eternal life; Jesus teaches about compassion and gives the parable of the Good Samaritan
• 10:38 – Martha gets upset with Mary; Jesus teaches about worship
• 11:1 – a disciple asks about prayer; Jesus gives a model prayer and teaches them about God as their Father through a parable
• 11:14 – Jesus is accused of operating under the power of Satan; Jesus teaches about unity, gives a little parable about demons
• 11:27 – a woman blesses Jesus’ mother; Jesus point her to the Bible
• 11:29 – Jesus starts getting very popular; Jesus points out that the people are just seeking entertainment, gives a couple of parables
• 11:37 – a lunch host is annoyed at Jesus’ lack of ritual; he fires right back with accusations of hypocrisy
• 11:45 – a lawyer feels the rebuke and Jesus tells him that he should be

That is, each of the introductory statements that Luke gives is connected to the teaching that Jesus gives. Jesus begins his little speech by making a statement that connects their recent experience: his own judgment of the Pharisees AND their current situation of his astounding popularity – all the crowds. He tells them to “Beware” the leaven of the Pharisees. Why? Why does Jesus talk about hypocrisy in the context of all of these people? I think Jesus may be addressing his own popularity. Now here’s my caveat: none of my commentators seemed to address this matter. But it seems to me that Jesus may be making some link between ‘popularity’ and a temptation to hypocrisy.

Jesus tells us the truth about hypocrisy. That’s one of the great things about God, he came down to us to tell us – face-to-face – about how things *really* work in the universe that, after all, he created.

In the context of the catastrophic effect of sin upon our relationship with God: Even David recognized this when he confessed his sin to God; which included: his dereliction of duty, abuse of authority, adultery, conspiracy, murder and said to God, “Against you and you only have I sinned.” Ps 51:4. Clearly David had sinned against Bathsheba, Uriah, and Joab, as well as the whole nation of Israel. But David poetically emphasized that sin’s most important effect is to offend God.

I deliberately declined to go into the concept of the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and made the point that the real important theme in the text was hypocrisy, not this issue of blasphemy. However, it is there and in the text, so I did develop some thoughts though didn’t include them in the actual sermon. Here they are:

Generally, “blasphemy” is an hurtful statement made about someone. There are several facets of blasphemy but, at its core, it is a violation of one of the Ten Commandments: Exodus 20:7 "You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. We saw an instance of this a few weeks ago when people were claiming that the works of God are actually of Satan. E.g.; Luke 11:15 – the claim that Jesus was casting out demons using the power of Satan. A more theologically precise definition is: “A conscious, willful, and intentional statement about the clearly recognized revelation of God’s grace in Christ through the Holy Spirit, which is – because of hate and hostility – attributed to the devil.”

In a way, hypocrisy and blasphemy are related. With hypocrisy, you are acting a lie about yourself; with blasphemy, you are speaking a lie about God. Now the question always comes up, “I think I might have said or done something once that was an unforgiveable sin!” Within the Bible, this is the only explicitly stated “unpardonable” sin. Why? Because of the clarity and obviousness of Jesus’ works at the time, a persistent declaration of those works as being from Satan is just inexcusable. Today, Jesus’ claims are not so obvious and clear as they were to those who were physically in front of him. We must walk by faith and not by sight. To put it simply: we live in different times and circumstances. So most commentators that I’ve read – and I agree with them – say that today it is just impossible to commit this “unpardonable” sin. Yet, there seems to be this distinction between blasphemy against Jesus and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. It seems to me that this difference is a recognition of our limitations. For those standing right in front of Jesus, they didn’t see the divine second person of the trinity; they saw a blue-collar guy in his early thirties. Even as the “Quintessential” or “Ultimate” human being, there are normal, natural, and predictable doubts about what we would’ve seen if we were looking at Jesus then and there. Please note that Jesus just got through saying previously that denying him would result in judgment - but that sin is forgivable. But when the power of the Holy Spirit is displayed for good, live-giving, life-enhancing, and God-honoring purposes in unmistakable, concrete, and completely miraculous ways - to then persistently say, motivated by pure hatred and hostility - that power is actually from evil and Satan - THAT, at that time and place, is just too much: such a person has leapt headlong into the lake of fire.

We, as Christians, are going to get hammered. Yes – there are consequences to following Jesus. There’s a saying that has gone around: “The safest place to be is in the center of God’s will.” Being in the center of God’s will is clearly the best place to be, but it may not be safe for you, or – this is much harder - those you love. We’re pretty fortunate that here in Sterling Heights, in 2010, we don’t face the probability of death for confessing Jesus. There are many good reasons for that and I am grateful. But the point is that we must be willing to accept the value of confessing Jesus OVER the value of our physical lives, or even the lives of those we love. This is a point that we frequently miss, precisely because of our relative safety and security in our society. We need to take up our cross – we need to be ready to die. A few weeks ago, we heard Jesus saying: Luke 9:23 And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” We must love Jesus more than family; later, we’ll hear Jesus saying: Luke 14:26 "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” But this isn’t just a New Testament thing: Psalm 27:10 “Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.”

As to this promise for supernatural help, we see several fulfillments of this promise by Jesus in the Bible itself:

• Acts 2 – Peter, after being filled with Sprit, and being in front of people who were responsible for killing Jesus, preaches amazing sermon
• Act 4 – Peter, on trial, preaches another amazing sermon (4:8 > 4:13-14)
• Acts 6 – Stephen, on trial, again preaches amazing sermon (6:8, 12, 15 > 7:2, esp’ly v55)

Can you imagine what it would look like if we all stopped being hypocrites and valued Jesus more than the other mini-gods we are attracted to;

• little gods like:
• good health
• good job
• good education
• good marriage or family
• nice house in good neighborhood
• a good reputation
• all of the above - for our children

Are all those things good? Sure, I just said so. But not only are those things idolatrous when we value them more than Jesus, the hypocrisy part is when we value looking good over being good. Say it with me:

• Renounce hypocrisy;
• Follow Jesus;
• Don’t worry about the consequences