At this point, it is important to examine the forms that hypocrisy takes. According to the gospel as recorded by…….. Matthew, our Lord Jesus Christ identified four types of Hypocristes.
The Poseur, The Pusher, The Preventer, and The Preoccupied, Matthew writes “ Then Jesus said to the crowds and to His disciples: The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.
So you must be careful to do practice what they do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.
They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to
move them. “ Everything they do is done for people to see: They make their phylacteries wide and the tassels on their garments long; they love the place of honor at banquets and
the most important seats in the synagogues; they love to be greeted with respect in the market places and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by others” (Matthew 23:1-7). –
The poseur is the type of person who acts as if he or she possesses every quality that is needed at any time. In the family his opinons
are the best and so he must be listened to all the time. in the church, he claims to possess the highest level of spirituality just to make himself look good.
He wears big ropes dangling from his robe so that everyone will look at him and think he is spiritual than those with little ropes dangling from theirs.
Everytime he goes to a seminar, he sits in the front and raises his hand, because he always has the answers.
He is the one who carries his Scripture verse pack in his front pocket, so you will know he is memorizing Scripture. He is the one who
shows up at all of the growth groups and has all the answer before the questions are asked. He is the one who always calls you on the phone to tell you he has just solved
another spiritual problem, and you didn’t know there was one. in the civil front, the poseur loves to be an adviser because he claims to
know the terrain better than anyone else. The Poseur is very dangerous because he deceives people into believing him and so
entrusting a whole lot into his hands.Before his real self is discovered, a lot of damage would have been caused.
The pusher makes other people do the things that he should be doing, but is not. The Pusher is the boss’. He preoccupies others
with responsibilities he himself should be handling. He keeps everyone busy, does nothing but only shows up to take glory for
what he did not do. The danger with the pusher includes that he never lets the real actors be known and rewarded.
The Preventer claims to believe in the vision of the system where he works, and at the same time does his best to keep others from
believing in the same vision. He will take up a responsibility, not only will he not perform the responsibility, he will see to it that no one else perform it.
The preventer is out to destroy the same system and struture he claims to build and from which he feeds, after all, he is not at the head.
The preoccupied is the hypocrite that worries too much about their outer appereance and what they are doing.,rather than is going on inside of their soul.
The preoccupied is only intrested in his personal image. His priority is to be seen as busy, even when he does nothing. He is ready
to decieve eveeryone to create a good public image for himself. He is always ready to change his behavior to suite every situation
without any concern about his attitude. The preoccupied loves the billboards, banners and flyers. He will do anything to be at the new headlines and newspappers front pages.
WHY HYPOCRISCY
Let’s try to take a look into the heart of hypocrities and see if we can decipher why
people live in falseshood? As we do this, we discover that people become hypocrities because……
i. There is a battle ground. The fact of the matter is that we have a dual nature. Some are upset with that and call it the flesh and the spirit .
some say it is the old man and the new man. We will not be concerned with theological semantics. You call it anything you want.
The main ideas is that there are two forces vying for control in the real you, which is the heart that lives within you.
You may say, “I want to stop being bitter.” you may not stop showing bitterness, but your heart keeps sending up the bitterness signals. You can mask it and playact. Why?
Because….
a. It is easier to change your behavior than your attitudes.
b. We live in a performance, religious – oriented world that says if just do the right things you will be acceptable.
c. So many scriptural commandments have to do with behavioral responses such as, “Thou shalt not….” “Thou shalt……”
We first learn to express the externals of the christian life.
That is as it should be. For example, when you become a christian, by God’s grace you stop committing adultery.
The scripture says, thou shall not commit adultery, and you stop as you should. The scripture says, let him that steals, steal no more, so you quit stealing by God’s grace.
The scripture says, seven things God hates, God hates a lying tongue, so you quit lying , and that is good, that is what we ought to do.
The scripture says, Love your wife as christ loved the church, and love your wife as you love your own body. You quit beating your wife. That is good.
The scripture says, the body is the temple of God, so you quit using drugs or any involvement with sexual immorality. There are many examples we can look at.
This is the right progression. You should by grace stop committing adultery, stealing, lying and beating your wife and all forms of immorality.
But here comes the problem. You stop lying, and the church is impressed. The world is impressed.
Soon, we become impressed because they are impressed, we are impressed, and we begin to think that God is impressed.
But if the intent of your heart it still deceitful, you are still as big a liar as ever. Now you just compound the lie with hypocrisy.
You might quit beating your wife, but you still have the bitter spirit towards her. Now you just beat her in your heart, and you start beating her emotionally with your wealth and action.
you may stop committing adultery, but your eye look after another man’s wife. Jesus says therein lies than problem.
He tells us to clean the inside of the cup that shiny, self- righteous vessels of yours, so it will be able to be filled and used.
The first problem that we must recognize is that the battle between Gods spirit and Satan’s is very much in progress our lives. God’s control is for the heart, for out of it comes the issues of life.
We need to come to understand the dual nature.
2. the second reason for hypocrisy is even more important than that. It is that man desires to be accepted. He wants acceptant in four ways:
a. He wants to be accepted by God. He thinks the way to do that is to do good and
Behave himself.
b. He wants to be accepted by himself. The way to do that is to deceive himself into
Believing he is not that bad after all.
c. He wants to be accepted by the world, so he walks the gray line of compromise why Waving a flag of religiosity.
d. He want to be accepted by the church, so he behave as though he was what other
Think he is.
Acceptance: we all want it. Before we became Christians, we all were faced with this problem. We look in the mirror and decided that we were ugly.
We wanted to be pretty, so we became hypocrites and try to fool ourselves, and we try to fool others, we wanted to be good, but we knew we were bad.
We became hypocrites. We pretended to became what we were not. We wanted to be successful, but we were not, and again we try to fool ourselves and others.
The root cause of hypocrisy is that we set standards we can’t reach. As we watch television, we see miss world.
Even the girl on the shampoo commercial who is washing her hairs looks like miss world everyone on television commercial looks handsome or beautiful.
The whole point is that the world bases everything on physical talent, physical ability and physical appearance.
Here were, and uneducated young man becomes rich, drives fleet of cars, he automatically becomes famous, is
bombarded with offers of chief tanincy and political title and appointments. I mean he becomes ‘a leader’ with no one caring to know, who he really is.
Because he has now been given such a high responsibility, he must playact to fit in. So what do we have, hypocrisy.
What do we see these days? Every young man and woman is ‘a minister of the word’. We become Christians.
All of a sudden, we read the scripture and realize that the ground at the foot of the cross is level. We convince ourselves that
‘Ministers’ of the gospel; we can become famous as the political leaders. As a matter of fact, God uses our weakness, so that we can get that much more excited about him.
We decide now that we have an even chance in the game of life to be accepted and that acceptance comes in the realm of the Spirit.
Now we can be accepted by spiritual standards. But we aren’t spiritual yet, and we don’t want to wait for acceptance, so we become hypocrites.
Remember what Jesus says about the hypocrite who now is a church leader. Do what he says to do, but don’t do what he does.
This is not a good commentary on Christian authority. I don’t know how many of you will say this of people in positions of leadership in your life.
The preachers of this world want acceptance. They want to be ‘holy ‘ because that is what we except of them.
They have hard time being real people. Yet, real acceptance is when you are around someone who is ministering the word, and you know they are real.
They share that have the same heartaches and same problems that you have.
Can you just picture Jesus? He had reasons to condemn double standard.
Do you know why? He never exhibited double standard in His life. Can you picture Jesus calling the disciples together and saying,
“Okay team, sermon is on foot washing. I am going to stand here to show you some chart on the wall. You must clean between the toes and above ankle.
I want you to get this right. Now peter, you go first. You take care of James.” No. How did Jesus do it? He asked the disciples to take off their sandals so He could wash their feet.
No Hypocrisy.
Jesus sent the disciples out without a place to stay. He told them, “You are going to go out, and you will be the guests of the people where you go.
If you need me, I will be at the Classy Palace Hotel Suite.” No that is not what Jesus said. He told them, “The Son of Man has no place
to lay his head.” Jesus sent the disciples out as he told them, “You are going to be persecuted and some of you will die, and I’ m
going to be watching it all.” No. He went to the cross Himself, then allowed us the privilege of entering in part with His suffering.
Jesus didn’t understand in His own life what it meant to have double- standards. He was transparent.
So there are two reasons why people become hypocrites.
First, the flesh in us can be masqueraded so quickly, but the heart can’t be changed that quickly. It is so convincing that we become satisfied and think that God is satisfied, too.
Secondly, people are hypocrites because they need acceptance to desperately that they
pretend to be what they aren’t in order to be accepted by the few who are impress by performance. So now we see what it means that the heart is deceitful and wicked, who can know it?
HYPOCRISY AND RELIGION
“Then assembled together the chief priest, and the elder of the people.. And consulted that they might take Jesus by subtitle, and kill him. (Matthew 26:3-4)
Is it not astounding to you that the ones who gave Jesus the biggest headache, so to speak, were the religious leaders of his day? Unfortunately, this is still true today.
Religious leaders are supposed to set the example for right living amongst all people. yet, all too often, they are as sinful as the people they are to be converting! all too often,
religious leaders are religious hypocrites. it was the religious leaders of Jesus day who actually incited the people to have Jesus murdered.
Jesus sternly warned against religious hypocrites. (Luke 20:46,47)He said to beware of holy “acting” people who set themselves
above others, taking advantage of their goodness! When Jesus referred to religious “Hypocrites” He used the Greek word “Hypocrites.”
This was a word used in the Greek Theatre to describe “actors.” (Matthew 23:15) Jesus said there is a particular curse that comes
upon religious “actors” That curse is “greater damnation “than that which will come upon their followers! (Matthew 23:14) Religious is worse today than ever.
Too many are sexual Leaders today are hypocrites. Many are sexual predators. Many drink alcohol, are addicted to tobacco, use
drugs, manipulate and control their followers. Religion is still ongoing strong and Jesus still refuses to cut false religious leaders any slack.
The same religious “spirit” that paid Judas to betray Jesus is still in the earth today. (Luke 22:1-6) it’s a conniving, devious spirit that schemes and manipulates others to do its dirty work (John 18: 19-31).
Religious hypocrites corrupt themselves by concealing their true nature beneath an outward of uprightness.
However, not all people are hypocrites and actors, Jesus had religious friends who loved him. Some tried to save his life. (Luke 13:31)
one sincere religious leader looked after Jesus body once his hypocritical peers has killed him. (John 18:19-31).
So, not all religious people and religious leaders are hypocrites. Some want to please God and really do mean well. A good number lack proper teaching.
How about you? Are you a religious hypocrite, who “acts” holy before others, but in reality you secretly do things of which God and conscience disapprove?
You can become a brand new person, supernaturally (2 Corinthians 5:17) God himself to cut that hypocritical spirit right out
of you and give you a brand new spirit. He actually promises to put His own Spirit with you. (Ezekiel 36:26, 27) That’ll do a whole lot
to knock the hypocrisy out of anybody. Just say from a sincere heart, “Jesus, I don’t want to be a religious player anymore. I’m not
interested in ‘greater damnation’. I’m interested in ‘relationship’ not religion’. I choose You as my savior and give You access now to ‘iron out the religious wrinkles’ in my life.” (Romans 10:13).
HYPOCRISY IN THE CHURCH
“Hypocrisy” or variations of it appear 17 times in the NIV translation of the Bible.
Often it is Christ calling people hypocrites (see, for instance, Matthew 6:2, 5, 16; 7:5; 15:7; 22:18; 23:13, 15; 23:23, 25, 27, 29; 24:51; Mark 7:6; Luke 6:42; 12:56; and 13:15). “You hypocrites!” in fact is a recurring
phrase. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How
can you say to your brother, ‘let me take the speck out of your eye, ‘when all the time there is a plank in your eye? You hypocrite, first
take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from
your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:3-5NIV)
With these witty also biting words, Jesus causes his listeners – then and today –to
carefully examine their own lives. Are we going about accusing others of minor shortcomings when, in fact, we ourselves are
ignoring our own behavior? If so, we are hypocrites. Once our hypocrisy is removed, then we are in a position to help others.
Unfortunately, one obstacle to the acceptance of Christianity that is often raised is provided by Christians themselves. Phrased in many
ways, the core of the objection is, “If Christianity is true, why are there hypocrites in the church?” In other words, if Christianity
is really supposed to change people, then why do some who profess to believe in Jesus set bad examples?
Similarly, critics of Christianity who raise the hypocrisy objection usually point to some
moral failure in the lives of Christians they know as examples of Christianity being false or at least highly suspect. “See!” they
exclaim. “There goes another hypocrite in the church! How can I believe Christianity if the church is full of hypocrites? “Was Jesus
guilty of pointing out the speck in someone else’s eye when in fact he had a plank in his own? Not at all. Therefore, Christianity does not stand or fall on the way Christians have
acted throughout history or are acting today. Christianity stands or falls on the person of Jesus, and Jesus was not a hypocrite. He
lived consistently with what He taught, and at the end of His life He challenged those who had lived with him night and day. For over
three years,. To point out any hyporcrisy in him. His disciples were silent, because there wasnone. Since Christianity depends on
Jesus, it is incorrect to try to invalidate the Christian faith by pointing to horrible things done in the name of Christianity.
In diassociating Christianity from the hypocritical behaviors of some of its professors, thress things need to be borne in mind.
First, whether or not Christianity is true does not depend on how its adherents behave. This, of course, does it mean excuse
hypocrisy in the church, but neither does it mean that hypocrite in any sense of the word. Often even crities agree with this point,
exalting the high moral standards of Christ without understanding his larger claims. Third, seemingly hypocritical behavior on
large scale, such as the inquisition, does no invalidate Christianity, either. Again, this does
not excuse hypocritical behavior, but separates it from the center of Christianity: Christ and his claims.
The positive influence of Christianity: Are al;l Christians hypocrites? Not at all! In fact, the history of the Christian church is filled with
examples of selfishness, courage, moral action and reform and many other positive influences on the world. There are not the
acts of hypocrites, but of sincere believers transformed by the resurrected Christ and moved by the holy spirit to :do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matthew 7:12; Luke6:31)
The church is a work in progress (and so are its members). Like a cathedral that may take decades to complete the process is long and
arduous, but someday it will be complete and stand as a beautiful testimony to the power of Christ to transform lives for the better
remember, too, that only some professing Christians act hypocritically. What about all those who do not? What about all those who consistently live out the love of Christ in the world?
HYPOCRISY, MORAL STANDARD AND SIN
Until the church and all followers of Christ are glorified, there will, unfortunately, be
hypocrites in the church. What’s important to remember, however, is that this does not negate Christianity or the claims of Christ. In
addition, accusation of hypocrisy assumed that there is moral standard that hypocrites break. But where does this standard come from?.
In this sense, the hypocrisy objection actually support the reality of a transcended, moral law giver (that is God), rather that argue against Him.
We must also remember that biblical speaking, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by
His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:23-24). In other words no one is perfect and all are dependent on Christ for redemption, salvation and
growth in spiritual maturity. But the warning and the truth remain, Christians should not act hypocritically lest we provide critics with flimsy reason to reject the Gospel message.
Shalom…
Also read this…
“Spiritual Growth And Transformation”
Wonderful