Are You Acting Like a Hypocrite?

Introduction
I think it’s obvious to everyone who knows us, that my family loves dressing up for Halloween.  Although, if I’m being totally transparent, after so many years of doing it—and with the expectation every year that we must have a great costume because it’s expected—the pressure of having a great costume is a bit stressful every year.  And with 2 kids now grown and out of the house, and Abigail being a full-fledged teenager who may or may not want to be part of the family tradition, some of the joy we had in the past has gone out of

it.

Still, we do love to dress up.  The hardest part is coming up with an idea—something that’s new and different, that we haven’t seen overdone, but also something people will recognize.  And something that’s doable (because we like to make our own costumes as much as possible.

Once we find the right idea, we may even research the characters a little bit to understand them.
A few years ago when we dressed up as Popeye and Olive Oil, we spent several evenings together watching old cartoons of Popeye. And I got curious:  why did Popeye love spinach so much? I found out the original cartoon’s creator wanted to encourage kids to eat healthier.  So, he made spinach the miraculous source of Popeye's super-stregnth. It worked. Some data shows kids consumption of spinach increased by as ⅓ at the cartoon’s most popular period.

Of course, we all know the characters we dress up as during Halloween are just make-believe. No matter how much we delve into it, when we take off the masks we become ourselves again.
Halloween is just pretend.

But what we do during Halloween—pretending to be someone else for the night—is a great example of a mystery of human behavior Jesus warned about often.  Jesus warned His followers not to be like the hypocrites. 

You know what a hypocrite is.  It’s become a churchy word.  Sometimes we use it in the church and sometimes people outside the church like to call people who go to church hypocrites.  In Jesus day, hypocrite was a Greek word that came from the Greek culture.  In Greece, people loved to watch plays in the theater.  And the actors in the play were known as hypocrites.

The actors in the plays would put on costumes or masks and pretend to be character from Greek mythology.  And then the actors would act out the great mythological stories of Greece.  Hypocrites pretended to be other people in order to tell the story.  That’s fine if you are an actor in a play (or if you’re dressing up for Halloween), but we shouldn’t be like hypocrites in real life. 

This is a theme Jesus touches on again and again throughout the 6^th chapter of Matthew in His Sermon on the Mount.  Today, we read Matthew 6:1-4.

Matthew 6:1-4
¹ “Watch out! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. ² When you give to someone in need, don’t do as the hypocrites do—blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity! I tell you the truth, they have received all the reward they will ever get. ³ But when you give to someone in need, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. ⁴ Give your gifts in private, and your Father, who sees everything, will reward you.

When You Give...
The people of Jesus’ day, as do Christians today, inherently knew that righteous people do good deeds—including giving charity to people in need.  Throughout the Old Testament, God instructed people to give to help people in need. 

And it’s important to point out, Jesus assumed His followers would give to the needy.  Jesus didn’t say, “If you give to the needy…”  He said, “When you give to the needy…”

Tooting Your Own Horn
Important and wealthy people of Jesus day—both Romans and Jews in Israel—made big displays of when they gave money to the poor.  Roman officials would often erect monuments to commemorate their giving.  One Roman official I learned about recently had a record of all the money he had given and all good deeds he had done carved onto a wall in the city where he governed.  The record of his “righteousness” is still preserved in ancient ruins to this day.

Sometimes, wealthy religious leaders in Israel would stand on a street corner and have trumpets blown to get everyone’s attention while they handed our charity to the poor.  Everyone in the neighborhood would hear the trumpets and know that person was a righteous and generous person.

But Jesus said, “Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven.”  It feels good to be admired by others.  And a fact of life in our modern world is:  Sometimes you do have to toot your own horn.  In order to succeed as a business or and individual, you have to "market" yourself.

If you’ve ever made a resume in order to get a job, if you’ve ever gone to a job interview, you know you have to show your potential employer that you are worthy of the position.  You may be competing against other candidates and you have to show your next boss that you’re the best choice for the job.  So you sort of have to "toot your own horn" in some sense in some situations.  There's nothing wrong with that.  And Jesus also said, "Let your good deeds shine forth before people so they will glorify your Father in Heaven." (See Matthew 5:16).  

What Jesus is saying in Matthew chapter 6 is:  don’t pretend you’re someone you’re not.  Don’t pretend to be righteous and holy like the religious leaders on the street corners blowing horns so every one will look at them and think, “Now there is a truly godly, righteous person.  You know God them!  Look how good they are!”

You see the Pharisee and Sadducees, the religious leaders in Israel where Jesus lived, were hypocrites.  They pretended to be righteous.  They did such a good job of acting, they fooled everyone.  People believed they were truly holy and righteous.  They looked good on the outside, but they were rotten and evil on the inside.  They cared more about what people thought of them than what God thought.  Their charitable giving was done to win people’s favor.  This helped them stay in power and protected their positions of authority and their income.

In fact, when the Son of God, Jesus, came to the religious leaders of Israel, they rejected Him.  They didn’t care about God.  They didn’t care about the people. They only cared about themselves.

What was worse, not only did they lie to the people and make them believe they were holy, they also lied to themselves and believed their own lie.  They believed they were holy and God must love them more than anyone else.  They were so blind the didn't recognize when the Son of God Himself came to them.  They crucified Jesus.

Don’t Lie to Yourself
We have to be very careful, because we want to believe we are good people who are holy.  We want to believe we deserve God’s blessings.  We should know better, because if we look inside our hearts, we can easily see we are often selfish and petty and sinful.  Even so, we want to believe we deserve some kind of divine reward because we’re so good.

When we believe our own lies, when we believe we are good, we are blinded to our desperate need of God’s salvation and merciful grace.  Jesus wants us to do good and give to the needy to glorify God, but Jesus doesn’t want these habits to be a way we lie to ourselves and others.

Be very careful, because when you make a big show of doing good or giving to the needy, you could become like an actor (a hypocrite) who is putting on a show, pretending to be good.  Impurity in your heart can sneak in and poison you’re motives to where you don’t even care about the person you’re helping.  You’re just show off for others to see—wearing a mask, pretending to be someone you’re not.

Protecting Yourself From Yourself
Since we are prone to believe our own lies that we are good and deserve God’s favor and people should look up to us, we need a way to protect ourselves from ourselves.  First of all, realize you are not good.  Realize you are sinner who desperately needs God’s grace.  You don’t deserve anything from God.  Every good blessing you have received is a gift given by God in spite of your sin.

Second, give anonymously sometimes.  Now, I’m not saying you always have to give anonymously.  It’s ok to get a receipt of your charitable giving.  It's even ok to get take credit for which you're eligible. But don’t make a habit of making a big show of your giving.  Make sure your giving for the right reasons—to help the needy, to show compassion, and to glorify God, not in order to show how awesome you are.  Do it for the glory of God and to help people in need.  And I challenge you to at least sometimes (maybe even often) to give absolutely anonymously.  As Jesus said, “don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.   

Faith Without Good Deeds Is Dead. Amen!

Introductions
The Bible is the Word of God and contains everything necessary and sufficient for our salvation.  The Bible teaches that Jesus Saves us from sin when we have faith.  The Bible also teaches that faith without good deeds is dead. 

James 2:14-20
¹⁴ What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but don’t show it by your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? ¹⁵ Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, ¹⁶ and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do?

¹⁷ So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless. 

¹⁸ Now someone may argue, “Some people have faith; others have good deeds.” But I say, “How can you show me your faith if you don’t have good deeds? I will show you my faith by my good deeds.”

¹⁹ You say you have faith, for you believe that there is one God. Good for you! Even the demons believe this, and they tremble in terror. ²⁰ How foolish! Can’t you see that faith without good deeds is useless?

Explanation
The Apostle James wrote these words to remind Christians that faith in Jesus in not merely an intellectual matter.  You can’t just say, “Sure, I believe Jesus died on the cross and rose from the grave.  I believe that actually happened.”  It’s not even enough to say, “I believe Jesus is God’s Son and that He is Lord of all the earth.”  The kind of faith that saves us is a living faith that changes the way you behave.

You know, you can say, “I believe it’s safe to fly in an airplane.”  Saying it is one thing, but you don’t really believe it unless you get in the plane and fly somewhere.  

The kind of faith Jesus wants from His followers, the kind of faith that actually saves us, compels us  to act.  When we say, “Jesus is Lord!” then we actually live as though He is Lord of our lives; following Him is the most important priority in our life and we follow His commands.  When we truly believe Jesus rose from the dead, we live like we have nothing to lose because we know we have eternal life too.  Living faith—the kind of faith that saves you—compels us to do good deeds.

Being Good vs. Doing Good Deeds
Maybe this is too elementary, but I think it might be important to review what is a good deed.  I say this because sometimes Christians confuse being good with doing good deeds.  In Methodism we call one works of piety and the other works of mercy.  

A Work of Piety is being good inwardly through religious devotion.  Works of Piety are things like praying, fasting, reading your Bible, Holy Communion, and going to church weekly for worship.  These are all good religious devotions that help you be a better person.  You’re not primarily doing them to help other people.  You’re doing them to help yourself.  The point is, you can't say: "I did my good did for the week; I went to church."  Going to church or reading your Bible is not a good deed.  

A Work of Mercy is a good deed, something you do for the betterment of another person or society as a whole.  Reading your Bible or praying are not “Good Deeds”.  They are definitely good things to do., but they are good things you do for yourself, not others.  A Good Deed—something living faith compels you to do—is something good you do for others.

In the Methodist tradition, we further break good deeds down into 2 broad categories.  Corporal Works of Mercy", which concern the physical needs of others, and Spiritual Works of Mercy, which concern the spiritual needs of others.

Corporal Works of Mercy
Jesus told a parable in Matthew 25 about sheep and goats.  In the story, He tells how the Son of Man comes back at the End of Time and separate people into two categories--sheep and goats.  

The sheep are rewarded and the goats are punished because they have or have not done certain works of mercy.  Matthew 25:34-36 says, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.”

From this, we get 6 works of mercy:  1) Feed the hungry, 2) Give water to the thirsty, 3) Clothe the naked, 4) Shelter the homeless, 5) Visit the sick, 6) Visit the imprisoned or ransom the captive.  And to this we can add a 7^th) Bury the dead.  Basically, these are good things you do to help others with physical needs.  

There’s another important distinction Jesus always adds when he teaches his followers to do good deeds.  He says in Matthew 25:40, “When you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!”  In other words, this is not a matter of doing good things for people who do good things for us.  This is not, "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine."  There’s no spiritual reward in that.  No, we are supposed to do good things for people who can’t do anything for us.  Jesus even said in Luke  6:35, “Love your enemies! Do good to them. Lend to them without expecting to be repaid. Then your reward from heaven will be very great, and you will truly be acting as children of the Most High, for he is kind to those who are unthankful and wicked.”

People have physical (corporal) needs.  It doesn’t make much sense to focus on a person's spiritual needs without first tending to their physical needs.  If someone is starving to death, they don’t need you to teach them about Jesus. Give them food!

Spiritual Works of Mercy
However, once a person’s physical needs are met, it’s important to also offer people spiritual food.  In Matthew 28:19-20, Jesus commanded his followers: “Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you.”

And that’s where a second set of good deeds comes in—Spiritual Works of Mercy: 1) Instruct the ignorant, 2) Counsel the doubtful, 3) Admonish the sinners, 4) Bear patiently those who wrong us, 5) Forgive offenses, 6) Comfort the afflicted, and 7) Pray for the living and the dead.

Do you see all the ways a true Christian has to do Good Deeds?  There are seven Corporal Works of
Mercy to tend to people’s physical needs and seven Spiritual Works of Mercy to tend to people’s spiritual needs.  That at least fourteen ways to do good deeds!

That's why James 2:18c says, “I will show you my faith by my good deeds.”

Challenge
I’d like to close  with a challenge.  First of all, if you’re not a Christian (if you've never put your faith in Jesus Christ) then decided to trust Jesus today.  Pray and ask Jesus to forgive your sins and make a commitment to follow Jesus as your Lord from this day forward.  And do just say it; do it.

Second, I challenge you to do good.  If you say you’re a Christian (that you have faith in Jesus), then show your faith through good deeds.  Choose one good deed you’re going to focus on between now and Easter on April 9^th.

There are fourteen options:  

1. Feed the hungry.
2. Give water to the thirsty.
3. Clothe the naked.
4. Shelter the homeless.
5. Visit the sick.
6. Visit the imprisoned or ransom the captive.
7. Bury the dead. (Attend funerals, even for a few people you don't know.)
8. Instruct the ignorant.
9. Counsel the doubtful.
10. Admonish the sinners.
11. Bear patiently those who wrong us.
12. Forgive offenses.
13. Comfort the afflicted.
14. Pray for the living and the dead