Let's Get Real Series

ENGAGE

A cowboy walked into a Texas bar, ordered three bottles of beer, and sat in the back room, drinking a sip out of each one in turn. When he finished them, he came back to the bar and ordered three more.

The bartender told the cowboy, "You know, a bottle goes flat after I open it. It would taste better if you bought one at a time."

The cowboy replied, "Well, you see, I have two brothers. One is in Australia, the other is in Dublin, and I'm in Texas. When we all left home, we promised we'd drink this way to remember the days we drank together, so I drink one for each of my brothers and one for myself."

The bartender admitted this was a nice custom and left it there.

The cowboy became a regular in the bar and always drank the same way. But one day, he ordered only two bottles. All the regulars took notice and fell silent. When he came back to the bar for the second round, the bartender said, "I don't want to intrude on your grief, but I wanted to offer my condolences on your loss." The cowboy looked puzzled for a moment, then a light dawned and he laughed.

"Oh, no, everybody's just fine," he explained. "It's just that my wife and I joined the Baptist Church, and I had to quit drinking. It hasn't affected my brothers though."

TENSION

All of us have undoubtedly witnessed that kind of hypocrisy in the church. And unfortunately it doesn’t go unnoticed by those outside the church either. How many times have you heard someone say that they don’t want anything to do with the church because it’s full of hypocrites? Whenever I hear someone say that, my usual response is, “There is always room for one more.”

While it may not quite be true that the church is “full of hypocrites”, the fact is that hypocrisy is a pervasive problem within the church and one that threatens to undermine our ability to be effective witnesses for Jesus and to bring His kingdom near to others.

My guess is that all of us in this room have been guilty of being a hypocrite at times in our lives. I certainly know that I have. There have been times when I’ve gotten up in front of you and encouraged you to read your Bibles or to pray and given you the impression that I had my act all together in those areas when I did not. There have been times when I’ve exhorted you to forgive others when I was unwilling to do that in my own life. So I know that I need this message this morning. And I’m pretty sure that many of you do as well. However, if you can honestly say that you have never been a hypocrite or are never tempted to do that in your life, you may be excused right now to head out to the lobby and grab a cup of coffee while I speak to the rest of us.

TRUTH

Since I’ve already used the words “hypocrisy” and “hypocrite” a number of times, it would probably be a good idea to go ahead and define those terms before we proceed. Jesus used the word “hypocrite” quite often, especially when speaking to the Jewish religious leaders.

The Greek word from which we get our English word hypocrite is a compound word that was used to describe actors in the Ancient Greek theater. You’re probably familiar with the two masks that the actors used – one when they read their comedy lines and the other when they read their tragedy lines. So a hypocrite is someone who “hides behind a mask” and who is therefore not who he or she appears to be.

This week I read about a fancy restaurant that came up an ingenious way to increase their business. They had two different sets of menus which were identical except for the prices. So when a couple came in, they would give the man the menu with the actual prices and give the woman a menu with the identical menu items, but with prices that were substantially higher than the prices that would actually be charged. As you can imagine they were flooded with business from men who wanted to impress their dates with their willingness to pay such a high price for their meals.

Isn’t that exactly how hypocrisy works. We put on one mask to impress one person or group and then we put on another mask when we want to impress someone else.

And as we’ll see this morning, and as we’ve already talked about, the church is certainly not immune to hypocrisy. So we’re going to take a look at the account of the first two hypocrites in the church and see what we can learn from them that will help us to be real with God and with others so that we don’t become hypocrites ourselves.