Apologia Live - Sermon on Hypocrisy

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There you go, okay, you can open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 6.

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Matthew chapter 6, wow, it's a big day, right? No beard, new chapter, what are we going to do?

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Okay, let's see how deeply held our traditions are, if we can handle both things in one day.

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Matthew chapter 6, my wife told me that I need to be more clear on the verses that we are actually in, and so I'll make sure that I'm as clear as possible.

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Matthew chapter 6 and verse 1, Matthew chapter 6 verse 1,

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Sermon on the Mount. As you guys are opening your Bibles or your devices to this chapter, a little bit of background, we have spent quite an amount of time in the

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Kingdom of God series, it's an exposition of the gospel according to Matthew, and hopefully I can give you guys a little bit of encouragement here in terms of what we try to do at Apologia Church as elders in terms of teaching from the

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Bible. I think it's important for us when we teach as ministers of the gospel, as elders, and we give people the entire counsel of God, the whole counsel of God.

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Topical sermons are good and necessary at times, they're important to go through, but on a regular basis, we think it's important to do expositional

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Bible teaching that's verse by verse through the entire Bible, this way you can get the whole counsel of God.

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It's really interesting, as you think about Matthew so far, as you guys get there, you have learned, we have learned together in Matthew about Jesus, about His genealogy, we've learned about the

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Old Testament prophecies about Jesus, we've learned about the symbolism in the book of Matthew from the

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Old Testament, you've seen how amazing Jesus is as the fulfillment of prophecy, as what all of Scripture was pointing to Jesus.

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He's the prize, He's the treasure, He's the sum of it all. You've gotten a chance, we've gotten a chance to look at the law of God by going through Matthew, you've gone into the

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Old Testament, we've read some of Leviticus and Exodus and Deuteronomy, we've gone into Jesus actually unpacking and interpreting the law of God, we've gotten hopefully cut, some of us, as we've read

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Jesus talking about anger in our hearts or lust in our hearts or love for our neighbor.

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We've learned all those different things, there's so much that we get to do when we go verse by verse through the

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Scriptures, rather than kind of being a slave to the whims of the pastor for like 20 years, what does he feel like doing for the next six months, what's on his mind right now, we get to get the whole counsel.

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So we go from Jesus explaining the law of God and we get some pretty rigorous teaching going through there, but now we get a little switch, and now we're going to be talking about hypocrisy, pretending, we're going to be talking about having a pure heart before God, and I love that,

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I love that we're going to, in really just a few weeks, we're going to be touching Jesus, talking to us about our anxiety, about our fear, about our worry about tomorrow.

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So much we get to learn when we go through the

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Bible verse by verse. You get the whole thing, not just one thing, but the whole thing, and so it blesses me to be able to do this.

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So we're in Matthew chapter 6, Gospel according to Matthew, starting at verse 1. Today I'm going to read a pretty extended portion of this passage.

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The benefit of now getting here is we get to do sort of bigger chunks, which is really nice, right?

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Maybe, we'll see. But we're going to do the whole thing right here, all the way through fasting.

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So hear now the words of the living and the true God. Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your

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Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others.

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Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret, and your

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Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.

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Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your

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Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the

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Gentiles do, for they think that they'll be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your

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Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

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Your kingdom come, you will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

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And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly

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Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your

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Father forgive your trespasses. And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others.

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Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your

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Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

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Thus far is the reading of God's Word. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for your

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Word that's a gift to us. God, we recognize, God, that we don't deserve what's in front of us right now.

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Lord, the fact that you have revealed yourself is not something, God, that is owed to us, especially considering the fact that we are the rebels.

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And Lord, I confess that I do not, I do not treasure your

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Word and the gift of it as I ought to. And Lord, I want to ask that in this moment,

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Lord, you would speak through me to your people, that you would draw those who don't know you to yourself, and that you would convict the hearts of your people,

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Lord, to have a heart that is pure before you. God, I pray that you get everyone today.

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I pray that you touch them, that you would challenge them, challenge me. I pray that you would allow us to see

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Jesus as he is. Lord Jesus, you're magnificent.

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You are glorious, and I thank you that you revealed yourself to us and your desire for us to have hearts that are right before you and real.

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Help me, God, to teach it today. By your Spirit, guide us, protect our hearts and minds, expose us.

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In Jesus' name, amen. So beware of practicing, verse 1, your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your

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Father who is in heaven. That right there is massive. In terms of, like, religions in the world, that is a statement that exposes the divinity of Jesus Christ, that he is, in fact, divine, that he is, in fact,

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God. It's one of those marks, the things that, you know, show that you are the one.

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You have authority. You are right. You are true. We can see that Jesus is, in fact, that Messiah, that he is

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God in the flesh because he says stuff like this. I don't know how many of you guys have spent time studying other religions, if you've read their writings.

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So, like, just as an example, if you've read the writings of someone like, say, Joseph Smith or if you've read the writings of someone like Charles Taze Russell or Judge Rutherford or if you've read any of these religious leaders in history, you notice something that's a common theme throughout.

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Oftentimes these religious leaders are heralded as, like, the righteous, amazing, perfect prophets upon the face of the earth.

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But as you look at their own lives, you begin to discover these people aren't really what they say they are.

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And you begin to see, as you study the history of these movements, that these religious leaders would say one thing and then really do another.

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And you begin to see that there's usually a whitewashing of that person's life in history to make them look like something that they really were not.

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I mean, just as an example, one of the things that's fascinating, it's just utterly fascinating is if you do a study, just as one example of, say,

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Mormonism, that history, it reads like a novel or like a television program.

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It really has, like, these amazing turns and these twists, and there's such drama to it.

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There's a fantastic book, One Nation Under Gods by Richard Abanes that shows the history of Mormonism and the beginning of that movement, and you see the life of, say,

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Joseph Smith, it really is a life of hypocrisy. You see Joseph Smith, for example, in other relationships with other women before he gets the divine revelation from God of polygamy, right?

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And then you see the revelation of polygamy comes while he's engaged in this other behavior, and then he has a special revelation for his wife that if she doesn't accept polygamy, she'll be damned for all eternity, right?

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Just kind of weird stuff that happens, and you see these lives that are just seeped in hypocrisy and secrecy and hiding and always a whitewashing of their lives.

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And one of the things that marks Jesus out from the religious hypocrites and charlatans and con artists of history is just how real

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Jesus was and is. The fact that if you were a hypocrite around Jesus, you would not have been comfortable.

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If you were the kind of person that liked to just have an external shell of religiosity, you wouldn't have liked

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Jesus, and you wouldn't have been comfortable around Him. Jesus always went for the jugular when

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He ministered to people. So if it was His enemies, He would cut right through their attempts to trip them up in an argument.

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He would cut right through their attempts to look holy. He would always go right for the jugular.

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He would always cut right through to the heart of the issue. Jesus never liked to play. He was always real with people, and this particular portion is something that ought to cut every religious hypocrite, and it ought to cut every

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Christian constantly, because Jesus talks about a life in God with a pure heart.

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And here's the thing. Listen, this is what's so powerful about this section right here. When Jesus talks about doing your righteousness to be seen by others, when

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He begins to deal with the hypocrites, the pretenders, the actors, listen, He talks about stuff that is all good stuff, that ought to be part of all of our lives as believers.

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I mean, think about this. He talks about prayer. We ought to pray. Everybody should be engaged in prayer.

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He talks about giving. We just did. We just did it.

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So that's a good thing. He's not nailing people on things that they shouldn't be doing, like prayer and giving and fasting, but He's talking about stuff that everybody who has a life in God ought to be doing, only

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He does something that would have knocked all these religious hypocrites back on their heels.

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He cuts right through their attempts to fake it, and He goes right to the heart. Listen, what

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Jesus says here, this is important, what He says here offers no benefit to the person who is obsessed with attention, it offers no benefit to the person who is religious so that they get praise or notoriety or a name.

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What He says here offers no benefit to the person who is not in this completely for intimacy with God.

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I mean, think about it. Jesus just cut out most of the hearts of people who are in religious experiences because oftentimes people are religious in moments where they can be given praise for it.

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People are spiritual in ways that they can get attention. People often act spiritual, behave spiritually, write spiritually in such a way that people will give them a name for their spirituality.

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And what Jesus says here disenfranchises many religious people, it cuts them out completely because He says stuff here that offers you no attention, no reward.

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You get nothing for following Jesus in this way. So prayer, giving, fasting, all spiritual disciplines, all very important things, if you do it

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Jesus' way, if you follow Jesus Christ in these ways, you get no attention.

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You will get no one to give you praise. You will get nobody that will write a book about you.

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You get nobody that's going to lift you up and exalt you if you follow Jesus here.

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No benefit. No benefit to your prayers, no benefit to your fasting, no benefit to your giving.

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You get nothing except the attention of God, of course. And that's what makes

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Jesus so unbelievably radical. That's what makes Jesus such an obvious resistance against a religious system because He says stuff here that guts the acting completely out of religious experience.

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You can't follow Jesus comfortably if you're a fake. You can't follow

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Jesus comfortably if you are comfortable wearing a mask. At some point, you're going to come face to face with Matthew 6 and all of your charades, all of your faking is going to be obliterated, answered by Jesus, struck down, and you are confronted.

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You are standing before the God of the universe with all of your phoniness right in front of Him.

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You can't pretend. And this, by the way, I love this about Jesus, is that Jesus speaks in such a way that it identifies

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Him as God and as true. Because what reward is there for living with Jesus in this way, walking with Jesus in this way?

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What reward is there only with God? Only with God. And so it's a powerful moment for us as a church because we've been talking about the law of God.

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We've been talking about the heart. We've been talking about the sins of the heart and the mind, lusting, anger, bitterness, strife, all those things right before us.

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The true heart before God that loves God and loves neighbor, and that's where that law flows forth from.

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And now we're right into piety. We're right into like the religious expression of life.

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And every one of us ought to get cut at some point here because Jesus speaks to hypocrites.

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Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.

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For then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. First thing, obviously, Jesus is zeroing in on practicing righteousness, doing godliness and righteous deeds, doing things that look pious so that you'll be seen by others.

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Because Jesus says, watch, your Father will not reward you for doing those things.

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No reward from God. You might be asking this question first and foremost, okay, let's get down to the nitty -gritty.

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Reward from God for doing good things? Well, see, the pagan who's trying to manipulate

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God into heaven one day does good deeds because they think that they'll be somehow accepted by God and rewarded by God for those good deeds, right?

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How do you get to heaven? For the pagan, well, do good deeds and then God, the deity, will somehow accept you.

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Maybe that's how pagans think they'll be rewarded by God for their good deeds. But for the Christian, we know that it is only in Christ and His righteousness that we have salvation, amen?

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It's only in Jesus that we are going to have salvation. It's solely a gift of God's grace. So what kind of rewards are we talking about here?

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I think there's at least two. Number one, number one, rewards from God today.

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I do believe that God our Father, the one that has saved us, we are

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His children. I do believe that He rewards us in this life. He rewards you in this life as a good father does.

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But I also believe that in heaven one day, in eternity with God, I do believe that God does reward

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His saved children based upon the life they live in Christ.

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We're all going to be with God forever because we're reconciled with God through Christ, amen?

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However, there are going to be rewards in heaven for God's children based upon the life you live in Christ by grace.

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Does everyone catch that? Yes, there are rewards in heaven. Oftentimes, people will say, when speaking of this issue of like rewards and punishment, they'll say, well, all sins are the same.

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First of all, is that true? No, that is stupid. People say, well, all sins are the same.

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Well, all sins are the same in this way that all sin will send you to hell, amen?

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But not all sins are the same. If a person violates a child in a disgusting and low way, and there's a person over here that has stolen a pencil, those two things are not the same.

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And when you look at the law of God, God has degrees of punishment based upon the crime, right?

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So there are varying degrees of seriousness when it comes to sin itself. Now, all sins send you to hell, but there are some sins that are more grievous to God than others, and people are punished based upon that.

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For example, the average pagan who knows God in his heart of hearts, but will not come to God, switches

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God for idols, may not suffer as bad in hell as, say, a

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Hitler or a Stalin. There are varying degrees of punishment even in eternity.

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However, in heaven, there are varying degrees of reward, and so Jesus takes it seriously. You're not going to receive reward from God.

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Now, first and foremost, let's address this. Should we live a life before God with a pure heart of righteousness in order that we get lots of stuff from God?

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Should we do that? No. We live lives that are glorifying to God and that delight in God because we love

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God and He deserves it, right? Because He's right, because He deserves it.

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However, as believers, we have to recognize that this is our Father and we are His children.

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He desires for us to have joy in Him, to have pleasure in Him, to glorify

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Him, and as you do that, the Bible says God does reward you. But He tells people, when you practice your righteousness in order to be seen by others, you have no reward from God.

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Here's the thing. God isn't fooled. Does everyone get that? He's not fooled.

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A lot of us need to hear that, that God isn't buying the charade. God isn't buying your act.

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He never bought it. He doesn't buy it now. He's not going to believe it later. God isn't buying it.

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When you come to church to worship and you put on a mask, you put on a face pretending all is well and that you live a life of piety and righteousness, when you live that way and you pretend, you may be fooling the person next to you, but not for long because at some point that mask is going to crack and we will see through it.

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But most importantly, God has always known it was a mask, pretending

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God isn't fooled by it. And here's the thing, ready? There is no benefit to it. What's the benefit of pretending to be a

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Christian? You might be in church right now and you know that you don't believe. You've never turned to Christ and you're here because somebody brought you here.

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You come to church because your husband makes you or your wife makes you and you've been pretending the whole time. Let me just say this right now.

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Go ahead and quit pretending because there is no benefit to pretending. It's not fooling God. It doesn't bless you.

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There is no reward in pretending to be a Christian. One of the worst things ever for anybody is almost

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Christian. There's no benefit, not now, not ever.

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And Jesus, by the way, would tell anybody who's faking it, he would say, go ahead and stop pretending.

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And I love that about Jesus. We've talked about it often, right? The many crowds that come around Jesus, they follow

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Jesus and some of them were there and they really trusted in Jesus, but other ones, they were there because they wanted the stuff.

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He was feeding them, right? He was doing really cool miracles and taking away sicknesses and disease and they got to eat bread and fish and they were part of sort of a big movement and Jesus knew that they were faking.

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And he would turn around and he would say to these large crowds, which most churches today would do everything they could to keep them, he turns around to them and he separates them.

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He says, go away. All right? If you don't come to me and hate father, mother, sister, brother, wife, and even your own life, you're not worthy to be my disciples, stop pretending.

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He just cut them off. He'd say, go away. He turned to the other ones and he would say, do you also want to leave? And they would say, where are we going to go?

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You have the words of eternal life. They knew what they were there for. They knew what he was there for and Jesus just told people, go away.

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Stop pretending. Don't live that life. It doesn't benefit you anything.

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People came to him, he turned them away. Religious leaders who looked good to everybody. They looked pious.

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They looked righteous to everybody. They did good deeds externally in front of everybody. He told them, you're a hypocrite.

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You're a pretender. He isn't fooled. One of the things that has bothered me in the past, this is not something

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I talk about often, but in ministry and serving God in ministry, many, many years, you get to see a lot of people and you get to minister alongside a lot of people.

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And I can tell you about times where I've spoken at churches and you would see somebody come out on stage, right?

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They come out on stage and they would be, God, Lord, and just, you know, passion and spirit and you would just be...

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And if you were in the audience, you would think, which is what it was, an audience, you would think, wow, this is so highly spiritual and it's so beautiful and amazing.

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And I remember moments where I wanted to throw up when

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I would be back behind the stage and I would see these people come off stage after this beautiful erudite prayer and moment of emotion before God and worship.

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And they'd walk back and as soon as they came back, their phone is out and they're just talking and chatting away with friends and just sort of like kicking it with each other and nothing spiritual, nothing worshipful.

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It was just an act and it was a lie. And those are the sorts of things that I think have firmed me up more in my convictions about who

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Jesus truly is. And there are things that have cut me to the core because I see in Jesus somebody who despises hypocrisy and pretending.

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And He's actually willing to tell people, listen, I'll take a very teeny church of people who truly follow me as opposed to a very large movement of people that are all complete and utter fakes.

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So here's a question before we go on to these points, before I read them to you. Jesus says, beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.

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In order to be seen by them. He didn't say, beware of practicing righteousness. First and foremost,

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Jesus wants you to practice righteousness, amen? He just said, Matthew 5, He says, you are the salt of the earth.

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You are the light of the world, right? He says, city set on a hill, right?

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Cannot be, you have to set it on a hill so it shines light to everything. You don't put it under a basket.

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You don't hide your light. Jesus says, you do these good deeds so that people will give glory to you.

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No, people give glory to whom? God. So Jesus says, you do your good deeds so that God gets the glory.

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The hypocrite does their good deeds so that they get the glory. So Jesus does want you to practice righteousness, but He says to us,

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He says, you practice righteousness for God's glory, not in order to be seen by others.

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For there's no reward from your father. So here's a question, I hope this, I hope this sets where it's supposed to in your heart and your mind, because it was something that God worked on in my mind and my heart a long, long time ago.

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Here's a question for you to ask yourselves, sin, do you resist it?

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Do you resist your idols? Do you resist your pet sins?

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Do you flee from them because somebody is watching?

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I want you to think for a moment by yourself, don't say it out loud because it'll embarrass you and me, okay?

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Think about a sin that you struggle with today. It's a sin that you know is there.

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It's a sin that you know you engage in pretty regularly. It's a sin that you've confessed to God many times.

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It's a sin that you are asking God to free you of.

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Let me ask you this, do you resist that sin? Do you flee from that sin because somebody is watching?

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Because somebody might see you? Do you turn from it because of what might happen to your reputation?

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Is that why you don't do that? When it happens and you do try to turn from it, do you not do it because of what it would do to your reputation?

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When you think about, if I sin in this way, somebody will find out.

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Does your mind immediately go to the consequences of what would happen to your reputation if people caught you or saw you or witnessed you doing that sin?

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Do you avoid it because you don't want to get caught? Is that the motivation for you not sinning in practicing righteousness in that respect?

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Because here's the thing, if there is any other reason, if there is any other reason in practicing righteousness in that area besides the glory and pleasure of God, it's fake.

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So if you don't engage in any particular sinful behaviors and you're practicing righteousness because in your mind you're thinking that I must do this because, what would the church say?

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What would my wife say? What would my husband say? What would happen if I got caught? What would happen if somebody saw me behaving this way?

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If it's not for the glory of God and His pleasure, it is fake. Think about that.

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All the pet sins we have that we try to put under the feet of Jesus, what's our motivation for practicing righteousness in those areas?

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Is it for the pleasure and glory of God or is it because ultimately we think of the final consequence as, it'll ruin my reputation, somebody will think ill of me?

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Why do we practice righteousness? Why are we not sinning? Is it for the glory of God?

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Is it for His soul, pleasure, and glory? Or is it for some other reason?

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Because I think, watch this, watch, this is what my thinking is in this area. I think when we go to this text, at least for me, when

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I've gone to this text in the past, I think about practicing righteousness and I think about practicing good deeds in front of others and don't do that so people see you and they give you praise for it.

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But I don't think we often think about it in terms of like our war against sin, right? Practicing righteousness so that others see it.

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And that goes right to our fight against sin and our mortification of the flesh and our putting to death the desires of the flesh.

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It goes right to the heart of it. What's your motivation as a believer in practicing righteousness and putting these pet sins to death?

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Is it you're afraid to get caught? Is it your reputation?

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Is it you don't want the consequences? Or is your war against these sins for God's delight in you in giving it to Him?

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What's your motivation? What's the heart? What are your passions in practicing righteousness?

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Why are you doing it? Because here's the thing, if you want your father who loves you to have a heart of delight in you in that righteousness or in that putting something to death, it must be from a pure heart before God.

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Another thing that is hypocrisy is the appearance of strength. One of the things that was really cool about Apologia Church when we first planted the church, some of you guys know you were here, is that it was a glorious mess.

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It was a glorious mess. Amen? For those of you guys who were here, it was a glorious, insane mess.

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You had a church full of people that have come out of drug and alcohol addiction, many of them had never even stepped foot inside of a church before, and they were just raw.

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You had people showing up to church and giving me a bag of 25 pills of ecstasy to flush down the toilet.

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People coming to church with bags of marijuana saying, I almost sinned, here's my weed.

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People coming to church and giving us syringes full of heroin.

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We would go over to the bathroom and we would have a little ritual that we performed where we would say, we're going to flush this as an act of worship to God for the glory of Jesus.

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We'd go in our little sanctuary with the porcelain bowl. We'd stand before it and we'd worship

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God and we'd toss it down. It was just raw. It was just raw to walk into church where people were just confessing, yeah,

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I was just putting heroin into my veins three days ago and I've turned my life over to Christ.

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It was just raw, beautiful life in Christ. We used to tell people all the time, listen, take the

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God face off, stop pretending. You know the God face, don't you? If you say no, you have it on right now.

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The God face, you know what I'm talking about, right? You're driving to church, like two hours before church, you almost killed your children, right?

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Right? You guys are like, amen, brother, that was in my house today, right? Or like on the way to church, your kids are in the back of the car and you're driving with one hand and trying to destroy them with the other one.

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As soon as you walk to those doors, you step in, praise

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God, right, smiling at everyone next to you and you're just pretending. You just had like the war of the century with your spouse the night before, right?

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You come to church the next day and you pretend like all is good, I got the marriage of the ages right now in Jesus.

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We love the Lord Jesus Christ, we got a marriage that is glorious and beautiful and perfect, right?

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It's a lie. That's hypocrisy. Pretending to be strong when you are in fact weak isn't helpful.

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It doesn't please God and it doesn't bless you. So this whole thing of practicing your righteousness in front of others in order to be seen by them can be seen in many ways, not in just the simple ways that we think about prayer and giving and fasting and the good deeds we do in the world like serving at Salvation Army.

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It also has to do with practicing righteousness, pretending to be good so that others see you as righteous and spiritual and good when in reality you are not so good.

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You are hurting, you are low, you are not okay. That sort of thing is fake.

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Christians ought to abandon any life in Christ that is a life of pretending.

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Okay, in order to make sense of what Jesus says next, you have to understand a quick background and so I'm going to give you some texts to go to, all really close to Matthew.

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So let's do it together. When Jesus talks about the hypocrite, let's read it real fast in verse 2. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others.

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Truly, by the way, some translations will say verily. The word is, what, amen.

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It is settled. Truly, I say to you, amen. I say to you, they have received their reward.

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They already got it. Everything they did, every spiritual thing they did, that's their reward.

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Enjoy it. All your applause, all of the reaction you got from the other, there's your reward.

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I hope you enjoy it. Jesus says these hypocrites do it in the synagogues and in the streets.

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They do it at church and they do it in public. They don't have a single place they do it in a religious service.

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They do it everywhere, church and in the streets. It happens all over their life. They are pretenders.

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The word there, hypocrite, it's a popular word. People use it a lot in reference to church.

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Amen? Amen. They use it. People say, what, I don't like church because there are too many, what, hypocrites.

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First and foremost, yes, amen, come and join the club, right?

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I mean, the thing is, is Jesus saves sinners, not righteous people. And so if the people that Jesus saves gather together to be with Him and one another, they have a certain thing in common, sin and salvation, right?

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So get used to it. God's at work, right? We're all under construction. We're all under construction.

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But being a hypocrite is something that atheists despise, the godless despise, and Christians ought to despise.

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Hypocrite comes from the Greek, hupakrite. Hupakrite was from the world of the acting, the

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Greek actors. They would literally put a mask on. They would literally wear a mask to pretend to be the character that they were portraying.

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But it was so obvious. It was so obvious. It's much easier for us today. We have these great skills in makeup and all the

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CGI and all the effects. We can do everything we can to make it really, really hard for you to even realize this is a film.

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And you get into catharsis, right? You're watching a great movie, and then like two hours later, you snap out of the world you were just in because it all seemed so real.

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They do such a good job of pretending. They do such a good job of acting.

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And that's the word Jesus is drawing from when he says that you are the hupakrites, you are the actors. He literally is calling them out as pretenders.

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He says, you pretender. You are an actor. You are a fake. You have a mask on.

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It's all pretend. And Jesus says, don't be like the actors, the pretenders, the ones who wear masks.

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They are something on the inside that they are not revealing to you. They are pretending. He says, don't be like them.

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Don't be like them. The hypocrites. Jesus talks a lot about these hypocrites. I want to give you the premier passage where Jesus talks about these hypocrites.

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So you're in Matthew now, Matthew 6. Keep a finger there, and now go to Matthew 23. So you can see

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Jesus' long, extended passage before he gives them the promise of coming destruction.

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Now, Matthew 23 is a big one. By the way, this is really powerful. For the people who think that Jesus is the blonde -haired, blue -eyed, surfing

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Jesus in a wedding dress, this is typically a passage they have either not read or they try to avoid like the plague.

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Here's meek and mild Jesus. 23 verse 1, then

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Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, the scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do, for they preach but do not practice.

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He did not say, don't live righteously. He did not say, watch, he did not say, don't obey

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God's law. He says, well, they're preaching it. They're preaching the law, but they don't do what they preach to you.

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Don't do like them. Don't be like them. He says this, verse 4, they tie up heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.

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They do all their deeds to be seen by others. Pause. That is the consistent theme and thread for all hypocrites.

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And if any of us have anything to repent of today in this service, it's that.

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That's the consistent theme, to be seen by others, for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others, but you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers.

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And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father who is in heaven, neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the

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Christ, the greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

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Here we go. Ready? This is it. This is where Jesus lays the smack down. But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

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By the way, woe in the Scriptures is not like an impressed like, woe, right? Like woe in Scripture is calling down the curse of God.

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It's basically saying, God, destroy them. So when

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Isaiah and Isaiah 6 gets a glimpse, a vision of God's holiness in this amazing revelation and vision,

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Isaiah's vision, where he sees God on the throne and the angels saying, holy, holy, holy,

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Isaiah's first reaction to it is himself as a prophet who would usually be calling out woes upon God's enemies, woe to you, woe to you,

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Egypt, woe to you, Babylon. Now all of a sudden the prophet of God who gets a glimpse of God's holiness, he says,

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God kill me, kill me, destroy me, woe to me,

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God, end my life. I'm a man of unclean lips. I'm coming apart at the seams.

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I'm unraveling. And so Jesus here, as a Jewish prophet, in line with all the prophets, he doesn't say woe to Egypt, woe to Rome, woe to Babylon, woe to the

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Philistines. He says, woe to you, scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites.

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It's amazing. Everything the Jews, the religious people thought, listen, the religious people of that day thought that the

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Gentiles are God's enemies. Rome is God's enemies. And yeah, amen, hallelujah, yes, enemies of God, right?

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But they thought, we're righteous, we're good, because look how religious we are. We got the Bible, we got our religious services, we do our good deeds, we're doing this whole thing, it's our culture.

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And Jesus goes, as a Jewish prophet, he doesn't go for the enemies of God that were apparent.

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He goes right to the religious leaders of the day. He says, woe to you, hypocrites, scribe,

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Pharisee, woe to you. He says, verse 13, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces.

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You neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

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Meek and mild, Jesus. He just told them that their daddy is the devil.

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You child of hell. You hypocrite. Woe to you, blind guides, who say, if anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing.

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But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath. You blind fools, for which is greater the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred?

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And you say, if anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing. But if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by that oath.

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You blind men, for which is greater the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred?

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So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it.

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And whoever swears by heaven swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

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These you ought to have done without neglecting the others, you blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

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Here we go. Woe to you, verse 25, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self -indulgence.

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You blind Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

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Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.

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So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

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Take a breath. My goodness, Jesus just went after the most respected people of the day.

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You see, we see Pharisees as the enemies today because we knew that in many ways the Pharisees operated as enemies of Jesus.

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They delivered Him over, they're testifying against Him, they're condemning Him. The Apostle Paul, when he was

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Saul, he was trained in a gamaliel, he was a Pharisee as to the law. That's what he held to when he persecuted the church, he tried to destroy it.

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So we say, well, the Pharisees are the bad guy in the story, but we forget something. The Pharisees were considered the religious elite of the day.

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It means the separate one. They were the ones who lived separate from the world. They looked the most religious.

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These are the most respected and revered of the day, and Jesus went for them. Did Jesus condemn sinners like prostitutes and tax collectors?

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Did He confront their sin? Yes. But His strongest language was for the religious hypocrites.

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So if you want to know, like, what it appears that Jesus despises the most, is it the serious rebel?

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Is it the person that is just without hope and most people see as just a throwaway?

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Is it the person that's not very pious? When Jesus was in His earthly ministry, the people who came to Him the most were the regular people who were most broken and most honest about their sin.

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They knew who they were. They weren't pretending. And Jesus said, when people say, why are you hanging out with these tax collectors and prostitutes?

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He says, people who are healthy aren't in need of a physician. It's the sick who need a physician.

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That's why they're coming to Me. But the point is, is the religious leaders of the day didn't think they needed a physician.

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They thought they were fine. And Jesus had the strongest condemnation for the religious leaders, people who were in church, the

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Christians, the church -going crowd, the ones who lived religious lives.

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Jesus condemned them. He condemned them for what? They were concerned with the outside and not the inside.

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And so let me ask you this question. Is any of this connecting with you and your life and how you live daily before God, with your family that's right in front of you, with your church that's right next to you?

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How do you live before God? Are you focused on the inside of your cup? Or are you focused on the outside first and what people see with their own eyes?

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Are you concerned with what God sees within you? Or are you more concerned with what your neighbor sees outside of you?

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What's the dedication of your life? Where's the focus of your life when you walk with God? Is it on the inward man, the inward woman?

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Is it on a heart that is truly pure before God, that is sold out for God and committed to Him?

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Or are you most committed to building up a life on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram that looks so spiritual, but as soon as you walk away from the screen, it's a life that slips into weakness and depravity?

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Are you as strong spiritually when your device is off as you are when you hit post?

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Or is it pretend? Is it real? Or is it pretend?

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Are you posting things? Are you filming things so that others might see your good deeds and give you praise?

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Or is the settled part of your heart, this is to the glory of God? Why do you do what you do?

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It's interesting that Jesus, when He comes... Let's get to the text.

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You've seen what Jesus says to these hypocrites, these pretenders. Look what He says here. He says, chapter 6, in praying,

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He says, verse 2, thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others.

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Truly I say to you, they have received their reward, but when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your giving may be in secret and your

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Father who sees in secret will reward you. I remember hearing a story of a local church that was having a fundraising drive for some new project or coffee shop or something,

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I don't know. And the biggest donors in the church, before the church, the minister went up before the church and he said,

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I'd like such and such and such and such and such and such to stand up because they gave more than this many thousands of dollars and they stood up in church and the audience applauded.

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And I think to myself when I hear stories like that, enjoy your reward because that was it.

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Jesus says these Pharisees, these hypocrites, these people who like to pretend and be seen by others,

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He says, don't be like them. When they give, people blow trumpets in the synagogue and in the streets and let people know, oh look, look, look, they're giving.

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And Jesus says, don't be like them. When you give, give in such a way that nobody knows what's happening.

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You give in a way where it is a secret and silent worship before God. You give in such a way so that it's not about somebody discovering it and giving you praise.

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You give in such a way that it was between you and God. He knows and you know and that's all that matters.

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Now here's the thing, the hyper -religious will hear Jesus saying that and they'll take it like literally, like they're writing checks and giving money in such a way that like I don't even know where to put it.

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Like I don't even know where it goes. The point is not that nobody can ever know that you've given, right?

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Like I'm not going to anymore like sign a check with my name on it, I'm going to try to be real secret and like throw it through someone's window or something.

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That's not the point. It's about the praise of men and being seen by others. Jesus says, don't be like them.

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They give in such a way that everybody knows and that's what they want. They want the reward. What's the reward?

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People see you as spiritual. They go, oh look, you are so gracious and so spiritual.

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You have such a servant's heart. And Jesus says, well when you give, why are you doing it?

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Are you, are you trying to make your father happy about who you are before him?

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Are you trying to make God pleased in how you live before him or are you doing it so somebody sees you and they reward you for it?

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That goes big. Oh, that goes so many directions because it could also go to a life of service, right? Like why do you do evangelism?

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Why do you show up at the abortion clinic? Why do you go to the Mormon temple? Why do you engage in any evangelism at all?

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Is it because you like the response you get from others when you engage in that behavior? Is it because you like the appearance of being very spiritual and knowing what you're doing?

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Why do you, why do you do it? Do you, would you be satisfied if you did evangelism and nobody ever wrote a book about you?

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Would you be satisfied if you did evangelism and nobody ever saw it? Nothing wrong with people seeing it, but here's the point.

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What's your motivation? Why do you do it? Why do you serve God at church? Why are you giving away bulletins at the door?

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Why do you put the tables out? Why do you worship before the church? Is it so that people see you as unique, as special, as gifted in the church?

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Are you doing it so that others see you in a particular way, with a particular status?

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Or are you living your life with the gifts that God has given to you so that He gets glory and you find your greatest delight in Him?

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Why do you serve God? Why do you give? And Jesus says this, and when you pray, this is big.

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This is big. And when you pray, you must not be like the hupakrites, hypocrites, for they love, love, they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others.

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Truly I say to you, amen, I say to you, they have received their reward.

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But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret and your

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Father who sees in secret will reward you. Years ago, I taught as a minister, as a pastor in another church through the

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Sermon on the Mount, and while I was preparing, this must be like a decade ago, it seems like, while I was preparing for the sermon and I'm praying and I'm reading through,

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I'm always trying to go through the sermon first and foremost for me first, to look at myself first, and then for the church so that I can make sure that I'm being faithful in how

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I handle God and it's not a performance, and I got nailed, nailed when

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I got to this passage. Because as I was reading commentaries and I'm going through the passage, it's rather quite simple.

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Why do you need a commentary on it? It's pretty obvious. Don't pray so that others see you pray and pretend, and I'm reading commentaries on it and then the guy who writes the commentary says, how are your prayers when you're with other

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Christians in Bible studies? How are your prayers before the church compared to how they are when you're in your bedroom with God alone?

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And I got absolutely nailed. Think about it.

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When we read this passage, what do we say? Pharisees are bad guys. Those are the bad guys. Those are the hypocrites.

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I'm not like them. Really? Really? Question. When you pray at your reach group, do you have these long, just beautiful prayers?

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When you pray at a Bible study, are you all of a sudden really wordy?

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Do you have so much to say to God? When you pray before a church or at a service or with friends or at a

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Bible study at Starbucks or at a coffee shop, all of a sudden, are your prayers very erudite, very beautiful and lofty and high and majestic?

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Is your prayer life before God something that would confuse God, where when you're in your bedroom with God, it's,

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Lord, thank you. Great day. Forgive me. Amen. Right? And all of a sudden, you get before a

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Bible study, other Christians, and it's like, Father in heaven, Lord, we just thank you,

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Lord. You know what I mean? You people that can pray, ask the question, is that prayer life before other

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Christians the same prayer life that you have when it's just you and your

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Father in heaven and nobody else? Are your prayers as impressive?

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Are they as wordy? Do you pray for such an extended period of time alone as you do before others?

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Because let me tell you something right now. If you read this passage and you only see the bad Pharisee in your mind and you think,

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I'm not like that, you haven't got it yet. Pretending hupakrite, the actors, is something that every one of us can slip into.

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And I'll tell you what. I don't know of a better place to find out your hypocrisy than your prayer life.

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Man. Let that sit for a second. You want to see how much of an actor you are?

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Tell me how much you talk to God. Stop and think about it.

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If you want to see how much of a pretender you are, show me your prayer life. How much do you talk to God?

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Because if you love to talk to God and about God with other people, you might be pretending.

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If your prayer life and your talking to God is something that happens only when there's someone else around, you might be pretending.

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I'm not saying you're not a Christian. I'm not saying you're a complete fake. I'm saying that your prayer life might be kind of fake.

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Repent. Because what God desires, what He's calling you to is He's not saying, you're a hypocrite and now

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I'm done with you and let me smash you. This is pretending. Don't do it. Meet me in your closet.

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Our life in God, our prayer life is supposed to be a prayer life that is big, that has a lot of volume, a lot of words, and it's happening constantly, right?

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And the only person that really knows ultimately how much you communicate with God is God Himself.

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How's your prayer life? How are you talking to God? Do you ever talk to God? Because I'm going to tell you this right now.

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If you're in this room right now and you'd say, I don't ever talk to God, I would say, I would look at your heart.

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If you don't ever talk to God ever, what makes you think you have a relationship with Him at all?

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What makes you think it's there at all? If you don't talk to God, if you don't commune with God, if you don't desire to know

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God and speak to God and hear from God, it begs the question as to whether you know

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Him. Jesus is cutting right through our fiction. The story that you spin and I spin before the watching world,

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He cuts right through your fiction, and He says, are you a hypocrite? Are you doing it to be seen by others?

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Or are you doing it because you want your Father to reward you? Do it in secret.

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Jesus says, go into your closet. Do it in secret. Okay, I'm actually going to do an entire sermon on the next piece, so we'll skip what

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Jesus says about the Gentiles and Roman Catholic prayers. But let's go to next, 16.

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That was a failed joke. Okay, so verse 16. And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, that their fasting may be seen by others.

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Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your

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Father who is in secret, and your Father who is in secret who will reward you. Here's the point. Jesus is saying this about fasting.

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If you're going to be hungry, if you're going to be thirsty, then you need to be hungry for God and thirsty for God, not for others.

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Fasting is one of the neglected spiritual disciplines. Let's all just confess it and let's lay it on the table.

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We don't fast the way we're supposed to. We do not pray the way we're supposed to, and we don't give the way we're supposed to.

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Let's confess it and let's walk with God new. Let's just confess it and put it out.

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We don't even know what this means. Jesus is like, when you fast, don't do like this. We're like, I don't fast anyway, so I don't need to worry about that, right?

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Never happens. It's not speaking to my heart. I'm not even convicted, right?

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We're like, oh, awful people over there that make themselves look like they're fasting, so other people say it's hilarious.

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A bunch of hypocrites. We're like, never happens. When do we fast? And here's the thing.

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If you're thinking right now, well, I do, and you're not raising your hand, I think you got it, but the truth is

01:02:10

I don't think any of us really ultimately can grasp what Jesus is saying here because we don't fast in the first place.

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The first thing we have to start doing is being hungry for God and thirsty for God on a regular basis where we give other things up to spend time with God.

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I'll just share this quick story with you. We first planted the church. We had absolutely no idea how we were going to make it.

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All we knew was that God was saying, do it, and we did it, and we didn't know how we were going to survive. We didn't know how we were going to take care of people's needs.

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We didn't know how we were going to pay for the stuff. We just knew we're supposed to do it. And we got to a certain place where we had absolutely no way to take care of our church's needs.

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We had no way to take care of our own needs. We had nothing, and we were at a particular place where all we can do is plead with God and ask

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God to show up. We had nothing. Everyone that was there was like in a halfway house or completely broke and bankrupt, families destroyed, and it was just like, what do we do?

01:03:05

I don't know. I have a nickel. How much do you have? Do you have 25 cents? Let's see what we can come up with. Maybe we'll be able to buy a soda.

01:03:12

I don't know. Like, how much do we actually have? We needed $10 ,000 to take care of our church's needs.

01:03:20

And this is a church for the people that really had never done anything spiritual like this ever.

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We're just part of a new church. It's a new experience. And all I did is I came before the church on a

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Sunday at like 5 o 'clock, and I said, here's the deal. We have to have $10 ,000.

01:03:37

We're completely trusting in God for this whole thing that he's doing here with this church, and we have nothing, and we have to depend upon him.

01:03:43

And everyone's thinking, how are we going to get past Jeff? I remember the look on people's faces, especially my wife and Luke's wife, was like, how?

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How? And here's what I said. Here's what I know. God did this. This church is here because God made it.

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And I know that God is in it, and I know that God is faithful. I said to the church, here's what I want everyone to do.

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I want everyone to fast and pray tonight. We don't eat anything.

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Every time you are hungry, you seek God. When you're hungry, you get to prayer, and you pray that God shows up and he drops it from heaven.

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That's it. I said, when you're hungry, you fast. You pray to God, and you say, God, bless this church.

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Take care of our needs. Pour out your blessings upon us spiritually and financially so that we can make it and we can grow together.

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God, please show up. And the whole church came together, and they were fasting. And every time they were hungry, they were praying, and we had a little thing between each other where we all knew we were praying about, and we were in it.

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People stayed up all night to pray and to seek God, and there was no food. Some people, no water. They were just fasting, and it was the most beautiful, glorious experience.

01:04:53

People came to me. They said, Pastor Jeff, I have never had such intimacy with God in my life. I've never even experienced that with God.

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I was seeking God, solely on God. And then the next morning, I got a random phone call from across the country, someone who didn't even go to our church, and they said, hey, the

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Lord laid it on our hearts to give you $10 ,000. He just showed up.

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He dropped it from heaven. The church came together. The church fasted.

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The church prayed. The church sought God. And what Jesus says in this text is you don't be like the pretender, the actor who wants everybody to know how spiritual they are, and they make themselves roughed up so that they are going to get somebody to ask them, hey, why are you fasting?

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Oh, you're so spiritual. Oh, you're fasting. Oh, man, you're so spiritual.

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Man, I wish I could be like you. That's amazing. What's it like to be so spiritual? Jesus says when you fast, don't let anybody know.

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If you're hungry, be hungry for God. God will reward you, but not if you're doing this when somebody sees you.

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And so this is like the nuts and bolts of what it means to be a Christian. Faith in Jesus and then a life that is real before God.

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It's real. It's not for anybody else and their praise. It's for the praise of God, for the glory of God.

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And so that's the question I have to ask myself is how much of my life in Christ is wrapped up in what other people think about me and see in me?

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You ask yourself that question. Ask God to meet you there. Let me say this to you.

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If you've been turned off by religion before, if you've just been sick of Christianity, you've been sick of religious experiences, maybe you were abused by religion.

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Maybe you were the victim of another false religion and false prophet and cult. Let me just say this to you.

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The refreshing thing about Jesus, if that's behind you in any way or it's residing in your heart right now, the refreshing thing about Jesus is that He is with you in His opposition to the hypocrites.

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He is with you in His opposition to the phony, to the actor and the pretender.

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If you want truth and the real, deeply intimate spiritual experience, you can find no one greater an ally and friend than Jesus.

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He despises the pretenders. And if you do too, then cling to Him.

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Do what you do to the glory of the Father and never to the glory of self.

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If you have thought in any way today as you've heard the words of Jesus, I think that's me, then know this.

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The hope is this. Jesus, the one who condemns the hypocrite, calls the hypocrites and the liars and the fornicators and the adulterers and the thieves,

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He calls them all to come. To do what? To rest in Him.

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Rest from your sin, your self -righteousness, your hypocrisy.

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Come and rest in Him. He is God. He is righteous. He died.

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He rose again. And He bids you to come and cease your labors and rest.

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In Him, find true, deep intimacy and life in Jesus.

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And it's not because of you. It's only in Him and His work and His strength that you can do it. So what's the call right now?

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The call is to confess, to repent, and to put your trust in Jesus. Here's the thing.

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Before you come to this table today, this is important. When we come to the table today together to take of the broken body and shed blood of Jesus, when you do that, it would be good that before you do, before you come to this table, you confess hypocrisy.

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You just had a whole message on hypocrisy. Abandon it. Give it to God. And come be renewed, remembering what

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Jesus has done to purchase a bunch of hypocrites like us. Let's pray. God, I pray that you'd bless.

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And right now, your church, as the word went out, I pray that you would open our eyes to you, change us, mold us, challenge us, make us like Christ.

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God, I just want to ask that you would expose in this very moment our hypocrisy.

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Lord, you hate it, and we want to hate what you hate. We want to love what you love.

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So give to us, God, this church, a hatred for our own pretending.

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Please, God, please show up in a big way right now in the hearts and minds of your people.

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Expose the fake. Expose the hypocrite. Expose the one who desires glory.

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Please, God, cause us to break free and to turn from it. And Lord Jesus, please bless us with that life of joy and intimacy and obedience to you that you so desire.