If you follow the actions of Jesus through the Gospels, you will
see that when he interacted with the people who were largely rejected by much of society, “the down and outers,” as we might call them, he was patient and kind to them.
If they were living lives that were in some way unrighteous, Jesus did
not excuse them of their actions. Indeed, he pointed these things out to them
and even reprimanded them. However, if they were sincerely looking for freedom
from the things about their lives in which they felt trapped, he explained to
them the way to do it. This he did with gentleness and patience. This was the
manner of Jesus if the people were honest with him.
You may think it odd, but the group of people for whom Jesus had little
patience were the religious leaders of the day.
Although there were some notable exceptions, this group of leaders, primarily the Pharisees and the scribes, were not interested in seeking an honest truth, but only in a self-righteous appearance. They wanted merely to be the recipients of admiration by the society of their day and perhaps to enrich themselves.
Although there were some notable exceptions, this group of leaders, primarily the Pharisees and the scribes, were not interested in seeking an honest truth, but only in a self-righteous appearance. They wanted merely to be the recipients of admiration by the society of their day and perhaps to enrich themselves.
It was some men from this group who gathered around Jesus one day in
order to find fault with him. At the time that they did this, Jesus was very
popular with the people. The popularity that Jesus had was upsetting to these
religious leaders. Not only were they jealous, but they were also upset with
him because he would point out to these self-righteous people some of their own
hypocrisy. Because of all of this, the reason that they usually came to Jesus
was because they were looking for some way to discredit him.
Clean Hands, Dirty Hearts
So it was in the seventh chapter of Mark, when the scribes and
Pharisees came to Jesus, they were looking for a way to bring disgrace to him.
As they arrived, they saw that Jesus and his disciples were eating with
unwashed hands. It was not that their hands were dirty necessarily, but it was that
they were ceremonially unclean.
The Pharisees had put in place an elaborate system of ceremonial
cleansing that was to be done with great display and formality. This was meant
more for showing their devotion to ritual than it was for hygiene. They were
upset that Jesus and his disciples were not following this tradition.
The religious leaders asked Jesus, “Why do your disciples not walk
according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” (Mark
7:5)
As I said, it may not have been that the disciples’ hands were dirty,
just that they were ceremonially unclean. However, I also should say that I would
not be greatly surprised that their hands may have been a bit dirty. Most of
these men were fishermen. They were laborers. Men that are accustomed to manual
labor also get used to not having things so clean when they eat. When it is lunchtime,
they often wipe most of the dirt off their hands and onto their jeans, and sit
down to grab their sandwich.
I grew up on a farm and am no stranger to manual labor. My
growing-years were before the time when machinery did most of the dirty work.
When I was a boy, our own hands did much of the work. It was manual labor and our
hands got dirty!
Many times when we were at work far from the house, we carried our
lunch. Most often in these situations, to wash our hands cleanly was simply not
practical. At these times, we did as I described above—we wiped the dirt off of
our hands the best that we could and sat down to eat.
A few times we had company from the city with us—our cousins or
friends. I did notice that the kids were a bit taken back by the uncleanliness
of our eating situation, for which we farm kids would occasionally tease them
about being so finicky.
This type of situation may have also been the case when the Pharisees
commented about the cleanliness of the disciples’ hands. It is a possibility
that their hands were a little dirty. But even if this was so, this aspect was
not the main concern of the Pharisees. They did not care about the health of
Jesus and the disciples. The main concern of the Pharisees was ceremony, not
hygiene.
I know this because of the response of Jesus to their concern. Jesus
did not tease these men as we teased the city kids. Instead, he called them
hypocrites. He told them, “Isaiah was right about you. He prophesied about you
saying, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”
Jesus then added, “You ignore the commandment of God so that you can
teach the tradition of men.” (Mark 7:8)
Modern Day Pharisees
What Jesus was telling these people was that by their ceremonial
washing, they were attempting to hide the filthiness that was within their
lives. This is hypocrisy. We see it also in our own day.
The sad part about all of this is that the hypocrisy of religious
leaders is not so surprising to us. We also see this in our own day. In fact,
it seems even to be quite common. Church leaders with large media organizations
are eventually found to be living lives that are completely at odds with the message
that they are preaching. Or even more grievous, the very people who are
supposed to be teaching the people righteousness are committing indecent acts
even against the people that they have vowed to protect.
It is sickening, and we get tired of hearing about it. Hypocrisy is
especially disgusting in people who make a great outward show of
self-righteousness, but inwardly their lives harbor an evil lifestyle. Also in
the day of Jesus, these confrontations that he had with the religious leaders were
not uncommon.
On another occasion, a Pharisee asked Jesus to have lunch with him. When
they sat down to eat at the Pharisee’s table, the religious leader also noticed
this time that Jesus did not go through the ritual of cleansing his hands
according to ceremony.
He commented about it.
Jesus
said to him, “You Pharisees like to clean the outside of the cup and of the
dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not he
who made the outside make the inside also? If you would pay attention to those
things that are within, everything would be clean for you…But woe to you
Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the
marketplaces. Woe to you! For you are like unmarked graves, and people walk
over them without knowing it.” (Luke 11:39-44 ESV)
Unfortunately, this hypocrisy goes beyond mere ceremony. As we see in
the instances in our own day that I cited, for the people who are violated or
wronged, it can scar them for life. It is not only the perpetrators, but the
victims carry the burden of the wrong done to them to their grave.
Rejecting God’s Commandment in Favor of Man’s
Traditions
This is what Jesus pointed out to the Pharisees. He told them:
You
have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your
tradition! For Moses said, “Honor your father and your mother;” and, “Whoever
reviles father or mother must surely die.” But you say, “If a man tells his
father or his mother, ‘Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban’” (that
is, given to God)—then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father
or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have
handed down. And many such things you do. (Mark 7:9-13 ESV)
This statement by Jesus requires a bit of explanation: Part of
honoring one’s father and mother, as God commands, is being responsible for
their care in their old age. However, this presented a problem for the
religious leaders of the day, since they saw that the money that might
otherwise be given to the temple and to them was sometimes instead used to
support the elderly.
To avoid this situation, they proclaimed that if a son should declare
this portion of his money “Corban,” that is, if he would live this money to God
(and by extension to the temple and to the religious leaders), that son was
free from the responsibility of caring for his parents.
Their hypocrisy in this case had a very hurtful effect on society. The
elderly were left abandoned. Unfortunately, this was not the only situation
where the Pharisees ruled against the way of God in order to benefit
themselves, for as Jesus told them, they did “many such things.”
Righteous in our Own Eyes
We tend to shake our heads in disgust about these Pharisees who would
convince people to give money to them instead of supporting their own parents.
Likewise, when we hear of another leader of the church of our own day who has
been found out to be living a sinful life, we are repulsed by him.
“What hypocrites!” we say.
We sometimes take these examples of extreme duplicity that I talked
about to compare with our own lives. When we do that, in our own eyes we
suddenly seem quite righteous. It is often much to our own delight that we feel
this way. We come to think that perhaps we are not as bad as we thought that we
were!
If you sometimes find yourself doing this, beware! This is actually
the first step of hypocrisy.
I do not care how bad you are, you can always find someone that is
worse than you are—at least, he or she is worse in your own estimation of them.
The difficulty is, that person might be looking at you and thinking the same
thing about you!
The Apostle Paul says that when we measure ourselves by ourselves and
when we compare ourselves with others, we are without understanding (2 Corinthians
10:12).
This is the great danger in living a duplicitous life. It is startling
and distressing what great evil the human spirit can harbor within himself if
he is allowed to project a respectable lifestyle to others. Adulterers and
rapists, swindlers and murderers, child pornographers and molesters. Again
quoting Paul, “It is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by
them in secret” (Ephesians 5:12)
Hypocrisy is what makes it possible for an evil person to live with
himself. As long as he or she is able to appear righteous to others, they are
able to exist in their daily lives. But the difficulty is, in living this way,
they never deal with the great evil that they harbor within their spirits.
This is the dark aspect of hypocrisy. If there is something about your
life that you are harboring deep within and you are afraid that it will one day
come to light, you need to bring it to Jesus. The true fact of the matter is,
it will indeed one day come to light.
Jesus spoke often of the coming judgment. He once said, “All who are
in the grave…shall come forth. Those who did good deeds to the resurrection of
life, those who committed evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment” (John
5:29).
Come to Jesus. He will make you clean now.
Hypocrisy and Respectability
There is another aspect of hypocrisy that may not have the same dire
effects as those things that I have mentioned, but they are destructive
nonetheless. This form of hypocrisy is fueled by the desire to want people to
think that we are more righteous, or in some way better than we actually are.
We put on airs, as we say. This form of hypocrisy comes because we all desire
to be respected by other.
The truth be told, who among us can look at our own lives and not see
a bit of this kind of hypocrisy? In one way or another, we all want be respected
and accepted. I cannot say that this inner need of ours is necessarily a bad
thing, since we all have a desire to belong. It is just that we should learn to
go about it in the right way.
I am not saying that instead of trying to appear more righteous than
we really are, we should hang out our dirty laundry for all to see. But if we
are to be honored, it is not we who should seek to bestow this honor upon ourselves.
Rather, it should be God who does this. If God wishes to point out something
about us as exemplary, he will do it through others or through situations that
he brings to us.
Jesus spoke to this inner desire of ours to be honored and respected. One
day when Jesus was invited to attend an important meal, he noticed that some
people where positioning themselves so that they could sit at the most respected
places of honor at a table.
He said to them, “When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast
(for instance), do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more
distinguished than you be invited by him, and he who invited you both will come
and say to you, ‘Give your place to this person,’ and then you will begin with
shame to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit in the
lowest place, so that when your host comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up
higher.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with
you.” (Luke 14:8-10 ESV)
Acceptance and respectability is something that we all desire.
“But what if this never happens?” you may say. “I have tried to not
promote myself and the good things that I do, and still no one recognizes
anything about me.”
If this is your situation, I am sorry to hear about it, but again, you
are not alone. Perhaps all of us feel this in one way or another. Perhaps all
of us have done things, helped out, or tried to keep our lives pure, and no one
seems to notice or to even care. As you might expect, Jesus also speaks to this
when talking about a hypocritical life. He says:
“Beware
of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by
them, for then you will have no reward from your 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.
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 Father who sees in secret will reward
you. (Matthew 6:1-4 ESV)
This is the other aspect of the final days and the judgment of our
works. Not only will those hypocrites finally be called upon to pay for their
sins, but those who have done well will receive the rewards prepared for them
by the Father.
True Respectability
We can choose how we are to receive our reward for doing right. You
might prefer to choose it now and receive some instant gratification. It feels
good—at least for a little while. But if you are looking for something that is
more enduring than a medallion around your neck, or a phone call from the
president, listen to what the New Testament writer James has to say. He tells
us that “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from
the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change”
(James 1:17).
Jesus said of his second coming to earth, “I am coming quickly, and my
reward is with me, to give to every man according to what he has done” (Revelation
22:12)
This is an honor that will endure. The lesson is this: “For everyone
who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted”
(Luke 14:8 ESV).
Do you want a congratulatory phone call from the president? Let the
honor that you seek come from God.
How about this instead—the Sovereign Lord of the Universe, the Creator
and Sustainer of all that there is, one day after your life of work is over,
putting his hand on your shoulder, looking at you, and saying, “Well done, you good
and faithful servant…enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:23)
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