Masks
When Jesus-followers are examined by others, it is God’s desire that we would be found to be genuine people of God and not hypocritical.
The Doctor is In!—Treating Ailments that Demand a Diagnosis. This message series stimulates Jesus-followers to live out their daily lives with prescriptions diagnosed in God’s Word. Jesus Christ came into the world to treat the aliments of sinners. Every ailment needs a diagnosis. Under the direction of the Great Physician, Doctor Bob seeks to diagnose various ailments common to the Christian community and provide a prescription from God’s Word. The Doctor is In to treat the trauma experienced by a vast majority of Jesus-followers today.
Introducing Dr. Bob. Doctor Bob needs little introduction to Jesus-followers at Christ First. However, some people have asked to know a little more about Doctor Bob and his qualifications. Currently Doctor Bob is conducting a research project with the renowned biotechnologist Dr. Ima Fraud. Dr. Fraud is widely respected as a pioneer in the field of DNA manipulation. This research—while preliminary—is still very encouraging.
For example, in a recent clinical test, a laboratory mouse was exposed to a sample of basketball superstar Shaquille O’Neal’s DNA. The mouse later went on to record a “triple double”—scoring 42 points, pulling down 21 rebounds and setting-up 12 assists in an exhibition game against the Los Angeles Lakers. “We’re very excited”, Dr. Fraud was quoted as saying.
In addition, we are pleased to say that Doctor Bob has also received the following degrees…
Ph.D, Catatonic State University
M.A., Connecticut School of Cranial Development
B.O., Neuman Institute of Nasal Sensitivity
Doctor Bob is currently sharpening his scalpel in preparation for his next surgical appointment with the traumas Jesus-followers face. While we are waiting to see Doctor Bob, please take a moment to answer the following questions. Our answers will greatly aid us in our diagnosis and treatment…
Why is it always that “4 out of 5 doctors agree” on some product or service? Can’t all of these guys agree on anything? Explain.
On this Super Bowl Sunday, don’t we just hate the San Francisco Forty-Niners football team? I mean, look, we know they won five Super Bowls in the 80’s and everything, but why do they have to be so smug and arrogant about it? Please be specific.
As a small child, did we ever make faces at our mothers and have them tell us, “Your face is going to freeze like that”? Did it?
Why do American beer commercials try to teach us that if we drink the right kind of beer, then we can spend all our time on the ski-slopes, or at the beach, and party all night without having to sleep, and beautiful women or gorgeous guys with perfect teeth will throw themselves at us, and when we get tired of all that, we can go into the bar and watch beer commercials with guys who say “Wasssss-Uppppp?”, and it’s OK that we never finished school, or held a job, because all we need to know is “Tastes Great - Less Filling.” Explain.
Why do they call them “strait-jackets” when they aren’t?
Thank you for waiting. The Doctor will see us now!
Ailment: “saying one thing and doing another”
Diagnosis: “hypocrisy”
Doctor Bob dislikes to hear people say, “I won’t come to church because its’ full of hypocrites.” They’re right, of course. If we ran all the hypocrites out of the church, our campus would be empty! At times we are all hypocrites. We say one thing and do another. We fail to live up to the life demonstrated by Jesus. We need to be thankful to God who wants to be with sinners like us. God has taken the initiative in Jesus Christ to make us forgiven people, new people, and whole people.
Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentence.” —Luke 5:31-32 [TNIV]
Doctor Bob has noticed that people sometimes look at Jesus-followers who have made mistakes and say things like this: “Look at her—she calls herself a Christian and she did that?!?” Or perhaps they might say, “Look at him—I thought he was supposed to be religious. What a hypocrite!”
Saying these things may help such people feel better about their own personal shortcomings but it still brings up a good question…
What’s the difference between making a mistake and being hypocritical in our faith?
Well, let’s drop in on the Apostle Paul’s Biblical letter to the church in the town of Philippi and get the answer in Philippians 1:9-10…
And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.
When the Bible speaks of being “blameless” in this passage it uses a word that means to be “sterile and not a stumbling block”. However, the actual meaning of this word really goes deeper than that, for in the Greek original language this term means…
Blameless = “to be tested by sunlight.”
Now what does sunlight have to do with being inwardly clean?
Well, let’s look at the background information first and then we’ll talk about what it means.
Back in the days of the first century dishonest pottery vendors sometimes tried to sell cracked clay pottery to unsuspecting buyers. An unethical vendor would do this by covering the cracked portion of a clay pot with wax and then painting the crack over. The resulting cracked pot looked like a new unbroken piece—until you got home and filled it with water! So to avoid getting cheated, a smart person would hold the piece up to the sun and check it for cracks before buying it. The sunlight could then be seen through the cracked portion and the buyer would know not to purchase it.
So what does this illustration mean for us today?
Well, the Apostle Paul is saying that his prayer for the Jesus-followers from Philippi is that they would be totally genuine in their relationship with Jesus. When the Philippians were “brought into the light” and examined by others, his desire was that they would be found to be genuine people of God and not hypocritical “cracked pots.” This very same thing is also true for us today. God desires that we be sincere and genuine in our faith.
But this presents something of a problem for us, doesn’t it? After all, none of us are perfect, right? If we are totally honest with ourselves then we have to admit that we aren’t always everything that we should be in our faith. All of us have a few cracks here and there and we all make mistakes.
However, we should enjoy being around those who admit their mistakes and ask, “What can I do to get straight with God and with other people?” Jesus came for people like that. He came for all of us. And Jesus wants us to reach out to others with all the love that is in us.
What group of “sinners” do we tend to avoid?
There must be a group of people outside the church that we can reach out to with the gifts, resources, and experiences God has given us.
But the unfortunate truth is that most of us aren’t always as sincere and genuine as we’d like to be as Christians in reaching out to “sinners.” In fact, 1 John 1:8 tells us, if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
So does the fact that we sometimes fail to live a totally perfect, genuine Christian life make us hypocritical?
Well, let’s think about that for a moment. A “hypocrite” is someone who pretends to be something that they really aren’t. In the days of New Testament the word hypocrite has a clear implication.
Hypocrite = “one who wears a mask”.
It was used in the ancient Greek theatre to describe actors who used masks to portray different emotions. Over time, the word came to be used to describe anyone who wasn’t really what they claimed to be. A hypocrite then, is not someone who makes mistakes or struggles to do the right thing. A hypocrite is really a “mask-wearer” who is knowingly and intentionally different from what he or she outwardly claims to be.
He made free use of Christian vocabulary. He talked about the blessing of the Almighty and the Christian confessions which would become the pillars of the new government. He assumed the earnestness of a man weighed down by historic responsibility. He handed out pious stories to the press, especially to the church papers. He showed his tattered Bible and declared that he drew the strength for his great work from it as scores of pious people welcomed him as a man sent from God. Indeed, Adolf Hitler was a master of outward religiosity–with no inward reality!
Now perhaps there have been times when we’ve felt that we haven’t been everything we’ve claimed to be in our Christian life. Perhaps we’ve been struggling with some particular sin or maybe we’ve repeated the same mistake over and over. In cases like this, it can be very easy to feel hypocritical in our faith. But making a mistake—even a big one—doesn’t necessarily make us hypocrites. After all, some of the greatest people of God in the Bible made some tremendous mistakes!
Struggling repeatedly with some particular sin doesn’t necessarily make us a hypocrite either. Psalm 37:23-24 tells us that,
the LORD makes firm the steps of those who delight in him; though they stumble, they will not fall, for the LORD upholds them with his hand.
The meaning of this verse is pretty simple: it means that if we mess up and fess up, we can count on God to uphold us if we are really giving Him the first place in our lives. God can help us overcome unhealthy behaviors in our lives but it’s important to realize that God’s process may take some time and may involve some struggles along the way.
So here’s the defining question: are we real in what we believe or is it all just a show for others?
To guard against hypocrisy, no matter if we are young or old or what generation we represent, we must be really interested in living the kind of life that is pleasing to God, not just wanting to appear to do so. It‘s definitely hypocritical to wear a mask and pretend to be something that we’re not. It’s also hypocritical to habitually live an ungodly lifestyle with no desire to change and still call ourselves Jesus-followers.
We can usually tell if people are living a pure and blameless life or a hypocritical life simply by listening to their words and watching their actions. A person who is living a sincere and genuine lifestyle will demonstrate it by the things they do and say. Of course, doing good things doesn’t necessarily make us a godly person, but godly people will demonstrate their godliness by doing good things.
The apostle John tells us that there should be a clear difference in the lifestyles of those people who claim to be Jesus-followers and those who don’t.
I John 3:10 says,
This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Those who do not do what is right are not God’s children; nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.
The Ambiguity of Saints. There is the story of the man who came down from the North Carolina Mountains. He was all dressed up and carrying his Bible. A friend saw him and asked, ‘Elias, what’s happening? Where are you going all dressed up like that?’ Elias said, ‘I’ve been hearing about New Orleans. I hear that there is a lot of free-running liquor and a lot of gambling and a lot of real good naughty shows.’ The friend looked him over and said, ‘But Elias, why are you carrying your Bible under your arm?’ And Elias replied, ‘Well, if it’s as good as they say it is, I might stay over until Sunday.’
One quick way to see if there is a clear difference in the lifestyles of those people who claim to be Jesus-followers is to simply ask ourselves some questions like this:
Am I are going to all the same movies and listening to all the same music as my non-Christian friends?
Am I watching all the same television shows and reading all the same magazines and hanging out in all the same places and playing all the same games as my non-Christian friends?
Am I using all the same language and wearing all the same clothes and involved in all the same kind of relationsips as my non-Christian friends?
If the answer to those questions are “yes” then the next question might be, “Is there any real difference between myself and those who aren’t really interested in Jesus?”
Jesus gave some of his harshest criticism to those people who outwardly claimed to follow God but inwardly couldn’t care less about Him, not to those who struggled or made mistakes.
Double Message Noted. One blistering hot day when they had guests for dinner, Mother asked 4-year old Johnny to return thanks. “But I don’t know what to say!” the boy complained. “Oh, just say what you hear me say” his mother replied. Obediently the boy bowed his head and mumbled, “Oh Lord, why did I invite these people over on a hot day like this?”
On a more serious note, a man sat down to supper with his family and said grace, thanking God for the food, for the hands which prepared it, and for the source of all life. But during the meal he complained about the freshness of the bread, the bitterness of the coffee, and the sharpness of the cheese. His teenage daughter questioned him, ‘Dad, do you think God heard the grace today?’ He answered confidently, ‘Of course.’ Then she asked, ‘And do you think God heard what you said about the coffee, the cheese, and the bread?’ Not so confidently, he answered, ‘Why, yes, I believe so.’ The girl concluded, ‘Then which do you think God believed, Dad?’ The man was suddenly aware that his mealtime prayer had become rote, thoughtless habit rather than an attentive and honest conversation with God. By not concentrating on that important conversation, he had left the door open to let hypocrisy sneak in.
On the other hand, the Bible has this to say to those who may be struggling but truly desire to live a God-honoring life.
Psalm 103:8-13 says…
The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him.
We were hiking in the mountains above Yosemite Valley when I saw the stone–a small one, about the size of a half-dollar, with smooth rounded edges. Ordinarily I would have passed it by, not being a rock hound. It would have remained there for another thousand years perhaps, a mere pebble among the larger stones on the trail. But this one instantly caught my eye. It was special. Glinting in the sunlight, it seemed to reflect all the surrounding colors, as though trying to mirror nature. Into my pocket went the rare find. All the way home I thought about where I should display it so its beauty could be most enjoyed. I finally placed it on the shelf in my den, next to other mementos. I forgot it for a while. Then one day, while dusting, I was surprised to see that the stone had completely lost its luster. It sat on the shelf among the other lovely objects, a hard, gray chunk of nothing, downright ugly. I was shocked. What had happened to the prize I had so carefully brought back with me? Where was the sparkle and the colors that had attracted me so much? Disgusted, I snatched it up and started for the trash can in the backyard. Then, just as I opened the sliding glass door from the living room, a beam of light struck the stone. As though by magic, it began to shimmer, to glow again. In an instant the beautiful jewel tones shone brilliantly. Had they returned? Or had they always been there, dormant, waiting to be released? Wondering, I glanced up at the sky.
Sunlight? That was the answer. The rays from the sun were all my stone needed to come alive. How much like each of us! Of ourselves our lives are subject to hypocrisy– empty, colorless, without meaning. Only when we are touched by the glory of God, and brought into the sunlight is our inner beauty revealed.
As we are called to the Lord’s Table to receive Holy Communion, we don’t have to timidly come to God because we have made some mistakes in our lives. The Bible reminds us that God doesn’t treat us as our sins deserve, nor pay us back in full for our mistakes. As high as the heaven is over the earth, so strong is God’s love to those who honor him.
So what prescription do we receive from God’s Word?
Living Pure and Blameless for the Day of Christ
take off the mask before others
stand in the light before God
don’t be a hypocritical crackpot
If we are truly seeking to place God first by inwardly following him, then Jesus Christ’s sacrifice removes our sins from us. When we are “brought into the light,” and are examined by others, let’s make sure that we are found to be sincere and genuine people of God and not hypocritical “crackpots!”
Forgiving and loving God, we thank you that you continue to love us even when we sin, even when we are hypocrites, even when we fall far short of the life revealed in Jesus. Lord, as we come before the Lord’s Table to receive Communion, use us as your forgiven children to bring your love and forgiveness to others. Amen.
