[Note: This sermon continues the exposition of Matthew 23 and returns to Matthew 22:41–46. Delivered 10 May 1981, Montreal. The pastor was recovering from a cold.]
In the last two weeks we have been looking at Matthew chapter 23 on the theme of the spiritual symptoms of disease. We saw that there are seven basic symptoms of spiritual disease, and that all of these symptoms are classified as hypocrisy — various manifestations of the one disease. Hypocrisy, as the scripture shows, is fatal: the Lord says plainly that the place of the hypocrites will be in hell. So we must ask: how shall we avoid this disease? How can we remain free of it?
Before answering, I want to illustrate the nature of hypocrisy with a story. A woman was crossing an old and rickety bridge, and she prayed: "Lord, if you will bring me safely across, I will put five dollars in the offering box." She started walking, and the bridge held firm. Halfway across, she decided she would probably make it without divine help and so scaled down her offer to three dollars. Then the bridge began to shake, and she quickly said: "Lord, I was only joking — I'll put the five dollars in." That is hypocritical behaviour. One moment five dollars, the next three, and back to five depending on the situation. We want the most from God and we want to give the least. That attitude is entrenched in the mentality of man. We laugh at that woman, but this is the way we ourselves often conduct ourselves with God. At exam time we become extra-religious; when the exam is past, there is no need to be so religious anymore. What is the difference between us and that woman? Really none.
When you look carefully at the seven woes the Lord speaks of concerning the Pharisees, you find that they are nothing but the elements of human nature. We don't like other people to do what we ourselves don't want to do — that's human nature. We are always concerned about the external and less about the internal. We wash the outside of the cup and are not worried if it is dirty inside. Families who cannot afford a certain living standard will still try to outwardly display that standard, to impress the neighbours, while heavily in debt. That is exactly what the Lord condemns. And so the disease of hypocrisy is simply human nature in its natural state. That is the first crucial thing to grasp: hypocrisy is not some mysterious exotic disease that only a few unusual people get. It is the condition of every person who allows their basic, egocentric human nature to dominate their thinking.
The first factual statement I want to make is this: even to be aware of the dangers of hypocrisy is not going to save us from hypocrisy. The Pharisees themselves were deeply aware of the danger of hypocrisy — they were no fools. Both the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmud list seven types of hypocritical Pharisees. One type would bash his head on the wall because he was afraid to look upon a woman lest he be tempted to sin. Another was so concerned to display humility that he walked bent double like a pestle in a mortar. Here is a statement from the Talmud: "Every person in whom is hypocrisy brings God's wrath upon the world. His prayer remains unheard, and he is even cursed by the embryos in their mother's womb. Such a person will fall into Gehinnom — into hell. A community addicted to hypocrisy is loathsome, like an unclean thing to God, and will be driven into exile." The rabbis themselves could not have put it more strongly. Yet all this awareness did not prevent them from falling into hypocrisy. Because hypocrisy is human nature at its basic level, and to be delivered from it you would have to be delivered from your own egocentric human nature — you would have to cure yourself of your own disease, which cannot be done.
The second factual statement is this: there is no fundamental doctrinal difference between the teaching of the Lord Jesus and that of the Pharisees. They believed in one God; so did he. They believed in a coming Messiah; so did he. They believed in angels, in heaven and hell — and so did he. If the difference lies only in believing Jesus to be the Messiah, then why should Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses not be saved? They also say Jesus is the Messiah. Simply believing the right doctrines is not the magic by which we overcome hypocrisy. We must be thinking very superficially if we imagine it is.
So how do we remedy hypocrisy? The answer is found back in Matthew chapter 22, verses 41 to 46 — the passage I deliberately left out in order to return to it here. "Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, 'What do you think of the Christ? Whose son is he?' They said to him, 'The son of David.' He said to them, 'How is it then that David, inspired by the Spirit, calls him Lord, saying, "The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, till I put thy enemies under thy feet"? If David thus calls him Lord, how is he his son?' And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions."
David was Israel's greatest king — the brief and glorious days of his reign were the one moment in their history when Israel stood truly independent and unchallenged. They looked forward to a Saviour who would come from the house of David, from his lineage. Yet this greatest of Israel's kings, in Psalm 110, calls the Messiah "my Lord." Have you ever heard of a father calling his son "my Lord"? David recognized that the Messiah, though descending from him, was far greater than he was — so great that David himself could bow before him. The Pharisees could not answer this question because they had consistently failed to see who the Messiah truly was: not just the son of David but the Son of God, not just a king but the Lord.
The practical point is this. What made David great was precisely his recognition of the greatness of the Messiah — his willingness, like Abraham who rejoiced to see Christ's day, to live already under the Lordship of Christ in prospect. And the root of hypocrisy lies in the rejection of that Lordship. Either you acknowledge Jesus as Lord in your life, or you have no alternative but to live as a natural man in your own strength, and therefore to live in hypocrisy. Your religion will have to be external — walking with your Bible, going to church, saying mechanical prayers — outward religious behaviour with corruption inside. A whitewashed tomb. That is what happens when you accept religion without accepting Jesus as Lord inside your heart. I say this especially to those being baptized today. The last thing I want is for you to simply put on a cloak of religion on the outside while nothing changes inside. If that happens, all that will have resulted is one more Pharisee in the world. When you become a Christian, you must acknowledge Jesus as Lord — not just with your mouth but in your heart. From now on he is King in your heart, Saviour of your heart. That is the choice that faces you today.
[Continues in Part B]
# Christ as Lord, the Remedy for Hypocrisy — Matthew 22:41–46; 23 (Part B) — Justice, Mercy, and Faith as Expressions of Lordship; The Meaning of Faith
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 22:41–46 and Matthew 23, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 10 May 1981, Montreal.]
We continue to examine how, through the Lordship of Christ, we can avoid the dangers of hypocrisy. We return to Matthew chapter 23 verse 23, where the Lord gives us three things the Pharisees neglected: justice, mercy, and faith. These three are inseparably linked to the Lordship of Christ, and we need to look at each in turn.
The first, translated as justice, is actually the Greek word krisis, which means judgment. In Matthew this word occurs twelve times and is consistently translated as judgment — for example, "the day of judgment." The translators chose justice here, but I prefer to keep the word as judgment, because if we are conscious of the judgment of God, we will also be careful about justice. A true Christian who acknowledges the Lordship of Christ lives with the judgment in view. One of the great errors in preaching today is to teach that judgment is no longer relevant to Christians, that judgment is already passed. But Paul says plainly that we must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. The quality of Christian life will not rise until Christians realize that we will answer before God for the kind of life we live — and more severely than non-Christians, because to whom more is given, more is required. Notice also that the word translated justice in verse 23 is the very same Greek word used in verse 33: not "sentenced to hell" but literally "the judgment of hell." The connection is exact.
The second is mercy. Mercy is love in our relationship to one another when we have been offended against — as Matthew 18:33 expresses it, "Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?" The Lordship of Christ is expressed in this command to love, and mercy is simply that love forgiving the person who has offended us. People are constantly offending each other in the church of God, and we would soon fall apart if we did not constantly exercise mercy. If you hold a grudge against someone right now, let me state it categorically: Jesus is not Lord in your life at this moment. If you are unforgiving, you do not know Jesus as Lord, because you have not obeyed his word, however much you say Lord, Lord with your lips. I must search my heart often and ask honestly: do I truly bear no bitterness against those who have offended me? Can I, when I see that person again, genuinely be merciful? That is the acid test of the Lordship of Christ.
The third is faith. It is a rare word in the Gospels — eight times in Matthew, five in Mark, eleven in Luke — but Paul uses it one hundred and forty-two times. Endless doctoral dissertations have been written on faith, and yet Christians still find they do not understand what it is. Let us look at the seven other occurrences of faith in Matthew and let them teach us. Matthew 21:21 — "if you have faith and never doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even say to this mountain, be cast into the sea." Matthew 17:20 — "if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, nothing will be impossible to you." Matthew 15:28 — "O woman, great is your faith; be it done for you as you desire," and her daughter was healed instantly. Three times in Matthew 9: the blind men in verse 29 ("according to your faith, be it done to you"); the woman with a flow of blood in verse 22 ("your faith has made you well"); and the paralytic in verse 2 ("when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, your sins are forgiven"). And finally Matthew 8:10, the centurion, of whom the Lord said, "Not even in Israel have I found such faith."
You will notice that five of these seven examples involve physical healing. This is crucial for understanding faith, because sin is seen in scripture as a spiritual disease, and physical and spiritual healing are closely related. Isaiah 1:4–6 pictures the sinner as sick from the sole of his foot to the top of his head — bruises, sores, and bleeding wounds, nothing sound in him. And Isaiah 53:5 tells us that by his stripes we are healed: our healing comes from the sacrificial death of Christ applied to our lives, because sin is sickness. Therefore, just as the blind man came to Jesus in the confidence that he could heal him, you come to the Lord Jesus in the confidence that he can heal your spiritual sickness. Faith is the confidence that God can do for you what you cannot do for yourself. It is the confidence that he can transform you — deliver you from your natural selfishness, superficiality, bad temper, self-centredness — and make you whole again.
There is something very beautiful in the story of the paralytic. He could not come to Jesus himself; he had to be carried by his friends. When we look at others and feel despair at how slowly they seem to grow, we need not despair — we can carry them to the Lord in prayer. If we think someone is a paralytic, we will bear him before the Lord and say: Lord, we bring this dear brother to you; have mercy on him. We may even have to break through the roof to drop him right in front of the Lord, but we will do it. If God can heal you, he can heal him — that is the glory of faith.
So to those being baptized today: make sure this is not just an external washing. Come to the Lord Jesus and say: Lord, I know what I really am — I know how selfish I am, how sinful I am. But I am going to trust you to heal me, to make a new person of me, to make me spiritually healthy again. I am going to trust you. I know that you can do it, I know that you will do it, and I thank you for it. That is faith. When you exercise that faith, he will heal you of the disease of sin. Let us be quiet before God. We pray.