This is a sermon preview for the fourth week of our “Mountaintop Manifesto” series.
Visit FBCM’s Church Center Channel to view video live stream (live) or audio version of sermon (published later).
"Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven." - From Matthew 6:1-8; 14-18
"Don't think the church is full of hypocrites. There's always room for at least one more." I shared this once from the pulpit. It is what I thought was a well worn-out preacher joke. A person who heard me say it found it a bold statement: one he'd rarely heard a preacher share. Can you say that about "good church people"?
Hypocrisy involves many things. We usually take it to mean to preach one thing and do another. The original word has the connotation of putting on a mask, or putting on a big showy display. When I said the church always has room for more hypocrites, that is not to say anything positive about hypocrisy. It is to say it is a universal human temptation and the hospital for sinners which is the church is exactly where such people need to be: not because God loves hypocrisy but because he wants religious hypocrites to become genuinely spiritual.
Jesus, in fact, is against hypocrisy, but he is not surprised to see it.
Such hypocrisy happens in every age. Clarence Jordan once wrote a paraphrase of the Gospels called "The Cotton Patch Gospel" where he imagined the Gospels taking place in the 20th century American South.
Here's how he put some of Jesus's words in Matthew 6:
Now, when you go to church, don’t be like the religious phonies who put on a solemn face to impress men with their piety. Rather, when you go to church, act perfectly normal so as not to give the impression you’re going there to be seen, but to worship God. And your Father, who sees the inner life, will respond to you.
Are we here to be seen, or to worship God? Of course, worshiping together is vital. The church is a community, not a show of private individuals. Going to church is not like going to a movie theater. But, we can find concern about God and godly things curiously absent from our religion if we're not careful. If at worship we're not gathered for God, it'd be better if we were not gathered at all.
As we continue hearing from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminds us that God is not impressed by outward displays alone, but looks at our hearts. The questions for us pile up when we hear such news. We begin to ask questions like:
What is the shape of my heart?
What do I desire? And does it look like Jesus?
Is my heart set on the Kingdom of God?
Am I extending the same forgiveness to others, that I would hope to receive myself?
It's easy to become a hypocrite. It's hard to have a sincere heart, devoted to God. Some might even say it's impossible. But with God, all things are possible: even for us hypocrites and sinners gathered at church.
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