We all hate hypocrites. We don’t like the insincerity. When people only do the things they do because they know we’re watching. When people want to manipulate how we see them. We’re never sure if we’ve met the real them.
But of all the hypocrites, our society has the strongest dislike of religious hypocrites. People who claim to be devout followers of a particular religious system, but it’s all a show. Indeed, many people today dismiss the Christian faith precisely because there are so many Christian hypocrites.
The good news is that Jesus hated religious hypocrites as well. If we found Jesus today and told him that his church was full of hypocrites, he wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. He often said it would be like this.
Jesus often urged his followers to be distinctive. If we picture this, we probably think of the many times Jesus warned us not to resemble the unbelieving world. But Jesus also warns us not to resemble the hypocrital church. “The church will be full of hypocrites,” he says, “but do not be like them.”
So when we meet hypocritical Christians, they should not drive us away from following Jesus. Instead we should heed Jesus’ warning, and follow him, unlike the hypocrites we’ve just met.
The first half of Matthew chapter 6 is one such passage. The first verse sets the tone: 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. Beware of doing what you do to be seen by others.
And then Jesus picks up on 3 areas. 3 areas in which we might be religious. 3 areas in which we might express our devotion to God. But 3 areas in which we are in danger of looking over our shoulder, trying to impress others.
We’ll look at those areas in turn, but then I want to show us that what Jesus says actually goes much wider and deeper than just those 3.
Giving
First, then, Jesus talks about giving. Specifically he’s talking about giving to the poor.
He paints a scene of these hypocrites. They march down to the temple, gift in hand, with a brass band in front of them playing a fanfare to announce the generous gift. And then having made the donation, the giver turns to the alleys where the beggars would be found, to make sure that they all know who provided that evening’s meal at the shelter.
Jesus is being deliberately colourful. I doubt you’d have had any scenes exactly like that, but it makes us smile, and makes the point. Indeed, this is where the English phrase comes from, “blowing your own trumpet”.
But once we’ve chuckled at the picture Jesus has painted, we stop as we realise we might be laughing at ourselves. Jesus goes onto explain that the giver who gives like this will get rapturous applause for their generosity. But that’s the limit of it. There’s no other reward for them. God is not impressed.
Here’s a better way, he says: Give in secret. Make sure nobody knows what you’re doing. In fact, he says, as your right hand puts the money on the plate, don’t let your left hand know what’s going on. We’re so good at congratulating ourselves, at rehearsing how generous we’ve been, at feeling quietly smug that we’ve given what we have, that we should even keep it a secret from ourselves.
We know what Jesus is talking about here, don’t we? We can all picture the celebrity who runs a marathon for charity. Why not just quietly write a cheque? Or the business that makes a donation, but is photographed by the local paper handing over a cheque the size of a roll of wallpaper.
Jesus says we are to give in secret. Not because anyone is watching.
This church is solely funded by the generous and sacrificial giving of Christian people. And people give in different ways. Some put money in the plate each week. Some put money in an envelope that allows us to reclaim the tax. But others set up a standing order at the bank, and their giving just transfers. From Jesus’ perspective here, that has to be the best route. Once you’ve set up your gift you can completely forget about it.
Giving.
Private Prayer
The second area Jesus talks about is private prayer. Private prayer.
I say private prayer because there is a place for public prayer. A bit later, someone will lead us in a time of prayer as part of our service. This coming Thursday night is our church prayer meeting when we come together to pray in public. Those are good things to do. There’s a place for public prayer. But as we’ll see, what Jesus says here only makes sense if he’s talking about our private prayers.
In those days, everyone read aloud. If you were reading to yourself on the train, you’d do it out loud. That was the culture. And the same went with praying. But where to do it?
Jesus paints another vibrant picture of the hypocrites. They’d go to the synagogue for their prayers. This was the bustling centre of a Jewish community. It’s a bit like going to one of the apexes of Bluewater for our morning devotions. Or like going to the church or the post office in order to pray.
Other people pray on the streets. The word for “street” here is different from the one we had before. This is not the alley where the beggars would be. This is the corner of the boulevard. The widest street with the most people on it. So we go to pray by the pedestrian crossing at Oxford Circus. Or we do it on the corner by Waitrose in Sevenoaks.
You can pray anywhere, including in any of those places. But the problem with choosing to go somewhere like that for your time of private prayer is that it’s not terribly private. You’re on stage.
Jesus says that we should instead go to the innermost room. The word he uses here would have been the storeroom, possibly because in many homes it would have been the only room with a lock. Go to the walk in fridge. Go to the larder. The cupboard under the stairs. The toilet. Your bedroom. Wherever nobody will know you’re there. Wherever nobody would find out that you were praying.
Because, he says, God is there. As you go to a secret place, you discover that God is in that secret place. And if you’ve gone there to pray, that’s all that matters.
Private prayer.
Fasting
The third area Jesus talks about is fasting. Fasting.
This is one that many of us find harder to relate to. It simply means going without food. Perhaps for a single meal. Perhaps for a day. Perhaps for a few days.
The Old Testament commanded the people of God to do this, but in a very limited way. By the time of Jesus, it had grown, and the New Testament simply assumes that Jesus’ followers would carry on some of this. Today, some Christians do fast from time to time. The three reasons people would do this are to take the time they would have spent eating praying, to save the money from a meal to give to those in need, or to express sorrow for a particular sin. Other Christians don’t fast.
I don’t want to get hung up on the rights and wrongs of whether we fast, because that isn’t what Jesus is talking about. He’s not interested in whether we do, but in how we do.
And again, he invites us to picture the scene. The hypocrites disfigure their faces. Literally they make their faces disappear! Imagine them walking around, but their face is missing! We can get at what he’s saying when we remember that one phrase today for applying make-up is to put your face on. The hypocrites forget to put their face on that morning. They look deliberately gloomy. They think it’s spiritual to look miserable.
That’s why they do it. Others will see the sour puss, and know that you must take God seriously enough to be fasting.
Instead, Jesus says, look normal. Wash. Brush your teeth. Comb your hair. He’s not saying we need to go to excess when we’re fasting to look after ourselves extra well – that just creates the reverse problem. The point is that nobody should know. If you’re fasting one morning, you should look exactly the same as you walk out of the door as you would on any other day.
Fasting.
Wider for us today
And so Jesus has talked about three areas where we might be tempted to live for show, for the approval of others, rather than for God.
But as I said, this goes wider for us than just those three areas.
We need to take a step back. We need to be clear that none of these activities would attract any kind of real reward from God at all. They don’t make God love us any more than he does already.
In the previous chapter, Jesus has already pronounced God’s blessing on those who are spiritually bankrupt. That’s our problem. We all sin. We all fail God. And as a result we’ve cut ourselves off from him. And no amount of charitable giving, going to church, praying, or doing without food can make God love us again. That can only happen if God makes the first move. Which he has. He sent Jesus to die for us and to rise again, so that we can trust him, have our sins forgiven, and be his friends once more.
But once God’s done that, he also adopts us into his family. Which means that we now have God as our Father, and we have a church full of brothers and sisters. And so we get to live out the privilege of being God’s children, and we do so together – with the rest of the family.
And here’s where the problem creeps in. As we enjoy relating to God our heavenly Father, it’s hard not to start to care what others in the church think of us. Our attention so easily wanders off God, and onto those around us.
When the church’s annual report comes out, it boosts my ego to see my name in there. Here are the things I’ve contributed. My name’s in print. It’s been recognised at last. And if I was on some committee, or I helped organise that big event, but somehow my name got left off – I’m mortified.
Many in this church go to a small group midweek, to read the Bible together, to pray together, and to encourage one another. That’s a good thing to do, and if you’ve not joined one, please speak to me and I’ll put you in touch. Wouldn’t it be a good thing if being in a group like that got us reading the Bible more at home? But part of it is that we don’t want to be the only one who can’t find the book of Nehemiah. It’s good to pray aloud in a group like that. But part of it is that you want others in the group to think you pray at home too:— but do you?
You know what – it’s even possible to go to church because it’s the done thing. Pressure from parents, so that we can tell them at Christmas that we have been a bit this year. The desire to get our children into a faith school – make sure I’m seen at church so that I can get the form signed. And the more this church grows, the more it will become a socially acceptable place to be seen.
Conclusion
One final analogy as we wrap up.
Celebrities have an interesting relationship with the media. Some long for privacy, but the press won’t leave them alone. Kate Windsor did not ask to have her holiday photos published. Others love it. They like the limelight. And on the red carpet, they want a husband or wife to smile next to them. They want a wedding so that the wedding pictures can go in Hello!. And so you get the trophy wife or the trophy husband. Worn on one’s arm like an accessory. And he’s less interested in loving her, and more interested in looking like he does.
One of the images the Bible uses to portray the relationship God has with his people is the picture of a marriage relationship. Jesus Christ is the bridegroom. The church is his bride.
What Jesus is saying in Matthew chapter 6 is that he doesn’t want us to have him as a trophy husband. He doesn’t want us to live for ourselves, to live in the public gaze, trying to look like we’re happily in love with him.
He wants our hearts. He want a true relationship with us. He wants getting to know him, loving him, and living for him to be the one thing that matters for us.
Jesus gave up his own life in order to buy us this kind of relationship with him. The question is how we will respond to his love for us. Will we stay wrapped up in ourselves, and be driven by what others think of us? Or will we respond to him in love and devotion from the bottom of our hearts? Because if that’s what we’re going to do, that involves some things in private and in secret.