Authenticity in the Kingdom: Overcoming Hypocrisy

God and the good news is that that growth is possible um what is insurmountable in your life in our world are not our problems not our sins but the presence of the kingdom of God I just heard from a friend this week who said he he only uh recently realized that that title insurmountable is kind of a play on The Sermon on the Mount so I should have explained that clearer much earlier on but that idea the sermon the M's greatest talk has ever been given most impactful in all of human history from the greatest teacher ever and the good news is that the kingdom of God is real and it's available and it can be helpful to you. [00:25:43]

Jesus uh and it's particularly a concern for anybody who really does pursue God's spiritual life spiritual growth and that is the problem of hypocrisy so I have this little mask you might have seen if not you can go back and look or listen to the uh previous video about how that word hypocrite uh was given most of its moral weight by Jesus he talked about hypocrit 17 times in the New Testament and it's taken from a word that they would use in the ancient Greek world for actors who would carry a mask with them and to live without a mask is such a relief. [00:69:41]

Hypocrisy is the default mode in human life especially if we are trying to grow spiritually because it's just so tempting to think I am who you think that I am so Jesus says when he's talking about um finances and then he'll talk about the same thing in prayer the same thing in fasting when you give don't be like the Hypocrites because they love to blow trumpets in synagogues and on Street corns uh I tell you the truth if that's what you do then you you have your reward in full you have been paid need in full but instead when you give don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that you're giving may be done in secret. [00:146:23]

The real problem is um that I add to that deception I clean the outside of the cup I whitewash the tomb so it's not that I talk about doing good things but do bad things I may do good things but I do them for a bad reason Jesus in Matthew 23 says this this is a passage where he uses this word hypocrite over and over and over again again this is about financial life V to you teachers of the laws and Pharisees you Hypocrites you give a tenth of your spices minth dill and cumin now that's not a bad thing they're doing a good thing but they're doing it for the wrong reason and here's part of how that uh betrays itself but you have have neglected the more important matters of the law Justice mercy and faithfulness. [00:198:79]

And this is where it's so good to be in The Fellowship of the withered hand and just say I'm a mess God and this is step one we acknowledge we realized that our lives were powerless over money maybe greed status other people's opinions and our lives have become unmanageable uh fascinating research on this topic of hypocrisy one of the kind of brilliant experiments that's been done lots of times now is to put people in a setting where they're working with another person who's kind of a Confederate in on the deal and if I'm the subject I have to assign one problem to the other person and one problem to myself one of them is a real difficult tedious problem nobody would want to do and the other one's much easier so naturally I would want to give myself the easy one but then I might look like I'm not a good person if I give it to the other person so I got to decide do I want to be moral do I want to look moral. [00:310:84]

When people are prompted to think thoughts of moral superiority I really am quite a moral person I really am quite a lot better than other people they are actually more likely to cheat in private on the coin flip and this is this has to do with the way that we view ourselves and the way that our eyes get distorted almost all areas of life there's kind of a bell curve there'll be people who run really fast people who are stronger than the average folks IQ lots of different ways and people may be quite aware of that they may be able to be pretty realistic we do have to fight the self-serving bias but it's Poss however however uh the idea that I'm morally Superior to anyone is always toxic misguiding and misleading always it always leads people uh to be um less alive to the kingdom of God it always causes people to take steps that will be less Godlike and less moral. [00:393:56]

Help me when it comes to my finances three questions because really good with finances to get out of fuzzy reality is always our friend when it comes to deliverance from hypocrisy and giving in secrecy uh three questions one how much did you give last year really good to get out of fuzzy and if you don't know take a look at your bank statements and figure it out number two what's your goal for this year and it might be a percentage might be a dollar amount um what would that be and then number three can you have an honest conversation with one other person about your financial life where they see you and and where you can be financially accountable because if we ask for God's help and I seek to practice giving on a regular basis in a systematic way and do it with accountability but then not trying to impress other people not going um public in ways that are designed to get people to applaud but with appropriate accountability change can happen. [00:489:56]

The happy hypocrite and it's a story about a man who whose life was a train wreck he was a mass indeed help um he was corrupt deceitful Gambler treated women dishonorably and then one day he saw him fell in love with a woman who was a truly good woman who had a wonderful character only uh she had made a vow she would only marry a man who with the face of a saint character of a saint and so in this kind of a fairy tale that he finds a shop and the shop keeper has these very lifelike plastic masks and so he gets one that is the face of a saint and he wears it and this woman marries him and he begins to change and he gives generously to folks in secret and he speaks the truth even when it's difficult and when he's with people who don't look very important he treats them as people who are very honorable and he serves and then one day years into this marriage an old lover of his finds him and decides to unmask him and humiliate him before his wife and so that moment comes and the mask is taken off and underneath the mask his face now looks just like the mask did it's the face of a saint he has grown into his face he has overtime bit by bit Choice by choice Moment by moment day by day become the person from the inside that he desired to be and that's the promise of life in the kingdom of God. [00:560:88]

There's a wonderful passage in uh 2 Corinthians 3 where Paul talks about how Moses used to put a veil over his face there was Radiance and it was kind of fading away and he says but we all with unveiled faces no mask will reflect the glory of God and I can move in that direction a little bit to oh God oh God I need your help help me to be a generous person help me to do it in secret to be free from the need of other people's make it Golden Rule. [00:668:00]