The Gospel of John as we continue our studies in the Gospel of John. Today from chapter 12, and we'll read the first eight verses from John chapter 12, verses 1 through verse 8. Jesus therefore, six days before the Passover, came to Bethany where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they made him a supper there, and Martha was serving, but Lazarus was one of those reclining at the table with him. Mary then took a pound of very costly perfume of pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples, who was intending to betray him, said, ìWhy was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and given to poor people?î Now, he said this not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief. And as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it. Therefore, Jesus said, ìLet her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial.î You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me." And we'll conclude there this morning this portion of the reading of God's holy word. It's been a rather sobering week for those who keep up with the news. Words like bombshell, shocking, News alert. Those are fairly common on Fox News, but they're not always common on CNN and other news stations. Something very serious has happened. In Amish Pennsylvania country, actually the day after my wife and I just passed Hershey, Pennsylvania this recent week, Five young girls were killed in execution-style shooting in a one-room schoolhouse. The murderer tied up their feet, forced them to face the blackboard, and shot them in the back of the head. I don't know if I could think of something worse that could happen than that. The murderer seemed like a nice guy. He had a wife and several children. He drove a milk truck for a living. But you know, in a sense, he wore a mask that was different than his real face. The mask was the public man who drove the milk truck for a living. The real face, the real man, was a man boiling over inside with anger and hate. Who would have ever guessed? A nice man he was, ready to explode. A United States congressman from Florida who headed up a committee in Congress to protect our children from sexual predators on the internet was found to be such a predator himself. He resigned. And we're told even in sessions of Congress itself, between the votes and the speeches, he was engaged on the computer in immorality. This was a man who wore a mask to cover his real face. What you saw was not what you got. The church has had to deal with problems like this from the Roman Catholic priests, the fundamentalist clergymen. I hope the shock will never leave us. I pray the day never becomes that we accept these things as normal. But you know, these are not the first men in history to fool the public by wearing a mask to hide their real faces, their real persons. The Bible tells us about a number of such men. And we find in our text today one of those men, Judas Iscariot, being maybe the most well-known. Now, let me say, before we get into the text itself, that all of us, to some degree, wear masks. How we perceive ourselves, how other people perceive us, don't always match. What we are inside sometimes does not match the public face. It's a good thing that the world does not know everything about us. It's a good thing that the world does not know how we fight sin and temptation. We all have thoughts we should not have. We think things we should not think. We have our mask. Some would be surprised. My wife and I, while we were in Massachusetts last week, we stopped at the museum of Norman Rockwell in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Norman Rockwell, most of you may know, was a great illustrator. I call him an artist. Some people don't like to call him an artist, but I call him an artist. I believe he was an artist. Norman Rockwell was Criticized by the contemporary artist of his day, you know, those art pictures where they throw paint against the wall. They didn't like Norman Rockwell. Norman Rockwell went to visit a university in Chicago, and one of the students of an art professor came up to him and said, my professor says you sneak. Norman Rockwell did not need an interpreter to interpret his art. He didn't need a college professor to tell people, what does this mean? It was there and in two seconds you got the picture. A great artist in detail. He was amazing. And yet, Norman Rockwell suffered from self-doubt about his art ability. Now, you know, looking at his pictures, I would never think that anybody who could paint those pictures, that artwork, would ever have self-doubt about his art ability. But sometimes he painfully doubted his ability as an artist. No, don't tell me that. I want to hear that. That can't be. What I see in public, somewhat different from what he felt about himself. He was a man with great ability, but also doubted himself. Oftentimes that's the case with men with great ability. They have great doubts. Sometimes I find men with no ability who have all the confidence in the world. You know, you find everything. It's a strange world. But it's quite normal. We know in Christian theology, in the doctrine of sanctification, we know it's quite normal for us to be inconsistent. We have not finished the race. In a sense, we have not become what we want to be. And we hide the real self sometimes. We all do that. We have a public face and we have a private face. You know, women put on makeup every morning, you know. They have a private face at home and they have the public face. I'm told that it's not a face, it's simply something to enhance their natural beauty. But it's not exactly reality. It's not totally what is there. That's life. That's part of the Christian life, is not being what we want to be. And there's a sense in which we're all somewhat hypocritical. That's an adjective form. We're all somewhat hypocritical, are we not? But our text today is not about a man who was truly a believer, who yet was struggling with sin and struggling with his public perception and who he really was. and praying that God would make him more holy and more righteous and more consistent in his life as he was perceived by others. That's not what this is about. This is not about being hypocritical. Our text is about a hypocrite. One thing to have life inside of you is one thing to have the Spirit of God inside of you and yet fall short of what we ought to be. Paul says the Spirit fights against the flesh, and the flesh fights against the Spirit, and the day you become a Christian, you enter into a battle, a constant battle where there is need of forgiveness every day for our sins. And once we are forgiven, the very next day we face the same temptations, and we often fall again. It's a constant battle, being a Christian with sin. But we're dealing here with somebody else of a different caliber. We're dealing with somebody in our text, Judas Iscariot, who posed himself in public as a follower of Jesus Christ. One who endured persecution with the other disciples. One who by reputation was associated with Christ. One who sat at the feet of Christ. One who was present when Jesus healed the lame and gave sight to the blind. One whose public persona, whose public perception was that he's a very godly and a very holy man. He's a follower of Jesus Christ. But behind the mask was a thief. Verse 6, now he said this not because he was concerned about the poor, but because he was a thief. He was a thief. And as he had the money box, he used to pilfer what was put into it. You know what pilfer means? I don't know. We don't use that word anymore. Some of you young people don't know what pilfer means, but pilfer means to kind of slowly take from the pot over a long period of time, small amounts that eventually build up to a lot. Everybody puts five dollars in the pot once a week. Judas, being the treasure, is perceived as a very trustworthy man. And when nobody's looking, nobody's looking. He pulls money out of the treasury box, the money box, and he sticks it in his own pocket. And he does that all the time. All the time. It's like a deacon in a church taking up money, you know, and then going maybe to count it or something, and he puts some in his pocket every Sunday. And it adds up. Embezzlement by the treasurer. Scandal. Later he would sell Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. This man loved money. He didn't love Christ. He was in the discipleship of Christ. He was in the discipleship program. He was part of the body there of those who followed Christ. But he didn't love Christ. His God was money. His God was having silver. The Bible tells us that. He was a thief. He would even steal from the treasury that was given for the disciples and for the support of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, it's one thing to steal from the bank, but to steal from the church. To steal from the bank is bad, it's wrong. But to steal from God's church, the people will give money for the work of Jesus Christ. And here he is, he hears these teachings every day, every day. He's been sitting at the feet of Christ, and he's hearing Christ speak over and over and over, and every day it does nothing for him, and he simply takes money from the treasury and puts it in his own pocket for himself. Now, next week, Lord willing, we're going to look at his justification. We're going to look at his argumentation here. We're going to look at how, you know, he didn't mind putting a guilt burden upon others to give of their money for the poor. We all like to give away other people's money, right? I think I hear that out of Washington, D.C. a lot and out of other places. We all like to give away other people's money. And that's the argument that he uses here. This perfume could have been sold and given to the poor. Well, la-dee-la-dee-da. Aren't you a godly man? You know what? That doesn't hold water. That argument doesn't hold water here. We're going to look at that, Lord willing, next week. Wealth distribution versus real charity. But the point here today is that Judas was a hypocrite. He was an actor. He was a man with a mask hiding his face. Jesus chided the Pharisees for the same thing. In the book of Matthew 23, and I know you know these texts, verse 25, He said to them, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you clean the outside of the cup of the dish, But inside they are full of robbery and self-indulgence. They were so concerned about all the ceremonial, technical cleansings, but inside they were full of robbery and self-indulgence and wickedness. But boy, they looked good. Man, did they look good. You know, they had their suit on, their tie on, and they had the little Whatever you clean your nose with there. Handkerchief, that's it. They had the little handkerchief sticking out of there. Man, they looked good. But they were thieves. Verse 27, "...woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tooths which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside you are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness." A casket, he says even later on in verse 28, I think, so you are outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. Whitewashed tombs, he says. You're like coffins that we construct and make them look so pretty and so nice and we put flowers on them, but inside, Soon it will be nothing but death and corruption." And he says, that's the way you are. And I tell you what, if you want to win friends and popularity, don't talk like Jesus talked. I mean, that doesn't win too many people. But you know what? It was true of these men. It was true of these men. May God deliver all of us from being hypocrites. Men and women who appear loving and spiritual in public, but who wear masks, to hide who they really are. I'm not an old man, but I've seen a few of those in God's church. Growing up as a teenager, I remember a young man who was every Sunday evening in our church, my wife's church, used to give a testimony. Wonderful testimony. And we'd just sit there and just marvel. I was afraid to stand up and speak. You know, I felt guilty all my life because I didn't stand up and speak. But I was so backward, I didn't want to speak in public. How I ended up in a pulpit, I'll never know. I guess it's by God's grace. But I didn't even want to stand up. I didn't want people looking at me. But he was, younger than I was, would stand up and give this marvelous testimony. And I admired him so much until I found out that he was a hypocrite. He was truly a hypocrite. You might find himself uninvited in your own house in the night with a knife in his hand, as once one of my sister-in-law guests or my relatives did. You might find him speeding down the highway at terribly high speeds, putting in danger everybody around him, until one day he hit a bridge abutment head-on and instantly he was killed. So, officers in the church, I've seen a few of those who serve well, who seem to love their wives, yet are seeing another woman on the side. Men caught setting up rendezvous with other women. Other men's wives, even in the church in which they're in, I've seen that. Even in the PCA. Even in our own denomination. We are not immune to hypocrites. May God deliver us from being hypocrites. Let me say this. I believe that hypocrites are a great small majority in God's church. Judas Iscariot was one of 12. That's less than 10%. We don't meet many. But when we do, we never forget it. It blackens the reputation of God's church. One of the greatest compliments, men, that you can ever have is from your wife who will say that the man you see in public is the man you see at home. The man you see in public is the man we see at home. There is no hypocrite. A hypocrite prays wonderful prayers in church and then goes home and treats his wife like she's the wicked witch from the West. He goes home after church and says, Honey, it's 12.30 sharp and I want my meal right now. You know the rules around here. Where is my food?" And those screaming kids do something about them. And then he comes to church and says, Oh Lord God Almighty, we thank You so much that You are such a wonderful God and we are such wonderful people. They say, Preacher, you are blowing it out of proportion. Well, maybe so, maybe not. A hypocrite is a man who says, Amen, when the preacher preaches about adultery. And then he goes home and fills his eyes full of pornography. Day after day. Day after day. Month after month. A hypocrite bows his head in prayer and lifts his hands in song and goes to work and gives his employer a half day's work. Wastes time. Everybody knows it. He steals from his employer, finding ways to avoid work. And then he professes to be a Christian. A hypocrite has the Ten Commandments hanging on his wall at home, and yet he pilfers the money box. There are some in the church. But let's end the sermon this morning on a good note. We're all hypocritical, right? We're all hypocritical, but we're not all hypocrites. But you know what? For both there is the forgiveness of sin. For both there is forgiveness and cleansing in Christ. If you repent and turn away from your sin and come to Christ for cleansing, you will be washed as white as snow. Whether you're a congressman, whether you're the milkman who is driving the truck that harmed these young girls, whether you're a preacher, an elder, a deacon, whether you sit there in the pews, Whether you've never darkened the church, there is forgiveness and acceptance with God if we repent and turn to Christ for cleansing of our sin. If there is a change of mind and a change of heart that drives you from sin and drives you to a forgiving God, hypocrites and hypocritical ones will be forgiven. And that's the message of the gospel. It doesn't matter how bad you are or how far you've sunk. No matter what you've done, ye who wear a mask, uncover your face in the presence of God. And God will forgive you and cleanse you. That's the good news. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we see in the midst of the twelve disciples, one who was a thief. And Lord, the history has given evidence that even down through time, there have been those who wore a mask to disguise their face. Our Father, as we hear these things, we know we all have a problem of hypocrisy in the sense that we are not what we ought to be. We fail in many ways, and we even sin and fall. And yet, Lord, we get up and we repent and we come to You for cleansing and we go on. And we pray, O God, if there be any hypocrites here today, that You would break down their hearts, that You would change their minds, change their ways, Forgive them of their sins and give them new life. We ask these things in Christ's name. Amen.