morning will be, we'll read the entire chapter. Stand with me as we read God's Word together. Therefore thou art inexcusable, O man, whosoever thou art that judgest, for wherein thou judgest another, thou condemnest thyself. For thou that judgest doest the same things. But we are sure that the judgment of God is according to truth, against them which commit such things. And thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God? Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness, and forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds, to them who by patient continuance and well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life, but unto them that are contentious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first and also of the Gentile. but glory and honor and peace to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile, for there is no respect of persons with God. For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law, and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law. For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, These, having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my gospel. Behold, thou art called a Jew. and restest in the law, and makest thy boasting of God, and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law, and are confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which has the form of knowledge, and of the truth of the law. Thou therefore, which teachest another, teachest thou not thyself, Thou that preachest to man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou that sayest to man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? Thou that abhorrest the idols, dost thou commit sacrilege? Thou that makest thy boast of the law through breaking the law, dishonest thou God? For the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you as it is written. For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law. But if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision. Therefore, if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision? And shall not uncircumcision, which is by nature, if it fulfill the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision doth transgress the law? For he is not a Jew, which is one outward. Neither is that circumcision which is outward, in the flesh. But he is a Jew which is one inwardly. And circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter, whose praise is not of men, but of God." May God bless His Word. You may be seated. We've probably all heard this excuse one time or another. Why don't you go to church? Someone has asked. Because the church is full of hypocrites. Hypocrites say one thing, do another. Hypocrites, oftentimes, under the cloak of religion, under the cloak of tradition, confuse outward blessings, ceremonies, religious words, religious actions, they confuse these with the inner reality, which is a heart humbled by God's grace and mercy in Jesus Christ. A tremendous injury has been done to the cause of Christ by hypocrisy. And we see here in chapter 2 of Romans that Paul makes a transition from the Gentile world, which was evil, corrupt, blind in their understanding, perverse, in their morals, hardened in their hearts, He makes a transition to the Jews. And as hard as chapter 1 was, chapter 2 is harder. Because if the light of nature, God's revelation of Himself, His glory, His power, His goodness, if God's revelation of Himself in nature was sufficient to leave all men without excuse, what of His revelation in the law? in the promises, in the covenant that the Jews possessed. How will they fare? How will they do before the judgment seat of God if knowing God's truth, unlike the Gentiles? How will they do if knowing God's truth and His promise of salvation in the Messiah, how will they do if they reject that Messiah? And reject they did. The Jews tended to think of themselves as a privileged group. They were descended from Abraham. They had the covenants. They had the law. One of the things that was lacking in your average Jewish mindset, according to Paul, who knew it better than we do, is that they had not any sense of personal, individual accountability to God. That all of the trappings of religion and the external blessings of God's covenant wouldn't do you any good at all. if you lack the inner reality. Now that inner reality is exactly what the Old Testament taught. Moses told them in Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 6, circumcise your hearts, not your foreskins, so that your outward blessings, the covenant, the worship, the sacrifices, the temple, These things will only increase condemnation if your inner heart is not tamed before God, and you do not love Him and sincerely seek to serve Him. This is exactly what the Jews did not do, which is why our Lord in Matthew 15 verse 8 said this, quoting Isaiah, this people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. He was quoting there Isaiah chapter 29 verse 13. Isaiah had given that verse, that description of God's people, hypocritical, having the outward but lacking the inward. He had given this description of them eight centuries earlier and nothing had changed. Now again, we're talking about the majority, we're not talking about all. We're not talking about Mary and Joseph. We're not talking about Simeon and Anna. We're not talking about Simeon. Nathaniel, and Andrew, and Peter, who obviously were men who were waiting for the Messiah. And so when John pointed him out and said, Behold the Lamb of God, they dropped everything that they were doing and ran for Him. But we're talking about the majority. That at the time of the Lord Jesus, at the time Paul was writing this, they rested in externals. They rested in the outward badges of God's covenant. and of His favor and assumed that this would be enough to preserve them from judgment. But they went one step farther. Not only did they lack the internal renewal of heart and mind and spirit that God gives His people, but they turned around and condemned the Gentiles for all kinds of horrible sins. All the while, they themselves We're practicing the same thing. Read the prophets. It'll be a useful exercise for you as well as tremendously edifying. Over the month of December, read Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel together in succession. And you'll see in there that those prophets do not spare the Gentile world, which is interesting because most of the religions of that day assumed that each people had its own religion and could only judge within the boundaries of its own religion, kind of like today's pluralism. Whereas the prophets of Israel, even though they were within the covenant people, turned God's Word on the other nations as well, because God is the Lord and Judge of all nations. So you will find in the prophets dealing with Moab, dealing with Babylon, dealing with Nineveh, but you will find the strongest condemnation against God's people. Why? Because they had the line. They had the truth of God's Word. Their hearts should have been humbled by God's goodness, but their hearts were not humbled. They should have been led to repentance, but they were not led to repentance. They should have been very careful about condemning others when they saw the same sins within themselves, but they were not careful so that the most common description of a Gentile was what in the days of our Lord Jesus Christ? A dog. A dog. You Gentile dogs. And yet, Paul's point here as a Jew is profound, as a Christian. Unlike many today for who their nationality is everything and their religion second. Okay, Paul's faith is first. And his nationality was, yeah, it's important to him, but it's not nearly as important as living life before God. What did Paul say? Any Gentile is morally superior to you Jews because they don't have God's life. And some of them, as we'll see in a little bit, did at least some outward things that were commendable. They're preferable and you're moral superior because you had God's law and didn't keep it. So what we actually find in chapter 2 is that the condemnation is stronger against the Jews than it was against the Gentiles. Now you might say, but I thought sodomy, lesbianism, I thought all those sins we looked at last week, hateful, stubborn, rebellion, I thought all those sins were the worst things you could possibly do. Well, they're horrible and they'll send you to hell forever. But by far the worst is to know God's will and not to do it. By far the worst, the one who will be beaten with many stripes, is the one who knew his master's will Did not do it, and then condemned other people because they didn't do it. Hiding under the cloak of what? Hypocrisy? My outward privileges? Well, of course God's going to overlook my bad. Look at all He has done for me. This was the case of the Jews, and that's why Paul says, wherefore? This is inexcusable. Verse 1 of chapter 2. It is indefensible. O Jews, my countrymen, for you to act in this fashion. The blessings that God gave to you, the worship He revealed to you, the commandments He gave to you on Mount Sinai, all the blessings you had received from His hand, deliverance from Egypt, preserving you through the wilderness, bringing you to the Promised Land, all of these blessings should have humbled your hearts and wed you to Him forever. But instead, they became a source of pride, They became a Fed your presumption that we can have the outward blessings and yet we can live our lives as we please. This, oh man, is a great warning. It's a warning to us as well. And we ignore it to our peril. Because it's a fine thing to be religious, but without a heart held firmly in the grip of gratitude for God's mercy and grace, love for Him, love for His Word, were guilty of the same hypocrisy that the Jews were condemned for. We cannot rest in our baptism. We cannot rest in our Lord's Supper. We cannot rest in the possession of God's completed revelation. It's not enough for the gospel to flit about in our brains and have weekly impressions somehow. Well, maybe I ought to do a little bit better over here, but you know, I can always come back next week and do it again. So let me just kind of continue the way I want to live my life. True religion has three components. Let me give it to you. True religion is present only when our hearts are sincerely, savingly humbled. by God's goodness and mercy to us in Jesus Christ. True religion is present only when our hearts are savingly humbled before God for His mercy to us in Jesus. And then from that flows what? A weeping over our sins, a hatred of them. We want to be done with them. We want to turn from them and walk in all of the ways of God's commandment. True religion, secondly, as our Savior defines it, is what? Forsaking the world, denying self, and bearing the cross. True religion has an inner component. True religion has an outer expression. It's only when both of those are united that we have what the Bible calls integrity. When in my heart I am humbled by God's mercy, I realize I do not deserve the Son of God to have borne my curse on the cross. I'm duly convicted, although never as I should be. I need to repent of my repentance. But I sense a little of God's goodness in saving me through Jesus. And then from that, I rise up and I forsake the world. And I serve my God. And I want to walk with Him and bear my Savior's cross and deny myself. So true religion, then third to kind of sum up, is when God's goodness leads us to self-honesty, then repentance, then hope in the gospel. That's the only true religion in the world. True religion is not when we beat ourselves up because we know we're not as good as we need to be. That can be a very ugly form of pride. There are many people even within the precincts of the church who walk around sad, speaking negatively about themselves, but really what they want is to be petted and to be encouraged and for everybody to look at them. That's not true religion. True religion is both a sense of my sinfulness and God's incredible mercy in saving me, coupled with faith in the gospel and what He has done for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Without this, we're hypocrites. We have to have both. We have to have inward renewal. We have to have outward sanctification. The masks have got to be torn off. And you know, hypocrisy has got no power at all like this to transform our lives like true religion does. It's empty. It's dead. It's vain. It's worthless. We may as well go home and watch football like the other blind men. We may as well just go ahead and admit publicly we're wrapped up in self and pride and it's really all about me. And my religion, my tradition, my theology is really about me. It's become a badge of honor. Let that not be said of us. But listen, without true and undefiled religion, the Jews had blessings. They saw the glory of God. They heard His voice at Mount Sinai. They saw His wonders for centuries. And it didn't do them any good. And we'll be no different because a greater light has now dawned in Jesus Christ. If we don't seek this true religion, honesty before God for our true condition, thankfulness for His mercy, humble faith in the Gospel, we'll fall into the same hypocrisy and the same judgments as fell upon the Jews. We see it throughout the church today. Like them, we'll grow blind in our understanding. We'll think religion is a way to financial gain or social connection. We'll miss the Savior who was in our very midst this morning just like they did. Because what we really want is not Him if we're hypocrites, we want the facade and the appearance of religiosity and the appearance of being good people without the reality. And finally what happens to hypocrites as we see in the Jews, they lose their taste for God's Word. If you notice when you read the Gospels that those who were truly humbled before God, when Jesus was talking, You know, they hung on every word. It was like, I'm already in heaven. Just hearing His voice, I'm already in heaven. Nobody ever talked like this. I want to hear more. Don't stop. Give me a hundred sermons on the mounts. I don't care if it exposes me. I don't care if it shows my filth. I don't care. That's why we see then the people who had all kinds of diseases and filth and things that would be socially shunning, just running to Him openly and honestly and confessing. Why? Because He's the life and I must have Him. I must have Him. I must have Him. I must have the reality. You know what happens though, like to the Jews, if we don't have that desire? We can't bear to hear the Word of God. that Stephen was preaching to the Jewish leaders there in Acts chapter 6. And he's just going through basic Old Testament history lessons. He's not even getting into anything controversial. He's just showing the disobedience, the stubbornness of God's people, which all the prophets had done. And these are the leaders of the people. And what did they do? They stuffed their hands in their ears and threw stones at him. Why? Because hypocrites eventually lose their taste for the Word of God. They eventually can't stand it anymore because it exposes them. And they ridicule those who walk in the old paths of God's Word like we see in some sections of the church today. Oh, if you believe in expository preaching and worship without all the trappings that unbelievers expect, you're a bigot, you're an enemy of freedom, you're out of step with our current spiritual needs as we understand them. Hypocrites never want to worship God purely, but according to their own traditions and imaginations and eventually novelty. But you know the problem with this kind of sham religion, because it is sham religion, it's not real. It doesn't tame our hearts before God at all, and it feeds our self-love. It's going to turn into license, like we saw among the Jews, practicing the same sins that we condemn in others. We've seen this in preachers. I've seen it myself. Practicing things that we condemn in others, attitudes, actions, words. We may formally worship God, but we do not worship Him with our whole heart. We don't offer ourselves to Him. Outwardly religious, we team with inner lusts and covetousness and other base lusts. We practice the same sorts of sins as those who do not know God, condemning them while we excuse ourselves. We assume what? We assume a sanctimonious air, I've been very guilty of this, that drives away the very want who need to be hearing that God has had compassion upon this poor sinner and saved him. But I don't feel it anymore if I'm a hypocrite. There's a sense of self-worth. There's a sense of, well, I don't need to go back to that anymore. There's a sense in which I'm past that. And there's also this ugly kind of pride that we've seen, I've seen in my own life, perhaps you have too. It's like God teaches you something new and you kind of want to incorporate that within your life and act like, well, I've always been like this. I've always been this good. I've always known all these things because it's really all about me and promoting an image to others that I want to seem like I have everything under control. It's hideous. It's ugly. Hypocrisy in the heart always produces hypocrisy in life. It delights in condemning the sins of others to shield oneself from the searching candle of God's Word. I mean, the church, for example, can condemn sodomy and lesbianism all it wants to. It can defend traditional marriage all it wants to, but does anybody want to take that very seriously? When a, probably a majority, of men who attend church services during the course of the week view pornography, indulge themselves in other vile lusts. I mean, you can't really call me a hypocrite because nobody sees it. It doesn't matter what men see, God sees it. It's vile. It's hypocrisy. And that's just one among many examples that we could give. You know, it is always more appealing to our beastly flesh to condemn others than it is to condemn ourselves. And yet in some respects, this is the very essence of what gospel love does to a man. It makes us willing to overlook the sins of others, praying for them to receive the mercy that we ourselves are seeking and feel ourselves so much in need of. True faith is humbled by its own sin. Hypocrisy loves to sit in judgment to avoid facing its own sin. Now understand, this is not to promote universal tolerance. Our Savior commanded us in Matthew 7, 24, commanded us to judge righteous judgment. Where God's Word has spoken, it is sinful to be silent or tolerant. It is sinful. It is evil because He is the righteous judge. But you know what? The Spirit and the tone are everything. How do we judge ourselves? Do we judge ourselves before God first? Do we weep? Have you ever felt on your face those briny tears of repentance when you see your own sinfulness in the sight of a holy God? And like Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11 31, you judge yourself before God. You realize if you're a sincere worshiper of God, a true believer in the Lord Jesus, the judgment of men means nothing. What other people think of me at the most fundamental level means nothing. The Apostle Paul said that. I don't even judge myself. My judgment of myself means nothing. Ultimately, what counts is God's judgment of me. And I go before Him and I seek for Him to judge me. And I join with Him in honestly looking at my sins and asking Him to have mercy upon me. And then, when I'm with others, Then there's what? Then there's that soft spot of, listen, I'm a sinner too. There's hope, there's forgiveness, there's mercy, there's cleansing in the blood of Jesus. You need it. Your deeds are evil, but I'm not coming to you as your judge, jury and executioner. There is another. My judgment of you means nothing. But God's judgment of you will define your utter misery or unspeakable happiness forever. So go before Him, look at Him in the light of His holiness, then judge yourselves. That's what a man who has true religion does. A hypocrite judges others to avoid judging himself. But God doesn't play this game. Verse 2 says the judgment of God is according to truth. God doesn't play this game. His eye penetrates into all the deep, lurking places of our hearts. Remember what Samuel said, or the Lord said to Samuel? Samuel said, hey, Jesse's first son, this guy, he's tall and good looking. He's got to be the next king. God said, forget him. Or maybe it's the second one. He's only a little shorter and only slightly less good looking. He's got to be the guy. Forget him. And then he goes on through Jesse's sons and he goes through all of them. The Lord says to Samuel, listen, All you do is judge by what you see. But I see every man as he really is. I see every man as he really is. I look on the heart and see the Lord here is telling us when he says that his judgment is according to the truth, that he doesn't see our masks. He doesn't see them. He's not deceived by them. He's not put off by them. In fact, Paul says in Hebrews 4, 13, that all things are naked and open before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. You, me, our innermost motives, our true selves. It's naked. It's open before Him. He doesn't respect persons. He doesn't say, well, He's a preacher. He gets a lighter sentence. No, He says, He dared preach my word. He gets a stiffer sentence. He doesn't say, well, he was Presbyterian, so he gets a heavier sentence. He says, no, if I put him in a place where he can have my truth, he gets a firmer sentence. No respect of persons. He doesn't judge by the appearance of things. It's not to warn us not to spend any second in our lives trying to pretend that we are better than we are, not as bad as other people are, and therefore will gain some brownie points with God. or that our religious words and deeds will make up for filthy hearts, because they won't. They will not. God does not judge us by others. He does not judge us by pretense and masks. He judges according to His own holiness. And we need to be very careful. Let me give you one application of this that I think we all ought to take a lot more seriously than we do. If we indulge secret sin, while pretending to be his servants. And secret sins can be all kinds. It could be just a pride that you walk around with all the time. It could be a marital sin. It could be a financial sin. It could be an internet sin. It could be a thought sin. Forget all the trappings. Okay, we have to be honest here. I don't need any pornography if I'm a man to love. If I'm a woman, I don't need any magazine to be covetous and discontent with my position in life. Now those things may facilitate, they may pour some gasoline on the fire, but the fire was already burning. Because within my heart there's a cesspool. There are sparks of hell that are raging in my old man. Even as believers, these sparks are not completely quenched in this life. But if we indulge these secret sins, if we don't mourn over them and beg God to have mercy upon us and forgive us, you know what we're doing? We're blaspheming His omniscience. We're telling God, in a sense, you're not the revealer of secrets, Daniel chapter 2. You're not the searcher of hearts. Revelation 2.23, Jesus says, I am the one who tries the reins in the hearts. And He says that to the church. He doesn't say it to the world there. He's talking to the church. That's why when He appears to John there on Patmos, it says His eyes were like flaming fire. Why? Because He's right through. He's right through. No hiding, no pretense, no masks before Him. So we have to be careful. Hypocrisy dares God to expose me. It dares him to. I'm going to play this little game here, God. I'm going to challenge your sovereignty. I'm going to challenge your presence in our midst. I'm going to challenge your warning that what a man sows, he will also reap. It basically demands that God play this game with us of pretending, and it is self-delusion, and it is deadly to lie to oneself, to lie to others, to lie to God. You know, it's no wonder Judas left the upper room when Jesus' searching words got a little bit too close to him that night. It's no wonder Cain tried to play the hiding game with God, making all kinds of excuses to throw God off the scent. David tried it for a while. David tried to throw God off the scent, and men, but God first. How did he do that? Murder. Murder! I've got to hide the fact that I've committed adultery with this woman, murdered her husband. That way I can marry her real quick and everything will be okay. What happened to David who was a true believer? There's hope for us. We all have a little bit of the hypocrite still in us because the fig leaf game runs deeply in the human family. Let me hide from God. I don't want to take full responsibility. Let me make some excuses. Let me blame some other people. Let me give a sob story. Let me look to other people who will kind of pet me and cajole me and tell me everything will be okay, but I don't want to face who I really and truly am before God." There's hope for us. David tried this, but God would not let one of his go. Now it ruined his health for a while, Psalm 32. Ruined it. He was utterly cast down though. When the Word of God came back to him with that one word, remember we saw that last week, thou art the man. And that one word pulled David's mask off and it was a relief to him. It was deeply humbling. That's why when we read Psalm 51, the hair on the back of our neck ought to stand up on end. Look at what mercy does. Look at what a sense of self-honesty does when we face our sins and our crimes against God. God doesn't say, oh, I'm surprised. I thought you were a lot better than you were. No! We're then brought back in step with the truth about ourselves when we realize, I'm sinning. My only hope is God's mercy. My sin is always before me. God may forgive it. Like Micah says, He may cast it into the depths of the sea. But I'm permanently bruised because I know what I have done against God. And yet look at blessed mercy. Look at how He's forgiven me. I'm going to teach sinners your ways. They're going to be converted unto you. Lord, restore unto me the joy of your free spirit so that I can tell other people what you have done for me. See, hypocrites creep around. and they play and they pretend and they keep their toes in the world and their toes with the godly other foot trying to have both sides and they're miserable and you cannot serve two masters. It is impossible. But when God comes to us with his word, he rips off the mask and it's painful and it hurts. It's kind of like Eustace there in C.S. Lewis. He turns into the dragon. Why? Because he was a dragon. He was evil. He was crafty. And how did Symbolically, the Lord Jesus come. He dug his claws into those scales on that dragon and tore him off. It's no fun to have the mask of self-deception and hypocrisy torn off my lives, my self-image. I've worked so hard to give people this certain view of me. But oh, when God tears it off, it's exhilarating. It causes the Samaritan woman to run through the village like a 12-year-old girl again, she who had been a serial adulteress, and just scream at the top of her lungs, come on, come on, let me tell you about a man who told me everything I ever did. Let me tell you, come see this man who finally, finally tore the mask off. And I could see, I felt, that I also saw hope. and mercy in Him. And you have to see both this morning, beloved. Or these words from God won't do you any good. You can't walk out of here and say, well, I know I'm a hypocrite. Okay. I know I'm a hypocrite. Okay, so I'm a hypocrite. You know, you walk out and your condemnation is going to be worse because that self-condemnation without repentance is also a mask. Hypocrisy has many masks. It has a world of closets full of them. It's called hell, already entered into our soul. But this doesn't buy off God. It actually increases our condemnation, for we knew better. So you've got to hear the other side this morning. God heals hypocrites. Jesus heals lepers. How does He do this? Through His Word. So let me encourage you. We're being searched now. I'm being searched. Don't run from the light. The Lord Jesus Christ walks among the candlesticks now, at this moment. His Word is open to open the prison doors of our self-delusion and our hypocrisy. But we've got to come to Him humbly. We have to come confessing our sins. We have to be willing to be exposed and to confess them. So when you hear these words of Paul, don't run into your own feelings and just go deeper and deeper and deeper. Let me tell you something. There is no salvation in your feelings. There is no salvation in morbid preoccupation and curiosity with your own thoughts about yourself. Because the bad, the sorry thing about sinners, and that includes every one of us, is that we wear so many masks. We're like the Janus. The masks just keep rotating. And we think, OK, now that's my real me. No, there's only one place that shows us. That's His word. And we have to come to it. And the way that we're preserved from hypocrisy moving forward is what we keep coming to this word. We keep asking the Lord to reveal ourselves to us. Let me encourage you to come. The only one who's fooled by our hypocrisies is us, and we're not even really fooled all that well. God certainly is not fooled by them. So draw near to God, you hypocrites, including the creature where these things apply to us, says the writer to Hebrews. Draw near to God, you double-minded, and He will cleanse you, and He will bring life and salvation. And we're reminded in verse 3 that there's no escape for hypocrites. Now, we can escape men, We can escape, men. I mean, it is possible for somebody to spend all their lives, or very close, right to the end. Judas did, right to the very end. Right to the end. He had fooled, not Jesus, but those right close to him. Peter, James, John. Andrew, Philip, Nathaniel, Bartholomew. He fooled them all. You can fool people real close to you, but you can't fool God. What does he say here? And do you think this, O man, that judges them which do such things, and does the same, that you will escape the judgment of God?" One of the last sermons, one of the last sermons, I don't think it was the last, one of the last sermons Greg Bonson preached on the East Coast, he preached at Calcedon Presbyterian Church around 1990. And the title of the sermon was, How's It Going in Our Neighborhood? How's It Going in Our Neighborhood? That sermon stayed with me over the last 20-something years. Because it brought out something very important. And that is, particularly those who are more socially and culturally conscious, we have to expose sin. I've already said, Jesus said, judge righteous judgment. We have no choice. We have to stand against evil. It is imperative that we do so and expose it. But if our neighborhood is in shambles, is the world going to listen to us? I mean, here we are, defend the traditional family. The world kind of looks over there. How's it going over there for y'all? 50% divorce? Well, you're telling me I don't need to go and be in the gay pride parade in San Francisco or downtown Atlanta. And it's, oh, nasty, those vile people. But yet, I work with Christian businessmen who tell dirty jokes. And I know my boss who goes to church on Sundays Got a little sweetie on the side. I know some of my co-workers have got some pornography saved on their computer. So it's like, disconnect. I'm telling you, that's how the world looks at church. Now, we're not judged by them. The world is not our judge. But Peter, we saw this when we were studying 1 Peter, does say, we need to lead godly lives so that we can shut the mouths of evil doers. And we can't shut their mouths if our lives are successful. Now granted, I realize we may think here, and it may be true, that God is doing a work in our midst, and I rejoice in that, and our families are growing, but let me tell you something, even that can become an occasion for pride and hypocrisy unless we have more meetings like last night, and everybody comes. in which we attribute everything good to God. Everything! Men, did you have victory? Are you having victory over lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of the life? It's not your willpower, brother. It's not your inner resolve to... No, it is not because you don't have any strength just like I don't. It is the power of God is the footsteps of the pure and holy One in your midst. Wives, are you being more contented with your husband? Not wearing the pants as much? Not complaining as much? Let me tell you something, that's not because of you. That's because of Jesus and the power of His Spirit in our midst. See, that's how the godly teach. from turning hypocrite. Because when we see the things that God does, our hearts are melted by His goodness. Is your heart melted? Is your heart melted? Or is it bitter? Or do you want more than you have? Or can you not see the good that God has done and are mad because He hasn't done all the good you want Him to do? We can't complain if He doesn't give us heaven on earth. I'll be happy with just a fleck of the gold off the streets. I want more flecks. I'd like a bag full. I want more of God's blessings. But He's not going to give them until I'm thankful and humbled by His goodness, which is what verse 4 is all about. And we better make sure we give the right answer to the question Paul asks in this verse. Verse 3, we're not going to escape. Verse 3 says, we're not going to escape if we're hypocrites. God sees through it all. There's no pretend with Him. He sees it. Young men, it's the best thing for you early in life. Best thing. Let me encourage you, do it early. Because the more you play the game, the tighter and more glued the mask becomes to your face. Find a quiet place in your home, in your basement, in the woods near your house, and you get on your face before God, you lie in the leaves, find a big rock you can fling yourself down on, and you go to your Heavenly Father humbly and you confess your vileness to Him, the secret sins of the heart that you can see that you're struggling with, and learn to be open and broken before Him. It's tough, but it's better than the alternative. which is His wrath against hypocrites and self-deception. There's nothing more liberating as we've seen. But if we're not willing to do that, we despise verse 4, His goodness. And boy, I know Paul was thinking of the Jews here. Deliverance from Egypt, Red Sea, wilderness, manna from the sky, quails from the wind. God was so good to that people. I mean, that's one of the reasons we like to read the Old Testament so much. Isn't God good? Isn't He kind? Doesn't He like to do me, Jeremiah? My thoughts towards you are good. I delight in mercy, Micah chapter 7. God was so good to His people. He was also, as the second word here indicates, He was also forbearing. What does that mean? Restraint. Restraint from giving us what our sins deserve. Restraint. He pulls back from chasing us as we deserve. I mean, remember Katie Sparnia? Moses, get out of my way. I'm going to obliterate this people right here and now, and I'll make a new nation out of you. Moses intercedes, and God pulls back his hand. He was going to pull back his hand the whole time. But those are in secret things. We just have to deal with what he says to us, because we're children. He restrained his hand. Times of the judges. They look like a screen machine. Okay, it's Six Flags. God be good to them, give them the land. Hey, hey, fighting sassy time. Sink back down to the trough. Oh, God is terrible. The Midianites have come upon us. What are we going to do? Okay, I'll deliver you. Raises up Ehud or Samson or one of those good guys. Whoa, right back up top. Hey, look here. We can see again. Everything's great. Whoa, right back down. Why? Presumption. Despising God's goodness and His forbearance and His long-suffering. Peter says His long-suffering, His patient endurance with us. It's our salvation. But if we play the hypocrite, we despise all that and we spit in his eye. Think about what the Lord has done for the church in this nation. It's amazing. We have the freedom, as many of our young people pointed out last night, to worship God. It's not guaranteed by the Constitution. It's a gift from heaven. We have the liberty to assemble. We have the liberty to assemble in our homes. We've had preachers galore for two or three hundred years who've come and taught us the way of God. He's been good to us. He's put us in a good place. And what? We've grown fat and sassy. Got our feet in the world. Hey, you know, I want to have a little bit of God, but I want to have a little bit of fun, too. And then God restrains His hand. I mean, I'm not alone, I don't think, but in some respects, it's like the death angels at the door of the church in this land. Is He going to go through? God's been very forbearing with us. Why? Forget everything that's going on with the city of man right now. It's not important. I promise you it's not important. Forget everything going on with it. And just think on this one thing, because this is all God's, well, all, relatively speaking. God doesn't think like we do. But you get the point here. God's thinking about His people. And he's saying, is there any that seek me? Is there any that understand me? How could one chase a thousand except the Lord had been with them? He's saying, is there any who are thinking, oh, how good that I've been, how much I have blessed. Any of you fathers thinking on this this morning? Oh, God has been so kind to me. He has been so restrained in not giving me what I deserve. He has been so forbearing, patient. I mean, I've provoked him to his face so often by my willful sinning when I knew better. I'm worse than any sodomite marching in the gay pride parade in San Francisco. Far worse. I'm the dog because I knew better. I knew better. Okay, so what do we do with those dogs? Why? God's been so good to me. My husband's not perfect, but neither am I. He loves me. He reads God's Word, maybe not every minute like I'd like him to, but he'll do it occasionally. He's provided for me. I've not gone hungry. I've got children. We've been remarkably preserved in this congregation from disease and all kinds of things. Why has God been So good! One reason. To lead us to repentance. To make us beat our breasts. And say, God be merciful. You have been so kind. So patient. So forgiving. So long suffering. My heart needs to be melted by your goodness. And then, We turn our eyes, oh my self, oh my filth, my filth! He's been so good to me despite the fact I've been so filthy, so ungrateful, so hypocritical, so prideful, so sensual, so self-indulgent, so many lies, so much ingratitude, oh my self! That is enough in God's goodness to melt our hearts for a million years, if we let it. But look at what He laid upon His Son. All my filth, all my ingratitude, all my presumption, all my hypocrisy, He laid that upon the back of His beloved. He gave his back to the smiters, Jesus Christ did. He gave his cheeks to those who plucked out the beard. It was my shame. It was my misery that he took upon himself. Oh God, you've been so good to me. You've been so faithful. I just want you. I don't care what of my filth needs to be exposed. Doesn't matter. I just want you. Rip my mask off. I don't want to be a hypocrite. I don't want to fall into what your people of old fell into. I don't want my religiosity to be a cloak of pride, my knowledge, my tradition, my family, my way of life. I don't want to hide. I want to come into the light of your presence. And I want to have a humbled heart for your goodness to me so that I can walk with you. Let me tell you something. What I've just described, this is the dynamic of the book of Deuteronomy. and much of the Old Testament, it is the dynamic that will bring stability to your weekday lives. To remember every morning, every afternoon on your way home, every evening before you go to bed, now wait a minute, who am I that God should be so good to me? We spend so much time, oh boy, this child's got the problems, that husband's got the problems, that wife's got the problems, and that may all be true. And we've got to deal with those things. We can't be passive. But at the same time, behind it all, there's got to be a sense of look how faithful, how patient, how long-suffering, how merciful, how good, how kind, how benevolent, how generous my Heavenly Father has been to me. Father, take my life. This is also the reason, by the way, why even people who go through horrible things like divorce, death, Job laws, who are believers, don't turn bitter. They don't turn bitter. People go to war, as my dad used to say, I've heard him say it a couple of times. Some of the men who went over there just became bitter. Vietnam, drugs, drink. He didn't take any credit for the difference. It was God's goodness leading to repentance. So turn your eyes, believer, off your problems. And at some level, you can turn your eyes off your hypocrisy and look at the goodness of God and be melted. Be melted to repent and say, Father, I have no secret safes in my life that I'm hiding sin. There are no areas in which I claim the right to do what I want to do. Everything I have belongs to you. Everything I... Search me. Know me. See if there be any wicked way in me. I just want to be yours. I just want to walk with you. How important is it that you do this? Well, I'll just give you an analogy this morning. The Jews didn't, and they crucified the Lord of Glory. The Jews didn't, and Jerusalem was torched in 87. Why? God hates hypocrisy. He hates it. So come before Him. He offers Himself to us this morning. He's about to give us the Lord's Supper. He says, come, learn of Me. Take My yoke upon you. Be open. Be exposed. Judge yourselves now. Bring your griefs to Him. Throw your masks in the fire of His Holy Word. And be Mine. And I'll be a God to you. I'll be a Father to you and to your children. And I will bless you. I will be with you. Turn from hypocrisy. Let God's goodness lead you to repentance. But if we will not understand that at the bottom of hell, there is a place that is reserved for God's most exquisite miseries and judgments and pain. It is not the sodomites who will be there. It's not the lesbians. It's not the Democrats. It is for those, says our Savior, who knew their master's will and didn't do it. And what is worse, they condemned other people for doing the same thing that they themselves do in secret. This is life or death. Heaven or hell. And Jesus offers himself to us this morning and says, come unto me and I will cleanse you and I'll forgive you. Let us turn to him now. Our Father, we thank you for your love for us. Thank you for strong warnings like this. We need them living in our day and age. Lord, a sale at the mall becomes the most important thing that's happened in a month. Everything important is trivialized. Everything that is trivial becomes important. We need to be brought back to what really is important. Your holiness. Your rightful authority over us. Your goodness to us. That we might be humbled and led to repentance. And then when we see your hand sifting and chastening, we're not filled with pride or madness that somebody's taken away what we think is ours. We are led to Examine our hearts before you and see where we've fallen short of your glory. Help us to do that now. Help us to do throughout the rest of this year and into the next year that we would be in awe of your restraint and of your patient endurance of our many provocations. We pray that your goodness would humble us and lead us to repentance. Thank you, Father, for laying upon your Son all of our filth and all of our curse. And we pray that everyone here this morning would flock to him and look to him and cling to him. Lord Jesus, you are the only healer of our lies and of our leprosy. And we pray that you would do so for your own namesake, because you love your church. You lay down your life for her and you will lose none of yours. Thank you, Father, for your word. May it be a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path this week. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.