You've probably, at some point, heard the term hypocrite. It is a term that bounces around anywhere that you hear of spiritual things. It's a term that is often used to, at times, slander Christians. At other times, it is an accurate representation of people within the church, or even without the church. But what does the term mean? Why is it viewed so negatively? If you go back into the Greek origin of the word, it has the sense, it has the meaning. It comes from speaking of an actor, an actor not who would put on face paint, but an actor who would literally put a mask in front of his face and present a character that he was not. We are, of course, perhaps even more familiar with actors today than we were or than the original audience of the New Testament was because while they had to go out to see an actor, actors are ported into our lives in the TV and in the phones and the movies we see every day where you might have an actor who is a 21st century middle-aged man playing a king, say a British king who has many years older than him, who is set in a time period hundreds of years prior to him, there is no real connection between that man, the actor, and that king that he portrays. And that is the idea of the hypocrite. The idea of the hypocrite in scripture is this person who is one thing, but presents himself as something else. He is one thing and claims to be another. Jesus here in John chapter 8 is confronting a situation of hypocrisy. He is attempting to have these Jews realize that their great sin and the thing that is going to drag them into destruction is indeed their claim to be sons of Abraham. They're presenting themselves as sons of Abraham when actually they are sons of the devil. They are not truly sons of the Lord or sons of Abraham. They are sons, as he says, of your father, the devil. And he's already said, because of this, you can expect at death to enter into eternal judgment. And so this is an important topic for us to consider. But I want to suggest that it's an important topic to consider in two directions. On the one hand, it's important that we recognize and understand hypocrisy so that we can recognize it in ourselves, so that we might not be blind walking into destruction as Jesus' original audience was. On the other hand, I think we need to be able to discern the signs of hypocrisy because many a tender conscience has accused itself of being hypocritical when it is not. that very often a person is struggling with this distress. What if I am a hypocrite, when if you lay out the actual spiritual symptoms they present, the one sin is quite clear, they're not committing, as it were. I'm not saying they're committing all of them, but one sin you can absolutely say for sure they're not committing is the sin of hypocrisy, that indeed their distress is from some other source. And so I think it's important that we consider this idea of hypocrisy, on the one hand, to diagnose it correctly, but on the other hand, not to misattribute it when it isn't there. And so as we think about this idea of hypocrisy, I wanna begin by considering what is the sort of hypocrisy considered here? There are many ways of presenting yourself as something you are not. And Jesus here is not dealing with hypocrisy that happens outside of the church. You know, there's plenty of that that goes on where the wicked man presents himself as a righteous man, where a person says and speaks one thing while he does something totally disconnected from that. But that is not so much what Jesus is dealing with. Rather, he's dealing with the sort of hypocrisy that can only happen within the gathering of God's people. So we see in verse 33, the claim that is made is important. And so they are making a claim to a certain identity, not just something random, but we are sons of Abraham. We are sons of Abraham and they make this claim first on the basis of generation. We are genetically tied to Abraham. You can run the lineage. We have our place somewhere in the genealogy of the sons of Abraham. They also can make this claim on the basis of their participation in the worship and ceremonies of inclusion in God's people. We are circumcised, we come to the feasts, we offer sacrifices, we've married the right people, all of those kinds of things. They can make that claim. They, as they do this, can also make a claim to certain privileges and blessings that they ought to possess from the Lord. I lean somewhat on the interpretation of this text on Galatians, because I think Paul is thinking about this text as he reflects in Galatians chapter 3. Let me read starting in verse 7. Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. In the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, In you shall all the nations be blessed. So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. For all who rely on works of the law are under curse. For it is written, curse be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the book of the law and do them. Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for the righteous shall live by faith. But the law is not of faith, rather the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed be everyone who's hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. So I really wanna dwell on those words, actually starting in verse six. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him his righteousness. And then in verse 14, in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles. In the midst of that is that whole idea of the escape from curse and the welcoming into God's blessing. To claim to be a son of Abraham is not just to claim a genetic heritage. It is not, as so often is missed, simply to claim a right to the spirit, to the land of Israel. It is to claim to be under God's favor and approval and blessing. And so when they claim to be sons of Abraham, what do they say? We've never been enslaved. We are free people. Probably particularly, we are spiritually free people. We are not in bondage. And so that's the claim. That is the claim that hypocrisy, spiritual hypocrisy makes. It says, I am named of Christ. I am in the church. and I have all of these markers, therefore I have a right to all the blessings that God gives. And yet Jesus turns around and he tells them, you claim to possess the blessing, but actually you neither have it nor are you particularly interested in possessing it. So he says in verse 34, truly, truly I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin, And he'll continue with that idea. But then again, in verse 39, they go back to this claim. They answered him, Abraham is our father. Jesus said to them, if you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me, a man who's told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did. And so Jesus turns and he says, no, by your very behavior, it is clear that you do not have an interest in Abraham. You want to claim that interest, but the way that I know that you're not a child of Abraham is you don't act like Abraham did. You show yourself to be outside of the blessings that Abraham enjoyed and the faith that Abraham showed. And I think this is important because very often when Christians are accused of hypocrisy, it's this accusation. Oh, look, you sinned. As if Christians ever claimed to be free from sin. As if we were not told by Christ Jesus himself what to pray on a routine basis. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Or in 1 John that that warning that the one who claims to be without sin is, I can't quote it right now, but you know the force of that. We're in 1 John where it's told very clearly, Christians continue to sin. And so the marker of a hypocrite as a Christian is not that a Christian sins. It is rather that claim to have an interest in Christ without actually having it. In that sense, it's a little harder to discern, because you can't just go and say, oh, that guy's a sinner, he must not be a Christian. There are those who've tried to boil Christianity down to that, but we can read scripture and tell it's simply not that simple. So that then leads to the question, then how can I discern between hypocrisy and sincerity? What marks hypocrisy out? What marks sincerity out? And yet I think Jesus here lays out some reliable markers for a real faith. Let's go back to verse 39. Jesus said to them, if you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did. He'll continue in verse 42. If God were your father, you would love me. For I came from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Now at this moment, I think it's helpful to think about, you might notice that Jesus was talking about this interplay of slavery and son earlier in the text. It's really clear, I think, he's deriving that from a remembering of the account of Isaac and of Ishmael. And in particular, he talks about the slave being cast out. That refers to a very specific episode in the life of Abraham. We find it in Genesis 21. 21 verse 8. And the child, this is Isaac, grew and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham laughing. So she said to Abraham, cast out the slave woman with her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac. and the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, be not displeased because of the boy, because of your slave woman. Whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you. For through Isaac shall your offspring be named. There's some things to note about this episode. What has happened is Isaac has grown old enough to be weaned. Could have been easily three, four, five years old, given the ancient traditions, and the household is gathering to rejoice over this young one now reaching an age of greater independence. And so the household is gathered to rejoice over Isaac, this child of promise. And Ishmael comes along and that word of laughing has that idea of laughing and mocking at Isaac. He despises Isaac. He rejects Isaac. He has no love or joy at the coming of Isaac. He sees Isaac only as the one who has taken his inheritance away. Notice that contrast between Ishmael and Abraham. What are Abraham and Sarah and the rest of the household doing over Isaac? They're rejoicing, they're having this great feast. It's kind of an ancient birthday party. Look at this son, the son of promise that God gave us. And here's Ishmael looking at the son of promise and mocking him, deriding him, wishing he had never been born. So then we come back to the book of John and we think about how These Jews are treating Jesus. How do they speak to him? Verse 41, you are doing the works your father did. They said to him, we were not born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God. Now perhaps here they are trying to get a dig in it, Jesus, as perhaps they've heard rumors of the less than normal circumstances of Jesus's birth. If you did not believe in the virgin birth, you would assume that Jesus was indeed born of sexual immorality between marrying And so they get this dig in, perhaps. I think, though, just as much, they might actually be thinking of the exact episode between Abraham and Ishmael and Isaac. And they're saying, we're not born of Ishmael. Ishmael was born of sexual immorality, right? Of the concubine. We don't have an interest in Ishmael. We're children of the promise. It is you, Jesus, born of your sexual immorality, who belong with Ishmael. You're not really one of us. You are born of the flesh. And so they mock and deride him. And then in verse 48, they say, are we not right in saying that you are Samaritan and have a demon? And of course, in verse 50, they pick up stones to attempt to kill him. They are not rejoicing over Jesus. They are not glad to see him. Rather, they mock him. They reject him. They long to be rid of him. And their very mocking of him shows that their identity is not with Isaac, but with Ishmael. They are imitating not the deeds of Abraham or his son, Isaac. They're imitating the deeds of Ishmael, the rejected, the slave, the son of the devil. Now here, I want to consider for a moment that what Jesus is not saying is, oh, you can recognize a Christian because a Christian is never sorrowful. It's not at all what Jesus is saying. Although he does say, he does say, if you were sons of God, if you were sons of Abraham, what would you do? You would rejoice at my coming. but the very fact that you are not rejoicing in my coming shows that you are not my son. So verse 55, but you have not known him, I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I'd be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. So here Jesus looks at him and says, the fact that you're not rejoicing over me shows your hypocrisy out just like your father Ishmael. Your spiritual father, Ishmael, your spiritual father, the devil. They did not rejoice to see me, but mocked and derided me, so you do. But Jesus is not simplistically saying, oh, Christians are always joyful. They've always got Jesus, they've always got the Spirit, so everything's always hunky-dory. Life is good, and there are no tears in the life of a Christian. Rather, he wants us to get at the heart of the issue. What is the source of your joy? What is the source of your sorrow? The Christian rejoices over Jesus and his nearness and his presence. And the Christian sorrows over his absence and distance. This very dynamic guarantees the true believer is a person who is always in some ways divided. Because on the one hand, we have Christ Jesus present by his spirit. On the one hand, we have him present by his word, by his promise, and by his activity, and by the very fact that God is always and ever with us. Yet at the other hand, we feel deeply his distance. Jesus, I am here, and you are up there. You are seated at the right hand of the Father, and oh, how I wish you were here. or oh, how I wish I was there. And so there's this profound conflict and emotion in the Christian on the one hand rejoicing. I have Jesus. I have the child of promise and the sorrow, but he is way over there. I think the song of Solomon. presents well this dynamic, as it presents the Shulamite woman on the one hand rejoicing and glorying over her beloved, and then singing songs of sorrow because they are separate. She jumps back and forth between this joy and this sorrow, this delight and this love sickness. That is the life of the believer. And yet we should recognize that the hypocrite rejoices and sorrows too, but the source of that joy and that sorrow is very different. I refer you to a text we considered in Sunday School in Revelation rather recently, a very pointed text. Revelation 18, I'll pick up in verse 11. And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, that is Babylon, since no one buys their cargo anymore. Cargo of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wood, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots and slaves, that is, human souls. The fruit for which your soul longed is gone from you, and all your delicacies and your splendors are lost to you, never to be found again. The merchants of these wares who gained wealth from her will stand far off in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud. Alas, alas for the great city that was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, with jewels and with pearls. For in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste. And all the shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning. What city was like the great city? They threw dust on their heads as they wept and mourned, crying out, alas, alas, for the great city, for all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth. For a single hour she has been laid waste. There's here rejoicing and sorrow. It speaks of the rejoicing that the merchants and the mighty of the earth had. Previously, you can read there of the sorrow of the kings who lived in the luxury of Babylon. And yet their joy and their sorrow is not over Christ Jesus. It is over the wealth and glory of Babylon. And their sorrow then is about the collapse and the loss of the wealth. May I suggest that this thinking typifies our world very well. Open the headlines day after day after day. What drives thinking, political thinking in our own land? There's this funny political saying, I think it came from President Clinton, maybe not, maybe one of his campaign managers. It's the economy's stupid. You've probably heard that saying if you know about politics, right? That's what causes us to rejoice in sorrow. If people are making money, everyone's happy, and if people aren't, they're sad. It does not exactly what's described here with Babylon. And what the hypocrite does is he rejoices in sorrows over wealth or power or influence or comfort, the things that this world has, but he veils it with a veil of inclusion in God's people. And the way we cut through it all in our own hearts and in the hearts of others is that key question, not do you joy and you sorrow, but what really makes you joyful? What really makes you sorrowful? Is your joy in a secure paycheck or in influence, or in recognition, or in likes, or in social recognition? Or do you find your joy, as the simple children's song goes, that Jesus loves me, and I know it? Is your sorrow, are you shaken when the headlines say the economy is going down? It's the this, it's the that, it's the other, it's the interest rates, it's the tariffs, it's the whatever, and you might lose money. Is that what brings you real sorrow? Or is what really brings you sorrow that I so wish to be home with the Lord? I love Jesus and he's just not here. Perhaps it's the distance we feel because of that real distance. Sometimes it's that spiritual distance. I want to feel his comfort and I just don't. And so I am brought low in sorrow. Many a believer suffers in those places over and over again. And it's those same believers who will falsely accuse themselves of hypocrisy. When they are mourning exactly for the right reason, they are mourning because they feel deeply the absence of their Savior. These are believers not to be condemned for hypocrisy, but to be encouraged. You mourn because you love your Lord and you want to be with him and you just can't. You can't feel it. You don't. You wander looking for his comfort and you cannot find. That is not signs of hypocrisy. That is signs of a sincere and vital faith that mourns, that says, I long to have my savior and to know his comfort. So true members of God's house long for Christ Jesus. And so much of their life has some sorrow to it, some very real and pointed sorrow, because he is there and we are here. But then to return to this idea of the hypocrite, what are markers of the hypocrite? Jesus gives two very pointed ones, perhaps three, we'll call it two. The first one, the hypocrite is a murderer. If you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works Abraham did. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. You are doing the works your father did. And then continuing in verse 42, if God were your father, you would love me, for I come from God and I am here. I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It's because you cannot hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. but because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. There are two markers here Jesus points out about hypocrisy and they are not nice. Murder and lies. Jesus looks at these people and says, your hate for me, even as you claim to be sons of Abraham who are seeking the Messiah, your hate for me is so powerful. Why does the hypocrite want to murder the son? for the exact same reason that Ishmael hated Isaac. You think, for example, Jesus lays this out in the parable of the vinedressers, right, where you get these vinedressers who've been hired who have let out the vineyard while the owner is far away. They say, well, we're just not gonna pay. And so then the owner sends servants to go collect the rent and they're sent back and they're beaten and killed and mistreated. And so what does the master say? Well, I'll send my son, they'll certainly respect him. And the son comes and what do the vinedressers say? Well, if we kill him, then the inheritance will be ours. We'll get to keep the land. The hypocrite wants to murder the son so he can steal his inherited rights. In Christ's church, this is marked out because the hypocrite ends up showing himself to lack a love for Christ's people, a love for the brethren, but desires rather their destruction and their exploitation. He walks into the flock and says, what can I gain from God's people that I might use it for myself? That is, of course, an attitude we must watch for in our hearts very closely. There's much that you can gain from Christ's people, much that Christ's people will do in love for those who are in their midst. And yet we are not here for selfish gain. We ought to be here because we love Christ Jesus. Not that we not ought not to receive the love and gifts and care of the brethren. Indeed, as those who love Christ Jesus, that is part of the benefits of loving Christ Jesus. But we ought even as we receive to care very deeply for their blessing and their good to delight in them because the sun delights in them. The other thing that Jesus marks out is this lying. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character for he is a liar and the father of lies. How did the serpent bring death into this world? He shows up and he commits a series of lies and manipulations. The first set of lies are the ones that we're very familiar with. To Eve, you surely will not die. It's quite a bald faced lie. And yet it is effective. It gets her to eat. But then we have to ask the question, why did the serpent want Eve to eat? Eve was not the covenant head. Eve's eating of the fruit was not the eating that consigned us all to death. It was Adam's eating of the fruit that then guaranteed all descending from him by ordinary generation would sin in him and die with him. So why then does the serpent target Eve? He's targeting Eve because he hopes to manipulate and deceive Adam. You can either choose your wife or you can choose the Lord. You can either eat and be with her and keep her, but if you don't, you will lose her. It is a manipulative pressure that Satan places on Adam, trying to force Adam to make the kind of choices he ought never have to make. This is the other marker of a hypocrite. Hypocrite is a liar. It's indeed baked into what he is, that he wants to come and participate in the church and present himself as a Christian and enjoy the temporal benefits of such, without actually having an interest in Christ Jesus. And so when Jesus says that you are like the devil, the devil lies out of his own character. He's also saying, you, as you pretend to be a son of Abraham, Also, lie instinctively is baked into what you are. You cannot tell the truth. You cannot love the truth. And so when we see hypocrisy in the church, we see one is routinely oriented in what can the hypocrite gain for himself. And the mechanism, and he will do it gladly at the cost of Christ and the brethren. and that the way he primarily does it is through deceptions, manipulation, twisting the truth to create pressure that ought not to be. Why does the hypocrite do so? Jesus deals with this in the very last part, starting in verse 54. If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say he is our God. But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I'd be a liar like you. But I do know him and I keep his word. What's Jesus doing there? He's drawing a contrast between himself and his audience. He's telling his audience, you're accusing me of glorifying myself. That's not what I'm doing. I'm not here to glorify myself. Indeed, as we follow the story of John, we tell very quickly, Jesus is not glorifying himself. He's actually setting aside his glory for the sake of the saving mission on which he has come. But as he says, I'm not glorifying myself. He is implying, and I think poking at these people, you know in your heart, you are so offended at me because you are trying to glorify yourself. Your whole mission is not the glory of God, not the rejoicing over his Messiah, not love for his people. You've come and claimed to be sons of Abraham saying, what's in it for me? What temporal secular gain can I get out of this? And I do here want to be very blunt and warn you, whether young or old, that the problem of hypocrisy in the church and those who are seeking to misuse the church for unrighteous gain has been present since the very earliest days of the church. I think Judas, Simon the Magician, others, and will continue until Christ returns. So you must be on guard for it because people will come to the church and seek to use it to gain for themselves unrighteous honor, to gain the respect of men that they can use to other ends, to gain money, to gain influence, power, even to gain sexual gratification and many other unjust and unrighteous things. Paul was very pointed in his last words to the Ephesian elders to watch out for wolves in the midst. And that is such as our hypocrites in the midst. And so we must protect ourselves and be on watch. There are those who will present themselves as Christians who are seeking your destruction. Even as the serpent came into the garden, and claim to be seeking good for Eve while hoping to annihilate her. And so it is right that we watch and we ask and we say, is there sincere faith in this one? Do they show love for the brethren? Are they given to lies and to harming the brethren? Are they seeking their own glory, the glory of others? But to bring this back home to ourselves, I would lay out that there is ever for congregations and for churches as we live together, this fork in the road. We can either be a church of hypocrites, those who come together and we are each seeking to gain from each other what we can wrest out of each other's hands, gain the glory that each one can give to the other, gain the financial means or the power or the influence that a gathering like this produces, seeking to exploit and destroy each other. This is how churches destroy themselves. It's very, very ugly and unrighteous. Or it can be a church that gathers out of love and longing for Christ Jesus. That we are coming week after week because Jesus has said, I am here. And we say, Jesus, I'm dying. I am longing. I am both rejoicing and sorrowing because I know you're here, but I want to be where you are. That puts him at the center point. I would call us as a church to be a church that is not looking for power, influence, money, honor, not the things that Babylon loves. We must be a church that loves Jesus and our joy is that he has said, I am here. And our sorrow is that yet he has not returned. He is present by his spirit, but he is not present in his body, in his flesh. And we long for that day when he is present in his flesh. And then just that closing question, the question we should ever examine ourselves in. Where does your joy and your sorrow lie? Does it lie in the ebbs and flows of Babylon's power, in the state of the economy or the state of international security, in how comfortable you are, or does it lie in Christ? This is a lie in those days when you sense His presence and His comfort, and it's like you're walking on clouds. And then when you feel Him distant, whether by reason of sin or circumstance or just God's providence, when you feel His distance, you have that sense, I don't know what's wrong, but I just, I can barely cope with life. I'm sad and I'm down. What causes your joy and sorrow? Again, it's not the presence of joy and sorrow that's important. It's the reason behind it. And that will quickly discern for you. Am I a person who knows not Christ and needs to come to Christ? Am I a person who knows Christ very well and I'm distressed because I just don't sense his presence now? Two entirely different problems. One that we know will pass of itself. Christ will always come back to his own. The other that must be fled from. in quick repentance, for there is judgment for those who live in hypocrisy. Let's pray. Father, we pray as David prayed. Psalm 139, that you would search out our hearts. Show us our hidden sins. Let us not live claiming to be one thing, but truly something totally different. Lord, if we rejoice, let it be because we know Christ Jesus with us. And if we sorrow, let it be because of his absence from us. Lord, we pray that you be pleased to protect your church, both this congregation in your church throughout this land and all lands from the damage that hypocrisy does to the evil that wolves have done to her. We pray that you would protect her. Lord, we pray that you would give us a sincere and simple faith. That Christ would fill us, that we would delight over Christ as Abraham delighted over Isaac. That we would follow in his footsteps and receive of his blessing. We pray in Christ's name, amen.