Fear of God
Dread of Hypocricy
Well praise Jesus today, everyone. It's
one thing to be against outward sins, things that are displeasing to God, such
as tattoos or piercings, or those visual things that we see in our culture. But
what Jesus really, really hates, is Christian hypocrisy. When we are pretending
to be good Christians on the outside, but inwardly we're full of sin and doing
things that are against God. That is why Jesus said in Matthew Chapter 23 over and over
again to the Pharisees.
13“But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the
kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you
allow those who are entering to go in. 14Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! For you devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long
prayers. Therefore you will receive greater condemnation. 15“Woe to you, scribes
and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, (which means a false
convert. ) and when he is
won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves. 16“Woe to you,
blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever swears by the temple, it is nothing; but
whoever swears by the gold of the temple, he is obliged to perform it.’ 17Fools
and blind! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctifies the
gold? 18And, ‘Whoever swears by the altar, it is nothing; but whoever swears by
the gift that is on it, he is obliged to perform it.’ 19Fools and blind! For
which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? 20Therefore
he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by all things on it. 21He who
swears by the temple, swears by it and by Him who dwells in it. 22And he who
swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by Him who sits on it. 23“Woe
to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise
and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and
mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others
undone. 24Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! 25“Woe to
you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup
and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. 26Blind
Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of
them may be clean also. 27“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For
you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but
inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. 28Even so you also
outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and
lawlessness. 29“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because you
build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, 30and
say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been
partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.’ 31“Therefore you are
witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the
prophets. 32Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. 33Serpents,
brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?
Do you see how much Jesus Christ hates hypocrisy over and over again?
He speaks against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and he tells his
disciples over and over again, be warned of the leaven of the Pharisees,
which his disciples did not fully understand at the time. But he was speaking
against sin, this
sort of hypocrisy.
Now when
I was in the world, but trying to be a Christian, one of the big things
that kept me from being a witness talking to people about Jesus, was this
feeling, this true feeling of condemnation that I couldn't speak
about Jesus because inwardly I had sin in my life. And I had no business
telling other people to repent or any business telling other people about God.
But I didn't really believe in him myself. You can't really preach against sin
and feel good about yourself if you yourself are a sinner. So, if you want to
be able to be a bright light shining for Jesus, a good testimony to him, you absolutely can't be partaking any part of
hypocrisy. If
you are, the devil will attack you, you will be attacking yourself, you'll be just knowing
that you're a hypocrite. It will keep you from shining your light more than
anything else. And more than anything else, Jesus was against the hypocrite, the one who was acting
like a child of God, who
is acting like a Christian or a true Jew, but who was playing the
hypocrite.
We have to be warned about this. I remember when I was in church, I had my life where when I was at church, I
was trying to uphold being a Christian, uphold reading the Bible, uphold to the youth, being a good example of
what it means to be a Christian. But then when I would go back to college, I was living a very
hypocritical life. I was living a life of sin and then trying to pull myself
together on the weekends and on Wednesday for church. And
that led me to a place of depression because the dissonance between who I was
in church as a Christian and who I was in the world as a sinner was this gap
that was getting so big that I could not justify it in my heart anymore. I knew that I was a
hypocrite, and I knew that God was against me.
If we want to be right with Jesus and be fighting against
the devil, we
have to start to really hate hypocrisy, we have to start to hate sin, and we have to fear God
more than we fear just these pleasures in the world or fear what people think.
We have to become separate from the world. Now, being separate from the world doesn't mean that we
don't drive a car, or we wear old baggy clothes or we look like Indian monks. To
be separate from the world means that we're disengaged from all the sinful
things of the world. If we had to go out of the world completely, then there
wouldn't be anywhere that we could walk or anywhere that we could eat. It would
be impossible for us to be humans on this planet. But Jesus hasn't called us to
do that. But he has called us to be separate from sin. And by the power of
Jesus Christ, by his Holy Spirit, we can be set free from the bondage of sin.
And we can dedicate ourselves to God to fear God, and to be dedicated to
doing his work.
And when we start setting ourselves out to be a light for him and dedicated to
his work, then
we won't have this dissonance of hypocrisy in us. Now I remember when I was in
church and being paid to be a minister, it became a nightmare for me because I
started to realize that I needed to fear God, and that it was hypocrisy
for me to even be paid by the church I was part of, by this Baptist Church.
And that was quite a nightmare for me because all of my income and everything
that I had put into my college to become educated was all to be part of
church ministry. And
so now I have this dissonance of trying to follow God in church and now hearing from the
Holy Spirit. And
this dissonance is making me feel like a hypocrite. And every time I'm
getting my pay check, I know that it's just the church, the church from this
place of hypocrisy, and
if I don't continue in hypocrisy with the church, then they're going to kick
me out. And if I don't continue with Jesus, then he's going to kick me out of
his kingdom. So it put me in this really bad spot where I had to gather my
faith and pray and say, “Lord, please help me to be severed from
the church, from the false church. Help me to be severed so that then I can
serve you and get my money from you, my provision from you, my manna from you,
and not from men who promote
and support hypocrisy.”
And it was the greatest blessing of my life when the Lord did the first miracle
for me and provided for me and my new wife as we left, organized,
organized religion forever. People thought we were just leaving the
Baptist Church, maybe
we had a falling out with some people in that particular church, or maybe we had church
hurt that we were hurt by the church, none of which was the case. It was Jesus calling us
out of hypocrisy. And when he called me out, I knew that I was being called out
of dead religion, called out of church.
never again in my life to ever return, but to preach the gospel free of charge
to be part of the kingdom of God without the dissonance of hypocrisy and sin
and getting paid to preach lies at the pulpit.
Now I am dedicated to serve Jesus every single day to preach the gospel free
of charge so that you can hear or anyone that's out there can hear the truth. I am not paid by Youtube. I'm not paid to preach
the gospel. Of
course I am here out of the love of my heart to speak the things that Jesus
puts on my heart, so
my fellow brothers and sisters, whether they are blind, are starting to see the
truth can truly come into fellowship with Jesus and be saved by the blood of
Jesus, that's
what I want for you. I
desperately want people to be saved from their sins and no longer have these
accusations from Satan no longer be under this cloud of hypocrisy and this
dissonance of sin.
If we put our faith in Jesus and start becoming obedient to him, he sets us
free from all of this sort of bondage, and I am so glad to be set free from
that. Now,
occasionally Satan will try to condemn us for things. And the more you listen
to people that are on the Internet, the more people will try to bring
dissonance into your life, they will nit-pick you for every single thing,
they'll watch you
like a hawk, they'll
try to condemn you for everything. But we have to also know how to separate
condemnation from the true direction that comes from the Spirit. And when we are listening
to the Holy Spirit and wanting to follow him, the guidance of the Holy Spirit
does not come as condemnation to us. It comes his direction and joy from the
Lord to do what is right.
So if you are a Christian who is trying to walk in the light of the truth, but constantly, you're
being condemned, possibly
that is condemnation from Satan trying to beat you up to make you think that
you're not really right with God, God doesn't really love you, you're not really hearing
from God the way you should, you should just give up because God cares
about other people, but he doesn't really care about you. If that is the case,
you need to rebuke Satan in Jesus name, and continue to push forward with Jesus
and bear good fruit for him. Push through that and know that the more
that you practice doing what is right. So for example, preaching Jesus, standing up for the
truth, resisting evil. The better you get at it and the more you will be
able to resist Satan and push off temptation, accusations and all of those
things that come at you from the world, the more you practice, the better you
will get. That
doesn't mean that you
will immediately perfect. But it does mean that
you'll get a whole lot better at resisting sin, pushing out temptation, pushing
out evil thoughts, intrusive thoughts, you'll become a whole lot better at
overcoming very
quickly. And that is what we want to do as disciples. We want to get good at
overcoming sin, temptation, casting out evil spirits. We want to be able to do
that very efficiently and quickly, that the Spirit of God may manifest through
us, speak to us and that we can be vessels of honor for the Kingdom of God. That's
what we want to do.
So I hope this encourages someone who is either accused by the devil or who is
living in current hypocrisy. Because when you're living in accusation or when
you are living in hypocrisy, you can't be a light to the world. Jesus says you
are the light of the world. Let your light so shine before men that they may
see your good works and glorify your father in heaven. But you absolutely
cannot do that if you're living this life of dissonance in sin. If there's any
sin in you and you're trying to speak out in the gospel, the devil's going to
say, “wait a second, you can't open your mouth, you're not obedient to the
gospel. Wait a second, you can't be preaching against lust or against porn, you're
looking at porn. Wait a second, you can't be preaching against self-denial and
resisting the devil when you're not resisting sin.” So make sure that you are part of the
resistance, that you're pushing against the devil, that you're speaking against
evil and that you're in the light of the truth. So I hope this encourages you.
I want to pray for you. If you are wanting to be in the truth that you may
repent and push through, that you may overcome Satan and the demons, and that
you may be able to go forward in faith with the Lord and practice what is right.
“So, Lord Jesus, I pray for your church. I pray for true fruit that we may
truly bear fruit for you and be able to overcome that.
We would not be sinful, that we would not have any of the leaven of hypocrisy
because we know that you are against sinners, but that you detest, and you hate
hypocrisy. We know that you call sinners to repent. And so, I pray for all of
the church, your
people that have been led astray or who have fallen prey to those that are
doing what is evil,
for those who have fallen into sin, I pray that you would bring them out of sin
out of hypocrisy so that they can be holy and pure and be wash clean and be
able to bear good fruit for you being connected to the vine. I pray that people
can truly be set free of the shackles of sin, bondage, hypocrisy, the
oppression of Satan that they may be able to be your children and bear good
fruit for you every day. So I thank you for being able to stand with you and
that you make the way for us and that when we're pure in heart before you, that
we can be vessels of honor who bear good fruit for you and encourage others. I
thank you that you've called us to be the light of the world. And we pray just
to encourage more people to repent of their sins and to live holy and
righteous. I pray these things in your name, Lord Jesus, amen.”
