“Be doers of the Word and not just hearers, deluding ourselves.”
The word “hypocrite” is defined as:
having a false appearance of virtue or religious;
or the second definition is that:
our actions are a contradiction to our beliefs or emotions.
If you think of that last definition
then I think many of us fall afoul to being hypocrites;
not that we try to be hypocrites
but that sometimes we end up being hypocrites
because our actions end up being counter to what we really believe.
All of us believe that the truth is the right thing to say and
yet, all of us at some point in time have managed a few white lies
and maybe a few big black ones too.
The challenge is that while we believe in one thing,
doing what we believe is not as easy.
For example take the simple things;
we know what food is not good for us
but we kind of take it anyway.
We know what food is good for us and
we don’t always take it anyways.
Doing and the believing seem so straight forward
but they are actually quite hard to follow through.
But we have to understand first of all, do we really believe it?
Assuming that all of us, because we are here,
we believe in Jesus. Right?
That is the reason we are here.
And we are committed to it; you are here as an example of that.
Yet, we constantly give in and we fail.
Most of us reserve the word “hypocrite” to severe cases.
If someone calls us a hypocrite, it hits us hard. Right?
We can easily get offended by it.
So we tend to reserve the term “hypocrite”
for the most extreme version of it.
And of course, we would not consider ourselves to be the extreme.
Jesus today takes on the pharisees’ leaders and the religious’ leaders
because they are so blatantly hypocritical
and he just goes after them constantly.
We see it all over scripture.
And today, he basically calls them liars,
adulterers and all sorts of murderers.
He bunches it all in.
Now I am not saying we are all those
but I do think we have the ability to be hypocrites in our own life.
Who among us has not said to our children
to do one thing and then we go and do something else?
And our children are very quick to point it out. Right?
And when we were children, we did the same thing to our parents.
“Oh, so that’s not okay?
Oh, it’s okay for us to do it but not you?”
Right?
So what are we to do?
The first thing is we have to be humble enough
to recognize that we have the potential for good inside of us;
and the potential for evil inside of every single one of us.
And that is just real.
That is there all the time.
We have the thought of doing a good thing
and we have the thought of not doing the good thing.
And that might be not doing it which is not a good thing.
Or we might actually do the opposite of it,
which could be a bad thing. Right?
We have these two sorts of poles inside of us.
Think of it like this:
Think of it as two plants inside our heart.
One is the good plant, which produces the good fruit of
gentleness, kindness, forgiveness and all that.
And then there is another plant that is the evil plant, that produces
selfishness, bitterness, lies and sort of egocentric behavior.
You might ask “Well which plant grows best in our heart?”
Whichever one we water.
Whichever one we water will grow.
That is just the bottom line.
If we give the good plant attention, it will grow.
If you give the other one attention, it will grow.
It is just a simple law.
I have two sets of rose bushes in my back garden
and we have not put an irrigation system to it.
If I do not water them, quite simple, they are going to die.
If I water them, they produce beautiful roses.
If I do not water them, no roses.
It is really quite simple.
And that is the truth inside all of us.
It is that simple.
Humility says we have the potential to do good or bad;
or fail to do good.
The watering is the work of doing the Word of God.
What does that look like in our life?
It means that we have to take the effort to practice to be kind.
And there are days that is really easy
and there are days when that is really hard.
For the boys and girls here,
when your sibling is really irritating,
it is really hard to be kind to them
because they are irritating you;
they are pressing your buttons
and they are doing something annoying.
So we practice our kindness.
We practice our gentleness.
But there are other times when we have to go beyond that
and we have to actually do some works of goodness;
it is not enough to avoid doing evil
or to not be mean or be bitter or something
but we actually have to do some good. Why?
Because we have the opportunity to do the good.
And so therefore that watering means
that we need to go one step further and
really do some acts of kindness,
of goodness, of patience, of forgiveness.
Every single day, every single one of us gets an opportunity
to water one plant or the other.
We start with hearing the word of God;
then we start with the thoughts
and then we end up with the action of watering
which means that we do good works.
Let’s not make it anymore complex than that.
If today, you are given the opportunity,
can we water the plants of goodness in our hearts
and not water the plants of not goodness.
Keep it simple and we will not just be hearers of the Word;
we will be doers of his Word.
And that will prevent us from being a hypocrite.
We will say what we believe and we will believe and do what we say.
