This morning (Friday)  I decided I would spend most of the day working on my sermon for Sunday. This meant that I would also be praying a lot, since the sermon is on prayer. Reading about prayer always inspires me to pray more than usual.

I noticed this truth years ago when I was reading through John Calvin’s Institutes of Christian Religion, the section on prayer. I believe it is in the beginning of Book III. Getting through that section took me longer than any other part of the book because I kept putting the book down in order to pray. It was a wonderful lesson to learn.

The sermon I’m working on is the second one from Matthew 6, which deals with the way hypocrites corrupt the religious practices of charity, prayer, and fasting. You can listen to the sermon on charity here. The hard part is actually honing in on the definition of what a hypocrite is, according to the Bible. I think I finally got close:

But before we jump to the two ways the hypocrites make prayer an abomination, let us think through what it means to be a hypocrite?

Some would say that a hypocrite is someone who believes one thing and does another, or does the opposite. But the definition biblically is one who is pretender, or a stage-actor. The person is performing in a role, as if they were in a Greek play. This if fine for a play, but not for things of the faith.

Hypocrisy, when it comes to the faith, is a problem. The hypocrites were pretending to be godly. It wasn’t so much that they were believing one thing, and doing another. They were not believing at all, and acting as though they did believe.

It is actually worse than one who believes in Christ, but then fails in an area of our faith. In fact, when we fail, we actually affirms the truth that we profess: we are saved by grace through faith, yet, we still stumble and fall into sin.’

This reality is not hypocrisy because we do have faith. When we fail and repent, we are restored. This is typical for the Christian. I’m not trying to belittle our failures, but to show that hypocrisy is much worse.

They hypocrites didn’t believe at all. There was no faith in them. There is no belief in God at all. They were and are performing as if they are in the faith, yet they lack faith all together.

Therefore, the audience and the praise they hope to gain, becomes their god. Their praise and attention they seek, is their god. When it comes down to it, they themselves are their god.

Hopefully you can see that hypocrisy is more than just failing to do what we believe. It is the absolute absence of belief, but pretending in belief for the praise of others, instead of the honor of our Father in heaven.