WOEFUL BEHAVIOR (PART 7)

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

Matthew 23:27-28

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Are you a genuine person?

You know what I’m asking, right?

When someone sees you, do they see the true you or a fake, someone beautiful and seemingly wonderful but behind the façade, you are anything but that?

You see, there are people who are good at masking. They have become skilled actors, presenting a certain image that isn’t really who they are at all. They are masterful in presenting themselves in character so it is totally believable to someone observing them.

In Jesus’ day, there were a lot of these kinds of actors, some even in His closest circle. Consider Judas for example. Out of all the people Jesus could have chosen to be in His inner circle, He selected him as one of the twelve. He even vested special responsibility on Judas, allowing him to be the treasurer for the group. I’m sure Judas had become very good at putting on a front and showing himself as trustworthy on the outside.

But inside, Judas was greedy and traitorous. We know he robbed the money bag with some regularity because the scriptures tell us he regularly helped himself to “what was put into it” (John 12:6). This fixation with money on the inside became connected to his willing betrayal of Jesus as Judas conspired with the chief priests to deliver Him over to them at Gethsemane’s garden (Matthew 26:14-16). His payment for his woeful behavior was thirty pieces of silver but the treachery cost him more than that. For after he had done his dirty work and saw Jesus condemned, Judas tried to return the money to the chief priests and repent but it was too late. He had been a main player in the plot to kill God’s Son and it ended up too great a burden for him to bear. All the internal sinfulness manifested itself in overwhelming guilt which led Judas to hang himself (Matthew 27:1-5).

As we turn to today’s passage, the next to the last in this series on woeful behavior, we find that Judas had company when it came to being a skilled deceiver. Look again at Jesus’ words here:

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” Matthew 23:27-28

The choice of a tomb for Jesus’ analogy was carefully selected. A tomb could be made to look very nice on the outside as people in first century times would often whitewash them but the reason for whitewashing wasn’t really intended just for cosmetic reasons. Rather, the tombs were whitewashed so they could easily be identified by others. If a Jew accidentally got to close to a corpse, they could be considered impure and a cleansing would require a week. You can see where it would be important to avoid that from happening.

Remembering there was an actual dead body inside the tomb is critical to the point Jesus was trying to make about the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. For they put on a great outward appearance, trying to convince everyone that they were spiritually tuned into God and were His special appointed leaders but the reality was that they were as spiritually dead on the inside as the corpse inside the tomb, filled with hypocrisy and wickedness.

This was obviously unacceptable, woeful behavior and Jesus wanted to shine a spotlight on it. If someone didn’t expose the Jewish religious authorities for who they truly were, then they would be able to continue deceiving the people and leading them down the path of sin and destruction.

Today, it’s important to make sure the spiritual leaders we look up to are legit. Jesus warned about false teachers in His day and that warning still extends to today for there are leaders within Christian churches who make sure they look great on the outside when they are as spiritually dead, hypocritical, and wicked as the first century Pharisees and teachers of the law.

How can you spot them?

Test them against the scriptures which spell out the qualities of a godly Christian leader and the way they should live. They also provide believers with the most effective litmus test to weigh whether a pastor’s/minister’s message is accurately reflecting the word of God. Perhaps nothing can better expose a phony than the Bible and the associated illumination and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Both will ensure that any Christian leader operating in the darkness of sin will be brought out into the light.

We would be well served to always put this to work to protect and prevent being led astray by a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing (Matthew 7:15).

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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