Twin Sins: Hypocrisy and Pride

The scripture reading this morning is found in Luke's Gospel, chapter 14.

I will be reading verses 1 through 11, and I'd encourage you to turn there and look on as I read the scripture passage and as we study it together.

And if you're here this morning and you don't have a Bible with you, there should be a pew Bible in front of you in that little uh shelf in front of you.

You can find it on page 873.

And I do want to encourage you, if you're here this morning and you happen not to own a Bible of your own, uh please feel free to take that Bible that's in your pew that you're using right now and take it home with you as our gift to you.

We want you to have it, to read it, to study it, and then encourage you to come back each week as we go through a passage at a time.

Luke chapter 14, beginning in verse 1.

Luke 14 · chapter mention

One Sabbath, when he went out to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees, they were watching him carefully.

And behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy.

And Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?

But they remained silent.

Then he took him and healed him and sent him away.

And he said to them, Which of you, having a son or an ox that has fallen into a well on a Sabbath day, will not immediately pull him out?

And they could not reply to these things.

Now he told a parable to those who were invited when he noticed how they chose the places of honor, saying to them, When you are invited by someone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in a place of honor, lest someone more distinguished than you be invited by him.

And he who invited you both will come and say to you, Give your place to this person, and then you will begin with shame to take the lowest place.

But when you are invited, go and sit in the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, Friend, move up higher.

Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you.

For every one who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.

Pastor Warren Wearsby writes in his commentary on Philippians, it's a matter of historic record that the two great English evangelists, John Wesley and George Whitfield, disagreed on doctrinal matters.

Both of them were very successful, preaching to thousands of people and seeing multitudes come to Christ.

It's reported that somebody asked Wesley if he expected to see Whitfield in heaven.

And the evangelist replied, No, I do not.

Then you think that Whitfield is not a converted man?

Of course he's a converted man, Wesley said.

But I do not expect to see him in heaven, because he will be so close to the throne of God, and I so far away that I will not be able to see him.

Wearsby writes, though he differed with his brother in some matters, Wesley did not have any envy in his heart, nor did he seek to oppose Whitfield's ministry.

There's a danger in becoming so focused on finding fault with those that you disagree with that it becomes impossible for you to see God at work in your midst.

And this was the sorry state of the Pharisees in this passage that we open up with.

And it's it's honestly astounding when we stop to consider the reality of what is happening here.

The Pharisees here demonstrate twin sins.

Now, these aren't identical twins, they're fraternal twins.

And you're familiar with the difference.

Identical twins are exactly the same in every way, sharing all the exact genetic uh characteristics, having the same gene pool uh all the way down all of their chromosomes.

Fraternal twins, they're born at the same time, and there's clearly a relationship between the two, and yet there are some differences, but they both come from the same parent.

And that's the case with these two sins that we examined this morning.

They're not identical, but they are fraternal twins.

Their parent is pride.

The first sin is the sin of hypocrisy.

A hypocrite is somebody who will criticize another and yet does the same sin or the same type of sin as the very person that they're criticizing.

But in his mind, his sin is not significant, or he doesn't see it as sin at all.

One of the main reasons why they cannot see their own sin is because of the pride that's in their heart.

And there's a second sin that we're going to see here, and that is the sin of superiority.

The sin of superiority looks down on others thinking that they're so much better than those around them, so much smarter than them around them, so much more worthy than others around them.

And if hypocrisy is spiritual pride before God, then superiority is personal pride in their own eyes.

And so this morning I want us to look at this passage and examine these twin sins of hypocrisy and superiority as it unfolds in this celebration that Jesus is asked to attend at the house of the Pharisees.

So, first of all, in verses 1 through 6, let's examine the hypocrisy, spiritual pride in the eyes of God.

We open up in this passage, and it says, one Sabbath, when he went to dine at the house of a ruler of the Pharisees.

This was a Sabbath setup.

This was a setup, it was set up intentionally by the Pharisees in order to trap Jesus to find something in which they could accuse him, either in his teaching or in his practice.

We find, first of all, that it's on the Sabbath, and that would have been a very important special meal because of all the preparation that would have had to have taken place prior to it.

In Jewish uh culture, uh following the interpretation of uh of the Pharisees regarding the Old Testament, no work whatsoever could be done, including the preparation of a meal, so that all of the preparation for this meal would have had to have been done before sundown of the beginning of the Sabbath.

Now imagine if you're going to have a banquet feast and you can do no prep work on the day that you're serving the people.

And this was uh set up particularly, they picked the Sabbath in order to trap Jesus.

And so it was a setup.

What's fascinating is surely Jesus knew that they were in opposition to him.

Jesus knew the Pharisees had been opposing them, opposing him uh time and time and time again.

And one of the fascinating things as I read this is the fact that Jesus agreed to dine at the house of his opponents.

Clearly they were hostile to Jesus.

Clearly they were setting him up, and he knew that even before he went in, and yet we find that he chose not to avoid eating with them.

I think if we were in that situation, we might say to ourselves, why even bother?

Why bother going to somebody's house when we know that they oppose us?

And yet we see Jesus doing this.

Jesus was known to associate with sinners, even sinners who were hypocrites and who were in opposition to him.

And there's a lesson for us here, I think, because how quickly we cut ourselves off from associating with people that we disagree with, particularly people who aren't believers.

Sometimes we tell ourselves, why bother?

They're not going to listen to us anyway, and so we we begin to separate ourselves and isolate ourselves, and we give excuses and reasons why.

We've tried to share in the past and they've been hostile to the gospel, and so uh why bother associating with them?

Sometimes we even associate with uh, we disassociate with fellow believers.

I was at a church and they practice what's called second-degree separation.

I don't know if if you're familiar with this, but some people will not even associate with people who associate with sinners.

And so they they they set up a barrier so that they don't come in contact with people who come in contact who don't know Christ.

And it's called second-degree separation.

But here Jesus goes to their house knowing what their intention is.

And Jesus never gave up an opportunity to perhaps appeal to others in spite of the hardness of the hearts of those who he was gathering with.

But notice here it says they were watching him carefully.

This was a prominent Pharisees' house, a ruler, possibly a member of the Sanhedrin, and they were watching him.

And uh Daryl Bach, a commentator, says the phrase used here means to watch uh surreptitiously and ominously, rather as an undercover agent would today.

The suspicion is deep and the mood somber.

Another commentator adds, Luke pictures the Pharisees as watchdogs of the faith as they wait for some theological flaw to appear in Jesus' teaching.

They were the gatekeepers of orthodoxy, both in faith and in practice, and they were hounding Jesus, and eventually they were looking to find something that they could accuse him of so that they could use it against him, and they were ready to pounce.

They had a tight-knit theological construct, and everyone and everything would be run through this theological grid.

And if they didn't measure up, they would be exposed, expelled, and ultimately executed.

But they stacked the deck against Jesus here.

Look at what they do.

It says, and behold, it it Luke writes it as if almost this man just appears.

And behold, there was a man who had dropsy.

It's written in such a way that it's as if this man just he wasn't there and now he's there.

But we know the Pharisees, we know it's on a Sabbath, and and most likely it seems that this man here uh is a plant.

Now, surely he doesn't notice.

He doesn't know he's being used by the Pharisees in order to trap Jesus.

Uh, surely he was there.

He was invited in.

Oh, here, come to our party.

We we want to have you, please come and join us, intentionally choosing a man that they knew Jesus in his mercy would have pity on.

And so this man was an unwitting plant being used by the Pharisees in order to trap Jesus.

He was genuinely ill and in need of healing and probably had no idea what the true motives of the Pharisees were.

This is the fourth encounter that Luke writes regarding Jesus' healing on the Sabbath.

If we remember in Luke chapter 4, verses 38 through 41, we saw the healing of Simon Peter's mother-in-law and others on the Sabbath.

Luke 4:38–41

And in Luke chapter 6, verses 6 through 11, there was a man with a withered hand that Jesus healed on the Sabbath.

Luke 6:6–11

And then in Luke 13, 10 through 17, there was a woman who was bent over for 18 years that Jesus healed on the Sabbath.

This man had dropsy.

Dropsy is one book writes, uh, diseases of the Bible.

It says that dropsy was an abnormal accumulation of serious fluid on the tissues of the body.

One other author says the condition could indicate organ failure and possibly was terminal.

Although the man likely was not going to die on the Sabbath itself, but it seems that this condition was a serious condition of fluid buildup in different parts of the body.

Some say the arm, some say the torso region.

Uh, but this man would have been in extreme discomfort.

And some uh authors note that uh in in certain times and certain places he would have even been disassociated with as unclean because of his disease.

And so they stacked the deck against Jesus, and it says, Behold, there was a man before him who had dropsy.

In verse 3 it says, and Jesus responded to the lawyers and Pharisees.

They didn't say anything.

In the passage, there's nothing that the Pharisees said, there's nothing that the lawyers said, they're sitting there watching Jesus.

And Jesus responds to their unspoken comments.

He asks a simple question: Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?

Brilliantly, Jesus turns the table on the Pharisees.

The Pharisees were there waiting to try to accuse Jesus of violating their interpretation of the Sabbath laws by healing.

And then Jesus turns it around and he asks him a question: Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?

And they're caught in the horns of a dilemma because if they say no, there really is no Old Testament scripture that would that they could point to that says that Jesus is wrong for doing good and helping and healing somebody on the Sabbath.

But if they say yes, it is lawful to heal on the Sabbath, then they have no grounds in which to accuse Jesus.

And so he turns the table on their accusations, their unspoken accusations as they sit brooding, staring, waiting.

They wanted to trap Jesus and now they're trapped.

How could they stop somebody from being healed and helped on the Sabbath?

And says in the text, they remain silent.

There was nothing that they could say.

They realized that they had no grounds in which to answer the question that Jesus had asked.

And then almost as an afterthought, Luke writes, Then he took him and healed him and sent him away.

Jesus focused on this man.

He took him, perhaps, like he did with the leper and others.

He he may have touched this man, but he he took him and he healed him, and then he removed him from the midst of this, so this man could not be a pawn in the true agenda that the Pharisees had.

And then we see the hypocrisy here.

Because Jesus turns, he then asked them a question.

He says, Which of you, which one of you, if you had a son or an ox that had fallen in the well on the Sabbath, which one of you would remain passive and do nothing until the next day?

He says, Will you not immediately pull him out?

That as soon as it is an emotional issue, it is your son, it is your child, it is your flesh and blood, as soon as your son, mercy recognizes and interprets rightly the law.

And you would immediately act.

You would not think twice, you would not debate, you wouldn't go to the Pharisees.

Immediately you would respond and help.

Or if it was your ox that had fallen into the well, perhaps you would be moved by pity for this animal.

Maybe it was your ox and you realized that this was your livelihood, and if it died that you didn't have the money to buy a new one, maybe it was purely financial considerations that ran through your head.

But if it was personal emotions or personal profit, you wouldn't think twice.

Immediately you would respond and act.

Some Pharisees said that if this were to happen, you should uh throw food down there and wait till the next day, or that you could uh provide a bed and throw some hay down there, and perhaps uh the animal might be able to crawl up it, uh, but that you weren't to actively assist.

And Jesus says here immediately you would pull them out.

And at first they remained silent, now they had nothing to say.

It says, and they could not reply to these things.

What a sad reality of these Pharisees.

They were so caught up in their own world that they could not see the living God in their midst.

I have never seen somebody healed before my eyes.

Never.

Not once in my life, where somebody was who who in the in the context of this, not only was this man healed, but apparently all of the fluid was gone.

He was perfectly well.

Imagine seeing that.

And then having the attitude that these Pharisees had.

It's hard for me to even comprehend.

They were so blinded.

They couldn't see the work of God right in their midst.

Spiritual pride had blinded them to their own poverty and their own need.

They were hypocrites and they didn't even realize it because they never turned their eyes towards themselves.

Well then Jesus goes on.

Secondly, we see the superiority, personal pride in your own eyes.

We had first the hypocrisy, which was spiritual pride in the eyes of God.

Now we have superiority, which is personal pride in your own eyes.

Notice what it says here in verse 7.

When he noticed how they chose the place of honor, they were watching Jesus.

But Jesus was watching them too.

They were watching Jesus, waiting for Jesus to fall, to fail in their eyes.

And Jesus is noticing them.

He notices how they pick their places of honor.

It says, now he told a parable to those who were invited when he noticed how they chose the place of honor.

At banquets, and one author writes this, Leon Morris in his commentary on Luke, he says, at banquets, the basic item of furniture was a couch for three.

Uh a triclinium was was the word, and it was a couch for three, and the banquet would be set up.

Guess what would recline?

They were low tables on the ground, and uh they would you would recline uh leaning on your left elbow on the floor, and you would you would then eat on your uh with your right, and you would have places of honor.

The place on your right uh would be the place of honor, then the place on your left, and then uh following that uh were those on the left of the principal man reclining behind him and on the right, and it would go out in this U shape from there.

Uh think much like a wedding and the head table in a lot of settings.

And so uh here was this setting, and Jesus is pointing it out, and he tells them a parable.

And he gives a parable of a wedding feast.

You're invited by someone to a wedding feast, and this is what Jesus, how he describes it.

You arrive and you notice a spot of prominence there at this wedding feast.

You notice a spot that's open, and and so like a peacock in full glory, you strut your way up to the front, and of course, everyone's low, and so you're walking, and people are watching you, and you you strut across all eyes focused on you, looking up as you make your way, and you recline yourself in the place of honor.

Everybody is looking at you, and you love it.

You absolutely eat it up, and you sit down, and they're all looking at you.

They're all staring at you.

And then suddenly the mood changes a little bit.

They're still looking at you, but as you look, you notice that their faces have changed slightly, and you don't understand why.

And then you notice a shadow coming over you.

And you sense a presence behind you, and you realize that there is the host of this wedding feast, and he is standing right behind you as you're reclining, and now you begin to turn and you look up and you see the host with another man next to him.

And all the eyes are still on you.

And the host looks down at you and asks you to please get up and move because you are in somebody else's spot.

This spot is reserved for somebody who deserves more honor than you.

And so you begin to slowly, sheepishly stand up with the hot shame coming over you, and you slink away, realizing that there's no other spaces that are open, and the host isn't asking anybody else to move.

The only place that's open is in the back of the room, the lowliest place, and you have to walk every step as those eyes are now on you, and you take your seat at the lowest position in the banquet.

So Jesus tells him this parable.

And then he says, What you should do.

He says, But when you're invited, go and sit at the lowest place, so when your host comes, he may say to you, friend, move up higher.

Then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at table with you.

Now, Jesus is not saying here, now this is how you really manipulate it.

False humility is a form of pride.

Jesus is not saying, Well, this is how you can manipulate the situation, debase yourself and make yourself the lowliest person, and then the host will come in and say, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, come up here.

That's not the point that Jesus is making.

The point that Jesus is making is that the truly humble person, the person who has humility in his heart, is not going to think of himself worthy of the greatest place.

He will take the place and think others better than himself, and so will take the place of humility.

The truly humble person will not naturally try to grab the place of honor.

Proverbs 27, 2 says, Let another praise you and not your own mouth, a stranger and not your own lips.

The proud person assumes he's better than others and worthy of honor.

Do you ever watch that, the Oscars or some award show?

And they have a and the cameras, they have cameras and all of the possible people who are who might win, all of the nominees.

And I always I love watching them because I love watching the people who didn't win.

And watching their immediate facial reaction when they realize that somebody else got the Oscar, somebody else got the award and not them.

And occasionally you see a gracious response and a light clap.

But most often, especially the immediate, if you watch this immediately, that first flash after they announce the name, and you see this look of contempt, like, how could they?

Her?

They begin to whisper to their entourage.

Because everyone has an entourage.

And it's just fascinating to watch.

Because all of them thought, surely me.

The absolute shock.

And Jesus says, no.

No, the pursue humility.

It's been said that pride is the only sickness, pride is the only disease.

Pride is the only disease that makes everyone else around you sick.

Proverbs said, pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.

One commentator tells a story about this man that he knew, a man named Principal Carnes.

This is what the commentator writes.

He says, Principal Carnes would never enter a room first.

He always said, You first, I follow.

Once as he came onto a platform, there was a great burst of applause and welcome.

He stood aside and let the man after him come first, and he began to applaud himself.

He never dreamt that the applause could possibly be for him.

He thought it must be for the other man.

How do we pursue humility?

Now I heard one author or one speaker, uh, D.

James Kennedy once, and he was commentating, he was, he was saying that he was in the process of writing the world's greatest book on humility.

Humility is one of those things that once you think you have it, you've probably lost it.

How do we practice humility?

And let me just give you a few ideas.

Uh, it is a pursuit, it is a lifelong pursuit, it is a moment-by-moment reality in your life.

It's not something that you attain and then you hit this plane of existence and never struggle again with pride.

So, how do you practice humility?

First of all, realize the greatness of God.

Realize the greatness of God.

If we were truly to come to grips with the reality of who God is, and we could keep that in the forefronts of our minds continually, we would never struggle with pride because we would think, who am I to stand and to be in the presence of the Most Holy?

Realize the greatness of God, and then related to that, embrace the reality of your sin.

Embrace the reality of your sin.

Not only look to God, as Calvin called this twin knowledge of looking to God and looking to self, but realize, look at your own heart, your own life.

Realize your sin.

Realize the fallenness and the depravity, even as a redeemed child of God, that the residual sin in your life that you struggle with every day.

And the reality that we are fallen creatures in need of God's grace every day that we struggle with sin and temptation.

Embrace the reality of your sin.

Recognize the graciousness of grace.

It is undeserved favor.

There is nothing in us that warrants or deserves God's grace.

He freely chose to give it to us.

And so embrace and recognize the graciousness of grace.

I don't deserve God's favor.

I don't deserve God's forgiveness.

I don't deserve a relationship with Christ.

It's by his mercy he saved us.

As Philippians 2, 3 says, you know, in humility, consider others better than yourselves, and so forth.

I would say, put your focus on others, considering them better than yourselves.

Hold them in higher honor than you hold yourself.

Recognize and treat and elevate people rather than looking to be elevated.

When I was in my first church, and it was a very affluent church in a very affluent uh retirement community, and there was a family that was there that had invested early on in this little startup uh division uh called Motorola in this thing called cell phones.

Um he seemed to make a little bit of money off of that.

I guess they're catching on.

Um and I was I was on his yacht, um, five bedrooms.

Um when you have a boat on your boat, you know your boat's big.

That's you have boat four jet skis and you have the crane to lower it into the water, you know you're on a big boat.

But but here was the amazing thing.

If you were to go on that boat and you were to watch, you would see this couple, and they you would have thought that they were the that they were the the butler and the maid.

All they did was serve the people the entire time.

All they did was serve people.

I remember one time my parents were in town, they called me up and said, Hey, I heard your parents are in town, we'd like to take them out to lunch, we'd like to take them on a ride, and we went on this ride, and there was a family that was there.

And I had never met this family before, and we we got to talking.

I said, Oh, I said, Well, how do you know so-and-so?

How do you know this couple?

And they said, Well, we don't.

I'm thinking to myself, well, you're on their boat.

I think you gotta have some connection somewhere.

They said, No, we really don't.

And I said, Well, okay, how'd you get here?

And they said, Well, actually, I'm a pastor in Indiana with my wife in this small, uh, small church, about 40 or 50 people.

And this couple, they are they attend church every Sunday, and they happen to be driving through on a Sunday morning, and so they they saw my church, they pulled over, and uh they attended church, and afterward they came up to me and said, Um, you know, hey, uh they they they introduced themselves and they asked, you know, have you have you ever been to Florida?

And they said no, and they said they asked, Well, when's the last time you've been on vacation?

And the guy, in a fit of honesty, said, honestly, we can't afford vacation, um, wasn't angling for anything.

And and this couple said, Well, we'd like to fly you out to Florida.

And we'd like to put you up in one of our condos in Sanibel Island and give you one of our cars for the week, and pay for your entire vacation for your entire family.

This the this couple, although they had means, they were they were the most gracious, humble, giving people that I've ever met.

And they treated others as better than themselves.

If you saw them on this boat, you would not know they owned the boat.

You would have thought they were the hired help.

They were serving the hors d'oeuvres and cleaning up.

See yourself as a waiter, not a patron.

And then lastly, I would say, be for the good of others for God's glory.

Strive in everything to say, how can I be for the good of others to glorify God?

What can I do?

How can I help?

How can I serve?

How can I be Christ to others?

Christ who came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many.

Let me close with the story of an unknown saint.

None of you will have ever heard of this man.

He will not have a footnote in a church history book.

Uh, his name was Emil Santani.

He was an old mid-80s man in my church when I was a youth pastor in Chicago.

Emil did not have a lot to live on.

Uh, other than his social security, he was uh dirt poor, his clothes were 20 years old, kept up as well as he could keep them up.

He was retired, he did not have much education, but he had a heart of gold.

If anything was needed in the church, emil was there.

If the doors were open, emil was there.

If there was a work day, he would be standing there waiting when we got there to unlock the doors of the church.

He was about 84, 85 at the time.

He was a short man, and short by my standards is really short.

Uh he was about five, four, uh, just an amazingly strong man for his age.

I'd watch him.

Uh, he would take folding tables and pick them up and lift them up over his head and carry them across the gym by himself and place them down.

84, 83, 84 years old.

This man had a smile on his face and a song in his heart.

Every time I saw Emil, he was just the happiest man you would ever meet.

Emil was always seen, and this was an irritation to people, emil was always seen picking through the garbage.

He would pick through the trash after we'd have a party, after we'd have a Sunday morning, a youth event.

Here's Emil coming over, and he's picking through the garbage, looking for aluminum cans.

And people looked down on Emil.

They were annoyed at this man.

He'd come to help, and they thought he was more of a bother than a help, and so they would talk behind his back.

I sat there listening to some men talk as they were working on a parsonage that the church had owned, and all they did was hope that Emil didn't show up.

But sure enough, he did.

Towards the end of my ministry there, I was in a board meeting.

I'd never noticed this line item before.

I just assumed that Emil collected aluminum cans to supplement his income.

He was he was poor, he drove a 20-year-old truck, he had uh worn-out clothes.

I just assumed he was he was collecting this in some way to, in a meager way to supplement his income.

Until one board meeting when we began to talk about a line item.

Emil had a son who died a long time before when he was still in his childhood.

But before Emil's son had died, he liked going to camp.

Camp had been a blessing to him even when his son had become ill.

And Emil wanted to honor the memory of his son by having a scholarship so that other kids could go to camp.

And every week, Emil would go through all of the trash cans and collect all of the aluminum and throw them in the back of his 20-year-old Toyota pickup truck and take them to the recycling bin so that he could cash them in and take the money to the church and give it to the church so that kids could go to camp.

And there was over$1,500 in this fund, and many, many kids had attended camp that couldn't afford it because of this godly saint.

I think in heaven, I'm going to have to squint if I want to catch a glimpse of emo.

Because he is going to be so much closer to the throne of grace than I am.

Let's pray.

Father.

Hypocrisy.

It's so easy to see it in the in other people's lives.

Not our own.

In the lives of the Pharisees and the pages of scripture and the lives of the what we think are Pharisees around us, and we never turn and look at our own lives.

Father, I pray that we will be humble.

That we will not exalt ourselves.

But that we all humble ourselves before you.

That you might do your work in your time.

In our life.