What you see is what you get!  Or is it?  If WYSIWYG were true, if we could trust that appearances would not deceive, then our senses would be an infallible guide to what is good and true.  So long as we could see, hear, taste, smell and touch, we could have absolute certainty in every choice.  But we don’t live too long till we learn that what you see is rarely what you get.

The burger in the bag bears only the faintest resemblance to the picture on the marquee.  The size of the chip bag has little to do with the actual volume of chips.  The fine print in the packing materials walks back the remarkable claims boldly and brightly printed on the packaging.   Assuring guarantees are diluted by asterisks and double daggers.  A flatterer’s sweet words quickly sour into abuse.  And lover’s undying promises often die.  Many of our greatest sorrows arise from the disconnect between what we saw and what we got.

As a young couple, Melanie and I decided to invest in a crockpot. We researched features and read consumer reports.  Satisfied with our choice, we went to a local retailer and secured our grail.  We unboxed it, eager to press it into service.   But much to our surprise the box contained something quite unexpected.  A single concrete block wrapped in newspapers!  We were shocked.  But the customer service clerk at the store was not.  “We see this all the time,” he shrugged. Utterly unphased, he exchanged it without question.

More common and distressing, however, are those we encounter whose surface is radically different from their substance.  We call them hypocrites.  A word taken from two Greek words meaning, “beneath the mask.”  Originally the word referred to the masked players in the Greek theater.  And no hypocrite is more despised than the religious hypocrite.  We have all encountered professing Christians who refuse to go to church, because “every church is full of hypocrites.”  And while this is a common excuse, it is by no means an unfounded one.

The religious hypocrite destroys everything good.  Grace is not enough.  Holiness becomes an exercise in “set construction.”  Appearance is everything.  The religious hypocrite shelters in legalism and self-righteousness, and is usually a fugitive from faithful, biblical authority.  The gospel becomes the “law according to me.”   The religious hypocrite’s self-defined piety is all that matters.  Sin is manageable.  And grace redefined as God’s grudging approval of religious “box checking.”

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day are paradigmatic of this type of hypocrisy.  Jesus’ condemnation of them was stunning.  Matthew 23 is especially pointed as Jesus unmasked mask-wearers with seven woes.

…they preach but do not practice.  They do all their deeds to be seen by others.  [But] they shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces.  For [they] neither enter [themselves] nor allow those who would enter to go in.   [They] travel across the sea and land to make a single proselyte, and … make him twice as much a child of hell.  [They] clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence… [They] are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness.  [They] outwardly appear righteous to others, but within are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. 

Mark 7 marks a new phase of Jesus’ ministry.  Acclaim becomes controversy.  On his way to the cross, Jesus reaches out to “unclean Gentile dogs” and conflict with the scribes and Pharisees is part of every story.  This opening account marks the trajectory of what follows as the Pharisees accuse Jesus of lawlessness because his disciples failed to walk the fence of tradition they erected around God’s gracious law.

Jesus wastes no time in calling them out for their hypocrisy.  They care only for outward appearances, locate the source of defilement in external circumstances.  And shelter in an external, self-righteousness that never reaches the heart.  They have utterly failed to believe the creed they professed at every synagogue gathering. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” (Deuteronomy 6:4)

Jesus notes that they exemplify what Isaiah prophesied.

This people honors me with their lips,
    but their heart is far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
    teaching as doctrines the commandments of men. – Mark 7:6-7

Grace always works from the inside out, not the outside in.  It begins with the work of God to give us a new heart, a new love, and as one old Scottish preacher noted, “the expulsive power of a new affection.”  The spiritual-but-not-religious crowd cries, “organized religion is full of hypocrites!” Are they more right than we like to admit? Is our religion a mask? A role? Do we honor God with our lips while our hearts are elsewhere? Do we know and demonstrate the expulsive power of a new affection?

Join us as we examine Mark 7:1-23 and consider what Jesus says about what does and does not make us unclean and clean.  We meet Sundays at 10:30 am on the square in Pottsville, Arkansas right next to historic Potts’ Inn for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join our livestream on YouTube.