Theme: Hypocrisy
(Key verses: Genesis 3:12-13)
Jesus said these words which reveal the depths of spiritual darkness in our natural hearts which is the “darkness…upon the face of the deep” (Gen 1:2):
Mat 6:23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
God created this darkness (Isa 45:7), but the depth of the spiritual darkness in the first Adam’s heart in us is something we all find out in a progressive manner, as God brings “to light the hidden things of darkness” (Rom 8:6,20; Pro 26:29; John 8:3-12):
1Cor 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.
We share this spiritual dark pit with other creatures of God, and He also brings them to our attention at the appointed time for His purposes. Within these relationships with others, deeper dynamics of this darkness is revealed to us:
Gen 3:11-13 And he [God] said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? 12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. 13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
Adam’s statement suggests that if Eve was not there, he would not have done this evil deed. Eve’s answer to God reveals the same idea as far as the role of the serpent is concerned. It is clear that Adam and Eve did not know the depths of the darkness in their own hearts at this stage. Their lips could not fully express the hidden mysteries of God’s work in their lives. This is also what the book of Job so beautifully captures for our learning:
Job 2:10 But he [Job] said unto her [his wife], Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.
Confessions and expressions with our lips are quite inadequate and not in sync with our carnal heart. This is called “hypocrisy”. We are all hypocrites by nature. Hypocrisy is just one more deception in this deep pit in our natural hearts which is part of the carnal ways of the first Adam. Naturally our tongue is “an unruly evil” (Jam 3:1-8):
Jas 1:26 If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.
Mar 7:6 He answered and said unto them, Well hath Esaias prophesied of you hypocrites, as it is written, This people honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
The natural heart in Adam did not become like this on its own as many falsely propagate. God knows the natural heart as He made it marred and full of conceit, deceit and also desperately wicked:
Jer 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Jer 18:4a And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter:
This marred spiritual heart of darkness is also shared by others whom God created and is using to show “how great is that darkness”. Within this process we, like Adam and Eve, naturally points to other’s evil as if our darkness is somehow different from that of others. The beam of this deception in our own eye obstructs our vision of our own deceitful heart as we cannot see we are part of a “congregation of hypocrites” – all carnality is the same spiritual dark pit!
Mat 7:5 Thou hypocrite [Greek: “hupokritēs”], first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
Job 15:34 For the congregation of hypocrites [Hebrew “chânêph”] shall be desolate [vain and devoid of truth and spirit life], and fire shall consume the tabernacles of bribery.
The word “hypocrite” is translated from the Hebrew “chânêph” which has corruption at its root in the Hebrew. In Greek the word is “hupokritēs” which means “to pretend” – “think[ing] himself to be something, when he is nothing”:
Gal 6:3 For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.
After Adam and Eve transgressed the commandment of God in their hearts, the “motions of sin”, which includes hypocrisy, started to be exposed in their actions and in the confessions of their lips (Rom 7:5). In the story of Job he is first described as a “perfect and upright [man], and one that feared God, and eschewed evil” – that was the outward appearance of Job.
Job 1:1 There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.
But then his heart is systematically exposed and through several chapters this painful unveiling develops (also the hearts of his comforters when they all blame and accuse others as more evil than themselves). At the end of the book of Job we see a different Job, when his eyes were opened to all the deceit within his own heart:
Job 42:1-6 Then Job answered the LORD, and said, 2 I know that thou canst do every thing, and that no thought can be withholden from thee. 3 Who is he that hideth counsel without knowledge? therefore have I uttered that I understood not; things too wonderful for me, which I knew not. 4 Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak: I will demand of thee, and declare thou unto me. 5 I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. 6 Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.
Like Job, we all start of thinking we are righteous….but it is all in our won eyes (self-righteousness):
Job 32:1 So these three men ceased to answer Job, because he was righteous in his own eyes.
We all also first struggle to associate with the Pharisee and the older brother of the prodigal son who confessed with their lips that they “deserve” much better than those sinners out there (Luk 15:11-32; Luk 18:9-14). Even in the case of Jonah, we all see ourselves as more righteous in our own eyes, which temporally serves as a spiritual gourd shielding and blinding us. We cannot see the destructive worms, like hypocrisy, within:
Jon 4:5-7 So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what would become of the city. 6 And the LORD God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it might be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceeding glad of the gourd. 7 But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered.
We naturally try to justify ourselves and find fault with others whom God actually sends on our way to help us in this discovery and revealing of our own evil. In this process we cannot see that the opening of a curtain or the tearing of the veil lets in light and healing or salvation (Heb 10:19-20; Isa 1:6):
Pro 20:30 The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil: so do stripes the inward parts of the belly.
In our dark pit or prison of spiritual blindness we actually condemn God and His ways of bringing us under other’s rule, whom He appoints for our benefit (Eph 1:11; Ps 22:28; Ps 115:3; Pro 16:4,9; Pro 19:21; Dan 4:17). It is through a progression of events in our life that we all discover the depths of our own natural or carnal mind and what this spiritual darkness is all about. In the story of Adam and Eve this ongoing spiritual process is beautifully typified for us. God sent the serpent and Adam and Eve found a rapport with his words and ways of thinking. By God’s design, Adam and Eve (and all of us) share the same dark spiritual “pit” (“prison”) with this serpent, the devil, “from the beginning” (Rev 11:7; Rev 20:1-3):
Joh 8:44 Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
Their one-mindedness with the serpent was revealed and this worldly spirit in them was exposed by the way they firstly thought of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The first Adam and his wife had the same pride and lusts as the serpent and those in the world, even before they outwardly took and ate of the fruit of that tree:
1Jn 2:16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
Gen 3:6 And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food [“the lust of the flesh”], and that it was pleasant to the eyes [“the lust of the eyes”], and a tree to be desired to make one wise [“the pride of life”], she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.
The Word of God confirms this evil one-mindedness by describing mankind in Adam as a beast “whose coming is after the working of Satan” made with the other beasts on the sixth day of creation by God (2Thess 2:3-12; Gen 1:24-31). Spiritually the first man Adam has some clearly defined beastly characteristics:
Ecc 3:18 I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.
Rev 13:1-2 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. 2 And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion: and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority.
These three beasts were also shown in the same types of a lion, a bear and a leopard in Daniel’s “vision by night”. But there was also a fourth beast which Daniel described as “dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly”, yet diverse from the other three:
Dan 7:7 After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse [separate] from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns.
He is described as “diverse” which means this forth beast is not the carnal mind (as some believes), but he shares the same spiritual “deep” darkness of the carnality in mankind. The seven heads and the ten horns also typify the comprehensiveness of the evil pride and ruling lusts within all in the first Adam. This is all part of this fourth beast, the “great red dragon”:
Rev 12:3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
As we know this darkness in the heart of Adam was shared by his wife Eve who typifies the unfaithful wife in this case. It is recorded that she was the first person who became entangled in the conversation with the serpent, which was of another spirit than the holy spirit of God.
2Cor 11:3 But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.
This disobedience to God’s spirit and His commandments is known as spiritual whoredom or adultery:
Jas 4:4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.
Adam “listened to his wife” also gives us the picture how natural man follows the harlot without spiritual discernment and discretion (Gen 3:17; Pro 5:20-23). The spiritual harlot, called Babylon in the Scriptures, shares this same dark pit with all in the first Adam as she rules and “sits upon many (dark) waters” of “the deep” and “upon a scarlet coloured beast” in us (Gen 1:2; Ecc 3:18; Rev 13):
Rev 17:1-3 And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: 2 With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. 3 So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
Adam and Eve wanted God to judge the other’s heresies before the heresy in their own hearts, which is so common to the natural mind which thinks that judgment is for someone else and something which can be avoided. Judgement is actually beneficial, and even more if it is done in this life:
Isa 26:9 With my soul have I desired thee in the night; yea, with my spirit within me will I seek thee early: for when thy judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.
1Pe 4:16-17 Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf. 17 For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?
When the knowledge of this truth of God’s fiery judgements is unveiled to us, we complain and contend with God, like Job in type, as the time we must spent in this fire seems like it is never ending – “bottomless”:
Rev 6:9-11 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: 10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? 11 And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellowservants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.
But God is sending His angels to give us the key to understand more and more how deep or “great is that darkness” and how much evil is locked inside that should be dealt with by the fire of God:
Rev 9:1-3 And the fifth angel sounded [Greek aorist tense], and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. 2 And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. 3 And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.
His wisdom “from above” gives us the patience to endure His work in us, as we see that all the evil and darkness in all natural hearts (mind / heaven) is actually all under God’s control as He mercifully brings His chastening grace (Eph 2:8-10; Tit 2:11-12):
Rev 16:10-11 And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, 11 And blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds.
The natural man is a hypocrite and not spiritual at all and in no position as yet to even judge himself righteously. Only those in the “last Adam” are given the spirit and mind of Christ to judge “all things” as we know nothing by ourselves. We are learning to appreciate God’s “hands” and instruments in our lives as He builds and strengthens His gift of faith in us through His grace:
1Cor 2:15-16 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. 16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
1Cor 4:3-4 But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self. 4 For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord.
4windkoinonia 