BEHIND THE MASK
Luke 12:1
… after so many thousands of people had gathered together that they were stepping on one another, He began saying to His disciples first of all, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
It was Linda’s first morning of elk hunting, and it had been non-stop since before daylight. As we stepped out of the truck, we heard the elk screaming just below us and they were coming up the mountain quickly to our left. We hustled to get above them and get set up. Thankfully, the herd moved up the next draw which gave us the opportunity to get to the mountain bench where they bedded most days. When we got to the bench, we quickly began setting up. The elk came so fast that we got stuck in the open aspens.
What happened next was almost unbelievable…. The first bull walked up the trail that Linda was standing on. She was in full camouflage, doing her best impression of a short aspen tree. The bull walked up until he was nearly nose to nose, at about 10 feet, from Linda and all she had to hide behind was a muzzleloading rifle and a tripod. Luckily for that bull, he wasn’t what we were looking for, he was a young 4-point bull and Linda was after an older bull.
She might not have filled her tag that morning, but later in the afternoon Linda harvested a 6x6 bull when he also walked right up to her, not seeing through her camouflage. Pretending to be something she wasn’t, Linda was successful that day and on her hunt. Camouflage is a good thing. Hiding our real identity in the pursuit of the hunt is never bad. Hiding who we are in life isn’t so good.
One evening, several years ago, some friends blessed Linda and I with Green Bay Packers tickets. We sat with 80,000 green and gold fans. It seemed as though over 50% of the fans there that night was wearing Packers’ jerseys! I am sure there were over 10,000 Aaron Rodgers wannabes and nearly that many Clay Matthews jerseys as well. All these people that wanted to be someone they weren’t.
Jesus warned His followers to not hide behind a mask or be something they are not. The word He used was hypocrite.
In that day those that put on dramatic plays held a mask on a stick to cover their face, to pretend they were someone else. Jesus warns us against that in Luke 12:1, above. The definition of “hypocrisy” is literally, “to hide behind a mask”. At the time Jesus didn’t want His disciples to try to be accepted by acting like the Pharisees. Jesus called them “whitewashed tombs, dead on the inside, but pretty on the outside”.
Jesus warns us to beware of the “leaven of the Pharisees”. Leavening is yeast, which is a rising agent. In the Bible, it is always symbolic of evil. It is something that works in secret with tremendous penetrating power, starting small and eventually working its way through our lives. Little sins become bigger and bigger until they are out of control. King David is a prime example of this. He didn’t set out to commit adultery, lie and then murder when he stepped out on the roof that evening. No, his sin of lust caused him to go from one sin to the next, until he was out of control.
Hypocrisy makes no sense with God. He sees everything and even tells us in Luke 12:2, “"For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, nor hidden that will not be known.”. We can’t hide our sin behind a mask.
I pray that I will, and you will, live out our lives without the camouflage, the masks or the jerseys of this world. I pray that we will be what Jesus has called us to be without pretending to be something or someone we are not.
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