All An Act?

The Jesus Way, that's what we call our summer series in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters five, six and seven, the greatest speech ever given by Jesus Christ. My name is René, another one of the pastors here at Twin Lakes Church. I am so glad that on such a beautiful summer morning, you all decided to join us here for 75 minutes or so. Don't you love church? I just loved church so much. I was thinking during worship, just get a chance to wash away all the noise, you know, of the week and refocus on God, refocus on the words of Jesus Christ that just transcend every culture and every time it is just so much fun.

Well, today I wanna start with an incredible but true story. It's the story of this guy, Fred Demara. Fred was an exceptional person. Fred actually had genius level IQ. He had true instant photographic memory. Everything he read for even one second, he would remember for the rest of his life. So what did Fred do with these amazing skills? Fred became an actor. But not on the stage and not on the screen. The world was Fred's stage. What I'm trying to say is Fred became a con man. Fred took on all kinds of identities that he assumed falsely and just had a great time.

In his life, Fred masqueraded as a monk. Now I don't know why, if you could masquerade as anything. Why would you choose a monk? I don't know, but he did. A surgeon, a sheriff, a doctor, a teacher, a prison warden, a psychologist. In fact, impersonating a psychologist, he got a job teaching at a college. And then he became such a beloved teacher at the college, they promoted him to dean of the department. And then he was so well regarded as dean of the department, another college recruited him to found a new institution which still exists up in Maine, even though right after the college was successfully founded, they discovered that he had been faking every credential and they fired him.

So his incredible life actually was made into a movie called The Great Impostors, starring Tony Curtis, who said it was his favorite role that he ever played. Fred said that really the key to successfully doing all these acts, all these masquerades, was his photographic memory, which served him well many times. For example, probably most infamously, he masqueraded as a surgeon for the Canadian Royal Navy during the Korean War and actually operated on people. This is Fred in that role. These are actual pictures of him during that time. And one time he was on a ship, an aircraft carrier, serving as a surgeon, and 19 soldiers were medevaced from the Korean War front, riddled with bullets and shrapnel and came into the surgery and he was on call that day.

And so what in the world did he do? Well, one patient at a time, he had them prepped for surgery, looked over their wounds, excused himself while they were being prepped, went to his room, read the relevant portion of the textbook, came back and performed the surgery. All 19 of the patients did just fine. Isn't that remarkable? But shortly after that, they discovered who he was and he was arrested yet again. He successfully masqueraded in all these different roles, but every single time he was ultimately caught. Now you will be stunned, I think, at the end of his story. How does somebody like Fred actually turn out? You'll discover that in a moment.

But first, this morning we are talking about actors, about people who act their way through life. Say actors with me. Actors. Why are we talking about actors? Well, because Jesus talked a lot about them. In the time of Jesus, check this out, Romans were building theaters all over the place. Jesus was surrounded by theaters. Here's a map of Israel back then. Jesus lived for much of his adult life here in Capernaum, which within walking distance of Capernaum, there were all kinds of Roman theaters. These are just the ones that have been unearthed so far, like within walking distance for him was Beit Shein, which at the time had this massive theater, three tiers seating 7,000 people, or in Tiberius, which was just down the road from where the Sermon on the Mount was probably given, this theater, which was brand new during the time of Jesus Christ, or even closer, just three miles from Jesus's birthplace, a rather hometown, where he grew up, Nazareth, was this theater in Sephorus. Beautiful, beautiful theater.

Now, permanent theaters like this were an innovation in the entertainment industry then. Before then, they just had wooden bleachers. They tore them down when the show was over, but these permanent theaters were an innovation like maybe streaming services are today, because these meant that people could see plays year round. I actually looked it up this week. The average Roman, they estimate, saw about 60 plays a year. That was average, some much more than that, of course. So that's more than one unique play a week. It was a big part of their lives. And here's the kind of thing that they saw on stage there. This is a very rare statuette from the first century, Roman Empire, it's about the size of an action figure these days. And it's a figurine of an actor from the time of Christ. And can you tell he's holding up a mask to his face? You can see his eyes through the eye holes at his mouth. This is what actors used in those days instead of makeup.

Now, did Jesus himself see all of these plays? Well, the Bible does not say that, but we know he saw actors. How do we know that? Well, because in those days, actors would go to busy street corners and put on previews of the plays. Almost like movie trailers today. Trumpeter would come out and sound a fanfare, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. And the actors would stroll to the street corner, get the attention of the shopping crowd, and they would perform and say, well, if you wanna see the end of the play, then you've gotta come tonight and pay for the ticket.

Now, why am I telling you all of this about theater culture in the first century? Because Jesus talks about this scene. In fact, specifically this scene, the actors doing their movie trailer thing all the time. This became one of Jesus Christ's favorite metaphors for how religion can go toxic. Jesus Christ uses the word actor 17 times to describe toxic religious leaders. Now, you may be thinking to yourself, well, I actually have read the Bible, read the Gospels. I do not recall a single time when Jesus talks about actors and theaters and the street corner previews. Well, that's because of a weird translation decision that became traditional in English Bible translations. Now, this is gonna be a little bit Bible language nerd content for just a couple of minutes here, but stick with me because there's a payoff that could change the way you read the Bible from today on.

Sometimes when the Bible is translated from the original Greek in the case of the New Testament into English, instead of just translating the word, they transliterate the word. Now, what is the difference? Well, take the word baptism. The Greek word baptizo literally means to dip or immerse. That's the literal meaning of this Greek word. That's the translation. The transliteration is just taking the sound of that Greek word and rendering it into English as baptism. You see the difference? Now, here's my question. Why didn't the translators just translate that word literally? I mean, think of it. We could have been saying John the Dipper this entire time. I don't know why they didn't do that. Here's another example. The Greek word hypocrites, which literally means stage actor or mask wearer. Because again, actors those days always wore masks. That's the translation of that word. But of course, it's come into English as the transliteration hypocrite.

Now, eventually the word hypocrite in English came to mean somebody who does not live up to their stated values, but that came much, much later. So when you read the word hypocrite in the Bible, you need to realize how the original hearers heard and read this word. So with that literary and historical context in mind, let's take a look at today's verses from the Sermon on the Mount. We've been going through this verse by verse, and today we're at chapter six, verse one, where Jesus says, "Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you'll have no reward from your Father in heaven." Now, here's another interesting acting theater word, the phrase that's translated as several words in English, to be seen. That's actually one word in the Greek, theatheni. And guess what English word we get from that Greek word? Theater, that's right. Literally, Jesus is saying, "Don't do your religion, don't make a religion to such a theater." Jesus is saying, "Don't just live for the applause of others. You especially don't have to perform for God. God sees your heart. God loves you. You don't have to perform for him."

And then he gives three examples of common religious practices in those days of how this sense of performative religion, a performative life, acting your way through your life and your faith, through all of your relationships, how this can poison these good things. He's talking about doing the right things, but for the wrong motives. And he gives three examples: giving, praying, and fasting. Next verse, "So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites, let's translate that word as the actors do, in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others." He's comparing the religious leaders, the pastors, you could say in those days, to actors. They're stage performers. And this, 2,000 years ago, was a danger for religious leaders. It is a danger, to this day, it is a danger for me. It's a danger for all of us.

Two words that should never be in the same sentence, celebrity and pastor, right? 'Cause that is just a recipe for disaster. He says, "Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full." In those days, the religious leaders would literally do this. They'd adopted this from Roman culture, where in Rome, they had benefactors, but the benefactors didn't do their acts of charity because that was the right thing to do out of love. The benefactors did it for one reason, in order to gain honor, in order to gain prestige. And Jesus is saying, "Don't do that." He says, "When you give to the needy, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret." Now, ever wonder what does this mean? Left hand know what your right hand is doing. What does that even mean?

I think this is what Jesus is talking about. Show of hands, how many of you ever learned to drive a stick shift? Can I see a show of hands? Awesome. Leave your hands up. I want you to notice there's kind of a generation gap in answer to that question. So when you drive a stick shift, what do you do? Eventually, you don't have to think about it. Your right hand does one thing, your left hand does something else. Right hand's shifting gears. If you're driving American, and the left hand is steering right, your left hand doesn't know what your right hand is doing. It just comes naturally. How many of you ever took piano lessons? Can I see a show of hands there? Great. So when you take piano lessons, eventually the same thing happens. The left hand is playing this, the right hand's playing something else, and you don't have to do what you did originally was, okay, what is the left hand doing? I gotta think about that. Now the right hand, it just starts to come naturally. That's the kind of thing Jesus is saying. Let your giving be such a part of you that you don't even have to think about it.

When somebody comes up to you and says, man, I gotta tell you, I really appreciated what you did for me when we were both in school, and nobody sat with me at lunch, and you invited me to sit with you at the lunch table, or I really appreciated that one time you saw me out here in the church lobby, I was kinda down, you didn't even know me very well, but you put your arm around me, and you prayed with me, that meant a lot to you. And they say these things to you, and you go, I actually don't even remember that. That's what Jesus is talking about. Helping people becomes such a natural part of what Jesus is doing in you, that not only are you not doing it performatively, like you're doing these things, and you're not even keeping a record of them yourself, because they don't even go into your own ledger like, look at what a good person I am, I prayed with that person in the lobby. You don't even remember it. And Jesus says, but your father, who sees what is done in secret will reward you. This is just so cool. God sees, you don't have to tally up all your good deeds for your own self worth. God sees, and he'll reward you for kindnesses that you have long forgotten. Isn't that awesome?

Now, if you've been with us during the Sermon on the Mount series this whole time, some of you are going, now wait a minute, because just a few verses before this, like four minutes in sermon preaching time, Jesus said, let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds, and glorify your Father in heaven. Isn't this a contradiction? No, because it has to do with your motive. What's the motive here? That they may see your good deeds and glorify you for being so awesome? No, glorify your Father in heaven. Your strategy for feeding the hungry. Your strategy for giving to missions work. Your strategy is for people to be drawn closer to God, not to think that you are so great. Again, you can do the right thing, but for the wrong motives. This is what Jesus is talking about.

And then he goes on to prayer. He says, and when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, again, the actors, if you are translating that word, for they love to pray. It's the movie trailer scene, again, standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Your prayer life becomes theater. He's saying, literally, do not be the movie trailer guy when it comes to your prayers. And I gotta tell you, this is a personal temptation for me, especially pastors. People ask me, like, everywhere I go, if I'm around, hey, right, would you pray for us? And I kinda joke sometimes, yes, I am licensed to do that. But it is a temptation to go, oh, I better make this prayer good and literally go movie trailer. In a world of sin and sorrow, you are the glorious and gracious God who has descended to earth and blessed us most bountifully. But it's all, we're all subject to this.

Do you have this temptation sometimes? No, never. What about when you're in some kind of a small group Bible study and there's maybe 12 of you and then somebody says, hey, let's all close in prayer together. And you go, oh no, out loud? And you bow your head and then the first person prays, you're in a circle and then the second person prays, it's clear, it's going clockwise, and you're like the 11th person in the row. Let me ask you a question. When it starts to go around the circle and it gets to about the fifth person, are you listening to anything anybody is saying? No, what are you thinking about? What you're gonna say? What's the solution to that? Watch this, Jesus says, but when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your, what's the word, father.

When you realize God is your father who loves you unconditionally, that frees you so much of the performative burden in every way because you don't have to perform for him, you don't have to perform for anybody, you're just talking to your father. And your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Now Jesus doubles down on this father idea because he's about to teach us how to pray what's called the our father or the Lord's Prayer in the next several verses, and we're going to get to that next week as we continue the Sermon on the Mount series. But for now, let's skip over that and go to Jesus' third example a few verses later in verse 16. He says, "And when you fast," he's not talking about medical fasting or dieting, fasting as a religious discipline. Sometimes this is kind of lost today, but it's a good discipline where you fast from something for some time, for perhaps a day or for longer, just to teach you self-discipline, to get you focused on the Lord.

But he's not talking about that right here, he's just talking about the fact that people did fast in those days very frequently, but he says, "Do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they've received their reward in full." You know, this word disfigure is interesting because literally it means to make unseen or to make unattractive like a mask. In the ruins of Pompeii, they found in a workshop 15 molds for actors' masks. This is just one example. Every single, now these were hard molds that they would put like paper mulch on, and when the mulch dried, they'd peel it off so actors would have like a paper mache mask that was painted, right? But every single one of them looks like this, very grotesque characters, they look like a cartoon, don't they? And so what they essentially had in their place was live cartoons, people going around wearing these masks. And Jesus, this is what people would have thought of when Jesus used these words.

And so Jesus is saying, what the religious leaders do is basically they make their faces look like this when they fast so everybody knows they're fasting. And so people look at somebody and go, wow, look at him, he looks so miserable. He must be very religious, you know? And he's saying, but when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face so it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your father who sees what is unseen and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

Now, let's just kind of take a step back and think of the whole Sermon on the Mount, right? We've been going through it now for a while, we're almost halfway through. Let me ask you this question. What is the Sermon on the Mount about? What's its theme? It can seem so random, right? Because it's about all kinds of different subjects. There's fasting, there's giving, there's prayer, there's worry, there's adultery. What's the point to the Sermon on the Mount? Is it just a collection of random sayings? It has a theme when you think about it. Jesus is making the same exact point with every single example. And the point is that God cares about your heart. God looks past all the external religiosity and sees what is really inside of you, not just the religious externals.

What God wants more than anything else is a relationship with you. The problem is that what religion often does is substitute rules for relationship. And this becomes a passion of Jesus Christ. This becomes like his major theme for the rest of his ministry. There's only one group of people that Jesus consistently just goes after, criticizes publicly and it's not the Romans and it's not the sinners. It's the religious leaders who teach a performative religion. And in fact, this becomes such a passion of Jesus's. What I wanna do is show you, this sermon is at the beginning of his ministry, all the way to the very end of his ministry, like the last week of his life. He is still hitting on this theme. He hates it, performative religion, because it traps people and it becomes a barrier to an actual relationship with God.

And so how do you spot it and why is it so bad? Well, look at these themes. He always talks about these three characteristics of a performance-based religion, acting your way through faith instead of really having it. And he says, here's how you can kinda notice it. And I wanna show you some of the other ways that Jesus talks about this all through his ministry. Number one, it invents extra rules. It invents extra rules. He says in Matthew 15:9, their teachings, he's talking about the Pharisees, are but rules taught by men. Here's one example. It comes to Sabbath, right? Sabbath means you take the first day of the week off. The whole point of Sabbath was that you could develop a relationship with Jesus Christ, a relationship with the Lord, but the religious leaders, the Pharisees, had taken that beautiful rule that was meant for you to have some time to work on that relationship with God and just soak in his love. And they turned it into a bunch of rules about the things you could not do on the Sabbath.

Like you couldn't pick up a bucket on the Sabbath. You couldn't raise a certain weight of fork to your mouth. You couldn't gargle because all of that was considered work. And so they added all these rules and maybe you were raised in a church that added all kinds of extra rules to your faith too. Let me just list some. Maybe, depending on your age, you might have been raised in a church that told you you couldn't listen to rock music or you couldn't listen to rap music. It's funny because they never said that about country music when obviously that's the real problem. Or maybe you were raised in a church where women couldn't wear pants, that was a thing. Or where men couldn't have long hair. Or where you couldn't play cards. You couldn't go to movies. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Just kind of a quick show of hands. How many of you were raised in a church that had one or another of those rules? Can I see a show of hands? Raise those hands high. A lot of people here, maybe 40% of us. Now, before we criticize those churches, because most churches don't do that anymore, what about you and what about me? Do we ever do this? Do I turn my personal preferences into God's requirements? What he's criticizing the Pharisees for is making their personal rules about the Sabbath into God's rules for everybody else. But do you do this? Do you ever judge like the rest of the world based on your personal preferences? You say, I actually don't think I do. Well, let me give you a couple of examples.

What about cigarettes? I'll tell you this, I don't like cigarettes. They're expensive, they give you cancer, they make my wife wheeze. Lori is so allergic if there's an atom of cigarette smoke. She wheezes and she cokes the coughs and she gets all hoarse. And I could tell this is happening 'cause I call home and I go, hey honey, and she goes, hello? I'm like, hello, honey. This is not flirtation with you, dear. The neighbor is smoking. So she is very affected. And so my preference is I don't like cigarettes. But I cannot lift that up to God's law and say thou shalt not smoke. And if thou smokest, thou art a bad Christian. Because that's not in the Bible. Let me give you another example, meat. It's Santa Cruz. Some of you are vegan, some are vegetarians. You can say my preference is no meat. I'd say that's awesome. But you can't say God says no eating meat because the Bible doesn't say that.

Here's the third example. Politics. You can have a preference. You can have a passionate preference. But you have to be very careful about what you raise to the level of the Bible and declare war over and judge other people on. But people do this. Listen, I believe the Bible is the inspired and inerrant word of God. But do I believe my interpretation of the Bible is inspired and inerrant? No, of course not. But people often confuse the two and become passionate about their interpretation to the point where their interpretation becomes the new litmus test about what it means to be a true Christian. And that leads right to the second characteristic of a performance-based system. It produces passionate commitment to the wrong things. It produces passionate commitment to the exact wrong things.

Jesus talks about this in Matthew 23, starting in verse 23. You hypocrites, again, the word their actors, you give a tenth of your spices, mint, dill, and common, but you've neglected the more important matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness. The Pharisees decided to tithe everything, a tenth of everything they owned to the temple and they took it even to their spice rack. Every single, they would count the leaves of their dried spices and a tenth of those would be donated to the temple. Now, why would people, why would it even occur to somebody to tithe a tenth of their dill weed, you know? Follow me here. In a performance-based mentality, of course, you have to be able to gauge performance. In a performance-based system, you have to be able to measure performance. You have to have metrics, measuring points, and giving a tenth of your dill leaves is very measurable.

In fact, following that same logic, the more rules you have, the more measuring points you have, and so the more rules, the better. But here's the problem. It quickly gets to the point where no one can ever keep all the rules. And so, you pretend to keep the rules. And you even pretend to agree with all the litmus test issues. My heart just goes out to people in some of these denominations that have made all kinds of things that aren't actually in the Bible litmus test issues about what it means to be a true Christian. And the list gets longer and longer and longer. And what eventually happens is this. You gotta know that the people who are in these denominations, not all of them agreed on every single litmus test point, but they pretend to agree. Why? Because they don't wanna deal with all of the discussions that would emerge if they said, well, I have some questions about it. So they just pretend. And pretending, according to Jesus, is the problem.

And that brings us to our final point. A performance-based system focuses on the external and not the internal. The external, not the internal. Jesus says, "Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites, you actors. You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they're full of greed and self-indulgence." Blind, Pharisee, first clean the inside of the cup and dish, then the outside will also be clean. The human problem is sin, for which we need a supernatural savior. We don't need external religiosity. Now look at this, Jesus doubles down on this in that next verse, verse 27. "Blind Pharisees, 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 dead men's bones and everything unclean." So this is not just talking about a whitewashed grave marker.

In those days, in the first century, they had this new culture of these massive, multiple-story tombs. The cooler you were, the cooler tomb you had. And in those days, these would have all been whitewashed and gilded with gold, and he's saying, "That's religion for you guys. You're like an elaborate tomb, and the inside is just full of corruption." That's the problem. Performative religion always ends up masking the real problem. I mean, imagine being in a super-legalistic church and having real marriage problems. You can't reveal it. It wouldn't look good. Other people would probably judge you. So what do you do? You pretend. You clamp the mask on tight. And the problem is, you get no help. The marriage just gets worse and worse. On the outside, you might look perfect, but on the inside is death and decay.

Or let's say you have a substance abuse problem. You can't admit it because you're worried people would judge you, so you put on the mask and you drink at home, and the problem just gets worse. Now, I don't think most people who mask their true struggles set out to do that. In many cases, they loathe their own vices, but afraid of being judged for what's really inside, they clamp on the mask as tight as possible, and they act. And that's why Jesus starts out the Sermon on the Mount with blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who admit, I'm helpless here, I'm powerless, I have a lot of weaknesses, I need a savior, I don't need more paint on the grave. I need a resurrection because I'm dead. Those are the people who find life.

You know, I wasn't raised in a very legalistic church, but I was personally very legalistic, very performance-oriented, just super type A, just my own self. Like as a teenager, I would literally time, every morning, how long my morning prayers were. And I felt better about myself if I prayed 20 minutes rather than 15, and if I prayed on my knees rather than sitting, and if I read my Bible for 10 minutes instead of five, I measured it all, kept records! And in many, many other ways, I have these gauges, why? Because I wanted to be a good, holy Christian. Now, nobody else knew I did this, I didn't do this for others to see, but even worse, somehow I thought I had to do all this for God to really bless me. It was still all a performance. And what happened was it drained my joy. But I didn't want people to know my joy was drained. So I pretended. Praise the Lord, praise Jesus. Wow, Rude, you're so joyful. Well, God is good!

Thank God I discovered God's grace. Thank God that I realized that the key is to not wear the mask and to just admit your weaknesses and receive the grace of God. And maybe you can relate to my story. The joy you once had is gone, replaced by anxiety about whether you are doing enough. Hear the words of Jesus to everybody trapped in a performative religion. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, I'll give you rest. He's talking about people who feel like a beast of burden, loaded down with all kinds of stuff they gotta carry around. He says, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you'll find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is the light. Doesn't that sound good? The world's way is to perform for everyone, even God. The Jesus way is you do not have to perform for God or for anyone.

You know, I started with the story of Fred Demara. You wanna know how he ended up? Come back next weekend. No. So Fred, the last time he was released from prison, went to Multnomah School of the Bible in Portland after he became a Christian behind bars. And he got a degree in ministry, an actual degree. And he moved to Los Angeles where he was a beloved hospital chaplain for the rest of his life. Now, yeah, praise God. But I want you to listen to this quote. In an interview, somebody asked him, well, you know, why did you pretend for so long? Fred said, for years I was afraid to be real. But he discovered freedom in Jesus. What about you? Let's pray together. Would you bow your heads with me? As our heads are bowed, let me just say this. Some of you, your whole religious lives have been about pretending. And you don't even know if you can be real. You worry that God and everybody else would just reject you if they really knew you. And I get that. So why don't you just start by saying to Jesus now, I hear you, I hear you. And then Jesus, help me. Have mercy on me, a sinner. Set me free by your grace. In Jesus' name, amen.