Title: No Small Sin / Topic: Hypocrisy

Today’s Reading: 2 Samuel 13-14; Matthew 24

Scripture: Matthew 24:48-51
48 But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, 'My master is staying away a long time,' 49 and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. 50 The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. 51 He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Observation: Verse 51 caught my eye. The punishment for the wicked and abusive servant is in two parts: first, the master will "cut him to pieces," and second, he will "assign him a place with the hypocrites." This is a little puzzling to me since the guy is already in pieces -- does it matter where you get sent after that?!?

OK, besides my offbeat sense of humor, what else does this passage have to offer. Well it is extremely interesting to me that the place of punishment that has "weeping and gnashing of teeth" is called "a place with the hypocrites." We tend to think that hypocrisy is no big deal -- I mean we all know that the church is full of it, right? But here the place assigned to the hypocrite, that is the person who says one thing but does something else, is a place of significant punishment and separation from God.

Application: We get it wrong when we think of big sins and little sins. We used to say,

"I don't smoke, drink or chew,
and I don't go with the girls who do!"

And we thought that because of that we were holy. Yeah right! But we could have a little hypocrisy and think that it was no big deal. God says otherwise. We really do need to practice what we preach or we better prepare ourselves for a shock when we stand before God because our future accommodations will not be what we were hoping for.

Prayer: Lord, help us to live in integrity and truth. May we walk out the things we confess. May our lives line up consistently with what we say we believe. And show us where that is not happening in our lives so we can repent and make it right. We want to be in Your presence when it is our time to pass into eternity.
This I pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.