Wednesday, April 9, 2025

Listen to the Word

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 the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. (Matthew 23:27-28)

Jesus’ disgust for the sin of hypocrisy is clear in today’s verses. He calls the insincere religious leaders of his day “whitewashed tombs.” I don’t think that is a compliment! You could apply a nice coat of paint to the exterior of a tomb, and you would have something lovely to look at. But not even the trendiest color of the fanciest designer paint could change the fact that what is inside the tomb is nothing but decay and death.

That is what we are when we practice hypocrisy. We spend a lot of energy trying to make the outside look good, trying to appear impressive to other people. But if the inside is unchanged, if the inside is dying, then all of that work on the exterior is useless. God doesn’t want you to APPEAR beautiful - he wants you to BE beautiful. He doesn’t want you to APPEAR alive - he wants you to BE alive.

Live the Word

Ask God to change you from the inside out. Ask him to form you into the kind of person who doesn’t mind if others know what they are really like - a person who has no need to apply whitewash.