"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," - Romans 3:23
One of the main reasons people don’t like the church is because of the rampant hypocrisy. For many of you, it’s a major reason why you don’t go. In the 1997 movie, The Apostle, starring Robert Duvall, we saw a preacher who got in trouble, physically abused and cheated on his wife. He even killed a man, but he quickly ran to a new town where no one knew anything about him and was able to continue preaching.
Certainly over the last 30 years, Hollywood has done a number on preachers and priests. And time after time they are painted in a very unflattering way, usually as hypocrites or a bunch of out-of-touch airheads, or mean, cruel psychos. If you combine all preachers with the charlatan TV evangelists, well, it’s not a pretty picture.
The truth is, all of us preachers struggle with hypocrisy; none of us always practice what we preach. I sure fall short in my life. But I have good news. I’ve only known one preacher in my life who had no trace of hypocrisy. He’s alive today – His name is Jesus.
All the rest of us fall short, but Jesus never does. So, I encourage you to put your focus and your faith on Him. Study His life, in the 4 biographies of Him in the Bible. (The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.) If you can find any hypocrisy in Him, by all means, reject Him. But I don’t think you will. I believe you will discover the most genuine man who ever lived. Thankfully, He’s still alive today!
