We were continuing in our sermon series in Matthew yesterday. This week, we reached Jesus’ comments about hypocrisy and the woes he pronounced against the Pharisees. You can listen to the whole message here if you are so inclined (the sermon comes at the front end of the service).

During the course of one point, I went off-piste. I was moved to suddenly go off my notes on a short detour. I can’t remember exactly what prompted it. You can probably find the section if you watch the sermon back. But I was particularly moved to speak into the very worst thing we can do to somebody. Unusually, I got a bit upset about it to be honest. Not least because it happens time and again and is a matter on which I think many UK churches need to repent and to whom the Lord will have some very stern things to say.

One of Jesus’ big concerns in Matthew 23 is that the Pharisees are leading people to Hell. Jesus says expressly that this is what they do, where they are going themselves and where those who follow them will end up too. Earlier in the gospel, Jesus has some very hard words concerning millstones around people’s necks if they cause any of his little ones to stumble. The ‘little ones’ isn’t just about children, but more broadly Jesus’ people. Stumbling in scripture does not usually mean a sinful (but repentant) lapse, but rather tends to mean falling away altogether. Jesus is saying anyone who leads people away from the kingdom – as the Pharisees teaching does – would be better off never having been born!

My sidebar (albeit a relevant one) centred on this. One of the purposes of the passage we were looking at is to help us avoid hypocrisy. To look at ourselves and ask if we really belong to the kingdom unlike the Pharisees who were hypocrites and didn’t. One of the applications drawn was the need for church discipline. As church members it is our duty to warn people if they appear to be living hypocritically and we should welcome others pointing out where we are living hypocritically so that we can repent and not remain hypocrites who find ourselves outside of the kingdom on the last day.

But so often church discipline is dismissed as ‘unkind’ or ‘unloving’. Who are you to tell me that my life does not match my profession of faith? Isn’t that the real essence of hypocrisy: telling other people how to live?

Well, in short, no it isn’t.

Hypocrisy is telling other people how to live when you are unwilling to do the same things. This was what the Pharisees were doing. Hypocrisy is telling people that we are all sinners in the same boat, who all need to repent of many different things, but then making out that we have no need to repent and everyone else does. Hypocrisy is claiming we love Jesus, claiming he has changed our lives, all while living in such as way that there is zero evidence of it in practice. It is saying one thing and doing another, demanding others live in ways we are unwilling to live ourselves.

Assuming we are not saying we are better than anybody else – we are sinners too – but this is a kingdom-disqualifying matter of sin that warrants repentance is not hypocrisy. It is not pointing at ourselves and saying how great we are, it is actively calling people back to Jesus. And (I would hope) is done out of a genuine concern for the state of a person’s soul rather than any desire to make ourselves out to be superior to them.

But I think churches very often do not want to engage in meaningful church discipline of this sort. And, I’ll be frank, I get it. Who wants to have awkward conversations with people about their lifestyle choices, their unrepentant behaviour and evident sin in their lives? It is difficult and unpleasant, not just for the person hearing it, but for the person having to bring it up. The only people who relish those sorts of conversations are psychopaths! Most of us, if we are honest, want a quiet life and are only too conscious talking to people about their sin and calling them to repent of specific matters is absolutely not the way to get it.

But the thing is, Jesus has the harshest things to say for those happy to let his little ones stumble. Whilst churches might not be accountable for the particular sins that some of their members wander into of their own accord, it is difficult to see how Jesus’ talk of millstones doesn’t apply to those of us unwilling to warn them that they may fall away altogether if they persist because it is too awkward. And I absolutely cannot see how we escape the charge when – looking on at an unrepentant, errant sinner – we continue to let them play at church, let them take communion, let them call themselves Christians and never do anything to challenge them despite their behaviour unbecoming of a believer all because we didn’t want to be accused of being “unkind”. So, in full knowledge of that person’s standing, we let them waltz merrily to Hell because saying anything is “not the done thing” or “culturally inappropriate” or “just a bit awks”.

One day, we will be stood at the door of Heaven and some people we were in church will be there too. We never thought they were real believers but we never said anything. We never told them they couldn’t take communion. We never told them their sin really needed addressing. We never did anything to challenge their assumption they were saved when we didn’t think they were. They will be ushered away, told to depart because Jesus never knew them, and they may rightly look over at you and ask, ‘why did you never say anything?’ How kind will we seem then? And how hollow will our defence of, ‘it was just very awkward and not very culturally appropriate’ be then? I know these things get trotted out by those thinking about our unwillingness to share the gospel in evangelism, but I think far more of us will have to answer before the Lord concerning people whom we saw week in, week out, in our churches with regularity and had countless opportunities to say these things and yet we never did.

It makes me so angry that it is those with the stones to say these things who get derided as unloving and unkind. It is those who, despite the awkwardness and the desperate desire to do everything they can not to be unkind when they say these things, who are routinely called out. All the while, those who smile indulgently, who refuse to anything, who even affirm the unrepentant as believers who are condemning people to Hell with their “niceness”. Which, of course, isn’t nice at all! It is deeply unloving. Indeed, I think it is the most despicable thing one human being can do to another and Jesus affirms it as such in this passage. To tell people they are safe in Christ when they are no such thing is a heinous thing to do. You are condemning people to Hell with a smile and, I am sad to say, I think our churches are full of it.

I’m not talking about churches “out there” either. I’m not talking about those rubbish, non-gospel preaching churches that actively tell people a false gospel. I’m talking about us. Those of us who know the gospel of repentance and faith in Christ. Those of us who insist on salvation by faith alone in Christ alone. Those of us who claim we are gospel people, with our gospel preaching churches, who are very clear about what the gospel actually is. We condemn people to Hell not so much with a false gospel but with tacit false comfort all because we prize our own personal comfort above all. We don’t want to be mean, unkind, heavy-handed, whatever. Of course, who does! But in our bid not to be those things, we do the very worst thing of all: refuse to tell people they are lost, continue to give them the pretence of a church around them, tacitly (if not explicitly) affirming their profession despite our misgivings because it’s all too awkward and uncomfortable.

I have no doubt some of us have said these things in cackhanded ways. I have no doubt there are some who have felt so awkward that they chickened out of meeting and fired off an email laying out their concerns. I have no doubt there are countless ways church discipline has occurred badly and in less than excellent ways. But – notwithstanding the many examples of it being done as well as it is humanly possible to do too – I would take all those poorly executed, sub-optimal attempts efforts over those who simply will not say anything or out of a misplaced sense of niceness or politeness will not do it. As bad as some examples might be, at least they are doing something to attempt to save a soul from death. Those who do nothing, or continue to affirm a person over whom they have serious doubts, is simply consigning them to Hell. Do I think a blunt missive fired off by email is the best way to tell someone you are worried about their soul and standing in eternity? Not really. But I do I think that is eminently better than continuing to give them communion, smiling indulgently and saying nothing at all. You bet your life I do!

Jesus does not say it is better for those who cackhandedly tell people they’re in sin and probably outside the kingdom to be thrown into the sea with a millstone around their neck. No, he saves that particular suggestion for those who cause his little ones to stumble. He saves his seven-woe barracking for the Pharisees who are leading others to Hell. Why is that? Because even the less good efforts to warn people of the serious and imminent danger they are in are by far and away better than seeing the danger and letting them continue in it anyway or, worse, actively pushing them headlong into it! It is my view that the very worst thing one person can do to another – above and beyond anything else you might ever do – is to actively encourage them to continue in their state of lostness and, by extension, lead them to Hell. We are very quick to point at “those out there” with their “false gospels” who do it, but we need to be much angrier at those closer to home who do exactly the same thing in full knowledge of what the gospel entails condemn people to a lost eternity out of cowardice, awkwardness and misplaced notions of “niceness”. God have mercy.