The hope of the hypocrite!

(Charles Simeon)  LISTEN to Audio!  Download Audio

"The hope of the hypocrite shall perish!
 What he trusts in is fragile; what he relies on is a spider's web.
 He leans on his web, but it gives way; he clings to it, but it does not hold."
      Job 8:13-15

Many professing Christians appear fine to others, but are themselves under the dominion of some besetting sin. They are secretly indulging pride, envy, malice, covetousness, lewdness, or some other bosom lust. They do not live near to God in their secret chamber, or aspire after conformity to His will as revealed in His Word. They are more anxious to appear pious, than to be so; and to be applauded by men, than to be approved by God.

It rarely happens that a hypocrite continues long to deceive those who are intimately acquainted with his private habits. He cannot maintain a consistency of character, for lack of an inward principle of saving grace.

Hypocrites eventually "make shipwreck either of their faith or of a good conscience." Lot's wife was a monument of a hypocrite in the Old Testament, and Demas was a monument of a hypocrite in the New. Just so, similar monuments of a hypocrite are yet found in every church today!

Let us follow the hypocrite into the eternal world--what is his condition there?

Alas! alas! However high he was in his own estimation or in that of others--he is now fallen indeed; and all his towering hopes are now swept away with the broom of destruction! Even while he is here carrying on his deception, though it is unsuspected by himself or others, and though his hypocrisy is not in act, but in heart only--he is "treasuring up wrath for himself" for "the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Christ Jesus!"

Possibly he may carry his hope with him into the eternal world, and almost presume to argue with his omniscient Judge. But "He will say to them, I never knew you! Depart from me, you who practice iniquity!" And then their state shall be so superlatively wretched, that those who sink the deepest into perdition are said to "take their portion with the hypocrites!"

"But the wicked will lose hope.
 They have no escape.
 Their hope becomes despair." Job 11:20

"Where is the hope of the hypocrite, when God takes away his soul?" Job 27:8