Bible Verses About Hypocrisy

Spare me the noise of your songs! I don't want to hear the strumming of your lutes!

Instead, let justice well up like water, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings in the desert forty years, house of Isra'el?

No, but now you will bear Sikkut as your king and Kiyun, your images, the star of your god, which you made for yourselves;

as I exile you beyond Dammesek," says Adonai ELOHEI-Tzva'ot - that is his name.

"Speak to all the people of the land and to the cohanim. Tell them, 'When you fasted and mourned in the fifth and seventh months throughout these seventy years, were you really fasting for me? Was it for me?

Rather, when you eat and drink, it's just to please yourselves, isn't it?

"A son honors his father and a servant his master. But if I'm a father, where is the honor due me? and if I'm a master, where is the respect due me? - says ADONAI-Tzva'ot to you cohanim who despise my name. You ask, 'How are we despising your name?'

By offering polluted food on my altar! Now you ask, 'How are we polluting you?' By saying that the table of ADONAI doesn't deserve respect;

so that there's nothing wrong with offering a blind animal as a sacrifice, nothing wrong with offering an animal that's lame or sick. Try offering such an animal to your governor, and see if he will be pleased with you! Would he even receive you?" asks ADONAI-Tzva'ot.

So if you pray now that God will show us favor, what your actions have accomplished is that ADONAI-Tzva'ot asks, "Will he receive any of you?

Why doesn't even one of you shut the doors and thus stop this useless lighting of fires on my altar? I take no pleasure in you," says ADONAI-Tzva'ot, "and I will not receive an offering from you.

For from farthest east to farthest west my name is great among the nations. Offerings are presented to my name everywhere, pure gifts; for my name is great among the nations," says ADONAI-Tzva'ot.

"But you profane it by saying that the table of ADONAI is polluted, so that the fruit and food offered deserve contempt.

You also say, 'It's all so tiresome!' and sniff scornfully at it," says ADONAI-Tzva'ot. "Then you bring animals that were taken by violence, or they are lame or sick. This is the sort of offering you bring. Am I supposed to accept this from you?" asks ADONAI.

"Moreover, cursed is the deceiver who has a male animal in his flock that is damaged, but vows and sacrifices to ADONAI anyway. For I am a great king," says ADONAI-Tzva'ot, "and my name is respected among the nations.

But when Yochanan saw many of the P'rushim and Tz'dukim coming to be immersed by him, he said to them, "You snakes! Who warned you to escape the coming punishment?

If you have really turned from your sins to God, produce fruit that will prove it!

"Be careful not to parade your acts of tzedakah in front of people in order to be seen by them! If you do, you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

So, when you do tzedakah, don't announce it with trumpets to win people's praise, like the hypocrites in the synagogues and on the streets. Yes! I tell you, they have their reward already!

"Not everyone who says to me, `Lord, Lord!' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, only those who do what my Father in heaven wants.

On that Day, many will say to me, `Lord, Lord! Didn't we prophesy in your name? Didn't we expel demons in your name? Didn't we perform many miracles in your name?'

You hypocrites! Yesha`yahu was right when he prophesied about you,

`These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far away from me.

Their worship of me is useless, because they teach man-made rules as if they were doctrines.'"