Everybody loves a dead prophet. 

They did in the days of Jesus. Think of those Old Testament prophets. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Elijah, and Malachi. We know them. We celebrate them. We read their words. God spoke through these men! We know they were heroes. But we have the benefit of living in 2026. 

But what if we lived in those days? The prophets of Israel were persecuted, hated, and even murdered by their own people. 

Why? Because they didn’t like what those men had to say. What they said indicted the failed and compromised religious elites of their day. So, they had to be silenced. 

Then, hundreds of years later, during the last days of Jesus’ ministry, everybody loved those dead prophets. 

Because religious hypocrites are always “brave” when the battle is already over.

Hypocrites Feign Courage When It Costs Nothing

During the last few days of Jesus’ earthly ministry, He spent much of His time in the temple, engaging with the religious leaders of Israel. In Matthew chapter 23, Jesus spoke in some of the strongest terms regarding their failure. In verses 13-36, Jesus pronounced seven woes against the religious leaders. Each of them was rooted in an overarching accusation that they were hypocrites.

Jesus’ seven statements show that the religious hypocrites teach false doctrine (13-15), place a wrong emphasis on material possessions (16-22), sacrifice rather than obey (23-24), have merely a surface-level righteousness (25-28), and that religious hypocrites boast of virtue and bravery with regard to the past (29-36).

It is that last accusation which is so damning, so insidious, and so relevant in the year 2026. 

Jesus asserts that these hypocrites build tombs and decorate monuments to the heroes of the Old Testament, saying, “Trust me, bro, we wouldn’t have killed those guys like our ancestors did.” 

Recently, when I was preparing to preach this passage, I couldn’t help but think Jesus was engaging with the religious leaders of our day. 

This simple truth stands the test of time: When it is socially and politically expedient, religious hypocrites feign virtue and bravery. But in the moments when it counts, they are not only silent, they also sabotage those who show true courage.

Beware Those Who Are Brave When it is Too Late

It is always easier to be “brave” when the stakes are low. And a key hallmark of religious hypocrites is that they feign virtue and courage, but when the rubber meets the road, they crumble. The scribes and the Pharisees, to whom Jesus spoke, boasted of just such bravery that didn’t cost anything to display; the prophets of old were long dead and gone, but they “decorated” their tombs. They wanted to act as if they stood with them now, when they would have been the first to attack them when they were alive. 

Jesus makes this very point to the religious leaders of his day, prophesying that those same hypocrites would soon persecute and kill His disciples and apostles (23:34). 

With regard to a battle long finished and fought by others, they were happy to pretend that they were on the side of those who stood against their very own class. But when a new battle would come their way in the days following the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, they would prove, in real time, that they were just like their fathers of old, too scared to stand with the true and final Prophet, and instead join in persecuting and killing his disciples. 

We need to beware those who are brave when it is too late. Not ungracious. Not unforgiving. But cautious. 

For example, it is very easy to be brave now, in 2026, about the church lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. But what will you do next time? Perhaps you learned a lesson. If so, you should acknowledge that. John MacArthur was brave in real time, in the moment, when it counted, and many other religious leaders of our day attacked him for it. 

Occasionally, I see on social media a call to “expose” every Christian who shut their church down or posted a “black square” on their social media during the George Floyd debacle. Yes, we need to know the record. Those who were on the wrong side then need to repent for what they did and make their repentance clear. 

For those of us who were brave when it was costly, we need to be gracious and forgiving. But we do not need to be naïve. Naivety is not a virtue.

Decorating Monuments to Brave Men Long Dead

Charles Spurgeon, now lauded as one of the best Baptist preachers in modern history, ended his life with a reputation among his peers as a grumpy old minister. The Downgrade Controversy pitted the Prince of Preachers against virtually every other Baptist in London in a fight over the threat of liberal theology. 

Spurgeon, although he was on both the right side of history and God’s Word, was isolated and alone. When he died, he was beloved by his church but largely disliked by the clergy class of his peers. But then, not long after his death, he became the subject of laudatory biographies, and the vibe began to shift. When the battle was over, and it was no longer costly to stand with Spurgeon, the newly “brave” Baptists started coming out of the woodwork. 

I can’t help but think of the “vibe shift” we’ve seen among church leaders after the 2024 election and the murder of Charlie Kirk. While Trump won the presidential election in 2016, he didn’t win the popular vote, and the vibe was very much in favor of maintaining never-Trump convictions or an anti-Trump sentiment. Church members were chastised for their support of the president, and sermon after sermon urged those in the pews to stop putting their hope in political figures. 

But eight years later, after Trump survived an assassination attempt and pulled off one of the most unlikely political comebacks in modern history, those same pastors felt the cultural tides turning. This time, Trump did win the popular vote. The vibe had clearly shifted, and they became lions in the pulpit over issues they had previously taken church members to the woodshed for a decade earlier.

And what about Charlie Kirk? To be frank, if the average church member had shared a clip of Kirk engaging students on a college campus prior to September 2025, it would have been documented and filed in the “cause for concern” folder by the church’s leadership. 

But when Charlie Kirk was killed, many pastors and evangelical leaders wrote blogs and long posts on social media praising Kirk as a hero of the faith. Pastors who would have never praised or associated with Charlie Kirk while he was alive were now happy to decorate his tomb. 

Because it is always easy to be brave when the battle is over. 

Beware the “Brave” Southern Baptist Leader of our Modern Era

What about in the Southern Baptist Convention? A bubble is about to burst, I am convinced. I am not a prophet, but I see the momentum shifting. 

Every week, we learn about more and more churches in our convention with female pastors. Too often, someone has a story about contacting the Credentials Committee and hearing nothing back. This is why the Law Amendment was offered. Unfortunately, that amendment never got the necessary vote precisely because major players and leaders within our Convention told us it was unnecessary. Well, it’s looking more and more necessary each passing day. Now the vibe is shifting. 

We will likely see many of those same pastors and Convention leaders who opposed the Law Amendment step forward to advocate for another way to solve the issue of growing egalitarianism and female pastors in the SBC, but one that won’t be as effective or comprehensive as the Law Amendment. And all this will be is a repackaging of a Baptist leader who is brave just in time for there to be no battle. He will be praised as a conservative stalwart, never mind the fact that he is “stalwart” half a decade too late.

Beware, Southern Baptist, the brave Convention leader who changes his tune in the coming days without repentance. 

This is why I am so encouraged by someone like Willy Rice. He is a very rare leader in the SBC who has publicly said, “I got it wrong then, but I want to get it right now.” That’s the kind of man we need as a national leader in the SBC. 

Conclusion: True Courage is Always Costly, So Follow Men Willing to Pay the Price Now

As Southern Baptists, we need to be willing to be on the right side of “hard” issues even when it means we will be ostracized. It is far better to have been right on the Law Amendment in 2023 – and to have been vocal about it – than to bravely stand for it when it is proposed as something else in 2030. 

As C.S. Lewis once wrote, “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality.” 

I believe that many of our “leaders” across the SBC need to heed the warnings of Jesus in Matthew 23, to examine themselves and what they will, or won’t, speak to publicly. True courage, leadership, virtue, and bravery are shown when leaders defend what is right and good precisely at the moment when it is costly, and not later, when the tombs have already been built for the brave men who came before. 

As we prepare to gather in Orlando for our 2026 Annual Meeting, let’s look for those men to lead us. The ones who can admit they were wrong in the past but are willing to be right now, to speak up and out now, even if it means they are labeled a “troubler of the SBC.”

The time to defer to hypocrites stealing valor from the brave men of the past is over. The time for brave men at the helm of American Christianity and the SBC is here. 

It has to be—for the days are short and the hour is dark.