Transcript
Matthew chapter six. So have any of you ever been to, I think it's pronounced Defend or Dine China? Has anybody here ever been to Dine China? Do you know what they're famous for? They have an extraordinary claim to fame. This village is known as the world's factory for oil paintings walk down its streets and you'll see row upon row of artist studios each filled with canvases. But these aren't original works of art. They are copies, thousands of them replicating masterpieces by Van Gogh, DaVinci, and other renowned artists. The skill of these artists is undeniable. Their ability to mimic the strokes and the colors of other great masterpieces are impressive. Yet despite the visual similarity to the originals, something essential is missing the spirit of authenticity, the soul that only the original creator can imbue to their work. This village with its endless production of art replicas offers a metaphor for the message that Jesus delivers in Matthew chapter six, verses one through four.
Here, Christ addresses not the art of painting, but the art of living out our faith. In his time, acts of righteousness had become like those replica paintings skillfully performed outwardly perfect, yet lacking the authentic essence that comes from a genuine relationship with God. As we delve into these verses, we are invited to reflect and to ask this question, do our acts of obedience and devotion stem genuinely from a sincere heart and a true connection with God making them authentic originals? Let me read the text to you, Matthew six, starting in verse one. It says this, be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others, to be seen by them otherwise, you have no reward with your father in heaven. So whenever you give to the poor, don't sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues or on the streets to be applauded by people.
Truly, I tell you, they have their reward, but when you give to the poor, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you. Okay, that's our text. Let's go ahead. Let's pray together. Lord, we just give you the next 30 minutes of our time and we want to hear from you. We want to be governed. We want to be a people. Where if you look into this, and we know you do look into it where people that are submitted under the authority of scripture, we're not just trying to make up the Christian life on our own, but we are really before you placing ourselves under the authority of your word. And we ask that you to apply this text into our own individual lives.
Lord, you know where we're fake, you know where we're disingenuous, where the hypocrisy comes out. And Lord, we pray that you would come and you would be like a surgeon cutting those things out of our life and that you would author in us a genuineness and the root reason behind our inauthenticity. Lord, we pray that you deal with that, whether it's fear, whether it's pride, whatever is the root cause of us being hypocritical, Lord, we ask and we give you permission to work in us this morning. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So here we are, we in chapter six. But what I want to remind you of is that when Matthew wrote the gospel, this book he did not put in there verse numbers and chapter numbers that came along a thousand years after this was just a text that was read by the church.
It was Matthew's account of the life of Jesus. And this is the first major teaching section out of the book of Matthew. I don't know if you're going along with the Bible project or not, but in their podcast and on their website, they're just zeroed in on the sermon of the Mount. And this week the podcast was all about how does this sermon on the Mount fit in with the overall structure of Matthew? And it's excellent. It's one of the shorter episodes that they have. The whole back half of the episode is just a lengthy reading for chapter five through seven of their translation of the Sermon on the Mount by Tim and this great material, I'd encourage you to keep up with it as we're kind of covering the same material on Sundays. So we are in the book of Matthew, and we found ourself here in this first sermon called the Sermon on the Mount, which is a collection of Jesus's teachings that he gave to his disciples.
And you'll recall that before we got to this particular verse, we had Matthew 4 23, which doesn't seem, oh, there it is. Matthew 4 23, Jesus began to go all over Galilee teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people. Now here's the interesting thing. What does it mean to preach the gospel? What does it mean to preach the good news of the kingdom? Well, just a couple verses later, we get into the Sermon on the Mount. And the interesting thing about the message, the gospel here that Jesus is preaching is not this come forward, pray a prayer and then you're like in, you got fire insurance. You're not going to go to hell anymore. The gospel that Jesus, the good news that Jesus is preaching is very much about a life that's lived out, right? Have you noticed that?
It's very much this about like, Hey, if you want to be a follower of me, here's the good news about the kingdom. It welcomes in all these outcasts, the poor, the sad, those who are suffering, those who are persecuted. Congratulations. You're welcomed into the kingdom. And then he says, I didn't come to abolish the law. I didn't come to abolish the law. Rather, what I came to do was to fulfill it. I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself here in when we come to Matthew chapter six, Jesus opens up, he says, be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. Now, we have this giant number six in our Bibles, right? You have it, you have it in your Bible. It's a big chapter six, and that wasn't there. This ties in with something that goes all the way back to chapter five verse 17, where Jesus said to these disciples, don't think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets, right?
When and if you're in the Bible class with us law and prophets here, this is Jesus saying, look, I didn't come to get rid of the scriptures. I didn't come to get rid of the Hebrew scriptures. No, I came to fulfill it. I am the fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures. I didn't come to abolish it. I came to fulfill. And then a couple verses later in verse 20, Jesus says to his followers, I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you'll never get into the kingdom of heaven. So he lays it out. He says, you got to be more righteous than the religious leaders of the day. Now that must have just broken their brains, right? It's like, wait, our religious leaders, how are we going to be more righteous than the righteous, professional, righteous people? Then he goes in and he elaborates on what that righteousness looks like by giving six what we called antithesis.
They were these, well, he says, this is a quote from my reading. It's in verses 20 through 48. It centers on a positive righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, a positive righteousness, which was, look, anger is equivalent to murder. Lust is equivalent to adultery. He places these strict limits on divorce, speaking truth without the need to spice it up with, I swear, an asymmetrical response of goodness when the world is harsh. I didn't fix my spelling even in the last week. I'm sorry. And then love your enemy. So those are the six ways in which Jesus is saying, okay, listen, you've come into the kingdom, right? You're coming into my kingdom, the kingdom of heaven. And this is not a kingdom that just throws out the Hebrew scriptures. No. This is a place where the Hebrew scriptures are fulfilled through me and righteousness, the idea of doing righteousness, it exceeds your concept that you see modeled in the Pharisees.
No, it's this kind of righteousness that has, it has depth, it goes to the heart. It requires sincerity. It's stricter in a sense, it's more sincere. So he goes through these six examples, and then we get to verse one of Matthew chapter six, where he says, again, be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. So this theme of righteousness continues, and now he's going to talk about righteousness. Three of the most common acts of righteousness at this time, three of the most common acts. He's going to say, don't practice that righteousness like the scribes and the Pharisees. No, because your righteousness, the righteousness of my kingdom that my people do, it looks different from what you're used to. It looks different from your professional religious elites. The statement introduces Jesus is about to teach from verse one to 18.
So this statement here is not just about taking care of the poor, but this statement here, verse one is actually a statement that introduces the material about caring for the poor in a genuine way, praying in a genuine way and fasting in a genuine way. So this is the introductory statement to those three acts giving to the poor prayer and fasting. Eugene Peterson, he translates and he expresses this verse in this way, be especially careful when you're trying to be good so that you don't make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding.
There is a very wrong way to do good and there is a very right way to do good. A reward from your heavenly Father is on the line. And so he says this in verse two. He's going to zero in on this idea of giving to the poor. So whenever you give to the poor, don't sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets to be applauded by people. Truly, I tell you, they have their reward. First of all, do you see the assumption that Jesus is making, okay, I'm calling you to be in my kingdom where those religious leaders, they can come and be in my kingdom too, but they're no longer the elites. They've got to come and they've got to adopt my righteousness. They don't get to set some social religious agenda like, no, no, no.
If those pharisees want to come into my kingdom, they're going to have to follow my rules as the king. But in that kingdom, there's an assumption and the assumption is that you're going to be giving to the poor. He says, so whenever you give to the poor notice, it's not, Hey, if you give to the poor, no. The way that Jesus phrases this and the way that he phrases the teaching on prayer and the way that he phrases the teaching about fasting is, Hey, when you do it, it's assumed that you'll be doing it. It's assumed that you'll be giving to the poor if you're in Jesus's kingdom. But he says, don't sound a trumpet. Don't sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues. This is the righteous deeds, this idea of giving to the poor that's assumed. This goes back to Abraham in Genesis 1819.
So think we're going all the way back in Israel's history to the founder of Judaism, the forefathers, right, all the way back to Abraham. There is this statement about Abraham that God makes about him. He says, for I have chosen him Abraham, so that he'll command his children and his house after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just this is how the Lord will fulfill to Abraham. What he promised when God says this about Abraham, he's saying, look, your future generations, you're going to teach your children to do what is right and just this is the Hebrew word, sah and mishpat. Sah is righteousness to do what is right and the people of God from Abraham on, they're expected that you are going to do what is right within society. I found this beautiful quote about this word, sah meaning righteousness.
The word sah comes from the Hebrew root word, sadik, which means straight. It's used literally of objects when they do what they're supposed to do. For example, in the Bible, accurate weights and measures are measures of siddiq and safe paths. For sheep are paths of siddiq. Building on this root word, Sika refers to humans, beings who are straight or in the right order with their relationships primarily, and first with God himself and also with others. The word sah refers to a life of right relationships. And so from Abraham on, there is this expectation that you are going to live a life that is, it's a straight life, that it lines up with God and with others.
And so Jesus here as he's teaching about giving to the poor, this is familiar language like Israel got in trouble with God, and God allowed Israel as a nation to be taken captive by Assyria and by Babylon because they didn't take care of the poor. They were an established nation and part of they were idolatrous, right? So they worshiped foreign gods. But another aspect of their running away from God was they just didn't take care of the poor. They didn't take care of widows, they didn't take care of fatherless, and they didn't take care of the poor. You can go back and read Isaiah 58. You can read Isaiah chapter one. It's like a medical diagnosis of the nation. You are sick in Isaiah chapter one. It's like you've got open wounds that are like pussy and yucky. And what that refers to is you're not taking care of poor people in your midst.
This is a big deal for God, was that people who are lined up with me, they're like, they're just taking care of people who are poor and downcast. This is what is a part of my kingdom. And so you have the tradition, but the tradition has grown into this kind of act, this religious act, it it's a performance and it became inauthentic. And it was this evidently in the synagogues, it would be like, we're going to play a trumpet and we're going to make a big deal out of who's giving what. And it just took it from being this genuine act of righteousness to being an act of hypocrisy. And Jesus says in verse two, he says, well, they have their reward in the synagogue, the hypocrites action in the synagogue on the street. They're sounding a trumpet when they give to the poor with the intent that they will be applauded by people. And Jesus says, that applause, that is their reward. He goes on Matthew six verses three and four, he says, but when you give, right? So we've talked about what not to do now. He says, here's what I want you to do when you give, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you. So there's this picture that he draws of, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.
This week, I was thinking about when I learned to type, and it still just blows my mind that I don't have to think about the keys. Isn't that the weirdest thing? If you're a trained typist and you can just find the keys and you're not hunting and pecking, it's just weird how your fingers just do this thing. And I do it every day, and I don't even put any thought into it where the keys are. And I was trying to think back in ninth grade, I took a class and I remember the Mavis Beacon teaches you to type, and I dunno if you had, that was your class too, but I had a cover that they put over my hands and somehow it just clicked. I think that's the idea of how natural for us as followers of Jesus in his kingdom as citizens in the kingdom, it just is like this.
We're just taking care of the poor in this way where the right hand doesn't know the left hand. It's not like you're hiding it from the left hand. It's just like it just happens. It's just natural. It's become so just normal to care for the poor. There's no real mental thinking it through. And it's not this strategic playing the angle so that you have this audience. It's just inherent that flows out of this relationship with God. And there is a privacy aspect. There's this discretion where it's being done, and I don't need anybody else to know that it's happening. He says in verse four, he says, so that your giving may be in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
Man, there's so much here. So he's going to keep repeating this idea of do it in secret. He's going to talk about pray. Pray in secret. Your father sees he's there, he sees it right? He will reward you, he'll reward you openly. Each one of these areas of giving to the poor prayer and fasting are all done in this, just in relationship with God, not for human, not for public consumption. Now, mind you, okay, well, I put it here in my notes. Jesus is assuming, again, he's assuming that you're giving to the poor. It is done with anonymity, and the secrety is not the objective. The goal is not how secret can I be in my giving? And giving to the poor is not the objective. The underlying principle here is to live out your private devotion to God regardless of human audience. So what Jesus is doing, he's being surgical here.
He's dealing with the heart and he's saying there's a heart issue with these Pharisees, these hypocrites where they're doing their religious acts, they're giving to the poor, they're praying and they're fasting for a human audience. And that's not why the behavior is supposed to be there. So you may have, we could put on stage, we could have Sam here, and Alexis and Sam over here is like a Pharisee, and he takes care every Saturday. He's in the compassion center and he's caring for the poor, and he's spending two hours sorting the food and giving it out to people. And he's very genuine. And Alexis is doing the exact same thing, but their hearts are completely, radically different. Sam here wants to make a show out of his working at the Compassion Center and wants to be padded on the back, and that's his motivation. And Jesus says, well, he's got his reward. And you know what? There's a reward to be a good person that volunteers in the community. That's nothing. You can get a good pat on the back.
It's not, yeah, it's hypocritical. But I was thinking about this this morning. I'm like, there's really some advantages to kind of being that hypocrite. Sam can go around and tell people like, Hey, here's what I do. And Sam's a good guy. It's, I really like the fact that Sam's, and nobody's looking at Sam necessarily and like, oh, you're just a hypocrite unless he's really ostentatious. But there's a way to be hypocrite Sam and really get the reward on earth and ingratiate yourself to other people and be thought of as like, wow, he's a really good guy. And he gives up some of his weekend to do that. And then there's Alexis over here who doesn't, she's not playing any angles. She has no ulterior motive. She's there and she's feeding poor people, and then she goes home and it just is a natural part of her life. It just flows out of, I love Jesus. I spend time with Jesus. I'm in relationship with Jesus. This is just what I do. And she's not looking over her shoulder of like, Hey, who saw me do that? Who saw me do that awesome thing? It's just this natural joyful, yeah, I did it. I love Jesus.
There is such a genuineness and authenticity that exists in Alexis's relationship with God. A human audience doesn't really factor into the picture. Now, mind you, Jesus is going to do, Jesus is going to do the next three years of his life, healing people, raising people from the dead. Every day of his next three years is in public. He is a public figure doing good and proclaiming the kingdom. So Jesus can't be having an issue with public ministry. He is dealing with our hearts, his followers, hearts, and he knows how quickly the temptation can be to shift from doing the good thing. The bottom can just fall out. I know this in just working at the Compassion Center, how easy it is for me for just the kind of the bottom to fall out and for it to just become this rote routine that happens every week.
And it's not this, Josh is abiding in the vine, and there's this vibrant relationship between Josh and Jesus, and he's there involved in making sure the truck runs and picks up food from Amazon. No, it's, it's so easy for it to just kind of, the bottom falls out and it's like, this was like fun, but where's the abiding? Where's the relationship with Jesus? Jesus isn't asking his followers to do something that he himself isn't doing Public ministry, public obedience isn't in conflict with what Jesus is teaching here. He's dealing with those core motives. Are you? Am I okay with not being seen as we do good to others?
Recently in our house, there's been a conversation about real and fake Pokemon cards. Pokemon is like a, I don't even want to explain who Pokemon is because I'll slaughter it, but there are these trading cards that exist, and some of them are real and some of 'em are fake. And even a young person values what is genuine over what is fake. And even the fake ones, to me, they look pretty good. But I've learned over the last couple of weeks that man, if it's not real, ah, it's a fake. It's not genuine. God's the same way he's looking at us and he values genuineness something that is inauthentic. Hypocritical is just living out a lie. It's an attempt to do what is right, but only imitates the authentic. A few years ago, I was working with a therapist, and one of the things, the greatest things that he taught me is there is the spirituality that masks, and there's the spirituality that reveals, and you'll find this after spending any little bit of time around Christians, you'll find that some people are using their spirituality to actually play a game and to put up a mask and to make themselves look like their spiritual, when really what's going on inside is a bunch of garbage that's really toxic, and they're using Christianity to put on an outfit or an external dressing.
And then there's other people that understand what Jesus is teaching here, the whole blessed or the poor in spirit, that they finally realize that the invitation into the kingdom is an invitation to basically be naked and unashamed in the presence of God and to be known as somebody who's broken and flawed and sinful, and you're okay. And there's this great liberation that comes from being in God's kingdom because it's not like God's beating you over the head saying, you are hypocrite. He's saying, no, I am the great surgeon. Come knowing you're a hypocrite, knowing that you're hiding sometimes, knowing that you know your own nakedness, know you know your own guilt, and I'm here to say, I've come to cover your shame. And you don't have to put on this masking anymore. You don't have to play the games anymore, and you don't need to use Christianity as your mask.
This is the place where you are free to be genuine and authentic. That's one of the reasons why in our church tradition, and there's a lot of different ways to do church and worship Jesus, but in our church tradition, we do what's called low church. So my dress this morning is casual, and that's because we feel like in the presence of God, God's okay with our common apparel. I don't have to wear some fancy hat for you to feel like I have spiritual authority as I preach. Now, I understand that in a Eastern Orthodox tradition, there's other roles that those outfits play, and it's serves probably a beautiful purpose in connecting with God and in an authentic and genuine way. It has its place. But for us, we wear these kinds of clothes to church because of this idea that God's okay with us, who we are, of where we are at, that we can be authentic and genuine in his presence.
I'll close with this quote from Keller. Now, Keller wrote this beautiful book called, actually I can't even remember the name of it. It's like a self forgetfulness, I think it's a gift of self forgetfulness. It's a little tiny book, but he says this of Soren Kier guard in his book, sickness Unto Death, Soren Kier Guard says, it is the normal state of the human heart to try to build its identity around something beside God. Spiritual pride is the illusion that we are competent to run our own lives, achieve our own sense of self-worth, and find a purpose big enough, give us meaning in life without God. Sorin Kiku guard says that the normal human ego is built on something besides God. It searches for something that will give it a sense of worth, a sense of specialness, a sense of purpose, and builds itself on that.
And of course, as we are often reminded, if you try to put anything in the middle of the place that was originally made for God, it's going to be too small. It's going to rattle around in there the invitation when Jesus says, Hey, come into my kingdom. Come be at home in my kingdom, should be this liberation that you don't have to create an identity that is triangulated off of other people's opinion, of your acts of righteousness. Because in his kingdom, you're loved, you're esteemed before you did any feeding of the poor. Before you ever prayed, he's going to say, I knew what you were going to ask. And then before you fast like He loves you, that's his invitation. There is a security and a liberation that comes with this beautiful kingdom ethic. And so this isn't just a stop being a hypocrite message from Jesus.
This is this invitation to be liberated from all the pressure and all the motivation to be a hypocrite and to realize that you're like, you're totally loved by God. You're freed up from that hypocrisy. You're secure, and He wants to establish you in that more and more and more. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for this idea that you're okay with us just in that secret place. You're okay with us not getting the applause of other people. You just receive our genuine acts of righteousness. We get to do it, and you reward us for those things that you see us doing. Lord, we pray that you would shape us more and more into being these people that the masks come off and there's this genuineness, this transparency that we're comfortable with as we serve you. Thank you, Lord for letting us be a church that does care about the poor, and some of us are poor. Lord, thank you for letting us be that church. We want to walk in these things more and more. We want to have a heart this week that's open to just caring for those that are down and out, those that are vulnerable. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Let's take communion together. The elements are there to take back to your seat. We'll continue to worship and then we'll take communion together.