Sermon Transcript
You ever feel like you have to wear a mask? You know what I mean? You feel like you have to pretend like everything’s fine on the outside when it’s not really fine on the inside, you know, to act like on the surface everything’s okay, but beneath it all, beneath the surface, things aren’t okay. Jesus taught that he came to fulfill God’s will from the Old Testament, taught not just the letter of the law, but he taught us to follow the spirit of the law as well, the thing beneath the letter of the law.
And in Matthew’s gospel, which is written for a jewish audience, Jesus is presented as the messiah, the anointed one, the Christ who is sent to give a final authority, a final authoritative teaching on God’s will. Last week we talked about, they concluded our talk on the 6th antitheses, Jesus teaching that follows the structure of you’ve heard that it was said, or you’ve heard that it was taught, but I tell you, or I say to you. And in doing so, Jesus contrasted common misunderstandings, common misinterpretations of the law with his deeper and heart focused interpretation. And so he concluded that portion of teaching by saying that we, as disciples of Christ, need to be perfect, therefore, as our heavenly Father is perfect. This week we’re going to explore Jesus teachings on the motivations behind our acts of righteousness.
Jesus emphasizes that true discipleship leads to external compliance to the law, but it requires an inner transformation of our hearts in order for us to get to that point. And so our acts of righteousness, whether it be in this case, the examples that Jesus uses, are giving to the poor or praying or fasting. They should be driven by a sincere devotion to God, not by a desire for public recognition. Jesus calls for an inner transformation that leads to genuine acts of righteousness. And so let’s explore his teaching on giving and prayer and fasting.
We’ll start in Matthew, chapter six, verse one, where Jesus says, be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your father in heaven. And so, right off the bat, Jesus addresses our religion as it takes place in public. What good, after all, is righteousness? What good is our faith if it doesn’t brush up against other people?
If we keep it to ourselves, if our beliefs and our faith, if it isn’t tested by the actions and the beliefs and the religious practices of others? Then what we know to be true is that our faith becomes undeveloped. It remains undeveloped if it’s untested and undeveloped, then ultimately this is harsh, probably to hear, but the reality is that it’s probably useless to us. The example I would use is a sword, for example, if you walk into a home, and this is not a thing that we do commonly anymore, but, you know, you could probably imagine, you know, this old home with a fireplace and a mantle, and above it, there’s, there’s this sword that’s hung decoratively, right? You’re probably not going to grab that sword if all of a sudden a medieval battle just happens to take place out in front of your home.
Right? I don’t know how often that happens to you, but. Happens to me all the time. No, just kidding. But you’re probably not going to use that sword in battle.
It’s probably decorative, it’s probably not sharp on the edge, and that would be a terrible instrument to go into the thrills of war with. Right? But you’re probably not going to want to take an actual sharpened sword that’s useful in battle and hang it above your fireplace, because if it falls down, it’s going to chop off a toe or something like that. The two are not useful for the purpose of the other, if that makes sense. One is too dangerous for one purpose and too effective at what it’s good for, and the other is ineffective completely in use of the other.
And so, to complete the analogy here, it’s the same way with our righteousness. Righteousness for show is of no use in our relationships. It’s of no use before other people. If our faith has no practice to it, what good is it? In fact, these ideas are encapsulated in the same word.
This word, dikiasune in Greek, is righteousness, and it has the use, as Jesus says in Matthew 520, for I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven. And so righteousness, as Jesus defines it, involves fulfilling God’s expectations of us, his divine expectation, not, not for human praise, but as the results of an inner transformation that happens when we experience the grace and the mercy and the love of God. Michael Wilkins explains that righteousness indicates God’s transformation of the heart, which then manifests itself externally in acts of righteousness. And so the same word is used to encapsulate the virtue of being right, of being just, of being a child of God, as the actions of a child of God. Jesus isn’t teaching that public acts of righteousness or worship are inherently wrong.
Instead, what he’s teaching, the question he’s asking us to look at, is what motivates us. What motivates our public acts of worship and prayer and generosity and fasting. What motivates us and what should motivate us is that we want to draw closer to God. And those motivations should be closely examined. The influence of the religious leaders of Jesus Day shouldn’t be missed here in the context of what Jesus is teaching, because they were the ones who would go out and they would do righteous acts.
They would do religious acts in order to gain popularity, in order to be, to be praised by people. But we should remember that God calls all of his children to righteousness and faithful living to the Lord. The law makes that clear, that righteousness is expected from God’s people, and it should not be for show. All it takes, though, for us to cross that line into hypocrisy, is to perform those religious acts for recognition, for praise, for the admiration of people, rather than for the love that we have of God, rather than the result of an inner transformation that takes place in our hearts. To put it simply, it’s necessary for our righteousness to be tested among others.
But it’s possible for that same righteousness to be put on for display. And so Michael Wilkins says, the public religious life is crucial for the development of one’s spirituality. But this arena is also hazardous, because public religious practices can be carried out primarily to be seen by people. What we learn, then, is that the reward that we need is not the praise of people, but the righteousness of the kingdom that will be finally complete in eternity. A follower of Jesus, a disciple of Jesus, sees that righteousness of the kingdom as their reward.
And that reward will be complete when Christ returns and calls us home to be with him in eternity. Jesus illustrates the importance of this through three very common things, three very common pious acts in his day. One is giving to the poor, like we said, prayer, and the other is fasting. And so Jesus says this of giving. Let’s start there, he says in verse two, so when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others.
Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full. Now, what’s Jesus talking about here? Well, poverty was rampant in the ancient near eastern world. It was an agrarian society. So if you think about it, all it took for societal stability to be lost is just one bad harvest.
And so, literally, the stability of society rested from one harvest to another on whether it was good or whether it was bad. And so the Israelites, they took this obligation to serve the poor, to meet the needs of the poor. They took it seriously and with good reason. It was almost some of that was even self serving. Because if you think about it, if all of the nation collapses under poverty in that day, who’s going to work in the fields and who’s going to make the next harvest successful?
So it was partly to their benefit that they took care of the poor as well. But they also did this out of obligation from the law. There was precedent for this. Deuteronomy 1511 says, for example, that there will always be poor in the land. That’s not a prescription.
It’s a description that God is saying, this is always going to be the case because of all the things that cause poverty. And so God said, therefore, I command you to be open handed toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land. Jesus teaches then that when we give, not if, but when we give to the needy, it should be done in secret, anonymously, not for public praise. He warns against announcing our generosity with fanfare, as the hypocrites do to gain admiration for themselves. Think about it.
How many of you like it when someone toots their own horn? Right? If you like it when people brag like, oh, I’m such a generous person. I love to give to people. Last week, here’s my ledger of all the things that I gave away to other people.
Is that a welcome thing to us or not? No, it turns people away. And Jesus says that the one who does so is a hypocrite. Now, that word hypocrites, in the Greek, it’s the greco roman world. The Greeks had play actors, and that’s what that word means.
And so Jesus is using this as an analogy, as a metaphor, as an imagery that we can wrap our minds around pretty easily. What he’s saying is that someone that goes out and with fanfare gives to the poor. What they’re doing is it’s like somebody that goes on stage to play a part in a play. And in that day, in Jesus day, actors would wear masks that would hide their identity and would help them kind, kind of get into the character that they’re playing. And so what’s Jesus saying?
What he’s saying is that going out and giving to the poor for your own recognition, that you’re just playing some role that isn’t who you really are, you’re pretending you’re a hypocrite. Because you’re not really giving out of the goodness of your heart. You’re doing it for recognition instead. For a disciple of Jesus, giving should be motivated by genuine compassion and the desire to please God, who sees what is done in secret and will reward us accordingly. And so a disciple of Jesus should be different.
Jesus teaches his disciples in verse three, when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. The real question we should ask ourselves, as the children of God and disciples of Jesus, is what motivates our acts of generosity. Are we giving out of a desire to those in need so that we can be recognized out of a desire for our own self glorification? And unless we get our motives right, Jesus says our acts of generosity are of no real value.
And if we get to the poor to receive praise of people, we will receive no reward further than that. So according to Jesus, why we do what we do matters just as much as what we do. What we learn, is that giving to the poor for the praise of people is hypocritical and won’t be rewarded by God. Jesus next turns his attention and addresses the sincerity of our prayers. He says in verse five, and when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites.
There’s that word again. For they love to pray, standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full. Jesus is getting a little bit more explicit here with what he’s saying. Prayer, again, was an integral part of the lives of pious jewish worshipers.
Throughout their day, there would be three times of prayer, typically for jews, where they would stop and they would pray morning, afternoon, and evening. And so if you imagine as you’re going throughout your day, you know there’s probably going to be a time, if it’s morning, noon and evening or morning, afternoon and evening, where that prayer time is going to intersect with some interaction you’re going to have with the public, right? So what Jesus is saying is that when you are in those public places, everything stops for that prayer time, right? And imagine the difference between someone walking along and let’s say the clock strikes noon. They didn’t have clocks back then, but let’s bring this into our times.
Let’s say you stop and the clock strikes noon, silently pray. Or you could stop and draw attention to yourself. The clock strikes noon and hey, everybody stop what you’re doing. It’s time to pray. All right, everybody pray with me.
Lord, we want to come to you right now and just make everyone know how awesome we are, right? That’s basically what you’re doing, right? Just drawing attention to yourself just loudly in front of other people. Or imagine we came into church and if all of our prayers like, okay, let’s bow our head for prayer, for communion. Lord, do you see the problem here?
What Jesus is saying is not prohibiting public prayer, just like he’s not prohibiting giving to the poor.
That would violate portions of the law, in fact. And it would actually contradict what Jesus has taught elsewhere and what he’s going to teach later. The point is the motivation of the heart has to be right. That’s the real focus here. In fact, next week we’re going to dive deeper into the Lord’s prayer and think about how the Lord’s prayer starts.
Our Father in heaven. And so Jesus isn’t against corporate prayer. He’s not against praying publicly. He’s against praying in a way that draws undue attention to us, when in reality prayer, the purpose of prayer is to draw our attention to God. And that’s why we pray, to turn our eyes, our hearts, our minds to God.
And that’s what Jesus is teaching here. It’s a matter of the heart and to this teaching on the outward motivation of our prayer. So our prayer should not be motivated outwardly to receive the praise of people, but inwardly our prayer should be motivated with the trust of God. Jesus says in verse seven, and when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him.
And so in Jesus day, the Gentiles, that’s this word here that’s translated, pagans. Throughout the Gospel of Matthew. The word is ethnikoi and it just means nations. Other people other than Jews, right, they believed that they had the ability to manipulate their gods. They were polytheistic, and they believed that if they just did the right incantations or they just did the right rituals, that they could make their gods acquiesce to them, to give in to their desires through endless rituals and meaningless incantations, repetitions.
And honestly, that’s not too unlike what some people do today with the God of the Bible, what they try to do. Some people think that they can manipulate God into giving them what they want, but you can’t manipulate God to meet your requests. And trying to do so is foolishness. And so there’s no magical mix of words that you can say to control God. There’s no formula, there’s no ritual to prayer that makes God hear you any more or any less.
God is always ready to listen. He’s always there. He knows what you need even before you ask for it. He’s always aware of what’s going on in your world. And so what we learn from Jesus is that coming to God in prayer should happen with a sincere heart, a focused heart, ready to ask for what we need and to receive whatever the father’s will is for our lives.
Jesus instructs that prayer should be private, sincere, in communication with God, not a public display to gain attention. And so he criticizes those who pray loudly in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Instead, he encourages us to pray in a private space. Now, most jewish people on that day didn’t have an inner room, an actual inner room. So again, this is probably metaphorical, what Jesus is saying here, just like he’s saying, don’t blast trumpets when you get to the poor.
He’s probably focusing us here on our relationship with God and how we focus our hearts in prayer, because God knows what we need even before we ask again. The Lord’s prayer, which we’ll explore more deeply next week, is centered on expressing our desires and our needs and our dependence upon God to him, from everything from the order of the universe all the way down to even our daily needs for food.
Finally, Jesus speaks about the true motivation behind fasting. But before we get there, I got a question for you. What is a billionaire who gives to the poor and a preacher who’s been fasting have in common? They’re both going to tell you about it, right? Sorry, little joke on preachers there.
I can do that because I am one. Jesus says in verse 16, when you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others their fasting. Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full. The law of Moses only requires one fast a year. For the Israelites, it’s on the day of atonement, which we read first in the levitical law.
And so Jesus is again not prohibiting fasting any more than he was prohibiting giving to the poor or praying. Instead, what he’s doing. The law requires a fast once a year. And so Jesus is saying that the desire of our heart needs to be recognized. The command from Leviticus of fasting on the day of atonement is to deny yourself.
And it’s not just a command to abstain from food. It means that we demonstrate a humbling of our soul by wearing sackcloth and mourning and praying. And so these are metaphorical ways. These are ways that the Israelites, in their appearance, would change their appearance to show that they were mourning either a personal loss or the loss caused by sin. And so pious Jews in Jesus times, sometimes fasted for other reasons.
They were added to the day of atonement. In Jesus day, people would fast in preparation for significant life events. They would fast while they were mourning, or even to discern God’s leading both during personal and public and national tragedies.
Jewish culture had no prescription for fasting, as we would think of it as a diet or weight loss. And so we have to be careful not to read our culture into their culture, not to spiritualize things that the Bible doesn’t say are spiritual. And also notice here that Jesus doesn’t prohibit fasting, nor does he mandate it in any way. Just as with giving to the poor in prayer, though, Jesus assumes that his disciples will fast. He says, when you fast.
And he assumes these things about his disciples because he knows that generosity and prayer and fasting, that these are all important and valuable, spiritual, that when they’re done out of pure motivation, that they will lead us closer to the heart of God if they’re done with that in mind. But that’s not how the religious leaders of Jesus day practice fasting. They would disfigure their faces. They would put ashes on their foreheads. They would sometimes tear their clothing so that people would know that they were mourning.
They’d make big shows out of their prayers and their fasts. And that’s not how it’s supposed to be with Jesus disciples. And so in verse 17, Jesus says, when you fast, put on your head, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you’re fasting, but only to your father, who is unseen, and your father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. To where the hypocrites went to great lengths to disfigure their appearance, to make it known to other people that they were fasting. Jesus says that his disciples should go to equally great lengths to hide the fact that they’re denying themselves for their faith.
In this way, only God will see that they are fasting and reward them. What Jesus emphasizes here is that fasting should be done discreetly and sincerely, not to show off our piety, he criticizes those who disfigure their faces to make their fasting obvious. And instead, he instructs us to maintain our appearance so that our fasting remains between us and God. What we learn is the value in fasting is in the spiritual reward that only God can give. And so, in summary, Jesus provides for us guardrails guidelines it’s like the white lines on the road when it comes to our spiritual acts of righteousness, what Jesus is teaching us here is like, you know what I’m talking about?
There’s a line on one side that says, hey, keep it on the road, kid, or you’re going to end up in the ditch. Right? And on the other side, there’s the solid lines of the dashes that says, keep it on that side, kid, or you’re going to go into oncoming traffic. Right? And so our job as disciples is to keep it between the lines, keep it on the road.
That’s what Jesus is teaching us, that acts of righteousness on one side are the result of a grateful heart to God for taking away our sin. They’re acts of love that draw us closer to God, that invite us to live as a part of his kingdom, and they will inevitably be done before other people. That’s not what Jesus is teaching against. It’s inevitable that your righteousness is going to brush up against other people. That’s just going to happen.
It should happen. It’s beneficial that it happens. But on the other side, the other line is our acts of righteousness should not pass into the realm of hypocrisy. We shouldn’t be doing these things for the recognition and the praise and the commendation of other people. That’s not the purpose of them.
And we’re going to receive no reward beyond that praise. We’re going to receive nothing of eternal value from acts of righteousness. Or another way to say, this is our spiritual disciplines, praying and worshiping and giving and all those things. We receive no value from doing those things for the praise of others. Our job as followers of Jesus then, is to keep it on the road, keep it between the white lines.
And that can be hard. It can be difficult to live out this teaching of Jesus. After all, we have to ask ourselves, where do our motivations lie and apart from Christ? The motivations of our hearts are corrupt, and that’s the very thing that Christ came to change in us, to transform in us is our hearts first. So Jesus criticism here is for the inner corruption, the inner hypocrisy, the sinful disease of self glorification.
And that corruption seeks a reward from the attention of people. It seeks to be honored and placed on a pedestal above other people. It seeks positions of power. But that’s exactly what Jesus came to change about us, is that self seeking heart. When we act intentionally out of those mixed motives, instead of according to the teachings of Jesus, we’re acting contrary to the will of God.
And so therefore, we’ve received the only reward we ever will for those kinds of actions. So how do we avoid that? I want to give you some practical steps that you can take, three things, in fact, that you can do in your life, in your inner world, in order to avoid these mixed motivations, in order to practice your acts of righteousness, your spiritual disciplines, in a way that is honoring and pleasing to God, in which he will reward you eternally. For we do that, first of all, through an inner transformation. I’ve just been talking about that acts of righteousness should stem from a heart that’s transformed by God’s love and gratitude for his salvation.
Do we recognize the difference that Jesus has made in our lives? Do we recognize that Christ has transformed us and what we would be without him? And if we understand that, shouldn’t we be grateful to God for his loving transformation? The second thing is that we need to seek wisdom. We do that through desire to live wisely, through the guidance of God’s word and through the prayer that we seek God in through the power of the Holy Spirit.
And that helps us avoid the trap of self righteousness and self glorification when we go to God and we ask him to examine our motivations. And finally, we desire eternal rewards, not earthly ones. Our ultimate motivation should be to please God and to seek an eternal reward, not an earthly recognition. And that focus helps us practice spiritual disciplines sincerely and know that God sees it and that we will be rewarded by God who knows what’s done in secret. Complete holiness and eternal life is in the presence of God our father.
That is the ultimate goal, that is the ultimate destiny of all who are in Christ. And so we have to be cautious here, of course, that we’re not just living for the reward of our faith, but that’s what we’re seeking. Ultimately, Harold Hohner says, believers motivation in this life should not be the obtaining of rewards as an end in itself. Our motivation should be to please God wholeheartedly in gratitude for what he has done for us through Christ. Ronald Dahl, in his book motives and motivation, says, the worthiest of motives are directed vertically in an effort to give gratitude, obedience, and honor to God, and then horizontally, in the quest of the spiritual welfare and also the physical and material welfare of one’s fellow man.
So we should seek to keep our motivations in balance. It’s essential to following Jesus that we do. And ultimately, it’s a love of God, not the praise of people, that should motivate our hearts to be devoted to God in righteous living. What we learn is, and if you’re going to take anything away from today’s message, it should be this, that God’s children love their heavenly Father more than the praise of people. Spiritual disciplines are there to help us grow in our walk with Jesus.
And Jesus expects us to give to the poor. He expects us to fast. He expects us to pray and to practice these other spiritual disciplines, but he expects us to do it out of a sincere heart. We can assume that Jesus also taught his disciples on other spiritual disciplines. In a similar way, we know for sure that the gospels don’t record every word of Jesus, but the principle behind his teaching and the sermon on the mount applies to every area of our lives.
Practicing spiritual disciplines with the right motivations is what we should be called to do. Neglecting to live righteousness at all is dangerous. As James says, faith by itself, if not accompanied by actions, is dead. And so acts of righteousness or spiritual disciplines don’t gain our entry into the kingdom of heaven. But they will teach us to live more deeply in a relationship with Jesus.
They’ll help make that internal transformation of our hearts visible externally, the part of the quest to obey Jesus commandment, to be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. And so what are some other examples? I want to give you some tools here from two great teachers. When I think about spiritual disciplines, the two names that I think of most are Richard Foster and Dallas Willard, two great men and two great teachers of the faith. Richard Foster wrote celebration of discipline, and he suggests these three sets of disciplines, inward, outward, and corporate.
He says inward disciplines are meditation, prayer, fasting, and study. Outward disciplines are simplicity, solitude, submission, service. Corporate disciplines are confession, worship, guidance, and celebration. We’re going to put those up on the screen if you want to take a picture of that. We’ll leave that up there for a second.
And these are just ways that we can practice these acts of righteousness before others, as long as they’re motivated by a pure heart and not for praise of people. The second one is Dallas Willard, and in his book the Spirit of the disciplines, he gives two categories of disciplines, disciplines of abstinence are like solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, and sacrifice.
Lord suggests the second category of disciplines of engagement, like study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, submission. And so these are all ways for us to practice our righteousness externally, for us to live lives that are obedient to God and Jesus. Again, remember, Jesus is not saying that we shouldn’t live out righteous lives. What he’s pointing to and what’s as equally dangerous as not living righteous lives is what he’s teaching his disciples here. That we start, if we start to do acts of spiritual disciplines, acts of righteousness, with the motivation of being seen and praised by people, or to simply fulfill some duty or to check off some list, that we will receive no reward for it.
And so in all of these things, Jesus is our example. He lived a perfect life of righteousness devoted to God. Donald Whitney states, the Lord Jesus not only expects these disciplines of us, he modeled them for us. He applied his heart to discipline. He disciplined himself for the purpose of godliness.
If we’re going to be christlike, we must live as Christ lived, in every area of our walk with Jesus. We must ask ourselves, what is motivating our hearts? What is the purpose behind what I do? And eventually our actions are going to reflect what’s really at work in our hearts. If we’re seeking praise, eventually the mask is going to come off.
Eventually what’s really at stake in our hearts is going to be made. Evidently, Jesus brings us, though, an inside out transformation. So we develop an inside out mentality when it comes to righteousness, that the spirit produces growth in our hearts, and that spiritual growth leads us to external spiritual acts. So what does that motivation look like? How do we live that out?
Again, I want to give you three ways to do that. First of all, we live out righteousness. We ensure that our internal motivations align with our external actions. We take the masks off, live out the righteousness that Jesus brings into our lives by letting our good deeds glorify God, not bring us praise. Second thing is, we avoid legalism and elitism.
We recognize that all followers of Jesus are on the same journey. We all walked in here today as sinners in need of a savior. It’s been said that the ground at the foot of the cross is level. There are no pedestals there. We all need Jesus just the same, regardless of how long we’ve been a believer.
And so we need to avoid creating some sense of superiority or legalism. We need to focus on genuine passion for our relationship with Jesus instead of an outward appearance. Finally, we need to practice spiritual disciplines privately. We need to engage in spiritual disciplines like giving and prayer and fasting with sincere hearts. We need to do these acts privately and anonymously whenever possible and seek to deepen our relationship with God rather than seeking the recognition of others.
Are you wearing a mask? Are you ready to take it off? Are you ready for the inside to match the outside and vice versa? Balancing our motivations it requires a lot of wisdom from God, and we can seek that wisdom from our Father in heaven because he loves us and he is generous to us. As we look next week at the Lord’s prayer, we’re going to see that it’s centered on the provision of every good thing that we need from God, that he knows our every need and that he wants us to submit to his will, depending on his provision.
And we’ll receive all that and more in righteousness as we live in his presence both now and into eternity.