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Matthew 6:1-8, 16-18 Do You Want Approval?
Matthew chapter 6, beginning verses 1 to 6, and then verses 16 to 18. Hear the word of the Lord. Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your father who is in heaven.
Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But 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, and your father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.
Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases that the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him.
And then now let's skip down to verse 16. And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, that they have received their reward.
But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your father who is in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you. May the Lord add his blessings to the reading of his holy word.
What would you do for approval? Would you pretend to agree with someone so that they would think you agree with them? Would you not say something you'd like to say because you're afraid they wouldn't approve of it?
Would you eat something that you really don't want to eat so that they think you're one of them? Would you exercise so you look better to them? Would you mow or rake your yard, not because you really care about it, but because you're afraid of what they think?
Would you buy a car to impress them? Would you dress with the primary thought, what will they think? Do you wonder often, ask yourself often, what are they saying about me? They. Are you always considering this looming, omnipresent they, what they approve of?
And if you answer no to any of those questions, is it really because you're just a self-affirming, independent individual, or because you have so absorbed social expectations that you now no longer know the difference between what you want and what they want?
Someone online answered the question, is social approval important with no. If someone doesn't approve of you, then their approval isn't important enough to consider. Okay. And in American culture, that is the socially approved way of answering the question.
As if we are always, all each of us, these individuals doing our own thing, totally separate from each other, uninfluenced by each other, before an audience of one, just ourselves, not caring about each other's opinions.
And in our culture, we're supposed to answer the question, are you concerned with social approval with no. I just do my own thing. I am my own person. After all, that's what they want us to say. They want me to say, I don't care what they say.
And if I don't, they'll disapprove of me. And I'm so desperate for their approval, the approval of them, I deny I care about them so that they will approve of me. If we answered, yes, it's important to me what others think.
It's very important what others think. I care all the time. I'm obsessed with what others think of me. If we answered that way, then here, others would not approve of us. So we have to say no, or they will think I'm weird.
We claim to be these individuals and individualists, because if we don't, the group will disapprove of us. The group demands that we claim to be individualist. So we conform by denying that we're conforming.
In reality, we usually crave for social approval. Do you really think we all just individually chose to wear blue jeans and untucked shirts and eat pizza and drink coke? You really think it's just, we just all came to that conclusion all on our own?
Or is that what we kind of do? That's the environment we're raised in and we naturally want to fit in. We're influenced by it. And because we're so intent on being approved, we like the things that gain us approval.
The jeans and the untucked shirts and the pizza and the coke. Or the nice house or the car or the political or religious opinions or even the right church. We do know, don't we, that some people choose the church they do for the social approval it will give them.
One psychologist wrote, the need for social approval is often more important than the pursuit of happiness. The reality is that for many people, the pursuit of happiness is impossible without at least some social approval.
And for some people, that urge for approval is so strong, it determines everything they do, everything they live for. They live for they. How important is it for you to be approved? Here, the Lord Jesus calls us to do our spiritual disciplines, our acts of righteousness, he calls them, to live our whole lives before an audience of one.
Not ourselves, but the heavenly father, he calls him. The passage, this passage begins with a straightforward opening statement that lays out clearly what the rest of the passage, with this parenthetical teaching on prayer in the middle of it, but the whole passage is really about, in verse one, beware of practicing your righteousness before people in order to be seen by them.
For then, you will have no reward from your father who is in heaven. Remember Jesus's challenge in the chapter 5, chapter 5 verse 20? Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
And then he tells us what to do. Here, in chapter 6, it's literally practicing your righteousness, and it's about how to do it. He warns us to beware of how we practice our righteousness, and then he gives us examples.
Beware, the Greek word is prosecco. I would assume it's where we got our English word prosecute from. Prosecutors are wary, they're looking, they're investigating. The word prosecco means to pay attention, to attend to, pay attention to, be cautious of, devote yourself to how you do your righteousness, and that righteousness should exceed that of the strictly religious.
Now, these are the spiritual disciplines Jesus is talking about, and he gives us three examples. Remember he gave us, I don't know if there's anything to it, but he gave us six examples of what we do, and here he gives us three examples of how to do it.
And he gives us these three examples, but the principle he develops with these three examples would apply to any other thing we do for the Lord, or any spiritual disciplines, our church attendance, our Bible reading, our doing chores for this building, doing things for the church, or donating anything, teaching a class for the church, or driving a vehicle, or helping someone move, a good deed for anyone, helping with the music, which we really needed today, or with Jim Jr., or even preaching on Sunday morning.
Whatever it is, you can do it for the right reason, for an audience of one, or you can do it for the wrong reason, because you want to look good to them. In chapter 5 verse 16, the Lord Jesus told us, remember, let your light shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
But then here he tells us not to do it before others. Is he contradicting himself? In one chapter, when he originally preached this, it was probably only a few minutes, disconnected. He says, let your light shine, then let me see your good works, and then a few minutes later, beware of practicing your righteousness before others.
Is he contradicting? Did he forget? No, of course not. The intention is different. We are to let our light shine, in chapter 5, not so that they may see us and glorify us, all those great people, but that seeing our good works, they glorify the Father, and here in chapter 6 verse 1, the motive is, in order that, beware that you're doing your good works, in order that, that is for the purpose of being seen by others, by them.
That's what you care about. You care about what are they going to think of me? I'm going to do this so they think I'm great. They'll prove of me. The hypocrite does what he does to get glory for himself so that people would look at and be impressed with him.
Wow, he's a holy guy. One secret here is to do your righteousness without the motivation of drawing attention to ourselves, but simply because we love the Father. How do you let your light shine when we live a life in which our giving, our praying, and our fasting is a real intimate expression of love for the Father so we are satisfied, even if no one ever knows about it?
We know God does, and that's what matters. But some, in verse 1, do their religious practices to be seen. That's the purpose of them. They would be the type that travel to go here preaching when there's a crowd there.
It's a social event. There'll be people they know there. They'll be seen. They'll be seated prominently. Maybe it's a revival when they know everyone will be expecting them there. They have Bible verses on their bumper or on their Facebook or Instagram pages at home.
They may have a big Bible on display or Bible verses on plaques on the wall for visitors to see. But when they're alone, they don't bother to actually read the Bible when there is nothing to be gained from it but just hearing the Word of God.
No one is looking and no one will know that you spent some time in Scripture. Well, then they think, I'd rather watch TV. The reward for them for the spiritual things is the social acceptance they will get.
Look at this guy's house. Every wall has a plaque of a Bible verse on it. People will see that and think they're great. They'll be greeted respectfully. It's brother so-and-so. They may even be allowed to proceed up to the front as the offertory plays in a special offering.
They place the offering on the table like it's a sacrifice in Solomon's temple. So ornate and elaborate. And if they're really on a roll, they'll get to say the prayer before or after the offering and they'll get to be seen as somebody.
And Jesus says in verses 2 and 5 and 16, that's their reward. That's all their reward. And if you wonder why there are people who have gone to services every week for decades and decades and they never seem to grow, it's because they're going to be seen.
And the Lord Jesus says here, they'll get no other reward than that. They'll get seen. That's it. They don't get any spiritual reward, any blessing. They had better enjoy that smile, that warm handshake.
Maybe they even have a special recognition Sunday when they're the recognized one. They better enjoy it that they got in church, the impression of being a saint, because that's as close to God's favor as they will get.
What will people do for approval? Well, if they're hypocrites, they'll be functional atheists. Oh, they say they believe in God. In fact, they even hardly think about God, but they function like atheists.
They act as if God did not exist. They'll make the most important holy things in the world, in their lives, and they'll take them and use them for themselves, for their glory. And we see that here in this passage in three parts, in giving, in prayer, and finally in fasting.
First, giving. Do not make a show out of your giving. C. H. Spurgeon said, to stand with a penny in one hand and a trumpet in the other is the posture of hypocrisy. They had people in Jesus' day who's giving to get approval.
They'd blow a trumpet to announce, I'm about to give, everybody pay attention. So they get a fanfare, gather the crowds, watch them drop in a big donation into the offering box. And we have the same today, maybe not in churches, most churches wouldn't do it, but we have the same today.
Rich people giving large gifts to colleges so they get their name carved in marble right in the front of the building, above the door, like Carpenter Hall. That'd be great, wouldn't it? Non-profits will promise that donors will get more glory the more they give.
If they give 50 to 100 dollars, they'll be published out there, printed somewhere, is in the bronze club, name kind of in small print, but they get a little glory. If 100 to 1 ,000 dollars, the name will be listed in bigger print as a silver donor.
Okay, now you're getting better. If 1 ,000 to 10 ,000 dollars, you're getting a name that's pretty big, gold donor. They look impressive, don't they? But best of all, and this is the ones really people pay attention to, at the top, in big letters, if you give over 10 ,000 dollars, you're a platinum donor.
And why do people do that? Why do they give? Because they want to be known as one of those people. There are scholarships and foundations named after the people who gave the money. And so giving becomes a form of advertising.
What are they advertising? They're just advertising the ego of the person. That is, of course, that's the way of the world. And really, I'm not necessarily criticizing it. It's just the way the world is.
We should be surprised by it. They'll make a show out of giving, but things should be different in God's kingdom. In God's kingdom, giving is important, but it's done for the benefit of the recipient, for the glory of God, of love for the Father, not for the performance, not for the applause, the name on the building, the picture in the paper, you know, with one of these pictures with a big check about the size of a surfboard with your name on it.
Looks impressive, doesn't it? Now, authentic giving arises from a heart transformed by grace, seeking to serve God and one's neighbor without ulterior motives. So in verse 3, we do not let our left hand know what our right hand is doing.
Our right hand is giving. The left hand doesn't know about it. Now, that doesn't mean you take this so literally that your left hand behind your back when you're giving. Somehow you got to, every time you give, put your left hand so that your left right left hand doesn't see.
No, it means to be selflessly generous, not seeking the approval from them, but do as if you really believe God saw. God knows what your right hand did, even if your left hand doesn't, and that matters most.
Give for an audience of one, for the Father, not even for ourselves, not even for the deduction. You can get the tax deduction. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. You can keep track of your giving and report it to the IRS and we'll get your tax.
That's fine. I'm not criticizing that, but that's not your main purpose. Once you've given and you want the tax deduction, that's fine. Don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. It means don't be so self-conscious because self-consciousness easily morphs into self-righteousness.
The hypocrites in Jesus' day gave for the fanfare, for the attention. Hypocrites now see, at least in the church, see that there's no fanfare, there's no attention, because we're trying to follow this passage, right?
And you know what hypocrites do with that? Remember, in Jesus' day, they would say, oh, if I give, I can get all these people pay attention to me. Now, because we're following this, we're doing our giving and mostly in secret, how does a hypocrite think?
Well, what he concludes is, I don't get anything out of it if I give. No one knows, so I'm not going to give. That's what they think. Today, the hypocrite is thinking the same. How can I get approval?
But since we've removed the ability to get recognition by giving to the church, they reveal themselves by not giving. Since they're functional atheists, they look at the offering and asking themselves, well, what can I get out of it?
They're not thinking about God. And so if we're passing the basket around like we used to, then they think, well, you need to be seeing dropping something in there. People don't know what exactly it is, but you need to be seeing your hand going and dropping.
Please don't take anything out of it. People might see that. But see, dropping something, putting something in. So they'll give a couple dollars. If we have the offering out by the front, they may not even do that.
They love to be seen. They just don't love to give. So if no one but God is going to see their giving, they think, well, why give? Only God sees it, if they even think about God. And I don't care about Him.
I'm doing it for them. And they aren't going to see it, so I'm not going to do it. Those people Jesus here calls hypocrites. The word literally means actors, right? Three times he talks about the actors, the hypocrites.
They're like actors in the theater. In other words, they're pretty good on show. They're looking like something they are not. Except here, they are acting like they're givers when they're really not. Even if they're actually giving, but they're not really givers.
They announce their big gift. Maybe they had one of those big checks printed out again, huge checks, so that photographers could take pictures of them, handing it out to the president of the community college or whatever they're doing.
They were acting the part of a giver, like an actor today. Acts like he's a war hero or acts like he's a great athlete or a great leader. But he's not. He's not really. His real identity is nothing like the war hero or the athlete or the leader that he portrays.
He may actually be a coward or he may be a wimp, but he knows how to act strong and act brave. He knows how to command attention before a camera or on a stage. And so these people are just, these people here Jesus is talking about, are just acting like they're givers.
Well, they may actually give money, especially in Jesus's day, because everyone could see how much they're giving. They may actually give money, but they weren't really givers. They're not giving because even if they're actually giving, they're not giving because they want to improve education at their college or help someone.
They want their picture in their paper. They want their name on a building. They have all this money. They got to do something with it. Or if they're in church, they want the impression that since they're a deacon, they can proceed to the front, they take the offering, that they too must be givers.
But they aren't. They're just acting, putting on a show. And the Lord Jesus says in verse 2 that they have all the reward they will ever get, that recognition they crave so much, and they acted for. That's all they get.
That's it. On the other hand, there's the non-actors. There's the real givers. Jesus says that those who really love their Father give, not because anyone will ever know about it. They give simply because they love God more than they love their money.
And they want to use their money to be a blessing. True givers like that will be rewarded. If no other reward, they're rewarded because they're givers like God. And being like God is a big reward. They gave and they give for an audience of one.
Well, here the Lord Jesus is particularly talking about giving to the needy in verses 2 and 3. That's alms for the poor that we were supposed to give to alleviate poverty. Now, today, some of the poor are substantially helped through our taxes, maybe very inefficiently, but we can still and we still should give to the needy.
Our serving food to the Jim Jr. kids we do right here on Saturdays is for many of those kids, probably most of all of them are needy, and so we're giving to them. Occasionally, the church is called to give charitably to someone with a special need around us.
I wish we had more money so we could do more of that. Got to be careful of scammers though. We don't want to give to scammers, but sometimes you get taken advantage of. That's just one thing you have to realize.
You're going to be a giver, you're going to be taken advantage of. And you know what you do? You get taken advantage of. That's it. You get used to it. And you go on. Try not to get taken advantage of the second time, because then you're hurting that person, but that's the way the world is.
But we should be able to give charitably to help people in need. That way, some of your offering money, when the church does that corporately, some of your offering money is going to do what the Lord Jesus described here, giving secretly to the poor.
We give money for the Evangelical Theological College in Ethiopia, which is not only going to help an evangelical organization and help spread the gospel there in Ethiopia, but like any money sent to Ethiopia, it helps the destitute.
I'd like us to be able to give to Ottavio if possible, who seems to be needy right now. Please give to the Gideons on your way out, who help get the Word of God out, and that transforms people's lives so they can become givers.
God can use His Word to change people. If you have needy people in your family, you should start by giving to them. Paul says that very clearly. I forget which second time I think. Anyone who does not support his own family is worse than an unbeliever and has denied the faith.
Very strongly. Our religion can never be used as an excuse to think that we're just these individuals. We have no obligation to help each other. No. We're a body and we support each other. But notice here, even with charity that is giving to the poor, the major motivation for this Christian is not simply philanthropy.
That is concern for our fellow people, for their needs, for the down and out. Well, that's good. But that's not first. That is not the root of the tree of charity. Understand? Just being a humanist, care about the impact on human beings, that is not the root of our charity.
Well, first is not our relationship with each other, but our relationship with the Father. Because we love the Father, because we're living before an audience of one, because we live as if we really believe that God is watching and we want to please him, we give.
Because we want to be like God who gave to us, we give. Now, sometimes as Paul shows in 2 Thessalonians, we may intentionally not give. We talked about this earlier in the year. Intentionally not give in order to teach lazy people that they need to work to support themselves.
If they have the job, the opportunity, they should support themselves so they aren't dependent on us and our giving. And they can get money and they can give to needy people. And sometimes the only way you could teach them that is, we're not going to give to you.
You can't eat, sorry, unless you start working. Sometimes we realize the best thing we can do for someone is to let them experience the consequences of their bad decisions. But we do that, not because we're stingy, we're selfish, we're not Ebenezer Scrooge, but because we love the Father and he wants us to help someone else, either by our giving or by our teaching them to give to themselves.
The second act of righteousness is prayer, starting in verse 5. Now why do you pray? Now if when earlier in the service I asked you to bow your heads and pray, do you do so because you really want to pray to your Father?
Or because you know that if you didn't, if you got up and walked around, maybe shot some basketball, got the pool balls out, started doing some pool, get to the kitchen, got a drink, you know we would disapprove.
Why do you participate in prayer? When you pray, Jesus says in verse 5, you must, notice the emphasis, you must not, absolutely do not be like the hypocrites. They do it for the audience and their audience is people.
And one way to tell whether you pray for the right audience is whether you pray in private. When you're alone in your bedroom, when there's no one else to see, when no one else will know, there's no social approval to be gained, then do you pray.
Or you think, I'd rather watch TV. Prayers for those who have God as their Father. He is the Father they know, that the people know and they're doing it for them in private. Now we can't really ask the unconverted to pray.
They don't have a relationship with the Heavenly Father. We can ask them to kind of bow your head and be quiet while we pray, but we can't ask them really to pray. So for example, I don't ask children who may not be Christians to pray.
I know you believe in teaching, you don't teach children to pray by just repeat this prayer or say something and we'll correct you. No. Our role as parents or leaders of children's Sunday school or Jim Jr. isn't to teach the kids how to act like a Christian.
This is how a Christian acts like he's praying. Now do this act. Literally act. Be an actor in order to please us because we're your audience. We're telling the kids when we treat them that way. And then we become the they that they're trying to win the approval of.
They can learn the part, right? We teach them. They learn their part, how to pray for us, how to put on a good show. But if they're not really converted, they don't have a heart for God. God is not their father.
They don't know him and they're not praying in private. They don't really care. Then they are what Jesus calls here a hypocrite. They're acting. And if church has only taught them to act and not that who they are needs to change, they must be bored again.
If we've just taught them that they can look good by putting something in the offering plate or saying the prayer, folding their hands just right, saying the right words. If we've only taught them how to act, we've taught them to be hypocrites.
We've put on acting lessons for them, right? We treated church like an acting lesson shop. Here's how you act like a Christian. And we've churned out hypocrites and we made them worse than they were before.
And they'll get no reward from God. You must not be like the hypocrites, Jesus says in verse 5. What they actually need is to be converted. They need to be born again. And then they're made. They have a new heart.
Then they're made into givers and into prayers. Our prayer life should be like we really believe in God. Yes, we have public prayers, but they ought to only be the tip of the iceberg of our prayer life.
We ought to live our lives as saturated in the presence of God as the fish is in water. We should pray as naturally as we breathe, as naturally as we speak to any loved one who's with us. And so go into your bedroom alone and pray.
The Father sees and He hears you alone. He will reward you in verse 6. At least and best, you'll have a relationship with the Father. That's quite a reward. How you pray matters too in verse 7. Pray authentically, not like someone who uses redundant and ancient informal phrases to address God as if you can impress Him with how lofty your verbiage is.
Of course, they're not really trying to impress God. They're trying to impress other people who are listening to the prayer, which means it's really for them, isn't it? For the people, for the audience, the they.
But prayer of all things should be for an audience of one. So we can speak to the Father naturally. Prayer is fellowship. It's not trying to impress the Lord or those who might hear you. Don't heap up empty phrases, Jesus says.
Like lead, guide, and direct. Okay, same thing. It's unnecessary synonyms. Just heaping up different words to say the same thing. Don't recite the same phrases or mantras excessively without any genuine meaning.
Just saying repeatedly like, bless this food and bless this food without real gratitude. Don't use convoluted, ornate language to impress others. Thou most holy, omnipotent, sovereign of the universe, we do now beseech thee.
No, don't do that. Don't fill your prayers with cliches or platitudes like, just bless everyone without specificity or heartfelt intention. Don't begin and end every sentence with, Father God, Father God, just bless everyone, Father God.
No, don't do that, please, our Lord. Don't think you have to fill the time like you're writing a paper for school, that you have to get the minimum word count in. Don't take two minutes to say what you can say in 10 seconds.
My usual prayer before a meal is, I thank you for this food and your goodness to me. That's it. Prayer is not informing God of something He doesn't know. Jesus says in verse 8, our Father knows what we need before we ask Him.
Sometimes it's we who don't know what we need. And so we pray and we lay before our Father our desires, maybe what we think we need, and we're seeking His will. And perhaps it will be us who learns what we really need.
Remember, this is the gospel of the kingdom that Jesus is preaching. It's the good news that the rule of God has come on earth. And when God rules over our prayers, it's not about us getting our three wishes out of God like he's a genie in a bottle, but us conforming to His will, not my will, but yours be done, our Father, as we'll see next week, who is in heaven, your will be done, your kingdom come.
And if at the end of the prayer, that is now our heart, your will be done, your kingdom come. That's a reward. We don't try to manipulate God with prayer like pagans do, using rituals, incantations, right?
The magic words to say the right thing. You say the right words, God must do the thing. Say, huck simper what a corpus. He's got to turn the bread into into flesh because that's the incantation. He's just got to do it.
Use beads, holy objects, icons. That'll help you in your prayer. It's a window into heaven. No, it's not. It's an idol. That's what it is. Our prayers are different than pagans who manipulate their gods to get out of them what they want, right?
The pagans are using God to get what they want. We come to God seeking your will be done. Instead, we come to our Father, He knowing what we need and we perhaps not. We let Him make us more like Him. And that's a big reward.
The third act of righteousness is fasting. Skipping down to verse 16, there's this parenthetical model prayer. I'll have to call the Lord's prayer after he talked about prayer. We'll look at that next week.
But for now, fasting. Fasting is simply the commitment to go for a period of time, usually a full day or part of a day, without food to deprive ourselves of the usual things that sustain us for the purpose of especially focusing on the Lord.
It's a way of reminding ourselves that if we do not, that we do not live by bread alone but by every word of God. It's a practice of self-control and a special time to focus our whole being on the Lord.
And so we do not let even a bite, not even lunch, distract us from that. Notice that the Lord Jesus says, when you fast. It's not if you fast, but it's when. So He takes it for granted that His disciples, and that includes us, that we will fast.
Christians now do not have an annual fast or monthly fast or weekly fast. Some people have fasted half a day for twice a week. You can if you want to do that. There's no scheduled fast for Christians that we have to keep.
In the book of Acts, the only time when the church fasted is when they were making crucial decisions for the future of the church, like when they were sending Paul and Silas, I think, out for missions.
They fasted. Should we do this? Should we send them out? So fasting is for special occasions when we feel the need to especially seek God's guidance or God's blessing. Maybe we're doing battle against some sin or temptation that is hounding us.
Some may want to fast as they're entering a new stage in life that the fathers will be done. Perhaps some would want to fast to pray for the conversion of their children or for a spouse or pray for revival.
In fasting, we say to ourselves and to God that this thing we're seeking, this sin I'm praying to be rid of or this person I'm praying to be saved, this ministry that we're seeking to be blessed, that this is more important than my food, than my body.
When we fast, we're to fast as though we really believed in God, as though we were really in a relationship with the Father who sees that we're skipping these meals to pray instead of to eat. He knows our hunger pangs, and we know He knows because we believe He sees and He feels with us.
It doesn't matter that no one else knows. We're not concerned about that. We don't care about that. We're seeking God's favor, God's blessing. Now then the hypocrites, those who really weren't self-denying, God-seeking disciples, they were the scribes and the Pharisees, the hypocrites, were trying to exceed their righteousness.
Now they would try to, when they fasted, which they did usually twice a week, it's a lot of fasting, isn't it? Stayed thin that way, I bet. They would try to put a... They would do it, regular, so religious, so strict, but they would do it to put on a show, to impress others.
So they would wash, perhaps they'd smear ashes on their faces. They felt miserable, so they're thinking, oh, I wanted to have breakfast. That's what they're really... They're not thinking about God, really.
That's what they're thinking about, the breakfast they missed. And they wanted others to know that they felt miserable. They didn't really, in their hearts, believe God saw and would reward them. They weren't really thinking about God at all.
They didn't really care about building up their self-control or teaching themselves that they didn't live by bread alone. That wasn't in their minds. They just wanted the reputation for being a strict, moral, religious man.
And Jesus says, once they earn that reputation, that's the only reward they will get. The Lord Jesus instead tells us that this discipline, like the others, is also an intimate, it's a private exchange between us and the Father.
No one else needs to know. It's personal. So to keep others from catching on, Jesus says, when you fast, clean yourself up nicely, look good, take your shower, wash your face, look happy, smile, so no one will know.
No one except your Father in heaven. And He will reward you. The purpose of your fasting will be achieved. God's will will come on earth, especially in your heart. And you will be happy indeed. That's a good reward.
What would you do? For approval? Well, for the hypocrite, church is only, it's a stage in which they put on their performance, singing the applause of people, their audience. The people is their audience.
God is not in their audience, they think. But once you see that God is in your audience, everything changes. What would you do? Don't you see that? For God's approval. Does going without a meal or two seem too much for His approval?
Now people in the world will deprive themselves of many meals just for the approval of other people. So they'll look good, they'll be slim, they'll appear healthy and in shape. Would you deprive yourself of as much for God's approval?
What is the audience before whom you perform your life? There's no substitute for a genuine encounter with God, a life-giving experience with God when He becomes your Heavenly Father. And you see finally that He's your audience.
And having now become a child of the Heavenly Father and a disciple of the Lord Jesus, then they don't matter so much anymore. In the end, they won't even matter at all. They won't even be around. We will be standing alone before the King, the Lord Jesus, the King of the Kingdom of God, and He will be the audience of one.
And it will only be His approval that matters. To have it then, you need it now.