Matthew 6: 1-4, November 10, 2024

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So this week, what we're gonna do is we're gonna start on a new section in the Sermon on the Mount.
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But as you know, I like to do, before we move on, before we head into what's new, let's take just a couple of steps back and do a quick overview of what we've seen or where we've been so far.
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And I think this is really important for us to do because I've pointed out several times as we've gone through, particularly the
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Sermon on the Mount, how these teachings are building on each other. You need the foundation of some of the earlier teachings.
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So reviewing the concepts that we've already talked about gives us, hopefully, a greater appreciation for a couple of things.
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It should give us a greater appreciation for the divinely inspired nature of Scripture, and particularly the order in which these things are presented, the order in which these principles are presented to us.
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And every set of verses that we go through, for me personally, it just deepens my appreciation for the structure of the
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Sermon on the Mount, but for the structure of Scripture as a whole. As somebody who spends time putting words together, oh, that I would be able to do it in such an orderly, logical fashion.
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This is so amazing to me. And it would also be a shame for us, as we go verse by verse, to miss out on the intricate way that Scripture interacts with itself, the way it connects with itself, the way it reaches back to the
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Old Testament or even to earlier verses to help interpret itself.
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And this shows us something. It shows us the foolishness that is trying to take a single verse and use it to build a principle of any kind.
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Because when you take a single verse out of its context, you run the risk of missing a tremendous amount of its meaning.
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You run the risk of sending yourself down the complete wrong path in trying to live your life as a
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Christian, because you really have to understand all of these things together. You have to understand the way they work, the way they interpret each other.
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So with that, let's review what we've covered in the Sermon on the Mount so far. Starting at the beginning of chapter five in verses three through 11, we have the
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Beatitudes, a list of character attributes that result in God's blessing.
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These are the ways that a Christian is expected to live in the world. We see that a
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Christian should be poor in spirit. A Christian should mourn for their sin. Christians should be lowly.
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Christians hunger and thirst for righteousness. Christians show mercy.
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Christians are pure of heart. Christians are peacemakers.
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And even after all of those things have been shown in your life, Christians are expected to suffer persecution for the very things that sound like such a wonderful way to treat another person.
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Verses 13 through 20 give us a high -level overview of what these characteristics, what the
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Beatitudes look like in practice, how we are to be salt and light, salt of the earth and light of the world.
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Within those verses, Jesus also preemptively addresses the idea that he's somehow changing the meaning of Scripture, because in this teaching, he's about to correct a number of just incorrect ideas that have been taught by the
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Pharisees. These don't represent a new gospel or a new
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Scripture. They represent a correction of things that have been corrupted by those teachers.
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Then in verses 21 through 48 of chapter five, we go into greater detail, fleshing out at what it practically looks like on a granular level to live as a
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Christian and to highlight the lifestyle that comes out of the
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Beatitudes naturally. Now, a big chunk of these deal with the way that people interact with other people on a personal level, our relationships and interactions.
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If you recall, one of the overarching themes was the idea of following the spirit of the law instead of just sticking strictly to the literal letter of the law.
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And what we see from that concept is it truly comes down to a heart issue and an issue of obedience to the commands of Scripture when individuals try to do this.
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Another big theme in that section is the idea of denying yourself. Now, this is the idea that in our personal relationships and in our interactions, we're not to place the highest value on our own reputation or on our own security, our own comfort, our own possessions, our own freedom.
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We're not to place those things even over the same attributes of other people, just because that's something that makes us feel better.
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Practically lived out, it looks this way. When somebody insults us, for example, we're not to go on and on, letting everyone know how offended we are, making sure everybody knows how we've been wronged by this situation.
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Not to stew on it and dwell on why we aren't being given the things that we deserve from other people.
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But instead, we're to forgive others.
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We're to show the forgiveness that Christ has shown us, which is the true meaning of turning the other cheek to someone.
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In that section, verses 21 through 48, closes with an exhortation, just to wrap all of this stuff up, with an exhortation to love our neighbor as ourselves.
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Included in that is the recognition that everyone is our neighbor, particularly those that are in need.
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But if we look at one thread, one thing that connects all of this stuff together so far, something that connects all of these attitudes, actions, decisions, behaviors, we come back to Matthew 5 .3,
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blessed are the poor in spirit, and we recognize the fact that the
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Christian has been given a gift that they can't earn. This is the foundation for all of it.
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This is where it begins. It may not be where it ends, but it's absolutely where it all starts.
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That poverty of spirit is the humility to recognize that we've been forgiven, that we've been given salvation in a way that we can never earn.
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And as this is the case, this gift of forgiveness of sins, sins, by the way, that are much worse than anything that anyone has done to you.
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When we live our lives in light of this principle, we realize that it would be unchristian not to extend that same grace to other people, and that includes your enemies, and that includes the people that are persecuting you.
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Ephesians 4, 31 through 32 says this. Let all bitterness and anger and wrath and shouting and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.
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Instead, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, graciously forgiving each other, just as God and Christ also has graciously forgiven you.
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So with this, we could say that it would even be hypocritical not to forgive other people the way that you've been forgiven.
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And we'll get into the idea of hypocrisy and particularly religious hypocrisy in just a little bit, although it'll be in a slightly different context.
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I will acknowledge that each and every one of these things is profoundly difficult, goes very much against our human nature to do, and if we were to try to do it under our own power it would probably take more effort than most of us are capable of.
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We can do it for a little bit, but to sustain it as a lifestyle under our own power is probably impossible.
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I shouldn't say probably, it's impossible. To even begin to move in this direction is only possible through the power of the
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Holy Spirit. It's only possible through that change in your heart that comes through salvation. So again, these are principles for Christians.
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These are principles for people that call themselves Christians. And when someone calls himself a
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Christian and lives very much in opposition to some of these things, it certainly raises questions or it raises red flags on our head.
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But this is how we, so let me say this also. I just said that when people don't act this way it raises red flags, but it's more important for us to assess our own lives in light of these beatitudes than it is to go out looking at other people's lives and how well they're keeping up with it.
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If we all focus on ourselves, we all focus on our attitudes and our behaviors, that would make things better in a lot of ways, much quicker than trying to fix other people.
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But if we were to attempt to sum up everything that we just covered or that we've covered so far in the
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Sermon on the Mount, in one word, even though that one word makes it hard to do justice to all these concepts, the one word could be righteousness.
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So in the preceding cases, it's righteousness in your personal relationships, it's righteousness in your personal dealings, your personal interactions.
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But now we're gonna move on and shift our focus to something else. Righteousness is still very much present, righteousness is still our focus, but now we're looking at righteousness and how it relates to our conduct before God.
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So today, we're in Matthew chapter six and we're looking at verses one through four.
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So if you will, turn in your Bibles with me to Matthew chapter six, verses one through four.
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In these verses, our Lord says, beware of doing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them.
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Otherwise, you have no reward with your father who is in heaven. Therefore, when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets so that they may be glorified by men.
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Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving will be in secret and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
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Now again, we're into a new section. Set of verses that we're gonna be in for the next few weeks is, they're all related again to our conduct before God.
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And what verse one is serving to do is set the stage with an overarching principle that will guide us through this section.
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The examples that Jesus is going to give us are all examples of the way that we practice righteousness before God.
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We'll be looking at the concept of giving today. But Jesus also addresses prayer and fasting.
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But a common theme is connecting all of these examples. And that common theme or the common thread here is that giving, prayer, and fasting are all forms of religious righteousness that we practice before God.
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And they're all, as forms of things that we practice, they're all subject to corruption due to our sinful nature.
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They're all subject to corruption in the form of hypocrisy. So when
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I say religious hypocrisy, that probably brings all kinds of different things to mind, different things for a lot of different people.
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But we have to keep something in mind. A lot of people call things religious hypocrisy that are not religious hypocrisy.
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So it's common for non -Christians, and not just non -Christians, but it's common for Christians who are dedicated to a particular sin.
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Christians who are still entrapped or ensnared in a particular sin that they kind of wish to be excused for.
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And we're going high -level vague. We're not getting specific on examples right now. But people will say something along the lines of Christians are supposed to love their neighbor, but they told me that my sin was wrong, and I didn't feel like that was loving.
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Again, this is a summary of about a billion different things that you'll come across in your life.
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Christians are supposed to love their neighbor, but they told me that I was sinning.
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And that is not religious hypocrisy. In fact, that's quite in line with what
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Jesus would have had us do to love our neighbor. It's not to judge their sin, but it's also not to excuse their sin as well.
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People love the woman at the well. People love to bring up the woman at the well. Jesus did not spend a whole bunch of time haranguing her about her sin.
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He certainly brought it up. And when the crowd wanted to stone the woman, he pointed out their hypocrisy, but then told her to go and sin no more.
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This is the message for all of us. We all sin, other people sin, but we don't want people to stay in those sins.
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We don't want people to live in those sins. So we do have to tell other people sometimes what the truth of Scripture is, particularly when they're living in ways that are in just complete violation of that.
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And that's particularly true for our brothers and sisters in Christ. So it's not hypocrisy to lovingly point out someone's sin.
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But another form of religious hypocrisy is one that we see all the time, and it's one that's far more common.
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And that's the idea of doing a religious act, a religious practice, performing even a good deed for the purpose of simply appearing religious, or for the purpose of making people think that we're a good
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Christian. I mean, this could be as simple as coming to church just so people believe that you're a
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Christian and not truly dedicating your life to these principles. And the reason this is important is because this is what's being addressed with the scribes and Pharisees.
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So in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is constantly criticizing the scribes and Pharisees because they were the absolute, just consummate masters of religious hypocrisy.
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They were skilled beyond just about anyone else at performing public actions to appear to be pious, or to make people think that they were more holy than they were.
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They loved to do this stuff in public because it made people respect them.
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It made the regular synagogue goers respect them. It made other religious leaders respect them.
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However, the majority of the time, these things were performed in public for the sole purpose of being seen.
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Now, the scribes and the Pharisees, they were hardly the first religious hypocrites that we've ever seen.
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And obviously, they're far from the last religious hypocrites that we're ever going to see. You see this throughout
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Scripture. Probably the first example in Scripture comes in Genesis with Cain and Abel.
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It's summed up in Genesis 4, 5, but for Cain and his offering, he, God, had no regard.
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Now, there's not a lot of context there. It's just one verse, and I know that sounds a little vague, but Hebrews 11, 4 helps us shed a little more light on that.
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Hebrews 11, 4 says, by faith, Abel offered to God a better offering than Cain, through which he was approved as being righteous,
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God approving his gifts. And what this is speaking to is not the actual content of Cain's offering that was not pleasing to God.
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It was Cain's heart. And we see this because just a few verses later, he murders his brother.
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God is not interested in our actions, our deeds, our offerings, our sacrifices.
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If they're not coming from a pure heart, if they're not coming from a place of worship to him, he doesn't care about the show.
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He cares about the motive, the intention, the fact that it is actual worship for what he's done.
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Turning back to our history of religious hypocrisy, Judas was probably the greatest hypocrite that Scripture has ever known.
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Whatever acts of righteousness he performed in carrying out his ministry, and they may have been great, we don't know.
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Judas could have been looked at as a really amazing apostle. But in the light of the
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Gospels, we now know that he didn't believe any of it. How could he possibly believe in it if he sold his
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Lord and Savior to those that killed him? Now, this was obviously all part of God's plan, but it shows that Judas wasn't thoroughly acting out of pure heart motives.
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And this remains the case in the church today. People show up, they do a variety of good things, amazing things, give, give generously, even if they don't really believe.
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Sometimes people just wanna be thought to be religious, and I know it doesn't make a lot of sense. And I hope that you hear me say this, and you're like, well,
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I don't know anybody like that. Praise God, I hope that you don't. One final example of this idea of hypocrisy or giving in order to be seen, or giving because it's what everyone else does, or so that people will think you're righteous, it comes in Acts chapter five, verses one through 10.
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Acts five, one through 10. Let's just read through this. But a man named
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Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold a piece of property, and kept back some of the price for himself with his wife's full knowledge.
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And bringing a portion of it, he laid it at the apostles' feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why has
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Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit, and to keep back some of the price of the land?
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While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your authority?
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Why is it that you laid this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men, but to God.
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And as he heard these words, Ananias fell down and breathed his last, and great fear came over all who heard.
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And the young men rose up and wrapped him up, and after carrying him out, they buried him. Now there was an interval of about three hours, and his wife came in, not knowing what had happened.
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And Peter responded to her, tell me whether you were paid this much for the land. And she said, yes, that much.
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Then Peter said to her, why is it that you have agreed together to put the spirit of the Lord to the test? Behold, the feet of those who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out as well.
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And immediately she fell at his feet and breathed her last, and the young men came in and found her dead, and they carried her out and buried her beside her husband.
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And great fear came over the whole church and all who heard these things. Now, why would they do this?
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I mean, we see in the verses before that people were, this is exactly what people were doing.
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They were selling everything that they had out of gratitude for what they now learned was the sacrifice made for them through Jesus.
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They were giving to those that were in need. Now we can assume based on the context and based on this story that the people earlier who were giving were giving simply to worship
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God. Ananias and Sapphira were slightly less well -motivated, but they wanted to participate.
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They wanted to be seen as part of the crowd, but they didn't wanna quite give up all of it. So they held part of it back.
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Again, it's not that they didn't give enough. It's that they lied about giving it all, trying to keep some of it for themselves while appearing pious.
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This is the heart of the religious hypocrisy that we're talking about. Throughout Scripture, we read of God's desire for worship to be done sincerely and from a place of genuine gratitude.
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And if we go back to the Beatitudes, pure in heart. Of course,
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John 4, 23 and 24 says this, but an hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the
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Father in spirit and truth. For such people, the Father seeks to be his worshipers.
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God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. But it goes back long before the
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Gospel of John. Throughout Scripture, we see that God cares nothing, absolutely nothing for the pomp and circumstance of religious ceremony when it's not genuine.
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We see this in places like Isaiah 1, 10 through 15. Isaiah 1, 10 through 15.
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Hear the word of Yahweh, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah.
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What are your multiplied sacrifices to me? He says, Yahweh. I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle, and in the blood of bulls, lambs, or goats,
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I take no pleasure. When you come to appear before me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts?
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Bring your worthless offerings no longer. Incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath, the calling of convocation.
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I cannot endure wickedness in the solemn assembly. My soul hates your new moon festivals and your appointed times.
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They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. So when you spread out your hands in prayer,
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I will hide my eyes from you. Indeed, even though you multiply prayers,
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I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood. We see a similar idea in Micah 6, six through eight.
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Verse eight is a verse that everyone loves. We have to look at all the contexts. Micah 6, six through eight.
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With what shall I come before Yahweh and bow myself before the God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with yearling calves?
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Is Yahweh pleased with thousands of rams, with 10 ,000 rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
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He has told you, oh man, what is good. And what does Yahweh require of you but to do justice, to love, love, and kindness, and to walk humbly with your
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God? The people of Israel were doing all manner and variety of things that were completely against God's law, completely against the will of God.
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But they thought that bringing offerings, having ceremonies, all the religious pomp and circumstance, the religious dog and pony show, they thought that would be enough to overcome the fact that in every other aspect of their lives, they were completely betraying
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God. And he tells them that he does not want that worship that's not coming from a pure heart.
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Returning to the New Testament, Jesus is constantly warning the Pharisees, constantly criticizing the
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Pharisees for their endless list of rules and ceremonies, all the stuff that they did, designed to give the appearance of that religious piety, yet being done with impure hearts.
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He called them whitewashed tombs, he called them wolves, he called them tares among the wheat, and all this is to say that the point of this, any act of Christianity that is done to attract attention, rather than simply to be an act of genuine worship, anything that's done to get kudos from people, congratulations from people, or anything like that, is religious hypocrisy.
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This is the hypocrisy that we're talking about. As we move into verse two, we begin with our first practical example of how something good, the practice of giving, can be corrupted and made worthless before God through impure motives.
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So verse two says, therefore when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be glorified by men.
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Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. So again, this verse is dealing with giving, almsgiving, giving to the poor.
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This is the idea that we're looking at. Now one of the interesting implications of this verse is the fact that giving to the poor was just assumed.
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It wasn't something he's teaching them to do. There's no need for this teaching. It was expected. This was already something that was going on.
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So I guess to the credit of this culture, this is what they were doing anyway. This was part of God's law.
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And even people who weren't followers of Jesus were still doing this. They were still participating and caring for the needy.
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And this continues today. Again, we've said before, it's not simply giving that makes you a
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Christian, because we all know people that are not Christians that are very generous and give to all kinds of causes.
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They give way more than some of us can give. But this is even more so for followers of Jesus.
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If we look briefly back into the Old Testament, we see that this idea of caring for others was always expected.
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But more important, it's a delight to God. Leviticus 25, 35 says this.
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Now, if a brother of yours becomes poor and his means with regard to you falter, then you are to sustain him like a sojourner or a foreign resident that he may live with you.
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And when a slave was freed, Deuteronomy 15, 13 through 14 addresses this.
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When you let him go to be free from you, you shall not let him go empty -handed. You shall furnish him generously from your flock and from your threshing floor and from your wine vat.
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You shall give to him as Yahweh your God has blessed you. So that's a principle that continues with us to this day.
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You're to give to someone the way God has blessed you. All that to say, this is what people were expected to do.
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And this is probably what they were doing. The idea of giving alms, giving to the needy, showing mercy to other people.
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But as we've already discussed, there's a right way to do it and there's a wrong way to do it.
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Now, in that verse, Jesus engages in a little bit of hyperbole or a little bit of a ridiculous kind of example to describe what he calls the hypocrites.
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When he says that you shouldn't sound a trumpet so that everyone knows about your giving. Now, there's no historical documentation that there was actually trumpets blown in the synagogue when people gave.
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That's not something that actually happened. So he's using just a little bit of absurdity to kind of drive the point home here.
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What he's saying here is basically, or what he's doing here is basically mocking these people who are seeking attention, who are wanting to make sure that everybody knows what they've given.
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They wanna make sure that everybody knows about the good deeds that they're doing. And in our day, this is probably even easier.
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So that kind of metaphorical trumpet is much easier for us to blow with stuff like social media available.
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And it reminds me of a friend of mine who while hopefully, probably well -meaning did exactly this kind of thing.
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And this is another one of those situations where I'm gonna be as vague as possible because I don't wanna identify this person because we all make mistakes.
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But what they did was they posted on their Facebook page, this was a few years back, about how on a regular basis, they passed a homeless person on the way to work at their church and how they stopped and got them food, got them coffee, stopped and hung out and went on to relay the story of how grateful that person was to them.
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And that person told them how much they appreciated it and how nice it was.
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I mean, again, this is the person telling the story about himself. And then we go on to this is how you can show the love of Jesus to other people with the subtext being the way
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I do. And that might get you a bunch of likes on Facebook, but there's a much greater danger to this that we'll look at very soon.
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But this danger exists in a lot of other places as well. If you're donating to get your name on something, that brick in the building or that plaque on the wall or your name on the website, that kind of thing.
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You have to be careful of your motives when you do this kind of thing. And Jesus explains why in this verse.
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He says that if you do these things or you use these acts which are undeniably good, helpful and useful, but if you do them to be glorified by men, then you will have received your reward in full.
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Now, I hope that we're all in agreement that no amount of good works, no amount of charitable giving, no amount of being nice to other people is ever gonna help you earn your salvation.
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That's not what this is about. This is about living that holy, righteous lifestyle that comes, that is an outworking of the free gift of salvation.
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These kind of acts are to be the evidence of, not the cause of your salvation.
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And we see that this type of thing is required of Christians. Even just in what we've covered in Matthew so far.
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Matthew 5, 7 said, "'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.'" This is a huge part of mercy is caring for others.
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And Matthew 5, 42 says, "'Give to him who asks of you, and do not turn away from him who wants to borrow from you.'"
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This is the way that a Christian lives, but this is the way that a Christian lives, not out of obligation, not out of duty, not out of a checklist, but out of joy and gratitude.
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So always go back to the Beatitudes to be reminded of this. Always go back to the
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Beatitudes to be reminded about why these things are the natural outworking of your gratitude to God.
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And also remember this, when you do good, when you show mercy, when you give to him who asks, it doesn't matter who sees it.
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And we'll get to that in verse four. But having discussed the fact that our giving to the needy is not to be done for the approval of other people, and that we are not to seek that approval by sounding a trumpet or drawing attention to ourself or publicizing our good deeds, we have to now briefly look at a principle that's far more challenging.
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In verse three, which says, "'But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.'"
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And I would suggest that this one is a lot harder. It's a lot harder for me. I fall prey to this idea because it goes against my natural instincts as well.
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So here's the idea. Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. The idea is that you shouldn't be keeping an internal record or an internal tally of the good deeds that you do for anyone.
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And there's a variety of reasons for that. Or well, for a variety of reasons, whether it's your personality, your motivations, the opportunity, or whatever, it's easy to avoid making a public spectacle of giving, but it's much harder not to be self -satisfied over what you've done.
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Again, I can get caught up in this too, and I have. You see, it's easy, like in the case of my friend who put this post up on Facebook about how amazing they were and how they're the hands and feet in Jesus, look at me.
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And it's easy to find that distasteful. Most of us are turned off by people who brag about themselves and the things that they do.
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But then you have to be very careful about what comes into your head after that. You might think something along the lines of, well,
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I do that. I do way more than that. You don't hear me talking about it. And now you realize that you're keeping an internal record of the good things that you do as well.
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Another way this shows up, speaking from personal experience, and I'm not proud of this, is when someone insults you maybe or questions your work.
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And internally or even out loud to a small group of people, you might say something like, how could that person say that?
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Don't they know everything that I do? Or how can that person say that? Don't they know what
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I did for them? They don't see everything that goes on when they're not looking.
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And while you might have done an adequate job of quietly going about your life, doing good things for other people, that kind of thought or that kind of statement just reveals the fact that you really do still want the credit for it.
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You're maybe not bold enough or interested enough to go out and ask for it, but internally you want it.
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So the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, is not really about keeping secrets from yourself.
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Obviously it's impossible for you to not know what you're doing. Again, a little bit of hyperbole here in the example.
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But it's more about keeping short mental records of the good things that you do so that you're not focused on how great you are.
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You're not focused on what people owe you. Martin Lloyd Jones says this, how is this to be done?
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There is only one answer, and that is that we should have such a love for God that we have no time to think about ourselves.
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We shall never get rid of self by concentrating on self. The only hope is to be so consumed by love that we have no time to think about ourselves.
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And practically speaking, there's three reasons why this point is important. And the first one is this, keeping these internal accounts only leads to pride.
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And when you judge that person, so again, going back to my friend who I'm judging, right? When I judge that person who's bragging about their deeds, you wind up sounding like a certain story in Scripture that we're probably all familiar with, and I think
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I even read it last week. But it's about the Pharisee who says, thank God I'm not like that person.
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So you have to be careful about what's going on inside your head and inside your heart. Second, if you really wanna keep internal records of the good things that you've done, or the things that you've done, recognize that the bad far outweighs the good.
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If you wanna be honest about your record keeping, the bad things you've done, the bad thoughts that you've had, the negative prideful things you've thought of, it's probably a lot more of those than there are the good things that you're wishing that people recognize that you did for them or for whoever.
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And then number three, when it comes to the tally of good things, your opinion doesn't matter.
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The score you keep doesn't matter. And that's what we get into into verse four. So verse four says, so that, this is why you don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
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So we all know this. We all know that when it comes down to the ultimate final judgment, the ultimate, the final tally of your life, it really doesn't matter what you say it was.
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It doesn't matter what somebody else says it was. The ultimate rewards, the ultimate judgment, the ultimate count is coming from God.
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And we know that God sees everything. Psalm 139, seven, which was part of our call to worship this morning, says, where can
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I go from your spirit or where can I flee from your presence? In Proverbs 15, three says, the eyes of Yahweh are in every place watching the evil and the good.
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And in 2 Chronicles 16, nine says, for the eyes of Yahweh move to and fro throughout the earth that he may strongly support those whose heart is fully devoted to him.
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And that last verse touches on a couple of very significant points. And those are that God sees the actions, even if no one else ever does.
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God sees it, good or bad. But second, and probably more important, is that God sees the heart that motivates those actions.
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Again, good or bad. So God sees all that, God knows.
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You don't have to keep the score. The only score that matters is what
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God has done for you and that you will never match. So one point of clarification on this particular verse is that some people have suggested or might suggest that this emphasis on secret giving contradicts what
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Jesus said in Matthew 5, 16. That verse said, let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your
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Father who is in heaven. Wait, so if we're not supposed to sound a trumpet, we're not supposed to even know what we're doing ourselves, doesn't that contradict that verse?
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And superficially, those statements do appear to be in opposition to one another. But in reality, they're not.
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And it's easy to work this out. In fact, you can do it with one question. Who gets the glory?
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If it's you drawing attention to yourself and then taking credit for it, you get the glory.
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But if you are going about an honest Christian life, living according to the
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Beatitudes, being the salt of the earth and the light of the world, and someone notices and sees what you're doing, because you have to be in public, people will see what you're doing.
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The idea of this is not that it has to be done in a closet inside your house so that no one ever sees you ever again.
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You're still the salt of the earth and the light of the world. But if people see that and understand that you're doing it because of what
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God has done for you, then God gets the glory for that. So again, it comes down to the motivation.
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Who's getting the glory? John MacArthur puts it this way. In the first passage,
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Jesus is dealing with cowardice, where in the second passage, he is dealing with hypocrisy.
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So the first passage, letting your light shine to be seen by men so that your father gets the glory, he's addressing people that are scared to share their
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Christianity, that are scared to let people know that they're Christians because they don't wanna be persecuted.
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So he's saying you still have to go out there and be a Christian. But in the second verse that we looked at, he's dealing with people who are just giving so that people will think they're great.
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And that is total hypocrisy. Now, the last thing we have to address in this verse is the idea of a reward.
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And there aren't specifics here about the reward. We have seen Jesus talk about the kingdom of heaven a number of times in the
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Sermon on the Mount. But let's do a little thought experiment about the reward.
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In 6 -2, Matthew 6 -2, Jesus says, not to sound a trumpet so you'll be glorified by man, because if you do that, then you've already received your reward in full.
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So for the praise or the glory of man is your reward. That's all you ever get for this good work.
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So let's work on the assumption that no matter what, kudos are the only reward that you're gonna get.
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Way to go. The reward for good work. So in 6 -4, it tells us that giving done in secret is rewarded by God.
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So if all you're ever gonna get is kudos, who do you want them from? Do you want them from God or do you want them from man?
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And the reason this is an important question is because it will never be both. If you seek the praise of man, you will never get that from God.
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Now, I already quoted Martin Lloyd -Jones on loving God so much that there's no room for anything else.
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Speaking on the issue of rewards, John MacArthur tells us that the greatest reward a believer can have is the knowledge that he has pleased the
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Lord. The greatest reward a believer can have is the knowledge that he has pleased his
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Lord. So let's get into a few takeaway points as we wrap this up here.
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Overarching theme. Good deeds are to be done for God alone.
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We show mercy because we've been shown mercy. And we give because of what has been freely given to us.
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And all of this returns us to the Beatitudes. It all takes us straight back to the
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Beatitudes. That we're not to seek the praise of other people for how good we are.
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What we do is we rest assured in the knowledge that God sees all these things.
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And that our reward for simply living the way a Christian is supposed to live will be far greater than the praise that any person can give us.
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So that's the first thing, is that we do good deeds for God alone. They're done out of gratitude.
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Now, the second point is that why you do something matters more than what you do.
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So Christian charity, giving to the poor, good works, any of these things, if you do them in a way that's designed to bring attention to you, to show how pious you are, how religious you are, how
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Christian you are, those things are offensive to God.
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And that amounts to hypocrisy like we talked about because religious -looking actions done for anything other than the glory of God are exactly what
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Jesus is condemning the Pharisees for here. All these things are to be done in love, not in a search for congratulations or a search for glory.
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First Corinthians 13 three says, and if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
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There's a lot of confusion over the role of works in the
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Christian life, but there shouldn't be. Works can never earn you salvation.
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Works can never get you to heaven. But if you truly understand salvation, and if you truly understand and believe the condition that you were in before salvation, you should be so overjoyed at what you've been given that wanting everyone else to know how they can get it as well, and showing them that love and doing those things should be the natural outgrowth of that.
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So you can't do the works to be saved, but because you are saved, you can't not do these things for other people.
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And third is the eternal reward from God is greater than anything you could ever receive from man.
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I mean, you could rebuild our building, and we could all send you a letter, sign a card or something like that, but that's nothing compared to the reward from God for giving out of a pure heart, for giving in response to what he's done, for giving to advance the kingdom.
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Charles Spurgeon says this, keep the things so secret that even you yourself are hardly aware that you are doing anything at all praiseworthy.
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Let God be present, and you will have enough of an audience. He will reward you, reward you openly, reward you as a father rewards a child, reward you as the one who saw what you did and knew that you did it wholly unto him.
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Again, there's no greater reward than the knowledge as believers that we have pleased
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God. Let's pray. Father, thank you once again for your word.
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We all need the regular and frequent reminder of what's been done for us.
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It's so easy to forget going throughout the course of our day -to -day lives how we've been forgiven the second that somebody does something wrong to us.
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God, but we need the reminder. We need the reminder of our identity.
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We need to know who we are, we need to know who Jesus is to truly understand what's been given to us.
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God, I pray that the continued look at the Beatitudes, the continued look at the Sermon on the Mount just serves as a reminder from your word as to all these things.
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No matter where we turn in Scripture, we see your love and we see your grace and we see your mercy.
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And deep down inside of ourselves, where a lot of us don't wanna go or don't wanna admit, we know that we didn't actually deserve that.
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And we can feel bad about that or we can stand in awe of you and who you are. Lord, I pray that you would just continue to allow the
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Holy Spirit to open our hearts, to open our minds, to open our eyes to who we are and to what you've done.
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God, thank you again that we can gather. I thank you for the church family this morning. Be with us as we go out the doors of this church into your world and help us be the salt of the earth and the light of the world and shine the light of the gospel into all the dark places that we go.