Do Not Do Your Acts of Righteousness to be Seen by Men

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church.

Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern, Minnesota.

We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel according to St. Matthew chapter 6 verses 1 through 6 and 16 through 21.

1.

Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men to be seen by them.

If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the

streets to be honored by men.

I tell you the truth.

They have received their reward in full.

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.

Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street

corners to be seen by men.

I tell you the truth.

They have received their reward in full.

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is

unseen.

Then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do for they disfigure their faces to show

men that they are fasting.

I tell you the truth.

They have received their reward in full.

But when you fast, put oil on your head, wash your face so that it will not be

obvious to men that you are fasting.

But only to your Father who is unseen.

And your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy

and where thieves break in and steal.

But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy, where thieves do not

break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

In the name of Jesus, giving to the poor, praying,

fasting.

These are all good things to do.

And hear what our Lord said.

He literally said, Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men to be

seen by them.

If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

I wish I can say I'm not guilty of praying in a way that I hoped

people would be impressed by my prayers.

Now clearly by my girth, you can tell I don't do a lot of fasting.

As far as giving to the poor, I must confess I don't do nearly enough of that.

The reality of the situation is that many people want to do all kinds of good works

and they want to do them for the wrong reasons.

For example, have you ever talked to that person who said, Did you see how much I gave to the poor?

I want my hefty donation publicized in the Grand Forks Herald.

Ouch.

I know a pastor who makes a point of letting everybody know that he reversed tithes.

Every time he goes on national television, he lets the whole world know, Oh, why give 90 % of what I have back to the church?

And everybody knows how generous he is.

Yeah, the issue is, is that when somebody does that, does their good works, and these

are good works, for everybody to be seen so that they can say, Oh, how holy you are.

Oh, you're so much farther along than I am.

Well, they've received their reward.

It's as if Jesus is saying, I'm not impressed.

I'm not impressed with your good works.

They're a stench in my nostrils.

Because you're not doing them for your neighbor.

You're doing your good works for you.

There isn't one thing that you've done that's motivated in true love

towards God and true love towards your neighbor.

Everything you do is designed to give you an edge, a leg up, or designed

to make people think, Oh, if only I can be like that person.

And that's when you realize that it's possible,

in fact, probable, that Christ not only died for our sins, but died for

our good works.

Because our good works are just drenched with sin.

The prophets describe our good works in one passage as saying that

they're filthy menstrual garments, used

maxi pads.

That's our good works.

In other words, think of it this way.

This Lenten season, as you reflect on how you have not measured up,

don't only do that.

Look hard and ask yourself, have I done my good works in order to impress people?

Have my good works, have they been soiled?

Are they filthy and wretched, like filthy menstrual garments?

You see, if that's really the case, that because we do our

good works for ourselves and not truly for our neighbor, then Christ died on the

cross for even your good works.

That's how much I don't measure up, how much you don't measure

up.

Jesus has to save us not only from our blatant sins, but even from our acts of

piety.

When you pray in such a way that you just want to impress people with how well you pray, and maybe even want to give a

seminar next week on how you can pray like me, hmm, you've taken a good

work and you've turned it into a wretched, wretched deed.

One for which Christ had to bleed and die.

You see, heaven is a gift.

Christ won it for you.

We read in Romans on Sunday school that if Christ died for our sins and it's all a gift, then where is

boasting?

There's no need for boasting.

Christ has done it all.

It's self -righteousness, pietism, not true Christian piety, that

takes your good works and makes it so that you can somehow stand on a pedestal in front of everybody and everybody

goes, oh, I want to so be like you.

At least that's what you think.

And Jesus says, I'm not impressed.

In fact, I'm so not impressed that because you think that somehow you're earning your salvation by how

pious you are, by how much you pray, by how much you give to the poor, by how often you fast and you tell everybody

all about it.

I'm going to throw you and your good works into the lake of fire and give you an eternity to think about it.

That's what he's saying.

So should we give to the poor?

Yes, we should.

But when you give to the poor, go out of your way to make sure that nobody knows what you're

doing.

I know it's difficult to give to the poor in a way that they don't know that they've received a gift.

And that's not what the point of this is.

The point is don't give to the poor in order to let everybody know how wealthy you are and how

generous you are.

Give in such a way that it's between you and the person that you're helping and you and God.

And when you pray, don't pray in such a way that you want everybody to see

that you're doing it.

In fact, it's probably a good idea to pray the way Jesus said, go into an inner room,

shut the door and pray.

Well, what good is that?

No one's going to see me.

Your heavenly father will see you.

You're the one, you're talking to him anyway.

You're not trying to impress people by your prayers.

That's not the point of prayer.

And when you fast, don't look gaunt.

Don't go on so weak.

I'm fasting.

You really need to feel bad for me.

Oh, but I think this is the most spiritual thing I can do.

And it's just really helping me be transformed to be like Jesus.

Well, if you were being transformed to be like Jesus, you wouldn't be acting that way and putting on a front like that so that everybody would know you're

fasting.

Right?

Right.

Jesus wants us to fast.

Jesus wants us to pray.

Jesus wants us to care for the needy.

But because we are in Christ and because he has bled and died for us and

salvation is a gift, all of your good works and all of your piety, none of it is

done to earn brownie points with God or to earn piety points with the

neighbors or the church ladies.

Nope.

All of it is done for your neighbor.

All of it's done out of true love for God.

It's not done for you because you got to remember this.

When it comes to Christ's kingdom, you're not number one.

God is.

And then your neighbor's second.

You come in third and you are servant to both.

It's a completely radical way of thinking.

And every time when you try to make yourself number one,

you miss the whole point of the cross.

Christ made himself nothing, taking on the form of a servant, being found in human likeness and was obedient to

death, even death on a cross.

The God who is king of kings, lord of lords, whose throne is above every

throne in the universe, who made all the thrones that exist, nothing

passes in this earth that doesn't first go through his throne.

Yes, he does micromanage because he can.

He's the one who came off the throne and was born of the Virgin Mary, born in a barn

for you.

The highest to the lowest.

He humbled himself and then God the Father exalted him.

And this is what we're called to do.

And every time we don't do it, we don't understand who God is or what he's about.

If the people are going to know that we're Christians by our love, well, then it'd be

good for us to figure out what love is all about.

Because looking out for number one, trying to impress the neighbors, trying to earn brownie points with

God, all of that stuff means you still think that you're number one.

And that's the reason why Christ had to die.

And that's something to think about.

In fact, a good story to end on is a story that Jesus told in Luke chapter 18.

To some who were confident of their own righteousness and they looked down on everybody

else.

See, that's the thing.

When you're doing your good work so that everybody can see them and everyone's saying, oh, how wonderful you are, how generous you are, how

holy you are.

You know what happens?

You end up believing it.

And when you end up believing it, you know what you end up doing?

You look down at all the little people.

I'd like to thank all the little people who made it possible for me to be as great as I am.

But now you're starting to look down on other people.

So Jesus said to some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else.

Jesus told this parable.

Two men went up into the temple to pray.

One a Pharisee, the other a tax collector.

Sounds like a setup for a joke, right?

You know, there was a rabbi, Roman Catholic, and a Pentecostal, all who went to the pearly gates.

That's what it sounds like, right?

It kind of sounds like a perfect setup.

Everybody knows how this is supposed to end.

The Pharisee is the religious dude.

This is the guy who's got prayer down.

He knows what he's doing.

Tax collector, miserable, worthless.

There is nothing holy about this guy.

He's a complete traitor against the people of God.

He's working for the Romans and he's making a ton of money, basically keeping everybody else in

poverty while he's getting rich.

We all know this is how the story is supposed to end, right?

So the Pharisee stood up and he prayed about himself.

Unfortunately, I've prayed similar prayers in my life.

I've listened to it.

God, I thank you that I am not like other men, robbers,

evildoers, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week.

Look, I'm even skinny.

I'm gaunt.

I give a tenth of all that I get.

This guy's a tither.

He's generous.

He prays, he fasts.

What a great prayer!

Right?

Right?

Wrong.

This is exactly what Jesus was preaching against in our biblical text, our gospel text.

But the tax collector, he stood at a distance.

So keep in mind, this is the temple court, right?

And you know what they're there for?

If you don't know your Jewish history, you don't know your Old Testament, you're not exactly sure why they're even there in the first place, right?

Some people, it's two men went up to the temple to pray.

Well, what hour of the day is it?

It doesn't say.

Well, actually, if you know your Bible, you know, it's three in the afternoon.

That's the time of prayer at the temple.

Three in the afternoon.

Why?

Well, that's the time of the evening sacrifice.

The evening sacrifice is a lamb.

It's a sin offering.

Offered at three in the afternoon, and while the priests are performing their duties, and you can hear the lamb bleeding,

and then the lamb's throat is slit, and it bleats no longer.

And there's blood.

Right?

While this is going on, prayers are ascending.

Why?

Because God is being merciful, because a sacrifice has been given.

This is why they're at the temple praying.

And you know what the tax, the Pharisee is doing by his prayer?

He's saying, I don't need that sacrifice.

But that sacrifice that's going on is pointing to the one true sacrifice, Jesus Christ.

But there's a tax collector in the wrong place.

I mean, would we want him here at church?

Right?

Somebody as nefarious as this?

He'd probably be sitting right in the back over there.

And it says he couldn't even lift his eyes to heaven.

The shame of his sin weighed on him.

God's law had done its work.

He knew he was guilty.

He would not even look up to heaven.

He beat his breast.

That is a way of dishonoring yourself in a male -dominated honor culture.

He beat his breast.

And unfortunately, the English translation doesn't quite capture it.

God, have mercy on me, a sinner, is what he prays.

It's a little bit stronger than that.

God, be propitious towards me, a sinner.

By saying, be propitious towards me, it's clear what he's pointing to.

It's the sacrifice.

Because God is only propitious.

God's wrath is only propitiated through a sacrifice.

Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins.

God, be propitious towards me, a sinner.

That's his only prayer.

All he says is, I've got nothing.

It doesn't matter what good deeds I thought I've done.

They're all garbage.

I'm guilty.

Have mercy.

And Jesus says of the tax collector that that man, rather than the Pharisee,

went home justified before God.

Justified means to be declared righteous.

So the tax collector, in his worthless little short prayer, saying that he's a sinner

and asked God for mercy, goes home justified.

And Jesus ends with this punchline, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.

He who humbles himself will be exalted.

In other words, the Pharisee ends up burning in hell.

The tax collector has eternal life.

Why?

Because the tax collector realized his sin.

And the Pharisee foolishly thought because he was so busy doing religious things, he didn't

need to be forgiven.

That's deception.

Of the worst kind, self -deception.

Here again, Joel, even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your

heart, with fasting, with weeping, and mourning.

Rend your heart, not your garments.

Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

And he relents from sending calamity.

Who knows, he may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing.

In this Lenten season, let us rend our hearts, not our garments.

Let us think and ponder and meditate anew on why Christ

had to go to the cross and die.

It was for your sins and mine.

Let us never forget this side of Christ's return, what those sins are,

and what they were, so that we would never exalt ourselves, but always humbly receive

Christ's forgiveness as a gift, and then humbly love and serve our neighbor.

Pray for them, support them in their needs, and fast on their behalf.

But never let them know that we're doing it, because we're not doing it for ourselves.

Like Christ, who served us, we now serve them.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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