The Secret Life Matthew 6:1-4

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Who are you when no one is looking? This is a question that every one of us should ask.
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I once heard a quote by legendary college basketball coach John Wooden, who said, your reputation is who everyone thinks that you are, and your integrity is who you really are.
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I once heard another definition for integrity that said, who you are in private is who you are.
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This is the measure of our character, and it is convicting to think about this as we examine ourselves.
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If a camera followed you around and everyone got to watch what you were like when no one is looking, what would people think?
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Would people's opinions of you change? It is true that all of us are better in public than we are in private.
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We need to be realistic. All of us are more likely to let down our guard when no one is looking.
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And even if you know Christ, you still sin. So to be a little different in private is not a cause for major concern.
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If we are realistic, there will be a little drop off. But we want the gap between who we are in private and who we are in public to be razor thin, and we should aim to grow to make it thinner and thinner.
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Now if the gap between who you are in private and who you are in public is enormous, this is very problematic.
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It may mean that you are not saved. There is a word for this kind of person, and this word shows up in this sermon.
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This word is hypocrite. In ancient Greece, the word hypocrite meant actor or actress.
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This was one who played a different persona on the stage than they were in real life.
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There were hypocrites all over the world, and sadly, even today, there are hypocrites all over the world, and even in the church.
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These are people who act out a role in public, one that people around them like, and the person knows that people like this, so that's why they do this.
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But in private, they are someone completely different. Jesus talks about the importance of who we are in private in our text this morning as we continue our sermon series through Matthew.
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So at this time, I encourage you, in a Bible, to turn with me to Matthew 6. We'll be looking at verses 1 through 4.
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If you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on page 964. Jesus addresses this important topic, once again, in the most famous of all sermons, the
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Sermon on the Mount. Just imagine Him preaching this. He's preaching this on this small mountain overlooking the beautiful Sea of Galilee, and His words are what we need to hear in Eureka.
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This sermon is titled, The Secret Life. And here's what this sermon is calling you to do.
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It's calling you to aim to be admirable in private.
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Aim to be admirable in private. And we will see two ways how revealed in this text.
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But before we jump in, let me give you a little recap of last week's sermon. We looked at Matthew 5, verses 43 through 48.
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This topic piggybacked on the previous text, where Jesus told us not to retaliate when we are poorly treated.
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So it was natural that after Jesus addressed retaliation,
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He would tell us how to treat our enemies, since our enemies are usually the ones who we are tempted to retaliate against.
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So the sermon called us to love those who are hardest to love, and we saw two reasons why.
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The first reason why is that our Father in Heaven loves this way. The text said that He sends rain and causes the sun to shine on the just and the unjust.
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God loves His image bearers, including those who will never believe in Him. The second reason why is that you will stick out like a sore thumb to the surrounding world.
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The world does not love their enemies, but rather hates them. This is what separates
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Christians, their love from the love of the world, which is a false love.
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Christian love is so extraordinary that it extends to the most unlikely people, our enemies.
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You can dislike someone and yet love that person at the same time, and you show this love by doing good to them.
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When we love this way, God is glorified, and what a strong witness this is to the world, the world that is watching.
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Now at this time, we're going to take a deep dive into the text, Matthew 6, verses 1 -4.
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I'm going to begin here by reading the whole text, and then we'll start diving into it. Verses 1 -4, this is what
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Jesus said, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your
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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.
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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
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Father who sees in secret will reward you. This is a very important text, and we're going to learn a lot here today by the grace of God as He speaks to us through this.
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So in verse 1, Jesus says, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.
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Obviously, Jesus is not saying don't do good works in front of other people.
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That's common sense. We already saw in the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus told the crowd to be salt and light to the world, and the purpose of this is that people would see the good deeds of a believer, and God would be glorified through these good deeds.
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So we, of course, should practice righteousness before others. However, Jesus is condemning something else here.
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What Jesus is warning the crowd is that there can be a false motive for doing good deeds before others.
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He reveals this false motive in the middle of verse 1, and that false motive is doing good things to be seen by others.
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To do this has tragic consequences. As the end of verse 1 tells us, the one who does good deeds to be seen by others forfeits any reward from your
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Father who is in heaven. Several weeks back, in our End Times sermon series, we looked at the
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Final Judgment. What we saw is that at the Judgment there is the
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Book of Life, but there's also another book, or other books, and these are the books that record the deeds that everyone has performed.
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So everything that you do is being written down. But none of these works for the unbeliever in the book that they have will have any value, even though some of their deeds were good in a shallow, earthly sense.
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For example, there are unbelievers who are law -abiding citizens. They are good neighbors.
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They feed the poor. They clothe the hungry. Yeah, they clothe the hungry, and they feed the hungry too.
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However, if this person does not have the Holy Spirit dwelling within him or her, then none of these works were done for the glory of God.
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Jesus tells us the motives of the sinful heart here. What He tells us is that one of the reasons the sinful human heart does good things is to be seen by others.
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Look at me. Look what I just did. People in their sinfulness love the praise of man.
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To be seen as a good person by the world is the motivation for doing good things.
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But the motivation to please God is completely absent. There's no consideration for that.
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They want to do good deeds to be seen by others. What the
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Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 14 .23 is that whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
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An unbeliever does not have faith, and therefore nothing that they do can be pleasing to God.
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None of their works will pass the test to prove one's true faith. You might be saying,
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Pastor Seth, I thought we are saved by grace through faith alone.
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And the answer is yes. We are saved by grace through faith alone.
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We are saved 100 % by what Jesus did on our behalf. His perfect righteousness is counted as our righteousness.
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And when He went to the cross, He paid the full penalty for our sins. And anyone who sincerely believes this, believing in Him, has been given the
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Holy Spirit. And this person has eternal life. The Spirit is described as a deposit that has been given to you.
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And many in this room right now have this. And you are able to do God -honoring works because in your works, your desire is to please
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God. Not always. We still sin. Sometimes we have false motives for why we do things.
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But your desire to please God is still there. And those are the works that will show up at the judgment that you truly were saved.
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So in other words, your works don't earn your salvation. They're not the reason that you're saved.
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Jesus is that. But they're the evidence that you are saved. When you're given the Spirit, these works are going to be there.
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So, at the judgment, those who are saved will have some
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God -honoring works. These works are not the reason, but they are the evidence.
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But an unbeliever does not do things through this deep transformation that is taking place in the heart of a believer.
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Unbelievers don't have that. The motivation of the unbeliever is to be seen by others, as verse 1 says.
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And if this is the motivation, then there is no reward waiting, as we just read.
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So let's take a look at verse 2. Jesus says, 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.
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Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. Now in this verse,
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Jesus highlights a specific good deed. And that deed is giving to the needy.
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To give to the needy is seen as a good thing by everybody.
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Universally, it's agreed upon. You can go anywhere on planet earth. Any culture. Any political party.
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Everyone is going to say, it is good to give to the needy. And what is interesting is that there are some good deeds that don't get praised by our world.
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To share the gospel with someone is a very good deed. And yet, it's something that in some places you can't do, because it's outlawed.
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Or it's frowned upon. And we stress sharing the gospel, the good news of what
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Jesus has done on our behalf, because it's the only hope the world has. And we're commanded to do it, so we must do it.
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And we must do it joyfully. It's the only way that people will be saved.
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It's a truck that is coming towards someone, and you are there to push them out of the way before the semi takes them out.
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As my old pastor used to say, how much would we have to hate someone not to tell them about Jesus?
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Yet proselytizing or sharing the gospel is not allowed in certain places.
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But to give to the needy is universally recognized as a good thing.
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And this is one of those works where you really want to be seen by others. Because think of how many people will be impressed by what you did.
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It's not controversial. I'm going to go out in public and give to these people who have need.
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And people will say, what a good guy, or what a good woman, or what a good child. So giving to the needy is one that a false believer really wants the world to see.
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They want the world to look on and applaud. And I say false believer because this is who
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Jesus has in mind in verse 2. He has in mind the religious people.
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Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has been correcting the false teachers in the
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Jewish religion. They have taught their people wrongly. And they have a filthy character that they carry with them that shows that they are not true teachers of God.
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These are the teachers of the Bible who are really unbelievers. False believers do not have good fruit.
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And Jesus shows their filthiness here. He says they don't really do their good works because they are growing as transformed people as the
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Spirit works in them. No, they are bad people pretending to be good people.
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As I mentioned in the introduction, and as we see in verse 2, they're hypocrites.
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That's what they're called. Remember that the word hypocrite, as used in ancient
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Greece, refers to actors or, if you're a woman, actresses.
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They wore masks as they played someone different than who they really were.
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And the Jewish leaders, these false teachers, were playing someone they really were not.
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Jesus said these people sounded trumpets. What this means is that they let everyone know, look what
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I did. If there weren't anybody around, they wouldn't give to the needy. But because people are looking on, they're saying,
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I'm going to give. And everyone's going to say, what a righteous person that is. Now, as we look at this, we might think, well,
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I don't do that. But we need to say, yes, we do. I examined my own life recently, and I have a confession to make.
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When we were visiting my parents a few weeks back in Mound, Brianne and I got into a disagreement, and sadly, to defend myself,
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I listed off all of the ways that I had helped with the kids that day. I listed off a laundry list.
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And I wanted her to know, look what I did. And then the Lord convicted me.
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And it just so happened I was studying this text at that time, which happens quite often as a pastor.
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So I was wrong, and I had to ask for forgiveness later on. I mean, think about pastoral ministry.
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I mean, you don't know what it's like because you're not in my shoes. But every week
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I get up here, I'm thinking, okay, am I living this out? Because if I'm not, that's really a bad thing.
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Then I'm being a hypocrite. I can't be the very thing I'm condemning in this sermon. So when we do sin, we need to repent, and we need to do better next time.
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And with the Spirit's help, we can grow over the long haul. And to make someone or everyone know our good works is tempting.
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But what Jesus is telling us in this passage is not to do good works to be seen by others.
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Do not let that be your motivation or my motivation. At the end of verse 2,
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Jesus explains the tragic reality of those who only do good works to be seen by others.
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The end of verse 2 says they have received their reward. So in other words, the praise of man is the reward.
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There's nothing coming in the future. People clap their hands and say, what a great thing that man did, or what a great thing that woman did, or that child did.
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And for the one who does not have a relationship with God, the reward stops there.
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There are lots of historical figures who have received the praise of the world who are in heaven right now.
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Let me say that again. There are lots of historical figures who have received the praise of the world who are not in heaven right now.
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They have received their reward. Some of them did good things while on earth, and yet none of their works were done for the glory of God but came from a place of personal pride.
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Because you might wonder, why do people even bother to do good things if they're not doing it for God? There's ulterior motives that are there.
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And let me say right now that the history books should record the good that people have done.
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And isn't that not relevant with what we're seeing in our world right now? We live in a time when people are trying to erase
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American history. We can recognize the sins of our past and say, yes, those were sins, but you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
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We recognize there were some good things here that we should carry with us as a country into the future.
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God has used many unbelievers in our history to accomplish much good, and we should recognize
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God's common grace toward them. However, even if some of these people did good, if they did not know
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Christ, then they did it from a place of personal pride in order to be applauded by others, and their reward is behind them.
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You don't want your reward to be people cheered for a while, and then you're in hell forever.
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That's not the way to live. And this is one of the ways the sinful human heart is motivated to do good works.
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This is what Jesus highlights and warns against here. It is for the praise of self and not the praise of God.
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So we are to aim to be admirable in private, and the first way how is by refusing to live for the praise of humans.
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Refusing to live for the praise of humans. The second way how we are to aim to be admirable in private is striving to live for the praise of God.
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And we'll see this in verses 3 and 4. So in these verses, Jesus tells us the right way to do good works.
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Let's read these verses together again. 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
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Father who sees in secret will reward you. So as Jesus is preaching this sermon, what he tells them is do your works in secret.
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As I mentioned earlier, Jesus also tells us to do good works in public so that people will see
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Christ in us, that they will be drawn to him, and that they will give praise to our
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Father who is in heaven. But if the sum of our works is only in public, then this is a serious problem.
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We should do good whether in public or private. What Jesus does is use this figure of speech to say that your left hand should not know what your right hand is doing, as if these are persons.
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And this is a picture given by Jesus to say no one knows the works that you are doing, and yet you do them anyway.
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How do you treat your spouse when no one is looking? How do you treat your children when no one is looking?
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How do you treat the downtrodden of society? Do you give to the needy when no one is looking?
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What thoughts are you thinking? Since no one can read our mind, what comes into your mind?
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God sees it, and so we should care a lot about that.
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If your thoughts could be produced on a computer screen, what would people think?
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What internet sites do you visit when no one is looking? What TV shows do you watch when no one is looking?
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What music do you listen to when no one is around? Now what we get from verse 1 is that Jesus is talking about general righteousness.
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But the one specific act of righteousness that he mentions in verses 2 through 4 is giving to the needy.
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When you see someone on the street corner, do you help them out? We usually say they are going to use it to buy drugs or alcohol, but how they use the money that you give is not your concern.
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It may be that they do that, but we should be willing, if we feel led by the
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Lord, to give a few dollars so that the man or woman on the street can afford a meal. And we should make mention to them that these are the
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Lord's resources. To do this is to bring glory to God. And as we think about giving, we should also think about our giving in other areas.
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When pastors preach on this text, they often talk about your giving to the church.
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As you know, our church would not be able to exist without your generosity. And I'm grateful for the generosity of this church, especially during COVID, by the way.
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You wonder, are we going to be able to keep up with everything? And we have, by God's grace. So thank you for your generosity.
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And the more that is given, the more we can do as a church, the more missionaries we can support, the more we can do to fix up the resources that God has given us.
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And I am grateful that I don't know how much each of you give to this church.
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And I will always keep it that way. It's never wise for a pastor to know how much people give.
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The giving to your local church is a private matter where God is aware of your stewardship even though most everyone else does not know.
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And I say, of course, most everyone else because a few people have to know, right? They count the money. But no one else knows besides that.
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And I don't bring up giving to the church to guilt anyone, but I bring it up because Scripture tells us to give and we don't dodge anything in this church from the
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Bible. And so here is a question to ask yourself and for me to ask myself, if we were the normal standard of giving in this church, how would we be doing?
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Would we be doing well? Would we be barely making it or would we have to close our doors?
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That's a good question to ask yourself. I understand that everyone has lots of expenses and some of you have a situation where you can't give as much as you would like for whatever reason that might be.
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And God knows that. And this is why God tells us we should give as we feel it's a situation where we do it with our relationship with God.
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It's between you and God how much you give. But he still expects his people to give to his church.
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What God promises is that he will take care of you. Let me read a passage from Malachi 3, 8 -10.
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The Lord said, Will man rob God? Yet you are robbing me. But you say,
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How have we robbed you? In your tithes and contributions. You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing me, the whole nation of you.
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Bring the full tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house, and thereby put me to the test, says the
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Lord of hosts. If I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.
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What the Lord is telling Israel here and what he's telling us, is that everything that you have came from him and it all belongs to him.
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And he expects you and I to give to his mission in the world. And the vehicle through whom
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God is working in the world is through the local church. So in other words, the firstfruits goes to the church.
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And you may be generous in other places, but the firstfruits goes to the church. Because Jesus said,
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I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
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There is good in parachurch ministries and in other places.
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But even faithful people in parachurch ministries would tell you, the firstfruits goes to your local church.
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What the promise here says in Malachi, is the Lord is saying, if you give, I am going to take care of you.
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So a lot of times it's a matter of trust. He's saying, as you give in secret and nobody knows,
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I'm going to take care of you. I'm going to provide everything that you need. I once had a professor in seminary, and I don't know if this is true, but it's worth saying.
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He was talking about giving to the local church. And he said, he said, what
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I have seen in my experience as a pastor, and as he thought through it, he said it seems like when either he didn't give what he was supposed to, or he felt that others did not give what they were supposed to, he said they would have other expenses that would come up.
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So in other words, God is saying, I'm going to get this money from you somehow. It just depends on, is it going to go to the church, or is it going to go to your car bill, or somewhere else.
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And so, again, take that for what it's worth. I don't know if that's true. But what we do know is that there is blessing when you give.
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So, we must be faithful in that area. The Lord calls us to be generous people, whether it be helping people, or helping
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His church. And when you show generosity, do not announce it to the world, but rather do it in secret.
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This is a strong test of character. Who we are when no one is looking.
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That's the question we need to ask. Who are we? By God's grace, may we be in the pattern of doing good no matter who is around.
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This is the Christian life. Yes, we are to do good works in public so that God's glory is displayed to the surrounding world, but we are also to live faithful and fruitful lives when no one else is looking.
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And those who live this way do this not to get the applause of humans everywhere, but to get the applause of God.
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In verse 4, Jesus tells us why we should be motivated to do good things in secret.
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He tells His listeners on this mountain, and each of us, that when you do good works, do it in secret so that your
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Father who sees in secret will reward you. When you do something good, and no one is around to see it,
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God knows and He will reward you. He sees everything. I'm going to quote my old pastor again.
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He said there are no secret sins, which is true. God sees everything. There's no such thing really as a secret sin.
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A while back, I shared the story about a man, and this is a faithful example.
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There's no secret good works and there's no secret sins, but this is an example of good works. There was a man in central
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Minnesota who is single -handedly keeping a church alive. Before I came here,
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I preached at that church and saw how faithful he was. He picked up most of the elderly people and drove them to the building.
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He brought in a different preacher every week because he did not preach.
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He was a deacon in the church, and he led all the other parts of the service, including the hymns.
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As we were driving away, I remember telling Brianna that this man, his reward is going to be great in heaven because of what he's doing in secret.
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He doesn't get the applause of man. He doesn't have a famous blog. He isn't followed by thousands of people on YouTube.
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He doesn't have lots and lots of people flocking to his church, but he's faithful.
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That's what God cares about. Faithfulness. That's what he's impressed with is our faithfulness.
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We are going to be surprised one day at who receives the greatest reward in heaven.
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I think it's going to be quite a surprise. It is not difficult to be faithful to the
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Lord when people are constantly patting you, on the back, saying, you're so wonderful, you're so great.
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What about when no one does that? And we need to be careful that are we doing our good things for the praise of man, or are we doing it for the glory of God?
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Are we doing it for our reward in heaven, or are we doing it for applause here on earth? Everything that we do must be for a deep love for God.
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And I talk to myself here as I talk to each of you. No one is immune from the disease of the praise of man, even if one is in a small place.
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Our aim must always be to live for God's praise and not man's. The praise of man is so fleeting and so empty, but the praise of God stands forever, and the reward that you receive from him will be an eternal reward.
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Not merely eternal life that every believer experiences, but a greater experience in heaven that you will be able to enjoy forever, as there's different degrees of rewards based on your faithfulness.
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Your Father in heaven will reward you for all the things you have done when no one was looking. The time you resist a sin that no one would ever know if you committed it.
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The time you were kind to a child who will never be a reference for you.
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The time you visit someone in the nursing home who suffers from dementia.
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The time you helped someone you will never meet again. All those times you gave generously knowing almost everyone would never know.
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These aren't things that the world is going to see, but God sees it.
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God notices the things you have done that won't make it on your obituary. But God has marked it down in heaven, and he will reward you for your faithfulness.
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And this should be our motivation. The praise of God, not the praise of man. So aim to be admirable and private.
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And we've seen two ways how in this text. The first way how is by refusing to live for the praise of humans.
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And the second is by striving to live for the praise of God. What we learn in this passage is that we should live for an audience of one.
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The fact that God sees everything shows us about the greatness of God. He knows everything we will ever do, and He will give us whatever we deserve for our faithfulness or lack thereof.
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So we should live for the one who ultimately has the only opinion that matters. God's opinion of you will stand forever.
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Do not live for the fleeting praise of man. And so may God be glorified through our lives as we pursue this reward.
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Living lives of integrity. Now next Sunday, Jesus is going to teach us, as I mentioned earlier in the service,
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He's going to teach us how to pray. The Lord's Prayer. The prayer you've heard more than any other.
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And so often people wonder, what in the world do those words mean? The prayer, honestly, that is prayed more mindlessly than any other prayer, and yet it's gold.
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And we're going to learn how to really pray next Sunday. So I look forward to opening that with you.
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Let's bow our heads in prayer at this time. Father in Heaven, may we do everything, not for the praise of man, but from Your praise,
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Lord. And we can only do that if the Spirit has transformed us to give us that desire.
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A desire that an unbeliever does not have, but is given to a believer. And so Lord, all of our works are done through the transformation of the
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Holy Spirit. It's not as if anybody from the world could just come and say, okay,
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I need to do this. You can only do this if you're saved. And so I pray,
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Lord, that everyone who can hear my voice right now would have a relationship with Jesus Christ where they are able to live this out by the power of Your Holy Spirit.