Giving Before the Eyes of God

Matthew 6 Continues the Sermon on the Mount

Well, this morning we are moving into the sixth chapter of Matthew and into what is sort of the next section of the Sermon on the Mount. As I say that, we should take care that we do not allow the chapter and verse divisions that exist in our text distract us from the movement that Christ makes in the entirety of this discourse.

Because it is all part of the same sermon. It's not separate from what we have been dealing with previously, rather it is a continuation of some of that and sort of a shift in how we look at what Christ has already been talking about.

Since it is necessary that we ensure that we keep the framework where it is, we need to be reminded that last week we completed chapter five and in doing so, Christ brought us at the pinnacle of these six examples that he had been given us to the final statement that we see in verse 48 where he gives us this conclusion based on the information that he has presented that says to us as believers, therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

So that was the whole thing that it brought us to. So if you recall all the way back in verse 21, we began looking at this exposure that Christ does of this righteousness that is outward as opposed to a truly transformed heart.

So there's this display that's happening but the heart is not being touched. And as you'll remember, Christ continued to press past the outward appearance into the heart, the matter of at the end. And so as he came to the end of that passage, he doesn't allow any of the things that have been used as examples to stand as our standard.

So he eliminates the standard of the scribes and the Pharisees. He eliminates the standard of our enemies. He eliminates the standards of our neighbors, of the tax collectors, of Gentiles, even the standard of other believers and points us specifically to the fact that the standard is God and God alone.

That the righteousness required by the kingdom is measured by the perfect holiness of God. And so as we transition out of that into the next chapter as we have it delineated in scripture, we come to a place where Christ isn't leaving that concern behind.

What he's actually doing is pressing a little bit deeper. Chapter five kind of asks the question, what does the righteousness look like that's required by the kingdom? Chapter six goes into why are you doing the righteous thing in the first place?

What is your motivation? And so having dealt with the depth of the righteousness in five, he begins dealing with our motive in righteous acts. And so we'll expand on that over the next three weeks or actually a little more than three weeks because in the middle of this is the Lord's prayer.

And so obviously that'll take a couple of days longer to deal with. But he is teaching us throughout this section that even good righteous work can be corrupted when it is performed for the wrong audience and toward the wrong end.

Why is this important? It's important because we as humans are quite capable not only of doing unrighteous things for unrighteous reasons, we are capable of doing righteous things for what we would call righteous reasons, things that are genuinely good, things that are commanded by God, things that actually benefit other people and then corrupting it because we have unrighteous motives.

And so over this section what you see repeated is this concern regarding doing the righteous things for the right reason. And so with that in mind, if you have not already done so, please turn in your Bibles to Matthew chapter six as we read verses one through four this morning.

And if you have found your place, please join me in standing out of reverence for the reading of God's holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, sufficient, complete and certain word. Beginning in verse one of chapter six and reading through verse four, we find these words.

Jesus Warns Against Righteousness Performed for Human Approval

Beware of doing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them. 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.

Truly, I say to you that 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.

Gracious heavenly Father, Lord, may we approach your word humbly. Father, asking that this truth would search us. Lord, we know that you see far beyond the outward actions to the heart, to the matter, to the motive of the things that we do.

No matter who we would present something different, you know the truth. There's nothing hidden from your sight. Father, we pray that we are guarded this morning from the temptation to hear these words as only condemnation of others.

Father, that we would hear that within us would be exposed this desire for praise, for recognition, for reputation. Father, even approval that is the approval of man. We pray that you would teach us to live before your face, satisfied with knowing that you see what no one else sees and that your approval is infinitely greater than the applause of men.

Lord, as your word continues to expose the impurity that remains even in our obedience, fix our eyes firmly on Christ, his perfect righteousness, his perfect obedience, our only hope. Father, we pray that by your Holy Spirit, we are continuously conformed to his image.

We ask all of these things in the blessed name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen. You may be seated. As we begin this passage, we notice that Christ begins with a warning. The warning comes in the form of a word, beware.

This word carries with it the force of paying attention or taking heed to something, ensuring that we are continually on guard. This is an imperative command given to his people to watch ourselves because there is a great danger that exists within the heart of every sinner.

And the reality of the situation, no matter how often we may want to try and tell ourselves otherwise, we are still sinners. The only difference between us and other sinners is that we are sinners saved by grace.

And so there is this danger. And it's one thing in our lives to exist and be on the watch for things that we would call obvious sins. In fact, the last six weeks, we have worked through things that we would consider to be obvious sins.

But the reality is that there is a much deeper danger that is subtly dealt with in this passage. Because what Christ tells us here is to be on guard while we are practicing righteousness. Now, practicing doesn't imply that we are trying to get better at something.

This is the action of doing good works. These are God-given good works that we have been called to do. And so the danger is not that we have stopped doing good. The danger is that the good that we are doing, that sin attaches itself to the reason that we are doing the good deed.

Now, this is a difficult thing for us to assess because we can lie to ourselves often quite easier than we can lie to other people. This is why this is so critical in our lives. We can perform a whole lot of good actions, genuine service for the church, sacrificing our time, giving our resources, accomplishing things that are of real benefit to other people.

And while we are doing these things, we're doing them with the wrong motivations. Those people who are watching may not have any reason to suspect anything at all is wrong. They may see us doing good, accomplishing these things, and the Lord preys upon us, but yet the one who sees the heart, the one who sees and knows the heart, knows whether our motives are directed and are pure towards him.

Or if we are simply doing the things that we are doing to look good before men. John Calvin recognized this danger in his commentary on this verse when he wrote the following. A very necessary admonition.

For in all virtues, the entrance of ambition is to be dreaded, and there is no work so laudable as not to be in many instances corrupted and polluted by it. In other words, our ambition to appear to be good, our ambition to appear to be effective, our ambition to seek and desire human praise, corrupt the actions that we take.

The truth of the matter is, is when we do the things that we do, we should be humbled by them. Now in verse one, there is something that we need to deal with, because in older translations that rely on the Textus Recepticus, the word translated as righteousness here is translated as almsgiving.

Almsgiving is the idea that is introduced in verse two where we are giving to the poor. Now, or in verse three, talking about giving to the poor. Now the reason that this variant exists is because there's a slight difference in the two Greek words that are used.

Older manuscripts contain the word that the LSB translates into righteousness, where the Textus Recepticus and some others translate the word into almsgiving. That Greek word is a little different. At the end of the day, the truth of the matter, it doesn't change the doctrine and the principles that are being taught here.

So it's not one of those that is a real big concern. However, one of the things that we look at is the overall picture. And so the reason that the LSB and most newer versions have used the Greek word that we have translated as righteousness is because it more appropriately fits in the entire section.

So what we'll see over chapter six, verses one through 18 are three things that Christ introduces with this same concept, and it all goes back to righteous deeds. So we have righteous giving, we have righteous prayer, and then ultimately we have righteous forgiveness.

So each one of those things, what that does is it makes verse one a heading that everything below it fits under. And because each thing is still going back to this righteous action, then it is still acceptable.

And so we need not have concern over this variant, but it is necessary that you understand it exists. So if you happen to have, especially at King James or one of the older translations, you may pull it up, you may read this verse and you may see it says almsgiving and go, well, I don't understand why we have righteousness in one place, almsgiving in the other.

The word used is very similar. And since this serves as a heading over this entire section, the other thing that it does when we have this reading is it ties us back to Matthew chapter 20 in verse five.

So if you'll recall, Matthew chapter 20 in verse five is where Christ tells those that are listening that they must have a righteousness surpassing that of the scribes and Pharisees. So you see that there is a theme that is occurring throughout this passage.

We dealt with in the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, we dealt with the characteristics of the people of the kingdom. All of them describe righteousness of the people. We get to the point where Christ tells the people, you have to have a righteousness that surpasses.

Then he spends the next period explaining and demonstrating for us how that righteousness looks and showing us that we simply cannot attain that righteousness. And then finally leads us into the last statement in verse 48 of chapter five, regarding the perfection of the Father.

And then transitions us into a little bit deeper demonstration of the righteousness. This brings the entire passage together. Now, one of the things that this does is in the midst of the passage, or back up in verse 16, one of the things that people see after they read through 21 through 60 or 48, I'll get it right in a minute, is they get this idea sometimes that, well, the best thing then is not to have outwardly righteous works.

Well, the problem is, if you go back up to verse 16 of chapter five, he tells us, let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.

So there is no statement of Christ that says, oh, well, just don't do good works or just do everything in secret. What he is teaching us is that there are good works that we do and that the good works that we do should have the right motivation.

The difference here lies in the purpose of the action and in the destination of the glory. Are we seeking our glory or are we seeking God's? The good works of the believer in five become visible as a natural fruit of a life transformed by grace.

Listen, if your life is transformed, if you are born again, if you are saved to the uttermost, if you are a believer, you have to have a transformed life. You cannot continue to live the same life you've always lived.

If you're doing that, then you're not believer. You're not truly believer because you're not truly giving your life to him and being transformed by the grace that is working within you. In Matthew six, what we see is the work deliberately arranged so that the attention terminates or comes upon the person performing it versus being given to God.

So that's the distinction. That's why it is different. The question we ask is not whether simply someone saw that we did it. The question is, is did we have a reason or what was the motive that draws the attention why it matters to us that they saw it?

So that's a difficult question. Why? Because we have wicked hearts that are very good at disguising our desire for praise. Sometimes we can call it testimony. We can call it encouragement. We can call it accountability.

We can even claim that we're giving glory to God. The truth of the matter is, is that we can secretly be disappointed when our own name disappears from the story. And so the words that we see over the next 18 verses in chapter six drive us beyond that.

They drive us to the point of ensuring that the works that we're doing are truly being done for the glory of God. And it forces us to look at the motivation. And so we see that the warning is, beware of doing your righteousness before men, to be noticed by them.

Otherwise, you have no reward for your Father who is in heaven. We're gonna circle back to that reward in just a minute. So establishing the principle of not doing our outward works, our righteousness before men for that purpose, he then moves into specifically around giving.

Giving as a Fruit of Grace and a Duty Toward the Needy

Notice the beginning word of verse two, therefore. So because you are not to do your righteousness in this way, when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet. Now, before we move into the trumpet conversation, let us first deal with this first clause after therefore.

Because you will notice that it does not say, if you decide to give, or if you think you would like to give, it assumes that you are going to give. Which tells us that one of the responses of the transformed life is to give.

There's not a new concern for the needy shown here. This is not something that says, well, this is the New Testament, so now we have to show special mercy that's not presented elsewhere. In fact, the Old Testament repeatedly commands people of God to be open-handed.

Deuteronomy 15, seven through eight says, if there is a needy one among you, one of your brothers in any of your gates of the towns in your land, which Yahweh your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor close your hand from your needy brother, but you shall freely open your hand to him and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.

So we're given this warning not to close the heart, not to close the hand. Later in Leviticus 19, also in Deuteronomy 24, we see provisions made regarding gleaning so that the poor or the sojourner in the traveling through the area would not go hungry.

If you'll remember in the book of Ruth, that they're going out when they come back, when Ruth and Naomi come back to the land, they go out and they are gleaning what they're doing is picking up the leftovers so that they have something to eat.

This is a law taught in the Old Testament. Psalm 112 describes the righteous man as one who gives freely to the poor. Proverbs 19, 17, he who is gracious to a poor man lends to Yahweh and he will repay him for his bountiful deed.

Isaiah 58 condemns outward religious devotion that is separated from feeding the hungry or sheltering the poor or giving and caring for those in distress. The law and the prophets is clear that this is an expectation of the people.

And so if you'll recall, when we began all of this in verses 17 through 20, Christ tells us of chapter five, he came not to abolish, but to do what? Fulfill the law and the prophets. So there's no abolishment of this expectation.

It still exists. Jesus says when you give, so he is assuming that people whose hearts have been touched by grace will desire to give. J .C. Ryle expresses it very simply. If you've ever read Ryle, you'll know that there are times when he just nails something to the point and he says a giving savior should have giving disciples.

This is important because there is a way to read this passage and interpret this passage, albeit wrongly, to use it as a reason not to give at all because we can look at it and go, well, our motives are never truly pure.

We can never be certain that they are entirely pure. And so since we can never be certain, the best thing to do is not give, is to not serve, is to not be obedient. We just keep our money to ourselves.

However, if you read the passage, again, Christ is not permitting that conclusion because he is continuing the duty. When you give to the poor and as he continues the duty, he corrects the situation, he corrects the motive.

He teaches us that the kind of heart from which a Christian generosity should flow is one who desires to do it, not to be seen before men, but before your Father who is in heaven. You'll notice that he continues this warning.

The Trumpet of Hypocrisy and the Reward of Human Praise

He 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. Now there have been much made of this trumpet in this verse, much of which has absolutely no historical standing or anything else that really supports it because we look at it as something that's literal, that they would literally come in and give and then blow their trumpet, or some have postulated that it refers to the shape of the vessel in which they did their giving.

The reality is, is neither of those is necessary to understand what Christ is saying because what he is saying here, it doesn't depend on this established thing. He is using vivid language that creates an unforgettable image.

The image that it creates in our mind is somebody literally blowing a trumpet, making fanfare within the action of giving. You see, the hypocrite turns giving, turns generosity into something to garnish or garner his own acclaim.

That's what his goal is. He wants an audience for himself, not because he is meeting the need, but because he is meeting the need in order to get the audience. The suffering of the other person becomes a backdrop for their picture.

The truth is that there is something especially ugly about this when we fully understand what has happened. Don't get me wrong, the person that's receiving the gift may still benefit. The money that was given may still put food on the table, purchase clothes, pay a bill, improve a circumstance.

There was genuine good that outwardly occurred. With that being said, however, the giver has taken an act that should express mercy towards a neighbor and gratitude towards God and turned it into the deepest enhancement of their own reputation.

Charles Spurgeon wrote regarding this principle, to stand with a penny in one hand and a trumpet in the other is the posture of hypocrisy. Glory of men is a thing which can be bought, but honor from God is a very different thing.

This is an advertising age and too many are saying, behold my liberality. Those who have Jesus for their King must wear his livery of humility and not the scarlet trappings of a purse proud generosity, which blows its own trumpet, not only in the streets, but even in the synagogue.

You see, men naturally evaluate gifts by what they can see. We measure amounts, we measure sacrifice, we measure usefulness, we measure things by the visibility that we have, but God sees something much deeper.

God sees the why. The truth is that this desire can attach itself to almost anything. And although we are specifically talking about giving here, and every time we talk about giving, most people automatically go to the offering plate, but the reality is you give your time, you give your effort, you give your energy.

You see, there are a lot of ways in which we can give. In truth, we can even give very little and still want people to notice because we want them to see how sacrificial our gift was. You remember the story of the widow's mite, right?

She gave all she had. Pharisee's over here blowing his horn, his image to make himself look good while she's scrounging. And she humbly just gives all she has, seeking no fame, no reward, but there are times when we will do that, yet we want people to know that it cost us dearly.

Maybe we quietly mentioned the person that we are helping while we pretend that our story is actually something else, or we make someone understand just how difficult it was for us to do this, or we point out how inconvenient it was or how much time we gave.

Sometimes we don't even recognize how much the praise of others matter until we don't receive that praise. We didn't get that pat on the back that we thought we should have. And because no one acknowledged us, resentment begins to rise.

And if we are truly serving the Lord, then there should be no resentment. Christ clearly identifies the problem here, the works that they do. Verse two, 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.

You notice the direct contrast between verse 16 of chapter five? Let your good works, let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven, here, so that they may be glorified by men.

The work may be exactly the same, but it's the motivation behind the work that becomes the issue. Now, there is a solemn truth in this verse. Notice what Jesus says regarding these people. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full.

The term in full is a financial term that speaks of an account being settled, a payment being made. The hypocrite seeking the praise of men receives the praise of men, which is exactly what they were seeking.

They noticed him, they associated his name with the gift. They've received their reward. You're like, okay, well, they got what they wanted, so they were rewarded. Let us think for a moment about the seriousness of this statement.

The admiration of others, the applause of men is fleeting. Yes, it can make you feel good for a moment. When we are valued by others or approved of by others, we feel valuable. Sometimes we feel spiritual.

We feel generous. We may even feel significant. But when we place that alongside the reward mentioned in verse four, it should become very obvious how short-lived the praise of men is. Notice that they have already received their reward.

Verse four, the father who sees in secret will reward you. One is done and gone, the other is to come. Those who praise us today will probably forget us tomorrow. Those whose admiration we seek cannot really see our hearts and know why we do things that we do.

And so if we exchange the approval of God for the applause of men, we have just completed a very poor, in fact, an extraordinarily poor transaction. So we move in the passage from the hypocrite displayed for us in verse two to the disciple in verse three.

Secret Generosity and Freedom from Self-Exaltation

But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Now, as a kid growing up, I always found this passage very interesting, simply because I had no clue what it meant to keep my left hand and my right hand from knowing what each other was doing because they're both attached to me, right?

And so there was this question of what is exactly does it, is it that Christ is trying to say here? Well, the one thing is, is that this is imagery, okay? This is describing a kind of generosity that refuses to turn inward to itself.

This is refusing to have a kind of generosity that's forced to look at our inward parts and or that is looking at ourself as the goal of this generosity. What does that mean? Well, first of all, we're being told not to advertise our generosity.

We see that not only in verse two, but again in verse three because your left hand is not supposed to know what your right hand is doing. The only way your left hand knows what your right hand is doing or another person knows what you're doing is if you tell them.

We don't need to have that conversation where we're boasting about what we are doing, but we also don't need to stop at that point and think that that's all this is about because it goes a little deeper than hiding this from other people.

What it does, it says that we are to give with such freedom from self-consciousness that we don't spend our time admiring ourselves afterwards. You see, it's not just about the praise of other men. It's also about you patting yourself on your own back, making yourself feel good.

Listen, just because you're anonymous don't mean you're not prideful. Just because others don't know doesn't mean you don't hold that pride and high esteem yourself. Doesn't mean you don't think to yourself, look what I did, look what I accomplished.

We've been in church long enough to know that we shouldn't tell other people that, right? We shouldn't behave that way, so what do we do? We tell ourselves. We make ourselves feel good. We spend the next several days congratulating ourselves for being the kind of person who privately gave, who secretly did.

We can take pride in just the fact that nobody else knows exactly what we did. Maybe we compare ourselves with those whose generosity is more visible. The reverse can be true, right? You know, the Pharisee that looks at the other guy praying, he says, man, I'm glad I'm not like that guy.

Very loud and very ostentatious. But there could be someone else praying that goes, man, I'm glad I'm not like that Pharisee because I'm praying quiet. I'm praying in silent. I'm doing what God says. I'm giving quietly.

I'm not making boasts about it, but I'm prideful because of my own behavior. Christ's words reach deeper than this rule about anonymity. Again, we need to understand that when we look at these passages, it's not just this do this, do this, do this, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this.

This is going beyond that to our motivation, to our desires, to the very nature of our heart. And so this is not about just this rule about being anonymous. This is a call that there is a forgetful, self-forgetful kind of generosity that exists in the believer, that we see a need, we recognize that God has placed the ability to respond under our stewardship, has given us what we need to respond.

And then we, out of that flow, we respond, we give according to biblical wisdom. And then we allow it to cease being something that we continually rehearse in our mind. The need matters. The response matters.

The person matters. Obedience to the Father matters. But our reputation should not be part of the transaction. Matthew Henry captures this principle when he wrote, when we take least note of our good deeds ourselves, God takes most note of them.

Now he's not teaching us or telling us that God literally learned something after we forget it. The point is that the disposition Christ commends doesn't require the believer to continually keep good track of our goodness.

You don't need a spiritual notebook where you record all of the good deeds you did so that you can look back and go, oh, look what I did. Now, that also doesn't mean before someone goes off on the wrong tangent that there's something wrong about a church keeping financial records, about bookkeeping, tax documentation, legitimate accountability.

That's not what any of this stuff is about. In fact, there are other texts within the New Testament that teach us how to record. Paul does a great job in 2 Corinthians 8. This is reality, that there is a responsibility that the church have.

Biblical secrecy is not financial carelessness. There's a difference between administrative knowledge and spiritual exhibition. The secrecy that Christ requires here serves a deeper purpose. It serves the purpose of freeing the heart from the temptation to make generosity a means of self-exaltation.

Christ's command regarding the left and the right hand resists that entire tendency. It resists the tendency that Christian generosity is there to create leverage over a recipient. It removes that from us.

It's not a debt that allows us to say, after everything that I've done for you, some of you may, some of you may not have been involved in churches that were ruled by families who gave and they were quick to tell you what you could and could not do in their church and it was their church because they gave the most.

Or maybe they were even part of the founding of the church. Look what I have done. Look what my family has done for the kingdom of God. We did this. We did that. That's the error that Christ is teaching against.

This is an act of stewardship performed by God before God and trusted to God for His glory, for His glory alone, not for ours. Which brings us to verse four, where Christ tells us, so that your giving will be in secret and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

The Father Who Sees in Secret and Rewards His Children

This is the center. This is the key. And before we get hung up on it, the key is not the secrecy. You see, we're very funny people. We will key in on verses really quick. We say, oh, well, it's secrecy.

Therefore, nobody should know what I'm doing. It's between me and God and me and God alone. You'll see the same principle applied when we get to prayer. Talks about praying in secret. Go in your closet, pray in secret.

So does that mean we shouldn't pray in church? Because that's not in secret. You see how fast we can go that way, though. It's not about the secrecy. The emphasis is the father and what he sees. The emphasis is that the disciple can give without securing human recognition because we're never truly unobserved.

You're always seen. Whatever you do in secret is seen in secret. Notice what it says. So that your giving will be in secret and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. Meaning that the father sees all.

The father knows all. He sees the gift even when no one else sees it. Hidden faithfulness is not forgotten. Just because you aren't getting pats on the back from those around you doesn't mean that God doesn't know.

And while this is a comforting truth because we know that our works are seen by the father, it should also be a humbling truth because we know that our works are seen by the father. We know that the motivation behind our works is seen by the father.

We may see a good gift or generous gift and we will admire it. What God sees is the hunger for recognition that it generated. We may overlook a small gift while God sees the deep sacrifice and severe sincere love that was part of that gift.

We'll see this pattern throughout Matthew six where this reward of men and reward of father is contrasted with each other. But we also need to be clear that we understand that this reward is not talking about our salvation being earned by private charitable giving for God's glory.

The truth is that fallen human beings cannot perform works of sufficient purity or value to place the holy God in their debt. If you didn't catch that, what that means is there is nothing you can do to put God in your debt.

You can give in a church and you can say to the body of the church, hey, I give more than anyone else in this church so you're gonna listen to what I say. You can't do that to God. He will never be in your debt.

The passage itself demonstrates how easily our best works are corrupted. We're giving to those who are in need and yet it's being corrupted because the motives aren't pure. If your justification and my justification depended on the purity of our generosity, we would all be found wanting and none of us could stand.

The 1689 Second Lenten Baptist Confession addresses this distinction very carefully in chapter 16. It teaches that the believers cannot, by their best works, merit pardon of sin or eternal life yet because believers themselves are accepted through Christ God is pleased to accept and reward what is sincere in them and it warns that works are not done to a right end, the glory of God, of works that are not done to that right end.

What this does is it helps us to understand Christ's language. You see, this is not an employer-employee relationship where we are settling a commercial account. This is a relationship between the father and his children, not one trying to become a child, one who is already a child, one who is learning to live as one who has already been adopted, who has already been brought into the father's household by grace.

We give because we've already received. We show mercy because we've already been shown mercy. We are free to leave both the recognition and the final accounting with God. Christ began this passage with the warning, beware.

This word keeps us from applying everything only to the obvious hypocrite. This word beware teaches us that there is a danger that is not confined here to particularly theatrical form of religion. In other words, we can't look at the other churches around us that don't believe what we believe, that don't live the way that we live and go, it applies to them, does not apply to us.

The warning is for us all. And if you'll notice, the warning keeps us again within the thread Christ developed since Matthew five, verse 20. The righteousness for the kingdom must surpass the outward righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.

The standard of that righteousness is God himself. That righteousness reaches even to the motives behind our good works. That's where we are now. And because that righteousness does this, the most humbling truth that we find in this is that sin attaches itself even to our obedience where we can perform the right action and done it in a way that we occupy the center versus God.