FBC Daily Devotional – January 14, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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week is marching on and getting ready to wind down and looking forward to that, because on the weekend comes the

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Lord's Day and we gather to worship and that's always a highlight of the week. At least it is for me.

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I hope it is for you as well. How are you doing in your Bible reading? Are you following the

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Bible reading plan? If you are, wonderful. Are you staying up to pace?

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And I'm sure you've noticed that you have one easy day and then a little more difficult day.

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We go back and forth between reading in Genesis, right now at least, and then reading in Matthew.

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And today's reading is in Matthew 6, verses 1 to 24, as well as the first five verses of Proverbs chapter 2.

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But in the Matthew 6 passage, I want to encourage you to think about this question.

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Why do I do what I do? Why do I do what I do? When you think about the different religious exercises that we engage in, and I'm sure you do, you engage in some of those, even watching the

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Daily Devotionals, you know, why do I do what I do? You know, why do

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I go to church every Sunday? Why do I pray before meals?

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Why do I pray at the start of the day? Why do I read and perhaps study the

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Bible? Why am I following this Bible reading plan? Why am

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I endeavoring to read through the whole Bible? Why am I doing that?

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Why do I give money to the Church and to other Christian organizations? Now, all of those are good things, and those are things

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I would not, I wouldn't suggest you stop doing any of them. I would encourage you to do all of them.

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But why? Why are we doing them? Because the fact of the matter is, we can do all of these good things from, shall we say, less than virtuous motives.

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Jesus really zeroed in on this, didn't he, in Matthew chapter 6, especially in these first eight verses, and he's zeroing in on some of those religious practices of his day and the potential motives behind them.

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And essentially, as he talks about those motives and those practices, essentially the motives were, you know, pretty selfish on the part of those he's zeroing in on.

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So he says, for example, beware of practicing your righteousness, as he begins this chapter, verse 1.

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He says, beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.

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You get that? You're practicing your righteousness before other people, you're parading it before others, in order to be seen by them.

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You want them to see you. Or it says, beware of doing this, for then you will have no reward from your

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Father who is in heaven. And then he targets some key areas. He targets their giving.

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They were giving benevolence offerings, alms, to the poor, but they were doing so in such a way that they might be praised by others.

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They would trumpet their giving, literally, blow trumpets before them, and then, you know, they'd do this little parade and say, well, everybody need to know, look at what

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I'm giving to so -and -so. We see this in some rather odd ways these days, and I would not necessarily question the motives of it, but, you know, when someone makes a grand announcement about, you know, giving a million dollars to such -and -such a charitable organization, and they want everybody to know that they have given this great donation, you do have to kind of wonder why, right?

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You know, what's your real motivation here? You know, why not just give it and give it quietly?

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Blessings on those who do, right? Well, this is what they were doing. They were giving their benevolence offering to be praised by others, and they were praying in such a way that they would wow others with their piety and their spiritual depth.

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They would be sure that their prayers were, you know, ornate and flowery and had all the right words and so on and so forth, that others hearing them would say, wow, they're really spiritual, they're really godly, man, oh, and hold them up in great reverence.

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And then the other thing Jesus targets is their fasting, and they had the religious zealots of the day had greatly enhanced and added to the number of fast days that were called on by the

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Old Testament. There were only really a couple in the Old Testament that people were supposed to engage in, but they had them every week if you wanted, a couple times a week.

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But they were doing it, as the way they were doing it is what Jesus is talking about. They were fasting, but then they were making everybody know how miserable they were in their fast.

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Oh, I'm so hungry, my stomach's growling, I haven't eaten anything in 12 hours, you know,

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I'm just, yay. And just so that people in seeing this would say, wow, boy,

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I wish I had their kind of spirituality that I could endure hunger like they do, you know.

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It was all a sham, and Jesus so much as says that. He says, you're getting no reward from your

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Father in heaven for doing this kind of show. So when you and I read this passage, we need to ask ourselves, what are our motives?

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What are our motives? Do I give so that others will think I'm generous?

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Maybe we could be even so distorted in our motives in giving that we've fallen into the prosperity gospel mentality that tells you that if you give generously, you know,

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God will give back to you multiple of what you give. And you know, you give ten bucks, he'll give you a hundred.

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You give a hundred, he'll give you a thousand. Am I giving to get? What am

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I wanting to get for my giving? See, that's the question. What are my motives? Am I praying in such a way that I'm trying to impress others so they'll think

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I'm godly, even if it's my own family sitting at the table? And how about the sacrifices

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I make? Do I make sacrifices and then let everyone know how difficult life is because I've made these sacrifices so that others will think

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I'm just such a giving, humble guy? You know, when you get right down to it, our concern must be only about our

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Heavenly Father, about pleasing him. Not doing what we do as a show to others, but doing what we do because we love our

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Heavenly Father and we want to please him. That's it. Simple as that.

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This is what Jesus is getting at in Matthew chapter 6. Our Father in heaven, we pray that you would deliver us from these kinds of selfish, self -centered motives that can enter into even the best of good practices, godly practices.

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Deliver us, O Lord. May our concern really be about you, about pleasing you, about honoring you.

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This we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen. All right, well have a good rest of your day.

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I trust God will bless you in it, and I hope to see you again tomorrow on the last day of this week.