FBC Morning Light – January 9, 2023

Well, good Monday morning, hope you had a wonderful weekend and were able to attend church yesterday and meet with God's people, worship the Lord together, and hear from Him through His Word. But let me ask you this, this morning, why did you go?

Why did you go to church yesterday? What was your, what motivated you, what was your motive for going to church? Let me ask you this, did you give in the offering plate or in the offering box? In our church we have an offering box at the back of the auditorium.

Did you make a contribution? I'm not asking you to make any comments in the comments section below or anything like that, but just for your own thought. Did you have your devotions this morning? Did you open God's Word, read the Bible, spend some time in prayer?

Motives for Church, Giving, and Devotions

Again, what motivated you for those spiritual activities, those religious activities, if I can use that term? What motivated you to do those things? Now the reason I ask that is because of one of the passages in our Bible reading plan for today.

So we're reading in Genesis 17 and 18, but also in Matthew 6 and the 6th Psalm. And what I want to zero in on is the opening half of Matthew chapter 6, because in that section, the Lord Jesus addresses the motivations for participating in three specific kinds of religious activities.

First is giving, the second is praying, and the third is fasting. These are very common practices among God's people, the Jewish people, that first century you could go to the temple complex area, there was a treasury box where people could put contributions in the treasury box, there was a time of prayer, a couple times of prayer every day, where people would gather together at the times of prayer during the times of the morning and evening sacrifices, and there were always milling about in the streets and around the temple area, there were always milling about some people who were crying out for alms, asking for financial help.

And so there's plenty of opportunity to give alms. And then fasting was a regular part of the Jewish calendar, there were only a couple of times a year when the Lord prescribed in the Old Testament law, when the Lord prescribed a fast, but the religious leaders through the years had established a whole bunch more, and if you were really spiritual, you were really faithful, so the thinking was, you would fast many, many times during the course of the year.

Some even would call for a weekly fast. So fasting was a big part of the practice. But Jesus addresses each of these areas, and he issues, really, a warning in each one. So, for example, in chapter 6, Matthew chapter 6, in the first verse, he says, Take heed that you do not your charitable deeds or your alms before men who be seen by them, otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

He says when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets, and so what would often happen is the wealthy people, they wanted to display their wealth and wanted to display how generous they were, so they would blow a trumpet and let everybody know that they were making a financial, significant financial contribution to somebody in need, and then all the praise would go to them.

In verse 5, he says, and when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites, they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corner of the streets that they may be seen by men. So, the motivation here was, again, they wanted people to see them, to recognize them, and to recognize how pious they were.

So, in the first instance, they wanted people to see how generous they were, and as a display of their piety, and here, they wanted people to see how pious they were as they engaged in public prayer. And then, in verse 16, he says, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites with a sad countenance, they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting.

So even in this spiritual discipline of fasting, what they were doing was making sure everybody knew that they were hungry, that they were miserable because they hadn't had anything to eat for a long time.

And, again, they were doing this for the praise of men. So you see that theme running through each of these three criticisms that Jesus offers regarding how people are engaging in religious practices.

He says, don't be doing these things to be praised by people, to be seen by people, to make a show of your piety before people, so that they think of you as such a pious person. That's one thing if, just in the course of your life, your walk is such that it's evident that you walk with God.

But it's not evident that you walk with God because of your show, because of your display. So I trust when you go to church, you don't go to church just to be seen by other people. I trust you go to church because you want to worship God together with God's people.

You want to be an encouragement to other people. You want to fellowship with God's people. And I trust when you make a contribution, whether it's in an offering plate as it goes by or in an offering box, that you're not looking around to make sure somebody sees that you're actually putting something in that offering plate.

And I don't know if you engage in fasting, again, this was a prescribed discipline in the Old Testament economy a couple times a year. It's not prescribed in the New Testament, but it's a spiritual discipline that could be beneficial spiritually to you.

But if you do, do it for yourself. Do it unto yourself and do it as unto the Lord. Don't let everybody know how pious you are because of how many times you fast and how miserable you are because you're so hungry.

That totally does away with any possible benefit that might accrue to you at all. So let's be careful. Let's be careful and let's check our motives at the door and make sure that what we do in our walk with the Lord is because of our love for Him and our desire to grow in grace and the knowledge of Christ and to be pleasing to Him.

Prayer and the Danger of Hypocrisy

So our Father in Heaven, thank you for this challenge and warning that we're not doing what we do because we want people to pat us on the back or to praise us or to glory in how pious we are. Deliver us from such hypocrisy, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.

Closing Blessing

Alright, well I hope your week gets off to a great start and I trust the Lord will bless you in it and in the remainder of the day. God bless.