Please turn with me if you would to Matthew chapter 6 verses 1 through 4. Last week we finished making our way through chapter 5 in the Sermon on the Mount, in which we discovered how Jesus views the law and its application to the Christian. Today we begin a new section in this sermon of Jesus, a section which addresses the motivation of the heart. This is Matthew chapter 6 verses 1 through 4, and I ask you to stand in honor of God's Word as we hear the Word of God. Be aware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your 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. 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 Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Let's pray. Father, you are the one who sees all things. You see what we do in public. You see what we do in private. Lord, you not only see what we do, you see what we are. You see what drives us to behave the way we do.
You know every motive of our heart, every thought we think. Please use these words this morning to make us a people who live to hear you say, well done, good and faithful servant. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
You may be seated. Before we look at the specifics of this text, I think it will be helpful to see how these verses relate to what has come before. In the previous chapter, Jesus describes what righteous living looks like, and he primarily describes it in terms of not doing things which are forbidden in God's moral law. Don't kill, don't even get angry, don't commit adultery, don't even lust, and so on. In chapter 6, Jesus continues to talk about righteousness, but now he's talking about doing right things in the wrong way.
He's addressing motivations of the heart, why we do what we do. And this too is part of righteous living. The verse that connects these two sections is the last verse of chapter 5 which says, you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. So Jesus is describing what moral perfection looks like, what true righteousness, true godliness is. And this moral perfection not only forbids certain behavior and attitudes, chapter 5, it also demands that we do good things with the right motivation.
Chapter 6. Much of Matthew 6 then is spent explaining and illustrating and applying the importance of righteous motives in the Christian life. Now in verse 1, Jesus lays out a universal principle, and then in verse 2, all the way through verse 18, he illustrates and applies that principle as it works itself out in various Christian disciplines, in giving, in praying, and in fasting. So let's begin in verse 1 and spend some time this morning unpacking the principle that's going to be used over and over again throughout chapter 6.
So we have the principle. Verse 1 says, beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. The principle then is this, godliness demands that we value the approval of God more than the gratification of self. I'll say it again, godliness demands that we value the approval of God more than the gratification of self. When we practice righteousness in such a way as to be noticed by other people, we're serving ourselves, not God, and there's really nothing righteous about it. We could say it this way, there is no virtue in noisy virtue. That is, virtue that's simply out to draw attention to itself.
Now I suspect that this principle really doesn't need much explaining. I think we get it, and the reason we get it is because we're guilty of breaking this principle. Jesus has our number. He knows how we tick, and in this verse he puts his finger on an ungodly motivation that every one of us struggles with and probably struggle with often. We are prone to being very public about our godliness because we enjoy acclaim. We like to be commended.
Men, why is it that we show more etiquette to our wives in public than we do in private? Ladies, why do you have to pretend you have it all together when, truth be told, there are some pretty dark days in your home, days when you just really don't feel like the next Elizabeth Elliot or Susanna Wesley? What about you young people? Are you immune to all of this?
Absolutely not. Perhaps you struggle with the desire to fit in more than anyone. Young people, you place a high premium, do you not, on being real, not fake.
Even your apps are called Be Real, and that's great. Authenticity is a virtue, but I suspect if you're honest with yourself, you'd have to admit that you too struggle with the desire to be seen and praised by people. I can remember being in the youth group at our church where I grew up, and we were always talking about being who you are no matter who's watching. We would sometimes sit in judgment of those stuffy adults who just couldn't let their hair down in public and be genuine, and yet ironically in our genuineness, we all looked alike, we dressed alike, we talked alike, we had the same idioms, the same attitudes, the same tastes and preferences.
What is that? That is the desire to be commended by other human beings. Perhaps adults do it by conforming to social norms together and young people do it by being mavericks together, but it's all coming from the same underlying motivation.
We want to be accepted. And Jesus throws open the curtain of our motives and He says, Doing righteous things for the approval of other people who are themselves doing righteous things for the approval of others is futile, and it's actually the opposite of righteous behavior. Now I should talk about the relationship between this verse here and chapter 5 verse 16 because there seems to be a contradiction.
Jesus says in 5 16, Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. Is this not the exact opposite of what He's telling us to do in 6 1? Well, no, Jesus doesn't contradict himself. You see, in both verses, Jesus is addressing the motives of the heart. In 5 16, He tells us to do good works for God's glory. In 6 1, He tells us not to do good works for our own glory. In both cases, we're to be doing good works, but always with an eye to the glory of God and not to our own glory. The doing of righteous deeds is not in question. In fact, we'll see throughout chapter 6 that it's just assumed we'll be engaged in practicing righteousness. When you give, when you pray, when you fast, Jesus assumes we're doing these things, but He wants to make sure that we're not doing them for the wrong reason. In 5 16, Jesus is addressing our tendency to hide our light and not live for God's glory. In 6 1, He's addressing our tendency to show off our light and live for our own glory. And so Christ commands us to avoid both extremes. One commentator amusingly said, Christian people tend either to be guilty of great ostentation or else to become monks and hermits. But here we are called to avoid both extremes. The Christian at one and the same time is to be attracting attention to himself and yet not attracting attention to himself.
The difference is one of motivation, isn't it? Why are you practicing righteousness? It should be for the glory of God alone. So the principle Jesus is laying out for us is this. Godliness demands that we value the approval of God more than the gratification of self. Now, why didn't I say the principle value the approval of God more than the approval of man?
Why did I make that the opposite? Isn't it the praise of men that Jesus is condemning? But don't you think that pursuing the praise of man is just a symptom of a deeper root problem? I mean, why is it that we love for people to praise us? It's because that praise strokes our flesh. Praise from other people is just a means to an end. The end, the ultimate motivation that drives us to seek praise is gratification of self, isn't it?
We feel good when others think highly of us and it's that feeling that motivates us. So the warning Jesus gives is really, I think, about self-gratification, loving that self-gratification more than we love the approval of God. It's really a God versus self scenario, not a God versus other people scenario that Christ is condemning. But not only does this principle give us a warning, it also lays out a very specific consequence if we fail to heed Christ's warning.
Look at the latter part of verse 1. For then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Practicing righteousness from selfish motives forfeits the reward that God gives for genuine righteousness.
So if we live to hear men praise us, if we live to feed our sense of self-righteousness, we lose something that God intends to give. We forfeit His reward. Now to really feel the sting of this consequence, I want us to think for a moment about the reward that we're forfeiting. And as we think about this reward, I want to try to answer two questions. First, what is the reward of true righteousness? And second, is it wrong to be motivated by a reward? Jesus is going to say a lot in the next several verses about a reward for the righteous. In fact, the word occurs nine times in the Sermon on the Mount. What is that reward, and is it wrong to let a reward be my motivation to live righteously?
Let's think about these things for just a moment. The Bible, in general, not just in the Sermon on the Mount, speaks often about a reward for the righteous. Luke 6 23 says, Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven. Luke 6 35 says, Love your enemies and do good and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great. 1 Corinthians 3 8 says, He who plants and he who waters are one, speaking of those who minister the gospel, and each will receive his wages, his reward, according to his labor. In the Old Testament, we read, The wicked earns deceptive wages, but the one who sows righteousness gets a sure reward. Proverbs 11 18, Jeremiah 31 16, Thus says the Lord, Keep your voice from weeping and your eyes from tears, for there is a reward for your work.
And we could go on. The Bible doesn't hide the fact that there is a reward for the righteous. But what is the nature of that reward? When we speak of this reward, certainly there are many benefits for the righteous in this life.
Peace of conscience, for example. The fruit of the Spirit is a reward. The enjoyed fellowship that we have with other saints. The fellowship of the Holy Spirit as he comforts and empowers and teaches the righteous. There are even material benefits for the righteous.
At the end of chapter 6, Jesus says, Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. What things? Material things.
Physical provision. Clothing. Shelter. Food.
Drink. So there are some wonderful spiritual and material blessings enjoyed in this life. And we could probably spend a whole series of sermons looking at these current present day rewards. But for now, I want to focus on the ultimate reward for the righteous. And I'm referring, of course, to eternal life with God in the new heavens and the new earth. The Bible calls it glorification.
Let's just wet our appetites for a moment for this reward. Matthew 25 describes a day when Jesus will come to this earth in all his glory with his angels around him. And he will come, scripture says, to repay each person according to what he has done.
On that day, King Jesus will separate the wicked from the righteous, and he'll look at the righteous and say to them, Come, you who are blessed by my Father. That's part of the reward of the righteous. God is pleased with them. They receive the blessing, the approval, the favor of God the Father. Jesus goes on to say, Come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
So this, too, is part of the reward of the righteous. A kingdom prepared by God. What will this kingdom be like? I'm afraid we often think of that kingdom in a spiritualized, ethereal sort of way. Maybe we imagine ourselves floating around in some dreamlike space. Maybe we envision ourselves singing or praying or lying prostrate before God's throne.
But the Bible's description of this time and place is surprisingly concrete and real. It's referred to as a new heaven and a new earth. There will be a whole new world, like the Garden of Eden, only better.
Not just a spiritual dream world. It will be physical. We'll have bodies with senses, touch, sight, taste, smell, sound. Only our senses will be totally unaffected by sin.
C.S. Lewis, in his book The Great Divorce, describes an imaginary bus trip from hell to heaven and back, and his description of the new heaven and earth shatters any notion we may have of a non-material, spirit-only kind of place. He describes the new world as being so expansive that it's as if our old solar system were indoors and we're experiencing what it's like to be outside for the first time. As he marvels at how real it all is, he says, The light, the grass, the trees were different, made of some different substance, so much more solid than the things in our country. That world is so much more real than ours.
It's as if we've been living in the shadowlands all of our life. Folks, Jesus is preparing a place for us that will exceed anything we can imagine. If you think these Milky Way heavens declare the glory of God and the sky over Harrisburg shows his handiwork, just wait.
It's going to get a whole lot better. But not only will it be a place of beauty and discovery, Jesus will be there. And so there will be no need for fear or worry or anxiety about the future. Jesus will be there, but sin won't.
So we won't have to fight against pride anymore. We won't have to struggle with jealousy or envy or bitterness or resentment. Jesus is there, so we won't be beaten down with anger or lust or apathy or guilt.
And this will last forever and ever. Church, that's the reward God gives to those who are righteous. And that's the reward we forfeit when we practice our righteousness to be seen and praised by men. This is why Jesus says at the end of his Sermon on the Mount, On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name? You see, these people have performed great works of righteousness but all to be seen by men. But then Jesus says to them, I never knew you.
Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. They have forfeited their reward. Now perhaps all this talk of reward leads us to ask the question, Is it wrong to be motivated by reward? Is this a legitimate motivation or does it make us somehow less than sincere like paid servants of God? I would suggest that the promise of a reward is not a bad motivation so long as we recognize that every spiritual benefit we enjoy is given to us by grace. So long as we recognize that God is not only the one who rewards the righteous, He's also the one who makes us righteous. He not only gives us the promises, He also meets all the conditions for those promises.
And when we understand this, when we realize we don't deserve anything from God, then the rewards He offers us becomes just one more reason to give thanks to Him. Think about your best friend and the things you enjoy together as friends. Hanging out, good conversation, mutual trust, having each other's backs. Having benefits that are mutually enjoyed between best friends. We could say there are rewards that come with that relationship, but do those benefits make the relationship insincere? No, if anything, they just give more reason to be grateful for the friendship. The same could be said of the marriages represented here. There are perks that you enjoy because of the relationship with your spouse, but those perks don't make the relationship less than genuine.
They don't have to. Certainly it's possible for someone to be a paid lover, so to speak, to be involved with someone solely for what they can get out of it, but when true relationship exists, the perks, the benefits, the rewards are just all the more reason to show gratitude to your spouse, to your friend, or to your God. You don't expect these rewards, and you don't love the person because of the rewards, but when rewards are given, when benefits are enjoyed, you're filled with gratitude. 1 Timothy 6.17 describes God as the one who gives us richly all things to enjoy. We don't love God because of the rewards he gives, but we nevertheless enjoy the rewards. That's why he gives them to us so that we'll enjoy them. Our enjoyment of God's blessings is part of our love for him. It's part of our worship. In fact, to not enjoy those benefits, to not look forward to his reward, is less than sincere.
There's nothing wrong with enjoying the rewards of righteousness so long as we recognize that not only the rewards, but also the righteous deeds that bring about those rewards all come from unmerited, undeserved grace. So this is the principle that Jesus lays out, and it contains both a warning and a consequence. What Jesus does next then is to take that general principle and he applies it to three specific areas of Christian obedience. We're going to look at just the first of these three areas today, the area of giving.
So we could restate the principle like this. Godliness demands that in our giving we value the approval of God more than the gratification of self. Jesus explains it this way in verse 2. 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.
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 Father who sees in secret will reward you. So he tells us what not to do in verse 2. We could call that noisy giving.
Then he tells us what to do in verses 3 and 4. We'll call that quiet giving. Let's think for a moment first about noisy giving. Jesus calls these noisy givers hypocrites. This is a very interesting Greek word.
It was a term of the theater and referred to an actor, someone who played a part in a stage play. Jesus refers to noisy givers as those who pretend to be something they are not. They pretend to be generous givers when actually nothing could be further from the truth. We have a very dramatic account of noisy giving in the book of Acts, don't we?
Remember Ananias and Sapphira. Their charade literally cost them their lives. They were hypocrites. They were play actors on a stage. Listen to how Jesus describes these kinds of people, sounding a trumpet before them in the synagogues and in the streets that they may be praised by others.
Get embarrassed just reading this about them. These actors even supply their own soundtrack, a trumpet fanfare, to announce their generosity. Now maybe we laugh at the thought of this kind of egocentric attitude. We wouldn't dare draw that kind of attention to our own giving practices, would we? And yet we have subtle ways of tooting our own horn. Have you ever observed, for example, a faith-based ministry that says a whole lot about their commitment to trust God to provide?
They say so much about not asking for money that they seem to be asking for money. They're announcing their faith and in so doing are failing to live by faith. One preacher said there are ways of saying you don't announce things that for all intents and purposes announces that very thing.
Folks, self is sneaky. Pride is subtle. So subtle, in fact, that even though none of us would blow trumpets on the street corner to announce our giving, we still have to be careful that we're not announcing to everyone that we're not blowing trumpets. That kind of giving is noisy, it's self-centered, it's proud. This all reminds me of the opening verses of 1 Corinthians 13. If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I give away all I have, if I deliver up my body to be burned but have not love, I gain nothing. Jesus says those who live this way, those who give this way, have their reward and it's nothing more than the praise of men. Not the praise of God, not the approval of God, not the eternal blessings God lavishes on those who have a single heart to live for His pleasure.
Instead, all they get is just empty, fleeting praise from the lips of men. Now contrasted to this noisy giving, verses 3 and 4 describe what quiet giving looks like. Jesus says, but when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. So not only are we to stop announcing our good deeds to the world, we're not even to announce them to ourselves. This is tax season and I wonder how many of us when we're doing our taxes maybe pause to admire our charitable giving. Wow, I've given a lot this year, I'm pretty generous, I'm pretty awesome.
What is that? That's announcing to your left hand what your right hand has done and it misses the mark. When we engage in that kind of thinking, our eyes aren't on God's glory, we're fixated on our own glory. Jesus says we don't need to keep a spiritual scorecard to remind ourselves how good we are. I think Matthew 25 illustrates this kind of quiet giving as good as any passage. In verse 35 of Matthew 25, Jesus says, I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me.
I was in prison and you came to me. Listen to how the righteous respond to Christ's commendation. Then the righteous will answer him saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothe you?
And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will answer them, Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me. You see, it's as if the righteous don't even realize they're practicing righteousness. It just comes naturally. They're not thinking of themselves as generous people. They just are generous. This isn't the attitude of a paid lover or of an egomaniac. They practice righteousness because they've been made righteous.
It's what they want to do. And when Jesus rewards them, it's almost as if they're surprised by it. People consumed with God's approval are not even aware, it seems, of their own righteous deeds. Verse 4 says, Your Father who sees in secret will reward you. Now this tells us something about God, doesn't it? He's the one who sees all.
Nothing escapes His notice. When Hagar fled from Sarah and was at the point of death in the wilderness, she cried out to God and God heard her. Genesis 16, 13 says, Then Hagar called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, You are the God who sees, for truly I have seen Him who looks after me. The psalmist said, Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence? God, You are in heaven.
God, You're in Sheol. You're at the bottom of the ocean. You see in the light. You see in darkness. The writer of Hebrews acknowledges that no creature is hidden from God's sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account. And Peter, coming face to face with his own frailty and cowardice, confesses to Jesus, Lord, You know everything. Folks, God is the God who sees in secret.
He keeps the books so we don't have to. We can be satisfied and should be satisfied with having God alone as our witness. We don't need man's approval, man's thumbs up, but we desperately need God's approval, God's satisfaction, God's affirmation, well done, good and faithful servant. John Calvin said the cure for selfish ambition is to fix one's mind on God who sees all.
How do we do that? We do that by having such a love for God that we have no time to think about ourselves. You see, these verses in Matthew 6 are really a call for us to die to self, to die to ourselves, to stop being absorbed with how we are perceived, to stop being obsessed with our reputation before others. Our text is calling us to live radically selfless lives doing nothing for our own glory and promotion. And if Christ has to tell us these things, it implies that we have a persistent tendency to live for our own glory and to even do good things, virtuous things, obedient things for our own self-promotion. If this is the case, then we are capable of even trying to be selfless in a self-glorifying way.
Look at me, everyone. Look how self-effacing and humble I'm being. It's the right outward action with the wrong inward motivation, which means according to Christ, it is sin.
And so here's the point I think we need to remember. We don't live selfless lives by trying to live selfless lives. We live selfless lives by being wholly enamored with the glory of God.
I think it was C.S. Lewis who said something to the effect of we don't become humble by thinking less of self, we become humble by thinking of self less, which is to say we become humble by thinking of God more. The application of all of Christ's ethical instructions in the Sermon on the Mount begins with making God rather than self the reference point for all of life.
In our giving, in our praying, in our worship, in our treatment of other people, and even in our witnessing to the world, God is the fixed point, the North Star, the unchanging standard. If you struggle with pride, your view of God is too small. If you struggle with showy religion, your view of God is too small. If you struggle with anger or lust or dishonesty or Sabbath breaking or any sin, your view of God is too small.
The solution then is not to first try harder. The solution is to fix your gaze on the holiness and greatness and immutability of a God who sees and knows everything. I want to close with an exhortation I came across last week that very simply points us in this Godward direction.
It says this. When we wake up in the morning, we should immediately remind ourselves and recollect that we are in the presence of God. It is not a bad thing to say to ourselves before we go any further. Throughout the whole of this day, everything I do and say and attempt and think and imagine is going to be done under the eye of God. He is going to be with me. He sees everything. He knows everything. There is nothing I can do or attempt, but God is fully aware of it all. Thou, God, seest me.
Let's pray. Father in heaven, you are the God who sees all and knows all. The praise of men is passing and empty, but your rewards are eternal and full of joy unspeakable. So, Lord, would you protect us from bragging mouths? Would you guard our hearts from even wanting others to be impressed with our righteousness? Remind us frequently that we are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked without Your grace. And create in us such a longing for heaven that it makes the shadowy pleasures of this life pale in comparison. Lord, be glorified in us, I pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.
