Ask you to grab your Bibles. So we prepare to get to work
today. We'll be in Matthew chapter 6.
You may have noticed last week we did a little Skipper Roo.
So we're going to circle back now and look at six one through
4. And then we'll also look at
verses 16 and 18 together in this passage.
So we'll be in six verses, one through 4 and then 16 through
18. The reason we had to do that is
because the winter weather we had back in February, I think it
was been a while, maybe it's January.
Anyway, we had to postpone a Sunday and so that got us
behind. And so we stuck with the
schedule preaching the Lord's Prayer on Easter, and now we're
circling back. So here we go.
All right, Matthew chapter 6, verses one through 4 and 16
through 18. I kind of set that up as you
turn there. We are still in the heart of the
Sermon on the Mount. We'll be there through Chapter
7, and then we'll take a break for summer and preach some
Psalms, and then we'll hop back in the fall to Matthew chapter
8. But as we're here, what we're
learning is that Christ is teaching us what life in his
Kingdom looks like, right? What, what the people who are
part of his Kingdom, what their lives should look like more
specifically. So what we're seeing is that God
is not content with mere outward religion, right?
Just the, the doing the good things, the morality that we
often possess as religious people.
He's not content with merely that.
He's not content with just our appearance as Christians.
He, he is after our heart. God is concerned with the heart
of man. And so that's been very clear
from chapter 5 to now. Jesus has shown us in chapter 5
that true righteousness runs deeper than our external
obedience. Again, that it's not enough to
appear righteous before others while the heart remains far
right. You may remember in the
beatitudes. Blessed are the pure in heart
for they shall see God right. So he's after the hearts in
chapter 6, Jesus takes it from the acts of the hearts to he
begins to address acts of devotion, right?
He and in chapter 6, he's showing us that even good
practices like giving and fasting and praying can be
corrupted by a desire to be seen by others and praised by men,
right? We, we might do those things,
those outward acts of devotion, we might only do those things to
be seen by others and praised by them.
So the issue that he's addressing is not whether we
practice righteousness. He he's really getting at the,
the why of it. Why do we practice
righteousness? And before who are we practicing
that righteousness, right? What is the motivation of the
heart? So in this passage or in these
two passages together, Jesus is going to warn us not to turn
devotion into performance, right?
We don't want to make devotion about our performance.
Instead, He's calling us to live.
There's a Latin phrase that some of you may be familiar with, but
the Latin phrase is corum deo, and it's an important one.
It was one that many theologians throughout the years have used,
the church has used throughout the years.
Corumdeo just means to live before the face of God or to
live in the presence of God. And that's the the reason they
coined this term is because of this kind of idea that
everything about our lives is always done, whether it's the
secret things of the heart or it's the outward acts that
everyone sees. All of those things are always
done before the face of God. Nothing is outside of his sight,
right? And so we want to have a heart.
We want to have a life that is lived with this mindset that
everything I do is Cordea. It's before the face of God,
right? It's, it's before him.
It's in his presence. He's the one who sees in secret
when no one else can see or divulge the and often we can't
right see the the true iniquity and struggle of our heart.
God sees all of those things. Nothing is hidden from him.
And so that's what we're getting at today is how do we learn to
live before the face of God always, right?
How do we learn to live in His presence always?
And so we're going to look at Matthew 6, one through 4 and 16
through 18. If you're able, would you please
stand in honor of the reading of God's Word?
When I'm finished reading, I'll say this is the word of the Lord
and the congregation can respond.
Thanks be to God. All right, so Matthew 6 verses
one through 4 first, and then I'll skip down to 16 through 18.
Jesus is speaking. 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. 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 you're giving maybe in secret.
And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
I'll skip down to 16. And when you fast, do not look
gloomy like the hypocrites, for they just figure their faces
that their fasting may be seen by others.
Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face that
your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your father who
is in secret. And your Father, who sees in
secret, will reward you. This is the word of the Lord and
speak to God. Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you today for your word.
God, we thank you for what we know about you, what we come to
know about you through your word, and particularly this
truth here, that you are after the heart of man, right?
You have created us in your own image.
We are created in such a way that we can have fellowship with
the Creator, we can relate to Him, we can speak, we can read
His word. Father, we have been created in
a way that we can commune with you.
And so, Lord, we ask now that you would sanctify us by God,
that you would develop a deep dependence in our hearts for
you. Oh, Lord, that you would help us
not to think about the practice of our religion, whether it's
prayer or giving or fasting or singing in church or our
parenting or our marriages or any of those things.
Let us not think about the things that you've called us to
as ways to be praised by men. Rather, Father, would you help
us to think on all of those things as ways that we might
live our lives for you, that we might present ourselves a living
sacrifice for you. And so, Father, would you use
your word today to transform us at our at the heart level,
transform our minds, renew us by your spirit today.
And Lord, may we go out and live lives that honor you.
Having heard your word preached and read this morning, It's in
the name of Christ, I pray, Amen.
So one of the most dangerous
sins. All right, there's a lot.
There's seven that are deadly, right?
But one of the most dangerous sins that we can think of is
that sin that can hide beneath religious activity, that the
kinds of sins that exist far below the kinds of things we do
in the secrecy of our own hearts, right?
We, we know often the motivation for why we do something, but it
appears outwardly religious and good and right, and it receives
praise because it looks that way, right?
That that's a dangerous spot to live in.
Now, some sins are obvious, right?
They, they become painfully obvious.
They break out into the open. They're the kinds of sins that
are shouted from the rooftops, so to speak, right?
The kinds of sins that will scandalize a family or
scandalize a church or scandalize a community, All
right. They, they embarrass, they cause
great remorse and difficulty. They cause a lot of suffering
and pain and hardship. Those kinds of things we know
about. But, but there are other sins
that dress themselves up in church clothes, right?
They they look outwardly religious.
They know how to speak the right language, right?
They know the lingo, they know the jargon.
They do the right things. They appeared outwardly
faithful, and yet there's a heart underneath all of that
that's truly far from the Lord. And because of that, because
they appear outwardly righteous, they're really hard to detect,
right? It's sometimes hard to discern
like pride in our own heart. I'm not just talking about like
you look into the lives of other people.
Remember, as we come to the Lord's word, we always want to
be thinking first about what is this saying to me?
Right? What?
What is the text saying? What does it mean for its
audience? And and then what's it calling
me to do? So I invite you today with me to
examine your own heart as we walk through this passage
because we understand that pride in our own life can be difficult
to detect. It can sneak up on us.
And that's especially true of the kinds of sins that Jesus is
confronting in this passage, which really just, if you bolt
it down to one sin, you might just call it hypocrisy, right?
Jesus uses the word hypocrites here.
So, So the sin of hypocrisy, right?
Now, it's possible to do the right thing for the wrong
reason, right? It's possible to do outward
religious acts like singing in church for the wrong reasons,
right? Or or giving to the needy, or
fasting or whatever, right? It's possible to give and do not
truly love God. It's possible to to fast without
truly seeking God. It's possible to practice
righteousness outwardly while inwardly craving the notice or
the approval or the applause of man, right.
And so if we're honest, and it's hard to be, it's the difficulty
of this. If we're honest though, this
temptation is not really that far from any of us.
This is something that we all can wrestle with.
We all know what it is to want to be seen.
Well, right. We all know what it is to want
to have our peers notice us and respect us, or to have your
parents notice and respect you, or to have friends or Co workers
or church members all. Right.
So we all know that it's easy to get into this place where we
care too much about what other people think.
Like there is a way to care about what people think in the
right ways. Like this is my brother in
Christ, and if he has something to say to me, I should care what
he thinks, all right? If he needs to speak the truth
and love to me at a moment, I need to be able to receive that
word well, right? So we should care to some extent
what people think. This isn't like, you know, only
God can judge me type stuff of the world today.
But we shouldn't be so enthralled with what people
think that we begin to live our lives for their approval rather
than God's approval. That's where the rub comes in.
But that's where we must be careful because even in
spiritual things, our flesh craves an audience, right?
But Jesus praise God, loves his people too much to leave us
there. He loves his people too much to
leave us in that place. He and So what he does here is
he exposes false righteousness so that it's not just a wound to
you, right? He exposes these things so that
he might lead us into a true devotion to God to help us see
where are we airing, right? Where do we have a false
religion at work in our lives? And so he calls us away from
living for the eyes of man and into this idea of coromdeo,
living before the face of our Father in heaven.
And so that's the burden of this passage, all right?
It leads us to this main point that I think the text is
teaching today. Kingdom righteousness seeks the
Father's approval in secret rather than the praise of people
in public. All right, so very simple, But
Kingdom righteousness seeks the Father's approval in secret
rather than the praise of people in public.
Now we're going to see that in two ways today.
We'll see it in giving, right? So in giving we're going to say
seek the Father's pleasure rather than man's praise.
And then in fasting we're going to say seek the Father with
sincere devotion. OK, so again, the main point,
Kingdom righteousness seeks the Father's approval in secret
rather than the praise of people in public.
Now with that warning before us all that we've seen, let us
consider what Jesus teaches about giving.
All right, so in giving, number one, seek the Father's pleasure
rather than man's praise. Let me just read these 4 verses
again. 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. 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 you're giving maybe in secret, and your Father who sees
in secret will reward you. All right, So Jesus begins in
verse one with a warning that governs the entire section,
right? We talked some about this last
week as we looked at prayer, but he says beware of practicing
your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by
them, right? That's the motivation, right?
With the word beware. Jesus is telling us to be on
guard, right? To be, to, to watch yourself
carefully, to, to recognize spiritual danger that may not be
obvious at the moment, right? It may not be first obvious to
you, but what is the danger? Well, the danger is not the
righteousness itself, right? He's not saying beware of
practicing your righteousness. That wouldn't be right, right.
Jesus is not warning you against obedience, is what I'm trying to
say. But he's encouraging obedience
in the right direction, right? So he's not saying that acts of
devotion are unimportant or that acts of devotion are optional.
He warns against practicing righteousness to be seen by
others, right? So the motivation is what Jesus
is warning about. Do not practice your
righteousness. Beware of practicing your
righteousness in a way that you're saying I want to be seen
by others. I want them to notice me.
Now, I think this is a particular, this sin is
particular for young Christians, all right, young Christians who
are seeking to make their way in the faith, they're seeking to
kind of prove themselves to the more mature Christians around
them, right? This becomes a sin that is
particular for them. However, that does not mean that
a mature Christian will not find himself or herself wrestling
with this either. How many times did we see, you
know, we, we preached, how did we preach through?
It's bad when the preacher can't remember, right?
That happens. But we see pride throughout the
Scriptures, right? And in particular, we see that
men in the Old Testament were guilty of, you know, having some
success in serving God, living righteously for him and him
blessing that and giving his approval to it and making it
fruitful and multiplying it. And then all of the sudden and,
and just like the blink of an eye, it seems like in Scripture,
from one sentence to the next, it's like they grew proud in
their own hearts. They begin to beat their own
chest, so to speak and say, look at what I've created by my own
hands kind of thing. All right.
And that's a that's a terrible spot to be in.
So even when you've had some success, even when you've been
walking with the Lord for some time, we need to beware of this
showing up in our lives as well. So he warns against practicing
this righteousness to be seen by others.
The issue then is not the deed, right?
It's not giving or it's not fasting.
It's not prayer. The issue is not the work of
righteousness, it's the desire of the heart behind that work.
Why do I pray? Why do I give?
Why do I fast, right? And that's important because
earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said in Matthew
516, let your light shine before others so that they might see
your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
But if you read this the wrong way, you might think Christ is
just simply contradicting himself, right?
So it cannot mean that every public act of obedience is
sinful. We need people living as
Christians in public. Amen.
We need that. The difference is this.
In Matthew 5 where Jesus says to do this, the goal is the
Father's glory, right? Let your light shine before men,
that they might see your good works and glorify your Father in
heaven. And in Matthew 6 the goal
becomes self praise. It's almost like let them see my
good works and glorify me who is on earth all.
Right. So 1 is humble obedience that
points only to God. The other is religious theater
that points to itself, right? So Jesus is not merely
correcting bad behavior here, He's exposing a deep corruption
of the heart. Even our righteous acts can be
poisoned in the well of pride, right?
Even our generosity can become a platform for self exaltation.
And then he says, for then you will have no reward from your
Father who is in heaven. That's sobering, right?
Beware of practicing your righteousness in this way, for
then you will have no reward for your Father who is in heaven,
who is in heaven. So Jesus teaches us here that
it's possible to perform a religious act that appears
commendable to men, yet receive nothing from God.
Why? Well, because God.
Does not merely evaluate the external act.
He he judges the motives of the heart right.
That that's the deeper truth behind this warning.
God sees more than what we do, which is about all man can see
in US. God sees why we do it, right?
So man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks
on the heart, as we see in first Samuel 16, seven Proverbs 16 two
warns this. All the ways of man are pure in
his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the Spirit, right?
That's exactly what Christ teaches here, right?
The Father who is in heaven is not impressed by polished
appearances, right? He searches the hearts.
So then in verse 2, Jesus comes to His first example of this.
Thus, therefore, when you give to the needy, right?
Notice that He says when and not if, right.
We saw that with prayer last week.
When you pray, not if you pray. When you pray, right?
Giving to those who are in need is assumed by our Lord here.
Jesus expects His people to be marked by mercy and generosity.
So Kingdom citizens are not selfish, they're not stingy,
they're not indifferent to the needs of others, that they're
open handed because their father is generous.
All right? It's one of the things we talk
about often here when we talk about practicing generosity just
in giving, is that we recognize that all good gifts come from a
good Father above who gives good gifts to his children.
And so we can't cling to those as if they're ours and we got
them by the strength of our own hands and our own might.
All right. Deuteronomy 8 warns us that even
the work we perform to gain wealth is a gift from God.
He's given us able bodies to go and work, right?
So we can't even claim that. Well, I worked 40 hours a week
or 80 hours a week and I earned this.
This is mine. It's like, no, you did that
because the Lord blessed you with the ability to work.
He blessed you with a job, right?
We, we, we have no claim to anything that comes to us.
It all belongs to God. It's all his.
And so when we think that way, then when we see a person in
need, one, we should live in a way we'll get to those kinds of
things. We should live in a way that
when we see a person in need, we can be generous, right?
We can be helpful to them. We don't want to be stingy.
We want to be generous because we have a generous Father in
heaven. And so the Old Testament
repeatedly called people to care for the poor, to care for the
widow, to care for the sojourner, to care for the
needy, right? Proverbs 1917 Whoever is
generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him
for his deed. In Deuteronomy 15, God's people
were commanded not to harden their hearts or shut their hands
against a poor brother, but to open their hands freely.
So the issue here is not whether giving matters.
That's not what Christ is doing. Christ is assuming giving,
right? Giving does matter.
Mercy toward others is 1 fruits of genuine righteousness, right?
But Jesus says here's what matters, right?
Jesus says sound no trumpet, as the hypocrites do in the
synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by
others. Now whether this was literal,
right? And a guy walks up to a beggar
in the street and he pulls out of his money bag some change and
he gives it to him. And then he pulls out of his
satchel on his left side a trumpet and just starts blaring
this thing, I have no idea, right?
Doesn't seem likely, but we all know what it looks like.
Maybe we're guilty of this to give in such a way that we want
to make sure everyone knows we gave, all right.
How many people throughout the world give all the time?
And I don't mean just Christians, all right, but give
all the time. We might just say especially
unbelievers give large sums of money and they make sure it's
known they gave large sums of money, all right.
But it's, it's in all of us to like, want to broadcast the
sacrifice we made because we want people to notice the
sacrifice, right? And so we should be careful of
sounding A literal or figurative trumpet and our giving, right?
We, we don't want to give in such a way that we're attention
seeking in our generosity, right?
Some people gave, this is what Christ saying.
Some people gave to draw eyes to themselves, right?
They, they wanted their charity to become a stage that they
wanted their generosity to be noticed.
They wanted to be admired and talked about.
Look how righteous that man is. Look how generous he was.
And Jesus calls such people hypocrites.
Now, that doesn't mean that people won't talk about a
generous person, right? Many of you known generous
people who don't broadcast their generosity.
But people know they're generous because they've benefited from
that person's generosity throughout their life.
And then they'll say things like that man or that woman loves the
Lord. They're so generous, all right?
You can see the praise becomes a praise for God rather than the
praise for the man or woman who gave.
All right? So there's a way to give and
which people will talk about it. But that becomes that comes back
to Matthew 516, that you're doing it in such a way that it
brings glory to your Father in heaven.
All right, now this word hypocrites, we covered this last
week. But if you weren't here, here's
what hypocrites is referring to. It originally referred to as
stage actor. So someone who's on a stage,
someone who plays a part behind a mask, right?
The mask is made to make them look like whatever part they're
playing, similar to how we would use makeup today.
And so that is precisely what hypocrisy is.
It's the performance of devotion without the reality of it.
It's looking devoted on the outside.
But if you pull away the mask, there's no true devotion to God
underneath, right? There's only a devotion to
oneself. So it's spiritual play acting.
It's using the appearance of righteousness to gain a
reputation for godliness. Now, John Calvin said this.
He said the hypocrites are inflamed with no desire to
please God, but only to gain applause among men.
That's the issue we see. Like the hypocrite may give real
money to meet a real need. And I also think that God's
probably pleased to use the hypocrites money to bless
someone, but that doesn't mean the person giving is blessed of
God for that. You see what I'm saying?
There's some common grace at work there, but his deepest
desire, right, the deepest desire of the hypocrite is not
the good of his neighbor or the glory of God.
His deepest desire is his own praise.
So Jesus says, truly, I say to you, they have received their
reward. And in other words, human
applause is all they're going to receive.
They, the praise of men is their entire reward.
They wanted recognition and they got it.
They wanted to be admired. And so they were.
But that's the end of it. Jesus says that there's no
reward from the Father because the ACT was never truly for the
Father. So that's a, that's a pretty
piercing word, is it not? I mean that that's a, that's a
terrifying thing to read. It reminds me of the parable of
the sheep and goats, right? Those who will do these acts of
devotion and think that they're living for God and doing all
these things to please God. And yet in the last day they'll
be told you're goats. You're not truly my sheep depart
from me. I never knew you.
It's a piercing thing, right? It reminds us that there is
reward that is tragically small. There's a reward that's
tragically small. To be admired by people for a
moment, yet to miss the the smiling approval of God, well,
that's a terrible bargain, brothers and sisters.
All right. Martin Lloyd Jones observed
this. He said if we are governed by
the desire to please men, we have already received everything
we were after. So the reward of men is shallow,
it's fleeting, it's empty. Their their praise fades
quickly, their attention moves on, their approval cannot
satisfy the soul. And so by contrast, Jesus says
in verses 3 through 4, but when you give to the needy, do not
let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that
you're giving may be in secrets. So Jesus is using some vivid
language here. He's he's not forbidding all
record keeping, right? He's not forbidding thoughtful
planning. He's not forbidding some
organized generosity. No, He's saying that our giving
should be so free from self display that it is almost hidden
even from ourselves. That there should be no self
congratulation, no Pats on your own back, no inward applause, no
cherishing of our own sacrifice as though we were impressive.
The point is secrecy. The point is sincerity.
The point is singleness of heart before God.
And then comes the comfort. Christ goes on to say, and your
Father who sees in secrets will reward you.
That's a precious statement. Jesus does not merely say that
God sees. He says your Father sees, right?
The the one who watches the hidden life of his people is not
some distant observer. Rather, he's a loving father,
right? He sees what others miss.
He sees the unnoticed gift. He sees the quiet act of mercy.
He sees the sacrifice of time that no one praises.
He sees the generosity that's only known to him.
Nothing done for his scape, for his purpose.
Sorry escapes his eye. I think that's a real comfort
for believers. That ought to be.
That'll be a real comfort for believers that the world may not
see it. So what?
Other Christians may not know about it, So what?
The recipient may never understand what it costs you to
do that. So what?
Your Father sees it and he approves, and what He gives in
return is called a reward. Here Christ says He sees it in
secret. He will reward you.
Again, This is not performative righteousness.
This is not works based righteousness, right?
He doesn't reward you because we earn His favor by our giving.
He rewards because He, by His own grace, delights to honor
what He Himself has worked into the heart of His children.
This is not a doctrine of merit. It's a doctrine of fatherly
pleasure. The Lord delights in the good
works of his people, but the same God who saves us by grace
also delights in the fruit of grace in our lives.
Seems pretty natural to me. Spurgeon said in essence that
God is so gracious that he crowns his own gifts in US.
The Father rewards not because we have put him in our debts,
right? The Scriptures tell us no man
can give to God in a way that God would have to repay him.
God has no lack. He has no need for anything.
Right. So we can't put God in our
debts, but the Father rewards because he is kind and He's
pleased with sincere obedience produced in the heart of His
people by His own grace. So maybe a brief illustration
illustration can help, right? There's a great difference
between a child who does something kind to be praised in
front of the whole room. All right?
You might think of the little boy from Leave It to Beaver.
It has all the manners and all the right things to say.
Some of you are like, what is Leave It to Beaver, right?
I don't know. More modern example, right?
We've always just thought of Wally.
So it says all the right things, does all the right things, so
that everyone in the room thinks that's a good boy.
But there's a difference between that and a child who quietly
obeys his father simply because he loves his father and wants to
please him. Right.
Outwardly, to everyone in the room, the ACT looks similar, but
inwardly they're far apart, right?
One is living for the crowd, the other is living for his Father's
smile. And that's the point that Christ
is making here. Kingdom giving is not about
being seen as generous. It's about living before the
Father with a sincere, merciful heart.
So how should we apply this? Well, first we must examine not
only whether we give, we should examine that.
Do you give? All right, Well, we should also
examine why do you give when you give?
Why it's possible to put money in the offering bag each week.
It's possible to support a ministry that does good work.
It's possible to help a family or to meet another need and
still be driven by pride. We we may want to be seen as
generous and sacrificial and compassionate and important, but
Jesus calls us to test our motives honestly before God.
Secondly, we should cultivate hidden obedience, right In a
world that constantly urges us to display ourselves, Christ
calls us to the freedom of secret faithfulness.
Notice I said the freedom of secret faithfulness.
It's a freeing thing to live Corumdeo before the face of God
and not before the face of man, because then you're always
trying to please everyone around you.
You're wondering all the time, what do they think about me?
What are? Right.
Now it's a very freeing thing to just say.
Lord, may my life bring you praise.
I'm going to glorify and enjoy you forever, and that's all I'm
concerned with. And I know that you'll take care
of everything else in my life. And if people praise that, I
want to say thanks be to God. I am what I am by His grace.
By His grace, I'm not what I once was by His grace.
I'm not yet what I will be, right?
I am what I am because of Him. Not every act of obedience needs
an audience, brothers and sisters.
Not. Not every sacrifice needs to be
announced. That there's something deeply
healthy for the soul and doing good that only the Father can
see. Third, we should remember that
generosity is still expected, right?
This passage is not an excuse to stop giving while my heart's not
right. So I'll just quit giving until I
can get my heart right. That's not what Christ is
saying. It says when you give, right?
So his point is not less mercy, His point is pure mercy, right?
The Christian should be a giver, but he should be the kind of
giver who seeks the Father's pleasure rather than man's
praise. And then finally, we should ask
the Lord to make his content with his approval, right?
That's the issue beneath the issue.
Why do we crave human praise so much?
Well, because we're often not satisfied with the smile of God,
right? Human praise is enthralling
because it happens right in front of us.
We see it, we hear it, we feel the warm and fuzzies over it,
right? We feel kind of pride well up in
US. And pride's not attractive
because it's ugly. Pride's attractive because it
feels nice until it doesn't, until it causes a fall.
And that's not so nice. All right, So.
But we should think with eyes set on eternity, What does my
Father approve? Let me be content with that,
right? But why do we crave human praise
so much? Because we're not satisfied with
God's smile, right? When the heart is captured by
the Father's love, human applause begins to lose its grip
on you, right? So in our giving, Jesus calls us
away from performance and towards sincerity, away from
display, towards secret devotion, away from the shallow
reward of public praise, and toward the rich pleasure of the
Father who sees in secrets. And that leads pretty naturally
to the second example that Jesus gives, which is really the third
example in the text. Not only our giving, but even
our self denial can be corrupted by hypocrisy.
So in fasting point #2 seek the Father with sincere devotion.
New verse 16 through 18. And when you fast, do not look
gloomy like the hypocrites, but they disfigure their faces, that
their fasting may be seen by others.
Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that
your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who
is in secret. And your Father who sees in
secret will reward you, right? So Jesus now turns from giving
to fasting again. Notice that he says when, not
if, right? Just as with giving, just as
with praying. Jesus assumes that fasting is a
real practice among his people. He does not mock.
He does not dismiss it. He does not treat fasting as
meaningless. He addresses simply the right
way to do it. I'm not going to ask for a show
of hands, but if I were to ask for a show of hands, how many of
you have fasted in the last year?
What might that look like? If I would ask, have you ever
fasted as a Christian, like a true fast?
What might you say? I suspect that not many of us
think much about fasting. Not a lot, all right, But we
should. We really should.
So this is worth pausing over because fasting is one of the
least understood and least practice disciplines among many
Christians today. We know something about prayer.
We know some things about Bible reading and giving.
But fasting often feels foreign to us.
Jesus speaks of it as a normal expression of devotion to God.
When you fast, when you pray, when you give.
At its simplest, here's what fasting is.
Fasting is the voluntary abstaining from food for a
spiritual purpose, right? It's not a hunger strike to
force God's hand. It's, it's not a means to earn
righteousness. It it's not a spiritual badge of
maturity. Well, I'm one of those
Christians who fast. You know, I must have reached a
new level. No, it's it's a humble act of
self denial that enables us to give ourselves more fully to
prayer, to repentance, to dependence, to grief, grief over
sin, grief over suffering, or just an earnest seeking after
God for a season. So in scripture, fasting often
accompanies seasons of sorrow, seasons of repentance or
pleading or concentrated prayer. Right?
David fasted in grief and supplication in Second Samuel
1216. The people of Nineveh, after
Jonah's amazing sermon, fasted in repentance in response to the
word of judgement. That's a better joke.
If you remember Jonah's less than amazing sermon there.
He was really angry about going to the novots.
Ezra proclaimed a fast so God's people might humble themselves
before the Lord and seek His help.
In Ezra 821 and Acts 13, the church at Antioch worshipped and
fasted as they sought the Lord's direction.
In Matthew chapter 4, what we saw just several weeks ago, our
Lord himself fasted in the wilderness before his
temptation. So fasting is not some empty
ritual. It's a way of saying with your
body what we say with the soul. Lord, I need you more than I
need my daily bread. Lord, this matter is weighty.
Lord, I am grieved over my sin. Lord, I am seeking you
earnestly. Lord, my hunger for you is
greater than my hunger for food. That's why fasting can be such a
useful and meaningful practice in our Christian lives even
today. So a believer may fast to devote
himself to prayer over a particular burden.
He may fast to humble himself before God in repentance.
He may fast to seek wisdom in a serious decision.
He may fast to express spiritual longing and a season of grief or
need. Fasting does not make prayer
more meritorious before the Lord, but it can make your
prayers more focused, more urgent, and more deliberate.
But as with giving, Jesus shows that even this really great
thing can be corrupted by the pride of your own heart.
Do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, he says.
Apparently these hypocrites wanted their fasting to be
obvious, like they wanted their giving to be obvious.
So rather than a trumpet, this time they walk around with
disfigured faces. You know, if you've gone without
food for a while, your face might be disfigured.
Also, they they neglected their appearance.
They wore their discomfort on their faces so that everyone
could see, right. They cultivated a look of
visible strain and sorrow. Probably became very serious.
Why? Well, if you saw someone like
that, what would your response be?
What's wrong? Are you OK?
What's going on in your life? Like, if you care about the
person, that's probably what you're going to ask, right?
Well, then the answer, of course, would invite admiration.
Oh, nothing, I'm just fasting. Oh, so Jesus says they disfigure
their faces, that they're fasting may be seen by others,
that the issue again, is not the ACT itself, but the motive,
right. They're they're content.
They're not content. Sorry to be known by God.
They want to be noticed by the men around them.
They've turned self denial into self promotion.
And as in .1, Jesus calls them hypocrites.
They're acting apart. They appear deeply spiritual.
But the audience they truly care about is not God, it is other
people. Their sorrow is merely staged.
Their devotion is curated. Their fasting is not about
seeking the Lord. It is about being seen as
serious, sacrificial, and maybe holy.
Right? That there's something
particularly subtle about this temptation, right?
And giving, one might seek the praise for generosity, but in
fasting one may seek praise for your own seriousness.
One says, see how much I have given.
The other says, see how devoted I am.
Right. Yet both are forms of self
exaltation. So pride.
The truth of this is, guys, that pride can feed on religious
activity just as easily as on worldly success.
I guess I should say that again, pride can feed just as easily on
religious activity as on worldly success.
So again, Jesus says truly, I say to you, they have received
their reward. The the reward is human notice
and admiration. It's reputation that, but that's
it. Like when you die, if that's all
you have to bring to the Lord is look how awesome people thought
I was. That's a really sad state to be
in. That reward is painfully small.
I don't know exactly how to go, but I could imagine the Lord
saying, if only you've done these things for me, look how
great the reward could have been.
Right. It, it cannot, it cannot cleanse
the conscience. The fast in this way to receive
the praise of man doesn't cleanse your conscience.
In fact, it's going to accuse you more and more because the
more you crave man's applause, the more you'll seek man's
applause, the more you'll do whatever you have to do to gain
the approval of man. So it can't satisfy the heart's
desire either, because you were made for your Creator, You.
You were not made for His creation.
You were made to worship Him, to honor Him, to glorify Him, to
live your life before his face. So it cannot man's, man's
approval. Applause cannot draw your soul
near to God either. So Jesus then gives this
positive instruction in verses 17 and 18.
But when you fast, anoint your head, wash your face, that your
fasting may be seen by others. Not sorry that your fasting may
not be seen by others, but by your Father who is in secrets.
So in other words, do not advertise your fasting.
Do not put your spirituality on display.
Do not make a your own devotion a public spectacle.
Carry yourself normally. Ordinarily attend to your
appearance. Let your fasting be directed
toward God rather than broadcast to men.
Now, it's important to note Jesus not forbidding all mention
of fasting in every circumstance, right?
Scripture provides examples of corporate fasting and public
calls to fast. So the the point is not absolute
concealment in every setting, but it's the refusal to use
fasting as a means to gain attention or reputation or image
that the heart of the command is clear.
Fasting is for the Father. So imagine this.
Imagine I decided to go on a fast and Patricia makes a
delicious dinner, something I love.
And I come home that night and I have not told her that I'm
fasting. And I take this command here so
seriously that I will not tell her I'm fasting.
I just refuse to eat her food. That's not going to go well for
me, right? But I could invite her into that
and say, sweetheart, the Lord has placed on my heart of desire
to fast. And so I'm going to commit
myself to fasting. I'll sit at the table with you
guys. We'll do family worship.
We'll continue to, I'll hear about your day.
We'll talk through things, but but I won't eat during that
time. All right, see how easy that is?
That's not disobeying the command.
So you can mention fasting in the right places, and sometimes
Scripture calls whole groups of people to fast together.
But the repeated phrase that matters most here is that your
Father who sees in secret will reward you, right?
Just as in giving, so in fast in a Christian life has lived
before the face of God. Jesus does not merely say that
an all seeing judge observes you all right.
The all seeing judge sees what you're doing.
That's true, right? No, but he says it more
intimately than that. Your father sees you.
The one who knows your hidden prayers, the one who knows your
secret burdens, your inward grief, the one who sees those
unseen acts of devotion. That one is neither cold nor
indifferent towards you. He is your father, right?
And that changes the whole practice.
Fasting is not about impressing people with what we have denied
ourselves. It's about drawing near to the
Father with a sincere hearts. It's about setting aside lawful
comforts for a time to say, Lord, I want you and you alone.
Lord, I need your help in this matter.
Lord, I've got this great burden that I need to bring to you.
Lord, my soul longs for you. If you want to see what the if
you want to see a great prayer that you could use in fasting,
you might look at Psalm 42. All right, John Calvin noted
that fasting has value only in so far as it is joined to
humility and repentance and prayer.
Fasting by itself is nothing. In fact, we live in a world
today that promotes fasting for your health, right?
You could do a, a 72 hour water only fast.
And this is good for your body. It's a cleanse for you.
It's Yeah. But there's nothing spiritual
tied to it. They're not saying you should
devote yourself to prayer. And right.
So there, there are physically good benefits, I assume for
this, otherwise the world wouldn't promote it.
But but again, we're after the heart of this.
We're not just saying I'm going to give these things up and just
go on about my life. We're saying I'm giving these
things up. I'm going into that time of self
denial so that I can seek the Father above.
So when fasting is united with genuine prayer, fasting can then
be a fitting expression of a humble, dependent heart before
God. So there's a warning for us here
in our age. We live in a time that
constantly pushes us toward display.
When you think about what social media has done to the world, and
I'm not like a social media hater, I don't think it's really
that great for you, but I think it can have some benefits.
But we live in a time that pushes us toward display.
Like you're, you're now being trained to like curate your own
image. You're being trained to present
yourself, to make yourself visible in a certain way, right?
You can put a beautiful family photo up and everyone in your
family knows that that picture does not reflect what goes on in
our home. It ain't beautiful, it ain't
pretty. But we smiled good on that day.
We did what we were told that day, you know what I'm saying?
Like this. And, and we'll be proud of
ourselves for putting out this beautiful family photo when the
home is actually in turmoil. That's a problem, right?
Should be. And we shouldn't be OK with
that. But that's how the world trains
us, right? It trains us to curate these
images of ourselves. But Jesus calls his disciples to
something radically different. He calls us to a secret piety, A
sincere devotion, contentment with the Father's eyes alone.
And that's what Jesus exposes here.
Fasting is not religious theater.
It's not spiritual image making. It's meant to be a quiet,
sincere, Godward expression of humility and hunger for the
Lord. So maybe you've arrived now to
this question. All right, Kyle, I agree.
How do I apply this? What would you ask?
Thank you. I thought of that.
All right, First we need to recover a biblical understanding
of fasting, right? Many Christians have simply
neglected it. Yet Jesus speaks as though it
belongs among the ordinary practices of devotion.
Now, that doesn't mean that we get to bind consciences where
Scripture does not bind us, right?
The New Testament does not lay a command for a fixed fasting
schedule for all believers. You're going to fast on Tuesday
of every week for 24 hours, right?
That's not in there, so it doesn't.
It also New Testament also doesn't leave us this room where
we could ignore a practice that our Lord plainly assumes and
that the Scriptures repeatedly commend in the right context.
Secondly, we should view fasting as a servant of prayer.
You might see there's one hand going in the other hand, right?
Fasting is not really the point. Seeking God is the points.
The absence of food is not really the goal.
Communion with God is the goal. So fasting can help us focus our
prayers. It can help us humble our
hearts. It can help us express our
earnest dependence on the Lord. 3rd.
We must guard against turning even our devotion into self
display. We may not disfigure our faces
like the hypocrites of Jesus day, but that temptation
remains, all right. It's like someone who just did
leg day and their workout, they're going to make sure
everyone that day knows they did leg day.
You ever met anybody who didn't let you know they did leg day?
Of course you haven't. It's like trying to meet someone
who's not going to let you know they're on the keto diet or
something, right? They're going to let everybody
know just what you do. So we don't want to do that with
our righteousness, right? But we can't, we can't disfigure
our face and we can't make sure everyone knows.
But you'll be tempted to do that.
And you need to understand that that temptation will come and
you need to guard against it, right?
We, we may still want others to see us as especially serious, as
disciplined or spiritual, but Jesus calls us to sincerity.
Be sincere in the way that you seek the Lord.
It's better to have a hidden hunger for God than a public
reputation for holiness. That's a better thing. 4th, we
should consider whether fasting may be a fitting practice for
some of us in this season. I don't know everything going on
in your life right now. There may be burdens in your
life, could be financial, could be your marriage, could be some
parenting trouble, could be sickness, could be all sorts of
things that there may be sins to repent of.
There might be decisions to seek wisdom for.
I'm just not satisfied with my job currently.
I should seek a different job. That's not me making that
statement, all right? I love my job.
I'm just saying you might be in that place, right?
But there's decisions to seek God's wisdom for, right?
There may be griefs you're carrying some deep loss, some
deep pain, some deep grief of some sort or another, right?
Have you fasted? Have you thought to seek the
Lord in that? Maybe prayers you just want to
deepen. It's like, man, my communion
with God is just way off right now.
I read my Bible, but it's like I'm just reading words on a
page. I say my prayers, but it's like
the ceiling, you know, my roof catches on and they fall back
down. Just don't feel like I've got
much communion with God right now.
Have you considered fasting? You consider devoting some time
to the Lord, denying yourself, devoting sometimes to the Lord.
Now again, and it may be, let me say this, it may be one meal, it
might be one day, it might be a set time of fasting, but you
should join it to prayer. You should join it to scripture
reading. You should join it to devotion
with God, seeking him and, and, and when you do that, it's a
fitting way to seek the Father like they go hand in hand.
Now you're not trying to earn his favor.
I want to be very clear about that.
You're just simply a child expressing your need and your
dependence upon your father. Finally, we should remember that
the heart of all true devotion is this, the Father who sees in
secret. But that's the heart behind
devotion to God. He sees the hidden prayer.
He sees the quiet hunger. He sees the unnoticed act of
dependence. He sees what no one else sees.
And Jesus says, your Father, who sees in secret will reward you.
Again, the reward is not wages earned by religious effort.
It's the gracious pleasure of a Father who delights in sincerity
among his people. He honors what is done in faith.
He meets those who seek him. He draws nearer to those who
humble themselves before him. So in fasting, as with giving,
Christ calls us away from performance and towards
sincerity, away from image curation and toward reality,
away from the fleeting praise of men and toward the praise and
the presence of a Father who sees in secrets.
So as we come to the end of the passage, Jesus has shown us
something deeply searching, that even our righteous acts can be
corrupted by the desire to be seen by others.
Even giving can become self exalting.
Even fasting can become performative.
And the problem is not merely what we do, but why we do it and
before whom we offer it. And that is why this passage
presses on our hearts. You see, Jesus is not merely
calling us to a better set of religious habits.
He's calling us to live before the face of our Father Corumdeo.
He's calling us away from the shallow reward of human praise
and into this deeper joy of pleasing the one who sees you in
secret. So let us hear the warning
clearly this morning. Do not live for the approval of
men. Just don't.
Public applause is a poor reward.
It's thin. It's temporary and it's empty at
the end of the day, but the Father's pleasure, on the other
hand, is rich. It's enduring, it's full of joy.
And let us hear the invitation of Christ clearly this morning.
Seek your Father. Seek the one who sees in secret.
Be devoted to him. Give before him, pray before
him, fast before him, obey before him, walk sincerely
before him. For the heart of true
righteousness is not performance at all, it's devotion.
And for those of you who are like me, and you know that
you've failed. You've sought the praise of men
at times in your life. And truly, all of us have, in
some measure, right? The answer here is not to hide.
It's not to be like Adam and Eve, to see your nakedness and
to go and search for fig leaves and make yourself close and hide
in the bushes. It's the first camouflage, by
the way. It's not to do that, right?
If you know you failed. We don't hide.
We come to Christ. We flee to Christ.
Why? Because He alone is the one who
practiced a perfect righteousness with a perfectly
pure heart. He, He never, never once, even
one of His offered to Him, never sought the praise of man above
his Father's will. And then he went to the cross.
And he didn't go to the cross merely for his own glory,
although he receives a ton of glory for it.
And he should, though He went to the cross for for hypocrites.
He went to the cross for proud people.
He went to the cross for glory seekers like you and me.
He died for our false righteousness, and He rose that
we might take on His own righteousness, that we might
have a new life in Him. So we don't run from Him at all.
We bring our divided heart straight to Him.
We confess our pride to Him. We're honest about our own glory
seek, and we ask Him to teach us to live before the Father's
face. That's what believers do when
they read a text like this. That's how we should respond.
Now, unbelievers, this text merely calls you to understand
that you are a glory seeker. But you're seeking the glory of
the wrong one. You're seeking it for yourself.
You're building your own Kingdom.
You're concerned about your own will, concerned about the paving
your own way even. But I want you to know that
Christ died for the ungodly. Christ died to save unbelievers
like you. And there's a lot of believers
around you can testify to that because they once were an
unbeliever themselves, living in their own way, doing their own
thing. And so the call to you is to
repent of your sins. It's to come to Christ today.
It's to say with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and to believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead and to devote
yourself to following him all the days of your life.
So, brothers and sisters, those Christians in the room, let us
not be content with being outwardly godly or being thought
godly. Let let us desire truly in our
inward being to be godly. Let let us not merely appear
righteous before others. No, let us seek the Father's
approval in secret. Let us trust that the Father who
sees in secret will surely reward his children.
Amen. Amen.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you
for your word today, tough as it may be, convicting as it may be.
God, we thank You that, as I said in the beginning of the
sermon, you love us too much to leave us in our sinful state.
Father, because of your great love, you sent your Son to live
a perfectly righteous life, to die the sin, to die the death
that we deserve, to cover our sins on the cross, taking them
on Himself, enduring your wrath in our place.
You died. You sent him to die for the
ungodly. And Lord, we know that you did
not leave him in the grave, but he rose on the third day,
defeating death and hell and sin once for all time, and that now
all who call upon his name receive new life, forgiveness of
sins, righteousness. It's not their own, it belongs
to Christ. We can walk in that.
We have new desires, a desire to please our Father who sees in
secrets. And so, Lord, I just ask,
knowing all of that, knowing what Crisis said today, would
you help us as Christians to live a life of true devotion to
the Father who sees in secrets, to no longer fall to the
temptation of practicing or righteousness before men?
Not in a way that we would be seen.
God help us to live our life for the glory of God in every way.
Father, I pray for any unbeliever in here that you
would save them from their sins today, that you would draw them
to yourself. Let nothing hinder them from
coming. Would you grant them new life in
Christ this morning? I'm going to give you a moment
now there in your seat to to pray and to seek the Lord.
Maybe it's time of confession and repentance for you.
Maybe it's simply a time of adoration for what the Lord's
doing in your life, what He has done, the places He's brought
you to. Maybe there's a command here to
believe. Maybe you haven't practiced
fasting or even giving to the needy, and you recognize now
that you should be obedient in those areas and ask the Spirit
to help you. Maybe you're unsaved and you see
it now for the first time, that you're in rebellion to God and
in need of a Saviour. Ask the Lord to save you this
morning. Heavenly Father, we praise your
great name. We thank you for your kindness
toward us. We thank you for your love for
us. We thank you for your help and
our time of need. We thank you for the grace and
mercy we find when we come to the throne of grace.
Boldly we ask, Lord, that you would help us to be devoted men
and women and boys and girls who love Christ above all else, who
live our lives before the face of you.
Father, in every way, it's in the name of Christ to pray.
Amen.