Matthew 6:1-4

Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

So have any of you ever been to, I think it's pronounced Defin or Dafine China?

Has anybody here ever been to Dafene China?

Do you know what they're famous for?

They have an extraordinary claim to fame.

This village is known as the world's factory for oil paintings.

Walk down its streets and you'll see row upon row of artist studios, each filled with canvases.

But these aren't original works of art.

They are copies, thousands of them, replicating masterpieces by Van Gogh, Da Vinci, and other renowned artists.

The skill of these artists is undeniable.

Their ability to mimic the strokes and the colors of other great masterpieces are impressive.

Yet, despite the visual similarity to the originals, something essential is missing.

The spirit of authenticity, the soul that only the original creator can imbue to their work.

This village, with its endless production of art replicas, offers a metaphor for the message that Jesus delivers in Matthew chapter six, verses one through four.

Here, Christ addresses not the art of painting, but the art of living out our faith.

In his time, acts of righteousness had become like those replica paintings, skillfully performed, outwardly perfect, yet lacking the authentic essence that comes from a genuine relationship with God.

As we delve into these verses, we are invited to reflect and to ask this question.

Do our acts of obedience and devotion stem genuinely from a sincere heart and a true connection with God, making them authentic originals?

Let me read the text to you.

Matthew 6, starting in verse 1, it says this be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.

Otherwise, you have no reward with your Father in heaven.

So whenever you give to the poor, don't sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues or on the streets, to be applauded by people.

Truly, I tell you, they have their reward.

But when you give to the poor, don't 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.

Okay, that's our text.

Let's go ahead, let's pray together.

Lord, we just give you the next 30 minutes of our of our time, and we want to hear from you.

We want to be governed.

We want to be a people where if you just could, if you look into this, and we know you do look into it, where we're a people that are submitted under the authority of Scripture.

We're not just trying to make up the Christian life on our own, but we're really before you, placing ourselves under the authority of your word.

And we ask that you'd apply this text into our own individual lives.

Lord, you know where we're fake, you know where we're disingenuous, where where the hypocrisy comes out.

And Lord, we we pray that you would come and you would be like a surgeon, cutting those things out of our life, and that you would author in us a genuineness and the root reason behind our inauthenticity.

Lord, we pray that you deal with that, whether it's fear, whether it's pride, whatever is the root cause of us being hypocritical, Lord, we ask and we give you permission to work in us this morning.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So here we are, we're in chapter six, but what I want to remind you of is that when Matthew wrote the gospel, this book, he did not put in there verse numbers and chapter numbers.

That came along a thousand years after.

This was just a text that was read by the church.

It was Matthew's account of the life of Jesus, and this is the first major teaching section out of the book of Matthew.

I don't know if you're you're going along with the Bible project or not, but in their podcasts and on their website, they're just zeroed in on the Sermon of the Mount.

And this week, the the podcast was all about how does this Sermon on the Mount fit in with the overall structure of Matthew?

And it's excellent.

It's one of the shorter um episodes that they have.

The whole back half of the episode is just a lengthy reading, um, chapter five through seven of their um translation of the Sermon on the Mount by um by Tim.

But and this great material.

I'd I'd encourage you to keep up with it as we're we're kind of covering the same material on Sundays.

So we are we're in the book of Matthew, and we found ourselves here in this first sermon called the Sermon on the Mount, which is a collection of Jesus' teachings that he gave to his disciples.

And you'll recall that before we got to um this particular, um before we got to this particular verse, we had Matthew 4, 23, which is doesn't seem oh there it is, Matthew 4, 23.

Jesus began to go all over Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

Now, here's the interesting thing.

What does it mean to preach the gospel?

What does it mean to preach the gospel, the good news of the kingdom?

Well, just a couple verses later, we get into the Sermon on the Mount.

And the interesting thing about the message, the gospel here that Jesus is preaching is uh not this like come forward, pray a prayer, and then you're like in, like you got fire insurance, you're not gonna go to hell anymore.

The gospel that Jesus, the good news that Jesus is preaching is very much about a life that's lived out.

Right?

Did you have you noticed that?

It's very much this about like, hey, if you want to be a follower of me, here's the good news about the kingdom.

It welcomes in all these outcasts, the poor, the sad, those who are suffering, those who are persecuted.

Congratulations, you're welcomed into the kingdom.

And then he says, I didn't come to abolish the law.

I didn't come to abolish the law.

Rather, what I came to do was to fulfill it.

I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself here.

In um, when we come to Matthew chapter six, Jesus opens up, he says, Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.

Now, we have this giant like number six in our Bibles, right?

You have it, you have it in your Bible, like it's a big chapter six, and that wasn't there.

This ties in with something that goes all the way back to um chapter 5, verse 17, where Jesus said to these disciples, don't think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets, right?

When and if you're in the Bible class with us, you know, law and prophets here, this is Jesus saying, Look, I didn't come to get rid of the scriptures.

I didn't come to get rid of the Hebrew scriptures.

No, I came to fulfill it.

I am the fulfillment of the Hebrew scriptures.

I didn't come to abolish it, I came to fulfill.

And then a couple verses later, in verse 20, Jesus says to his followers, I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you'll never get into the kingdom of heaven.

Okay, so he he lays it out.

He says, You gotta be more righteous than the religious leaders of the day.

Now that's gotta, that must have just like broken their brains, right?

It's like, wait, our religious leaders, how are we gonna be more righteous than the righteous, professional righteous people, right?

Then he goes in and he he elaborates on what that righteousness looks like by giving six, what we called antithesis.

They were these, um, well, he says, uh, this is a quote from my reading.

It's in verses 20 through 48.

It centers on a positive righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, a positive righteousness, which was look, anger is equivalent to murder, lust is equivalent to adultery.

He places these strict limits on divorce, speaking truth without the need to spice it up with I swear, an asymmetrical response of goodness when the world is harsh.

I didn't fix my spelling even in the last week, I'm sorry.

And then love your enemies.

So those are the six, those are the six um ways in which Jesus is saying, okay, listen, you've come into the kingdom, right?

You're you're you're coming into my kingdom, the kingdom of heaven.

And this is not a kingdom that that just throws out the Hebrew scriptures.

No, this is a place where the the Hebrew scriptures are fulfilled through me, and righteousness, the idea of doing righteousness, it exceeds your concept that you see modeled in the in the um Pharisees.

No, it's this kind of righteousness that has it has depth, it goes to the heart, it requires sincerity, it's this, it's stricter in a sense, it's more sincere.

So he goes through these six examples, and then we get to verse one of Matthew chapter six, where he says, again, be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.

So this theme of righteousness continues, and now he's gonna talk about righteousness, three of the most common acts of righteousness at this time, three of the most common acts, he's gonna say, don't practice that righteousness like the scribes and the Pharisees.

No, because your righteousness, the righteousness of my kingdom that that my people do, it looks different from what you're used to.

It looks different from your professional religious, you know, elect uh elites.

The statement introduces everything Jesus is about to teach from verse 1 to 18.

So this statement here is not just about taking care of the poor, but this statement here, verse 1, is actually a statement that introduces the material about uh caring for the poor in a genuine way, praying in a genuine way, and fasting in a genuine way.

So this is the this is the introductory statement to those three acts giving to the poor, prayer, and fasting.

Eugene Peterson, he um translates uh and he he he he expresses this verse in this way be especially careful when you're trying to be good so that you don't make a performance out of it.

It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding.

There is a very wrong way to do good, and there is a very right way to do good.

A reward from your heavenly father is on the line.

And so he says this in verse 2.

He's gonna zero in on this idea of giving to the poor.

So whenever you give to the poor, don't sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be applauded by people.

Truly I tell you, they have their reward.

First of all, do you see the assumption that Jesus is making?

Okay, you've you're I'm I'm calling you to be in my kingdom, where you those religious leaders, they can come and be in my kingdom too, but they're no longer the elites.

Like they've got to come and they've got to adopt my righteousness.

They don't get to set some social, like, religious agenda, like, no, no, no.

You if those Pharisees want to come into my kingdom, they're gonna have to follow my rules as the king.

But in that kingdom, there's an assumption.

And the assumption is that you're going to be giving to the poor.

He says, so whenever you give to the poor, notice it's not, hey, if you give to the poor.

No, the way that Jesus phrases this, and the way that he phrases the teaching on prayer, and the way that he phrases the teaching about fasting is, hey, when you do it.

It's assumed that you'll be doing it.

It's assumed that you'll be giving to the poor if you're in Jesus' kingdom.

But he says, don't sound a trumpet, don't sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues.

This is the the righteous deeds, this idea of giving to the poor that's assumed, it's it's it this goes back to like Abraham.

In um Genesis 18, 19.

So think we're going all the way back to in Israel's history to the the founder of Judaism, the the four fathers, right?

All the way back to Abraham.

There is this statement about Abraham that God makes about him.

He says, For I have chosen him, Abraham, so that he will command his children and his house after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just.

This is how the Lord will fulfill to Abraham what he promised.

When God says this about Abraham, he's saying, Look, your future generations, you're going to teach your children to do what is right and just.

This is the Hebrew words sadaka and mishpat.

Sadaka is righteousness, to do what is right.

And the people of God from Abraham on, they're they're expected that you're going to do what is right within society.

I found this beautiful quote about this word sadaka, meaning righteousness.

The word sadaka comes from the Hebrew root word sadik, which means straight.

It's used literally of objects when they do what they are supposed to do.

For example, in the Bible, accurate weights and measures are measures of Sadiq, and safe paths for sheep are paths of Sadiq.

Building on this root word, sadaka refers to humans beings who are straight or in the right order with their relationships, primarily and first with God Himself and also with others.

The word Sadakah refers to a life of right relationships.

And so from Israel, from uh Abraham on, there is this expectation that you are going to live a life that is a straight life, that it lines up with God and with others.

And so Jesus here, as he's teaching about giving to the poor, this is like familiar language.

Like Israel got in trouble with God, and God allowed Israel as a nation to be taken captive by Assyria and by Babylon because they didn't take care of the poor.

Like they were an established nation, and they part of like their they were idolatrous, right?

So they worshiped foreign gods.

But another aspect of their running away from God was they just didn't take care of the poor.

They didn't take care of widows, they didn't take care of fatherless, and they didn't take care of the poor.

You can go back and read Isaiah 58.

Uh you can read Isaiah chapter 1.

Isaiah 1 · chapter mention

There it's a diet, it's like a medical diagnosis of the nation.

You are sick.

In Isaiah chapter 1, it's like you've got open wounds that are like pussy and uh like yucky.

Isaiah 1 · chapter mention

And what that refers to is you're not taking care of poor people in your midst.

This is a big deal for God.

Was that that people who are lined up with me, they're like they're just taking care of people who are poor and and uh downcast.

This is just this is what is a part of my kingdom.

And so you have the tradition, but the tradition has grown into this kind of like act, this religious act.

It's a it's a performance, and it became inauthentic.

And it was this, evidently in the synagogues, it would be like, we're gonna play a trumpet and we're gonna like make a big deal out of who's giving what.

And it just um took it from being this genuine act of righteousness to being an act of hypocrisy.

And Jesus says in verse 2, he says, Well, they have their reward in the synagogue.

The hypocrites' action in the synagogue on the street, they're sounding a trumpet when they give to the poor, with the intent that they will be applauded by people.

And Jesus says, That applause, that is their reward.

He goes on, Matthew uh 6 verses 3 and 4.

He says, But when you give, right?

So we've talked about what not to do.

Now he says, Here's what I want you to do.

When you give, don't 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 there's this um this picture that he draws of don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

Um this week I was thinking about when I learned to type.

And it still just blows my mind that I don't have to think about the keys.

Isn't that weird the weirdest thing?

Like if you know, if you're like a trained typist and you can just find the keys and you're not like hunting and pecking, it's just weird how like your fingers just like do this thing, and I do it every day, and I don't even I don't even like put any thought into it, like where the keys are.

And I was trying to think back like in ninth grade, I took a class, and I remember like the you know, Mavis Beacon teaches you to type, right?

And I don't know if you had that, that was your class too, but you know, and you had like I had a cover that they put over my hands, and somehow like it just clicked, right?

I think that's the idea of of how natural for us as followers of Jesus in his kingdom, like as citizens in the kingdom, it just is like this.

We're just like taking care of the poor in this way where like the right hand doesn't know the left hand, it it's not like like you're hiding it from the left hand, it's just like it just happens.

It's just natural, it's become so just normal to like care for the poor.

It's there's no like real like mental thinking it through.

It's and it's not this strategic, like playing the angles so that you have this audience, it's just inherent that flows out of this relationship with God.

And there is a privacy aspect, there's this discretion where it's it's being done, and I don't need anybody else to know that it's happening.

He says in verse 4, he says, so that your giving may be in secret.

And your father who sees in secret will reward you.

Man, there's so much, there's so much here.

So he's gonna keep repeating this idea of do it in secret.

He's gonna talk about pray.

Pray in secret.

Your father sees he's there, he sees it, right?

He will reward you, he'll reward you openly.

Each one of these areas of giving to the poor, prayer, and fasting are all done in this just like in relationship with God, not for like human consumption, not for like public consumption, right?

Now, mind you, okay, the um, well, I put it here in my notes.

Jesus is assuming, again, he's assuming that you're giving to the poor.

It is done with anonymity.

The secrecy is not the objective.

The goal is like, not how secret can I be in my giving?

And giving to the poor is not the objective.

The underlying principle here is to live out your private devotion to God regardless of human audience.

So, what Jesus is doing, he's being surgical here, he's dealing with the heart, and he's saying there's a heart issue with these Pharisees, these hypocrites, where they're doing their religious acts, they're giving to the poor, they're praying, and they're fasting for a human audience.

And that's not, that's not why the behavior is supposed to be there.

So you may have on on, we could put on stage, we could have like Sam here and Alexis, right?

And Sam over here is like a Pharisee, and he takes care every every Saturday, like he's in the compassion center and he's caring for the poor, and he's spending, you know, two hours sorting the food and giving it out to people, and he's he's like very genuine.

And Alexis is doing the exact same thing, but the hearts are completely radically different.

Sam here is like wants to make a show out of his like working at the compassion center, and you know, wants to be patted on the back, and that's his motivation.

And and Jesus says, Well, he's got his reward.

And you know what?

There's a reward.

Like to be a good person that volunteers in the community, like that's nothing that like you can get a good pat on the back.

Like that's it's not, yeah, it's hypocritical.

But I was thinking about this this morning.

I'm like, you know, there's really some advantages to kind of being that hypocrite.

Like Sam can go around and tell people, like, hey, here's what I do, and Sam's a good guy.

Like, you know, it's like I I really like the fact that Sam's and and nobody's like looking at Sam necessarily like, oh, you're just a hypocrite, unless he's like really ostentatious.

But like there's a way to like be hypocrite Sam and really like get the reward on earth and be like ingratiate yourself to other people and and be thought of as like, wow, he's a really good guy, and he gives up some of his weekend to like do that.

But and then there's Alexis over here who doesn't like, she's not playing any angles, like she has no ulterior motive.

Like, she's there and she's feeding poor people, and then she goes home, and it just is a natural part of her life.

It just flows out of I love Jesus, I spent time with Jesus, I'm in a relationship with Jesus.

This is just what I do.

And she's not like, you know, she's not like looking over her shoulder of like, hey, who saw me do that?

Like, who saw me do that awesome thing?

It's just this like natural, like joyful, like, yeah, I did it because I love Jesus.

There is such a genuineness and authenticity that exists in Alexis' relationship with God.

A human audience doesn't really factor into the picture.

Now, mind you, Jesus is going to do, Jesus is going to do the next three years of his life healing people, raising people from the dead.

Every day of his next three years is in public.

He is a public figure doing good and proclaiming the kingdom.

So Jesus can't be having an issue with public ministry.

He is dealing with our hearts, his followers' hearts.

And he knows how quickly the temptation can be to shift from doing the good thing.

Like the bottom can just fall out.

I know this, like in just working at the Compassion Center, how easy it is for me for just the kind of the bottom to fall out and for it to just become this rote routine that happens like every week.

And it's not this like Josh is abiding in the vine, and there's this vibrant relationship between Josh and Jesus, and he's there, like involved in making sure like the truck runs and picks up food from Amazon.

No, it's kind of so easy for it to just kind of the bottom falls out, and it's like, woo-hoo, this was like fun, but where's the abiding?

Where's the relationship with Jesus?

Jesus isn't asking his followers to do something that he himself isn't doing.

Public ministry, public obedience isn't in conflict with what Jesus is teaching here.

He's dealing with those core motives.

Are you, am I, okay with not being seen as we do good to others?

Recently in our house, there's been a conversation about real and fake Pokemon cards.

Pokemon is like a care, I don't know, I don't even wanted to explain who Pokemon is, because I'll slaughter it.

But there are these trading cards, right, that exist.

And some of them are real and some of them are fake.

And even a young person values what is genuine over what is fake.

And even the fake ones, to me, they look pretty good.

But I've learned over the last couple weeks that man, if it's not real, ah, it's a fake.

It's not genuine.

God's the same way, He's looking at us, and He wants, He values genuineness.

Something that is inauthentic, hypocritical, is just living out a lie.

It's an attempt to do what is right, but only imitates the authentic.

A few years ago I was working with a therapist, and one of the things, one of the greatest things that he taught me is that there is the spirituality that masks, and there's the spirituality that's real that reveals.

And you'll find this after spending any little bit of time around Christians, you'll find that some people are using their spirituality to actually play a game and to put up a mask and to make themselves look like they're spiritual, when really what's going on inside is a bunch of garbage that's really toxic.

And they're using Christianity kind of as a as kind of to put on a uh an outfit or or um an external dressing.

And then there's other people that that understand what Jesus is teaching here, the whole blessed are the poor in spirit, that they reve they they finally realize that the invitation into the kingdom is an invitation to basically be naked and unashamed in the presence of God and to be known as somebody who's broken and flawed and sinful, and you're okay.

And there's this great liberation that comes from being in God's kingdom because it's not like God's beating you over the head saying, You're a hypocrite.

He's saying, No, I am the great surgeon.

Come knowing you're a hypocrite, knowing that you're hiding sometimes, knowing that you know your own nakedness, no, you know your own guilt.

And I'm here to say, I've come to cover your shame.

And you don't have to put on this masking anymore.

You don't have to play the games anymore.

And you don't need to use Christianity as your mask.

This is the place where you are free to be genuine and authentic.

That's one of the reasons why in our church tradition, um, and there's a lot of different ways to do church and worship Jesus, but in our church tradition, we do what's called low church.

So my dress this morning is casual.

And that's because we feel like in the presence of God, God's okay with our common apparel.

I don't have to wear some fancy hat for you to feel like I have spiritual authority as I preach.

Now, I understand that in like an Eastern Orthodox tradition, there's other roles that those outfits play, and it serves probably a beautiful purpose in like connecting with God, and in an in an authentic and genuine way, it has its place.

But for us, we wear these kind of clothes to church because of this idea that God's okay with us who we are, of where we're at, that we can be authentic and genuine in his presence.

I'll close with this quote from Keller.

Now, now Keller wrote this beautiful book called Um actually, I can't even remember the name of it.

It's like a self-forgetfulness.

I think it's a gift of self-forgetfulness.

It's a little tiny book, but he says this of Soren Kierkegaard.

In his book, Sickness Unto Death, Soren Kierkegaard says, it is the normal state of the human heart to try to build its identity around something beside God.

Spiritual pride is the illusion that we are competent to run our own lives, achieve our own sense of self-worth, and find a purpose big enough to give us meaning in life without God.

Soren Kierkegaard says that the normal human ego is built on something besides God.

It searches for something that will give it a sense of worth, a sense of specialness, a sense of purpose, and builds itself on that.

And of course, as we're often reminded, if you try to put anything in the middle of the place that was originally made for God, it's gonna be too small.

It's gonna rattle around in there.

The invitation when Jesus says, Hey, come into my kingdom, come be come be come be at home in my kingdom, should be this liberation that you don't have to create an identity that is triangulated off of other people's opinion of your acts of righteousness.

Because in his kingdom, you're loved, you're esteemed before you did any feeding of the poor, before you ever prayed, he's gonna say, I knew what you were gonna ask.

And then before you fast, like he loves you.

That's his invitation.

There is a security and a liberation that comes with this beautiful kingdom ethic.

And so this isn't just a stop being a hypocrite message from Jesus.

This is this invitation to be liberated from all the pressure and all the motivation to be a hypocrite and to realize that you're like you're totally loved by God.

You're freed up from that hypocrisy, you're secure, and He wants He wants to establish you in that more and more and more.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for uh this idea that you're okay with us just in that secret place.

You're okay with us not getting the applause of other people.

You just receive our genuine acts of righteousness.

We get to do it, and you reward us for those things that you see us doing.

Lord, we pray that you um would shape us more and more into being these people that the the masks come off and there's this genuineness, this transparency that we're comfortable with as we serve you.

Thank you, Lord, for letting us be a church that that does care about the poor.

And some of us are poor.

Lord, um, thank you for letting us be that church.

Um we want to walk in these things more and more.

Um we want to just we want to have a heart this week that's open to just caring for those that are down and out, those that are vulnerable.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's take communion together.

Um the elements are there to take back to your seat.

We'll continue to worship and then we'll take uh communion together.