Matthew | The Father Who Sees In Secret

Ask you to grab your Bibles. So we prepare to get to work

today. We'll be in Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

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

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

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

Matthew 8 · chapter mention

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.

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

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

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.