Summer on the Mount: Practicing Righteousness | Matthew 6:1-18 | Jarryd Cole

Welcome to the Ambassador Church Podcast, a church in the city for the city, on Milwaukee's east side.

We pray this message meets you where you are, challenges your faith, and draws you closer to Jesus.

Good morning.

Welcome to Ambassador Church.

My name is Jared.

If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, I get to be the lead pastor here.

And I'm excited to be back.

If you've been coming for a little bit the last couple of weeks, I haven't been up here, so it feels good to get back in the saddle.

Um, but I trust it's been held down uh well while gone in my absence.

And if you're wondering, man, the lead pastor is supposed to be preaching.

Trust me, trust me, you'll be getting plenty of meat in the fall.

Okay, so buckle, buckle up.

If I'm looking at my calendar, it's crazy.

It's already August.

The fall is coming, it's among us.

I've been telling people like my kids are going back to school.

And that, yes, the fall is here.

Excited about the fall.

Uh my kids are going back to school in less than two weeks.

It's insane.

All right.

Um, I was at the beginning of the summer, looking at the fall.

It's gonna be a long time away.

And look, we're already here, August 2nd.

It's wild.

My kids are not looking forward to going back to school, but I'm looking forward to them going back to school.

Amen.

Parents, let's go, let's go.

Get in school.

But hey, I've Ambassador Church.

We actually have a handful of things coming up in the fall, and we've been talking about them, slowly dripping, vision on some of these things coming up.

But I just want to unpack a couple of them really quickly, uh, just so we can get excited for what's ahead, okay?

Uh, we're actually starting city groups coming up in September.

Get up for groups.

We're excited about those.

If you haven't filled out your interest form, fill out your interest form.

We're excited about this, all right?

Um, if you're wondering how you're going to be getting discipled in the life of Ambassador Church from this point forward, uh, City Groups is going to be the answer.

So sign up for a city group.

But not only that, we have men's and women's ministries starting also in September.

Okay, give men's and women's ministries separate from city groups, separate from Sunday morning, men's and women's ministries.

Um, be on the lookout for information about those, okay?

Our Salt Company, college ministry.

Any college students in the room, anybody who loves college students, that should be all of us.

Amen.

Uh, they're kicking off again for the second year in September as well.

Uh, so be praying for them.

And lastly, here's the thing for your calendar, all right?

At the end of August, August 30th, 6 o'clock p.m., right here in this space, we're gonna be having our very next team night.

And team night is kind of like how we treat our member meetings, okay?

If you're on the team of Ambassador Church, you're saying, hey, you're giving or you're serving in it in some main capacity.

You call Ambassador Church, your home church, and this is you.

We want you to come out for that night, spend some time with us, we'll feed you a meal, uh, we'll pray a little bit, we'll worship a little bit.

And that night, as we rev up for September, we're gonna be praying and commissioning our city group leaders, and we don't want you to miss out on that.

We want you to be a part of that.

We want you to lay hands on our city group leaders, prepare them to go out and do a difficult thing, helping Shepherd and lead this church.

It'll be really exciting, okay?

So mark those things, put those things on your calendars.

The fall is gonna be full, and we're excited for everything coming up, all right?

Without further ado, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and get those out.

We're gonna be in Matthew chapter six, continuing our Sermon on the Mount series.

Uh, it feels like we've been in Matthew chapter five for like 98 years, okay?

But now we're coming into a new chapter.

We're gonna be tackling the first 18 verses, Matthew chapter 6, verses 1 through 18.

Matthew 6:1–18

And we have about six more weeks in the Sermon on the Mount before we hit into the fall.

But here in this new chapter, Jesus is gonna be unpacking a handful of things, okay?

He's gonna talk to us about several practices in the Christian faith: uh giving, prayer, fasting, all these different kinds of things.

He's gonna help us understand how we can view our possessions.

That's for next week.

But he's also gonna help us see how, like the cure to our anxiety.

Anybody anxious in the room?

Anybody worry about things sometimes?

Jesus, believe it or not, has something to say about that.

And we're gonna be unpacking that as we unpack chapter six over the next couple of weeks.

But today, specifically, what Jesus is going to do is he's going to uh hone in on three important Christian principles, okay?

Giving, prayer, and fasting.

We're gonna unpack these things.

And the way Jesus is going to do it is he's not just gonna say, hey, the what you do is important.

He's going to say the why you do it is important.

Does anybody know this?

Especially in the Christian faith, it's not a matter of just what you do.

There's also a matter of why you do it.

And the distinction he's gonna make is that he's gonna say, hey, if you're doing the things that you're doing, spiritual or otherwise, for the applause in the sight of man, he's saying, Hey, good on you, and the reward that you get for that, that's all the reward that you're ever going to get.

But he says, if you do it for the eyes and the applause of God, he says you not only have a reward that's good for now and it's temporary, but you have an award, a reward that's good for eternity.

You can take that to the bank with you forever.

But those of us know it's it's hard to operate in that way.

It is easy to do things for the eyes of man.

Am I not right?

I think about my kids.

And my kids in the house, I have four kids.

Those of you who don't know, 11, 9, 7, and 5, my house is very active.

And I love my kids a ton.

And one of the main things I hear from my kids most often in my house is hey, daddy, watch.

Mommy, watch.

Come watch me do this thing, watch-da-da-da.

And you come to my house any given moment, you'll see handstands, you'll see like round off back handsprings, you'll see the new trick they just learned, aerials, okay?

Like, we tend to like take our kids whenever a company comes over and we do this thing we call introducing, all right?

And we do it like the you know 90s Bulls era, and it's like introducing.

My kids just run out, do their like famous trick and round off back handspring into the splits, right?

And they're just like, good job.

I had a video I wanted to show you.

It's not working first service.

If you want to see it, come to second service and I'll show it to you.

But we applaud our kids.

And it's not only kids that have this like desire to have eyes watching them and seek the applause of people that they admire.

But we all can do this.

And there's some ways where it's cute and cuddly, like kids wanting to showcase something off for their parents.

But don't we all know that when this goes downhill, it can become something that's awe-consuming?

It can actually mess with our identity.

It leaves the realm of cute and adorable, and hey, watch this for the sake of something cool.

Into like, hey, if I don't get the applause that I'm seeking, if I don't feel like I'm worth something when I do this thing, then I'm worthless.

It begins to tell you something fundamentally about your identity, and this is when it can actually go south.

You'll begin playing a game where even if it's not your normal character to do something, you'll choose to do it because you know the response that you'll get.

Or maybe you'll choose not to do it.

Why?

Because you're afraid of the response you get if you did.

And we gotta know both these things stem from the same source.

You think, man, if I don't get the credit, if I don't measure up, if I don't get the applause, if I don't get the promotion, if I don't have the approval of man or woman, then my life is all a wreck.

My life has no meaning.

And trust me, as a recovering people pleaser, I know this all too well.

There's a danger in doing things for the applause of others, the applause of men.

I want us to know this.

And in our text today, Jesus is going to address that very point, but not about these trivial things that we're talking about, but the spiritual things.

Like I said, he's gonna look at and unpack three common Christian practices.

And what he's gonna say is that we should do these things to honor God in the sight of God, not in the sight of men.

He's gonna get not down to the what, but down to the why.

Because he knows, like all of us know, like most things in our life, we can be tempted to do even good things for the wrong reasons.

Anyone else like that in the room?

We tend to do them for man instead of for God.

But here's what Jesus wants us to know: that as believers in Jesus, people who call God our Father, here's what's true: we don't get a pass to do right things for the wrong motives in the economy of God.

We don't get that pass.

Like when it comes to living out our faith, the worst thing isn't that you'll never receive applause from man.

The worst thing is that you actually receive all the applause from men that you can get, but you receive absolutely nothing from God.

This is the warning.

This is the day that Jesus is presenting to us this morning.

So if you have your Bibles beginning in Matthew 6, I want us to take note of Jesus' first words here in verse 1 is going to pop up here on the screen.

Here's what Jesus says: He says, 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.

This is how Jesus begins this discourse.

And this is the thesis statement for the entire passage that we're going through this morning, that we are in danger when we use our righteousness as a way to appear impressive before men.

But I think it's interesting because in chapter five, if you remember before this chapter, Jesus says something that could be interpreted a little bit different.

You remember this in Matthew chapter 5, verse 16?

Matthew 5:16

We were going through being salt and light of the world, all that kind of stuff.

And what Jesus is saying is that like, let your light shine before others.

Why?

So that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

You remember that?

Like Jesus assumes that people are going to be looking at your life and they'll be close enough to you in order to see your life and how different it is living for Jesus than their own life is.

And so when we see that, we can kind of have this idea of Jesus, are you are you like going back on yourself?

Or are you saying some of the same thing?

Can it fit under the same umbrella?

And the answer is yes, it can fit under the same umbrella.

Matthew 5, 16, yes, still stands, but here's the difference.

Your light that Jesus is saying that you should shine is not inward so that people can see you, but it should be primarily outward so that people can primarily see God.

This is the light we are to shine.

And the way that you ensure that what you're doing is focused on God and not you is this you check your motives.

You ask yourself, is this for me or is it for God?

You check your surroundings, you check the outcomes, and you say, Man, am I more glorified in this, or is God more glorified in this?

And Jesus is gonna unpack what this looks like in the rest of the text as he begins to jump into the three practices.

Look at verse two.

You'll be able to identify a pattern here.

Look at this, pop up on the screen.

He says, 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.

Why?

Because truly I tell you, they have their reward.

People do that already 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 what may be in secret.

And hear this, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.

That's giving.

He says the same thing about prayer.

He says, Whenever you pray, don't pray like the hypocrites.

Why?

Because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people.

And truly I tell you, they have their reward.

But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your father who was what again in secret and here it is, and your father who secret will reward you.

When you pray, don't babble on relentlessly like the Gentiles do, since they imagine they'll be heard for their many words.

Don't be like them, Jesus says, because your father knows the things you need even before you ask.

And therefore, he even gives an example.

He said, You should pray like this instead.

You all know this, our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as is in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as also we have forgiven our debtors, and do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

For if you forgive others their offenses, your heavenly Father will forgive you as well.

But if you don't forgive others, your Father will not forgive your offenses.

And lastly, about fasting, here's what Jesus says Whenever you fast, you're catching the formula, don't be gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so that their fasting is obvious to people.

But truly I tell you, they have their reward.

But when you fast, you put oil on your head and you wash your face.

Why?

So that your fasting isn't obvious to others, but to your father who is again in secret.

And your father who is who sees you in secret will again reward you.

This is the text for the morning.

And as you see, this is a pretty repetitive text, but Jesus is holding in on three important practices, and he's letting us know something specific that the things that we are to do, we are to do them 100%.

But there's a way to do them, there's a way not to do them.

I think it's important for us to note too that the things he's highlighting here, these aren't distinctly Christian practices.

Like in this day, back in the first century, uh, many people, people who believed in God, and people who who didn't believe in God, maybe they served other gods, they often did these things too.

They often gave and they prayed and they also fasted for many other reasons.

So Jesus isn't like holding up, I want to know this, he's not holding up these three practices, like the primary Christian practices for you to do.

He's not putting these three things on a pedestal.

Should we do these things?

Absolutely.

But he's not saying, hey, do these things or bust, or the list isn't like this because he's saying these are the three most important things of all time, ever.

And if you don't do them, you're not a good Christian.

Like he's not, he's not saying that.

But he is saying, hey, there's a something that we should do, and there's a way that we should do it.

We should do it for God, and we should do it not for men.

So for the rest of the message, here's what I want to do.

I just want to unpack this truth about these three practices.

One, I want to show us that there is indeed a righteousness that we are to practice.

I want to show us two that there is a right and wrong way to do it, and three, there is a guaranteed reward.

And so, first, there's a righteousness for us to practice.

Take note of what Jesus says every time he's about to shift subjects from giving to prayer to fasting, verses two, five, and sixteen in your Bibles.

And the operating word here is whatever.

Jesus says, whenever you give, whenever you pray, whenever you fast.

It's important to note that because he's not saying if you do these things, he's saying, if you so choose, he's saying, Hey, whenever you do it, which means he's expecting you to be a person who gives, be a person who prays, be a person who fasts.

These are all good and right things to do.

He's not dumping on these things.

He's saying, No, we should actually do these things.

And so we need to know as Jesus' followers, Jesus actually expects us to be people who give, who are generous people.

And the caveat here, this particular verse isn't about giving to the church, although we believe in giving to the church here.

Come back next week for the money talk if you so dare.

All right, we'll talk about that then.

But Jesus here is talking about giving specifically to the poor.

It's what the high church calls almsgiving.

We gotta know almsgiving isn't something that you can do to earn your salvation.

There's money you can give away to say, hey man, yeah, now I'm right with God.

Okay, so that's not what we're talking about here, but it is a good practice to have.

Why?

Because it tells you something about yourself, it informs your heart, and it helps your worship towards God.

And what Jesus wants us to know, that giving is a clear biblical principle.

And we as believers should be willing and ready to give.

Not only that, but we have a responsibility to give, a personal responsibility and a corporate responsibility to give.

Now, as we understand this personally, here's what we have to know: that the key to generosity is understanding rightly that everything that you have, including your money, it's all a gift from God.

You see, the problem, I think, in 2026 America, and maybe even for all time, is that we tend to think that we are owners of the things that we have.

Do you want to know what's more true than not?

We're not owners specifically things that we have, but because God owns all things, there's nothing in the universe that God doesn't lay claim to.

What's true is that we're just stewards of the things that we have.

And so everything from the money in your bank accounts to the possessions in your house to the breath in your lungs, all of that does not belong to you.

You are just a steward.

All of it belongs to God.

Like God owns it all.

So when we get that down into the core of who we are and we believe that truly, generosity just begins to be something that just flows out of the nature of our heart like water does.

And so a question I have for the room is do you have margin in your budget to be generous to the spontaneous needs around you?

If a need were to pop up, if a neighbor was in need, if you saw someone, maybe you're sitting in a restaurant, would you be ready and willing to give of your resources to a person that maybe the Holy Spirit is nudging you to say, hey, I think it might be here.

Would you be ready and willing to do that?

And I've got to admit, this isn't often true of me.

I'm not the most generous person.

And I have had to learn this over time.

You know who teaches me most about generosity in my own household?

My kids.

Young married, if you feel like you're stingy with your wallet or your pocketbook and you want to grow in your generosity, just have a couple kids, okay?

Because their hearts are soft and they tend to see things that we don't see.

We're tend to be blinded to them, and kids' hearts are soft, and they see needs, and they're just like, I want, I want, I'll help.

Dad, do we have anything in the car?

You got any food?

We got any money?

I got a couple.

They have stuff on them, and they're like, I'll give them mine.

My kids are teaching me more about generosity in my house more than anybody I know.

Kids have a soft heart and eyes to see these things, and I think it would do us wise, y'all, if we were to have a heart and eyes like kids to see the needs in the world and be ready to be generous to fill them whenever we see them, as God would have us to.

But we don't have a personal responsibility, we also have a corporate one.

And this is what we mean in Bachelor Church when we say we want to be a church in Milwaukee for Milwaukee.

This is one of the main slogans that we have.

It's that we want to be a people who don't like hoard the possessions and the generosity that God is allowing to come in here, but we want that to flow out of us into the community.

Why?

Because we want to be people who receive a blessing to be a blessing.

And so there's so many organizations in this city that we partner with Hope Street Ministries.

We talk about the backpack drive, that's who we're helping with the backpack drive.

They're doing phenomenal work in the city, seeing the needs of the people.

And we want to say, hey, how can we come alongside you as a church and corporately be generous to help you see a flourishing city?

Kinship Cafe.

They handle some of the food needs in the city.

And spoiler alert, they're gonna be who we highlight this year for our annual impact offering.

Okay, so um coming up in a couple months, we're gonna be talking about them.

And so we want to help them in the city as well.

Bridge to brider with foster care, safe families of foster care, personal needs that arise in this church.

We want to be a people who are generous to the people in our midst.

Not just Christians, not just people in this building, but also people in this city.

We want to be a church that where, man, God forbid, if ambassador church didn't exist 10 years from now, that the city of Milwaukee would miss us.

This is our hope.

And the way we do that is that we we honor and we abide by the fact that we are generous people.

Jesus expects us to be givers.

Secondly, he expects us to be people who pray.

He expects us to pray.

And if you think about some of the Christian practices, prayer is often one of the things that we tend to fail to do the most, y'all.

And it blows my mind how often I have alarms set on my phone to specifically pray for different things in the city, all that kind of stuff.

We have the pray the Luke 10-2 prayer at 4 14 p.m.

I have a 10.02 alarm set and a 4.14 alarm set.

And you know what's more consistent about me than not?

Often when those alarms go off, they're a nuisance to me.

And I pause them.

But sometimes, sometimes, sometimes, I pray to God to do far and above more than we can ever ask, think, or imagine.

And I want to be a church like that who begs and pleads God to do those things.

And in order to get there, I think we have to understand the privilege that we have in prayer.

Like when you think about prayer, do you understand the privilege that you have?

That you have to talk to the God of the universe.

We did a whole message on prayer from our James series.

You can go back and listen to that.

But prayer is, among many things, a privilege that we have.

Think about this: the God of the universe, who created all things, who knows you and loves you, who knows the end from the beginning, who knows the numbers of hairs on your head.

He says, Hey, I want nothing more than a relationship with you.

And when we don't pray, man, are we slapping the hand of the Almighty Creator?

Are we spitting in his face to say, I don't need you?

And yet he still extends his hand.

He sends an offer to say, Hey, I still want you to talk to me.

Prayer is a privilege.

Would the people of Ambassador Church be a people who understand that prayer is a privilege?

God desires communication with us.

And Jesus even gives us a model prayer here in the text.

Many of you know this prayer, the Lord's prayer.

I'm gonna say it again.

Our Father in heaven, your name beyond it is holy, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us a day our daily bread and forgive us our debts.

We also feel those who are forgive our debtors and do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from evil, from the evil one.

For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever.

You know that's not in the text, right?

That part was made up later.

It makes the song sound a lot better, probably.

That part's not in there.

But did you know that this prayer isn't a prayer that was meant for us just to recite?

Like it's not a prayer that we're just to be like, yeah, I prayed this prayer, not done my prayers for the day.

Like, this is all good.

But what Jesus is doing is modeling a way for us to pray.

A way where we first honor God in his name as.

Holy.

Where the thing, like we can petition for God for the things in our lives, but that's like third or fourth in the list of what Jesus says in this text.

How many of us we put our needs above everything else?

We put it above the kingdom of God.

We put our names and our needs above the name of God and his desires.

Like we often don't have the desires of God on our hearts.

Like, do your prayers sound like this?

Do they follow this model?

They don't have to sound exactly like this, but when you pray, they don't have to, every prayer doesn't have to have every component of this prayer in your prayer.

But are you consistently praying prayers that align with the model that Jesus gives us here in the Lord's Prayer?

Do they start by honoring the holy name of God?

Do you align your heart with his rule and his reign before you ask for what you want?

Do you pray for forgiveness and against unforgiveness?

Do you ever get to the part where you're specific about your sin and temptation and plead with God for rescue?

Do you ever get to that place?

See, Jesus isn't concerned whether you have the Lord's prayer memorized.

Okay, I have it memorized, my wife has memorized, my kids can even do a little bit of it.

But he's saying, Hey, is your heart tuned in to the things of God in prayer?

May we be people of prayer.

But he also expects us to fast.

This is maybe one of the most misunderstood practices in the Bible.

But when we fast, here's what we do: we're seeking the hand of God.

What we're saying is, hey, God, we want to deny ourselves from some of the good things in our lives, like food, pleasure, and entertainment.

Why?

To seek the better thing in Jesus.

In 2026, I think fasting has become in vogue a little bit.

It's just part of now the health and wellness culture here in America.

But believe it or not, I want us to know like fasting is something you do more than when you're just trying to lose weight, okay?

There's so many different ways that we fast now.

Intermittent fasting, 75 hard, right?

J money, all the diet trends, all these kind of things.

And here's what's true.

Like, these are just a hundred different ways to try to say the same thing.

I'm starving myself, so I'll look better in a bathing suit next summer, okay?

Like this is what we're saying.

By the way, y'all, summer's almost over.

You can have a cheeseburger, it's fine, I promise.

But seriously, there's better things to fast for.

Here's some.

You can fast to intensify your pursuit of God in all things holy.

Like when you fast, it strips away your physical comfort to remind you of your desperation for God.

You can fast to gain clarity for the decisions you want to make and the actions you want to pursue.

Fasting actually quiets your heart so that you can discern right decisions and right choices.

You can fast to express repentance and humility before God.

Fasting can say with the body what words can't fully express alone.

You can say you need mercy, but fasting is something you do with your body that says, God, I need mercy.

We saw this back in our Who Knows series.

Fourthly, you can fast to beg God with holy ambition and divine expectation to do things that would blow your mind for his own glory.

You can ask Micah in the back, we're praying for 300 college-aged people to be at the kickoff on September 1st, 2026, over at Lake Park.

Tell your mama, tell your papa, tell your friends.

We're praying for that.

And we'll be in a time of prayer.

And we'll be asking God to do far and above more than we asked or imagined.

You can beg God to do that you don't even think He can do, but you can bring for Him and say, God, would you do it?

We're believing you for it.

You can fast for those reasons.

Listen, we should fast.

And in the future, we'll even fast here at Ambassador Church.

We'll do corporate prayer and corporate fasting here, even as we beg God to do things as well.

So the truth is, Jesus says there's a righteousness that we are to practice.

But secondly, there's a right and wrong way to do it.

You see this in the text?

Jesus says, Hey, we should do these things, but there's some people that you shouldn't do this thing like.

And he keeps naming them.

He calls them hypocrites.

Anyone know any hypocrites in the room?

If you didn't raise your hand for being a hypocrite, you're a liar, you are a hypocrite too.

But Jesus warns us hypocrites.

But we have to understand there's a difference between how we define hypocrites here in 21st century America and how Jesus would have defined it hypocrites in the first century.

Here's how we define it we think a hypocrite is someone that doesn't practice what they preach.

You don't practice what you preach?

Hypocrite.

In the first century, here's what Jesus says: a hypocrite is someone that practices what they preach, but they do it for clout.

No, you say it and you do it, but you do it for the wrong reasons.

You do it for the wrong motives.

You practice what you preach for the approval of men.

You practice what you preach for clout.

So, what these two definitions have in common is that they're both frauds.

You live the 21st century hypocrite and the first century hypocrite, and you say, hey, you know good and well, you're not really who you say you are.

That's what a hypocrite is.

Jesus is saying to the hypocrite, he's saying, hey, don't give while sounding your trumpet, heading to the giving box.

Imagine someone, we have a giving box in the back right corner, my right corner, by the way.

Imagine someone going to the giving box, open up their wallet, 100 bills, pop, pop, pop, pop, boom, in the giving box.

Like this is what Jesus is saying.

He's saying, don't be like that.

Don't give like that.

If you got hundred dollars to give, give hundreds of dollars.

But don't do it like this.

He's saying, don't do it to be seen.

Don't do it to have yourself in the limelight.

Don't do it to be seen by men.

He says, Don't pray to be seen.

Don't babble like the length of your prayers earn you something.

One of my mentors used to say we would be in groups praying and all that kind of stuff, and he would always make this caveat.

He'd be like, because we're all pastors and we're all friends and we all love Jesus, right?

And what can be tempting to do is you just start praying the longest prayers you can pray.

You're just naming stuff and saying stuff and blah, blah, blah.

Is my prayer more righteous than his?

And my mentor is like, here's all these pastors in the room.

And he's like, listen, here's the rule: nobody prays for longer than a minute.

Nobody prays for longer than a minute.

And he's not saying that as a rule, like you can pray longer than a minute, okay?

But the idea is, hey, if you're praying more and more and more, you're saying more things and more things and more things because you want the people around you to see you as holy.

He's saying, Hey, that's the wrong way to pray.

Don't pray like that.

He says, Don't fast in a way where your face or appearance or your disposition is just begging people to ask you what's going on with you.

Hey man, you're not looking too good.

Did you catch the solid parasite?

Like, no, I'm just fasting.

Too soon?

Probably way too soon for that one, right?

Because don't fast like that.

Like if we were to keep it real in a room, we would say, hey, there's something in all of us that desires to be seen by men.

There's something in all of us that wants us to have the applause of men.

And we can see this maybe in this room.

Maybe you're a young person in the room.

And maybe you come to our salt company calls ministry on Tuesday nights, and you're in the room, you're worshiping, you have your hands up, and you're singing to Jesus, and you know, there's a cute girl over to your left, and so you're like, does she sing?

I hope she sees me.

I love Jesus.

Maybe you're like me and you pray with your eyes open, just so you can see the heads nodding.

Are you are you are you agreeing with me?

You agree with me and prayer, somebody else taking this prayer to the kingdom of God.

Are you knocking on the door with me and praying?

You better be knocking on the door with me and praying.

You like me?

See, for some of us might be spiritual things, but maybe this shows up more in our personal lives.

We need to know that God isn't just looking at your spiritual life.

Like, hey, don't be a hypocrite right there, but we also need to know who's looking at your personal life too.

He's saying, Don't be a hypocrite right there either.

And we have to know all of us have a little bit of this in us, maybe some a little bit more than others.

This is just a matter of our fallen nature.

Like, think about some of the relationships in your life.

Maybe you're a girl in the room right now and you're desperately wanting to get married.

And so what you do is you tend to put on a front.

Maybe you put on this face, maybe you do these activities that you know is going to attract the guy that you think you're going to be attracting.

Maybe you're tempted to do this.

You're hoping to be seen, you're hoping to be chosen.

Or maybe at your workplace, what you do is you show up to your work and you're not genuine.

You show up and you know the character and the personality they're looking for for the promotion.

And what you do is come out of your natural character and you do the things necessary because you know that you can fake it so that you can be the one to get the promotion, not the other person.

You practice what you preach, but you do it for clout.

See, this was me.

I used to play basketball, played in college, played overseas for several years, and I always look at my time in basketball and I think about all it gave me.

It gave me amazing things.

I'm from Kansas City, Missouri originally.

I never would have gotten to college, got a scholarship, got my education.

I never would have met my wife, probably, never gotten a chance to see the world had it not been for basketball.

Amazing, amazing thing.

But also think back on that time and I'm like, man, what about all the other things it gave me?

Pride, just desire to achieve the masks that I wore, and the mask that I still have to take off and put down.

Like God's not done with me in that area yet of my life.

Like the temptation to perform.

Like, do you know what being in front of tens and hundreds of thousands of people with limelights and people screaming and national attention?

Do you know what that does to us all?

Do you know what that can do to us all?

It can do a lot, just so you know, okay?

It can do a lot.

Like everything in me over time, ever since being done with basketball, the desire to be seen a certain way, the need to achieve and do certain things, to have my reputation upheld, so many of these things.

All the while just seeking the applause of men.

You want to know what that leaves you feeling.

Tired, fake, insecure.

All for something that would one here be here today, or one day be here today, but then gone tomorrow.

Paid in full.

Got my applause, got my reward paid in full, but shallow as a puddle.

Not lasting.

That too is hypocrisy, y'all.

We have to know this.

But here's the good news for those of us who wrestle with these things.

And if you're honest, you raise your hand and say, I wrestled with these things.

Here's the good news: Jesus died even for the hypocrites.

Amen.

Jesus put his life on the line.

He hung high.

His body was broken, his blood poured out, even for the hypocrites.

Even for me.

You need this truth.

I need this truth deep down to my core.

And here's what's true about me.

I may not be perfect and not being a hypocrite right now, but here's what I can say is definitely true of me.

My core desires are different.

Meaning, I no longer long for the shallow applause of men, but I primarily long for the eternal applause of God.

I want the eternal reward.

And I wonder if there's anybody in here who's like that.

Who have or who want different desires?

When once all you wanted was the applause of men, all you wanted was the eyes of the men around you and the women around you.

And now all you want is the eyes and the pleasing of God.

The pleasing gaze of our heavenly fathers.

And so if, like the hypocrites, the wrong way to practice your righteousness, we have to ask the question: what is the right way to practice our righteousness?

And the answer Jesus gives us is we practice it in secret.

Look at these texts that's going to pop up back here on the screen.

In Matthew 6, verse 3, he says, But when you give to the poor, back to giving, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

Matthew 6:3

Why?

So that your giving may be in secret.

Underline that in your Bibles.

Look at this next one, verse 6.

But when you pray, go into your private room, set your door, and pray to your father who is in secret.

Again, verse 17, but when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face so that your fasting isn't obvious to others, but to your father who is again in secret.

What does Jesus mean by secret right here?

I think, yes, we can take some application and say there's something too going to a quiet and an isolated place and taking inventory and doing these things.

Yes, I think there's an application for sure.

But I think the primary application Jesus wants us to take away is that it goes a little bit deeper than that.

He's saying what's going on in the innermost of your heart.

He said, Is the reason why you're doing it?

Does it spring from a well that is in secret that desires me more than it does the applause of man?

Is it coming from a secret place?

Or is it coming from a place to be seen?

Or is it coming from a place to earn?

Nina Vonos will cut it.

Jesus says, hey, it has to come from a place in secret.

Where your mind, your heart, your will, your emotions are most put on me.

See, God is rightfully honored and your worship reaches him without hypocrisy when you do whatever you do.

Pray, give, or fast.

Raise your hands in worship.

Do a missions trip.

Whatever it might be, whatever you do, God is honored on your worship when it reaches him without hypocrisy, when you do whatever you do with a sincere heart, when you do it in secret.

And the tricky part is this is that only you know.

Only you know if it's sincere.

But I want to help you with the mini litmus test because here's a question you can ask if you want to know is what I'm doing sincere?

Is it coming from the secret place?

Here's the question: would you still do the thing you're doing with integrity to its fullest extent if it was okay that nobody else knew?

That is the question.

Would you still do what you're doing with integrity to its fullest extent if it was okay that nobody else knew?

The answer to that question, yes.

The answer no.

Only you know.

See, for many of us, here's what's true.

The things that we do are contingent on praise, they're contingent on attention, they're contingent on promotion.

And if this is true, I want to submit like maybe the thing you're desiring is not a genuine thing to desire.

And yes, maybe it is a good thing, maybe it's a righteous thing for you to do.

But if your main desire is gain and want and to be seen and applause, I would say, hey, it's not a genuine thing, it's still bathed in hypocrisy.

And so Jesus says there's a righteousness we should practice, there's a right and wrong way to do it.

But lastly, there is a guaranteed reward.

Here's what we have to know when Jesus is talking about all three of these practices, he makes it clear.

He says, when you do it for man, you have your reward.

But he says, when you do it for God, the Father who sees in secret will reward you.

I love how this reads because he's saying it doesn't matter if you're gonna get a reward or not, you're you'll you'll get a reward.

You'll get the applause of man that's here today, gone tomorrow, or you'll get the applause of God that lasts into eternity.

Like he's not trying to say, like, if you do one of these things or the other, you're not gonna get a reward, whatever it is.

No, no, no.

You can get some pleasure, you can get a reward.

But what reward are you seeking?

And I know as I'm saying this, it's really like taboo and weird to talk about rewards in church.

You read it all the time in your Bible, but you're like, I don't really understand this, so I'm just gonna skip over it, okay?

Some of you got like black tape in your Bibles over the rewards section because you're like, I don't know what this means.

What does this mean?

I'm not gonna pretend to know everything about what it means that the Bible says we're rewarded for our righteousness.

And the Bible's not extremely clear.

It's a little bit of a mystery on what it means for rewards, but here's what we do know: the greatest and most important reward that you can get is not any particular thing from God, but it is God Himself.

And ultimately, you want God, if you want more of God, if you want to be conformed more into the image of God, if you want him to be uh more about like it, if you want him more than anything, he's saying, check your motives for the things that you do.

I'm the highest reward, and I want nothing more than to be with you and be around you and lead you and guide you.

He says, You can actually experience more of me when your motives are right.

But it's also this, and I love this comfort for the Christian life right here and right now, that we can have hope and faith and comfort and joy, that the righteousness that you choose to do right now that may even feel really uncomfortable to you, that you're wondering right now, is it worth doing?

Is it worth being generous?

Is it worth actually going to God and prayer and begging Him for stuff?

Is it worth actually fasting, giving up of myself for the things of God?

Is it actually worth that?

Is it worth seeking forgiveness?

Is it worth not holding a grudge?

The answer is yes, and you can have comfort and joy and look forward to a time in heaven where what you're doing right now is not in vain.

You will be rewarded for your righteousness in heaven.

I love that this is true.

So I hope you hold on to that.

This truth that yes, God is the ultimate reward, but at the same time, God is a good God and He has rewards for you in heaven.

We don't know what those are gonna be.

And if I were you, I wouldn't waste your time thinking about it.

I would just be thanking him that it's gonna be true anyway.

Just thank him that it's gonna be true.

See, people who seek both the applause of man and the applause of God, they get something.

It's not like one gets a reward, the other one doesn't.

But there's a difference in the nature of the two rewards.

One of them lasts and one of them doesn't.

It says when you give, pray, and fast for the applause of man, you have your reward.

And I hope that this is a sobering reality for us.

Because we should be people who love Christ and desire the reward from God, not the reward from man.

And he wants to make this point for us that the righteousness practiced for the wrong reasons, here's what's true they're rewarded in full now.

But trust me, they're temporary.

But righteousness practiced for the right reasons to be applauded by God, they're rewarded later, but the reward is not temporary, it is eternal.

This gets us to the key takeaway for the morning.

Here it is righteousness practice for the wrong reasons gets temporary rewards now, but righteousness practice for the right reasons gets eternal rewards later.

And to everyone in the room, here's my charge, here's my challenge.

You are going to have to choose.

Do you primarily want to live for a shallow, paid-in-full transaction that's good for now, or a robust, eternal relationship with God that is good forever?

And my hope is that we be people who grow in our desire for the eternal over the temporary.

So, by way of application, I want to ask this question How does this desire take root in our lives?

How does this desire, eternal over the temporary, take root in our life?

Two things I want us to know.

Here's the first one.

We need to be people who grow in resting in our identity in Christ.

Christian, you need to be reminded who you are and whose you are.

You need that constant reminder.

You need the power of the Holy Spirit to remind you of your identity, that you are a son of God.

Right here, right now, that you are a daughter of God, and that because of your proclamation, salvation, you are chosen, you are forgiven, you are loved, you are valued.

These are things that are true of you, regardless of if you lift your finger or not to do anything else.

You need to be reminded of this truth.

You need to be convinced that you are not the sum of what you do or what you produce.

Your identity is not what you do, your identity is who you are.

And God has something eternal to speak over your life that you didn't earn, and that He lavishes on you gracefully.

You need to be comforted by a work in your soul to calm the rage.

Battle between your flesh and your spirit that tries to make you believe that you have to earn your stripes before God and man.

You don't have anything to prove.

If you're a Christian in a room, your end destination is secure.

It is done.

What you're heading for is something far greater than anything you can experience right here in this life, right now.

You don't have to white knuckle it.

You don't have to pretend for it.

You don't have to fake for it.

You don't have to not practice what you preach.

You don't have to practice what you preach and do it for clouts.

You don't have to do that.

There's something greater coming for you than anything you can lay your hands on right now, anything you can lay your eyes on right now, anything you can drive out the parking lot right now, anything that you can buy in a lot right now.

There's more.

There's more.

And you didn't earn it.

You don't deserve it, but it's God given to you by his grace and his grace alone.

And all you have to do is receive and be reminded of your identity in Christ.

You are an heir with Christ.

What's his is yours.

Remember that today.

If you're a non-believer, before you can rest in your identity, you have to receive your new identity first.

And maybe this is your step.

Maybe your step is to say, God, I need a new identity.

This isn't working for me.

I don't even know who I am.

I see the rest.

I see the comfort in the Christians around me.

And God, I want that for me too.

You can have that.

When you believe in your heart, when you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, here's the promise: you will be saved, and your new identity is given to you right then and right there, and your new identity is secure, and you can now rest in your new identity today.

That's your privilege.

Get familiar in secret.

Ask God to help you die to the need for recognition.

Ask God to help you die for the need for people to see and honor you for what you do.

Get comfortable in this secret place.

There's a story of an old Moravian missionary named Count Zinzendorf back in the 1700s.

Can read his history, great guy.

Maybe one of the first missionaries ever, maybe one of the first mission agencies ever.

But he was a guy who started a missions agency, and he was most popular for his 24-hour prayer movement.

Can you believe that?

And out of this prayer movement, it lasted over a hundred years, and so many missionaries would come to it and come out of it, and he would be sending them out over the world.

He's the one, maybe quote, he's in essentials, unity, in non-essentials, liberty, but in all things love.

Zinzendorf wrote thousands of hymns.

Some of the words that we sing in our hymns now are responsible for him.

He significantly influenced John Wesley.

But if I was to say, what's the most compelling thing about Count Zinzendorf?

I would probably say this.

It wasn't any of those things.

It's not his accolades.

I would say it's the way that he carried himself.

It's the way that I believe this man was so comfortable with the secret place.

There's another quote he's often responsible for, unquoted saying, and it's this as he was receiving missionaries and people who were interested in taking the gospel different places, places that had not gone, they would come to him, they would train for a while, and he would send them out.

And here's the way that he would commission them as they're leaving this place.

He would say, Preach the gospel, die and be forgotten.

Preach the gospel, die and be forgotten.

Like some of you even know people like this.

People who you know have their hearts so marked by God, if this is even what's written about their lives, that there are people who raise their hand and say, Hey, I want nothing more than to just preach the gospel, come know Jesus, die, and then be forgotten.

Yo, what if this was true of the people here at Ambassador Church?

Listen, so many things in our lives are probably overlooked.

I don't even know their names.

You probably don't even know the names of those missionaries.

But their legacy is marked.

Their reward is one.

And it's not one of the applause of man, but it's primarily one of the applause of God.

What they've done after they crossed into eternity is they heard nothing but the hand clap of God saying, Done, good and faithful servant.

Y'all, this is what I'm after.

And I want you to be after this too.

Because here's what's true on this side of eternity, we won't be recognized for everything that we do.

But I pray our greatest desire isn't for that, it's not for the applause of men.

I pray that it's not for to hear.

Hey, great job on that prayer, great job on how long you fasted, great job on giving, great job on whatever that project is, great job on serving.

That's not what I'm praying we hear the most of.

Although you might hear some of those things, and I hope you do, and I hope you hear from me, even because I'm grateful for all of you.

But I pray that our greatest desire should be to hear from God, hey, well done, well done, well done, good and faithful servant, as we heed the call, even like Zinzendorf says, to preach the gospel, die, and be forgotten.

Would this be true of us?

You pray with me, Father, we love you, and we're grateful for your son, and we're grateful for his work and all he's done.

And that we're grateful for his words, even in the Sermon on the Mount, that are so strong that convict to the soul.

But we ask today that you not only convict us, but would you comfort us?

Would you help us realize that yes, we may not be who you want us to be fully, and yet you still lavish your love on us anyway.

Would you help us be people who primarily remember grace?

Would we remember grace?

That it's not primarily up to us not being hypocrites, but it's up to us to receive the grace that you so lavishly give.

And today I pray more than anything that we would be people who open our hands, who open our minds, who open our hearts, and receive the grace that you are pouring out to us right now from the cross to eternity.

This is what you have for the people who believe in you.

Would we believe in that?

Would we trust in that?

Would you work it in our hearts to be so today?

We love you, Jesus.

And we pray this in your name.

Amen and amen.

Thanks for listening to the Ambassador Church Podcast.

To learn more, visit ambassadormke.org or follow us on Instagram at AmbassadorMKE.

And if you're in the Milwaukee area, we'd love to see you this Sunday at 9 or 11 a.m.

at 2308 East Bellevue Place.

Grace and peace.