THE DEVOTIONS OF JESUS
Matthew 6
1 "Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men, to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2 Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. 3 But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 that your charitable deed may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will Himself reward you openly.
5 "And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. 6 But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.[b]
7 And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words.
8 "Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. 9 In this manner, therefore, pray:
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
13 And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.[c]
14 "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
16 "Moreover, when you fast, do not be like the hypocrites, with a sad countenance. For they disfigure their faces that they may appear to men to be fasting. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. 17 But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.
I learned a quick lesson when I started my freshman year in college. I had taken a trip from a town in Alaska to a suburban Chicago college campus to play football. I had gotten there about a day early. Packed my stuff into my room after flying all night. Slept briefly. And then tried to spend some time trying to get to know some of my teammates.
It was an intimidating couple of days. First, I had come from a town less diverse than Fowler, into a team that was approximately 50 percent black and 50 percent white. I was baby-faced and had just turned 18 while on my flight, and I was obviously out of my element. I did not know what to expect, except for I was getting to play on a defense coached by a member of the Chicago Bears championship team. I saw this as a great opportunity.
It took a couple of days to figure out that every freshman coming in had these stories to tell. These stories about how they were all-conference this and all-state that. Until we got on the field I was pretty intimidated. Once I got on the field I learned a different lesson.
The lesson I learned was those that had the skill and talent to play tended to keep their mouths shut and let their ability speak for them, and those that did not have the skill tended to tout their athletic pedigree to compensate. As I became an upper-classmen in college we would have these freshman strutting onto campus acting like we should all be honored to just know them. We veterans would just shake our heads and say, "Looks like another one of those high-school all-stars" and roll our eyes. We knew the type. All talk—no action.
You know the type from the many life experiences you have had. The guy in sales that talks about how much he has sold until he complains to you that his salary is being reduced because he is not meeting his benchmarks. The guy who talks about how many women want to spend the night with him, and you know there is not a woman in town that would be seen on at dinner in the local restaurant with him, much less parked in front of his house all night. The mother that talks about how smart and well-behaved her child is, but for some reason he can't pass a class and he keeps getting suspended for disrespecting the teachers. Or the soldier that brags about how tough he is and how many fights he has been in, until he gets in a really stressful situation in a conflict and he is the first to cower, or cry or freak out.
Suprisingly, the act of talking big and delivering less is not limited to sports and our social lives. It also creeps on into our church lives. At least it does in the circles pastors run in. While athletes exaggerate about how fast or how strong they are, pastors tend to exaggerate attendance records to impress others.
Every time a new youth pastor would come into town when I was in Montana, they would tout their attendance numbers. You see we would gather for prayer, and in a litany of thankfulness they would give us all the raw statistics of their seemingly successful ministries. They would talk about the dozens of decisions for Christ that were made under their ministry. They would talk about how they had over 100 kids at their youth group for both high school and middle school. The rest of us, humbled by our new friends' expertise, would pray for blessings for our youth group. We would soon hear that our friend that liked to tell about how good a youth pastor he was had lost his job or quit a little over a year in his ministry.
Whether we are athletes or playboys, salesmen or soldiers, pastors or men and women that attend church every Sunday and have "good Christian friends", we tend at one time or another to either encounter people who play for the crowd, or we even play for the crowd ourselves. In the passage we just read, Jesus tells us to live our lives for an audience of one. As followers of Jesus, Jesus commands us to live our lives for the glory of the Father. To strive to please Him, and to not live to please the crowd that may or may not gather around us.
For about half of the sixth chapter of Matthew Jesus makes this point, this importance of living our lives for an audience of one. Jesus does this by saying the same phrase over and over again. He says, "Do not be like the hypocrites" when you do certain things like pray, or give, or fast. The hypocrites he says do things to be noticed by men. Instead, Jesus tells us "go to a secret place" or something similar, so that our acts will not be noticed by others. He says that those that choose to make their spiritual lives a spectacle for the whole world are getting their reward through the attention they get from people. Holy people, Jesus says, do things quietly, and what they have done in secret, God rewards in front of all.
I have told you this before, but I think it important to remind you what a hypocrite is—literally. A hypocrite was an actor. It was specifically an actor that played a number of different parts in a play for a crowd. Many of the dramas of that time had actors wearing different masks in front of their face for their performance. When they had one mask on, they were one character. When they had another mask on they were another character.
When we talk about a hypocrite today, we talk about this malicious person who is deliberately duplicitous. Not so in the time of Jesus. A hypocrite is simply someone who plays a role for people, or for a number of people. They play the roles people want them to play.
Neverthless, Jesus tells us not to be like the hypocrites. Do not play a role. Do not make your spiritual life something that is to be evaluated by others. Do not make your prayers good theatre. Do not live your life like you are on a stage for the crowd to boo or to applaud. God doesn't want our spiritual lives to be like the theater. He wants us to live for an audience of one What I would like to do, then, briefly, is to take the rest of the sermon to discuss why it is important that we live our life for an audience of one.
- Doing things to be seen and honored by others is destructive to community
The minute that we live our lives to impress those around us, we begin to destroy the church community that God gave us. Why is this? It is because as soon as we make the spiritual life something for public consumption, we make our spiritual lives something we measure against everyone else. We compare ourselves against everyone else. And once we start comparing ourselves to everyone else and what they do in church, it is almost guaranteed that we will have things like jealousy, malice, self-centeredness, arguments, and divisions enter our congregations.
Perhaps to get the picture of this we have to return to the word-picture the Bible passage gives us. The theater. Now I suspect Tim runs a pretty tight ship with the students in the theatre department. So this kind of thing does not happen there. But the theatre crowds I have often been around when I was younger were full of competition. There were always one or two parts in any one production that everyone wanted. And certain people would get those parts, often over and over again. And everyone else would be angry and jealous. Pretty soon everyone would talk about how they deserved the role that this other person got, that this other person did not really deserve the attention and appreciation they received from others. Then gossip about the people in the lead roles would start up. Pretty soon, everyone would be comparing their abilities to the star of the show. And they would either feel woefully inadequate, or they would be like the "high school all star" athletes we talked about earlier and overestimate their abilities.
Our relationship with God is a relationship. It is not something that where we try and be as good a prayer as someone else, or as good a giver as another person. We each have our own spiritual journey that is something that is unique to us. And that is part of a personal relationship between us and Jesus. As soon as we start making it a show for everyone to evaluate and compare themselves to, we start grading ourselves and everyone else on a curve. And those that rate better than us, we either put on a pedestal or we look to criticize. And those we rate as less than we either make into a project or we undervalue or underestimate what God can do through them. And we find that instead of being in a community we are in a spiritual beauty contest. God forbid.
- When our spiritual life isn't a show, we can come to God just as we are.
Perhaps there is no bigger damper on people's prayer life and more dangerous temptation in our spiritual lives than the temptation to be less than honest with God.
When we pray for the crowd, we pray for what we think other people would like us to pray for. We try and look and sound like we know what we are doing. We try and have the right words at the right time. Like the person fasting, we try to have the right look on our face so we look spiritual. Sometimes we can make our playing for the crowd sound more spiritual by playing a role as we put what give in the offering plate so everyone can see what we are giving—and we say that we need to be a "role model".
When it comes to prayer God does not want us to be a role model for others. He instead wants us to come to him just as we are, and let him deal with us for just who we are. God does not want you to have the right words when you pray. God instead wants you to come before him and be just who you are. Maybe you feel like you should pray, but you don't have the words. Say, "God I know I should pray, but I don't have the words. I don't know what to pray about." It won't be long before you will just start talking to God the way you would with a friend, or you will be blessed just sitting in the silence with God. You don't have to come to God with a resume. You do not have to impress God with how much or how little you give, or how much you endure when you give up something for him. Just come before God just as you are, and let him grow you into who he wants you to be.
Pray about how much to give to Him. Then give it. You don't have to say So and So gives this much, and I only give half. You do what God wants you to do, and you trust Him with the gifts you give. Then you seek how you might be able to give again. But if you compare yourselves to others, you will either be underwhelmed or overimpressed by what you give. No, instead, give as an act of love to God. Give as an act of faith. And see how God blesses. And be encouraged to give more, because you see God at work through you instead of being impressed with yourself and what you have done.
This is good news! God does want perfect people. Our spiritual lives are not like an amway plan, climbing the ladder to success. No. God simply wants us to spend time with him. He wants us to know that he accepts us for just who we are, in spite of what we have done, or how we have failed, or how we can't figure out what words to say. He wants us to know that we are his treasured child. And that he doesn't look at us when we pray and compare us to others. He is just overjoyed to be with us, to help us, to hear us. So just come to him and pray. He wants us to be our authentic selves. He wants to show us he can love us completely even when it feels like we are completely unlovely.
- A loving relationship is a personal relationship, not just a public relationship. This is true with both people and with God.
I want you to imagine with me for a moment. I want you to imagine that you were either married to someone or dating someone. And you had this relationship with them. And when you were in public, and when you were within earshot of others, your spouse said all sorts of nice things about you. They told you how much they appreciated your work around the house. They talked about how beautiful you were. They talked about how smart you were. They shared their dreams and aspirations with you in front of others. Always when you were out at dinner, at church, in a crowd, your spouse was like this.
But when you got home, everything started to change. Your spouse never talked to you or acknowleged you. None of those sweet moments between you and the one you love. None of the talking about the most basic things. No talking about the kids, or how the day at work went, or what you thought about what was on TV, or how you felt about something that happened the day before. None of those whispers in your ear. They only touched you in public. They only kissed you in public. When they got home, they refused to look at you, acknowledge you, communicate with you. And this is how your whole marriage went. This is how your whole relationship was.
My guess is that you would be unhappy with a marriage like this. You would even feel uncomfortable dating a person like this if you are not married yet. Nobody wants a relationship where everything is a show and nothing is personal, honest, or authentic.
Yet, I would imagine that there are a few of you that are in danger of living your spiritual lives like this. You show up to church. You may even be involved a little bit in some other way with church activities. But you struggle to have a personal relationship with Jesus, where you can have the day to day honest, authentic living with your Lord day to day.Jesus does not want us to be religious. He wants a personal relationship with us. He wants to know us and he wants us to know him. He wants us to come to Him just as we are, and accept Him as our Lord and savior. And then he wants to walk with us, and help us to grow and to learn how to truly live. To live with Him. To share our life with Him for eternity.
So won't you today, just let go, and let God love you and accept you just as you are, so he can help you grow into the friend, and man or woman he created you to be. I hope so.
