SPEAKER_00: Matthew 6, I'll begin reading in verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets, that they may be praised by others.
SPEAKER_00: Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.
SPEAKER_00: But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
SPEAKER_00: And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, that they may be seen by others.
SPEAKER_00: Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.
SPEAKER_00: But when you pray, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your father who is in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
SPEAKER_00: Now jump down in your eyes to verse sixteen.
SPEAKER_00: When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, so that their fasting may be seen by others.
SPEAKER_00: Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.
SPEAKER_00: But when you fast, anoint your head, 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.
SPEAKER_00: This is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The key word in this verse is the word hypocrite.
SPEAKER_00: It is in verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be like the hypocrites.
SPEAKER_00: Hypocrite is a word from the Greek world.
SPEAKER_00: Let me teach you a Greek word right now.
SPEAKER_00: It's the Greek word hypocrite.
SPEAKER_00: It comes right into English.
SPEAKER_00: Unadulterated, unchanged, hypocrite.
SPEAKER_00: It's a word from the drama world, somebody who puts a mask on.
SPEAKER_00: The Greek actors would have multiple masks.
SPEAKER_00: You'd have one person playing different roles.
SPEAKER_00: They would put this mask on, then that mask on.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't fooling the crowd.
SPEAKER_00: It was just to convey.
SPEAKER_00: They would even change their voices.
SPEAKER_00: I'm speaking in this voice, this mask, and this voice, and this mask.
SPEAKER_00: And that was the two people, two different roles.
SPEAKER_00: Neither of them were the real person.
SPEAKER_00: As you think through that, it is worth asking yourself as you survey the whole Bible in your mind.
SPEAKER_00: There's a category, maybe if you've been doing Bible reading, you might have this in your mind, of people whose sin was so extreme that God struck them immediately dead.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not talking about large groups of people that the Lord took out of this world together, like opening the ground and swallowing them, or the Babylonian leaders getting annihilated by the Persians in a single night, but I'm talking about an individual or a pair of people that sinned in such a way the Lord said, Up with this I will not put, and took them out of the world immediately.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a few examples of that in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: I think immediately of Nadab and Abihu, who in the book of Leviticus, the office of the high priest, had just been instituted from Moses to Aaron.
SPEAKER_00: Aaron's sons had been trained in this.
SPEAKER_00: They went out and they got fire for the offering the high priest was supposed to offer.
SPEAKER_00: They paraded their fire through the streets so that everybody would see them.
SPEAKER_00: They then offered their fire before Yahweh at the temple, and the Lord struck them dead immediately.
SPEAKER_00: Aaron came to Moses and said, What gives?
SPEAKER_00: And Moses says right away, the Lord killed them so that it would be known among all people that in his presence he's to be taken seriously.
SPEAKER_00: Nadab and Abihu were parading themselves through the streets.
SPEAKER_00: They had made their religious act of worship into a spectacle for everybody to see, and the Lord struck them dead.
SPEAKER_00: The ark, remember, had been left outside, away from Jerusalem since uh for decades now, and David decided to move it into Jerusalem, and they did not follow the way it was supposed to be done with worship and sobriety, but instead they uh made a pomp and circumstance and a parade, and everybody who was the who's who of Jerusalem was out there.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody whose uncle was on the planning committee was lining the highway, and they were blowing trumpets, and they was like, look at us, and we get to move the ark in, and the oxen stumbled, and the ark tottered, and Uzzah grabbed the ark to keep it from falling, and the Lord struck him dead.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the whole thing was obnoxious to the Lord from start to finish.
SPEAKER_00: But somebody driving the cart into the city with the ark on it was too much for the Lord to bear.
SPEAKER_00: And you can jump to the New Testament with Ananias and Sapphira, who were giving to the Lord, as was often the custom as the church got in the Lord's Day.
SPEAKER_00: People would offer their offerings and their gifts to the Lord, and they would give.
SPEAKER_00: But Ananias and Sapphira, they had sold a field and they made a big production of letting everybody know that they were giving all they got from the field to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It almost doesn't even matter if that was true or not.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't true, the Bible says, but it almost doesn't even matter.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about you guys give at church.
SPEAKER_00: Think about what it would take for everybody in the church to know that you sold your car and you're giving every penny from your car to the church.
SPEAKER_00: That would be weird.
SPEAKER_00: That's a lot of work to let everybody know this.
SPEAKER_00: But they figured out how to do it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I have been in churches too in Ghana and in Rwanda where people give by dancing down the aisles.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they every you get up a row at a time and everybody dances down the aisle.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't do that in our country.
SPEAKER_00: Praise God.
SPEAKER_00: But as people get to the front, they dance around the little offering box and they put their money in the offering box.
SPEAKER_00: But even there today, you know, they do a closed fist in the offering box.
SPEAKER_00: So if you were watching, you couldn't tell if that guy gave$0 or$1,000.
SPEAKER_00: You'd have no way of knowing.
SPEAKER_00: But not in an essence and Sapphira.
SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
SPEAKER_00: They let everybody know how much they supposedly gave, and the Lord killed them on the spot.
SPEAKER_00: For the same reason, to strike fear into the heart of the people.
SPEAKER_00: Now you take those three examples together.
SPEAKER_00: Do you recognize that all three of those examples, it's the same sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's the sin of parading your religiosity in front of other people to be seen by them.
SPEAKER_00: It is the sin of hypocrisy.
SPEAKER_00: It is the sin of putting on the mask and acting like this sober worshiper of the Lord when you are really putting on a performance for everybody in the audience, and the audience is those all around you, those lining the streets in Nadab and Abai's case, those lining the streets in Uzza's case, those lining the pews in Ananias and Sapphira's case, you're performing for them, not for the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord killed those people.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus makes this a driving point in Matthew chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: Don't worship like them.
SPEAKER_00: Again, the word hypocrite, it's this the word for the mask, and it's what the actor puts on, and I mentioned this earlier, but the actor with the mask is not fooling anybody as to who he really is.
SPEAKER_00: It's not designed that way.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a high-budget production.
SPEAKER_00: I remember many years ago I used to do the sock puppets in Cubbies in Iwana.
SPEAKER_00: And I would kneel behind the little tables that were set there, and I'd have Yui the Lamb above me, and I don't even remember the other guy, and they'd be having a conversation.
SPEAKER_00: But even the little four-year-olds in Iwana, then, they could see me through the chairs.
SPEAKER_00: They weren't fooled.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, one of the reasons we do an evening service now is to get me out of puppet duty in Iwana.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody's actually fooled by the sock puppet.
SPEAKER_00: But the religious hypocrite thinks he's fooling everybody.
SPEAKER_00: He's putting the mask on, unaware that everybody else can see his whole body.
SPEAKER_00: He thinks he's putting on a presentation for everybody to convince them of how godly he is.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord sees right through it.
SPEAKER_00: It was Calvin who said that essentially all the world is a stage and we are merely actors.
SPEAKER_00: Shakespeare, by the way, stole that from Calvin.
SPEAKER_00: In Calvin's design of it, we are just secondary, supporting actors.
SPEAKER_00: The star of the show is the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We're all moving to and fro on the stage, but we're keeping the spotlight on the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's how it's designed to be.
SPEAKER_00: But the religious hypocrite puts himself in the spotlight.
SPEAKER_00: The religious hypocrite pushes the Lord off of the stage and wants the spotlight on him so everybody sees him as a star of the show.
SPEAKER_00: But Calvin is right in this.
SPEAKER_00: In a sense, we are all actors.
SPEAKER_00: We are all playing a role on the stage.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm going to give you an outline this morning to make a way through Matthew 6.
SPEAKER_00: So, you want to be an actor, do you?
SPEAKER_00: That's my best parent voice right there.
SPEAKER_00: To the teenager who comes and says, I think I'm going to move to LA and be an actor.
SPEAKER_00: So, you want to be an actor, do you?
SPEAKER_00: I used to serve in a church in Los Angeles in college ministry.
SPEAKER_00: The college ministry was students who were moved to LA for school, and students moved to LA to be an actor.
SPEAKER_00: You could tell the second category, by the way, they all worked at Chili's.
SPEAKER_00: That's how you you knew that.
SPEAKER_00: And there's certain questions that you would ask the person who moved there to be an actor, and here are those questions right here.
SPEAKER_00: Who is your audience?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you performing for?
SPEAKER_00: You know, what kind of what role are you going to take?
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to be an actor in a soap opera?
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to be an action star?
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to be in a telenovela?
SPEAKER_00: You want to be on the stage?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, choose one because once you go down that road, you can't jump to another path.
SPEAKER_00: So know what kind of actor you're going to be.
SPEAKER_00: What reviews are you after?
SPEAKER_00: You know, whose opinion matters?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you performing for?
SPEAKER_00: Whose opinion are you cultivating and is motivating you?
SPEAKER_00: And thirdly, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, what talent do you actually have?
SPEAKER_00: I know your grandmama said that you're a great actor or a great actress.
SPEAKER_00: Has anybody else vouched for that opinion?
SPEAKER_00: Those are three kind of basic questions to ask the person who wants to make it in Hollywood, and I have those questions for you this morning as we work our way through this passage.
SPEAKER_00: First, who is your audience?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you performing for?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus begins, Matthew 6, beware.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a warning sound.
SPEAKER_00: Take heed, it's a cautionary word.
SPEAKER_00: The yellow sign on the floor, cuidado, piso mahado here.
SPEAKER_00: Pay attention.
SPEAKER_00: You see the sign, look out.
SPEAKER_00: Beware of who you're practicing your righteousness in front of.
SPEAKER_00: Even the word practicing is dripping with sarcasm here.
SPEAKER_00: For the hypocrite, it's all a show.
SPEAKER_00: It's designed to be reminiscent of the actor who's doing his lines in front of the mirror to see if he's convincing to the mirror.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Jesus describes, the religiosity of those who are putting on a performance for the watching world.
SPEAKER_00: They're like the actors rehearsing in front of the mirror.
SPEAKER_00: They're just practicing.
SPEAKER_00: What a dismissive phrase.
SPEAKER_00: Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people.
SPEAKER_00: This is the person who is on the street corner, praying out loud on the street corner.
SPEAKER_00: You think, why would somebody pray out loud on the street corner?
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it distracting to pray out there?
SPEAKER_00: That's odd.
SPEAKER_00: Well, they want to be seen by everybody.
SPEAKER_00: Of course, they could pray in their room, but nobody would see that.
SPEAKER_00: So they pray it on the street corner.
SPEAKER_00: Or the person who's blowing the trumpet before they give their money.
SPEAKER_00: That's odd.
SPEAKER_00: Cling.
SPEAKER_00: You know, they're doing it for the watching people.
SPEAKER_00: It's a production for them.
SPEAKER_00: Or the person who's fasting.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting is supposed to be conforming your heart to and your desires and your passions to God's will for your life.
SPEAKER_00: That's what fasting is supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00: It's an act of conformity.
SPEAKER_00: But some people like to fast so others will see.
SPEAKER_00: So others will see them.
SPEAKER_00: This is the, I think back to my time as a youth pastor on retreat.
SPEAKER_00: I have no individuals in mind.
SPEAKER_00: But I think back to times like on youth retreats and camps or whatever, there's always the one or two students that choose that weekend when they're with all of their friends to fast, you know, and the youth leaders are watching what everybody's eating, of course, because that's what youth leaders do.
SPEAKER_00: They're paying attention to the group, but there's always the one person who's like walking around and not eating the food.
SPEAKER_00: And like, oh, what are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I couldn't possibly tell you why I'm not eating.
SPEAKER_00: Wait a minute, are you fasting?
SPEAKER_00: No, I wouldn't want anybody to know I'm fasting.
SPEAKER_00: Person who prays, prayer is supposed to be conforming your will to God's.
SPEAKER_00: Prayer is moving you closer to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You understand prayer doesn't change God's mind, right?
SPEAKER_00: When you pray, you're not trying to change God's mind.
SPEAKER_00: You're drawing yourself to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: But the person who prays so everybody can see, that's flattening it out.
SPEAKER_00: They're not praying to change their desires to the Lord's desires.
SPEAKER_00: They're praying so everybody sees that they have the Lord's desires.
SPEAKER_00: Notice something that is designed to be vertical.
SPEAKER_00: It's designed to be from you up to God.
SPEAKER_00: Fasting, prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Performing for other people flattens it out, squishes it down, makes it just on a normal horizontal plane.
SPEAKER_00: Makes it like everything else.
SPEAKER_00: Giving.
SPEAKER_00: God has given you money and resources.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to be using that to advance God's kingdom in this world and to let your light shine into this world to direct the attention back to God and to do God's purposes with it in this world.
SPEAKER_00: But the person who gives with trumpets and pomp and circumstance and look at me, look at me.
SPEAKER_00: They're not giving to advance the Lord's work in this world.
SPEAKER_00: They're giving to advance their own image in this world.
SPEAKER_00: It's a performance for other people.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we have offering boxes in the hallway.
SPEAKER_00: They're there forever, but you can imagine the person with their check above their head.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, ushers, where do I put this large offering?
SPEAKER_00: Where does this go?
SPEAKER_00: And they say, oh, it goes in that box right there.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, could you please give this to one of the pastors and know that it's from me and have them put it in the box for me?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, beware.
SPEAKER_00: Understand who you're performing in front of.
SPEAKER_00: Who is your audience?
SPEAKER_00: Are you performing in front of the Lord or are you performing in front of other people?
SPEAKER_00: Now this comes down to what kind of role are you going to have?
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned that Calvin said we all have supporting roles to play on the stage.
SPEAKER_00: The star of the show is the Lord, the audience is God.
SPEAKER_00: In the Christian worldview, the audience is God.
SPEAKER_00: Everything is before Him.
SPEAKER_00: It's not other people.
SPEAKER_00: The audience is the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The star is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We're all supporting actors moving to and fro about the stage to keep the spotlight on the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We're supporting actors.
SPEAKER_00: That's the Christian worldview.
SPEAKER_00: My oldest daughter right now has an assignment in a writing class where, you know, she's read a series of books, and her assignment is to write about who the best supporting character is from the books.
SPEAKER_00: And that is a very interesting question.
SPEAKER_00: It makes you ask, what makes a good supporting character?
SPEAKER_00: What does make a good supporting character?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody who hogs the spotlight?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody who steals the show?
SPEAKER_00: No, a supporting character is somebody who directs the attention to the star, who helps the plot advance so the star advances, not so that they advance.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you are a good supporting role on the stage if you keep the spotlight on the star.
SPEAKER_00: And you're relatively nice to the other supporting actors and actresses around you.
SPEAKER_00: You make their little few minutes on the stage as pleasant as possible while you're putting the attention on Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's a good supporting actor.
SPEAKER_00: You've done your role well in this life.
SPEAKER_00: If those that are on stage with you, you made their life a little bit better and you directed everybody's attention to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: That's what a good supporting actor does.
SPEAKER_00: A terrible supporting actor pushes Jesus off the stage and hogs a spotlight for himself.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine giving with the trumpets.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine fasting and disfiguring your faces.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, the Jews, religious leaders, would fast on Tuesdays.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, they would go a day without eating.
SPEAKER_00: But man by lunchtime on Tuesday, they're like gloomy, outside where everybody can see, pacing back and forth by the salad bar.
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
SPEAKER_00: They got donut crumbs in their face still.
SPEAKER_00: Like, I think I see poppy seed in your teeth.
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: I'm fasting.
SPEAKER_00: Praying so that everybody could hear you.
SPEAKER_00: That is a person who's after the star role.
SPEAKER_00: Not a person who's putting the spotlight on the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: When you become a Christian, you are taking yourself out of the center of the stage and putting the spotlight back on the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Your life exists to direct attention to the Lord, not to yourself.
SPEAKER_00: So beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: The right way to be the actor is the end of verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: When you give, don't let your left and your right hand know what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: It's just an idiom for you're doing it in secret.
SPEAKER_00: So that your father, look at verse 4, who sees you in secret, you're doing it for his approval.
SPEAKER_00: For his approval.
SPEAKER_00: So know who your audience is.
SPEAKER_00: Second.
SPEAKER_00: Which reviews are you after?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you performing for influences whose reviews you're after.
SPEAKER_00: If you're performing for other people, you want their approval.
SPEAKER_00: If you're performing for the Lord, you want his approval and he sees your heart.
SPEAKER_00: He sees right through it.
SPEAKER_00: You understand whose reviews you're cultivating.
SPEAKER_00: There was a period in my life where I was a soccer referee, and I would find out before the games who the assessor wash in the league, who didn't, you know, the guy who was grading my performance.
SPEAKER_00: And different assessors had different things they liked.
SPEAKER_00: There was one assessor from England and he graded like an Englishman.
SPEAKER_00: You know, if you took off somebody's leg, he would expect maybe a warning, you know.
SPEAKER_00: You murdered someone in a tackle, okay.
SPEAKER_00: Don't do that again.
SPEAKER_00: Broke one leg, okay.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a yellow card, because he's got two legs, you can do it one more time and then you're gone.
SPEAKER_00: There's a different inspector from Mexico.
SPEAKER_00: Man, that guy had totally different standards.
SPEAKER_00: Like a shirt pull is an international incident.
SPEAKER_00: Like, you better shut that down.
SPEAKER_00: And I would referee accordingly.
SPEAKER_00: The British guy in the stands, it was just mayhem and murder, and he would be so happy after the game.
SPEAKER_00: The Mexican guy in the stands, like it was law and order, and none of that.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, yes.
SPEAKER_00: You all recognize that in your own work.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you put a tie on if you got a meeting with your boss.
SPEAKER_00: You might roll in with jeans if you don't, unless you work at the Pentagon and then I don't know what you wear.
SPEAKER_00: Your life, you have to determine whose reviews you're cultivating.
SPEAKER_00: Are you doing things to be pleasing to the watching world around you?
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna act in a superficial way.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna act one way around these people, another way around that people.
SPEAKER_00: Are you living in such a way that the Lord who sees you at all times, he's your audience?
SPEAKER_00: The person who lives and acts to cultivate the reviews of others is not going to be mature, is not gonna have the kind of ethics and integrity that will transcend situations, but will really live and act in one way around these group of people and another way around that group of people because they have no standard.
SPEAKER_00: They don't, they're not thinking the Lord sees both groups of people.
SPEAKER_00: They're so concerned about their appearance before these guys and so concerned about their appearance before these guys that they have no lasting integrity.
SPEAKER_00: So when no one's watching, it's anyone's guest.
SPEAKER_00: They feel lost when no one's watching.
SPEAKER_00: This is the high school kid who's you know, around his non Christian friends at school, he's the moral one.
SPEAKER_00: You know, he's act as acts a little bit better than them, so he's the moral one around those kids.
SPEAKER_00: And around the Christian kids, he's He's the, you know, he's he's the punk kid around the Christian kids.
SPEAKER_00: He's the coolest of the Christian kids, and the most moral of the non-Christian kids.
SPEAKER_00: He's living flatly, with no convictions that guide him.
SPEAKER_00: It's putting on a sh it's the two masks.
SPEAKER_00: And that person thinks others don't see.
SPEAKER_00: You have to decide who you're living for.
SPEAKER_00: The person who lives for the Lord is gonna act the same way in every situation.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you, I said high school kids, some of you are like that at work.
SPEAKER_00: You act one way around your work friends, another way around your church friends, another way around your family, and as long as those three groups of people don't get their stories straight, you can get away with it.
SPEAKER_00: In contrast, the person who lives and acts before the Lord develops a life of stability, a life of integrity.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the theological background of this, theological principle, is that rewards are real.
SPEAKER_00: Rewards are real.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus makes this point.
SPEAKER_00: Well, look at verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry, look at verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: If you do your righteousness in front of other people, you will have no reward from your father who's in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Or verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: If you get praise from other people because of your giving, you've already received your reward, Jesus says.
SPEAKER_00: In contrast, verse 4, if you give in secret, your father will reward you.
SPEAKER_00: Or verse 5, if you pray in secret, or if you pray in public, you don't get a reward.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the end of verse 5.
SPEAKER_00: If you pray in public, you've already received your reward.
SPEAKER_00: But verse 6, when you pray in secret, your father who sees in secret will reward you.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18, if your fasting is done in secret, your father who sees in secret will reward you.
SPEAKER_00: There are rewards for prayer and giving and fasting.
SPEAKER_00: God does reward you.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 6, verse 10 says, God is not unrighteous so as to forget your deeds.
SPEAKER_00: God knows what you're doing and he will reward you.
SPEAKER_00: Now, to be very clear, this is not talking about salvation.
SPEAKER_00: You receive salvation as a gift from God of grace.
SPEAKER_00: You don't deserve salvation, you cannot earn salvation.
SPEAKER_00: Remember how the Sermon on the Mount begins.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are the bankrupt.
SPEAKER_00: Blessed are those who realize they don't have righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: They cannot earn salvation.
SPEAKER_00: They don't have anything to merit it from.
SPEAKER_00: So you confess your unrighteousness through faith in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: You receive the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, how do you use that righteousness that God gives you?
SPEAKER_00: That's what you're rewarded for.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not talking about salvation.
SPEAKER_00: It's talking about how you live with what God gave you.
SPEAKER_00: And you don't all have the same stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have more talent than others, more time than others, more money than others.
SPEAKER_00: You are rewarded based on how you used what God gave you.
SPEAKER_00: God graves on the curve for sure.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are saved later in life.
SPEAKER_00: You have less time to use the righteousness God has given you.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have less money than others.
SPEAKER_00: God rewards you for, you know, if you have oversight over two cities and you do it well, the Lord rewards you with more cities in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: If you have oversight of five or ten cities and you rule them well in this world, then you receive more than that in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: This is talking about rewards in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: When you reign on the earth with the Lord, you will be rewarded based upon how you use what God gave you in this life.
SPEAKER_00: Store up for yourself treasure in heaven, Jesus says later in Matthew 6, where thieves don't steal it and where it won't corrode or rust and all that.
SPEAKER_00: Just by Jesus saying that, it follows that not everybody will do it the right way.
SPEAKER_00: Not everybody will store up the same amount of treasure.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus commands you to store up treasure.
SPEAKER_00: How you use what he gives you determines how much of that is stored in the next life.
SPEAKER_00: Do you hoard it for yourself?
SPEAKER_00: Do you build bigger barns for yourself?
SPEAKER_00: No reward.
SPEAKER_00: Do you squander it on things with no eternal value?
SPEAKER_00: No reward.
SPEAKER_00: Do you invest it in the kingdom?
SPEAKER_00: Lots of reward.
SPEAKER_00: What reward do you value?
SPEAKER_00: Now, the word that's used here in the end of verse 2, they have received their reward.
SPEAKER_00: That's basically one Greek word.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a technical word.
SPEAKER_00: It's the word for like getting a receipt.
SPEAKER_00: You've received the receipt, you gave the money, you got the product, and you got a receipt that said, received, paid in full, no returns, no refunds, no exchanges.
SPEAKER_00: Boom.
SPEAKER_00: So when you take that receipt and you take that product, that transaction is over.
SPEAKER_00: There's no returning that.
SPEAKER_00: It's settled at that point.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it's like for somebody who does their righteousness before other people in this world.
SPEAKER_00: They receive their reward right here and right now with no future reward.
SPEAKER_00: I was once bumped from a flight and I was offered by the gate agent$400 or 40,000 frequent flyer miles.
SPEAKER_00: And I said, can I get both?
SPEAKER_00: No, cannot get both.
SPEAKER_00: Can I think about it?
SPEAKER_00: Also, no.
SPEAKER_00: You had a little iPad.
SPEAKER_00: I had to check one box or the other box on the iPad.
SPEAKER_00: That decision is right there.
SPEAKER_00: And I could either get my$400 right now, it would have been in a gift card right there and handed it to me.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Or 40,000 miles that will go into my account for future use.
SPEAKER_00: I chose the miles because I have kids.
SPEAKER_00: This is what it is like when you do your righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: You do something that is righteous, you can cash out right now.
SPEAKER_00: You can do it in front of other people, and they can say, Oh, look how godly you are.
SPEAKER_00: And that's your reward.
SPEAKER_00: Done.
SPEAKER_00: Or you can hold out for reward in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Every act of righteousness you do, you have that choice.
SPEAKER_00: Get rewarded from others, or get rewarded from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Every opportunity of Christian service is an opportunity for one reward or the other.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord to reward you, or they add a voice from other people.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the crazy thing in this passage, when you think about it, is that on the outside, those two actions might look exactly the same.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I used hyperbolic examples earlier, with the person waving their offering check in the hallway, or the high school kid with sackcloth and ashes around the salad bar.
SPEAKER_00: Those are obviously hyperbolic examples.
SPEAKER_00: In real life, somebody who's doing street evangelism for the praise of others, and somebody doing street evangelism for the praise of the Lord is going to look exactly the same.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody who's a small group leader in high school ministry for the praise of the high school students as a kind of a behind-the-scenes way for the Lord to see their service, it's going to look exactly the same.
SPEAKER_00: And you and I could not tell the difference.
SPEAKER_00: Or, more practically or personally, somebody who preaches a sermon could preach it for the praise of people or for the praise of the Lord, and you could not tell the difference.
SPEAKER_00: This is a little window into authentic Christianity here.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord sees the heart.
SPEAKER_00: On the outside, you don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Granted, the trumpet gives it away.
SPEAKER_00: But in most situations, on the outside, you don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Two people could go on a mission trip.
SPEAKER_00: One could go as a tourist and one could go as a missionary.
SPEAKER_00: And you would not be able to tell which is which.
SPEAKER_00: Two people could lead a prayer group.
SPEAKER_00: One to be known as the praying saint, and the other to be known in heaven as the praying saint.
SPEAKER_00: And on the outside, you would not be able to tell the difference.
SPEAKER_00: If you do it for other people, you get your receipt here and now, and you've cashed out your praise.
SPEAKER_00: That's the review you wanted.
SPEAKER_00: You got it.
SPEAKER_00: Next.
SPEAKER_00: So what kind of role do you want?
SPEAKER_00: Second, what kind of reviews are you after?
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, what talent do you actually have?
SPEAKER_00: What talent do you actually have?
SPEAKER_00: You know, the person who's giving their money with trumpets and everything.
SPEAKER_00: Look how important they are and how influential they are and how generous they are.
SPEAKER_00: They're giving all that money.
SPEAKER_00: Here's an interesting question.
SPEAKER_00: Whose money are they giving away?
SPEAKER_00: You can act very generous with somebody else's money, can't you?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you're so generous with that person's money.
SPEAKER_00: The Christian, everything you have belongs to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We're generous with our money because he gives it to us.
SPEAKER_00: We're stewards.
SPEAKER_00: It's not ours, we're stewards.
SPEAKER_00: So all this connects.
SPEAKER_00: What talent do you have?
SPEAKER_00: It's not your talent.
SPEAKER_00: It's the Lord's talent.
SPEAKER_00: He might give you some time, he might give you some ability, he might give you some wealth that you can manage for him, but ultimately all of it belongs to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you one more Delta Airlines illustration this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Last week in the news, the FBI arrested a guy named Aquil Mohammed, 36 years old from Minneapolis, who had worked for Delta Airlines for four years as a phone agent, and he had given away$400,000 of free flights.
SPEAKER_00: Basically, it started as an exchange for good customer reviews, and he became known as one of the, you know, the most beloved phone reps.
SPEAKER_00: No kidding.
SPEAKER_00: And eventually he figured out how to give his own phone number to his friends and family, and so they would call the Delta help desk and get routed to him, and he would fly them first class all around the world, and he would give little flight certificates to himself to cash in.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't even disguise this very well.
SPEAKER_00: He put his own name in all the flight certificates.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, his family loved him, you know.
SPEAKER_00: The Associated Press story has all these interviews with like his cousins who are like, yeah, Uncle Aquil is the most generous guy we've ever known.
unknown: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Man, it pays to have an uncle like that, right up until he goes to the slammer.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he was generous because it wasn't his money.
SPEAKER_00: This is the person who's parading himself around as if he's the benevolent benefactor of everybody.
SPEAKER_00: It's not really his money.
SPEAKER_00: You get that, right?
SPEAKER_00: It all belongs to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Your prayer, what makes you want to pray?
SPEAKER_00: It's nothing good in you.
SPEAKER_00: Your fasting, what makes you want to conform your desires and your heart to the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: It's nothing good in you.
SPEAKER_00: It's all what the Lord has given you.
SPEAKER_00: Any talent or ability you have is a gift from Him.
SPEAKER_00: It's all a gift from Him.
SPEAKER_00: And this comes down to righteousness, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Whose righteousness do you have?
SPEAKER_00: We'll leave the theatrical thing aside for a second and get back to the theology of it.
SPEAKER_00: Whose righteousness do you have?
SPEAKER_00: And you really do need to get the whole point of the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, it starts with blessed are the broken, the bankrupt.
SPEAKER_00: You are blessed when you mourn over your lack of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: You hunger for righteousness, but you don't got any, so you plead to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: God, I need your righteousness because I don't have any, I'm broken, I'm bankrupt, I'm sad about it, but I need it.
SPEAKER_00: And through faith in Jesus Christ, the Lord declares you to be righteous.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where Jesus says in Matthew 5, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, it better be better than the Pharisees, or you will not go to heaven when you die.
SPEAKER_00: And then he gives you a series of horizontal applications to that.
SPEAKER_00: Like the Pharisees, the most religious people.
SPEAKER_00: Horizontal plane.
SPEAKER_00: You better be more righteous than them.
SPEAKER_00: Adultery, oaths, coveting, these are all things that the Pharisees do.
SPEAKER_00: They don't actually commit the adultery, of course, but they do in their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, guilty.
SPEAKER_00: They come up with transparently flimsy excuses to divorce their wives.
SPEAKER_00: Guilty.
SPEAKER_00: They come up with excuses to avoid keeping their vows.
SPEAKER_00: Guilty.
SPEAKER_00: Those are all horizontal.
SPEAKER_00: Now in chapter 6, Jesus is doing the same thing, only he's putting it vertical.
SPEAKER_00: You want the most religious people as your standard for righteousness?
SPEAKER_00: They fail in marriage.
SPEAKER_00: They fail in truth-telling.
SPEAKER_00: And now let's go vertically.
SPEAKER_00: They fail in giving, they fail in praying, they fail in fasting.
SPEAKER_00: These people fasted once a week, and Jesus says it's meaningless.
SPEAKER_00: These people wore long and elaborate robes, and they were known as those who prayed.
SPEAKER_00: You were considered fortunate if you had a Pharisee come and pray at one of your events, and Jesus says their prayers are worthless.
SPEAKER_00: This is astounding to us.
SPEAKER_00: And we make these same category errors today.
SPEAKER_00: We really do.
SPEAKER_00: I have, you hear people say all the time, like so-and-so, they don't know the gospel, but they fed 10 million orphans last year.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly they're going to heaven, right?
SPEAKER_00: They ran a health center that washed filthy beggars for decade after decade.
SPEAKER_00: They don't know the gospel, but look at how many beggars and homeless people they helped.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly that means they're righteous.
SPEAKER_00: We make the same kind of category errors.
SPEAKER_00: They've done so much, and they was on Facebook live stream and everything, so we know it really happened.
SPEAKER_00: How godly that person must be.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, take the most religious person in your world who washes all the beggars and clothes all the orphans and tell you about it in all their prayer letters, it is worthless.
SPEAKER_00: Push it aside.
SPEAKER_00: That's not real righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Real righteousness comes from the Lord and is given to you through faith.
SPEAKER_00: You, my friend, are spiritually bankrupt.
SPEAKER_00: The so-called religious people are emphatically not the standard of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: They're not.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is the standard for righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: Take the most religious person you can imagine, and they fail the test.
SPEAKER_00: And before we wrap up here, it's a common question.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 5, Jesus says, let your light shine before others.
SPEAKER_00: So that they see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 6, do not practice your righteousness before others.
SPEAKER_00: Uh-oh.
SPEAKER_00: Did Jesus forget what he said five minutes before?
SPEAKER_00: And I have preached those kind of sermons.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, what did I say five minutes ago?
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus' sermons are inspired and infallible, and he did not forget what he said, so they are both true.
SPEAKER_00: And how do you reconcile that?
SPEAKER_00: And I think the easiest way to bring the two together is, well, here's the easiest way: to recognize that your heart is deceitful.
SPEAKER_00: So if you are in a situation and you want to hide your Christianity so that others don't know you're a believer, if you have an opportunity to stand for righteousnesses, you want to hide instead, then you should be public.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever you're tempted to hide, be public.
SPEAKER_00: But if you're doing something righteous, you're giving your money to a good cause, or you're praying, or you're fasting, and you're tempted to let other people know, then hide.
SPEAKER_00: So if your heart says hide, then you need to show.
SPEAKER_00: And if your heart says show, you need to hide.
SPEAKER_00: Do whatever the opposite of your heart says, and you'll be okay.
SPEAKER_00: That's generally a good principle in life.
SPEAKER_00: You recognize it's the light from the Lord that shines through you.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're living in a way that gives glory to God, then you're letting your light shine before men.
SPEAKER_00: But if you're manufacturing your own light, or if you're acting like the light that you're shining is yours and not the Lord's, you're doing it the wrong way and you're stealing glory from the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: A good way, I think, just in my mind, it helps me conceptualize the difference.
SPEAKER_00: I think of the gift of healing in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The gift of healing was given in the New Testament era to authenticate the apostles so they could heal people at will.
SPEAKER_00: The apostles were authenticated.
SPEAKER_00: The apostles received the glory for it.
SPEAKER_00: So when they wrote the New Testament, it was received as inspired.
SPEAKER_00: It was verified by the gifts that they were able to do.
SPEAKER_00: They were the ones who got the glory for it intentionally to authenticate the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: Very different than today.
SPEAKER_00: Today you're sick.
SPEAKER_00: You might go to the elders or you might go to friends.
SPEAKER_00: They pray to God.
SPEAKER_00: If God answers those prayers and heals you, God gets the glory, not the person who prayed for you.
SPEAKER_00: You understand that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Somebody prays for you to be healed and God heals you, God gets the glory, not the person who prayed for you.
SPEAKER_00: That's the basic principle here.
SPEAKER_00: You let your light shine in front of other people so that God gets the glory.
SPEAKER_00: You don't act like you are the one authenticated.
SPEAKER_00: You don't act like you are the one on display.
SPEAKER_00: You are not.
SPEAKER_00: You are a supporting actor.
SPEAKER_00: God is watching you, even though you're a supporting actor.
SPEAKER_00: God cares, God knows you, God loves you, and his eyes are on you.
SPEAKER_00: But you're not the star of the show.
SPEAKER_00: You do not have your own righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: You can close with these three questions.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give them all to you.
SPEAKER_00: Who is your audience?
SPEAKER_00: Who are you performing for?
SPEAKER_00: What reward do you value?
SPEAKER_00: And whose righteousness do you have?
SPEAKER_00: Notice they're all connected.
SPEAKER_00: If you're performing for other people, you value their reward and you're using your own righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: But if you turn this around and you say, I received a righteousness from God because I am bankrupt, I am poor, he makes me righteous, the reward I value is in the next life for how I send this righteousness ahead.
SPEAKER_00: I invest it here for the next life because God is my audience.
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing everything so that He sees.
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing it all for His approval.
SPEAKER_00: God, we're grateful that you have given us a righteousness that is alien.
SPEAKER_00: It's outside of ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We don't deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: We can't earn it.
SPEAKER_00: It's a gift.
SPEAKER_00: You've clothed us in it.
SPEAKER_00: You've robed us in it.
SPEAKER_00: We were dressed in rags.
SPEAKER_00: And you made us beautiful in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You robed us in righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: And then you sent us into the world.
SPEAKER_00: So, God, as we go into the world, we pray that we would live out your righteousness so that people will see the deeds that we do and give glory to you because it is your righteousness on display.
SPEAKER_00: We are not glory hogs.
SPEAKER_00: We don't want to be the center of the show.
SPEAKER_00: We want the light to go to you.
SPEAKER_00: They view themselves as a star of the show.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that today they would confess their sins, they would confess their lack of talent, their lack of righteousness, and they would flee to you.
SPEAKER_00: They would come to you and receive forgiveness of sins through their faith in Christ that you would give them.
SPEAKER_00: And we ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for parting words for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with Jesus.