SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast.
SPEAKER_00: Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love.
SPEAKER_00: Visit us online at thelookout.church.
SPEAKER_00: Alright.
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to jump into the word.
SPEAKER_00: If you have your Bible, open up to Matthew chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: And if this is your first time with us, we have been on a journey through the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_00: So again, this morning, we are up on the mountain with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We're gathered around him.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine Jesus at the top of a mountain.
SPEAKER_00: You are sitting down in the grasses with the peoples, the multitudes of peoples listening in as Jesus is kind of setting the dinner table.
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, I want to show you what life in my kingdom is like.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to help rearrange and kind of rework, rewire the way that you think about life, the way that you think about God, the way that you think about your relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And slowly but and slowly but surely, passage by passage, Jesus is laying out what we know as the Sermon on the Mount, which is a vision of what it looks like to follow him, life in the in the world that he is creating.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: So one thing to note for today is this.
SPEAKER_00: We've just finished chapter five.
SPEAKER_00: We're starting chapter six here today.
SPEAKER_00: So chapter five could loosely be organized around what Jesus was uh he was casting a vision for what it looks like to live in a right relationship with other people.
SPEAKER_00: So he's talking about anger, he's talking about loving your enemies, he's talking about letting your yes be yes and your no be no.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about lust and divorce, he's talking about living assault and light among people, okay?
SPEAKER_00: In chapter six, which is where we're going today, he shifts.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just about right relationship with others.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's going to be talking about what it looks like to live in a right relationship with the Father, with your Father in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And what you're going to see over the next several weeks is there's a theme of what it looks like to live in the gaze of the Father, to live in relationship with the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Because Jesus makes no separation between loving God and loving others.
SPEAKER_00: To Jesus, it's one and the same.
SPEAKER_00: We're really good at separating the two, but He He is bringing us back into a cohesive whole life of devotion to God and the way that it expresses itself to others.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so excited about today.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're with me here this morning, we're going to start in Matthew chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: Starting in verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it says it says, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.
SPEAKER_00: 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 in 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 at 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 up into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Now we're gonna just call a timeout just real quick.
SPEAKER_00: From here, Jesus then goes into what we know as the Lord's Prayer, and he actually teaches them how to pray.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: That's next week.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so next week, Amy Joyner is gonna be here and she's gonna walk us through the Lord's Prayer.
SPEAKER_00: You wanna be here for that, it's gonna be awesome.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is kind of walking through a pattern here of um of spiritual practices, living in public, and then going to a secret place in the Father.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna skip down to verse 16.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna pick it back up.
SPEAKER_00: After he teaches the Lord's Prayer, he picks back up.
SPEAKER_00: So verse 16 says this and when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, 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 and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your father who is in secret.
SPEAKER_00: And your father who sees in secret will reward you.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, we submit our lives to your word this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We are here to know your heart.
SPEAKER_00: And we invite you, Holy Spirit, to rearrange us from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, we confess our need for a way that's different than our own way.
SPEAKER_00: And as we sang a few minutes ago, we declare together that your way is better.
SPEAKER_00: So help us follow the narrow way today, God.
SPEAKER_00: Expose us from the inside out to your love.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So in the Sermon on the Mount, as you know, Jesus is acting much like a skilled surgeon, and he's just creating a little incision and tearing open our chest cavity.
SPEAKER_00: Because he wants to show us not just what the outside of Kingdom life looks like.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to show us the inside.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to start with what's going on in the inside of your life.
SPEAKER_00: And in this passage, it's really no different.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to show them, and this is the this is the wild part.
SPEAKER_00: He not only wants to expose what's on the inside, he wants to show them how to get what it is that their hearts really want at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_00: But there is a kind of word that Jesus introduces in the Sermon on the Mount here.
SPEAKER_00: It's a specific word that he uses to contrast what he's talking about versus what you shouldn't do.
SPEAKER_00: And those in particular who have a problem with what he's suggesting, and the word is a word that we all know and love, and it's a word called hypocrites.
SPEAKER_00: Hypocrite, right?
SPEAKER_00: So we're talking about hypocrisy, all right?
SPEAKER_00: So let's just hang here for a bit.
SPEAKER_00: It's this word hypocrite that we use a lot in our culture still today.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Jesus says, do not do as the hypocrites do.
SPEAKER_00: It's this Greek word hoop hypocrites, and it actually means a play actor or a pretender, one who wears a mask to play a part.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: Now, in our particular culture, we use the word hypocrite often as a critique against leaders, as a critique against anybody who says one thing and does another thing.
SPEAKER_00: And typically that's how we define it, right?
SPEAKER_00: Is that somebody who says one thing with their mouth and their lives live a different thing?
SPEAKER_00: But uh Bible scholar Tim Mackey, he uh he encourages us to not just limit it to that definition, but he would say it's not just saying one thing and doing another.
SPEAKER_00: Hypocrisy is actually doing the right things, but for the wrong reasons.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: Doing the right things, but for the wrong reasons.
SPEAKER_00: Can I get a collective groan across the room?
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, that's all of us, right, on some level have to deal with this thing of hypocrisy, because at a certain level, all of us have a tendency to want to do the right things, but it's not always for the right reasons, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so in this case, what is the reason that the hypocrites are doing the right things, such as giving to the needy and prayer and fasting?
SPEAKER_00: In this case, it's to what?
SPEAKER_00: It's to be noticed and praised by men.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus really gives those three examples.
SPEAKER_00: He starts with three things that were considered really spiritual extra credit or so in Jewish life.
SPEAKER_00: They were not in the Ten Commandments, they were things that were kind of bonuses to a good life.
SPEAKER_00: It's the the people that, you know, it's the things that you can do and get really a pat on the back, you can get public recognition.
SPEAKER_00: He says, When you give to the needy, you are to do it like this and not like this.
SPEAKER_00: When you are praying, don't do it in the synagogues, don't do it loud and boisterous things that you're drawing attention to yourself, go into the secret place with the Father.
SPEAKER_00: He he ends with this kind of triad.
SPEAKER_00: He ends this one on fasting, and he says, Listen, when you when you fast, which we know is is with withholding food from our bodies, you know, that can you can look sickly over time.
SPEAKER_00: Some of these guys were doubling down on that, making sure everybody knew how horrible life was when they were fasting.
SPEAKER_00: He said, No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: When you fast, make sure put some oil on your head, make you make yourself look good, because the reward of fasting is not in the public place, it's in the secret place.
SPEAKER_00: And so the thing is, those three examples, in our culture, we don't get rewarded for the same things.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I I would even argue uh it's probably a negative social uh consequence in these types of things.
SPEAKER_00: If you are uh praying, if you're on a street corner and you're praying out loud publicly, nobody's gonna be like you're not gonna get a slow golf clap, right?
SPEAKER_00: You know, like from everybody watching in.
SPEAKER_00: Everyone's gonna be like, this guy is strange.
SPEAKER_00: All right, he needs to be quiet.
SPEAKER_00: All right, this is actually kind of off-putting, you know, it's off-putting what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00: That's what would happen in our culture.
SPEAKER_00: Um, giving to the needy, that's probably still socially recognized as like something that's good and and uh you know, charitable, charitable uh living.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but you can imagine in our culture, there's other things that we get rewarded for if we do it on a social level, if we do it in a public thing.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of causes, there's a lot of social initiatives, activism of sorts, that if you are uh public with what you're doing, you're gonna get some kind of you know, brand recognition, you're gonna get some public credibility for that.
SPEAKER_00: And we have a word for that in our culture now, all right?
SPEAKER_00: It's this is not in the Bible, this is just kind of more of a term given to this thing of living these values out loud in order to receive some kind of recognition for it.
SPEAKER_00: We call it virtue signaling.
SPEAKER_00: Virtue signaling, all right?
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: It means to live a virtuous life in order to be applauded, to kind of be recognized and to gain some kind of merit social credit.
SPEAKER_00: It's not necessarily always about what you're saying, it's about managing public perception and reaping the rewards of being about the right things.
SPEAKER_00: Do you guys know that you can be about the right things and get a lot of social rewards?
SPEAKER_00: Anybody?
SPEAKER_00: So, some examples of that.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of brands and corporations, you guys know, we'll will brand them.
SPEAKER_00: So we'll talk about um how environmentally friendly they are, how green they are, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then when you dig a little bit down into their practices, you find out that they're they're doing things that are just that they're scorching the earth on another side of the planet, or they're doing something that's actually having a negative consequence on the actual planet.
SPEAKER_00: You guys know what I'm talking about.
SPEAKER_00: So they're saying the right thing, but they're saying it, they're they're promoting a virtue for the sake of credibility, not necessarily because they care about the earth.
SPEAKER_00: We have a lot of businesses you know, this happens every June.
SPEAKER_00: This this is what happens.
SPEAKER_00: We we see pride flags all across uh the landscape in America.
SPEAKER_00: Now, uh the reason why businesses do that, what they'll say is a solidarity with a people group, right?
SPEAKER_00: With the L LGBTQ people group.
SPEAKER_00: But uh how many of you believe that some of these businesses aren't doing it necessarily for solidarity?
SPEAKER_00: They're doing it because they know that the bottom line, the revenue probably has a better chance of doing well if they fly the right kind of flag, right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Just using an example.
SPEAKER_00: So you can fly all kinds of flags for a lot of different reasons, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, this happens in our in our in our country.
SPEAKER_00: Whenever there's a racially motivated event, when there's a young black uh man or woman who loses their life unnecessarily, or maybe to an act of violence, it's at a time where every what happens is we we hear about a news event like that, it affects us deeply.
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes we we don't know what to do, and so we it's it's easy to kind of rush out and just start you know posting things online, black lives matter, which is completely true.
SPEAKER_00: Black lives do matter, and we do need to show solidarity for people of color.
SPEAKER_00: But but here's the question we have to ask.
SPEAKER_00: When we rush out to say things, when we rush out to be about causes or initiatives, or if we if we if I rush to the internet to say black lives matter, but I but I but I fail to step back and say, besides my statement that I'm doing publicly, is there anything about my life or my action or my beliefs or my behavior that is making it more difficult for people of color to flourish in this nation?
SPEAKER_00: If I don't ask the deeply reflective question that what I can do is position myself as being about something without doing the inner work to actually say, Am I participating in the kind of life that this would be true in and out of my entire life?
SPEAKER_00: Am I just doing something, am I saying the right thing on the surface, but is this true of my actual life?
SPEAKER_00: Are you guys hearing me?
SPEAKER_00: We can say one thing and project one thing on the surface, but what Jesus is saying here is you can do that and you will get the praise of men.
SPEAKER_00: And and and and if you want to do that, you're gonna get that reward.
SPEAKER_00: But if you come back into the secret place, if you if you if you peel back the layers and if you do it before the Father, there's a different kind of reward.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get to that here in a second.
SPEAKER_00: Politicians do this.
SPEAKER_00: Politicians are the best of this.
SPEAKER_00: This is what they do.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this isn't, I'm not saying all politicians are bad.
SPEAKER_00: I'm grateful for for men and women in the political arena who are who are living lives of integrity.
SPEAKER_00: But but how many of you know that not everything politicians say, not every good thing that they say they're about is because they're for that good thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's because they know what will get people to vote for them.
SPEAKER_00: Can I can I say that?
SPEAKER_00: Are we okay?
SPEAKER_00: Um it's not always the when when politicians espouse virtues, it's not always because they actually believe it.
SPEAKER_00: It's because they know that that is the best way to maximize influence.
SPEAKER_00: Is I'm going to say these things, not because I'm necessarily about these things, but I know that the people I want to vote for me in the ballot box are about those things, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's the difference between saying, being virtuous on one level, and actually living a life that is consistent with that virtue.
SPEAKER_00: All right?
SPEAKER_00: I need you guys to hang with me, alright?
SPEAKER_00: We're just I'm just getting after the landmines here.
SPEAKER_00: Just gonna take care of all of them right away.
SPEAKER_00: We're safe here, right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Hopefully.
SPEAKER_00: If we're not safe, you can start throwing things at me, alright?
SPEAKER_00: There's a desire in us to maximize influence.
SPEAKER_00: It's so significant.
SPEAKER_00: There's a desire to be liked and loved.
SPEAKER_00: It's so significant that even Gen Z, this is wild.
SPEAKER_00: Studies have come out that Gen Z, half of Gen Z, if they had a top career choice, it would be to be an influencer as a paid career.
SPEAKER_00: All right, this is from Entrepreneur Magazine or Entrepreneur Online.
SPEAKER_00: Gen Z's main career aspiration is to be an influencer.
SPEAKER_00: Over half of Gen Z individuals surveyed express a desire to become influencers compared to 41% of adults from other age groups, which is still pretty high.
SPEAKER_00: But an influencer, what does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: A YouTuber, an Instagram, uh, you know, it's somebody who is using an online presence in order to gain followers and essentially sell products or just kind of uh be able to shape minds and culture.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that's not all bad.
SPEAKER_00: Influence is not bad, right?
SPEAKER_00: Influence is power.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm grateful actually for Gen Z and their desire to want to make an impact on this earth.
SPEAKER_00: I think God is gonna use that mightily um in the days to come.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, what we have to be careful, both for ourselves and both for the young ones that we're parenting, influence can become such a magnet, it has a magnetic power in and of itself to live the kind of life that is seen as uh uh significant, you know, just like we want to have this massive impact.
SPEAKER_00: But what can happen is when influence, the desire for influence, overtakes the desire for integrity, we can start to do and say things that project an image that's not actually true of our real lives.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
SPEAKER_00: This is a huge, this is a huge, huge thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that influence is bad.
SPEAKER_00: God raises people up, God puts people in positions of power all throughout the scriptures, men and women.
SPEAKER_00: God would put in positions of influence.
SPEAKER_00: But one of the things Jesus is exposing here is to make sure that whatever is underneath the influence is consistent through and through, that we're not like the hypocrites, but they're ones we're ones who know how to do things before the Father in secret.
SPEAKER_00: And he's basically saying, be careful not to let your desire influent for influence overshadow your life before God.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we do need to reconcile something for a moment, because it would appear as if Jesus is contradicting himself from the last chapter.
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's look at this from uh chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: We read this verse.
SPEAKER_00: He said this.
SPEAKER_00: You can put this on the screen, please.
SPEAKER_00: Let your light shine before others that they may see your good works and give glory to the Father who is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus, just like a few verses ago, said, Let your life shine, right?
SPEAKER_00: So people can see your good work.
SPEAKER_00: Live in such a way so people can see your life.
SPEAKER_00: And when they see your life, they're gonna praise God in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: But then he kind of flips the script.
SPEAKER_00: It would look, it would appear in Matthew 6, he says, uh, but beware of practicing your righteousness before others in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from the Father who is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Like, wow, okay, all right.
SPEAKER_00: We gotta we gotta reconcile that.
SPEAKER_00: That seems like we're saying you're saying one thing and then tell me to do the exact opposite, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Now, just a little context here.
SPEAKER_00: A lot of scholars believe when he was saying, Let your light shine before men, he's speaking to a specific group who were living their lives.
SPEAKER_00: They were withdrawing from the public arena.
SPEAKER_00: They were actually withdrawing for people.
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes we can face this a similar temptation to withdraw, withdraw from our faith, withdraw from public anything outward-facing about our faith.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's you.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you have a hard time bringing up the content of your spiritual life when you're at the gym and when you're at your workplace because you think that it's going to be off-putting, or maybe you have different reasons for why you would not do that.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to ruffle feathers, you don't want to do that.
SPEAKER_00: To you, Jesus would say, No, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: Let your life shine before men.
SPEAKER_00: You have nothing to hide.
SPEAKER_00: Live your life in the public arena and do not apologize for it.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: So on one hand, he's saying that.
SPEAKER_00: On the other hand, he's saying, and as you do that, when you're practicing your righteousness before others, do not do it in such a way that what you're trying to aim for is to earn their approval and earn their notice.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to root that out of your heart, that motivation for approval and affirmation coming from the outset.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to root that out.
SPEAKER_00: So to kind of pull it all together, it's almost as if he's saying this.
SPEAKER_00: Let your life be visible to all, but be careful to make sure that what is visible is motivated by a desire to reflect the honor and the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: Let your life be visible, but be careful to make sure that what is visible is motivated from a desire to actually reflect the honor and the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: Are you guys with me?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so this is why Jesus' response is so remarkable here.
SPEAKER_00: When he responds to the hypocrites, when he responds to people that there's a disconnect between what they're doing and why they're doing it, this is remarkable, what he goes into.
SPEAKER_00: Because what he says is like, listen, if you're gonna go pray in public and at the synagogue and in the street corner, you're gonna you're gonna get the praise of men.
SPEAKER_00: And guess guess what?
SPEAKER_00: You'll get that full reward.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna get everything you're looking for.
SPEAKER_00: If that's the reward you're looking for, you're gonna get it.
SPEAKER_00: See, see what that does.
SPEAKER_00: To you.
SPEAKER_00: See if that's enough for you.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a different kind of reward.
SPEAKER_00: There's a different kind of reward that you can live for.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want a different kind of reward that actually gets at you and satisfies what you're looking for, what you want to do is you want to take your righteousness, you want to go to the Father in an unseen, in a hidden place.
SPEAKER_00: And when you do that and he sees you, you're going to get a different kind of reward.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's remarkable because Jesus, what we would do typically, we rebuke people for wanting to be noticed.
SPEAKER_00: Can't believe you would want to be noticed.
SPEAKER_00: Can't believe you would want anybody to see you.
SPEAKER_00: How shameful of an act.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't do that.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't rebuke them for wanting to be noticed.
SPEAKER_00: He shows them the right way to be noticed in a way that actually leads to transformation.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is good.
SPEAKER_00: Hang with me.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what is true.
SPEAKER_00: You were created to be noticed.
SPEAKER_00: To be seen and to be this is actually a God-given purpose.
SPEAKER_00: This is a God-given instinct that we are all desire, all of us desire to be seen and to be noticed.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we learn as soon as we're born, most of us.
SPEAKER_00: When we're born, we're not born into an empty room, an empty, quiet room by ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We're not born immediately into solitude.
SPEAKER_00: When you were born, you were born into the loving arms of a mother or father or a caretaker.
SPEAKER_00: And when you opened your eyes, you did not open your eyes to a blink slate.
SPEAKER_00: You opened your eyes to see eyes that were looking for you, looking back at you.
SPEAKER_00: And that became the source of home.
SPEAKER_00: That became for the rest of your life, that sight that became the GPS location of where home would be located is when you are seen and you're loved.
SPEAKER_00: And it's somehow in the eyes of the one who is beholding you, you knew that you were safe, that you knew that you were secure, you knew you're loved and you were valuable, and everything was gonna be okay.
SPEAKER_00: And for the rest of our lives, we've been we we search for the rest of our lives, we search for the same loving gaze until the day that we die.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Psychiatrist, Christian psychiatrist, Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Curtin Thompson, here's what he says.
SPEAKER_00: He said, We are all born into the world looking for someone looking for us.
SPEAKER_00: And then we remain in this mode of searching for the rest of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: You were born looking for someone who was looking for you.
SPEAKER_00: You realize that?
SPEAKER_00: This is so important.
SPEAKER_00: This is what you're made for, actually.
SPEAKER_00: You were you you learned how to behold from day one as your parents were beholding you.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what Adam and Eve, this is what they learned from day one too.
SPEAKER_00: When they woke up from the breath and God shaped Adam and Eve in the garden, he took the clay and he breathed into the clay, into their nostrils, and filled this body that he fashioned with new breath.
SPEAKER_00: Their eyes opened.
SPEAKER_00: And again, it didn't just open into a new world, it opened to see the God who just kissed them and breathed breath into their lungs, and they opened their eyes to see God looking back at them, waiting for them to wake up.
SPEAKER_00: This is you and I as well.
SPEAKER_00: This is the one of the deepest parts of our lives and existence is knowing whose gaze that we will live under and whose gaze we are searching for.
SPEAKER_00: And we do this as a baby, and this is their entire life.
SPEAKER_00: We see this, anybody who has young boys or girls, they're always asking daddy and mommy to look at them, right?
SPEAKER_00: Watch me.
SPEAKER_00: So so little girls, they come into the room, little boys, little girls are different.
SPEAKER_00: Little girl comes into comes in the room and says, Daddy, look at me.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the new dress today.
SPEAKER_00: Look at me.
SPEAKER_00: Put the makeup on, look at me, daddy, right?
SPEAKER_00: The boys, they come in the room, they're like, Daddy, watch this.
SPEAKER_00: Watch this, jump this out, right?
SPEAKER_00: They want you to come and participate in something.
SPEAKER_00: They want you to, they want you to admire something they just did or can do, or some kind of a trick or sport thing or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a thing that is so ingrained inside of us, and it's not a result of sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's a result of God's love and his his his the way he fashioned you to be beheld, that we behold him, that he beholds us, and somehow we're able to behold each other, not in an end of itself, but as a pathway back to the eyes of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's a God-given desire.
SPEAKER_00: Dale Frederick Brunner, in his commentary on this, Matthew 6, he said this the human drive to be impressive to people is so deep-seated that Jesus knows it can only be countered by the still deeper drive to be impressive to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: The human drive to be impressive to people is so deep-seated that Jesus knows it can only be countered by the still deeper drive to be impressive to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: That is a drive inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're left with the decision, though, over the course of our eyes, when we trade the eyes of God for the eyes of man, we are left performing and unsatisfied.
SPEAKER_00: When we trade the eyes of God for the eyes of man, we're left constantly trying to do the right things in order to be loved and to be seen.
SPEAKER_00: And it never works.
SPEAKER_00: It never gets at us.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get that reward.
SPEAKER_00: We get rewarded by human approval.
SPEAKER_00: Good job, Luke.
SPEAKER_00: Way to go.
SPEAKER_00: But the only eyes that have the potential to get at us, to just to satisfy us, that drink of water that never runs dry is the eyes of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: It's the only gaze, it's the gaze that we were made for.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is saying, You've got to get to the secret place.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to start to love the secret place with the Father, because that's where you will be seen.
SPEAKER_00: And before the Father, you will be loved, you will be honored, you will be cherished, valued, prized, and loved through and through.
SPEAKER_00: And nobody else can do that for you.
SPEAKER_00: But if you get that part right, then you can practice your righteousness, and you're not doing it to win approval, you're doing it because it's the overflow of your love life with God.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: There is a word here for some of you.
SPEAKER_00: For all of us.
SPEAKER_00: He tells us how to live for a reward of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: It's a really interesting paradigm because in church world, we talk about this a lot.
SPEAKER_00: We talk about, yeah, when you serve God, you do all these things, you're not earning anything from God, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're not doing things because if I do enough, if I give enough, if I serve enough, if I fast enough, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna earn favor from God, right?
SPEAKER_00: It by grace we are saved, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's by grace, it's not because of our own work so that no man can boast.
SPEAKER_00: So we got that part settled.
SPEAKER_00: Um so when we come to church, it's not because it gets us brownie points in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: It's not, it's not so that maybe if we do enough right things, God will start answering our prayers for Aunt Susan, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's not we're not trying to stack up good things because at some point that that pendulum will shift and all of a sudden God will be, he's gonna be like, wow, this guy's got it together.
SPEAKER_00: I better start doing stuff for him, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's not what we're talking about, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Um so we know God's not a slot machine, he's not a genie in a magic bottle.
SPEAKER_00: We're not just trying to stack up our chips so one day at the right time we can cash in, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Just make sure we're we're settled there.
SPEAKER_00: But it is fascinating that in this passage, Jesus is indicating that the Father actually does have a reward and you should want that reward.
SPEAKER_00: Can we just be clear on that?
SPEAKER_00: We're not doing we're not doing things in secret to earn things from God.
SPEAKER_00: But what Jesus is saying here is like, listen, when you are with the Father in secret, there is a reward that he has prepared for you.
SPEAKER_00: And you should want it.
SPEAKER_00: You should want it.
SPEAKER_00: With the same vigor and the same intentionality, you're trying to organize your life to receive love.
SPEAKER_00: What you should be doing is living for the reward of the one who actually has the potential to transform you and to change you from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in Hebrews 11:6, this the writer of Hebrews gets at the same type of thing when he's talking about the kind of faith that pleases God.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 11:6 says it like this and without faith, it is impossible to please him.
SPEAKER_00: For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
SPEAKER_00: That's another very challenging thing because basically it's saying if you have faith, that's actually pleasing to God.
SPEAKER_00: Without faith, it's impossible to please God.
SPEAKER_00: But with faith, you can actually please God.
SPEAKER_00: I want to please God.
SPEAKER_00: How about you?
SPEAKER_00: I want to please God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm hoping that he sees faith in my life.
SPEAKER_00: For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.
SPEAKER_00: So, what is the reward of the Father?
SPEAKER_00: Let's just talk about this for a second.
SPEAKER_00: What is the reward then?
SPEAKER_00: Is it a consolation prize?
SPEAKER_00: Do I get a ribbon I can pin to my shirt?
SPEAKER_00: And says, You were a good participant today.
SPEAKER_00: You did it.
SPEAKER_00: You got to that secret place.
SPEAKER_00: Is it money?
SPEAKER_00: I wish it was, right?
SPEAKER_00: So, what is the reward?
SPEAKER_00: The reward is him.
SPEAKER_00: He's the reward.
SPEAKER_00: He rewards those who pursue him in the secret place when we come to God and we live our life for his honor and his glory.
SPEAKER_00: When we live for an audience of one, the reward is more of him.
SPEAKER_00: And he honors us in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: He bestows on us the value, the worth, the pleasure, his delight.
SPEAKER_00: There is nothing like living under the smile of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what we were made for.
SPEAKER_00: Are you guys with me?
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is saying we should live for the honor of God.
SPEAKER_00: As image bearers of God, we should want to reflect his goodness and honor into the world.
SPEAKER_00: So, all that said though, as Jesus is kind of framing this whole thing out of listen, there's a lot of ways you can do the right things, and they are good things.
SPEAKER_00: But underneath, what you're what you're really wanting to happen is you're wanting it to come from such a place, a secret place with the Father.
SPEAKER_00: There is a secret place available to every believer, and it's hidden, and nobody will see it, and nobody will reward you for it.
SPEAKER_00: You will get no earthly rewards for the secret place.
SPEAKER_00: You know that?
SPEAKER_00: None.
SPEAKER_00: But the reward that you desire, that your heart desires, the reward that you crave, that the instinct that when you were born that you were looking for in the eyes of your mother or your father, the the the look that you're waiting for to find the rest of your life.
SPEAKER_00: If you could just do a good enough job, if you could just succeed enough, if you just make your spouse happy, make your parents happy, make your kids happy, make your co-workers happy, make your boss happy.
SPEAKER_00: If you could just do enough, you're gonna get that.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said, No, if you want that reward, you're gonna have to go to the secret place and receive it in the Father, because when He sees you and He loves you, your life will be transformed from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: So this morning, just a couple things as we land a plane here, just to respond to this word.
SPEAKER_00: I think for all of us, we would be right to look at our lives and to use this as an opportunity to examine the content of our lives and say, God, would you show me if there's any way about me, if there's any motivation in me, other than your honor and your fame and your glory, would you show me those things?
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, the answer for that question is that's all of us, and that's that's the there's there's a lot of reasons we do things, and I'm not saying it's all bad, but this is an opportunity to say, God, would you show me how to live from integrity from the inside out with integrity?
SPEAKER_00: And just close your eyes across the room and just join me and just invite the Holy Spirit to speak to us.
SPEAKER_00: Is there anything in your life that if nobody noticed you, you would stop doing it in your prayer life, in your service to others, in your generosity?
SPEAKER_00: Would you still give if there is no tax deduction?
SPEAKER_00: Would you serve if nobody ever wrote you a thank you card?
SPEAKER_00: How much of your life are you living longing for someone to see you?
SPEAKER_00: And the truth is, in the body of Christ, we we should be seen by others.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just about God.
SPEAKER_00: We actually do need to be seen by others.
SPEAKER_00: We just have to always know that those eyes can't entirely satisfy what matters from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: So we should look each other in the eyes and say, I see you, I see you, I honor you, I value you.
SPEAKER_00: We should be doing that.
SPEAKER_00: But for us, the motivation is God, Father, Abba, I want to know you.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you know what it feels like to just constantly being perform, constantly perform what Bruner calls theatrical righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: To constantly perform your living your life in order that somebody will catch a glance from a side eye, from the peripheral, that you might be admired, acknowledged, or noticed, right?
SPEAKER_00: Some of you know what that feels like.
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to speak to you this morning and say the Father sees you, he loves you.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to be in the hamster wheel of performance.
SPEAKER_00: You can step out of that and enter into the light and easy yoke of Jesus where you are loved.
SPEAKER_00: You are loved from the inside out.
SPEAKER_00: I speak that to your heart.
SPEAKER_00: That the Father sees you and he calls you his beloved.
SPEAKER_00: I bless you to receive the rest of God and that you can take the mask off and know that you are a child of the Most High God.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's others though that that might be in this place.
SPEAKER_00: I think there may be others in the room where much of your life is hidden.
SPEAKER_00: It feels in the secret already.
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes it feels like it's so hidden that it doesn't quite matter, and you're not even sure if it matters to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: You've been in between things for a long time, maybe in between jobs, you've been in between seasons, you have been trying to do things well in a quiet way, in a hidden way, and that's been hard for you.
SPEAKER_00: And in the same way, I want to bless you and remind you that in the hidden places, in those secret places, the Father sees you, He notices you, He notices you, His gaze is on you.
SPEAKER_00: He's made up His mind about you.
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to, in the secret place, reward you with more of Himself.
SPEAKER_00: And so I pray for you, for an enriched experience in the presence of God, that you would be richly blessed where you are not seen and you are hidden and you are in the secret in your life.
SPEAKER_00: You're waiting for something to happen, but it's not quite there.
SPEAKER_00: You're hoping that something happens in your life, but you're not quite there.
SPEAKER_00: But in this where you are today, I pray for an enriched, deepened experience in the presence of the love of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: There is nothing like it.
SPEAKER_00: And you're in the you're in the perfect place to experience him.
SPEAKER_00: So this morning, maybe you're performing and you need to rest, or maybe you're hidden and you need to be loved.
SPEAKER_00: I just I bless you in the love of the Father this morning as we sing together.
SPEAKER_00: First John 3 says this see what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God, and so we are.
SPEAKER_00: It is a good thing to be a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: It is a good thing to be a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: We are loved by God.
SPEAKER_00: And I just, my heart, my desire this morning is that you receive the blessing of the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Like Josh said, we're gonna have we're gonna be down front.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to receive a father's blessing, someone just lay hands on you, that this would just go deeper.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be available after the service, but I just want to bless you this morning that as you leave this place, that you'll leave knowing that there's a father who sees you in secret.
SPEAKER_00: And not just the bad things, but he sees how he made you to be.
SPEAKER_00: And I pray that that view of the Father, it it heals any other version of a father that we have in our life, maybe versions of a father that maybe didn't see parts of our life.
SPEAKER_00: I'm telling you, the Father in heaven sees you, he loves you.
SPEAKER_00: When you live from his view, it changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So may the Lord bless you and keep you, may he make his face to shine upon you, may he be gracious to you and give you rest.
SPEAKER_00: Now go in the awe inspiring love of Jesus to transform the world with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Love you guys.
SPEAKER_00: Have an amazing day, and we'll see you soon.
SPEAKER_00: Love you.