Righteousness and Rewards

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0:20So this morning we transition from Matthew chapter five to Matthew six. And in these first 18 verses, Jesus teaches about giving and prayer and fasting. And so we'll look at the first of these three this morning, Jesus' teaching his disciples how to view these things in light of the ever present danger of hypocrisy. So would you join me as we pray one more time and ask the Lord for help? Oh, father in heaven, that is our heart's cry this morning that we would be satisfied in Christ and Christ alone. So as we've sung of your goodness, would you now show us your goodness through your word? Help me to be faithful, to preach your word in the power of your spirit so that you would root out any hypocrisy that might be in us and conform us to the image of your son.

1:19Jesus, we pray this in your name. Amen. How many of you plan to tune in to the Super Bowl later this afternoon? Show of hands. You can admit it. It's okay. And as you tune in with wrapped attention to the commercials, since the Vikings are absent from the big game, you'll notice all of the official brand sponsors of the NFL. There'll be advertising partnerships, there'll be halftime show sponsors, viral campaigns. And this is not mainly to sell products, but for a brand to be seen at this particular time. Uh, they're saying we are the type of company that will spend millions of dollars to be talked about on Monday morning.

2:08And why do they do it? Why do they spend so much money to show a commercial during this big game? It's because image is everything. Image is everything. Their reputation, the image, what other people think about them is what matters. Companies do this all the time. They do strategic philanthropy. They partner with social causes in order to boost their sales. So we stand with and then fill in the blank with whatever cause whether on the left or on the right we stand with that cause. And so we would like to sell you more of whatever we are selling or brand altruism. For every pair of shoes that you buy from us, we will give a free pair to some needy person halfway around the world or image-driven philanthropy we're for clean water or eliminating hunger or saving the earth.

3:02They would like you to think highly of them and their philanthropy enables that. This is true of individuals as well. We do publicized donations or you can give enough money and then get a building named after you or endowed professorship at a Ivy League institution. You can even do this without exchanging any money at all. We, we live in an age of virtue signaling where you can show people that you are a good person that believes the right things with the appropriate retweet like hashtag flag in your bio or emoji. And why does this happen? Because we all care about what other people think about us.

3:50Our image is everything. And in our passage this morning, Jesus warns his disciples against this very tendency caring about what other people think about you. He warns his disciples against practicing their righteousness in order to gain human praise. Beware the temptation to want others to like you and to think highly of you. That's a dead and row beware of performative Christianity rather than true devotion and worship. Now, Jesus warning comes in verse one, which we just heard read and sort of extends over verses one through 18. And he follows it up verse one with three examples with alms giving, so giving to the poor, prayer and fasting.

4:45And the Jews in Jesus day would've viewed these three things as the most important in terms of their relationship with God. It's a little bit like how we think of Bible reading and going to church. Like those are the really important things. And for the Jews of that time, alms giving prayer and fasting would've seen, been seen as the most important things as they relate to God. And Jesus had already taught, we saw in chapter five that his disciples righteousness needed to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. So God's people are indeed to practice righteous deeds. And you're supposed to let your good deeds shine before others.

5:27And herein lies the temptation. When we start practicing righteousness, are we doing it to be seen by men? So the main point this morning is that giving is never to make ourselves look good. Giving is never to make ourselves look good, but rather it's to be done secretly as a true act of worship. It's to be done secretly as a true act of worship. Or in other words, you could say giving is about God and not ourselves, giving's about God and not ourselves. And the aim of this text is not to get people to stop giving or stop being generous, but rather Jesus is teaching his disciples how to take hold of the true heavenly reward that the Father is to give to his children.

6:19Pass up these lesser riches for greater rewards from God. So our plan is to look at the warning in verse one, and then we're gonna look at how not to give in verse two, and then how to give in verse three and four. So a warning, how not to give and then how to give. So look with me at verse one, again, I'm gonna read it for us. 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. So in that day and time, it had become common for the Pharisees to practice their religious rituals in public in order for other people to look at them and they would increase their social status.

7:04How do I look? How do I appear? What do other people think about me? They, they walked around like spiritual peacocks, wanting others to praise and recognize and admire them for their piety and for their righteousness. They did all these things for attention. Uh, let me direct your attention to Matthew chapter 23, and I'm gonna read verse three to seven there, Matthew 23. Jesus says this about the scribes and Pharisees. So I think it fills out the picture of what Jesus is correcting among his deci, among the Pharisees. Excuse me. It says, and Jesus is speaking of the Pharisees and scribes and Pharisees, for they preach, but they do not practice.

7:49They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their FIEs broad and their fringes long. The FIEs would've been like a little leather container that they might attach to their wrist and they might put it on the front of their foreheads. And this was trying to put into practice Deuteronomy six, four, the Shama hero, Israel, the Lord your God. The Lord is one Shama Israel, Yahweh ade, Yahweh, Nu Yahweh ade. And for every Jew, this would've been right at the center. And it tells you you're to bind this to your hand and you're to make it a front lip for your eyes. And so the Pharisees would've literally bound this to their head and it goes on.

8:31They love the place of honor at feast, the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces, and being called Rabbi by others. So that's Matthew 23, 3, 5 to seven. In other words, the Pharisees did everything to be looked at and to be admired and honored for being respectable and to be upright. People looked up to them for their piety for being religious. And the Pharisees made sure of it. And yet the reality is this is not just the Pharisees that love this, right? We all like to be honored and respected and admired and known by others. It's like that old sitcom. Cheers. You wanna be in a place where everyone knows your name or I was at the BCS Pastor's Conference and I could walk around and people would recognize me and I would feel, oh, kind of nice about myself.

9:26People know who I am. Here. In Matthew 23, Jesus issues his strongest condemnation against the Pharisees. In the following verses though, he says, woe to you. And he says that several times. And then he calls them hypocrites. That's verse 13. He calls them blind fools. That's in verse 17. He calls them whitewashed tombs. Verse 27. And then he calls them a brood of vipers. Verse 33, you're literally sons of Satan, seed of the serpent. And then in John's Gospel, John 1243, Jesus says this, or actually John says this, that the Pharisees loved the glory that comes from man, more than the glory that comes from God.

10:13That this morning is what Jesus is warning against. That desire to love the glory that comes from people over that of God is deadly. They care more about what other people think and say about them than what God thinks about them. And the result of such praise seeking is in the second half of verse one. You will have no reward from your father who is in heaven. This implies that the true practice of righteousness with the right motives, the right intentions will be rewarded. And the wrong way to practice those things will miss out on reward. This should be a terrifying word for us this morning.

11:04It means that you can do all sorts of great, sacrificial, costly, good deeds. You could even die for your neighbor, lay down your life, go be a missionary halfway around the world and be martyred and miss out on the rewards because you did it with the wrong motives and the wrong intentions. It means that the most outwardly humble, outwardly pious, godly believer in our myths could have all their good deeds rejected. I could preach this very sermon that I want for your edification in vain because of my own heart motives and intentions.

11:54This is a terrifying word. The warning is not against the true practice of righteousness or others discovering that righteousness, but it's warning against religious hypocrisy where you do one thing for the public applause and accolades that you would receive. You're gonna miss out on God's reward. Now, we'll come back to what this reward is just a little bit later. But the, the question that often comes to people's minds when you look at that warning is, well, does this contradict contradicted Jesus' Earlier words in chapter five, verse 16. 'cause in chapter five of Matthew verse 16, Jesus says, let your light shine before others.

12:40You're to do your good works, that they may see those good works and give glory to your father who is in heaven. So are we to practice those things in public so that other people will see them or are we not to? Well, the answer is yes. The motive for good deeds is so that people will praise God and not us. That's the point of chapter five, verse 16. Jesus says, let your righteousness point away from you to God so that people will see God and think God is great, not that you are great. And that's what Jesus is warning here as well. So Jesus issues this broad warning and it's gonna be applied to three different areas.

13:23And the first of these is alms giving or giving money to the poor and needy. So we're gonna look at verse two, how not to give Jesus turns, how not to give. Thus, when you give to the needy sound, no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. So in Jesus' day, pious Jews were commanded in the Old Testament to care for the poor and needy. So he says, when you give, not if you give, he's assuming his disciples will indeed give to the needy. Poverty was widespread and often dire, absolute poverty.

14:06And we see various passages in the Old Testament that command God's people, the Israelites, to give to the needy. Let me read one of those. Deuteronomy 14 verses 28 to 29. At the end of every three years, you shall bring out all the tithe of your produce in the same year and lay it up within your towns. And the Levite, because he has no portion or inheritance with you, and the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns, shall come and eat and be filled. That the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands that you do. So that's Deuteronomy 14, 28 and 29. The Israelites are to set aside a special tithe every third year that would be used to support the vulnerable, the Levites, the sojourners, the orphans, and the widows.

14:55So God's people were to live their lives, to create the rhythms and patterns in such a way that they would always have a mind on the poor and needy, that they would be compassionate and merciful. Or in Exodus 23, 10 and 11, they're to leave the seventh year of their field fallow. That means no harvesting, no planting, so that whatever grows the poor can come and partake. Or in Leviticus 2322, Israel is not to reap their fields all the way to the edges. Don't be so efficient. Don't get all the sheaths, you're gonna leave some so that the poor and others would be able to glean. That's what happened with Ruth and Boaz.

15:35But in Jesus' time, alms giving to the poor had become absurd. It had been taken to sort of the next level. In one apocryphal book, it says this, it's better to give to charity than to lay up gold. And here's the point in the next sentence, for charity will save a man from death. It will expiate any sin. So giving had become so corrupted in later times that it began, it began to become a way to atone for sin similar to purchasing indulgences in the Catholic church. So this is the background for Jesus prohibition. God's people are to be mindful of the poor, but they're not to draw attention to themselves in the synagogues or in the streets when they give.

16:24And it says, don't blow a trumpet before you. I don't think there was any, we don't have any evidence that literal trumpets were being blown. But rather it's just the broader metaphor of don't draw attention to yourself with ostentatious giving or the public recognition of a large donation like we often do in our culture. You know, you can get a building named after you. You can get other recognition if you donate lots of money. What's wrong with such giving the second half of verse two, truly. So again, Jesus is signaling an important word. He's gonna say, truly I say to you, they have received their reward.

17:05What they really want is the praise of man. And what they get is the praise of man. So they should not expect any other reward from God. They get exactly what they want. And so they weren't giving, they were buying the praise of man. And that's exactly what they receive. God owes them nothing. So Jesus calls this hypocrisy hypocrites there. I think there's two different types of hypocrites that could exist. There are those who pretend to do good but are evil. Deep down, they know exactly what they're doing. So they're conman, they're, they're a conman or they're a charlatan. But there's another type of hypocrite who succumbed to his own deceit who's thinking that he's actually doing good and he fools himself and others.

17:54So he's self-deceived. And I think this is the idea that Jesus has in mind. The scribes and Pharisees genuinely thought they were doing the right thing. They weren't thinking, well, we're gonna tell everyone to do these things and we're gonna do something different. They genuinely thought this is exactly the way we are to relate to God. And God is being really pleased with the way in which we're giving. And Jesus is calling them self deceived. God sees the heart, the intentions, the motives. And that's what has been emphasized throughout the Sermon on the Mount, isn't it? It's not just external righteousness that counts among God's people.

18:34It's about the heart disposition and how are we truly devoted and worshiping God? It's wicked to love man's praise over God's approval. That's the broad principle that's at work here. It's wicked to love man's praise over God's approval. Where do we see that in the scriptures? Acts five, who did that? An Ananias and Saria. Uh, Luke tells us in Acts five that Barnabas in the immediately preceding chapter at the end of chapter four, he had just sold all of his property and given it to the apostles in, in kind of to distribute as they saw a need to support the ministry of the church. And Anani and safaria are like, oh, we can do that too.

19:23And, and so they sell their property, but, but they lie about the amount. And, and Peter's like it, it was yours to do with what you want, but why are you lying to the Holy Spirit? They wanted the praise and the approval of others and God saw the heart. Or we see a similar example of loving the praise of man in Acts 1223 when Herod Agrippa stands before the people and the people cry out the voice of a God and nod of man. And Herod didn't deny it and God struck him down in that moment. It's deadly to love the praise of man, uh, that that's what Jesus is warning us against this morning. And yet this danger is not just a Pharisee problem, it's a human nature problem.

20:14We can love worldly recognition. Who doesn't like someone knowing their name and respecting them and admiring them and someone else saying, oh, this guy, this guy's a really good guy. Let me introduce you to him. We, we all love that. Some of us really struggle with this. Your people pleasers by nature, kind of personality wise, you hunger and long for other people to recognize your accomplishments, to praise your gifts and skills, or to call out your contributions or to acknowledge your work. And this can be in the home, right? Like, hello, I I just cooked dinner, cleaned the whole kitchen. Why doesn't anyone pat me on the back?

20:59Why isn't anyone thanking me? Or you can do this at work. I I've made this company millions of dollars. I don't even get a note of thanks from the CEO. All I got was this crummy, you know, thermos with the company logo on it. This can be with family and friends. Why isn't anyone thanking me for planning this amazing vacation? Time and energy went into this. Jesus is warning us against loving the praise and recognition of man over and above that of God's. And the reality is God is to be big in our sight. And the praise of man is to be small. So that is how not to give. And now let's look at how to give verse three and four.

21:51But 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. So he's contrasting, ostentatious, giving with secretive giving. Don't let one hand know what the other one is doing. So that's an idiom. It it's not only is your giving to be so secretive that other people don't see you yourself are not to see. Now this is not advocating thoughtless giving like, oh, well I'll just, you know, dole out money randomly, you know, leaving it in, in the alleyway and letting someone find it.

22:31And, and don't get me wrong, this is not teaching that someone should hide what they give from their wife or husband either rather, your father who sees in secret will reward you. That's the first thing we should notice here in terms of how we are to give. We are to remember and recognize that God sees our giving. Secretive giving is not hidden from God. We can give with one hand so that the other doesn't even know about it. And yet God knows and sees, and this is a foundational truth for us to recognize. We, we often think of God's omniscience. That God knows everything mainly in terms of judgment, right?

23:14He's, he knows everything you say, everything you've done on that final day, it's gonna be exposed and judged. And so go to Jesus for forgiveness of sins and cleansing. And that's true. But in this way, nothing is hidden from his sight. So everything that you do with right motives and the right intentions will never escape his attention. All the thankless things you do that no one else sees private acts of praise and piety at home and at work and at church, God will surely reward the poor. Widow sounded no trumpet when she put her two little copper coins that made up one penny in, and yet God saw and he said she was giving all that she had out of her poverty.

24:10And that act of generosity was seen. She gave a hundred percent in God saw. Second thing we should notice is that God sees in secret and he will reward us. That's what verse four is calling out. God does not ever shortchange his children, but he will lavish his rewards. God will not be out given. So sometimes we can think, well, look at all the things I've done for you. God, look at all the money that I've given. Look at all the things that I'm, all the areas I'm serving and, and, and I don't feel like anyone's recognizing that. And yet the reality is that God will always reward his children for the things that they do in the right motives, with the right intentions.

25:02God is the most generous individual in all of the world. He is always the benefactor. He's never the recipient. Every beast of the forest is God's a cattle on a thousand hills is his. He doesn't need our money, but he designed his people to give generously to meet the needs of others and to show that money is a tool and that God is God. So the theme of reward I is kind of called out in Matthew's gospel. It shows up here more than any other New Testament book. But the curious thing is that the actual reward is not spelled out in detail. It's not obvious what are these heavenly rewards? But let me make a few observations about them.

25:50First, these rewards come from the Father. He's the one who gives every good and perfect gift. And so God is the one who gives these rewards. So we should not think for a moment that these rewards are not going to be stunning and amazing. Consider all the gifts that God gives his children. Uh, uh, a jotted a few down. The beauty of a breathtaking sunset over water or the sound of laughter or the squeal of a baby being tickled, that's like one of my favorite sounds. The, the perfect meal with a satisfying dessert. And then a cup of coffee at the end just to top it all off, or the love and connection and intimacy of marital bliss or the comfort of a good hug or the feeling one gets when you get a word of affirmation or what we saw this past week, the fresh coat of snow that makes Minnesota beautiful and keeps us around for another winter, right?

26:55The the happy exhaustion of a hard day's work or a good workout or a long hike in nature, the sweetness of a good night's sleep where you get eight or nine hours and you wake up and you're like, I can tackle the world. All of those things God gives us for our enjoyment, for our joy, and for our good. And so when it speaks of God giving good rewards to his children, even if we don't know exactly spelled out in detail, what are these rewards, you better believe that it's gonna be good. It's gonna be even better than every single thing I mentioned. Second, these rewards are eternal blessings that cannot be destroyed, not by moths, not by rust, not stolen by thieves.

27:47And so many of us, it have various rewards, right? Things that we save up. If you hoard cash, it could get burned in a big fire. If you stockpile gold, it could get stolen. If you collect cryptocurrency, you could get hacked or you could lose your digital wallet. If you have a sterling reputation and you take great pride in your reputation, one mistake and it can be demolished, you can have a real estate empire and a natural disaster. Like the fires in Los Angeles can wipe out your portfolio. If you have stocks and ETFs, a market crash can wipe out your wealth. But with Jesus rewards, they are eternal.

28:30They will never fade, never crash, never diminish, cannot be burned and will never be destroyed. And Jesus is telling us trade in these lesser things, the praise of man that comes one day and fades another and store up treasures in heaven. These heavenly eternal rewards are going to be better than you can possibly imagine. We are promised an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. So think with me for a moment. What will we inherit? Well, what belongs to God? What belongs to God? Everything. Everything. Job 41 11, who has first given to me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole earth is mine.

29:24I own it all and I've given it to my son Jesus. And if you are in him, you will receive that great inheritance. Your name is listed as a beneficiary on the account of Jesus, where you'll inherit everything more than you can possibly imagine. So Jesus is not just saying, don't seek the praise of man, just deny yourself and don't try to get what, what you just kind of naturally crave in hunger. He's saying, crave and hunger the better thing, rewards from your Father who gives them lavishly, go after those things. So what's that reward? I think the reward is that we get God, we get more of God. What could be better than knowing God?

30:22Experiencing the joy and comfort of Jesus and being indwell and empowered by the Holy Spirit. The eternal reward of heaven is that we get God, we will be able to say what the psalmist whom have I in heaven but you. And there's nothing that my soul desires besides you or Psalm 1611 in your presence is fullness of joy at your right hand. Our pleasures forevermore. We're not gonna get to heaven and say, good to see you God. Good to see you Jesus. Now let me go play with my rewards. We're gonna say, oh, to be in the presence of my Lord and Savior, finally face to face what I have longed for all the days of my life.

31:10That's what it means to be a Christian. That we don't love the praise of man and we love and we long for the commendation of our Lord and Savior to be accepted by Jesus. There is nothing greater. So giving is never to make ourselves look good, but is to be done secretly as a true act of worship or glorify God by secret giving. Or you could put it another way. Are you serving an audience of one? Is the main thing when you practice acts of righteousness is how is this going to glorify and honor God? Or is it, I wonder if they saw, IIII wonder if other people notice that I, I'm doing these things.

32:07I hope my family recognizes that I'm, I'm serving them. So how do we apply this text? I had to think hard about this one. I don't know if we have a big problem with ostentatious giving within the church. So no trumpets go off when you donate online. I don't know if you noticed, we don't list our top givers on a PowerPoint slide, you know, before the service. Like, look who gave this week. We don't have a bell to ring when you drop something into the little pillars there, we don't give out plaques for donating a certain amount. I have no idea what anyone gives around here though. We encourage every regular attender and member to give regularly to support the church.

32:50But I do think there are ways to apply this text even if we don't sound trumpets. It's ultimately a matter of the heart is in it. Like where are our motives? Where are intentions? But a a first application could be that we give if you're not giving it all, I think it's a reasonable application here to begin giving. Jesus says, when you give, not if you give. And a starting point, I think in our path to growing, towards becoming generous Christians, is to give to the church which serves the poor, advances the gospel and supports the church's ministry. We have something called the global diaconate that seeks to serve the poorest of the poor and then also tries to minister to places that are hit by disasters.

33:36We minister to many homeless who walk in each week, and we've seen more of that. We support the local food pantry. We have global partners who are seeking to minister the good news of Jesus and also to meet spiritual and physical material needs. And I think they say on average Christians give 2% of their income to charity. And so though we're not bound by Old Testament law, I think tithing 10% is a good starting point to aim towards and then to exceed. So a second application. Are we guilty of hypocrisy and seeking the praise of man? And only you can determine this. You know your heart, you know your intentions and, and so one of the applications of this is for us to do business with the Lord and say, search me and try me.

34:27Oh Lord, if there'd be any grievous way in me, oh, bring that to mind. Bring that to light so that I might repent. Do we give out a guilt rather than joy? Do we truly believe that it's more blessed to give than to receive? Do we long and hunger for the commendation of our heavenly Father or are we walking around looking for someone else to notice us at the heart of this passage is that we're to love God's smile upon us more than we long for the praise of our peers. Do we see God as big and people as small? Do you learn to not care about what other people think about you? Because we care so much about what God thinks about us.

35:20And we do live in an age where there's a lot of social pressure to do this virtue signaling. Or if you're a high schooler, uh, you don't have the right shoes, you don't have the right clothes, you don't have the right little brands on your clothes and, and you can just feel like my, my life just isn't worth living because I'm not in with the in crowd. And that social pressure can feel so significant and it can feel that way for adults as well. Can it at work? Everyone else is talking about something and you're standing on the outside looking in knowing that you don't fit in. And are we exercising the muscles in the right way of, I don't care because I really care about what God thinks and I know what God thinks because I see it in his word.

36:08When he looks down on his children, he calls us holy and beloved. He says, you're not missing out on anything. Don't worry. The rewards are being stored up. This is a sobering passage because I realize that it's easy to become a religious hypocrite. It's easy for me to be a religious hypocrite. I can say things in this sermon from this pulpit to make you think more highly of me than I ought. Or I can tell stories that portray me as the hero or as really humble. It's the ational hazard of ministry. I am tempted just as much towards hypocrisy. And so my main prayer has been this as I've prepared this sermon this week, oh Lord, keep me from trading infinitely glorious, eternal rewards for the pittance of temporary praise.

37:14I love you guys, but I don't want your praise. It's not worth it. And isn't that to be true for all of us? That when we look out on the world and they say, well, you're on the wrong side of history, you're not doing the right things, you're not supporting this cause that we say, I don't care because I know what my heavenly father thinks about me and my account in heaven is growing and I want to be rich towards God. Amen. Earthly praise withers human accolades fail, but the commendation of the Lord Jesus Christ lasts forever. So if you're not trusting Jesus this morning, what I want you to hear loud and clear is we do not want your money.

38:02God does not want your money. God wants much more. He wants your life. He wants you to surrender so that he might give you everything in the life to come. And yet that means repentance and faith so that you might receive the forgiveness of sins and eternal life and it will cost you everything and you will gain infinitely more. God will never shortchange any one of his children. No one will get to heaven and say, I paid too much. We will say, it is all of grace. I paid nothing and here I am in the presence of my Lord and Savior. And on that final day, we will know that image doesn't matter at all.

38:46How many of you have sat by the bedside of someone on hospice as their straining to take those breaths and they're not saying, how's my hair? Do I have the right shoes on? Do I have the right clothes on? Show me how much is in my bank account. Remember that really good vacation we took? No one's thinking that way on their deathbed. If you're a believer though, what are you thinking? I can't wait to hear the words that I've longed to hear my entire life. And the only words that I would want to hear in that moment, well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your master. May that be our heart's disposition this morning that we long to hear those words and we make much of Christ in all of life.

39:46Let's pray. Oh, father, we want to be those who grow as those who love you, who give generously, who release our resources with joy and who care most about what you think. And so that we would be rich towards God. And so help us and then lead and guide us, sanctify us by your grace so that we would be those who will hear those glorious words on that final day. Well done, good and faithful servant. We love you. We long to see you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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