Or “Who is Your Audience?”
Matthew 6:1-18
Matthew 6:1 "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.
I. INTRODUCTION
A. WE ARE ALL ACTORS
In the famous soliloquy in As You Like It, (Act II, Scene VII) Jaques says to Duke Senior the following immortal words:
All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.
At first, the infant, Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like snail Unwillingly to school.
And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.
Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon’s mouth.
And then the justice, In fair round belly with good capon lined, With eyes severe and beard of formal cut, Full of wise saws and modern instances; And so he plays his part.
The sixth age shifts Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose and pouch on side; His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice, Turning again toward childish treble, pipes And whistles in his sound.
Last scene of all, That ends this strange eventful history, Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
While this is merely a fanciful comparison of life to the theater of Shakespeare’s day, in another way it is an apt picture of our own lives, and not just because it walks through the stages of life. What makes us all players is the same thing that makes every Hollywood star one – an audience. This generation of human history is one of the most self-promoting ones of all time, largely because of technology. This is the YouTube generation – the generation of people who invented a new dictionary word: “selfie”. No type of fame seems to be too gross or embarrassing, as long as one gains likes and followers. Many teenage girls are likely to take more pictures of themselves in bathrooms than the Apollo 11 astronauts took of themselves during the first moon landing. While this kind of open vanity certainly characterizes our modern culture, what I want to talk about is more subtle and is a universal truth for all of human history. Just like our favorite movie and TV stars, we are all members of the acting profession. How? Let’s look at what actors do.
Our society certainly idolizes movie stars. There is even a popular TV show where people try to get their big break in show business called “American Idol”. Actors are probably the most admired and followed people in our entire society, sharing that rarified atmosphere with sports figures, musicians (and the occasional politician). We follow their lives as if they were close family members and hang on their every word (if you doubt that, you have never been in a supermarket check-out line). And for what are they so famous? Why do we listen to all that they say as if it was wisdom from God himself and try to look and act like them? What do they do that makes them so much better than us? What is their great skill that sets them apart from the rabble? One thing – they are good at pretending to be somebody or something that they aren’t. That’s all. They pretend. Wow.
I am not attempting here to bash actors in general. In fact, we sell ourselves short in that area because we are all consummate actors, playing parts with such aplomb that even we can’t always tell what is real and what is not about us. Sometimes we act polite when we are full of hate. Sometimes we act brave when we are scared. Sometimes we pretend to care (but don’t really, so much). But God sees through all of our acts, and He is not impressed by our talents in that area. And Jesus saved the name “actor” for those who incurred some of his most angry denunciations. He used it when denouncing the scribes and Pharisees. You might not recognize it, but he did, and we actually see it in the several verses in Matthew chapter 6. Some background is in order:
The theatre arts have been around through just about all of recorded human history. They were already well developed in ancient Greece
Jesus himself had probably seen actors in society – less than 4 miles from his hometown of Nazareth was the gleaming, cosmopolitan town of Sepphoris Nazareth
B. WHERE WE ARE - CONTEXT
Here is where we enter back into the Sermon on the Mount. Remember that this is one of Jesus’ most well-known sermons. It has been called by many the greatest sermon ever preached. Most Christians only associate the name SOTM with the beatitudes, or the “Blessed Are” statements at the beginning (and the verse about not judging), but the sermon as it is related in Matthew covers three entire chapters: five through seven! In this sermon, titled by many as “The Manifesto of the King”, Jesus describes what the Kingdom of God
So in the part of the sermon that we have related in chapter 5 we see the moral quality of a member of the kingdom. What kind of moral behavior is acceptable and the attitudes of the heart that need to empower those behaviors. It is not enough to not murder to be saved from the penalty of the law – one must love even their enemies! But just like us today, the Jews of Jesus’ day had not discerned the intent of the law but instead had distilled it down to a “do or don’t list” by which they could earn the reward of heaven from God (he would become in debt to them for complying with the letter of it). In Romans Paul put it this way:
[Rom 10:3 NASB] For not knowing about God's righteousness and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God.
At the end of this first chapter, Jesus had finished kicking all of the self-righteousness regarding the moral self-congratulation of his hearers out from under them. They were now feeling uncomfortable. This was NOT the kind of preaching that they were used to. As with all who preach the gospel, however, Jesus had to show them their hearts so that they could see their need for the gift that He was going to give them. But one catch remained. And it is the same for people of all times, and it is the biggest danger from religion in general. What is that danger?
The great danger of religion is that we think that if we do religious things it is like doing some sort of magic spell that somehow compensates for our sin. It is the danger of hypocrisy. People go to “do church” once a week and then (as the saying goes) “live like the devil” the rest of the week. Sometimes it is obvious: I think of the moral depravity of Mardi Gras, which is a last day of “get as much sin as you can before getting all religious for the Easter celebration of Jesus saving us from those sins”. Bachelor parties are the same principle: “let’s celebrate my dedication to the woman I am marrying tomorrow by being as nasty as I can until a few hours before the holy ceremony. Though these examples are obvious, usually it is hidden and subtle. And it is universal. There is no human being and no Christian that is not a hypocrite to some extent. Those people who refuse to go to church are right in one thing: the church is full of hypocrites. BUT there is always room for one more, right?
But the point is that we tend to fall back on “religion” to somehow fix things with God. And the Jews of Jesus’ day certainly believed that. Today if you challenge a religious person about sin in their life they will undoubtedly point to the religious practices that they do. A Catholic friend of mine from high school (VERY religious family) was told by his uncle (the almost Jesuit priest) as they were getting drunk together one day “I would rather that you were going to mass every week and seeing a girl on the side than that you were living a holy life and going to your friend’s protestant church.” (referring to SDGBC actually). The religious observance sort of makes the sinning “okay” because you are protected. The 9-11 hijackers went to strip clubs, drank alcohol and other things that they thought were immoral the night before they crashed the planes – they believed that they would be guaranteed to go to “heaven” because of the religious service they would perform the same day – ironically seeking to kill Americans because they were immoral and drank alcohol.
So, Jesus now has to tear down the other false hope of his listeners there on that hillside – religious observance. Remember what we said about religion in general when we went through chapter 5:
(Human) religion usually degenerates into a few common points or ideas:
1. It is the system by which we distinguish between “us” and “them”, where “us” is the “good” people and “they” are the “bad” people.
2. It is the set of special rules, that if we follow them God is made our debtor. In other words, we “earn” our way to heaven, which then God is obligated to give us as our reward for following them, and
3. It is the framework that we can use to feel good about ourselves and whatever we choose to do in life.
So Jesus has to redefine religion as a thing of the heart just like He redefined personal righteousness in chapter 5. He does so in three areas that were very dear to the Jews: Giving to the poor, Praying, and Fasting. It should be pointed out that all of these things are GOOD things. Jesus will not condemn these practices. But, using the word for actor (hypocrite) he will emphasize the most important thing for any actor – without which there is no point in doing it at all:
II WHO IS YOUR AUDIENCE?
The rest of this section of his sermon covers the practices of Giving Alms, Praying, and Fasting, in that order. As we read, we see that Jesus follows the exact same form for all three, which we can summarize like this:
1. a warning not to seek man’s praise
2. an assurance that those who do will get only an earthly reward
3. a command to perform such acts privately, and
4. a promise that God, who sees in secret, will reward the disciple openly.
Let’s start at the beginning:
Matthew 6:1 "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.
Jesus is definitely not letting his audience relax. He starts his new admonition with “BEWARE!” There is no room for complacency, we must be very careful. The term Jesus uses here is interesting. James Montgomery Boice says this:
Righteousness (dikaiosunen) in verse 1 is not easy to translate. The NIV translates it as “acts of righteousness”, which is probably the best that can be done in contemporary English, though the term has to do with the practice of religioin and not mere good works. We might say piety, but piety usually refers to what we call a pious attitude. Devotions is a possibility, but we usually limit devotions to such matters as Bible reading and prayer. Religion might work if what we mean is, “Do not make public displays of your religion in order to attract other people’s attention.”
The danger, then, is of being an actor, playing at religion on the stage of life for the applause of the crowd and the appreciation and admiration of other people rather than serving and glorifying only God. Let’s see how the first example plays out in Jesus’ sermon:
IIa Give in Secret
Matthew 6:2-4 2 "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. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you..”
Here we see the formula in action. The first area Jesus challenges them is in the area of providing for the poor. The religious leaders of the day made a big deal about their charitable works and made sure that they got credit for being respected in the public eye. They were “blowing their own horn”. They did this in the synagogues and even out in public. Today it might be making sure that television crews are there to record you giving the five foot long giant cardboard check to the homeless shelter, or having your name on the plaque, or doing your charity through a foundation named after you, or having a building named after you for posterity. Jesus makes it clear that God does not take that as service to himself, but as service to yourself. As Jesus says here “they have their reward”. What reward do they have? “To be praised by others.” What Jesus plainly implies is that this is hypocrisy and play acting at serving God and if that is what they are doing they should not expect any reward from God. If the adulation of the crowd is what you want, go for it. But that is all that you will get.
Jesus gives a whole new challenge. If you are going to do your religious good deeds (in this case almsgiving) then do it in private. Don’t call the newspapers. Don’t make sure your donation is mentioned in the newsletter. Don’t make sure that the poor person you helped knows who was the donor and how big the sacrifice you made was. Just do it in private. God can see, and when He sees that your heart is pure (visibly seen since there is no way you can get any other reward for your loving deed than from God himself) then “your Father” (a loving and intimate term) will reward you. Jesus promises this. What does it take to be able to do this? I go back again to the definition of faith that pleases God in Hebrews 11:6 (hope I am not sounding like a broken record but I think this verse is foundational!):
Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.
IIb Pray in Secret
The second of the three religious duties gets a much larger treatment than the other two. I think this is because it is the one in which the connection to God is the most obvious. Prayer IS talking with God, so it is the duty where “playing to the crowd” makes the least sense and the one with the most potential to be a direct insult to God himself. If we pretend to pray to God but only for the benefit of our standing before others, how much of an insult is that to God?
After repeating the regular formula, Jesus adds here more instruction (directly from his heart) about how to pray. This part of the passage has two interesting features:
1. It is the same prayer form that he tells his disciples directly in Luke 11 when they asked to be taught how to pray (with a bit more verbiage), and
2. It comes with additional warnings about the heart-state of the person praying
First, the repeating part:
Matthew 6:5-6 5 "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. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go 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.”
Again he uses the word “hypocrites”. The reward that the “actors” seek is to be seen by others. The solution once again to their hypocritical prayers is vividly described: “go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret”. Once again God is described in loving and intimate terms as ‘your Father’. He is once again the Father “who sees in secret”. What do we learn from this? HE CARES. HE PAYS ATTENTION. HE IS WAITING FOR OUR FELLOWSHIP. If we are not close to God, then, who is to blame? We are, of course. As the song goes: “oh what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry, everything to God in prayer.” BTW Jesus was not a hypocrite here. Though He was God, He, in his humanity, spent large amounts of time praying.
Luke 5:15-16 15 But the news about Him was spreading even farther, and large crowds were gathering to hear Him and to be healed of their sicknesses. 16 But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray.
But this subject is so important that Jesus now elaborates on it:
Matt 6:7-8 7 "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
Another sign of hypocritical prayer is to “heap up empty phrases”. There are obvious and not-so-obvious ways this is done. Jesus says that this is an error in what “the Gentiles do”. I remember when I was attending UCSD and the Hare Krishna devotees come onto our campus with their orange robes and drums and sit for hours chanting “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Krishna Krisha….” Etc. etc. etc. On and on and on. I read somewhere long ago that they are accumulating favor by chanting the name of their deity – I think I once read that they were aiming for something like 26000 times per day. Whatever the case, this would be an extreme example of what Jesus was talking about. But the award for sheer irony has to go to the Catholic church, which teaches that the prayer form that follows should be said over and over and over again without any changing … to get favor from God. But the Lord Jesus just said specifically NOT to repeat prayers over and over, thinking that we “will be heard for our many words”. But countless Catholics around the world have chains of beads that they use to count out how many “Our Fathers” and how many “Hail Marys” they have said. In confessional they are given assignments by “priests” to say them so many times as “penance” for the forgiveness of their sins. In fact, the slang term “pitter-patter” in English comes from the latin words that begin this prayer (Pater Noster). What word would Jesus use for this? THE NUMBER OF WORDS SPOKEN IS NOT A MEASURE OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OR THE SINCERITY OF PRAYER. IF YOU KEEP A COUNT SO AS TO TELL OTHERS YOU ARE NOT TALKING TO YOUR FATHER WHO HEARS IN SECRET.
Now Jesus gives his example of how to pray:
Matt 6:9-13 9 Pray then like this: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12 and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
It is not going to be my intention to exegete this prayer in detail – Glen is doing that anyway on Sunday nights (and we are nearly through it now). But there are several obvious and relevant observations we can make from this prayer:
1. Jesus does not say “pray this prayer”. He says “pray … like this”. LIKE this. He has already said not to repeat empty words. We must talk to God from OUR hearts, from OUR minds. Like Paul says in 1 Corinthians (talking about praying in “tongues”: “1 Co 14:14-15 14 if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays, but my mind is unfruitful. 15 What is the outcome then? I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also.”
2. There are six parts to this prayer, and just like the ten commandments the first half of them have to do with our relationship to God and the second half have to do with our relationships to other people.
3. The three main characteristics of this prayer are that (A) it is God-centered, (B) it expresses trust in Him for all that we need and promises that we will keep our hearts loyal and obedient to Him, and (C) even the requests made to God are mostly about our spiritual needs – the physical is almost assumed (but we are still to ask).
The six elements are these:
1. “Hallowed be your name”. God says:
· Isa 42:8 "I am the LORD, that is My name;I will not give My glory to another,Nor My praise to graven images.” – God is jealous of the glory due to his Name.
· Lev 22:32 "You shall not profane My holy name, but I will be sanctified among the sons of Israel
· Mal 1:6-7 6 " 'A son honors his father, and a servant his master. Then if I am a father, where is My honor? And if I am a master, where is My respect?' says the LORD of hosts to you, O priests who despise My name. But you say, 'How have we despised Your name?' 7 "You are presenting defiled food upon My altar. But you say, 'How have we defiled You?' In that you say, 'The table of the LORD is to be despised.'” - based on this, can we pray Jesus’ prayer if our half-hearted worship tells God that his name is not hallowed? That IS hypocrisy in action and fits well with Jesus’ teaching.
· Finally Isa 48:11 "For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.” – if we want our heavenly Father to act on our behalf, we see that it will be for his own glory. If we are praying for any other reason, our prayers will be ineffective. This is the most important part, so Jesus puts it first.
2. “Your kingdom come”. This is two-fold: (A) we ask that God’s righteous kingdom would come back to earth again, and (B) ask that it be fulfilled IN US.
3. “Your will be done”. Same as the above – the death of our own will and our desire that God’s will.
· These two requests recall the image painted by Isaiah of the coming kingdom:
Isa 11:4-9 4 But with righteousness He will judge the poor, And decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth; And He will strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked. 5 Also righteousness will be the belt about His loins, And faithfulness the belt about His waist. 6 And the wolf will dwell with the lamb, And the leopard will lie down with the young goat, And the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; And a little boy will lead them. 7 Also the cow and the bear will graze, Their young will lie down together, And the lion will eat straw like the ox. 8 The nursing child will play by the hole of the cobra, And the weaned child will put his hand on the viper's den. 9 They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, For the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD As the waters cover the sea.
· When we think about this we should pray with John at the end of Revelation “AMEN! Come Lord Jesus!”
4. “Give us this day our daily bread”. The word for “daily” appears almost nowhere else but was found on a woman’s shopping list of the day, as a reminder “to buy a necessary food item for the next day”. This is the part of the request where we ask for and express our trust in God to provide for all of our needs, not just bread. All good gifts come from God (James 1:17)
5. “Forgive us our debts”. We remember that we need daily forgiveness (1 John 1:8-2:2). It is why Jesus came.
· This one seems to have a qualification “as we also have forgiven our debtors.” In fact, Jesus follows with:
Matthew 6:14-15 14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses..
· Can we lose our salvation? Here and in the parable of the unforgiving servant Jesus seems to be saying this, so we must be careful. Again, we are running out of time but three things are true here:
A. It is clear elsewhere in scripture that our salvation is sure and does not go away when we sin again. All of our sin is future from the crucifixion and our salvation pays for all of our sin.
B. While we are saved eternally from the wrath of God by the death of his Son, we are also told that will still sin and that we need to confess and forsake those sins and God will forgive us of them. Since they are already judicially forgiven, this must be to keep abiding in Christ and keep our familial relationship open and effective (1 John 1 & 3-4 talk about this. As Jesus explained to Peter in John 13, “he that is bathed needs only to wash his feet”.
C. Given that we have been forgiven by God for our infinite guilt before Him, and that He is “faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins” that we daily confess to Him, it is a great injustice for us to refuse to forgive others, and a continually unforgiving disposition is a strong indication that we ought to “make sure of our salvation” and that we are not play-acting at that! We don’t want to be the person Jesus talked about who talked about all of their religious service to God and have Him reply “depart from me – I never knew you”
6. “Lead us not into temptation”. We need deliverance from sin that is always dogging us. For this we need power from God and to abide in Him always. Jesus follows this with “deliver us from evil (or the evil one)”. We can’t “go it on our own”. Without his help, we will be sitting ducks. We must “take up the whole armor of God”. How does Paul’s admonition to put on the armor end? Eph 6:18 “With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints,”
IIc Fast in Secret
The third of the three religious duties also follows the formula of the others.
Matthew 6:16-18 16 "And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 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.
For most of us, fasting is just something we have read about in the bible. It was very important to the Jews however. The only fast that God had commanded was on the Day of Atonement. After the Babylonian exile they had many regular fast days. While we don’t emphasize this too much, the point of this is clear. Just like the other disciplines, we must not telegraph our great spiritual piety to everyone else. It reminds me of the story of the zebibah (Arabic زبيبة zabība, "raisin"), also known as a zabiba or zebiba, or browneye, is a mark on the forehead of some Muslims. It is a calloused area that is shown as evidence of faithful prayer (with the forehead on the prayer rug five times a day). I read how some muslims would purposely rub their foreheads raw to make themselves look more spiritual. “Wow! Look at his zebibah! He must be very spiritual!” Jesus implies that many Jews of his day would make a great show of hunger pains and misery when fasting. In their case, he declares that “they have their reward”.
I was intrigued by the closing words of Boice, who pointed out that we do have several NT examples of Christian fasting. Two (he says) stand out. In Acts 10:11 Peter was praying and fasting when given the vision of the great sheet let down from heaven which led to the inclusion of the gentiles into the church (at Cornelius’ house). The second incident he talks about is that the Christians in Antioch
IIII. Conclusion
The conclusion is clear. “Religious duties” will not save us. We must do them, but with no desire for acclaim. In the area of Christian service, our goal is not the acclaim of the “academy of arts and sciences” – no gold trophy. Just “well done, good and faithful servant.”
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