Self Glorification (Matthew 6:1-4)
February 23, 2020
Jesus has provided us with an image of God’s people in the Sermon on the Mount. We have learned what a Christian is supposed to look like through each section of Chapter 5. I wanted to go slowly through all of that section to be sure that no one took those ideas hastily. I tend to brush over the concept of anger, assuming that I would never be angry in a way that Jesus condemns. The same with lust, lying, or retaliating against those who do evil. Jesus is addressing the Jewish people who have done that very thing. They have brushed past the passages in the OT that condemned their practices and magnified the passages that they are confident they have accomplished.
We must always challenge ourselves to see if our heart is faithful to God. If we aren’t careful, we can hastily assume that we are doing what is right when we are really ignoring God’s will. This is why we gather so often. We are trying to understand and apply the will of God and become righteous like God is righteous. As Jesus said back in Chapter 5, God’s people are hungering and thirsting for righteousness. They are transforming their hearts so that they may become perfect like God is perfect.
In the rest of the sermon, Jesus starts warning us of pitfalls we will face as we strive to be righteous like God. The first of these pitfalls is the pitfall of the ego. Jesus knows that all of us will face the temptation to glorify ourselves after we become more righteous. When we submit to the will God, we become better than others around us. This is dangerous because it could cause us to look for approval and exaltation from men. Jesus wants to warn us against this pitfall. In the first eighteen verses of Chapter 6, Jesus looks at three righteous practices (giving, praying, and fasting) to warn us against pride and conceit. Today we will look at the first example because that is all we have time to look at.
Beware of Being Seen By People
Matthew 6:1 (ESV) --- 1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
Here Jesus encourages God’s people to beware of letting other people see our righteousness. He has just spent an entire chapter revealing how we must become more righteous than the scribes and Pharisees. Now he wants us to hide that righteousness from the world? Does this contradict what he has said in 5:16? He said, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” Notice the difference.
On the one hand, God is telling us to let people see our good works so that they might glorify him. On the other hand, he does not want us to do good works before men to be seen by them. It is all about who we want to receive the glory for the good work. Do we want God to be glorified, or do we want the glory for ourselves?
It Goes To Our Head
When other people see the way we love them and the way we love others, they are supposed to respond to our good works by glorifying God. But what do people actually do when they see our good works? They typically praise us. I get this all the time. It is inevitable when I preach scripture as powerful as the Sermon on the Mount, that someone will come up and talk to me about how good a job I’ve done. The truth is that I have only revealed how good a job Jesus has done. The message comes from God, not me. There is nothing special about me. I’m not getting these teachings from the top of my head. I’m just taking you with me so that you can see all of the amazing things God wants us to see. Please do not hold me up as something special. God is special.
Knowing that there will be people who lift me up scares me. I have to continually ask myself, “Why am I doing this?” I imagine that preachers everywhere have to face this genuine fear of teaching people the word of God to be seen by people as righteous. If they aren’t meeting that fear, it may be that they are preaching with their minds set on what people will think of them. You see, that is what Jesus is getting at in 6:1. He wants us to be aware of ourselves when we do a good work. We need to be mindful of our motivations and desires. The problem of becoming more righteous is that it can go to our heads. It is okay to let men see some good work, so long as our motivation for doing the good is still to be seen by God. But if the only good I do is seen by men, I likely have a problem.
No Reward From God
At the end of that verse, Jesus tells us that seeking an appreciation of people will take away all of the rewards that our Father wants to give us for that good work. It doesn’t matter what the work is. When we do a good deed with the desire to be exalted by people, we lose our reward from God. God is not interested in our good deeds when they are done to be seen by others. He wants us to do good deeds to be seen by him. We must ask ourselves, “Is it worth it? Is the praise of men worth losing the gift of God?” I’m afraid we don’t do this calculation very often. We might go to heaven expecting to get all kinds of rewards from God for our good deeds, but we will find no treasure there for us because we did them for the wrong reason. We are like the man who came to the wedding feast inappropriately dressed. Later in this sermon, Jesus tells people who do good works, “I never knew you.”
Do we see how hard it is to be sure of this? Often our motivations are hidden in a shroud of deceit. This is as small as talking about something great that we have done with a hope that they will be blown away and give us a pat on the back. Is there a person here who has not done this? Our craving for notoriety and exaltation can be so intense that we don’t even see it. We may be proud and conceited while we express our faith and not even realize we are doing it.
When You Give To The Needy
Matthew 6:2 (ESV) --- 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.
Hypocrites
The first good work that Jesus hones in on is giving. Jesus says, “When you give to the needy.” Implying that he expects his people to be giving people. His people will provide for those who need help. The Pharisees were giving to the poor and needy out in the streets and the synagogues. If we were there witnessing their giving, we might be touched by their generosity. We would probably be motivated to loosen up our hold on money and stop being so stingy. We could be well thought of as they are. The act of giving to the needy is terrific and incredibly gracious, but we can quickly see how giving like this could be self-serving. The Pharisee wanted people to be touched by their generosity and think that they were extremely righteous. Although we cannot control the way people view our giving, we can control when, why, and how we give to those in need.
Jesus focuses on our desires to let other people know about what we are doing. Maybe we are asked about how our weekend went, and we use that as an opportunity to brag on ourselves, “I didn’t do too much this weekend. I just helped out at the homeless shelter for about three hours on Saturday and took a group of orphans to the parade and bought them ice cream. Oh, and I almost forgot about visiting the nursing home to play games with the elderly.” Nowadays, we would post that kind of stuff on Social Media. We want to publicize our goodness and say, “Look at me! I am more righteous than you. Don’t you wish you were me?” I doubt any of us load our weekend with that much giving, but if we do give something, are we eager to tell it to someone else or to be recognized for it?
How Do We Sound A Trumpet?
Jesus says, “Sound no trumpet before you.” I wonder if the rich would actually sound a trumpet to call all of the poor to come to them for money, bread, and clothing. Why do we sound a trumpet? The world around us is good at sounding a trumpet. They know we like to do it, so they have created platforms for us to do it well. Social media has taken off because this is what we want to do. People can make themselves YouTube stars by doing crazy or charitable things and recording themselves doing it. A viral video is pasted all over Facebook or Instagram. It’s just a more advanced method of doing the same thing we have always done. Charitable organizations will give ceremonies to celebrate someone who gives to them and often memorialize them with a plaque or monument.
But imagine how we would feel if we donated a considerable sum of money, and no one recognized that we did it. Would we feel outraged? We might not ever do that again. How many of us do something nice for our spouse and get offended when they don’t notice? We decide to stop doing nice things for them because they never appreciate what we are doing. It is only when we stop doing the nice things that we get a response, and it is often critical. We are focusing on the wrong things. We must keep in mind that the appreciation of men is nothing compared to the reward of God. We need to train ourselves to stop desiring the appreciation of men for the good that we do.
It is not worth it. How many of those people who did some amazing things do we recognize or know right now? Maybe they touched our hearts and brought a tear to our eye for a moment, but not anymore. The full extent of reward that we get for all of our hard work and sacrifice is a moment of recognition. Doesn’t that seem kind of silly to sacrifice that much for such little appreciation and praise? The cost greatly outweighs the benefit.
Jesus wants us to stop seeking attention for ourselves. If our goal is self-promotion, we are missing out on the purpose we ought to have in giving. Letting a light shine is a different image than sounding a trumpet. One is a short blast to get attention, while the other is exposing something good that will help people see the truth and understand the God we serve, not self-promotion.
Finding The Reward
Matthew 6:3--4 (ESV) --- 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.
Hiding Our Good Deeds
Jesus is not saying that we need to hide our good deeds under a basket so that the world cannot see. He is telling us to hide our good deeds from ourselves. We are tempted to overthink about the good that we have done. We dwell on it, and we want others to know about it. It is kind of ridiculous to think that we can hide from our left hand what our right hand is doing. Our hands don’t know anything. What is the point Jesus is trying to make?
This is a picture of us automatically providing for people who have needs without thinking about who is watching, how good we are, or how it could benefit us. We are not taking the time to assess the situation or figure out whether it is worth the investment. Think about all of the factors that go into our giving. Do we have enough money in the bank? Can I make money off of this? Is this going to build my reputation? Our minds go through this process as we are trying to decide whether to give. Aren’t we just searching for reasons not to give? We ought to give automatically because we love our neighbor, we know God gave us a surplus to share, and because we don’t care about money like the world around us does.
Why Do We Resist Giving?
What makes us hesitant to give away our money? Jesus talks more about money than just about anything else because we have the wrong mindset when it comes to money. We love it more than we should. It is ours, and we want to enjoy the benefits it brings. Jesus gives us a way to enjoy the most benefit. His reason for giving money exceeds all of the other reasons. When we give in secret, our reward will be from God, and it will be much higher than any compensation we could ever get from a man. We need to give with faith that our God sees what we do in secret and will reward us accordingly, as he has promised.
The Greatest Benefit
At first, we may think, “How is that any different?” Aren’t we still giving to others while pursuing our own benefit? It is just in a different location. If you thought this, you make an excellent point. But the difference is that we are seeking this treasure secondarily. Our primary focus must be on God, who gave us the goods to share and who created the transformation that has made us righteous. We do not believe we deserve any glory. We recognize that without God, we would not have grown to greater righteousness that people see and want to glorify. God deserves all of the credit for any good that we do.
Honestly, the fact that he offers a reward should be incredible to us. Here he tells us that when we give him credit, he sees that, and he promises to reward us. How does that sit with us? Do we think, “Good, we will get what we deserve.” Or, “Why would God reward us? We aren’t even close to deserving anything after all that he has already given to us.” Later in this sermon, he will encourage us to lay up treasure in heaven. God is not accepting all the glory we give him and looking at us as slaves. He looks at us as children and his diligent workers who are worthy of a treasure for their earnest fruit-bearing life. God does not want us just to pursue having less or give up everything to live a miserable life. He wants us to seek his glory while trusting that he will bless those who love him abundantly. We should joyfully give with a desire to glorify him. Paul encourages us to compete with one another in showing love and honor for each other (Rom 12:9-10). We need to run this race like it will take everything we have to finish it.
How Do We Practice Righteousness?
You might hear all of this and think, “We need to give more into the church treasury without anyone else knowing what we are doing.” If you want to give more money to support the work of the church here, that’s great! But I’m not preaching this so everyone will give more money to the church that meets here. Think about Jesus’ words, “When you give to the needy.” Who is in need, and what are they in need of? If a neighbor is in need, help them. Maybe there will be a time the church needs more money, or we are working on something that you can help with financially. But right now, we have more building than we can fill, and the cost of operation is not extremely high from a monetary standpoint. We don’t need people to give their money. We need people to give their time and their bodies to the work of spiritual growth and evangelism.
The church that meets here has a need that is not financial. God’s people will not grow and become strong because we throw a lot of money at the preacher or the treasurer. All that money would do is make our lives difficult as we try to find something to do with it that glorifies God and not us. What we need is more Christians who are committed to growing in the knowledge of the Bible so that they can teach others also. We need Christians who use their gifts to build up the body in love and to bring others to Christ. In April, we will be talking about a lot of different ministries that anyone could be involved in. Maybe you have tried to fill a need by working for God in the past, and you haven’t seen much fruit. Perhaps no one notices the work that you are putting in and the sacrifices you were making. Do Jesus’ words strike you? Reread the words of Jesus, “Your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” We aren’t supposed to care about the appreciation of others. We give of ourselves for the reward that God offers. It could be that the things we are doing are ineffective because we need some help, or maybe we need to try something else. Come to the study, find support, or provide insight so that God is glorified in all of us. God wants us to be letting our light shine without sounding out a trumpet for all to hear.
Conclusion
In this section, Jesus is going to warn us against self-promotion continually. When we practice righteousness, whatever that righteousness may be, we have to stop thinking about how other people will receive it. We want to be sure that our motives are focused on glorifying God and pointing to his blessings as the basis for anything significant we accomplish. The recognition of men is a bad thing for us because that means we receive a much lower reward than the one God wants to give us.