The Father's Generosity (Matthew 6:1-4)
Sermon on the Mount • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 6 viewsNotes
Transcript
Sermon
Sermon
Key Passage
Key Passage
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
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. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Introduction
Introduction
Sermon on the Mount
We made it to chapter 6! It only took 10 weeks!
If I were to recap what we have covered, it would be a very simple but profound truth.
Jesus is revealing His own heart. A heart of humility and holiness, then showing how that looks in our world.
Jesus heart is very different from the world we live in.
All of us have a sinful nature that is contrary to God’s holiness
This draws us into sin of all sorts.
As we talked about last week, one of the consequences of sin is division.
SIN ALWAYS BREAKS RELATIONSHIP.
In our journey as disciples, Jesus calls us to a different path.
And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
A disciple follows Jesus
A disciple is changed by Jesus
A disciple is obedient to the mission of Jesus
As we have talked through this sermon series, we have really focused on what it looks like to follow Jesus
Leave our lives and surrender lordship to Him
We have also seen what change looks like.
A heart that is focused on the things of this world, compared to a heart that is focused on the Kingdom.
Jesus hasn’t really spoken about the third part of this definition in the Sermon on the Mount except that we are to be salt and light.
There is an effect to these things. That is to bring change to the world around us, but not for our own purposes.
Rather,
In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
Our hearts change. The world sees it. It brings glory to God
The glory of God is the ultimate outcome of our lives
If you think about it, that is the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven
This is the picture Jesus paints.
He is the King. We are a part of the Kingdom
There are two things we need to comprehend about the Kingdom
He wants its citizens to grow in deeper knowledge of Him
He wants the borders of the Kingdom to expand
These two things are connected.
As we grow closer to Jesus, we take on characteristics of the Kingdom (and the King).
The world sees it and God is glorified. Some will then follow Jesus and expand His Kingdom.
We live and exist for the glory of God.
That is for our Good and His glory.
As we talk today about the topic of giving, I know this is a touchy topic for some
There are quite a few cynics of the church and giving, and rightfully so.
I hope to address these things today and bring some clarity to this topic.
I feel it is very important that we fully grasp what God is asking of us.
Preaching Time
Preaching Time
Address topic
Address topic
Before we fully dive into this topic today, I want to look at the landscape of the world around us
Are you ever confronted with people asking for your time or money?
Like literally every day, multiple times each day, we are encountered with something that is intended to tug on the strings of our generosity.
There are TV commercials, gofundme pages, web ads, and dozens of other outlets, even church.
This passage doesn’t give us direction on who to give to, but it gives a very strong warning about how to give.
In the sphere of church, this topic has been publicly abused
There are people who claim, “If you give me your money, God will dump blessings all over your life.”
So if you want blessing, you’d better give. If you want a lot of blessing, then you had better give a lot.
These are usually manipulative guys that are abusive of the flock.
I want to build our concept of giving off of a clear and contextual understanding of the Bible.
When we talk about generosity, there are only two forms that exist in this world.
There is generosity that brings glory to God
And there is generosity that does not.
Did you know you could do good things, even kind things in this world, but not for the glory of God?
Motivations may vary, but as followers of Jesus, we want to take advantage of every opportunity to bring glory to God in our activities
The generosity may be pointed in the same direction, but the heart behind it will be where the glory is directed.
The world will ask for generosity, but never for the glory of God. It will always deflect the glory to another place.
Today we are going to take a journey through this topic, but I’m actually going to preach the same points of a sermon as last week:
Last week we talked about loving our enemies and how love based on identity is the defining mark of a disciple.
Know the Father
Know the Father’s love for us
Know the Father’s love for us and share it with the world
Know the Father’s love for us and share it with the world for His glory.
We will find that the love of God and the generosity of God are inseparable.
They are for God and they must be for us.
Know the Father
Know the Father
We talked about this last week as we looked at the topic of love.
But the topic of generosity does not move on from that foundation.
I want to go back to a passage we read last week:
For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.
He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Everything in this world is His.
He created it. This passage says it is by Him and for Him.
This is a statement of Lordship in our world.
When I look at myself, I have to recognize that my very existence is by Him.
Ps 139
When I look at myself, I have to recognize that my purpose is also for Him
We can also see a part of the nature of God in this passage
Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Here is something we need to learn and know about the Father
He knows. He is all-knowing.
When we talk about matters of the heart, like generosity, we cannot deceive God.
All a person’s ways seem pure to them, but motives are weighed by the Lord.
for the Lord searches every heart and understands every desire and every thought.
This is the nature of God
He is God.
The world and everything in it is His
It was created by Him and for Him
He is all-knowing
He knows your heart and my heart.
There is no deceiving God. There is no faking a right attitude.
You may be able to fool me.
You may be able to fool those around you
You may even be able to fool yourself.
But you will not fool God.
“ ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’”
This is the nature of our passage today. It is a warning to those who are disciples of Jesus.
We cannot, nor will we ever trick God into thinking our hearts are right.
Know the Father’s generosity to us.
Know the Father’s generosity to us.
First off, I want you to see the parallel between the love we spoke about last week and the generosity of God.
If He didn’t love us, we would never know His generosity. In fact, if He didn’t love us, he would have squished us out of existence a long time ago.
But He does love us, and that love is demonstrated by nothing more than His generosity.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
The first point I want us to see here is the generosity that God gives us so that we can be made righteous through His Son.
Our salvation is a gift given by a generous God
This isn’t because we are deserving. It is His grace that we experience in His generosity.
But beyond that, when we look to the nature of God, we know that everything in this world is His.
It was created by Him and for Him.
When it says “everything” it means “everything”
The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;
If God is in Heaven, and everything in this world is His, then I can conclude that I am His and the things that I think I own are all actually His.
For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?
What this opens up is foundation for a word called “stewardship”
We are stewards or caretakers of God’s possessions.
When Jesus called Peter and John on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, did He call just them?
Or did He call their lives.
He called their lives.
They had to leave their nets to follow Jesus.
Matthew had to leave his tax collection booth
Not every follower of Jesus had to quit their job. That isn’t the point.
The point is that Jesus becomes the purpose of our entire lives
What we have, He has given us.
My job is given to me by God and for God
My family is given to me by God and for God
My church is given to me by God and for God
And we will see that our money is also given to us by God and for God.
Every blessing from God comes with instructions for holy use and for the glory of God.
God has blessed me with a wife
Has God given instructions?
God has blessed me with children
Has God given instructions?
God has blessed me with a job
Has God given instruction?
God has blessed me with a nation
Has God given instruction?
God has blessed us with a source of income
Has God given instruction?
Yes to all. He has given His instruction for every blessed He has given us.
When it comes to our money, who should we look to for its use?
God. I am simply going to say this. God as is revealed in His Word.
I will not stand up here and give you some manipulation tactic that will hopefully cause the giving of our church to go up.
Much like the previous passage about integrity.
I hope to preach this sermon in a way that my “yes is yes” and my “no is no”
I say this because this is His church, not mine.
God will lead His church, God will direct His church and God will sustain His church.
When it comes to the topic of giving, no one gave more that Jesus.
I want to take a moment and pause here.
If we contemplate this reality. Even this day that we are living today.
This is a day, unlike any other day that has ever existed in history.
We will have conversations we have never had before
We will see people we have never seen before
We have opportunities that we have never had before.
These are gifts from God.
How much gratitude must we have for God because of His gifts to us!!!
Know the Father’s generosity to us, and share it with those around me.
Know the Father’s generosity to us, and share it with those around me.
Now we get into our text for today.
I didn’t want to just begin today by saying, “You all need to give money” without context.
We must understand where giving fits in the grand scenario of being a disciple of Jesus.
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So when you give to the needy,
Do you see what the expectation is here?
It is that you would be practicing righteousness
It is that you would be giving to the needy
It is not a command to do these things.
The expectation is that you would already be living out your righteousness and generosity.
Verse 1 needs to be clear in this point:
We should practice our acts of righteousness in front of others
The motive is where the warning is at
This is what Jesus is talking about in Matthew 5:16
In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
As disciples of Jesus, He changes us.
That change must be lived out in the world around us.
That change is to be seen by others
It is the overflow of love from God to us
Now that love overflows from us to others.
But not just the feeling or the intent.
Love is demonstrated in part through generosity.
I want to take a journey further into the NT to understand where this topic of generosity fits with the rest of the journey of discipleship that we are on.
Paul is telling the Corinthian church about the growth and maturity of the Macedonian church. They were a living example of the maturity that Paul was calling the Corinthian church to.
And they exceeded our expectations: They gave themselves first of all to the Lord, and then by the will of God also to us.
Do you see the prioritization here?
They gave themselves first to the Lord
This is the foundation of discipleship
Love the Lord your God with everything you have
Then the second part was played out as well.
They then loved and gave themselves relationally to Paul and his friends.
They loved others.
You can see the same journey that Jesus is calling us to was being lived out among the Macedonian church at that time.
So moving on to the Corinthians, here is what Paul writes:
But since you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in the love we have kindled in you—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.
Look at what Paul says about the Corinthian church:
They exceled in:
Faith
Speech
Knowledge
Earnestness
and Love
These are things that they were growing in, maturing in.
But now Paul challenges them further in maturity.
To excel in the grace of giving
Grace
Grace/Love/Generosity
All of these are others centered living that God demonstrated to us, that we ought to demonstrate to others.
Generosity is a demonstration of grace, love and maturity for the disciple.
In fact, this brings us back to our key sentence for today:
Know the Father and His love for us.
God is a God of grace, a God of love and He demonstrates these things through the grace of generosity to us.
Salvation and every other good gift that we have.
Now, we are called to be stewards of what God has given us and openly give as He directs and guides.
Our model is very simple
We follow Jesus and we follow the examples of those in the Bible who modeled themselves after His example.
The instruction is clear. We must be people of generosity.
I just want to highlight the balance here.
We are called to be generous, but we also must be responsible with what God has given us and responsible to know what we are giving to as well.
We must have wisdom alongside of generosity.
Give to the church and give as God directs.
Know the Father’s generosity to us, and share it with the world, for His glory.
Know the Father’s generosity to us, and share it with the world, for His glory.
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
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. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
This boils down to the question, “Why do we give?”
As we look at this passage we see the reason for the warning.
Through misplaced generosity, we can steal God’s glory.
“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“...to be seen”
Greek- Theomai
To be seen— where we get our word “theater”
The command here seems clear.
Don’t do good deeds as a theater act so everyone can see.
If you do, there will be no reward.
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
Jesus hones the microscope in on a piece of righteousness, generosity.
Don’t act like the hypocrites
A stage actor, a pretender, one who plays a part
Again, the act of giving is to be seen by others.
If we claim to be a disciple, then our lives and everything we do is not for our glory. It is for the glory of God.
If I do my giving or my acts of righteousness so others will see it, what is the motive of my heart? To be seen.
If this is the case, Jesus gives the result.
They have already received their reward in full.
The glory of the people around me is my reward.
There is no reward in heaven.
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. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
If our generosity is done not on a stage or as a show, but rather, it is done as a function of grace, whether it is seen or not seen, then there is a reward
Now we can get all caught up in the “How can I be secretive in all of my giving.”
This is not a command to secrecy.
This is the heart of not being generous so I can be seen.
The only way God will be seen is if I am not seen.
This says that there will be a reward if your generosity is done in secret.
Reward:
Reward:
So there is all of this talk about a reward and about losing my reward.
It would be really helpful to know what the reward is, right?
I want you to know that I read all the way through this passage and do you know what? There is not a verse that says, “And this is the reward.”
If I give to get a reward, what is the heart of my giving?
Me
Our giving ought not be about our reward. Our giving ought to be about our recognition that we are stewards of God’s generosity, and we do the same with our eyes focused on Him, not on others or ourselves.
Here is what I can tell you about the reward:
It is good
It will bring glory to God
It is like a Christmas present. It is there, it is real, and it is great. And one day, we will know what it is.
We can rest assured that we serve an omniscient God who is also good. He will reward.
But our giving ought not be trying to get rewards. We give because it is the result of our maturity in Christ.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Everything about generosity revolves around our view of God.
When we see God for who He is, we respond with gratitude.
A heart of gratitude is a heart that will be generous.
The world will see the Kingdom
Reach the world for Jesus, one person at a time.
Gospel Presentation
Hurting
Real Life in Action:
Head- Do my eyes focus more on what I don’t have than what I do have?
Heart- Ask God to help me see His generosity in my life.
Hands- Ask God for direction to display His generosity to the world around me.
Giving must be God-focused not reward focused
Giving must be God-honoring not self honoring
