Sermon on the Mount -05- Who's on First

Reading: Matthew 6:1-18

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.

Matthew 6:5 (NIV)

Intro:

Jesus introduces 3 “acts of righteousness” These were the three essential ways a person showed devotion to God: Giving to the needy, prayer, and fasting - acts of devotion in the areas of one’s belongings, one’s soul and one’s body.

What we’ll see is that most folks tend to look at externals. God is only interested in what’s going on in our hearts.

I.   Who’s on First when we Give?

     A.  Who Benefits?

           1.  Some folks seem to give only if they come out ahead in the deal.

           2.  Giving is supposed to benefit the one who is receiving the gift.

                 a.  With some gifts this doesn’t happen at all (stringy gifts).

           3.  The point of giving to the needy is to help the needy.

     B.  Do I care who’s Watching?

           1.  Sometimes we give to impress people around us with our generosity.

                 a.  We brag about our tithing and the way in which we go beyond the letter of the law.

                 b.  What we really want is human approval

           2.  Some give only when it gets them “good publicity.”

           3.  When we’re after getting people to notice our giving, we get what we’re after — but no more.

     C.  God rewards Authentic giving

           1.  Jesus says “give secretly” so that we remove our temptation to be impressive about our generous spirit.

                 a.  In fact we are to be so secret, that we don’t let our own left hand know what our right hand does — we don’t even do it for the personal benefit we get out of knowing we’ve done something good.

           2.  If, when we give, what we’re after is that people notice, once they have that’s all the spiritual benefit there is to it — that is to say, there’s no spiritual benefit at all.

           3.  God rewards us when our giving is truly motivated by a desire to serve God by helping the needy.

                 a.  God blesses us when we give to help, without a thought to what’s in it for us.

II.  Who’s on First when we Pray?

     A.  Impressive pray-ers.

           1.  You’ve heard them — the prayers that sound like singing with old sounding words and little to say.

                 a.  These prayers sound like public displays of godliness, rather than pouring out our hearts to God.

           2.  We are often deeply tempted to pray so as to impress our human listeners with our piety, than to actually come humbly before God.

     B.  Demanding pray-ers.

           1.  Jesus condemns the babblers who think they’re going to wear God down with their words.

           2.  He calls this kind of “demanding that God answer” pagan praying.

                 a.  Pagans think they can manipulate the gods and force them to do their bidding.

                 b.  This has crept into the Church and into just about everyone of us at one time or another — we’d rather have God do things our way and we try every trick in the book to make him do it.

           3.  Prayer isn’t about converting God to our point of view, but merely opening our hearts to him.

     C.  God hears Humble prayers.

           1.  Jesus gives us the Lord’s Prayer as an example of how to pray.

                 a.  Only one out of 7 requests is about stuff.

                       (1)      Here the request is only for the basics (not the luxuries) of life.

                 b.  The first three are about expanding God’s authority in our lives.

                 c.  The last three are about our spiritual health.

           2.  Jesus reminds us that our prayer life and our relationship with God is dependant upon our relationship with those around us.

                 a.  We are to forgive people who wrong us, in the same way we want God to forgive us for wronging Him.

                 b.  If we don’t, we have completely missed the boat.

                       (1)      This does not imply a tit-for-tat account book.

                       (2)      It does mean that if we habitually withhold forgiveness when people wrong us, we have a serious spiritual problem.

           3.  There is no spiritual benefit for those who pray to impress the people around them, but there is spiritual blessing for those who pour out their hearts honestly before God.

III. Who’s on First when we Repent?

     A.  Humility contests

           1.  Fasting is often associated with confession and repentance in the Bible.

           2.  Fasting is an act of humbling oneself.

                 a.  It seems the people of Jesus time did this in such a way that everyone would know just how spiritual they were.

           3.  If we can’t impress people with our amazing generosity or our eloquent prayers, we’ll try to impress them with our humility.

     B.  Worm theology

           1.  Some folks measure how close you (they) are to God by how badly they speak about and treat themselves.

           2.  How did we ever get the idea that God likes it when we mistreat ourselves?

           3.  Worse, how do we pretend to be sad when we aren’t always sad?

     C.  God honors Joyous repentance

           1.  In Nehemiah 8:8-10 Nehemiah encourages the people not to grieve but rejoice that they now understood God’s will.

           2.  There’s no spiritual benefit for those who humble themselves in order to elevate themselves in the eyes of others — they’ve gotten everything out of it they can get.

           3.  God honors true humility and blesses a real change of heart.

The Bottom Line:

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