Attitude Is Everything

Having completed our study of Matthew 5, we turn now to Matthew 6. In Chapter 5, Jesus taught us something of the heart of the Christian. A Christian is honest before God, with regard to his sin, his sinfulness, his waywardness. He comes before God, understanding, recognising God’s perfect holiness.

Through the Holy Spirit’s work in his heart, he confesses his sin, he longs to be freed from it, and he hungers and thirsts for God’s righteousness. He looks at God’s law and he sees both the spirit and the letter of the law. And, in it he sees the way of righteousness, the paths of righteousness, that the Shepherd leads him on, even when the paths wend their way through the valley of the shadow of death.

This walking, this heart, soul, mind and will, this focus on God, and his glory moves us to be honest about ourselves, and about others. We live first for God, then for neighbour, and last for self. But according to our old, sinful natures, our disposition is to live for self first, second and third. And that’s what gives rise to legalism and liberalism. We do what we do for our own benefit, not for God and neighbour.

But those who are in Christ have a new nature, and that new nature is all about living rightly under God our Father. Chapter 6 perfectly picks up where chapter 5 ends, in that it teaches us how to live as sons of our Father in heaven, that we are to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.

Live for God

How then, do we live for God? Chapter 5 is about the character of the Christian—citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, Chapter 6 is about the righteousness, or the right living of the Christian—the citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. This involves having the right attitude.

When I was taking flying lessons in the early ‘90’s, one instrument in the flight panel caught my attention. It is the attitude indicator. No, it didn’t randomly yell out things like, “Dude! Watch it!” Rather, it indicated the pitch of the airplane relative to the horizon. When you’re flying, it is easy to become disoriented, especially on a cloudy or foggy day. The attitude indicator will tell you if you are banking left or right relative to the horizon and if you are pitched up or down.

Jesus’ teaching in chapter 6 is all about our attitude. But rather than thinking about it in terms of our position relative to the horizon, we need to think about our actions, our living in relation to God. We are God’s sons, we are sons of the Father and we live relative to, and for our Father in heaven.

The chapter begins with three examples, our attitude in righteousness (which is a better definition than charitable deeds), our attitude in prayer, and our attitude in fasting. All three are to be done in secret, for our Father in heaven, who sees them in secret rewards us openly now, and at the end of the world.

Jesus is teaching us that, because of our own sinfulness, our own sinful nature, our default position will always be to do things for ourselves, for our own glory and benefit. This is what he calls out the hypocrites as doing. They do their righteous living before men, that is, so as to be seen by men, and thus they get their reward.

The true Christian doesn’t do things, good deeds, righteous living, so as to be seen by men. The true Christian does it so as to be seen by the Father. We have the best example of this in Christ Jesus. He shunned all efforts to elevate him. He refused personal accolades. Even when people rightly understood what he was doing, he always said that he was merely doing His Father’s will. He always pointed to the Father.

Our attitude, our focus should be so much on the Father, than we give no thought, no thought whatsoever as to what we might get out of it. We should be so focussed on God the Father, on doing our living, our righteousness for him, that it is as though we’re not even aware of what we’re doing, our left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing. This is the attitude Jesus spoke of when describing the response of the sheep on the day of judgement, “When did we see you hungry and feed you, naked and clothed you, thirsty and gave you drink?” The Christian who loves God the Father, lives righteously, super-naturally, that they are unaware whether their good deeds they are doing, their acts of righteousness are even noticed by other Christians, other people.

Pray in Secret

The second principle where Jesus applies this thinking is in regard to prayer. In prayer, we are to comprehend to whom we are speaking. We are not to pray for the benefit of others, we’re to pray so as to be in connection with our Father in heaven. It is not much of a stretch to think about our prayers in light of others. Just as there is a temptation to do good deeds, so that other people can see them, and thereby give us praise for doing them, there is also a temptation to be conspicuous in our prayers so as to gain attention from others.

Jesus tells us to pray in secret. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we all have to pray alone, and in a closet. The principle is that our prayer life must not draw attention to ourselves. We should be always praying, but not obviously so.

Having a set time for prayer is a good thing, but this too can become something that we end up doing by rote. And we all know of religions where the members must pray a certain number of set times per day, and that such prayer times will interrupt the activity of the person. But not our prayers, says Jesus. Pray wherever you are. Don’t draw attention to it, either by doing it loudly as the scribe did in front of the sinner, nor so privately, that people all know what you’re doing and give you praise for it.

Such is the sinfulness of our hearts that we can get even talking to God wrong. We think our prayer time has to last a certain amount of time. Or has to be a certain kind of passionate, or that we have to use special words and phrases.

Jesus reminds us that our prayer life is simple. It is as simple as a child before her father. There is simple trust. There is confidence in our Father. There is knowledge that our Father is good, and will answer our prayers out of his amazing goodness, and his willingness to give us more than we can ask or imagine. We need not win over our Father, He is already disposed toward us—he loved us so much as to send us His Son! We simply come before God with simple expression, simple communication. He knows what we need, even before we ask him.

How to Pray

Thankfully, Jesus taught us how to pray. He provides us with a very simple prayer, that covers all the bases. This is an eloquent, simple, concise, prayer. We would do well to imitate it. Preachers would do well to mimic it in its simplicity and brevity.

I tell you the truth, the hardest part of my job is the congregational prayer, or as it was called when I was growing up, the long prayer. There’s a burden of not forgetting to pray for anything, or worse, anyone. But the biggest struggle for me, for most preachers and elders is that we are more concerned about what the congregation is thinking than we are about what God is thinking. This must not be.

Today, we will not get into the specifics of the Lord’s prayer because we will be studying it together when we come to it in the Heidelberg Catechism. The biggest take away from our study of prayer today, is that it is our communication with God. We must never forget who we are talking to, we must never forget how we talk to him, and that while this is something we ought to be regularly doing together, it is also something that is intensely personal and private.

One last thing about this prayer, consider verse 15. This has to be one of the most frightening verses in the Bible, and it underscores what we considered last Sunday morning. If we do not forgive others, our Father in heaven will not forgive us. If we forgive others their sins against us, then the Father will forgive us our sins. Trespasses, sins, debts, all have the same meaning. We commit sins against others, and others commit sins against us. We cannot delude ourselves into thinking, that if we’re good enough, God will forgive us. Rather, it is how well we understand our own sinfulness, and how desperately we need forgiveness that will drive us, move us to forgive, so that our Father in heaven will also forgive us.

Fast in Secret

Now, fasting, like prayer and charitable deeds, is to be done in secret. Just as hypocrites will announce their charitable deeds, they will also announce their fasting. They do it to be seen by men, and that is their reward. I think one of the big frustrations we all have with other Christians, whether they are legalists or liberals, is that they do what they do to be seen by others.

Again, we’re not to exercise specific disciplines in order to be seen by others. In fact, the Christian life is one of discipline period. Yes, it is a full, a wonderful life, but it is disciplined. We need to approach life with moderation, neither indulging too much or in too little.

But fasting isn’t the only discipline. It is an exercise discipline, for a specific purpose, it is not an end of itself. But before we get into that, let me ask, how much have you heard or thought of, or tried fasting>

It isn’t something that I ever really grew up with. My friends in the Alliance church fasted, and I think that Evangelicals like those in the Alliance, the E-Free and most Pentecostal circles have had a fairly consistent application of fasting. But, it has been much less in Reformed circles, it seems to me.

Fasting is something that Jesus taught. It has benefit for spiritual growth, when done properly. When fasting, we are to avoid two things: either demonstrating by our appearance, or by our clothing that we are fasting. “Wow! That there’s some uncomfortable looking sack cloth, good for you!” Or, “Whoah, what’s wrong with your face, or are you just fasting?”

Nor are we to understand that our disposition, or our clothing ought to draw the reverse attention to us. Dress normally, appear normally. Don’t draw any attention to yourself, rather, fast in silence. Fasting, though it was commanded for the Jews once per year, was practiced by the Pharisees twice a week. Fasting became something in of itself.

The disciples fasted after Jesus’ resurrection, the apostle Paul fasted, the church fasted, often when something important needed to be decided, or in response to a major event, or out of a need to become more focused on God.

Beloved congregation, we grow, by exercising our faith, in living careful, disciplined lives before God. We live out the character of God, placed in us by the Holy Spirit, on account of Jesus Christ, who lived and died, and rose again for us. We live Christ in us. And so, then we employ the proper attitude, neither veering to the left, to legalism, or to the right, to liberalism, or pitch down, with the danger of crashing into sin, or pitch up, where we lose forward movement and causes a loss of lift leading to a stall, with the result that we come crashing back to earth. No, we need to keep on the level, and do everything for God’s glory, not concerning ourselves with what people think, not concerning ourselves with what we think, nor for our own goodness and glory, but rather, with what God thinks—doing all for his glory and honour. Amen.

Father in heaven, we are your sons. By your Spirit, live in us, so that we may live, not for others in being noticed by them, nor for ourselves, so as to think more highly of ourselves than we ought, but for you, so that you are praised and glorified. We can’t do this, but You did, Jesus. Please live your life in each of us, amen.