Matt 6.7-15

what we really need

(matthew 6.7-15)

Jason Procopio

Prayer is one of the most difficult aspects of the Christian life for me. When I was a kid it seemed not just strange, but completely, full-on crazy. In every movie where you see someone talking to someone who isn’t there, that person is either insane (best-case scenario) or there are demons or ghosts around (much worse). When I was taught at church to go in my room and speak to someone I couldn’t see or hear, it wasn’t God I thought of, but scary movies. So of course, I never did it.

It wasn’t until much later that I came to real faith in God, and accepted the truth that even if I can’t see or hear him, he is there, and I can and should speak to him—that he delights in hearing his children speak to him. But even after having accepted that truth, it was difficult. Even with other people, normal conversation is difficult for me. I have no problem with hearing God speak to me through his Word, but actually speaking back…? That’s much harder.

So I wish I had learned earlier the very simple lesson Jesus teaches us in today’s text. This text is an enormous relief to those of us who find prayer difficult, because he makes it truly, incredibly easy. The only struggle is remembering and believing that it really is this easy.

In the first six verses of Matthew 6, which we saw last week, Jesus warns us against doing the right things for the wrong reasons—for doing good things like giving, and praying, and fasting, to be seen by others instead of because we love our God and are seeking the reward that only he can give. In today’s text, v. 7-15, Jesus warns us against doing one of these right things—prayer—in the wrong way.

Prayer as Mantra (v. 7-8)

He’s just been talking about prayer and how we should not pray like the hypocrites, who pray to be heard by other people. He remains on the subject of prayer in v. 7:  

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. 

Jesus moves from saying, “Don’t be like the hypocrites” to “Don’t be like the Gentiles.” Pagans often repeated certain words, or the names of their gods, hoping they will be heard because of their repetition. (Maybe the best example in the Bible is in 1 Kings 18, when the prophets of Baal stand on the mountain and repeat his name—“Baal! Baal!”—over and over, trying to invoke him.) So Jesus says, “Don’t do this. Don’t pray like the pagans.”

It’s important to understand that Jesus isn’t condemning simple repetition. There is a place for repetition in prayer. The Bible encourages us multiple times to persist in prayer, to be diligent in prayer—to come back to prayers over and over again, especially if they’re things God has promised us in his Word, or something he delights in (like praying that he would make us more like Christ, or save someone we love). That’s not what he’s talking about. So if your first thought was, Oh no, I always pray for the same things, don’t worry: that’s not necessarily a bad thing. 

Rather, Jesus is talking about what I’ll call “prayer as mantra”. Think of transcendentalists repeating a mantra, or monks intoning a chant. We can slip into a quasi-Christian version of this very easily. Jesus knows that when we lack inspiration, we will say certain things over and over again simply because we don’t know what else to say. Or even worse: we’ll say the same things over and over again, like a hammer hitting a nail over and over, hoping that if we keep going, eventually that prayer will make it through the wall. He’s talking about a kind of mechanical repetition that we think will help get our message across—as if God were a three-year-old who has to be told over and over again to not eat Play-Doh (just like the discussion I recently had with my daughter).

It sounds silly when I put it like that, but it’s far more common than we imagine—we do it without even realizing it. For example, for some of you, the next time you pray aloud, count how many times you say  words like “Lord” or “Father” in your prayers. When I was a kid, I would get bored in prayer meetings, so I’d distract myself by counting how many times people did this—one guy repeated the words “heavenly Father” forty-seven times in a two-minute prayer. 

Or another example—many people will simply say the name “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus”, over and over, as if he were lost, and they’re trying to guide him back to where they are.

If you do this kind of thing, don’t worry—like I said, it may be completely unintentional, little more than a verbal tic. But it might well go deeper than that. Try praying without repeating those words, and see how it feels. For many people, a vague kind of worry will creep in, because you have the feeling that your prayer would be somehow less effective without saying these things over and over.

Jesus tells us not to pray like that, not to imagine that by repeating a stream of buzzwords, God will hear you better or pay more attention to you; that’s simply not true. 

But most importantly, Jesus tells us why we shouldn’t pray like this. His reason is so simple and so freeing that it hit me like a truck the first time I really paid attention to it. V. 8: 

Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 

What great news! And it’s so simple, we kick ourselves for forgetting it. Our prayers need not act like a mantra because nothing we can do or say will make our prayers any more convincing to God! He already knows what we need, and far better than we do! 

We don’t need to heap up empty phrases and mindless repetitions—we don’t need to pray as if we were reciting a mantra. This is wonderful news.

The problem, though, is that for many of us, if you take away that mindless repetition, there won’t be a lot left. If I don’t say these same things over and over…what am I going to say? How am I going to pray?

So of course, Jesus steps in. Rather than simply telling us what not to do, he tells us what to do. He teaches us how to pray. 

Or to put it another way, he gives us a piece of liturgy. He gives us something we can repeat to ourselves over and over, to remind ourselves of what is essential.

The Lord’s Prayer (v. 9-15)

Let’s read the prayer quickly, and then we’ll go over it point by point. V. 9:  

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. 

As you can see, this prayer has a beginning invocation (“Our Father in heaven”), and then six requests to help us adjust our priorities—the first three focusing on God himself, and the last three focusing on our own needs in the context of the Christian community. These things, Jesus says, are essential—these are the things that we should be focused on; it is in these areas that we should understand how God works in our lives.

One more thing before we begin (and this may be obvious, but it bears being said). When Christ tells us to pray something, we can be assured that God will always answer that prayer. If God himself tells you what to pray, it’s because he wants you to pray that way, because these are the things he wants to do. The petitions in this prayer are not just requests, but promises. And if he has promised to give us these things, it is because these are the things are what we truly need. Everything else we could pray for is either unnecessary, or an extension of these main things. So let’s see them together.

Firstly:

We need God to be known as holy (v. 9).

He begins by saying:  

“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 

When Jesus speaks of God’s “name,” he’s not talking about the letters G-O-D, strung together. The name represents the person who bears it. When we speak of God’s name, we’re talking about who God is, as he has revealed himself. We know that God is holy—that is, he is entirely above and apart from all other things that exist. Only God is perfect in his character and perfect in his attributes. He is the source of all things and the reason for all things. 

God alone is truly holy. So when Jesus tells us to pray that God’s name be “hallowed,” he is telling us to pray that God might be seen and treated as holy. That the world might see who he is, and what he is like, and respond to him appropriately. 

This simple fact of the holiness of God should be the beginning point, not only of our prayers, but of our lives. If God is holy, then I cannot think of anything else as ultimate—only he is ultimate. If God is holy, I cannot look for my fulfillment in anything else—because he is my Creator. If God is holy, my priorities should become his priorities—because only he knows what priorities I should have.

The starting point for all our life, all our thoughts, all our loves, all our actions, is the holiness of God. 

And that is why he can tell us to call God “our Father in heaven.” Christians can often turn the fact that God is our Father into something far too familiar, adopt a mentality that thinks of God as “Daddy”—as if when we pray, we’re coming to God for a hug. 

But reminding us of the holiness of God’s name, of the greatness of who he is, keeps us from falling into that trap. God isn’t my Father like my Dad is my father. God is my Father in that although he is perfectly holy and perfectly “other”, perfectly transcendent and infinitely above me, he has established a relationship with me, through the life, death and resurrection of his Son. He has brought us into his people, into his family, and given us all the rights and privileges afforded to his children. 

Knowing God’s holiness doesn’t diminish the goodness of this relationship; it increases it. For such a relationship with the Creator God should not be possible—and yet, in Christ, it is.

So we pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Next:

We need God’s reign over us (v. 10).  

10  Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 

So this is actually two requests that I’ve put together into one. And already, this should freeze a lot of us in our tracks, because at least right now, today, we don’t want this. 

When we pray that God’s kingdom would come, that means that we want God to reign over the entire earth. And that means we’re praying for a world which is not a democracy. We are not praying for God to “serve at the pleasure of the people,” as we say about our presidents. We are asking him to do his will in this world even if his will is very different from ours. 

And here’s the thing: God’s reign and his sovereign will extends to the minutest details of our own lives. When we pray this prayer, we are asking God to do what he will in our lives; with our health; with our professions; in our families; in our children… Everything.

That’s a frightening request. Or at least it’s frightening if we don’t fully believe that God is good—that his will is gracious, and that his reign is just. The loss of democracy is no loss at all if the King who reigns is perfectly good and perfectly loving and perfectly just: if our King will always do exactly the right thing, at all times. That’s not a loss; it’s a gift. 

Next:

We need God to provide for our physical needs (v. 11).  

11  Give us this day our daily bread… 

We’ll be coming back to this in a couple weeks, later on in this chapter. But when we ask God to give us our daily bread, we are simply asking him to provide for our physical needs—the most basic things, like food, clothing and shelter. These are things we need in order to live, so these are the things we ask for.

The reason this picture would have been evocative for Jewish disciples is because they knew the story of the manna in the desert—how God provided food for the Hebrews every day that they were in the desert. Every morning, new manna was on the ground, which they would collect. That’s the picture: trusting God daily for the things that we need.

It may make us uncomfortable to not be more specific with this request—to not actually give him a shopping list of our needs—but what did Jesus just say, in v. 8? Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 

He knows what we need far better than we do. Many of the things we ask God for are things we don’t actually need. Our prayers so often devolve into self-seeking nonsense. We pray for things, not only that we don’t need, but that are actively bad for us. 

And in a way, that’s okay. We aren’t God’s colleagues; we’re his children. Children ask their parents for things they don’t need all the time; but if we’re good parents, we don’t get angry at them for asking—we’re just glad they’re talking to us. So we say no, and we show them—over much time, and with much patience—why the things we give them are actually better for them than the things for which they ask. And we trust that they’ll learn over time to ask for better things.

When we pray such a simple prayer as Give us this day our daily bread, we’re putting our needs in God’s hand, and submitting to his wisdom: “You know what I need; please take care of me.” And we can trust that he will do it. 

Next:

We need God’s forgiveness (v. 12, 14-15). 

12  …and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 

Jesus follows this petition with a bit of further explanation in v. 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. 

This can be a troubling idea. It seems as if he’s saying that God’s forgiveness of us depends on our forgiveness of others—and we know that’s not true. Everything the Bible says about salvation us tells us this isn’t the case. God saves us before we do anything to please him; he forgives us before we forgive others. We are saved by grace, through faith (Eph. 2.8). Faith is what saves us, and nothing else.

I think he said it this way in order to make it as clear as possible that there is a link between God’s forgiveness and ours. God’s forgiveness of us doesn’t depend on our forgiveness of others; but there is definitely a link between the two.

The first step in our salvation—the first thing God does in us when he gives us faith—is that he makes us penitent. That is, he makes us aware of our sin, and sorry for our sin; he shows us that we need to be forgiven. And then he helps us believe the good news that in his Son, through his sacrifice, we are forgiven.

If God saves us, if he has truly forgiven us, we will be penitent. That’s just the way it is, and that’s the way it is every time. If we are not penitent, we have not experienced repentance and faith.

And what happens when we begin to understand the weight of our sin, and the forgiveness we have received in Christ? As we grow in our understanding of our own sin, and of God’s grace to us, we naturally grow in our desire to extend that same grace to others—to forgive others as God has forgiven us. 

Why? Because our sin against God is far greater than anyone’s sin against us. We’re not just talking about one isolated offense, or even a series of offenses, but all of them—all of the sin of our heart, every sinful thought, action or attitude, from our birth to our death. God doesn’t merely forgive a sinful act, or even a series of sinful acts; he forgives sin—all sin, in all its myriad grotesqueries, for every one of his children. Even a great sin committed against us is small compared to the sin God has forgiven in us.

So you see, in the light of the forgiveness we have received, it becomes unthinkable for us to not extend the same forgiveness to others. 

If God forgives us, we will forgive others. It is a process—it does take time—but if we understand God’s grace to us, we will definitely grow in this area; we will learn to forgive others, as he has forgiven us. If we stubbornly persist in our refusal to forgive others, we need to take a good look at our hearts and wonder whether we’ve truly experienced forgiveness for our sins. Because if we have, such hard-hearted lack of forgiveness goes against everything we are now.

So we pray—that God would forgive our sin, and that he would help us to forgive others.

Lastly:

We need God to protect us from sin (v. 13). 

13  And lead us not into temptation, 

but deliver us from evil. 

Now, God has promised that he will not tempt us to sin (James 1.13)—why would we need to pray that God wouldn’t do what he has already promised not to do?

The answer lies in the second part of the sentence: but deliver us from evil. We know that there is one who tempts us constantly. The devil and our own sin are at war with our souls, trying to drive us to sin, or to break us, through the trials we face throughout our lives. Evil is constantly working to drive us away from God rather than towards him.

So Jesus is saying, "Ask God to shield you from the evil which wants to break you.” God might well lead us into situations we would never have chosen for ourselves. He might well lead us into times of suffering. But he will never lead us into situations which will destroy our faith, or drive us to sin. If we sin, it’s because we decide to sin—it’s not because God didn’t protect us well enough. When Jesus tells us to pray that God would deliver us from evil, he is telling us that all of the infinite protection at God’s disposal to shield us from sin will be ours.

Learning to Pray

There are a few striking things about this prayer that we need to see, beyond its mere words. 

Firstly—and if you come from a charismatic church background, like me, listen closely to this—it is remarkable that what Jesus tells us to do here isn’t remotely spontaneous. Some Christians imagine that if it’s not spontaneous—if it doesn’t flow freely from whatever our heart happens to be feeling at the time—then it’s worthless (or at least worth less). The problem with this idea is that whatever our heart happens to be feeling at any given moment might be wrong—we might be passionate about the wrong things, or more likely, we aren’t passionate about the right things. 

So Jesus doesn’t tell us to pray spontaneously: he tells us, “Pray like this,” and then gives us a prayer to pray. 

The Bible is full of prayers like this—examples of what godly prayer looks like. People who prize spontaneity will resist praying these prayers themselves, because they’re not original. But prayer without the Bible almost always turns into navel-gazing. What we usually end up praying for is self-centered nonsense: asking God for things that wouldn’t be good for us, which he’ll never give us because he loves us. So we lean on the Bible to help us know how to pray what we ought. 

And that’s the second truth we need to see. Prayer in the Bible is never just “talking to God”, or even just teaching us how to talk to God. The prayers in the Bible teach us the truths which should motivate us. When we know what is most important, we will pray for what is most important; and we will have confidence that God will answer, because these are the things he says are most important, and which he told us to ask for. 

Which leads us to one final truth. Like I said before, there are many prayers in the Bible. Almost every prayer in the Bible—if it is a prayer of which the Bible approves, and isn’t used as a bad example (like maybe Jonah’s prayer in the belly of the fish?)—is, in one way of another, an extension of the truths we see in this one. 

Think of it this way. As you know, a few months ago we did a series on our church’s vision statement. We wanted to have a clear vision for the church, so that every big decision we make, every initiative, every ministry, could be traced back to it—so we could know why we are doing what we are doing.

Well, this prayer could be seen as God’s vision statement. These are the things that God prioritizes. It starts with who God is: the holiness of his name, the greatness of his reign on earth and in heaven, for the glory of his name; and it continues to show that who God is overflows in goodness to his people—to provide for our needs, to forgive our sins, to protect us from evil. If we want to know why God does what he does, there’s our answer.

Obviously we will pray for other things than these. But when we pray, we should have this prayer so firmly anchored in our minds and our hearts that everything we ask for in prayer can be traced back to one of these truths. 

When we ask God to bless our ministry, it is so that he might be glorified.

When we ask God to help us obey him, it is because he is our King, reigning over our lives, and he has promised to protect us from temptation and to deliver us from evil.

When we ask God to save our loved ones, we are praying that his reign would come to bear on their lives as well.

When we ask God to provide for our material needs, it is because he has promised to do so—and it is to remind us that everything we truly need, we will always have.

God knows how difficult prayer can be—particularly if we tend to be scattered in our minds or in our affections. So thanks be to God: he teaches us to pray. He shows us that these are the things that are most important to him; these are the things he has promised; and so when we pray for these things, we can rest in perfect assurance that he will do them. And as we pray this prayer, we teach our hearts to share these same priorities, to share these same desires, and to have this same focal point: our holy God, to whose kingdom we belong, and who cares for us according to his perfect and gracious will.

Matt 7.13-20

true or false?

1: roads & leaders

(matthew 7.13-20)

Jason Procopio 

We’re reaching the end of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount—two more weeks to go. And this will actually be a two-parter, because the last part of the chapter should indeed be seen as one unit; it covers two separate sides of the same coin.

Jesus has spoken for nearly three chapters about what we could call Christian ethics: how the gospel will change us and shape our behavior in the world as Christ’s representatives on earth. Of course, Jesus knows what is coming: he knows what the church will be like, and also how people will react to it. Some will react honestly and rightly…but not everyone. Some people will want to manipulate the church to their own ends. Some people will want to offer alternative means of being saved. And some disciples will be tempted to imagine that the incredible things they do are proof of the legitimacy of their faith. 

Every one of these is a danger to the church, so Jesus warns his disciples of this reality; he speaks of each one in turn, and tells his disciples how to avoid them and protect themselves from them.

To put it another way: Jesus ends his sermon with several examples of false faith and true faith, and the various ways they manifest themselves.

False Roads (v. 13-14)

There are actually two images here, “roads” (or “ways,” depending on the translation) and “gates”. But these images are really talking about the same thing: about the paths we take to get to either eternal life, or eternal death—or if you want to come right out and say it, heaven or hell.

If you’re here for the first time, and you have had little or no exposure to Christianity, I’m probably going to offend you right out of the gate, because the first thing we see in today’s text is one of the most offensive claims the Christian faith makes: that all other religions, spiritualities and metaphysical philosophies are wrong. 

I know how that sounds; even I have a hard time saying it straight like that. People hear us say that and they immediately think the same thing: that Christians are unbelievably arrogant, for claiming to know the truth while all these other billions of people are mistaken. 

I know why it sounds arrogant, and the emotion that wells up when we hear something like this is difficult to see past. But the argument that this claim of exclusive truth makes Christians arrogant has never made sense to me—even before I was a Christian—for two reasons. 

The first is because everyone does this. It’s not just Christians. Even those who attack Christianity for its exclusive claims say, “There cannot be only one truth. Truth is whatever you want it to be. No one religion, no one faith, is right. Everyone has to decide what is true for them.” And on and on.

The thing is, these are exclusive truth claims as well. They are claiming to know that there is not only one way. They’re doing the same thing we are, only in reverse. It is a religious claim, a faith-based claim, based on their conviction in what they think is right and good.

That’s the first reason: we all do this. But that doesn’t get to the bottom of the issue, so here’s the second thing, and it’s a good deal simpler: the exclusive truth claims of Christianity did not come from us. 

If I go to the doctor, and the doctor examines me and diagnoses me with cancer, and tells me that only this specific treatment can make me well, I’m not arrogant to believe the doctor and start the treatment. It would be arrogant for me to go around belittling other people for not choosing my doctor as their G.P. But trusting in what my doctor says, if he’s proven himself trustworthy, isn’t arrogance, but wisdom.

We believe that the Bible is the Word of God, and that Jesus, the Son of God, really did say these words. We don’t believe this because we’re smarter or more enlightened than anyone else, or because we’ve arrived at a kind of knowledge others haven’t reached, but rather, and very simply, because God saved us. He intervened in our lives before we ever made a single step toward him.

This is not arrogance; it’s trust that the God who met us and saved us is telling the truth about who he is and how he created the world.

And so, as unpopular as it is to say it, we have to say it, because this exclusive truth claim does not come from us. Jesus himself says it.

Let’s read, in Matthew 7.13-14:  

13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. 

So there are two roads, two gates—one leading to destruction, and the other leading to life. The one leading to destruction, I’m calling it the false gate because no one who takes it thinks it’s leading them to destruction; they think it’s leading them to life. It’s only once they’re through the gate that they realize where they’ve been headed all this time.

Jesus describes it, first of all, as wide—that is, there are many different ways to get there, many possible ways up that road and through that gate.

Secondly, he says, it is easy—that is, it requires little effort or sacrifice to get there.

The reason why so many people take this road, and enter through this gate, is because this is what sinful people naturally want. And we’re all sinful people. We all want a way of life that will give us what we want and require little or nothing of us in return. 

That’s why Netflix is so popular. It’s cheap, and it’s meticulously curated to show us what we want to see at any given time.

Don’t get me wrong: I love Netflix. I remember when I was a teenager, and I had to drive all the way to a store, and look at boxes of VHS tapes on shelves, if I wanted to watch a movie. Or if it was a TV show, I’d have to just wait for it to come on TV; and if I missed it, I missed it. So I am definitely grateful for Netflix.

But I think we can all agree that a life spent on Netflix isn’t a life that’s going to be valuable, or ultimately joyful. I might enjoy myself, but I’ll probably hate the person I become.

Most people, whether they know it or not, are living a Netflix life—they’re living whatever life will give them the most amount of pleasure and fulfillment, as quickly and as cheaply as possible. And it brings happiness, and comfort, and pleasure…for now. But this false gate, this false road—which are wide (which has many possible roads leading to it) and easy (requiring little from us to enter)—in the end, leads to destruction.

We need to understand that when Jesus talks about “destruction” here, he’s not talking about the obliteration of life. He’s not saying the lives of those who enter in the wide and easy gate will wink out, like a flame snuffed out by the wind. All of us will live forever; the question is, what will that eternal life look like? One will look like destruction, desolation, isolation from everything that once made life worth living. 

The other will look like…well, life—but life in its best and purest and most joyous form, something that for right now we cannot even begin to imagine.

And we get there through the true gate.

This gate is narrow—that is, there is only one way in. 

The only “way in”, the only true gate, is Jesus Christ himself. Jesus says in John 10.9:  

I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved… 

And again, in John 14.6:  

I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 

The gate is narrow—there is only one way in, and that is through faith in Jesus Christ. And it makes sense, because he did what no one else could do: only he did what we needed to reconcile us to God. We are all naturally rebels against God, separated from him by our rebellion. So Jesus Christ, the Son of God, took our rebellion—our sin—upon himself and was punished for our sin, in our place. And in exchange, he gave us his perfect life. No one else has done what he did, so no one else and nothing else can lead us to life, because true life is only found in him.

The way is narrow, he says, and it is “hard”—it will cost us. Jesus says later on, in Matthew 16, something that is almost a parallel of what we see in today’s text. Matthew 16.24-25:  

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

The way is hard because it’s counterintuitive—he’s saying that if we want to find life, we need to leave behind the things we think are going to give us life today. But those things, we saw before, are the things we find on the wide path that leads to destruction. It’s only when we are willing to let go of those things that we find the life we were really searching for the whole time. 

He’s saying this, of course, because he knows what his disciples will lose if they follow him. He knows what it will cost them. So he is warning them ahead of time—the gate is narrow, and the way is hard. But this way leads to life.

False leaders (v. 15-20)

Now, in v. 15-20, Jesus anticipates another temptation they will have: that of having the wool pulled over their eyes by false leaders, who will rise up in the church to harm her. 

15 “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

In the time of the early church, one of the gifts we see the Holy Spirit give to his church was the gift of prophecy—God spoke to certain Christians in a particular way, and they shared what they had received with the church, to build her up. (We don’t have time today to go into too much detail here, but if you want to know more, read 1 Corinthians 12-14.)

The problem is that a lot of Christians had a hard time discerning between someone who really had received this gift from God, who wanted to help the church, and those who simply said God had spoken to them, and then who said whatever they wanted. Christians found it difficult to argue with them, because they claimed divine authority: that God had told them to say this. And you don’t want to argue with God, right? So these people could make up just about anything and, claiming a divine mandate, manipulate people into doing things or believing things or accepting things they shouldn’t.

This still happens today, but in our particular church context, it doesn’t happen as often. Many people in our church context don’t believe that prophecy takes the same form today as we see it take in the New Testament; and even those of us who are more open to the New Testament form of prophecy would still agree that the Bible tells us to heavily and critically weigh so-called “words from God”, to make sure they line up with the Bible. So our particular church context helps protect us from this kind of prophecy—it’s not 100%, but it helps.

But it still doesn’t protect us from the kind of danger Jesus is talking about here. Because claiming to be a spokesperson for God isn’t the only way for a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” to come into the church. (When the apostle Paul speaks to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, he takes up this image of wolves coming into the church, but he leaves it more open, speaking simply of people who will try to turn Christians away from God’s will.)

This could happen in a variety of ways, but the main way it happens today in our context is through simple influence. Rather than saying they have “a word from God” and using that word to harm the church, people will develop their influence, and use their influence to harm the church. They will make people think they have special understanding and knowledge, that others don’t have, so people will listen to them in much the same way the early church listened to prophets.

Jesus says that those who do this “come to [us] in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (v. 15). A “sheep” here is not a derogatory term; it means a sincere disciple of Christ. And these people—these false leaders—seem very much to be sincere disciples of Christ. They seem loving. They seem caring. They seem righteous and good.

But in reality, either they are actively seeking to harm the church; or they want others to admire them, they want to build power and reputation for themselves, and their self-seeking will harm the church.

It can happen in many ways, but here’s a typical one (and this can be incredibly subtle). A guy will come into the church and build up his image: he is charismatic, he knows the Bible well—he even communicates it faithfully. His knowledge and charisma are intentionally put on display (and yes, social media is likely to play a big role in this, because that’s how people often make themselves known today).

He grows in influence through the same means anybody would: maybe he teaches in the church, but maybe he just spends a lot of time with people, impressing people; maybe he has specific gifts; in the end, all of things make it so that people listen to him. When he speaks, they lean forward.

Leaders aren’t mainly formed through ministries. Leaders are formed through ordinary Christians, who grow in influence by the same ordinary means as everyone else: they spend time with people, they impress people, they may display special gifts—like particular messages they claim come from God, or maybe just an ability to be really convincing—and so people listen to them. 

That’s not necessarily a bad thing; we need godly men and women who can use their influence to bring others into a closer relationship to Christ. But we need to be careful, because the false leaders Jesus is speaking of are those who have enough ability to make their influence powerful, but not enough character to make their influence healthy. Because they wield influence but lack character, their leadership is dangerous.

They can get people to listen to them…and then manipulate them, or even abuse them.

They can get people to listen to them…and then convince them to believe things that aren’t true.

They can get people to listen to them…and cause unhealthy divisions in the church.

It’s incredibly difficult to discern this ahead of time, so Jesus tells us what to look for:

16 You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? 17 So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. 18 A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. 19 Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20 Thus you will recognize them by their fruits. 

We use the word “fruit” a lot in the church, but it may not be clear what we’re talking about if you didn’t grow up in the church. (Christians aren’t walking around with apples and pears in their pockets.) When we talk about “fruit”, we’re talking about the product of our lives. 

Not our ministries, but our lives. And that’s a really important distinction to make, because often in church today we talk about fruit and we think, “success in ministry.” But that’s not what Jesus says. There may be spectacular ministerial fruit (as we see later on in v. 22), but that’s not the question. 

The question is, what do these people produce, not in their ministries, but in their lives? You will recognize them, Jesus says, by their fruits. Someone may have a very successful ministry…and leave a sea of personal injury behind them. Someone may have a successful ministry, and still be driven by their own ego and appetites. 

That’s how we’ll recognize these leaders we should stay away from: a healthy tree does not bear bad fruit.

Now I’m going to confess something to you. When I prepared the first draft of this sermon, this section grew to be incredibly long: as long as most of my sermons are, just for this one point. And it was difficult for me to write, because it’s personal. I’ve known people like this. Some of them used prophecy, like Jesus says here; some of them used influence they had built over many years. I saw these kinds of people eviscerate people I love; people like this got my father fired when I was a teenager (he was our youth pastor, and a very good one). For a long time when I was young I hated the church because of people like this. 

Now that I’m a pastor, I think about this a lot, because I love you all, and I’m called to care for you the best I can. And now, would-be leaders are even more influential than they were when I was young because (as I said), the church is no longer their only platform; now we have the Internet, which spreads their influence much farther than it would have gone twenty years ago.

So given all that, two questions preoccupy me on a regular basis. Firstly, how do I maintain love and charity for Christians I disagree with—even those whom I would consider dangerous—while at the same time giving you what you need to protect yourselves from them? I don’t want to be needlessly alarmist, and I don’t want to instill doubt in you where there shouldn’t be doubt. But I do want you to be on your guard. So how do I do that?

And secondly, how do I protect myself from this, so I don’t become the kind of person who uses my influence to get what I want from you? I know my own sin; I know the things I see in my own life, remnants of the man I used to be, which still come out sometimes. I know that I want you all to like me (like most people do), and I know that if I let it, that desire could drive me to use you instead of serving you. So how do I protect myself from becoming this kind of person?

Those questions are constantly on my mind, so when I was writing this sermon, everything I could think to say about this subject came out. Every piece of advice (look out for this, look out for that), every way to distinguish a good leader from a bad one… But the subject is too complex, and the ways it comes out are too subtle—there’s just too much to say, it would take all day. 

So rather than go through all that, I’ll just say this (and trust that God will give us all discernment). 

Don’t confuse word of God and word of man. That’s what this boils down to, isn’t it? Whether we’re talking about a false prophet, or a person using their influence to get what they want from others, they are able to do this because people come to trust them almost as much as they would trust God himself. 

We must not confuse the word of God and the word of a man—any man.

I’ll use myself as an example. If I do my job well, and you can clearly see from the Bible that what I am saying is what the Bible teaches, then you can trust that I’ve told you the truth. But it’s not my truth. If I’ve done my job, then the truth I spoke didn’t come from me, but from God.

Someone can communicate the Word of God with great faithfulness, and still be a wolf. So even if what they said is perfect, don’t make the mistake of thinking that the truth they communicated came from them. If it’s confirmed by Scripture, then it didn’t come from them. Don’t confuse word of God and word of man.

And to take it a little further: don’t let anyone—even myself—influence you to the point where you assume that what they’re saying is right, because they’ve so often been right in the past. Don’t let anyone influence you to the point where their words carry the same weight as God’s. It is incredibly easy to go from influence to manipulation without realizing it’s happening. The only being in the universe whose influence you should follow completely, and accept without reserve, is God himself.

If anyone—even someone you trust—tells you something which seems like a biblical truth, that’s wonderful. 

Weigh it. Check it. Pray about it. Measure it against the Bible, first of all, and against what the Church has always taught. 

If anyone—even someone you trust—tells you that you should do something that is not clearly stated in Scripture, weigh it. Pray about it. If anyone tells you to do something which goes against what your own conscience is telling you, don’t just do what they say anyway. Weigh it. Pray about it. Check it against the Word of God. 

And don’t try to do it alone. Ask other Christians you trust what they think (chances are, the church has dealt with similar situations before, and other Christians can point you to resources to help). 

Don’t let anyone’s influence take the place of God’s in your life. 

Application

I’m aware that I’m having to leave off on a bit of a bummer; we’ll get to the good part next week. But for now, even if we look at just this part of the text, Jesus is still encouraging a clear response to these two passages.

There is a path that leads to life, and a path that leads to destruction. There are leaders who will help you walk the path that leads to life, and there are leaders who will pull you away from it, or who aren’t walking that path themselves (even if they may seem to be).

So firstly, pray for wisdom and humility. It takes an incredible amount of discernment to notice these things, and incredible amount of humility to consider that we might be wrong about someone, or about the state of our own hearts. These are things we have to ask God to produce in us (and thankfully, they are among the things he has promised to give us).

Secondly, pay attention to those you admire. Pay attention to me. Pay attention to the elders and deacons and other leaders in the church. Pay attention to those Christians—either here or online—whom you look up to. Don’t be suspicious of everyone; don’t become conspiracy theorists; but don’t ever confuse what someone else says with what God says. Don’t let anyone besides God himself have that kind of influence over you. 

Thirdly, examine your own heart. Look at your life; look at the trajectory of your life, and ask yourself, Which road am I on? Who am I following? Am I looking for an easier way to life than taking up my cross, and losing my life, in order to find it? What do I really want? A short life filled with everything I want right now, or an eternal life filled with everything I should want…even if I have to give up some things today in order to get it?

And examine your own heart and sincerely and humbly ask yourself: Am I a sheep, or am I a wolf in sheep’s clothing? What do I want to get out of my involvement in this church? Am I doing it so that others will see me and admire me? Or am I doing it because I want to know Christ, and I want to be a part of his family?

Lastly, pray that God would protect you from straying. Ultimately, a right heart and a faithful life are things only God can produce in us. Once again, Jesus calls us to place ourselves in his hands, and trust him to bring us where he wants us to be. So let’s keep praying, and keep examining ourselves, and resting in his promises to change us.

Matt 6.1-6, 16-18

clickbait righteousness

(matthew 6.1-6, 16-18)

Jason Procopio

See if this sounds familiar for you. You’re new to this church. You come in here, and you spend some time getting to know the people. And you like the church, you like the people…but you get the feeling that these people are just on a different plane of existence from where you are. They’re always smiling, while maybe you’re struggling to be happy; they seem to know the Bible really well, while maybe you don’t; they seem to always do the right thing, while you’re struggling with things you think are pretty basic. 

So what do you do? You don’t want to leave, so instead, you fake it. You put on a smile you don’t really feel; you nod your head when they’re talking about the Bible, so they think you know what they’re talking about; you start doing the right things the best you can, but you do it so that the people around will see you as being on the same “level” as them.

There are a million variations of this type of story. Maybe you don’t feel inferior to others, rather superior—you know the Bible really well, you’re able to obey where other people struggle. And so you feel great: and a part of you wants everyone else to see how great you’re doing.

The temptation to act like this is huge. The temptation to do what the Bible says, to obey the Bible’s commands, in such a way that others might see us doing it, is massive. Because when people see us doing these things, we know that they know that we belong here. They know that we are a part of this family. And if ever they didn’t see us doing these things…what would they think of us?

There is a very fine line between being a model for other believers, between doing the right thing for the right reason…and allowing ourselves to become prideful because we think other believers see us as models. That needle is difficult to thread.

But Jesus helps us thread it in today’s text.

Before we get started, let me explain what we’ll be doing and why. 

We’re actually going to look at v. 1-6 of chapter 6 first; then we’ll skip v. 7-15, which we’ll see next week; then we’ll go straight ahead and look at v. 16-18. We’re doing this because in v. 1, Jesus sets up a new theme in his teaching, and then he gives a few examples. In one of these examples, he makes a brief detour into another topic, before coming back to the main theme he set up in v. 1. So rather than just hitting these verses straight through and having to repeat ourselves later on, I thought we’d hit these two themes separately, rather than doing a kind of thematic U-turn this week. (This is the only time in this sermon that we’ll be doing this, but that’s why.)

Counterfeit Righteousness (v. 1)

How many times has you seen this? You’re scrolling on Instagram or Facebook, and you see someone has posted a picture of their time with their Bible in the morning. The Bible’s open on a table, there’s a cup of coffee next to it, maybe the sun is rising in the background. The caption talks about how wonderful their time with God was this morning. 

Now, I don’t want to pronounce judgment on anyone here—it is quite possible that these people were just overjoyed in Christ that morning and wanted to share their joy with others. But it’s also possible (and you should ask yourself the question if you’ve ever done this) that this picture was posted for another reason. It’s possible you posted that picture because, somewhere in the back of your mind, you wanted people to know that you had read your Bible—because you knew they would see you as a “good Christian” if you did so.

This is the theme of today’s text, and Jesus lays it down in no uncertain terms in v. 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. 

You see, he’s addressing what we could call “clickbait righteousness”—righteousness that is done so that other people will notice it. So he says, Don’t do this—don’t practice your righteousness in order to be seen by other people—and then he gives the reason why we mustn’t do this…and it’s not the reason we would often give. We would encourage someone not to obey God in order to be seen by others because that’s not why we obey God; we obey God to be happy in him, and because he deserves it.

But that’s not what Jesus says. He says, Don’t pratice your righteousness to be seen by others, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. 

That is a pretty shocking thing to say. Why would this be the case?

Well, in order to understand why Jesus would say something so frankly shocking, we need to understand what it means to practice righteousness. 

A lot of people would assume that “practicing righteousness” is simply doing what the Bible commands us to do. “Righteousness” is the word used to describe the moral character of God. When we speak of God’s moral attributes—his goodness, his love, his justice, his wrath against sin, his mercy, his grace—we’re talking about his righteousness. Practicing our righteousness means doing those things which are in accordance with his righteousness.

And that is very different from simply "obeying God’s commands”.

Fundamentally, naturally, we are not able to truly practice righteousness, because our sinful nature rejects God’s righteousness. So what does God do? He sends his perfect, sinless Son, who lives a perfectly “righteous” life (always in accordance with God’s righteousness). Christ takes our sin—our rebellion against God—on himself, and is punished on the cross in our place. In exchange for our sin, he gives us his righteousness: the perfect life that he lived. 

So in essence, our sin is dead: it was nailed on the cross with Christ. Christ broke the power of our sin on the cross, so our sin no longer has the power to control us.

And then God goes further than simply canceling our debt. When he saves us, his Spirit gives us a new nature. He shares his righteousness with us, and helps us to become more and more righteous, like his Son: to act in accordance with his righteousness. 

Growing in righteousness will necessarily drive us to do certain things. Everyone who knows me knows that I love movies. No one has to force me to watch movies: it’s my default mode. I watch movies because I love to watch movies. 

In the same way, as we grow in Christ, we’ll find ourselves naturally gravitating towards certain attitudes and actions, certain ways of living, that weren’t necessarily natural for us before. We will do these things, not to be seen by others, and not to score points with God, but because he has given us a new nature, and we’re beginning to love what he loves. 

Do you see how that is different from practicing righteousness before other people, in order to be seen by them? Everything we do could be perfect on the outside, but if we do it for this reason, it’s not the result of faith, but of pride—we want other people to see us as righteous. That is very different from doing these things because the righteousness God has given us in Christ actually makes us want to do them. 

You see, Jesus’s point here is to say that practicing righteousness to be seen isn’t really practicing righteousness. Clickbait righteousness is counterfeit righteousness; it has the appearance of righteousness, but none of the substance.

We have to understand this, because Jesus clearly says that God does not reward counterfeit righteousness. He does not honor counterfeit righteousness. He does not applaud counterfeit righteousness. 

He hates counterfeit righteousness, because it is righteousness strictly for our benefit, to elevate our social standing. It is an affront to his grace.

Now after having established that pretty sobering principle in v. 1, Jesus gives three examples of what this looks like, and what the alternative looks like in each of these situations. He talks about giving to the poor, and then praying, and then fasting. The goal of each of these, when we do it for the wrong reason, is to say to the world, “Look how pious I am!”

But there is a different goal, a better goal, when these things are practiced out of faith.

So let’s take these examples one by one.

Giving for the Reward (v. 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.

When you read the rest of Matthew’s gospel (or the others), it becomes clear that when Jesus talks about “the hypocrites,” he’s almost always talking about the religious elite of the day. These groups of men prided themselves on their piety and their righteousness, because they knew the law and they followed the law…and they let everyone know it.

When they gave to the poor, they would do so in such a way that everyone in the immediate area knew that’s what they were doing. People would see them and, they thought, admire them for their generosity.

And Jesus says: Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. What is their reward? Recognition and admiration—being praised by others.

That’s the first thing to see; Jesus will repeat it in the next two examples. Practicing one’s righteousness to be seen by others is not entirely fruitless—there is reward in obeying the commandments in this way. It’s just that the reward is temporary, only lasting as long as the people who saw it remember it, and it is not ultimately that valuable.

So what is the alternative? V. 3:  

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. 

It may not be easy to grasp just how strenuously Jesus insists on this point. He says to not let your left hand know what your right is doing. Now of course this isn’t possible to literally do this; if we make a decision to do something, of course we will be aware of it. But when we give, we can choose not to dwell on it, we not to draw attention to it, even in our own minds—to give naturally, simply because God has been generous to us, and to turn our act into an act of thanksgiving rather than an act of pride.

John Stott writes: “We are not to be self-conscious in our giving, for our self-consciousness will readily deteriorate into self-righteousness. So subtle is the sinfulness of the heart that it is possible to take deliberate steps to keep our giving secret from other people while simultaneously dwelling on it in our own minds in a spirit of self-congratulation.”

What, then, is the alternative? Why do we give, if it is not so that other people might see us, or so that we might feel good about ourselves by giving? Jesus tells us why at the end of v. 4—a phrase he will repeat in v. 6 and 18: And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 

So if you’re trying to wrap your brains around this and you keep running into the idea that there will always be a self-serving motive to our obedience, stop trying to avoid it—that’s right. No righteousness we perform is not purely altruistic. It’s not that there is no self-serving here.

Jesus encourages us to focus on reward when we obey…as long as it’s the right reward—the reward which doesn’t come from others, or from ourselves, but from God. (If this seems weird to you, don’t worry; we’ll come back to this later.)

Praying for the reward (v. 5-6)

The next subject Jesus turns to after giving is that of prayer. He says (v. 5):  

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.

OK, so once again—what do the hypocrites do? They pray loudly, that they may be seen by others (v. 5).

Even if we grew up in church, it’s likely that these days, few of us have seen people giving to the needy while blowing trumpets and being seen by others. But this one? This may hit home a little easier. 

When you spend enough time in church, you learn how to pray in such a way that makes your prayers sound good. We incorporate Scripture we’ve memorized into our prayers; we formulate our prayers in ways that inspire others, that almost makes it sound like we’ve rehearsed it ahead of time.

Now we should never presume on anyone’s motives when they pray, so we want to be careful not to assume that if someone’s prayers sound good, they must be hypocrites: that’s simply not true. Jesus is calling us to examine our own motives here: what’s wrong with the hypocrites’ prayer isn’t their prayers, but rather why they pray. They don’t just pray in the synagogues and on street corners; they love to do so, because they know they will be seen by others.

In some prayer meetings you go to, it can almost sound like a competition to see who can pray the best. Many of us know how tempting it can be to engage in that kind of mental competition.

But we mustn’t, because once again, Jesus says that the hypocrites pray to be seen by others, and “they have received their reward.” They have received the recognition from man that they craved. If you pay attention to your prayers so that other people will hear you pray and be impressed, good for you. People will be impressed…and that will be your reward. 

What, then, is the alternative? V. 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. 

This makes so much sense, doesn’t it? Prayer is, by definition, speaking to God. We pray so that God hears and answers our prayers. We seek a reward that comes from him. How silly is it to pray for any other reason? 

Now of course this doesn’t mean we can’t pray with other people; prayer meetings are good. But when we pray together, we don’t do it so that other people might hear us or admire us; we pray to encourage one another to seek from God that which only God can provide, to seek the reward that comes from him alone.

Fasting for the reward (v. 16-18)

We’re going to drop down to v. 16 in a moment, but before we read it we need to talk about something. Jesus is going to talk about fasting. If you’re new to the faith, this may not be very clear. Even for Christians the how and the why of fasting can be difficult to grasp. Many Christians don’t do fast because they don’t see the point of fasting.

So very quickly, here’s the point. Fasting is intentionally depriving yourself of something (most often food) with the intention of reaping some spiritual benefit. 

We all know what it feels like to be hungry, to go without a meal. There’s a kind of ache inside that can only be satisfied by the thing we’re refusing to give ourselves: a hunger we feel which can only be satisfied by eating. 

Well, remember what we saw a few weeks ago about hungering and thirsting for righteousness? When we fast for reasons of faith, we are intentionally giving ourselves that ache in order to give ourselves a kind of physical hook on which to hang that spiritual concept. We fast so that we might feel hungry, and then say to God, “I’m hungry for you like this. I’m thirsty for you like this. As much as my body needs food, my soul needs you infinitely more.” We are teaching our heart to understand something our bodies understand already. 

That’s what fasting is. And Jesus expects that his disciples will do it—he doesn’t say, “IF you fast,” but “WHEN you fast.” So when you fast, he says (v. 16): 

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. 

Even though the Law of Moses only required one fast a year, the religious leaders fasted often; and they would often fast in such a way that everyone knew that’s what they were doing. They wouldn’t wash their face; they would sprinkle their face with ashes, in order to make public the pain they were feeling—so that, as Jesus says, their fasting may be seen by others. 

And once again, they have received their reward. You want to be admired for your piety? If that’s the reward you want, that’s the reward you’ll get.

But that’s not what Jesus’s disciples will do. V. 17:  

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. 

Just like with giving, and just like with prayer, when we fast, we fast for ourselves, and we fast for him. We’re not doing it for anyone else. I’ve been in churches where, when people fast, the men don’t shave, the women don’t wear makeup; they don’t iron their clothes because they’re “so exhausted from their fast”. At lunchtime they look longingly at their neighbors’ plates, and then when someone offers them some, they say in a longsuffering voice, “No no, I’m fasting. But thank you. I’ll be okay.”

NO—when you fast, shave your face. Put on makeup. Iron your clothes. Do whatever you normally do, look like you usually look. 

We don’t fast and pray and give so that others will see us; we do it because he sees us. We’re not looking for reward from anyone other than him.

The Reward and the Mission

There are two massive questions I’ve put off answering until now.

In every example Jesus has given, he’s said, “And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” So what is the reward? What’s he talking about?

We’ll come back to this in a couple weeks, but to put it simply, we fast, we pray, we give, so that we might see God more clearly, and know him more deeply. That knowledge and that view of God are imperfect for now, but they won’t always be. The reward we are hoping to receive from God is imperfect knowledge of God in the present, and perfect knowledge of God in the future; an imperfect view of his glory in the present, and a perfect view of his glory in the future.

And this reward is the very thing for which he created us.

Everyone who’s ever stumbled into their perfect job knows what this feels like. You start doing something, and you get this feeling that says, “Now I know what I was put here to do.” There is a deep satisfaction that comes from knowing that what you’re doing is perfect for you, that you are uniquely suited to a particular task. 

Some of us might experience this to some degree, in one or two areas of our lives. But one day, all of us who belong to Christ will experience that completely. 

Why? Because this is what we were created for. 

Isaiah 43.6-7:  

6  I will say to the north, Give up, 

and to the south, Do not withhold; 

bring my sons from afar 

and my daughters from the end of the earth, 

7  everyone who is called by my name, 

whom I created for my glory… 

We often think of the glory of God as being something that benefits God, but not us. How did we miss that if we have that for which we were created, we have everything?

And not only do we have it, we have it forever, and completely. Habakkuk 2.14:

For the earth will be filled 

with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord 

as the waters cover the sea. 

When we are on the new heavens and the new earth with Christ, we will always know that we are doing exactly what we were created to do. Perfect satisfaction, perfect pleasure in perfect holiness, beholding the glory of God for which we exist…for all eternity.

And even now, we have part of that satisfaction in Christ. It’s no accident that Jesus began his sermon by saying, HAPPY are the poor in spirit… HAPPY are the meek… HAPPY are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness… 

J. C. Ryle wrote: “Let us feel convinced, whatever others may say, that holiness is happiness. . . . As a general rule, in the long run of life, it will be found true that ‘sanctified’ people are the happiest people on earth. They have solid comforts which the world can neither give nor take away” (Holiness, 40).

This is the reward. Growing to be like Christ in order to see him more clearly, and being infinitely and eternally happy in what we see.

And this brings us to our second question. If you take these passages individually, they seem simple enough. But if you read them in context, right after chapter 5, that changes things a bit. Because in 5.13-14, Jesus gave us a mission: You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world… This mission is not about us. It’s about showing the gospel to the world—we’ve spent the last several weeks on this subject.

But now, he turns inward, telling us (in a way that seems almost selfish) to seek reward—a reward that has nothing to do with other people, but is for us.

So here’s the second question: How does the reward that Christ promises equip us for the mission that Christ has given us?

Both of these images Jesus gave to describe his disciples—salt and light—have more to do with experience than knowledge; it’s not just about what information people can learn, but rather what they can see (light) and what they can feel (taste).

In other words, Christ never meant the gospel proclamation to be only intellectual. Sharing the gospel cannot be only helping people to know and understand the contents of the message. Those things are absolutely essential…but they’re not enough.

Essential to the gospel proclamation is helping them to understand not just how Christ saves us, but why they should want the salvation Christ offers. You can give a perfectly accurate explanation of the gospel, only to have the person in front of you say, “Yeah, thanks, but I still prefer football. I still prefer my friends. I still prefer sex. I still prefer Netflix.” Or whatever it is they love the most.

If people don’t see in us why they should desire what we are trying to share with them, there’s a good chance they won’t desire it. It’s possible—God does what he wants—but it’s not the norm, because God calls us to be salt and light, that people might see us and glorify him. 

When people come to Christ, it is because they finally see him as desirable. But how can we expect people to see Christ as desirable if the Christians they know don’t seem to desire Christ? We will never show others why they should want to follow Christ if we don’t enjoy following him ourselves.

Now I know that may seem like bad news for some of you, because right now you don’t enjoy him all that much, and you don’t really want to. But here’s the good news. The reward that God promises is that we would enjoy him. The reward he promises is that we will see him, and know him, and love him, forever. We won’t enjoy Christ as we ought if we’re practicing our righteousness for any other reason than that—to receive the reward which comes from the Father alone. 

How good is our God? To call us to things that are so huge and difficult…and then to tell us that the only way to do these things rightly is to do them so that he will reward us?

Remember what the author of the letter to the Hebrews said? Hebrews 11.6:  

And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. 

Our obedience is worthless if it is done for any other reason but this reward: that we might see him, and know him, and love him. And knowing God in this way, enjoying him in this way, makes us want to be like him. So what do we do? We obey—we obey because we love it, and because through our obedience we will know him even better, and love him even more. 

Christ is calling us into a never-ending cycle of joy. And brothers and sisters, this kind of joy is palpable; it is easily recognizable. People will see it, even though they may not know why it’s there. So when they see it, and then they hear us tell them why we have this joy, it will make sense. They might still refuse it, but they’ll at least understand why we don’t. 

Seeking the reward that comes from our Father in heaven is the greatest tool God has given us in our mission to go and make disciples of all nations; the joy that we have in knowing him and becoming like him and loving like him is the best possible proof we can give that what we are saying is real.

So don’t seek the approval of men; don’t do anything to be recognized or applauded. Seek the reward that comes from our heavenly Father. And show the world your joy in the reward he has promised.

Matt 5.38-48

a deeper obedience (4) : vengeance & love

(matthew 5.38-48)

Jason Procopio

I don’t know if many of you have seen the John Wick films. I do not recommend them to everyone—they’re quite violent—but the premise of these films is appropriate for our text today. (I’m just going to spoil the first five minutes or so of the fist movie.) John Wick is a retired assassin whose wife dies of some rare disease. As a final goodbye to him, she gives him a puppy. A day or two after her funeral, John’s house in broken into by a gang. They beat him; they wreck his house; they steal his car; and they kill his dog.

So John Wick, fueled by his rage after the only thing he had left of his wife is taken from him, goes on a rampage to get revenge on this gang.

If that sounds ridiculous, it absolutely is. But when you watch the movie, you kind of understand why someone would do something it—you feel for John Wick, and so you take a kind of weird pleasure in watching him go on this violent rampage. 

Many films and many books have been written with almost this same storyline. I think people keep telling it (or variations of it) over and over again mainly because of how empowering righteous anger can be. The victim is made able to do something they wouldn’t normally do because, in that situation, it feels right. It feels like that’s what is deserved. And we feel good knowing that the bad guys got what they deserved.

We feel good, that is, until we remember that in our story, we are the bad guys.

In this last passage of chapter 5, Jesus gives us two final examples of the point he’s been making for almost thirty verses. He told his disciples they are to be salt and light in this world, preserving and presenting the message and the character of his kingdom to those who need it. And he said that the way we go about doing this is by not contenting ourselves with obedience to a standard of behavior, in which we could do the right things while being the wrong kind of people. He calls us to a deeper obedience, not merely to do, but to be as children of the kingdom.

He’s been using this verbal formula: “You have heard that it was said...”, and then he quotes a commandment they all knew; then he says, “But I say to you...” and interprets the commandment correctly. In every case, he takes something his disciples think they know, and turns it on its head, to show that if obeying the Law of Moses is all they do, they’ve missed the mark.

He’s going to do this two more times in our text today, but really it’s one more example he gives, for both sections are two halves of the same whole, and that whole is being like our Father, and loving as he loves.

Justice and Generosity (v. 38-42)

The first example we see here is that of retaliation against a wrongdoer, or to put it more properly, justice against a wrongdoer. V. 38:  

38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 

So let’s just stop for a second right there. This makes perfect sense, right? This is the way children think about justice. They get hit, they hit back. They get bit, they bite back. And they think this way because it feels right. This is the way we like to think the world works. Call it karma, call it justice—if someone hurts you, you want them to be hurt in equal measure. 

The Law of Moses had a provision for this as well—we find it in Exodus 21, Leviticus 24, and Deuteronomy 19. This is what Jesus is quoting here. The greater context in the law shows that this wasn’t meant to be taken literally every time; it was a principle based on the dignity of human life as made in the image of God. It existed to keep people in Israel from harming one another; it is meant as a warning for those people who might do wrong.

But what about the person to whom wrong is done? It would be easy to weaponize this concept of eye for an eye, to begin thinking like an executioner—this is right, this is fair, this is just, so this I will do. And if I can’t do it, well then, I’ll at least feed that grudge against my brother, because it’s a well-deserved grudge.

But this law wasn’t given to produce this attitude. It was a means of protecting the society of Israel, not of telling individual Israelites how they should react towards one another. It was a deterrent for how the Israelites managed times of injustice, not a guide for how individuals should live their lives in times of peace. And if we look at the rest of the law, and the kinds of people God encouraged his people to be, we can see that. 

So Jesus reminds us of that fact: even if “eye for an eye” might be fair, it isn’t necessary, and it should not be our gut instinct. V. 39:  

39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40 And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41 And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.

It’s hard to think of anything more controversial than this, because it seems so unfair. It goes against everything we’ve been taught about what it means to be strong. It seems unfair, and it is unfair. It feels—at least initially—like injustice upon injustice. 

But if we’re honest, is “fair” what we really want? If we really take that concept all the way through to its conclusion, we do not want fair. Because if we get what is fair, in the end we will find ourselves not face to face with our adversaries, but face to face with the God of the universe against whom we have rebelled. “Fair” would see God, in his rightful capacity as righteous Judge, pouring out his wrath on us for all eternity because of our rebellion against his good rule. 

That would be fair. But that’s not what we’re getting, and that’s not what Jesus got. We got life, and he got death. We get adoption, he got rejection. We do not want fair. We do not want justice—at least not by our standards. The justice we are looking for is not the kind of justice we would give. 

The justice we are truly looking for—even though we may not realize it—is God’s justice. It is justice that is tempered by knowledge and wisdom, knowing when to give it and how to give it. And it is justice that is tempered by love—which knows that sometimes, for reasons only he knows, giving us what we deserve is not what is most beautiful.

You see, the attitude we should be nurturing in our own hearts is not an attitude of anger towards those who have wronged us—no matter how righteous that anger may be. The attitude God’s Law is meant to build in his people is that of generosity. 

When Jesus says, “if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also,” he is telling us to be generous. Because in that moment, we are showing our wrongdoers the beauty of humility rather than punishment, or the anger they are seeking to drag out of us. We are showing them what they need, not what they want or deserve. That is what Christ did for us, and that is what he calls us to.

And he goes even further: generosity towards those who hurt us is difficult. So if we are this kind of generous, that generosity will naturally spill over into generosity in other situations as well. V. 42:  

42 Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you. 

God’s people are called to be people who are so humble, so disinterested in their own reputation or merit or even possessions, that we are willing to let it all go if it means showing those around us what God’s kindness looks like. In those situations where any ordinary person would balk at “being had”, God’s people let their light shine before men, to show them what God’s generosity and grace look like.

Grace to the unjust and demanding, and generosity to those in need. This is the model Christ gives us.

And in the next verses, Jesus is going to take that idea further than any of us would have wanted him to.

Hate and Love (v. 43-48)

V. 43:  

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

Now this isn’t an exact quote of what the Law said. This comes from Leviticus 19.18, which says,  

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. 

So we can already see that by this time in Israel, the point of the law has been twisted. Leviticus 19.18 goes very much in the same direction of what Jesus said just before about turning the other cheek. No vengeance, no grudges—loving your neighbor as yourself.

The problem is that if you lose the context, and you remember only that God said to “love our neighbors,” the natural question that pops up is, “What about those who aren’t my neighbor?” The law said not to bear a grudge or take vengeance against the sons of your own people. The people of Israel had quite a different attitude towards those who weren’t part of Israel, who were very often literally the enemies of the people. So the law became, love your fellow Israelites, yes; but anyone belonging to other nations were owed no such treatment. They were enemies, and so were to be treated as enemies.

This is the kind of thinking that had seeped into the people’s mentality, and it’s completely logical. This is how we all naturally think. If someone acts like an enemy, you respond to them as an enemy.

So what does Jesus do? He brings us back to the law, and extends it even further. The goal, he says, wasn’t to build up nationalistic loyalty, but real, actual love. V. 44:  

44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… 

It’s not hard to see why this was so shocking, because it’s still shocking today. We’re not in the same context today, but most of us have been treated as enemies by someone, at some point in time. We know what it is to be the subject of slander, or unfair abuse—whether it’s because we’re Christians or not. Most of us know what it’s like to be at the receiving end of unjust, unrighteous treatment by another person. 

If this has happened to you—particularly if it’s happened recently—take a second to think about it. How do you feel towards that person? What is your natural reaction to them? It’s hatred. It’s anger. They treated you unfairly, and you want vengeance. You want retaliation. You want them to receive what you received. You want an eye for an eye.

But once again: God’s people are not called to feed such feelings. Rather, we are called to love our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us.

Love and prayer are inextricably linked. If we truly love our enemies, we will want what is best for them, and we will know that we can’t give them what is best for them. So we will pray that God might save them, and bless them, and show them his love, as he has shown us his love. It is nearly impossible to hold on to anger, to maintain a desire for vengeance, when we pray for our enemies—if we truly pray that God would do for them what he has done for us, our anger against them dissipates like fog under sunlight.

The question is, why should we act this way? It doesn’t make sense. Why would we want the best for our enemies? Why should we hope and pray for their good?

Jesus gives us two reasons. V. 44 again:  

44 But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. 

Tim Keller told the story of the king of a vast kingdom who decided to adopt a poor orphan child from the street. The king brought the child into the palace, washed the mud from his body, took off his rags and gave him the clothes of a prince. Once the child was cleaned and dressed, the king looked down at him and said, “All that I have is yours. You are my son, and I am your father.” The child asked, “Why are you doing this? Why have you adopted me?” To which the king responded, “That’s not for you to know. All you need to know is that now that you are my child, you must start learning how to live like my child. If you are a son of the king, you must learn to live like a son of the king.”

We are sons and daughters of the King of Kings. We have been adopted into his family. Now, we must learn to live as his sons and daughters. We must learn to live as he lives, to love as he loves.

And how does God love? V. 45b:  

For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. 

We are all part of God’s creation; he has always been the Lord of all things. And yet, how unfairly do we treat God? How often do we neglect God? How often do we refuse his gracious leading? The answer is, constantly. We do nothing but this, apart from his grace. We want nothing to do with him, or his good rule.

And yet, how does he respond—not after giving us faith, but before? He responds with what we call “common grace.” Common grace is the grace that God shows to all men and women, indiscriminately, simply because we live in his world. Now of course, some people suffer more than others; some people prosper more than others. What Jesus is getting at here is that if we are alive, that is only because God has given us a measure of grace. He gives sun and rain to the just and the unjust, to the good and the evil. He gives life to all; he is generous to all humanity. 

And if we are his sons and daughters, we will do the same. We won’t base our treatment of anyone else on what that person actually deserves (because we all deserve God’s judgment). We will see the example our Father set, giving sun and rain to the evil and the good alike, and we will do the same. The love we extend to our brothers, we will seek to extend it to all—even to those who wound us.

So we love our enemies because our Father shows common grace to all, and we are his children. And secondly, we love our enemies not only because we are his children, but to show that we are his children. 

V. 46:  

46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?

So what he’s saying is, essentially, we set ourselves apart by the love we show to our enemies. Anyone in the world can not do this. Anyone can show love to a brother, and hate an enemy. This is the natural way of things. We are drawn to those who love us, and we naturally want to respond with love. 

But it is not natural to respond to persecution with love. No one loves a bully. No one naturally acts like this. If we act like this, it is because something remarkable has happened in us, to produce that love in us. 

Of course, some people who aren’t Christians have learned to be kind and generous to others as well, even those who mistreat them. But they’re not doing it for the same reasons. We don’t love our enemies because we have adopted a philosophy that requires it. We don’t love our enemies out of simple altruism, which we have learned is admirable. We love our enemies, Jesus says, so that we may be sons of our Father who is in heaven. 

This is the spectacular thing that has happened in us: we have been adopted as sons and daughters of God. And loving our enemies because we are God’s children, loving our enemies in order to be like our Father, proves that we are his children. It proves—to ourselves and to the world—our identity as members of his family.

This is what Jesus was talking about when he said, Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. This happens when the world sees us respond in such a way that there is no other way to explain it other than the work of God in us. This is what it means to be salt and light; this is what it means to preserve and to present the message and character of the kingdom.

That is the goal. And that is why we aim, not just for surface obedience, but for a deeper obedience. Or to put it another way, this is why we aim for perfection. V. 48:  

48 You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. 

This is a verse that has terrified me over the years, as it has terrified many of us. But what Christ is saying is simple: we aim for the perfect righteousness of our heavenly Father, because he is perfect, and we are his. His perfection is the goal, because he is our Father, and we are learning to live as his children. Our Father is perfect, and we want to be like our Father. If we want a target to hit, that’s it.

And it shouldn’t be surprising—Jesus has already said this. He said it way back in v. 20:  

“…unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

This “righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees” is the perfect righteousness of our heavenly Father. This is our goal. This is what he is bringing us toward. And this is what, one day when all is finished, he will produce in us. We’re not there yet, but that’s where we’re headed.

The Example of Christ

It’s difficult to think clearly about these passages because they have both almost become clichés by now. Even unbelievers have heard these phrases: “Turn the other cheek...” “Love your enemies...” And what makes a cliché a cliché is that we’ve heard it so many times we no longer take it entirely seriously.

The apostle Paul, when writing his first letter to the Corinthians church, addresses a problem they were having with Christians pursuing legal action against other Christians. He talks about it at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 6, and in v. 7, you can almost hear his disbelief at the situation. He says:  

To have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather suffer wrong? Why not rather be defrauded?

Now of course it’s a slightly different context, but I mention it just because many Christians won’t even entertain this as a possibility. Many Christians wouldn’t for a moment consider the idea of simply letting the bad guy get away with it, at least for now. No matter that God has said that he will judge all sin. No matter that God said that vengeance belongs to him, and not to us. If an injustice is committed against me, I will not let it stand.

These Christians will quote “Turn the other cheek” and “Love your enemies” with joy because they have become such common phrases in Christianity that we don’t think twice about them. But will they actually do it? For many of us, I highly doubt it. We will defend ourselves to the last breath because we simply can’t conceive of any other possibility. We will defend our honor, no matter the cost.

But it’s no accident that Jesus put these two things together. Turning the other cheek and loving your enemies are the same thing. They are variations on the same theme. And if you keep reading the rest of the gospel, you quickly realize that Jesus isn’t just giving a happy life principle here—he is foreshadowing. He is saying, “Turn the other cheek…love your enemies…and if you want to know what that looks like, keep watching me, because this is exactly what I’m about to do for you.”

Jesus went so far beyond this. He loved his enemies to such an extent that not only did he give them his other cheek to strike; he gave them his life. And who were his enemies? The apostle James says in James 4.4:  

Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 

There is not one single person in this room who was not at one point “friends of the world”—that is, alongside those who do not know God, loving what they love and rejecting God as they reject God. We are all naturally guilty of this; we are all, in our fallen human nature, active and hostile enemies of God.

So Christ’s enemies weren’t only those who cried out for his condemnation; it wasn’t just those who set out to trap him in some fault so they could accuse him; it wasn’t just those who nailed him to the cross. Paul tells us in Romans 5.6-8, in a beautiful echo of what Jesus says here:  

6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Christ turned his other cheek to us, because our sin sent the strike. Christ loved us while we were his enemies, and he showed his love for us by dying for us. By taking the condemnation that we absolutely deserved as his enemies. By being generous to us in sharing his perfect life with us.

There is not one thing Jesus says in this passage that he did not first live himself. 

So if we know what he has done for us; if we know what we have in him, and how loved us although we were his enemies, how is it even thinkable to still count eye for eye and tooth for tooth? How is it even thinkable to love our friends and hate our enemies? to maintain bitterness and anger towards those who have wronged us, when Christ has all the more reason to hate us, and yet loved us enough to die for us? 

This is the call he has placed on us. This is the perfect love to which he calls us, because he loved us first.

Conclusion

As you know, I’ve been preaching basically the same sermon for the last five or six weeks, because Jesus has been giving example after example of the same truth. He is calling us to be salt and light to the world, to preserve and present the message and character of the kingdom. We do this by pursing deeper obedience. And the examples he has given are only examples: he’s not being exhaustive here. He calls us to deeper obedience, in all things—not only seeking to conform to a certain standard of behavior, but also, and most of all, seeking to reflect the perfect righteousness of our heavenly Father back to the world.

We do not stop at the command to not murder; we control our emotions, and we don’t let them rule us.

We do not stop at the command to not commit adultery; we bring our thoughts into captivity, and remain pure in heart.

We do not stop at the command to follow a certain procedure when we want to divorce our spouse; we become husbands and wives of such faithfulness that divorce will be unthinkable.

We do not stop at the command to not betray an oath; we become people of such faithfulness that oaths aren’t necessary.

We do not stop at the command to exercise justice; we trust that our Father has exercised justice for us in the person of his Son, and we show generous humility to those who mistreat us.

We do not stop at the command to love our neighbor; we reflect the love of our heavenly Father, and love our enemies, just as he loved us when we were still his enemies.

And we do the same for every commandment we see. We don’t content ourselves with “simple” obedience (though simple obedience to a commandment is the beginning); we go deeper. We don’t just try to do the right thing, but to be the right kind of people, with his help—to learn to live as children of the King. 

Jesus is going to continue showing us what this looks like in the next two chapters. But for now, we have to remember that this will not be possible without God’s help. It’s possible to not kill, to not commit adultery, to not lie. It is not possible, on our own, to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect.

But this is the gift we have been given: with his help, by his Holy Spirit, we pursue his perfection. We pursue this righteousness which is greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees. And with his help, by his Spirit, we wil be salt and light to the world; we will preserve and present the message and the character of the kingdom. We will let our light shine before others, so that they might see our good works, and give glory to our Father in heaven.

Matt 6.19-34

Do not worry

(matthew 6.19-34)

Jason Procopio

I need to be up front with you all from the beginning. Last week I said that the subject of that text—prayer—is one of the most difficult areas of the Christian life for me.

The subject of today’s text is THE most difficult area of the Christian life for me, and by quite a large margin. There are a few areas which give me anxiety, but by far the largest source of regular stress in my life is illness. Not even illness itself, but the potential that someone in our family will get sick.

This stress was fairly low-key for most of my life, but it absolutely went through the roof when we had kids, because kids get sick all the time, and for all kinds of reasons.

Recently this anxiety has been getting worse. We’ve all seen the headlines about how our immune systems are all weaker because of the confinements; so I’ve just been waiting for it to happen—it’s been like having a bomb in your house that’s ready to go off without warning. And it’s happened several times just in the last few months: it seems like someone in our house has been sick since August.

This week, Zadie (our three-year-old) threw up in her bed, in the middle of the night; she wasn’t even sick, she just started coughing and coughed so hard it came out. (Yes, if you don’t have kids yet: there are solid joys that await you.) So I went into efficiency mode; I wasn’t particularly stressed or afraid, but I was standing with her, helping her in front of the toilet, when all of a sudden I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I got incredibly dizzy; I saw stars, to the point where I couldn’t see anything else; I started sweating profusely; my muscles felt like jelly, to the point where I collapsed to my knees. I was this close to passing out. I told myself everything I needed to tell myself—both practical and biblical—and nothing changed. It was the first actual panic attack of my life.

I’m telling you all this because the day after this happened, I sat down to prepare this sermon—and reading the text, I knew I was going to feel like the biggest hypocrite in the world if I didn’t confess up front that the subject of today’s text is a very real struggle for me. So in everything I’m going to say today, know that I’m not sitting over you; I’m with you; I need to hear this as much as, or more than, anyone else here.

So that being said, think back over the last couple weeks. Jesus teaches us to pray in v. 7-15: he gives us a prayer in which he lays out the most essential areas of our lives, with the promise that God knows everything we need before we ask, and will give us what we really need. Then he comes back to the subject he started before, in which he encourages us to practice our righteousness, not to be seen by men, but to receive the reward which comes from the Father. This reward, as we saw, is God himself: an ever-increasing knowledge of God, an ever-increasing vision of his glory, and an ever-increasing joy in him. If we obey God for God and not for men, God is exactly what we will get. He is the promised reward.

And that’s where Jesus ends in Matthew 6.18: “And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

That’s the background, and Jesus presents what follows in two parts; the first part centers on this reward we seek—the treasure we lay up for ourselves in heaven—and the second part centers on anxiety. He moves from treasure to anxiety for one simple reason: the more you want something, the more you fear to lose it. I believe he put these two together because if our treasure is the treasure we are laying up for ourselves in heaven, then we can’t lose it. So we need not fear or worry. (And by the way, I’m not suggesting that there aren’t biological or medical reasons for anxiety; there are, and we shouldn’t be afraid to seek appropriate treatment if that’s the case. But for most of the anxiety we feel in our lives, this is how we’re called to deal with it.)

Our Treasure (v. 19-24)

In v. 19, Jesus continues in the same subject he was just in before, except now instead of using the word “reward,” he uses the even more evocative word “treasure.” V. 19:  

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal…

It’s not accidental that Jesus uses this word “treasure” here. He’s talking about money, or the possessions we can obtain with money. So many stories have been written about how the pursuit of a treasure can become an obsession (think of Treasure Island, or The Hobbit, or more recently, Ready Player One). We don’t need anyone to explain why this pursuit of treasure takes such a hold on us because we get it. We all know what it’s like to have possessions, to have money, and to want more.

Randy Alcorn actually did the math: roughly “15 percent of everything Christ said relates to this topic — more than his teachings on heaven and hell combined” (The Treasure Principle, 8). He talks about this a lot, because he knows that of all the things that will preoccupy us, accumulating wealth will be one of the most difficult to shake.

When I say “accumulating wealth,” I’m not just talking about greed—Jesus isn’t just talking about greed either, as we’ll see in the latter part of this passage. The reasons why we want more stuff—more money, more possessions—can be various. It may be because we feel like having more money would give us more security. It may be because more possessions would give us a certain level of comfort. It may be because we know how we would look to other people if we were wealthy.

Whatever the reason, we all know what this desire for more is like—and we know, because very often, that desire drives us. While our desire for treasure may be less fanciful and exciting than what we find in Treasure Island, it is no less attractive. 

It may be the house we want to own one day. It may be a computer we salivate over (that’d be me). It may be the home decorations you see in the windows of stores, or (for some of you) a certain pair of shoes you want to add to the thousands you already have. It may be a vacation house in the mountains or on the beach—or even just a great vacation. 

Or it may be something less “material”, but even more attractive… 

It may be the job we’re hoping to get. It may be the perfect marriage we want to have, or the perfect kids we want to have.

None of these desires are bad. But when they take on the weight of treasure in our minds, we find ourselves coming back to them over and over; we start making decisions based on what we think will get us these things more quickly; we start accepting some opportunities and losing others because we are preparing for our treasure.

We all understand what it means to want something so badly that it is constantly in the back of our minds, driving our decisions and our thoughts.

The problem is that none of these things will last: moth and rust destroy, thieves break in and steal. Time takes the things we love, and even the people we love. Nothing in this present world truly comes with a lifetime guarantee.

That’s why Jesus tells us not to pursue these things. It’s not that these things are bad things, they’re just bad treasures—they will not last. So rather than pursuing these things as our treasure, he says (v. 20):

…but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

The only things which are worthy to be considered as “treasures” are those things which time and wear cannot touch: our reward, our treasure in heaven, our eternal and ever-increasing joy in our God.

So the question is, how do we do this? How do we lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven?

We actually saw that two weeks ago. We practice our righteousness for the reward that comes from our Father. We obey his commandments, because through our obedience, we know him better and we love him more—that’s the treasure. That’s the reward.

So you see how incredibly pragmatic Jesus is here. He doesn’t tug at our heart-strings; he doesn’t try to manipulate us into wanting something that we shouldn’t want. He simply says, “Make a good investment.” He doesn’t deny that a treasure on earth is appealing. He just reminds us that it won’t last. It’s not a good long-term investment.

So, he tells us, "Seek the treasure that will last.” 

Already, the strength of that simple, pragmatic argument should be enough. But he goes further. V. 21: 

For where you treasure is, there you heart will be also.

We’ve heard this verse so many times that it might be easy to pass over it. So take a minute and think about what he says. Where you treasure is, there you heart will be also. All throughout the Bible, the “heart” refers to the center of who we are. It includes our emotions, our reason, and our desires. If I want to get to know you, and find out where your heart actually is, I won’t ask what decisions you’ve made for Christ, what convictions you hold, or what you believe or know. Those are the wrong questions. If I want to know where your heart is, the question I need to ask is, “What do you want?” 

To know the state of our hearts, we need look no further than whatever we want more than anything else—whatever we see as our treasure.

Or to put it another way, we don’t own our treasure; our treasure owns us. If something becomes our treasure, our hearts will automatically follow.

So it’s not surprising, is it, that Jesus gives this illustration of “eyes” in v. 22-23:  

22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! 

That sounds awfully mysterious—it’s an image that might not speak to us in the same way today—but in this image he’s saying the exact same thing he just said, in v. 21.

The eyes are how we see where we are going and what we are doing: they literally let light in. What we see determines where we put our feet, where we put our hands, etc. Eyes in the Bible are often used as an image in the same way as the heart: both pictures speak of the focus of our attention and desires. 

Jesus quite simply says that if our eyes—our desires, our attention—are focused on righteous things, we will grow in righteousness; if they are focused on unrighteous things, we will grow in unrighteousness. The things we focus on, the things we pursue, will shape who we become.

Our hearts will always follow our treasure. Whatever we desire most rules over us. Which is the point he makes in v. 24:  

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. 

We want to say that God is our King, that God is our Master… But if we’re honest, a lot of us have to admit that there are some things we love a good deal more than him. 

The incredible and terrifying thing we have to see here is that whatever we love the most starts off as our treasure, but becomes our master. Money is meant to be our servant, something we master in order to live; but far too easily it becomes a tyrant, controlling our decisions and influencing our behavior. 

And if money doesn’t draw you, replace it with whatever it is you love the most. Whether it’s money, or a home, or our jobs, or our families, whatever we desire the most becomes our king; it becomes our slavemaster; it becomes our ruler. 

The same is true with God—the only difference is that God is a good master, a master who wants and provides what is best for us.

So either we serve money—either we serve our earthly treasure—or we serve God. There is no other option.

And you cannot have two competing masters. You cannot serve God and money. You can serve God while having money; you can serve God with your money; but you cannot serve God and serve money at the same time.

Why? Because if two opposing things are competing for your love and desire, necessarily you will love one more than the other. And your love for the one will make you hate the other, because the other is fighting against it, trying to get you to love it less. Either you are mastered by money (or whatever it is), and you will ignore God because he’s telling you to love it less than him; or you are mastered by God, and you will put your money, your possessions, your jobs, your families, to use in service of his kingdom.

But you can’t do both. You can’t have one foot on either side of this fence. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

do not worry (v. 25-34)

So Jesus has just laid out this lengthy encouragement to seek the right treasure—not the reward that comes from man, not the satisfaction we find in the things of this earth (however good they may be in themselves), but rather the treasure of knowing God and loving God more and more, forever.

It is vital that we never read the next passage (v. 25-34) out of context. Everything he’s said about treasure in heaven intensifies and informs what he says next. 

He says (v. 25):  

Therefore [because you are laying up for yourselves treasures on heaven and not on earth] I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. 

I said this at the beginning: this is incredibly difficult for me. I’m a naturally anxious person—I always have been. I worry about finances (because Paris is expensive); I worry about people’s perception of me (getting married was a big stresser for me, because suddenly I had this woman whom I really wanted to impress, living in the same house as me, seeing all of my weaknesses and failures); I worry about car accidents (that’s why I drive like an old man); and yes, I worry about illness (the COVID confinements were actually wonderful for my emotional life, because we weren’t exposed to any germs for about a year).

But really—if I take a second to take stock of my situation, I have to admit that most of the things I’m worried about feel huge at the time, but are, in the grand scheme of things, relatively inconsequential. Jesus never promises that nothing bad will happen to us. He’s telling us that if these are the things we’re worried about, then we’re thinking far too small. There are much worse things to be worried about than getting sick, or losing your job, or losing your home. 

What we should be worried about is the great end-goal of our lives—we should be worried about the treasure—about joy and satisfaction and peace that won’t fluctuate with time or circumstance, but that will last forever.

And that treasure, we have it. We’re laying it up for ourselves in heaven; God is guarding it for us, and providing it for us. If we are in Christ, then the only truly legitimate source of worry in our lives—whether or not we can get this treasure—is gone. The only truly legitimate source of worry in our lives, we don’t have to worry about it anymore.

So here’s what Jesus is saying… If God is generous enough to give you this treasure, which is infinitely greater than we can imagine, and eternal… If God is generous enough to give you this treasure, don’t you think he’ll be generous enough to give you the much smaller things you need? That’s his point at the end of v. 25:  

Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

It’s not that these things aren’t important; it’s that they’re not ultimate. Life is much more than our needs, and in Christ we already have the most important needs met. If he’s good enough to give you these ultimate things, he will be good enough to provide for your other needs too.

And then, Jesus gives several examples, to reassure us. V. 26:  

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

V. 28:  

28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

My anxiety in the face of such generosity on God’s part shows me how small my faith is. If we fully believed God is as good as he says he is, as generous as he says he is, we would not worry. If he takes care of his creation, of things that aren’t made in his image and which aren’t his children, he will all the more take care of us. Our anxiety is groundless.

And not only is our anxiety groundless; it is useless. Jesus hammers this home with this simple question in v. 27:  

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

Anxiety contributes nothing. It can’t solve any problems; it can’t give us more time to enjoy things; it can’t make our pain go away. Anxiety is utterly useless.

Fear—a healthy fear—can be useful. We stay away from wild animals because they can eat us. We hold our babies tightly because we’re afraid of dropping them. We buckle our seatbelts because we’re afraid of car accidents. We are right to be afraid of these things, and to take measures to prevent them, because we know that they are legitimate dangers.

That’s not anxiety. Anxiety is the undercurrent of dread that says something bad is going to happen…even though we have no real reason to believe that it will. It’s like walking outside under a completely blue sky and being afraid of getting struck by lightning. It’s one thing to see the clouds and hear the thunder and to seek shelter; it’s quite another thing to seek shelter when the sky is blue. The first is wisdom; the second is insanity. That’s anxiety.

Our anxiety contributes absolutely nothing—it cannot add a single hour to our lives. On the contrary, the time we spent anxiously turning an imaginary problem over in our minds is time we could be spending doing something actually beneficial (like sleeping). Being worried does nothing to help us, and everything to harm us.

The only truly legitimate worry we might have has been taken care of for us. Christ lived and died and was raised, to give us the treasure. That’s proof number 1 of his generosity. So if God has given us the harder thing, he will all the more give us the easier things (like providing for our needs). 

In addition, God is generous to his creation in general: he feeds the birds and clothes the flowers. That’s proof number 2 of his generosity. So if God provides for his creation in general, he will all the more provide for the needs of his children—we are worth more than birds and flowers.

Now what we see here should be obvious to us, even if it’s difficult. In the face of all this overwhelming evidence that we need not be anxious, Jesus actually commands it: DON’T be anxious. V. 31:  

31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 

We often wonder how Christ can command us not to do things we can’t help doing. We can’t keep ourselves from feeling anxious when anxiousness comes on us. So how do we obey this command?

Here’s what happens in my head when I begin to worry—or at least, here’s what I try to do; it’s a struggle for me to remember it. I imagine God is physically in the room with me, and I’m telling him what I’m worried about. A kid in Zadie’s class is sick, and she’s been around him, so now I’m worried. I imagine God listening calmly, with a smile on his face, as I lay out all the excellent reasons I have to be worried. I tell him the horrors I have in my mind, which we actually lived the other night: the crying and the vomit and the cleanup and the time it will take to get back to sleep, and the possibility that someone else in the house will catch whatever she’s got… 

I lay all this out before him, and he looks at me, and (not at all unkindly) says, “So what?”

Whatever the worry is, I imagine myself laying it out before God, giving him detailed reasons why I’m right to be worried, to validate what I’m feeling. And God (again, not at all unkindly) says, “So what? Do I not know what you need? Didn’t I tell you I’d take care of you? Didn’t I tell you I’d give you everything you need?"

When I actually remember, and take the time to imagine this scene, my anxiety tends to shrink fairly quickly.

There are certain things I could describe to God, to which he would not respond in that way. I could tell him how my desire for him is dwindling, how I’m starting to love my sin more than him. If I describe this to him, he’ll say, “You’re right. That’s serious. Let’s get to work taking care of that.”

Nine times out of ten, though, I’m pretty sure his response to whatever worry I bring to him would be that same loving “So what?”

Jesus isn’t telling us to be stoic; and he’s not telling us to never feel something we can’t help feeling. He’s telling us to not give in to it; he’s telling us to fight it. And he’s already told us how: we put our faith to work, and we trust. 

In this chapter, we have had promise after promise after promise—that God will be glorified, that he is reigning over our lives and this world, that he will provide for our needs, that he will protect us from sin. And on top of all these promises—or rather, underneath them all, the foundation of them all—we have the promise of the treasure which is already ours, which God has given us and which we are laying up for ourselves. If Jesus is not a liar, then we have nothing to worry about. 

So how do we obey this command to not be anxious? We trust in our Father’s goodness, and we rest in his promises. We lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven.

The incredible freedom these promises and commands offer is kind of overwhelming. I don’t have to worry that God won’t provide for the basic needs of my life. I don’t have to worry that he’ll lead me into temptation. I don’t have to worry that he’ll stop reigning over my life. I don’t have to worry that he won’t do his will in my life. I don’t have to worry that he won’t give me the reward he has promised.

That makes up most of the things that should occupy our minds: how to have what we need, and how to live happy. So if we don’t need to worry about these things…what are we going to think about instead?

V. 33:  

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.  

In God’s hands, we lack for nothing. “The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing” (Psalm 34.10). So we don’t need to put all of our energy and all of our resources into laying up treasures for ourselves on earth. We don’t need to expend all of our efforts to get the things God has promised to provide us himself. Some effort, sure—we have to do our jobs and buy groceries and sometimes we may not know how we’ll get it all done. But we don’t need to worry that we won’t have what we need—the mental and emotional bandwidth that worrying about ordinary things takes up is huge…and now, in Christ, that bandwidth is freed up, so we can pursue what really matters.

His kingdom. His righteousness. Learning what he is like. Learning to be like Christ. Putting our faith into practice and discovering that God’s commands are actually good for us. This is where our focus lies now, and we do it, trusting that while our focus is over here, on these things, God will give us everything else we truly need. We will lack for nothing. We may not have everything we want, but we will always have everything we need.

And that’s why he ends the way he does, in v. 34: 

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Didn’t we just learn to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”? If we really believe God will provide for every need we have today, we are able to live free of anxiety about tomorrow. 

Seek the treasure…and let God worry about the rest. Work hard, but do it for him (not because you’re worried about not having what you need). Plan well, but do it because it’s wise (not because you’re worried of what will happen if you don’t). And if things happen to not go the way you hoped they would, don’t worry: your Father knows what you need, and he will provide for you. Rest in his provision, and watch as he does the impossible, and provides for your needs in ways you haven’t yet imagined.

Conclusion

Now there is no better way to finish this than by taking Communion together. (To be completely transparent with you, I desperately feel the need for this today.) Because when we take Communion, we remind ourselves that in Christ, God gave the ultimate provision for our ultimate need.

Separated from our Creator because of our sin, we need to be reconciled with him. But we can’t do it on our own, because our sin is still on us. So Christ takes that sin off of us and puts it on himself, and he puts our sin to death with himself on the cross. And in exchange, he gives us the perfect life he lived—the one thing we need to be united to God. 

This exchange happens by grace, through faith. And when it happens, we have the assurance that if God provided for this need, he absolutely will provide for every other need. Romans 8.31-32:  

31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Yes, he will. When we take Communion, we remember this truth, and we remind one another of this truth. So let us take the bread, which represents Christ’s body, broken for us, and the cup, which represents his blood, shed for us, and let us invite God to reassure us this morning—to give us assurance of his grace to provide for this and every other need.