This sermon was preached to Grace Church Guildford on 19 June 2022. The full video recording of the service can be found below along with the transcript.
If I asked you what the greatest danger in the Christian life is, what would you say? What rock are you most likely to shipwreck your faith on? Over the last few Sunday mornings, Jamie has been teaching from Ephesians 5, where we are warned away from sexual immorality, participating in the promiscuity that is all around us today. We have seen just how dangerous such sins can be, heard we must not have even a hint among us. Yet, it is notable the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5-7 spends time not only cautioning us against such sins, but also warning us about righteousness. That is what Jesus is doing in 6:1, warning us about how we practice righteousness, urging us to avoid hypocrisy. Martin Luther was so struck by this, he famously said righteousness is more dangerous than sin.
That may seem a strange thing to say, yet it is true in the same way that for a ship, an iceberg is more dangerous than a cliff. Of course if a ship sails into a cliff it will sink just as surely as if it strikes an iceberg. Yet an iceberg is more dangerous because it is hidden. It causes the same damage, without you even realising it is there. And that can also be true of our practice of righteousness. As we seek to obey God’s commands, follow his will, live a righteous life, we might avoid the cliffs of clear and obvious sins, perhaps the kinds we have been hearing about in the mornings recently, yet there is still the risk we will strike an iceberg, hit this hidden hazard of hypocrisy.
You see, sin is a hydra of many heads, a shapeshifter found in many forms. And just as Paul in Ephesians 5 warns us away from one form, here in Matthew 6 Jesus warns us away from another. Brothers and sisters, take care that in steering away from the cliffs of immorality, you do not set your course straight for the iceberg of hypocrisy. For there is more than one way to scuttle your ship. And all of them lead to the same end: destruction.
Since the start of the year, we have been working through the book of Matthew, this record of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and are currently considering the Sermon the Mount, the longest and most famous of Jesus’ speeches.
Having addressed happiness in the introduction, Jesus spends the rest of chapter 5 teaching about holiness, this greater righteousness he requires his followers to have. And our passage this evening continues that theme, for in 6:1 Jesus speaks of ‘practic[ing] your righteousness’. Here Jesus is speaking not of happiness or holiness, but of habits. The practices that help us to pursue the perfection of our Heavenly Father, that goal Jesus gives us in that final verse of chapter 5.
In 6:1 Jesus summarises all he will go on to say in 6:2-18. For just like we saw a few weeks ago, where Jesus gave a principle about holiness and then applied in six different scenarios. Here again Jesus gives another principle and goes on to apply it in three clear examples. First, he tells us generally in 6:1, do not practice your righteousness before others, rather practice it in front of God. And then he applies this to three potential practices: giving, praying and fasting. We see each of them highlighted to us in 6:2-18. This evening as we walk through our passage, I think it can be summarised in three simple instructions: (1) Give Secretly (6:2-4); (2) Pray Simply (6:5-15); and (3) Fast Sincerely (6:16-18). Let’s consider these three together.
1. GIVE SECRETLY (6:2-4)
Simon was excited. As a professional marathon runner, he had competed in events around the world: New York, Boston, London, Berlin. However, his next was going to be a special one. Not because it was a famous event in some far-flung location. No, it was because the route was due to pass right through his hometown of Guildford. He wouldn’t usually have room to fit such a small race into his schedule, but the prospect of running down that high street to the shouts and cheers of friends and family, well that was just too tempting to resist. And so, he decided to disrupt his training schedule and squeeze the Guildford marathon into the middle of his season. When he turned up at the start line, he was clearly the only professional there. And once they set off, he quickly dropped all his amateur competitors and took the lead. For 26 miles he dominated the race, no one got anywhere near him. As he rounded each bend and came over every hill, he heard the shouts of cheers of people he knew: his old schoolteacher, first running coach, cousins, grandparents. As he sped down the high street towards the finish line, he passed by friends and family, all celebrating his inevitable victory. Even after he crossed the line in first place, the celebrations didn’t stop, for he had set a new course record. As he stood on the podium to receive first prize, the organizer got his own parents to put the medal around his neck. It was a day he would never forget, a highlight of Simon’s long career. And yet it had consequences that were far less pleasant. You see, having squeezed this race into his schedule, he was now behind in resting and preparing for his next event. An event that was far more important, for this was an Olympic year and Simon was due to compete for the greatest prize of all: the Olympic gold medal. Unfortunately, his efforts running up and down the Surrey Hills had taken too much out of him. He did everything he could, but didn’t recover in time. And so rather than performing on the greatest stage of all, he struggled to keep pace and ended up dropping out before the Olympic finish line. Yes, Simon had got to stand on a stage and receive the congratulations of a crowd, but he had run the wrong race, had picked the wrong prize, chose the wrong crowd.
It’s a fictional story. And yet, it illustrates the main point of our passage. For here Jesus warns us not to run the wrong race, pick the wrong prize, chose the wrong crowd. He makes this point about giving in four simple sentences: first, in 6:2 he tells them not to give like the hypocrites. Then explains why, ‘Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.’ In 6:3 he goes on to tell them how they should give, that is secretly. Finally, in 6:4 he explains why, ‘Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.’ And we see this same fourfold structure replicated with respect to prayer in 6:5-6 and then fasting in 6:16-18. In each case, giving, praying or fasting, Jesus teaches us not to practice these habits like hypocrites do.
You get an idea of how they went about giving in 6:2, for Jesus tells us that they ‘announce it with trumpets...in the synagogues and on the streets.’ Many think this is where the expression to ‘blow your own trumpet’ comes from and some suggest this is literally what happened in Jesus’ day. When a large amount was being given to the poor, people would ensure they got plenty of publicity by blowing a trumpet to draw everyone’s attention to their act of charity. Of course, we would never do anything as crass today. Yet, our modern equivalents of having donor details put on a wall plaque or naming a new hospital wing after a major funder are hardly much better.
Jesus goes on to explain that this kind of generosity is actually less about giving and more about getting, for in 6:2 we read it is all done this way so that they will ‘be honoured by others.’ We see the same with prayer in 6:5 and fasting in 6:16. They give so they can get. And they do get, for Jesus goes on to say they receive their reward. People do honour them. They are applauded and celebrated, called charitable and generous. They get what they were looking for, but that is all they get. For at the end of 6:2 Jesus says, ‘they have received their reward in full.’ They have enjoyed every ounce of praise they deserve in the present, and so can expect nothing more in the future. As Jesus said in 6:1, because they practiced their righteousness in front of others, they will have no reward from the Lord. Like Simon, they get cheers from a crowd, but its not the crowd that really matters. They impress earthly onlookers, but the one watching from Heaven is unmoved. They ran the wrong race, they picked the wrong prize.
Brothers and sisters, do you see the iceberg Jesus identifies for us here? Do you see the care we must take when we practice righteousness, the danger we face when we do good deeds? This passage should cause us to regularly ask ourselves: I am more interested in having a reputation for righteousness than I am in righteousness itself? Do I want people to praise me now, or am I content to wait for that ‘well done good and faithful servant’ on the last day?
One very practical way we can challenge ourselves about this is to do exactly what Jesus says here in 6:3: ‘when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.’ That idea of the left and right hand is one of almost unnoticed, automatic action. Like the way your left hand just changes gear when driving the car. You don’t think about it. Your right hand doesn’t even notice the left hand moving. It just happens. It is discreet, it is hidden. Jesus teaches that one way to deal with the danger of hypocrisy is to give secretly. Later he says the same for both prayer and fasting: secret giving, private prayer and hidden fasting can all help to avoid hypocrisy. For when we prioritise practicing these things in secret, we begin to see what is really going on in our hearts. If we struggle to be as generous or as prayerful in private as we are in public, then that is a sign that the iceberg is nearby, that we are becoming like those hypocritical pharisees that Jesus spoke of, who ‘loved human praise more than praise from God.' (John 12:43)
Brother or sister, if you are more likely to be found praying in a prayer meeting than you are in a quiet corner of your own home, you are in danger. And the same can be said for other righteous practices, whether it is attending church, serving others or reading your Bible, for giving, prayer and fasting are but three examples Jesus chooses to illustrate that principle in 6:1. Indeed, if your motivation for doing any good deed, any righteous practice, any act of service, is whether someone sees you do it, whether it is publicly prominent, makes a parade of your piety, even just highlights your humility, then you are in danger. For ungodly motives can transform even the holiest of actions into hypocrisy.
Jesus here calls us to secret giving, private prayer and hidden fasting, which we should all do. But that isn’t all he calls us to. For in other places in Scripture we also see public offerings, corporate prayer and group fasting. Indeed, in but a few verses, Jesus gives his disciples words not for a personal private prayer, but a communal corporate prayer. Further, as he explained in 5:16, Jesus wants the world to see our good deeds, not so they glorify us, but our Father in Heaven. Not every good deed must be in secret. As Spurgeon put it, the problem is not giving publicly, but giving for publicity.
It is less the manner and more the motive that makes all the difference. And so, brothers and sisters, as we consider if we should practice something privately or publicly, we must be mindful of our motives. For example, as Klaus reminded us at our members meeting a few months ago, we must be careful how we talk about our recent giving day. If we do tell others, are we doing that so they can glorify our Father in Heaven? Or GCG? Those are the kinds of very practical questions I think Jesus is wanting us to consider here. And each of us needs wisdom as we do this.
We should particularly pray that God would give wisdom to those who are wealthy among us, those whom God has blessed financially. For with greater resources comes both greater responsibility and greater danger. Pray that God may keep their hearts from seeking honour from man more than from God.
Pray too for those who lead us in corporate worship, pray particularly for Jamie and I, as we seek to publicly teach each week, pray that we would not drift towards the iceberg of hypocrisy. That our hearts would not even realise what our tongues are doing, that may experience what Tim Keller has called ‘the freedom of self-forgetfulness’. That is what we should all be aiming for. That as we all live our Christian lives together, we are so taken up by living in the sight of our Heavenly Father, we neither notice nor think about who else is watching. That we may be so occupied by running the right race, preparing to please the heavenly crowd, that earthly praise and present rewards seem like the temporary token trophies they truly are.
2. PRAY SIMPLY (6:5-15)
In many ways we could end our sermon now, for we have seen that practicing our righteousness before God rather than others is the main point Jesus makes in our passage, repeating the same argument, same four sentences, for giving, praying and fasting. However, lest you go home early feeling like you haven’t got your money’s worth, notice that Jesus says something else in the middle of our passage. While in 6:5-6 he tells us not to pray like the hypocrites, in 6:7 he also tells us not to pray like another group.
Here Jesus highlights a different danger, the danger of praying like a pagan. At the time, these followers of non-Jewish religions were famous for ‘babbling’ in prayer. The Roman writer Seneca gives us an idea of what this means when he recommends ‘fatiguing the gods’. That is, talking so much that they get tired of listening and so give in. It might be observed many children try this pagan tactic on their parents: if they keep asking for a dog they think they are eventually going to get one! In 6:8, Jesus tells us our prayers must be different. He says, ‘Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.’
In saying this, I think Jesus draws our attention to two key differences between pagan and proper prayer. First, we see that are not praying to inform God. He already knows what we need before we ask. Our prayers are not an intelligence briefing for the omniscient (all-knowing/seeing) God of heaven.
And secondly, in saying ‘your Father’, Jesus is contrasting the pagan’s relationship with their gods to our relationship with our God. However fond they might have been of their deities; they did not relate to them as children. Our praying should differ from the pagans not simply in what or how much we say, but also who we say it to. Christianity tells us that God is not a far off being that must be persuaded and appeased, a reluctant listener who eventually gives in if we keep going on and on. No, he is a loving Father who delights to speak with his children, who cares about what they want and need. We see here Jesus has two concerns, (1) simple prayer (2) to our Father. God does not need information, for he already knows. And God does not need persuasion, for he truly cares.
We see both of these concerns in that model prayer Jesus gives us in 6:9-15. These verses are known as the Lord’s Prayer, and their importance far outweighs the time we can treat them with tonight. Perhaps in the future we will come back and do a series on them, walking through each clause one week at a time. The Lord’s Prayer lies not only at the centre of our passage, but the centre of the whole Sermon on the Mount. And it is offered as an example of the kind of simple praying Jesus commends to us. In three succinct phrases it summarises all our concerns towards God and in the next three phrases it condenses all our concerns for ourselves. Rather than babbling on like pagans, Jesus shows us how we should pray simply, gives us a model prayer, an example of what we should be doing, highlighting the kinds of concerns we should be bringing and the simple way we should present them.
Brothers and sisters, this week, as you pray to God, why not use this model prayer to check your own prayer life. Are there concerns here that you do not cover? Aspects of this prayer that you tend to overlook? Praying for God’s wider kingdom? Or confessing your own sins? Maybe your prayers aren’t as straightforward and simple as this one? Do you need to debabble your prayer life? Stop sounding like a nagging child going on and on about getting a dog and start sounding more like a child who is confident that your Father truly cares for you and really knows what you need.
That second concern of Jesus, praying to our devoted Father rather than some distant figure, is clear from those first two words of the Lord’s Prayer. They remind us that we do not bring our simple petitions before a distant disinterested deity, a god who has to be goaded into giving us what we need, hassled into helping us. No, when Christians pray, we pray to ‘Our Father’. And that relationship is the foundation of all proper prayer. Here on Fathers’ Day, as we stare into the very centre of the Sermon on the Mount, we see why MLJ suggested that rather than calling this the Lord's Prayer, it should be known as the Children's Prayer. For we pray these simple requests like little children go to ask something of their loving Father.
3. FAST SINCERELY (6:16-18)
As we said earlier, in these final verses Jesus deploys the same fourfold structure to argue for hidden fasting as he did for secret giving and private prayer. However, I think it may be helpful for us in our last point to simply dwell on those first three words in 6:16: ‘When you fast...’. Jesus said the same of both giving in 6:2, ‘when you give’, and prayer in 6:5, ‘when you pray’. Each time it is clear Jesus has an expectation that his disciples will practice these habits. It’s not if you give, but when you give. Christian, are you regularly contributing financially to Christ’s work? If you are a member here, one of your responsibilities is supporting the work and ministry of this local church. Are you doing that? And it’s not if you pray, but when you pray. Friend, are you settling aside dedicated time to speak to your Father? If that has fallen by the wayside over the last few months, before you go to bed tonight work out how to do that this coming week. And it’s not if you fast, but when you fast. I imagine Jesus’ first two expectations sit far more easily with most of us than this one. Even if we have slipped up in giving or praying, we accept that those are things Christians should regularly practice. But fasting seems a little more niche, a kind of optional addon for the spiritually keen. And yet, Jesus doesn’t seem to see it like that, for he begins 6:16, ‘when you fast’. Christian, when do you fast? Do you fast? If not, why not? For here and elsewhere in the New Testament Christ clearly expects you to do so. If you are a member here, perhaps you joined the corporate fast we had back in April as part of our week of prayer. Have you done it again since then? If not, why not? Perhaps this week you should find time to relisten to Jamie’s sermon on 24 April about fasting and think through how and why you can do that regularly in your life. See here Jesus’ expectation that his followers will fast. Are you taking this text seriously, sincerely? Jesus not only instructs us to Give Secretly and Pray Simply, but also to Fast Sincerely.
However, as we close, I want to conclude by highlighting the truth that is at the heart of all we have said and seen. It’s been a very practical sermon, which makes sense as our passage is about practicing righteousness. And yet, we must not miss, that whether Jesus is speaking about the hypocrites or the pagans, he teaches the same truth. Did you notice that? Underneath all Jesus says, is the reality that our God is a God who sees in secret and knows what we need. He repeats that over and over. God sees and God knows. God sees all. Hebrews 4:13 declares, ‘Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.’ We cannot hide from God. Nothing escapes his sight. He needs neither telescope nor microscope. For he sees everything. Even those things that you do in secret of which Paul tells us it is even shameful to speak of.
And he knows all. You cannot fool God. Young people - You can fool your parents, your YPF leaders, even our church, but you will never fool God. He knows even the depths of your heart. Hypocrisy is only possible because humans can only see and know so much. But as 1 Samuel 16:7 explains, we ‘look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.’ When we stand before the all seeing all knowing God, the one who judges every thought and intention of our heart, surely we are undone, emptied, levelled, we stand naked and ashamed, all of our worst moments uncovered, all of our sinful thoughts and words and actions laid bare before his sight. And the Bible makes clear that we will give an account for what we have done, that we will be judged. What Jesus says here is true, the God who sees in secret will reward us. And yet, as Paul makes clear in Romans 6:23, the reward we deserve, the wages we get for your sin is death. Destruction. Every one of us have taken our ship and scuttled it on the rocks of sin. We have made a shipwreck of our lives.
And yet, the good news of the Gospel is that the God who sees what we are like in secret, in love, sent his Son to die on the cross and rise again for all who turn from sin and trust in him.
If you are here and you are not a Christian tonight, if you have yet to take Jesus as your Lord and Saviour, what will you say when you have to give account to the God who sees and knows everything you have ever done.
You cannot hide from him. There will be no hypocrites on that last day, for the God of light will expose all those deeds that we have done in darkness. Friend, your only hope is not to hide from God, but hide in God. To trust in Jesus Christ to cover all your sins, to receive that forgiveness and that love which remembers no wrongs we have done, omniscient, all-knowing yet he counts not their sum. Thrown into a sea without bottom or shore, our sins they are many but his mercy is more…
ALEXANDER ARRELL