This Week's Sermon
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~ July 6, 2008 ~
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
Matthew 6:1-15
Dear Friends in Christ, Richard Nixon and Watergate, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and Client 9. Nixon, Clinton and Spitzer were three men who rose to national prominence, two of them to the presidency. They worked hard to serve their parties, they worked hard to serve the people who had elected them. They spoke of high standards and publicly upheld them for a time. But ultimately under the glare of national spotlights, they each took a major fall, and for each their legacy was tainted by scandal. While those who supported them still find much good in their work, their opponents lampoon them and all for which they stood. Because they live under such intense scrutiny, and the spotlight on them seems to be brighter and brighter every year, it’s very easy to see the foibles and failings of politicians. But having problems with hypocrisy is certainly not limited to politicians or major public figures. Even we normal people can have problems living up to what we say. That being said, living with integrity, upholding basic honesty and practicing what you preach have been, are now, and always will be highly valued habits of living that people look up to in life. And as we move on in our series on Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, we see that this is exactly how Jesus fully expects us to live as Christians in the world. He expects of us that we will strive for a basic honesty with the help of His Holy Spirit in what we believe and in how we live. This is the message that Jesus gets across in the first fifteen verses of Matthew 6, which reads as follows:
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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 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. 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.
When you carefully read what Jesus says, it’s interesting that He doesn’t allow us to avoid hypocrisy by setting low standards for our lives. He doesn’t allow us to say I won’t be a hypocrite if I don’t profess anything, or if I don’t uphold doing basic, decent things. Instead, Jesus expects of Christians that we will do certain things, that we will practice our faith, that we will not be ashamed of Him or of the Gospel, and that we will live openly and publicly as, not just religious people in a generic way, but as specifically Christian people, believers in Jesus Christ who are proud to have been chosen by Him to be His followers. That is more challenging than ever for us and for people around us, and it is more important than ever for us and for people around us the way the world is going today.
When you look at that passage in Matthew 6, and read carefully what Jesus is saying, this is what He expects of us in our day to day living: very basically, He expects of us that we will practice our righteous before other people. He expects of us that we will give of our resources to help the needy. He expects of us that we will pray to Him. He expects of us that when we pray, we will not just go through a routine, or say the same thing over and over again, but He expects of us that our prayer will be an honest conversation with Him, with God. He expects of us that we will have the depth of faith that will inspire us to care more about Him than about what other people think of us so that we will simply be who we are, so that we will be the people whom God calls us to be as Christians without regard for the opinions of others. The problem for us is a little different than it was for people in Jesus’ day. For in our time, people don’t necessarily want to make a big appearance of being openly religious. But in Jesus’ day they did. There were plenty of people who made a big public display of religion in order to appear as if they were faithful Israelites who worshiped the Lord. And they did so by making a big splash in public prayer, in making a public show of the practice of fasting, and making of big display in their giving alms for the poor. The reason for what they did was not to honor God or to help people who were less fortunate then they were. Rather, they were making a big show of religiosity in order build themselves us, and to get people to honor them more so than God Himself.
In our time, religion is increasingly a private matter. People don’t want to look different, or they don’t want to be offensive to someone else, they don’t want to appear to be disrespectful, so it’s just easier to keep your religion, your faith, to yourself. While that might be an honest opinion, it can also be an excuse to make faith a lower priority in life, and to just blend in with the crowd. That’s why it’s important to realize that when Jesus blasts the priests, the scribes and Pharisees of His day for their blatantly hypocritical displays of public religiosity that were meant to boost themselves, He wasn’t letting anyone else, including us, off the hook at all. Instead He assumes that we who profess privately to be His, or that we who profess within the church that we are His, will also profess at home, at work, with our neighbors, when out and about running errands, and when traveling for work or on vacation—in other words, Jesus assumes that we who profess to be His people will do so wherever we are at all times. Limiting the practice of our faith to that which we are thinking in our own minds, or limiting it to just at home or at church is showing that we fear the opinions of others more than we fear, love and trust in the God who created us, and who sent His Son to save us. And limiting our faith, limiting God is never advisable, as is clear from the time when Jesus first asked the Apostles, who do people say that I am, and then the most important question, who do you say that I am, and Peter answered saying, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus told Peter, you’re right, that’s who I am, and then He told them that as the Son of God, He would be rejected, He would be killed at the hands of His enemies, but that He would rise again on the third day. Peter only heard that Jesus would be killed at the hands of His enemies, so he tried to jump in and tell Jesus that this couldn’t be. He didn’t understand that the Lord’s suffering, death and resurrection were necessary for our salvation. So Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? For what can a man give in return for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
Jesus spoke the truth and lived the truth every second of His life and ministry in this world for our benefit. Without His life, death and resurrection, we would have no hope whatsoever. So it is far more important for us to honor Him than it is to worry about what other people will think of us, especially in the world today, if we live openly as Christian people. And it’s not only important for ourselves, but as the Lord has chosen to operate, other people will not come to be forgiven children of God for Jesus’ sake themselves unless the hear about Him and learn about Him through the faithful witness in word and deed of Christians. So our honest, inward life as Christians benefits us, and our outward, honest life as Christians is an open witness of the Lord Jesus that is a benefit to others.
So as it is very easy to see how open, public hypocrisy is a major problem for politicians and public figures living and operating on the grand scale of national life. But the fact of the matter is that it’s just as big a problem for us even as we live on the more limited stage of our daily lives. So as we hear the Lord speaking to us today, let us be inspired to not only believe in the Lord and be faithful to Him in our private lives, but to be faithful to Him openly and publicly with sincerity and integrity at home, in church, at work, in the neighborhood, uptown, wherever we are, so that people can see that the Lord Jesus truly is at work in the world for our benefit and for theirs today and always. Amen
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