Main Idea: Keep Your Motives Pure.
Reading Assignment: Matthew 6:1-18
Key Verse: Matthew 6:1
Jesus teaches us to keep pure (and godly!) motives. He applies this principle to three areas of righteous living common in His day:
Mercy: Jesus talks about helping the needy, the poor, or anybody else in need of our assistance. Jesus’ point is that when we engage in such acts of mercy, we should do them not to be recognized by men, but to be pleasing to God.
Prayer: Prayer is the most beautiful and intimate connections we have as human beings, when it is done rightly. We are communing with the God who created us and loves us when we pray. Jesus, therefore, teaches us to never mistreat prayer as a means of gaining human praise. The hypocrites did this. Jesus shows us that His disciples are to pray to commune with God truly and so even we are to pray even when no one’s looking, because we love to connect with our Heavenly Father.
Fasting: Fasting is how we can humble ourselves before God and express our need of Him. It is not a way to get God to do what we want—God will always do what is the best and the wisest thing to do from His infinite wisdom and understanding. Sadly, the religious hypocrites of Jesus’ day used fasting to garner people’s attention. If we humble ourselves before God, it should be because we really seek to express our broken and lowly condition before Him, not to put on a show for people so that they would think highly of us.
Sum: With every area of righteousness, we should do what we do for God’s eyes only, to please Him. If we always have this squarely fixed before us, then we will practice that which is truly pleasing to God and we will always have a healthy relationship with Him.
Prayer Suggestions:
Jesus. I understand what You are saying. I want to be a God-pleaser, and not a man-pleaser. My deeds of righteousness should always be for God’s eyes only.
I want to live in the presence of God always. In the same way You always pleased the Father, so I want to always live to please Him. Put in my heart this right perspective. Train me to always think about what would please the Lord. I want to grow as Your disciple, so teach me.
Help me to be more concerned about what You think about me and less about what people think about me.
Teach me to pray as I should. Make me a person who worships and sees God as supreme and exalted. I want to give to God my greatest attention and affection. Help me a be a good worshiper.
Teach me to be less dependent on myself and more dependent on You. Even with my everyday needs, help me to see that I need God more than anything else, or even anyone else.
Transcript
Let me pray for us and we'll begin our time.
God, thank You for another time to look at Your word together. Thank you for blessing our souls day after day from Your wonderful book. We pray that You would teach us. And that You will speak to our hearts and the real needs and issues, areas in our own lives, and that we would ever more draw near to You the holy and loving God. Thank You that You have revealed Yourself to us in Your Son. And we pray that You will speak to us now as we continue to give our attention to Jesus’ precious words. In His name we pray, Amen.
The passage to be read next is Matthew, Chapter 6, verse one through 18. The main idea is simply this: keep your motives pure. Keep your motives pure. The key verse for this section is found in verse one of Chapter 6, which says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” Jesus’ main point in this section is keeping pure motives. And by pure motives, Jesus doesn't merely mean that you should do things for good reasons in a vague way. Jesus means that we should do all things for God's recognition, that if God approves of what we are doing, we should be satisfied. This also means that we're not very concerned or motivated by what other people think about us, how people might recognize us, or how we might gain men's approval.
This is another dimension of true righteousness. Jesus goes on from what He had talked about in the previous chapter about external and technical righteousness to now dealing with showy righteousness, doing righteous deeds to please men and not God. Jesus shows us that His disciples should practice their righteousness to please God and not men. In this passage, Jesus gives us 3 examples of false motives, where the people of His day often did deeds of righteousness with impure motives, for men's approval, not God’s approval. The three areas are the areas of mercy (or charity), prayer, and fasting.
The first area of mercy or charity, is found in verses 2 through 4 of Chapter 6. You'll notice the language in the NASB is “giving to the poor.” Now giving to the poor is a good translation, but it doesn't encompass everything Jesus means. In the original language the words “give to the poor” is literally just “showing mercy.” And so this could talk about helping the poor or any person who is in trouble or less fortunate. You know, think about the Parable of the Good Samaritan. The Good Samaritan found someone who was beaten and robbed, and he helped him. The person wasn't poor, but he was clearly in a very needy condition. That man showed mercy. In any case, Jesus is talking about helping anybody who is in need of mercy. With this example, Jesus then points out the religious hypocrites of his day, who engaged in charity or philanthropy only to be honored by men. They were driven by impure motives. They were a bit like the politicians today who are only interested in a good photo shoot. They only want good PR. They only want to get credit for their good works in front of people who might vote for them. What Jesus teaches us here is that that sort of behavior is not okay with God. God frowns upon people who do good deeds for men’s praise and recognition. And you might think that, maybe the right motives Jesus would promote would be to do good deeds to help people. But His explanation isn’t that either, surprisingly. It’s actually more than that. As Jesus had indicated already in verse one, pure motives have to do with pleasing God, to do things for God's eyes only. This matter of seeking God’s approval only is so important that Jesus even adds these words, “Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” Those are kind of famous words out of this passage, if you ever heard them before. I probably need to clarify that the point seems to be at first pass about being secretive about your good deeds. In fact, Jesus uses the word “secret” multiple times in this section, but as we already saw in verse 1, the bigger issue (and the main issue at hand) is about pure motives. Jesus isn’t just telling us to be sneaky about good deeds. He is saying keep your motive pure and to always seek God’s approval in all that we do.
The second example has to do with prayer. Now prayer is one of the most intimate and beautiful spiritual connections we make with God. It's the time when we can speak honestly from our hearts to the Lord. But the hypocrites of Jesus' day perverted prayer. They used prayer as an opportunity to gain people's attention, to impress people, to be honored (or literally, “glorified”) by people. They made long prayers just to make people think that they were smart or that they were godly or whatever. And Jesus teaches us that God isn't impressed by any of this.
Jesus teaches us more on prayer. He gives more attention to this area of righteousness, because prayer is such a personal thing and so Jesus teaches us to keep it that way. He doesn't mean that we can't pray in public or that we can't pray with other people. But He emphasizes how we need to honestly exercise closet prayer. Closet prayer simply means that you pray when no one is looking because you really want to talk to God.
Then He gives us a pattern for the kind of prayer we should pray, prayer with meaning and simplicity. And that's what we call today “The Lord's Prayer.” And when you read this section, you'll see that the Lord's prayer is in the middle of this section. Jesus’ purpose with this prayer is not that we would just parrot the words. He is teaching us to pray with meaning and with simplicity. Let me just quickly highlight a few aspects of that model prayer. He teaches us to first begin with worship. He says, “Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be Your name.” Now those words, “Hallowed be Your name” are not very common today. It's not the language that we normally use today. But its meaning is significant. It meant that when we pray to God, we should first worship Him. “Hallowed be Your name” means “may Your name be honored, may Your name be treated as holy.” What this shows is that when we pray, we should always remember who we're talking to. God is not a jolly old grandpa in the sky. He isn't a finger wagging judge either. He is righteous and holy (no question about that), but He is also loving. And He isn't a caricature of any of these attributes. He is God first and foremost, and that means He is wholly set apart from everything else, greater than anything that you can possibly imagine, more powerful, more knowledgeable, more loving, more everything than you can possibly imagine. And so when we pray, we should remember just how special God is, how holy He is. Therefore, prayer is to begin with worship.
Then Jesus focuses on God's supreme position. And so He teaches us to pray, “May Your Kingdom come. May Your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.” What that recognizes is that God's Kingdom and His will are the most important things in this world. You know, all of this means that when we pray, we should be mindful of who God is, and how little we are and how great He is. We should always consider who God is and worship Him in our prayer. Then the second part of the prayer focuses on our needs. And they’re needs, not absurd wants. You know, this is not a prayer that asks, “God, make me rich, wealthy and happy.” It's a humble prayer. And so Jesus teaches us to pray about our daily needs, “our daily bread,” for the forgiveness of sins, and for protection from evil. All of these things have their place in our prayers and what they show is that we go to God, humbly recognizing who He is, and we express to God our real needs. And we humbly depend on Him for His provision, for all of them. Jesus emphasizes what prayer ought to be, because there was such an abuse of prayer in His day. Hypocrites loved to garner attention from people through their prayers but they had no desire to actually talk with God (how incredibly sad!). But Jesus shows us that our talk with God should be a rich and intimate exercise where we truly connect with God.
The third area has to do with fasting. Fasting is not very common today except for certain fad diets, I suppose. But fasting in Jesus' day was among the Jews an important practice. First, God ordained fasts on special holy days. One example of this is the Day of Atonement, called the Yom Kippur, where they were told to fast because this was a day to repent. Now, it may sound odd that they would have one day in the whole calendar year to repent. Nonetheless, it was a national call to humble themselves before God, to confess their sins and get right with Him. Fasting was to be a means of expressing their humble and broken condition before God, that they needed God's mercy, that they recognized that they have done wrong before God, and that they need to make things right with Him. Another facet of fasting was an expression of humble depending on God. I think when it comes to this second area of fasting, I think it applies to us today. It's not that your fasting will twist God's arms to do what you want. God is God. He will always do that which is best in His eyes. But we can most certainly humble ourselves before God and show Him that we need His help and intervention, that we have no other recourse than Him. And fasting is a means by which we can express this. As you can tell, fasting was meant to be a useful expression of humility before God. But again, the religious hypocrites of Jesus' day hijacked fasting and they made it into a badge of honor. They just wanted people to respect them and think highly of them and they used fasting as a means of garnering that kind of attention from people. Jesus confronts this false practice and shows God has no taste for this type of behavior. Fasting should be done for God's eyes only, to be done with pure motives.
Now these are the three examples Jesus gives for the people of His day. I think if we were to maybe expand this out to examples relevant for today, we might add to this list a number of things. Perhaps we may add community service, or maybe one's knowledge of the Bible, or how much somebody might give to the church, or how somebody might be supporting his parents or helping neighbors or giving to charity, or whatever else people might do to gain respect from people. Jesus shows us that for His disciples, our motives should always be to please God. And that if God should say to us, “good job,” that's enough for us. I don't need to be recognized by anybody, just the fact that God is pleased with me, that is the greatest reward that I can ever want.
Thus, Jesus shows us that we ought to always have pure motives. I could word this in another way. We should always live in the presence of God. God's eyes are on me, and I really want to please Him because He has sent His Son to save me; and if I have His approval, that's all I need. Again, this isn't meant to say that you have to keep your good deeds secret, or that if people compliment you somehow, you need to feel bad about that. That's not the point. This is all about your motives. And Jesus teaches us to always keep our motives pure.
There's a lot we can pray about in light of this. We can express to Jesus that we have heard Him, that we ought to have pure motives. And that and again this is something you have to ask yourself in your own heart. But I want to tell Jesus I don't ever want to be a man-pleaser. I always want to live in the presence of God. In the same way Jesus always pleases the Father, I want to always please God. Another area to pray about is to tell Jesus that I need His help to be more concerned about what He thinks about me and less about what people think about me, to value Jesus’ opinion about me more than others’ opinions about me. And lastly, maybe it will be appropriate to pray that Jesus will teach me to pray. Like the prayer He taught in this passage that I would also learn to pray more meaningfully. All right, we’re going to cut it off here and end for today. Lord bless you, and we are done for today.
Before I end the call, let me just add that if you have questions about the said Scripture passage or about prayer or anything else related to our morning devotions, stick around afterwards and I’ll be available for 10-15 minutes after our meeting. This is only on Mondays and Wednesdays. Fridays I have another meeting immediately afterwards, so not Fridays. So, jot down questions or discussion topics and we can discuss them in the future.