Please open your Bibles to Matthew chapter six, beginning in verse one. Matthew chapter six, verse one. Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men to be seen by them. Otherwise, you have no reward from your father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, Do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret and your father who sees in secret will himself reward you openly. And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But you, when you pray, go into your room and when you have shut your door Pray to your father who is in a secret place, and your father who sees in secret will reward you openly. And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they'll be heard for their many words. Therefore, do not be like them, for your father knows the things that you have need before you ask him. Let's pray. O Lord, we thank You for Your discipleship. We thank You for Your instruction of us here. You have come into this place with Your own Word to teach us the way in which we should go. To convict us of our sins. To show us our duplicity. To help us to know the path of life. To relieve us of our fakery. O Lord, we thank You. Thank You, Lord, for these words. Now, I pray that you would send your Holy Spirit to burn them into our souls, to apply them in ways that no man could ever apply. O Lord, I pray that you keep me from error and that you would help me to observe wondrous things from your law and to praise you in the congregation as I desire to do now. Amen. Well, we have this wonderful text before us today that God has designed to to transform your giving and to totally revolutionize your praying. And as the Lord Jesus is speaking to his disciples, he is speaking to us as well. These words are for us. In chapter six, you'll just recognize we've just, you know, moved out of the first section of the Sermon on the Mount and now into the second section in this. This chapter divides into two two sections as well. Chapters one through 18 speak about hypocrisy in almsgiving and in prayer and in fasting. And then there's the Lord's Prayer or what some people call the disciples prayer. After that, and then what it looks like to be hypocritical in your fasting. Three things that we ought to be doing with all of our hearts in praise to God. Almsgiving, praying and fasting. So those three things have particular regulations and insights for us. And then from verse 19, to the end of the chapter, he's identifying hypocrisy in everyday life. And one of the most difficult areas of our lives, and that is to trust God for our provision. And he deals with our worldly mindedness and our worry about our life. And so there are these different areas that he's addressing. And he ends with this this one area that you can't you cannot serve two masters. And that really, I think, forms the theme of everything that's said here. There are two masters. There's man and there is your father in heaven. You know, this is this is such a beautiful picture. Matthew five, verse eight, where Jesus says, Blessed are the pure in heart. for they shall see God. I pray that that happens, that there would be a purity of heart that's stimulated in us. There would be a childlike likeness, that there would be an honesty before God, that he somehow brings about in our lives as a result of this passage, because this is what it is intended for. So the two sins of this chapter are hypocrisy and worldly mindedness. And here, what's so wonderful about this section is that Jesus Christ is so straight talking to His disciples, to help them so that they don't waste their life on serving man, so that they don't have a fake life. They're not fake Christians in the world, but they're real. They're real people with real hearts, crying out, relating to God, observing their Father in Heaven in everything, being so aware of Him. Not only aware of man and how He might love man, and serve God through serving man, but to have God in mind for everything that He does and really to save His disciples and to save us, brothers and sisters, from living lives that are just a flash in the pan. If you want to have a flash in the pan, kind of life where you have a lot of friends and you're pleasing men and you have a name and you're doing things to manipulate your image and your Facebook in the world to make yourself look so good and everything you pray, everything you do, you want men to see. Then here, Jesus is here to save us from a flash in the pan life where we get our reward here. There's a reward you can get here. Absolutely. There is. We've gotten so much of it. And we try every day to get more and more of it. And Jesus is saying, no labor, labor for heavenly rewards. And that only can happen when we somehow disconnect our service to be man pleasers and become God pleasers. And that's exactly what Jesus meant when he said, blessed are the pure in heart. For they shall see God. And so he's here pointing to very particular things that you'll see right in the text, that he points to the desire in verse one to be seen by men. You see that there? To be seen by men and then to be rewarded by men in verse one as well. And then to receive glory from men. Those three things. To be seen by men, to be rewarded by men, and to have glory from men. He's putting His finger on this sin and how it drives everything that we do. The cars we drive, the houses we buy, the way we give, the places we give, the way we talk, the look on our face. Jesus is putting His finger on these things here. so kindly and graciously to keep you from wasting your life, to keep you from being a fake person, to keep you from being a flash in the pan where, yeah, you did get your reward here. You did have your friends. You did. You did have the things that you wanted. You got them and they will die with you. And so the main question that Jesus is asking his disciples is, are you living before man? Or are you living before your father who is in heaven? And he gives us he gives us remedies in the way that we give in order to point the sin out, because the sin that so easily besets us in giving And praying is a sin that besets us in every area of life. I think these are just representative things. But he's speaking of representative things that we can so relate with. Who has not prayed to man for man? Who has not desired to be thought well of by their magnanimous spirit and their giving? and their charitable life and just how generous they are. Who hasn't desired to have the praise of man? I don't believe there's anyone here. So Jesus uses these two areas that everyone can relate with. But there are more areas in life like this. Every area in life is like this. Our work, our service in the church. You can be preaching and be sinning against this principle that is here. When I was looking at this this week, I was I was listening to second the book of Second Corinthians on on audio and I and I bumped into Second Corinthians, chapter five. I'd like you to turn there because there's a principle here that it so relates to this whole thing as we continue to try to set the stage for this this great passage of Scripture. Second Corinthians, chapter five. Here, the Apostle Paul is speaking about the reward that there is in heaven. He begins in verse one that we know that if our earthly house, this tent is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. And he says we groan for that house. We desire to be clothed. But often we want to be clothed by earthly praises and things like that. And so he continues to make this argument about the superiority of this heavenly home, he's making an argument for a heavenly mindedness. That everything that would be done would have in the backdrop heaven. And then in verse 9 he says, therefore, and this is the principle that Jesus is bringing to his disciples, that Paul is bringing to the Corinthian church. Therefore, we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well-pleasing to him. To be well pleasing to him in everything that that that's the focus of life to in every conversation, every work, every movement of the hand, that there would be this aim to be well pleasing unto him. That's the essence of blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God to be well pleasing unto him, not not for the praises of man, the glory of man. or the rewards of man, but for the praises and the glory and the rewards of God. So these two things are being set up against one another. There's your Father in heaven, and then there are men. And in Matthew 6, 1-8, it's just constantly back and forth. Your Father in heaven, man. Your Father in heaven, man. That's what Jesus is trying to instruct us in. And then in verse 14, He says, For the love of Christ compels us. The love of Christ compels us. This is the ground of all worthy living. And this is the way that you save yourself from wasting your life. So, Jesus is on the mountain. And He is urging His disciples to take heed to a danger. And that is to do your religious duties for man. and not for God. So, before we look at the first words of the text, I just want us to be aware of this question. What is it? What is it that we're doing for the praise of man? And here the Lord Jesus Christ is present among us to rescue us from such a life. What a blessing that is. I've been so thankful to be in this passage this week. It's helped me. It's convicted me. It's pierced me to the heart. Now, in chapter five, the theme was to be like your heavenly father, and that's why chapter five ends with be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. Now, in chapter six, the theme is being before your father. your father who sees in secret. So in chapter five, be like your heavenly father. In chapter six, be before your father. So those are some of the great themes that we find here in this passage. So the first thing we we encounter is hypocrisy in giving. And in verse one, we see the danger that we are in. Take heed, he says, take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men to be seen by them. And so. Here, Jesus is right at the beginning, he's informing them of the danger that they're in, that there is a there's a perilous opportunity in life and that sin is crouching at the door to just try to Facebook your way through life. To try to just make yourself look so sunshiny and, you know, full of well-being and everything is just so sunny and good. And you're doing it for man. And so he's saying to be careful. And, you know, God says this over and over again in Scripture to be careful, to take heed. Remember, how often did we read? The words be careful in the book of Deuteronomy here, Jesus is just being like Moses. He's a prophet like Moses in that sense. And he's asking us to be careful. Christianity is a is a religion of I'm just going to call it a it's a picky religion. It's picky about things, it's picky about the way you live. and what's really happening. It's not a gloss over kind of make everything is beautiful kind of religion. It's one where you're asked to examine your life, to inspect, to take heed, to be careful. So right at the beginning, I just want to say, be careful, take heed, make this a time of self-examination. Take heed to yourself. And this is he's asking to take heed regarding the way that they give. the way that they give. He assumes that all of us are giving, that we're all almsgiving, generous people. He's just assuming that. He's not making a rebuke to anyone here that you're not giving enough. He's just assuming that you are giving, that you are an almsgiver. You're doing charitable deeds, that your life is full of charity. Is that true? Well, he's assuming that here in this passage of Scripture. And it's an important issue as well. You know, so often we think wrongly of of of of a charitable kind of life and a life of generosity. And we we become we become very upset about certain sins. We might talk about the sin of Sodom, but we might forget we might forget that the only sin in Sodom was not sodomy. that Sodom was destroyed because of lack of generosity as well. In Ezekiel 16, we read that it was their fullness of food, abundance of idleness, and neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor or the needy. So this is an important issue, this whole matter of a charitable kind of life. So he raises the importance of the issue and he's saying, take heed. Now, he focuses in not on whether or not you have a charitable life, but how your charitable life is working and how you're doing it. And it's really it's a very painful command that he offers here. Lloyd-Jones says there's no chapter which is calculated to promote so much self-humbling and humiliation than this particular one. And I really agree with that. This is a very humiliating, humbling passage of Scripture because it takes us down below the surface in the midst of our giving, in the midst of our kindness, in the midst of our charitable life. The way that we're magnanimous, there's something underneath. He's saying, no, go down below that and be humbled by the sin that lurks there. And he's assuming that there is sin lurking there. And so it's a very painful command, because Jesus is calling us to live a different kind of life, not just an outward life of images and pictures and words, but a life that's true. It's a life He desires truth in the inward parts. He desires a pure heart that sees God, not one that's just operating on the surface. So here we're going below the surface here. We're going below all of our social conventions. You know, we all look so nice here today. You know, and we came here and we're just so orderly and sweet and everything. Jesus wants to go below that to cut through the images and see what's really there. So he says, take heed. And so it's a very, very painful command. And he's asking us to consider if we were seeking the honor that comes from man or from God alone. Are we seeking honor from man? What a blessing it would be if we could all get free of this, wouldn't it? Where we were completely unpretentious. Where there was no posturing, no fakery, no trying to be someone at all. But to be before our Father in Heaven. Not seeking glory from one another. Not trying to arrange the conversation to shine well upon us or make everything somehow work right. God doesn't have His children doing that. We're not image makers. And so the sin is identified here to be seen by doing things to be seen by men. You know, Jesus in John chapter 5, verse 44, he said, how can you believe when you receive honor from one another and do not seek the honor that comes only from God? Receiving honor, the desire to receive honor from one another can mean that you do not believe. Now, he says that to the Pharisees. How can you believe if you receive honor from another? But here, Jesus is not talking to the Pharisees. He's talking to his friends. He's talking to his sheep. He's talking to Christians. Who have left everything and followed him because this sin somehow continues in our hearts. And so he desires to put his finger. He identifies the sin now. So he's talking about the public life, what you're doing in your public life and why you're doing it. And he says, don't do things to be seen by men. So is that contradictory to let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven? Has Jesus just contradicted himself? No, he hasn't contradicted himself at all, because the good works have only one purpose, to glorify your father in heaven. That's the whole point. Good works are to be done, not to be seen by men, but to glorify so that when they are seen, your father is glorified. So we should be doing good. We shouldn't be saying, no, we're going to stop doing our good works because we don't want people to see us. That's not what Jesus is saying. Do the good works. Do more of them. Do them faster, do them more completely, do them more wonderfully, do them more deeply, do them more generously. But do them to glorify your Father in heaven, not to glorify yourself, to gain attention to man. So it's not contradictory to let your light so shine. So the Christian is at the same time, he's attracting attention to himself, and yet he's not attracting attention to himself. But it's not a contradiction at all, because in his heart, he knows that he is desiring to please God and not to show himself to be so magnanimous to man. Now, in any given moment of our day, we are either pleasing man or are or we are pleasing God and. Every action. Can be ordered under one of those two headings. There are only two kingdoms. There's the light kingdom of light and there's a kingdom of darkness. There's the kingdom of God and there's the kingdom of the devil and God has so structured the world so that there are only two masters and you can only serve one of the two at any given moment. That's the reality of life. And, you know, when Jesus continues his sermon here, he ends up saying no man can serve two masters. He will either love the one or despise the other. That's it. Every action, Everything that we do either comes under one of those two. Every time a husband talks to his wife, every time a man gets on the telephone, every time a man gets on his keyboard, every time somebody takes a drive and does anything, he's either operating under one kingdom or another. And, you know, when we so desire for men to think well of us, we need to understand that God always sees when we're seeking the applause of men. He always sees when we are serving ourselves and we are wanting more aggrandizement in the eyes of those around us. He always sees us when we're trying to make a name for ourselves. This was the sin back in times of old, when they built that great ziggurat at the Tower of Babel. They said, let us make a name for ourselves. They did not want a life where, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. They wanted a life where where let us make a name for ourselves so that we can be somebody in this world. He sees he always sees the way he sees into our hearts when we say, thank you, but we're really just posturing. We're not really thankful. He always sees when we're polite, but really, we're full of hatred. He sees what we're trying to do. He understands that we So often say things only for posturing. We might be in a very difficult conversation and we want to come off so cool. We want to come off so unangry. We want to make sure that our faces don't get red and we pride ourselves because our face didn't get red in the conversation. But in reality, we were just posturing ourselves. We came off nice. We looked as if we were handling the situation well. We might even have if someone confronts us about a sin and we say, thank you, brother, for sharing that with me. I'm so grateful that you've done that when actually you're not grateful at all. You can say you're grateful. You can act. So magnanimous, you can put on such a sheen. You know what the fruits of the Spirit look like. And you can manufacture them. You can manufacture a form of love. You can manufacture a form of joy. You can manufacture a form of love, and peace, and patience, and kindness, and goodness, and faithfulness, and gentleness. And you can even manufacture self-control. You can. But I understand that God sees that he understands that you're just posturing. That your self-control is actually the control of the devil. That your gentleness is actually a work of self gratification and glorification. So Jesus is taking off all of all of the covers of our pretenses. And he's saying, consider who you are in your heart. Maybe you heard that story many years ago. Someone saw Robert Redford walking into an elevator and he walked into the elevator and turned around and there was this woman running at him. Are you the real Robert Redford? And he said, as the elevator doors closed, only when I'm alone. And that's true about all of us as well. Who are you deep in your heart when you're alone? with your own heart, not how nicely you tried to present yourself in order to congratulate yourself so that you would be thought as such a loving and self-controlled and gracious and gentle spirit in the world. So Jesus is coming against this whole thing in our spirit. Now, in contrast, you know, the disciples have such a help because they're with Jesus. They're walking with Jesus. And we have been able to walk with Jesus as well. We have four gospels. We have the entire Old Testament, which speaks of Jesus. We can walk with Jesus to see how he is. Jesus, though, was an entirely different kind of person. He said, I only say what I hear my father saying. In other words, blessed are the pure at heart, for they shall see God. They always see God. God is the one who's ruling and reigning everything, not pretenses, not anything else. He said, I only do what my father tells me to do. I only do what I see my father doing. So Jesus is the perfect example. He's always looking to his father for his works, not to man. Jesus never was posturing. He never tried to make a name for himself. Well, he had the name above all names. Now, I want us to just recognize something before we move on to the next point about rewards. This is not something that we just fell into. This is not just a human foible. I just I didn't realize what was happening to me. You know, I just. You know, I'm really not. I'm really not that way. I just sort of, you know, forgot myself for a moment. No, that's not true. None of us fell into this. We posture. Because we're serving the wrong Lord, no man can serve two masters. And it's easy for us to say, well, you know, this is just something I need to work on. No, there is sin working in our hearts that makes us this way. This is the way we are. When you came to this church, maybe you didn't recognize that you were joining a group of self-congratulatory people who want to please man. the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. And they needed a shepherd to shepherd them away by progressive sanctification, away from this tendency. So glorifying yourself is not something you just sort of tripped into by accident. You got there honestly. You really do love yourself a lot. You have a very aggressive and fat self-image. You think very highly of yourself. And so you want to make sure everyone else thinks as highly of you as you do. And that's why you posture. And you didn't just trip into it. You got there honestly because you were serving your master. So this is the reality of it. This should be a time of great repentance for all of us. I know it has been for me as well, considering these things carefully. Now, there's the consequence. There are rewards. Otherwise, you have no reward from your father in heaven. So when you seek when you seek to be, you seek the praise of man, the glory of man, you have no reward from your father in heaven now. So this brings up the whole matter of rewards. Now, this explodes a whole wrong idea about rewards, because there is a reward from your father in heaven that is promised both here and in heaven. The rewards work in this life and on the other side as well. And that's what the Bible teaches. But there's there's a really wrong idea about rewards that Jesus just he just puts a 50 megaton bomb and lights the match on it and it goes off here. He's exploding a whole wrong view of rewards. And it's it's this view that there's there's this altruistic impulse in us to see Christ for his own sake. That we're not in it for the blessing, our motives are pure. You're very altruistic person who has no selfishness anymore and you're just seeking Christ, not for any reward at all. But Jesus says, no, there is a reward. He's promised a reward. It sounds very spiritual to say, I'm only following Jesus regardless of any reward when his entire calling of you was for a reward. It's the essence of your salvation. God is the rewarder of those who seek him. That's how that's how the world is rigged. It's a good thing. It's a wonderful thing. Seek him for the reward. People say, I desire the giver, not the gift. I'm not so sure that's right. I don't know if you can desire the giver without the gift. You can't have one without the other. If you just want the giver and not the gift, you don't get the giver. You just don't, because he is a rewarder of those who seek him. That's what the blessings and the curses are all about. There are so many commands in Scripture, there are so many principles that make this so clear that if one thing happens, another thing happens and it happens to be blessing. What are the Beatitudes all about? Blessed are the blessed are the blessed are the there are blessings, there are rewards. And so we shouldn't go around saying, you know, I'm not I'm not really in it for the reward. Well, if you're not, I don't know what religion you're in. You're not in Christianity because there are enormous blessings. Moses renounced Egypt for a better reward. Jesus went to the cross for the joy that was set before him. Everything is rewarded. Those that who keep the commandments of God are always rewarded instantaneously. They may not see it exactly as God sees it. But there's a reward. He says in keeping them, there is great reward in keeping them, there is great reward. It's immediate and it's continuous. And it's finally fulfilled in heaven. So there's so there's a reward. There's a reward for man and there's a reward from heaven. And we could we could we could give many, many verses about about this whole matter of rewards. And but but here's what Jesus is saying. There are two kinds of rewards as there are two kinds of masters. And there are two kinds of rewards. There's the reward for man and you can get that. You can get it in spades. You can get it so well. You can look so good. You can have it all. You can have it all. And then it dies with you. The other really terrible thing about the rewards of man, think of who you're pleasing. Think of who you're getting the reward from. You're getting your reward from man. Fickle man. Self-centered man. It ebbs and flows. It goes one way and then the next. That's why Jesus said He didn't entrust Himself to man, because He knew what was in man. Do you want the reward of man? Jesus is setting these two things in opposition. Do you want the reward of man? You see the kind of reward the Pharisees get. Is that what you really want? You want rewards from fickle men, from a fickle media, from a fickle church, from a fickle world? No, you don't want that kind of reward. Don't seek that kind of reward. That's why he says, blessed, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. They're not seeing man. They're not. They're not controlled by man. And then he tells about how not to do a charitable deed, he speaks of rewards and then in verse two, he says, therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory for men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. So how not to do a charitable deed is to is to try to make everybody know about it, to sound a trumpet. Now, you know, the Jews would they prayed three times a day and they would pray wherever they were. Often, if they were on the middle of a street corner, they would pray. But they did it in such a way in order to receive praise for man. That's what they wanted. And they would just pick the right time. so that they would be seen by men in their charitable giving. So he says how not to do it. In other words, you know, don't try to draw attention to it. There are lots of different ways you can draw attention to it. And then he tells how to do a charitable deed in verses three and four. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand Know what your right hand is doing, that your charitable deed may be in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you openly. Now we come across the word secret and we find the same word in the whole matter of prayer. So there's this idea of secrecy in it. There is secret giving and there's secret prayer. And so he says, don't let your left your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Now, Jesus has done this many times. He's speaking in a proverbial manner. It's not literal. Everyone knows, you know, who has their head on straight when their left hand and their right hand are doing different things. So he's not saying that somehow that they don't know. He's saying it's as if they didn't know. It's as if man, man and God were somehow completely in different categories. So he's speaking proverbially for proverbially in this sense. It's as if your left hand and your right hand did not know what they were doing. In other words, it's as if the praise of man didn't even exist. You give the gift with your right hand, but you don't even know. You don't even know about this. It's like it's like you're it's like your left hand isn't even there. It's not. It is there. But it's as if it wasn't even there. Remember when he said, if your right eye caused you to sin, pluck it out. He wasn't saying go pluck out your eye. He was saying no. It's that serious. Adultery is that serious that it actually would be better. He's just making a comparison. And it's interesting that Jesus continues on with this same logic. He says that there's There's a sin of the heart that has to do with adultery. There's a sin of the heart that has to do with murder. And there's a sin in the heart that has to do with your charitable giving. And there's a sin in your heart that has to do when you're actually praying. So Jesus continues to go down below the surface to the person that we really are. He's trying to get to our innermost being so that we are dealing with him, so that we are those people who are pure in heart and we see God. And that's who we see. It's as if our left hand didn't even exist. It's as if man wasn't even there. That's what it means to have purity of heart in the sense. And it's a mark of a true Christian. We understand that we all fall short in many ways in these areas. This doesn't mean that you're not a Christian if you struggle with this. But if you loathe yourself when the Spirit of God convicts you of it and you repent, then you're a Christian. If you love it and you continue in it, then you ought to question. So this whole thing of giving in secret, we've been asked many times, where's the offering? How come you guys don't do the offering in this church? And so we keep a box in the back. And so why do you have a box in the back? Is it so that people aren't trumpeting their giving? No, that has nothing to do with why we have a box in the back. The reason that we have a box in the back is because we used to have a time of the offering in our church. And it took a long time, and so we quit doing the public offer. We just wanted to do other things in the service. That's all it is. We're not trying to be holier. It's not holier to have a box in the back than it is to pass a plate. That's not holier. It's only holier when the hearts of the people are doing it for the right reason. So it is lawful to give alms in public. But it depends on how you do it. And then he turns to hypocrisy and prayer. After after going over this matter that he's assuming that's happening, giving, giving of alms and charitable deeds. And by the way, I believe that the term that he uses there includes all kinds of charity. It's not just giving of alms or money, but the term is a broad term. Anything you might do in in kindness to people in this world. So then he talks about hypocrisy in prayer and he says, when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrite. So he is the same language. He's assuming that we're praying. He's assuming that we're a prayerful people. That we have that we are praying. In the secret place and that we're praying publicly, he's assuming that. And And then he speaks about how not to pray. And the way that we're not to pray is to pray like a hypocrite prays. And a hypocrite is someone who wears a mask, someone who is actually somebody else that has an they're playing. They're playing a role. They're actors. And Jesus is saying Christians are actors. They're not putting on airs, they don't do anything in order to act. They're not hypocrites who wear a mask, who are one thing on the outside and a completely different person on the inside. So, you know, are all of us hypocrites? Yes and no. First of all, we need to recognize that there are no hypocrites in heaven. The hypocrite is an unrepentant pretender. A hypocrite is not a person who's being sanctified. A hypocrite is not a person who still has flaws in his life. A hypocrite is not a person who has inconsistencies. A hypocrite is not a person who genuinely teaches something and doesn't have it all right in his life. Because, I mean, the preacher always is preaching on things that he doesn't have all right in his life. But his authority is of God. It's not of his own life is not the authority. It's the word that's the authority. So what is a hypocrite? So in a sense, yes, in one sense, we are all hypocrites. In another, we are we are not hypocrites. Hypocrites are unrepentant pretenders. And then he speaks of how the hypocrites pray in the last part of verse five. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets that they may be seen by men. That's the controlling statement that they may be seen by men. That's what they want. They want to be seen by men, and so that's why they do what they do. So it's not it's not that they're neglecting prayer. It says here that they love to pray. I mean, the person in the church who loves to pray, who prays the most might be the worst offender. So again, Jesus is cutting through the appearances. So that his disciples are not fake Christians. So that they don't waste their life pleasing man. So that they don't really sort of flush their life down the toilet and end up with a reward that is not there. So then he says, assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. So we already talked about rewards. He brings he brings the exact same principle up again. There are two rewards. There's an earthly reward, which you can get a lot of by doing certain things in this world. You can manipulate it, but then there's a reward in heaven. There's the reward of your father. There is there is the pure heart that sees God. Now, they love to pray that they may be seen by men. So here's something that we should really consider. It wasn't the prayer. It was the recognition that got them excited. Now, if you are a person who is excited by recognition, your soul is in danger. If you are a person who is excited by recognition, your soul is in danger. And your blessedness will be deprived of you, because blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. If you're excited by the recognition, you will not have the happiness that Jesus Christ desires for you. Matthew Henry in his commentary warns that we need to guard against anything that makes our our personal devotion and even our corporate devotion remarkable to try to make it remarkable, to try to make it so fascinating. He said we just have to guard against that because we might find ourselves that we are seeking. We're seeking the praise of it. We're excited. We're excited by the remarkableness of it all. Because we want to be remarkable and amazing and looked up to and thought to be so wise and so prayerful, so holy, so generous. And so there are sinful prayers. Prayers out of pretense, which Jesus speaks of in Matthew 23. We'll get there later on. Prayers out of an unforgiving heart. In Mark 11, Jesus says, when you stand praying, if you have anything against your brother, you can have an angry, unforgiving heart and be praying at the same time. And Jesus says, no, leave your offering there and go. Go to your brother. You can have self-righteous prayers like the Pharisee in Luke 18, who he stood and he said, I thank God that I'm not like other men. Now, most people who pray that the same kind of prayer don't do it exactly like that. We have a there's a more refined way to do that can pray for someone in trouble. But in reality, we're so proud that we didn't fall into that sin and our hearts are not broken. We're just concerned. We're just concerned about that person. Yeah, yeah, we're really concerned because they're self-righteous. There's a self-righteous praying that arises out of the out of the the different problems that people have in a church or in friendships. So there are self-righteous prayers. He's talking about prayers by men to men for the glory of men. And he's leading his disciples to prayers by men to God for the glory of God. And there's a big difference. And then he says the hypocrites will be rewarded. They'll have their reward. Now, there's a very, very important principle here that I don't want us to miss. And it's this sin follows you everywhere. It follows you to church when you're praying. The most religious exercises can be the most sinful exercises underneath the surface. Sin is so pernicious. You would think, you know, when you walk out of here and you go out into the world, then you're so vulnerable. But here, this is a safe place. I don't really think that's true. This is no safer. This is no safer than your workplace or anywhere else. Because sin follows you, it follows you when there's giving and generosity. Sin is there. Sin is also in the place of prayer. You would think that there would be these enclaves of holiness where nothing else could get in. And that's not true. Because of the nature of the fallen sinful heart, we carry ourselves where we go and therefore sin is carried into everything that we do. And Jesus is just desiring his disciples to get below the surface of the outward and to recognize how sinful sin is, how pernicious, how broad it is, how deep it is, that it's worse than you ever thought it was. It even is there in your prayers. You might think it's such a holy thing to set yourself aside for the Word of God and to preach it. But let me tell you, there is human weakness and sin in everything. David and Taylor Stantzels and I went to a conference several years ago and a man was giving a speech on hell and he said that he was quoting someone else. He said, if sin were blue, And every time you sinned, there was a little bit of blue coming out of your mouth. Then there would be a lot of blue coming out of our mouths. And what he said was he says, I'm not confident that we say anything that's not completely the eruptive sin, that there's that where sin taints everything. So there's the blue. Fortunately, people can't see it. Only only the person who says it knows. Only, only in your heart do you know when you're sending in that way. Aren't you glad that sin wasn't blue? Aren't you glad that all of your motives are not broadcast? Well, they will be broadcast one day to you. And I pray that we will be covered by the blood of Jesus Christ that takes care of all the blue and all the blood, all the broadcasting. of sin. So then he talks about how to pray secretly in verses six through eight. But when you pray, go into your room and when you shut your door, pray to your father who is in the secret place and your father who sees in secret will reward you openly. So you go to a place of prayer. Now, here's the question I want us to consider as a church. Here we are, a family of God together. And what happens in this area has a profound impact on this church. If you're concerned about our church, if you think that there are things wrong in this church, then here is something that you can do about this church. If something's going wrong in your family and it's very disturbing to you, here is something you can do. If something is going wrong in your workplace with your friends, here is something you can do. You have a remedy. There's something so important that's being spoken of here. And Jesus is revealing to His disciples one of the most powerful things that they'll ever experience, and that is of secret prayer. Notice, you go to a place of prayer. When you pray, go into your room. The words refer to kind of a closet or a cupboard. It's a place undisturbed, a place where you're undistracted, a place where you can unburden your soul, a place where you can cry out to God, a place where you can say what's really in your heart. You can't do that everywhere. So there's a place that you go. So as a church family, let's let's let's let's take this in and let's become a people of secret prayer. Are you a person of secret prayer? Do you go to an undistracted place and cry out to God and labor with God? Are you doing that? It's a place to exclude the world, and when you have shut the door, You know, the door is shut. Things are things are shut out of your life. Your computer's not there. You're not playing around with your gadgets. You are you are alone before God, you are completely alone before God. You're beholding the face of your father, you are you are those blessed. of pure heart who see God and there are no other distractions. There's a time. There's a time for that. Do you have? Maybe you've said this. I've said this. I've heard many people say it. Well, I don't go to a secret place, but I pray all day long. That's not what he's talking about here. He's not talking about when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about going to a secret place and shutting the door. And when you have shut the door, you you. You pray to your Father in the secret place. Now, does this demand a literal door and a closet? No, it doesn't. Jesus' pattern is so clear. He's constantly going out to the place of secret prayer. If you read through the Gospels, you see Him doing it over and over and over again. In Matthew 14, In the day and into the evening, he went on to a mountain by himself to pray that secret prayer early in the morning in Mark, chapter one, verse thirty five. Having he went and prayed long before it was daylight and he went out and he departed to a solitary place. That's the secret place. So you don't need a literal door. Maybe your house doesn't have a closet for this. You don't need it. You don't need to build one. You go ahead and build one. Soundproof it so that everyone can hear. I don't know. But you don't have to have a closet to do this. This is secret prayer before your father, who is in heaven. In Mark, chapter six, Jesus sent his disciples away. So that he could pray in Luke, chapter 5, 16, he departed into the wilderness to go out and pray in Luke, chapter 6, verse 12. He prayed all night on a mountain. This is this whole concept of secret prayer where there's no distraction, where he's coming before his father. Are you doing that? You're the head of the household. You should ask your family. Are you doing that? Maybe you don't know if they're engaging in secret prayer, but you should ask them. And you should encourage them to be involved in secret prayer. The secret prayer that we find with Jesus mostly happens outside, out in the wilderness, in the night, in the early morning hours. He goes to a place where he can be totally alone. You see the pattern, particularly in Luke 6, of his praying on a mountain. after his teaching and after working many miracles. So, prayer before the teaching and the miracles, prayer after. Prayer in between. This is the pattern that Jesus is speaking of here. Moses prayed for the children of Israel. Hezekiah was praying and weeping in private and God answered and gave him 15 years of his life When Isaac was all alone meditating and praying and treating the Lord, there shows up his wife, Rebecca. Jonah prays and he's relieved of being incarcerated in the belly of a whale. In other words, he will reward you openly. There are many ways that God rewards those who pray openly. He openly blesses them in answering of the prayers in real life. And then He answers them as He takes them to heaven. God was rewarding Jesus openly when He ascended into the heavens. It was an open reward for His face being before His Father in heaven. And your Father who sees in secret. All things are open to His sight. Nothing escapes His eye. And then finally, he deals with the use of words. When you pray, do not use meaningless repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. So this is just idle babbling, mindless repetition, magic using magical formulas. If you say in Jesus name, it'll authenticate and empower the prayer. That's not true. A mantra at the end or the beginning of a prayer doesn't make it significant. We often think that if we change our voice, that our prayers will somehow be more effectual. Instead of praying to God, we refer to him as God or something. And our whole personality changes. It's frick and frack. There are two people. There's one person in real life and there's another person in prayer. Or it might just be the use of meaningless cliches. My experience in my own family, maybe your family is not like this. We fall into using cliches in prayer. And we use some of the same words over and over again, because our hearts are so disconnected from God. It is not we are not the blessed who are pure in heart, who see God. We're not praying out of the fullness of our hearts. We're praying mechanically for things rather than out of the genuine things that are there in our hearts. One of the commentators that I read this week made an observation. He said in the 1700s, you don't find hardly any written prayers coming out of the churches. But in the 1800s, you do. Big books on prayers written out. What he says is this is Lloyd-Jones. Lloyd-Jones says this is just a sign of the grip of formalistic Christianity. that somehow the prayers get holier if you're able to write them down. Now, I think we can be blessed by reading prayers. Maybe you've read the Valley of Vision, Puritan prayers. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from reading those at all. I think they're a blessing. But what Lloyd-Jones is saying is that there's an element of formalistic religion that just wants to package the prayer so that every single syllable is right and every single thing is just perfectly in order. And so you have these overly elegant prayers that, you know, overly elegant prayers usually are prayed when someone is aware a little bit too much of who's there. Now, you can't judge a prayer because you don't know the heart. The person to judge the prayer is the person. And so there should be a clearly focused conversation with an audience of one, God. Those who behold their Father in heaven, praying in secret, praying publicly. The Roman Catholic Church has made a business out of this through rosaries and all kinds of ways that you can actually make money by doing various incantations and rites and rituals where the heart's not even necessary. It often happens in homes when a child seems to pray beautifully in the home and you're so excited about it. Don't get overly excited about it. Just because your child can pray means nothing. It means zip. Don't get too excited. Don't get too. If you're if you're too excited about your children's prayers, then you ought to get really excited about your own. Don't get any more excited about theirs than yours, because you know that sin is lurking at the door in all of our praying. The devil is right there to meet your children in their praying. It doesn't matter if your children can pray or evangelize or anything like that. Jonathan Edwards was known for preaching in the swamps and in the fields, wherever he was, to children. He was always preaching to children and he wasn't even converted. So don't get too excited by your children preaching either. If they're if they're so cutely, you know, with the Bible and preaching to their siblings, I don't think they should stop doing that. But you just have to understand that there are other issues way below the surface that are important. So the conclusion in verse eight. Do not be like them. Do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. So do not be like them because your Father is there. He knows your need. Behold the face of your Father in these things. He knows you. He loves you. You don't need the rewards of man. Your Father knows what you need. You don't need to get a reward from a man. He'll take care of you. So you don't need to shine up your image in your prayers or your giving. It's just not necessary. Your father knows, your father loves you. We'll get to that later in the sermon, in a couple of weeks. OK, application. Number one, where are you on this? Are your prayers, have your prayers been a little too fake? Or have you neglected secret prayer? Now, this is what Jesus is talking about, two secret sins, a secret sin in giving and a secret sin in praying. So we have to ask ourselves, where are we in this? And you cannot judge this from the outside. David summed up what I hope is in our hearts right now at this moment when he said, Lord, all my desire is before You and my sighing is not hidden from You. Well, Jesus is revealing to his disciples how inadequate the rewards of man are. And how good he is that he's a father who sees your needs before you ask him. That he is a good shepherd who desires to take care of his sheep. And he desires that his sheep would have their eyes upon him. That they would be the most blessed people in the world. They would be the pure in heart who see God and they see Him everywhere. I pray that God would help us to be people like this, that we would be generous givers, caring nothing for what men see, that we would be passionate prayers, both in public and in the secret place like Jesus was. on the mountains, on the streets, stealing away for prayer. And that we would recognize that God sees. He sees every flaw. And you who have repented of your sins and have been covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, be comforted in that God sanctifies every sin that He sees, every secret sin not just the ones on the outside that everyone else can see. He is the sanctifier of those who've been polluted by internal sins that continue to be there. He knows which master we're serving. He knows that no one can serve two masters. He knows you. And so for us, it's to cry out to him and say, Oh, Lord, O, reveal to me when my eyes have shifted away from my Master, from my Good Shepherd. There's nothing more comforting to the soul but to know that God sees and He is the sanctifier of His children. Would you pray with me? O Lord, These things have run very deep beyond what meets the eye. O Lord, we pray that You would make us more aware of You in our weakness, in our distraction. And that You would make these things true in us. That we would be servants of one good Master. Amen.