Amen, amen. Well, good morning again. If you've got your Bible with you, I'd love for you to open that to Matthew 6, Matthew chapter 6, verses 1 to 18. I think I mentioned last week that as of chapter 6, verse 1, we're entering into a new section in the Sermon on the Mount. It's not unrelated, obviously, but it is thematically, conceptually a little bit different. You'll notice that. For the last several weeks, we've been in that part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is raising the bar. Consistently, you've heard that it's said, but I say, you've heard that it's said, but I say, right? Jesus is raising the bar in terms of the definitions and understandings of righteousness. that he expects out of his people. If you're going to be salt and light, then you can't just live your life at the level of the lowest common denominator. You can't just be like everybody else. Nobody's going to notice that. Nobody's going to care about that. There's no witnessing value in that. So he says, we're going to raise the bar. I'm going to remind you of what it looks like to live distinctive lives as my followers in the world. I think we've used the expression a couple times now, antithetical teaching. That portion of the Sermon on the Mount that we've just walked through is generally referred to as antithetical teaching, meaning Jesus is contrasting the way of the kingdom of God with the way of the Pharisees. And that's what we mean when we say raising the bar. He's usually starting at the level of the Pharisees, and he's raising it up. So Matthew 520, for example, for I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, He'll never enter the kingdom of heaven. So their bar was the bar of the lowest common denominator. Their bar was basically whatever you could get away with while still looking righteous. They were all about limits and loopholes. Tell me how much I have to do. Tell me how much I can get away with. And tell me in what circumstances I can be exempt from this principle. Limits and loopholes. But here comes Jesus and he says, let me tell you the way of perfect love. So Jesus is setting the bar significantly higher. And as beautiful as that is, isn't it wonderful? As beautiful as that is, there's actually a hidden risk, a challenge associated with that. D.A. Carson puts it this way. He says, it almost seems as if the greater the demand for holiness, the greater the opportunity for hypocrisy. Isn't that true? I mean, let's just be honest and say we struggle with that a little bit as a conservative evangelical church. It's fun to raise the bar, but then you gotta pretend to be making the bar. Right? And so what do you do? I think there was a generation that maybe took one approach, and I think maybe in the last 30 years, we've taken another approach, which is just to ignore the higher bar. But there's a danger here, right? A danger of religious hypocrisy. And so here, in this next section, Jesus is turning his attention towards that danger. He's basically saying, don't bother doing all this stuff that I'm talking about. Don't bother doing that if you are only doing that so as to be seen and appreciated by other people. And you say, wait a second, hold on a second. I thought you said this was all an outworking of the principle of being salt and light. Didn't Jesus say at the start of the previous section, you are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven. Didn't Jesus say that? I mean, aren't people supposed to see? Aren't Christians supposed to shine, right? Isn't the whole idea that people are gonna see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven? And the answer, of course, is yes. Yes, people are supposed to see, but you aren't supposed to do it so as to be seen. You are supposed to do it because you love God and you wanna honor Him. You aren't supposed to do it so that people will love and honor you. So we're talking today about motive, not effect. According to Jesus, there's no credit, there's no reward, and there's no lasting benefit. There's no kingdom benefit if you do these things, if you do these deeds of righteousness so as to be seen for the approval of other people. That is religious hypocrisy. That is the yeast of the Pharisees, and it's a disease that needs to be attacked and defeated at the root. The goal here is to be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. That's the standard. Now again, so important we understand this. This is not a standard that you have to jump over or that you have to meet or achieve in order to be saved. The Sermon on the Mount is not a sermon about how to get saved. It is a sermon to saved people about how to live as the representatives of Jesus in the world. It's a standard that we look at. It's a standard that we approach by God's grace. That's important that we do have this conversation. I know sometimes people will hear this and say, it sounds like the church is getting a little legalistic, right? Raising the bar, talking about righteousness a lot, feels legalistic. No, no, it's legalistic if you say you have to do this in order to have a right relationship with God. You have to do this in order to be saved. We're not saying that. Sometimes I feel like evangelicals have talked so much about grace in the last 30 or 40 years that we don't know how to talk about holiness anymore. Does anybody else feel like that? They go together, like in the Bible, we are saved for holiness. That's how it goes together, right? The goal is that we would be saved and restored to actually the life we were originally meant to live. But we have put so much emphasis on being forgiven for the penalty of sins that we no longer talk about the freedom that we have in Christ from the power of sin. And yet that is a consistent emphasis in the New Testament. 2 Peter 1.3, we've talked about this, that we have been given in Christ everything necessary for life and godliness. The gospel comes with the resources to live a whole different life. And so, again, these standards are important, not because this is a bar we have to jump over to get saved. The standards are important because as we see the standard, as we agree with the standard, as we acknowledge the standard, and as we repent before the standard, then grace is given such that we may approach the standard. Does that sound good? That we can live again the lives we were created and saved to live. But of course, saying that, again, reminds us of the scale of the task. the length of the journey. So let's spend a moment in prayer before we read the text. Our Heavenly Father, we ask for your help today in the hearing and receiving of your word. Lord, we ask for the conviction of the Holy Spirit to fall in hearts this morning. We ask that the scriptures would be sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit of joints and of marrow, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And Lord, alongside of that, we pray the very old prayer, oh God, command what you will, but give what you command. Give us grace that matches the heights of this bar of these standards we ask in Jesus' name. Amen, amen. Hear now the inspired and fallible and inerrant word of the Lord, beginning at verse one of Matthew chapter six. And we'll read all the way to verse 18. This is Jesus speaking. 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. 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. But 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, and your father who sees in secret will reward you. 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. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who's in secret. And your father who sees in secret will reward you. 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. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head, wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who's in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. We'll come back next week and drill down on that verses 5 to 15 there where we talk about the Lord's prayer. We'll drill down on that. But I think it's important for you to see this as a unit. Verses 1 to 18 are a unit. They have a consistent concern and that concern has to do with religious hypocrisy. Remember, Jesus says you gotta be perfect like your heavenly father is perfect. That's the standard. He's not saying, again, to earn salvation. But he's saying this bar over here that the Pharisees have presented, that's a very low bar. The bar is the perfect righteousness of God. And in the Bible, perfection, the perfect righteousness of God, this standard, perfection, is about doing the right thing the right way for the right reasons. And it's this last part that often disqualifies us, isn't it? Ah, we do a good thing. We do it really well. But in truth, our motives were entirely selfish. And so there's a sense in which if you thought last week was rough, right? Like the last week of the week before we got to what we called the twin peaks of the Sermon on the Mount, that's absolutely true. That's the high bar in terms of human ethics. But now, actually to be honest with you, if you're paying attention, whoo, it gets even harder here because not only do you have to do the right thing, not only do you have to do it the right way, turns out you gotta do it for the right reason. And so that's what Jesus is leaning in on here in this section on religious hypocrisy. Let's begin by defining our terms. What do we mean by religious hypocrisy? People today tend to use the word hypocrisy in a different way than it tends to be used in the Bible. It's very common. to hear people say, you know, all Christians are hypocrites. Put up your hand if you've ever heard that said, like, oh, all you Christians are hypocrites. And what they usually mean by that is that Christians don't live up to their own standards. So they say, you Christians, that's fun to do, isn't it, by the way? You Christians out there, looking at you, you Christians, you say that you believe that sex is designed by God and should only happen in the context of covenant marriage. And I'll tell you something, I know an awful lot of Christian couples wrestling with adultery issues, just saying, hypocrites. And you people, you Christians, you like to say, turn the other cheek, but I got news for you. I've seen plenty of people in the car with the little fish thing on the bumper give me the finger when I cut them off at the intersection. Hypocrites. Well, whether that's true or not, that's not what the word hypocrite means. At least it's not what the word means in the Bible. By the way, just before we get to that, what do we call people? Does Christianity have a word for people who don't live up to the agreed upon standard? What word is that? Sinner. Yes. And are all Christians sinners? Yeah, so yeah, yes, Christians don't live up to the agreed upon standard. That's not the point, and that's not hypocrisy. No, I'm not saying that it's fine, but I'm saying, the reason you become a Christian is because you know you're a sinner. So I always find that the charge of hypocrisy that most people are making is actually just somebody saying, hey, do you know you're a sinner? So the great answer to that is, boy, you haven't got half a clue. I am way more of a sinner than you even know. How much time you got? But hypocrisy is a slightly different thing. Hypocrisy in the Bible actually means to play a role. It means to pretend. It's a word borrowed from Greek theater. It means to play a role. It means to want to appear a certain way. Wanting to appear righteous when actually you don't care about being righteous. That's hypocrisy. It's to play a role. And nobody played the role better than the Pharisees. Jesus really leaned in on them. He was hard on them. He said, woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you are like whitewashed tombs. What's a whitewashed tomb? Painted over. Nobody even knows how much deadness is inside. For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous. That's the issue. But within, you're full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. See that? Hypocrisy is about doing good things so as to be seen by others. That was a major issue in Jesus' day. And it was characteristic of the Pharisaic approach. to life and godliness. All of their rules, all of their things they talked about, all the things they wanted to argue about were really about appearances, not about substance. That was a dangerous disease. Once you are worried more about how you look than how you are, you're on a very dangerous road. Jesus warned his disciples about that. He said, beware of the leaven, that's another word for yeast, the spreading influence. of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. So again and again in the Bible, Jesus is telling his disciples, look, don't look at, I know they're the leaders of the day. I know they're the cultural tone setters. I understand that, okay? But you've got to look away from that system of religiosity. That's not the way to do it. You gotta look away from that. You gotta reject that approach entirely. Because at root, it is not about honoring God. It is about seeking honor from others. So that's what hypocrisy is all about. And that's what this entire section, these 18 verses, are about. You see that in the opening verse, verse one. Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them. That's religious hypocrisy. All right, so based on what Jesus goes on to say, how can I tell if I am a religious hypocrite? How can you tell if you are? Here are three diagnostic tests Now, by the way, I hope that doesn't sound crass to you. It should not seem crass to you. This is core Christianity. In the Bible, we are told to test ourselves. The Apostle Paul told his people, examine yourselves to see whether you're in the faith. Test yourselves. That's the correct use of these standards that we're meeting in the Sermon on the Mount. Again, this is not a bar that you have to try to jump over to become a Christian. This is a bar that you're supposed to apply to yourself. You're supposed to test yourself to see where you're at. You're supposed to listen to this and you're supposed to go home and be like, God, wow, I didn't even realize how bad I was doing at this. Lord, have mercy on me. Help me, Lord. That's what this is for. The apostles referred to the Bible as a mirror. You're supposed to look at yourself and see what requires adjustment. So this is the right use of this kind of a text. All right, so let's do that. How can you know if you are a religious hypocrite? That's the question. Well, according to Jesus, first diagnostic test would be this. If you need to be recognized, if you need to be recognized for all your deeds of mercy, you might be a religious hypocrite. Look at verses two to four again. Jesus says, thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that, key word there, that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward, but when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, that your giving may be in secret. Now, that phrase translated in the ESV there as give to the needy, maybe if you have an older Bible, it might say give alms, whatever, that's not any clearer. The ambiguity in these translations reveal that actually the Greek word is difficult to translate into English. It literally means works of righteousness. or works of mercy probably is the most literal rendering, works of mercy. So it includes giving money, of course, but it's more than that. It would include giving eight hours of your time at the soup kitchen. It would include baking a lasagna for someone shut in or whatnot. All of that sort of all-encompassing love and mercy stuff that Jesus has been talking about, all of that means nothing, he says, if you do it so as to be seen as righteous by others. That is the essence of religious hypocrisy. So the diagnostic question obviously is, is that me? Do you need to be recognized for all your deeds of mercy? Let me say that another way. Are you capable of doing a good deed without telling anyone about it? It's a good test, isn't it? Are you capable of doing a good deed without posting a picture of it on Facebook and working it into your next story? Are you capable of that? Does what percentage of your good deeds make their way into stories in which you are the hero? That's the question. When you give something to the church, do you need a bronze plaque to commemorate that? When you make a donation to the charity, do you do it with one of those giant oversized checks and do you wait for the photographer from the local paper to show up? That's what we're talking about. We're talking about motive here. We're talking about audience. Who is this for? What are you hoping to get out of this? Honor for you or honor for the Lord? You know, it is interesting. By personality, I'm kind of a reflective guy. I like to, I'm always zooming out. You probably hear me say that phrase, let's zoom out. They're gonna put that on my headstone, I'm sure. Like, he liked to zoom out. Of course, no one will know what that means. Pick something better. Anyway, I do like to zoom out, though, and I've been spending a lot of time recently thinking, like, what is God doing? What has he been, addressing what is he refining in us as a people? You know, these last three years have been interesting times, yeah? Lots of changes, what do those changes mean? One of the things I'm thinking about right now is how COVID has totally changed the way we do offering in the church. Remember pre-COVID? We're going to be telling these stories to our grandkids one day. And we're like, gather around, kids. Back in my day, we used to pass around wooden plates, and people would drop in envelopes full of checks and money. Right? I mean, that's how we used to do it. And you could always tell the big givers from the thump, right? you know, a couple quarters here, a light $20 bill, and then thump, and the usher would... And it was, I mean, who in the world came up with that system? That is a system designed to tempt us to religious hypocrisy, isn't it? You know, I sit in the front row. And if you're like me and you get paid every other week, did you ever kind of freak out inside on the off weeks? When you're like, do I whisper in the usher's ear, like, I get paid next week. And I'm in the front row. So when I pass the offering plate to the person behind me, there's no one else I can blame that on. I can't be like, it's him, he gave nothing. He doesn't love the Lord. Right? It freaks you out. I actually, and I honestly, I honestly struggle with that because I'm a pastor and I'm supposed to set an example. So on those off weeks, I was feeling anxiety. There was like a little voice inside me going, maybe you should, on the off weeks, put an encouragement note inside an offering envelope and just put it, put a prayer request in there, do something! Right, that's the voice of your inner hypocrite. And Jesus is saying here that the best way to kill that voice is to do your giving in secret. So here's a funny question. Is it maybe a good thing that COVID killed the offering plate? You know, before the pandemic, about 90% of our giving was through the plates. Now do you know about 90% of our giving is online? I mean, people do it on Sunday morning now before they come, like paying your hydro bill. Now, I think we have to tweak, we have to adjust. It'll take us a couple years to figure out, wait a second though, how do we continue to position that as an act of worship? Because it's not just like paying your hydro bill. It's an act of worship. It's a way of you acknowledging God as your creator. It's a way of saying, God, I understand that you made me who I am. You gave me the power to create wealth. All of this comes from you, Father. I'm just a steward. That's supposed to be going through your mind. So we have to think through some new rituals, some new routines. I'm just saying, maybe that change was actually an act of mercy. Maybe it was God leading us not into temptation. We do pray that, you know. Maybe God was listening. Either way, it's a good diagnostic question. Do you need, do you crave recognition for your righteous acts? Second diagnostic test that Jesus gives has to do with the how and the why of prayer. Maybe you could phrase it this way. If your prayers sound more like personal testimonials or flowery poems, you might be a religious hypocrite. Now, as I said earlier, we'll come back to verses 5 to 15 on the Lord's Prayer. For now, just look at verses 5 to 8 there. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. Oh, 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. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who's in secret. And your father who sees in secret will reward you. 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. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him." The basic issue again here is audience. Who are you praying to there, friend? Right? Because I mean, if you're praying to God, you're going to sound a certain way. And if you're praying to the people around you, you're going to sound another way. And believe me, you know the difference if you've ever spent time in a Christian prayer group. Let me bring this down to street level for you. If you automatically switch into KJV mode whenever you open your mouth to pray, you might be a religious hypocrite. Now, unless you are the last person on planet Earth to speak Elizabethan English, or unless you think that actually God's native language is King James Version English, those people are out there, bless you, but unless that's your reason, it's really hard to make sense of why you would do that. It makes no more sense than praying in Latin, which, by the way, we thought for a while made sense. That was one of the secondary issues of the Protestant Reformation. The church wasn't preaching or praying in languages people understood. What was going on with that? Well, boy, if you could pray in Latin, it sure did make you look spiritual, didn't it? Why aren't we praying and speaking in words that people can understand? When you pray in KJV mode, it just looks like you're playing a role in a Shakespearean play, which, by the way, is literally the definition of hypocrite. Or, if your prayers sound more like personal testimony than prayer, you know that one. Dear Lord, the other day when I was pulling that little girl up out of the well, on my way to the soup kitchen from a 4 a.m. shift after serving you through fasting for 11 days, water only, mind you. I said to myself, self, it is an honor and a privilege to serve the Lord, amen. All right, listen, friend, let me say to you something. No one is buying that, okay? That is clearly a prayer to us. God knows your calendar, he knows your schedule, he ordained it for you, so he did not need the recap, that was for us, thank you. Recap received, reward given, prayer disqualified. And that's religious hypocrisy. A prayer to God does not require a recap of the highlights of your week. That's for us, right? And a prayer to God does not require Shakespearean English. That is also for us. Jesus is saying here, a prayer to God should be simple, honest, open, and to the point. Now, it can and should be respectful, and it may include scriptures that you've memorized, whatever translation you may have memorized them in, but it need not be ostentatious, and it must not be seeking glory for yourself. So if your prayers sound like testimonials, or if they're filled with flower and language, then according to Jesus, you might be a religious hypocrite. The third diagnostic test that Jesus gives comes out of the illustration he offers about fasting. He seems to be saying here that if you exaggerate the hardships you endure as a believer, you might be a religious hypocrite. Look again at verses 16 to 18. And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by others, but by your Father who's in secret. There are certain religious activities that are good, they're fine, they're wonderful, they're okay. but that are also dangerous because of their capacity to be transformed into performance art, and fasting would be at the very top of that list. The Pharisees of Jesus' day were very interested in fasting. The disciples of John the Baptist were very interested in fasting, and they noticed that it was a way bigger deal for them than it was for the disciples of Jesus, and they came and asked him a question about that. Matthew 9, the disciples of John come and they're like, why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast? Why do we make such a big deal about religious fasting, but you don't? Boy, that's a really good question, isn't it? And I think the answer had something to do with timing, but it also had something to do with risk. Fasting has always been the playground of the hypocrites. It certainly was in the Old Testament. In Zechariah chapter seven, a delegation of Jewish leaders from the town of Bethel came to Jerusalem in order to ask the prophet Zechariah and the other prophets a question. The question was framed this way. Should I weep and abstain in the fifth month as I have done lo these many years? That's a good Pharisee question right there, isn't it? According to the historians, there was a fast that had become prominent during the exile. It was celebrated in the fifth month of the Jewish calendar. And it commemorated the destruction of the temple in 586 BC by the Babylonians. But when they came to ask that question, the new temple was almost completed. And so the religious leaders are wondering, what do we do? What do we do with this fast? I mean, the fast was all about, God, don't you see our suffering? God, won't you come and rebuild the temple? And they're over here doing this. The temple is being rebuilt. At some point, you wonder, so is this still necessary? What are you doing over there? So they came and asked the question. The answer they got is fantastic. It certainly was not what they expected. It was more than they bargained for. The story goes on to say, then the word of the Lord of hosts came to me, so that's Zechariah, say to all the people of the land and the priests, when you fasted and mourned in the fifth month and in the seventh for these 70 years, was it for me that you fasted? That's a good question. And when you eat and when you drink, do you not eat for yourselves and drink for yourselves? Were not these the words that the Lord proclaimed by the former prophets when Jerusalem was inhabited and prosperous with her cities around her in the south and the lowlands inhabited? And the word of the Lord came to Zechariah saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart. Doesn't that sound like the sort of answer Jesus would give to the Pharisees for such a question as that? That's interesting. Lord, we have some questions about a fast that we invented. What should we do about that? Answer, how about we talk about something more important, right? Redirect. That was the approach of Jesus. God says, here in this passage, God says, this fast that you're asking about, this big hairy thing where you weep and abstain and flail about. Is that ever really about me? Or was that about you? Do you secretly love the opportunity to outdo each other in demonstrations of mourning and lament over Jerusalem? Do you secretly, ah, do you secretly love to play the role of the holy martyr in front of your friends? Because do you know how I would like you to respond to the exile? Not with a big noisy feast, but with a noticeable increase in your public justice. How about you start being kind to widows? How about you take an orphan into your home? How about you stop being such a jerk to immigrants? You know, I'd much prefer that to your noisy fast. That's quite an answer, right? Sidebar, free point. Maybe don't ask God stupid questions, right? If you ask God a question, be prepared for him to tell you what you should have asked for and to talk to you about that. Right? Interesting, interesting. It certainly raises the question, why do religious people tend to make such a big fuss about fasting? I'm not saying fasting is bad. I'm just saying, any reading of the Old or New Testament should reveal that it's a pretty minor issue. Here's a fun question. How many times did the Apostle Paul give instructions to his churches in his epistles about fasting. What would you think that was? Eight times? Four times, one time, 12 times? What would be your guess? Answer, zero times. Zero times. So you can do it, it's fine. But beware of the impulse to make it a major thing because that impulse flows from a root of hypocrisy. Fasting appeals to us because of its potential as performance art. It gives us the opportunity to play the martyr and to magnify our sufferings for the Lord. How unlike the Lord Jesus. of whom the scriptures say, he was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shears is silent, so he opened not his mouth. That's the Jesus way, my friend. So if you can't stop talking about all your sacrifices and about all the difficult and painful things you do for the Lord, beware. You might be a religious hypocrite. So, we've defined our terms. We've provided some diagnostic tools. Now, what do we do if we've convicted ourselves in the process? And, of course, I'm not going to ask for a show of hands, but is there anybody here that has not yet felt convicted in the process? If you've not felt convicted by any of those three diagnostic ticks, you are either Jesus or fooling yourself. You're such a good actor. Not only have you convinced us, you've convinced yourself. We'll pray for you after the service, all right? The truth is we all lean in this. Religious hypocrisy is probably the most common sin among the people of God and has been for a very long time. We all lean this way, so what do we do? Thankfully, the answer is very straightforward. The cure for religious hypocrisy is repentance and reorientation. Repentance means you have to name it. You have to be honest with yourself about your score on those tests. A repentant person is gonna say, you know what, you know what? I do tend to give my resume at prayer group. I do that, I confess, God have mercy on me. A repentant person is gonna say, you know what? I do tend to crave recognition for all my righteous deeds. I get angry when I don't get the volunteer mug. Argh. I confess that, oh God have mercy on me. Repentant person is gonna say, you know what? I do sometimes love playing the martyr. I do sometimes, like making a huge deal out of all the sacrifices I'm making for the Lord. God have mercy on me, sinner. So that's the first step, own your score. Own your score and take that to God in an attitude of humility and repentance. And then reorient. Reorient. Take this question seriously. When you fasted, was it for me? That's the issue. Of course, you can change that up. When you prayed, was it to me? When you gave, was it to me? When you served, was it for me? Take that question seriously. And if you don't like the answer, then make some changes. Reorient. Make sure that everything you do is truly unto the Lord. Maybe do some stuff in secret for a while. Clear the stage in your heart. Empty the auditorium of your religious theater. Kick everyone out. and learn again how to live your life and to do all your deeds of righteousness before an audience of one. Oh, God, help. Let's pray together. Our Heavenly Father, once again, in this Sermon on the Mount, you've raised the bar. Lord, I stand convicted. I'm sure many others do here as well. And so, Lord, I am thankful for Jesus Christ. I'm thankful that I don't have to jump over this bar to be saved. I'm thankful that Jesus met and exceeded this standard, that he lived a life of perfect love and justice. He did that for me. He died on the cross for me and for all my sins and failings. And he sits now, ever at the right hand of the Father, eager to make intercession for me, as indeed for all those in this room who know him. And I'm thankful that he pours down supplies of the Spirit and grace and help that we all, with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord as though in a mirror, may be transformed by one degree of glory to the next into the same image as our perfect Lord and model Jesus Christ. Oh God, let this be the work of the Spirit in us, we pray. Amen.