Hey, I'm Matt Brownell.
And I'm Van Owens.
And I'm Tim Adams.
Welcome to Climbing the Mountain, where we dive into the scriptures and discuss themes,
connections, and real life application.
We're kicking off a series here where we're going to examine the sermon on the mount and
discuss implications for this teaching for Christians today.
In chapter six of Matthew, Jesus begins a new section.
Now, we've been studying the passage that began in 517, how Jesus tells his hearers
that he's come to fulfill the law.
Then he warns his hearers how their teachers were not correctly teaching the law.
They had false teaching.
Now in chapter six, Jesus turns to our lives, how we live out our faith.
He warns us not to be hypocrites, possessing merely a superficial righteousness or doing
a religion for show, essentially for yourself.
We're going to read a longer section of scripture that includes three bad examples of how we
should not practice our faith.
In the middle of it is this wonderful aside, the Lord's Prayer.
We're going to read all of it together so you can hear it all in context, but we're
going to just focus on the three examples and we'll save the Lord's Prayer for another
episode.
Tim, you want to read this?
Sounds good.
Starting in Matthew 6, verse 1.
Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.
If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
So when you give to the needy, don't announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do in the
synagogues and on the streets to be honored by others.
Truly I tell you, they've received their reward in full.
But when you give to the needy, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is
doing so that your giving may be in secret.
Then your Father, who sees what is done secret, will reward you.
And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues
and on the street corners to be seen by others.
Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
But when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is unseen.
Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they'll be heard
because of their many words.
Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.
This then is how you should pray.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our
debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will
also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.
When you fast, don't look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show
others they are fasting.
Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious
to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father who is unseen, and your Father
who sees what is done in secret will reward you.
Awesome.
Thank you.
So the big picture I see in this passage is Jesus telling us to look at our hearts again.
Why do we do what we do when we worship, especially in public?
In the previous passage, people were trying to get out of obeying the law.
Now Jesus pivots to people who were obeying the law, but they were obeying for the wrong
reasons to be seen by others.
So what is the quality of our hearts that God desires?
Yeah, I think that when I looked at this question, I wrote down three words, sincerity,
earnestness, authenticity.
These are the things that I think are really difficult, and I'll just speak for myself.
They're really difficult for me when I think about my public presence.
It's easier to just put it on.
It's easier to just treat it almost like clothing for me.
I know I've been around public worship for the last almost 40 years of my life.
And so it's easy for me to put it on and just say, I know how I should look when I go to
church.
I know what's in me.
I know how I feel, and that might be a mixture of all kinds of sin and attitudes and just
wrongness, but I know how I should look.
And so it's really a challenge sometimes to be sincere and to go in and to prepare myself,
which is what it takes.
I have to prepare myself to be sincere.
Otherwise I can just put it on.
Yeah, I think it's very easy for any of us, and definitely for me to have this mindset
of what I'm doing in public is what I have to focus on, and that that's really what counts.
And when I think about what God actually wants is that my public worship means to be an outpouring
of my existing and growing relationship with God.
So there's something that there's a relationship, there's a fellowship that I have with God
inside of me, and that is deep in my soul.
And everything that I do, whether it's private or public, comes out of that.
And what I'm seeing Jesus really speak against here is that doing things so that other people
will see.
And that inverts it, which I know we'll talk a bunch about.
But to me, that's the key quality.
There's this outpouring of I want to be in fellowship with God at all times and in all
places.
And one of those places happens to be in public worship and in public, but that's not my primary
focus.
Yeah.
When I was thinking about this, well, I thought of two things.
First, this is kind of frightening.
These people are doing the right things, but God judges your heart.
He sees your motivations.
And so suddenly this became very, very difficult for me.
And it reminded me of another, one of my favorite scriptures, which I'm sure is yours as well,
Van, because I'm going to quote Samuel here, which is your favorite.
It says, God says to Samuel, do not consider his appearance or his height, he's talking
about David, for I've rejected the other people, his brothers.
And the Lord does not look at the things people look at.
People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
And there was something about David's heart that was special.
And when you see him burst on the scene, I think it kind of relates to this, you know,
how God sees our hearts and what's going on inside of us when we're worshiping.
When we see David, he's, you know, before we see him, you know, go face off against
Goliath, we know he's spent a lot of time on his own, obviously.
He's been in the middle of nowhere and tend in the sheep.
And then, you know, a wild animal comes along and God saves him from that wild animal.
And that builds his faith.
And so we see he's got some kind of real relationship with God that was developed in private.
And so when he sees Goliath, he's angry.
He's angry that this guy is insulted, the armies of the living God.
And then he gets up and I think that there's this trust in God that is at the core of him.
Yeah.
You know, it's sort of like that scripture in 2 Peter 1 where it talks about making
every effort, making every effort to add to your faith goodness and to goodness knowledge
and knowledge, self-control.
And when you read a passage like that, for me, it's overwhelming.
It's like make every effort and then there's a long list of stuff that I need to do.
And yet it makes complete sense when I think about the kind of heart that I want to have
towards God in my relationship with him.
Because if I don't have it, the more around it I am, the easier it is to fake it.
And the easier it is to get away with faking it because people are used to seeing you in
a certain light.
And it's that effort in your individual, that thing that made David stand out, that made
him do what he did when he went march down into that valley to confront Goliath, came
from inside of him.
It wasn't something he was wearing.
And in fact, there's that comical scene where Saul gives him the armor and says, I can't
go in this because I'm not used to it.
And so you envision this little kid trying to wear the armor of a six and a half foot
tall man when what he had inside of him was enough for him to be able to do what he needed
to do.
And I think that that's what Jesus is calling us to, is that authenticity, that it comes
from a real place inside and not from some motivation to just look right or to be popular
or to fit in.
And there's a real danger in what you're describing too, Van, right?
The more you perform at it, the better you get at performing.
And that's scary.
Yeah.
There's an aspect to the way we live our lives that is performative.
But if all there is is the performance, then, and there's nothing underneath the performance,
then there really is nothing.
So Jesus, I love what he's, so he's, he's addressing public shows of righteousness.
And he uses these three examples, right?
He's got public giving, public prayer, public fasting or fasting is such a way that everyone
knows about it, we don't live in the same culture, might have a hard time relating to
these examples.
For instance, if someone got up in the street corner and started praying loudly, we'd probably
think they are crazy.
But we do have things today like virtue signaling, right?
Signaling your virtue.
What are some modern examples of things that we can kind of tie back to these examples
Jesus is giving and how, how do they relate to us here?
Yeah.
I mean, I think it depends on your cultural context.
Are you doing this in a setting that's, you know, maybe primarily Christian or you're
doing this in the setting that's not.
But with most of this, it basically comes down to I'm doing something primarily so that
other people will perceive me a certain way, not so that I, you know, become a certain
way.
I mean, the actions that we do do, do something to us.
But if the primary purpose is just to change other people's impression of us, that's, that's
the issue.
So there's a lot of examples of that, you know, most of them would be talking about
something you're doing or doing something and making sure other people know about it.
Right.
Or like, tuning your own horn, which comes right out of this passage.
So but yeah, I mean, I think a very obvious one example to me is when is with acts of
charity, you know, it's still very, very common of telling people, you know, that you, you
just gave a lot of money to someone, whether that's a very public figure or it's really
easy to slip that in to a little conversation.
Oh, you know, I was talking to this person and they needed XYZ.
But then, you know, I think in addition to that, it's about, you know, as for us as Christians,
it's really easy to get into this mindset of what do I need to do for someone else to
think that, you know, I'm okay, or that I'm, I'm, I'm a good Christian, whether it's just
showing up to something or it's using the right lingo.
So I'm kind of in the in club, right?
And that gets me some sort of status or favor or like perks within a community, but it's
not actually changing my heart.
Yeah, I think that there is something that's very prevalent in our culture now is this
tendency towards being self congratulatory.
And it's, it's really pervasive.
And it's something that I notice all the time.
And I will see it in myself.
And when I do it, it just, it's repulsive to me.
I'll see it in myself where I'll suddenly feel like I'm at work, for instance.
And someone, I'm in the presence of someone that I feel intimidated by or that I want
to impress them.
So I will figure out a way to get into the conversation that, oh, I've been around this
place for my whole adult life.
I'll say that sentence or I've had experience with, with this president.
I was here when so and so was president of the university.
And I was, and it, and it becomes this thing where I'm trying to puff myself up.
You're not in a job interview.
You already got a job.
Right.
I'm just, I'm trying to, again, I'm trying to look like something.
Yeah.
The thing that, and this is, I'll say this because it, it's a particular pet peeve of
mine.
Do you know those things that you'll see sometimes on social media where people go up to a homeless
guy and they give him a bunch of money?
And then they take him to the store and they buy him clothes and they give him a haircut
and they do all this stuff.
And I'm not making a judgment as to where the hearts of those people are in doing that.
They might be in a great place.
But to me, it's like, just do it.
Yeah.
Why do you have to put it on social media?
Are you trying to make me feel, are you trying to make me feel guilty for not doing that?
Or are you trying to just look like a great guy?
Right.
And that's a great example.
I find myself a lot of times, I just want to look like a great guy and almost especially
when I'm not feeling like a great guy.
I want to do something to just sort of show everybody, look, here I am.
See, see how good I am.
See what a good boy I am.
I'm just a good guy.
First thing I thought of with this thing was philanthropy.
I was, you know, I work in the construction industry and so I don't want philanthropy to
stop.
I like when people give a lot of money to fund projects or fund, like, you know, different
departments or whatever or positions and, you know, they get their name attached to
the, you are the so-and-so fellow and or get their name on the building.
And I love all that because it keeps us going with the construction that I love to do.
But yeah, that was the first thing that came to my mind.
And what does that say?
You know, you want your name to last, right?
It's about legacy somehow.
People will still have your name in their mouth after you're gone and I don't know.
Yeah.
I think there is, but there's also a thin line because Jesus does say earlier in the
sermon on the Mount, he says, let your light shine.
I know.
To the world, right?
I know.
A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
Don't put your light and put it under a basket.
And to me, it's just one of those.
There's a, there's a series of fine lines in the teaching of Jesus that you have to walk
on that where does letting your light shine stop and blowing your own trumpet begin?
Right.
It's a, it's a really thin line.
Yeah.
And I brought up that I was thinking about a lot about those, those Matthew five, 14
through 16.
That's a great counterpoint.
And so it really is then a quality of your heart.
I was also thinking about philanthropy in that I remember doing, there was a wall of donors
for this building that we were, you know, and then there was a tile that was anonymous
and we're like, Oh, okay.
Well, that person didn't want, they just wanted to give and they thought it was a good cause,
but they didn't want their name, but we're, we're still putting anonymous up here.
Okay.
Anyway, something to consider.
I don't know how did these kind of different examples creep into the church?
For instance, do we see virtue, virtue signaling in church?
If so, how?
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's, I think it's super common because in the church, the, you know,
in an ideal world, if everything was perfect, you know, the, the leaders and the people
we most respect in the church would be those who have hearts that are so rich and generous
that they are doing all these things naturally, but it's a lot easier to kind of fake it or
to point to the one example of something that we're doing and not have the consistency that
it, you know, it's something that I'm doing in secret and it's also happens to be in the
public space.
So I, it's not to say that anyone who's talking about something that they're doing that's
good is only doing it for praise, but I think that the temptation is especially significant
in the church because that's really what defines what it means to be great.
Right.
If, if we're going to be great like Jesus, we're going to be doing the things that Jesus
did and said.
Yeah.
I think that, you know, when I was talking before about the thin line between letting
your light shine and blowing your own trumpet, it, it really is, and it is a quality of heart
and it's something that we have to first of all be very aware of and I think be very
prayerful about and also be very open about talking in as individuals because I think
I'll give an example of someone up at the pulpit talking about how generous a church
we are.
Now there's a reason to do that.
You know, there's a reason you want to encourage generosity.
You want to, you want to share with people who might be visiting churches that, you
know, we're, we're trying to not just be religious, but we're also putting our, putting our money
where our mouth is.
We're also, you know, we're, we're living, we're trying to live like Jesus and be giving
for real.
But if you're not careful and you're a person sitting in the audience, especially a person
who is a member of the church sitting in the audience, you might misconstrue that and think,
well, this is what you do.
You say how generous you are because, so that people can see it.
So that people can see it.
And when you're presenting at a public worship service, there are things that you say so
that people will know because otherwise they wouldn't know.
I think it's just a, it's a very thin line and I think it's a line that we all have
to walk individually in our relationship with God.
Yeah.
I know I, I felt the same way that this is a tricky kind of thin line and, and a lot,
it seems like so much of our modern world deals with seeing things publicly, like what
we were talking about before with social media.
And so I, I actually find some really useful aspects to that too.
Like if you're going to use social media to evangelize in creative ways, I think that's
great.
I'm not suggesting we get rid of any of our marketing communications teams at all.
I think they're needed.
They're great.
But you know, I think where it veers into self promotion over promoting God, I think
that's, that's maybe a judgment call that each of us has, has to have in our own heart.
And I think that's also the danger of anyone who gets up in front of it, people, you know,
are you doing it for yourself or for God?
Are you getting likes?
You know, I don't know.
Uh, what's, you know, I think that's, that's the question.
I think God sees it and we need to ask ourselves, you know, what are our motivations?
So I think we have time for maybe one more question here.
This is, this is great.
So all right, let's say, um, let's see.
This doesn't say that giving, praying or fasting is wrong.
He says, when, when you give to the knee, when you pray, when you fast, so he expects us
to do all three as an aside.
I often wish he'd say, if you fast, I hate fasting.
I don't know why people, it's the rage now, you know, like everyone's talking about their
intermittent fasting and it's so good and health benefits and blah, blah, blah.
Uh, I'd rather eat frankly, but Jesus says when you do all these things.
So it, it can be good to give pray and fast.
It's more about what we were talking about, the quality of the heart and, uh, how we do
each of these.
Why, why do you think Jesus frames these religious activities in this way as heart issues between
you and God?
What does that teach us about the purpose of religious activities in the first place?
Yeah, I mean, when I think of this question, the fundamental thing I have to go back to
is, you know, what is God's goal for us?
And that's one of those questions that has many different answers, just like Jesus comes
down and he says, you know, this is why a sudden man came down and there's like, he gets
like six or seven different answers at different places.
But one of those is in Titus, um, chapter two, and it says, for the grace of God has appeared
that offers salvation to all people.
It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled
upright and godly lives in this present age while we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing
of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ.
And then this is the key who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and
to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.
And so in the context of what we're talking about, if my, if my righteousness is something
that I do for the praise of others, then I will be very eager to do it when I receive
that praise, right?
And I'll, I'll be going, I think giving money is a really good example of this and so I'll
just keep on using it, but I'll go and I'll like look to, oh, there's someone who needs
something and then I'll kind of check, look around, right?
And think, oh, is anyone watching?
Or like, you know, who am I going to, I'm thinking about who am I going to tell about
it, you know, in an hour or two?
And so there's a certain kind of eagerness there, but I don't think it's the eagerness
that, you know, is being talked about in Titus where there's an eagerness to do good because
it is good.
There's an eagerness to do good because that, that is the type of people that we are because
we're the people of God.
And so wherever we go, you know, in the light of day and in the dark of night, you know,
we're just eager to do good.
And I think that's the, that's the direction that God is calling us to and wants, you know,
to purify us, to become those people and quote, unquote, religious activities, you know, performing
righteousness can be a really incredible way of developing that heart because we're, we're
teaching ourselves, this is the kind of person that I am, you know, this is the kind of person
that God has made me to be.
And so that to me feels like the fundamental reason behind why I'm being called the faster
to pray or to, to give or whatever they'll, in the case may I be.
Yeah, I, when I was looking at this, at this question, I was thinking of the fact that
the people that Jesus was talking to here, the original audience were people who lived
a life where these things were very normal, that they didn't have the way that we can
have today.
So we have a very sort of segmented existence.
I have, I live in different worlds.
I have my work world.
I have my church world.
I have my home life.
They're all, they all can feel like different lives.
And if I don't have something overarching that unites all of those things, I can be three
different people in those three different places very easily.
And those three different people are, are, they can be at odds with each other, which
is why it's always weird when somebody from my work comes over to my house for dinner.
Because then it's strange because those two worlds are clashing and they don't, and they
don't match.
The reason they don't match or the reason that they may not match is that I don't have
something overarching.
And what's overarching needs to be my devotion to God so that I really in a way have one
life that I'm living in all of those places and that it's devoted, that one life is devoted
to God.
So even though there are certain behaviors that I exhibit at church, that I would not
exhibit at work, I would not when a meeting starts in my office, stand up and start singing.
Okay.
Let me lead you all in a prayer before we start this meeting.
I wouldn't necessarily do that, but I need to have, it needs to be the same person in
all those places.
So there needs to be an acknowledgement of God if that's appropriate at work.
I need to be able to share my faith.
You know, I need to be able when I'm talking to my daughter about a lesson that she's doing
in her class on the book of Job.
And she says, this is stupid and I understand why she's saying this is stupid.
So let it be overarching and say, well, this is what it's communicating.
Not in a churchy way, not in a work way, but in a sincere way.
You don't want to be a secret Christian and people should know you're a child of God,
right?
Right.
Wherever you go.
You wouldn't want to have your friend say, oh, I didn't know you were a Christian.
Yep.
I need to say really, really hard to do.
It's really hard to think that way when I'm in those different worlds.
Well, I like what both of you are saying here.
And I think I was thinking of bits of both of them a little bit in terms of purpose,
I think.
What you were saying, Tim, and the Titus scripture you mentioned references glory.
And that was kind of what I latched onto here that I think a lot of this has to do with
giving glory to God.
And as I was looking at the end of chapter five, I was reminded, be perfect therefore,
as your heavenly father is perfect.
And I couldn't help but think about him being described as our father, which is the Lord's
prayer is in the middle of this section, is a reminder of that he's our father.
And at the end of chapter five, Jesus is saying, God's their father, but they aren't
acting like it.
They don't resemble God.
And when we act like our father, we give him glory.
And in Proverbs 17, saying it says, the glory of children are their fathers.
If we were gaining our sonship by our works, we'd get the glory, which I think is a little
bit of what Jesus is talking about here.
And again, it's like this delicate balance that we've been talking about, because on
the one hand, and this is what the scripture you mentioned earlier, Van Matthew 5, 14
through 16, it says we need to be the light of the world and not hide that light because
it's needed all around us.
But then, you know, verse 16 is really great.
I want to actually read that because it relates to what I'm saying here.
In the same way, let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and
glorify your father in heaven.
So we should stand out.
None of these examples are bad in themselves.
The crucial thing is Jesus is addressing now why we do them, our motivation.
We should never stand out for self.
This is all forgotten, His glory.
Who gets the glory?
Yeah, who gets the glory?
This is great.
I think we should do another one on this.
This is a lot of fun.
Thanks, guys.
Thank you.