Amen, all right, I'm gonna need a little bit of feedback
here, so don't be bashful, a little response here,
but what is the good life?
What is the good life?
If I grab the microphone and I hit the streets
and I started to do an interview,
what are some of the responses I would hear
on the street of the good life?
What's a good life?
Relationship with Christ.
Relationship with Christ, all right.
The spiritual one here, that's a good answer.
What's some of the answers I might hear on the street?
20 million cash.
Cha-ching, the good life, right?
Big house.
Big house, yeah.
Fast cars.
Debt free, what was that?
Fast cars.
Fast car.
20 cars in the garage, yeah.
What else, good life?
Eastern State.
Relationship with family and kids,
this is the good life, right, yeah.
Anyone else?
Your health.
Your health, yeah.
The good life is having health.
Knees not aching, back not creaking, right.
The ability to get out of the bed in the morning,
that's the good life.
It's a lot harder nowadays, but yeah.
Anyone else?
But what, what was that?
A cup of coffee.
A cup of.
Yes.
There are days that is the only life.
Cup of coffee, that is the good life, yeah.
Well, we're gonna be looking at
the greatest sermon ever preached.
The greatest sermon.
Anyone know what the greatest sermon ever preached is?
The Sermon on the Mount.
He had the spiritual answer
and he's got the good answer there.
Good, he's right.
The greatest sermon ever preached
is a sermon that was taught by Jesus,
the Sermon on the Mount.
And we call it the Sermon on the Mount
because in Matthew chapter five, verse one,
it says that when Jesus saw the crowds,
he went up onto a mountain.
And he sat down and his disciples came to him
and he began to teach his disciples.
And this teaching is for his disciples.
That's something to remember as we hop back into Matthew.
We've been in Matthew before, we're picking it up again.
We've made it all the way to chapter six,
the middle of chapter six.
And so we're kind of jumping in,
but I'm gonna give you a little bit of just a recap
of some of the themes that were there
in the study of Matthew
and particularly the greatest sermon ever preached.
It's important to remember first
that it is to his disciples he's teaching,
even though there is a large crowd there.
And his disciples are those who have left everything
to follow him.
And so they are his disciples.
They are wanting the life of the kingdom.
They understand that Christ is come to bring something.
They don't fully understand all the details of it yet,
but Christ is beginning to teach them.
And this sermon represents a teaching
about what the good life is in the kingdom of God.
What is the good life in the kingdom of God?
It's a blueprint for really living.
That's what this whole sermon is about.
And Jesus teaches that the good life of the kingdom
is for the poor in spirit,
for those who mourn and those who are humble,
those who hunger and seek after righteousness,
those who are merciful and pure in heart and peacemakers,
that the good life is to those who are persecuted
for righteousness' sake.
And this is an upside down thinking
if you compare it to what we would find out
on the street, right?
No, the good life is the opposite of all of those things.
The good life is ambition.
The good life is rising up.
The good life is rising through the ranks to the top.
The good life is $20 million in the bank account.
That's the good life.
And Jesus says there is a good life in the kingdom,
but it's not like what you'll find on the streets.
And unless we think it is a trivial matter
to follow Christ into this good life that he offers,
a few verses later in Matthew chapter five, verse 20,
he says, I tell you,
remember he's talking to his disciples,
those who have already left everything to follow him.
He says, I tell you that unless your righteousness
surpasses that of the scribes and the Pharisees,
you will never get into the kingdom of heaven.
Well, who are these scribes and Pharisees of Jesus' day?
These were a group of folks
who they practiced strict adherence to the Jewish law.
They were striving to execute on the letter of the law
rigorously, perfectly.
In fact, they so wanted to make sure
that they were keeping the letter of the law,
that they set up kind of fences around the law
to make sure that they didn't accidentally cross over
and violate it.
You know how we have houses
and then we put a fence around our property?
We're like, we don't want you to get even near to our house.
You stay out there.
We're gonna put a fence around our property.
Well, they had the same thinking.
Let's put a fence around the law.
In other words, more laws
to keep us from ever getting close
to the laws that are there and so we'll never break them.
That was their thinking.
And the Pharisees were all about it.
Now, they weren't the professional class
of priests or teachers.
They were the lay people who had just said,
we're gonna be all about this.
You know, they were the type A go-getter type personalities.
Like, we're gonna grab this by the horn.
We can do it.
We can live this perfectly.
And that's who Jesus is talking about.
They worked really hard at outward,
detailed conformity to the religious rules.
And Jesus says to his disciples,
your righteousness must surpass theirs
if you are to enter into the kingdom of heaven.
And I think most people who are looking at the outward
display of their righteousness at that moment
would say, hopeless.
It ain't happening, right?
No one is better at it than the Pharisees.
But Jesus wasn't talking about
the same kind of righteousness.
When he said surpass, what he was really saying is,
you need a kind of righteousness that is better
than the righteousness they're pursuing,
that is more whole or complete than the righteousness.
You need grade A righteousness.
They're going after grade C to enter the kingdom.
And the righteousness he's talking about
is a kind of righteousness that is the inside out.
Whereas the Pharisees were obsessed with working
on the outward condition and adherence to the law,
Jesus says the kind of righteousness
that will get you into the kingdom of heaven
is a righteousness that is inside out,
that begins at a heart level,
that begins at a motive level,
why we do what we do, not simply what we do.
And so we're jumping in now to chapter six,
and we're picking it up in verse 16.
If you have your Bibles, I would encourage you to turn there
on Matthew chapter six, verse 16.
It will also be on the board if you would like to read along.
It reads like this, Matthew chapter 6 16,
whenever you fast, don't be gloomy like the hypocrites,
for they disfigure their faces
so that their fasting is obvious to people.
Truly I tell you, they have their reward,
but when you fast, put oil on your head
and wash your face so that your fasting
isn't obvious to others but to your father
who is in secret.
And your father who is in secret will reward you.
This is God's word.
What we have here is right in the middle of chapter six.
If you remember what we studied last when we were in Matthew,
if you were here, we studied the Lord's Prayer.
And the way to think about the Lord's Prayer
from a structure standpoint on the greatest sermon
ever preached is the Lord's Prayer is in the center.
And that may not make a whole lot of sense to us
since our stories typically began
and then the climax is toward the end
and then you have a wrap up, right?
But in Jewish literature and Jewish writing,
the point, the main point, the crux of everything
that was taught was always at the center working outward.
And so the center is the Lord's Prayer,
Jesus teaching us how to pray.
But right around the Lord's Prayer,
before it and after it here in 16,
we have three examples that Jesus uses to teach his disciples
what it means to have that greater righteousness.
And the first one back in verse one is giving
in how we give.
The second one is in praying how we pray.
And then the third one here is how we fast.
Between verse one and 18, these examples are given.
And the reason these three examples are chosen,
giving, praying and fasting is because these three activities
would have been very significant to the Jewish audience
he was speaking to, the disciples.
This would have represented their regular
and even commanded activity of their life.
We think of giving sometimes,
especially if you're in church, you get all sweaty
because it's like, oh no, he's gonna talk about giving.
That mean?
Grab the wallet, right?
No, no, no.
In Matthew chapter six, verse one,
when he talks about giving, he's talking about almsgiving.
It's not a word we use very much.
Alms, alms for the poor.
This wasn't about funding and ministry.
This was about your responsibility individually
to give directly to those who are in need.
That you are the kind of people, this was expected.
Jesus says, whenever you do this,
it's expected that you will give to those who are poor.
That's just a part of being a disciple.
And in their society, it was more than just being a disciple.
It was actually their food stamp program.
The community takes care of one another,
especially those who are down and out.
And so he uses giving and then he uses praying,
which was an activity that they did throughout the day.
Every single day they prayed.
And now he uses an activity, the activity of fasting.
But to start this whole section off,
he sets it up by saying this in verse one of chapter six.
Be careful not to practice your righteousness
in front of others to be seen by them.
Otherwise, you will have no reward
with your Father in heaven.
Be careful how you practice.
And then he gives these three examples.
This will serve as a pattern for Jesus' teaching.
He's laying out the idea of what a hypocrite does
when he gives praise and fasts,
and how his disciples will live differently
than the hypocrites and when they give, pray and fast,
because it will be from a wholly,
completely different motivation.
It may be the same thing that is happening,
the same activity that's happening,
giving or fasting or praying,
but it will be completely different.
Because it comes from a motive, a heart aligned with God.
And we find here in this passage too,
that Jesus is really leaning into
like Jewish wisdom literature.
You guys know like the book of Proverbs, right?
The book of Proverbs is this heavy wisdom literature.
Sometimes it's hard to understand.
Sometimes you look at it and you say,
hey, that, it makes promises,
but that's not always how it is.
Well, that's because it's wisdom, right?
It's generally true.
It's generally the way we ought to live.
This is wisdom that's pointing us this direction.
And Jesus is leaning into that wisdom way of writing
when he lays out these three examples.
And wisdom literature focuses primarily on
the fear of the Lord at the center.
It's from the place of the fear of the Lord
that we work out.
And that's that motivation.
That's that centering core, the fear of the Lord.
And also that the integrity of the heart
before God comes before the acts of righteousness we do.
That is most important that our heart be in alignment first
than doing the activities.
Jesus is contrasting the Jewish wisdom literature
that says, hey, the fear of the Lord is the foundation.
The integrity of the heart before God
is paramount before the activities.
And he's comparing that or contrasting it
with a Greco-Roman idea of the virtue writings
of their day.
And here's the thing about the virtue writings
of the Greco-Roman period.
The virtue writings were all about doing public acts.
Public acts, good acts, good deeds in public
for the purpose of being glorified.
Think about it, like how are you gonna get a statue?
How are you gonna get an inscription written about you?
How are you gonna get someone to parade before you
when you enter into a town?
You've gotta do heroic, virtuous acts.
And so the Roman Greco writing was all about,
hey, do these acts, do these performances in public
in order to get to the public's praise
and you will have immortality.
You will have immortality, you'll live on
in the likeness of your statue
or your inscription somewhere.
And this is all in the mind of Christ
as he's giving this teaching
because this is in the mind of his disciples.
What about the Roman way?
The Roman way of triumph, the Roman way of gaining
a name for myself, glorification, public performance
for public praise.
Is that the way or is the other, is the way
through the virtue of the fear of the Lord,
through the wisdom of following God and his commands
from the integrity of a heart aligned with God first?
Is that the way?
And Jesus is contrasting these two.
And he begins by saying, whenever you fast,
and we'll stop right there,
because notice that it does not say if you fast,
it says whenever you fast.
Fasting is not an if, but a whenever.
And so what is fasting?
Well, fasting is very biblical.
You guys know that fasting shows up in the Old Testament
in a few places.
One place is in the book of Jonah,
when Jonah goes to the city of Nineveh
and he preaches judgment over the city.
How does the city respond?
Yes, sackcloth, ashes, they fast
and they ask God to relent and he relents on his judgment.
Fasting shows up there as a way of repentance.
We also see it with David when his child was struck
sick and unto death because of his sin with Bathsheba.
And it says that David fasted and prayed
and asked for the Lord to heal or to deliver his child.
And so fasting is a form of mourning as well,
repentance and mourning.
And we also see fasting used in the Old Testament
to seek the direction of the Lord.
They would call national fasts to say,
what is God doing, where should we do,
what should we do in this situation?
But then we also jump into the New Testament
and we see that fasting is also a New Testament idea
because it begins with Jesus in the wilderness
for 40 days fasting.
Anyone fasted for 40 days before?
Not as a boast, but so we can go, wow.
No, Jesus fasted for 40 days in the wilderness.
We also see that Anna, who was a widow in the temple courts,
that she also fasted and prayed for the Lord
and said night and day, praying for God's deliverance,
praying for Messiah to come when Jesus was ultimately
brought into the temple courts to be dedicated.
Little bit further in the book of Acts,
we see that the early church fasted and prayed
for God's direction and ultimately it led to them
appointing the apostle Paul and Barnabas
to go out and do missions work.
And so fasting was integral to the life of the believer
in the early church.
In fact, there's a document, it's kind of neat,
it's an extra biblical document,
meaning that it is not a part of your Bible
and therefore it's not considered inspired word.
So it's not something to say, hey,
this is the inspired word of God,
we should do everything in it.
But there is a document from the late first century
to the early second century called the Didache.
And the Didache is a document that was produced
as a way of teaching young converts,
those who had just come to the faith in Christianity,
what are the essential doctrines of the faith
and the essential practices of a believer
and it would help to teach them,
oftentimes they would memorize the Didache
as a way for them to prepare for baptism.
So they would go through this study
in preparation for baptism and somewhere in that document,
the Didache, there's a passage,
one line that's inserted there that I thought was telling
of the practice of the early church
in the late first century, early second century,
late first century being just after Christ
and the disciples or the apostles.
So it's right there at the beginning.
Here's the line in the Didache
that I thought was fascinating.
Do not let your fasts fall on the same days
as the hypocrites, for they fast on Mondays
and Thursdays, therefore keep your fast
on Wednesdays and Fridays.
Don't let your fast fall on the same days of hypocrites.
There's that word from Matthew, right?
Well, they fast on Monday and Thursday,
you're gonna fast on Wednesday and Friday.
What do you hear there?
I hear a lot of fasting.
A whole lot of fasting was going on
in the first century, it sounds like.
And this fits actually with the story that Jesus tells.
Some of you will remember in Luke,
Jesus tells a story about a Pharisee
who enters into the place of worship.
And do you remember what he says?
He looks over at the sinners and he says,
God, whew, Jesus, I thank you, I'm not like them.
That side, I thank you, I'm not like them either.
This side of the room, I thank you that I'm not like
the tax collector and the sinner and the prostitute.
Why, why, why am I not like them?
Because I fast twice a week and I give a tenth
of everything that I have.
Whew, thank you, Lord.
Right?
And so it tells you, even in Jesus' time
when he's writing this and then late into the first century
and early second century, fasting was a way of life.
Fasting was a way of life.
Twice a week was a standard for the Pharisees
and for the new converts to Christianity.
They say that when the Pharisees would fast,
that oftentimes they would put mud all over their face
or put a bag over their head, right?
To show the level of sincerity of their mourning
or repentance or whatever it was.
And so you can imagine on Mondays and Thursdays, right?
A bunch of people in the marketplace
with bags on their heads or mud all over their face.
It probably was an interesting spectacle.
So I'll ask us this, to get our mind going,
do we regularly practice fasting?
Do we regularly practice fasting?
I'll tell you that in my early days in the faith,
I was at a church where fasting was a theme.
Like it was something that we did fairly regularly
as a body called to fast or personal fast.
But in looking back, I was much younger then,
much, much, much younger.
I'm such a different person now.
I was much younger at the time,
but I remember the fun jokes that we would make
whenever it was fast time, right?
And then those jokes actually began to take on reality
a little bit.
So one of the things that you would hear is like,
man, I'm fasting right now, I'm only doing smoothies, right?
And then the next time you would run into them,
like the next week, they're on a two week fast,
like yeah, I'm still fasting,
but I decided I was gonna blend up the brisket
and just drink it.
And then pretty soon everyone's getting creative
with their fasting about what they can put
into the blender and blend up.
It's like a little potato, a little sour cream,
a little chive, a little,
I'm getting a loaded potato here in my fasting drink.
Can you imagine what immaturity?
We would never do that, would we?
What is the purpose of fasting?
Why should we fast in the first place?
Well, I'll say it this way,
fasting is a way for us to deny ourselves food
or certain kinds of food or activities or something
so that it reminds us and we are making a confession
about our dependence on God.
It's a reminder to us that our life,
our reality, our sustenance,
true life is not found in these things.
It's not even found in food, which gives us life,
but it is found in God and God alone.
If you're like me, like food brings comfort, right?
Some of you guys get a hangry, right?
Hunger, anger, right?
You get a little hangry and then you eat a little bit
and you're like, woo, I'm much better now, right?
And we joke about the carb coma, right?
You have a really heavy meal loaded with carbs
and shortly afterward, like you are useless,
but you feel good, but you're useless, right?
And we pray our best and we worship our best
when we've had a big full meal, right?
Or we sleep.
Or we sleep and we rest really well.
Food brings us comfort.
So why wouldn't food be included in fasting, right?
Because it separates us from that thing
that lulls us to sleep,
both physically and spiritually at times,
and it awakens us and tunes us in.
Richard Foster, a Christian theologian and author,
he says that more than any other
spiritual discipline practiced,
fasting reveals the things that control us.
Fasting reveals the things that control us.
And fasting is also a sort of declaration
that whatever it is that we're seeking from God,
whatever that is, is greater than our need
for the most basic of our needs, eating.
It's desperation and dependence.
But we have to be warned because Jesus says
that there is another way that you can fast.
Verse 16, whenever you fast,
don't be gloomy like the hypocrites,
for they disfigure their faces
so that their fasting is obvious to people.
Truly I tell you, they have their reward.
And so we're told by Jesus that fasting
can actually be co-opped by the Lord.
It can be co-opped for the praise of people.
It can be co-opped to earn the praise of others.
How many of you know that we are tempted
to act spiritually, especially in a congregation
or a church when we are around one another?
We are tempted to act spiritually in worship,
in prayer, in obedience, in order at times
to be seen and praised by others.
But I will admit, it happens.
At a heart level, at least.
The hypocrite is not a hypocrite because he or she
acknowledges that fasting is good, but then doesn't do it.
That's how we typically think of a hypocrite.
Oh, you say it's good, you say it's right,
but you don't do it.
No, the hypocrite that Jesus is talking about
is one that is a hypocrite because they do the good thing
that orients them toward God,
the God-orienting thing like fasting,
but not to orient themselves to God,
but to people instead.
They are a hypocrite because they're trying
to get the praise out of the people.
Like the Greco-Roman virtue writings,
the Pharisees made fasting a spectacle
to gain human approval.
And when we do that, it becomes a form of self-righteousness.
And when we fast or we pray or we give
or we worship for public recognition,
we're actually seeking a form of self-salvation.
We're using religious activity to build our identity
apart from the gospel.
Fasting is about reorienting or God-orienting our lives.
It's about reliance and dependence at a heart level.
And Jesus is teaching his disciples that they are to live
not for human approval or praise,
but that their primary concern should be God's approval.
When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face
so that your fasting isn't obvious to others,
but to your Father who is in secret.
And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
What's the in secret?
In secret part is in the heart, in the motive, in the will,
the part that no one else can see.
You see the activities look identical.
The giving looks the same, but the heart is what matters.
The heart is what's in secret.
You can see this wisdom type literature.
Jesus is saying no one can know
he's not saying to us that no one,
no one can know that we're fasting
and if they do know that we're fasting,
well, that's worthless, that's pointless.
What he's saying is put oil on your head,
but wash your face, do two very common things,
cosmetic practices of the first century.
You know, putting oil, we don't put oil on,
well, some of us may not put oil on our head.
Some may, there's all kinds of oils now
that you can put on yourself, right?
And Jesus is teaching us that we should be
putting oil on our face, right?
But whatever the common cosmetic practice
you go through every morning, that's what it was like
to put oil on their head and to wash their face.
And he says, do what you do every day.
Don't disfigure your face, don't look gloomy,
hoping someone will ask what's wrong.
So you can tell them that you're fasting
and they can give you sympathy and praise.
We tend to think that things like giving and praying
and worshiping and fasting, well, they have to be done
in an altruistic fashion, right?
Where we want nothing out of it, zero desire for anything.
No reward, no recompense.
But that's one of the things that I found
very interesting about Matthew is that Matthew,
in Matthew, Jesus over 10 times uses the idea
of acts of righteousness or acts of obedience
and contrasts them with the rewards
that we will get for doing them.
That there is a reward system of sorts in heaven.
He says, in other words, don't seek earthly rewards
like treasure or money or people's praise,
but do seek and pursue kingdom rewards.
They support and encourage faithfulness
which will not go unnoticed.
And I have to say that we know salvation is by grace
through faith alone, in Christ alone.
That it is not something that you can earn.
That no amount of obedience, no amount of good works
will ever earn you standing before God
to commune with him, to be loved by him and to know him.
That is only through Christ.
But good works and the rewards that are promised
are built on the foundation of salvation.
It's not about earning God's love,
but responding to his love in obedient faith
and reaping the blessings of God
and the blessings of a life that is oriented
toward the kingdom of heaven.
Tim Keller says, the purpose of spiritual disciplines
like fasting and praying is not to earn God's favor,
but to put ourselves in the path of his grace.
And that is the reward.
The reward to us that is promised by God
for faithful obedience from a heart
that is oriented toward him.
The reward is a blessed life.
The reward is oriented toward God
and a life that is lived wholly and completely.
A God designed, God shaped, day to day, grace to grace life.
That's what we're being invited into.
That's what Jesus was inviting his disciples into.
I'm gonna invite the worship team to join me on stage
as I wrap it up, but another way to say it is that
the reward is life with God and the life of God
abounding in us.
That is the reward for faithfulness.
Life with God and the life of God abounding in us.
And you could take those two things,
the life of God or the life with God
and the life of God abounding in us.
And you could bring those together
and you could package them up
and you could say in one word what they mean.
And that's Jesus's word throughout Matthew.
That's the kingdom.
As we're studying Matthew and we're looking at the text,
you'll over and over again see the words the kingdom
or the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God.
And when he talks about the kingdom,
he's talking about life with God
and God's life abounding in us.
And you know what that means?
That's not a future reality only.
It plays a part in the future.
There's a full realization of it in the future,
but it's not purely a future reality.
It's a reality now.
Brothers and sisters, we can live the kingdom today.
We can live oriented toward God.
We can use spiritual disciplines like fasting or praying
or giving or other ways that we can express our love
and devotion to God, faithfully obeying him,
not to get anything for ourselves among people,
but to earn rewards in heaven.
That is being with God and God's life being with us.
I think of it like a key, right?
You put a key in and only when all the cylinders line up,
does it work?
Does it turn?
Does it open?
And that orienting toward God,
that heart's motive toward him,
it's not like a transaction where if I do this,
I get this thing, but it's an alignment.
And it's only in the alignment that these things come,
the blessing, the grace, the life abundant,
the joy, the peace, the patience, the kindness,
the spirit.
Don't be like the hypocrite who uses
these spiritual disciplines, these mechanisms
and thinks of them transactionally.
If I just do them, I get something out of it.
If I do them, I can get people's praise.
If I do them, I can earn God's favor.
If I do them, God's gotta love me better.
Or if I do them, I'm better than you.
Don't use them that way, but they are very useful
to reorient our hearts and our lives back toward God
and to be found in the way, the kingdom,
so that the kingdom life flows through us,
so that we are wrapped up in the kingdom life with God.
And I believe there's a passage in Philippians chapter three
where Paul having lived his life this way,
he understood it, he got it.
And that kingdom life was so alive and flowing through him
that it was bursting out through his pen onto a page,
sent to him a letter to the church in Philippi
and ultimately delivered down through time to us today.
I want you to listen to these words
out of Philippians chapter three.
The apostle Paul writes,
if someone else thinks they have reasons
to put confidence in the flesh, I have more.
Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel,
of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews,
in regard to the law, a Pharisee,
as for zeal, persecuting the church,
as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.
Paul saying, I did it all, I was perfect.
I was a Pharisee of Pharisees.
I lived the life of trying to earn the life through Jesus.
I lived the life of trying to earn the life
through the wax of righteousness.
I can boast in that if I want,
but listen to what he says next.
But whatever were gains to me, I now consider loss
for the sake of Christ.
What is more, I consider everything a loss
because of the surpassing worth
of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,
for whose sake I have lost all things.
I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ
and be found in him, not having a righteousness on my own
that comes from the law,
but that which is through faith in Christ,
the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.
I want to know Christ.
Yes, I want to know Christ,
to know the power of his resurrection
and participation in his sufferings,
becoming like him in his death
and so somehow attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already attained all this
or have already arrived at my goal,
but I press on to take hold of that which Christ Jesus
took hold of me.
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet
to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do,
forgetting what is behind and straining toward
what is ahead, I press on toward the goal
to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward
in Christ Jesus.
You see it?
It's all there.
The prize, what's the prize?
The prize is God himself, the life of God in me.
How is that attained?
Not through acts of righteousness,
not through adherence to the law,
but through orienting toward God,
through reaching out, through pressing on,
through trying to grab hold of him.
Then life begins to flow to me.
The prize is God, the prize is his life,
and ultimately it's his resurrected life
in our glorified bodies, which we will one day possess
in perfect communion with God for all eternity.
You see, in Genesis chapter 15,
God says to Abraham, I am your shield
and your very great reward.
I am your shield and your very great reward.
Will you pray with me?
Father, I thank you.
As we study your word that the gospel of Jesus Christ
is not about my merits or my earning,
but it's about your grace.
I thank you, Lord, that we can study Matthew 6 today
and not get a lesson on, oh, I should be fasting
every single day this amount of time.
I should be doing this, I can't drink that,
I have to eat that, I can't do this.
But instead, you have given us a work of grace,
a spiritual discipline that could help to align us
to have relationship with you
and receive the life of the kingdom.
I pray that each one of us would not walk away
and leave it behind, but instead we would consider how
in our lives we might use it faithfully
to orient our lives toward you.
I thank you for the invitation to live the kingdom life.
I wanna ask while we're praying this morning,
have you lived the life of a hypocrite?
Have you lived the life of performance?
Has the motive of your heart been off?
Have you sought praise of man or acknowledgement of people
or self-righteousness and self-earning?
Or do you want to change?
Do you wanna turn and reorient?
Do you wanna seek intimacy in life with God?
If that is you this morning with our heads bowed
and eyes closed, would you just raise your hands
so I can pray for you this morning?
Father, I thank you for those who are responsible
and those who are responding to your word, to your grace.
I pray that you would empower them to live the life
that you are calling them to, not as a hypocrite,
not through the motions, not for performance,
but that they may know you, that they may lay hold of you.
May they be brought to you our great prize and reward.
I pray that they would grow in intimacy
and relationship with you this week,
that they would feel your presence near,
and that you, by the work of the gospel in their lives,
would take away the desire for performance,
the desire to measure up, the desire for self-salvation,
and instead, melt all of that away
in light of the beauty of who you are.
Captivate their hearts and draw them to yourself,
not through legalism, but because of God's grace
and through legalism, but because of beauty.
That they would see you as beautiful, desirous,
a pearl of great price, a treasure to be chased,
and they would reach out to take hold of you,
not as a law, but as grace.
Amen.
Let's keep praying for just another moment, though.
You are here, and there are things in your life
that have control over you.
Things in your life that have control over you,
and as we've talked about fasting
and we looked at the Word, you're going,
you know what, it's time for those things to be done with.
It's time for me to break them off,
and you see that fasting might be a grace
that God has given you to cut that thing off
and to reorient your life toward Him.
It may not be a bad thing, most of the time it's not,
but oftentimes it's the things that we lean on
or we rely on or we've been kind of lulled
into a stoop or a sleep around.
If that's you this morning, I also wanna pray for you.
If you are done with those things
having control over your life
and you want to reorient back to God,
I wanna pray also for you.
If that's you, would you just lift your hand
and raise it up with me this morning,
and I will pray for you as well.
Father, we come to you and we pray that
whatever power or hold the things of this earth
created things people have on our hearts,
that you, the great deliverer, would break the bonds,
break the chains, and set us free.
I pray that there would be victory and triumph
in the name of Jesus, of the gospel of Jesus Christ,
that a flood of joy and hope would fill their souls
as they take steps to cut that thing off,
to choke it out for a little while,
and to see what life is like without it.
I pray that you would give them wisdom
on how to execute on that, to do that well,
and endurance to follow through.
I also pray that your life in grace would meet them
and give them strength when they have no strength,
and help to carry them to the finish line.
And may they always remember
the great reward and treasure is you.
It's not about the loss of the thing,
it's about the gaining of the thing
that is of greatest value.
We pray this in the name of Jesus.
Amen.