Matthew 6:1-8: The Father Who Sees in Secret — A ‘Christian Growth’ Message

Transcript

Our friends, we’re doing something on Sunday morning which has been done by billions of people, and that is, we’re walking through the most famous sermon given by Jesus Christ called the Sermon on the Mount, recorded in Matthew 5-7.

I think, and I hope you agree with me, those of you who’ve been on the journey, I think we have seen very clearly that the sermon is not a list of rules.

It’s not a checklist for heroes in the church. It’s not some kind of Olympian programme which you must rise to. Jesus is teaching his disciples that God has entered into their life and made them new people, and this new life is going to be very different from the ordinary life of the ordinary person, so if I might put it like this, Jesus does not treat his people as rowing boats.

And say to them, well, I now want you to go at tremendous pace, against incredible odds and do miraculous things.

Jesus puts into us an engine.

And says I will help you to live a brand new life. So chapter 5, which we’ve looked at now, has been about the new life, especially to do with relationships, being forgiving, loving, pure, not too angry. Chapter 6, which we come to today has got to do really with the new life in religion.

Praying, giving, etc. So chapter 5, we might say has been more public Christianity. Chapter 6 is now more private. Chapter 5 has been more social. Chapter 6 is more spiritual, and the big point Jesus is making is in the first verse which Rosie read for us. Chapter 6, verse 1, where Jesus says this, be careful not to practise your faith in front of people, to be seen, because if you do, you’ll have no reward from your Father in heaven, and as I say, Jesus gives three examples where we might do this, one is in our giving, one is in our praying, and one is in fasting.

Now this teaching therefore my friends, and this is one of the most important things I want to say to you this morning, is not just a warning. It’s not as though Jesus is standing up and just saying, look, don’t be a boaster. Don’t be a bragger.

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We’ve all seen people who do display themselves, and we might say blow their own trumpets, which is a phrase borrowed here from Jesus. But what Jesus is teaching is that the Christian must learn that the reward you get from people is vastly inferior to the reward that God is able to give you.

And so to put it in a famous nutshell.

Who is your audience?

Finding your audience is going to be crucial to your life, because if your audience is people, you’ll be let down again and again.

If your audience is the heavenly Father, you’ll be wonderfully provided for. So this teaching is not just negative, as I say, it’s not just Jesus saying don’t be a bragger, don’t be a boaster, don’t be a hypocrite. This is a positive message. He’s basically saying, do you realise, believer, that your heavenly Father can be trusted to give you more than people could ever give you?

So let me put it like this, in case this is sort of slowly coming home to you, would you rather be a performer on a stage? Where people applaud you madly. And then you go home to great loneliness and longings.

Or would you rather be somebody who just serves very quietly. But you go home to a friend whose love is steadfast, kind and wonderful, because that’s what Jesus is getting at.

He wants his disciples to find that the Father has more to give than this world.

So we’re going to, if you’d turn to the passage, it’s on page 1442 in your Bibles in front of you, page 1442. Matthew chapter 6, verses 1 to 8.

And we’re gonna look at the principle for a minute, chapter 6, verse 1, don’t perform. And then we’re going to think about secret giving and then secret praying.

Do you think friends God could give us great things? Well, the answer of course is yes, because it says in the Bible that God who didn’t spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, will he not along with him, graciously give us all things that we need. So let’s think for example, at the principle of who we live for.

Who we live for

I think I’ve told you before the story of a small boy, maybe 10 years old, playing in the back garden, finds a rat in the back garden, and without going into too many gruesome details, he corners the rat and kills it.

And then he runs into the house holding the rat by the tail, but he doesn’t know that his minister has called in to visit his mum, and he runs into the house calling out, Mum, I found a rat in the back garden and I cornered it and I whacked it and I whacked it and I whacked it and I killed it.

And then seeing the minister standing there, he suddenly says,

I do believe that the Lord has now called it home. And you see, his mind, his mind has gone to the minister. That’s the person that he wants to impress. His language has completely changed and it is the easiest thing to do this because people are in front of us.

And we sort of want the rewards of people, don’t we?

And so we say things that will work. And we omit things that won’t work.

And in a religious meeting, of course we can do things to impress people. We can talk over morning tea to impress. We can pray publicly in a way that impresses great eloquence. Great knowledge. We can preach in order to impress. We can sing, we can play, we can serve in order to impress people, and, and what we do there is we forget God.

And we miss his reward.

So Jesus teaches us that not only should we remember that there is a heavenly Father, but we should want what he has for us, because it says in chapter 6 verse 1, the Father is able to reward.

And verse 4, the father is able to repay, and verse 6, the father is able to repay.

So let me say this friends, God has something for his people, which the world is not able to give.

You may say at this point, I don’t want any reward. I’m perfectly happy to pray, speak, serve, do the morning tea. I don’t want any reward, I didn’t even want a reward from God, I’m just happy to do it.

There’s a mistake in that kind of thinking.

CS Lewis said once that if you marry for money, you are corrupt. But if you marry for friendship – you’re wise.

And we need to recognise that God is a friend to his friends, that he has things to give his friends. And these things are not catering to our greed. These are things that contribute to our progress and our growth. So is it possible that my heavenly Father, God, if I looked to him, and trust him – is it possible that he has something to give me which is better than all the world can give me, and the answer says Jesus is yes.

Let’s think about this in the area of secret giving, verses 2 to 4. We read in chapter 6, verse 2, Jesus says, when you give to the needy, notice he doesn’t say if you ever give to the needy, but he assumes his people will be giving to the needy. If no, when you give to the needy.

And then he has two bits of humour. Yes, Jesus has 2 bits of humour. The negative one is don’t blow your trumpet as you give. Now we’re going to have an offertory in a few minutes. Just imagine people are walking down with the bag, and just as it reaches, Tom, halfway down the seats here, he’s just about to put in his 50 cents and he gets out his trombone and he plays the trumpet to say, here’s my coin moving into the bag. It’s an incredible thought.

And there’s a negative piece of humour, he says, I want you to be so quiet in your giving that your right hand or your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand is doing.

Now imagine this afternoon, after you’ve put something into the offertory, your two hands are having a conversation.

And your left hand says to your right hand, whatever happened to that money that we got out of the ATM yesterday? And your right hand says, oh, I gave it to this so and so charity, and your left hand says, why didn’t you tell me?

It’s an absurdity, but Jesus is making a point, a very, very wonderful point.

There is a book on the humour of Jesus written by a man called Elton Trueblood.

He’s done a whole book on the humour of Jesus, now the humour of Jesus is not sort of comedy festival humour, but it’s very illuminating.

You know, why don’t you take the log out of your eye, said Jesus, so you can see the speck in your brother’s eye.

You who are worshipping money and not God, you’ve got as much chance of going into the kingdom as a camel through the eye of a needle.

And here you don’t blow your trumpet when you put something into the offertory.

And you give so secretly that your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand is doing. There’s something very illuminating about this humour of Jesus. And so with this trumpet illustration, he’s exaggerating the hypocrite who’s so keen on being noticed that he blows a trumpet as he gives some money, and does he get a reward, he does.

People stop and they say, wow, look at that.

And then it all fades away.

We know of course there are occasions where people give a check.

And they want to be seen handing over the huge check and they want to have their photo taken and ideally go into a newspaper or a magazine.

Maybe their names are going to be read out in some big public way, or maybe their names are going to be carved into a building, this person gave a huge amount of money.

In the church, I suppose it is possible to be known for giving. Or to make sure there is some recognition for what we’ve done, but I am so thankful that I have noticed in the church there’s hardly ever any of this.

Most people give very quietly, privately, without expecting great recognition.

And I want to ask the question whether God could actually reward a person who gives without any recognition. When a person gives secretly, is it possible that God could reward them?

So picture the Christian who decides to give in such a way that nobody knows but God. Do you think God is capable of rewarding that person? Well, of course he is.

First of all, God will be delighted to see his son or daughter giving some money and especially I would say to a gospel cause. If you’ve got to make a decision between giving your money to something that will perish or something that will last, the believer should choose what will last.

But also God knows how to provide for that Christian. I mean, the Bible says the cattle on 1000 hills are his, he’s got the whole world in his hands, he knows how to compensate.

And so he may defend the Christian from going bankrupt if he wants to. He may defend the Christian from getting a speeding ticket.

Maybe he’ll loosen the Christian’s grip on the world as the Christian gives something away. Maybe God will strengthen their grip on the eternal world as they give something away.

Maybe God will decide to reward them with great joy, which the world can never give or peace, or maybe he’ll entrust them with more money because he can see that they can be trusted with money. I have a friend who earns billions, but he gives away close to billions and it just doesn’t really interest him – owning a lot of money – what interests him is seeing his money go to the gospel work.

Now the point you see is that God is able to see what we’re doing, he because he does see what we’re doing, he really does.

And he’s able to provide a reward, which is infinitely more valuable than anything we could get from this world.

I’ll just tell you a humorous anecdote if I may, that I was in the surf once in Bondi and a small plastic bag floated past and in the plastic bag were some coins and some notes and a driver’s licence, and I grabbed it and I asked around if anybody had lost this and nobody had, and I went onto the sand and I asked around if anybody had lost this and nobody had. So using the driver’s licence in the bag, I put it into a postal bag and sent it to the guy. I’m now going to lose my reward because I told you how wonderful I’ve been, and this bag and the stamps cost me $11.

And I got a note back from this guy to say thank you very much, that was very kind of you, and he put in the bag a scratchy.

Do you know what I’m talking about? So, I’ve never bought a scratchy before, but I decided to go down to the news agent, hoping very much the archbishop wouldn’t be there seeing this gambling clergyman.

But I went down to the news agent with my scratchy, and you remember I paid $11 for the bag and the stamps and I won $11 on the scratchy, and I walked home thinking God is very clever. Very clever.

There’s secret giving, dear friends, you can give, and God knows, and God knows how to look after you, that’s what Jesus says.

Now secret praying

Chapter 6 verses 5 to 8, Jesus says when you pray, doesn’t say if you pray because he expects you will be praying, and he’s got a negative example about prayer. Don’t do it like a performer, says Jesus, who stands up in the synagogue and shows off. Don’t do it on the street corners to show off, because you’ll be seen and maybe people will applaud, but your reward will be over.

Now this is an unusual thought, isn’t it? I mean, it may be true that in Jesus’ day you stood on a street corner and prayed in a loud voice and people were very impressed, but I would have thought in our day people would think it was a very wacky thing to do.

But a person could pray to show off.

In my previous church, we had a professor of English and he would lead us in prayer, it was never showing off.

But it was the most extraordinary prayer, with no notes whatsoever, he would pray virtually a perfect prayer. He would begin with the attributes of God and how great God was, and then he would go on to the things of the world and the kingdom and the individual, and he would come back to the faithfulness of God. And it was as if we had sat listening to a very great prayer, but it was never done to perform. And it would have horrified him if anybody had applauded him.

But it would be possible, wouldn’t it, to show off in prayer.

You know, you’re up the front and you’re basically praying, but you’re really giving the congregation a lecture on what you think, or you’re preaching a sermon aimed at people. We could do that, it would be a tragedy.

It’s what we call a horizontal prayer, not a vertical prayer. Now the big issue that Jesus raises is in chapter 6, verses 6 to 8, he, he asked the question, could you pray in secret and just honour God?

And receive from God some reward for your praying, and could you get a reward for your private praying, which is more wonderful than anything you could get from the world? And the answer is yes.

So let’s imagine that we’ve decided that we’re not going to pray publicly and we’re not going to pray some kind of fake prayer, and we want to find a private place to go and speak to our heavenly Father. Now Jesus warns us in verse 7 of another danger and that is we’ll talk rubbish.

He says don’t be a babbler when you pray.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking, well if I talk a lot, God is bound to think I’m spiritual. God doesn’t think like that.

One sincere sentence is worth more than 1000 insincere sentences.

And also we mustn’t be so fearful when we pray that we think, well the only way I’m going to get through to God is if I keep raving at him forever.

No, no, no, God says. Put your mind in gear. And pray, speak like you have a heavenly Father.

Because otherwise it’s going to be unreal. Not real prayer.

And that’s the prayer that Jesus commends, the real prayer.

The prayer that God rewards, how does God reward our prayer? Well, I think it works like this, we find a few minutes in a quiet place and we go to speak to God and we remind ourselves who we’re speaking to, our heavenly Father, that he’s very great and he’s very good, and we speak to him humbly because he’s great.

And we speak to him honestly because we want to be honest.

And we tell him things that we’re grateful for, and we tell him things that we want forgiveness for, and we tell him things that we have needs of. And this is how I think God rewards us, as we do this, he deepens our faith in him.

He strengthens the bonds of our friendship with him.

He maybe gives us peace as we unburden things to him, knowing that he can do things we can’t do.

And he takes our prayers, yes, he really does because he sees in secret, and he wisely works out what to do with those prayers.

And he refreshes our soul, and we may be getting up after 3 minutes of prayer, having had a better 3 minutes, than we could have had with 1000 people to complain to.

So a few minutes of real prayer with the Father, says Jesus, brings more reward than this world could ever provide.

Now next week we’re going to look at the skeleton prayer of the Lord’s Prayer. In one 20-minute sermon, we’re going to look at the Lord’s Prayer next week.

And we’ll see the genius again of the prayer, but I just want to finish with a few quick comments.

The point that I’m making this morning from this part of scripture is that Jesus tells his disciples that they must live their life before God, because he is watching lovingly.

And find that his reward is better than any human reward.

A few closing questions, why should we have a secret life, Chapter 6, when we’ve been told in chapter 5 that we’re to let our light shine before men? Is there a clash?

The answer is that we’re to hide the things that should be hidden, so God is honoured. And we’re to show the things that should be shown, so God is honoured, they’re not a clash. We’re to show the things that should be shown to the honour of God. And where to hide the things that should be hidden to the honour of God.

Second, are we always in God’s presence or do we go into His presence? And the answer is that we’re always in his presence.

But there are times where we draw aside to concentrate on him and come in prayer to his very throne of grace.

Thirdly, how do we find a secret place when life is chaos?

And one commentator says necessity is the mother of invention, that when you want to find a few minutes alone with your heavenly Father, you’ll find a way.

When I was a new Christian, I was about 19 years of age, and I went to a thing called the Church Missionary Society Summer school up at Katoomba, and there was a hall for the men, and there was a hall for the women, in each of the halls there were probably 60 double bunks.

And so there are 120 men in one hall and there are 120 women in another hall. How do you have a quiet time in a hall like that?

Well, one morning I woke up and woke up early, and I was looking round this big hall of men.

And an African man I remember called Francis Narruka from Tanzania, he very quietly got out of his bed, he didn’t know anybody was up, he assumed everybody was sleeping and everybody pretty well was sleeping.

And he stood beside his double bunk and he put his Bible on his bed and he read for probably half an hour, and then he prayed for a certain amount of time and then he slipped back into bed. And as he slipped back into bed, the bell went and we all sort of were woken up and onto our duties, but that man had found a way in a crazy room, to spend a little bit of time with his heavenly Father.

And I’ve no doubt it pleased his heavenly Father very much that he found the time, and the effect of God in this man’s life was that he was a very, very saintly man. A peaceful, joyful, godly man.

And that’s what Jesus is talking about, we have this very wonderful heavenly Father, and to find a few minutes to deal with him, is something that not only pleases him but it also greatly blesses us. So we’ve got a secret life – if you’re a Christian, an honourable secret life.

And there’s more reward from God when we look to him and when we trust him than all the world can ever provide.

Let’s Pray

Dear heavenly Father, we thank you for putting new life into your people.

We thank you for the opportunity to show a new life in ways that honour you in the world.

And we thank you for the privilege of having a secret life where we can draw near to you and unburden our hearts and find that you provide and reward in ways beyond this world, we ask that you would lead us in wise and faithful paths in Jesus’ name, amen.

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