Latest / Redeemer Students Podcast / Matthew 6:1-18 | Practicing Your Righteousness | August 30th, 2026

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Matthew 6:1-18 | Practicing Your Righteousness | August 30th, 2026 · Redeemer Students Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us before we start.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you for your church and for coming here tonight.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: I pray with the word that you have for us that you would teach us, you would convict us, you would comfort us.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, that we would just be able to see you as more beautiful when your word is done being heard.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: I pray for small groups, and above all, that we can just see you more clearly tonight.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Pray all in your name.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, last week my friend Zion was here and preached for us, and he walked us through the second half of Matthew 5.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Because remember, we're going through the Sermon on the Mount, which is Jesus' first sermon in his public ministry, these uh chapters of Matthew 5 to 7.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: And Zion asked the question, kind of getting at what Jesus was getting at, which is what's in your heart?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: That was the question that we asked.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because from the very beginning of his ministry on earth, Jesus has been setting the record straight, correcting the way that we think that being a disciple of God is not just about what's on the outside, but it's about your heart.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying that we too often exchange heart transformation for just changing our behavior.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: I started playing football when I was in sixth grade.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: When I got the 10th grade, I have a picture of me, JV football keel, just a menace in the slot right there.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: Bro.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: You're good.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, so that's me in 10th grade.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and that that's the face of a guy who wanted to quit playing football.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I quit when I was in 10th grade, pretty much because it was just like becoming too much to juggle with, and I just kind of didn't really care anymore.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: But there was a problem.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: See, the varsity football coach when I played was one of my parents' best friends.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: So the problem was that if I was going to quit, I couldn't just silently leave, but I had to go have a conversation with him because he was probably going to be at a cookout at my parents' house that weekend, right?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: I had to go talk to him.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: But to my relief, right when I was about to quit, there was a coaching change.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so I immediately thought, well, maybe this new coach will take things a little easier.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe he won't care as much, won't be as intense.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so maybe I can still play.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: I can kind of like football can go to the background and I'll just still kind of do and hang with my friends.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that new coach was Coach Morgan.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know Coach Morgan, he was the opposite of easier and the opposite of more relaxed.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was actually he cared more about football, demanded more of the team.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: His expectations did not lower, but but they doubled down.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: So to me, that was an easy exit.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: I quit.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And what we see in the Sermon on the Mount is that Jesus, from the beginning of his teachings, he shows up and instead of relaxing the commands and the laws of God from the Old Testament, he doubles down.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: So far, Jesus has been taking the law from the Old Testament, the original Ten Commandments, and intensifying them.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Saying it's not only about how the law looks on the outside, but it's about what's going on in your heart.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus takes the law that was established by God and his people, and instead of saying, okay, that God, the Old Testament God, was a lot, he's really intense.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna take things easier now.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: He says things different.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Everything that God has spoken still remains.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is crazy.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: They normally all go off at the same time, I thought.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're good, you're good.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um Jesus is doubling down, right?
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: The the standard is the same.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: We see in Matthew 5, at the end of Matthew 5, here's what is the expectation of God.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is not relaxing the expectations of God.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: He's not relaxing the law.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying and showing that God actually cares more deeply than maybe we thought.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so he continues his argument here in Matthew 6, as Faith just read for us.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna work through the first 18 verses, and what we see is that Jesus is pressing on the same thing here, what's in your heart, and more specifically, why do you do what you do?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's doubling down.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: He cares more than we thought because God is not only concerned about your actions, but he cares deeply about the fears, the desires, the insecurities, the intentions, the anxieties that motivate why you do what you do.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: The warning in his passage is clear in his first verse.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: For then you will have no reward from your father who is in heaven.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's this thing I see on Instagram a lot that talks about the performative male.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Have y'all seen this?
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's like a performative male starter kit.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And what has been happening on like college campuses is they're having like performative male competitions.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And and and pretty much what this thing is, is it's a self-awareness of guys who the reasons that they wear what they wear, the reasons that they do what they do, they read what they read, the kind of coffee they drink, all of these things is to be performative, to show something on the outside, but they actually probably don't actually enjoy these things.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: And in the same way, like there's this culture that can happen that Jesus was talking into thousands of years ago that is still a culture today of a similar performative Christianity, where it's not about what you wear or the type of worship you listen to or the hobbies you have or the spiritual disciplines that you do or don't have, but it's why are you doing them?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: How are you presenting yourself?
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Are you just practicing these Christian things just to be seen by others?
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: And in the following verses of this passage, Jesus gives us three examples of what this looked like 2,000 years ago: giving to the needy, prayer, and fasting.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Three spiritual practices and rhythms that have been taken and hijacked to be performative, performative spiritualism.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's important to notice that these are examples specifically to the warning of practicing your righteousness.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because certainly there are countless other examples that Jesus could have given of ways that we want to be noticed, right?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Ways that we want to be seen.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: But his primary focus here is how we use religious activity to earn approval for ourselves.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really creative scheme of the enemy to take these good things, and now we're using them for our own gain.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: The command from Jesus is not don't practice your righteousness, not it's not don't do these things, but it's don't do them for the wrong reason.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Don't practice your righteousness in order to be seen by others.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so where I want to start tonight is our first point is that righteousness is received, not earned.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: I think we have to start here when we talk about practicing your righteousness because righteousness is what the gospel is about.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: See, we are not righteous people.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're not good people.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're rebellious and sinful.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible is clear.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Paul talks about in Romans 3.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: None is righteous.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: No, not one.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: No one understands, no one seeks for God.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: All have turned aside, no one does good.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's how we're born that way.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: We are not right, we don't have a righteousness of our own, but in Jesus we have been given and bestowed a gift of righteousness, a gift of goodness that makes us good in the eyes of God, but it was not earned by what we do or don't do, but it was bought for us by what Jesus did for you and for me.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Paul explains it, for our sake, he, Jesus, made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's this exchange, our unrighteousness for God's righteousness.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: We are made one with God.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: We belong with him.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: That is what he's talking about.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: We belong.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: But because sin still lingers in our heart and clings close, we are constantly trying to earn something, earn a righteousness that we have actually already been given.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Bernay Brown explains it this way.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is such a helpful way to frame what Jesus is getting at.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Belonging, this idea of being one with God, being known and loved.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: Belonging is the innate human desire to be a part of something larger than us, to be seen.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in, by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes, but often barriers to it.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And what's in Jesus' sight here is how our yearning to belong, to be seen, to be approved, we practice these spiritual things, we practice religious acts, we practice righteousness in order to acquire and earn this belonging for ourselves instead of arresting in the belonging we already have in Jesus.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And these things that we do, they're just they're poor substitutes.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: They're poor substitutes for what we have.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, what does this look like?
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let's read Matthew 6, 2 through 4.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: 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.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: 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 the Father who sees in secret will reward you.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: See, Jesus here is assuming that his people, God's people, the religious and righteous people, are already going to have a care for the needy.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: He's assuming the expectation that they're already practicing their generosity.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: However, the focus of his warning here is about doing these things for the wrong reason.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's in line with everything Jesus has been teaching so far.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's getting down to the heart, the motivations.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: In a commentary I read this week on this, the author helpfully points out that there's three motivations in our heart that could be happening here.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: The first is that we seek the praise of others.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying, Sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites, that they may be praised by others.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: We we want the praise of other people around us.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Secondly, we congratulate ourselves.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: We do these things to make ourselves feel better about ourselves, to congratulate ourselves, or we desire the approval of the Father alone, so that all your giving may be in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm honest, it's probably more realistic that I feel a combination of all three of these when I do and practice my righteousness.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's rare that I just feel one or the other.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: I do have a genuine desire to be generous, right?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: To give to others, but that generosity is tainted by a hunger for the praise of people around me, for people to notice me, maybe for people to feel good about for me to feel good about myself, right?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: We feel a mix of all these motivations going on when we do these things.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: However, the distinction that Jesus is making is it's not between those people who have perfect intentions and those who don't, but the distinction is between hypocrites and honest people.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Being hypocrites and honest.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: See, we get our English word hypocrite from the Greek word hypocrite.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, originally this word referred to an actor or a stage player, right?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's what that's what they would have been hearing when they heard this word hypocrite.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: So when Jesus is using the word, he's painting a picture, an image of someone who was on stage pretending to be somebody that they're not.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: In the early days of theater, actors would literally wear a mask.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: There's some pictures of what they would look like, right?
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: They would literally make these masks and wear them on stage.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't have actors like we do now in movies or TV where it's their own face, right?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: They would cover themselves up, wearing a disguise for their character.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to theater or when it comes to a play, there is an agreement between the audience and the stage that we know what's happening here.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: We know you're pretending.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And we're okay with that.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Religious actors, another word we can use for hypocrites, religious actors, however, don't have the same agreement.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: See, these people, these hypocrites that Jesus is calling out, are setting out to deliberately deceive people into believing that they are better, that they are more moral, they are more religious, they are closer to God than they actually are.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: These religious actors deceiving, pretending that there's somebody they're not.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: But instead of a harmless theater show, these religious hypocrites are taking righteousness, the best gift from heaven, and using it in a way that it was never meant to be used.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is seeing straight through it, going straight to the intentions of the heart, seeing through their deception.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Our second point that I want us to see is that practicing your righteousness is not a pass-fail test from God.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: Righteousness is received and not earned, therefore, practicing your righteousness is not a test.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's this ancient idea made popular in the new movie, The Odyssey, called Zeus' Law, right?
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you've seen it, you'll know.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Zeus's Law, it was this ancient Greek moral code that promoted hospitality and general respect for strangers when they came into your land.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if a visitor or a stranger came to your home, it was expected that you would give them food, you'd give them somewhere to sleep.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's a good moral code, something that Jesus actually talked a lot about, right?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: These same kind of things.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: But the reason underneath Zeus's law was that you did this because any stranger or any visitor, no matter how powerful or poor they might appear to be, they might be a god in disguise.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's why they did this.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: So the motivation for giving a needy stranger food and shelter was that guy might be Zeus in disguise.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: That guy or girl might be Athena.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: So I better obey the law so I'm not punished or obliterated by God.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: And in ancient Greek mythology and society, obedience to God or the gods was done directly out of fear of punishment.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: They lived their life as a past-fail test.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: Am I doing what I'm supposed to do?
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if I if I fail to practice my goodness, then I'll be destroyed.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: The gods were constantly testing humans and punishing them for their failure.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And many of us view the warnings of Jesus in the same way.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's easy for me to do that too.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to think that if I see a homeless person on the side of the road or I get asked to donate something, I feel a sense of pressure that God will judge me if I don't give them something.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's a test.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: God's testing how righteous are you actually.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or if I do a generous act, I need to make sure that others see it so I have validation that I'm passing the Christian righteousness test, right?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: But again, Jesus is not after necessarily in this point, whether you are generous or not.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's assuming as a disciple of Jesus that you will be.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: He's after the why.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: Is it out of fear?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Is that of out of wanting praise from others to feel good about yourself?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus gives us the same warning when it comes to prayer.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: Let's read in further in Matthew 6.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: And when you pray, you also must not be like the hypocrites.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: When you pray, don't heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: For they think that they will be heard for their many words.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Again, these religious actors, these hypocrites, they're praying why?
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: To be noticed.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: They're not praying in secret.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: The only reason they're praying, they're you they're using these, he says, heaping up empty words, empty phrases.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Other points of the Bible, Paul talks about these people as just clanging a symbol.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's what your words are.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: Good sounding words in order to be noticed.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: So prayer then becomes a vehicle in order to earn approval for ourselves rather than a deeply intimate moment with our Creator where we rest in the approval that we already have.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I could spend more time on prayer, because maybe we'll do a full series on it soon, because there's so much here.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: But it's because prayer specifically is really confusing and really hard.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: One of my seminary professors always said, prayer is the most convicting doctrine we have because all I have to do is say the word prayer and you immediately feel guilty.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's true.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because whenever someone talks about prayer, my first instinct is shame.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't pray enough.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't pray as powerfully as I should.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't pray as often as I should.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't pray when I promise that I'm gonna pray for somebody.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: What we see here, I can say this, is that the purpose of prayer is not to impress God.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's not to impress others with how good you sound or how much you seem to care.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: Prayer is a gift from God to commune and talk with the creator of the universe who loves you.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: If you're measuring your prayers by how many mms you get, right, when you're praying and you want some approval, or how eloquent you sound, how many big words and Christian words you can use, then you're acting more like the actors, the hypocrites in Matthew 6 who heap up empty phrases that don't mean anything.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: And look, I get it.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't hear me shaming you, because I know prayer's hard, but here this is a challenge from me and a warning from Jesus to not use prayer for something it was not designed for.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because when we misuse prayer, when we manipulate prayer in order to impress other people, we miss out on the beauty that prayer actually offers.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: In his amazing book of Praying Life, I could not recommend this book higher if you want to learn more about prayer.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Paul Miller tries to get us to stop being good at praying, to stop trying to be good at praying because we miss the point.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way that we're tempted to impress people by how good our prayers are, we also try to impress God, don't we?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: This is what Paul Miller says.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Hypocrite, an actor.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: We try to fix ourselves up, but God cheers when we come to Him with our wobbling, unsteady prayers.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Don't try to get prayer right.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Just tell God where you are, what's on your mind.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: The only way to come to God is taking off any spiritual mask when the real you has to meet the real God.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see how different that is in what Jesus is describing in Matthew 6?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: Praying to get noticed, or actually bringing my mess, my wobbly, unsteady prayers to God.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because prayer is supposed to be messy.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_00: Prayer actually is where the gospel is the most true.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought about that?
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: The beauty of prayer is that in our mess, in our sin, in our shame, in our failure, we can come to God confidently and be with him and talk to him.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's not asking us to have it together.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_00: Prayer is where the gospel is true.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus knows how messy and hard it is.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: He knows that we're not good at it.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why, out of all the examples he gives here in Matthew 6, it's the only one where he doesn't only say, Don't be like this, but he actually adds, hey, do this instead.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna help you pray.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Real quickly, let's read this.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you're familiar.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: This prayer, the Lord's Prayer, Matthew 6, 9 through 13.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: Pray then like this.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's words, I'm sure you've heard it before.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so quickly, I think what will be helpful to see is that this prayer has has two main movements.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: First, set your eyes on your Father in heaven.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hallowed be your name.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: Your kingdom come, your will be done, you are God and I am not.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's saying, God be God.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: And secondly, trust your Father in heaven.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, God, provide for me, forgive me, lead me, deliver me, God, I trust you.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's honest prayers, admitting who we are not and admitting who he is, not heaping up empty phrases.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: We offend the grace of God.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: We miss out on so much when we use prayer just to impress instead of resting in our belonging in Jesus.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, the last example Jesus uses is fasting.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: He says in verse 16 And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, that their fasting may be seen by others.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Truly I say to you, they have received their reward.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: 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 is in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe fasting feels a little bit less familiar than the other two.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: The practice of fasting is maybe a little bit lost on our our modern Christian culture here in the West, but fasting is a spiritual discipline where someone won't eat for a period of time, right?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Typically in a season of desperation or a season of waiting before the Lord, trying to get and hear something from God.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: Simply put, the purpose of fasting is to remove distractions from your life.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: To divert your appetites in order to seek God and His will.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's what fasting's for.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: But here is what fasting is not.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Fasting is not going a week without eating and saying, look, God, you see how much I care?
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: See what I do for you?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Can you answer my prayers now?
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Can you do this for me?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: Fasting is also not, man, look how good of a Christian I am.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't eaten today.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fasting, telling everybody.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: I love how he describes these hypocrites here.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Don't look gloomy like the hypocrites, disfiguring their faces, right?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Trying to make it obvious that they're suffering because they're hungry.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: Fasting in the eyes and ears of our heart, when we fast, we're able to see and hear more clearly because we've removed the distraction.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Fasting is a physical way of communicating.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm poor in spirit.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: God, I need you.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's an intimate and powerful thing.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: All these things are generosity and prayer and fasting.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's why Jesus cares so deeply that these things should be used correctly.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's why he cares so deeply that these religious actors are using something as holy as the spiritual practices in order to be seen, saying, Look how spiritual I am.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: It upsets Jesus.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: He sees straight through it.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: He sees these religious actors and pretty much says, I know what you're doing.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's pathetic.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, you're not very good at it.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: He can see straight through it.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Point three.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: We don't practice righteousness to impress, we practice righteousness to surrender.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's the point of what he's getting at.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Doing practicing our righteousness, doing religious things to impress yourself or God or others, you're misusing the point.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're missing it.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: By practicing your righteousness, you're not showing how strong you are, but you're actually showing how sufficient Jesus is, how weak you are, how much you need him.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Notice that all these hypocrites that Jesus is challenging, they all have the same motivation, right?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: That they may be seen by others.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And all three of these practices are meant, instead of to impress others, they're meant to open your hands of control, of materialism, of self-sufficiency.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Look, giving to the needy, what we're saying when we do it with a pure heart, we're saying, My money, my time, my energy, they're not my own.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: God, they're yours.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_00: In prayer, we're praying, your kingdom come, your will be done, not mine.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: When we fast, we say, everything I need is found in my Father's presence.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: But the reality is, these are just three examples that Jesus uses.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be reserved to these three.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's across the board how much you speak at Bible studies, how many answers you have, how high your hands are raised at worship, whether you know the lyrics to a song without looking at the screens.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: All these things that they don't make you a stronger Christian.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: The purpose of them is not to show how strong you are, but actually to show how weak you are.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: When we use spiritual practices and gifts from God in order to make ourselves look better, we just miss the point.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: We don't practice righteousness in order to look better.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: We do these things because our souls need them.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of being a stage or a vehicle to impress people or feel good about yourself, these things are a way of confessing and surrendering to the Father.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: You are God and I am not.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: And when we do them and use them in the wrong ways, they're missing the point.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Throughout this passage, if you've noticed, Jesus promises that when we practice our righteousness in secret, the Father will reward us.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: That may sound weird, right?
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think this means that he's going to grant every wish or material materially bless your life, right?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think what he's saying, it means that when we use these gifts the way they were intended to be used: prayer, fasting, generosity, worship, studying the Bible, we will find a sweet and intimate and often secret reward of belonging in Christ.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Joy and blessedness in your faith that you can't find elsewhere.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: That is your reward.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus also promises that those who manipulate spiritual practices will also receive their reward.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to use praying to get attention, it's probably going to work.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: You'll get what you're looking for, but Jesus is saying that's all you're going to get.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: You may get the praise of others, but your heart is still going to be longing for the thing that it wants.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: That reward is a poor substitute for the reward found in Jesus.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Author Ray Ortland has this quote that has been very big in my life the past year.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: He says, You can be impressive or you can be known, but not both.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna get your reward.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Your reward can be to be impressive by others, to try to impress God, or your reward can be to be known and loved and beloved and belonging in Jesus.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: But you can't have both.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: The reality is that we don't have perfect motivations.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure you can feel that and you know it.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're insecure.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: We want to impress people, we want to be accepted, we want to be affirmed, we want to be approved, we want to be loved.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: God is not calling you to fix your feelings or to fix your motivations, to make them perfect in order for you to do these things, but he's saying bring your real self to him.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Stop pretending.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Stop being an actor.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: He wants your real self, not the performative version of yourself.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know I'm not the follower of Jesus.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: I want to be, I'm not the man, I want to be my desires, my motivations, my actions, they're they're still riddled with sin.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: They're messy.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: But God does not want the ideal version of Keel.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: He wants my real heart.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus does not want the ideal version of you.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: He wants who you are in your mess, the honest version of yourself, not the actor.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: The difference between those things is what you do with the guilt that you feel, with the tension that you feel when you know that you're not perfect.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're poor in spirit, you're messy, your motivations are messed up, they're not perfect.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do with that tension?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: Do you pretend it's not there?
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feed on the temporary reward of the world's praise of self-esteem?
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you lay it at the feet of Jesus, trusting that he is enough for you, letting your sin actually drive you deeper into the loving grace of Jesus?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes practicing our righteousness is the very thing that shows us how unrighteous we are.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's the grace of Jesus that allows you to stare your sinful self in the mirror of the Word of God and confess, I'm not enough, I'm imperfect, and yet we still find approval.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: We still find acceptance because we have been given a righteousness that is not our own.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: The grace of Jesus has freed you from this acting, from the hypocrisy, from living life pretending where the people around you are just an audience to impress.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is what Tim Keller called the freedom of self-forgetfulness.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Living in a way where you're not constantly trying to impress and prove yourself to others and prove yourself to God and prove yourself to your own self.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: You have been bought by the blood of Jesus.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: You have full access to God.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to pretend that you have it more together than you do.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Bring your honest self to Him.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Take advantage of the gifts he's given you.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: I want to close with the words of Psalm 139.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: You may have heard this before, and I find it interesting that I used to read these words that it was David saying, like, Look how good I am, God, search me, right?
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Search me, you won't find anything wrong with me.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I've learned to see that David is praying this prayer because he wants God to unsettle the sin that's settled in his heart.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: For this sin to drive him deeper into God's grace.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: So let's pray with David.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Search me, O God, and know my heart.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Try me, know my thoughts, and if you see any grievous way in me, lead me in the way everlasting.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we thank you that you have given us these things, Lord.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: You have made us people who can worship, you've made us people who can suffer, you've made us people who can be generous, who can pray, who can be with you.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, let us not use these things in order to acquire belonging for ourselves, but let them be ways that we can experience the belonging that you have bought us, that you've given us.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, help us stop trying to earn our righteousness, to earn your grace.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: Help us instead to rest in the fact that we are already secure in you and practicing our righteousness then as a way to live in that new identity.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, search us.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Even now, Father, as we enter into a time of song, Lord, search our hearts, show us the sin, and let it not drive us into shame, but let it drive us deeper into your grace.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.