When Good Works Become Hypocrisy - Matthew 6:1-8 (Session 8)

Can doing something good for the wrong reason turn it into something spiritually harmful?

In Matthew 6, Jesus continues the Sermon on the Mount by addressing the motives behind giving, good works, and prayer. He warns His listeners not to practice righteousness in order to be noticed by others. The issue is not whether Christians should do good works, but whether those works are being done for God or for human applause.

Glenn and Steve also examine the relationship between salvation and good works, why public recognition can become dangerous in Christian ministry, what Jesus means by giving in secret, and why taking Scripture literally does not mean ignoring figures of speech.

The discussion then turns to prayer. Jesus warns against praying to impress others and against meaningless repetition. But if God already knows what we need before we ask Him, why pray at all?

Matthew 6:1–8 | Reasoning Through the Bible

Questions discussed in this session include:

• How do we evaluate Christian ministers?
• How should Christian ministries handle giving?
• How should private and public prayers be different? 
• If God knows what we need, why should we pray? 

Transcript

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Why Jesus Raises The Standard

SPEAKER_00 0:16

I'd like to welcome everybody back to Reasoning Through the Bible podcast. We are currently going through the book of Matthew. We've finished chapter 5. We were in a session that's talking about the famously named Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. And that goes through chapters five, six, and seven in the book of Matthew. So we're going to continue that, pick it up here in chapter six. One thing, Glenn, I wanted to mention, just to emphasize and clarify, that as Jesus is going through all of what the Beatitudes at the first, and now he's going to go into some different specific areas, he's really not condemning the people. His purpose in all of this is to get the people to change their mind as how they think about God and about God's law. As it's said there in chapter five, unless their righteousness exceeds that of the Pharisees and scribes, the people that were teaching them, that they wouldn't see the kingdom of heaven. I just want to clarify for our listeners here is that as we go through this, there isn't any condemnation from us. There's things that are in here that we are guilty of performing, whether it's in our earlier life, something that might be happening now. And I think that's the same thing that Jesus is going.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

I think that's exactly what Jesus' main purpose was was to show people all of us are guilty. He's giving us God's perfect standard. Whereas a lot of the people thought, well, I've kept the letter of the law, and Jesus is saying, okay, that's not enough. The internal state of your heart and mind are what God looks at, which is a much higher standard. He's trying to show us we're all sinners, us included. You and I certainly not holding ourselves up as anything righteous.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

And I think there's three groups of people that are there. There are people that have participated in some of these things in the past. There's people that are might be participating in some of them at the present time. And then there's also talking about the future, so that the people that might think or might come across something in the future that they would remember these words. Let's just take one, for example, about the hatred where he says, But if you harbor hatred for somebody, you've committed murder. For somebody that's maybe had hatred in the past and they maybe still have hatred, he's explaining to them this is really how God takes hatred. It's more serious than what you think that it is. And also for those people that in the future that might get to a point where they have hatred for somebody, that they can think back on this and go, you know, I really shouldn't have this in my heart, remembering the words that he said here.

SPEAKER_01 2:55

And what human on the top side of the earth can stand and say, Well, I've never had anger in my heart against another human. We've all been guilty.

SPEAKER_00 3:03

So I just wanted to make that clarification as we start and go through here in six and seven, that this is kind of the background that's going on here with his teaching. We've often talked about repentance and what the strict definition of repentance is a changing of mind and turning 180 degrees away from God and turn back towards God. I think if somebody said, But I understand that definition, but what does it really mean to repent? I think that you could probably point people, say, go read Matthew 5, 6, and 7, and you'll get a pretty good idea of what it means to change your mind and the way that's how God thinks about life.

SPEAKER_01 3:40

I think that what we see, especially in Matthew chapter five, are examples of what he taught in this long sermon. He he most likely spent hours explaining some of these same things, and all we have is something he could read in 10 minutes. So he probably spoke much more, gave many more examples. So I believe what's here are just a few examples of what the entire sermon really taught. One of the more sensitive things, at least in our day, that he talked about in chapter five, and we tried to handle this as sensitively as we could, is the issue of divorce, simply because there's so much emotion in divorce. I remember talking to one man that was divorced, and I asked him what it was like, and he said it felt like half of my body got ripped off. You know, I felt just torn in half. And that amount of pain is very real. And I think there's a place in the church for everyone. There's certainly a place in the church for divorced people. I don't think, as you brought out, that these explanations here was Jesus' attempt to condemn. We want to reach out to everyone and say, hey, we're all guilty, but we're certainly not holding ourselves out. All this is in Matthew 5, 6, and 7 is God's perfect standard. He goes through several of the Ten Commandments saying, You have heard it said, but I say to you. He took the common understanding of adultery, murder, marriage, all these other things, and he then gives them God's standard, which was so much higher than our standard. He was trying to get us to all realize, hey, we're all sinners. And he sums it up in the last verse in chapter five, which was be perfect, as the Father in heaven is perfect. None of us can do that. So he's he's trying to show us that God has this perfect standard. But to me, Sermon on the Mount is just very beautiful. It's so wonderful the way the language is done here. And I think that it's it's just a perfect standard. Remember, he came out at the beginning, and Jesus' first statements, his first teachings were repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. As we mentioned to our listeners, that message was outlined with the statement there that he began to teach these things. From that point, he began to teach, repent for the kingdom of the heaven is at hand. Well, over in Matthew 16, he has that same language. From that point, he began to teach. Now it's the cross and the resurrection. So I think what we can do is a fairly clear outline here of the book of Matthew is that Jesus came out with a message of the kingdom. And the kingdom is a perfect rule of

Giving In Secret Not For Applause

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Jesus. It's a perfect situation that we're not in yet. Lest anybody ever had any question, the church is not perfect, we're not perfect, we're a mixture of sin and grace. We're all have our own faults and our own guilts, and we have no grounds to reach out and point to people and say we're righteous and they're not, simply because all of us are sinners. And I think that was his message.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

So I think in chapter five, he goes through those beatitudes, as you've heard, what I say. And now as we get into chapter six, he starts to give some examples of how to live life and how to worship God.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

So let me read just the first four verses here of Matthew chapter six. Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them. Otherwise, you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret, and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. The implication here is that if we do things to be recognized by other people here on earth, then that's a problem. But if we do our good deeds in secret that only God can see, then that's really what he's after here.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

One of the words there, hypocrites, word picture is like wearing a mask or being two-faced. You know, the famous mask for the actors' guild, where they have the happy smiling mask and then the sad mask. Actors in that day and age would use and utilize masks to show what the emotion was. It's like two-faced. You're one thing, but you're wearing this mask of something else. And that never happened in our churches today.

SPEAKER_01 8:17

What if people would look one way on Sunday and then act another way during the middle of the week?

SPEAKER_00 8:22

What's probably happened to every family is that as you're driving in uh driving to church that morning, you have the kids hollering in the back seat and you're trying to get them under control and everything else, and you park and everybody gets out, and of course, put on your happy face as you go into church because you can't have crying kids and mad uh parents worshiping God. I had a pastor tell a story.

SPEAKER_01 8:46

I was surprised he told this, but he said there was a day when he and his wife were driving to church and they had a huge argument. And they get out of the car and did exactly what you were just saying. Hi, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Everything's great. Nothing like a good sermon prep for the argument with your so this talks about doing good works.

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Right. And they said, Don't do your good works to be seen by other people. So here's just a fundamental

Good Works Versus Salvation By Grace

SPEAKER_01 9:08

doctrinal question. What's the relationship between good works and salvation and rewards? Because this passage here has to be taken in that light. So, what's the relationship between good works and salvation? Do we do good works in order to get into a right relationship with God or not?

SPEAKER_00 9:28

No, you don't. The good works are a result of your salvation in your relationship with God. So, no, you don't do good works in order to have eternal life.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

The passage that to me lays this out the clearest is Ephesians chapter 2, verses 8, 9, and 10. And he lays it out very clearly, saying that we are not saved by doing good works. We are saved by God's grace through our faith. After we're saved, then we are saved unto good works. We're saved in order to do good works. Here in Matthew 6, he's not talking about salvation. He's just saying, don't make a public show of your good deeds. We don't do good deeds in order to be seen by other people.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

The people he's talking about, their motivation was to show what they were doing to men, to the fellow mankind. They did it purposely so that people would watch them and see them do it. They weren't doing it out of their heart or out of their worship for God or to show kindness of God how he is by working through you. They're doing it for that applause or that appreciation from fellow mankind. And Jesus tells them there in verse two, he said, if you do it for that reason, you've gotten your reward in full. That's it. It's not giving you any good points to God, which isn't the way you're supposed to be looking at it anyway.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

In fact, it's the other way around. In our day, and it's probably the same way in all other ages of the church, is that there are good Christian people that are doing good things, and they're not out there trying to get a lot of fame and fortune just because of their good works. They're just doing what the Lord showed them to do, they're working where the Lord placed them, and they're not out there trying to get a lot of self-glory, they're just doing good work. And sometimes people notice that and they get promoted. There's other people that are putting their name on everything, they want to be the center of attention. Whenever there's a meeting, they want their name up there, they name the ministry after them. Or the building. Or the building, things like that. So there's a trap that can happen here in Christian circles simply by somebody actually being either very talented or gifted by God, drawing attention to themselves. The power of people complimenting you to your ego, it just puffs people up. It's just the way people are made. So, what Jesus is saying here is be very careful about doing things in front of other people to be seen by them. It can really draw us aside. There's been more than one good Christian leader that started out well, but the fame and fortune and the recognition and people coming to them, complimenting them all the time, really drew them off of the path. I would encourage all of our Christian leaders out there just to be very careful about drawing attention to yourselves. Christian ministry, who on whom should we focus our attention?

SPEAKER_00 12:19

On God. And I was just going to say there in verse four, it's very obvious that God is watching and seeing what we do and how our heart is, because there in verse four it says, so that your giving will be in secret, and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Does God see everything? Yes. Even the stuff that I don't show to everybody else? Yes. That's that's what he's saying here in Matthew 6:4, is that God sees all these things. He knows. But later in the chapter, here he's going to bring up this again as well.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

And one thing is that if God sees the

The Trap Of Public Recognition

SPEAKER_00 12:58

good things you do that nobody else sees, that also means he sees the not so good things that you do that nobody else sees. Just be aware of that.

SPEAKER_01 13:07

He says here, don't give your gifts before men and don't let your right hand know what your left is doing, etc. Should people be publicly recognized for large gifts, large financial gifts, or large gifts of time that they make to the church or to some ministry, should there be a public recognition for that? And I would submit that's a danger.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

There can be, but again, it comes down to the motivation for it. If the person is asking for that, if that's a condition of them giving, I would even say that the church or the entity might even turn that money down, especially if it's a church. If they say, I'm willing to give thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars to the church or toward your building fund, but under one condition, my name's got to be on the building. I would even say that the church is a decline. Thank you very much, but we don't need that type of donation.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

I remember the church I was a member of one time had a large building campaign going on. They were trying to build a new building and they needed a lot of money. So they had a fundraising campaign that lasted for a good while. And at one of the meetings they were having, trying to promote this giving, one of the leaders of the church, he was a deacon or an elder, was there with the pastor and several of the other leaders, were talking to a group of us from the church. And this one man stood up and he named the amount of money. He said, God told me to give, and he named the dollar amount. And it was a lot of money. This was more than a year's pay for an average person. This is a significant amount of money. And he stood up in front of everyone saying, Well, God told me to give this, and I encourage all of you to give too. And I was thinking at the time of this very verse, part of me wanted to stand up and publicly rebuke him. I didn't, but later I questioned myself whether I should have. But it was just the pastor was there smiling and encouraging, and this is just not to be done. I've also been at parachurch ministry meetings where they're doing fundraising, and I understand it takes money to run things, but I've seen parachurch ministries. Well, everybody that gave this amount, stand up and let's give them a round of applause. And if and they'd work their way up. And they'd work up to these highest donors saying, Oh, this one gave that amount of money. And I just don't like that at all. This is exactly what he's saying against is do not publicly announce what people gave.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

So, one thing, Glenn, before we move to the next section, we see there that it says in verse three, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. So do that you're giving in secret.

Reading Scripture Literally With Care

SPEAKER_00 15:47

This question to you is in relation to interpretation of scripture. Some people sometimes point these things out. If you say, Well, I believe in the literal interpretation of scripture. And then people go, Well, let's see, here, if you're a literalist, then how can the world can your left hand not know what your right hand is doing? But that's not what we mean by saying that we take the scripture as literal. This is very obvious, something that's being used as an example.

SPEAKER_01 16:13

One of the technical words that the theologians use is verbal plenary inspiration. We would hold then that the words are inspired, the very words that are here are inspired of God. So we take this very literally. Not every statement in the Bible is a literal statement. For example, Jesus says, I am the true vine. We don't conclude he's a plant. He also says, I am the door. He's not made out of wood and has hinges. Well, what he's saying is literally true in the sense that he is the only way. Going through him as you would go through a door is true. And that's true literally. He's not made out of wood and has hinges. The errors on each side is one error would say, Oh, well, that's entirely figurative, and he didn't mean anything by it. It's just some nice sounding poetic language that doesn't mean anything. No, no. He's saying, I am the only way to get to the Father. On the other hand, he's not made out of wood and has hinges.

SPEAKER_00 17:12

So this is obviously just to illustrate the secret part in regards to that.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

So, Steve, read the next few verses, start at verses five and go through verse eight.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites, for

Prayer Without Performance Or Repetition

SPEAKER_00 17:25

they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door, and pray to your father who is in secret, and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. So do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

So, what I take from this is that I don't think we need long, flowery prayers in public, simply because of what he says here. He says, Go in private and pray. We can have public prayer. I think pretty clear in the scriptures, they would pray as a group. But what we don't need is someone standing up front with a lot of multi-syllable words and a lot of flowery language trying to sound impressive with their language. Public prayers in a group should generally be short and to the point. Don't try to impress God with the flowery language. Private prayers can be long, detailed, and personal. That's the sense I get here is that he's saying it's just you and him talking. Go in secret, have a long conversation, be real with God. Don't try to be fake, just be real. Talk to him as you would talk to the most important person in your life, because he is the most important person in your life.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

And this part here about street corners, they wouldn't go to street corners that were four or five blocks in some hidden part of the city or obscure part of the city. They would actually go out into the broadways of the cities where most of the people were, and they would stand there with their prayers because they wanted to get seen by as many people as they could.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

He's saying here, that's not the point. The point is to have a conversation with God, not to be seen by other people. It continues on the theme of verses we just read a minute ago. Verse seven, do not use meaningless or vain repetitions. And what I think of there is there are some religions that genuinely hold as part of their teaching and value systems that if we repeat prayers over and over again, we do them enough, and we say the same words over and over and over and over, then that's a good thing they would hold. That makes a good prayer by doing more of them. So they would have very repetitive prayers. They would say the same words over and over. And this is precisely what he's saying against. He's saying just doing it more times, saying the same words over and over is not gonna buy you any points with God.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

He points out that they're meaningless, they they lose their value if you just say them over and over because you're supposed to say them over again, that they lose their value of what the prayer actually is. They're meaningless.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

I would have a genuine care that I wanted to take in front of God. That's a good thing. Saying it 396 times in the same exact words, over and over, that's meaningless. It's it's what he calls a meaningless or a vain or empty repetition. Talk to God like you talk to a regular person. Just talk to him. Christian prayer and meditation should always be purposeful and focused on something, not just saying this little memorized thing over and over again.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

At the very last part there, he says, For your father knows what you need before you ask him. I think that's really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

I think it's very interesting. What does that tell us about what God knows?

SPEAKER_00 21:00

He knows us intimately, he knows what we're going through. Even if we don't pray to him, he knows what we're going through and he's there.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

He knows what we're going through, he knows our needs before we know our needs. To me, that's very comforting. I don't have to go to God and explain to him how I'm feeling because he already knows. I think that's very comforting. It allows us to go to God in prayer and be totally open and honest and relax in front of him. I'm not trying to, as you mentioned earlier, I'm not trying to put on a mask because he sees right through it. We're trying to go to God and just be open with him and say, God, you already know these things, but here's the need. What should I do? Give me guidance and just praise God for what we can do and praise God for who he is, and then go to him in prayer. How much does God know? He knows all of our needs. He shows that God knows all things.

If God Knows Why Pray

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Then it also says, your father knows the things you have need of before you ask him. So here's a question. If he knows what I need before I ask him, why should I pray? People ask this question. There are some answers. First reason is because he said so. He tells us here in verse six go in, close your door, and pray. So one of the reasons is our Lord and Master has commanded us to, and that should be sufficient. As examples, Jesus prayed. Look at John chapter 17, very emotional prayer before the Father. Did not the Father not know what Jesus was feeling at the time? Yes. Well, Jesus prayed several times. He prayed. Sometimes he prayed all night. Our example from Christ Himself and the apostles, all of them prayed. That's one of the reasons. The other thing is praying gives us fellowship with him. Praying gives us the intimacy with God to where now it's a relationship. It's not just message in a bottle. I'm actually talking to somebody that's hearing me and I can read his word and get his answer back.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

And praying also isn't just asking for things. Praying is worship, can be worship. You're thankful, you're thanking God for the things that you have, the things that He's provided and the things that He's done. You're worshiping Him in your prayer as well. So prayers aren't just limited to asking God for things. I say things, I mean relief, maybe of an affliction or something like that, not asking for a brand new car. That's not what I'm talking about. But it's also worship and that relationship. It builds that relationship. It is a main way to have a relationship with God. If you never do it, then you're never you're never having that interaction that you should to build up that relationship.

SPEAKER_01 23:40

And the the Lord's Prayer, the model prayer coming up in a few verses, we're going to see his example of what to pray for. But I guess one more thing about yes, the question of why should we pray? We as humans do not know all of how God works. We can come up with these complex theological explanations and things like this, but we really don't know how God works. So I think examples like this tell us God already knows everything, but He still wants us to pray and ask for things. So I think we should follow that command and just pray as if we really could communicate something to God, and if we really could move God, and we should pray in a way like we would pray to anyone else, only this is to the Father. So we're gonna pray to Him in a way where if we really did want to change His mind, we should pray for that. What I do think there's some other verses about prayer that come to mind. James chapter four says, You have not because you ask not. You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. So there's reasons here why we don't get everything we need. Because he says here that we should ask, but nevertheless, we're gonna find out some qualifications with that probably next time.

SPEAKER_00 25:03

Any other things, Steve, before we wrap up? Just one last thing, going back to verse one and chapter six here, when it starts out says, beware of practicing your righteousness before men. That comes back to the same thing as what we studied in Judges. Everyone was doing what was right in their own eyes. And that's kind of a not a reference to it, but it is a parallel to it. Your righteousness is you're doing stuff that you think is right in your own eyes. That's not what God is looking for.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

We're gonna pause right here.

Preview Of The Lord’s Prayer

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Next time on Reasoning Through the Bible, we're gonna get to the Lord's Prayer, often called the model prayer, because it gives us some examples of what to pray for and how to pray. It's very memorable, one of the highlights of the scriptures. So we'll talk about that next time on Reasoning Through the Bible.