The passage we will be studying today is long. It is Matthew 6 v 1 -18. We continue in the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus is talking about the way a Christian must live. As way of introducing the content of today’s passage, I would say the very first verse of this passage does a great job of summarizing it for us.
Matthew 6 v 1 – “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven”.
The 17 verses that follow this one is about how we should practice certain religious activities in secret or in private. Now, this may seem like a contradiction to the verses we studied just a few weeks ago. Jesus specifically called us to be the light and salt of the world, so that “they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5 v 16). It’s obvious that Jesus does not call us to hide the fact that we are Christians. So, there is something deeper here that we need to discern and separate.
Here Jesus introduces three very specific religious acts that He is calling us to do in secret- giving to the poor, praying, and fasting. Before I read the whole passage, I would like to point out a few details you could be listening for, so that when we address them in the discussion, you’ll be able to reason for yourself the significance of these matters.
- There are three characters called out in this passage -the religious hypocrite who does things for the sake of public applause, the Christian who should not be like the hypocrite, and thirdly, the Father who sees and rewards in secret – Pay attention to the actions of each as described or prescribed by Jesus.
- The acts of righteousness, giving to the needy, prayer, and fasting are identified by Jesus as essential, even elementary to the religious faith. I say this because, as you will hear when I read, Jesus specifically says, when you give to the needy, when you pray, when you fast, as opposed to if you give, if you pray, if you fast. He took it for granted that these three acts would continue to be part of the faith-filled life of a believer.
- Reward is a Christian concept. Many of us struggle with the idea of reward – the hedonist might wrestle with the idea of being motivated by anything but complete satisfaction in Christ. Somehow, we must come to terms with the fact that the New Testament talks a lot about rewards – an inheritance, a crown, an eternal life free from tears and sin, even heaven.
Keeping these three points in mind, let’s go ahead and read today’s passage.
Matthew 6 v 1 thru 18 –
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. 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. Truly, I say to you. they have received their reward. 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 your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. 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.
And when you pray do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray then like this:
Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For if you forgive others their trespasses your heavenly Father will also forgive your but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
So, as pointed out earlier, there seems to be a contradiction in Jesus instructions to be the salt and light of the world just a few verses earlier and now this call to secret service. When we discussed the salt and light passage a few weeks ago, we talked about how the horizontal consequences of our saltiness and our light was that the world around us is better for it. The people around us benefit from the fact that we are salt and light. They get to experience God through us and in return give glory to the God we serve, not to us.
One aspect that I see different in today’s passage, when compared to the salt and light passage, is Jesus calling out the specific faith-filled acts of giving, praying, and fasting- as vertical interactions, i.e., between the Father and the believer. Jesus is pointing out that there is a private aspect of our Christian lives which should be reverently held in distinction from our public Christian lives.
God is glorified when we diligently live as the salt and light of the world for all to see. Such lives are rewarded in others glorifying our Father in heaven. And so, God is dishonored when we lose our saltiness or hide our light under a basket. He considers this hypocritical. Inversely, however, our private interactions with Him, which include giving to the poor, praying, and fasting, are honoring to God when it is done unto Him ALONE, in the privacy of our rooms and hearts. The hypocritical public display of these activities for others to behold gives Him no glory. Such lives are deprived of the Father’s reward, says Jesus.
The Jews highly regarded these specific religious activities. And rightly so. Jesus confirms this when in this passage He calls these three activities, practices of righteousness. He goes through each of these acts with details on how not do to them and how to do them rightly. He describes the unworthy manner through the actions of the one He identifies as the hypocrite and then immediately prescribes the commendable way to His disciples. He points out that the measure of worthiness for such actions is the reward from the Father who sees in secret. So, let’s go through them one at a time.
The Act of Giving to the Needy
When it comes to giving, Jesus says, “sound no trumpet before you in the synagogues or in the streets that you may be praised by others”. Sound no trumpet, as in take no action to make it known. Not in the synagogues, as in among believers nor on the streets, as in, before unbelievers. By your own volition, NO ONE should know of your giving.
Jesus goes a step further when He prescribes the right way to 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”. Not only should we make no attempt to have our actions known but we should also take intentional steps to keep it private, even secret.
I love the fact that Jesus uses the word secret in these verses as opposed to private. Secrecy implies privacy but to a heightened extent. A private matter can be known by a few. A secret is usually held between two and in this case, specifically between the Father and you.
Our left hand not knowing what our right hand is doing takes the intentional action of hiding the one from the other. Naturally, the way our bodies are made, the left hand and right hand are not hidden from each other. They face the same direction and are in plain sight of each other. So, one hand not in the presence of the other takes the intentional act of holding the other hand behind us in an unnatural pose. This is the idea of what Jesus is asking us to do – that we would go out of our way and make every effort to keep our giving hidden from everyone but our Father who sees in secret.
The Act of Praying
The next act of righteousness that Jesus cautions us on, is that of praying.
“Do not pray like the hypocrites,” He warns. “They love to stand and pray in the synagogues (read among believers) and at street corners (among unbelievers) that they may be seen by others.”
Of course, the Bible itself has mandated communal praying and we read of it all through the OT and in the NT church. So, we can know for a fact that Jesus is not condemning praying in our gatherings or in public. But such a prayer is hypocritical if done by someone who doesn’t practice private prayer. And even if you do practice private prayer, it is considered hypocritical if done to be seen by others or in an unworthy manner.
This unworthy manner is not limited to where we pray but also how we pray as described by Jesus when He says. “Do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do,” Jesus says. “They think they will be heard for their many words.” The words we use and how we use them matter. This includes meaning, tone, and amount.
Jesus then proceeds to teach them the Lord’s prayer. We did a detailed study on the Lord’s prayer in Episode 4 of Season 3 on PUYB so I won’t repeat that material here. I would, however, like to point out what we can learn from the Lord’s prayer, specifically regarding tone, words, and attitude we practice in prayer because this is what Jesus is calling us to do when warning us not to pray like the Gentiles who give no thought to these things in their prayers.
“Pray then like this,” Jesus says
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Let’s pause there and take a look at the humility that accompanies these words. There is a clear recognizing and honoring of God as being high and holy, quickly followed by the surrender of earthly wills and desires to His higher will. These words are not about receiving from God but giving to Him. Giving praise, honor, and ourselves in complete surrender.
“Give us this day our daily bread,”
Notice the brevity of this supplication. God knows what we need, exactly how much of it we need, and when we need it. The scarcity of words in this supplication magnifies the trustworthiness of the One Who hears our prayer.
“and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.”
There is no extended guilt-ridden exposition into the sin committed or detailed expression of immense personal remorse. This confession stands on the principle of divine grace and forgiveness. It is free for all who repent and ask for it. In addition, by its very divine nature, we can only experience it if we are willing to extend it to others. If we don’t extend forgiveness to others, we can tie it back to losing our saltiness or covering our light under a basket. We are good for nothing but to be trampled underfoot.
And the last bit of the prayer
“lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”
This simple prayer ends with committing our future into the hands of the One who preserves us till the end.
The overarching theme in this prayer, that Jesus teaches His disciples, is that every word stands on the promises of God. His will being done, Him providing our needs, forgiving our sins, delivering us from evil, are all promises in the Bible. This is what a prayer built on the promises of God sounds like. It is not the name and claim, or bless and manifest, tone that we hear in many prayers. No, this prayer requires nothing but trust in the One who made the promise. The number of words, the tone of speech, the attitude of the heart, mind, and body should all surrender to the One who hears the prayer.
But this is hard to do when you are praying in public, especially if you don’t have a strong private prayer relationship with God. It takes immense effort to keep your words simple, humble, and for God’s ears only. Perhaps, this is the reason behind Jesus’ strong caution to pray in private.
The Act of Fasting
The third act of righteousness that Jesus brings to our attention is that of fasting.
“And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face so that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who is in secret will reward you.”
Jesus again, cautions His disciples that when doing something to be seen and praised by others, their praise and adoration is the reward we’d gain. However, when it comes to fasting for spiritual reasons, the act must indeed, like praying and giving, remain unknown to anyone else but God. In Scripture, the only fast God had asked of the people was on the Day of Atonement. It was a national fast that was centered around repentance and atoning for sins. We do see other situations in which people fasted. Moses fasted before for 40 days on the mountain, Daniel fasted, Jesus fasted to prepare for the temptation in the desert. In these situations of personal fasts there was no announcement, no declaration, no public display. These fasts occurred in private. Unlike them, the Pharisees had started fasting every Monday and Thursday, which happened to be the public market days, when people would flood into the city from the countryside, to ensure an even bigger audience for their “displays of superior piety”. They would then walk around town with their outfits in shambles, their hair disheveled, and their faces twisted and disfigured to show suffering. Jesus says, this does not impress, nor have the audience of God.
There is a right way to fast before God, Jesus says. The righteous act of fasting to receive from God spiritually, as Moses, Daniel, and Jesus did, needs but the audience of the One who can spiritually bless. In Wiersbe’s words, “Simply to deprive ourselves of a natural benefit (such as food or sleep) is not of itself fasting. We must devote ourselves to God and worship Him. Unless there is the devotion of the heart, there is no lasting spiritual benefits”. And it is solely an act for God’s eyes only.
In today’s passage, Jesus calls out the hypocrisy He was witnessing among those who claimed to be righteous. In these three acts that were supposedly done for God, there was no desire for Him but rather for the approval and praise of others. As a remedy to this human tendency to desire applause, Jesus draws our attention to the Father who is in secret. He uses this description of the Father multiple times through this passage – “The Father who sees in secret” or “the Father who is in secret.” I want to spend the last few minutes of this podcast episode exploring this. What does this mean? Obviously, it doesn’t mean that the Father person or the knowledge of the Father is hidden from us, because the Bible says that the Father is revealed to mankind through His Son, Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit. I suggest that when Jesus uses the term, “The Father who is in secret” or “the Father who sees in secret,” He is describing the posture of God within the parameters of our personal interaction with Him. Not that the relationship between God and us is in itself private but rather that there are private aspects to the relationship which when public is void of spiritual transformation and is dishonoring to the relationship. The spiritual growth of our hearts happens in secrecy of God working is us one on one. This is why Jesus would spend so much time alone with God.
I’m going to make an attempt to explain this private aspect of our relationship with God through a similar dynamic we see in marriage. The fact that a couple is married is a public affair. The relationship and the life that a husband and wife build together, when done the right way, becomes a real blessing to their children, parents, siblings, friends, and even the wider community they are a part of (think salt and light here). However, the most essential aspects of this relationship between husband and wife are indeed private. The strength of this relationship does not lie in the fruit that it bears in public, rather in the many private acts of kindness, forgiveness, love, care, affection, compassion, intimacy, patience, forbearing, encouragement, sacrifice, humility, and the list goes on. It’s not just that it takes the work but that this work is done in secrecy between husband and wife. When Godwin, my husband, looks at me from across the dining table and proclaims out loud, “I love you”, his intent is that our kids know that he loves me. Though he is looking at me he is speaking to them. That the kids know that their mom is loved by their dad is of no small value and is a blessing to them and to me as their mother. But only because it stands on the shoulders of him having told me that he loves me countless times in private, and more importantly shown it to me daily. Without this they would be empty words on shifting sand; It would mean nothing.
When we become more concerned about what others think of us rather than what God works in us, we have become hypocrites. It behooves us to understand the intentional distinction between the private and public aspects of our Christian lives. We spiritually grow in God in private to be effectively used by Him in public.
The Word of God shows us so much of God’s heart. The Spirit of God reveals to us the truth about Him in His word. The Bible also holds up like a mirror before us to show us who we truly are, so that we can see our need for a Savior and to call on Him to be justified and sanctified through his Spirit.
I hope that todays’ passage encourages. Maybe you are doing exactly what you are supposed to and you will reap the spiritual benefit from the One who rewards in secret. In case, you struggle with this matter, Jesus, through this beautiful passage, calls you to secret service to our Father who is in secret.
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