Living the Righteous Life

Matthew 6:1 – 4 –

NIV – “¹“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. ²“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. ³But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, ⁴so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Introduction

I want to open with a quote from Charisma Magazine writer Lee Grady’s weekly “Fire in My Bones” email last week – “I’m not a big fan of religious greeting cards, especially the schmaltzy, pastel-colored variety that feature flowers and rainbows along with an obligatory Bible verse. The verse often comes from Jesus’ opening words in the Sermon on the Mount . . . These are weighty, gutsy, penetrating words—but they are neutered when we treat them like sappy poetry . . . Jesus was not tiptoeing through the tulips and mouthing pleasant phrases so they could decorate crocheted pillows or stained-glass windows . . . Jesus declared war on status quo religion and overturned the world’s values. These strong words are the muscle and bone of the kingdom of God. With them Jesus outlined His plan for a new kingdom and described the heart attitudes we must have to please Him.”

Most of you have come to enough classes in this Sermon on the Mount series to know that we are not tiptoeing through the tulips.  Rototilling rocky regions might be a better descriptor!

Today’s passage consists of four verses in two distinct sections.  Verse 1 serves as an introduction to not only the following 3 verses, but all the way through verse 18.  The theme of verse 1 gives us our class title today – “Living the Righteous Life.”  Verses 2 through 18 show us the outward practices that result when we choose to do that.  The esteemed high priest at the time of Alexander the Great, Simeon the Just, is credited with the statement, “By three things is the world sustained: by the Law, by the Temple-service, and by deeds of loving-kindness.”  Giving to the needy was one of the pillars of religious life.  Poverty was widespread in ancient agrarian societies, and the people of Israel took seriously the obligation to provide for the poor.  By the time of Jesus the phrase “to do mercy” had become a technical expression of caring for the poor by giving alms.

To the Jews, there were above all three great works of the religious life – the way I give to the needy, the nature of my prayer life, and the way in which I should subjugate the flesh.  Bob Padula, Allen Penton, Nancy Penton and Kim Kaloyannides will be talking about prayer and fasting over the coming weeks.

I’m not going to dwell on verses two through four today, but it’s vital that we realize that to the Jews, almsgiving was the most sacred of all religious duties.  Almsgiving includes giving money, time, or whatever is needed to help someone in need.  Interestingly, the Jews used the same Hebrew word – tzedakah – for both righteousness and almsgiving.  Giving of alms wasn’t something extra that was tacked on if you had time or desire.  To give alms and to be righteous were one and the same thing.  The Greek word for almsgiving in verse 2 means a deed of mercy or pity.  We are to be kind and merciful because that’s who God is.  Jesus obviously expected his disciples to be generous givers, in order to please God and to meet the needs of others.  The way we are to give is to be so consumed by love for God that we have no time to think about ourselves.  If we keep our own accounts, we lose our reward from God.  But if we just give in secret and forget about it, focusing only on pleasing God, He remembers every detail and will reward us according to His abundance.

Fear-of-the-Lord

I’d like to focus the bulk of our time today on verse 1 of Matthew chapter 6.  Jesus is telling us to do good deeds, acts of righteousness; but do them in a way that gives glory to God and not to ourselves or anyone else.

How exactly can we live a righteous life?  The Scriptures give plenty of counsel, and there are countless books written on the subject.  I am convinced that the one thing we need in order to be holy, more than self-discipline, more than a good working knowledge of what is right and wrong, more than a pure or undistracted environment, more than healthy boundaries, more than anything else, is the fear of the Lord.  Eugene Peterson gives one of the best descriptions of this I’ve read – “’Fear-of-the-Lord’ is the best term we have to point to this way of life we cultivate as Christians.  The Christian life consists mostly of what God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – is and does.  But we also are part of it.  Not the largest part, but still part.  A world has been opened up to us by revelation in which we find ourselves walking on holy ground and living in sacred time.  The moment we realize this, we feel shy, cautious.  We slow down, we look around, ears and eyes alert.  Like lost children happening on a clearing in the woods and finding elves and fairies singing and dancing in a circle around a prancing two-foot-high unicorn, we stop in awed silence to accommodate to this wonderful but unguessed-at revelation.  But for us it isn’t a unicorn and elves; it is Sinai and Tabor and Golgotha.  The moment we find ourselves unexpectedly in the presence of the sacred, our first response is to stop in silence.  We do nothing.  We say nothing.  We fear to trespass inadvertently; we are afraid of saying something inappropriate.  Plunged into mystery we become still, we fall silent, all our senses alert.  This is the fear-of-the-Lord.  Or we don’t.  Uneasy with the unknown, again like children, we run around crazily, yelling and screaming, trying to put our stamp of familiarity on it.  We attempt to get rid of the mystery by making our presence large and noisy . . . But there is also something about the sacred that makes us uneasy.  We don’t like being in the dark, not knowing what to do.  And so we attempt to domesticate the mystery, explain it, probe it, name and use it . . . ‘Fear-of-the-Lord’ is a new word in our vocabularies; it marks the way of life appropriate to our creation and salvation and blessing by God.”  He goes on to point out that we humans typically land in one of two places when trying to figure out how to live – by either coming up with a Code of Conduct that regulates behavior, or to take the opposite view, as an ancient smart-aleck put it, “I love to sin; God loves to forgive; What a wonderful arrangement.”  Neither of these positions – neither legalism nor cheap-grace-ism – can keep us on the path of righteousness – we will inevitably slide into the ditch on one side of the road or the other.  It’s only the fear-of-the-Lord that enables us to live the righteous life, to live rightly in reverence before a holy God.

Downward and Upward Growth

In telling us to do acts of righteousness, Jesus is adding to the previously held definition of righteousness which included things like honesty, purity, kindness, and love.  Even though Jesus uses exactly the same Greek word for righteousness that was used in chapter 5 – “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness” and “unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven,” He shifts the emphasis from just moral righteousness to include religious righteousness, with concrete practices such as giving, praying, and fasting.

Have you noticed that as believers we tend to favor one kind of righteousness over another?  Some of us focus on private devotions, public church-going, and other classic spiritual disciplines.  For others of us, the pendulum has swung in the other direction and the emphasis is on loving encounters with others in the community.  Both views are true and good and correct, but both are needed.  We cannot limit ourselves to either moral righteousness or religious righteousness – we need to live both.  There is no need to choose between piety and morality, religious devotion in church and active service in the world, loving God and loving our neighbor, since Jesus taught that authentic Christian “righteousness” includes both.

The Lord often uses pictures from nature to communicate deep truths.  Hosea 10:12 (NLT) says, “Plant the good seeds of righteousness, and you will harvest a crop of love. Plow up the hard ground of your hearts, for now is the time to seek the LORD, that he may come and shower righteousness upon you.”  In plant life and in our spiritual life, true growth takes place both upwards and downwards at the same time.  Downward, root growth is the inner life, seeking the Lord, spiritual formation.  Upward growth is where the fruit appears, outward life, acts of love.  We cannot separate the two kinds of growth.  If we have all upward growth but no downward – we do lots of great things but neglect to nurture our relationship with God – then we end up with either a withered plant that cannot flourish on the rocky, unbroken heart, or, perhaps worse, artificial flowers taped on top.  If we have all downward growth but no upward – we may be very pious but fail to care for the lost, the last and the least, then we will be stunted and fruitless.  True righteousness means that we invest in the inner life, plowing the hard ground of our hearts, and the outer life, planting good seeds of righteousness – and as Hosea wrote, God will bring not only the fruit of love but also a SHOWER of righteousness.  The way this Scripture is worded indicates that the Lord is waiting for us to plow, plant, and seek Him, that He may come.  And when He comes, He brings not just a little but an abundant shower.

Prophetic word

I want to share a prophetic word that I sense the Lord gave me for someone here today.  Don’t allow past failures to paralyze and immobilize you.  Take your past to the Cross – repent and receive forgiveness, cleansing, healing, and restoration.  Today is the day of salvation.  Today is the day of new beginnings.  Today is the day of holiness.  Today is the only day Jesus wants us to be concerned about – He calls us to live a righteous life today.  It’s too late to live a righteous life yesterday.  It’s too early to live a righteous life tomorrow.  Sow into tomorrow by living righteously today.  Today is the day to live a righteous life.

Holy Spirit

I want to share a new insight about the Holy Spirit with you that I received from an Indonesian pastor recently.  When you first meet someone, you greet them with a formal title, like “Mrs. Ledoux” or “Mr. Sykes.”  But when you have an intimate relationship with someone, formal titles just won’t do.  In fact, intimacy makes it totally inappropriate to continue using formal names.  What spouse would be satisfied with being called Mr. or Mrs. So-and-so by the one they’re supposed to share the most intimate earthly relationship with?  First-name basis is a way of saying “we’re close.”  God has invited us into a place of intimacy with Him, a relationship so close that the best picture He’s given us of what it’s like is that of marriage.  The person of the Trinity that indwells us, the helper that Jesus promised to leave with us, the one who guides, heals, comforts . . . has two names.  His “family name” is Spirit – that’s His domain.  He does what He wants, moves when, where, and how He wants.  He is mystery.  We can’t fully grasp what He’s like because Spirit is not something you can grab hold of, wrap up in a box and tie with a neat bow.

God has called us into an intimate relationship with Him.  We don’t call Him, “Mr. Spirit!”  He invites us to call Him by His first name, “Holy.”  Last Sunday we sang a worship song in which we declared “Your name is Holy.”  Our part is to call Him holy – His part is the work of the Spirit.  The only way we can call Him holy, the only way our praise to Him is found acceptable, is when we are holy as He is holy (1 Peter 1:16).  As we present ourselves to Him as holy, fully surrendered and broken before Him, then the Spirit can make use of us however He chooses.

R. A. Torrey wrote, “It is of the highest importance from the practical standpoint that we decide whether the Holy Spirit is merely some mysterious and wonderful power that we in our weakness and ignorance are somehow to get hold of and use, or whether the Holy Spirit is a real Person, infinitely holy, infinitely wise, infinitely mighty and infinitely tender who is to get hold of and use us. The former conception is utterly heathenish, not essentially different from the thought of the fetish worshipper who has his god whom he uses. The latter conception is sublime and Christian. If we think of the Holy Spirit as so many do as merely a power or influence, our constant thought will be, “How can I get more of the Holy Spirit,” but if we think of Him in the Biblical way as a Divine Person, our thought will rather be, “How can the Holy Spirit have more of me?” The conception of the Holy Spirit as a Divine influence or power that we are somehow to get hold of and use, leads to self-exaltation and self-sufficiency . . . But if we once grasp the thought that the Holy Spirit is a Divine Person of infinite majesty, glory and holiness and power, who in marvelous condescension has come into our hearts to make His abode there and take possession of our lives and make use of them, it will put us in the dust and keep us in the dust. I can think of no thought more humbling or more overwhelming than the thought that a person of Divine majesty and glory dwells in my heart and is ready to use even me.”

When we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit” let’s remember – our part is to call Him Holy; His part is Spirit.

The Balanced Life

Jesus cautions us strongly against doing good works or acts of righteousness in order to be seen or admired by others.  At first these words seem to contradict His earlier command to “let your light shine before men, that they may see . . .”  In both verses Jesus is talking about doing good works “before men” and in both cases it is in order to be “seen” by them.  But in Matthew 5:16 Jesus commands it, while in Matthew 6:1 He prohibits it!  These seem like mutually exclusive commands, like two sides of a coin – you can’t have both heads and tails at the same time.  But Scottish theologian A. B. Bruce explains this seeming discrepancy beautifully – “we are to show when tempted to hide, and hide when tempted to show.”  The ultimate goal of both of Jesus’ commands is the same – the glory of God.  Why should we let our light shine so that people can see our good deeds?  So that they will praise our Father in heaven.  Why should we do our spiritual devotions privately?  In order to give glory to God.

The Christian life is very much one of balance.  Philippians 4:5 is translated in many different ways – (NIV) “Let your gentleness be evident to all”, (NLT) “Let everyone see that you are considerate in all you do”, (Douay-Rheims) “Let your modesty be known to all men”, (King James) “Let your moderation be known unto all men.”  The word translated gentleness, consideration, modesty, moderation, and in The Message “unselfishness” – ἐπιεικὲς epieikes – refers to restraint on the passions, general soberness of living, being free from all excesses.  We are to do all that we do with balance.  Jesus is calling us to avoid both extremes.  The Christian life is a delicate life, a sensitive life; but if we approach it in the right way, and under the leading of the Holy Spirit, the balance can be maintained.  We are to simultaneously attract attention and not attract attention to ourselves.

This reminds me of Isaac Newton’s third law of motion – “to every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.”  This applies beautifully to the Christian life.  If we seek God wholeheartedly, spend time in prayer and the Scriptures, yet fail to sow seeds of righteous acts, we’re hiding and we’re out of balance.  If we genuinely love others and extend our arms to those in need, yet fail to abide in Christ and get to know Him more, we’re showing and we’re out of balance.  If we’re out of balance, the law of motion fails and we’ll stagnate because the inflow and the outflow need to be equal and opposite!  We must both hide and show, to the glory of God!

The Presence of God

God has given us a very big vision, to be holy as He is holy.  We need to carefully guard against reducing or converting the vision into something other or something less.  God asks for genuine perfection.  We tend to want to exchange it for a lesser goal of outward righteousness.  God sets us the goal of pleasing Him; we tend towards exchanging that for the goal of pleasing others.  You may have heard the phrase, “the greater the level, the greater the devil.”  The more we progress in the Christian life, the more aware we become of what true holiness is, the greater the temptation becomes for hypocrisy.  Pride is always looking for a toehold in our lives – we need to be vigilant and keep our eyes on God and His vision and goals, nothing less.  If we keep uppermost in our minds the fact that we are always in the presence of God, then hypocrisy, vanity, and pride will vanish.  If only we fully realized that God is looking at all, and is aware of it all, and is recording it all!  This is what the Bible teaches, and the way of holiness that is presented there.  There’s nothing in Scripture that even hints that we should seek some wonderful experience to solve all our problems.  On the contrary, it’s simply realizing that we are always in the presence of God – here we are back at the fear-of-the-Lord again.  Anyone who truly realizes this will be on his or her face before God crying out in desperation for God to fill them with the Holy Spirit.  May we each have a greater awareness of God’s holy presence every moment!  Martyn Lloyd Jones states our highest goal simply – “We should realize that our supreme object in life should be to please God, to please Him only, and to please Him always and in everything.  If that is our aim we cannot go wrong.  Here, of course, we see the outstanding characteristic of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Is there anything that stands out more clearly in His life?  He lived entirely for God.  He even said that the words that He spoke were not of Himself and that the works He did were the works which the Father had given Him to do.  His whole life was given to glorifying God.  He never thought of Himself; He did nothing for Himself, He did not obtrude Himself . . . He did not raise His voice aloft.  In a sense He seems to be there unseen and trying to hide Himself.  We are told about Him that “he could not be hid,” but He seemed to be trying always to do this.  There was a complete absence of ostentation.  He lived entirely and always and only for the glory of God.

Let us keep our eyes on eternal things, let us remember that we are always in God’s presence and in His line of sight, and let us live only to please Him.