(The inspiration for this sermon came from God and from the book Simple Faith, by Charles Swindoll).
As I said earlier, my name is Sheila Fiorella and I am the pastor of New Day, but I’m not only the pastor. You see, every pastor wears many different hats. Sometimes, like most preachers, I am also a priest and a prophet. Back in Bible times priests and prophets had mutually exclusive roles. You were either one or the other. The priest’s work was pretty routine. HE studied the Law of the Hebrew Scriptures and kept those commandments and formal requirements. If you pulled out his calendar, you would find his weekly to-do list noted there of responsibilities for the Sabbath day and the yearly schedule of feasts and festivals. You would discover that for the most part, he dealt with externals: sacrifices, ritual washings, holy days, and food rules. The priest’s work was to preserve the past.
That was not the case with the prophet. His job was to interpret the present and give direction that would preserve the future. Every day on the job was a new day for him. It was different. It lacked a schedule. It lacked ceremony. The prophet was called upon to read between the lines of the daily news, which regularly put his job, and his life, on the line. His courage and integrity were frequently being challenged. The prophet wasn’t always wanted around, was rarely appreciated, and if he did his job well, he was often hated. Impulsive emotion often took precedence over professional polish compared to the priest. The prophet dealt mainly with internals, with the ethical wearing down of the human heart. Here’s a good summary of their roles. Priests calmed things down; prophets stirred things up.
The author Warren Wiershe wrote, “If I had my choice, I would rather be a priest than a prophet….Most people don’t want a prophet around because [he] makes them feel uncomfortable. A prophet weeps while others are laughing, and a prophet wears a yoke that gets in people’s way and knocks expensive trinkets off the shelves….While the popular leaders bend with the wind, the prophet stands as firm as a wall so he can lead the nation forward.…He is a physician who exposes the ugly sores before he applies the medicine. He is, in short, a person who creates problems by revealing problems so that he can solve problems.”
Before we turn our attention to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the focus of our series so far this month, let’s look back through the Old Testament to one such prophet named Micah. In typical prophet fashion, he makes some comments to the people that had some bite to them. Micah said, “The leaders of Jacob and the leaders of Israel are leaders contemptuous of justice, who twist and distort right living. Leaders who build Zion by killing people, who expand Jerusalem by committing crimes. Judges sell verdicts to the highest bidder, priests mass-market their teaching, prophets preach for high fees, all the while posturing and pretending dependence on God: ‘We’ve got God on our side. God’ll protect us from disaster.’ Because of people like you, Zion will be turned back into farmland, Jerusalem end up as a pile of rubble, and instead of the Temple on the mountain, a few scraggly scrub pines.” Micah 3:9-12
Whoa, Micah! Don’t hold back! He calls it like he sees it, and his words fall on their hearts like the feel of concrete on your bare feet after a string of 40 100 plus degree days. Not even a pair of flip-flops could have protected them from this. Micah’s scorching haul over the hot coals raises an important issue in the people’s minds. If this isn’t what God wants, then what in the world DOES God want? “How can I stand up before God and show proper respect to the high God? Should I bring an armload of offerings topped off with yearling calves? Would God be impressed with thousands of rams, with buckets and barrels of olive oil? Would God be moved if I sacrificed my firstborn child, my precious baby, to cancel my sin?” Micah 6:6-7
I sense a little sarcasm here, maybe even a little exasperation and frustration in the people’s voices. “Look here, God: what do you expect? (In the words of Adam Lambert), What do you want from me? Don’t I deserve a little kick-back for all my hard work? The next thing you know you’ll be wanting my firstborn, too. Yeah, right! Like that’s ever going to happen.” Listen to what Micah says. In place of all the external rituals, he gives us one of the best definitions of basic faith ever written: “God’s already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It’s quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love, and don’t take yourself too seriously—take God seriously.” Micah 6:8
God isn’t expecting us to put on an external, public show. God’s looking for a few good men and women with a basic faith that emanates from a heart of pure commitment to Him. These words of the prophet Micah in the Old Testament of the Bible set the stage for Jesus’ words in the New Testament book of Matthew, Chapter 6. Jesus warns: “Be especially careful when you are trying to be good so that you don’t make a performance out of it. It might be good theater, but the God who made you won’t be applauding.” Matthew 6:1Jesus is talking about our relationship with God. He wants us to walk humbly with God, without pretentiousness or arrogance or self-importance. To get off our high horse as the old saying goes. You know our egos can be pretty big sometimes. We actually think the world revolves around us, and not around God. “It’s all about me,” the catchphrase goes.
But here Jesus is warning us about that type of attitude, and he applies it to 3 basic good works: giving, praying, and fasting. We’re focusing on just the habits of giving and praying today. I’m going to “fast” from speaking about fasting today. Get it? Anyway…. Jesus explicitly says, “When you do something for someone else, don’t call attention to yourself. You’ve seen them in action, I’m sure—’playactors’ I call them— treating prayer meeting and street corner alike as a stage, acting compassionate as long as someone is watching, playing to the crowds. They get applause, true, but that’s all they get.” Matthew 6:2
The primary audience that the book of Matthew was addressing were Jews in the 1st century. For them helping and giving to the poor in particular was equal to righteousness and goodness. It reflected God’s own righteousness, which was so often expressed in God’s forgiveness. Unfortunately the wholesome, “do something” acts of giving became infected with the showmanship of the Pharisees, the religious leaders. These leaders put on a religious show when they gave to the poor. As they walked to the offering box in the synagogues, they didn’t pass a basket down the row, these guys were preceded by trumpeters who blasted their horns. You couldn’t miss what they were doing! Then to top it off, these Pharisees carried the same ceremony out into the streets, looking for the public praise of people rather than the personal approval of God.
Jesus calls these grandstanders hypocrites. And “The trouble with the religious hypocrite,” theologian John Stott writes, “is that he deliberately sets out to deceive people. He is like an actor in that he is pretending (so that what we are seeing is not the real person but a part, a mask, a disguise), yet he is quite unlike the actor in this respect: he takes some religious practice which is a real activity and he turns it into what it was never meant to be, namely a piece of make-believe, a theatrical display before an audience. And it’s all done for applause.”
Jesus says, “When you help someone out, don’t think about how it looks. Just do it—quietly and unobtrusively. That is the way your God, who conceived you in love, working behind the scenes, helps you out.” Matthew 6:3-4 Let’s not become so aware of our giving that we become captivated by our own generosity. Instead your giving can be marked by spontaneity, not letting your left hand know what the right is doing. Give to others like God gives to us. “And when you come before God, don’t turn that into a theatrical production either. All these people making a regular show out of their prayers, hoping for stardom! Do you think God sits in a box seat?” Matthew 6:5 Prayer was such a part of a Jewish person’s life that it was in danger of becoming ritualized, repetitive, and rotely exercised.
So Jesus warns against putting on a show, grandstanding for a gallery of self-righteous peers. He isn’t discouraging prayer, but the mistaken motives that lie veiled behind a mask of hypocrisy. You see the hypocrites don’t love to pray; they love to be SEEN praying. They love the attention and praise thrown their way. Since they play to the audience, their reward is the applause of people, but that’s the extent of it. There’s no standing ovation for them from God. Jesus says, “Here’s what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won’t be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense his grace.” Matthew 6:6
When you pray, (and notice that I said when, not if); WHEN you pray, go to a private place. There’s nothing wrong with communal prayer, but the reference here is to personal devotion. Close, intimate contact with God shouldn’t be a rigid and empty habit on display. It’s not a show. Prayer should be natural, full of passion for God, the sort of passion we come across in the Psalms like this one in our Old Testament. “A white-tailed deer drinks from the creek; I want to drink God, deep draughts of God. I’m thirsty for God-alive.” Psalms 42:1-2 Or like this: “You’re all I want in heaven! You’re all I want on earth!” Psalms 73:25
Jesus says, “The world is full of so-called prayer warriors who are prayer-ignorant. They’re full of formulas and programs and advice, peddling techniques for getting what you want from God. Don’t fall for that nonsense. This is your Father you are dealing with, and God knows better than you what you need.” Matthew 6:7-8 Lengthy, eloquent prayers aren’t what get God’s attention. What God does notice are the basics: straightforwardness and genuineness. Authenticity. Get real, in Dr. Phil’s words. Get real with God. Talk to your Heavenly Parent like you would talk to your earthly parent. You don’t have to use big, fancy words with God. They don’t impress God much.
If the prophet Micah had been sitting there that day, listening to these principles about giving and prayer, he probably would have been cheering, “Yeah, Jesus, that’s it! You nailed it. Yeah! Amen!” Because Jesus’ words were just one more way to say what Micah had said all those centuries before: “Don’t take yourself too seriously—take God seriously.” So how are YOU taking God seriously? How are you walking humbly with God?
How would YOU best describe your commitment to God?
- Close and passionate?
- Affectionate but routine?
- Indifferent and boring?
- Bitter and painful?
Then ask yourself, Why? Why has it been this way? … What could I do to fan the flames of commitment in my relationship with God? … What would it take to make prayer a more personal and important experience in my life?
Now Showing! It’s our Christian lives, up there on the big screen, for all to see. What will we show the world? I hope it won’t be some act, but the real thing. I hope we won’t have to toot our own horns, but that others will see our good deeds and come to realize they’re done in response to God’s love. I hope you won’t be scared; you won’t be afraid to spend some quiet, alone time with God, just the two of you, where you can have a good heart-to-heart talk. My prayer is that your spiritual senses will be awakened, to help you know and experience first-hand God’s forgiveness and God’s love, for you.
Let’s pray: Oh, God, don’t allow our faith to become routine, where we’re just going through the motions. This isn’t a dress rehearsal. This is real life. Make us less SELF-conscious and more GOD-conscious. Increase our passion, our devotion, our commitment for You. Through Christ and in the power of God’s Holy Spirit we pray, AMEN.