Eighth Meeting
Sunday, November 8, 2020
The Sermon on the Mount Continued
Matthew 6
¶1. “Beware not to do your alms before men, to be seen by them; otherwise, you have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
* Jesus did not say (v. 1), “Do not do alms.” Nor did he only say, “Do not do your alms before men.”
* What he said was (v. 1), “Do not do your alms before men to be seen by them,” that is, do not do good things for the purpose of winning men’s admiration.
2a. So, whenever you give alms, don’t sound a trumpet before you the way the hypocrites do in the synagogues and streets so that they might be honored by men.
* The word “hypocrite” means “actor”. The Greeks had been using that word for centuries, so it was nothing new to Jesus’ disciples.
* But the disciples were probably puzzled as to what Jesus was getting at by calling those very devout men “actors” because everybody under the law of Moses was an actor. They had no choice. Everybody who kept God’s law was only doing and saying what the law commanded Israel to do and say.
* This is why the word “hypocrite” is not found in the Hebrew Old Testament books, nor the word “actor”, or even the word “pretend”. To act as the law of Moses demanded was all that Old Testament saints could do.
* When Moses built the tabernacle at Mount Sinai that God told him to build, he was only building a stage for the high priest to act on.
The high priest didn’t know it, but when he made intercession to God for Israel he was pretending to be Jesus. He was acting out what the Son of God would really do when he came. And God accepted that act at that time.
When Israel slaughtered the Passover lamb, they didn’t know it, but they were acting out what some of them who despised him would really do to the Lamb of God when he came.
And when Israel ate the flesh of that Passover lamb, they didn’t know it, but they were acting act what some of them who believed would really do after Lamb of God suffered and died for them. Paul said,
1Corinthians 5
7b. Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us,
- so that we might keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
* This is what Jesus was hinting at when he said this:
John 6
53b. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
. . . .
- For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.”
* Jesus lost a lot of disciples when he said that. They thought he was trying to add another act for them to perform of eating his human flesh and drinking his human blood. But he wasn’t talking about pretending to eat his flesh and blood, but to really eat his flesh and blood.
John 6
- When many of his disciples heard this, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can hear it?” 61. But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Does this offend you?
. . . .
- It is the Spirit that gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The things that I am telling you, they are spirit, and they are life!”
. . . .
- At this, many of his disciples went back to former things, and walked with him no longer.
* We’re not acting when we eat and drink in Christ. It’s the real thing! It is life.
1Corinthians 12
- For by one Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and all were given to drink of one Spirit.
* And.…
1Corinthians 10
- We, being many, are one bread, one body, for we all partake of the one bread.
* Now, spiritually, an actor is someone who plays a religious role, someone who says the words he is expected to say and does the deeds he is expected to do, and some people are excellent at it
* Uncle Joe never was good at saying or doing the expected thing. And he always struggled with that. He wanted to say and do what good Christians expected of him, but he was too alive in the holy Ghost to do it. It was a great relief to him to learned that Christianity is not of God, and that he did not have to conform to Christians, but Christians needed to conform to him and walk with him in the Spirit.
* Nothing an actor says or does is spontaneous; nothing is from the heart. * No ceremony is alive. They are all scripted; they are all pretend!
* This is another aspect on the greatest lesson of the New Testament; there is no ceremony, no acting, in the righteousness of God.
2b. Truly, I tell you, they have their reward.
* Every actor performs his act in hope of receiving some kind of reward. The actors Jesus was talking about wanted the reward of men’s admiration, and Jesus said that they had it. They were being paid for their acting ability, not with money, but with the being praise of men.
* Someone may ask, “What if the actor’s hope is to be rewarded by God for his ceremonial worship? The answer is that in this covenant of life, God does not accept ceremonial worship because it does not honor the sacrifice of His Son!
* Paul counted all his acting ability, every ceremony and holy day, every title and position, every tradition of the elders, as dung, just to know Christ.
* The son of God said he came to bring us life (Jn. 10:10), and Paul said that the Spirit is life.
Romans 8
10b. The Spirit is life . . .,
- and if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He who raised Christ from the dead shall also bring to life your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells in you.
* No ceremony is going to raise you from the dead.
* Jesus was made God’s real “high priest by the power of an endless life”. He really preached by that same power, and he was really raised from the dead by that power. The whole kingdom of God, Paul said, “is in power” (1Cor. 4:20). And to practice ceremonies now is to pretend that the Son of God has not come to see us free from them.
* You cannot add a ceremony without adding strife. Quarrels about when, who, where, and how often the ceremony should be performed will always arise. When a woman in Samaria wanted to quarrel with Jesus about the right place to perform acts of worship,
John 4
- Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when you’ll worship the Father neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
- You Samaritans don’t know what you’re worshipping; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.
- But an hour is coming, and now is, when true worshippers will worship the Father spiritually and truly, for the Father is searching for such people to worship Him. 24. God is a spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.”
* The Son of God was sent here to earth to pay the price for it, and he paid it, and that sacrifice is precious to God, and to everyone who knows Him.
- But when you are giving alms, don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing 4. so that your almsgiving might be in secret. And then your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you in the open.”
* But Jesus also encouraged us earlier in this same sermon to do good deeds that people can see:
Matthew 5
- Let your light shine before men (so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven).
* So, how can we know when to obey what Jesus said in Matthew 5:16 and when to obey what he said in Matthew 6:3?
* This is just one example of the conundrums that arise whenever men try to live by a set of rules. Life is too complicated for any set of rules to be able to cover every situation we face.
* Another example of such a conundrum is the occasional conflict that existed in Israel between keeping God’s commandment to do no work on the Sabbath and God’s commandment to circumcise male children on the eighth day after birth. Any male infant not circumcised on the eighth day was cut off from Israel:
Genesis 17 (God to Abraham)
- Every eight-day-old male among you shall be circumcised throughout your generations.
. . .
- An uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin . . . shall certainly be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant.
* Anyone who did work on the Sabbath was cut off from Israel:
Exodus 31
- You shall certainly keep the Sabbath, for it is holy to you. Those who defile it shall surely be put to death. Whoever does any work on it . . . shall be cut off from among his people.
* But what if the eighth day after the birth of a son fell on a Sabbath day?
* The right thing to do was to go ahead and break the Sabbath and circumcise the child, and God let the elders of Israel feel that was acceptable. The need to circumcise trumped the prohibition of doing work on the Sabbath day.
* Jesus pointed this out to those who criticized him for healing on the Sabbath day:
John 7
- Moses gave you circumcision, . . . and even on the Sabbath, you circumcise someone.
* But without God’s help, no one can know which commandment to choose to keep when there is a conflict.
* That is why God sent His Son, to help us know what to do by putting God’s law within us so that we can feel God’s will (which is His law) in every situation. * The Spirit can be with us in every situation, everywhere we go, and let us know what is right in God’s eyes.
¶5. “And when you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites, for they like standing up to pray in the synagogues and on street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly, I tell you, they have their reward.
- But when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have locked your door to pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you in the open. 7. And when you pray, don’t rattle on like the Gentiles. They think that with their many words they will gain a hearing.
- Don’t be like them; your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.
* Prayer in this covenant, being part of worship, must be “in spirit and in truth”. It must be inspired “by the power of an endless life”.
* To read a prescribed prayer from a piece of paper, to repeat a traditional prayer (e.g., “the Lord’s prayer” or the rosary) is a useless ritual, a dead religious work. * It wasn’t always like that, though. Before the Son came, dead ceremonial acts
were all man had, and the dead ceremonies that God gave Israel were glorious because, unknown to Israel, they were acts that foretold of God’s Son.
* That is how glorious the Son is. Even the shadows of his coming were holy.
2Corinthians 3
- If the ministry of death by letters engraved on stones came with glory, so that the children of Israel were not able to gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory on his face (which ministry is being brought to an end),
- how shall the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious?
- For if the ministry of condemnation be glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness overflow with glory.
- Indeed, that which was once made glorious has been made not glorious in this regard, on account of the surpassing glory.
- And certainly, if that which is being done away with was glorious, much more glorious is that which lasts.
¶9. “So then, you pray like this:
* First, this is not “the Lord’s prayer”. The Bible never calls it that; Christians do. This is the disciples’ prayer. Jesus told them to pray it.
* Second, telling his disciples what they should pray is the best Jesus could do for them as until after he died, for until the day of Pentecost, they didn’t yet have “the power of an endless life” to inspire their prayers.
* Lastly, Jesus said only that they should pray “like this”. They did not have to use these specific words. Jesus was not giving them another ceremony to perform.
9b. ‘Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name.
* BREAKDOWN OF THE DISCIPLES’ PRAYER: “Our Father who is in heaven”
* The first thing a Jew with a right heart would do is to confess his (and Israel’s) exclusive relationship with God. This was not a claim; this was a confession of God’s love for Israel.
* No Gentile could call God his Father, and it be true.
* Nehemiah confessed, like Jesus with the Samaritan woman, his and Israel’s exclusive relationship with God when he told the scoffing Gentiles, “You have no portion, or righteousness, or memorial in Jerusalem.”
Nehemiah 2
- When Sanballat the Horite, and Tobiah the Ammonite servant, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, they mocked us and despised us, saying, “What is this thing that you are doing? You are rebelling against the king!”
- And I returned a message to them, and I said to them, “The God of heaven, He will make us successful, and we, His servants, will rise up and build the wall, and you have no or righteousness, or memorial in Jerusalem.”
* God humbled His people to confess His exclusive relationship with Israel.
Amos 3
1a. Hear this word which Jehovah has spoken about you, O children of Israel … 2a. “Of all the families of the earth, I have known only you.”
* God only asked Israel to humble themselves to do the same.
* For Jews at that time, to confess that God is “our Father” was to testify that God was not the Father of those who outside of Israel – though the door was open for any Gentile on earth to submit to the law and be numbered among God’s people.
NOTE!
* It was Israel’s failure to confess their exclusive relationship with God that caused all their greatest problems. Only a few in Israel’s history were like Nehemiah. And every serious problem Israel ever faced stemmed from that one failure.
* If you have the holy Ghost, you have an exclusive relationship with God. * God humbled Himself greatly confessed you when that relationship began. His Spirit cried out through you, declaring Him to be your Father.
Romans 8
15b. You received the Spirit of adoption, by which we cry out, “Abba!” (that is, “Father!”) 16. The Spirit itself bears witness, together with our spirit, that we are children of God.
* Now, our part is to confess our exclusive relationship with God before men. If we do that at the right time and in the right spirit, people will hear the Spirit of God say, even if we do not, “You have no portion, or righteousness, or memorial in the body of Christ.”
* Some will hate us for that, as if it is our doing and our plan, but God’s lost sheep will not. It will be the sound they have been waiting to hear.
* It is our purpose on earth to “confess Christ”. Jesus said,
Matthew 10
- “Whosoever confesses me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is 26 in heaven.
- But whoever denies me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven.”
* To be a part of God’s family is such as great honor that one would think that confessing it would be an easy and exciting thing to do. But in this world, there is constant and great pressure against it.
* Confessing the truth of Christ is to confess that HE is the only way to God, the only truth about God, and the only life that comes from God.
* Men will approve of you if you tell them, “My personal way to God is through Jesus.” But you do not have a personal way to God. Christ is the way to God, the only way, and we confess him truly only when we confess that.
* When we confess that Jesus is THE way (not a way), we are testifying to others that they don’t have a personal way to God, either.
* To confess Christ truthfully to confess that those with the Spirit belong to the only family God has and that He is THEIR Father and nobody else’s, though the door is open for any sinner on earth to submit to Christ and become a child of God.
* In other words, to confess Christ before men is to testify to them, “Without the Spirit of God, you have no portion, or righteousness, or memorial in the body of Christ.”
* Isn’t that what Paul said?
Romans 8
9b. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to him.” * To confess Christ is to testify, as Peter did, that
Or, “confesses in me”, or “by me”. Also, Luke 12:8. 26
Acts 4
- Salvation is not by any other, for there is no other name given among men by which we must be saved!
* Confessing Christ truthfully is the real reason Paul was so hated, and it is the real reason that I and some of you have been so hated.
* And the failure to do that is the real reason some others are not so hated. * It is also the root of every problem the body of Christ has ever had in this world. * It is also the root of whatever problem you have in this world.
* Hear this! Every circumstance on this earth is determined by God based on His relationship with His people. Every circumstance on earth in ancient time was dependent on God’s relationship with His people. God shaped world history based on what His people needed, ands He is still shaping history based on what His people need. Stay out of politics and stay out of God’s way before He runs you over. He is doing the right thing! Whatever God is doing, He has something wonderful in mind for His children, and they will get to it if they do not get in His way, “thinking to do God service”.
* If you will live in “the power of an endless life”, if you will serve God “in spirit and in truth”, the only problems you will have will be somebody else’s, not yours,a nd you’ll be able to help them.
* To confess Christ is to testify that the only thing that we did, and the only thing that can be done, to enter the kingdom of God’s is repent and be baptized with His Spirit, which God gives in the name of His Son to every soul who obeys Him! * Peter and the other apostles paid the price for confessing Christ like that:
Acts 5
- Peter and the apostles answered, saying, “We must obey God rather than men. 30. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you killed, hanging him on a tree. 31. This man God has exalted to His right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.
- And we are his witnesses of these things, and so is the holy Spirit, which God has given to those who obey Him.”
- When they heard this, they were cut to the quick, and they began plotting to kill them.
* If we confess Christ as Peter did, it may be that we suffer as he did, if that is God’s plan for us, but then, as Paul said,
Romans 8
- The sufferings of this present time are unworthy of comparison with the glory that shall be revealed to us.
* May God give us the love of Christ that produces the boldness to confess him before men.
GoingtoJesus.com – PastorJohnsHouse.com – SongsofRest.com – isaiah58.com – PioneerTract.com
