Upside Down Living #14 - Secrecy in a Time of Boasting
Message Description
Strip District Campus Pastor, Joel Haldeman, continues the Upside Down Living series in Matthew 6 talking about our motivations in regards to things of faith, the rewards that await us in heaven, and the difference between actions of faith done in public or in secret.
Message Transcript
There are a few things that I enjoy doing more than paying my children to eat a hot pepper. On a recent family trip, I happen to have the camera rolling when I did this to my son. Take a look (video of son eating hot pepper for pizza reward). We're all motivated by different things, aren't we? For my son, he's in a phase of life where he is motivated by pizza. That is his passion in life. About a year ago, he discovered Chicago deep dish pizza for the first time, and he was in food heaven.
Now, what you and I all know is that there is a difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, right? An intrinsic motivator is one that comes from within. I eat hot peppers because I like the way it makes me feel. It makes me feel good. There's some sort of brain chemical rush that comes from hot peppers. That is intrinsic. My son ate one because of an extrinsic motivator. Somebody offered to give him something. Maybe you're in a classroom of some sort, and you work hard, because you love to learn or just because you want to bring your best effort. That's an intrinsic motivator. If you're working hard because you're afraid you're going to lose a scholarship, or because if your grades are not good enough, then something might not happen. That's an extrinsic motivator. Running a marathon for the love of running and fitness versus being able to say that you did it, is a difference between intrinsic and extrinsic. You get the point.
Now, what you and I all know is that intrinsic motivators are always better. I mean, you've probably all had this experience maybe when you were a kid, there was something that you were forced to do, to play a certain sport that you didn't want to play, or to learn how to play an instrument, or learn something else. And the only reason you did it was because someone made you, and maybe there was some sort of reward that was held over your head, or you were bribed in some way. And it just wasn't that great of an experience because the motivation was coming from outside of you. Every year around April 15, all of us have something that we do that's extrinsically motivated, right? We file and pay our taxes, not because we love doing it, but because of some sort of reward or punishment that is external, toward us. We're working because of the external consequences, not because of a thing itself.
Now, on the flip side, you could probably name something that you are really good at. Maybe it's something that you do as a part of your work or maybe it's a hobby. And part of the reason that you are so good at it, is because you are intrinsically motivated by it. When you do that thing, it makes you feel good. It makes you feel alive. You are doing the very thing that you were created for.
Now, the truth is, it's not always easy to untangle these two things, right? Because our motivations often get mixed up. I'm doing a home project right now. And there's part of me that wants to get it perfect because I'm a perfectionist. I like feeling productive, and I like feeling like I'm making something better. And I want this project to look intentional and exact because when I look at it, at the end of the day, I want to be able to look at myself and say well done, good and faithful homeowner, you've crushed it. Intrinsic motivation, right? But at the same time, tangled up in my motivation is this reality that I want other people to see it. And I want them to pat me on the back and say, good job, that looks nice, wow, creative solution, etc.
And so, our motivators can get all mixed up. My kids right now are reading the Harry Potter books. And my son started years ago, and I really had to bribe him in order to get him into the first book, or to get him to read any book that didn't have pictures in it. But now that he's into the story, the motivation is entirely intrinsic. He loves just the act of reading the book. Now one of my daughters, she's not there yet. For her, reading a book is purely about earning screen time. It's an extrinsic motivator. Now we need to get away from that system. But you know what, it's 2020. And she's doing third grade through a screen. So, one hurdle at a time, okay.
Now, when it comes to our faith, of course it would be so much better for us to be intrinsically motivated, right? To have pure motivation. Jesus addresses motivation in these verses. And by looking at these, I want us to be able to get to the bottom of our motivation. Because motivation matters. If you've ever tried to lose weight, or to get into shape, or to change some habit in your life, you know, that all of it hangs on motivation. And so how much more important is the motivation when it comes to your faith?
Now, we've been going through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. And here we find ourselves at the start of chapter six. And what happens is Jesus pivots away from what he's been doing in the past chapter, where he said in repeated sections you have heard it was said. And yet what Jesus continues to do in this next section, and throughout the whole sermon, is to confront the religious mindset of his day. Jesus deals with giving to the needy, he deals with praying, and fasting. And there's a theme that runs through these, especially the section on giving and fasting that deals with motivation. And so that's where we're going to spend our time, not so much on the subject of praying and fasting, which we've dealt with before and we'll deal with another time, but on the subject of motivation particularly.
One of the first hurdles that you and I have to get over in the verses that you heard read, is this belief that God rewards. I want you to hear just a couple of these verses one more time. Chapter six verses one through four says, "Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven." There's that theme of reward, right? "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 others, truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. So that you're giving may be in secret, then your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you."
The first hurdle that you and I have to get over is that God rewards. And I say that this is a hurdle because the only way that we can truly follow the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, is if we believe that God tangibly rewards those who follow him. Some of those rewards are tied to heaven. Some of those rewards are tied to God's supernatural intervention in our life today. But this is where you and I get tripped up. Because you and I are rational people, we look for the cause, we look for the reason in all things. And sometimes when we see something that's unexplainable, what do we look for? We look for the explanation anyway.
My guess about you is that you have a hard time believing in a god that's actually working physically in this world. Now, you probably are much more comfortable with the idea of a God, who got the ball rolling, so to speak, in the first century with Jesus, and then work spiritually in the hearts of the church today. We have a much harder time believing that God is actively involved in shaping the day to day functions of our world. And it's not that you would say that you can't believe it. It's that you and I tend to not expect it. But what we find instead in the scripture is that God supernaturally intervenes in this life, to reward his followers, and he stores up rewards for his followers in heaven.
Now, if we don't believe in the rewards of God, what happens is we stand to miss out significantly on what God can do in us. Let me tell you, just briefly about a name that you've maybe heard before. William Tyndale is one of the more influential Christians throughout history. And when you think about the Protestant Reformation, if you're familiar with the history of what happened in the 16th century, you might think of names like Martin Luther and his 95 Theses or John Calvin. And while those people were busy doing incredibly important work, Tyndale was busy doing something very different. He was working at translating the Bible into English.
See, one of the most significant problems during the Protestant Reformation was that the common people had no access to the Bible. It existed pretty much only in Latin, which common people did not have the ability to read and understand. And so, Tyndale saw this as an issue and worked tirelessly to translate the Bible, from Greek and Hebrew into English, even though it was illegal, and he knew that he faced the possibility of death. And so, Tyndale was successful and translated pretty much the whole New Testament and most of the Old Testament into English which paved the way for the Reformation to move forward in other English-speaking countries.
Yet Tyndale was swimming against the tide. He was arrested for heresy, and eventually killed. He was strangled and burned at the stake. In Tyndale's dying prayer, the last recorded words from his mouth was, “Oh, Lord, open the eyes of the King of England.” Within four years of his death, the very same King requested that an English translation be made of the whole Bible. And one came about that relied heavily on Tyndale's work, the Matthew Bible, which was mostly Tyndale's work, although there were other people that finished the Old Testament. The Matthew Bible was deeply influential. Much of the King James version, a Bible that was read for the next 350 years, in English speaking parts of the world, relied so heavily on the Matthew Bible. Not only that, but Tyndale influenced the King of England who eventually decided to completely separate from the Catholic Church, which has led the way to the worldwide Anglican community today.
Listen, in order for us to understand rewards, we have to understand that the experience of Christianity in this day has been unusual. What you've seen, whether you call yourself a part of Christianity or not, what you've seen is a world and a day in which Christianity has been somewhat accepted, or at least you'd agree that some sort of watered down version of Christianity is acceptable today. But there have been plenty of places, plenty of times, plenty of ages, where being a Christian has been very difficult. See, for people like William Tyndale, hope in the rewards of God was absolutely essential for his life's ambition. And even when all the world was against, and it seemed like every force was trying to prevent him to accomplish what God called him to do, he had hope. He was motivated because he believed in a God who rewards.
Just two other examples of this in scripture. 2 Corinthians 5 is a place where Paul is writing to a church, to a group of believers. And he writes, "So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad." He says every believer will appear before some sort of judgment with Christ, and there will be rewards, and there will be a loss of rewards.
Another place, Revelation 22:12, this is at the very end of the last book of the Bible, after this glorious vision of how God is going to create a new heaven and new earth. It ends this way, saying, look, this is Jesus in this vision, Jesus speaking, "Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done." Jesus is saying I'm bringing my reward with me. Now, importantly, God does not punish believers, because the punishment for sin was taken by Jesus on the cross. And so, what hangs in the balance when we talk about Jesus return, when we talk about judgment, what hangs in the balance for believers, is rewards and loss of rewards.
I said the first hurdle that we had to get over is the fact that God rewards. But Jesus is actually more specific than that in Matthew six. And I want to show you just a couple places where we see this concept. Verse one says, "Be careful not to practice your acts of righteousness in front of others, to be seen by them. If you do, you have no reward from your Father in heaven." Then verses three and four, "But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. So that you're giving may be in secret, then your Father who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." Jumping down to verse 17, on the subject of fasting, he says, "When you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your father, who is unseen. And your Father who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." And so, what Jesus tells us is that these public showy acts of righteousness, are not rewarded. Instead, it's the secret acts of devotion that God rewards.
Now, I think there's at least two reasons for this. Two reasons that God cares about whether acts of righteousness, as Jesus says, are done in secret, instead of in front of others. In the story of God, you are not glorious, in and of yourself. Any glory that you have derives from God and in the story, God is the one who's ultimately glorious. And so, anything that you and I do to detract from God's glory and bring glory to ourselves, put the spotlight on ourselves, is something that God is against.
But I think there's a second reason here. And it's that if you do any righteous thing, whether that's giving, or praying, or fasting, as he talks about in this chapter, if we do any of those things, any acts of worship or acts of righteousness, publicly, in order to be seen, then you've already received what you were aiming to get. Jesus says that in verse two, he says, "Truly I tell you; they've received their reward in full." Because what they were seeking was an extrinsic reward from others. See, we've already discussed that intrinsic rewards are better. They're more powerful in terms of motivating ourselves, right? By depending on extrinsic rewards, that's pats on the back from others. And we crush our own motivation. That's not in your own best interest. Who wants to spend their life chasing after pats on the back from other people? That is crushing.
And so, God rejects working for that kind of reward. And thank God that he does because it's lousy. It's not very motivating. And so Jesus says, when you do religious things, instead of doing them to be seen by others, do them in secret, because when you do them to be seen by others, you've already received your reward. You've gone ahead, even pressed people, congratulations, task failed successfully. That's a tragedy. Because God has something so much better in store for you.
And here's where we get some motivation. Because in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus confronting the religious life of the Pharisees, and Jesus gets at the motivation of the Pharisees. And here's what he offers you and I, that when you do something righteous, whether you're helping another person out, giving a gift, or you're doing some act of devotion, do it privately. Because when you do it privately, it guarantees two things. Number one is you're doing it because you love it. You're doing it because you desire it, because there's something good in and of itself about that thing that you're doing. Regardless of whether anyone else ever hears about it, or knows that you did it, I think that we'd all agree that we'd all be better off if we did things because we loved doing them.
And the second thing that it guarantees is that God will reward you. I want to talk about those rewards for a moment. I think in part, the reward is the simple fact that we're motivated, that we're developing in ourselves, this intrinsic motivation to continue doing those things and to love them. Someone once told me about something generous that they had done, and how they were telling everybody that they did it. And I just can't help but think how much they've hurt themselves by that tactic. See, the reason that you and I give to a cause, like give financially, is because we believe in it, right? Because what we're doing is, we're contributing to something that we see as being bigger than ourselves, that my money is better spent on that cause than it is on my own pleasures. There's this awesome thing that we get to do when we get caught up in something that's more glorious than we are. But what they did, by going around and telling everybody about that generous thing is they robbed themselves of the joy of being taken up by something that's more glorious than them. It became about them instead of about the cause.
How much better is it to glory in the cause itself? Because when you and I give to something, what we're doing is we are putting the spotlight on something else. And we're joining in with the glory of what's being done there. And how much more is that true when we talk about God. That we get to participate in the glory of God in some way. So the next time you decide to give money to something or a cause, you know, whatever, and someone finds out about it, and they say thank you, or wow, that was really awesome what you did, instead of taking the opportunity to congratulate yourself, oh, it was nothing or you know, it was no big deal, I love doing that sort of thing, if instead the response is, isn't that cause so amazing? Look at the good work that is going on over there.
And the difference is, you've pointed to something, or someone who is more glorious, than you are. Someone who is more generous than you are in the case of God. When we contribute to the cause of God, and give all the credit back to him, we're saying, I'm not the generous one, he is the generous one. He is the glorious one. And you and I get to participate in bringing about God's glory, which is exactly what you were created to do. And so, part of the reward is simply built in and happens any time that you make much of God and little of yourself.
By the way, here's another place where Paul's writing to a church that he planted in First Thessalonians chapter two, he says, "19 For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? 20 Indeed, you are our glory and joy." Paul saying our crown, our reward, is the project itself. The work that was done is more glorious. Imagine if Paul would have said, you know, here's our crown, here's our joy, here's our glory. We worked hard. We had sleepless nights. But instead, he says, look at what was accomplished. Which we know, was the work of God.
And so, what I've tried to show you here is that the rewards are built into the very fabric of life itself. When you serve God, when you make much of him, you're rewarded, because you become more self-motivated. You're serving something that's bigger than yourself. But there's a totally different kind of reward that we have to consider. And these are the tangible and actually extrinsic rewards of God. Remember that verse from Revelation, Jesus says, I'm coming soon, and I'm bringing my reward with me. I mean, we can't help but see that is a tangible reward, something that Jesus is bringing, and he's going to give to his followers. There are some rewards, that we'll wait for God to hand out. And because those rewards are coming from outside of us, we have to call those extrinsic.
Now, this is what I want you to think about for a moment, because we've said that the most powerful motivators are the ones that are intrinsic, they come from within. And I think that's obvious, because your opinion of yourself is so much more valuable and ultimately more powerful than the opinion of others. Because if everybody in your life thinks that you're successful, and you see yourself as a failure, your opinion of yourself will trump their opinion, right?
There's one exception. And it's that the opinion of God towards his children is the most effective opinion that you will ever encounter. And so, when God rewards, whether it's in this life, or in eternity, those rewards from God come from outside of us. They are powerful motivators. Because the opinion of God is even more important than your opinion of yourself.
Now, it's almost impossible for me to come up with an example of this, because we simply don't know when something in this life is actually a reward from God, or whether it's just the result of chance or our own creation. But what we do know, on the basis of Jesus words, is that God rewards what is done in secret. And that's exactly the point that I want you to take away today. God rewards what is done in secret. Now because God rewards what is done in secret, there's two things that I want us to consider that can empower us to do righteous things in secret, and thus prepare ourselves for the rewards of God.
The first is to know that nothing is hidden forever. I think sometimes, there's a fear that no one's ever going to know what you do. And what you and I need to remember is that God sees all things, God knows all things, nothing will forever be hidden. Now, I know that sometimes, we do things in secret. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you can't ever talk to another person about that. I mean, the danger here is that while Christ is inviting us to do righteous things in secret to not be seen, but you and I can't live secret lives that were meant to live in community. And so, what Jesus is speaking against is doing things that are showy in order to get a reward from others, but to have a close and trusted friend that you can discuss things with. Even your practices of giving, fasting, praying, or whatever secret devotional religious things you do, is so essential to have someone that you can talk those things over with, without it being showy or a bragging point. It can be so helpful. And so, the first empowering thing is to know that nothing is going to be hidden forever.
And the second, is to decide to value the rewards, an acclaim of God, above the rewards and acclaim of other people. See, one of the most life giving, life changing resolutions that you can make is that God's opinion is more important than anybody else's. That will take a weight off your shoulders to see that people are powerless compared to what God is able to do. That alone had to be the motivating factor in William Tyndale's life, to be able to spend his life working towards something that would get him killed. God's opinion was more important than the crowds that gathered around him to see him executed. God's opinion was more valuable.
You know, in a sense. The crucifixion of Jesus was a very public event, right? It had to be in order for the events themselves to be validated in order for people to be able to testify to them. But in another sense, the work of Jesus on the cross was in some ways a secret work. Because while the crowds saw him and shouted, crucify Him, there was a much smaller group that knew his true intention. And there was only one who saw his pure motive, his desire to carry the weight of sin on his shoulders and save humans from the wrath of God. And so, there's a sense in which the work of Jesus was a secret work, work that would go unrewarded in this life, yet a work of devotion that will be celebrated for eternity.
Friends, listen, you and I can never earn anything from God. He doesn't owe us anything. When we talk about the rewards of God, we have to recognize that we're never going to do anything that is perfectly righteous. Everything that we do in life, will always have a little bit of mixed motives in it. And so, God doesn't owe us anything. When Jesus talks about doing our acts of righteousness. It's not that we're earning any extra favor or any standing before God. That's already been earned by Jesus. Yet what God graciously allows us to do, is to seek Him to do righteous things, righteous things that in some strange way are purified by the perfect righteous life of Jesus so that when God sees those works, when God sees those acts of faith, He rewards them. Doing those things in secret, has this tendency to purify them because we're not concerned about the opinions of others. And when we do it, we are following in the footsteps of the Lord, who had secret faith that would be celebrated for eternity.
Friends, you owe it to yourself, to give it a try. Do something good this week in secret. Whether that's doing something good for another person, or just doing some private act of devotion to God, don't tell anyone about it. And by doing that, you're going to mimic the Lord who went to the cross with secret motives. Motives that will purify you and I. Motives that would earn for you and me a perfectly righteous standing before God so that we can do good in this life. So that we can experience the rewards of God. And when we do that, what's going to happen is we're going to join in a cause that is so much more glorious than you and me, which is exactly what we were created to do.
Let me pray for us. Father, I just ask that you help us be caught up in your glory. That we just set aside our own, not be concerned about the opinions of others, and that we'd be motivated to do acts of righteousness in secret. Thank you, God. Thank you for the rewards. We don't deserve any of them. But you are a gracious God, who continues to heap the rewards upon us. And we're so thankful. In Jesus name, amen.
