2 Corinthians 9:6-11 Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. 7 Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. 8 And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work. 9 As it is written: "He has scattered abroad his gifts to the poor; his righteousness endures forever." 10 Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness. 11 You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.
Introduction: God loves a cheerful giver
God loves a cheerful giver. God loves all His children so when you see a statement like that you know the point is that God especially loves it when we are cheerful givers. Why? What is it about giving that makes it so important that we be cheerful when we do it? Cheerfulness is a good thing in general, but God singles out giving as a time when it is especially important to be cheerful – why? When I pay my taxes or my electric bill they really don’t care what mood I am in when I write the check. The bottom line is just whether I give the money and how much I give. And most people think the bottom line in giving is how much you give. But nowhere in the New Testament do you find any laws regarding specific amounts. The amount is almost incidental; what matters to God is the cheerfulness – why is that?
Review
We have been working our way verse-by-verse through the Sermon on the Mount and last Sunday we began the section that begins in Matthew 6:1. In that sermon we studied the issue of living for reward. What is the right way to do that and what is the wrong way, and why is reward emphasized so heavily in Scripture? And I think I can say that I have had more positive response from that sermon than from any sermon I have ever preached. I am not really sure what it is that everyone liked so much about it, but I can say it is an important study and I would urge you to listen or read through it if you missed it because it is foundational to this whole chapter. And I would especially urge you to make sure you listen to the Q&A after the sermon. Probably the most important thing I said the whole time last Sunday came in answer to a question.
Reward and faith
This morning I would like to build on last week’s foundation, so let me refresh your memory with a brief summary: We found that living for reward is hugely important in the Christian life because of the connection to faith. Failing to be motivated by what God promises is an act of unbelief. And being motivated by human praise is also an act of unbelief.
John 5:44 How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?
When we do that we show we do not really believe that praise from God is what matters.
Reward and relationship
We also found that the key to understanding reward is to remember the relational aspect. It is a bad thing to use someone for selfish gain but it is not a bad thing to desire the natural benefits that come from nearness to a wonderful person. And the significance of God’s reward – the reason why it is so important – is that it is an indication of His pleasure. He rewards us when He is pleased with something we have done, and we live for His smile.
How to increase your desire for God’s rewards
God is responsive to our deeds – like a father rewarding his beloved child. And one of the keys to success in the Christian life is to get to the point where you are motivated by His promises of reward. The question that came up in the Q&A last week was, “How do I cause my heart to get more excited about God’s rewards?” How do you increase your desire for these invisible, unseen, unimaginable rewards? If my heart is not motivated by them, how do I make it so it is motivated by them?
Increase your knowledge of God’s goodness
I gave a fairly detailed answer to that last week, so I will not repeat it all now – but I do want to add to it a little. The answer to the question is two-fold. First, you become more excited about a reward based on your conception of the goodness of the Giver. If your favorite uncle just seems to surprise you every Christmas with the coolest gift – some really great thing you never even thought to ask for – then you get excited when he shows up with a gift even before you see what it is. You have never seen it, you cannot imagine what it might be, but still you are excited about it because you know a thing or two about what a great gift-giver your uncle is. The way to get excited about a promised gift that you have not seen and cannot imagine is to increase your faith in the goodness of the giver through knowledge and experience. We increase our delight in God’s promises of reward by spending more time with our attention fixed on His attributes. The more we learn about His goodness, and the more experiences we have of that goodness, the more excited we will tend to get when He promises us something and says, “Trust Me – you’ll love it.”
Use the samples
The other principle is this: To gain a greater anticipation of promised reward, use earthly pleasures for what they are – samples of God’s goodness. The best things in life – the most thrilling things, the most enjoyable things, the most pleasurable things, the most fulfilling things, the most interesting things – the reason those things are so thrilling and enjoyable and pleasurable and fulfilling and interesting is because they are samples of God’s goodness. Satan takes them and attaches them to sin, to draw us into evil. But the thing that is sinful is not the pleasure, but the disobedience. All the great pleasures of this world are samples of the goodness of God.
So make good use of earthly pleasures. It is a mistake to think of heaven as being completely different from all the wonderful things on earth. A lot of times kids will ask, “Will there be football in heaven?” Or dogs? Or water slides? Or skiing? The answer is probably. I don’t know if there will be football, but there will be something a lot like football. There will be something a lot like skiing. That is why those things exist in this life – to serve as samples of the goodness of God. All the best things in this life are previews of coming attractions.
If your conception of heaven is being a ghost sitting on a cloud playing a harp – think again. The eternal state will be a tangible, physical earth, and we will have physical bodies. And we will enjoy things like eating and drinking and doing all kinds of things that are very much like our favorite things in this life – only better.
So how do you increase your excitement about God’s rewards? Use all the greatest joys of this world as samples and then preach to your soul and say, “The God who invented all those things is promising to come up with other things that are like those only way better.” That, combined with an ever-increasing understanding of the amazing goodness of God, will change the affections and enable us to desire God’s rewards.
So Jesus laid the foundation in verse 1 by giving us the principle in general terms. Now He is going to show us how to apply that principle in three areas – giving, praying, and fasting. The first is giving.
Matthew 6:2 "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. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
The Goal: Cheerful giving
Giving for God’s reward glorifies God
The main point of all that is very clear – we are to give for heavenly reward, not earthly reward. Jesus’ great concern is not that we give more money, or that we give more sacrificially, or that we give more frequently, but that we give more expectantly. Or in the words of 2 Corinthians 9 – more cheerfully. The way to improve your giving is not to increase the amount, but to increase the joy.
And the reason for that is what Jesus said earlier in the Sermon on the Mount.
Matthew 5:16 let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.
All our good deeds must be done in such a way that they bring glory to God rather than to us. That is tricky when it comes to giving. How do you give to someone in a way that glorifies that person? Normally to bring credit and fame and renown to someone you need to receive from them, not give to them. For example, if I wanted to prove to everyone how rich Bill Gates is, it would be easy to do that by receiving from him. He could write me a check for a million dollars, and all I would have to do to show him to be wealthy and generous would be to just cash the check. But how do I give a gift to Bill Gates in a way that would make everyone impressed with how rich Bill Gates is? That is a little trickier. It is trickier, but it is possible. There is a way to do it. There is a way to give a gift to a generous, rich person in a way that makes it clear to everyone how rich and generous that person is.
How? By doing it for reward. The way to give to a generous, rich man in a way that advertises that man’s generosity and wealth is to give to someone he loves, and then get real excited about the reward you are sure to get. You run across his grandmother who is in dire straits, you dig deep into your wallet to help her out, and you do it with a huge smile on your face. And when someone asks you, “How can you give away all that money to a stranger and have such a big smile on your face?” you answer – “Easy – that was the grandmother of a very rich, very generous man. Judging from what I’ve seen him do in the past, as soon as he finds out what I did, I’m on easy street for the rest of my life.” And you walk away acting like you just won the lottery. That is how you give to a rich man in a way that shows how rich he is. In other words, all you have to do to give to a rich man in a way that draws attention to his wealth and generosity is be a cheerful giver.
Why does God love a cheerful giver? Why is it so important that when we write a check and put it in the offering that we do so with a happy, cheerful, excited attitude? Because that is the only way to give to God that makes Him look like the rich, generous, kind benefactor rather than the beneficiary. If I cannot wait to give Him my little one hundred dollars because I am so excited about what He is going to give me as a reward – my excitement shows everyone how rich and generous He is. But if I put money in the plate with a reluctant, grudging attitude, or a prideful “look at me” attitude – that makes Him look like some penny-pinching, low-budget father who is so hard up that he makes his children pay him an allowance. If all you do is increase the amount you give that will do more harm than good if it is done grudgingly or reluctantly or with an attitude that does not show God to be wealthy and generous. If you give and then worry about whether you will have enough money to get by, or if in your heart the money you give feels like a loss – that kind of giving does more harm than good. And just increasing it does nothing but increase the harm. The goal is to give more cheerfully – with more of an attitude of being elated because of the reward that is coming.
The Cheerfulness Must be Matched by the Giving
Will that have an impact on how much you give? Sure it will. If I am truly excited about the reward that comes from giving; I am going to give as much as I possibly can. So yes, this will have an impact on how much you give. It is the thought that counts, but the thought only counts as a valid thought if you act on it. If you do not act on it, it was not much of a thought.
Let me show you that from God’s Word: The Corinthians had all kinds of wonderful goals and aspirations about how much they were going to give to the struggling believers in Jerusalem. They talked a lot about how they were willing and eager to give. And Paul commends them for that, but then he urges them to follow through on that desire.
2 Corinthians 8:11 Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means.
It is the eager willingness (in other words – the cheerfulness) that counts, but it only counts if it compels you to follow through and actually give.
Now here is the really amazing part. Notice the end of the verse – according to your means. You need to follow through on your desire to give, but only within your means. That means our giving should always be a percentage, not a fixed amount. Do not give $10 or $100 or $1000; give 1% or 10% or 20%. Our regular giving should be some percentage of our income. The amount is incidental to God. So always figure your giving in terms of a percentage of your income.
But what is amazing is the fact that if you follow through on your eager willingness and give – even though you are giving according to your means, your gift is acceptable to God according to your desire.
2 Corinthians 8:12 For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.
If you do not give at all, God will not reward you at all. But if you give as much as you can God will reward you not for the amount you gave but for the amount you want to give. So if you really wish you could give a million dollars, but all you can give is one dollar, if you give that one God will reward you for the million that was in your heart to give. If you do not give the one He will not reward you for anything because obviously the willingness and eagerness are not really there. But if the willingness is there, and you prove that by giving what you can, God will reward you not based on the amount you gave, but based on the amount you would be willing to give if you had it!
So, do you have to give away everything you have? No. Some people have seen Jesus’ command to the rich young ruler to sell all he had and give it to the poor and have tried to turn that into a law for all believers. But that was a test for one man, not a law for all believers. We know that because in 2 Corinthians 8:11 Paul commands that we each give according to our means…
2 Corinthians 8:11 according to your means. 12 For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.
God does not expect you to give beyond your means. But He does expect you to have a compelling willingness.
But if all we have is eager willingness that is not matched by the actual completion of the act, that is not enough. Genuine love will desire to help the poor, and that desire will be so powerful that you will find a way to do it.
So having the desire without the action is not enough, but neither is the action without the desire. Just giving without a heart of mercy is not what God is calling for. In fact, the word Jesus used in the Sermon on the Mount translated give to the needy in verse 2 is just one word in the Greek and it derives from the root “mercy.” So when Jesus says, “When you give to the needy…” in the Greek it sounds like, “When you do your mercying…”. Giving is not mainly an issue of shelling out money. It is mainly an issue of a compassion for those in need combined with a desire for heavenly reward that drives you to find a way to give.
Proverbs 19:17 He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done.
Giving for man’s reward glorifies self
So Jesus assumes we will all give something, but then He gives us a caution:
Matthew 6:2. when you give do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men.
Honored by men
The word translated honored is the word “glorified.” It is the same word used back in 5:16 when Jesus said we should let our light shine before men so they would see them and glorify God. Glory belongs to God alone. Doing things to glorify ourselves – to receive honor for ourselves from men – when we do that we are putting ourselves in the place of God and stealing what rightfully belongs to Him. And on top of that we are preferring the reward of human honor above the reward God offers us.
Should we care about human assessments?
Should we care about what people think of us? Should it matter to us if people think we are spiritual or unspiritual? Yes – but only to the degree that their assessment reflects God’s assessment. If all the wisest and most spiritual and most biblically knowledgeable people around me disapprove of what I am doing – that makes me sit up and take notice – not because I am concerned about what they think per se, but because there is a fair chance that what they think is an indication of what God thinks, and I do care about that. So to the degree that someone has insight into the Scriptures I will pay attention to what he thinks of me. If he says I am doing something good or doing something bad, I will ask him to show me from the Scriptures. And if he can show me from the Scriptures, I will listen.
The wickedness of self-glorification
So the opinion of some people can be useful inasmuch as it helps me discover God’s assessment, but their own personal opinion in and of itself is meaningless. And doing things to gain human praise and human honor for ourselves instead of for God is a very serious sin. It is the disaster of hypocrisy. If you just look up all the times Jesus uses the word hypocrite it does not take long to get a feel for what a horrible thing that is. When a person steals God’s glory for himself he makes himself a bull’s eye for God’s wrath. In Acts 12 Herod gave an impressive speech.
Acts 12:22-23 They shouted, "This is the voice of a god, not of a man." 23 Immediately, because Herod did not give glory to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.
Daniel 4:30 Nebuchadnezzar said, "Is not this the great Babylon I have built … by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?" 31 The words were still on his lips when a voice came from heaven, "This is what is decreed for you, King Nebuchadnezzar: Your royal authority has been taken from you. … 33 Immediately what had been said about Nebuchadnezzar was fulfilled. He was driven away from people and ate grass like cattle. His body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird.
In Isaiah 14 there was a human king who thought he was a god and said in his heart, “I will raise my throne above the stars of God … I will be like the most High” and God cast him down to the grave (Isa.14:11-17). Seeking glory for yourself is a sin that God strikes people dead on the spot for.
Trumpets
And so Jesus says,
Matthew 6:2 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 glorified by men.
There is no historical record that they literally blew trumpets when they gave to the poor.
Some commentators have pointed to some things that took place in the Temple that involved sounding trumpets, but Jesus is not talking about the Temple here. He is talking about the synagogues and the streets. I doubt anyone actually carried a trumpet around to announce his giving to a poor person in the streets. More likely Jesus is using a figure of speech just like we do when we talk about someone blowing his own horn. It is a caricature – like the log in the eye in chapter 7. It is actually somewhat of a comical picture – a big trumpet fanfare in the streets every time they do a good deed. I am sure their methods of self-glorification were much more subtle than that, just as ours are. But Jesus tears away the façade of all our self-glorification and mocks it by exposing it for what it really is. When we have the motive of trying to impress people we might as well be walking around with a trumpet and having a big fanfare whenever we do a good deed.
We all have our own little trumpets. We do not make a big deal – we just hope someone finds out. You do not plan on saying anything, but somehow the subject just seems to happen to come up in conversation. Just a little trumpet. We are not off the deep end like some people. There are people who make a donation and then want a pew named in their honor – that is a trombone. We are not like that. We do not need a plaque or a brick or to be named at a banquette. For us it is not trumpets, it is…violins. No big fanfare, just a little violin music in the background inside our own hearts as we think of what a sacrifice this is. We are not bragging out loud about it, but we do sometimes wonder why people are not a little more impressed. We are a little put off by the fact that they seem so oblivious to our sacrifice. And if nobody notices our work, nobody takes the time to thank us, no one acknowledges us, we start to think, “What the point? No one appreciates what I’m giving here – why should I even bother?”
Divine reward or human reward? You can only have one
In Full
And then finally someone does finally come along and thank us for our work. Enjoy it, because that is all the reward you will get.
Matthew 6:2 … they have received their reward in full.
5 … they have received their reward in full.
16 … they have received their reward in full.
You wanted human reward, and you got it – that is all you get. So if you make a show of how spiritual you are, and someone sees it and says, “Oh, he looks like he’s pretty spiritual,” and then they go about their business and forget all about you – that is all the reward you get. If someone sees you and says, “Oh brother, who does he think he’s fooling? What a joke” and then walks away – that is all the reward you get. If you try to impress people with your commitment and devotion and no one even notices, that is all the reward you get.
That is not to say you lose heavenly reward every time someone honors you on earth. Jesus is speaking of motives. If you do it for the purpose of receiving honor – that is when you forfeit heavenly reward.
There is human reward and there is divine reward, and you have to choose because when you choose one you forfeit the other. You cannot gain man’s approval without forfeiting God’s approval. You cannot have both because man and God approve different things.
Luke 16:15 He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight.
And so Jesus calls us to choose – whose approval matters to us?
Eternal vs. temporary reward
When Jesus says they have received their reward in full, that language calls to mind a parent explaining to a child the principle of preferring long-term rewards over short-term ones. Your kid gets some birthday money, and so you take him to Wal Mart, and he can pick out whatever he wants. And there is a real cool toy that you know he will have a lot of fun with for a long time to come, but instead he wants to spend it on a soda. And you are trying to explain to him that an hour from now the soda would be long gone, but he would still have the toy. That is the principle Jesus is trying to teach us here. Human popularity lasts such a short time. All the pleasures of this world come to an abrupt end the day we die. But reward that is in heaven lasts forever. Later in this passage Jesus is going to make the point that it does not get stolen and it does not decay. And we could add it does not get spent either. You will enjoy it forever and ever and ever – throughout all eternity and it will never be spent. You will always have it. What folly it is to forfeit that for something so temporary as earthly reward. As the great theologian Woody Allen said, “Eternity is a really long time – especially toward the end.” Anything in this world would be worth giving up for the sake of even one eternal reward.
How can God reward sin-tainted deeds?
Recently I was asked this question: “The Bible says that all our actions are tainted with sin – so how does God reward us for any actions? I thought that God was only pleased with us because of the work of Christ.” Is the premise of that question true? Are ALL our actions tainted with sin? Yes. No one reaches perfection this side of heaven – not even for a moment. There is never a time when you can stand up and say, “Aha – I am without sin.” (cf. 1 John 1:8). Even our repentance needs to be repented of, and our purest worship and prayers are shot through with sin - lack of proper passion, mixed motives – all kinds of evils. So yes, all our actions are tainted with sin.
So how can God reward actions that are mixed with sin? God is perfectly holy – how can He be satisfied with holiness mixed with sin?
The answer is the sin part has been paid for by Christ, and the righteousness part is real righteousness. The good deeds done by unbelievers are not righteousness, because they are not done out of faith for the sake of Christ. But as Christians we do have actual righteousness. The Holy Spirit is working in us to produce love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Are our love and joy and peace and faith and all the rest mixed with sin? Yes. But God can reward them because He is capable of separating sin and righteousness. Is my generosity mixed with selfish motives? Yes. Is that bad? Yes, but God is capable of separating the selfish motives from the true generosity. And He will reward the true generosity.
Now, it is true that all of that is only because of Christ. It is only the favor the Lord Jesus Christ has in the Father’s eyes that makes my righteousness acceptable to God. However that is not to say that God’s pleasure in our righteousness is an issue of our standing only, unrelated to our deeds. Just the opposite. It is very much connected to our deeds. It is not a wage that we earn through good deeds, but it is tied to the deeds that Christ is working through us.
It is true that the Father is only pleased with you because of Christ. But He is not just pleased with Christ’s work on the cross. He is also pleased with Christ’s work in your heart. He is pleased with the things Christ is producing in you, and He is quite capable of distinguishing between the righteousness and the unrighteousness. And the righteousness is not destroyed by the unrighteousness.
Sometimes in our zeal to protect grace, and to avoid a system of merit we go too far and invent a system where our Father is totally unresponsive to the deeds of His children. We get so carried away with our favorable position in Christ, and imputed righteousness, that we forget that there is also a practical righteousness. God is not unresponsive to our deeds. He does not pay us a salary – as in most religions, where you earn your way to heaven through good works. But He does give us rewards based on our deeds. And as we saw last week – the difference is in relationship. God responds to our good deeds, not like an employer paying what is owed, but like a Father, who is responsive to the fumbling efforts of his beloved child. Relationships are built around responsiveness. God does something, we respond, then God responds to our response – that is what a relationship is. Interaction is essential for a relationship to exist and grow, so we do not want to invent a system where God is unresponsive to our deeds.
So how can God reward our imperfect deeds? He can do it because it is no problem for Him to separate the good from the bad in our motives. For us, however, that is not so easy. For us our good motives and bad motives kind of run together and we have a very tough time discerning which is which and whether there are selfish motives mixed in, or if there even are any righteous motives. One of the most difficult things in all the Christian life is discerning your own motives. Our motives are so complex and so mixed and so hidden that sorting out sinful motives from good ones is a very difficult task. But Jesus makes that task a lot easier by giving us a special tool here in chapter 6. This method He is going to give us is like a motive X-ray machine. Just flip it on and you can see right through the skin into your deepest motives.
The Test: Secrecy
The name of this motive x-ray machine is…secrecy.
Matthew 6:3 when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret.
6 when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that it will not be obvious to men 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.
If you want to test your heart, do your acts of righteousness in secret and see what happens. See if they suddenly seem worthless and pointless if no one but God sees them.
A test or a regulation?
Now I need to defend that interpretation of this chapter because it is not the typical way most people tend to read it. I think most people see the statements about secrecy not as a test, but as a policy or regulation. All your giving must be top secret. Fold the check with the numbers in, and slip it into the plate when no one is looking. Same thing with fasting. And as long as you always do those activities in private, you are good. So if you ask someone how much he gives to the church, he has a panic attack. If you ask him about his Bible reading he will tell you all about that, if you ask him about his ministry in the church that is an open book, any other area of righteousness is fair game, but you would be better off to ask a woman her weight than to talk to someone about giving – or fasting.
But for some reason people are not like that about praying. Jesus said the exact same thing for giving, praying, and fasting. But somehow people want to keep their fasting and giving secret, but they do not have any problem saying, “I’ll be praying for you.” That is usually how it is when you misapply something in Scripture. You end up having to be inconsistent in the application of it, because it does not fit with the rest of the Christian life.
But this principle applies not only to giving and fasting, but also to prayer. In fact, it is not even restricted to those three. Look again at verse 1.
Matthew 6:1 Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men
He is talking about all acts of righteousness. Giving, prayer, and fasting are just three examples, but the principle applies to righteousness across the board.
The Issue is motive, not secrecy: who gets the glory and whose approval do you want?
And at first that seems like a problem, because in chapter 5 Jesus told us not to keep our acts of righteousness secret.
Matthew 6:1 Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men
Matthew 5:16 let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds
Which is it? Am I supposed to do my acts of righteousness before men and let them see my good deeds or not? How do we deal with this contradiction?
Who gets the glory?
The answer is there is no contradiction. The reason they sound like they contradict is because I ripped them out of context and only read you a portion of each one, and I left out the most important part of both – the motives. This section is all about motives. What is forbidden here in Matthew 6:1 is the motive of self-glorification.
Matthew 6:1 Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them.
And what Jesus commanded back in chapter 5 was the motive of glorifying God.
Matthew 5:16 let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.
The issue is not whether or not they see or do not see your good deeds. The issue is who gets the glory? If you do it in a way that makes people think much of you, it is hypocrisy. If you expose your good deeds in a way that makes people think much of God, that is a wonderful thing. It is a wonderful thing to be able to say what Paul said in Galatians 1:24 - they praised God because of me. So if you are making your righteous deeds visible for God’s glory, that is good. If it is for your glory, that is hypocrisy.
So the issue here in chapter 6 is not public worship; it is worship for publicity – giving, praying, or fasting for publicity – for your own glory – so people will be impressed with you. In chapter 5 when Jesus commands us to let our light shine before men so they may see our good works, that includes all kinds of good works – even fasting, prayer, and giving. So it would be perfectly appropriate to say, “Let your light so shine before men so that they may see your giving and glorify your Father in heaven.” The point is not that some kinds of righteousness should be done visibly, before men that they might glorify God, and other kinds of righteous acts should always be done privately so no one knows. The point is that ALL righteousness should bring glory to God, and ALL righteousness should be done with the right motive.
What are you like when you are alone?
And the role of secrecy is to simply test that motive. That is how you find out if you are a hypocrite – just look at what you are like when you are alone. What do you do when the cameras are not rolling? What do you do when no one is around, no one sees you, no one knows what you are doing? What are you like in the dark? That is the test of your real character. The question is not what you do when you are sitting in prayer group at 11:00 on Sunday morning as much as what you do when you are all by yourself in a hotel room. Or in your living room when no one else is home. Do you reach for your Bible or the TV remote? A hymnal or a newspaper or magazine? I am not suggesting that it is wrong to ever watch TV or read a newspaper, or that you always have to be singing hymns and reading your Bible 24/7. What I am saying is it is a good practice to examine what your life is like when you are alone to see if it goes secular when nobody is watching. Is there anything distinctly Christian about your actions when you are alone?
Jesus’ command to not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing, or praying in your closet at home in private, or washing your face so it will not be obvious to people you are fasting – those are not rules to follow; they are tests to expose what is in your heart. It is not that we are to always do those things only in secret; rather we should sometimes do them in secret to see what happens. Jesus did many righteous things, including prayer, in public. But it is important that some of your righteous deeds be done in private so that you can test your own heart – to see if your motivation and zeal for them fizzles out when no one but God knows about them, or if there something else that compels you to give and pray and fast that has nothing to do with whether people will know about it or not?
Conclusion: Apply the principle to other kinds of giving
There is a lot more that needs to be said about this, but we are out of time so let me just close with this. Let’s not restrict the application of this principle just to giving money. The principle applies to anything we offer God. Whether you are writing a check, or giving of your time on a work day, or giving your mental and emotional energy to listen to someone who is struggling, or giving of yourself to your family, to your spouse, to your employer, to your friends – whatever kind of giving you do. God loves a cheerful giver. God loves a giver who gets excited about the rewards involved because of faith in Him. Because we are so delighted by His goodness. So convinced by the samples He has given us. Let our service and ministry and giving be filled with so much joy that our lives become a flashing neon sign pointing to the goodness and wealth and greatness and generosity and love of the God we are serving.
Benediction: Matthew 16:24 Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. 26 What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 27 For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done.
Summary
God loves a cheerful giver (i.e. a giver who is excited about the rewards) because that is the only way to give to God that shows Him to be the generous benefactor rather than a beneficiary. So giving for reward glorifies Him and giving for human praise glorifies self. We must decide which reward we want because we can only have one. God can reward our imperfect deeds because He can separate the good from the bad. It is harder for us to do so, but Jesus gives us a test to help us. Do your righteousness in secret and see if it suddenly seems pointless. This principle applies to all kinds of giving.
