[SPEAKER_00]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas for more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry Please visit citizenschurch.com
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to be in Matthew chapter six.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn there and we'll be in the verses that Mr. Terran just read for us.
[SPEAKER_00]: As you're turning, welcome to Citizen Church.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are visiting us, my name is Jayman.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm one of the pastors here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't take it for granted that you're here with us this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you call Citizen Church your home, it's good to see you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Matthew 6 verse 1, Jesus makes a statement and then throughout the next 17 verses, he unpacks that statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives examples of that statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to give all of our time to the heart of this, the where of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Eugene Peterson puts this verse in his own words, and he writes it like this, be especially careful when you're trying to be good, so that you don't make a performance out of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It might be good theater, but the God who made you won't be applauding.
[SPEAKER_00]: Since August, we've been in a series called Becoming Like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my hope for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our hope for it is that it's a bit of a milestone series for us as it captures and articulates what we think the point of the church is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Christ's likeness is the will of God for the people of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: The church exists to form Christ's like Christians who are loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: as they are by God and are being formed in the image of God's Son.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so our holy ambition together as a church, your holy ambition, as a Christian, the highest hope you could have for your life is that you would become like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in that you would become like Him in all the ways that He's like Him, that you would think like Jesus and love like Jesus and feel like Jesus and act.
[SPEAKER_00]: like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this morning, I just want to remind us of something from God's Word.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something that many of us already know.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those things that's kind of, it's usually a point in every sermon or a comment in every sermon.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just feel prompted by the Lord to make it the focal point of an entire sermon this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can pretend or you can be changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can't do both.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can fake religion, or you can become like Christ, but you can't do both.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can perform your spirituality to be seen by others, or you can offer obedience to God, but you can't do both.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a word that's repeated in this passage, and it's a word that we use.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a word that we all have our own kind of understanding of.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you fast, do not look gloomy, like the hypocrites.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for most of us, when we hear that word hypocrite, what comes to mind is somebody who says one thing and then contradicts the thing they say with their actions.
[SPEAKER_00]: So sometimes my daughter choose ice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll say, hey, don't chew ice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And she was looking me, because I chew ice all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like I am close to not having any teeth left, because I chew ice all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes we're watching a game.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my favorite team is playing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my son will lose his cool, and he'll get mad.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll say, hey, it's just a game.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was just looking me, like, what are you talking?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because he knows that we are like one missed foul call away from me losing my mind, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's hypocrisy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's light, silly, trite, hypocrisy.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's to tell others to do something that you yourself don't do, or to tell others not to do something that you do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus isn't using that word this way here.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of our common understanding of the hypocrisy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus uses that word that way, other places in Scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's not using that word that way here.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's using it a way that's more broad, illustrative.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's very convicting.
[SPEAKER_00]: A hypocrite in the first century was just an actor.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what the word meant in Greek.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a, so if you were to think of, if you were to think right now of your favorite actor, who or that is, movie TV show, whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they lived in the first century, and somebody asked your favorite actor, what do you do for a living, they would say, I am a hypocrite.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my profession.
[SPEAKER_00]: I act on stage.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's my trade.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's a powerful image for Jesus to use.
[SPEAKER_00]: It lost on us, his audience wouldn't have missed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't have CGI then, they don't have advanced stage makeup, they don't have AI or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so to play a role to be a hypocrite, it meant you were a mask where a hypocrite's pretended to be someone that they were not, and they hid who they really were behind the character, they played, and the way that they played that character was by wearing a mask that captured the character that they were performing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when some so loving says this, don't do that with your life with me, don't be a hypocrite, don't wear Christianity as a mask to hide who you really are, don't perform your spirituality in front of others because if you do that then you have your reward.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when it comes to following Jesus and becoming like Jesus, you can either wear a mask,
[SPEAKER_00]: or you can be changed, but you can't do both.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't do both.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's what Jesus is going to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's going to offer as the solution to that, the way to confront hypocrisy in our life, the way to kind of shatter the masks in our life is to have secret obedience with God that no one else sees.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's where we're going this morning, until we're God's leading us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Before we take another step, I want you to hear me.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am preaching a sermon to myself, and you just happen to be at church today.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true most Sundays.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's especially true to Sunday.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember the first time I prayed out loud in church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like early junior high, maybe late elementary.
[SPEAKER_00]: I prayed out loud in church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And somebody came out to me afterwards, and they said, you're good at that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, good at what?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd pray in that loud.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just, that sounded good.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I loved hearing that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It felt good to be told I was good at talking about God in public.
[SPEAKER_00]: And at an early age, here's what I discovered, I discovered God could be used as a means to an end.
[SPEAKER_00]: and God could be used as a prop to get praise.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have spent years, since that moment, I've spent years of life being better talking about God than I am talking to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And wearing public spirituality as a mask to hide how shallow my relationship with Jesus actually is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I talk about that a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's important for me to talk about that a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not over that.
[SPEAKER_00]: These verses expose me today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm not where I was.
[SPEAKER_00]: God has changing me, but here's what's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: My soul, I can feel it.
[SPEAKER_00]: My soul is desperate to have in reality the closeness with God I work so hard to pretend is there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a recovering hypocrite, is what I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I need to over and again hear these words, and Jesus invites us and do a better way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so if you relate at all to any of that,
[SPEAKER_00]: This morning is for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look with me at these verses.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus describes the hypocrite.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 1, beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.
[SPEAKER_00]: For then you'll have no reward from your father who's in heaven.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's his thesis statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Be careful of mass-quaring religion.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he gives us three examples of what he's warning about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 2, when you give to the needy,
[SPEAKER_00]: sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets that they may be praised by others, truly I say to you, they have received their award.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 5, and when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites.
[SPEAKER_00]: They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by others, truly I say to you, they have received their award.
[SPEAKER_00]: for 16.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you fast do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, they just figure their faces that they're fasting, maybe seen by others, truly I say to you, they've received their reward.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what's wrong?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is it wrong to give?
[SPEAKER_00]: No, you should give sacrificially of your money to causes that help others and further the kingdom.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a good big to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's prayer wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, next week we're going to spend all of our time on prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why we need it and how to do it will be in the Lord's prayer, staying in this chapter.
[SPEAKER_00]: is fasting wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not wrong to fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a good thing to fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good to deny yourself in hope of getting more of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's the right action, giving, praying, fasting.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus just assumes that all of that is going to be a part of our life as those who follow him.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of it's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the right action.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the wrong audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the wrong motivation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says that this way, in order to be seen by them, that they may be praised by others, that they're fasting may be seen by others.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what Jesus describes is somebody who puts on a mask of religious activity and they're performing in front of an audience whose praise and approval they want.
[SPEAKER_00]: It appears to be for God, but it's actually not about God.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about the approval of other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this was timely when Jesus first wrote it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels really timely now.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a lot of lies that we are influenced by and informed by in our day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe one of the most common and devastating is that we have to perform for love and acceptance.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the lie.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are a mask-wearing generation of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's two books I'm reading right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's two books I've read the intro of.
[SPEAKER_00]: and plan to keep reading slowly and will probably never finish to be honest.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the title of each book caught my attention and the title of the book kind of makes the point of the whole book.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first is a book by Pastor named John Stark.
[SPEAKER_00]: He pastors in New York.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wrote a book called The Secret Place of Thunder, trading our need to be noticed for a hidden life with Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: The other book is a pastor in Australia.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a pastor in an author named Mark Sayers.
[SPEAKER_00]: His book is called from platforms to pillars, trading the burden of performance for the freedom of God's presence.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in these books, in the introduction of each of these books, they name in their own words, kind of what's happening around us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sayers is, at this way, over the last several decades, the platform mentality has become the dominant script
[SPEAKER_00]: We're told for special and unique from our earliest school days.
[SPEAKER_00]: The millions of advertising messages were exposed to throughout our live's reinforces idea each promising to pander to our desires in once.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've transitioned from a society emphasizing communal well being to one where we're told we each deserve to sit atop our platforms.
[SPEAKER_00]: The platform mentality is based on the concept that the highest good is for our inner self, to be platformed, for our needs once and desires to be met.
[SPEAKER_00]: John start in his books at this way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Identity and achievement are visual metrics to be displayed and curated, and a happy home is a perfected, optimized one.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's in the air we breathe.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a social cataclysm where all digesting, where a young adult only learns through performance that he has a self-feeling pressure to procure others approval and repair feelings of unworthiness and shame through displays of high achievement.
[SPEAKER_00]: In this cultural phenomenon, the performance of the self.
[SPEAKER_00]: is more important than the reality of the self.
[SPEAKER_00]: So pastors from New York to Australia, they're trying to help Christians name what we're living in right now, the pull on our life to perform an identity for the approval and praise of other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're told the dominant script of our life is that we are center stage, and if you offer your unique self, there's a promise that you'll be validated and affirmed, and the reality is, you're burdened to perform.
[SPEAKER_00]: and the version of me I perform is more important than the one that actually exists.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so then there's a divide in my own person.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a division between, there's a chasm between who I try to pretend to be and then who I actually am.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what this amounts to in our culture is just a lot of pretending, a lot of faking.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are, we know this, there are non-religious ways to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So many non-religious ways to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people around us, in among us, we wear a mask of strength.
[SPEAKER_00]: to hide an insecure, hurting, afraid of failing version of me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I work really hard to appear strong, to have it all together, to know it all, to be able to do it all.
[SPEAKER_00]: I never want to look foolish, I never want to look dumb, I have to appear strong because I don't want people to see how weak I am, because the weak version of me, I believe, is on worthy of love and acceptance.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people wear a mask of success.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is our thing, this is our thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the suburb thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: As house and car and kids and job and it's all shiny, and it's all perfect and it's all put together and behind that mask is a lot of failure, behind that mask is a broken marriage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Behind that mask is some despair that I don't want to do with.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an inability to enjoy even the good in my life because it all feels so frail.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to appear successful because no one's going to love a failure.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of people wear a mask of happiness and work really hard to appear like everything's okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing great, smiling and content.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what social media tips us to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look how happy I am.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at the trips I take.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at the friends I have.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look at how great my life is going.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Stark's book, he quotes a journalist who's done a lot of work among
[SPEAKER_00]: Millennials in Gen Z on the negative impact social media has had among those generations and he has his quote, I just thought was really striking.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says we all know that what we see on Instagram or or anything else took talk or anything else.
[SPEAKER_00]: We all know that what we see isn't real.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that doesn't mean we don't judge ourselves against it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we know it's fake.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know it's fake.
[SPEAKER_00]: That life isn't that put together.
[SPEAKER_00]: That person isn't that happy all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've spent time with that person.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know they're not that happy all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those relationships aren't that good all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know, we know.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we can't help but judge our life against the life.
[SPEAKER_00]: We know they don't have, but we wish we did.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Christian are not, this is the air we breathe.
[SPEAKER_00]: present to be doing better than I am, pretend to be someone I'm not, because this someone I pretend to be is the only version of me that has any chance of love and acceptance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Jesus here, he names a mask of religion, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So now everybody needs to be paying attention because we're in church.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the mask we're tempted to wear.
[SPEAKER_00]: I look like somebody who's generous.
[SPEAKER_00]: because I give and I give loudly.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what's behind the mask is somebody who wants the praise and approval of other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: I look like someone who loves talking to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can use all the big prayer words and appear to have a vibrant relationship with God.
[SPEAKER_00]: But behind the mask is someone who only wants to talk to God when other people can hear.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I look like is someone who fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like denies myself to get more of God, but behind the mask is somebody who's actually feeding on the approval and praise of others, and I'm undernourished.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is obvious, let me just say it plainly, there's a thread in all of this, and here's the thread.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm living to be seen by the wrong eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm living for the approval of the wrong audience.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Starks is at this way in his book.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have internalized the belief.
[SPEAKER_00]: that our deepest happiness will come from being who others think we ought to be rather than from living the way God views us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so Jesus says this thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, and when you do that, you have your reward.
[SPEAKER_00]: The best you can hope for is the approval of others.
[SPEAKER_00]: And anyone who's ever actually gotten the approval of others, no, you know, a fickle and frail that actually is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of all the rewards, it's like the participation trophy of rewards.
[SPEAKER_00]: It means very little and it has no lasting effect, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the reasons, so this all started, you can either pretend or you can be changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't do both.
[SPEAKER_00]: is to be changed.
[SPEAKER_00]: We actually need one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we don't mostly need though from one another is approval and praise.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we mostly need from one another is to be known and loved.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when we wear a mask, we end up hiding from others.
[SPEAKER_00]: The very things that we most need them to know about us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary, people, if you're married.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, if things are not going well, in marriage, the knee-jerk reaction, the mask wearing reaction is to ignore that it's not going well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like some of us in the room are married and we've been growing more and more distant from one another since we had kids and there's tension in the home and the relationship is grown cold.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not delighting in one another like we used to, not pursuing one another like we used to.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're fighting more, or maybe we just don't even care enough to fight with one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then when somebody asks, how's it going?
[SPEAKER_00]: We'd dress it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going great.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's OK.
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of being honest, instead of being honest, we fall short of honesty and say something that's going to make it appear like we're doing better in our marriage and we actually are.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a rough patch, whatever he goes through that, you know, turns out he was raised very differently than I was and, you know, but everybody goes through these kinds of things and what's needed, beloved.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's needed is you're in a season where you need to raise your hand and say, we need help.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need help.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can't do this by ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't, we don't wear a place in our conflict, where's it the more we try the worst it gets and we need somebody to know and we need somebody to sit with us and what you'd find is you'd find that every other married person in the room has been in that season where they've needed that help.
[SPEAKER_00]: What the pressure is, the pressure is to dress it up to wear the mask, to pretend.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because we think that hiding our marriage problems will just make them go away.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in reality, hiding our marriage problems usually means that by the time everyone knows they're there, it might be too late.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us could say a secret sexual sin is ruining my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: and I come in here and I fake it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I lift my hands and I do the church thing, or I sit and I'm just riddled with shame and I believe that I am condemned with no way out and instead of asking for help instead of confessing instead of seeking accountability, I just keep the mask on and pretend to love Jesus more than my sin, which means I am choosing to isolate and fight both my flesh and the enemy all by myself and that's not a fair fight.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have all these doubts, I have all these doubts, and I look around, and Christianity seems so easy for everyone else, and it feels so hard for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if I say that out loud, I'll look like the kind of Christian who doesn't have faith, who doesn't have strong faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'll wear this mask of believing everything, and having all this strong faith, and I'll hide the questions that everyone else in the room actually wrestles with.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm super judgmental, but I know being judgmental is a bad look and I also know that other judgmental people really get on my nerves and so I'll just quietly criticize what I don't like about everyone around me and smile at them at the same time.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the most common mask church people wear.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a lot of ways to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of ways to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what's underneath.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are more afraid
[SPEAKER_00]: we hide because we're more afraid of what other people will think than what God already sees.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we fake it.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'd rather be impressive than known.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a better way to live than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Jesus invites us into that better way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse three, 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.
[SPEAKER_00]: And your father who sees in secret will reward you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse six, but when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father, who's in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Verse 17, when you fast and know in your head and wash your face that your fast they may not be seen by others but by your father who's in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you six times the word secret is repeated.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus says the cure for hypocrisy.
[SPEAKER_00]: The cure for mask wearing pretend Christianity is to have a secret life with God.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not secret sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's secret obedience.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's two kinds of hiding here, hypocritical hiding.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm hiding self-centered motivations.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm hiding who I really am behind, who I try to appear to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then there's a kind of holy hiding.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are righteous things that I do, and no one knows about them except God, because God knowing about them is all I care about.
[SPEAKER_00]: So see this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please see this, lean in.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can measure your discipleship by the quality of the secrets you keep.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do I keep sinful secrets?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or do I keep sacred secrets?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do the people in my life know, do the people in my life not know about the sins I commit?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or do the people in my life not know about hidden obedience that I only offer God?
[SPEAKER_00]: If what I work so hard to keep hidden, right now, if what I work so hard to keep hidden, if that were to suddenly bex, if the lights were to just turn on in that dark room right now, what would everyone see?
[SPEAKER_00]: Would there be any secret hidden sacred faithfulness to discover?
[SPEAKER_00]: You can measure your discipleship by the quality of the secret you keep.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think there are a couple of things to lean into.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could keep leaning into the confrontation of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you have a pulse, you're confronted by this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that would be right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It'd be right to lean into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just think there are many of us who just presume on the holiness of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us need to feel the conviction that discomfort, the holy fear of knowing that one day, all our secrets will be exposed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if that day was today, secret obedience would pale in comparison to secrets in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a scary way to live.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we would do right to pay attention to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need our fear of man to be replaced with a holy fear of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: and we need the word of God to carry more weight in our life than the praise of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even more than our own, even more than our own.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what some of this could say is, I don't struggle with any of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: All I care about is, is,
[SPEAKER_00]: my own approval.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a metaphor.
[SPEAKER_00]: Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That means it's not about what others think, but it's also not about what I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Frederick Bruner, he has a commentary on this, and he says that this way it's helpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Keeping the left hand from knowing what the right hand is doing means first of all seeking to be unself-conscious and unself-impressed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not only should there be no external trumpets, but there should not even be internal music suggesting after all, I'm a pretty decent philho.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus is saying that we should not even seek to impress or eternally justify ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it won't do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us are sitting here thinking I'm doing great because I don't care about what other people think.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just need my own approval and what Jesus says is your own opinion of you has to surrender to God's voice and God's eyes.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't need to exchange the audience for a mirror that won't do.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need the confrontation of this and and and.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need the invitation.
[SPEAKER_00]: that could so easily be buried under the confrontation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's the invitation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your father who sees in secret will reward you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, Jesus says, go into your room, shut the door and pray to your father who's in secret.
[SPEAKER_00]: And your father who sees in secret will reward you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your father, again, who sees in secret will reward you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's an invitation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's repeated three times.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I could just say it as simply as I know how to say it.
[SPEAKER_00]: God wants relationship with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants relationship with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not to fake you, not the best version of you, not to try really hard to look like a good Christian you.
[SPEAKER_00]: God wants relationship with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he wants you to know him.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's why you're invited.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why Jesus used this language.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're invited to get alone with just the Father, pray, be with, be heard by, just the Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants that for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: A few years ago I had some friends who went to a placing California called Big Sur, and they said it was amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They said it's one of those beautiful places they've ever been.
[SPEAKER_00]: and they talked about it for a while, and I don't remember all of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they talked about how great the trees were and the weather, I don't remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you asked me, J.M.
[SPEAKER_00]: and tell me more about Big Sur, I could try really hard to remember everything I heard them say, but I wouldn't have much else to offer.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a place in Wyoming called Jackson Hole.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is stunning.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a field right at the base of the mountains.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a famous barn there that people take pictures of.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you go there, there's like wild moose and buffalo everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the fall, there's snow in the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the leaves change colors.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so beautiful.
[SPEAKER_00]: It looks fake.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those places where a picture just doesn't do it justice.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you stand there at the base of the mountain, you're just overwhelmed by the beauty and creativity of God, not only that, but just down the road, there's a bakery called Persephone, and they have cinnamon rolls that will make you speak in tongues.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, whether you believe in all that or not.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's one of those stunning places I have ever been.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you asked me, tell me more about Jackson Hole, I would have more to say, because it's not just second-hand information, it's first-hand experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God wants more for your relationship with him than to be a place that you've heard about, but never actually been.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you talking to God about?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have friends who pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it works for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me about grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, let me try to remember how I've heard other people
[SPEAKER_00]: What's it like to deny yourself and find more of Jesus?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure I've never been there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never tried that.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we wear our Christianity like a mask, when we wear our Christianity like a mask, we have information but no experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: sharing only what we've heard from others about places that we ourselves have never been and God wants you to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants more for you than that.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants it to be that you could testify.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been there.
[SPEAKER_00]: I pray, I talk to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've experienced grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know the beauty of Jesus, not because someone told me but because I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good.
[SPEAKER_00]: God wants relationship with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you should, in this moment, in this moment, you should feel so much freedom in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it says this, what kind of God wants relationship with you versus six says this, go into your room, pray to your judge, go into your room, and pray to your harshest critic, go into your room, and pray to never around dad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Isn't say that.
[SPEAKER_00]: go into your room and pray to your father and heal evaluate your performance and may or may not reward you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Doesn't even say that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Given secret, because your father's season he loves you, pray in secret, because your father's season he loves you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fast and secret, because your father's season he loves you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I think?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the reason we put on a mask and do what we do to be seen by others is because the approval of others feels more real to us than the approval of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: hear this.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one sees you as clearly and loves you as deeply as God.
[SPEAKER_00]: No one.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we know that because the person telling us about the father here is the son of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Second person of the Trinity who has always been son to the father.
[SPEAKER_00]: He has always known him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he lived this perfect life.
[SPEAKER_00]: He had nothing to hide.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of his secrets were sacred.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he dies on the cross for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he dies on the cross for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he raises in victory over sin and death.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he invites you to know the father like he knows the father.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he doesn't say, when you're good enough, you can join the family.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, come as you are.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if the blood of Jesus is what we needed,
[SPEAKER_00]: If that was the right response to what's wrong with us, if the blood of Jesus is what we needed, no mask can cover how sins that we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if the blood of Jesus is ours, no sin can keep us from coming as we are to the Father.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I were trying to drive this home in conversations with my kids,
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was trying to take this point that I'm trying to make right now and illustrate it to my kids.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would talk about a movie that we have seen often.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a movie called Wonder.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's wonderful.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a boy who is born with a birth defect and his face is disfigured and he gets picked on at school and because of his disfigured face, he wears this astronaut helmet whenever he's out in public to hide his scars and to protect him from people's painful opinions.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he will take off his helmet when he's at home.
[SPEAKER_00]: because his mom and his dad and his sister see him and love him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He feels safe at home.
[SPEAKER_00]: He feels loved at home.
[SPEAKER_00]: What he covers in public, he does not have to hide at home.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what this is.
[SPEAKER_00]: God sees your face.
[SPEAKER_00]: He sees your face.
[SPEAKER_00]: and all your wounds and fears and sin and failure, all of it in the secret place with the Father that the Son invites you into is where you do not have to cover what He already sees or hide who He already loves.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wants relationship with you, with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: As you are, not the fake you, not the pretend you, not the work really hard to act Christian you,
[SPEAKER_00]: The you, who has no mask to cover sin, no helmet to cover scars, your father sees clearly and he loves deeply.
[SPEAKER_00]: Did you pray with me?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're not done.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just think what's needed is best done in prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think what's needed is for you to stop listening to me and start talking to your father.
[SPEAKER_00]: God wants relationship with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're here and you're not a Christian, God wants relationship with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're here and you've been a mask-wearing Christian for most of your life, God wants relationship with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think there's two things that could happen, as we pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us will need both.
[SPEAKER_00]: All of us will need one.
[SPEAKER_00]: For some of us, what needs to happen is we need to confess our sin.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to confess a new sin that we're early on in struggling with.
[SPEAKER_00]: And before it enslaves us, we just need to make it known and ask for help.
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to confess a life long secret struggle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like maybe for some of us, what we need is we need to just
[SPEAKER_00]: be found out, God, and take all of our secrets, all of our sin, and turn the light on for the glory of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we'll discover is this what we thought was our worst nightmare, will actually be the beginning of a whole new way to live.
[SPEAKER_00]: Please, please,
[SPEAKER_00]: and believe, believe that the masclist, honest, found out version of you will be overwhelmed by the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us need to make a plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: commit to return to secret obedience that only God knows about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us need to give something today, somewhere, and not tell anyone about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us need to get a loan and pray, and not announce it, just get out of phase before God.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of us need to say no to some things fast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some sort of self-denial so that we might plead with God for more of Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we need to do it again and again and again.
[SPEAKER_00]: And stack a lifetime of sacred secrets, believing that our Father sees and rewards because He loves us.
[SPEAKER_00]: What you pray is the Lord leads.
[SPEAKER_00]: Help us Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: What a gift.
[SPEAKER_00]: to be seen and loved by you, Lord God.