Embracing Secrecy: Finding Freedom in God's Presence

"we're study together the greatest talk ever given by the greatest teacher who ever taught Jesus surmon them out and he says what's insurmountable is not your problem not your addiction to approval or whatever else you might be addicted to it's the presence of God and his kingdom and his friendship and his love and his power and it's here right now and that means you can make this a golden rule day and live for something else" [00:35:14]

"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 and then we'll go on to look at he gives three different examples around generos and around praying and around fasting but this the overall framework now this is kind of confusing sometimes to people because Jesus in the last chapter it said let your light shine before everybody don't hide it under AB Buel so that everybody can see all your good deeds and now he's saying uh be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of other people so is there a contradiction no no no no no the point that he's making here is um not that it's wrong ever to do something that other people see don't do things in order to be seen by other people so that you are living to be fueled by their approval" [01:31:56]

"so um this suggestion of the practice of secrecy is a practice that will be particularly important for those of us who wrestle with the need to improve other people and I will do this I will fight this by things like when I'm with somebody especially if I think they're important or I want them to like me I will act more agreeable than I really am I will be afraid to speak the truth as I actually see it there'll be a just a chronic thread of self-promotion going on inside me I'll be over monitoring them to look at how are they responding to what I say and to what I I do I'll be kind of hyping or spinning or shading and and lots of stuff that's much worse than that so if you wrestle with that then Jesus has given some advice for you he says don't practice your" [02:22:44]

"righteousness now we've looked at this idea of righteousness is that basic thing that makes you a good person or not and that with when religion goes bad and it does inside all of us then what often happens is we turn it into something that we do so that we will look good in front of other people and this happened with the scribes and the Pharisees all the time so that their heart was off one of the real important words we'll be looking at as we go through this chapter is the word hypocrite and it means something quite different than you and I often think about but uh I will try to use my devotional activities my spiritual life in order to look good in front of you rather than to be living with a different kind of heart now this is very" [03:11:44]

"important um the our vulnerability to living to impress other people goes beyond religion and in our day it's not just practicing our righteousness to be seen by other people there's all kinds of ways that we get trapped by approval addiction um how successful am I I want you to know how educated am I how smart am I how attractive am I how talented and gifted am I how athletic hey I got a burning on this hole did anybody here notice uh and we can do all of those kind of things in order to be seen by other people and and then you get a kind of reward people will applaud you but what happens is you get increasingly IND addicted and uh that little burst of gratification that comes from uh experiencing approval from another person never lasts never endures cannot sustain a life" [04:08:00]

"and Jesus comment on this is now if you want to do that if you want to try to live to impress other people and to gain approval you can but if you do that um you will have no reward from your father in Heaven now these are real important words in the sermon of the mouth Father in Heaven is a phrase that Jesus uses in particular here over and over and over and it it reminds us um both of the intimate affection we can have he's like my father but then also uh his Transcendent power and goodness he is in heaven in the heavens All Around Me U I knew there was somebody in the heavens didn't know to be my father wanted to have a father didn't know he was in the" [05:11:56]

"heavens and then he gives a reward now people sometimes get concerned about uh if I'm living for a reward isn't that kind of superficial so I want to share this from CS Lewis's wonderful wonderful essay the way of Glory he writes if there lurks in most modern Minds the notion that to desire our own good earnestly hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing I submit this notion is crept in from Kant and the stoics and is no part of Christian faith indeed if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the Staggering nature of the rewards promised in the gospels mistos is a word for reward that is used I think it's 10 times by Matthew primarily in this of the M it's over and over and over again it would seem our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak we are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite Joy is offered us like an ignorant child wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at Sea we are far too easily" [06:08:00]

"pleased and then this this this is critical for what we're looking at Matthew 6 we must not be troubled by unbelievers when they say This Promise of reward makes the Christian Life a mercenary Affair there are different kinds of rewards there is the reward which has no natural connection with the things you do to earn it it's quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things money is not the natural reward of love that's why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money but marriage is the proper reward for a real lover and he is not mercenary for Desiring it or for example when it comes to learning uh uh the the extrinsic reward for learning might be a great a high GPA I compress other people with it the intrinsic reward is that I gain knowledge that I had the joy of Discovery and growth so the Bible uses uses lots of imagery for rewards um but there are always intrinsic rewards there are always things that are naturally tied now what's the reward for practicing" [07:05:00]

"secrecy and the reward is freedom I get to be a little bit freed from having to live under this stupid enslaving addiction what do you think of me do you like me and to be free of that because I know that my identity is the child of God and God loves me and God loves me no matter what you think me oh that's Freedom that's the reward that God gives now if I'm doing something in front of other people and trying to impress them then I get them to do this and that's it I used to think that what that meant was God had a little gold star and if I get other people to be impressed and he not going to give me that gold start no no no no no it is the intrinsic reward that comes along with spiritual growth and obedience and that is the goodness of freedom to be free to be able to be confident and relaxed and to be able to love other people cuz I'm no longer living under the slavery of what do you thinking me I want that I really want that you want that too I know you" [08:08:00]

"do so we're going to explore this more but for today just think about where can you keep something a secret I was reading about a man back in the 1930s uh under a pseudonym I think it was beero who put an ad in the Canton newspaper and tons of people wrote in who needed financial help and so anonymously he wrote checks nobody ever knew who it was couple years ago his grandson went through an attic and found a suitcase with all these letters written to Beaver though it was his grandfather nobody ever knew as long as he Liv just the joy of secret generosity read about a single mom didn't drive she had to uh walk two little kids a mile to the grocery store she take them in a little red wagon she came home one day there's just a box of groceries in her yard she didn't find out for years it was a bank teller that knew a little bit about her life that just uh did secret good for her I could tell you about things that I have done that are secret good but then I would lose my reward so I will not do that but you might just think today what's one thing good thing that you could do good thing that you have accomplished that instead of telling somebody else so that I get that little burst of gratification in there something instead of getting the wow uh I'm able to keep it a secret and realize I have a father in Heaven and he loves me and he wants great freedom for me he wants great freedom for you so this is the beginning of the power of secrecy in a life of Freedom make it a golden rule" [09:16:00]