Text: Matthew 6:1–6
Preacher: Pastor Brian Sauvé

Put Down the Trumpet

This morning, we are going to deal with the issue of faith. We’re going to be thinking about faith, even though the word “faith” doesn’t appear in our text, and I think you will see why shortly.

What is faith? Well, faith looks to, rests on, trusts in, hopes in some object for something. I eat by faith, believing that food will strengthen me and satisfy my hunger. I sit on a chair by faith, trusting it will hold my weight. I board a 747 in faith that it will bear me on aluminum alloy wings across the world, and not to a fiery death.

Human beings are creatures of faith—meaning everything we do is motivated somewhere along the line by faith. This is a feature of our createdness, a feature of our dependence and the incompleteness of our knowledge and power.

Many people don’t believe this. They think that they do all sorts of things that aren’t founded on faith, but rather on some other thing—like reason, science, instinct, etc. The problem is that even all of those things are, at bottom, faith things. 

As I reason, I’m trusting—note that word trusting; that’s faith talk—in fifteen different things that I cannot reason my way to. I’m trusting that my cognitive faculties are reliable. I’m trusting that the data of my senses are accurately relaying reality to me. I’m trusting that the laws of logic and reasoning are accessible to my thoughts, and that they are unchanging—that they weren’t different ten minutes ago, and won’t be different ten minutes from now. And more! Everything we do is motivated somewhere along the line by faith.

Now, as we move into Matthew 6, we move from one major segment of Jesus’ sermon on the mount and into another. Remember, the sermon is all about this righteousness which his Kingdom will be suffused with—this righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees.

And in the previous segment, he’s been dealing with the inadequacies of the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees as it dealt with the law. They misused, misunderstood, and misapplied the law of God.

Now, for nearly the entire sixth chapter and arguably even much of the seventh, Jesus will cut to the heart of the deficiency in their righteousness: The scribes and Pharisees did not pursue their righteousness by the right kind of faith.

Fundamentally, the deficiency of the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees is that everything they did, they did by faith in creatures, not in the Creator. Their faith, their trust, their hope was set firmly in the glory, the approval, the renown of human beings.

And so even as we talk about hypocrisy and giving and prayer this morning, we’re really talking about faith—about this massively central question that cuts through everything we do: In what am I trusting for reward? For happiness? For satisfaction?

Look with me at Matthew 6:1. This is the Word of the Living God:

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.

“Thus, when you give to the needy, 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 reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For 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 reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” 

-Matthew 6:1–6

Thus ends the reading of God’s Word. May he write it on our hearts by faith.

This is not a complicated text. Unlike me, Jesus is a brilliant preacher. And so when he wants to be understood, his teaching is simple enough for a child to comprehend. Sometimes he’s very difficult to understand—and that’s on purpose. But here, he wants us to get this. There’s no truth hidden in parables dynamic going on. In his grace, he laid it out for us in a very simple and comprehensible sort of way. He gives us the doctrine in verse 1a:

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them…”

Then he gives us the reason for the doctrine in verse 1b:

“…for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”

Then he gives us the application of the doctrine with two illustrations. First, in verses 2-4, 

“Thus, when you give to the needy, 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 reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

And then in verses 5–6, 

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For 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 reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” 

We’re going to cut with the grain and work through his words in that simple outline, starting with the doctrine in the first half of verse 1.

For Whose Reward?

Again, he says,

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them…” -Matthew 6:1a

What happened to being a city on a hill?

Now, maybe when you hear this command, hear this warning from Jesus, you do a kind of double take and think, “Did Jesus forget what he told us a few verses ago? What happened to being a city set on a hill, lit up with good works for the world to see and so give glory to our Father who is in heaven?” 

Go ahead and just back up your eyes a few paragraphs and look again at Matthew 5:13,

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

-Matthew 5:13–16

So which is it? Are we to be seen doing good works or not? 

The answer is in a few key words in the warning Jesus gives in verse 1. If we look carefully, we’ll find that he is contrasting—not works that are seen and works that are not seen—but works that are done to be seen by men with works that are done to be seen by God.

This command can’t be saying that if anyone ever finds out about a good thing you did, your good work is somehow nullified. I’ve heard people teach that, lament that someone found out about a charitable act they did and say, “Dangit, you weren’t supposed to find out about that! There goes my reward.” No, the contrast isn’t fundamentally between who literally sees a good work, but between two different kinds of faith at work in that good work.

One person can be on his knees in his room earnestly praying to God—not knowing that his son is peeking into his study through the cracked door. And another person can be ostentatiously praying on the street corner, seen by many. The key fact here isn’t whether or not someone sees you doing a good work, but rather on the motivation moving you to that good work: What kind of faith was operative in the good work?

Whose reward will you live for?

In a moment, we’ll look at the two ways Jesus applies this warning in verses 2–6, and see more deeply into the mechanics of the heart at work in these two motivations, these two kinds of faith.

But I want you to see something very important about this command, and that is the reason why Jesus says you should obey it. Or to put it another way, the motivation he says should drive us to desire obedience to this command. He gives the warning, to beware of practicing our righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, and then he says:

“…for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.” -Matthew 6:1b

It is the reward that ought to motivate us. This is one of those not-whether-but-which things that we run into all the time in the Scriptures. It’s not whether or not you will live for a reward, but rather which reward you will live for.

Everything we do, everything human beings do, is motivated—at least somewhere along the line of impulse, instinct, decision, reasoning, etc.—by the hope of reward. 

Even gloomy people who choose to be short and annoyed and angry and frustrated are being short, annoyed, angry, and frustrated for the sake of reward—or to put it another way, in the hopes of being happy.

They’re just going about it in an irrational and stupid way, but they’re still trying to be happy. They’re believing in that moment that if they allow themselves to be kind, patient, and cheerful to other people, they’ll somehow be missing out on some pleasure. They’re like the little boy picking at the scab on his knee, because even though it’s hurting him, in that moment, he kind of likes the hurt.

Don’t forget, this sermon is about how to be happy. Jesus started the sermon with a series of statements, of axioms, of treatises on how to be happy. He said, 

“Blessed are…”
“Blessed are…”
“Blessed are…”
“Blessed are…”
“Blessed are…”

To be blessed is to be satisfied, fulfilled, contented, joyful, happy.

This is a sermon on how to properly be a human being, on how to properly be a human being in this good realm of our good Ruler, in this good Kingdom of this good King. And Jesus knows that human beings were created for worship, that they were created for glorying in this higher—highest, we might say—Glory, the glory of God. 

Here’s the key point, why this text is really about faith even though the word faith doesn’t appear in it: Jesus wants us to see that the problem with the person who is ostentatiously living for the praise of people—that what they are fundamentally getting wrong—is faith.

They do what they do—they pray and give and do good works to be seen by men—because they believe that the reward of men will satisfy them. They have put their faith in men. They have put their hope in the reward of men.

And Jesus doesn’t say, “There’s no reward there.” No, he acknowledges that there is a kind of reward there. It’s just a reward that is ephemeral. It is a reward that is vulnerable to moth and rust and thieves and death. 

And what he would do is to point at where the foundational dislocation of sin is happening and to relocate it onto its proper end. The problem is that human beings, when they fall into sin, dislocate their faith from the Creature and onto the creature.

They stop worshiping and trusting in the Creator for their blessedness, and they rather turn to worship and trusting in the creature—in people, especially—for their blessedness.

Throughout this portion of the sermon—in fact, for much of the sixth chapter and even into the seventh chapter—Jesus lays out two fundamentally opposite ways in which we can go about our lives, both of which boil down in their essence to faith.

On the one hand, we could live for the sake of manmade rewards, in faith that the reward of men will satisfy us. We could live for the praise that comes from people, for the opinions of people, for the renown of people. 

Men, that’s what you’re doing every time you believe the lie that if you make your wife into a goddess and worship her, that she will make you happy. Women, that’s what you’re doing every time you believe the lie that if you make your husband into a god and worship him, that he will make you happy. You’re saying, “Bless me! Bless me! Make me whole!” Same for any other thing—food, drugs, sex, accomplishment, career, renown, fame, celebrity, whatever.

Or, the other way is that we could live for the praise that comes from somewhere else. Actually, not somewhere else, but rather someone else: Our Father in heaven. Jesus uses the word “Father” fully ten times in the first 18 verses of Matthew 6. He does that because the other way is to live by faith in a Father. 

That is how the dislocation is healed, how the joint is put back in place. To riff on the great theologian Augustine, we were made for God, and so our hearts are like restless wanderers, going on endless pilgrimages for happiness through God’s created creation. What we need is to come home. What we need is to return to the house of our Father and to live for his reward. 

Put Away The Trumpet

Jesus unfolds the way this dislocation of faith and worship works in two examples. First, in verse 2,

“Thus, when you give to the needy, 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 reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

-Matthew 6:2–4

And if you do this, if you live by this kind of faith, what you end up being is the worst kind of hypocrite: A religious hypocrite. A hypocrite is an actor; that’s actually where the Greek word comes from. A hypocrite is someone who wears a mask to play a role.

And so what Jesus is saying is that when we give ostentatiously, we are wearing a mask to play a role for the audience of people. What we really want—what’s under the mask—is the thirst for worship. We’d like to be worshipped as a god or a goddess.

But we’re masking that desire with a kind of ersatz, counterfeit righteousness. Are you familiar with ersatz food? During WWII, the British Isles were blockaded by U-boats, which would sink just massive amounts of the vital shipping that was needed to keep the island fed and clothed. 

And to help with rationing of food, the British government manufactured fake versions of various food staples—flour cut with other stuff, fake coffee, fake butter, etc. And it was basically terrible stuff, but it would kind of look like the real thing.

Hypocritical religious activity is like that; it’s ersatz. It looks like generous giving, and it looks like prayer to God, but it’s really miserly and it’s really not prayer. It’s something else. It’s wearing a mask.

When we give to be seen, we may look righteous, but under mask, we’re saying, “Look how holy I am! I’m so giving. I’m just like God, aren’t I? He’s very generous. So am I. Behold my glory!” 

In that hypocrisy, what we’re longing for and revealing is that we are hungry for happiness. And what we think will get us that happiness is simple: It’s worship. If people would just worship me, then I would be happy. 

This kind of religious hypocrisy is blasphemy, because what it does is to take something that seems to be about God, to take some act done in his name, and to actually twist it inward to be about you. It is therefore the worst kind of moral filth.

And here’s the thing: Not only is it blasphemous, it’s also suicidal. It’s also self-destructive. Why do you think that possibly the most dysfunctional class of human beings on earth by percentage are the people who are the closest to being worshipped as gods? 

I’m talking about celebrities. Take the Carl Lentz, this celebrity pastor from Hillsong who hobnobbed with Bieber. I mean, a wreck. An adulterer. A religious whore. Disgusting. The guy ran his church like a club, giving celebrities special access to his backstage throne room. 

Or any number of celebrities that are just obviously miserable. They’re filthy rich, people adore them, and they’re miserable and often basically seem insane. Glory, doxa, the glory that belongs to God alone, is weightiness. It’s heavy. It will crush you if you try to get underneath it.

And so, Jesus teaches us in his love, don’t try to get under it. Don’t use charity as a ladder to try and ascend to the throne of God. When you give—and you should give; it is commanded by God—don’t do it like a religious actor, to be seen and worshiped. It will make you miserable.

And don’t try on the other hand to transcend all desire, like some sort of Buddhist monk. That’s silly. You were made to desire. You were made to long for joy. You were made to thirst for satisfaction. 

Therefore, you were made to want to give for the sake of some reward. It’s not wrong, when you give, to want something—in fact, the location of the sin with respect to giving is to want too little!

It is a sin to give out of the desire for too small of a reward. What you should be wanting when you give is God. It’s a Father. It is the omnibenevolent, uncreated Creator God. Don’t settle. Live by faith in the reward that comes from this good Father, not from created nobodies.

To Whom Are You Really Praying?

Secondly, he applies it to prayer. Look at verse 5 with me, if you would:

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For 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 reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” 

-Matthew 6:5–6

In Matthew 23:5, Jesus says that the scribes and Pharisees did all their deeds to be seen by others. Giving is one huge temptation to do this. Prayer is another. Prayer is easy to pervert into a show.

Everything we saw with respect to giving is true here, but I think the connection is even easier to see between faith and this application. Prayer is obviously an act of faith: To oversimplify, it’s asking for things. It’s petition. It’s standing still, doing nothing to get what you’re asking to get, and asking for it.

So obviously, prayer presupposes that God is able to do things, to accomplish things, to give good gifts, to reward. But when you pray to be seen by people, you’re not actually praying to the Father, but to those people. It’s as if Jesus is saying, “ When you pray to be seen, you’re really praying to people. You’re really asking those people to reward you.” 

But how dumb it that? How dumb to pray to people when you could pray to the Father of lights, from whom all good and perfect gifts come down, as James reminds us? Again, Jesus would have us reach higher, not lower, in our desire for reward.

Do You Want To Be Happy?

So here’s the question: Do you want to be happy?

Not overcomplicating it, one thing this sermon asks you and would want to force you to consider is this very simple question: Do you want to be happy? Do you want to not be miserable?

Do you want to not be a miserable, inward-twisted, self-worshiping, human-praise-addicted, man-fearing little Gollum of a creature?

Then look to your Father.

Give knowing that your Father is good, and that he gives back—that in fact, he gives back good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over. That with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you—but that the Father’s measure is infinite. Don’t give for the by-comparison worthless reward of people thinking, “Oh man, he’s really generous.” What a stupid trade that would be. What a waste of giving.

Pray knowing that your Father is good. Pray knowing that he does not give a serpent or a stone to the one who asks for bread. Pray knowing that your Father delights to be asked and to give. Pray knowing that you have not because you ask not. 

Don’t pray for the by-comparison worthless reward of people thinking, “Man, that guy’s really spiritual.” What a stupid trade that would be.