Title: Renewing Your Faith / Matthew 6:1-8
Contents
Renew your faith (Matthew 6:1-8)
(Matt 6:1) Be careful not to practice your righteousness before men to be seen by them, or you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
False knowledge is not as good as ignorance, and false belief is better than unbelief. Believing in something you shouldn't believe is called superstition, and believing blindly is called blind faith. Not believing what you should believe is called unbelief, and believing what you should believe is called faith. It is hypocrisy to believe wrongly and pretend to believe well. At the time of Jesus, there were three types of religious groups. Examples are the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. All of them believe in Jehovah God, but among them, the Pharisees are the ones who say they believe in God the best. They criticize others and are extremely self-righteous. Jesus rebuked them very intensely, saying, "You brood of vipers," and "Things like whitewashed tombs."
It is one of the things we are truly grateful for that we are on the conservative line of faith.
However, we must not forget that we too can easily degenerate into false beliefs without our knowledge.
In today's text, Jesus emphasized to his disciples not to follow the religious hypocrisy of the Pharisees, that is, false beliefs. What is the false belief that the Pharisees should not imitate?
1. The Pharisees have a legalistic view of salvation.
Their religious hypocrisy begins with the legalistic view of salvation that people are saved by works.
They are people who not only think that they believe well, but also want to show people that they believe well. I believe that I have good faith, so there is no progress and no enthusiasm. If you know if you are a patient, you can go to the hospital and see a doctor for treatment. But a person who is ill and still thinks he is healthy will never go to the doctor and will never be healed and will eventually die. The Lord warns against following the self-righteous Pharisees.
Even today, Orthodox Jews wear black clothes and black hats and wear beards.
They are strictly law-abiding people. Especially those who try to keep the Sabbath according to the Bible. They never work from sundown on Sabbath Friday evening until sundown on Saturday.
So the lights are on even in broad daylight on Saturday. The reason is that you cannot put out the fire on the Sabbath.
When Jesus healed the sick on the Sabbath, they always quarreled.
But the Lord said. “Man was not made for the Sabbath,” he said. He said, "The Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath." In this way, the Pharisees believed that they could be saved only by keeping the law. This seems to be a good belief, but it is a false belief.
The Bible teaches that we are justified by faith. That is, we are justified before God by believing in Jesus Christ, who perfectly kept the law. If there are people who still live a religious life based on legalism, they must renew their faith.
In the old days, it is said that people bought tickets on Saturdays to avoid buying train tickets on Sundays. Now they drive the Sonata on Sundays.
Today we, like the Pharisees, may think that they are the only ones who believe best.
We must not pretend to believe in ourselves. Now we need to renew our faith.
2. The Pharisees are hypocrites.
In verse 1, the Lord says, "Take care that you do not practice your righteousness before men to be seen by them, or you will have no reward from your Father in heaven."
This text talks about the life of salvation (2-4), the life of prayer (5-15), and the life of fasting (16-18).
Giving alms to others, prayer to God, and fasting to ourselves open the door, which is a very important and essential element of a godly life. However, you are criticizing wrong giving, wrong prayer, and wrong fasting. You are criticizing that the purpose is good but it is being carried out with the wrong motive.
The famous T.S. Eliot said, "Satan's final temptation toward man is to carry out the right purpose with the wrong motive." left a saying.
He warned that if you pretend to be 'to be seen by people,' you have nothing to receive from heaven because it has already been rewarded. Therefore, salvation was to be done in secret. Do my children know that I have done good to anyone? is not to do that. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. When did the Lord visit the prisoners and the sick, the naked and the hungry, and feed them? that's what you should do. Do you go back and forth thinking about when the left hand goes out and when the right hand comes in? It's very natural.
The prayer was to go into the closet, close the door, and do it in secret. He said that he who sees in secret will repay. How pious I am. Hypocrisy, trying to get compliments from people, is a mistake Christians should not imitate. Who sits for the longest morning prayer I did the longest. You shouldn't do this. There are people who make long public prayers. There are people who pray for a long time in a restaurant or in a coffee shop. It is said that the prayers of those who do not usually pray individually are long. They're all eating out. He told me to pray in the closet. However, please do not write that you are praying in the closet.
So is fasting. One revival lecturer said that I fasted three times for 40 days. Write it down on your resume. How frustrated have you been fasting? What do you call it bragging? If Jesus had done it for 40 days, he would humbly do it for only 30 days... When fasting, he told me to wash my face and apply oil to my hair.
But don't say, 'Your hair dries quickly'. We must renew our faith.
We should do our prayers in secret, prayer in secret, and fasting in secret. I pray that you will receive the reward that God rewards you in secret.
3. Pharisees are arrogant people who ignore others compared to others.
In Korean churches, it is said that the number of believers drops a lot when the church is built. It's a very humble belief. That is why the faith of our Korean church members is shallow.
But those who have suffered from the beginning should be careful. It is easy to sit in an arrogant seat, ignoring those who come later. They can be an obstacle to church revival. The revival of Israel was stopped by these Pharisees, and the flames of revival went out to the Gentiles. If you and I do not renew our faith, we will eventually have to play a role in hindering revival.
How much did the Pharisees ignore the publicans who prayed while standing inside the temple and beating their breasts outside the temple gate? Pharisees have a habit of making such comparisons.
Even when he heard the word, he should have listened to it, received grace, thanked him, and repented. Thinking that it was not applicable to him, he looked around and asked, 'This is a word that Deacon Kim should have heard, so why didn't he come out today?'
He thinks he is transcendent. This kind of teacher is the problem. There are no tears in the eyes of such people. These people are wrong. We must renew our faith.
There are words that are repeated in the text. 'They have already received their reward.' They have no reward left.
It is the season of Lent. Please try to lead a godly life with alms, prayer, and fasting in secret and humility. He said, 'God who sees in secret will reward you.' Please experience that God who is in secret repays you in secret.