1/12/25 - Matthew 6: What Drives You?
Reputation and Power
Philanthropy
The Court of Women
The place where all Israelites could congregate
The court of the Gentiles, the outer court where anyone could be,
The court of women, the first inner court, only Israelites who are ritually pure can enter, the only inner court that women could enter.
The court of Israel, only the men could enter
The court of priests, only the priests could enter.
Collection boxes for the poor and temple taxes
Provincial collection boxes
Had a horn, whether metal or ram’s horn
Everyone around would hear the amount being given
Jesus points out the hypocrisy of certain people who would likely wait until peak public hours to pour their gifts and make a spectacle of how generous they were.
The story of the widow who gave her small coins takes place in the Court of Women while Jesus is observing the rich do just this thing.
Hypocrite was a theatrical term for an actor. Someone who wore a mask and played a role. It later came to mean someone with a divided mind, doing things with mixed motives or pretending to be something they’re not.
We do this today; whether it’s making sure people see us at the offering box, boasting about the ways we’ve helped people, giving gifts to people to win favors or influence them, and in our social media age, we’ve all likely seen the YouTubers who make a show of themselves giving money away.
Spirituality
The ancient synagogue was service was liturgical. The prayer portion was overseen by the Skeliack Tsibbur or, “messenger of the congregation” who would read the prayers and lead the congregation in them.
The hypocrisy that Jesus points out was perhaps in both the reader and certain congregants who would either make a show of their oration or their piety. Jesus references prayers in the street. The ancient Jews prayed three times a day in correspondence to the morning, noon, and evening sacrifices. Again, there would be some who made a spectacle of their piety, perhaps making sure they were in public during these prayer times.
Today is no different. It’s popular to tout one’s spirituality. The more vague or blended, the more vogue. But we can do this in church as well. The thinly veiled gossip framed as a prayer request, the smug recital of one’s salvation birthday, ministry positions, or spiritual gifts. The disdain for church order for the sake of ostentatious displays of praying in tongues or dramatic theatrics.
Social Justice
In Isaiah 58, God reprimands the people for fasting to get His attention while at the same time chasing pleasure, extorting workers, quarreling, and fighting. He then tells them that the kind of fast He desires is for them to loose the chains of injustice, set the oppressed free, break every yoke, share food with the hungry, shelter the transient, give to the poor, clothe the naked, and take care of one’s relatives.
By Jesus’ day, giving to the needy on fast days was common practice. While the pharisaical guidelines on giving commended secrecy of giving, the hypocrisy that Jesus points out is this practice some would employ, making their appearance rugged to highlight the fact that they were fasting so that everyone around them would know how socially conscious they were. Considering Jesus calls them out as hypocrites, who knows if they were even putting their money or the work of their hands towards social justice or were signaling to others that they were to look good? Sound familiar?
In our social media age, we’ve all seen the blacked-out profile pictures for black lives matter or the rainbow frames for Pride Month. Politicians tackle homelessness by throwing money into organizations that profit their own interests, and everyone and their mother makes sure that their speech is politically correct to the political standards of both sides of the aisle to sound socially conscious. We, in our day, make no less of a spectacle of ourselves, if not dramatically more so, to signal to others around us about how moral and socially conscious we are.
Turn it around
All of these categories are ways that we store up the treasure of reputation on earth. Jesus gives us the remedy and the solution to avoid hypocrisy and to ensure that our reputation is centered on pleasing God rather than the people around us: Don’t practice your righteousness with the motivation of being seen by people.
We are tempted to put ourselves on display for two reasons: we crave a good reputation, and we believe that providing for us and ours depends on ambition, status, and power, so we tend to signal whatever virtue, real or erroneous, to get what we want.
Jesus calls us to walk a fine line. In the same sermon, he commands us to let our light shine so that others may see our good works and glorify God in heaven and also to not practice our righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.
The difference between the two commands is rooted in this phrase, “To be seen.”
In Greek, this phrase is one word: theathenai. It doesn’t merely mean “to be seen,” but it means “to concentrate on so as to influence the viewer.” It also means “to make a spectacle of.”
The fine line difference here is, who are you bringing glory to? Who are you drawing people’s attention for? Is it to God to bring glory to Him? Or is it you to bring significance, status, reputation, or power to yourself?
Motivation
Desire
At the heart of this passage, Jesus uses the metaphor of the eyes. Jewish philosophy saw the eyes as the windows into the soul, believing that a person’s character and intent could be more readily observed in the eyes than a facial expression.
A good eye or a bad eye was a common metaphor for spiritual enlightenment or spiritual darkness. Jesus employs
Jesus says that the eyes are the lamp of the body. This is reflective of contemporary Jewish thought, but whereas the Jews often had in mind that it’s what goes into the eye that affects the soul and purity of the body, Jesus flips it around and reveals that it’s the inner motivation that enlightens or darkens the eye.
We often take this metaphor out of its context and connect it to being careful about what we look at. While I do believe we should be circumspect about what we put into our eyes, Jesus isn’t making commentary about what goes into our eyes but rather what comes out of us that causes the lamp to be bright or dark.
In context, Jesus is talking about what we treasure. Where our treasure is, that is where our hearts will be also. The good eye and the bad eye in this metaphor represent good and bad desires reflected in the actions of generosity or stinginess.
The idea of a lamp lighting the body can be lost on us in the 21st century. In the days before electricity, your day was constrained to the sunlight. At night, a lamp would guide your steps. Whether you were traveling or in your own home, without the light of a lamp, you would have little to no frame of reference of where you are going.
The desires of our hearts are the lamp to the body. Where we are going in life is determined by the motivations of our desires. If our desires are motivated by single-minded generosity, we will be full of light, not stumbling around, and able to see the pitfalls and obstacles. If our desires are divided, motivated by the acquisition of wealth, reputation, power, and pretense, we can delude ourselves and the people around us into believing that we’re doing good but don’t see the pit in front of us.
Devotion
Jesus says here that you can’t serve both God and money. The Greek word used here doesn’t just mean money but the pursuit of wealth. We can either serve God or chase after the treasures of life. And we can easily live hypocritically, trying to play the fence as if we can fool God or those around us. When Jesus says that our hearts are where our treasure is, he’s talking about what we are devoted to.
If you want to know the condition of your heart or the depth of your devotion, your bank statement will tell you.
Money represents our time. We exchange our time by labor for a tradeable commodity to attain what we desire. The exchange of money is a sacrifice of time and labor. So we direct money as our heart directs.
Our money is so often spent on self-serving, self-pleasing things. Perhaps it’s spent on advancing ourselves. But you don’t even have to spend a cent for your bank statement to reveal the condition of your heart, an empty bank statement shows a blatant desire for acquisition, free from generosity, free from helping those in need, free from feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, loosing the chains of oppression, or setting the captives free.
By examining your spending or even lack of it, you can examine your heart. But this works the other way around, too. If you direct your spending, you can redirect your heart.
You can live your life for acquisition and self-indulgence, reflected by a miser’s heart and a jealous desire, or you can live your life for God, reflected by a generous heart and a good desire. And which camp you land in can be determined by where you choose to direct your wallet.
Trust
How do we make that switch from serving acquisition to serving God? How do we gain the power to redirect our wallets from self-serving to others-oriented? How do we retrain our desires from selfish desires to virtuous desires? It all comes down to trust.
Jesus says you cannot serve God and the pursuit of wealth, and then he says, “Therefore.” There’s a solution. You can’t serve God and the pursuit of wealth, and the solution is this: trust.
Just like our wallets reveal our hearts, our anxiety levels reveal our trust. Jesus says, “Don’t worry!” Don’t worry about your life, don’t worry about your clothes; don’t burden yourself with concern for the acquisition of wealth, power, or prestige.
If you’re anxious about something and someone simply says, “Don’t worry,” that statement isn’t enough to get you to stop worrying. We let go of worry by gaining information.
We get into a car and drive without worry because we’ve been taught the rules of the road and shown how to drive, and we have experienced that when we turn the wheel, the vehicle follows.
We sit on a chair without worry because we know that it was designed to be sat on, and we trust that the manufacturer knows what they’re about.
We trust something because we know about it or have experience with it.
Jesus gives us the information we need to trust God. If we look at nature and see the way that God provides for the birds and clothes the grass, and he tells us plainly that we are more valuable to God than birds and grass, we can trust that He will take care of our needs. Christ doesn’t invite us to let go of our self-serving ways on blind faith alone but gives us the information and wisdom we need to be able to trust God.
We chase after the treasures of life because we’ve been trained and we are convinced that we are the master and commander of our fates. If we want it, we have to work for it. Jesus promises us that if we give up that pursuit, surrender our hypocrisies, surrender that idolatry, and set our desires first and foremost on God’s kingdom and His righteousness, orientating our lives towards generosity of heart, everything we need out of life will follow. He will make provision. He will give us every good thing. He will give us a good name. He will know Him and be known by Him. And our efforts will mean something, not for us and ours alone but for the good of those around us.
What does it practically mean to seek His kingdom and His righteousness? What does it mean to store up treasure in heaven? Isaiah gives us a pretty good idea.
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday. The Lord will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.” Isaiah 58:9-11
Seeking first His kingdom and righteousness and storing treasure up in heaven means doing the things that God deems good and directing our time, our money, and our reputation towards justice, mercy, and charity.