The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The pastor discusses the tension between Jesus’s teaching in Matthew 6 (give in secret) and Matthew 5 (let your light shine). How do you reconcile these two teachings in your own life? What is the difference between hiding good deeds and shining as a light for God’s kingdom?
How does the Magi’s response to God’s sign contrast with that of the people in Jerusalem, and what might this reveal about our own tendencies to prioritize stability or recognition over joining God’s kingdom work?
Jesus assumes giving to the needy (“when you give”) rather than treating it as optional. In what ways does this challenge contemporary church practices around generosity, and how should it shape our approach this year?
The sermon asks: “If all the charities stopped giving benefits of any sort—T-shirts, name recognition, tax write-offs—how much would giving go down?” What does your answer to this question reveal about your own motivations for serving and giving?
What practical steps can we take this week or year to “pass the light” of God’s righteousness in our homes, workplaces, or communities without sounding our own trumpets?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Oh, well, here we are on Epiphany Sunday and we’re also beginning a new sermon series. We were looking at what the gospels had to tell us about Jesus coming into the world and who he is over the last few weeks. And now we’re going to go back to what Jesus has to tell us about the kingdom of God. We started to get a sense of that over chapter 5 of Matthew. Over the last year, we’ve been going through parts of it between other series, going through parts of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. And if you haven’t read the Sermon on the Mount for a while, it’d be well worth going and just reading the whole thing straight through because it’s an incredible sermon. I mean, it’s from Jesus himself. There’s so much tucked in, though. What we’re doing is going through in little portions to pull out more of what he’s referring to, and there’s so much he’s referring to that’s going on in that time period, and we can’t necessarily grasp onto it because things have changed and what have you. That’s what we’ve been doing is we take that one sermon and we break it up into a whole series of sermons.
And this section, chapter 6, I believe, is so perfect for us to go into as we begin the new year because in it, Jesus is going over, how do we practice faithfulness? What does it look like to live the faithful life? Many of us make resolutions. We make resolutions that have to do with, how am I going to live the faithful life this year? I’m going to read my Bible more. I’m going to minister to people more. I’m going to pray more. I’m going to do all these different things. We may say that, but what does that actually look like? Here’s the funny thing. How we think that looks, and how it actually looks, aren’t necessarily the same thing. We have an idea. We think of what the righteous life looks like, but do we actually know what God’s righteousness looks like in us? What he wants us to look like as we show his kingdom to the world.
It’s Epiphany. It’s the traditional day that we—or Sunday, Epiphany was actually Friday, but Epiphany Sunday, it’s the traditional day that we observe the wise men coming to see Jesus. And the wise men actually probably came close to 2 years after the birth of Christ. We know that, at least roughly, because when Herod talks to them, he says, “What is this that you’re talking about some king? I am the king here,” and, of course, he’s a little more diplomatic than that, but that’s what he’s thinking. And he asked them, “Well, when did you see this sign and so on?” What does Herod respond by doing? He responds by killing all the baby boys under 2 years of age because he believes that’s going to wipe out any threat to his throne. He doesn’t know exactly when Jesus was born, but he has a window of time that he can work with and he believes that one will do it. That will get rid of the threat.
Now, what about these magi themselves, these wise men? We just sang “We Three Kings.” They weren’t technically kings. They were more likely wise sages, astrologers, which we rightly shy away from astrology, but in many cultures in the time, those who studied the stars to try to predict the future and look for signs in it and so on were viewed as the wisest of sages. They were the advisors to the kings, and these wise men, as they study the stars, see a star appear. And they realize what the sign is. They’re familiar with the wisdom of the world, including that of the Jewish people, the Old Testament. They know about the prophecies of the Messiah, and they say, we see this star. Something’s happening, God is doing something big and we need to respond to it. And so they set off and they go and they find Jesus and they worship him.
Think about that for a moment. There are very few moments in the history of the Old Testament, very few, maybe a little bit under David, under Solomon, where the glory of the people of God in a worldly sense is so great that anyone outside of that kingdom really cares about it other than as a chess piece in geopolitical fights. Normally it wasn’t a big deal.
So when the wise men go over to Palestine to worship this newborn king, they’re not going to the cultural center of the world. Not like today where we refer to it as the Holy Land, where people all over the world think of this as some special place. In worldly terms, there wasn’t a lot of reason for the magi to think this is a great investment in our time. It’s not like they probably lived right around the corner. This was an investment of time, and of course, because they were bringing very expensive gifts, an investment of money to go worship a king in the backwater of the Roman Empire. But they did because they saw that prophecy from God, and they got it.
Here’s the funny thing about them—or not really about them, but rather about God’s people. These wise men, these astrologers, those doing things that were actually condemned in the Old Testament, told that God’s people shouldn’t do, and rightly so. Those who may have, for all their lives up to this point, worshiped other gods, who served other kings that weren’t aligned with God’s purposes in the world in a momentary sense. These men saw God’s word, heard the message, the promise in it, it responded. And they came from wherever they were. We don’t know their exact location. We might hazard some guesses about where they were coming from, but they came from their land or lands and arrived and worshiped.
Well, God’s people in Jerusalem were troubled, we’re told, because what they thought was not, “Wow, God’s fulfilling his promises.” They thought, “There might be something that’s going to rock the boat and make Herod mad.” And what we want is a nice, stable life. Maybe with some power for us.
And we see that throughout Jesus’ lifetime. People encounter him. They see the miracles he’s doing, and instead of saying, “Jesus, tell me how I can be a part of your kingdom. Jesus, tell me how I can do the things that you’re calling me to do. Jesus, help me to understand how to be a part of this wonderful thing that you’re doing.” Those who understood the scriptures the best generally opposed him because when it came to getting recognition from their peers and recognition from the people, it was better to be against Jesus and continuing to practice that worldly form of righteousness than it was to follow him. Following him wasn’t a path to worldly glory.
And too often today, I think we run into the same problem because when we think about what Jesus is going to tell us over these next chapters, over these next weeks in this series “Trailblazer,” we’re going to be thinking about him telling us things that, in some senses, are as revolutionary today as they were 2000 years ago. Because somehow, even though we follow Jesus, we managed to drag bits and pieces of his teaching back into the modes and practices that the Pharisees were doing. We try to put it back in the same framework because what do we want? We want recognition too. We want people to think of us as righteous. We want people to look on us as great. When what Jesus is saying is we should be wanting people to look at God and see that he is great. That’s our challenge.
We want to be seen as righteous. We see that as Jesus describes the situation in verse one. He says, “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.”
Now, I would imagine if you’ve been in the church for a while, you have heard a sermon on giving or two or more. Sometimes this passage comes up. Sometimes we ignore this passage too ironically when preaching on giving because we want to highlight what happens if you’re faithful to God. So we do a whole series of testimonies, right? “This is what happens when I give, and I’m so glad I give.”
What’s Jesus talking about here? Notice that as he addresses giving in this sermon, his focus isn’t on doing the giving; his focus is on how we do it. And notably, we do it in a way that isn’t highlighted and trumpeted in front of people.
Now, we should understand the context of Jesus talking about this. Jesus is talking about, over the next section—which we’re going to look at this first part today—but Jesus is talking about three forms that were the primary ways that in Judaism of the time you demonstrate your righteousness. You gave alms, you gave to the poor. You prayed, and you fasted. He’s going to address all three of these because in our human sinfulness, what do we do? We take these things, these good things, these things that God calls us to do, and we turn them into things that aren’t so good anymore because they’re no longer focused on God in his kingdom. They’re focused on us. And that’s what he’s seeing here is the problem.
Jesus is preaching a sermon encouraging the people to give. Because here’s the thing, if you notice—and I think this is so remarkable—I was reading a commentary this week on this passage. And as many times I’ve read over this, I just kind of whizzed past that part before. If you look, we get so focused on the details of what he was referring to. Do you notice what he says about how we’d go about this giving that we’re called to do? Verse two: He says, “Thus, when you give to the needy.” Okay, yeah, I knew that was there. But notice he doesn’t say, “If you could find it in your heart to give to the needy.” He doesn’t even say, “You need to realize you need to give to the needy.” What does he say? “When you give to the needy.” So Jesus, the starting point is, of course, if you already know that you need to be giving. I don’t need to tell you that. That’s assumed.
That’s just so obvious in his mind that, of course, if you’re a part of God’s people, if you’re seeking to follow him, you’re going to be giving, and you’re going to be giving in different ways. And one of those key things that the Bible is concerned with over and over again is helping the poor. You’re going to give alms. You’re going to seek out those in need and you’re going to give to them. He doesn’t feel like he needs to remind the people to do that. We preach a lot of sermons in the church in America today trying to remind people, “Oh, you should give.” And part of that is we don’t necessarily have that as a given in our society anymore, even for those who attend church. And so that is in there. We should give, but here’s what we need to do more than that: We need to understand that God cares about how we give, not just that we give. And I don’t know that we care as much about that.
So how do we give? Well, he says here that when you do give, so again, assuming that you’re going to give, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues. Many people have dug around in historical records trying to find if there are examples of this, and as far as I know, there are no examples of people actually having trumpeters hired so that when they came into the synagogue to give money to the poor, they could have those trumpets blaring. And there’s debate on exactly how Jesus is referring to this, but the gist of it, I think, is really clear: Don’t give in such a way that you’re calling attention to giving.
I remember a number of years ago, when online giving first became an option, that we had a debate at the church that I was serving at the time on the session, the board of elders: Should we allow online giving? Now, that might almost sound like a funny debate now because, well, of course, every church probably allows online giving at this point. Certainly, if they didn’t before the pandemic, they do now. It’s just part of what we do now, right? But at the time, I remember one of the elders—and I have a great deal of respect for this man—he was always calling us to God’s word and to think about it. But in this particular case, I do disagree with him. Because he said, “Well, we need to make sure that we don’t move people towards online giving because we need to pass that plate and people need to have that act of putting the money in the plate in the moment of the service.”
I’m not going to say it’s wrong for us to have the plate. But something strikes me actually that’s pretty neat about where we’ve moved towards as we do more electronic giving and many churches have done as we do here at Little Hills that if we’re taking cash and other in-person giving, it’s in a basket on the side. We’re not passing it. We had to do that because of COVID, but it’s actually moved us, in some sense, closer to this, because you’re no longer looking around and seeing what other people are giving, and you’re no longer thinking, “I need to make sure that people see that I put the money in the plate.” Have you ever had that thought go through your head? Maybe you give once a month or certain other intervals and did you ever have that go through your head when the plate came by and it wasn’t the week that you were giving and you thought, “If I pass this plate and I don’t put anything in it, people are going to be thinking about me and they’re going to think I’m a cheapskate or they’re going to think I’m not righteous because I’m not tithing in this basket at this moment”? Have you ever thought that? I have thought that. I’ll admit, I’ve thought that. I have had times where I thought, “People are going to think I’m not giving because I just passed the plate and I didn’t put anything in it.” Oh, I’m a heathen.
And isn’t it funny that as we worship the God of the Bible and we read what God himself preached to the people, he said, “Don’t let people see your giving.” How far does he go on this? Look at it in a moment. But he says, “Your one hand doesn’t even need to know what your other hand is doing.” And if your one hand doesn’t need to know what the other hand is doing, how much more so does the person sitting next to you not need to know what you’re doing? Because it’s not about whether people think that we’re pious. It’s not what we’re supposed to do. It’s supposed to be hidden. And we might say, “But Jesus, I’ve been here listening to these sermons and we looked at Matthew 5 last year. We were looking at it as we’re going through the Sermon on the Mount, and I remember Jesus, what you said back in 5:14 to 16.”
Let’s take a look there. It says, “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 they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
Jesus, did you forget what you preached the chapter before? He said, “I should practice righteousness and make sure that people see it. I shouldn’t put it under a bushel basket. I can’t give online. I need to give, and I need to get one of those published or clearinghouse big massive checks printed up and put whatever I’m giving on that. I won’t mention the number. I’ll just kind of walk through the church with that.” Because I need to make sure people see. I don’t want to put it under a bushel basket. What’s going on here?
We need to understand what we’re trying to do. Because Jesus hasn’t forgotten what he preached the chapter before. I might forget what I preached before sometimes, and occasionally, you know, it’s really painful sometimes to go back to sermons you preached years ago. And you think, “How did I say that?” God’s constantly teaching us and humbling us and reminding us more about where he’s calling us to be, but Jesus didn’t forget. He wouldn’t forget ever. He didn’t say anything incorrect, and he certainly didn’t forget what he said in the same sermon. These are consistent things. And it really comes down to understanding what it is that we’re supposed to be practicing when he calls us to practice righteousness.
I have a light bulb here. And it’s really kind of a pretty light bulb, isn’t it? It’s nice and silvery and so on. It almost looks like an ornament. You can hold it that way. I’m pretty… yeah. So, what’s a light bulb meant to do? What’s the purpose of a light bulb? Shine light, yes. And this is a floodlight. So which way is it supposed to shine the light? All over. Is my face supposed to be lit up at the moment from this light bulb if it were plugged in? I mean, it’d be really amazing if it were shining and it weren’t plugged in, but is it supposed to be lighting my face right now if you imagine this is in a socket? No, supposed to shine out here, right? We’re shining forward. We’re pointing it at something.
A lot of times when we hear that Jesus says that we should practice righteousness and not put it under a bushel basket, and then we start to figure out how to apply that, we’re making a very, very strange light bulb. Because imagine a light bulb where it had a whole bunch of little lights in here and all of them were shining internally, pointed back so you could see the element. And so if this room were completely dark and you looked in this light bulb, and there was light in there, but everything out there was still dark. Can you imagine such a light bulb? It wouldn’t make such a light bulb because it would be ridiculous. It’s not the point of a light bulb. A light bulb is supposed to be shined at something, or to fill the room around it, not meant to light itself. To the extent that it does, it’s a side effect.
Well, when we practice righteousness, and when the Pharisees practice righteousness too often, they were trying to create light bulbs, and we’re trying to create light bulbs that light up us, the light bulb. And forgetting that God didn’t call us to righteousness so we could light ourselves up and people could praise us. He calls us to point to him. And so when Jesus says not to be under a bushel basket, he’s not saying, “Go and shine so people think you’re great.” But rather what he’s saying is, go point your light towards the heavenly Father. Right the way to his kingdom. Point to him. Do what a light bulb is supposed to do. Shine towards him.
Do I want to be a part of God’s mission and what he’s doing, or do I just want to get stuff in the moment? That’s really what it comes down to. Because if we do like the hypocrites that Jesus is talking about, we need to be careful there. We don’t go too fast because he’s pointing at us. He’s reminding us of what our human nature wants to do.
If we sound those trumpets… and I mean, it would be ridiculous if someone walked in here to Little Hills next week and had trumpeting going on as they were giving. Maybe they hired Tom and they said, “Tom, actually, no, maybe I’ll do this. Tom, would you come in next week and I’m going to drop some money in that offering plate over there? And as I’m doing it, I’m going to drop it one coin at a time so it takes a while. And I want you to trumpet out, you know, play while I’m doing that, okay?” Would you do that? Oh, sure, okay, perfect. So we have a deal. Here, let’s check on that. We need to make sure this is all set. Okay. So I’m all set here now, okay? This is great.
Now, of course, you’d think I was ridiculous if I did that, right? And you would go and pat Tom on the back afterwards and say, “Thanks for putting up with Tim. You know, he gets really nutty. Thanks for humoring him on this.” We don’t do that, but we do similar things, right? We find ways to slip into conversation, “Ah, you know, someone invites us to go do something. I was really, I’d really love to do that, but there’s this missionary I’m really excited about and I’ve been supporting him and I can’t go have dinner with you right now, right?” Something like that. Oh, I wasn’t trying to. I had to offer explanation, right?
Or the offering plate. Again, that’s a very common thing. We find other ways. Here’s the funny thing about it. How many charities do they actually encourage us to do that? Because they say, “Well, if you give, we’ll give you something,” right? You go down to the Muni, maybe you’ll do that in a few months, not right now. Obviously, they’re not performing, and it’d be really cold if you did. But go down to the muni, and you open the brochure, the playbill, rather. And what does it say in there? It has all the people, the patrons of the Muni that are sponsoring it. You go to a museum, they do that. You go into a lot of ministries and they do that. Maybe they even have a list. A Hall of Fame premier gold and platinum and silver sponsors and let’s highlight these people.
Not only do we list their names, but we give them stuff. Maybe we give them special pens, and we give them special shirts. And when I have looked at charities, oftentimes I get kind of uncomfortable about this, because I think, “Well, you’re asking me for money, and you say, if I give you this amount of money, you’re going to send me this and this and this.” And you start to think, “Well, but I was giving you the money to go help orphans, or I was giving you this money to go build wells, or I was giving you this money to go do this or to do that.” And you’re spending that money buying me a really nice polo shirt.
Or even worse, the ones that send it ahead of time, and they’re hoping to guilt you into it, because you already have it. And I know from a fundraising perspective it makes a great deal of sense because it does get people to give more money. But why does it do it? Because it stokes our egos. It makes us feel important. Ah, I’m a premier partner of this ministry or this charity, and they’ve given me these things, and I can wear these things and someone’s going to see me wearing these things and maybe feel like I’m doing something good.
Well, Jesus says, as we give to the poor, we shouldn’t be looking for the t-shirt. We shouldn’t be looking for the pen. We shouldn’t be looking for our name in lights or in playbills or in anything else. We should do it in such a way that no one knows. Whatever our way of trumpeting is, we should not be focused on that; we should be shining our light on the mission of the kingdom. To the extent that people see it, and they realize that I’m doing it not because I’m trumpeting, but because I’m giving my time.
Or maybe here’s someone. I know someone who inevitably, if he sees someone trying to ask for money on the side of the road, he’ll stop. Give. He doesn’t do it. He wouldn’t tell you that. And I certainly wouldn’t point him out if he were here because he wouldn’t be happy with me if I did. The only reason I know is that if you’re with him, you see him do it. You can’t help it. He can’t hide it. And that’s the kind of thing that should come out in our lives.
In general, as we practice righteousness not proclaiming ourselves, not trying to make a spectacle of ourselves, if the light bulb as you look into it is plugged in, it is going to be lit inside, but that’s not the point of it, and light isn’t focused inside. And our righteousness shouldn’t be focused inside either. People are going to see it, but we don’t aim for people to see it. But it makes us feel so good when they do. Makes us feel so good when people praise us and tell us that we’re doing a good job.
If all the charities stopped giving benefits of any sort—T-shirts, name recognition, tax write-offs—how much would giving go down in the church? I think that’s an interesting question. Are we giving because something is being given to us—recognition or benefits? Are we giving because we feel called and led by the Holy Spirit to do it?
Now, I’m not criticizing those who have wise accounting practices and figure out that they can give even more than they are possibly called to, and somehow it works out better from a tax perspective. I’m not saying if you’ve ever written down in your taxes what you gave so that you could get a tax write-off that somehow that’s sinful. I’m not saying anything like that. I’m just saying we need to examine in everything we do—every way we serve in the church—am I doing it so that I get recognition and I get praise on earth? Or am I doing it because God’s called me to do it? And any of that stuff that happens otherwise is just a happy side effect.
There’s nothing wrong if someone sees you doing something righteous, something good, and you weren’t trying to show off, and they come up and they say something kind to you. It’s encouraging sometimes. We get discouraged, and we’re serving in the church, and we’re serving in ministry, and we’re serving in our workplace, and we’re doing all this stuff, and sometimes we do need an encouraging word, not because we need to build our ego, but because our ego is so bruised. We’re so beaten down. And I think sometimes God, in his mercy, brings someone along who sees just enough to say something to encourage us.
So it’s not about that. It’s not about that it’s somehow bad even to receive something as we serve, but we need to check our motives. Why am I doing it? Why am I serving? Why am I giving? Why am I praying? Why am I doing anything?
Jesus uses the word hypocrite here. And there’s a lot of discussion on exactly how to make sense of that. There’s different ways we could take it. Hypocrites—the word hypocrite originally referred to actors on stage; that was the name, the Greek word for actor. And so sometimes what we’re really picturing is people are putting on a false front. But the way he’s using it, it often seems to be that he’s also indicating someone who’s even fooled themselves. Someone who’s been acting for so long they forget the separation between themselves and the character that they’re playing.
I think most of the time when the Pharisees were trying to bring recognition to themselves, they weren’t thinking, “I need to put on a show so people think I’m really great.” They were thinking, “I am really great.” And when people praise them, they were thinking, “Well, of course they are. Bring it on. I’m really great.” And Satan loves it at times. At times he likes to rip us apart, but at times he loves to tell us how great we are so that we start to expect for people to praise us and when people aren’t praising us enough, we slip something out. Just, “Oops, I didn’t mean to say that,” but now people can praise me. Ah, okay, now we’re getting back to where you recognize how great I am. We don’t even realize we’re doing it.
But when we do that, we’re trading something of much greater value for something of lesser value, because in the moment, we’re getting a valuable fix that we feel like we need. We need to be praised. We need to be told that we’re good. But are we doing it for that? Are we doing it for God’s recognition?
There are so many stories in history of things that have been traded for something of lesser value. We can find that in scripture. We find that, for example, when Jacob and Esau are talking and haggling over stew and Esau trades his birthright for a bowl of stew. We see those examples in modern times too. And one of them, I think it’s sort of interesting, gets talked about every so often, is the founding of McDonald’s.
Here we have the sort of premier fast food restaurant, right? If you’re going to represent American fast food culture around the world, what do you point to? Well, McDonald’s, of course. The giant golden arches, which, of course, was founded, rightly enough, given its name, by the McDonald Brothers. But the man who actually built it into what we know today was Roy Crock, not the McDonald Brothers.
And it happened in sort of just an interesting twist of fate. As Crock, who was barely surviving, was selling milkshake machines, he learned what was going on about this little restaurant chain of just a few stores that were buying all these milkshake machines, was impressed, and negotiated a deal where he could open more restaurants using the McDonald’s name. And he realized that he could turn this into something huge.
And as he realized that, he decided he didn’t really want to just be someone who was under the thumb of someone else, who even though they had started it, he wanted to buy the company from the McDonald Brothers, and negotiated with them, and they finally agreed to sell it for $2.7 million, which sounds like a lot of money.
They sold it to him, and about 20 years later, when Roy Crock died, he was worth $600 million. He couldn’t even afford the $2.7 million even though his restaurants were booming because it was a lot of money. That’s all a ton of money, isn’t it? I couldn’t afford $2.7 million. But when he died, he had $600 million. He’d taken this thing that had some value and it turned into something that had much more value.
Now, as far as I know, the McDonald Brothers never complained about that. They were okay with that. They retired a few years later and they were fine with it. They were fine with getting the $1 million each that they ended up having after taxes in the moment. But had they held on to McDonald’s, they would have, 20 years later, had 100 times more. If it followed the same path. And today, McDonald’s is worth approximately $175 billion.
Now, they were happy in the moment, and oftentimes we’re happy in the moment when we trade God’s heavenly pleasure, his joy in us, serving for the sake of serving him for the earthly recognition. We feel like we’re getting that million dollars. We can go and retire. Things are good in this moment. I’m happy with what I’m getting.
So when Jesus says, “Well, if you sound that trumpet, you’ve received your reward here already,” they say, “Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. I needed someone to appreciate me.” For all I know, the McDonald Brothers never regretted selling McDonald’s even though it was worth so much more. But we will regret when we trade God’s heavenly joy in us, his heavenly rewards in us for the earthly reward of the praise of other people. But it’s just, the draw is so strong.
John chapter 5, Jesus says to the Pharisees and the teachers, he says, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive glory from people, but I know that you do not have the love of God within you. I have come in my Father’s name and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? How can you do that, Pharisees?”
Go and preach God’s word, but don’t actually have the love of him in you. That’s what he says to them. But he continues to challenge us to ask for those places in our sinful hearts where we’re holding on to wanting the praise of other people rather than God. Because here’s the thing, we can—this in here, they were right. Eternal life, it’s written in here, we can find it in here. What have they done? They hadn’t used the scriptures to genuinely find eternal life. They had diluted themselves and those around them into thinking they had, but what had they found and said they’d found a way to be important in the moment to people around them? God calls us to see that his recognition and his alone is enough.
Jesus says, in verse 3 of Matthew 6, he says, “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.” God sees everything that we’re doing. And here’s the scary part when you think about it. He sees our hearts more clearly than we do. So there are plenty of times where I’m doing something, and I feel like I’m doing it for the right reasons. I’m doing it for good. I’ve deluded myself just like these Pharisees had. I’m feeling really good about myself and what I’m doing. And what I realized when I really get past myself for a moment, so what I’m really doing is trying to make myself feel good. Even if it was a good thing. That even in our best deeds, they’re stained by our selfishness and our desire to build ourselves up.
As Jesus goes through the Sermon on the Mount, he calls us to go above and beyond what the law called people to do in righteousness, to do more, but to be recognized less. And to know that God doesn’t need trumpets. If Tom played the trumpet every time one of us did something good, it would be beautiful because Tom does a beautiful job with the trumpet and that would be great. But God doesn’t need that. God doesn’t wait for us to have some kind of loud punctuation on what we’re doing and say, “Oh, I almost missed it down there. I didn’t know that they were doing anything righteous. Huh. Now I know.” He doesn’t do that.
God knows our hearts. He knows our unrighteousness and our righteousness and He calls us to simply do what he’s intended us to do, what he’s asked us to do. What he’s gifted us to do. To recognize that he sees it. There’s an irony to that. Because when the world sees us not trumpeting and simply doing, they may not see every single thing we do. They may not know where we put our money in every moment. They may not know where we put our time in every moment. But when the people of God are doing what the people of God are called to do over time, what will people see? They’ll see God’s kingdom functioning in this world. And as they see that, that’s that light of righteousness that Jesus wants us to show.
The world has plenty of people bragging about how great they are. Every week someone is doing that. Every day someone’s doing that. Nothing novel about someone claiming to be a very good person. What is novel is when people actually do what is righteous and don’t claim, don’t proclaim themselves, but they proclaim a good and righteous God. When we shine that light to where it’s really supposed to go and transformation happens.
God isn’t like us to where he misses something. Maybe you gave a gift to Christmas, and you wrote a little note in it, because there was some meaning to it, and you didn’t want people to miss, whoever the recipient was, you didn’t want that person to miss the significance of this gift. God doesn’t need us to write notes to him to say, “God, I’m doing this, and I want you to know that I’m doing this so you don’t miss it.” He sees it. We just need to ask what recognition matters to us. Whose recognition matters to me? Is it the world’s? Or is it God’s? Once we focus on God.
That’s a lifelong process because we’re going to go back and forth on this. But once we focus on God in a given moment, and we’re focusing on wanting to please him, and we’re free to shine as light. We’re free to light this world, not just at Christmas time, but every single part of the year.
Here at Little Hills, we’ve never had an in-person candle lighting. We were supposed to have it on Christmas Eve, and with illness going through the church, we didn’t have it on Christmas Eve. So we’re going to do something a little different. We’re going to actually light some candles tonight on Epiphany Sunday instead. And I love candle lighting. I love this. It’s always so special to me when we take time to do this.
We’ve done this online before, which is wonderful. But when we’re alone lighting our candle, sometimes we can’t really see the full effect of it. But a moment where I see this room start to pick up the glow of candlelight—that reminds us. Sometimes, I think that’s actually a perfect picture of how it goes, because sometimes in the moment, we feel like we need to trumpet our righteousness, because we’re sitting there like we were a few weeks ago on Christmas Eve and we were holding, maybe if you had a candle ready and you were watching the service, you lit that candle. And it didn’t seem like it did much good because you’re just by yourself there in that moment and you think, “Well, I need to tell people. I need to proclaim on social media how much light I’m putting out because no one can see it. No one can see that I’m helping delight the world.”
And so often in what we do in life, it feels like I’m just a lone candle. And in moments that may be all the light that’s being put out. But God calls us to be those who are bringing light to others. And so tonight, if you’re online and you have a candle handy, I’d encourage you to light it again. And it’s only going to maybe be that one candle in this moment.
Whether we’re in person here or we’re online, let’s not stop there. Let our light this year not stop there. Because here’s the amazing thing: I have this candle, but we can pass that light.
If you’d go ahead and share it over there, Tom, and then… Leo, if you’d go ahead and share that? We’re starting to get a glow in here. If you’d hold up your candle as you get lit, you can start to see it glowing.
Here’s the beautiful thing about these candles. They’re just a little piece of wax. They don’t actually do anything, but they remind us as we go from the Christ candle to our candle. And then we share it with others, the light starts to spread.
And whether we’re here in this building right now or you’re in our online community, the real light that matters, the real light that we’re seeing metaphorically here is the light in our lives as we practice the righteousness of the kingdom. Not by trumpeting it but by sharing it.
If you took this candle and we stopped at the first person on either side that had a candle lit, we stopped there, and Tom and Leo had stood up and proclaimed how great it was that their candles were lit, no one else’s candle would have been. It’s not about proclaiming, “Look at me, I have a lit candle.” It’s about going and sharing that light with others. And as we do, seeing other people’s lives lit up.
That’s not a challenge just for this moment or this night. It’s a challenge for this week, and this year, and this life. Because you go into work tomorrow or school tomorrow or wherever you might be. Go into your home tonight. Are we sharing light? Are we talking about being righteous, or are we actually showing the light of God’s righteousness?
Because that silent night that we sing about in that beautiful Christmas carol—it wasn’t all about that one night. Jesus came into the world to bring light into the world over the course of his ministry, to suffer for us, to die for us, and to triumph over death for us. It was a continuing process of light that he continues to give us today through his Holy Spirit. So it is in our lives.
We’re going to sing “Silent Night” now, and let’s not just think about that moment we celebrated a few weeks ago. Let’s think about how do we take that?
Start the Conversation