MESSAGE BEARER MEMO

By Ryan Shaw

These bi-weekly memos are to provide encouragement, exhortation, and spiritual nourishment in the lives of those who have signed the Message Bearer Creed as you prepare to serve the Lord globally, and are influencing your peers with this vision.

Sermon on the Mount – Part 4

Matthew 6

Pleasing God, Not Others

Verses 1-18 make up the first portion of Matthew’s sayings of Jesus and verses 19-34 take us into another theme. The first portion highlights the right and wrong way to go about various spiritual activities. Jesus is clearly calling those who follow Him to be those who do things in hiddenness and not to receive personal glory. The activities of almsgiving, prayer, and fasting were all valid religious activities for Jews and Jesus doesn’t question their continuance for those who have believed in Him, but the motives behind them and how one goes about doing them are now what is challenged. He goes straight to the heart of the matter. His call is to not flaunt ones activity in front of others, but to be purposeful toward the audience of One with all spirituality. Just imagine what life might look like if our churches took this call to do all activity for God and not human approval seriously. So much of our time is wrapped up in trying to please others and build our own reputations. We invest huge amounts of energy (like the Pharisees of old) in looking good on the outside so others will accept us and think highly of us as spiritual persons. God is actually opposed to us when we do this as we know His word claims that “He opposes the proud.” This seeking after a name is a core part of pride within our hearts, which is a critical reason why Jesus calls us to hiddenness.

Rewards Are Okay

In doing this, Jesus uses an incentive as well; the idea of spiritual rewards. A secret life in Christ revolving around secret faithfulness, which is done for God and not human approval, will receive a reward. This idea of rewards in heaven often takes a bad rap among believers. Someone might say, “We should simply do things from a pure heart and not to lay hold of some reward in heaven.” The Scripture, however, doesn’t back this up. God definitely has rewards and levels of blessing in heaven, each level nearer and nearer to the brightness of His throne. I don’t have time to go into this teaching now, but the Bible provides ample evidence that not all who are saved and go to heaven will experience the same rewards or blessings in heaven. Having a motive of wanting to be obedient to Him for the purpose of laying hold of a certain reward that He has promised to give, is not doing so out of a wrong motive, but in fact pleasing to God. He calls us to live a certain way here on earth and not to pursue the passing rewards of the world but instead live sold out to our true eternal inheritance in heaven, which is full of rewards for those who comply with doing things as He has prescribed in His word. Jesus lays these things out and invites us to have no embarrassment about receiving eternal rewards for faithfulness and obedience.

The Lord’s Prayer

In the midst of verses 1-18 we find Jesus teach His disciples about how to pray in the secret place. In essence, Jesus says, “Quit thinking that I need to be bullied by all the repetitions the religious leaders make, know that prayer is not about technique or formula, but about engaging with me and my heart and your heart being changed as a result.” Then he gives a model of how to manifest this. Many throughout church history have actually used Jesus’ model in this chapter for their own prayer lives and experienced remarkable vitality and life within their prayer lives as a result. Some have suggested that at its core the “Lord’s prayer” is really a missionary prayer. Check it out, line by line.

       “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” – The focus of missions, God’s glory through worshippers from every tongue.

       “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” – The goal of missions.

       “Give us this day our daily bread” – The financing of missions

       “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” – The problem of missions: unforgiveness among other message bearers

       “And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” – The spiritual warfare of missions.

       “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen” – The finishing of missions.

The themes of each section of this prayer are truly powerful and not put together by accident. If we will apply each component of this prayer into our prayer lives, we will see transformation as we align ourselves with that which He is doing.

What Are Your Priorities?

Verses 19-34 highlight Jesus now turning His attention to the subject of materialism and its insidious capabilities. Part of His motivation is a full recognition of what is in human nature and its sinful bent to prioritize ourselves. Jesus calls His disciples to give full priority to eternal issues and denounces a false trust on oneself or ones possessions to supply or meet the material needs here on earth. Verse 21 is a searing challenge to all of us to regularly check our hearts and see if we’ve allowed our treasure to be moved away from Jesus alone. It happens slowly, but surely. Don’t be deceived with the thought that you once made a full surrender of all these things to Jesus and so don’t need to do it again. Do it on a daily basis because our hearts slowly drift as we rationalize and justify ourselves and our low priorities. If we are wise we will regularly do a self inventory to see if we’ve let our hearts, even in the most subtle ways, drift and become enraptured by any other love but Jesus. Let Jesus be ruthless with you in order that your heart might not allow materialism to slowly enter in. Let Him put His finger on every little area, repent of it, and turn away with all your heart.

Don’t Worry

Jesus finishes the section with a beautiful illustration to remind us of His incredible capacity to care for every material need a human being can have. It is critical for us, as His Message Bearers, to internalize this illustration and regularly allow it to soak our spirits and saturate our souls. It hits upon quite possibly the biggest reason behind the relentless levels of anxiety that people feel today – worry over money. Again, Jesus knows the human heart better than any human ever could. He knows our propensity toward worry and He calls us on it. He clearly identifies it as sin in this passage. If we are allowing worry over our material needs being met to consume us, Jesus calls that sin! It is not sin to be responsible in your home by providing for your family, the key is trusting in God as your faithful Father. It is not a light matter in the hands of almighty God to have His ability to care for every material need you have, challenged. Remember, He is exceedingly jealous and wants to play the role of provider for us in every situation we face. To take this away from Him through worrying and not trusting His perfect ability, must grieve His kind, tender and generous heart immensely. As Message Bearers, this can be a difficult test. Often finances are tight and we are tempted to worry and yet if we put ourselves completely into the hands of God and are being obedient to His word and His Spirit speaking to us, we will watch Him move in extraordinary ways to meet every material need we have. You can bank on this.

To check out previous Message Bearer Memos and other resources for your journey, click here: http://www.svm2.citymaker.com/messagebearermemoarchive.html

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Ryan Shaw