Josh King

Matthew 6:5-8 & Methods, Motives, and Mindsets

Imagine two scenarios.

Scenario one: I never talk to Bethany in private. She tries to talk with me but I am never interested, until we get in public. When other eyes are looking besides her own, and when other ears are listening besides her own then I seem greatly interested in her. Why the difference? The conversation that seems to be about her, isn’t about her, it’s about me. It’s about putting on a show, putting up a façade to give an impression.

Scenario two: I am away on a mission trip. I hardly ever call Bethany until the last couple of days. Those conversations are liberally littered with “I love yous.” In our final conversation the day before I arrive I mention to her how horrible the food has been and how wonderful it would be if she would meet me at the airport with a Webber’s Root Beer and Burger. She does not bring one, perhaps she is planning that we all go there as a family. I am furious upon seeing her without the root beer and burger. She then realizes that “all the right words” that I said previous in our conversations were only empty phrases. The conversation wasn’t about how much I loved her, but about how much I loved root beer; she was simply the means to the end. I was not after her heart, I was after beverage and sustenance.

Scenario one is conversing like a Pharisee, scenario two is conversing like a pagan. Prayer is dangerous! The other acts of piety dealt with in 6:1-18 receive only one warning, prayer receives two. The methods are not what is being contrasted here. If you read this passage and only change your method, it is as if you put a bandage on your arm to deal with profuse internal bleeding.

In scenario one, now dealing with our text, vv. 5-6, the issue isn’t posture; for instance, the tax collector as well as the Pharisee pray standing in Luke 18:9-14. The issue isn’t public prayer as opposed to private prayer; there are numerous examples of public prayer that are blessed by God in scripture. The issue is praying in public to be seen and praised by others. The issue is prayer for publicity, not prayer in public. The issue isn’t the method, but the motive.

In scenario two, vv. 7-8, the issue isn’t repetition. Jesus would repeat the same prayer in Gethsemane. The pagan worshipper thought he had to appease or flatter the gods to get what he wanted. He would use certain formulas so that the gods would listen. The reason Christians are not to pray in this way is theological; we have a loving omniscient Father. The issue here is not method either, it is the mindset with which we come to prayer. Theology shapes your prayers profoundly, I would say more than anything.

If you want to grow in prayer don’t look for new technique, look to your God. Ever more important than method is your motive and mindset.

Too often when we struggle with prayer we focus on the wrong things. We focus on praying better instead of focusing on knowing better the one to whom we pray. And we focus on our need for discipline rather than our need for God. – Kevin DeYoung

Tolle Lege: The Pleasures of God

Readability: 2

Length: 258 pp

Author: John Piper

How is it that a book can still shock and thrill you with the glory of God even after having read it four times? I say it is because it is intensely Biblical, and that means it draws from inexhaustible stores. Further this is so because its focus is the eternal, infinite God; as D.A. Carson says,

The Pleasures of God is perhaps the most important book that John Piper has written. It is certainly the freshest and most penetrating. Many preachers and writers are calling Christians today to be more God-centered. The irony is that even the call to be God-centered focuses attention on us, on what we must do. Certainly the Bible spends no small part of its pages telling us what we must do, but it does so out of profound God-centeredness. And here is a book that does not tell us what we must do to be God-centered; it simply is God-centered. Intoxicating.

The Pleasures of God is a survey of Scripture to look into the delights of God’s soul. What does God rejoice in? Oh what worship, what peace, what meditation, what pauses of awe there are when you ponder the answers to that question. God is the happiest being in the universe, here you will see it, and by God’s grace be caught up into it.

Desiring God is perhaps the most influential book in my life, but I’m pretty sure that The Pleasures of God is my favorite. Tolle Lege! Yes, I already want to again.

Being infinite, God is inexhaustibly interesting. It is impossible therefore that God be boring. If we find him boring we are like five-year-olds who find sex boring. The problem is not with sex. Nor is the problem with God. His continual demonstration of the most intelligent and interesting actions is volcanic. As the source of every good pleasure, he himself pleases fully and finally. If that’s not how we experience him, we are either dead or sleeping.

The exhaltation of his name is the driving force of the gospel. The gospel is a gospel of grace! Grace is the pleasure of God to magnify the worth of God by giving sinners the right and power to delight in God without obscuring the glory of God.

[God’s] passion to save and to purify feeds itself not from the shallow soil of our value, but form the infinite depth of his own.

[Reflecting on Zephaniah 3:17] Can you imagine what it would be like to hear God singing? A mere spoken word from his mouth brought the universe into existence. What would happen if God lifted up His voice and not only spoke but sang! Perhaps a new heaven and a new earth would be created.

Behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth…
I create Jerusalem a rejoicing,and her people a joy.
(Isaiah 65:17-18, RSV)

What do you hear when you imagine the voice of God singing? I hear the booming of Niagara Falls mingled with the trickle of a mossy mountain stream. I hear the blast of Mt. St. Helens mingled with a kitten’s purr. I hear the power of an East Coast hurricane and the barely audible puff of a night snow in the woods. And I hear the unimaginable roar of the sun 865,000 miles thick, 1,300,000 times bigger than the earth, and nothing but fire, 1,000,000 degrees centigrade, on the cooler surface of the corona. But I hear this unimaginable roar mingled with the tender, warm crackling of the living room logs on a cozy winter’s night.

And when I hear this singing I stand dumbfounded, staggered, speechless that he is singing over me – one who has dishonored him so many times and in so many ways. It is almost too good to be true.

[God’s] anger must be released by a stiff safety lock, but his mercy has a hair trigger

God has no deficiencies that I might be required to supply. He is complete in himself. He is overflowing with happiness in the fellowship of the Trinity. The upshot of this is that God is a mountain spring, not a watering trough. A mountain spring is self-replenishing. It constantly overflows and supplies others. But a watering trough needs to be filled with a pump or bucket brigade. So if you want to glorify the worth of a watering trough you work hard to keep it full and useful. But if you want to glorify the worth of a spring you do it by getting down on your hands and knees and drinking to your heart’s satisfaction, until you have the refreshment and strength to go back down in the valley and tell people what you’ve found. You do not glorify a mountain spring by dutifully hauling water up the path from the river below and dumping it in the spring. What we have seen is that God is like a mountain spring, not a watering trough. And since that is the way God is, we are not surprised to learn from Scripture – and our faith is strengthened to hold fast – that the way to please God is to come to him to get and not to give, to drink and not to water. He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

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The Pugilist: The Bible is Revelation Received not Imagination Conceived

The religion of the Bible thus announces itself, not as the product of men’s search after God, if haply they may feel after Him and find Him, but as the creation in men of the gracious God, forming a people for Himself, that they may show forth His praise. In other words, the religion of the Bible presents itself as distinctively a revealed religion. Or rather, to speak more exactly, it announces itself as the revealed religion, as the only revealed religion; and sets itself as such over against all other religions, which are represented as all products, in a sense in which it is not, of the art and device of man. -B.B. Warfield, The Biblical Idea of Revelation

Matthew 6:1-4 & Learning From a Hypocrite

Perhaps we can learn how to give by observing a certain hypocrite and thinking through why his giving in particular is especially ridiculous. R.W. Glenn tells of a certain man who brought in eight figures yet consistently boasted of his giving. He would speak of how he gave a thousand dollars to this charity and to that cause. His giving is repulsive first because as we see in our text, it is not about God, it is not even about others, it is about self glorification. But secondly it is ridiculous because it’s nothing, he is giving away pennies. We think it would be easy to give away a few thousand if you posses such wealth. Here, I think is where we can learn from the hypocrite.

Giving liberally might be thought to be easier in proportion to the wealth one already possesses, but wouldn’t it be equally true, no, more true, that it would be even easier to give in proportion to the reward one expects to receive for giving. If I am told I will be given one hundred dollars for every Washington that I give away…

For the Christian both truths allow him to be liberally generous. He is already immeasurably rich in Christ, and He is promised yet more for giving in a way that shows His devotion to God. Focusing on the reward makes our giving unselfconscious. We don’t boast because we don’t think ourselves to be giving but receiving. Let’s focus on the scandal of the reward and the nature of the reward and see how it works toward this end.

First the very idea of reward is scandalous; how can God reward the spiritually bankrupt? How can the poor in spirit merit anything? They can’t! Even when we do all that we should have done, we have only done that which was our duty (Luke 17:7-10). Consider three further reasons why the idea of reward is scandalous.

1. All our acts, even our best acts are stained, contaminated with sin. They are acceptable only in Christ. John Owen wisely wrote,

Believers obey Christ as the one by whom our obedience is accepted by God. Believers know all their duties are weak, imperfect, and unable to abide in God’s presence. Therefore they look to Christ as the one who bears the iniquity of their holy things, who adds incense to their prayers, gathers out all the weeds from their duties and makes them acceptable to God.

2. The reward is immeasurably disproportionate to the service rendered. This is a repeated motif through the gospels of which Matthew 19:29 is just one example.

3. Our good deeds are not only accepted only in Christ, they are also only through and because of Christ. God rewards his own activity in us (Hebrews 13:20-21, Philippians 2:12-13). Commenting on 2 Corinthians 9:8 John Pipers says, “Good deeds do not pay back grace, they borrow more grace.”

The scandal of reward is the scandal of the gospel all over again, the gift that keeps on giving. God’s grace moves us to be gracious. But the most liberating freedom to give comes in contemplating what He has given us. What is the nature of the reward? Notice that Jesus does not go into spelling out exactly what the reward is. Jesus does not say, “Give and you will have land and great wealth in heaven.” If this were the case giving would be self-serving and not God-glorifying. I think the reason the reward is not elaborated is because what moves us to give here is not what is given, but Who is giving. In contrast to the hypocrite who gives to hear the praise of others, the Christian gives to hear the praise of His Father. God is the reward.

So then the key to giving unselfconsciously is to believe God’s promises and be enthralled with the reward.

The engaged young man working two jobs to buy a wedding ring doesn’t think himself to be doing anything, why? Because he is getting the bride. He doesn’t draw attention to it, doesn’t manipulate her with it, he is in awe that she graciously said yes, and wants to put a rock on her finger that says, “mine!” She is honored by his service and brags to others of it, but he doesn’t. The reward is incredibly disproportionate to the service rendered.

But he is a man. And there are times when he wonders if all this hard labor is worth it all. How can he gain gusto to work with joy again? By looking at her picture, conversing with her, dreaming of her, or seeing her.

If you want to give liberally and unselfconsciously think on your God, know His majesty, and remind yourself of the gospel and His promises. Go to the Bible and be in awe that in Christ you can say, “He is mine!” Do this and you will think all your meager giving ridiculous.

Tolle Lege: Tactics

Readability: 1

Length: 200 pp

Author: Gregory Koukl

If you want to gain skills to converse winsomely with others concerning the Christian faith I highly encourage you to read Gregory Koukl’s Tactics. For what it does, I know of no other book better. I’ll let it argue for itself:

Do arguments work? The simple answer is, “Yes, they do,” but this needs explanation.

Some suggest that using reason isn’t spiritual. “After all, you cant argue anyone into the kingdom,” they say. “Only the Spirit can change a rebels heart. Jesus was clear on this. No one can come to him unless the Father draws him (John 6:44). No intellectual argument could ever substitute for the act of sovereign grace necessary for sinners to come to their senses.”

Of course the last statement is entirely true as far as it goes. The problem is, it doesn’t go far enough. There is more to the story. It doesn’t follow that if God’s Spirit plays a vital role, that reason and persuasion play none. In the apostle Paul’s mind there was no conflict.

And according to Paul’s custom, he went to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead… And some of them were persuaded. (Acts 17:2-4, italics added)

…Simply put you can argue someone into the kingdom. It happens all the time. But when arguments are effective, they are not working in a vacuum.

…Here’s the key principle: Without God’s work, nothing else works; but with God’s work, many things work.

The burden of proof is the responsibility someone has to defend or give evidence for his view. Generally, the rule can be summed up this way: Whoever makes the claim bears the burden. The key here is not to allow yourself to be thrust into a defensive position when the other person is making the claim. It’s not your duty to prove him wrong. It’s his duty to prove his view.

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The Pugilist: Supernatural

Men have always and everywhere judged that a supernatural man, doing a supernatural work, must needs have sprung from a supernatural source. If there had been nothing extraordinary in the coming of the Savior into the world, a discordant note would have been struck at this point in the “heterosoteric” Christianity of the New Testament, which would have thrown it in all its elements out of tune. To it, it would have been unnatural if the birth of the Savior had been natural, just because it itself in none of its elements is natural, but is everywhere and through all its structure, not, indeed, unnatural or contra-natural, but distinctively supernatural. – B.B. Warfield in The Supernatural Birth of Jesus

Matthew 5:21-48 & Read the Law as Lovers Not Laywers

Jesus in these six antithesis is not negating the law, but explicating it. He isn’t countering the law, but the Pharisees’ wooden interpretation of it. The Pharisees read the law like corrupt lawyers, not lovers. They looked for loopholes in the law under the guise of seeking righteousness and justice. They used the law pursue sin disguised as righteousness. They put white dresses on black sins.

As depraved sinners we don’t want to pursue holiness, which is where the law thrusts us, we want to know where the line is. So we ask, “When does sex become sex?”, or “It it gossip if…?” But what you really ask by such questions is, “How close can I get to darkness? How far can I venture from the light while superficially suppressing my conscious so that I feel good about myself?” We want to flee the light while giving the appearance of avoiding darkness. When we ask such questions we are seeking answers that will make us feel better about our rebellion. We use the law to pursue sin, not righteousness.

Sons and daughters of the kingdom then read the law and keep the heart of it, not so that God will be our Father, but because He is our Father (Matthew 5:48). We read the law with delight (Psalm 1:2), seeking reasons, not exceptions. We read it this way not to gain salvation, but because reading it this way is His salvation in our heart. We read it this way not to get into the kingdom, but because the kingdom has gotten into us. Because of His love, we read the law as lovers, not lawyers.

The Pugilist: Christianity Didn’t Grow Up, It Was Founded

Christianity certainly did not just “grow up”; it was founded. And subsequently to its founding, it has not “run wild,” gone off in this or that direction according as some contentless “informing spirit” or “germinal life” within it may have chanced to lead it; it has been held strictly, more strictly than any other religious movement, to its fundamental type, by constant references back to its foundations. For whatever reason, on whatever ground, it has kept a constant check upon itself lest it should depart from type, and has shown an amazing power, after whatever aberrations, continually to return to type. Its eye has been fixed not merely in forward gaze but in backward as well. It has manifested a unique capacity of growth, justifying its Founder’s comparison of it to the mustard-seed and to the leaven; but, after all is said as to the transformations it has suffered, its slacknesses, its degenerations, its failures, its growth has lain not in the gradual development of a content for itself, but in the steadily increasing assimilation of its environment to itself. – B.B. Warfield in The Essence of Christianity

Matthew 5:17-20 & Fulfillment

This is one of the most difficult passages in the gospels… in the Bible. Some may think that Jesus is easy reading and that it is Paul who is difficult, but I wonder if they have ever read Jesus, and if they have, if they really pay attention to what He says or just read Him in a light superficial manner. If you think Jesus was just an ethical teacher and Paul was the theologian, think again.

But don’t let this passage intimidate you. It is crucial, for at least three reasons. It is crucial for understanding :

The Sermon on the Mount. The phrase “law and the prophets” appears again in 7:12; this forms an inclusio (think something like parentheses). They let us know what this whole section is about.
How the Old Testament relates to the New Testament.
How the law relates to the Christian.

As I entered into my study of this text I was excited about this passage because I knew it was a passage that influences my basic approach to the Bible. An approach that a children’s story bible nails, and sadly many ministers fail to realize.

Now, some people think the Bible is a book of rules, telling you what you should and shouldn’t do. The Bible certainly does have some rules in it. They show you how life works best. But the Bible isn’t mainly about you and what you should be doing. It’s about God and what he has done.

Other people think the Bible is a book of heroes, showing you people you should copy. The Bible does have some heroes in it, but (as you’ll soon find out) most of the people in the Bible aren’t heroes at all. They make some big mistakes (sometimes on purpose), they get afraid and run away. At times, they’re downright mean.

No, the Bible isn’t a book of rules, or a book of heroes. The Bible is most of all a Story. It’s an adventure story about a young Hero who comes from a far country to win back his lost treasure. It’s a love story about a brave Prince who leaves his palace, his throne-everything-to rescues the ones he loves. It’s like the most wonderful of fairy tales that has come true in real life!

You see, the best thing about this Story is-it’s true.

There are lots of stories in the Bible, but all the stories are telling on Big Story. The Story of how God loves his children and comes to rescue them.

It takes the whole Bible to tell this Story. And at the center of the Story, there is a baby. Every story in the Bible whispers his name. He is like the missing piece in the puzzle-the piece that makes all the other pieces fit together, and suddenly you can see a beautiful picture. – Sally Lloyd-Jones in The Jesus Storybook Bible

Jesus fulfills all Scripture. Some 16 times Matthew will use “fulfilled” in regard to Jesus, we have seen it several times already (Matthew 1:22; 2:15, 17, 23; 4:14). The excitement over this truth remained for me as I studied, but desperate prayers were turned to God in trying to understand how verses 18-20 related to verse 17. Simplistic answers at how the law relates to the Christian fall flat here. Some chop the law into three sections; moral, civil, and ceremonial. They will say the moral law remains, but the civil and ceremonial law have been done away with. There are some problems with this; we never see this kind of division hinted at anywhere in the Bible, the first mention of it come from Aquinas, and it doesn’t gel well with what Jesus is saying here about not one iota or dot.

The best help I received and pass onto you is R.T. France’s helpful paraphrase.

Do not suppose that I came to undermine the authority of the OT scriptures, and in particular the law of Moses. I did not come to set them aside but to bring into reality that to which they pointed forward. I tell you truly: the law, down to its smallest details, is as permanent as heaven and earth and will never lose its significance; on the contrary, all that it points forward to will in fact become a reality (and is now doing so in my ministry). So anyone who treats even the most insignificant of the commandments of the law as of no value and teaches other people to belittle them is an unworthy representative of the new regime, while anyone who takes them seriously in word and deed will be a true member of God’s kingdom.

But do not imagine that simply keeping all those rules will bring salvation. For I tell you truly; it is only those whose righteousness of life goes far beyond the old policy of literal rulekeeping which the scribes and Pharisees represent who will prove to be God’s true people in this era of fulfillment.

So it isn’t that we toss parts of the law as unimportant, but that we realize their full significance in light of Jesus. The law then must be read not through a threefold division grid, but in light of Jesus and His fulfilling it.

Tolle Lege: Give them Grace

Readability: 1

Length: 167 pp

Author: Elyse Fitzpatrick & Jessica Thompson

I was deeply convicted while I read Give them Grace, but I also was freshly reminded of the grace that is in Christ. I expected to find great ways to shepherd my children to Jesus from so highly a commended book (Tullian Tchividjian says it is the best book on parenting he has read), I wasn’t disappointed, but I didn’t expect to be so powerfully reminded of the gospel myself. But this is the ways it must be. You must know grace to preach grace. I concur with Tullian, Give them Grace is now my first book recommendation on parenting.

One of the reasons we don’t share this story [the gospel] with our children is that it doesn’t resonate deeply in our own hearts.

We need much less of Veggie Tales and Barney and tons more of the radical, bloody, scandalous message of God made man and crushed by his Father for our sin.

If a Mormon can parent the same way you do, your parenting isn’t Christian.

We long to be told, “You are good!” but only Jesus Christ and those clothed in his goodness deserve to hear it. And if we really embrace this truth, our parenting will be transformed from wishful deception to powerful grace. It will make our parenting Christian. Our children aren’t innately good, and we shouldn’t tell them that they are. But they are loved and if they truly believe that, his love will transform them.

Yes, a new day when everything will be put to rights will come, but in the meantime, while we’re living in the not yet, we need grace. And we don’t need it just a tiny bit; no, the truth is we are desperate for buckets of it. We need it every hour of every day. We need it when we remember that we need it and we need it when all we can see before us is futility and trouble and disappointment.

So, when you have that morning to top all mornings, when everything that could possibly go wrong does, when grace doesn’t mean anything to you, it is his grace that will sustain you. What mornings like these teach us is that we’re just like our children. They forget, and so do we. They need grace, and so do we. We are partners in grace with them.

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