Right Motivation in the Kingdom
Kingdom Living

Transcript

I see all of you here this morning. We're continuing our series entitled, “Kingdom Living.” We've been going verse by verse through the Sermon on the Mount. This is Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount. Many have regarded him as like a second Moses, yet superior to Moses.

Moses went up on Mount Sinai and brought down God's Ten Commandments. Now, Jesus goes up on the Mount and explains to us what the commandments have always meant. They were always aimed at the heart, not just external obedience, but obedience from the heart. So, we see Jesus, Who we see here. Many have called this, “The greatest sermon ever preached by the greatest preacher who ever lived.”

We're going verse by verse; we're in chapter six now. This is part eight of our series; we've entitled this sermon, “Right Motivation in the Kingdom,” because King Jesus now moves from what His conversation has been for the past few Sundays. He has been saying, “You've heard this law, you've heard thou shalt not murder,

but I say…” He's gone through different laws and moved them from outward obedience to inward transformation. That's where He's been. Now, we'll see that He, in chapter six, begins to talk about our spiritual practices, what some have called “Christian disciplines” or “Christian habits” - things like prayer, giving, fasting and things like that. These are not laws, but these are pursuits of ways that we do our acts of righteousness. So now, Jesus is moving past talking about the right application of the law to the right understanding of why we pursue these things. He says that it's got to do with the heart;

it has to do with our motivation. In today's world, appearance often trumps authenticity. We thrive on applause. Social media thrives on applause, or as it were, “likes” and “hearts” or whatever little buttons you can hit immediately and how many views. It encourages us to broadcast or project a curated image, whether it's through photos or achievements or even spiritual acts like we'll put on social media.

“I'm praying for you;” we don't even have time to say that now. We put those little folding hands emojis; that's me praying for you.

Maybe, you're really praying for people when you do that, or maybe you just want that person to know that you read their comment and you try to reply in a spiritual way. What if this pursuit of human applause, this pursuit of human response to our spiritual acts, corrupts our faith?

What if God isn't impressed with that, when we try to impress people rather than God? I wonder what Jesus has to say about that? Well, that's what we're about to find out today. That's really what Jesus is working on. He wants to move us from external compliance to heart transformation so that we have a new attitude as His kingdom people, His kingdom citizens.

He's calling us to heart change, heart transformation, so that when we worship, when we give, whatever we do for the Lord, we do it unto the Lord and not unto men, but so that we do it for God's glory. This is where Jesus is today in chapter six. In Matthew, chapter six, Jesus warned His disciples against practicing their acts of righteousness in order to receive human applause rather than God's. We can practice our acts of righteousness for the Lord and with a right heart motivation. As we look at the text today, He gives us three spiritual practices that He offers as examples of right heart motivation as we live before the Lord.

So let's look at the text; we're starting at verse one of chapter six. Matthew 6:1-6; 16-18 (ESV) 1 “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. 2 “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. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret.

And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. …” We're going to skip over verses 7 through 15.

We're going to save that passage for next time so that we can really focus on prayer. Then, we're going to skip down to 16 through 18 because Jesus is following a similar formula here, starting at verse 16, “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.. “

This is God's word. Amen. We're looking for three spiritual practices that Jesus utilizes to reveal right motivation so that God is looking for motivation that pleases God, which is from the heart.

1. When we give, desiring God’s reward, not man’s recognition.

When we give, desiring God's reward, not man's recognition. Christ calls us to the right motivation when we give. Now, look at verse two and then look again at verse three. You'll see the phrase, “when you give;” it doesn't say, “if you give.” There's an assumption that if you're a kingdom citizen, if you're a follower of King Jesus, you're a giver, because followers of Jesus are givers.

When you give, when you practice the righteous act of giving, which is part of being a Christ follower that we're givers, make sure you're doing it from the heart. Make sure you're doing it with the right attitude, not to be seen by others. He sets this whole conversation up with verse one.

Verse one begins with the word, “beware.” This is in the Greek imperative. In other words, it's a command word. It's an imperative word. He says, ‘watch out for this thing that I see among the scribes and the religious leaders, the Pharisees, this behavior of this outward performance of righteous deeds in order to be seen.’

He sets it up like that. He says, “beware,” watch out for practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them. Now, to be clear, he's not saying that you shouldn't do righteous deeds publicly. He's saying you shouldn't do them in order to be seen as your motive. Let's be careful here about His focus.

He says, “...in order to be seen by them.” Now, I must admit that I see here a potential contradiction between what Jesus said in chapter five and chapter six. Maybe you remember, maybe you've been with me on this journey and you remember that back in chapter five, Jesus says in verse 14, “You are the light of the world.” He says, “Don't hide your light under a basket.

Instead, put it up where everybody can see it.” Then, He says this in the same way, "Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Now, is this a contradiction? Has Jesus contradicted Himself? In chapter five, He says, “Do your righteous acts, do your good works in front of people so that they give glory to God.”

In the next chapter He says, “Do it secretly; don't do it to be seen.” Is there a contradiction? No, there isn't. What we're talking about here is we're shifting and I think it's important to see that in the earlier case, He commands it.

In the later one, He prohibits it. What's the discrepancy? One author was looking at this and says that in the first case, in chapter five, He's battling against the motive of human cowardice, that we're trying to be “secret agent” Christians, that we need to let people know that what we do is not to our credit, but it's to the glory of the Father. Then in chapter six, he's dealing with human vanity. So, on the one hand we keep it a secret that we're a Christian because we're cowardly about it.

and He's correcting that in chapter five. Then, in chapter six, human vanity is you're proclaiming it because the social community that you're in gives you social credit for that. Now, He's really checking our motives in both cases. The key, I would say in both cases, is that the glory belongs to God, not you, because when you receive the applause of others, you're receiving God's glory for yourself. This is what A.B.Bruce says,

“Show when tempted to hide and hide when tempted to show.” When you're tempted to hide, you should let people know that you're doing it for God. When you're tempted to show off, maybe that's when you ought to just keep it a secret, because human nature is to do things with the wrong motive. So, He sets it up in verse one.

Then, He begins to drill down in verses two through four. With His first example, He gives three spiritual practices: (1) giving, (2) praying and (3) fasting. He could have given us more, but those are the three that He works out with us. The first one is in verse two, 2 “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.”

Can you picture a wealthy person giving? They're coming into the synagogue to give, and they've paid somebody to play a trumpet. It's kind of a crazy scene. I don't know if anybody ever did that. Maybe they did and Jesus saw it and He's bringing it to battle, or maybe He's just using hyperbole to let people know how people act.

They make a big deal when they give an offering and they want everybody to know it. So, maybe He's just using a metaphor here or maybe He's referring to those offering boxes in the temple where there's some archeological evidence for that. They actually had a trumpet-like shape at the top. I've seen these kinds of contraptions in certain places where you could put a coin in. It's open at the top and it narrows as it goes into the box.

Go ahead and pop the photo up. I have a photo example of what these brass kinds of trumpets may have looked like. If you come in, you're a rich person, you open up your pouch and you've got a handful of denarii, you know, you've got all kinds of heavy chains, you could just kind of throw it in the top there, it would sound off like a trumpet. It would be loud.

Maybe He had that in mind. But at any rate, He's saying, ‘Don't sound off. Don't make a big deal in the synagogues (which is the place of worship for the Jews) nor in the streets, so that you may be praised. He says, “Truly, I say to you…” so there's that formula again that we heard earlier with the law. “You've heard it said, but I say…” remember that formula back and forth.

“You've heard it said, thou shalt not kill. But I say, if you've been angry and called your brother an “empty head,” you've committed murder in your heart.” “You've heard it said, thou shalt not commit adultery. But I say, if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you commit adultery in your heart.”

It is kind of the thing that rich people celebrate their giving. But, the formula that He's using again, he's still with authority. “I say the word truly, in the Greek, it’s the word “amen.”

”Amen,”I say to you. I've said this to you jokingly, but sometimes if you can't get an “amen,” you just “amen” yourself. So, He “amen’s” Himself here. He says, “Amen”

I say to you. If you won't amen me, I'll amen myself. Verse 2, “… Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” What's their reward? The applause of man; that's their reward.

Now, they don't get a reward from God because they took God's glory for themselves. They didn't give glory to God, they took it for themselves. That's the reward. The reward is that they got the applause of men. But he says, in verse 3, “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,”

I don't know how you would pull that off. Do you put one hand behind your back? Don't look, this hand's doing this. It's another metaphor, right?

It's a metaphor to the extreme where He's saying, not only should you keep it a secret from the public, keep it a secret from yourself in a way where you're not telling yourself, I'm so great for doing this giving that I'm doing. Be careful about taking the glory, even privately recognizing that all that we give was first given to us. We would have nothing to give if God didn't bless us. All glory, praise and honor belong to Him.

Even as our left hand is giving or our right hand is giving, don't take credit for it. Don't applaud yourself with the other hand or pat yourself on the back as this hand gives. He says, “don't be like the hypocrites,” right?

The Greek word for “hypocrite” is an interesting Greek word. You'll remember this one because it just got transliterated into the English, hupokritēs. It had its origin in the Greek theater.

In the Greek theater, rather than putting on makeup and wearing wigs, they would just go backstage and put another mask on. In the Greek tragedies and the Greek mythologies, they had these common masks. It would be a frowny face, a smiley face or whatever. Maybe the Greek theater is the origin of our “emojis.”

The idea of being a hypocrite means this, that you're a poser, that you're an actor, that you're a pretender, playing a part that isn't really you. That's the origin of the word. He says,don't be like the hypocrites who are making sure everybody knows how religious they are, when in their heart they're faking it. They're not really doing it for God. They're doing it for the praise of men.

Jesus is telling us to be careful. Beware of this. It says in the book of Proverbs, Proverbs 19:17 (ESV) “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will repay him for his deed.” When we give to the poor, we lend to the Lord. He says that we lend to the Lord.

2 Corinthians 9:7 (ESV), “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

God cares about the attitude of the heart. Are you becoming more like Jesus? Are you a giver? “For God so loved the world that he gave…” He's a giving God.

He's a giving God. In becoming more like Him, we become givers. But it must come from the heart. There's a story that we read in the book of Mark where it says that Jesus had positioned Himself in the temple area across from where the treasury was in the court of women, where they were dropping coins in those offering boxes that I was talking about a minute ago. It says that He was watching the people give.

Don't you find that curious? Jesus watches your giving. He's interested in it. In Mark 12:41-44 (ESV), He saw two types of giving. He saw the rich people come up and they would pull out their pouch and throw it down, “ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.”

Then, He saw a widow woman, and she came up, very circumspect, and pulled two little copper coins out, each of them very small, and put them in there. So they went silently down into the offering box. He turned to His disciples who were sitting there with him.

Verse 43, “And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. 44 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” He was looking at her heart.

He was watching her giving. Evaluate your heart when you give. Say, “Lord, examine my heart. Examine my motives.” Are you desiring God's recognition or man's recognition?

Do you give to be seen by others or even give under the pressure of others or do you give out of cheerful obedience to God? Maybe, you're just becoming a giver because you're following Jesus. Notice, He didn't say, if you give.

He said, when you give, because the followers of King Jesus are givers. Are you a giver? Today, at the end of the service, you'll have an opportunity to bring your tithes and your offerings forward as a gift. Do you do it for the Lord and for His glory?

In the lobby, there's two opportunities for giving today. We have the baby bottle collection that we're doing, where you can put your loose change in a baby bottle and bring it back. We will give it to Choices Women's center to help abortion-minded women and others choose life. So, we help support them. We don't just tell them to choose life, but we help them financially and help them in other ways.

Or, you can sponsor a child as we heard Caroline talk about a moment ago. We have a table out there with several packets from different countries. I think we have a couple of packets from Uganda. We partner with churches in Uganda through Pastor George Mybonye. We send teams there nearly every year.

In most of the churches there that he launches, within a couple years of launching that church, he'll open up a K through 12 school that is filled with Compassion International sponsored kids. So, he opens these Compassion schools. We've been partnering with Compassion for some time. We would encourage you to do so as well. There are many opportunities. When you give, give unto the Lord and give for His glory, not your own.

That's the first. Here's the second spiritual practice that Jesus uses to illustrate for us:

2. When we pray, seeking God’s attention, not man’s applause.

When we pray seeking God's attention, not man's applause. Christ calls us to the right motivation when we pray, seeking God's attention, not man's. Applause? Look at verse five.

It says, 5 “And when you pray,” Do you pray? Are you a prayer warrior? Do you pray over meals?

I pray over meals. I pray at bedtime. I pray when I'm in trouble. When do you pray? He says “when you pray.”

He's assuming that followers of King Jesus pray. Then, He gives us the warning. He begins with the warning before He gives the instruction. The warning is, “you must not be like the hypocrites.” The hypocrites are the fakers, the actors; they love to stand and pray.

What do they love? It's not that they love to stand. They love for people to see them pray because they've been practicing and man, they pray good. Wow, that person really knows how to pray well.

That person prays the best. I don't even feel like praying after I hear that person pray. They pray so well. They love to pray in the synagogues; they love to pray in front of the whole church. They love to pray on the street corners.

Is public prayer being corrected here? Is He saying that you shouldn't pray in public? No, that's not what He's saying. You shouldn't pray in public in order to be seen. That's what He's correcting.

He's correcting the wrong motive. If your motive is to be seen, it would be better not to pray at all because you're faking it. You're a hypocrite. He says, “they love to be seen.” My guess is the people who love to be seen when they pray in public may have no private prayer life at all.

They only pray when it's called for. Publicly. He says, “Truly. I say to you,” there's our formula again. You've seen this.

It makes you feel like you don't even know how to pray. They pray so well, you don't know how to pray.

You feel intimidated about praying now because this person prays so well. Verse 5 says, “Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” What was their goal? What was their objective? It was to have the applause of men.

Did they get it? Yes, people said, ‘You pray well,’ and they replied, ‘I know, I've been practicing.’ They've already got their reward.

But if you want the reward of the Father rather than of other people, He says, pray like this, in verse 6, “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. …”

He says that your motive is not for people to see you; you've closed yourself in. You need to be only interested in the applause of one person, and that's of the Father. You're only wanting His attention.

You're not trying to get the attention of other people. Do you have a private prayer life that is not in front of your spouse or in front of your kids? I know that you're trying to teach your kids.

I know that you're trying to make sure your spouse is not worried about you, but do you pray by yourself? The King James Version of this verse is interesting. It says, “Go into your closet.”

I used to always hear the old people say, ‘You need to go in your prayer closet.’ My mom would say it and I'd be watching her to see if she would go into the closet. I'd peep in her bedroom. She'd be down on her knees, next to her bed, crying out to the Lord. I'd be thinking to myself, that's your bedroom;

that's not a closet.

It literally means in the Greek, “an inner room that has a door.” Most houses were very modest in the first century. A lot of them didn't even have inner rooms, but if they did, it was often a room that they could lock, so that they might keep their stuff that was really important to them. It was almost like a treasury room in their house.

They didn't have all of these multiple rooms like we have today with doors. Here's the point: Go to a place where you can shut out the world, where you can get quiet. Now mamas, I know that you cannot find a place to do that.

You can't even go to the bathroom. You have that toddler beating on the door, saying, “Mama, Mama,” right? It's hard sometimes.

The inner room is your bathroom, right? It's the only place you can get a moment's peace, but it's important. Jesus is saying to pursue private prayer with the motive of your Father hearing you and seeing you. Know this, when you do, He sees you and He rewards you.

How does He reward you? He gives you the thing you're praying for, in Jesus’ name. He hears your prayer, right? I remember when I first married into my wife's family, my father in law and I had an interesting relationship. A lot of sons and father in laws have interesting relationships.

You take their daughter and they're not sure they can ever forgive you for that for a long time. That was kind of how we started out. He never called me by my name. He would introduce me to people in the family and say, “college boy” or whatever. He'd see me play Frisbee.

I used to be able to do a lot of tricks and stuff with Frisbees back in the days. He would say to us that he majored in Frisbee. That's how he'd introduced me. Two or three grandchildren later, he finally started calling me by my name. We started off a little distant, but we grew close.

As you know, I lost my father when I was eight years old. He really became a father figure to me, my father in law. I didn't know what to call him. He never told me what to call him.

Finally, when my son, Stephen, started calling him “Papaw,” that's what I called him. I called him, “Papaw.” I knew that I had arrived when one day he said, “I see you getting up early, reading the Bible and praying. Can I show you something?” He said, “Come with me.” He took me outside. He had these

pine trees that he had planted kind of as a windbreak on the side of his property. He had a pretty good sized property and he had this one area where it was really thick with pine trees. We went into the center of this area, and he had taken a porch swing and he had put it in there in the middle of those pine trees. We were surrounded all the way around with pine trees.

You could see the blue sky if you looked straight up. He sat down and said to me, “Have a seat,” and I sat down. He tells me, “This is where I pray. This can be yours whenever you visit, if you want to get up early, because you can have my sanctuary.”

I knew I'd arrived at that point, that he had brought me to the place where he met with the Father. Do you have a place like that? It doesn't have to be a closet. It doesn't have to be an inner room. It could be a room where you're all to yourself, where you can shut away the world.

You have a quiet place with the Lord. Do you have a “quiet time” habit with the Lord? It's not for others. It's just for you and Jesus. Jesus models this in Mark 1:35 (ESV) “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place,

and there he prayed.” He liked to go out away from people. Luke 5:16 (NIV) “But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed.” It was His habit.

Jesus had a habit. He liked to pray alone to his Father in these kinds of places. He told a parable one time about a Pharisee and a tax collector. I like how the parable starts. He says, Luke 18:10-13 (ESV) 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray,

one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

Jesus concludes His parable in Luke 18:14 (ESV) “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”

He was really praying to the Father. He wasn't just praying to be seen. Have you cultivated a habit of private, consistent prayer that seeks intimacy with God? Avoid using prayer to impress others in public or in small groups. Neither

abstain from public prayer because you don't feel like you pray well enough. You're still thinking of your performance. If that's what you're thinking, I don't know how to pray in front of people, you're thinking about your performance. No, you're talking to God.

He's not prohibiting public prayer. What He's cautioning against is wrong motives, that you're praying to be overheard by others rather than God. So, prayer is not a performance. It's communion with the Father.

Here's the third; He moves on to the third. He's talked about giving; He's talked about prayer. Now, Christ calls us to the right motivation.

3. When we fast, pursuing God’s reply, not man’s response.

Our right motivation is important here. He says, 16 “And when you fast,” Now, may I admit to you, I didn't grow up in a church tradition that talked a lot about fasting. We didn't talk a lot about it.

Some of you may have and you know more about it. I had to grow into the understanding of this discipline of fasting. It's something that I had to grow to understand more. I have fasted for certain reasons. My fasting has largely been because of desperation, when I've been desperate for an answer to a question that was concerning me.

It usually had something to do with direction, whether or not I was supposed to go this way or not. It often was that, although sometimes it has been where I was desperate for an answer for a loved one that had gotten bad news from the doctor and I was praying for their healing and I fasted for those kinds of things. Sometimes we, as a church, are called for a church-wide fast because we are getting ready to foot onto a real faith journey that we knew if God didn’t show up, this ain't happening. So, we've asked for a public fast and I've been part of those. Someone asked me in the lobby after the first service a question, because maybe I didn't make it clear enough.

They asked, ‘What does that word mean?’ I guess I failed to mention that it means to say “no” to something for a season in order to say “yes” to God. You might say it's to fast from physical nourishment in order to feast on spiritual nourishment. Let me say that again. Fasting might best be seen as “Fasting from physical nourishment in order to feast on spiritual nourishment.”

You're saying “no” to self and you're humbling yourself and saying “yes” to God. God, this is how serious I am about hearing from You. I'm humbling myself so that only You would lift me up. So, He starts with the warning again, as He's been doing, in verse 16 “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others.”

Oh, man, I'm hungry. Oh, why are you so hungry? Let's go to lunch. No, I'm fasting to the Lord today. Can't go to lunch with you.

Oh, is that chocolate cake? Oh, I wish you hadn't shown me that. Mmm, yeah. No, no, no. I'm fasting to the Lord today.

He says, ‘Don't do that.’ Now, you've ruined your fast to the Lord. You've actually been fasting so others could see you, and you already got your reward. They're all so impressed at how religious you are.

Oh, she's a true Christian. Look at her. Saying no to chocolate cake. That's your reward.

That's what you were after.

Fasting is humiliating to the body because you're saying, ‘You know what? I realize I'm so dependent on God that if I don't eat and drink, if I don't draw the next breath, this body will cease to exist. It's just a reminder of how little I am.’ Fasting humbles the self. It almost always goes hand in hand with prayer; prayer and fasting are integral parts.

He says that rather than going and making a big show about your fasting, “Truly I say to you.” there's the formula again. Verse 18, “...Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face,” Don't go out with your head looking like you combed your hair with your pillow. Put some product in your hair, anoint your head and take a shower.

Clean up.

Don't go out and people look at you like, Man, what side of the bed did you roll out of today? Oh yeah, I'm fasting unto God. No, no; just live your normal life. You're fasting privately to God.

You're not making a big show of it because you want God to do a work in you. You want Him to answer you, but you also want to learn something more about God. Every time you feel your stomach growl, it's like an alarm clock saying, Oh, I'm talking to God today. This is a reminder how dependent I am on God. Joel says this, the prophet Joel quoting the Lord.

He says, Joel 2:12-13 (ESV) “Yet even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments.” They had a habit, when they were fasting, they would tear their clothes. He said, rather than tearing your clothes, let me tear your heart. Let me give you a new heart when you are fasting.

Let it be that which transforms the heart, not just outward. James talks about humbling yourself. He says, James 4:10 (NIV) “Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.” Fasting is self humiliation.

It's choosing to say, ‘God, I'm saying no to this and saying yes to you.’ You're counting on Him to lift you up, not other people.
The King James Version has the word, “openly.”

He will reward you “openly;” It was done in secret. He's gonna lift you up. I'd rather get lifted up by God than other people.

I'd rather live for the applause of the One rather than the applause of the many. People are fickled. God is faithful.

Sometimes people meet me in the lobby and they say, “Good sermon, pastor” and I say back to them, “Well, praise the Lord!” Sometimes people stop me in the lobby and say, “You know that one part? I didn't like that one part.” I say back to them, “Well, praise the Lord! Praise the Lord.”

If I give Him praise for the good stuff, I can praise Him if you don't like it, because I'm not doing it for you.

I want to be a humble servant who just gives you the word the way He gave it to me and the way it's affecting me. I've already told you that I've not been one who's practiced fasting a lot.

I fasted for three days the year after my mother died. Those of you that have been around since those days, she passed away in 2001. It hit me after a little while that I was mad at God about that, about Him taking her. I started fasting.

Lord, help me. I don't want to be a preacher anymore. I'm mad at You. It's hard to be a preacher when you're mad at God. I believe in You. I just don't know why You took my mom;

it doesn't seem fair. Do you ever feel like God's not fair to you? That's a losing battle, by the way. You can try to shake your fist at God.

There's a play called, “Arms Too Short to Box With God.” Have you ever heard of that one? I found out that's true. I fasted and He spoke to me. It's the only time in my life that I felt that I heard an audible voice. For two days, I fasted.

I love coffee; I had such a headache from coffee withdrawal, caffeine withdrawal. I was suffering for Jesus. Man, my head's killing me. Lord, when are You going to talk to me?

Can't you tell that I've got a headache? I'm a baby.

But, He humbly talked to me. I haven't been a great faster. I don't fast a lot. You take one look at me and say, ‘We can tell you don't fast a lot.’ But the fasting I'm talking about is not for physical reasons. It's not for dietary reasons.

We fast from physical food in order to feast on spiritual food. He spoke to me. I'm telling you, I wouldn't still be here preaching if He hadn't spoken to me. He recharged my batteries and got me straightened out. There've been some seasons where I don't think I would have heard as clearly if I hadn't fasted.

So, pursue it. Look into it for yourselves. Study the scripture. Do a search for the word, “fast” and “fasting;” you'll see all these different examples. The church at Antioch fasted publicly before they sent Silas and Paul out on their first missionary journey.

Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness before He began his public ministry. I could go on. Esther told her relative, Mordecai, to tell the Jewish people in the Persian Empire to fast and pray for three days before she went in to see the King. I could go on and on, but people fast and pray at key moments. Do it for the Lord's glory, not for your own. Jesus isn't condemning giving, prayer or fasting.

He's the greatest giver, the greatest example of how to pray. The most miraculous fast in the Bible was done by Jesus. He's not condemning those things. He's warning us against wrong motives. That we do it unto God and for His glory and not for our own glory.

This week, think about your righteous acts and think about who you're doing it for. Let's pray. “Lord, purify our hearts. Lord, make us right with You.

We pray like David. Lord, ‘Examine my heart. Search my heart and know me. See if there is any unclean way in me.’ Lord, I want You to transform my heart.

I want to be more like Your son. I want to yield to Your work in me.”

Are you here this morning and you've never given your life to Jesus? You can pray with me right now, “Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner, but I need a Savior. I believe You came to this world and You died on the cross for my sins. You were raised from the grave.

I believe that. I believe that You live today. I believe that. Come and live in me. Forgive me of my sin.

I want to be a Christ follower. I want to follow You as my Lord, my Savior, my King. I give You my life. Transform my heart. Make me a child of God.”

If you're praying that prayer of faith, believing, He'll save you. Others are here today and you're a Christ follower. But you need a heart cleansing. “Lord, we surrender our hearts to You, afresh. Examine our motives.

Make us right with You. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.”