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Matthew 6:1 “Make certain you do not perform your religious duties in public so that people will see what you do. If you do these things publicly, you will not have any reward from your Father in heaven. 2 “So when you give something to a needy person, do not make a big show of it, as the hypocrites do in the houses of worship and on the streets. They do it so that people will praise them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full. 3 But when you help a needy person, do it in such a way that even your closest friend will not know about it. 4 Then it will be a private matter. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you.
This just makes sense. When you’re helping someone else by sacrificing time or money, you should only get rewarded once. No sense in God giving you rewards and people on Earth also thinking great of you. Let explore two different givers for a moment. You’d have one giver who just gives to the poor and doesn’t tell others about it. Then you have another giver who wants to make a show about it so everyone knows they’re charitable. In this situation, the guy who makes a show about it would get doubly rewarded if God gave them a reward. Both people are doing a nice thing, but if you look at it, if people did get doubly rewarded, people would be more inclined to brag about giving. And once you’ve entered into the bragging about giving, it becomes more of a show and less of an actual thing of charity.
The flip side of this is that when you give, you need to be careful not to tell people of what you do. Christianity is a religion of truth, yet it is allowable to keep secrets. God kept the secret of Jesus in plain sight through the times of the Old Testament. If God would have revealed his plan with Jesus to the enemies, they wouldn’t have been taken captive along with Jesus’ journey to the cross. So it is Biblical that secrets are allowed. The problem is when you tell people about your day or finances, they can figure stuff out, or you might slip up telling about things. It is difficult to keep secrets sometimes, but you shouldn’t tell people about your giving.
I think what is allowed though is preaching that giving is good. It is good to try and rally people around giving to the poor because the poor are starving to death. Sure if you give your money to a guy on the street, you could be supporting a drug habit. But if you give to a shelter or food bank, you’re directly helping people. The guy on the street could be confronted and asked,”Do you know where the food bank and shelter is?” And if not, you can help him to them. You just gotta be careful that when telling people about giving to the poor that you don’t give your own giving as an example. Besides God saying to be anonymous, if you give a money amount, others might judge their own giving against. If you give a lot, the person who gives less might feel less inclined to give because it doesn’t compare. If you give a little, the person who gives much might feel less inclined to give more because of the example you set. If people ask about your giving, you can quote Matthew 6:1-4. It is always good to quote scripture in the proper time.
Matthew 6:5 “When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites! They love to stand up and pray in the houses of worship and on the street corners, so that everyone will see them. I assure you, they have already been paid in full. 6 But when you pray, go to your room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what you do in private, will reward you. 7 “When you pray, do not use a lot of meaningless words, as the pagans do, who think that their gods will hear them because their prayers are long. 8 Do not be like them. Your Father already knows what you need before you ask him.
God does not want us praying things in the presence of others to demonstrate our piety. I think it is fine to lead a prayer with a group of people who’d also like to be praying with you. I don’t think Jesus is against group prayer. Rather, Jesus was against prayer as a sign of boasting similar to making a show of giving. Culturally speaking in the modern day USA, there isn’t much to gain in modern society by going to the street corner and praying loudly. Still, it could have been a problem back in Jesus’ time.
Matthew 6:9 This, then, is how you should pray: “Our Father in heaven: May your holy name be honored; 10 may your Kingdom come; may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us today the food we need. 12 Forgive us the wrongs we have done, as we forgive the wrongs that others have done to us. 13 Do not bring us to hard testing, but keep us safe from the Evil One.’
This is known as the LORD’s Prayer. It is typically prayed “Our Father in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”
Note some people say “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”, and both prayers are the same. Debtors means those who sin against us, and forgive us our debts is asking for forgiveness of sin. The same goes for trespass against us as those who sin against us, and our trespasses are our sins against others.
The LORD’s Prayer is good to pray in itself after you pray to God your things you request of him. I use a prayer list on computer. I try update my prayers daily and then pray the LORD’s Prayer. Let us examine the LORD’s Prayer.
The first thing we ask is for God to be honored: His name Hallowed.
The next thing we ask is for the coming of the kingdom of Heaven to Earth. We also say,”Thy will be done”. This means God’s will is above our will and our prayers if they conflict. Unanswered prayer is sometimes the result of asking God to do something that isn’t in his will.
Then we ask for the forgiveness of sin in us and those who wronged us.
When we ask to not be led into temptation, we’re asking not to be led into a place that might set us up for failure into sin. Instead we ask to be kept safe from the Devil and his minions on Earth.
It closes telling God that his is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever. We submit to him and happily and welcomingly tell God it is all his to rule.
This prayer is generally said the same way every time. It is a good affirmation prayer. As I said before, we typically place our requests before God, then we pray the LORD’s prayer.
Matthew 6:14 “If you forgive others the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.
This is a great spiritual truth. Jesus even tells a parable about it later on. Jesus forgives us our sins and demands we forgive everyone. Forgiving is sometimes hard, but when you remember the price Jesus paid on the cross, it is easier to forgive someone a great offense than it would be to die on a cross. Not forgiving someone is a sin in itself. And Jesus said we’re to forgive people a great number of times if they continually offend us.
Matthew 6:19 “Do not store up riches for yourselves here on earth, where moths and rust destroy, and robbers break in and steal. 20 Instead, store up riches for yourselves in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and robbers cannot break in and steal. 21 For your heart will always be where your riches are.
If you help the poor, the sick, and those in prison, you get true rewards in Heaven. If we do all things in love for all people regardless of race, status, or culture, helping others will come naturally as our love swells up! Know though that while love is intangible in this life, and people seeking to get rich in earthly money think nothing of sacrificing love in order to get rich, love is the only thing that lasts between this life and the next. It is one of God’s great ways of making fools of the Earthly wise, and wise what this Earth considers fools. If you lead a life of love, you will get to keep it in the next life.
Matthew 6:22 “The eyes are like a lamp for the body. If your eyes are sound, your whole body will be full of light; 23 but if your eyes are no good, your body will be in darkness. So if the light in you is darkness, how terribly dark it will be!
I believe this is referring to spiritual blindness. If you can’t see the spiritual things, you’re in a very bad position. If you recognize the darkness, that is good, you can come to Jesus and be healed. But if you don’t even realize you’re spiritually blind, you’re going to lead your life falling into all sorts of dangerous anti-spiritual pitfalls.
Matthew 6:24 “You cannot be a slave of two masters; you will hate one and love the other; you will be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
We should always serve and love God. Money can be used as a tool by which to serve God, but we should not love money for what it is. Money is a tool by which man gains mastery over other men and is passed around. God wants us to be the servant of all. So the proper use of money is to work hard for as much as you can gain without being unethical, and then spend the money to help the poor, sick, and those in prison. By working hard for money then giving away what you don’t need to frugally live on, you demonstrate you have no love for money.
Matthew 6:25 “This is why I tell you: do not be worried about the food and drink you need in order to stay alive, or about clothes for your body. After all, isn’t life worth more than food? And isn’t the body worth more than clothes? 26 Look at the birds: they do not plant seeds, gather a harvest and put it in barns; yet your Father in heaven takes care of them! Aren’t you worth much more than birds? 27 Can any of you live a bit longer by worrying about it? 28 “And why worry about clothes? Look how the wild flowers grow: they do not work or make clothes for themselves. 29 But I tell you that not even King Solomon with all his wealth had clothes as beautiful as one of these flowers. 30 It is God who clothes the wild grass – grass that is here today and gone tomorrow, burned up in the oven. Won’t he be all the more sure to clothe you? What little faith you have! 31 “So do not start worrying: “Where will my food come from? or my drink? or my clothes?’ 32 (These are the things the pagans are always concerned about.) Your Father in heaven knows that you need all these things. 33 Instead, be concerned above everything else with the Kingdom of God and with what he requires of you, and he will provide you with all these other things. 34 So do not worry about tomorrow; it will have enough worries of its own. There is no need to add to the troubles each day brings.
God goes as far to say we shouldn’t worry about the future! God can provide. God is promising he’ll provide until your death. And we know God provides for us even after our death forever! People are born and die, but death is not the end, death is only the beginning of when we spend time with God. God is even with us in this life and as long as he wants us to stay alive, he’ll be with us. I think we should shrewdly run our finances as so we provide for ourselves, but we should rely on God for our future. Some people rely on their money for their future, but money can be taken away in many different ways. It is foolish to rely on money for security if you do not have God. With God, money can be a tool, but we should use our wealth to help others as we go along.
God says the flower is more beautiful than even the most elaborate clothes. And he is right, he can make things beautiful. Imagine how beautiful Heaven is. We’re getting glorious bodies in the New Earth or New Heaven. God will make our bodies even more beautiful than we can imagine here on Earth. Heaven is where the real enjoyment of life begins. In this life we’re to push on helping others the best we can and it is good if we get enjoyment from helping others here on Earth. When we get to Heaven, no one will need any help anymore, but they’ll remember you when you did help them on Earth!
-Jim Sager