***The following is an unedited auto-generated transcript and may contain serious errors and speakers other than Dallas Willard. It is included here to assist your study. Please check the original audio for an authentic record of the event.
Dallas: We’re reading this morning from the sixth chapter of Matthew, and we’re going to read the first 18 verses. Jesus continues his teaching of what the abundant life in the kingdom of heaven is. And in this passage, he deals with how we are to live in the acts of religion. And in particular, he deals with three types of religious acts, alms giving, prayer, and fasting.
Take heed that you do not your alms before men to be seen of them. Otherwise you have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound the trumpet before thee as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But when thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, in order that thine alms may be in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
And when thou prayest, thou shall not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. But when you pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of before ye ask him.
Enter this manner therefore, pray ye. Our Father which art 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, because thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever, and so let it be.
For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Moreover, when you fast, be not as the hypocrites of a sad countenance, for they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast, and verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward you openly.
Thank God for the blessing which is in the thoughtful reading of His Word. Thank you, Kim, for your music. It’s always a blessing.
Before turning to the text of the morning and the message, there are a few preliminary remarks which I would like to make. One is that I’m getting a little uneasy about standing at this end of the yellow brick road. I want to lay any anxiety onto your part that I might be the Wizard of Oz because I ain’t.
Then there are a number of things which have come up in questions and comments from you after the messages, and I am so grateful that you are thoughtful and ready to ask and inquire and perhaps disagree with the things which I am saying. I think that is the only way which a pastor or a teacher or an evangelist or anyone who purports to do the work of Christ in the ministry of the Word can effectively labor with the people is if they will enter into a compact to listen critically and to raise questions and to comment and to disagree. I have said over and over as I’ve stood before you and I’ve stopped saying it because I hope you’ve got the message that I don’t assume that just because I stand up here and talk in tones which do not encourage doubt that I know everything. And I hope you will understand that.
The Apostle Paul wrote to the church at Thessalonica and told them to prove everything. And the church at Berea is described in the book of Acts as being more honorable than they of Thessalonica in that they search the scriptures daily to see whether or not those things were so which Paul and his fellow workers were teaching them.
So there are a couple of remarks which I would like to make just as preliminaries before I come to the text and the message of the morning. The first has to do with a difference in terminology between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God. And some people are concerned to make a rather significant difference there.
First of all, just so far as the terminology is concerned, when we look at the scriptures, we find that the kingdom of heaven, the phrase, the kingdom of heaven is a term that is used only in the Gospel of Matthew. I think it records an important insight that Matthew had into the gospel and in particular into the kingdom of God that perhaps was not sufficiently accentuated by other people. Nonetheless, we have to say that for most practical and theoretical purposes in the scriptures, there is no difference at all between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God. If you look at the teachings of Luke, for example, which are parallel to the teachings of Matthew, you see that Luke is using the phrase the kingdom of God to say exactly the same thing that Matthew used the phrase the kingdom of heaven to say. Matthew, of course, also uses the phrase kingdom of God.
And yet there is an important point which I think we should stress, and that is Matthew seems to have the vision of the kingdom of heaven as a socially organized order which we may for our time and our purpose simply identify with the visible church or what old theologians used to call the church militant. I hope it’s still militant, at least it’s still visible, the visible church.
And this is the people which in Matthew 21, 43, Jesus says to the people of Israel, the kingdom of God, and he uses the phrase kingdom of God, the kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a people bringing forth the fruits there are. And what we have to understand is that it has been the intention of God to create in this earth a theocratic community of human beings who live together and for whom God is the sole and complete sovereign, who are subject to other sovereigns only because they are subject to God, but they never make a mistake about understanding where their power lies and where their allegiance lies.
Israel rejected the theocracy. They rejected it early on. They did not just reject it when Jesus came. They rejected the theocracy through all of their history. And they went through the mill of history until a time came when Jesus could come forth and there would be a small group of people among the Israelites who could look at Jesus Christ and say, that is the Messiah. And because the nation of Israel rejected him at that time, the kingdom of God which was present in Christ and which he brought into the world in a real and concrete form and set on its feet and made it go was given to another people whom we may roughly say is the Gentiles, but it certainly wasn’t given to all of the Gentiles. It was given to a group of people who were called out from the Gentiles and who became in history the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And the kingdom of heaven, we shall see in some weeks, I wish to deal with the parables of the kingdom, some of them, and we shall see how that the kingdom of heaven is like a net that is thrown out into the sea and brings in all sorts of fish and creatures. So believe me, if you look around you in the church, you’ll see all sorts of fish and creatures. And they’re all in the church. They are in the visible, hopefully the militant church. And they’re not all saved, and they’re not all sanctified, and they’re not all set apart, but they’re in that church. The kingdom of heaven is like a field in which grows wheat and tares. Jesus taught the truth of the kingdom of heaven in the special sense. And it is important for us to understand that.
And nonetheless, as far as the teachings which I’m accentuating in these days, it is not greatly important that we hold the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God apart. And therefore, I don’t go into great lengths to do this as I go through the messages. But you’ll understand that I believe there is an important distinction. The kingdom of God is overall from everlasting to everlasting. There is no boundary to it. Everything that God made, and that includes everything, falls in that kingdom.
Now there’s another topic which I must say a word about, and that is the topic of dispensationalism. I’ve used this word a number of times because it is my intent to indicate that I disagree with certain people about the interpretation of the teachings of Christ, which would make them not binding on us in this church age. Perhaps the main source of the word dispensation and dispensationalism is in the writings of the very helpful scholar and one who has been a great blessing to many people, C.I. Scofield. He edited an edition of the Bible called the Scofield Edition of the Bible, and he wrote a small book, which is very influential, called Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth.
The import of the teaching of dispensationalism is in general correct. A dispensation is, as Scofield defines it, a period of time during which man is tested in respect to the obedience of some specific revelation of the will of God. Scofield distinguishes seven such dispensations, and if you will look, for example, those of you who have Scofield Bibles, if you will look on page five or in general at the note which follows Genesis 1.27, you will find a discussion of dispensations, the note following Genesis 1.27.
Now, it is helpful, I think, to understand that there are different relationships and requirements and opportunities offered to those who would be followers of Christ and those who would be obedient to God in different periods in the history of the world. But there is one point, I think, upon which great harm has been done, and it is that which I wish to clear up in this preliminary remark.
The question arises, can the disciple of today engaged in the fellowship of disciples after the New Testament manner, can such a person expect to see the purity and the power in his life and in that of his brothers and sisters of a kind and degree seen in the life of Christ upon the earth and in the lives of his companions and followers? The English of which is, can we be Christ-like or not? Should we intend to be Christ-like or not?
Now, very often you’ll find great discussions about who is a Christian and who isn’t. And those discussions are in general interminable and irresolvable. And they are so simply because we have left the simple mark of the Christian, which is Christ-likeness. And insofar as someone following a dispensationalist teaching indicates to me that we must not, we may not, we cannot intend to be like Christ, then I disagree with him. Right or wrong, I disagree with him. And the point made by many of those who advance dispensationalist teachings is simply that you can safely disregard the teachings of Christ. And I think this takes the heart out of the gospel.
It is precisely because Christ in his teachings is offering us a life, not a new law, not a new set of bonds, not a new set of killing burdens, but telling us what the abundant life in the kingdom of God can be like, that it is absolutely fundamental that we understand his teachings to be for us and for us now. I don’t know how to stress that any more strongly. I suppose what we should do is turn to the teachings themselves and continue to stress it as we go through them.
But it must be emphasized that Jesus himself clearly understood that those who would be his disciples should follow him and that meant to do as he taught. And as I’ve said to you last time and many times, the Great Commission of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is that we should go forth and teach everyone whom we disciple and baptize to observe, to do all things whatsoever I have taught you. And we cannot plan to do that, can we, unless we ourselves are set in the path to do that.
There are many confusions here and I cannot go into all of them, but I wanted you to understand something about that term dispensationalism and my attitude towards it. Let me be clear. There have been many dispensationalist teachers who have been a great blessing to the Church of Jesus Christ. That is all well and good and I wouldn’t take one bit away from that if I could. We must understand once and for all that if we or some other person is a great blessing to the Church, that does not mean that we’re right about everything. All of us are wrong on some things. It would be very foolish of me to suppose, well, now Luther was wrong about some things and Paul may even been wrong about some things. Peter certainly was wrong about some things, John Wesley was wrong about some things, practically everyone I know is wrong about something, but I’m right about everything, right? I’m not and therefore in humility I stand and simply say what I believe and trust that God in the fellowship of the Church will bring us to that truth which is important for us to adhere to and to follow.
Finally I wanted to say just one brief word about a concern which has been voiced in a number of ways and is a very important concern about the winning of souls to Christ in this congregation and there has been voiced to me a concern that this group should go forward in that regard and I’m glad to hear that you have now on foot a visitation program and I know that this work has been going on in some measure all along, but what I wanted to say to you is very simply this. It is right that we should be concerned about this, but we must understand that a correct work of the winning of souls will only follow when we ourselves are clear about our vision and when the Word of God is speaking and coming clearly through us. We have to ask when we win souls, what are we winning them to? What are we winning them to?
Now you are a group that has come into being in the last year or so. It is right that you should spend some time finding out just who you are and why you’re here and getting clear on what God’s purpose is for you so that when you come to win people and inevitably when we win people to Christ, we bring them in a connection with us and when we do that, we want to make sure that our trumpet is giving forth a certain sound, not an ambiguous confused one, so that those who come to Christ in conjunction with us will not be confused by our confusions, but will be directed by our insights and encouraged and helped by our strength.
And so the main work of the church is to equip the saints and to bring them into the full stature of men and women in Christ Jesus so that those who come to birth in their present will not be deformed and stunted and undernourished because of a failure to provide the sincere milk of the Word as well as the meat of spiritual substance which we should be providing the world. So just that word as you go forward and as you concern yourself with the winning of souls that you might understand it is so important, it is so vital that in your own minds you have a very clear, firm conception of who you are and what you’re doing in this world as disciples of Christ.
Now will you gather with me briefly for prayer before we turn to the text of today? Almighty and most gracious Heavenly Father, we come understanding how impossible it is to speak your Word and in our own strength we would not stand here at all. But we ask that you will give us ears to hear and lips with which to speak and may no man be seen in this congregation save Jesus only so that the disciples might be glad when they see the Lord. In Jesus’ name, amen.
The text this morning is John the 5th chapter and the 44th verse, John 5, 44. And I want to spend a few minutes elaborating the background of this text and then turn to the passage which we’ve already read of the teachings of Jesus in the 6th chapter of Matthew.
Jesus was locked in a struggle to the death with the Pharisees and the Pharisees were people who searched the Scriptures. They were a biblical people and yet they had a fatal flaw. They wished to be honored by men. Their religion was more than anything else a way of currying the favor of their fellows, of cultivating their in-group and getting those around them to look at them and say, yes, you’re all right. They were developing what we sometimes call a mutual appreciation society. And Jesus, because they had this problem, He understood that they could not believe in Him and no one can believe in Him and the presence and availability and the governance of the kingdom of God as long as they have that flaw. And so Jesus read their case in the 44th verse. And He asked them the question, how can you believe which receive honor one from another and seek not the honor that cometh from God only?
We are apt to mislead ourselves by constantly studying the Bible. Is that a shocking thing to say? We are apt to mislead ourselves by constantly studying the Bible into believing that we are somehow conforming with it. That the Bible can destroy your soul and religion is the deadliest of poisons.
In verse 39 of this chapter, you see Jesus saying, search the scriptures for in them you think you have eternal life. In them you think you have. Now I want to tell you that eternal life is not in the scriptures. It is in Jesus Christ. And these people were using the scriptures in such a way that they could not recognize Christ when they met Him. They were resting the scriptures in such a way that the scriptures were killing them.
I want to give you a verse to go with that. In 2 Peter, the third chapter and the 16th verse, Peter is speaking of his brother Paul and he says, as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable rest as they do also the other scriptures unto their own destruction. You can kill yourself with the scriptures. And the surest way to kill yourself with the scriptures is to use the scriptures to fortify where you are and create the basis for that mutual appreciation society in which everyone is assured that they are aligned as long as everyone else says they are and everyone else is saying they are because if they say they aren’t, then maybe someone else will say they’re not all right. The fear of man, Proverbs 27, 17, the fear of man bringeth a snare, but whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe. The fear of man bringeth a snare.
Now the scripture may work in to that deadly religious system which kills souls. The scripture you see is not the living Word of God. The living Word of God is Jesus Christ. The scripture is an incarnation of the Word of God which can be subjected to the purposes, vile or otherwise, of human beings. It can be twisted. One can rest it. One can beat people to death with it. One can justify oneself with it. See, I think I’m talking about something you all know and you all have seen it over and over again. There is in the English language a proverb, you can prove anything from the Bible.
Now the Bible is like God in so many ways. It’s a patient book. If you want to rest it, it will let you. If you want to justify yourself, all right, it will allow you to do that, go right on. You see, the scriptures themselves say that he taketh the wisdom, the wise in their own wisdom. And the person who’s so wise that they can take the scripture and twist it this way and that, God says, go ahead. The person who comes to the scripture hungering for life, God says, here I am. The person who comes before the scripture with the sense that they must change, there must be repentance, there must be a totally different self come forth from where they are, the scripture says, follow me, and it presents Christ. And it becomes the living Word of God because of its identity with the great Logos himself. But you must never forget, the scriptures can deal death and they themselves say that they can. And they primarily deal death to those who are caught up in the fear of man and who desire honor one from another.
You see, if you’re going to use the scriptures profitably, you must be prepared to do what the scriptures say, what the scriptures call for is obedience. But that fear of man has a funny way of coming in between the obedience which is claimed by the scriptures and the scriptures themselves.
I want to use a story which you all know to illustrate this combination of fear of man and disobedience before turning for some remarks to Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. And this is the story of Saul which is found in 1 Samuel the 15th chapter. You remember that Saul had become the king of the Israelites and he had been sent to do a job on some people who were nearby, the people of Agag, King Agag, the Amalekites, and he had been told to destroy them. Verse 21 of the 15th chapter of 1 Samuel we read that instead of destroying these people and their spoil, the people took of the spoiled sheep and oxen and the chief of the things which should have been utterly destroyed to sacrifice unto the Lord thy God in Gilgal.
Samuel, the prophet, went out to meet the Israelites returning from the war and Samuel said to them, have you done what God said? And old Saul said, yes, yes, yes, we have. Blessed be thou of the Lord, Saul said. I have performed the commandment of the Lord and Samuel says, well if that’s so, Saul, what is this bleating of the sheep in mine ears and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?
And then Saul had a story, you see, and we all learn so many stories to explain why it is we didn’t do what God told us to do. And Saul had a story and this was a religious story, see. The Lord told them to destroy these but Saul thought better of it and he decided that it would be a great thing to bring them back to sacrifice unto the Lord.
Verse 22 and Samuel said, hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king. You want to know why Saul was rejected for being king?
Now watch the way this dialogue between Saul and Samuel develops. And Saul said unto Samuel, I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord in thy words because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Isn’t that interesting? I feared the people and obeyed their voice. Here we find that pathetic figure, the political leader who leads from the rear and figures out which way the people are dashing so that he can follow close behind. And Saul had his complete justification for the whole thing, he said, I feared.
Now this, he is reduced to groveling in this scene and I want you to follow it through to the bitter end. He’s got an explanation and now then he tries to get Samuel to see if the Lord won’t change his mind about rejecting him. Look in the 25th verse, now therefore I pray thee pardon my sin and turn again with me that I may worship the Lord. And Samuel said unto Saul, I will not return with thee for thou hast rejected the word of the Lord. See, Saul still wanting to worship the Lord, undoubtedly had in mind that if he worshiped him effectively enough, the Lord might change his mind and he would get to keep the kingdom.
As Samuel turned about to go, Samuel is going to walk off and leave him now, verse 27, Samuel turned about to go, Saul laid hold of the skirt of his mantle and tore it. He grabbed Samuel by the clothing and tore his clothes as Samuel tried to walk away. And Samuel said unto him, the Lord hath rent the kingdom of Israel from thee this day and hath given it to a neighbor of thine that is better than thou.
Now this is not the end of Saul’s despair. When he sees everything is gone, he still, as one father requests, he asks Samuel to help him keep up appearances before the present group of people. Saul said in verse 30, I have sinned, yet honor me now I pray thee before the elders of my people and before Israel and turn again with me that I may worship the Lord thy God. And this last pathetic appeal for Samuel to help him simply to save the appearances and not destroy him in the eyes of those who were supposed to be following him, Samuel has pity on him and turns again after Saul and Saul worshiped the Lord with him. The fear of man brings a snare.
Now when we look at the sixth chapter of Matthew, we see Jesus addressing this problem in three aspects, one, almsgiving in verses 1 through 4, second, prayer in verses 5 through 15, and finally, fasting in verses 6 through 18. And in all of these passages, the main burden, and indeed in the first and the last, the sole burden, is to bring people off of their fear of human beings and their readiness to serve others and serve themselves and make it look like they’re serving God.
Let’s look first at the passage on almsgiving. Alms, as you may know, covers a wide range of activities and is primarily identified with giving to the poor. To give alms was mainly to give something to poor people, give something for charity. People who were in need in those times, of course, could not go to a local agency of the government. There was no such thing. If they had a need, if they were hungry, then someone who was near them had the responsibility in the eyes of God to feed that person.
Almsgiving is rooted in the old law. If you look at Leviticus, the 25th chapter, you’ll find there a teaching on helping the poor and giving of alms. Leviticus 25, 35, if thy brother be waxen poor and fallen in decay with thee, thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a non-Israelite, a stranger, or a sojourner, that he may live with thee, and thou shalt take no usury of him that is no interest of your loan. But fear thy God that thy brother may live with thee, and thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy victuals for increase. And the reason given for that is, I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God. Similarly, in Deuteronomy 15 and the seventh verse, if there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren with any of thy gates in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother, but thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need in that which he wanteth.
And the tradition of almsgiving is maintained through the history of Israel. The Proverbs say, he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord. I find in many churches today a mistaken teaching to the effect that all of your giving to the Lord is done through the church. That’s not so. I hope I’m not transgressing against any of your rules or principles in saying it, but it’s not so. Your giving to the Lord is a matter which it takes in all of your life, and it includes, I would almost say, above all your readiness to help those who are in need nearby. Some of you are old enough that you have lived possibly in communities in which it was a disgrace for anyone not to help someone in need. Some of you perhaps have known in those communities men and women who made it their business to find out who was in need and to help. And it is in that spirit of almsgiving that we are expected to live today.
But you see, there were many people who gave alms only to appear righteous. If they were going to do something good, they wanted to make sure they got the credit for it. And as Jesus describes them, they sounded a trumpet before them in the streets. Now you can be sure that probably there was some good reason for doing that. For example, if you’re going to give alms, you might sound your trumpet before the synagogue or make some kind of an announcement so that those who were poor would be able to come and get the alms that you were going to distribute. So there was some sort of justification for that, but Jesus read the heart of the individual. And he saw there a desire to get glory of men. And he says if you do it that way, there’s an interesting thing that happens. You get just exactly what you’re angling for. You stand up and you blow your trumpet and you give some money to the poor and everyone standing around says, wow, he gave some money to the poor. He must really be a fine person. She’s a wonderful woman. And Jesus says, verily I say unto you, they have their reward. That’s their reward. That’s what they did it for and that’s what they got.
But now you see, Jesus urges us never to confuse that with dealing with God. And he says to us, when thou doest thine alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thine alms may be in secret and thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. How do you not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing? There isn’t any way you can do that, purposively. If you have to deliver a lecture to your right hand about not paying attention to what your left hand is doing, what do you do to your right hand? You call its attention to your left hand.
And Jesus here in the masterly way in which he taught is calling our attention to a fundamental truth. It is possible to come in the progress of the soul in the kingdom of God to that place where the doing of good deeds to others is such a natural outflow that we do not have to stop and make a big deal of it. We don’t have to stop and meditate about whether or not we’re going to do it. It is simply done before we stop to think. It is the natural outflow of the heart in which faith and love rule. And that one, his left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing or the right hand what the left hand is doing because there is no great act of deliberation that goes into it.
Now we must understand again that Jesus is teaching us a spirit in which we may live. He is offering a way of life to us. He is saying you can come to the place to where this is so. He is not imposing a great burden. He is not among other things saying you must never let others know when you do a good deed. We can get trapped into all sorts of false modesty and posturing over trying to hide our good deeds. That turns the teachings of Jesus back into a law so that we read it as saying you are righteous only if your right hand doesn’t know what your left hand is doing. So you’d better get your right hand well-trained. Jesus isn’t teaching that. He is expressing a life.
The same way with prayer. When he comes to teach about prayer, he says, and when thou prayest, thou shall not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets. Notice the motivation that they may be seen of men. Now Jesus says, all right, verily I say unto you, they have their reward. Same principle. If you pray to be seen of men, you stand up and pray, men see you. Isn’t that right? So you’ve got your reward. But again, you shortchange the enterprise and you did not come into contact with God because that wasn’t what you were trying to do. You were trying to impress people and you impressed people. But just as with almsgiving, you impressed people, but you did not come in touch with God, see. That’s what Jesus is saying.
And likewise, he continues to teach, when you pray, enter into your closet and when thou has shut thy door, pray to the Father which is in secret and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. You see, that’s the positive side of the teaching. When we pray, our whole concern is with the Father. It is not with other people. And when we pray on that basis, we enter into an experiential relationship with God. We do business with God, see.
Now if we don’t do that, our prayer will be a constant disappointment to us. Let me just say frankly, prayer is a real problem for Christians. It is a real problem for them. And you rarely meet a person who feels entirely comfortable about praying. That is to say, a person for whom prayer has become a kind of business-like thing, which they understand how it works and they can count on a result. It remains something that they’re in great doubt and anxiety about.
And I think that what Jesus is teaching us above all here is that when we come to pray, we must understand that it is a simple, direct relation to God and we must clear our minds entirely of any attempt to impress people. That’s one side of what he’s doing. The other side is that he is available, he is ready to lead us into such a life of prayer. Would you like to learn to pray in such a way that it is really a business with you, that you understand how it works, that you can be known as a person for whom God answers prayer? If you want that, the Lord can lead you into it. And as he does so, your faith in prayer and your faith in God will grow in leaps and bounds as you progress through the experience. But in order to do so, you’ve got to get your eye off of human beings.
Let’s look at fasting now in the same light. And you may say, who is to fast? Well the answer is, just like almsgiving and prayer, you are to fast. And if you don’t understand what fasting is, you’re missing a part of the dimension of Christian experience to which Christ calls his disciples. Fasting is an activity in which we restrain ourselves from taking on normal, healthy, good comforts of food and other things which sustain us, in order that we might know the reality of the saying of Jesus, that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. What sustains you? I’m afraid for many of us we have to say that food and comfort are a very important part of our lives, so much so that they might well blot out our dependence upon God.
You see, once again the question arises, are you, am I, and God in a business-like relationship where there is simple, straightforward dealing with one another? In the fourth chapter of John, you may recall in the story of the woman at the well, after the events had unfolded and the disciples had returned to the master in the 31st verse, they say, Master, eat. But he said unto them, verse 32, I have meat to eat that you know not of. He wasn’t just talking pretty words. He was talking about an order of sustenance in the interchange of the soul with God, which actually sustained his physical being.
I know a lot of folks who can be made to break out in a cold sweat over a hostess Twinkie. His Twinkies are all right. Nothing wrong with hostess Twinkies. The question is, where is our dependence? And fasting is to help us settle that question. Fasting is not to make you slim and pretty. God doesn’t care, really, as long as it’s not a health matter, I think, how much your way. He doesn’t look at pretty in the way men look at pretty or handsome. He’s not concerned about that at all. The question is, where is your dependence? And fasting is to help us to keep before ourselves where our dependence is.
And Jesus teaches us to fast, and he says, moreover, when you fast, be not as the hypocrites of a sad countenance, for they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. What is that reward? Again, people say, wow, he’s fasting. Must be a real religious guy. They get their reward. That’s what they wanted. That’s what they got.
But now wait, once again, the desire to impress men, the seeking of honor from other human beings undercut the real interchange in religion between the soul and God, and Jesus says, when thou fastest, anoint thine head and wash thy face, clean up, put on a little brill cream and surer. Right? Don’t go through a big rigmarole of pain. Now he’s not telling us to fake it, you see. You see, he’s assuming that we will be moved in spirit to that place where that when we are without food or without some of those things which we delight in, we’re not depressed. We’re not angry and unhappy and miserable because we’re without them, you see. So he’s not saying, okay, you’re going to be really feeling bad inside because you didn’t get your breakfast, but fake it up, folks, look good even though you don’t feel that way. He’s not saying that. The assumption is that because you have meat to eat that the world knows not of, you will indeed be happy. And because in that relationship to God you are being sustained, you do not appear unto men to fast, you’re not trying to get your reward there, but unto thy Father which is in secret and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward you openly.
Because in your attitude in almsgiving, in your attitude in prayer, and in your attitude in fasting, you sought only the honor which came from God, God honored you, and therefore you are able to believe. Because you know the reality of the interchange of the soul with God, you’re not guessing about it, you know it to be a fact, you have experience of it, and in that faith you live.
There are many reasons why we are misled on these points. Sometimes we are misled simply out of the natural fact that we do live by the approval of other people, the little child comes into the world, it lives in the smile of its parents. Sometimes that desire for approval is not satisfied, and it is possible to spend one’s whole life seeking approval of others, a very natural sort of thing, and sometimes that destroys the possibility of our seeking honor from God.
There’s also the fact that sometimes in our lives we think only of life as something in which we are to get what we want. There are many folk who have not realized that that’s not the end of life. It’s possible to be a member of a church and not have learned that the aim of life is not simply to get what we want.
Again, here is a great secret of learning to pray. As long as we believe that the purpose of prayer is to get us what we want, prayer is not going to make any sense to us, it will not work. A minister friend of my acquaintance some years ago was called to a home where there was a young man desperately ill, a child desperately ill, and they called him because they knew he could pray. And as he entered into that home he sat down with the parents and he asked them a shocking question. He said, why do you want your child to get well? One is apt to say to that that’s a cruel question. What parent would not want their child to get well? Is it not enough to want your child well? After all, isn’t that the loving thing to do? And the answer is very often, no, it’s not. Is there something more that one must want in prayer than just for your child to get well? And the answer is yes. Why do you want the child to get well?
Those beautiful words which Kim sang to us and which we read earlier from the scripture, we find that we approach the Lord in the model prayer. The first request is hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, until that minister friend of mine could bring those parents to the place to where they could pray for the health of their child on the basis of the glory of God and the coming of his kingdom into that life and into that family and into that community. He would not pray, and it was because he understood such things that he was known as a man whose prayers were answered.
But you see, if a person’s whole life is focused on themselves, if religion itself is presented as a way of getting what you want, as it so often is, and that’s all there is to it, then you see one naturally slips into this, especially if, thirdly, another reason is there, and that is a fear and a belief that really there isn’t anything going on in religion and religious acts except human activity. If you have a person who in the depths of their heart does not believe that God deals with them, then they will very readily slip over into serving the expectations of men, and they will come into bondage to the fears and expectation and hopes of others, and that will be all there is to it. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews tell us that he that cometh unto God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
And so there are reasons why we slip into these things, but as we close this morning, we must hold before ourselves the text which I’ve read to you. How can you believe if you seek honor one from another and not the honor which comes from God only? And let me reinforce this by just telling you that that is not only a theological profundity, that is a psychological fact. Unless you seek only the honor which comes from God, you will not be able to enter in to that familiar concourse with the Spirit of Christ and with the living God that will cause you to have faith in his love and in his power in your life. And what that means is that for all practical purposes, you will not enter into the kingdom, the governing of God as you live in this world.
On the other hand, if you seek only the honor which comes from God, he will surely enter into a relationship with you. And you can encourage any person, anywhere, anytime to do the same thing with confidence that when they do so, they will be met with more than your words. They will be met with the reality of the living Christ in the present kingdom of God.
Let us stand together and sing a hymn as we close, and we will be singing number 476.