An Audience of One

SERMON: 2007-08-06--sm0729--an-audience-of-one-part-2 SOURCE DURATION: 00:31:54.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.98 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidate 6 concludes the spoken sermon content with a biblical citation and theological point ('...for his glory.'). Candidates 7 through 15 transition into highly repetitive vocalizations that strongly indicate music or a hymn chorus, marking the clear end of the main sermon address. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:27:19.780-00:31:54.000 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- Now, the chances are pretty good that you will never have heard of it, but in recent months a film documentary entitled "Audience of One" has been making the rounds in North America, particularly at film festivals. It has received fairly wide acclaim, and it's the story of a San Francisco Pentecostal church who a number of years ago felt had received a vision from the Lord to produce blockbuster movies. And so within recent years they have been working on what they believe is to be the grandest movie of all times, a mix of Star Wars and the Ten Commandments entitled "Gravity, the Shadow of Joseph." It's a very ambitious project, unfortunately nobody in that congregation, at least not very many, have any experience in filmmaking, nor do they have the financial resources to pull this off. And so last I heard the thing at the very least was in crash mode. And the documentary "Audience of One" highlights the life of this community as persistently they push ahead, claiming to keep their eye on just the Lord. Critics love the movie because it reinforces every notion they've ever had about the irrationality of faith. Now it's not my place or yours to judge this congregation this morning, whether they heard from the Lord or whether they just had a very vivid imagination, but there is something about playing to an audience of one that I think is highly biblical because that is the subject Jesus now introduces here in Matthew chapter 1 when he says, "Be careful to do your acts of righteousness before men to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven." And as we take some time this morning to look at this particular verse, there are, if we have time for it, three things that I want to call to your attention. The first is this, Christians are expected to perform acts of righteousness. Do, says Jesus, your acts of righteousness. Now an act of righteousness is, of course, a good deed. And a good deed biblically is something that a believer does out of love for God and out of obedience to His will, scripture says, "Faith without works is dead." And if we truly love God and are truly in relationship with Him, then as the Holy Spirit lives in our hearts, we are being conformed to the image of Christ and even as God is a God who does good things for others out of love for them. So you and I, we begin to perform what Jesus calls here, acts of righteousness. Now what I want us to notice this morning in the broader context of the passage is that Jesus then goes on to describe in more detail three acts of righteousness that have traditionally always been part of believing community. Let me try to walk you through it. The first is taking care of the poor. Jesus deals with that in the verses two through four in this particular chapter. When you give to the needy, He says in verse two. And again in verse three, when you give to the needy, all through scripture, God has a very special interest in the poor and the needy. Why? Because they lack the traditional form of support that enables them to sustain life. And throughout scripture, if there's nobody to look after you, God Himself steps into the picture and He looks after you. And so again, when the spirit of Jesus lives within our hearts, then He expects that characteristic to manifest and to demonstrate itself in the life of the believing community. And so it is that John puts it this way. He says, "If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need, but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and truth." And Proverbs 31, 9 says, "Speak up and judge fairly. Defend the rights of the poor and needy." And that is why historically the church, first of all, appointed deacons in order to look after the needy ones in the early church. That's why churches historically take up offerings for benevolence, to be able to extend its resources to those who are poor. And that is why historically it's been the Christian community that has founded orphanages and hospitals and other charitable works. I've often said it's never been the atheists or the agnostics that are on the forefront typically of looking after the poor and the needy. That's an act of righteousness. The second act of righteousness that Jesus talks about here is the ministry of prayer. He covers that in the verses 5 through 15. And notice that he doesn't say, "If you pray," but he says, "When you pray." Prayer in scripture, as you well know, is one of the primary means by which the believer communicates with the Lord God. One of our old hymns put it this way, "Prayer is the Christian's vital breath, the Christian's native air, his watchword at the gates of death, he enters heaven with prayer." And what's unique about the way Jesus approaches prayer is that prayer for the New Testament believer is not this fearful, frightful communication with a great, big, mighty, holy God, who you better stay out of the way of, but rather it's a conversation with your Abba Father. And even as a child can go to its father and share its heart, its needs, and its joys, so prayer for the Christian, says Jesus, is an expression of our relationship with him. It is the Christian's vital breath. And so the Bible tells us to pray and to do it without ceasing. So there's taking care of the poor, there's the ministry of prayer, and then there is the discipline of fasting. And Jesus deals with that then in the verses 16 through 18. Fasting as a spiritual discipline is to withhold food and/or drink from oneself for a period of time. And the purpose of fasting, and it's not particularly popular in our self-indulgent culture, but the purpose of fasting is to help us to exercise control over our bodily passions with a view of focusing and concentrating on the spiritual. And that often sounds counterintuitive, and if you've ever gone without food, you get terribly hungry, at least for the first couple of days, and you say to yourself, how in the world is this going to help me get closer to God? The fact of the matter is that once you push through that hump, you often become spiritually sharpened, and you can concentrate and focus that much more on your relationship with the Lord. So those in chapter 6 are the three acts of righteousness that traditionally and historically have been part of the Christian life and the Christian community. I don't think the list is exhaustive. There's a lot more that we do in terms of good works as believing people, but the list is complete in the sense that giving alms or taking care of the needy talks about relating to your neighbor. The ministry of prayer talks about relating to God, and the discipline of fasting relates to your own life and to your own body. And so it covers all the bases in terms of how we live life here in this world. So those are the acts of righteousness that Jesus talks about. The second observation that I want to make in connection with this verse is that the human tendency is to misdirect our acts of righteousness. That is to say the tendency is to play to the crowd rather than to God. And of course, that's what Jesus is after here in this particular passage when he says be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. Now think this through with me a little bit. Why does the Lord want us to do acts of righteousness? Why does he want us to focus our attention on him rather than other people or ourselves? Well, not because God is some big egomaniac who sits in heaven and who just wants to be the center of all our universe and he doesn't want to share himself with anybody else. No, rather because God is worthy of all our praise, the giver of all of life and as we'll see in a few moments, the rewarder of those who seek him. And so the Lord wants us to live our lives playing it out before his approval. He is the audience of one that we ought to seek to please. Now human nature being what it is, and you know this as well as I do, we're not always content living just before the face of God or playing to an audience of one. We don't always feel that he's there. We don't always feel that he is particularly taking care or affirming us in the good things that we try to do. And in addition to that we're surrounded by a lot of other people and they have the power to bless us and they have the power to make our lives very difficult. And so what often happens is that at the very least we might keep one eye on God and one eye on people all around us. And so we readily begin to play to the crowd as opposed to the Lord God. And the very best acts of righteousness can all be distorted to become very self-serving and to become all about us instead of the Lord. Let me give you just a couple of examples. You see somebody in need. And so out of a sense of compassion or out of a sense of duty, you take out of your abundance and you share it with that person so far so good. But then very often we want at least a thank you, don't we? Perfectly normal human reactions. We wouldn't mind a picture in the paper or at least some notice of how we're stepping out on a limb and doing good for other people. How many people do you know that will do good if it gets no recognition? Or you make a large donation to some cause and at the very least you'd like to see your plaque attached or your name on the building. I got to tell you I was never prouder of our Quinti Christian High Community in the early stages of their building program when they turned down a significant financial offering because it had too many strings attached to it that they could not in good conscience adhere to. But how easy it is to sell out for the sake of human value and for the sake of human recognition. And so we do a lot of work in the church or we spend a lot of time in prayer or we go out of our way to do good things. And how readily we are elevated when we receive the praise of man. And how quickly we are crushed if nobody takes notice or, Lord forbid, somebody should criticize or disapprove. Isn't that true? Isn't that the natural reaction that all of us have? And that's what Jesus is talking about in this context when he says be careful not to do your act of righteousness before men to be seen by them because if you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. And then he goes on to illustrate this from the life of the Pharisees. Because the Pharisees, of course, were the primary example of living this kind of life. They were the religious leaders of their day. They were people who lived by the letter of the law, not by the spirit of the law. Outwardly, they looked like they had it all together in other places, Jesus says. But inwardly, you're ravenous wolves. You are a whitewashed tomb on the outside, but inside you're full of dead man's bones. And the Pharisees had made an art out of living for the approval of the public and presenting an image to the public that was very different from what lived inside. And so, yes, they gave alms to the poor. But far from letting their left hand not know what their right hand was doing, they announced their giving with trumpets. Jesus is strong in his language, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets to be honored by men. Now, I think he's probably using exaggeration hyperbole. I can't imagine that even the Pharisees in the worst of their moments would actually recruit a trumpet player to go ahead of them, you know, tooting their horn, as we often call it in our language. But you get the picture. They were generous to a degree, but only if that generosity was taken notice of and properly respected. And so they prayed. Oh, they prayed up a storm, but what do they do? They pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. Their prayer was not a devotion to God and a relationship with God. So much of it was show so that people could respect them for the wonderful words and their language and their ability to just express it right before God. My land, aren't they spiritual people? And it became their way of securing their reputation. And then, of course, as the passage goes on, if you read the first 18 verses, they knew how to fast. In fact, they fasted far more often and more frequently than the Old Testament ever enjoined them to do. But it wasn't because they wanted to please God. It became another way in which to carve out their reputation and their security in their community. And it's easy for you and me, sitting where we are today, knowing what we know today, to point our finger at the Pharisees and say, "My land, aren't they a bunch of hypocrites?" I'd never be like that. But I think if we're honest with ourselves and if we allow the Word of God through the Holy Spirit to shine into our hearts, the lifestyle of the Pharisees is not so far removed from our own hearts that we don't at least periodically fall into that duty. How much of our lives is really lived before the face of God with God being the audience of one, and how much of our lives and our religious service is governed by the people around us? How many times do we hesitate to do things before the face of God because we fear the disapproval of man, and how many times, if we're really honest with our hearts, are our acts of righteousness conditioned by the impact this will make on other people and the subtle praise that we receive in that process? And so we're part of a prayer meeting, and we're called upon to pray. And if you've ever been in that situation, you know that particularly in the early stage of praying in that kind of a setting, we often get nervous and clammy. And why do we get nervous and clammy? Because we're worried that God isn't going to like the way we pray, or that he isn't going to hear the prayers of our heart. I think not. It's because we're afraid of what other people will think if we don't word it just right. And a lot of us are so busy trying to figure out what will I pray about that we don't even listen to the prayers of others and won't be tight-ass when they pray what we had planned to pray, because now we're afraid of looking foolish, isn't that true? And how many times when we're engaged in ministry, is our ministry not determined by whether we get approval or disapproval from other people? We might never admit it. It might be a subtlety that lives deep down in our hearts, but Jesus wouldn't say these words to his disciples about the Pharisees. He wouldn't say, "Be careful," if this wasn't a temptation that was faced by every last one of us. I'll never forget years ago, I was a student at seminary. The Charismatic Movement was just beginning to get stirred up, and the Catholic Church in particular was powerfully being affected by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in what is now known as the Charismatic Movement, where the Holy Spirit began to work particularly in denominational churches rather than just historically in the Pentecostal tradition. And two friends from school and myself decided to visit the St. Mary's Catholic Charismatic Community. They had prayer meetings some weeknight where about 300 of them would gather together in a school auditorium, and they would sit in a number of concentric circles, and they would begin to worship the Lord with spiritual gifts manifesting, and all the trappings of what we now have come to recognize as part of traditional Charismatic worship. I had never been in a situation like that before, and I've got to tell you that right away, though a lot of people, when they step into that kind of situation, they get really turned off very quickly. I knew in my spirit that while this was something I wasn't used to at all, there was something about the fervency of this worship, the fervency of the praise, and the devotion to the Lord Jesus that was incredibly pleasing to God. And I remember the conviction of the Holy Spirit in that given situation, that as everybody else was raising their hands in worship to God, that I should raise my hands in worship. Now I knew that was a biblical thing. I knew that from a scriptural point of view, it's like a child reaching out to a father or a tree reaching its branches up into heaven. Holy movements can be powerful and they can be symbolic, and they can have a powerful impact spiritually. They're nothing in and of themselves, but they can represent a lot. And I will never forget the struggle in my heart that night as I stood there with my arms along my side, one friend from school here and another friend from school here. I didn't know arms could be that heavy. And I said, Lord, how am I going to get these up in the air? And what is this guy going to think? And what is this guy going to think? They're going to think Viscera has flipped his lid, has become a Roman Catholic charismatic. The next thing you'll know is he'll be speaking in tongues. What in the world will this amount to? And not only do I remember that battle, but I remember the decision that I had to make at that moment, that it wasn't about me and it wasn't about them. It was about the Lord. And hard as it was, I managed to get my arms up in the air because I knew that I was living for an audience of one. I wasn't doing it to impress them. I wasn't doing it to impress the Roman Catholic folk because they were too busy doing their own thing. I was just wanting to worship the Lord. And I bet you will have found yourself in a similar situation where you've had to make up your mind. Will I honor the Lord in this or will I allow my freedom to be restricted by the people who are around me? Does that mean you just do anything that you want to do whenever you want to do it? No. The point is our motive ought to be the love and fear of God and not the love and the fear of even our closest companion and our dearest friend. Jesus said, "Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven." And that's the third thing. Just quickly I want to try to point out to you in this particular verse. It's not just about acts of righteousness. It's not just about doing them before the face of God as opposed to the public. But at stake here is the issue of our reward. Have you had a chance to read this whole chapter at least up to verse 18? You would discover that seven times in this passage Jesus uses the word reward. And in each instance the context is exactly the same. He says, "If you live for the praise of man, if your acts of righteousness are to be recognized and to be appreciated and to be praised by people, you will have received your reward. You will not get a reward from God. But if you want God's reward, the greater reward," in the words of Robert Lewis, "if you want God's reward, then you must do your acts of righteousness to an audience of one." And He says, "If you give your arms, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. It's not enough not to want the world to keep track of your good deeds of righteousness. You ought not even to keep track of it in your own life." Because you see there's always the tendency to say, "Well, I've done this. Now somebody owes me this." And He says, "If you pray, don't stand out on the street corners and pray with big elaborate words. No, you go in your closet and you talk to your Father who is in heaven." And He says, "If you're going to fast, you don't fast so that your community can be impressed by your great spirituality. No, you anoint your face with oil, you wash it, you put on a happy smile. Why? Because this is not about impressing other people. [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:27:19.780; remove through 00:31:54.000] This [CUT] is about doing it right before the face of God." And Jesus says, "As you miss out," this is powerful language, "as you miss out on the praise and the acclaim that otherwise would come your way even in believing community." He says, "Your Father who is in heaven, He's keeping His eye on you and He is going to reward you." One of the translations says, "He will reward you openly." And some of that reward will take place in the here and now. Some of that takes place in the life that is to come. But the beauty of it is before the face of God, no act of righteousness will ever be ignored, overlooked, or forgotten. And on that final day when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ and He hands out the prize and He hands out the reward, I sometimes think the greatest reward is going to go. Not to the man or to the woman who in Christian community, you know, rose to the pinnacle of ministry and publicity and recognition. No, I think some of the greatest rewards are going to go to nameless men, nameless women, nameless boys and girls, who forgotten by all the rest of the world, struggled away in obscurity, lived for an audience of one, and who in that final day will be revealed as those most worthy of the reward that God has for His children. The apostle Paul put it this way in Galatians 9.6, "Let us not become weary in well-doing, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." Why do I mention that? Because as we launch together or continue to work together on probably the most significant project that we have ever undertaken together, there will be times we're stretched to the demon, there will be times we wonder, "Lord, why in the world am I doing this, this is costing me my time and my talent and my treasure." There will be times when you say to yourself, "It feels like I'm doing all the hard work. Where is everybody else that said they would join me in this?" It's not hard to become resentful when you feel that more than your fair burden has fallen upon your shoulder. And there will be times when you've gone all out and you have worked your heart out and instead of getting a thank you or a recognition or at least some measure of appreciation, you may not only be overlooked in the praises of me and you might even be criticized, you might even be corrected. And if you've ever been in that situation, then you will know the test is really very strong. Am I playing to an audience of one or am I just playing to the crowd? Is it about God? Is it about the purposes of God or is it just about me? Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 puts it this way, he says, "Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain." And to illustrate that this morning, I want to end with this story about a woman named Becky. Most of you will not know her, but Becky came to this church about 10 years ago, was invited by one of the girls in our church to our then junior high program called Conquerors. And through the ministry of conquerors and through a conqueror's trip to a Billy Graham crusade, 10 years ago now, Becky gave [CUT] her heart to Jesus. [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:31:54.000; resume after this marked segment] She developed a relationship with Marty and Tina Vanderlaunoff and babysat for them, graduated from high school, went off to college, University of Guelph. And for the first year there, lost her faith, then bounced back, became involved in Campus Crusade for Christ International, led a number of her friends to Jesus, and now has made a decision to go with Campus Crusade for Christ full time and she's been spending her summer trying to raise support from the Christian community for her to step full time into that ministry. She comes out of a home that was a good home, but not a church going home with that particular period of time. And yet here she is today, 10 years later, seed planted in her heart bearing fruit and multiplying rapidly. Can you imagine the impact this young woman is going to have on secular university campuses as a Campus Crusade for Christ worker bearing fruit for Jesus? That is why we do what we do. In the Lord our labor is not in vain. And I see these 190 plus kids that have been here this past week and you'd have to be here on Thursday night to get the full flavor of that. But I see these 190 kids and I say to myself and I say to the Lord, Lord, God plant seeds in their lives and let it bear fruit. As somebody said to me, if even only one of these kids becomes a Christian and a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ, it will have been worth all the effort that we put into it for the glory of God. So be careful, don't do your acts of righteousness just for the approval of people. When you have those moments when you feel like nobody cares and nobody sees, remember God is watching. And when it comes time to hand out the reward, he is not so unfaithful, says the book of Hebrews, as to ignore our deeds of righteousness for his glory. Jesus be the center, be my source, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, be my light, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.