An Audience Of One

Acts of righteousness we saw last week are good deeds. The believer is called upon to
do out of love for God and out of obedience to his word. And in these verses in Matthew
chapter 6 from verse 1 to verse 18, in very rapid succession, Jesus catalogs for us three
traditional good works that believers have done throughout the ages. The first is caring
for the poor. The second is spending time in prayer and then the third is engaging
in a fast. The list is not exhaustive but it is comprehensive in the fact that he covers
all the bases. Giving to the poor deals with our relationship with our neighbor, spending
time in prayer deals with our relationship with the Lord and the discipline of fasting
has to do with our own self controlling our own bodies. I also pointed out that the tendency
for believers throughout the course of history is to misdirect their acts of righteousness that
is to say, instead of playing to God as an audience of one, we have a tendency to play to
the crowd. And that's what Jesus talks about 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 who is in heaven. And as we revisit this verse this
morning in preparation for communion, I want to look a little more closely with you and
why playing to the crowd, I think we all do so naturally is such devastating business.
And last week, we already looked at one reason and that is the fact that we lose our reward.
Notice again how Jesus words it here, if you do, that is, if you do your acts of righteousness
before people, you will have no reward from your father who is in heaven. And without repeating
everything that I said last week, his argument is very simple when you live for the praise
of people and you receive that praise of people, then you've already had your reward. And if
you want God's reward, you need to live for the face of God and God who watches everything
in secret will reward us the Bible says openly. And that is very important for Christians
to understand because there probably isn't a one of us who at one point or another doesn't
get weary in well-doing. We give our time, our talent and our treasure, unstintingly to
the Lord and sometimes we wonder, is it worth it all? Other people get praised, we get
ignored, our feelings get hurt. So important to keep in mind, the ultimate reward happens
when we appear before the face of God. And there isn't one deed of righteousness that
we have done in his name, but he is going to reward it fully. God is not unjust as the
writer to the Hebrews. He will not forget your work. And the love you have shown him as
you have helped his people and continue to help them. Nobody who puts their faith in
hope in God will ultimately be ashamed. Now that brings us this morning, then, to still
and other reason or problem that surfaces when we play to the crowd. And that is the
fact that people now become our God. And I want to ask you to think through that with
me a little bit because it's not always immediately evident because it is such a natural way
for us to be living. What is a God in biblical thought? Well, a God in biblical thought is
somebody bigger than you, somebody that you look to to meet the deepest needs of your
heart and of your life. And because he or she then is the one to whom you look, you end
up having to have a good relationship. You want to be in good favor with your God, which
means you end up doing what your God wants you to do. That's why throughout Scripture
God invites us to be in a right relationship with him so that we can receive his blessing.
But now when you make people your God, when you start living for the praise of me, so to
speak, and you want their approval, you end up having to do what they want you to do because
if you don't, you'll discover very quickly that you no longer receive their favor. And
so here's a young woman. She is greatly in love with a young man. She doesn't want to
lose his favor. And so she begins to bow her will and her life to his. We'll often end
up compromising her moral values to continue keeping his love and his affection. Or here's
a young man hangs around with his friends. Once the approval of his friends ends up compromising
his own convictions to run along with the crowd because to disagree with the crowd is to
lose their affection, their admiration, and their loyalty. Or here's an employee. Once
his boss's approval, once his boss's affection will bow his will to his employer's will,
not infrequently crossing lines of moral conscience, simply to keep the approval of the people
and the significant people in his life. You see, the problem is when you begin to bow to people
and start looking to them to meet your needs, you end up letting them govern and control
your life. And the bigger problem with that is that such people are not God. And because
they are not God, there are three things that are going to surface and here's the first.
You're going to discover their resources are limited. Doesn't matter how much your husband
or your wife loves you, they're not God. Eventually you're going to discover that what you
need, they cannot or they will not deliver. Doesn't matter how loyal your friends are to
you or you to your friends. You discover at a given point they haven't got what it takes
to walk you through what it is that you're going through. Your doctor may be the most
wonderful physician in all of the world. But sooner or later, your needs are greater than
he or she can provide and so they're going to let you down precisely at the time when
you need the most. People's resources are limited not only but people all have their own
agenda. Outside of Christ and life in Christ, everybody wants something back. And when you
don't give back what they're looking for, you end up losing their love and their affection.
And so you have the sugar daddy that sets up his girl in a beautiful apartment. Provides
her with the greatest of gifts and the most wonderful of provisions but why? Well, because
he expects certain favors in return. And so the boss, he lavishes your life with gifts
and with bonuses, why? Because he expects something back from you. He wants your performance.
And so your friends love you. But they love you because in some way you're meeting their
needs. Now that's not all bad. That's how life operates. The problem is that outside
of Christ when you no longer meet their agenda, would you no longer meet other people's needs,
you discover that all of a sudden they no longer have a need of you because you see
everybody is selfish and people will look after you and they will provide for you and they
will love you as long as in some small way or some significant way you are returning
what it is that they're looking for. And so the end product, and listen to me carefully
on this, the end product of living around people and trying to please people is that you
end up in biblical language losing your soul. Here's how Jesus puts it. He says, what will
the profit of man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life are what shall a man give
in return for his life. And the word life there is soul in the Greek suge. It's the
sun total of your personality. It's who you are. And here's what happens when you bend
inappropriately to people. Remember they have their own agendas. If you want to keep
their love, you got to do to some degree what it is that they want you to do. What they
want you to do might not be who you are or what you've prepared to deliver. And so what
ends up happening is now you cut off a piece of yourself and you cut off another piece
of yourself and you cut off another piece of yourself because you're pleasing people,
you're delivering what they want to receive from you. And in that process every time when
you cut a piece off your own soul, you die a little bit more. And that's why there are
so many people in the world today who don't know who they are because they have lost
their soul and they have lost their identity. That's the tragedy I think of the news stories
that you hear surrounding a person like Brittany Spears or Lindsay Lohan. They've both been
in the news a lot and they've been participating in some bizarre behavior. I don't know them,
obviously, but I can pretty well tell you even from a distance what is happening. They
have so had to sell themselves out for the approval of the crowd and for the approval
of their handlers that they've not stayed in touch with their own soul and they are losing
their own identity and behaving very foolishly. And you don't have to be a celebrity out
in the world to fall into that trap you can go to church. And if you don't have a staunch
relationship with a living God who favors you unconditionally in Christ and you make
it your business to live for the crowd, you will discover sooner or later. You also lose
your soul because you no longer know who you are. And the antidote to that, of course,
is to make up your mind by God's grace to live for the audience of one. Because the amazing
thing about the Gospel is that only our God is the true God. And so he is the opposite
in every way to the limitations of the human condition. He is infinite. That is to say,
he is infinite in power. Doesn't matter what you need, how broken you are, how wounded
your life is, how big the hole in your heart. God is bigger and has demonstrated in Christ
Jesus the ability to raise us from the dead. That is why he wants us to live for him.
And God has no agenda whereby he takes from us. A lot of people think, well, God is selfish.
He is a big egomaniac sitting on the throne and he wants us to praise him and to obey him
as if he has need of you and me. Well, I hate to tell you this, but he doesn't have any
need for you and me. He deliberately enters into a relationship with us because he is a
giving God. And his agenda for you and for me is to draw us forth, bring us into the
good works that he has prepared for us, for me, for the foundation of the world. And
his love towards you and me is impeccable. It is perfect. It is glorious. God will never
take, but he will always give. And his delight and his desire is to make us become everything
that he has always intended for us to be. And so the net result of letting your life
revolve around God is the audience of one. Is that far from losing your soul? You find
it. Here's how Jesus put it. He says he who finds his life for his soul will lose it.
But he who loses his life for my sake will find it. Why is it important to live for an
audience of one? Because only in right relationship with God. Do we come into ultimate maturity,
ultimate freedom and ultimate life? God's agenda never changes. He's never in a bad mood
one day and in a good mood the other day. You never have to look in what direction the
wind is blowing now. No, he is always consistent. He is always faithful. And though he will
sometimes discipline us and though he will be firm with us in the areas of our failures
in our sea. And it's not because he's a big bad mean angry God who is trying to take
from us. No. In the sacrifice of his son, he has demonstrated to you and to me that what
he's after is bringing us into his presence and into his glory so that we can rejoice forever.
Are you with me? That's the reality of the worship of God. God's not trying to take
from us. He's not asking us to do him a favor. Now, even as a fish is created to live
in the water. So we have been created and redeemed to live in the presence of Almighty God.
Let me take it still a step further. We lose our reward when we play to the crowd. People
become our God. And then it has a tendency to make hypocrites out of us. You will have
noticed perhaps as we read the scripture or as you've read this passage on your own three
times in Matthew chapter six, Jesus uses the word hypocrite. Verse two, "When you give
to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do, in the synagogues and
on the streets to be honored by men." Verse five, "When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites
for they love standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men."
And verse 16, "When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do for they disfigure
their faces to show men they are fasting." Now what's a hypocrite? A hypocrite is a person
who pretends to be something other than what they are. A hypocrite, the word comes from
a Greek word, which means one who plays a part. And in the ancient days of the Roman
foot in the Greek Empire, when they had theater, the actors would wear masks indicating the
role that they were playing. And they would speak through those masks. And the word actor
then came to be synonymous with the hypocrite, pretending to be something other than what
you are. And when Jesus uses the word hypocrite here, he uses it in connection with the Pharisees
why? Because he is pointing out their desperate inconsistencies. They are not men of sincerity,
living honestly before God and honestly before men. No, they are people who are playing to
the crowd and they are acting out a role. And so they give money to the poor. But it's
not because they love the poor. No, they just want to show off to people how generous
they are. And they spend time in the street corners praying wonderful prayers of eloquence
and majesty, not because they love the Lord and they want to walk in a relationship with
him, but because they want to be recognized for their piety. And so they fast. They fast
as I said last week religiously. In fact, they fasted more often than the Old Testament
commanded them to fast. But not because they were humbling their hearts before God and
were so conscious of their sin that they wanted to repent of it. No, they wanted the
whole world to be impressed by their religious piety. And a hypocrite is a person who is acting
out a role. And the sternest words of Jesus in the gospels is reserved not for sinners
who embrace their sinfulness and who repent of their sin. But it is reserved for religious
people who are play acting, who pretend to be something that in fact they are not. And
while nobody in the world is immune to being a hypocrite, there is something about being
a believer that makes especially committed believers prone to hypocrisy. And I'll tell
you why that is. As long as you're a pagan and you know that you can't live up to any
standard anyway, particularly in today's culture, you don't have to pretend that you're
better than anybody else. We live in a day and age when people are just letting their
sin hang out. And part of today's culture is what I do is my business. And while that
is, you know, a desperate slight in the eyes of God and very unhealthy, it at least comes
along with a measure of transparency. What you see is what you get. Now when you become
a Christian, then you know what it is that God is looking for. You know what it is that
other people expect of you. And sometimes what happens is that the role that you are expected
to play, you can no longer keep up with your heart and a disconnect begins to happen. And
so outwardly, you go through all the right motions. But inwardly, your life has already
shut down and it's begun to move in different directions. And so, you know, you sit in church
with your lovely family and everybody thinks you've got it all together. But nobody knows
that nasty fight that you've had on the way to church. Or your heart is broken and your
life is filled with despair or you're caught up in secret sedans, but you wash your face
and you dress up your body and you go to church. And nobody is the wiser. Or you profess
to be one thing on Sunday. And you live a very different thing in all the rest of the
week. And you see, a hypocrite is not a person who fails and who sins. A hypocrite is
a person who doesn't own his failure and who doesn't own his sin and therefore keeps
on pretending to be something other than what they really are. And as I said, Jesus is
extremely upset in the gospel with people who live that way because they give the wrong
image of who God is. And they cause other people to stumble on their journey towards God.
And so again, what is the antidote? Well, the antidote again is to live for an audience
of one. And here is where the gospel of grace is such an incredibly liberating truth. Because
fact of the matter is, God already knows who we are and what we are in the depths of
our hearts. He is watching us every moment of every day. He looks beyond our nice outward
appearance. He looks beyond our superficial behavior. He looks at the core of our hearts.
And that is what he weighs. And in Christ, he has already dealt with all our sin and with
all our failure. In Christ, he gives us the provision so that we could rise above that.
And so of all people, Christians, they'll need to be play actors. Because to be a Christian
is not to be perfect. To be a Christian is not to measure up to a certain standard and
never to fail. No, to be a Christian in the world doesn't understand this very well.
To be a Christian is to own my failure. It's to own my sin. It's to own my shortcoming
knowing that in Christ, I'm already accepted before God regardless of my failures and regardless
of my brokenness. And you know what that produces? That produces a transparency. That produces
a situation where we can confess our sins to each other. We don't have to be strong all
the time. We don't have to be good all the time. We can be honest with each other and
say, you know, I'm struggling in my marriage. I'm struggling in my family. I'm struggling
in my business. I'm struggling in my Christian life. Join with me. Help me to give my brokenness,
my failure and my sin to God, because God in Christ has already loved me. He has already
forgiven me. He has already accepted me. And what that produces is a culture of grace.
A culture where we don't go sitting so that grace me abound, but a culture where we can
celebrate the fact that God in Christ is bigger than everything that we can ever throw
at Him. And where God in Christ meets us, not because we're wearing masks, and we've
got it together, but because we're honest with Him, and we have a measure of honesty and
transparency with each other. And the Bible says that even as God opposes the proud, He
gives grace to the humble. That's why we celebrate communion. We come to the Lord's table
this morning, not because we haven't failed this past week, or we've always done everything
right. Now we come to Him, knowing that we are broken, knowing that we are sinners, knowing
that there are many times when we don't live before His face and we live before the face
of people, but we come with repentance. We come with humility. We come with the desire
to know Him better, and to experience more of His grace. And as we do that, we discover
that He's there, that He loves us with an everlasting love, and that His blessings in Christ
are poured out upon us so that we may live before His face. And so this morning as we move
into now the celebration of communion, there are two things that one asked you to do. First
is to ask the Lord. Lord, show me. Are there places in my heart where the fear of man
is stronger than the fear of God? Are there places where I'm not obeying you, where I'm
not being what I know you want me to be, where I'm not doing what you want me to do? Because
there's a husband or a wife or a son or a daughter, a brother or a sister, a neighbor
or a fellow church scholar whose disapproval I am afraid of and who has become more important
to me in my life than you have. And when the Lord points that out to us, we need to get
down on our knees figuratively, if not literally, and we need to say, "Lord, that is sin.
It's a snare. The fear of man is the Bible. Lays a snare. Show it to me, deliver me from
it. Set me free." And then number two, "Lord, help me to live just before your face is
an audience of one. Help me to live for your will, for your approval, for your blessing,
for your benediction." Somebody says, "People are going to be mad at me." Somebody says,
"I mean, I don't have to care about other people's feelings." No, you put God first and
you live for the pleasure of God and God will give you the wisdom to know how to love
your neighbor as you love yourself.
When I survey the long dress cross, on which the prince of glory died, my rift just
came to me. I come but love, I brought content on my brand. For better or better than I, that I should
have loved. Say in the dead, "Oh, Christ, my Lord, oh, Lord, bring this, let it show me, Lord, I,
shall live once, oh, to live, Lord, oh, Lord, I am glad for Christ, oh Lord, I am glad for
you, Lord, I am glad for you, Lord, I am glad for you, Lord, I am glad for Christ, oh Lord,
I am glad for Christ, oh Lord, I am glad for you, Lord, I am glad for you, Lord, I am glad for
His hands, his feet, and his sorrow and love for me, hold it down, and tell me, air such rain, and sorrow will be.
Oh, God, stop us so much, God.
Oh, the wonderful voice, Oh, the wonderful voice, this may come in time, if I may lie, maybe truly live.
Oh, the wonderful voice, Oh, the wonderful voice, this may come in time, if I may lie, maybe truly live.
Oh, the wonderful voice, This may come in time, if I may lie, maybe truly live.
The wonderful voice, Oh, the wonderful voice, This may come in time, if I may lie, maybe truly live.
Dream about my soul, my life, my home.