Best Sermon Ever: The Needy

Hi family. How are you? I have to be transparent with you this morning. I don't know how this is going to go. Don't worry, nothing bad for you, just all for me. So, probably 2005, 2006, there was about a two-year stretch in there where I didn't preach at all. The reason was because I started to struggle with panic, and I couldn't get over it. Didn't really know what about that was going on. Then the Lord called me in 2007 to plant a church, which I was like how? Literally, for years and years and years, every sermon, every service, I struggled with panic, had to pray it through, do all that stuff. Then through a series of really hard things going on in our home, I started worshiping every day, and the interesting thing is that the panic went away. Weird. It's back this morning and I don't know why but I just want to be honest with you. I may know why. I think that this is a hard sermon. Not hard in the sense of mean, but hard in the sense of this sermon is really going to push on the buttons of how we define our Christianity. Because of that, Satan does not want you to hear this sermon. So, I'm standing up here kicking him in the teeth. (Congregation clapping) So I just say all that to say, if I breathe like that, don't worry. I'm okay. There's no heart attacks happening. I'm just collecting my thoughts. Ready to go to work? Okay, here we go. We're going to continue number 5 in our Best Sermon Ever series. We have been talking about the process of Jesus saying, listen, you guys, your righteousness has to surpass that of the Pharisees and teachers of the law. If it doesn't, you don't have any part in the kingdom of God, you don't. So, here's the thing, we've talked about righteousness. Righteousness means right-standing in relationship. That's what it means. Right-standing in relationship with God and right-standing in relationship with people, it means both of those things. At the same time, we don't pick them. We do it. Right-standing in relationship with people doesn't mean that they always like what we do. It doesn't mean that they always agree with us. It doesn't mean that we're always cuddly and happy and rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes it means confrontation and loving conflict and working those things out in those tense spaces. Sometimes that's what right-relationship means. I think a right-relationship can withstand that. It's a wrong relationship that goes sideways when that conflict stuff happens. So, that's what our righteousness has to be.

Then he started talking about, if that's true, if that's how we're going to live, and love has to be this umbrella than what it sounds like, we talked about this last week, what it sounds like is you're just taking away all the rules. Just love each other and have warm, fuzzies, and move along and let everybody do what they want to do. Well, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not what we're saying. If that's how we're going to read Torah, then you've heard this, “Don't murder, but I'm telling you don't even be angry”, because it's not about not murdering that's the issue. The same driver is the driver that would make you angry in the first place. Because of that, we have to deal with the thing, below the thing, below the thing, the invitation of Torah, isn't just to follow a set of rules. The invitation is to deal with the brokenness in our own hearts. So, if you murder, that's bad, but if you're angry, it's the same thing because you're looking at people the same way. I mean, you may not pull the trigger, but you're still just as broken inside. Then he talks about adultery, and he talks about it being the same thing. It’s not even about adultery. It's about looking at a woman lustfully. It's about trying to use someone else for your own gain. Don't do that. That's not how God treats people. Then they talked about taking oaths and go on and on and on and on. That's what it doesn't look like. Then let's talk about what it's going to look like, right? It doesn't look like just keeping the rules. It's got to look like dealing with these deeper things.

Now we're going to take that even a step further. Starting in Matthew 6:1-4. Here's what it says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness”. What's righteousness? Right-standing in relationship. Right-standing relationship with God and right-standing relationship with people. “Beware of practicing that before other people, in order to be seen by them. For then you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy”, by the way, he doesn't say “if” he's like, if you're going to read Torah this way, you're going to give to the needy. This is true. Now, let me say this to you, whatever he's about to say next, and I've heard whole weird theologies built out of this passage in a vacuum, but whatever he's going to say next has to be seen through the filter of what he's already said in Matthew 5, that you're a city on a hill. “So do your good deeds so that people will see them and glorify God on the day that he returns.” He says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before the people in order to be seen by them for then you'll have no reward from your Father in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do.” Say, “Ypokritis”. That's a fun one. It means “under face” or “hypocrite”. Don't be an “under face/hypocrite”. Don't sound as the “Ypokritis” do. It's the word that's translated “actor”, okay? “As they do in the synagogues and in the streets that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you that they've received their reward. But when you give to the needy”, he says it again. “When you give to the needy, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be done in secret, and your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you”. Now, here's the thing. What he's saying here is your giving should be so secret that you're confusing your own body. You don't even know. You’re giving, and don't even know, right? That's not what's going on here, so, I want to talk about it. I want to pull it apart.  I want us to look at some of these things. In Matthew 6:2. Let’s go back and look at this first. Then we're going to start dissecting some context so we can make some application. He says this, “When you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, that they have received their reward”. So don't sound the trumpets. That sounds like a weird thing. (Pastor makes trumpet noises) Here's a $20. What even is that?  I want to talk about that a little bit and help us to understand what's going on here. Let me show you a picture. This is the Roman theater in the city of Aspendos in Turkey. If you come with me to Turkey, we will stand in this theater. It is a stunning example of a Roman theatre. In fact, it seats about 22 to 25,000 people in a world where there was no electricity. There was no sound amplification. There was nothing. 25,000 people could show up and watch a play because of the acoustics. It is incredible! It is the most well-preserved Roman theatre in the ancient world. It's one of two theatres where the Cavaya and the Skeinay touch. So, the Cavaya is the bleachers. You have the Ina Cavaya up in front, the Summa Covaya up in the back, and then this picture is actually taken from what's called the Vomitorium (Pastor laughs) because it's where the theater vomits you out. That's true. The back wall behind the stage is known as the Skeinay so watch me whip, watch me Skeinay. Now you'll never forget it. You're going to watch me Skeinay. So, here's the thing the Skeinay is really important.

There was tons of debate in the ancient world, especially in the Jesus following movement and in the Jews prior to that about whether or not somebody who followed the God of the Bible should go to the theater. It wasn't because of the fact that the acting was all done in the nude. It wasn't that, although that's true, that's not why it wasn't because all those “neices” in the Skeinay, they all had different gods in them, different gods of the Roman Pantheon. They were all there, and at the top, center was a big statue of Deinesus, who was the God of wine, theatre and orgy. This is who he is. So, what we do in the theater is a representation and a praise to Deinesus. It's an offering to the God of theatre. That's still not why because those things were overt. Those things were obvious. Those things are easy to recognize and say no to. The reason why the rabbis taught that you shouldn't go to the theatre is because of the worldview that was promoted within the theatre. The theatre is used in the first century as a way to push the social envelope, not unlike the world that you and I live in, right? Like you watch a movie, and you get to the end of it, and you're like, “Oh, my word, the environmentalist got ahold of that one”. We use movies and theatre to promote social agenda. We do it today. They did it then. Now when we go to Israel and we take trips to Israel, we go to lots of synagogues. The reason is because every town had one, because they were the driver of social culture in the Jewish world. In the Roman world, the theater is. So, we see lots of theaters. This theater is built to hold 80% of the city around it in one sitting.

They expected that almost everybody was going to come to the theatre, and they leveraged it to push social agendas for better or for worse. They used it that way, okay? Now, one of the ways they did that was they had these gods and all these different things.

Then if you notice at the bottom of the Skeinay there were these doors, and the doors are different sizes. Remember when you're in a stadium that seats 25,000 people without a jumbo-tron, it's a long line of sight. So, it's hard to make out who's who, but just like in our world, their world, they had famous actors and they had ones that weren't so famous. The famous actors got the big roles, the important ones and the not so famous actors got the not so important roles. Because of that, it was hard to see their face. It's hard to know who they are, so they had their costume, they had makeup. It's hard to know who they are, unless they have a really distinctive voice, like Morgan Freeman where you don't even need to see their face. You hear their voice and know who that is. There are those, but there aren't very many of those. So, what they did was they would wear these masks. Let's look at the next photo. They would wear these masks to accentuate. In fact, if you look at the symbol for theatre, it's the happy face, sad face mask. They wear those to accentuate the features to give you, as the watcher, an idea of what kind of mood they're supposed to be in as they walk out on stage. The doors are really significant because nobody who's a secondary actor would ever walk through the big doors. They walked through the smaller ones, because it reflects the importance of their character, the ones who were really important, they walked through the big doors, okay? “I’m really important to this production, so I'm going to walk through the big doors”. Now, that being said, one other trick if there was somebody who was really famous, you pick whoever your top of the heap actor/actress is. If that person showed up to star in a role, one of the things that they did when that person walked out on stage, they have a mask on, nobody can see them, but we know who it is because they blow trumpets. (Pastor makes a trumpet noise) I'm sure it sounded exactly like that. I don't know. I wasn't there. I think Russ was (The founding pastor of Southeast Church, congregation laughs, pastor laughs), but that's funny. I don't care who you are. That's funny. So, when they blow the trumpets and the person of importance walked out on stage, the crowd went wild, right? It's like this next photo. This is what they're pulling for. “Notice me!”. It’s the Paparazzi. It's the “Let me show you who I am. Let me show you how important I am”. The funny thing is, it's all an attempt to make myself important to me to begin with.

This is what Jesus says, “When you give to the needy, don't do it like the “Ypokritis””, which by the way, we've defined hypocrite as somebody who says one thing and does another, right? That's the way we kind of defined it in the modern churches. You say one thing and do another. You're a hypocrite. That is not what a hypocrite is. Not in this context. What Jesus is saying is somebody who says it and does exactly what they say, but they do it with the wrong motive. They do it to be seen by people. You would never find a more true group of people than the Pharisees and the teachers of law to portray this. They will say it and they will do it, but the problem is they're doing it to reflect their greatness to men, not to God. They get off base. They want this. “Notice me, not to God. You, notice how spiritual I am”.

Leonardo DiCaprio, according to the great purveyor of all knowledge, Wikipedia, I didn't search this one deep, but I trust it. (Congregation laughing) He's done 61 movies, 61. And they're varied, he's got a repertoire of movies, right? Here's my question. Which one do you think depicts who he really is? Is it Titanic? “Don't let go, Rose”, is it that guy? Is it Catch Me if You Can? Just perpetual liar? What about the Revenant? That was a great movie. Is that the one that depicts the real Leonardo DiCaprio? Or the one where he played Howard Hughes, where he was a crazy rich guy? Maybe we're getting closer to the truth. I don't know, but which one depicts who he really is? Here's what I would say, none of them, and that's the problem, because there are certain things that Jesus just doesn't want us to act about. He doesn't want us to pretend to be something that we're not. As the church, we have to be what Jesus calls us to, and we're going to be put in positions, if you're serious about following Jesus, you're going to be put in positions where you're going to be getting to know people, and you're going to watch God work in them and you're going to raise your eyebrows at Him. You’re going to think, I'm not sure what to do with that because you're not like me. You don't think the way I think. It can be simple things. It can be political ideologies. It could be on whatever. It can be all different kinds of reasons why, but we look at them and squirm.

We've been saying that the Sermon on the Mount is this passionate plea for being inclusive, but not affirming to be inclusive of everybody, but not affirming. What I find so fascinating is that the church has such a problem with inclusivity. Here's the thing. If we need to have a conversation about inclusivity, then the church has lost the plot. The kingdom of God has always been about all people, all of them. Now that doesn't mean that we have to agree, but we do have to find space to find God in our midst. Jesus says, “It's not the healthy who need a doctor, it's the sick”. Why would you hold the sick out? “Sorry, we have the doctor in here, the doctors in. You stay out there”. That is the most ungodly posture that we could possibly take.

We've got to do better. I would just say, there's some things Jesus doesn't want us tagged about, think about how we function on social media. You know, listen, I'm not telling you what to do. What I'm saying is consider your role on social media. Social media is not evil. It's not, we can use it for all kinds of good things. I got to use it yesterday because I got to support the Mountain Child Run For Help, which was great. I got to run a 10K and I had plenty of time to figure out how to run that social media on my phone. I had lots of time because I don't run good. I don't speak good either, but I did it! I made it and I got to record it and talk about Mountain Child and what they do and what it means to me. I got lots of time in the miles to pray for them. You can use social media for a good thing. You can also use it to try to be right and to try to make everybody else feel stupid. Here's the thing, when you’re Ypokritis, you make yourself big by trying to make other people small.

If you view yourself here and other people here, you have a couple of options. You can grow, which is really hard, and not very many people will choose that path. Not very many people would choose growth because it's hard. Growth is hard. You have to face down some things that you will not like about yourself. You guys know, if you've been here for a couple of years, you know I've been on a bit of a weight loss journey. Those of you that were here two years ago are like you are half the man that you used to be. (Congregation laughed) Now that being said, what I figured out is the weight was never about the weight. It was always about the issues that I wasn't willing to take a look in the mirror about to deal with. As I've had to face those down, the weight becomes a net effect, healthy insides, healthy outsides, right? Unhealthy insides, unhealthy outsides for me. I don't know if that's true for everybody, but it's true for me. So, we can choose to grow, but growth is hard. Believe me, growth is hard. It would be way easier to just stay broken and stay isolated. It would be way easier. It wouldn't be better, but it would be way easier. The other option is we just cut people down until they're smaller than us. Listen, it is never going to honor God to make other people small so that you can feel big. That's never going to be okay. That's not the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is about bringing everybody up. Everybody!

For me, I get caught in this game of professional Christianity. I get paid to be a Christian, right? In other words, I get paid to be good. You have to be good for nothing, Ha! (Pastor making a joke, congregation and pastor laughing) They just keep coming. Anyway, that's true, so for me, I have to be careful because I can get caught in the trap of doing what I'm doing so that you don't leave the church to be honest, because that wouldn't look good on my annual evaluation. Are you with me on that? I'm just being transparent, but that's the problem is that's not the kingdom. That's my kingdom. That's my “little k Aaron’s kingdom”, but that's not the one I've ever been asked to build. I've been asked to build the kingdom of God, not the kingdom of Aaron. Sometimes I get really frustrated that they aren't the same thing.

I think we all battle with that, but we have to be honest with what's going on inside of us so that when we give, we don't have to do it in a wrong way.

So, let's talk about that. What does it mean to do things in a wrong way? Matthew 6. Here's what it says, “When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you.” Let me tell you a story. I grew up in a church in Libby, Montana the budding metropolis of 2,500 people, a tiny town. There was a gal in our church. A great, godly, amazing woman. She had made a pie that she wanted to give another gal in the church that had gone in the hospital. So, the meal train happened, right? You know the meal train. Somebody needed meals, so people were organizing bringing meals and this lady made a pie to take to this other gal, who'd been in the hospital. She called my dad on a rotary dial telephone. That tells you how long ago this was, and she said, “Hey, I made this pie. Could you come pick it up and deliver it for me?” My dad replied, “I’d be happy to deliver it for you, but why don't you just take it yourself?” Here's what she said, “Because I don't want to lose my reward in heaven.”

Now here’s the thing, I think we’re missing it. This is important. We don't want to talk about giving because giving is dicey, right? It's personal and it's invasive, and if you don't give, you don't want to talk about it, right? I don't talk about giving. If you're a new believer and nobody's talked about it, you don't know what giving is and what it isn't. Do I just give the change in my pocket? Is there an amount or do I have to hit a quota? Nobody wants to talk about it. Everybody wants to keep it a secret. Well, here's the thing. I just want to be honest with you, you’re robbing new believers of the blessing of God, because you refuse to show them what the Bible actually teaches about how to access it. People don’t even want their hands to touch. No hand holding, no interlocking fingers. Nothing. (Pastor referencing the silliness of people using this scripture out of context) This was never meant to be a statement in a vacuum. We have to remember that this statement is sandwiched between two really influential thoughts. The first one is in Matthew 5, and here's what it says, “You're the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand. And it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” The other really influential passage on the other side of this is Matthew 6:33, “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these other things will be added to you.”

By the way, super stoked. In two weeks, we're going to tackle Matthew 6:33. My friend, Brad Gray is going to be here. You remember Brad? He's awesome and amazing! You're going to walk out of here going, “I’ve got smoke rolling out of my ears.” That's why he's always just incredible! This particular passage is an important one for him. It's a particular passion for him. The other thing is I get a week off, so who knows what could happen.

Now back to these two really influential thoughts that are all about God and his glory. “Seek first his kingdom and do your good deeds for his glory.” That's the problem is that when we do it as Ypokritis, we do it to be seen by other people. Who cares whether you think I'm spiritual or not, you don't get me into heaven! I know there's a lot of people who would like to control that. Like, “Hey, I know I'm going to heaven, and I want to be able to pick my neighbors.” (Congregation quietly chuckles) We've all lived by bad neighbors, right? I would suggest that maybe we're way, way out of balance. The goal isn't that we do everything in a secret. The problem becomes when you and I do things so that other people will think that we're something that we're not. It’s not about doing one thing and saying another. It's saying it and doing it but doing it for the wrong reason. This is one of those reasons why the more I preach and the longer I preach, the more I really, really, really want you to like me. I know that there's going to be some people who don't like me after today. So how do we know if we're properly giving? How do we know? We know when we're not ashamed of our giving, we have the freedom to talk about it, but we don't need to make a spectacle out of it. Here's the deal, go back to where Jesus has already been.

 When he talks about the motive, the thing below the thing, below the thing, where he's been going all along and he's saying in the giving it's no different. You’ve got to deal with the motive for your giving in the first place. If that's in check, then everything else is okay. Here's the thing, God can't love you more than he already does. He loves you 100%. There's nothing that you can do to get him to love you more. Now, the good news about that is there's nothing that you can do to get him to love you any differently in other people's reaction to us. Other people don’t get to say we're okay with God. That’s just not the kingdom, it's not the kingdom.

So, I have some implications for us as we tie this down this morning. Number 1: We're called to be generous because we're called to be like God. If you want to be a follower of Jesus, then saying, I'm going to do the things that the Bible asks me to do, not because it gets me into heaven, but because it represents him. It's a reflection of who he is in the world. So, I should love people that are different than me. I should forgive people who are hard to forgive. I should be generous when it's not easy to be generous. I should do all those things. There are two fundamental pillars of the building blocks of the kingdom of God, forgiveness and generosity. These two things show up in the teaching of Jesus over and over, forgiveness and generosity. If we're not willing to press into those two really hard things, and they're really hard, then eventually we have to decide, am I even really being a resident of the kingdom of heaven, or I just trying to leverage this as fire insurance? The call for us is to bring heaven crashing into Earth. Jesus didn't come to get you out of here. Jesus came to bring God here. That's what he came for and you and I get to be the vehicles to make that happen. We don't do that when we don't represent him accurately. “Your kingdom come your will be done on Earth just like it is in heaven”. That's why Jesus came by the way. We're going to talk about that next week. We're called to be generous because we're called to be like God. Number 2: Even our generosity can be used for selfish reasons if we let it. Even good things can be used for selfish motives if we'll let it. So that's a constant check. By the way, you can't make that decision yourself in a vacuum. You can't make that decision for yourself consistently, sometimes you can guess it right, but we will way too many times self-justify if we're not in community, which is why we need to come to church. It's why we need to be in a life group. It's why we need to have friends that know us to our toes that are willing to call do-do on us. Like, “Hey, I love you, that's nonsense. Quit it. Number 3: Giving in secret isn't a bartering tool to get God's blessing. It's a way to make sure that our hearts are in the right place when we give. It’s not more spiritual to give in secret. Now, again, it doesn't mean you need to be jingling your money bags in front of everybody either, but that's not even the conversation. The conversation’s with the posture of our hearts. So, giving in secret is a way to make sure that my heart is right before God when I give. Implication number 4: Our covenant is with God alone. He should be the object of our focus when we give to those in need. We give to people in need, by the way, not because they need the money, but because we reflect the heart of God to that person when we do it. People who are in tough spots in their life need to know that God's heart is for them, that he loves them, that he sees them. I think that we live in this spectrum of being better or worse at it, you know, depending on any number of variables, but it's so easy to get into the rhythm of the church culture and understanding how it works, but without really examining our heart in the process. Then we kind of catch ourselves a little and say, “Oh goodness, I have to get back on track”. Then little by little, we do it again. Here's the thing, the church in America over time has taken these little two-degree shifts. They're little. We haven't abandoned our faith. We haven't rejected Jesus, but we've allowed some religious practices to take the place of the heart of God, little by little over time, the gap gets larger and larger. It's time for us to call the church back. We've got to be a reflection of who Jesus is in his heart.

So, as we enter into our communion time, I want to say to anybody in the room, if you're new, we have an open table here. What that means is anybody who's willing to celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus with us is invited to partake, but we want you to hold the elements until the end and we'll take them all together.

When we consider this time where we prepare our hearts for communion, I would just wrestle and maybe in your quiet time here in a minute with the Lord, ask where have you allowed life to get in the way of God's heart? Where have you allowed religious practice to get in the way of God's heart being expressed in and through you? Where has context got in the way of your relationship with the father? Because communion is this reminder, this call back each week for us to say, “I haven't forgotten. Maybe I did get off base, but I really want to be right. I want to be in a good space”. Let's take some time to talk with the Lord about that as we prepare our hearts for community.

On the night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread, and he broke it. He said, “This is my body, which is given for you. So, whenever you eat this bread do it in remembrance of me”. Then after the dinner, he took a cup. He said, “This cup, this is a new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you. So, whenever you drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me”.

Let's pray. Lord, thank you for this incredible call to be your heart to the people around us, and Lord, I  just ask through your spirit that you would reveal to us the spaces where we need to be brought closer to your heart for the world. Lord, may we do so with gentleness, with kindness, this is how your spirit works. That we may be a full reflection of you, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Let’s stand and sing one more song.

So, I hope that leaving here today, I hope you still want to be a part of our church. (Congregation laughs softly) That's the selfish part of my hope, but I hope that we can walk out of here more committed to being God's heart in the world and whatever God's mind is, and we don't need to abandon God's mind. God's truth is God's truth. That doesn't change, but it has to be encompassed in the bubble of God's heart. If it isn't, then we lose the message from the messenger, and we don't want to do that. If you're struggling with that, if you've got a place where you need to work that out, we'll have some people up here in the front that will pray with you. You can come forward as soon as we're done, or we have a prayer room right outside that door. So, you can go outside and pray in the prayer room by yourself or with somebody else but may you and I be people who live out the heart of Jesus in our world, more and more. Thank you, guys, for coming. Have a great week.