Ask Me How Good I Am

Scripture: Matthew 6.1-18; Phil. 3.4-14

I am getting ready to coach baseball this spring. For this league, we have tryouts where all the players are evaluated on their baseball skills and then graded. Then we have a draft. I was talking to a prospective player about his chances in the draft when his grandmother chuckled, “Ask him how good he is, he’ll tell you.”

Most of us have a favorite subject to talk about – the subject is us. Moreover, we tend to view the world through the lense of Me. Jesus warns us that this way of seeing things puts us in great danger of losing our way, even and especially when we are trying to be good. Our motivation inevitably becomes how to make ourselves look good to others.

Along with distorting the Law, this was the Pharisees other great sin.

“They do everything they do with the aim of being noticed by others. They enlarge the religious symbols on their clothing. They like to have the most prominent seats at dinners and in the synagogues. They relish loudly respectful greetings in malls and public places, and being called ‘Professor’ or Doctor.’” Matthew 23.5-7

Not only did the Pharisees not “practice what they preached,” but the good they did came from a completely wrong motivation, to bring glory to themselves, to be better than the rest. Maybe you too have played the Game of Comparison. The game is played by comparing yourself to your peers at work or family by virtue of status, salary, awards or trophies. If you seem to be better than the one you are comparing yourself with, you feel good. If, in comparison to your peer, you look inferior, then you feel inferior. And then you feel envious, jealous, and maybe even angry and spiteful.

Either way, it’s not a pretty picture. You probably don’t admit playing this game to even close friends. But play it you do. I do too. I would love to be called Professor or Doctor. I don’t really want to do the work required to get that degree, but I would love the title. And it occurred to me years ago that since that was the only reason I wanted the degree maybe that wasn’t a good motivation.

My friend told me once he was sitting in a meeting with some other pastors and he looked around the table of older guys, many going bald, wearing brown polyester suits with bad ties and guts hanging out over their belts, and this prayer-thought occurred to my friend:

“Lord, I thank thee that I am not like these other pastors here. . .”




The Principle of the Audience of One

Jesus said, when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. We should say a word about this. “Hypocrites” is a term only Jesus uses in the New Testament, and he uses it seventeen times. A hypocrite in classical Greece was a stage actor, but it also came to mean someone who practices deceit. Jesus brought this term into the moral vocabulary of the Western world. He did so because it focuses on the moral significance of the inmost heart before God. When Jesus says, “Beware of practicing your piety before men,” or “when you give don’t let your left hand know what your right is doing,” he doesn’t mean that your goodness should be invisible. He means that the motivation and the intent of the good deeds should be for someone other than yourself.

Os Guinness has said of the Puritans in American history that they lived as if they stood before an audience of One. They carried their lives as if the only one whose opinion mattered were God.

And Jesus says, “Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Matthew 5.16

Don’t be like the hypocrite’s, the Pharisees, who every time they give want a marching band to go before them in parade and with voices crying, “Look how good he is!”

Literally blowing horns probably isn’t our style these days, but much greater blasts are heard every time someone gives a million dollars to this college or that endowment and they get their name on a building. Nobody wants to give for the maintenance for that building. Nobody wants their name on a mop or a broom. Now remember, the point is not that we are seen doing a good deed, but rather, are we doing a good deed in order to be seen?

Dr. H.A. Ironside, the famous preacher and bible scholar, remembers a time in his life when he didn’t feel as humble as maybe he ought. He asked an elder friend what to do. The friend told him, “Make a sandwich board with the plan of salvation in Scripture written upon it; wear it then walk through the business and shopping district of downtown Chicago for a whole day.” Ironside did what his friend told him. Upon completion of this humiliating experience, he returned to his apartment. As he took off the sandwich board, he caught himself thinking, “There’s not another person in Chicago that would be willing to do what I have done.”

Remember the heart’s motivation. Remember the audience of One.







The Principle of Secrecy
Dallas Willard writes, “When we want human approval and esteem, and do what we do for the sake of it, God courteously stands aside because, by our wish, it does not concern him.”

Jesus said that the hypocrites do what they do so that men will praise them. And so they do. You will get the world’s praise if you really seek it. But, Jesus says, that’s the reward you get, and that’s all you get. He implies that you lose something greater in the process when you love the world and ignore God.

Secrecy is a discipline we must cultivate. We know how to be secret about the bad stuff in our lives, will we learn how to do good things in secret? This is the missing power in our lives today – we are not praying; we are not reading our Bibles; we are not serving; we are not giving; in secret. If we were, “the Father who sees in secret” would reward us. Then when we come to worship on a Sunday, we and God would have something really good to say to each other. Remember, God goes where He’s wanted!

I remember years ago at my father’s funeral I spoke to an older cousin of mine whom I rarely see. We were catching up with the news of our lives. I knew that he at one time worked for his father-in-law’s lumber and supply business, which is a successful, fifth-generation family business in Lancaster. I asked him if he still worked there and if so, what did he do. He smiled slightly and with genuine humility said, “Well, I’m the president of the company.” So, that’s pretty good then, I think I said. He wore his status and achievement well. He never “acted” important that I could see.

Treasure from Heaven is Now

Is it possible to be successful by many standards of the world and please God? Success may come your way, but you will have to make a choice and that choice comes first in the heart. You can wear success well, even humbly, on the outside, but inside you must gauge your own heart’s motivation. Who are you trying to please? Is it the audience of the world’s approval or is it the audience of One?

“Your heart will be where what you treasure is.” Matthew 6.21

Life organizes around the heart. We have “heartsight,” as surely as we have eyesight. If by our eyesight our body is directed, then if the eyesight goes bad the whole body is in the dark. But if the eye of the soul, “the light within you,” is not functioning, then you are in the dark about everything.

If you tune your heart to the love of God, your life will organize itself around the things of God. You will pray and see this prayer come true, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Matthew 6.10

Or as St. Paul put it, “Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Philippians 3.8