Sermon for Sunday, March 23rd, 2025 at First Presbyterian Church at Unionville, NY (BPC)
Old Testament Reading:
[Jer 17:7-10 ESV] 7 “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. 8 He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.” 9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? 10 “I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
New Testament Reading:
[Gal 6:11-16 ESV] 11 See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand. 12 It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who would force you to be circumcised, and only in order that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. 13 For even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh. 14 But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. 15 For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. 16 And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them, and upon the Israel of God.
Gospel Reading:
[Mat 23:1-12 ESV] 1 Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, 2 “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, 3 so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice. 4 They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. 5 They do all their deeds to be seen by others. For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, 6 and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues 7 and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. 8 But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. 9 And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven. 10 Neither be called instructors, for you have one instructor, the Christ. 11 The greatest among you shall be your servant. 12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.
Sermon Text:
[Mat 6:1-4 ESV] 1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. 2 “Thus, 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, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Introduction
The subject of the sermon, and subject of the text is PROPER MOTIVATION.
What is it should motivate us?
Especially, what is it that should motivate us to do good deeds?
It is the rewards of men that motivate us?
Of is it the rewards from God that motivate us?
The answer is clear, but it is easier said than done.
The answer, which we’ll look at in two parts is:
1. Do good deeds NOT for the praise of others.
and
2. DO good deeds FOR the heavenly reward.
But there’s more to this passage as well. For one, what are these “heavenly rewards”? We’ll look at that as well, but first I want to continue on a theme I was focused on in the last sermon. That is, our sinfulness before the Lord. We saw in Chapter 5 of the Matthew that anger, lust, retaliation, etc. are sinful. We are called to be more righteous than the Pharisees, even to be perfect. And I’m convinced that shows us the IMPOSSIBILITY (not the possibility) of us following the commands and THEREFORE causes us to look to Christ for our salvation. Now, there is one additional point on this line of thought. Now, EVEN WHEN YOU DO GOOD DEEDS you are sinning IF you don’t have proper motivation for those good deeds! So it is incredibly difficult, even impossible to be without sin, to be perfect. There is such a thing as hypocritical good deeds. Motives matter. EVEN when you are doing good, you might be sinner! Yet, being forgiven in Christ we are yet called to live according to His commands for the Glory of God and for our benefit.
So we see that are are not to do good deeds for the praise of others, but we are to good deeds for the heavenly reward. That is to be our motivation. Or at least, one major factor of our motivation.
And this shows us that it is not selfish to want what is good for us. In fact, what is wrong is when we want something that is less than the best for us. It is good and right to want heavenly rewards, because those are gifts from God.
So we want that to be our motivation.
But first, “Do good deeds not for the praise of others.”
I. Do good deeds not for the praise of others. (v. 1-3)
1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”
This doesn’t mean you need to hide your good deeds.
But it does mean you don’t flaunt them.
That’s what Jesus says in verse 2:
2 “Thus, 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.”
Sound no trumpet before you. This may be literal, but more likely is hyperbole. In either case, we don’t often blow trumpets today, but we do other things to falsely promote ourselves or draw attention to ourselves. Very often people do want to do good, but they are even more interested in other’s seeing them do good. The modern term is “virtue signaling.” That is desiring for people to think good of you. But that so often backfires.
A comedian my wife and I like calls these types of people — those who are constantly drawing attention to themselves — he calls them “me-monsters.” Whenever someone else tries telling a story of themselves, the me-monster breaks in trying to one-up with a story of their own. So he wishes that he had been one of the men to have landed on the moon, so no one could one-up his achievement.
But we are called not to point out our achievements at all. Maybe you can on a resume, but not in conversation as a braggart or in seeking to impress others.
Jesus in fact says
3 “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing,”
This is a well-known saying but it can be a bit confusing: “when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”
Now, first is seems that “giving to the needy” is standing-in for good works in general. It is not the only good work, but one that is often emphasized. Giving to the poor is both an OT and NT prerogative.
[Pro 19:17 ESV] 17 Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will repay him for his deed.
[Gal 2:10 ESV] 10 Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.
But when you do give, “do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”
Naturally, your hands don’t have minds of their own. They can’t know anything.
But the idea is that your giving is to be secretive; not flaunted.
We are not to draw attention to ourselves.
Well you might notice that there are some names on things in our church. On the windows, on the communion table and plates. Well, these were only done in honor of others. They were not paid for by those people. In fact, when these windows were put in in 1910, all of the people noted on them were long dead. They were done “in memory.” Still, I generally prefer that we don’t put names on anything. Giving should be done for heavenly rewards.
That is our second point, and the other side of the coin from our first point.
We are not to be motivated by the praise of others to do good deeds.
Rather the heavenly rewards from God are to be motivate us to do good deeds.
II. Do good deeds for the heavenly reward. (v. 4)
So “do good deeds for the heavenly reward.”
First, we must establish that there are “heavenly rewards!”
A. There are heavenly rewards!
I’ve long had a concern about “rewards in heaven.” Some Christian traditions heavily emphasize them.
And I’ve thought “Isn’t heaven enough!” Isn’t THAT the reward? And isn’t it earned by Christ for us, and not by our good deeds?
That indeed is all true.
If you are a football fan you want to get a ticket to the Superbowl. It doesn’t really matter what row you are in; just that you are in the stadium.
And for Christians, what matters is that you are eternally with the Lord in heaven. I think “I don’t really need any reward, Christ is enough.”
But the Scriptures also speak about rewards; treasures in heavens.
Our salvation (our justification) is purely through faith in Christ who in God’s grace has saved us. So these rewards are not the cause of our salvation, but as Calvin said they are “held out to excite believers to aim at doing what is right.”
There was a conference not long ago where Derek Thomas was asked “Will Christians receive rewards in heaven?” And I like his answer. In part, he said:
Yes. I think if you had asked any Christian who lived prior to the twentieth century, or certainly any Christian in the Reformed world, the answer would have been, “Absolutely, definitely yes.” Something happened in the twentieth century regarding this doctrine of rewards. If I asked twenty-five or thirty modern seminary students: “How many of you expect rewards in heaven and that some will be rewarded more than others?” I doubt that two hands would go up. Somebody needs to make a study of what happened to the doctrine of rewards.
So what the Biblical proof for these rewards?
Well, the passage we are in is one of the places to look at. It speaks about rewards. Then, later in the same chapter we read:
[Mat 6:19-20 ESV] 19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
And Paul says:
[1Co 3:5-8 ESV] 5 What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. 6 I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. 8 He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.
So there are “rewards in heaven.” But I think it is speculative to and wrong to try to detail what exactly these rewards are. But, since they are from God we know that they are good and wonderful.
These rewards also help us to understand passages like Jeremiah 17:10.
[Jer 17:10 ESV] 10 “I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
And, importantly, these rewards are not something we merit by our own abilities, but are from the Grace of God through the Holy Spirit working in us.
Heidelberg Catechism 63:
Q. But do our good works earn nothing, even though God promises to reward them in this life and the next?
A. This reward is not earned; it is a gift of grace.
B. These rewards are to be motivating factors for doing good.
Now, the passage tells us that we are to be motivated for these rewards in heaven.
Therefore, it is not wrong to be motivated by heaven rewards.
If we live for the rewards of man, what is the result? Who knows! Sometimes we’ll get a reward, sometimes we won’t, but they are all fleeting.
If we live for the reward of God, we know that God promises rewards in heaven.
No doubt,
God’s rewards are better than man’s rewards.
God’s rewards are more sure than man’s rewards.
The acts of righteousness mentioned in the text is specifically giving to the poor. This is a GREAT “good work.” But other things, like prayer, must also be included in the discussion. And there are many other good works.
And God rewards those good works. That should contribute to our desire to work for the Lord. We should do what is right, in the first place, because it is right and commanded of God. But then we should do good deeds also for the promise of God’s reward.
I think of when I was in 1st grade. And I wanted above everything else to get 100% on every paper, every test, every assignment in school. But I was also motivated by those little star stickers that my teacher would put on the graded paper. A star sticker. Or, one a really good day it might be an even better sticker – a rocket ship saying “out of this world” or a cat saying “purrfect work.” Motivation can be both for doing what is right and for the reward. Rewards are ok. Don’t feel embarrassed or wrong about seeking good rewards; especially heavenly rewards.
How can we summarize the message of this text:
There is a verse coming up in the chapter that does that well:
[Mat 6:33 KJV] 33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
I almost can’t read that without singing it.
It is OK, it is even good to desire that “all these things shall be added unto you.” Even to desire heavenly rewards.
Now for an application:
Application 1: Don’t put your name on it!
I almost went this direction with the sermon and considered titling it “don’t put your name on it.”
When we give to the poor, we are to do so without drawing attention to ourselves; without naming a building after ourselves.
And there’s an elephant in the room because our windows have names on them.
It is not just the windows in this church that have names on them. It is also the communion table. (I don’t know if you know this) And the communion plates, and a few others things in the church. Now, I will say that it is good that these were in honor of people. These are not the people who donated. No one was putting their own name on things. And I think that’s an improvement. Though I’d prefer not to have names on anything at all. At the same time, I don’t advocate scrubbing away all of these names.
But the main point, along the lines of the text, is that giving is to be done secretly as an act of faith.
Application 2: Find your motivation in the Lord.
Again, we can say “seek ye first the kingdom of God.”
And it is not wrong to say “store up heavenly treasures.”
In this way we are not content to merely sit back, but to go forward with motivated energy to do good in the world. Give to the poor. Be a friend. Help others. Listen to them. Hand out Bibles to people. Give a person a ride. Volunteer in your community. There are endless good works that we can pursue. And now I hope that we’ll actually do them. I don’t know what the rewards look like. I don’t know what the treasures in heaven are exactly, but they come from the Lord who blesses us with His grace that we may live for Him.
So let us pray that God works in us His Holy Spirit in a mighty way that we shall be truly motivated to His service.
Let us pray.