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Jesus said, "Follow me." He said, "Follow me." Let's pray, Jesus said, "Follow me." Let's pray, Jesus said, "Follow me." Let's pray, Jesus said, "Follow me." Let's pray, Jesus.

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All right. We're diving in this morning to Matthew chapter 6. We'll be there in just a moment. This is a... it's funny how things sometimes come to us.

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together. In my original plan, we were going to get through much more of Matthew chapter 6 this morning than we are. And then in my backup plan, we were going to get through more of Matthew chapter 6 than we are. And then in my third plan, they say, like, no plan survives contact with the enemy or with toddlers. You know, this is kind of where we're at. And so what I want us to do, and I think it's so important, is to set a foundation.

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for where we are at in Matthew chapter 6. Because it is, in a lot of ways, very foundational for our understanding of the chapter as a whole. So we're going to pray for wisdom and for strength and for encouragement. And then we will dive right in. Father in heaven, we thank you so much for what you have done for us. We thank you for your word. We thank you especially for this message.

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directly from Jesus, recorded in Scripture. We thank you for how it challenges us, how it corrects us, how it shows us a better way, and how it doesn't ask us to do that on our own. We thank you that it strengthens us, it transforms us. And so I ask that you'd help us as we seek to understand

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the words of Jesus, but that you would help us to understand how to use Scripture rightly and properly, that we would rightly divide your word of truth. And so be with us. Help us. May your spirit be at work. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

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So kind of where we're going in just a moment is we're going to talk a little bit about the Bible, and then we'll talk a little bit from the Bible in Matthew chapter 6:1. And that's kind of the direction in which

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we're going. So as one does, I was looking through a bunch of old pictures this past week. I found an external hard drive, and I plugged it in and said, "Oh, let's see if this works." And started looking through some old pictures back before cell phones and the cloud. It's where, you know, you had your camera and you put the card in. And so I'm looking through all these pictures, and I found a picture specifically of myself, and it was from back, I think, either the end of 2005 or the beginning.

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the beginning of 2006. I thought about sharing it, but then realized I didn't necessarily need the blackmail, so I'll just share with you what this picture portrayed. It was a picture of myself, sound asleep in a recliner in front of a roaring wood stove in one of my cousin's basements with a hat that was not mine, pulled down around my ears, a pink scarf that looked like it belonged to a toddler because it did, and covered in a princess blanket.

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I found asleep. And looking at that picture, it brought back a whole lot of memories for me, and probably requires some context as well. And it was the end of December, the first year that I lived in Winchester, and it was after church, and I hurriedly threw all my stuff in the car to go home to Vermont for the holidays, and when I got in the car, it was here. It was like sunny in '65. It may not have been actually sunny in '65. I don't remember. I just remember it wasn't cold.

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And I was in a hurry to get on the road to Vermont, and I was still at that kind of young and dumb age. It's like, "I don't need a coat because I'm a man," right? And so I jumped in the car. I didn't even think about winter stuff, and it really, honestly, didn't matter most of the time because we go from a heated car to a heated house, back to a heated car, to a heated store, to a heated car, to a heated restaurant. And so, by and large, I didn't really even notice that I didn't have a hat, a coat, gloves, or even like a long sleeve.

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Sure, because I left it all in Virginia. And it worked fine until on the way home, I said, "I'm going to go visit my cousins who live in New Hampshire." They had like a two-year-old at the time, and so we got there, and I was like full of this, "I don't need a coat, arrogance of youth," until we were there, and we're talking to my cousin's little daughter, and they're like, "Hey, let's go play in the snow," right? And then all of a sudden, right, all of a sudden, the lack of any kind of winter equipment was very

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very, very important. And I realized I should have thought a little bit more about my preparations in light of what was coming down the road, and then I could have avoided this picture of me covered in prince's blankets. It's easy for us, I think, in many ways to approach the Word of God in the same way, without a lot of forethought or without a lot of preparation. And if we aren't cautious and prepared in how we approach

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when we come to the Word of God, it can easily lead us into a place that we don't want to be. For example, the Sermon on the Mount, if not approached in the manner in which Jesus has spoken it, it can lead us, one, to pride. Look at how great I am because I do all these things. But on the other hand, it can lead us to despair as we look at our lives and we say, "Man, I could never do any of these things."

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which is the second chapter of the Sermon on the Mount, I want us to consider sort of our purpose in studying this sermon. And I want to share with you, as we begin, sort of four approaches to sort of Scripture in general, but also to the Sermon on the Mount specifically.

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The first one is one I think that is dangerous, and it's difficult, and it's something that should be avoided. The other three are not bad. We're really going to only deal with the last one, but I want you to sort of see

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how it goes in general. Our goal, just very clearly, and purpose, in studying the Sermon on the Mount is to hear Jesus' words, and to understand them specifically in their context, and for the purpose of which He is speaking them.

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You see, Jesus covers a whole lot of different topics, and it's easy, if we're not careful, to sort of see Jesus moving through all of these different things. You're the light of the world, right?

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Don't anger, lust, divorce, harsh words, dealing with going the extra mile, with giving, with prayer, with fasting, all of these different things, it's easy sometimes for us to sort of take them as bite-sized chunks and miss the context.

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Jesus is not sort of speaking as sort of a stream of consciousness. He is, according to Matthew chapter 4 and verse 23, what He is doing is He's proclaiming the good news of the kingdom.

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At the heart of this message that Jesus is speaking, He is proclaiming the good news of the kingdom. And the Sermon on the Mount shows us what kind of life being a part of this kingdom produces.

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Not the kind of life that brings us into the kingdom, but what kind of life that we, who are poor in spirit, hungering and thirsting for righteousness and in humility, how when we come and brought into

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this kingdom, it transforms us, right? At the heart of this is good news. That Jesus comes with a new kingdom that welcomes, that transforms, that equates and leads us into righteousness with the assurance of a good Father who loves us.

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And so that's what I want us to see as an overview. Let's talk about how we deal with some of the Sermon on the Mount individually. I want to, first of all, deal with this warning. We're going to start with four ways of seeing

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the words of Jesus. The first is this warning because sometimes we approach Scripture or the Sermon on the Mount a little bit like loading a moving truck. And I don't know how many times you've moved, probably most of us have moved at least a few times. And when we get ready to move, we look at whether it's a truck or whether it's a car or trailers, and we try to figure out how many trips we have. And in some cases, I remember helping some folks here getting ready to move

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almost all the way across the country. They're moving truck, and it's like, let's see if we can get everything to fit. And so what we do when we tend to move is we look at the space that we have to take things, and then we try to figure out how to get all of the things we want to take into that space. How can we fit it into the existing space? It's easy, and it's so dangerous to take the things that Jesus talks about, whether that's

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anger, or lust, or giving, or praying, or fasting, and try to fit them into our existing belief structure. Whether that's our theological position, whether that's our preference, whether that's opinions, whether that's traditions, oftentimes when we come to Scripture, instead of letting the Word of God direct us and teach us and correct us, we say, "All right, here's what I believe. How can I fit this into there?" And we try to cram the Word of God into our

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existing ideas. And if we approach Scripture like this, here's what you're doing. You're putting your meaning into the text instead of seeking to see what God is saying to you. And the problem is that's such a low view of Scripture. Right? It's, "I'm the authority, and now I've got to fit it in." And it's not good. And it leads us to brokenness. And so as we approach God's Word, we can't see the Word of

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God as something we have to sort of shoehorn in to our existing ideas, right? If Scripture is not frequently contradicting you, then you're probably not listening very closely to what it says. Because one of the things that Scripture does is that it takes us, and it reorients us, and it re-centers us, and it restores us, and it makes us to walk in the way that we should go. And so first of all, we have to understand that the Word of God is not like, and understanding the Word of God is not like trying

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to fit this into a moving truck. So now let me take the last three approaches, which I think all of them are good, but they're not necessarily, the first two are not necessarily what we're trying to accomplish. Right? The first two, I think, are very common approaches to the Sermon on the Mount. They're not bad, as I said, but not necessarily where we're trying to go. Sometimes we see this, Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount, as a launching pad for some sort of top

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topical study. And once again, that's not bad. So back in, I guess my first year of college, it was the year 2000, may have been the beginning of my second year of college, there was a sport, and I don't know if anybody but me remembers this, it was called slam ball. And it was like, football, basketball, hockey. And what it was, is they took a basketball court, enclosed it in plexiglass, and just filled the floor with trampolines, and it was full contact and no dribbling. Right? It was ridiculous.

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It was like four games. They've tried to bring it back now like five different times unsuccessfully, the most recent being in 2003. But in the picture, you come and you're running down the court, you jump and you hit that trampoline, you can do a spectacular dunk. Sounds great in theory. In practice, you sort of end up bouncing into the wrong direction almost every time you jump. And one of the things that tends to happen when we come to places like this, where there are

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so many different things that Jesus is saying. We miss that he's talking about one message, and we say, "All right, now Jesus here in verse 2, he's going to talk about giving." And so we jump on that, and then we jump out to the rest of Scripture. That's not bad, but that's not what we're trying to accomplish here. We want to see Jesus's message in the Sermon on the Mount, not a general picture of what this means overall. The other way that we come to this is treat this text a little bit like a diving

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board, meaning it propels us to dive deeper in. Once again, this is not bad, and it's good, and it's healthy, just like seeing all of Scripture on a topic, to go deep in the passage of Scripture. And what is this word? And what is this phrase? And how does it fit together? And how does it apply? And how is God working? What is he promising? What is he commanding? How is he strengthening us? This is good, and it is wonderful to seek to understand

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specific texts deeply. So to summarize, it's good to see all of what the Bible says on a topic. It's also good to see deep specifics. But what we're trying to do with the Sermon on the Mount is to see this message as a whole. So think about it. Down in Woodstock, there's a fire tower on the top of a mountain. You can drive up there and park and hike up the fire tower in sort of the claim to fame, as you can see, the seven bends of the Shenandoah River, right? Because you can get up high, and stretching out in front

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of you as a landscape, and you get to see all of the pieces put together, the roads you came in on, the town of Woodstock, the bends of the river, as it goes down the valley. And so what I want us to do when we come to the Sermon on the Mount, whether it's the Beatitudes at the beginning, or the wise and the foolish man at the end, I want to seek to understand them as they fit together as a whole. Not springboarding somewhere

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else, or not becoming so focused we miss what comes before or after. I want to see what the ultimate point of what Jesus is trying to teach. And there's a lot of things in here to learn, but the big thing is this gospel, the good news of the kingdom. Right, from the beginning, the Beatitudes to the end, the wise and foolish builders, Jesus is sharing with us the good news of

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the kingdom. Let me give you an example of how this sort of fits together. Our text for the next several weeks, we're going to be in the next 18 verses, and Jesus here gives us three examples of spiritual behavior. He's going to talk about giving. He's going to talk about praying. He's going to talk about fasting. And for some, it will be easy to take their existing views and try to shoehorn it into this text to make the Bible agree with him. We're not trying to do that. Some will use this, for example,

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about prayer or fasting or giving to say, let's take a look at all of what the Bible says. That's not bad. Some will use it to dive deep into these specific teaching. But here's what I want us to try to do. These examples, they're part of a bigger message. The message is that the transformation of the kingdom goes beyond our external actions, whether that's toward others, that's the end of chapter 5, and goes beyond

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outward obedience toward God. That's these first 18 verses. That the kingdom of God ultimately transforms our hearts. And so I want to take us up the tower just for a second to get a view of Matthew chapter 6. And so here's where we're going. Matthew chapter 6 gives us three spiritual practices at the very beginning. Right? Giving, praying, fasting, and notice that Jesus is not commanding us to do these things. He's assuming we already do. He doesn't say,

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"If you pray, if you fast." He says, "When you give, when you pray, when you fast." Right? These are assumed to be practices of the people hearing His words. And what you're going to see with these three practices is underlying it are four realities. One is this picture that over and over again, and we're going to talk about in just a minute, is this picture of reward. There's a reward that we pursue. There's a treasure we store up. There's a way to see differently. And ultimately, it comes down

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down to what master we serve. What Jesus is doing is charting a correct path. And so the first question that I want to pose to us this morning is this: Where am I walking? And what we're trying to do is diagnose our heart with the words of Jesus. Right? This is where Matthew chapter 7 ends up. And with my apologies to Robert Frost, right, Jesus will say to

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two roads diverged in Matthew chapter 7, right? And one of them is less traveled by. Now that's not his intention at all with that poem, but that's the picture. There's two gates, and there's two paths, and there's two destinations. There's two ways to build your house, and there's two ways that this turns out for those who build their house. That there is a diverging place from where you are, and you have to make a choice.

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These words, that's where we're heading. This text, all of Matthew chapter 5, 6, and 7 is filled with contrast. Listen to this. "Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them. No reward from your Father who is in heaven." So Matthew chapter 6, full of contrast. In fact, the entire sermon is. I started making a list of all these different contrasts beginning at the beginning of chapter 5 and going through chapter 7.

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And the program in which I write my sermons, it gives you an estimate of how long the sermon will go based on how many words you have written. And like, just talking about these contrasts added something like 10 minutes. And that was just me saying, "Here's a contrast. Read the verse. Here's a contrast. Read the verse. Here's a contrast. Read the verse."

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I want you to see, first of all, the Sermon on the Mount, and specifically, Matthew 6 is full of contrasts.

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There are a lot of ways, I think, for us to get through Winchester. For example, I'm trying to go to the area around Walmart or Lowe's, right? A lot of ways to get there. I can go, for example, straight down Jubal Early to Pleasant Valley, turn and go that way. I can jump over if the light, hit the light right, and go through the Winchester Roundabout, which is just the mall, sneak my way in on the backside. If traffic's really bad going that way, I can go down 522, take Crossover Boulevard, come in from behind.

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I can be ambushed, right? It'll be 81 to 37, come in on the backside. There's a lot of ways to get to where I want to go. And this is how I think we often come to Christianity, right?

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Well, you might be going this path, but there's another route that's just as valid. Jesus is saying here, and I think this is important for us to hear, that when it comes to righteousness, this is not a choose-your-own adventure, right? The kingdom is not a multi-path

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endeavor. He's going to clearly draw a line between right and wrong in this entire sermon, right? There is a way that leads to destruction, and there is a way that leads to life. It's not good, better, best in regard to what you're choosing, right? There is a way in which we walk that leads to righteousness and life and joy and peace, and there's a way to walk that leads to destruction.

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What path is walking on? But here's the reality. Our path is not just where we're putting our feet. You see, because our feet simply follow our desires. Let's go back to this verse.

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"Beware practicing your righteousness before the people, in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven."

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There's two paths we're sort of seeing contrasted here. One is the praise of people, and then one is our Father who is in heaven.

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And for us, I think, if you've been in the church, there may be some emotions tied up in this word reward.

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And you hear this, and you go, "What is Jesus saying about rewards?"

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Is it this uncomfortableness? "Well, now do I have to earn? Am I supposed to earn? How does grace work with rewards?"

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Maybe some people are like, "Oh, I knew it! My goodness and my righteousness finally paying off!"

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Maybe sometimes we think that having a reward diminishes the goodness of our actions.

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Right? Well, I don't need any reward for doing that. It's just part of being a good person.

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The word here, reward, literally means what is due for work performed.

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And now this is where we have to be so careful.

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Because otherwise, we'll do a couple things. We might just ignore it.

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I don't want to deal with this. I don't want to try to figure it out.

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We might try to shoehorn this into our existing theology.

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And if we do those things, either ignore it or try to fit it into what we think.

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I think we missed something wonderful that's happening here.

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Because at the heart of this understanding of reward is this:

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What does my heart desire?

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What is it that I truly want?

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And this word assumes sort of an intentional aiming at something in the future.

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Am I here to be seen before other people?

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Or am I here to know my Heavenly Father deeply?

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Because these three things, whether giving, praying, or fasting,

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they can either lead us to this place where we're seeking praise and honor from those who surround us,

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and we'll talk about those specifics in the coming week,

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or they can lead us to know and rejoice and be near to our Heavenly Father in such a wonderful way.

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These are the two desires that Jesus contrasts.

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What is it that I'm aiming my life at?

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What is my purpose in obeying, in giving, in praying, in fasting, in seeking to be righteous?

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Am I seeking to get something so that people are recognizing me, or am I seeking to be near someone?

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And here's the reality: our feet follow our desires.

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We may not think about it in terms of us, but take a look at some examples in our world.

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For example, we have our puppy, Ranger, who's a year old.

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He's funny.

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Because sometimes I'll say to him, "Ranger, come here!"

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And you can tell he knows he's supposed to, and he kind of wants to be near me, but he's not super excited.

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And he does the thing that every little kid does when they don't want to do something:

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something comes as slow as possible, right?

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And then sometimes I'll say to him, "Ranger, come here, I've got a treat!"

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And he comes a whole lot faster if there's food, especially if it's chicken nuggets, right?

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He's like, "Hey, I'm here!"

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But what he really desires is to be in charge of everybody, and to be more important than everybody else.

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He's just full of pride.

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So I really want to get Ranger to come, drop everything.

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It doesn't matter if it's a kid on a bicycle covered in steaks, right?

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I can get him to drop it by going this:

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"Come here, Kaiser! You're such a good boy!"

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And Ranger just takes off like a rocket!

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There was people in the parking lot the other day, and Ranger was like, "I'm gonna go say hello to him!"

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And I'm like, "Come here, Kaiser! You're a good boy!"

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But Kaiser wasn't anywhere around. Ranger turns around and blasts back into the house

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because he wants to be praised and he wants to be more important than Kaiser.

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And so for him, right, his feet follow the desires of his heart.

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And it's not just true for dumb cattle dogs.

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It's true for us dumb people as well.

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That our feet follow our desires.

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And so the heart of what we're getting to is what is it that our heart truly desires?

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Our heart desires will move our feet.

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And maybe you say, "It's great. I'm still struggling with this word reward."

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The reward we see in the text here, and over and over again, on one side is human approval.

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The other side is God himself.

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The difference, I think, is between getting and being.

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The earthly side is transactional. I'll do this and get this.

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The heavenly side is relational about a child who lives before his father, and Jesus clearly draws this line.

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In fact, we said a couple weeks ago that the word "father" occurs throughout this entire sermon, very frequently.

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But what's interesting is Jesus talks about rewards and righteousness in Matthew 6.

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Over and over, it's a reminder that it's our Father who sees us and our Father who rewards us.

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Or in terms of our need, don't you know that your Father who knows what you need before you ask Him?

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Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your heavenly Father is the one who forgives.

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Your fasting may not be seen by others, but your Father who is in secret.

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The Father who gives good gifts. The Father who dresses the lilies and the sparrows.

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The sparrows, the Father who provides for your every need.

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The picture here, I think, in this righteousness and this idea of reward, is what is it you're setting your heart on attaining?

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Is it to get the praise and all the things that go with it, or is it to be near to your Father?

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Who is the reward? Is it your heavenly Father? Maybe we're still struggling with this idea of reward.

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Let me try to give you an example. The worst job I ever had was while I was in college and I was working for Sonic.

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One day on my day off, the manager called me.

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At that point, you didn't have cell phones and you had to pay extra to have a room, a phone in your dorm room, so there's a pay phone in the hall.

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And he calls, he goes, "Brandon, we're out of chicken tenders. Can you drive to Macon, Missouri, which is like 20 minutes away from where I was?"

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And I said, "Am I getting paid?" And he's like, "Man, I'll give you 10 bucks."

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And I was like, "Hard pass. Like, you know, talk to you later."

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About 20 minutes later, I guess after going through the roster of off-duty employees, he calls and he goes, "Hey, I'll pay you 40 bucks."

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And I was like, "Sweet. I make $5 an hour. It's going to take me an hour round trip."

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So I was like getting paid for like three extra hours. Plus, at that point in time, like there was a little gas war in the corner.

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I could fill my car up like twice for $20. I was like, "Yes, I will take your $40,

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and I will go get your bags of chicken tenders from the other Sonic."

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Right? I'm very much at that point like a mercenary for chicken tenders.

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I'm not doing it without the reward. Now on the other side of that, there's the getting.

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Now let's talk about the being. So before Rachel and I were married, before we were actually engaged,

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Rachel was working two jobs, her normal day job, and then she was helping remodel a Target overnight.

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And so I'd meet her in the evening. We'd eat some food, talk about our day. She'd fall asleep in the car.

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She'd go in to Target at like 9 o'clock, and she would work. I said this morning when I was running by this spy here

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to make sure she was okay with me talking about it. I said, "Oh, yeah, until like 2:00 in the morning."

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And she goes, "It was really more like 4:00 in the morning." I said, "I don't remember.

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That was a real tough time for me." And then she just stared at me, right? Like, "What?"

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So she would go to work. I would go home. I'd take a nap, and then she would call me when she was done at Target,

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and I'd go pick her up. You know, she had her own car. I'd go pick her up, and I'd drive her to her house.

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And the next morning she called me, and I'd go pick her up and take her back to work.

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And I drove so much, and there were so many times I almost fell asleep between exit 323

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on 81 and 313 here. But I wasn't doing it to try to get something else, because I love spending time with her.

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And the only way we were going to spend time together, with the way our schedules work,

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or in those few moments between one job and the next job, or on the drive home, or on the drive to work,

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or sitting with a cup of coffee for a few minutes, right? That's a reward, but it's a different kind, right?

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It's the reward of presence, and nearness, and closeness.

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And the picture that we're going to see in the text, I think, as it unfolds, is that, right?

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There's a reward. It's like, "I'm going to get some stuff."

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And then there's a reward that's like, "I'm going to be with someone."

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And what we'll see is Jesus teaches about giving, and prayer, and fasting.

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There's a way to use these to try to advance yourself, and then there's a way that draws you so much closer to your Heavenly Father.

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To know Him more deeply and more wonderfully.

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Here's sort of the end result. What you desire, you're going to follow.

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There are both rewards. One is about what I can get. The other is about who I am with.

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That's the difference in this opening of Matthew 6. Not no reward versus reward, but transaction versus relationship. Getting versus being.

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And when Jesus talks about reward in this chapter, He's not denying that there's a result in our life.

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He's showing that when righteousness is aimed at people, the reward is approval, and that's the end of it.

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But when our righteousness is because of our heavenly Father, the reward is life with Him and before Him, being known, being seen, being secure.

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So the question is, where am I walking? You see, we always walk toward what we desire.

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This chapter isn't just about behavior. It does talk about our behavior very clearly, but it's about direction.

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The question Jesus has for us is not, are you doing religious things? It's what are you living for?

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What is it that you desire? What is it that you're seeking? What you desire, you will follow, and what you follow will shape your hope,

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and your hope will shape how you see, and ultimately, it determines your Master's God or something else in this world.

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You see, desires take us down a path, either to a treasure that is eternal or to something that ends so very quickly.

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One leads to emptiness and one leads to a good Father. Jesus isn't trying to overwhelm you with a list.

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He's calling you to something wonderful that transforms all of our behavior.

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And maybe this morning our heart doesn't see that or doesn't feel that. Instead, it feels the weight of expectation.

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The discouragement of saying, "I don't know that I can. I don't know if I will. I don't know if I even want to."

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I want you to hear these words and these promises.

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"And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh

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and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you

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and cause you to walk in my statutes and to be careful to obey my rules."

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Right? The same God who calls us to righteousness

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is the same God who calls us into relationship, who transforms us,

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who sends his Son to stand in our place, not just for our sins,

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but in terms of righteousness, giving

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that to us. And so the question as we move through

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this chapter, it's about direction.

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What is it that we desire? What is it that we're chasing? What is it that we're seeking?

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What is it that we truly, truly want? Father in heaven, thank you

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for allowing us these few moments

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together, allowing us to study about your

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word and to dive into your word. Just be with us as we look at

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these things over the next few weeks,

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that you would see how

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they lead us deeper into relationship

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with you, or

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if used only on the surface,

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can lead us into pride and

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arrogance and superiority.

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So help our feet follow our

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desires, and may that desire be to

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you. It's in Jesus' name

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we pray. Amen.

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We're going to go ahead and

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we're going to stand

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and we're going to sing, "Christ our

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hope in life and death."