Episode Transcript
Remember the sermon two weeks ago.
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It was from Matthew, kind of halfway in the midst
of that fifth chapter of Jesus, a sermon on the Mount,
and it was titled pour on the salt, turn on
the light, no other the words let people know you're around.
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And our Lord said in that reading, let.
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Your light shine before others, so that they may see
your good works and glorify your father in heaven. Well,
that sounds like, go ahead, shine on, do good stuff
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and let people see it. That kind of how it reads.
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But then.
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Jesus comes along and in the very next chapter.
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He drops this line.
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He says, given secret, pray in secret, fast in secret. Now,
wait a minute, is Jesus contradicting himself.
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Sounds like it, doesn't it, But really not at all.
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Jesus is making, I think, a vital and a critical
distinction between.
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Showing love and showing off.
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There's a big difference.
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Between showing love and showing off. And it breaks down
like this. He deals with three areas, giving and praying
and fasting, and.
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He starts off with giving.
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Is says, hey, when you give no trumpets, here, give
from the heart. Now let's put ourself in Jesus's day.
In Jesus's culture of what was kind of the common
practice around the synagogue of that day, giving to the poor,
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giving to persons in need. It wasn't just well, a
nice thing to do, we can think of, well, it's
a nice thing to do. Giving to the needy was
considered righteousness itself. In doing so, it declared yourself as
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a righteous person, and you weren't just generous, but by
doing so it revealed that you were holy.
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Now naturally, as you can imagine, how how.
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We are, how people are people.
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Some people they love to broadcast their generosity.
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Look at me, look at my name. They broadcast their generosity.
But Jesus here.
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Is essentially saying, hey, don't be that guy.
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Don't be that goal.
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He says, hey when you give, when you give to
the needy, don't blow a bunch of trumpets.
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Like the hypocrites do, for.
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They've already received their reward. And Jesus is saying, if
your goal in giving is an applause, well congratulations. If
that's your go, well good, that's what you'll get.
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But then Jesus gets a little deeper here.
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He says, but if you're giving is to give from
the heart, quietly, with no expectations of credit.
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Jesus says, God sees it, and God loves it.
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God loves it.
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So he got.
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In a little deeper, but he said, don't let your
left hand know what your right hand is doing. Now,
that's like saying, give so naturally and reflectively that you're
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not even calculating it.
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You're just generous your generous period.
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And I think the point that Jesus is getting at
here in generosity is that the win in giving, the
win in giving, is it in the recognition that you
may get. But the real win, the real joy, is
in the transformation that Christian stewardship creates, the transformation of
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what those kinds of stewardship giving opportunities can do to others,
and the transformation it creates in the lives of others,
but also.
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In your life as well. So Jesus gives us an
instruction on giving.
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Then he moves right along from giving to praying.
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Here's what our Lord had to say this and this
area of prayer is when.
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Jesus is really getting personal, and he is Italy is saying,
prayer is not.
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A performance, it's not an articulate read of a Shakespeare sonnet.
Have you ever been at a dinner where I'd say
someone the kind of pray a little long, too long,
if you could do that? And I wonder if they're
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wanting to win an Oscar for a monologue.
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And here's what I mean.
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He goes something like this, Oh, dear Lord, thank you
for this meal, thank you for the weather, thank you
for Aunt SU's onion surgery.
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Thank you for a world peace. And I'm hungry.
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But there's this idea that that the longer the prayer,
the more words that the the the fancier it is
that that that's going to going to.
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Impress the the heart of God.
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And Jesus addresses that very clearly. He said, hey, think
of this when you pray. When you pray, don't be
like those hypocrites where they love to pray standing in
the synagogue and on street corners to be seen by others.
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Think of that, says, don't be like that.
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Prayer isn't about sounding impressive. It's about being real, being real.
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And then.
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Jesus gets even a little more personal here. He says,
when you pray, go into your room, close the door and.
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Talk to your father, talk to your Father.
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No filters, no big words, no presser, just you and God,
You and.
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God for prayer.
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It really is essentially communication between two persons who love
each other. Communication with two persons who love each other.
And then after Jesus gives that instruction on personal piet.
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Here, he then gives what we all.
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Know as that model of prayer, what we call the
Lord's Prayer. And we've had a number of sermons series
on the Lord's Prayer. I will go through all that again,
that's not necessary, but just some things to highlight. If
you ever notice that the Lord's Prayer it's not long,
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it's short.
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It's not a long long prayer.
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It's not fancy, very basic, it's honest.
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And it covers.
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I think, what really matters. And if you think of it,
when you break it down, you see those five words
there and each of those major critical areas of our lives.
Jesus addresses that in the Lord's Prayer. For instance, when
(09:47):
you think of praise, you begin by adoring God, how
would be your name? Another saying God, You're good, and
then there's God's purpose to be done.
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Your will be done, Lord, not mine.
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Other words, get me in sync with you, not what
someone else tells me. I need to invest my energies in,
but I want to be in.
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Sync with what you would have me be about.
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And then provisions, give us our daily bread, which is
another way of saying, Lord, I need you in my
everyday stuff, my every day's stuff. And then words of
pardon in that prayer, forgive us our debts, grace and
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please and help me to show that pardon as well
as I have been forgiven. And then the fifth pe
there protection to pray for protection, deliver us from evil.
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In other words, Lord, keep me from wrecking.
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Myself, because left to our own devices, we can wreck
ourselves up quite a bit. It's not just keep me
from someone who's got a gun wanting to murder me,
but keep me.
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From wrecking myself. So are you ready for this?
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Here's the good news.
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The good news is.
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You don't need a theological degree to pray.
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You don't even need to be ordained to pray.
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You just need to be yourself, be who you are.
You can pray in traffic, you pray at your desk,
you can pray in the.
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Shower, and you can even pray you're mad.
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Especially then that's a good place.
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To pray, and then Jesus giving us very practical instructions
on living the Christian life, the christ falling life.
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He goes into the whole area of fasting and.
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He says, he says, hey, when you fast, wash your
face and just get on with life. Okay, Now, we're
from Wisconsin. We like to eat, we like brots, we
like grills and chills.
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You know. That's I know, that's not the top.
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Of the spiritual disciplines for those of us. It's not.
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But it's in the Bible, okay, and it's not everyone's
favorite spiritual discipline. But I understand this that fasting is
essentially and basically saying no to something you really want,
like carbs, so you can say yes to something that
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is better, like connecting with God.
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It's the whole reason for it, to connect with something better.
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But again, contextualizing this to the family of God, that
Jesus was a part of it, and how they practiced
their disciplines. Then some folks in Jesus's time they treated fasting.
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I'm going to think of it like.
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A spiritual fashion show, a spiritual fashion show, or a statement.
They'd go around and they looked miserable fasting.
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I'll do that. I'm joking, hoping.
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Because they looked miserable that someone who would ask, hey,
are you okay? I'm okay, I'm just fasting. I'm fasting
for the Lord. That's that's what's going on here. And
then Jesus says, hey, hold on, when you fast, wash
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your face, put on some elotion, act normal. It's not
about you showing your piety in.
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Front of others.
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Fasting isn't about pity. It is entirely about focus. And
when we enter into fasting, it's that we may focus
ourselves on more of God.
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In our life.
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That's between us as we go into that that secret place.
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Jesus talks about, So what's the point of all this?
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What's the point of why we.
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Give when we pray while we fast in secret in
the secret place?
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And it is essentially because no.
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When we else will see us as God sees us.
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And it is precisely in those three areas of Christian discipline,
those are the moments that we meet God, not others.
That we are to meet God in a way that
is deeper than any kind of public approval.
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It's intimate, it's honest, it's.
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Real, and that's the secret place that Jesus is talking about.
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Now, it's not a physical location.
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It's a posture, it's a rhythm, it's a relationship. And
as you're pricedly the point where we stop performing and
start connecting, and Jesus saying, don't perform, I want you
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to connect with the Holy God. Would you please stand
for prayer as we prepare ourselves for the sacrament of
holy communion. Lord God, we thank you for calling us
to something deeper, something real, in a world that's always
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asking us to perform, to post something, to prove something.
You invite us into the quiet, into.
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The secret place.
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Where it's just you and me, no filters, no applause,
no pressure. Help us to remember that the most meaningful
moments they don't.
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Need an audience.
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Teach us to give without needing credit, to pray without
trying to impress, and to fast without broadcasting our sacrifice.
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God, we don't want to chase attention.
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We want to chase You.
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Grow in us a hunger for higher ground, living not louder,
not flashier, just truer. Remind me it is daily that
you see what's done in secret, and that your reward
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is greater.
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Than anything this world could ever offer.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
So we pray Lord you take us deeper God, deeper
into trust, deeper into intimacy, deeper into the secret place
where the real stuff happens. In Jesus' name, ahmen,
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