My Pulpit Message - notes Grow in Private Piety. My Pulpit Message Notes are extracted from sermon preached at the Nairobi Baptist Church (NBC) Ngong Road on Sunday 20th February 2022. Preacher: Pastor Wangare Benson. Topic: Grow in Private Piety. Scripture: Matthew 6:1-34 Jesus invites people to do their righteous acts for the glory of one, moved/motivated by recognition by others. We love to be validated our God. But then for those who do their righteous acts for men by others. to see, as they do them, the wows, oohs and aahs they receive from Therefore living according to God’s standards is not fellow men, Jesus says, that is their reward. an easy task. It is impossible by human standards. We cannot do it. Therefore this points to the fact that we need as Sav- The rewards from fellow men, quickly fill up our hearts and minds, iour. We do not need an operation so that we can walk or run faster, but just as quickly they fade away like fireworks, but God’s rewards but so that we can fly. Only God can do this. We need Christ to form is lasting. our heart, to transform our minds, to conform our will so that we When our perspectives, motives and priorities are not can see just how good and pleasing His will is. aligned with God’s intent then we end up missing the mark entirely. Matthew 5-7 is called the Sermon on the Mount and Kingdom Reward - Matthew 6:3-18 Jesus in chapter six continues to raise the standard, throwing in Kingdom Perspective - Matthew 6:19-34 more complications. Jesus explains that the way people understood Kingdom Priority Matthew 6:33 the law and the way they were ….. keeping the law was substan“ dard as an outward expression. So Jesus challenges our motives, perspectives and pri- Jesus begins by telling us to be careful not to do our acts of righteous before men to be seen by them. If we do them in that orities. Jesus highlights The overarching theme manner we will not receive our reward from our Father, be it in three critical disciplines of of the Sermon on the Mount is giving alms, prayer, fasting or any other discipline that we are to which every Christian is ex‘What does it really mean; to be involved in. pected to practice, giving, be a disciple of Christ? To have prayer and fasting. He says, kingdom values and perspecwhen we do them…, not ‘if we ” tives? To have the priority of do them…’ Meaning that it is the kingdom of God to domiexpected of us to practice these nate our lives? To be followers of Christ? disciplines. We probably will not be able to capture these in this era when Jesus begins by telling us to be careful not to do our acts of He says that our motives matter, when He says, let your left hand righteous before men to be seen by them. If we do them in that not know what your right hand is doing. This is a difficult one to manner we will not receive our reward from our Father, be it in understand especially in this day and era of social media, when we giving alms, prayer, fasting or any other discipline that we are to be wake up, what we eat, where we go, who we go with, everything that involved in. He says if we do our acts of righteousness before men we do, we post it on social media. Therefore, it becomes difficult to to be seen by them, then he called us hypocrites. understand what is Jesus trying to say, when he says, let your left James tells us that when we pray we do not receive what we hand not know what your right hand is doing. Nothing is private ask for because our motives are wrong. This is what we do with fastanymore. ing and other disciplines that we are called to do. These are the act We live for the likes and emoji hearts. We keep checking to that Jesus called hypocritical. see, what have people said about what I posted. We live for the soHypocrisy has done a lot of damage. It has pushed cial media world and do many things to fit in and we have lost our- others away from the gospel and the kingdom of God. selves in doing so and have even lost others. If our focal point is not God, then we do more harm than good. If our motive is not to please God, Matthew 5 tells us Grow in private piety poses a challenge in this social media that ‘Our good deeds ought to glorify our Father in heaven’. When world. our light shines, our motive should be to glorify God. When we go Firstly privacy with social media world feels like it is no lon- out as the flavouring and preserving salt of the earth, our motive ger happening. should be to glorify God, otherwise, we receive a reward, but a temPiety is a whole different story. Our devotion is not there, or poral one, a fireworks of a reward. if it is there, it is on different things. A.W. Tower quoting Ignatius says, “Apart from Him, When Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter six, the bar is higher let nothing dazzle you.” so our aim is to glorify God. than we have set, as human beings then and now, we see how we are
Kingdom Reward Matthew 6:3-18
3 TT 141 | FEB 22nd - 28th | 2022
