Contents
• Performing righteous acts before men
• Giving to the needy
• Salvation and the act of forgiving others
• Treasures in heaven
• The necessity of relying upon Jesus

Before reading this commentary, I encourage you to first read the text of Matthew chapter six.

Verse 1

This is an easy error for any Christian to stumble into. The reason is that advancement in business and culture is based nearly entirely on merit and who you know. To advance in nearly any aspect of this life requires that someone you know, sees your performance and hard work. They then might advance you into a position of higher pay or greater authority.

But when it comes to Christianity, God doesn’t want you to try to impress people with your acts of righteousness and good deeds, because that ultimately leads to pride.

I once attended a very large church that had many employees, I, however, was a volunteer. One day, I was volunteering to help set up and run some technical aspects in which a live broadcast from a different location was going to be shown at the address where I was volunteering.

I was having difficulty getting the system to work. So I made a phone call to the man who was in charge of overseeing that live presentation. He was also the person in charge of organizing and recruiting the volunteers for the event, so with only a few minutes left before the start time and nearly 1,000 people seated in the auditorium, I felt it was urgent that I call him and let him know that I was having difficulty getting everything to work.

There was also an employee of the church who hadn’t shown up yet. When this employee finally arrived, he came straight to me and began scolding me and reprimanding me for having called his boss. After my phone call, the organizer had apparently called him wondering why he wasn’t there yet. This employee was very mad at me and chewed me out for having called his boss.

I then became furious at his response to me. This man had zero concern for the 1,000 people who had come there to worship God. If this live broadcast could not be shown because of technical difficulties, none of those people were going to be able to participate in that worship event. But this employee was only concerned with how he looked to his boss. The only thing that mattered to him was that his righteous acts and good deeds were seen by his employer. My phone call made him look bad and that’s the only thing that mattered to him. He took no responsibility for the fact that he was late, he only wanted to look good to his boss.

Verse 2

Imagine there’s a person who volunteers at a food pantry where he helps to feed homeless people. Then when he attends his church’s prayer meeting, he asks that people pray for this food pantry and the homeless people who go there. He describes how he volunteers there and the work that he does. His request for prayer, however, is actually a way of letting his whole church know that he gives to the needy. His boasting is disguised as a request for prayer. God judges the heart. There may be many people who are sincere with their prayer request, but others might use it as an opportunity to disguise their bragging.

The objective should be to check your heart. Analyze your motivation. If you want recognition for your righteous deeds, don’t bother to do them.

I took 4 years of choir in high school, afterwards I took a few years of singing lessons. When I was in my twenties and thirties, I had become a fairly good singer, (unfortunately I’m not anymore because I haven’t practiced in decades). In those days, however, our pastor would ask the congregation to stand and sing together. I would do as the pastor instructed. I would stand and sing. At the conclusion of the song, the pastor would tell the congregation to greet the people around them. Inevitably, nearly every Sunday, the person seated immediately in front of me would turn around and begin showering me with praises, telling me how beautifully I sing. They would tell me how they were worshiping to the sound of my voice and how wonderful my singing was. It didn’t matter where I sat, or who was in front of me. The outcome was the same, someone would turn around and praise me for my singing. So you can probably imagine it only took 4 or 5 times of this happening before I began to anticipate it. This anticipation led to me seeking these praises. One day, when I analyzed myself and checked my heart, I realized what I had been doing; that I had been seeking praises from people. I asked the Lord what I should do. The lord answered and said, “Don’t sing”. This was a novel idea to me because the pastor’s instructions every week were to stand and sing, but God told me “Do not sing”. So I stopped singing from the pews and chose not to sing unless the seats in front of me were empty.

Verses 3-4

When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Let’s be clear, the objective here is not total anonymity. If somehow someone secretly deposited money into my bank account, upon discovering it, I would assume the bank made an error and would go promptly to the teller to inform them of the mistake. Most good deeds can not be done in complete secrecy. Good deeds often require the cooperation of others in order to bring about their fruition. For example, if you want to pay a needy family’s electricity bill, you have to call the electricity company and let them know of your intent to pay that family’s bill. Another example; if you had a car you wanted to donate to a needy family. You have to go to the pastor or church deacons and ask them if there are any needy families at church that are without transportation. How else are you going to find such people? The point that Jesus is making is that you must not seek to be honored and recognized for your good deeds.

Verses 5-6

The same applies when it comes to prayer. If you are seeking to be honored by men, or are trying to impress people with your self-perceived holiness, you’re doing it wrong! Prayer is about having a relationship with God. Praying in order to receive praises from man is one aspect of using the Lord’s name in vain.

Verse 7

Again, the Christian faith is about having a relationship with Jesus Christ. The pagans in Jesus’s time thought that by babbling on and on with their many words, they could somehow force God to hear them.

Verses 9-13

Jesus offers an example of how to pray. The irony from verse 7 is that some Christian denominations will stand to their feet and recite the Lord’s prayer every Sunday as a memorized babbling chant. I recall visiting a church and receiving the impression that the people sounded robotic when they recited the Lord’s prayer.

When we examine the Lord’s prayer bit by bit, what do we see happening?

‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.’ This is giving praise to God.

‘Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’ We are seeking God’s will above our own.

‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ We want to rely upon God for our sustenance, provision and needs.

‘forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.’ This is asking the Lord to forgive us of our sins and reminding ourselves that we also must forgive those who sin against us.

‘lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’ This is asking the Lord to be our guide as we walk through life and to be our shield to protect us from demonic forces.

So let’s review: Praise, God’s will, reliance on God, God’s provision, forgiveness, God’s leading and deliverance.

Notice that Jesus’s prayer is not a two-thousand-word monologue. He is giving an example of a prayer that is not the babbling of many words.

I often find humor in our group prayer meetings at church because there will almost always be someone who feels the need to explain to God the circumstances surrounding a prayer. Now, in reality, I understand that such explanations are for the benefit of the other people in the prayer group, so that they can know what it is they’re praying about, but it’s humorous to me that the background information is presented as part of the prayer as though God needs to be informed of something.

“Dear Lord, Marybeth fell on her steps at home last Tuesday and hurt her knee. Now the doctors are telling her she may need surgery, but she was planning to visit her grandchildren in Florida next week, and this surgery might force her to cancel that trip, so we come before you to pray for healing for Marybeth.”

My personal opinion is that if it’s necessary to give some background information to prayer group members, do so before beginning to pray.

Verses 14-15

These two verses are a curiosity to me because if a person is saved, all their sins are forgiven. The Bible describes it this way:

As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)

Therefore, if you are saved (i.e. you’ve put your faith in Jesus Christ), even if you harbored some grudge against a person, (which is a sin) the Lord would forgive you of your sins. Again, as stated numerous times in this commentary, we can not earn salvation. Salvation is by faith. Thus, by rightly dividing the word of truth, we must dismiss the idea that verses 14 and 15 are interpreted as earning salvation through good deeds. That would be an error.

What then do the verses mean? Let’s think logically about this…whose sins will the heavenly father not forgive? Those who do not put their faith in Jesus Christ. Therefore, when Jesus says “if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours.” To whom is he referring? He must be talking about unsaved people. They are the only one’s whose sins will not be forgiven. Therefore, we can conclude that those who forgive men their trespasses must themselves be those who have already put their faith in Christ.

So, I am interpreting these two verses as being a type of external hint regarding a man’s internal condition. For the past several paragraphs Jesus has been warning against performing righteous acts to be seen by men. But now it would seem he’s flipping the example by showing us not what is external, but what is internal. If you are unwilling to forgive someone who has wronged you, it may be an indication that you are not yet saved. You have not yet put your faith in Jesus Christ. Because anyone who has put their faith in Jesus Christ, will come to a point at which they are willing to forgive those who have wronged them.

Verses 16-18

Again, as stated before, do not perform your righteous acts to be seen by men.

Verses 19-21

Treasures on earth is an easy concept to understand. Anything that moth and rust can destroy or which thieves can steal could be considered a treasure. If the intent of your heart is to place so much value on a thing that your inclined to store it up it is to you a treasure.

My wife and I joke about middle-class America. Whenever you are walking or driving through a middle-class American neighborhood, and someone has their garage door open, you are likely to see that their garage has no room for cars because it will be filled with boxes of stuff. These things are stored up treasures that the home owner never uses. My observations have been that the same is not true for rich neighborhoods. When the garage door of a large mansion is open, you’re likely to see only vehicles inside the garage. I could speculate on why this is, but that would be outside the scope of this commentary. The point I wanted to make is that it’s often the people who are not rich that choose to fill their whole garage with boxes of stuff they never use.

Anyone who loves his father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me…(Matthew 10:37)

We will get to Matthew chapter ten very shortly, but in this context just know that if you love anything more than Jesus, you are not worthy of Jesus. Thus, the danger of storing up treasures on earth is that you may love them more than Jesus.

Jesus’s advice is to store up treasure’s in heaven. What are treasures in heaven? Jesus is suggesting that what we do in this life can lead to the storing up of treasures in heaven. So what could those treasures be? They are eternal relationships. Jesus wants us to go out to all nations and share the gospel.

“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest.” (Matthew 9:37-38)

So imagine this; in this life you make it a priority to either share the gospel or to financially support those who do. Instead of spending your money on stuff, you use that money to support the spreading of the gospel. As a result of your efforts, people come into a relationship with Jesus Christ and at the end of their earthly life, they enter into the kingdom of heaven. Those same people, while in heaven, are going to come and find you in heaven. They’re going to say “Thank you, because of what you did, I came to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.” From that time onward, forever and ever, you and they will be the best of friends. Those eternal relationships will be to you a greater treasure than anything money could buy in this life.

Verses 22-23

The way in which you view the world will determine if you are full of light or full of darkness. If you go around, all the time, seeing everything as negative; if you spend all your time complaining about everything and everyone, you will be full of darkness. However, if you choose to see the good things in life and to give thanks to the Lord in all circumstances, your whole body will be full of light.

Verse 24

This verse goes back to the storing up of treasures. What you value most is what you will love the most. If you value money more than Jesus, you will end up loving money and hating Jesus.

Verses 25-34

Verse 25 begins with the word “therefore”, which means that what comes next in the Bible is the conclusion drawn from what was previously written. So let’s look back and review. Jesus said we can not serve both God and money, “therefore” he says, do not worry.

He is now about to tell us that we shouldn’t worry about what we will eat, drink or what we will wear (i.e. our basic needs).

I personally define basic human needs as being food, water, clothing, shelter, sleep, security, transportation, communication and relationships.

It appears to me that the overall idea being conveyed is that we should not prioritize above God, the earning of money for the meeting of our basic needs.

This is the seed sown among thorns mentioned by Jesus in Matthew chapter thirteen.

“The seed sown among the thorns is the one who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.” (Matthew 13:22)

If we prioritize money over God, and if we spend all our mental energy worrying about how we’re going to afford groceries and how we’re going to pay the bills, we are choking the word of God within us and are thus becoming unfruitful.

If, instead, we seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all these things will be added to us as well. In other words, God is our provider. If we prioritize God over the pursuit of money and the worries of meeting our basic needs, we can have assurance that God will meet our needs.

This doesn’t mean, however, that we can quit our jobs and just sit on the couch waiting for money to fall from the sky. God said, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your bread.” (Genesis 3:19)

Although we are required to toil, there is no need to prioritize work and finances above God. God will meet our needs. We should trust in him more than we trust in the money we are trying to earn.