2.23.20 - The Unexpected Attention of God (Kenny Camacho)
SCRIPTURE: Matthew 6
How do you know if you’re doing a good job? As Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount continues in Matthew 6, this question yields another “unexpected” answer: “your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” This teaching challenges the culture of pious performance among the religious Jews of Jesus’s time, and it can challenge us, too: when we see our religion as something we perform, either for our peers or even for God!, we run the risk of forgetting that our faith is intended to rewire us so we can see our world and its needs in the same way God does. When we care for others, pray, or even fast, we should do these things because they are important and part of living the way we are meant to live...not because we are hoping to seem more impressive to others.
REFLECTION/DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
Have you ever been in a situation where you really didn’t know if you were “doing a good job” or not? How did that affect your “performance”? Did you ever find yourself looking to others for validation or approval, even when it might not have been helpful?
In verses 1-18, Jesus talks about this in the areas of charity, prayer, and fasting. What is your reaction to these verses? What ties all 3 examples together?
Have you ever caught yourself “doing good” in order to impress other people?
On Sunday, Kenny said that our “piety” shouldn’t be a performance for others...or for God. What do you think he meant by this? What might be unhealthy about “performing” for God?
Jesus’s teachings in this chapter again emphasize that God sees our hearts, including our hidden desires and secret motivations. How does this make you feel?
Read verses 25-34 together. What do you think Jesus is trying to teach us here? How does this relate to our potential anxiety about a God who “sees in secret”?