The in depth study of the Book of Matthew chapter 6
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:
I greet you in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is my sincere Prayer that you are being Blessed even as you read this email.
We begin with Matthew chapter 6.
6:1 Jesus warns us not to give alms before men just to gain human recognition to ourselves. The one who does righteousness (or gives of his possessions) to the Lord before men merely to be seen of them has no reward from the Father in heaven. True worship results from the desire to serve God, not men, since pleasing God is far more important than pleasing men. Loss of reward is incurred by gaining the reward of human recognition as an end in itself.
6:2 Therefore in all of our giving we are not to sound a trumpet before us in a hypocritical manner of gaining attention to ourselves. This metaphorical phrase means do not "publicize" your righteousness, for such performers are hypocrites (from the Greek, "play actor"). Thus, Jesus warns against acting like the hypocrites, whose aim is to win human praise.
6:3 Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth means that one's giving of finances to the work of the Lord should be done so freely and spontaneously that his right hand cannot keep up with his left hand.
6:4 The real key to success in this kind of giving is found in the phrase thy Father which seeth in secret...shall reward you. Giving by faith, out of a cheerful heart, depends on our total confidence in the fact that God does indeed see us and knows our needs. These verses certainly do not condemn public giving, but rather they speak against giving our of the wrong attitude and for the wrong motive.
6:5, 6 Praying, like giving, is to be done to the Lord, not to man. Jesus said that people love to pray standing in the synagogues. Both a time and place for prayer were customary in the ancient Jewish synagogue (Mark 11:25). Therefore, Jesus is not condemning the practice of public prayer, but rather the misuse of it. Because of the statement enter into thy closet, some have suggested that all public prayer is wrong. This would be contrary to the rest of New Testament statements about prayer, commandments and restrictions regarding prayer, and examples of prayer meetings (Acts 12:12). The principle here is that the believer should not make a show of his prayer nor of the answers he receives to prayer in such a way as to call unnecessary attention to himself.
6:7 Jesus warned that we use not vain repetitions (Greek battalogeo denotes babbling or speaking without thinking). Such prayer was characteristic of the heathen. A good example of this is found in the ecstatic babblings of the false prophets in the Old Testament and in the prophets of Baal who confronted Elijah on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:26-29).
Yours in Jesus Christ,
Bishop William B. Caractor
