We're gonna continue our journey through the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6 today, verses one through four. And today we're gonna see that our Lord Jesus shifts from comparing the false teaching of the scribes and Pharisees with the true teaching of scripture, and begins to get at some of their motives for such false teaching. And as we'll see, they love the glory that comes from men more than the glory of God. We begin reading in Matthew 6 verse 1 through verse 4. Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men to be seen by them. Now, some of you might have that you do not do your righteousness. We'll get to that. I don't know why it is that there's this section here of the Sermon on the Mount a little more than the average number of textual variants in the Greek manuscripts for some reason, and rather than act like they're not there, I choose to just confront them and explain them to you, so I hope that's not burdensome to you, but we have different translations floating around, and I want you to understand what's going on, and I want you to be confident in God's word, because as we all see today, and as we've seen throughout, they really don't amount to any real difference, such as the wonderful, miraculous work that God has done in preserving his word for us. At any rate, verse one in the New King James says, take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men to be seen by them, otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven. Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues. Now in this context, remember the hypocrites are the scribes and Pharisees, right, the false teachers that he's been dealing with. As we saw, remember when we did an overview of the Sermon on the Mount, one of the themes that runs throughout is don't be like Christ, right, have a genuine righteousness that comes from the Lord, don't be like the hypocrites, and don't be like the heathen. Those are the things that keep coming up, right, and we'll see that as we journey through. And here the focus is more on the hypocrites, but it would include the heathen as well and their false religions. And so he says, Here it's the Jewish hypocrites, because he says, therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. that your charitable deed may be in secret and your father who sees in secret will himself reward you openly. And of course, Jesus is going to go on to deal with not just almsgiving, right? Giving to the poor is what he's dealing with here when he speaks of charitable deeds, but prayer and then fasting will follow as three ways in which we're not to be like the hypocrites. Today, of course, we're gonna focus on the giving aspect. With that in mind, let's go to the Lord in prayer and then by God's grace and with the help of the spirit, we'll see if we can figure out what's going on here a little better. Holy Father, I do thank you for your wonderful love for us. I thank you for your reminder this morning that you chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be your children. Those of us who know you, know you first and foremost because you chose us. That's what it says there. And there's a great mystery here because we know we genuinely chose you and that somehow you worked it in your divine plan that we would do so. We don't understand it. It's far beyond us. We have to throw up our hands with the prophet David and say, such knowledge is too high for me. I cannot attain it. And just embrace the mystery of your wondrous love We don't understand your workings, Lord. We're just glad you work them on us. We're glad that you have shown us your love and that we love you because you first loved us. And we come, Lord, out of love for you this morning, desiring to hear what you have to say to us in your word. And I pray that you will fill us with your spirit and with understanding, as always, Lord, that we might understand what our Lord Jesus desired us to learn from his teaching here. As always, Lord, I pray that you'll convict us where we need to be convicted of sin. You'll encourage us in all the ways we need encouragement. and that as a result will become more like Christ. We pray these things in the name of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. I ran across a quote from a guy named Robert South, an old Anglican Bishop who lived in the later 17th to early 18th centuries, who said this, if there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives. And although I think that statement makes a good point about the importance of giving, I can't help but think that our Lord Jesus would have put it another way. Perhaps Jesus would have said something like, if there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it is by what he does for God's glory, rather than the approval of men. And that when he gives, He does so for God's glory because that's what Jesus is concerned about ultimately in all that we do. It's the very thing that he deals with in the passage before us this morning and we'll see that far more important to our Lord Jesus than what a man gives is the way in which he gives it as well as the motivation for giving it. And this is where he takes issue with the religious hypocrites of his day. whom he has been correcting so far throughout this sermon that he gave. We'll see this beginning in verse one where we read, take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men to be seen by them. Otherwise you have no reward from your father in heaven. Now, before we start to unpack the meaning of the text in more detail, we need to discuss a couple of issues that sometimes bother people. about this verse. At first, there's a textual problem I want to confront, I've already alluded to. And then secondly, there's a logical problem that I want to confront. And we're going to see that both of these problems are more apparent than real. They look like problems when you first think about it, but they turn out to not be a problem at all. At first, there's this textual problem, the textual variant in this verse that I think needs to be discussed. Although the majority of Greek manuscripts have the Greek word translated charitable deeds here, it's a word that actually had become a technical term for almsgiving, giving to the poor, such as blind beggars and so forth, to help them to live. There are some older manuscripts that have a more general word here, meaning righteousness or an act of righteousness. As you can tell probably from preceding weeks, I lean in the majority text direction. For those of you who know something about textual criticism, I lean in the majority text direction rather than what they call the critical text, which means I tend to go with the readings that you're going to find in the New King James. More often than not, not always, I lean that way. It's not a, no, I'm not going to go to the stake for that, right? The majority manuscripts here just start off with Jesus talking about charitable deeds, but there are some that just say righteousness. The New American Standard Version is a good example of that. It says, beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them, otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. Now, if one follows this reading that's in the New American Standard Bible, Then our Lord was making a deliberate reference back to a key statement made in the preceding context. It's a key statement to which we've gone back many times in our study, and that's in chapter five, verse 20. The statement that kicked off this comparison of genuine righteousness with that of the scribes and the Pharisees, and the ways in which we're to be different from them, right? And then also the heathen. There Jesus says, for I say to you that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. One of the ways then that our righteousness is to exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees is that it is not merely to be done to be seen by men. And so if you follow that reading, What you see here is Jesus deliberately connecting this back to that. And then after giving us the general principle about not practicing your righteousness to be seen by men rather than for the glory of God, right? He gives three examples, almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. That makes sense. You could see that Jesus could well have said that, right? However, even if one follows the reading in the New King James Version, this is still an example of a righteousness that exceeds that of describes in Pharisees in this context, because that's the hypocrisy he has in mind here, as we've seen. And there's still a general principle here that may be applied more broadly, as Jesus' further examples of prayer and fasting will demonstrate. So once again, we see that there's a textual variant here that really doesn't alter the meaning of Jesus' teaching in any significant way. It still amounts to the same thing. We're supposed to have a righteousness that exceeds that of the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, and as we practice that righteousness, it ought to show. What are some of the ways we practice that righteousness? Charitable deeds, right? Giving, prayer, fasting. Those are some religious things that people do, and we're supposed to do them in a way that's genuinely righteous and not like the scribes and Pharisees. And no matter which text you take, the New American Standard that I've used as an example, the New King James Version, that's still the teaching of this passage. So once again, we find that we have the teaching of Jesus preserved, despite the occasional scribal error in the transmission of the text, that we can usually figure out what they are. In this case, the two words have a Sunni ending that looks the same. So you can see how a scribe could have made it, there's two words that have the same ending. And maybe he looked up from his text and wrote the wrong one. And that's how they, Many scholars would say the New King James came up with its reading. They must have jumped ahead in the text for a second, saw charitable deeds, and stuck it in the wrong place because it has the same ending as righteousness, right? That's possible. Either way, this text is still teaching the same thing. Nothing alters the teaching of our Lord Jesus. But if one prefers the reading of the New King James version, which is the text I'm following this morning, then we're just gonna see Jesus starting right in with the almsgiving example. as, again, another example of how we're to have a righteousness better than that of the scribes and Pharisees, and of how we're to be different from both the religious hypocrites, and as we'll see in our further study of the Sermon on the Mount, also the heathen and their false religion. So that's the first thing I wanted to deal with here. Hopefully it was clear and didn't leave you confused at all. Second, as for the logical problem, There are some who say that Jesus is being inconsistent here with his previous teaching in this very passage, in this very Sermon on the Mount. How, they wonder, can Jesus warn us not to do our good works before men here when he has previously told us to do just the opposite? Remember what he said in another key verse earlier in the Sermon on the Mount, chapter 5, verse 16. There he said, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven. So they say, well, wait a minute, Jesus couldn't have said both these things. Well, Jesus is a far more nuanced thinker than people give him credit for. People who are looking for problems point out these kinds of things. But people who actually pay attention to the context and to their overall teaching of Jesus see that there's really no problem at all. The key to seeing what Jesus means, and thus how there really is no contradiction here, is to be found in the differing motives which stand behind these two admonitions. In chapter 5, verse 16, the context is the persecution that Jesus' followers can expect in response to their righteousness. If you look earlier in verses 10 through 12 of chapter five, you see that. In such circumstances, we may be tempted to lose our saltiness in the world, because we're supposed to be salt, as he said in verse 13 of chapter five, and to hide our light under a bushel, about which he warned us in verses 14 and 15, leading up to verse 16, right? But if we really want God to be glorified in our lives, we must not give in to these sorts of temptations, when we come under persecution, especially. when people resist us or look down on us for living for Christ. Instead, we need to let the world see our good deeds that our Father in heaven may be glorified. And the motive here is clearly the glory of God. You see, if we cared what people thought, we would hide our light under a bushel. We wouldn't let them see our good works. Why? Well, because then we'd be seeking the glory of men, that's why. So when we're tempted to not let people see our good works because we care more about the glory of men than the glory of God, we should resist that and care more about the glory of God than men. However, here in chapter six, Jesus begins to deal with religious practices which one may be tempted to perform without any real intent or interest in the glory of God, but rather with an interest in one's own glory before men, because not everybody is an anti-religious person. There are some religious people out there who want to be seen as religious, but not for the glory of God at all, but so that they can impress other religious people. They have an interest in glory before men. For example, in verse two, Jesus says, therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. So Jesus isn't being inconsistent. He's dealing with two different kinds of scenarios. He knows there are times that we're gonna be tempted not to let our good works be seen by men for fear. because we care too much what those men think, and we don't care enough about the glory of God. On the other hand, he knows in certain circumstances, we're gonna want our good works to be seen by certain men because we care about the glory of men rather than the glory of God. And Jesus says, whatever you do, you're supposed to do it for the glory of God. And sometimes that means making sure you let your good works be seen, and other times it means not doing that. Pretty simple. Doesn't take, you know, it's not rocket surgery, as they say, to figure this out. As A.B. Bruce has rightly concluded, we're to show when tempted to hide, and hide when tempted to show. He's probably on the right track there in trying to assess this. Anyway, now that we've addressed the matter of the differing text before us, as well as the matter of this supposed contradiction in Jesus' teaching, well, let's try to get into the meaning of the text a little bit more. When Jesus says in verse one, take heed, that you do not do your charitable deeds before men to be seen by them. Here he's confronting a problem which characterized many of the Jews in his day, and I dare say many Christians in our day as well. They often sought the approval or the accolades of men. That was their whole focus. In fact, Paul, later in his life, after having become a Christian and followed Christ for a long time, looked back at these days and he said he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. When it came to fake righteousness that impressed other people, you probably couldn't have outdone him, right? But he learned the true righteousness that came from Christ and gave all that up, gave up all that hypocrisy. And there are Christians, professing Christians, who can be like that today. But seeking the approval and glory of men first, is to minimize or ignore the importance of God's approval and glory as supreme. And as we've seen in our look at the previous context, what's motivating Christ and what he says should motivate us is always the glory of God first, and that should dictate in every kind of situation what we do. And these people aren't concerned about that, even though they may profess to be. The same kind of problem is stressed elsewhere by Jesus and also by the Apostle John. For example, Jesus said this in John 5, John 5, 39 through 44, when he's dealing with these religious hypocrites, these scribes and Pharisees are constantly attacking him. In John 5, beginning of verse 39, our Lord says, you search the scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life. And these are they which testify of me. but you are not willing to come to me that you may have life. I do not receive honor from men, but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you." They profess to love God, but they don't really love God. That's what he's saying. I have come in my father's name, he says, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, him you will receive. How can you believe who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? Now, the King James says, how can you believe who receive honor from another? But the Greek word is doxa, and it's typically translated glory. And that's the word that Jesus is using in Matthew 6. Their problem was they seek glory that comes from men and not the glory that comes from God. They profess to love God. but they really love themselves. The Apostle John, not surprisingly, agrees, because he learned this from Jesus. In John 12, verses 42 and 43, John 12, verses 42 and 43, the Apostle John writes, nevertheless, even among the rulers, that would be the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Sanhedrin, Many believed, but because of the Pharisees, they did not confess him. Nicodemus would have been one of those guys who was initially afraid to confess his faith in Christ. But we have good example that later, he was a ruler of the Jews who did believe. And then he says, they're fearful this way because of the Pharisees. They didn't confess him lest they should be put out of the synagogue, for they love the praise of men more than the praise of God. Now we know Nicodemus got over that, right? Maybe not all of them did. But that word for praise there, in the Greek text, it's doxa again, glory. You could say, for they love the glory of men rather than the glory of God. There's no middle ground here in any of these passages that we're looking at. If we seek the praise of men first, that's the idea, we're really not seeking the praise of God. And we won't have his praise either, as Jesus highlights when he says further in verse one, otherwise you have no reward from your father in heaven. He goes on to expand upon his meaning in the next verse, in verse two when he says, therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not set a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. Now, there are several points, I think, emphasized here. First, notice that Jesus assumes that we will give to the poor. He's just assuming that's what his followers will do. Notice that he says when you do a charitable deed or give alms, not if you give alms. I wonder if his assumption would be true of you and me. He's assuming we'll be the kind of people that want to give to help poor people. He's assuming that about every one of us who trusts in him as our Lord and Savior. Is this assumption right about you? Good thing to think about. Are we the kind of people that seek opportunities to help or to give to those in need? That's the first thing. He assumes that we will do that. Hmm. Hope we're not letting him down. I don't think most of us are, but I hope we're not. A second, Jesus assumes that we may be tempted to seek the glory of men. Otherwise, why warn us about it? He's assuming we're all going to face this temptation, not just scribes and Pharisees, but his followers as well will face the same temptation. In other words, he's not assuming in and of ourselves that we're any better than them, right? Remember, when he's talked about righteousness back in the Beatitudes, he's talked about a righteousness that exceeds the scribes and Pharisees. It's a righteousness that comes from God. Not from ourselves, ultimately. So he's assuming we're gonna be tempted to seek the glory of men, or else why would he warn against it when he says, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and the streets that they may have the glory comes from men. Now what did Jesus mean when he said, do not sound a trumpet? In answer to that question, we know that he may have been speaking either metaphorically or literally. That's usually your option, right? Although people today say literally and mean metaphorically, and that I find very confusing. I'm an old time let literal mean literal guy, just so you know. But if speaking metaphorically, Jesus meant something like the expression we use to refer to a showy person as blowing his own horn, right, or something like that. But I suspect that that saying came from this text. Right? So I don't think that Jesus was using it. I think we developed it from him, perhaps. So I think if speaking literally, which is more likely, Jesus was probably referring to an old practice of blowing trumpets to announce fasts, fasts which would also include almsgiving. As D.A. Carson has noted, public fasts were proclaimed by the sounding of trumpets. At such times, prayers for rain were recited in the streets. And it was widely thought that almsgiving ensured the efficacy, excuse me, the efficacy means it causes it to happen, right? Of the fasts and the prayers, that these occasions afforded golden opportunities for ostentation. So anyway, they had this practice when important feasts were gonna happen, they blow these trumpets. And the scribes and Pharisees had a way of making sure they were there when this happened, where they could give their, and people were coming, they hear the trumpets and they come around, and they would be standing there giving alms to people and saying their prayers publicly so everybody could see what righteous, quote unquote, people that they were. That's the kind of situation that we should have in mind. And Jesus says, you shouldn't be like that. Third here, Jesus warns us that the glory of men is the only reward for such behavior. This is what he meant, it's what he was stressing when he said, assuredly I say to you, they have their reward. He's already said you won't have a reward from the Father, right? If you're seeking the glory of men. You'll have a reward, he says, but it'll be the glory that you seek. That of men. As one commentator has observed, they really were not giving, but buying. They wanted the praise of men and they paid for it. He's probably right about that. I was reminded of a story that I read about Charles Spurgeon and his wife. According to a story in an old chaplain magazine, they would sell but refuse to give away the eggs that their chickens laid. Even close relatives were told, you may have them if you pay for them. As a result, some people labeled the Spurgeons as greedy and grasping people. They accepted the Spurgeons, the criticisms without defending themselves. And only after Mrs. Spurgeon died was the full story revealed. And she had outlived her husband, as I recall. All the profits from the sale of the eggs went to support two elderly widows. Because the Spurgeons were unwilling to let their left hand know what their right hand was doing, they endured all those attacks in silence. Because they didn't want to draw attention to the fact that they were helping to support two widows. So just as the Spurgeons were willing to do, so should we be willing to give to those in need. And not only should we be willing to give secretly, as Jesus will go on to talk about, without seeking to enhance our reputation. But perhaps we should even be willing to do so at the expense of our reputation. as our departed brother Charles Spurgeon and his wife were willing to do. I think they were trying to live out what Jesus said here. And by God's grace, I think they did, at least on that point. I guess the question for us would be then, would we be so interested in the glory of God and so disinterested in the glory of men that we would be willing to give in such a way not drawing attention to ourselves. Now, as we've seen, there's times when you let your good works be seen before men. And there's examples of people letting their giving be seen, not only in the Old Testament, say King David, but in the New Testament. When everybody was selling what they had and bringing it to the church, everybody saw what they were bringing. And of course, Ananias and Sapphira wanted to be seen by men to be giving, but really weren't giving in the way they were pretending to. We know what happened to them. So remember, Jesus has in mind what in each situation brings glory to God and seeks his glory first, and that the approval of men is what matters. Avoiding drawing attention to ourselves in giving is not the only point Jesus wants to make, though. He goes on to say, And verse six in the first part of verse four, or verse three, excuse me, in the first part of verse four, when you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. What a figure of speech. That your charitable deed may be in secret. And here Jesus takes his thought further and emphasizes that there's even a sense in which we must keep ourselves, or keep our giving, even from our own view in a way. Now, how can you do that? How can you keep yourself from knowing what you're giving? Now, Jesus doesn't literally expect that. He's speaking figuratively. Although we may not allow others to see our giving, we may nonetheless become self-congratulatory or prideful in our giving. And I think that's what Jesus is getting at when he says, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Not only should you not want the glory of other men, you should want your own prideful glory, right? From yourself. You should want God's glory. Perhaps we may be tempted to pat ourselves on the back for our secret giving. Well, we shouldn't do that either, because that's another way of taking the glory away from God, and not giving it to other men, but giving it to ourselves. And we're men, we're men, right? This seems to be the kind of thing Jesus is concerned about when he says, as I said, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. I think a commentator named Bob Deffenbaugh was probably on the right track when he wrote this. I'm quoting him now. Just as true love is to be forgetful of wrongs committed against it. Very exciting, 1 Corinthians 13, five. So Christian charity is forgetful of the good deeds done for others. We catch a glimpse of this kind of forgetfulness in the teaching of Christ in Matthew 25, 31 and following. When the son of man returns to take his throne on the earth, he reminds his faithful ones of their kindness to him. He writes, this is what Jesus says, then the king will say to those on his right, Come, you are blessed of my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me in. But those who are thus commended respond, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And Bob says, this is the kind of forgetfulness that we all need to have. I don't remember that. Why? Because my focus wasn't on congratulating myself for anything. Oh, yeah, I guess that did happen. Now that you bring it up, should be more the kind of attitude that we should have. And I think the sight, the looking ahead there to Matthew 25 by Bob Defenbaugh was a good thing. I think it anticipates the reward that Jesus will grant to assure us is ours in the last part of verse four. when he says, and your father who sees in secret will reward you openly. Now, what reward does Jesus have in mind? Might it be in this life? I suppose it's possible. But I think the focus in this passage is on the future heavenly rewards. As we saw, because we went back to these texts last week, For example, Jesus spoke of a future reward in heaven. Remember in chapter five, verse 12, he said, rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. So when we endure persecution in faith, seeking God's glory rather than the glory of men, we should rejoice. We may not be getting the glory of men that so many people want, But we're seeking the glory of God, and we will be rewarded openly in a heavenly future reward. We also looked ahead in the Sermon on the Mount to see that our Lord Jesus spoke of laying up treasure in heaven. And that has to be connected to this idea of the heavenly reward, I would think. He goes on to say in Matthew 6, 19 through 21, which we'll get to in a few months, probably. He says, do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys, where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Where does he want our hearts to be? On a heavenly reward. but that heavenly reward is tied into seeking the glory of God first. It's an interesting thing here that in seeking the glory of God above all else, we're actually doing the very best thing for ourselves in the process. Isn't that interesting? We'll see this when we look at Jesus' model prayer, what many call the Lord's Prayer in future weeks. God's glory and our good are not two separate ends in his plan. They're interlinked. The very best thing you can ever do for yourself is to seek God's glory first. And in seeking God's glory first, you're doing the very best thing you could ever do for yourself. That's the way God planned it. So the odd thing is the people that think selfishly they're doing the best thing for themselves by seeking the glory of men are really doing the worst thing for themselves ultimately. So Jesus doesn't mind saying to us, hey, Seek a heavenly reward. So long as we remember that comes through seeking God's glory first, not anything for ourselves. It's a great paradox in a way. It's one of these paradoxical things in the teaching of Jesus. But it's true. It's true. You want the very best thing for yourself, a heavenly reward, everlasting life forever with Christ? You seek God's glory first. and not the praise of men. It's grace upon grace, isn't it? With such passages and thinking in mind here, I'd like to conclude with what I think is a helpful quote from Warren Wearsby. He says this, we should give only to please God and receive his praise. If we give to win the praise of others or to be able to compliment ourselves, We get the immediate reward, praise, but we lose the eternal reward. We cannot get our reward twice, so we must decide which one we want. Yeah, he's right. And we all know which one we want, don't we? We want the heavenly reward because we want God's glory first. That's what matters most to us. And that's a reward in itself. Seeing God glorified is a great reward, to see God glorified in our lives. And to see others praise Him because they see our good works and glorify Him. May God continue to work in our hearts a deeper desire for His own glory than our own. That's my prayer. knowing that he will graciously reward us for what he himself has enabled us to do. Isn't that amazing? It's grace upon grace. He enables us to seek his glory first, and then he rewards us for it. It's all grace. It's all undeserved. What a wonderful plan he has for us. He likes to give us good things. and he's forever in heaven gonna do that, and it's all gonna be undeserved. What a wonderful heavenly father we have. When you think of him like this, the way Jesus presents him to us and the way the scriptures present him to us, he's so hard not to love. It's such a wicked thing that we don't love him like we should, isn't it? But I think, I think those of us here at Emanuel, I think we do love Him, and I think we do recognize the temptation not to love Him, and I think we do all want to love Him more every day. And we do want to seek His glory first. And if there's times that means we do things in secret, we do them in secret. And if there's times that means we're brave and we do things openly, then we do things openly, but always with His glory as our highest priority. Let's pray. Holy Father, I do thank you for your word. It's my hope I've been able to communicate what I think are the intentions of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. What are your intentions in this passage for us? I hope I've been able to do so in a way that's clear and understandable and that brings the most glory to you. Lord, I know the people here at Emanuel, and I'm happy to be amongst people of genuine righteousness. I don't look out and see scribes and Pharisees in this room. I see genuine followers of Jesus. Because, as we were reminded this morning, you called us, you chose us, you have been working in us. We're saved by grace through faith and not of ourselves, but it is the gift of God. It is not of works, lest anymanship boast. For we are your workmanship, created anew in Christ for the good works that you have prepared beforehand for us to walk in. It's all you're doing, and yet your reward is for it, because you just love to give to us. What a great father you are. Help us to be like you, wanting to give like that always. grace upon grace to other people as we've received from you. Lord, if there is any here who has not yet come to know you as his or her savior, it is our prayer that you would please do for them what you've done for us. Work through your spirit in their hearts that they might trust in Christ. Repent of their sins. receive the free gift of everlasting life and forgiveness of sins, and look forward to their heavenly reward with us. We'll give you all the glory for what you do in answer to these prayers, because as always, we're convinced that you're the only one who deserves that glory. Pray these things in the name of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. As always, I thank you once again for your kind attention.