Sermon On The Mount

Rewards

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 12-25

Genre:

Track: 12

Dictation Name: Sermon on the Mount – 12

Location/Venue:

Year: 1980

As we face a world that is in bondage to evil and in the hands of Thine enemies we come to Thee and Thy word that by Thy word and by Thy spirit we may be empowered with a holy boldness and with power to overcome. Thou hast called us, oh Lord, to victory and Thou hast told us that this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. We pray our Father that even as of old it was David who slew the lion and so today the Davids in Thy church may slay the Goliaths of our time. Bless us to this purpose we beseech Thee, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Our scripture is in Matthew 6:16-24. We’ve been studying the Sermon on the Mount and we continue now with the subject of Rewards. Matthew 6:16-24.

“Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

17 But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face;

18 That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.

19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!

24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

Man is a purposive creature, he is created in the image of God and he needs meaning in his life. There is no sure way to destroy a man then to rob his life of meaning. We know that in the old czar’s regime if there were criminals who were especially resistant and who fought the prison system and were a danger the czar’s rulers who were by and large quite humane had one certain way of breaking such a man. It was to put him on a work detail that was totally meaningless. They would tell him to go out into the prison yard and there would be a pile of rocks at one end and he was to pick up those rocks and carry them to the other and they were all carried over to the other side he was to pick them up and carry them back again to the other side and to do that endlessly. No point in it, no point in it and that is what would break the man. The men would much prefer to go out on some sort of construction job, really hard labor, but to do something that was senseless, meaningless, would break their will. It was a certain way to break a troublemaker. Man is a purposive creature, he needs meaning to his life. He cannot tolerate emptiness, he has to have a goal. One of the tests used some years ago which was quite revealing in determining how long people in a hospital were going to live, people who were very critically ill, was to ask them about their plans for the future. Now if a man were thinking ahead a month, three months, six months, to getting out and hoping to do this and that his chances of recovery were very good but if he were thinking no further than that night, am I going to sleep well tonight or when will be my next painkilling drug his chances of recovery were poor. In other words when there was not a meaing to his future that he could look forward to and say I want to do thus and so, I have a purpose, he died easily and readily.

Man needs a purpose. Now our Lord in this passage talks about reward, He says verily they have their reward. Thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly and again and again He refers to reward. Again and again in this passage and elsewhere and he says consider, what is your reward? Where are you looking for a reward from, from God or man? He begins by citing the Pharisees and their fasting. Now in the Old Testament there was one fast a year on the Day of Atonement from sunrise to sundown, at sundown there was a banquet. The only fast of the year on the Day of Atonement. But the Pharisees fasted twice a week or at least they pretended to whether they did or not and He says of course the hypocrites put on a sad countenance for they disfigure their face that they may appear unto men to fast. They want to look very holy and righteous. I encountered a man once who took very exception to some of us, ministers, who were telling some jokes. Such levity was not godly nor holy and he felt it should be rebuked. He was a Pharisee.

“But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face;

18 That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.”

If you are doing something, if you are fasting and praying, if you decided that there is something for which you need to fast and dedicate a day of prayer then that’s between you and God, don’t advertise the fact. Because if you want to look holy to men rather than to God God isn’t going to pay any attention to you, you’ll get your reward from men. Oh isn’t John Doe super holy, he fasts twice in a week and he prays by the hour. I know men who were very much addicted to making a point of the fact that they got up at five or six in the morning and spent two or three hours on their knees in prayer. That’s Phariseeism! Now our Lord says they think they shall be heard by their much speaking.

So our Lord says who is your audience, God or man? Are you performing for men, well you have your reward from men, so layup not for yourself treasures upon earth for moss and rust doth corrupt and where thieves break through and steal but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven and how do we lay up treasures in heaven by living unto God, by not being concerned with what men do, what men say, but what God requires of us. There is a verse in scripture that says avoid every appearance of evil and it’s a sad thing that that is so misunderstood. Because in the Greek and in the original meaning of appearance it doesn’t mean what appearance means now. Avoid the looks of evil, that’s what it means now when you say avoid the appearance of evil but as it was written originally in the Greek and in the King James it means avoid every actual occasion of evil. I have put in an appearance here rather tardily, but I have put in an appearance which means in the old fashioned sense I am here, so when the scripture says avoid every appearance, every real manifestation of evil it’s not saying avoid something that doesn’t look right but avoid that which is evil. To avoid what doesn’t look right is to put on a front but what Scripture says is to avoid the reality of evil. Treasures upon earth or treasures in heaven. What are your priorities? We have a purpose in life, are our priorities what men will say and think or are they what God will think. Now we have in the bible God’s account of what Joseph was and as far as most people are concerned Joseph is one of the great men of the bible. Certainly the story of Joseph is one of the most moving in the bible but look at it this way. Supposing you were living then and there, Joseph to his dying day had on the record a prison sense for attempted rape. It was a fraud, he was fraudulently accused and fraudulently convicted. He was taken out of prison because Pharaoh wanted him out, Pharaoh didn’t care whether he had a clean bill of health or not.

So in the eyes of men Joseph was an ex-rapist who through some lucky breaks became prime minster over all of Egypt. Now, some people would have spent all their time trying to clear their name but Joseph had too much to do under God to be concerned with those things, you use the difference? What our Lord is saying, it isn’t what men think of us that’s important but how we stand with God. Where are the priorities. Well in the last few months I’ve been back and forth across country, I’ve been in quite a few states and I’ve seen a lot of billboards advertising candidates and one of the things I’ve noticed again and again as some candidate asks people to vote for him, ‘people come first with joe doe’. People come first, is it any wonder our country is in the mess it is? If people come first with us truth does not come first, God does not come first, justice does not come first. We live in a world of Pharisees who put the priority on appearances and upon man and upon making an impression on them. People came first with the Pharisees. The Pharisees pretended to be greatly concerned with people.

“The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”

How we are determines how we see. Physically if we’re colorblind we’re not going to see colors in this world. If we are morally blind, if we are humanistic, if we are man centered rather than God-centered we are going to miss a great deal of reality. We’re going to see things humanistically, our vision will be darkened. We will therefore read reality in terms of our own darkness. But if we see in terms of the word of God, if we see as new creatures in Christ then indeed we shall see clearly, then indeed our eyes will be open, we will be able to understand, to comprehend reality. Our priorities will be right. No man, our Lord says, can serve two masters. It’s an impossibility and who we serve will be the one we look to for our pay, for our reward because man must have meaning, he must have a reward. The fallacy of so many idealistic programs for new societies is that they forget that fact. The men who financed the pilgrims to come to the new world wanted it to be a communal work arrangement, communistically we would say. And what happened, when you read the account by the governor he tells us, he says nobody wanted to work.

The women made every excuse not to go out into the fields, they had to do something to take care of the children or they had a sick baby or one reason or another and the men, they did everything to get out of the heavy work and nothing was done. So in violation of their charter and without waiting to consult London the second spring they said everybody gets so much land and you work your own and the governor said nobody had to tell the women to go out into the fields, they were making a start and they wanted to get something going with their husbands, a good home, a good farm and the children were going out and working because it was theirs, it was a reward. And very quickly there was success and they were prosperous. And our Lord says now if you look for your reward from men you will be judged of God but if you look for your reward from God you are going to have take some lumps from men. That’s the way reality is. In Deuteronomy 28 God in His word sets down very clearly the principles of reward and punishment. He says all these things will come upon thee and overtake thee if you obey me, all these blessings they will be irresistible. If you do my will the rewards will be irresistible. It’s going to have to be MY will and you’re going to have to turn your back on what other people want and think, but similarly He says, if you disobey me and if you try to be like the people and the nations round about you all these curses will come upon thee and overtake thee because you will have sought your reward from someone else. Rewards are inescapable, blessings and curses are inescapable. Our Lord is saying choose ye this day whom ye will serve, from whom will you receive your blessings and your curses, from man, or from God?

“19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: 21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee for Thy word. Create in us oh Lord a clean heart that we may with untamed joy do Thy will, seek Thy holy purpose in all things, that we may have Thy blessing and Thy reward. Thy word is truth oh Lord and we come to give ourselves to Thy word that by Thy word we may be made strong and great in Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? No questions? Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. Fasting is not required, now there can be times of fasting as there were in the last century quite often and then a time of national mourning or a national day of prayer but fasting is purely voluntary. Now there are two kinds of fasting, one is fasting for religious purposes, this is that which the Bible speaks of, fasting for religious purposes in order to be able to give ourselves more fully and clearly to prayer or to some religious concern. Then there is fasting which is very popular today and very deservedly so for health reasons and fasting for health reasons is quite widely practiced, it is an exceptionally important thing because it does help cleanse the body of a variety of poisons and toxic materials, so that type of fasting is especially popular today. Biblical fasting is different but both have their place in man’s life.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes and often did, not only then but throughout the last century up until almost World War I there were days of national fasting and the like.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes first of all what fasting does do is that it tends to sharpen the mind and its perception so that a person who is going to devote himself to fasting does so with a heightened consciousness.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] There is a difference between enforced hunger and fasting, yes a person who is compelled to go without food does undergo a great deal of mental torment because he does not know, because he is in an enforced slave camp condition when he will next eat, he is in fear for his life and food becomes tremendously important to him. But I have known people in past ten, fifteen years who’ve fasted for thirty days and haven’t gotten particularly hungry after the first day, have felt fine, gone to their jobs and felt much healthier for it after it was over. So there is a difference between a voluntary fast and an enforced fast. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well, it says the light of the body is the eye, it is the source of physical vision. If therefore your eye be single and by single here it’s an old fashioned usage, if it is clear, particular, sees things precisely and clearly, thy whole body shall be full of light, the whole of our life will have a point, a direction we can see so that what is in the background of this is that there is a kind of mental vision or insight and a physical vision and here the illustration uses physical vision.

Any further questions or comments? Well if not we will continue two weeks from now with the balance of this chapter of the Sermon on the Mount.