Peter Witkowski Sermon on the Mount

Does God Like My Worship?

Our audience profoundly shapes what we do and say. When junior accidentally smashes the lamp with his baseball bat, we react one way when its just the family at the house and another when the nice lady from church is visiting. Similarly, texts sent to our spouse often contain content that does not belong in our company’s email chain. When we confuse the two audiences, Joe in the cubical next door feels a touch awkward. He’s happy that you like him, but he never thought of you in that way. Audience shapes our expectations and our actions.

Our audience also shapes our spiritual lives. The object of our religiosity will shape how we go about praying, giving, and fasting. According to Jesus, our religious actions should have an audience of one. We are to worship with God and God alone in mind. If we have another audience in view, our worship will explode at take-off and plumet into the waters of uselessness. Jesus bluntly says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven (Matt. 6:1).” In other words if we perform religious deeds for someone other than God, we will miss God completely and tumble into the fiery rivers of hell. When we give, pray, and fast, God alone should be our audience.

What About the City on a Hill?

Despite appearances, Jesus’s statement in Matthew 6:1 which advocates for a private faith does not contradict the sentiment of Matthew 5:16 where Jesus says, “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works.” The sentiments of the two passages support each other. As the believer follows Christ, he loves his enemies with such intentionality that his coworkers cannot help but ask him his secret. But instead of praising his three-point, personal growth strategy, the believer points to Jesus. He testifies of God’s saving grace, hoping to lead the guy working next to him to Jesus. As Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:16, the goal of our good works is to inspire others to “give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” In other words, we live for the glory of God. As we privately make much of Jesus, others will notice our humility, joy, love, kindness, and justice. Our actions should prompt others to ask questions about the hope within us. At that point, we happily tell them about our God, but we do not practice the fruits of the spirit for this moment. We obey because we love God with all our heart soul mind and strength irrespective of what those around us think. This obedience should shape our giving, prayers, and fasting.

Sincere vs. Insincere Giving

To give with an audience of one in view, we must give in secret. When we give loudly so that everyone will notice our generosity, we have the wrong audience in mind. Jesus equates the practitioners of people-centered worship with the trumpeters of old. Those who worship to earn the admiration of their neighbors loudly put out press releases, nail up plaques, and drop hints about how they are the anonymous donor who bought the church its new bus. They give so “that they may be seen by others (Matt 6:2).”

Though people love such loud gifts, Jesus takes no notice of them. Rather he delights in private gifts because “your Father who sees in secret will reward you (Matt 6:3-4).” Sincere giving does not require a press release or a plaque. The left hand shouldn’t know what the right had is doing. The knowledge of God’s pleasure is enough for the believer. She gives because she loves God. She is content with the knowledge of his recognition.

Sincere vs. Insincere Prayer

Jesus tells us to pray in private for God is our audience. People who pray with other people in mind love public prayer. They pray loudly in church and “at the street corners, that they may be seen by others (Mt 6:5).” Hypocrites compose passionate and well-written prayers so that those in the pew next to them or sitting across the table from them will be in awe of their words.

Though people are impressed with public displays of elegance and passion, Jesus prefers us to pray in secret for “your Father who sees in secret will reward you (Matt 6:6).” When we pray, we should long to be alone with God. This is not to say that Jesus is not opposed to public prayer. He encourages the church to pray together in Matthew 18:19-20. Rather Jesus opposes public prayer that is done so that the guy standing, “may be seen by others (Matt 6:5).” A prayer that ends with people admiring the one who prays instead of the one prayed to is severely misguided prayer. Rather, public prayer should flow out of private, secret prayer.

Sincere vs. Insincere Fasting

Lastly, Jesus calls us to fast in private for God is our audience. When fasting, a believer will abstain from food for the purpose of securing deliverance. For example, Queen Esther calls for a fast after learning of a plot to annihilate her Jewish people. She asks her relative Modecai and his community to stop eating for three days as she prepares to enter the king’s throne room to petition him for help (Est 5:12-17). God grants Easter her requests. When done well, fasting is a good and proper exercise for the believer.

But as with giving and praying, hypocrites can turn fasting into a people-centered charade. When hypocrites fast, they refuse to wash their faces and look all sad and forlorn as their tummies grumbled. When the fasting hypocrite walked by, their neighbors would remark on the faster’s piety and devotion. All would assume that the hypocrites loved God dearly. After all, their religiosity had extended well beyond the bounds of typical westerner’s religiosity.

But as giving and prayer, fasting done with God in mind occurs in secret. The sincere believer fasts privately. Her coworkers have no clue that her stomach is churning on empty. She never mentions her hunger pains. She takes a shower. She avoids letting little comments slip out on social media about what she is doing. She appeals privately to God for deliverance from her trials for she knows that her “Father who sees in secret will reward” her (Matt 6:18).

The Essence of True Religion

Like many people today, Jesus takes issue with religious hypocrites. But in contrast to those who leave the church because of its flawed members, Jesus says the proper response to hypocritical worship is pure worship. Jesus does not call us to abandon giving, praying, and fasting because the bimbos at the local church do all those things insincerely. He calls us to do them sincerely. He calls us to worship with an audience of one in mind.

Who is your audience?

Peter Witkowski Christmas, Christmas Devotionals

The Christmas Story, In 4 Parts

Below is short, narrative retelling of the Christmas story that highlights the golden thread of the gospel that is woven into the first retellings of Jesus’ birth. Designed as a Christmas Eve script, the story below will serve as an excellent devotion for you and your family this Christmas season. Read it on Christmas Eve around or on Christmas morning before you tear into the presents. Or simply tack it on your daily bible reading. I hope this recounting of the miracle of Christmas warms your soul anew this Christmas. Merry Christmas!

The Story Begins: John 1:1-5

All was quiet; all was dark that first Christmas Eve night. The shepherds scattered across the hills of Bethlehem had become accustomed to the despair. They were well acquainted with Rome’s red shields that glistened atop the walls of Jerusalem. What little dignity the Romans had left the Judean shepherds was exploited by corrupt priests who preferred philosophical discussions about the proper way to tie one’s shoe to debates about justice, love, and mercy. Indeed, the shepherds’ world was dark.

But the world had not always been this way. The shepherds had heard the stories of the great prophet Moses. He had talked of a paradise inhabited by the universe’s first couple, Adam and Eve. There, at the beginning of time, all was good. All was perfect. Moses’s first book, Genesis, reports that, “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good (Gen 1:31a).” Every day, Adam and Eve conversed with God as they walked through the garden together. The first couple could feel, taste, and sense the love, justice, kindness, and goodness of God. They in-turn cultivated a human society defined by love, kindness, and justice. No fears, darkness, or silence could touch their hearts for they knew God. Like a child on Christmas morning, Adam and Eve rebounded with joy, praise, and glory. All was good!

But as the Shepherds knew, those days of joy had faded into the recesses of history long ago. God now resided behind a curtain in the temple. He no longer walked with humanity. Even the great prophets like Moses, Elijah, and Isaiah had become the relics of a by gone era. God was silent, hovering far above the stars. Evil, despair, and sorrow filled the void he had left.

The Darkness Explained: Luke 1:68-71

The Shepherds also knew the source of the darkness. Moses spoke of a vile snake. He had slithered into God’s paradise, promising Adam and Eve equality with God in exchange for one act of rebellion. The couple took the snake up on his offer. But instead of being elevated to the heights of Mount Olympus, the couple stumbled into the pits of Hades. The couple lost their connection to the divine experiences of love, goodness, and justice. They had attached their souls to selfishness, brokenness, and lawlessness. Sadly, Adam and Eve destroyed not only their own hearts but also the hearts of all their children.

Their son, Cain, turned worship into a provocation for murder, serving as the new exemplar of humanity. Within a few generations, the evil of humanity reached such heights that God began humanity anew, wiping out the world with a flood. He set aside Noah to serve as the new father of the human race. But the builder of the ark would fail to keep the world pure, stumbling into drunkenness. God then set aside Abraham to create a people for himself. But like Noah and Adam before him, Abraham stumbled from the heights of faith. He lied and committed adultery.

His descendants fared no better. The great prophet, Moses, whom all the Jews revered disobeyed God, striking a rock in a fit of rage. The first priest, Aaron, created a golden calf. And King David committed adultery on numerous occasions before murdering an innocent soldier. Every great prophet, priest, and king of the Jews failed to escape the effects of Adam’s first sin. As the apostle Paul had said, “Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned (Rom. 5:12).”
Darkness reigned. No human could overcome it.

If we are honest with ourselves, we too have known this darkness. Despite all our intentions, efforts, and promises to eat healthier, listen more, and complain less, we still find ourselves plagued by sin and lawlessness. We still get angry when a loved one interrupts our T.V. show. We still roll our eyes when Aunt Sarah gifts us another homemade sweater instead of a PlayStation. And despite all the lights, hot coco, and cheer, we still cannot find the power to forgive that one person that stabbed us in the back all those years ago. The darkness that hovered over the shepherds that first Christmas Eve still hovers over many of us.
But the darkness of that first Christmas Eve would not remain. An angel visited Zechariah while he ministered in the temple, telling the aged priest that he would have a son. Another visited a virgin in Nazareth, proclaiming that Messiah was coming! God was about to break through the darkness!

Baby Jesus: The Light of the World (Luke 2:8-20)

On that first Christmas morning, the light of salvation penetrated the darkness of earth in the form of a tiny baby. God filled the night sky with angels and his glory. It was light far more magnificent than any sun or star. It possessed a purity unlike any other. As the apostle John had written, “God is light and in him is no darkness at all (1 Jn. 1:5).” The shepherds understandably trembled when they first saw the light for God was holy and they were not. Were we with them on that first Christmas morning, we too would have been “filled with great fear (Lk 2:9).”

But the message of Christmas proclaims that we no longer have to fear God. The light that shone about the angels consisted of both holiness and forgiveness. The angel tells the Shepherds (and us) to fear not, “for behold I bring you good new of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto to you is born this day in the City of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord (Lk 2:10-11).” Jesus came not to judge but to save. He arrived not as some self-righteous, grumpy old man who looks cross eyed you when you walk into church 5 minutes late. He came humbly as a baby “wrapped in swaddling cloths and laying in a manger (Lk 2:12).” No pretense is required. No hoops have to be jumped through. To commune with God afresh, men and women need only to follow the shepherds to the stable and worship baby Jesus.

Though such an offer sounds outlandish, it is not. The manger was not a bait-and-switch tactic. It was a foreshadowing of Jesus’s true purpose. The baby in the manger can freely commune with sinners because he deals with their sins, dirty looks, and imperfections on the cross. As a child, teenager, and adult, Jesus perfectly fulfills the law. He faithfully worships God and never rolls his eyes or forgets to follow through on a project. He dies not for his sins but for ours. At his death, “the curtain of the temple was torn in two (Lk 23:45).” Thankfully Jesus does not stay dead; we do not commune with spirits who hide in the universe’s shadows. Our God is the God of the living. The angels at his tomb wonderfully declare, “He is not here, but has risen (Lk 24:6).” All who repent of their sins and trust in Jesus for salvation will live in eternity with him. God once again dwells “with those with whom he is pleased (Lk 2:14).”

This is the good news of great joy that the angels sing of. The light that Adam and Eve had rejected has returned to call sinners to himself. A prophet, priest, and king who never stumbled into sin has come, died, and risen again. The light has overcome the darkness.

Follow the Shepherds to Bethlehem: Luke 2:28-32

Christ the savior has come! This is the good news of great joy that shattered the darkness of that first Christmas Eve as the calendar flipped to Christmas day! As the Apostle Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, “For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” Christmas morn has dawned!

And now we must respond. We must follow the shepherds and come to the manger of the newborn king. As Christmas begins to dawn again, we should contemplate afresh the offer of salvation. If you come to the manger enveloped by the darkness of that first Christmas Eve, I invite you to repent of your sin and to trust in Christ for salvation. You need not do anything but come and worship Christ the newborn king. If you have already joined the shepherds’ song embracing the glories of salvation, I encourage you to kneel afresh at the manger. The miracle of salvation proves just as profound today as the day when you first believed. The light of revelation has come! Merry Christmas!

Peter Witkowski Christmas

How A VHS Tape Can Helps Us Recapture the Spirit of the Nativity

With your permission, I want to diverge from my normal writing and provide you with a movie review of sorts in an effort to remind our hearts that the nativity story is for those on the wrong side of the tracks.

For the sake of the innocent, I will omit the name of the 1990’s Christian kid’s special that was reintroduced to me the other day via my kids’ iPad. It’s nothing grand. The special in question was the kind of thing us nerdy, homeschool kids checked out from the church library (curb your enthusiasm). It was as G as G can be, and yet it is still worthy of discussion and reanalysis all these years later.

The special develops around a Christian middle-school student who reaches out to the bad kid in school, because said kid express little interest in the school Christmas play. Because the Christian student goes to the troubled kid’s home for the purpose of letting the bad kid know he has friends, the troubled kid decides to participate in the school play. Later that night, the now redeemed kid takes the relationship a step further and saves said Christian kid from a Christmas-Eve mugging. The special then cheerily ends with the Christian kid offering up a soliloquy on the true meaning of Christmas against a backdrop of hugs, smiles, and twinkling Christmas lights.

As I watched the special as an adult, I noticed that something was missing from the last scene. Better stated, someone was missing, the bad kid. Though extracted from the recesses of the criminal world, the bad kid never fellowships with the nice middle-class family. He’s never invited into that intimate family circle. Essentially, he is still not one of them.

When Fiction Becomes Reality

I found this little vignette from the Christian film world to be troubling because it reflects how many Christians approach ministry at the holidays. We want good for people that are not like us. We happily send gifts, deliver food, and rally to this community cause and that ministry project as our kids count down to Christmas. That is good. Truly it is better to give than to not give. But we stop at the gift. Though we may help a thousand people, we never invite one of them into our home. If those we helped at Christmas actually showed up at church, many of us would look at them funny, wondering why they came wearing those clothes. I’ve been around churches that gave large sums to gospel-focused endeavors while they simultaneously adopted policies that prevented people with certain social-economic characteristics from using this restroom and that vehicle. In other words, those institutions wanted good for everyone, but they did not want the bad kids in their homes, churches, and cars until they could achieve the correct level of niceness and sophistication whatever that maybe. Perhaps, they could come over next Christmas.

Jesus’s Approach to Christmas

Though we often keep the proverbial bad kids of the world at arms-length, Jesus embraces them. Jesus providential decreed that several pagans, a prostitute, and woman who had kids with her father-in-law would be part of his family tree. He then extends the first Christmas invitation to stinky shepherds who did not even possess the right to testify in court because their class was so derided by nice Jewish society. The second divine Christmas card went out to the Wisemen in the form of a star. Though we sing of them fondly in our day, the Jews of Jesus’s day discounted the Magi as uncircumcised, pagans with an unhealthy preoccupation with occultic practices. The original nativity scene consisted of men and women unwelcomed by nice, religious society.

But Jesus did not simply spend time with the lowly and hurting. He made them part of his eternal family. At his death, he ripped down the curtain that kept men and women from reaching God. He died on the cross so that he could clothe repentant sinners in his righteousness for the purpose of making the sorrowful outcasts of the world his glorious and joyous children. Paul describes the thrust of the Christmas message this way, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Jesus did care for practical needs. He taught sinners, gentiles, and tax collectors. He feed them and healed them. But he also welcomed them into his heart into his home, calling them his family. Where that 90’s Christmas special truer to the message of the first Christmas, the bad kid would have been the one delivering the closing speech against the backdrop of his new family.  

Yes, But, and Luther

Because we have the benefit of hindsight and the biblical text, we can be tempted to look indignantly upon those who get the Christmas story wrong. Though we may fall short of Jesus’s perfect calling, we still believe ourselves better than most. We can be tempted to say that we would have handled that 90’s Christmas morning better. For that matter, we would have handled the first Christmas night differently. We would have shared our room or hitched a ride with the wisemen. Perhaps we would have. Perhaps we would not have.

To find the answer to this fanciful historical experiment, we don’t have to time travel with Mr. Peabody and Sherman. We simply ask and answer the questions, “Do I love the bad kids?” When we sit down to Christmas dinner, do we see the faces of foster children, or the uncle the everyone hates, or the poor family down the street that quite frankly has a little body odor issue? Do we welcome the Mary’s, shepherds, and Wise men of our day into our homes and churches? As Martin Luther noted,

“Who is there on earth who is not surround be poor, miserable, ailing, erring, or sinful people…Why does he not do to them as Christ has done to him…It is a plain lie and deception for you to think you would have done a lot of good for Christ, if you do not do it for these people.”

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Sermons-Martin-Luther-Christmas/dp/B000O2QOW2/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=luther+advent&qid=1639165632&sr=8-3

Are the bad kids welcome in your home? What are we waiting for?

The End

While that 90’s Christmas special failed to fully portray the good news of great joy, we thankfully are not bound to last century’s animation techniques nor to their sweaters. We don’t have to keep rewinding and replaying an incomplete gospel Instead, we can pop-in the true message of Christmas, a message of love and adoption, from which we all can find the inspiration needed to welcome the bad kids into our homes and church. The question for us this holiday season is: will we?