← Catholic Bible Study
Catholic Bible Study
Matthew 6:1-34
00:30:04
This week Dr. Tim Gray and Dr. Michael Barber continue their study of the Gospel of Matthew by diving into chapter 6.
Loading summary
Transcript41 lines
- [00:00]
A
Welcome to form. Now, I'm Tim Gray, president of the Augustine Institute, and Joining me is Dr. Michael Barber, who is a professor of Scripture here at the Augustine Institute. And we're going to continue our Bible study on the Gospel of Matthew. So today we're at Chapter six. So if you have your Bibles, we're using the Augustine Bible, which is the English Standard Version, Catholic Edition, which is a great edition for studying the word of God. It tries to be as literal and close to the Hebrew and Greek as possible in the English edition. So it's a great translation. We love it. And so you can find that at Catholic Market. By the way, people ask us, well, where do I get that Bible? Catholic Market. So if you just go to there, that's our webstore, and you can find our Bible as well as many other things. One of the things you'll find there is a book that I'm hoping Dr. Barber will talk about a little bit. His book on salvation is Catholic Market. So, yeah, so we're going to talk about how that relates to some of the things in Matthew, chapter six. And before we dive into the details of Matthew 6, I want to just kind of go back to the big picture. The Sermon on the Mount, which is the great epic sermon of Jesus, is Matthew, chapter five, six and seven. And so those three chapters of Matthew's Gospel is the famous Sermon on the Mount. And there's kind of a threefold structure to the Sermon on the Mount that's been observed by different scholars. And I think it goes back to, as has been suggested to Rabbi Simeon the Righteous, who was an ancient Pharisee, a Jewish rabbi in the time of the Maccabees. And he said a quote that is very famous in the Mishnah, the early collection of Jewish sayings. They put it right towards the beginning of the Sayings of the Fathers. And it's that there's three pillars upon which the world is built. Torah, the word of God, Avodah, which is worship. And then third is Gemelut Chesedim, which is works of mercy. And so I like to use it as a simple iteration of the word of God, the worship of God and works of mercy. And those are the three pillars. And so in a sense, you could say the Jewish catechism would be those three things. You kind of put all of Jewish teaching in those three buckets. Torah, which is word of God, and then worship of God and then works of mercy, which are really important. Almsgiving and works of mercy are such an important part of Jewish practice of charity and of piety. So it's really important. So those are the three things. And Jesus just taught that we covered In Matthew, chapter 5, the Word of God. You have heard that it was said, but I say to you, and notice he's quoting the Torah, the word of God. But then he's saying, but I say to you, and notice that Jesus is saying his word has the authority of the Word of God. So we know he is Emmanuel, God with us. So he speaks that word. So he's teaching about Torah. And now in chapter six, we're moving to a new section. And this would be the section that would be called Avodah, which is piety, works of liturgy. And in this section, surprisingly, Jesus doesn't talk about the Temple, which you would expect in Avodah. You would expect him to talk about liturgy and Temple. He doesn't talk about the Temple, but he talks about three key works of piety. And he's going to talk about almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. And notice that prayer, which is you expect that to be at the heart of piety, is flanked by almsgiving, which is generosity to others, and fasting, which is sacrificing oneself. So in other words, a life of prayer can only come if it's contextualized. If you want intimacy with God, you have to contextualize your prayer life with generosity to others and sacrifice of self. That's the real method to deep intimacy with God in prayer, in a successful prayer life. So we're going to dive into chapter six. And I love how it begins, Michael. It begins with almsgiving, but it's going to talk about reward. And a lot of people are kind of, maybe some Christians are tone deaf. They don't hear this idea of reward, what we would call merit and getting something for what you're doing, that God rewards certain behaviors and actions, certain people for certain actions. And so there's going to be a lot of rewarding here at the beginning of a few verses. You want to just read the first few verses?
- [04:19]
B
Sure. Let's take a look at it. In Matthew 6, Jesus 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. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. There's the second time we've heard that Term. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your father, who sees in secret will. Will reward you. Now, I think when we hear that word reward, we're often led astray by the English term there. Because reward sort of evokes that image of that lost puppy you saw on a telephone pole. You know, if you find Fido, return him and there'll be some sort of reward for you. But the word in the Greek, mystos, is actually the word that's used for a payment, right? And Jesus will actually use that word later in the Gospel of Matthew, in the parable of the laborers who come at different times of the day. And there the owner will give the reward. Well, actually, in Greek, it's mystos. It's their payment, their remuneration. And then we also have that term reward in the verbal form. He will reward you. And the Greek word there is apodymy, which is also a term for. For paying someone. All right. Now, there's a certain allergy to this in some Christian circles because, of course, we know that salvation is first and foremost by grace. It's a gift. Paul talks about salvation being a gift. So many people want to play down this language that God is going to reward your good deeds in a way that they think oftentimes is antithetical to Paul's teaching. Well, we don't have a long time to get into all of this. If you want more on Paul, I've taught a short course on Paul. We get into all of that teaching on grace there. But suffice it to say, the reason we are able to do good works that receive a payment is because even in Matthew's Gospel, it's because we're united to Christ. And so we see this, for example, later in the Gospel, Jesus will say, inasmuch as you did to the least of these my brethren, term for his disciples, he did it to me. So Jesus is united to his disciples. He's united to us. Certainly in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is the one who saves us. That's very clear in the first chapter of the Gospel, right? You shall name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. We can't save ourselves, but once we're united to Jesus, we can actually do these good works that receive a heavenly payment. And in this, Matthew is drawing on Jewish tradition. This is the way ancient Jews taught. I talk about this in the book Salvation. What every Catholic should know but this is a very common Jewish way of thinking that good deeds actually are rewarded with treasure in heaven. Almost like you have a heavenly bank account. Right. Sin is a kind of debt.
- [07:44]
A
Jesus is going to talk about the heavenly bank account later on in this chapter, right?
- [07:48]
B
That's right.
- [07:48]
A
So I don't know if we want to go there right now. Sure, maybe we just jump in there. But if you have up Matthew chapter 6 A little bit further, in verse 19, Jesus 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. So Jesus says, you should be investing in your heavenly 401k. So what is the heavenly 401k?
- [08:13]
B
Right.
- [08:13]
A
What is that? What does that look like? Well, he goes on, he says, you know, where neither moth nor rust destroy, where thieves do not break in and steal. So it's a treasure that is safe, it's secure. Right. Whereas treasure and wealth in this world is always at risk or always anxious about it. But heavenly treasure, we're never anxious over. We don't worry about it. But then Jesus gives one of the motivators why, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And before we get into the second idea of treasure here, but I just want to say that is so powerful because for me it says, if we accumulate earthly treasure and that's the treasure we reflect on the most, then we're earthly minded and we're materialistically minded. Whereas if we're doing these good deeds out of love of our God, we start thinking about our heavenly treasure, which is God. It's being more united and closer to God doesn't mean we get more stuff in heaven. It's that we get more of God in heaven. We have a greater capacity to receive his love, so we have greater joy. And so there is a greater joy, there is a greater fulfillment. Some people have more than others because they're more receptive to that love. But here we get this idea of a treasure. And of course, the word for treasure is an interesting word in the Greek, isn't it? So word that they all probably know, it's where we get the word thesaurus from, Right? Which is thesaurus is a treasure house of words that you can use. And so if you're writing and you need to come up with the right word, you go back to the treasure house. Well, here Jesus is talking about treasure in heaven. It's the same word in the Greek that we get thesaurus from. It's this Idea of a treasure house, treasure store.
- [09:58]
B
Yeah. And it's appropriate that Matthew is using this economic imagery. Right. Here we have a gospel attributed to the tax collector. Right. Who learns that in the. Matthew sort of embodies this lesson. Right. You have a choice. Where do you want to put your heart? Do you want to put your heart on earthly treasure or do you want to put your, your, your, your trust in heavenly treasure? We are sorely tempted to trust in earthly treasures. Right. How am I going to be able to provide for myself in time of need? How am I going to be able to survive that difficult dark times? Well, I've got that bank account. Jesus wants us to recognize that we can't love God and mammon. We have to make a choice. And so he. There is a sort of zero sum game here. Right. Certainly Jesus calls different people to different degrees of detachment in scripture, but certainly the overall theme is that we need to trust in our heavenly reward. This goes back to what we saw in the Beatitudes. What's the first Beatitude? Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who identify with the poor spiritually, those who don't rely on their own resources, but trust in God.
- [11:11]
A
Yeah. And I think one of the key ideas there is detachment.
- [11:14]
B
Yes.
- [11:14]
A
Right. Because Jesus. What Jesus is worried about is where our heart is. He doesn't, you know, it's not that Jesus is worried that we have, you know, a really nice car, really nice house or these things. It's not like God is kind of this killjoy who doesn't want us to be happy and have nice things. It's that he doesn't want the nice things of this world to replace the nicer thing, the maker of all nice things, which is God. Right. And that's the danger, is that these things can become idols, that our heart loves these things more than it loves the maker of all things, who is God. Right. And so Jesus cares about where our heart is. And that's why detachment in the Catholic spirituality and the Catholic tradition is all a reflection on this. That, and I'll just give St. Thomas More as an example. Michael. St. Thomas More had the top job after the king. He was the chancellor of England, which gave him a significant income. Now, many chancellors had been corrupt before that because they had a lot of money, but they wanted even more. And that's the problem of greed, is it can't be satisfied. But Thomas More was satisfied. He didn't take bribes. He was, as one person observed, probably the only righteous chancellor who didn't take a bribe. In the history of that office in England, right? And so he never took bribes because he didn't need money. He didn't search money. He had it. He had a nice estate, he had nice property and a nice home. They ate well. But the beautiful thing is St. Thomas more wanted to live detachment. And so he practiced detachment. Even though he had to have a nice garment, he wore a hair shirt underneath. Oftentimes, even though he had nice food, he oftentimes would fast and skip a meal or give up certain things during meals. So Thomas More, although he had wealth, he didn't let his heart, and he kept up the battle of detachment. And that's exactly what Jesus is talking about here. To be poor in spirit is to be detached from our spiritual things. Can you give up? You know, and I think of people who, they could afford a certain amount of car, but they take a car, you know, they buy a car that's a level under that level that they could afford. That's exercising detachment. Now, that might be a level above what I could pay for a car. But for some people, not always taking best, but second best, not living in the nicest neighborhood, but choosing a neighborhood, maybe down from that, whatever it is. But ways of exercising detachment, that's the important thing. And more importantly, exercising attachment to God, which is what we find in this middle section, which is going to be prayer.
- [13:48]
B
Right? Before we do that, I just want to make sure we touch on this. So one of the ways we learn that detachment is. And the primary way we learn that detachment is by doing what Jesus says as beginning of Matthew 6, giving to the needy, almsgiving, Right? It's not something Jesus just recommends, right? He expects that his disciples will give alms. He doesn't say if you give to the needy. He says, when you give to the needy. Very important. And by the way, at this point, let me just highlight the way what Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount maps on to what we saw earlier with the temptations of Jesus.
- [14:29]
A
Right.
- [14:29]
B
A couple of episodes ago, we looked at the way Jesus is confronted with three temptations. I talk about this in the book Salvation what Every Catholic Should Know. But in the temptations, Jesus faces three challenges, right? Number one, Satan says, if you're the son of God, turn these stones into bread. And what is he doing? He's appealing to his carnal appetites, right? And we saw how in First John 2, all sins are seen as basically a part of one of three different buckets, right? They can all be fit into one one of three buckets right? The first temptation is the lust of the flesh, carnal desire. And so Jesus is tempted with these stones, turn them into bread. The second temptation is, he's shown all the kingdoms of the world. This can all be yours if you bow down and worship me. And of course, here we have the lust of the eyes, right? That the. The things that glitter appeal to us. We want to have possessions. And the third temptation Jesus faces is display your authority. Throw yourself down from the temple. Everybody will see who you are. You are the Son of God carried up by angels. Right? And this is a temptation to power, the pride of life, as First John 2 puts it. Jesus teaches us by his example in Matthew 4. But now in the Sermon on the Mount, he puts it into words. And how do we overcome these three major temptations? You want to overcome the temptations to possessions. Give to the poor. Number two. You want to overcome that temptation to pride. Jesus renounces the temptation to be. To display his identity, to assert his identity. How do we overcome this temptation? Prayer. Prayer is divine prescription. Or. And so in the second part of this chapter, right after we have the teaching on giving to the needy, we have, as you say, that teaching on how to attach ourselves to God. And he gives us the famous prayer, the Lord's Prayer. Did you want to say something there about that?
- [16:34]
A
That's a great intro to this. And I love the first thing he says about prayer is, you know, don't pray on the corners. And where the hypocrites do. And synagogues, they love to be seen praying because they want to be known as prayerful people and being very righteous. And Jesus says, look, that can't be our motivator. You pray because you want intimacy with God. God's your audience. And so Jesus is trying to delimit the audience of prayer to one to God. And he says, you know, go into your inner room and pray in secret. And that's the second time we got the word secret. And so there's another secret, and that is almsgiving. Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Don't blow the trumpet so that people know that you're a great benefactor. Give secretly. Again, the idea is, who are you performing for? You're doing alms for God. And your father, who sees in secret will reward you in secret. And your father, who sees you when you're praying, he will reward you. Right?
- [17:30]
B
Right.
- [17:31]
A
So I love that idea of the secrecy here, but the idea is having make God your audience, right? And how much that changes how we act when we change our audience.
- [17:43]
B
And prayer isn't just to be done in front of other people. Jesus says, you got to go in your room and close the door. Right? This is a really important principle in the spiritual life. It's not enough to simply pray in.
- [17:54]
A
Terms of the energy, which is important.
- [17:56]
B
We need personal prayer. We need time alone with the Lord as well. And if we cut that out of our schedule, I know our. We get so busy. It's one of the things that, you know, we quickly pass over because we've got so many other things to do. But if we cut that aspect of prayer out, that personal prayer, that time in personal meditation, we're cutting off a key lifeline to our Father. Because at the end of the day, what we see here in the sermon is that God isn't just king. This is not just a kingdom that we're entering into, but a divine family. God, the King wants us to be sons in his Son. And so Jesus teaches us to pray our Father. I always like that because as Pope Benedict pointed out, right. When we say our Father, there's an implicit reference to Jesus, right? Because we're always praying with Jesus to the Father. So there's that.
- [18:49]
A
That's so powerful. I love the hour. And you know, even the verse before, when you get to verse nine and you start the Our Father, the verse before that he talks about, you know, the Gentiles think they'll be heard by their heap of many words. Do not be like them. For your Father knows what you need before you ask him. How reassuring is that to hear that from our Lord Jesus, that our Father, you know, that the Father, your Father knows what you need before you even ask. And I think that, you know, in the Sermon on the Mount, we get God referred to his father 17 times. And it's such a powerful way in which Jesus brings us into contact with God. It's not just God in the general sense. You know, for the Jews, it would be Hashem, the Name or the Holy One, blessed be he. And Jesus takes this gap and he bridges it with an intimacy and a familiarity which is really radical. He wants us to see God as our Father. And that's striking. Now, Israel thought of God as Father, and David at one point called God as Father. But that was not the general practice of Jews to pray to God as their personal Father. And that's what Jesus is invoking us to do. And that's part of the revelation of Jesus teaching here.
- [20:06]
B
Amen.
- [20:07]
A
It's so powerful.
- [20:08]
B
That's right. Now after the Our Father, we go to fasting. Jesus says, when you fast, notice he doesn't say if you fast, right? He says when you fast. And again, fasting is such an important spiritual discipline because what does it teach us? It teaches us to be detached from worldly consolations, from the comfort of this world. We talked about this when we looked at Jesus temptations. So once again, Jesus taught us by his example, right? He taught us how to overcome carnal desire by fasting himself. So we are to learn to fast. And again, we don't do this so that other people will celebrate us, right? And as you pointed out, Thomas More, he had the hair shirt the same way. You know, you think of great saints like King Louis, right, who St. Louis is named after. He was associated with great wealth. But of course he had that wealth to give it away. It was at the service of his kingdom, not for his own self aggrandizement. Same thing with fasting. Fasting teaches us in the interior confines of our heart how to trust in the Lord for our consolation and not for. Well, Snickers, which is my personal favorite.
- [21:24]
A
Yeah. You know, I think, and you bring up a key word, Michael, and that is consolation. And I think, you know, especially in modernity, in the last 30 years, this last generation we have, there's whole industries built on making food a consolation. And every, every bite you eat, an experience of incredible consolation and pleasure. And so especially with processed foods, they're so full of salt and sugar especially, and easy carbs that we get these highs. And that's probably what's leading to our age of obesity, right? But if you look at, amongst other things, there's lots of things with the obesity crisis on what we eat and not just how much we eat, but what we eat. But I think that this idea of seeking consolations in food to be happy with food, what Jesus is saying with fasting, again, is that, look, food is a good thing and Jesus will have plenty of meals and plenty of feasts and celebrations, but again, it's something that we can make an idol that we can get addicted to. Paul will warn the early Christians in Philippians chapter three that he warns them against those amongst the Gentiles who make their belly a God, right. And are enemies of the cross. In other words, they can't sacrifice for themselves. So we don't want to be that way. We want to have the discipline and the freedom to be detached from food. And so fasting is a way of making sacrifice and detaching ourselves from, from the pleasures of food. And that's why Lent is such a great program every year where we have to get retrained and to really have that time of sacrifice, like Jesus in the wilderness, to fast, to become detached again from the goods of this earth.
- [23:16]
B
And so after Jesus has talked about fasting, we then get the statement we already looked at about laying up treasure in heaven. That's where our heart ought to be. And of course, we could talk about how the heart is such an important theme for Matthew. Why did Moses permit divorce and remarriage? It was because of the hardness of hearts. But Jesus is coming to write the law on our hearts. As Jeremiah the prophet explained about the new covenant in Jeremiah.
- [23:44]
A
I love what you said earlier about Matthew being a tax collector. And we know that when he talks about treasures and heart, he was collecting those treasures on earth.
- [23:51]
B
That's right.
- [23:52]
A
And that's where his heart was. And Christ arrested his heart, and he redirected Matthew's heart to the higher things, to God. And Matthew, being liberated from the bondage to mammon, wants to highlight Jesus teaching here that freed Matthew, and he wants to see us freed as well.
- [24:13]
B
Right. And so at the end of the session, he talks about, no one can serve two masters, can't serve God and money. And then he transitions into the final part of this chapter where he emphasizes that we need to trust in the Lord and not be anxious. Right. He says, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, what you will drink. Oh, you had a thought.
- [24:34]
A
Well, I was just thinking, because there's a lot there.
- [24:36]
B
There is so much there.
- [24:37]
A
I just want to share with you. I know the next that little parable he does in between the laying up treasures on earth versus heaven versus serving two masters. So you've got two treasures and two masters, not accidental. Whichever treasury will become the master.
- [24:52]
B
That's correct.
- [24:53]
A
But then kind of sandwiched in between that is this little parable of Jesus saying, the eye is the lamp of the body. And people are like, okay, all right. The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? And so what does Jesus mean by the eye is the lamp of the body? And this is very puzzling for a lot of people. And there's all kinds of different interpretations that are a bit tortured to try to understand this. But really, I think the first thing to Understand, this is the Hebrew idea of the good eye. But first off, Jesus speaks about the eye like a lamp. Well, he already spoke about a lamp earlier in the Sermon on the Mount. Remember in chapter 5, verse 14 and following, he says, you are the light of the world. And then he talks about a lamp not being hidden. So the idea of a lamp, that's to give light so that people can see your good works. Right? So he uses that term, good works. And so what's the eye is the lamp of the body that should then have light in it. It should have something to do with charity. Now, in a parallel discourse to this, I think you get a key to unlocking this internally in Matthew. And we'll go back to some things made in the Old Testament. But In Matthew, chapter 25, Jesus tells the parable of the five foolish versions and the five wise versions and the foolish and the wise. And what he says is that the wise have their oil lamps and they don't run out of oil, whereas the foolish have oil lamps, but they've run out of oil. And so when you run out of oil, you run out of what? Light. So what does Jesus talk about? The eye is the lamp of the body, and you don't want to run out of light because if you do, then the darkness in you is great. Well, what is he referring to? Charity. What the oil represents in their flasks is charity and love. And for the foolish brides, they've run out of oil. In other words, they've run out of love. Good deeds, but deeds of love. And you can't greet the bridegroom if you don't have love. You don't get the bridegroom if you don't have love. And so I think that this has. This metaphor has to do with that, but idea. In Proverbs and Even in Deuteronomy 15, it talks about, don't look at your brother with an evil eye.
- [27:23]
B
That's right.
- [27:24]
A
So the evil eye is the eye that's begrudging and that is not generous.
- [27:28]
B
Yes, that's right. So the key idea with the evil eye is it's the eye that's set on possessions it wants to accumulate. Right. It's eyeing other people's goods. Right. And it's being miserly. Right. So you have both themes there. It's also, this is the Australian verse in the Bible. It's about the good eye anyway.
- [27:48]
A
But I see what you mean.
- [27:50]
B
Then you go on in the next section to read about, and there's so much we could say about this, but the final statements really sum it up. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. And by the way, that idea of dikaiosune righteousness was linked with almsgiving in ancient Jewish literature. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. And then finally, Jesus says, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. And this is a passage that I constantly meditate on. Our need to trust in the Lord because He's our Father and He knows what's good for us better than we do.
- [28:36]
A
Amen. Well, you know, that's exactly the point here, as Jesus teaches in chapter six, is that your Father knows what you need. And he said that before we prayed. He says he knows what you need to ask. And then he says, you know your Father knows what you need, and seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. And the reason that we're not to be anxious is that it's not that we have enough for the future. We don't know what the future is going to have. We know now that the future can have some crazy curve balls, right, as we saw that with COVID But we don't know the future. It's uncertain. But that doesn't mean we have to be unsecure and lacking peace. Because we know that the Father, our Father, he knows the future. And our provident Father can take care of our future. And so because we trust our Father, we're not afraid to be generous and to give in the present, because we know that our Father will take care of our future. And so Jesus, when he talks about anxiety, talks about it in the very section that would be the section that Jews would talk about. Gimeluchassedim. In other words, works of mercy, charity. And what's the greatest hindrance to charity? My anxiety about, I don't know what I'm going to need in the future, so I better hold on to the present. And that fear of the future keeps us from being generous in the present. And Jesus is warning us against that. So it's a great encouragement here as we see our Father to trust in him and to pray to him. I hope this has blessed you, and may the Lord bless and keep you. Thank you.