You Only Need One Approval

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[0:00] the sermon here. This is Jesus in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. He's giving advice to his disciples. It begins like this. When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get. But when you pray, go away by yourself, Shut the door behind you and pray to your Father in private.

[0:32] Then your Father, who sees everything, will reward you. When you pray, don't babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. Don't be like them. For your Father knows exactly what you need, even before you ask him. Pray like this. Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. May your kingdom come soon. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today the food we need. And forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us. And don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one. Let's pray. way. Father, thank you for this word. We ask that you would add your blessing to it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, here's a little background about where we are. We're in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, chapters 5, 6, and 7 of Matthew, and we're in chapter 6. And if you look at the Sermon on the Mount, it's an interesting part of the Gospels because we often think of the Gospels as being sort of centered on this idea of grace and Jesus' sacrifice for us. But when you read the Sermon on the Mount, you actually get a lot of law. You get a lot of law. And it's a very interesting comparison because when Moses went up on Mount Sinai, he came down with the law, right?

[2:04] And so here's Jesus on top of the Mount, giving the Sermon on the Mount, and also he's actually actually intensifying the law. So, in some ways, people have said, well, Jesus is like a new Moses. He's actually giving us either more laws or he's intensifying the laws that we have. And he's exactly doing that. So, the Sermon on the Mount is pretty hard teaching. It's very difficult teaching. It's very in your face. And, but we have to, we would make a mistake if we said these are new laws laws or that Jesus is insisting that we are able to keep these laws. What Jesus is doing is he's making the law actually unattainable for us. He's making it clear to us that we never were able to keep the law because he's telling us what the law actually has required of us. And it was requiring everything. It was requiring our total obedience such that what Jesus is actually doing is he's bringing us to a place of holy despair, holy despair that we could ever keep the law. And that drives us to our knees, begging God for mercy. And that's our proper posture when we come to the law and we come before Jesus. So Jesus is saying, you know, the law is hard. You really can't keep it. This section that we're in right now is almost more like the Proverbs.

[3:26] We have parts of the Old Testament like the law and the wisdom. This is like the Proverbs. There's a lot of advice, right? And this chapter is about being private about your good work. So last week, Victoria preached about giving in private instead of giving in a showing way. Your generosity needs to be private, not public. And you think about all sorts of, you know, go to any, your kids are going off to college. you're going to go to the college and just about every building that you're going to go into is going to be named after somebody. It's going to be named after who? Maybe a past president of the university but most likely it's going to be named after somebody who donated a lot of money to the school. They gave very publicly and the school is also very publicly thanking them by naming a building after them. Jesus is saying you don't need to do that. Give in private. Give so secretly that your left hand doesn't know what your right hand is doing. Today we're talking about praying privately instead of praying publicly. It's important. Next week is about fasting, which is something that we don't talk about enough. And fasting doesn't necessarily mean abstaining from food. It could be it's a spiritual practice of abstaining from all sorts of things to focus us

[4:47] on God. So next week is about fasting and privately. And then the last two weeks are about money and anxiety. So there's really a lot to look forward to as we're going to go through this sermon series to learn a lot about what Jesus is saying. And so this section of the book is like a new book of Proverbs. Instead of a new law, it's a new book of Proverbs, some really good and wise guidance on how to navigate life. And so I'm excited for it because, you know, the older you get, the more you appreciate good advice. I hate to say it, you know, like, oh, that makes sense, you know. And so I'm looking forward to it. So today we're looking at praying in private and the pattern of prayer that Jesus gave his disciples that we now call the Lord's Prayer. But first, before we do that, and I want to, you know, since I love that you guys are going off to college because some of you may take a psychology class or a sociology class so everybody put on your professor hat or your student hat yeah thank you katya and and this is a little bit of mini lecture and i'm going to talk about an area of scholarship that really shines a light on this whole series here and that's this this field of study called social identity theory social

[6:01] social identity theory. You don't have to write that down, but it's an intersection of psychology and sociology, which are related fields, but not totally related, okay? And so I'm going to talk about social identity theory, but before that, I'm going to give you an illustration from my life, and here's how it goes, is that when I come across a pretty big candy bar, I eat the whole thing okay are you like me or are you like some of you are like no I can just take a nibble and if you if you're like that you're like an alien from another planet I don't know what you're I don't know where you came from but if you just eat a nibble you're amazing now here's the story why do I do that well you could say I have a lack of control and that's absolutely true. But there's something inside me, which is inside a lot of us, which is programmed to respond to scarcity. Hold on to that idea of scarcity. Because way back when, when all of our ancestors were foraging and hunting and gathering and all sorts of things, if they suddenly came across a really big supply of calories and it wasn't going to keep, right? They had to either protect it from somebody else or it was going to spoil, what did they do?

[7:22] They ate the whole thing and stored it up for the next two weeks when they weren't going to see very much food at all. So the response to scarcity is to gobble up as much carbohydrates as you can or as much sugar as you can. Imagine they found a beehive and they were able to swat away all the bees. They would. They would just gobble it all up. Animals act this way too. too. And so the response to scarcity is to eat as much as you can. So you'll say, well, Hans-Erik, you're not living in scarcity now, are you? And the answer is, right, I don't. So do I need to eat a whole candy bar? No, I don't. I could just eat a little bit of nibble. And sometimes I don't. When I don't eat the whole candy bar, it's because my rational mind says, whoa, your body's telling you to eat the whole thing, but you're more than your body. We all get this, right? You're more than your body. You can tell your body, either don't take the first bite, because that's actually the key. If I don't even take the first bite, then the rest doesn't happen. But you could just take one small bite. Your rational mind can say, just take one small bite and set it aside, come back to it tomorrow. And I'll be honest, sometimes the rational mind wins, and sometimes the rational mind

[8:35] is not up to the task, and the body wins. And the body has its own way of doing things. You're like, like, what is this about? So I'm going to explain it to you. But just remember, the rational mind can override the instinctive impulse. I'm going to tell you about social identity theory. And this is this theory that the way we act in social situations is really like the way we define who we are. We define our own identity often in relationship to other people. We define our identity by the group that we belong to. Way back when it was a tribe or a family or a group of families that kind of stuck together. They would hunt together, they would forage together, they would eat together, they did everything together, okay? And your identity wasn't, you know, Bob or whatever it was, I'm just part of this pack of people. And that was super important, right?

[9:30] Because of scarcity. Back then, there wasn't a 7-Eleven on every corner. There wasn't. It was hard to find food. Food was scarce. And so you needed a group of people if you were going to survive. If there was a loner out there, it was really hard, for example, for just one sort of a lone ranger type, a solo person, to capture a large animal. It took groups of people to hunt big game and bring back all that food to the group, right? right? It was hard for one person to protect themselves against wild animals, against other tribes, right? If that one person got injured, nobody else was going to bring them food or capture them. But if you were part of a group, you could navigate all these challenges by having the group take care of you when you weren't at your best, and you would take care of other people in the group when they weren't at their best, and you would divide labor. Some people would go out and get all this food other people would prepare it and do other things and so now we have a group and that group is super important to our survival does everybody understand this the group is super important to our survival and it was actually possible back then as it still is now to be so annoying or selfish or unhelpful to the group that what would the group do to you

[10:56] they would kick you out they would actually do the math and go this individual in the group is not making the group stronger at all in fact they're pulling us in the opposite direction and so the the group could and would kick that person out okay and that was a death sentence that was a death sentence because then you're a loner and your your odds of making it go way way down. So I want you to listen to that again. Your life depended on you getting along with your group. Does that make sense? Like your life actually, it wasn't just like, oh, you know, you're at school and you're like, oh, some of my friends don't like me. Well, I mean, I guess we'll all survive. It's going to be fine. Back then, if you were a cause of tension or disunity in your group, you could die. And you understood this. You understood that if you were out of the group, You couldn't necessarily join another group. They wouldn't necessarily want you. They might attack you and take everything you have.

[11:55] So your life depended on you getting along with your group. We're talking about the human self, the natural self, the self that likes to eat a whole candy bar at once. This is how we are. We still are this way. But I want you to think through the logical conclusion. conclusion, is if you couldn't function well in the group, you would die. What's the natural outcome of that? Think about that. The people who could get along with the group survived.

[12:29] And they passed on that trait which we call agreeability. They passed on that trait to future generations, whereas the ones who went off and on their own didn't have as many offspring or they had none. So as we understand it, this is why we have states and nations and cities and churches and tribes and groups and families and villages and all sorts of things. All of human civilization actually depends on our need to get along with other people in our group because of scarcity. This is kind of the large theory. Is everybody having fun in the lecture? It's gonna be a quiz later. I'm kidding. So this is our default reaction to scarcity and you're like what is this all about? I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna tell you. So just like the chocolate bar I need to get along with my group. That's my base sort of built-in genetic predisposition is to get along with people which is hard for me because I'm a very disagreeable person. Have you noticed? Yeah you've noticed that haven't you? Yeah but no I need to agree with the rest of my group. I need to say what they say. I need to recite their slogans, if they have any of them, no matter how absurd they are, right? In fact, here's a sociology experiment that you'll probably

[13:47] read about if you take psychology or sociology. And this is just an example, but there's many experiments like that. You take a person who's unsuspecting, and you introduce them to a group of other people who are all sort of in on the experiment and everyone in that group insists up and down that 2 plus 2 equals 15. Okay? Which we know it doesn't. We're doing math here. 2 plus 2 does not equal 15. And a certain number of people over time will go, 2 plus 2 doesn't equal 15. You guys are ridiculous. What is this thing? What's going on here? You know? And they'll swear up and down until the end that two plus two does not equal 15. And I love those people because they're the loners, they're the outsiders, they're the ones who are like, I don't need this. I don't know what this is about. But a certain number of people will eventually say, well, I guess you're right. I guess two plus two does equal 15. I mean, I don't really think so, but I'm going to say it because getting along with everybody else in their mind, they do the calculation internally and sometimes this just happens subconsciously. They say saying two plus two equals 15 is just easier. because that means I'm getting along with everybody, than actually being right or logical

[15:01] or truthful. And that's really interesting because our need to survive and our need to respond to scarcity as we perceive it is such that we will say things that we don't even agree with or do things that we don't even agree with because we want to belong, because we want to get along with other people in our group. Isn't that fascinating? I think that's so interesting. I feel really bad for the people who, at the end of the experiment, they're like, by the way, we were just seeing how weak-minded you are. Two plus two equals four, you're not going crazy, but we're sorry we put you through that. It's probably, at this point, almost an unethical experiment to do, but it's in many textbooks. You'll find it. You'll find it. So, what can we say about this? There's this deep desire for us to have the approval of other people, to show our group that we belong, to do things that other people will admire and like. And here's the short version of this, which is it's okay to be like this on a certain level. It's okay. We are social beings. We do need to get along inside our group. We do need the support of a community, okay? So, and we can't change that about ourselves. It's really built into us. It was a very

[16:22] powerful and useful survival instinct for us to be agreeable with the group that we're in, okay? We should not discount that. That's so super important. It's a great thing. Getting along with others is a good thing, is a good thing to a point. It feels good to belong. We have to be careful when it feels to exclude. Think about that. It feels good to belong, and that's good, but if that turns into excluding other people to feel good about ourselves, and that's another aspect of social identity theory is you do all sorts of things to show your group you belong, which is to agree with them and follow them and if there's a leader to follow the leader sort of unquestioningly, and the other part of social identity theory is to identify who's not in your group and say negative things about them to show hostility to them, and that proves to the rest of your group that you're actually part of the group. That's where we should draw the line, okay, is to exclude. And we have to be careful when our group is requiring us to say something or do something untruthful or dangerous to keep us in good standing. And, you know, I have a child going into middle school. I have a child just left middle school. Just think about middle

[17:27] school, you know, just think about junior high. You know what I'm talking about. You can get pressured into saying or doing mean things. I mean, if a sociologist very, could have a very profitable time just studying a middle school. It would be very fascinating. So let's get to chapter six. Jesus is telling us in chapter six that we're in that he knows how strong the urge is to have the approval of others. We love it. We need it. It's part of who we are. It's important to us to be seen as a generous person. It's important to us to be seen as a pious person who recites long prayers. That's important to us. It's important to be seen as a person who deprives themselves and makes a show of it or a person who has wealth. Jesus is saying, you really care about how other people think of you. You care about your group's approval. And on a certain level, that's okay. Okay. But so, and he's saying, it's good to be generous. It's good to pray. It's good to fast. It's even okay to have wealth. It's okay to have wealth if you use that wealth to bless other people.

[18:33] We need the affirmation of others, but here's the key to the Lord's Prayer. Maybe we could put up verse 8 there, Nathan. Here is the key to the Lord's Prayer that we often miss. The key, the reason why Jesus gives them this prayer, verse 8.

[18:50] Your Father knows exactly what you need. Let's hear that again. Your father knows exactly what you need. He knows you need affirmation. He knows you need to feel like you belong. He knows you want to be seen as generous and pious and good. He knows that.

[19:12] But he doesn't want to give you that. He wants him to see it, not everybody else. else because the father's affirmation is way more important than anyone else's affirmation. And again and again, it says the people who do this all for show, that's the only reward they're going to get. They've already gotten it. They're not going to get any reward from the father for it. But if you do it in the private, the father will reward you. The father will see to it that your prayers are answered and that your generosity is repaid and that your deprivation of yourself is paid off. So we care about what the father thinks. And so Jesus is actually inviting us to a place where we say the rational mind can tell the base part of who we are. I know you need all that, but you don't really need it. I know you think you need it. All you really need is the father's love. All you really need is the father's affirmation. All you need to really pray to is the the Father. You don't need to pray out loud for everybody else to see, right? So we get our affirmation from God. And so, and Jesus says right in the middle, but many of these petitions in the Lord's Prayer are about asking God for things that we actually truly need. Our daily bread,

[20:35] which isn't just food, but is everything we need for life. Our need for forgiveness and our need to forgive other people. These are our deepest needs. God will grant them because we pray to God in private for them. One of the best verses in scripture comes from the parable of the talents in chapter 25 of this same book, Matthew. The master returns and says, well done, good and faithful servant. And as you imagine that servant, now this is a parable, so it's not a real thing that happened, but we get the idea that that servant hearing that, for the master to come back and say well done good and faithful servant in that moment he realizes that's way more praise that feel that's a much better attaboy than i've ever gotten from anybody else in this world and we've had many great saints go on before us in this congregation i was telling somebody yesterday that it's been a difficult year we've had three funerals and basically in the last 12 months but each one of those are going to show up before the lord and the lord is going to say well done, good and faithful servant. And they will realize at that moment, although they probably already have realized it, that was all they ever needed all along was the Father, his love, his

[21:52] provision, his care for them, his affirmation. Well done, good and faithful servant. Now enter into your rest is what the Lord will say. So that's kind of the message, but I want to give you a superpower. We're here, we're talking here about sort of, sort of good, good advice, sort of the Proverbs. Here's a superpower that you can develop, and I am nowhere near to having it, I promise you. And this superpower is to actually decide that you don't need other people's affirmation. Who has that? Nobody. But would you like it? Raise your hand. Yes. Yeah. George would. Thank you, George. I saw Craig nod. Thank you, Craig. Like, we do need to be social. We do need to be a good member of our group and our community. That's all super important. But there's this great power in deciding that you don't have to agree with everybody else. There's great power in deciding that you don't need their affirmation to be whole. You only need the Father's affirmation. That's a great power.

[23:08] Because we're not living in scarcity. You don't, I mean, this is the logical part of it. You don't need your friends to like you so that you can eat tomorrow. You don't. There is a 7-Eleven, like, pretty close to your house. If you don't know where it is, I'll help you find it. You know, it's pretty close to your house. Do you know what I'm talking about? In like three taps on my phone, a hot meal will be delivered to my house in 30 minutes. Do you know what I'm talking about? DoorDash or whatever. Less time if you're close to the restaurant. I am not living in scarcity. I do not depend on other people to survive.

[23:45] There's probably some downsides to that, but I don't need their approval so that I can just live. So there's some part where our rational mind can tell our sort of our base instinct you don't actually need all that and then there's this other side of it where god jesus is saying pray to the father in private you don't need the affirmation of other people's thinking that you're a great out loud prayer and the father will supply your needs he knows what you need and he he's going to give you your daily bread forgiveness forgiving others All sorts of things, okay?

[24:21] So when you decide that you don't need other people's affirmation, then you don't have to signal to them that you agree with them. And this allows you to be, I think, one of the most important people in the world, a person the world actually needs, who can get up and say, no, 2 plus 2 does not equal 15. It never has, and it never will. You need to be a person like that. I'm not talking about math anymore. I'm talking about whatever crazy thing that the world is telling you to say to fit in. You can get up and say, I don't agree. In fact, the requirement for me to say that absurd thing is profoundly wrong and it's even dangerous. Because if you can get me to say a small thing like that, you can get me to say something that's really dangerous to other people. And I'm not going to do it because I don't need your affirmation. I have the Father's love. I have the father's affirmation. So let's end there. The father knows what you need. He's longing to tell you that you have done well because you've been faithful. He wants to give you good sins, good things, sorry. He wants to give you good things, your daily bread, forgiveness from your sins, and he wants to give you good, healthy, constructive community where you're

[25:37] valued for who you are in God, not for your usefulness to other people. So let's end there. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for your word. Thank you for this pattern of prayer. Thank you most of all that you know what we need and that you supply it. Help us to live into that every day. And we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.