Matthew 6: Living as God’s Kingdom People

Up to this point in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus has been born. He has fulfilled prophecy after prophecy after prophecy. All of the ways that the Lord told His people to look for the coming Savior that He promised, Jesus has fulfilled them one after another.

So anyone reading the Gospel of Matthew up to this point would be forced to say, “I think this is the Savior that we have been looking for. I think this is the person God promised to send all the way back in the beginning. I think this is the person that God said He’s going to send to destroy the devil and the forces of darkness, to restore our world back to God’s good original design, to undo the fall, to fix everything we broke, to put an end to the darkness of our fallen and broken world, and redeem humanity so that we can enjoy all of it together with the Lord one day when He finishes His work.”

So Jesus is the Messiah. He is the Savior that God promised.

The Kingdom of God Has Come Near

In Matthew chapter 4, Jesus launched His ministry as Messiah. He launched His Messianic ministry with a very specific message, a very specific core idea.

The entire ministry of Jesus was based on a very specific and very simple concept.

He said:

“Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.”
—Matthew 4:17 (WEB)

He’s saying God’s rule and reign is breaking into our fallen and broken world. God’s good rule and reign is breaking through the walls of our fallen and broken world. His kingdom is eclipsing the kingdom of this world. It’s going to overtake the kingdom of this world. It is going to replace the kingdom of this world.

A day is coming when the Lord is going to bring all of the darkness and brokenness of the world to an end. He is going to wipe away every tear, and there will be no grief or crying or mourning or pain anymore.

And Jesus says with the coming of Jesus, that kingdom has begun to break in.

So Jesus begins His kingdom ministry.

That is going to be a running theme throughout the Gospel of Matthew. In so many ways, Matthew is pointing to the way that Jesus brings the kingdom of God. He brings the rule and reign of God further and further and further, breaking into our fallen and broken world.

He starts gathering up His disciples, and He says, “Come with Me. Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of people.”

He’s saying, “If you become My disciples, I’m going to make you into My kingdom workers. You are going to be doing My good kingdom work alongside Me. I’m going to teach you and train you to work for My kingdom on My mission to find the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling and introduce them to the God who wants to redeem them and restore them.”

And that is our calling and our identity as disciples of Jesus and followers of Jesus as well.

The Sermon on the Mount

As He opened up Matthew chapter 5, He began something called the Sermon on the Mount. It’s Matthew 5 through 7.

And what Jesus is doing in the Sermon on the Mount is He is showing us what it looks like to be kingdom people.

Jesus is showing us how to live as kingdom people. He’s showing us how to live in a way that reflects His kingdom and reflects His goodness and His glory.

He says, “As My kingdom people, you are called to live like this.”

How are we called to live?

He said in Matthew 5, He gave us four things.

As kingdom people, we are called to live for reconciliation and restoration instead of broken relationships and grudge-holding and hatred.

As kingdom people, we live for faithfulness and loyalty. We are not driven by lust or a desire for power. We do not treat partners like they are disposable. We do not objectify people. Instead, we are a people who are relentlessly faithful to our partners, to our spouses, relentlessly loyal to our partners and our spouses.

As kingdom people, we live for radical honesty and radical openness and radical trustworthiness instead of lies and manipulation and so forth.

And as kingdom people, we live for peacemaking. We love and serve our enemies. We love and serve even our persecutors. We don’t live for vengeance. We live for servanthood and love. We resist the people who persecute us and hate us and attack us in ways that demand dignity, but that end that cycle of violence and conflict and vengeance.

That was Matthew 5.

That was the first part of this sermon.

But from there, Jesus continues on in Matthew chapter 6.

5. As Kingdom People, We Live for Generosity

Jesus says as kingdom people, we live for generosity.

As kingdom people, we live our lives out of radical generosity. We live out of radical self-sacrifice. We live out of radical giving.

Followers of Jesus should be the most generous people in the world, but not so that we can be praised by others, not so that we can get credit for how good we are, but we are called to be generous for its own sake, not for human praise.

Jesus, in particular, teaches through shock value. Jesus teaches by saying things that are shocking, that are surprising, that maybe hit you the wrong way and almost make you feel wrong because that’s extremely memorable, and we learn very well through things that are memorably shocking.

So Jesus makes big, shocking, exaggerated, hyperbolic statements, and He doesn’t always literally mean the exact thing that He said.

Like, again, when He says, “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away,” He does not literally want you to cut off your hand.

What He’s saying is if there is anything in your life that is constantly drawing you towards sin, constantly drawing you towards destructive behavior or attitudes, you need to be willing to cut that off and get rid of it. You need to be willing to remove that from your life.

In this same way, He says exaggerated things. He says shocking things, and it’s not always a literal statement.

He doesn’t literally want you to give absolutely anything you own away to absolutely anybody who asks. Some people are just trying to take advantage of you.

His point is: be radically generous.

So be generous for its own sake, because our radical generosity reflects the generosity of God, and it reflects His kingdom.

We glorify God by reflecting His kingdom and character when we are radically generous, not for human praise, but just for generosity’s sake.

That’s number five.

6. As Kingdom People, We Pray to Commune with Our Father

Number six, He says as kingdom people, we live for prayer as a way of communing with our Father in heaven, not as a way of impressing people.

Once again, He’s talking about doing things for the right reasons, not for human praise, not for street credit.

He says as kingdom people, we pray to commune with our Father in heaven. We pray to spend time with our Father in heaven.

We do not pray in order to impress people.

So again, He says some shocking things. He says:

“But you, when you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”
—Matthew 6:6 (WEB)

He’s not literally saying you should never pray in public, right?

All throughout the Bible, God specifically tells us that we should pray together as a group. If you’re in a group, that is in public, right?

But the point is, we pray to commune with our Father in heaven. We pray to spend time with our Father in heaven, not to impress people with how good we are at praying.

So as God’s kingdom people, we live a life of genuine relational prayer.

We live a life connected at the hip to our Father in heaven. We pray without ceasing. We are constantly bringing everything to the feet of our Father, not so that other people will be impressed with us, but because we are tethered to Him like a lifeline.

That’s number six.

7. As Kingdom People, We Practice Spiritual Disciplines to Grow

Number seven, He says as kingdom people, we live for something called spiritual disciplines.

Now, a spiritual discipline is literally anything that is meant to help you grow spiritually.

Studying God’s Word is a form of spiritual discipline. You discipline yourself to continually and consistently study the Word of God, and the result is God works through His Word to grow you.

In the same way, praying regularly, consistently bringing everything to the Lord, that is a spiritual discipline, and God works through that. He works through your prayers to grow you.

In the same way, there are other spiritual disciplines like fasting.

Fasting, that’s the one that Jesus mentions here in Matthew 6.

He talks about the spiritual discipline of fasting, but He says there’s a right way to fast and there’s a wrong way to fast.

What Is Fasting?

Fasting is a spiritual discipline that can do a number of different things.

Fasting is an expression of your commitment.

When you fast, sometimes you may fast because you are praying for a specific thing. Maybe you are praying for the Lord to open some door for you to be able to reach a certain person with the Gospel. Or maybe you are praying for the Lord to help you get this person out of this cycle of poverty. Or maybe you are praying for the Lord to give you an opening to be able to get over to this place so that you can introduce them to the Lord through Jesus Christ, so on and so forth.

When you fast, what you’re doing is you’re saying, “I am starved for this thing. I am starved for this request. I need this thing that I am asking You for in the same way that I need food.”

“I haven’t seen that person saved. I haven’t been able to help that person out of poverty. I haven’t been able to accomplish this thing that I believe that You’ve called me to, and that’s exactly like having an empty stomach. That is exactly like starving. I am starved for this purpose.”

“And so I am temporarily simulating starvation by skipping a meal every day and spending that time praying rather than eating,” and so on and so forth.

Fasting is a spiritual discipline.

Learning Not to Be Slaves to Our Appetites

In the same way, fasting can also serve another purpose.

Sometimes when we fast, we are teaching ourselves not to be slaves to our bodies, not to be slaves to our appetites.

We get hungry three times a day because we eat three times a day. We have trained our bodies to be hungry three times a day. So now every day, about breakfast, about lunch, about dinner, our body remembers that we usually eat now, and it starts demanding food.

And typically we give into it.

But one of the things that fasting can do is that sometimes when we fast, we are purposefully denying our body one of the things that it wants.

We’re saying, “You are hungry at 12:00 noon, but I’m not going to give you the food that you want.”

It’s not because food is bad, right?

And people who have things like eating disorders just need to not fast. If you’ve struggled with something like anorexia or bulimia or whatever, fasting is just not a good idea for you, just because of the circumstances. It can easily be a slippery slope to kind of relapse back into that.

But the point is, if your problem is that you are constantly giving in to your body’s demands no matter what, fasting is sort of like intentional training of yourself not to give in every single time your body wants something.

So it’s really not about food.

It’s about gaining control over your impulses and so forth.

Spiritual Disciplines Are Not a Reason to Feel Superior

Jesus says as kingdom people, we fast.

We perform spiritual disciplines, whatever it is—fasting, prayer, Bible reading, anything.

We do these spiritual disciplines in order to grow, not in order to feel superior to other people.

If you grew up in a church where they regularly did, like, group fasts and other things like that, there is probably this kind of sense that, like, “Oh, the people who participate in the fast, they’re better than the people who don’t,” right?

A lot of people, they think, like, “Oh, you know, I read my Bible every single day. I haven’t missed a day in 10 years,” and then they kind of look down at everybody else who sort of struggles to keep up with it like they’re just plebs or they’re second-class Christians or something along those lines.

In the same way, there are people who are just really, really faithful in prayer. For one reason or another, they have an easier time maintaining a continual prayer life than a lot of the rest of us, and they just kind of look down on everybody else.

Heck, there’s people—I’ve met a bunch of people who, they’re too spiritual for church. They can’t get themselves to just get in a church and stick around because they never feel like the other people at the church are spiritual enough.

They’ve convinced themselves that the real problem is that there’s just no church that’s good enough and holy enough and faithful enough for them.

The actual problem is that they have the sin of self-righteousness.

They have the sin of superiority complex.

So Jesus is saying when we perform spiritual disciplines, the religious leadership in Jerusalem, like a lot of the people that we’ve learned to look up to, they actually do spiritual disciplines for the wrong reasons.

They do spiritual disciplines for reasons that are not spiritual.

They’re doing spiritual disciplines to satisfy their sinful superiority complex so they can look down on everybody else.

And yet, if you are a follower of Jesus, you should be the most humble person in the world.

If you are a follower of Jesus, you should not see yourself as superior to anybody, because your sin was serious enough that it would have condemned you to hell forever if it were not for the fact that God Himself left the riches of heaven, came to earth, went to a cross, and allowed Himself to be murdered in the most brutal way imaginable so that your sin could be taken onto His shoulders and God’s righteous wrath over you could be satisfied fully and freely and forever.

Your sin necessitated the cross in order to save you, and that means you have jack.

You have no business looking down on anybody else.

Jesus says as kingdom people, we do spiritual disciplines to grow, not to feel superior to other people.

The Gospel should kill our superiority complex.

Kingdom people should be the humblest people in the world, and when we are radically humble, we reflect God’s character and God’s kingdom.

That is number seven.

8. As Kingdom People, We Use What We Have for God’s Kingdom

Number eight, Jesus says as kingdom people, we use our possessions and our power and our wealth in a different way than the world.

As kingdom people, we live to use our possessions and our power and our wealth for God’s kingdom purposes, not for status, not for the pursuit of riches.

He says:

“Don’t lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”
—Matthew 6:19–20 (WEB)

Don’t stockpile wealth.

Don’t stockpile riches.

Don’t pour yourself out to get rich.

Instead, we use our possessions and our power and our wealth for His kingdom purposes.

We use our possessions and our power and our wealth to reach the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling.

We use our possessions and our power and our wealth to help pull people out of the cycle of poverty.

We use our possessions and our power and our wealth to help support people who cannot support themselves.

Our wealth belongs to the people who are unable to build wealth and power and possessions themselves.

And we reflect God’s kingdom and God’s character when we use our possessions and power and wealth in that way.

We reflect the goodness of the God who loves and cares for the poor when we love and care for the poor.

We don’t stack up our treasures.

We don’t allow money to be our master.

Instead, the way we use all these things is driven by God’s kingdom and His mission.

That is number eight.

9. As Kingdom People, We Trust the Lord to Take Care of Us

And that leads directly to number nine.

Jesus says as kingdom people, we trust the Lord to take care of us instead of desperately working ourselves to death in pursuit of security.

We trust the Lord to care for our needs instead of grinding ourselves down to the bone to try to keep above water.

As Christians, we should be immune to workaholism because if God exists and He is who He says He is, we may struggle, we may go hungry, we may have hard times, but He will take care of us.

He will meet our needs, not our wants, but our needs.

God is probably not going to give you a gold Rolex watch. You should not care about having that.

God is probably not going to give you a nice car. You should not care about having a nice car.

God is probably not going to give you a mansion. You shouldn’t care about having a mansion.

We should be unbelievably easy to please.

We should be profoundly content with what we have, and we should trust the Lord to take care of us rather than bending ourselves backwards, tying ourselves into knots, constantly pursuing more and more and more.

He says, look, the birds, all they do is go outside, find some seeds and nuts and stuff like that, and then take it back to the little, like, bird hole or whatever.

You should have that same degree of peace about all of your earthly needs.

The Lord will take care of you.

And when we live out that radical trust in the Lord to care for every single one of our real needs, we reflect His character and His kingdom.

Two-Thirds of the Way Through the Sermon on the Mount

So once again, we are two-thirds of the way through the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus is showing us what it looks like to be His kingdom people and live out a kingdom-focused lifestyle.

As kingdom people, we are driven by generosity for its own sake, not for people’s praise.

As kingdom people, we are driven to pray as a way of communing with our Lord, not as a way of impressing people.

As kingdom people, we are driven to do spiritual disciplines like fasting, like prayer, like studying God’s Word, as a way of growing spiritually, not as a way of feeling superior to other people.

As kingdom people, we are driven to use our possessions and our power and our wealth as a way of accomplishing God’s kingdom mission, not as a way of enriching ourselves and piling up treasures on earth.

And as God’s kingdom people, we are driven to trust the Lord to take care of us rather than working ourselves to death, chasing after further and further and further feelings of security.

And because all of that is true, Jesus says, “You should pray like kingdom people.”

Pray Like Kingdom People

There are two ways to pray.

One, you can pray like the hypocrites.

You can pray like the Pharisees and the Sadducees. You can pray like the religious leaders who are in this for power and prestige and so forth.

They go in public, they sound a trumpet, they start beating a drum, they make sure everybody’s gathering around, and then they get up and they use the most flowery language they can.

They just throw phrase on top of phrase.

They want everybody to say, “Wow, look at how good they are at praying. They must be so spiritual. They must be so close to God. They must be so good. They must be so wise.”

They’re out here doing this literally to increase their prestige and their power.

And the rich people would come and they would give them money because of how elegant their prayer was and so on and so forth.

So it wasn’t just pay to play.

It was pay to pray.

Jesus says that’s how the hypocrites pray.

But you should pray like a kingdom person.

You should pray like a citizen of God’s kingdom and a member of God’s family.

What does that look like?

The Lord’s Prayer Is a Model for Kingdom Prayer

A lot of people mistakenly think that Jesus is telling us when we pray, we should just recite the Lord’s Prayer.

You can recite the Lord’s Prayer. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that.

If you recited the Lord’s Prayer every day, that would probably give you a lot of perspective, right? It would probably kind of help cast your eyes and your vision and your focus in the right direction.

So I have nothing against reciting pre-written prayers.

I actually think reciting pre-written prayers is awesome.

I love, like, high church liturgy. We may have a lot of disagreements theologically with some of the kind of high church denominations, but I really think that they’re on to something with their liturgy, where all of the people in the church recite a prayer that is 1,700 years old, and it was from some early church service that they have a record of, and things like that.

I like that.

I love that.

But that’s not what Jesus is telling us to do here.

He’s not saying we need to literally recite the Lord’s Prayer.

He is modeling what it looks like to pray as a citizen of God’s kingdom with all of the privileges and gifts that come with being a citizen of Christ’s kingdom.

Pray Intimately and Reverently

He says when you pray, your prayer should be intimate.

You are praying to God the Father.

You are praying to your loving Father, not some faceless deity out there.

At the same time, He says your prayer should be reverent.

When we pray, we’re praying to a holy God, to give Him praise.

“Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy.”
—Matthew 6:9 (WEB)

Pray Expectantly

He says when we pray, our prayer should be expectant.

What does that mean?

It means we are praying looking forward to His coming kingdom.

When you pray, you’re not just saying, “God, please help Susie. Her foot hurts. God, please help Jeff. He’s having some money problems. God, please help Rick. He still hasn’t learned how to ride a bike without training wheels, and it’s really embarrassing, and his kids won’t accept him,” and so on and so forth.

I mean, there’s nothing wrong with any of that.

That is all good.

But He says when we pray, we’re not just praying for Susie’s foot and for Rick’s bike-riding skills.

He says we are praying for God’s coming kingdom.

We’re saying, “Bring on Your kingdom. Let me see more of Your kingdom work through me to bring Your rule and Your reign and break it into this fallen and broken world just a tiny bit more. Let me see that. Give me the gift of looking. Give me the gift of seeing Your kingdom materialized just a little bit more today.”

We’re saying:

“Let your Kingdom come.”
—Matthew 6:10 (WEB)

We’re praying expectantly.

Pray Obediently

He says when we pray, we’re praying obediently.

We are praying seeking God’s will so that we can go and do it.

He says:

“Let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
—Matthew 6:10 (WEB)

If you pray to the Lord, “Your will be done,” you are volunteering yourself to do His will.

You’re saying, “Lord, show me one thing You want me to do today, and I’m going to do it. Show me one person You want me to talk to today, and I’m going to do it. Show me one person You want me to help today, and I’m going to do it. Show me one change I need to make today, and I am going to do it.”

You are praying obediently.

You’re seeking His will so that you can go and do it.

Pray Trustingly

When you pray, you are praying in a trusting way.

When we pray, we are asking God to give us what we need, and then we are accepting what He gives.

We say, “Lord, I need this,” and then we accept what He gives.

We’re trusting Him to give us what we need.

“Give us today our daily bread.”
—Matthew 6:11 (WEB)

Pray Confessionally

When we pray, we pray confessionally.

We pray owning our failures and our mistakes.

We pray and say, “Lord, I fell short in this way. Lord, I disobeyed in this way. Lord, I rebelled against You in this way.”

We’re owning our mistakes, and we are treasuring His grace in forgiving our mistakes.

We’re saying, “Lord, I failed You, but thank You for the grace that You have poured out on me through the cross so that my failures don’t end our relationship. My failures don’t build the wall back between You and me. My failures don’t get me kicked out of Your family. They don’t get me expelled from Your kingdom. I have failed, but all of my failures have been put onto Your shoulders on the cross, Jesus.”

We are owning our mistakes, and we are treasuring His grace to forgive us.

And at the same time, we are searching our hearts to forgive others.

Forgive the Way We’ve Been Forgiven

Jesus says:

“For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you don’t forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
—Matthew 6:14–15 (WEB)

Now remember the two rules.

Don’t get lost in all the details. Look for the big picture.

And two, remember that Jesus speaks through exaggeration. Hyperbole. He makes shocking statements.

It’s supposed to be like a knife that goes into your ribs, and then He pulls it out real, real quick. It’s like a punch to the nose.

He’s making a shocking statement to help you understand the bigger picture.

What is He saying?

Is He saying that God literally will not forgive you if you have unforgiveness in your heart to someone else?

No, obviously.

He’s saying the only people who truly know how to forgive are people who’ve been forgiven themselves.

Our sin placed onto the shoulders of Jesus on the cross should remind us that we are just as fallen and broken and sinful as all of the people that we have grudges against, all of the people that we are still angry at, all of the people that we are holding it over.

If we are holding someone’s sin over them, we should know what that’s like because we were sinners desperately in need of grace, and everybody else in the world that we know is a sinner desperately in need of grace.

His point is this:

We need to forgive the way that we’ve been forgiven.

That does not mean that you allow someone to continue walking all over you and abusing you and things like that.

You need to push that person out of your life and be done with it.

But what He’s saying is we need to let go of that corrosive root of bitterness before it takes over our life.

And when we do that, we are actually reflecting God’s grace and forgiveness.

So when we pray, we are praying confession.

We’re owning our failures.

We are treasuring the grace that brings forgiveness, and we are searching our hearts for unforgiveness towards others so that we can forgive them the way the Lord has forgiven us.

Pray Preparing for Temptation and Trial

And when we pray, Jesus says we are preparing.

We pray knowing that we are going to face temptation and trial, and we are seeking God’s fortification.

We are seeking His empowerment.

We are seeking His strength, and we are seeking His deliverance.

He says:

“Bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
—Matthew 6:13 (WEB)

There is only one way to be delivered from temptation.

There is only one way to flee from temptation successfully.

It is by being strengthened to withstand temptation.

Because when you flee from temptation, it chases after you. It tackles you to the ground. It turns you over, and it says, “You thought you could get away.”

Temptation is not something that you can just ignore.

Temptation is not something that you can just avoid.

Temptation is something you need to gain the strength—you need to gain the spine of steel to be able to withstand its attacks and overcome it.

He says when we pray, we are preparing for temptation to come, and we are preparing for trials to come.

We are preparing to struggle, and we are preparing to suffer.

When we pray, we are going to the Lord, and we are asking Him to put steel in our spines and fortify us so that we can be delivered.

Pray Thankfully

And finally, when we pray, we are praying thankfully.

We pray looking closely for the ways that the Lord has been working in our lives.

When we pray, we are looking through the past few days, we are looking through the past few weeks, we are looking through the past few years, and we are on a hunt to find, to see, to notice all those invisible ways that the Lord has been working in our lives.

And then we are pouring out our gratitude on Him.

God is working in your life in a million little ways you don’t even notice right now.

But when we pray, we are opening ourselves up.

We are putting on our glasses.

We are picking up our microscope, and we are looking for all the little ways that He’s been working in our lives and working on our behalf.

And then we’re pouring out our gratitude on Him for it.

This Is What It Looks Like to Pray as Kingdom People

We are praying as kingdom people.

We pray intimately.

We pray reverently.

We pray expectantly.

We pray obediently.

We pray trustingly.

We pray confessionally.

We pray preparing.

We pray thankfully.

We are going to the Lord not as some kind of machine that we put prayers into and get results out from.

We are praying to Him not as a grocery list of requests and demands.

We are praying to Him to commune with Him.

We are praying to Him as our loving Father in heaven who wants to hear from us and cares about what we need.

That is what it looks like to pray as God’s kingdom people.

A New Way to Be Human

We are still not done with what Jesus has to say about all of this.

We have one chapter left, and then we’ll be back into the narrative.

As we open up Matthew chapter 7, we are going to talk about another long list of ways that Jesus is teaching us a new way to be human.

He is teaching us what it looks like to live as His kingdom people and His kingdom workers who’ve been sent out into the world to reach the lost and the hurting and the broken and the struggling and introduce them to the God who wants to redeem them and restore them.

What questions do you have about Matthew 6?

What questions do you have about this new way of living that Christ has called us to here in this Sermon on the Mount so far?

Try to find one thing that sticks out to you or one thing that confuses you or challenges you that you want to know more about.