“Let Your Light Shine” — Should I Instagram My Good Works?

00:00:00.000 | [Music]

00:00:04.000 | To Instagram or not to Instagram? That is the question today. Specifically, should we Instagram

00:00:09.600 | our good works? We have sharp listeners sending us very sharp questions, and today's sharp

00:00:14.880 | question comes from a sharp listener named Steven who lives in Texas. "Pastor John, hello. You

00:00:19.760 | recently tweeted this. 'Let another praise you and not your own mouth.' That's Proverbs 27.2.

00:00:26.320 | And don't mess it up by retweeting the praise. Of course everyone notices,'" you said, Pastor John,

00:00:31.760 | "to which I wholeheartedly agree with you." And I retweeted it as a matter of fact. "But I also

00:00:36.960 | see a lot of social media photos of Christians doing good deeds, say, and helping with hurricane

00:00:41.120 | relief. So my question is, where and how do we draw the line between letting our light shine

00:00:45.360 | before others so that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven?"

00:00:50.160 | That's Jesus' command in Matthew 5.16. "And yet being careful not to practice our righteousness

00:00:55.760 | before other people in order to be seen by them." That's Jesus' command in Matthew 6.1.

00:01:02.160 | Any thoughts on how to balance these two truths on social media?

00:01:06.080 | Okay, let's put the texts in front of us, and then I'll try to make some distinctions. First,

00:01:12.320 | Jesus lays down this warning and principle in Matthew 6.1. "Beware of practicing your righteousness

00:01:21.200 | before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father

00:01:26.080 | who's in heaven." Now, that's a kind of aim to be seen, which is evil, he says. Shouldn't do it.

00:01:34.480 | And part of the evil of the aim to be seen is that it signals you are not content with your Father's

00:01:44.640 | reward. You need to add. You crave a human praise, and so God's reward is not sufficient for you.

00:01:53.280 | You need to supplement it by a little human adulation, and that's what makes it so evil.

00:01:59.600 | Then Jesus gives us an example of what he means with regard to doing good to the needy in the next

00:02:11.520 | four verses. He says this. This is Matthew 6.2. "Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet

00:02:21.360 | before you. Don't tweak your soup kitchen stint at Thanksgiving, as the hypocrites do in the

00:02:29.120 | synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have

00:02:36.960 | received their reward, not from God, but from man." Obviously, God's wasn't enough. "But when

00:02:43.280 | you give to the needy, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." In other

00:02:50.240 | words, do it so quietly that your right hand is able to make the gift to the needy, and your left

00:03:01.360 | hand was just hanging at the other side, didn't even know what happened. "So that your giving may

00:03:07.280 | be in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you." So there's the warning and the

00:03:13.600 | principle. Don't aim to be praised by others, and therefore avoid behaviors that look like that,

00:03:26.560 | like sounding a trumpet, or tweeting, or Instagramming, your piety and your good deeds.

00:03:33.440 | I have a real problem with people who simply say, "Praying for all the hurt people in Las Vegas."

00:03:42.080 | Well, now, if you want to call people to prayer, yes. If you want to quote a Bible verse that would

00:03:49.040 | encourage people to pray, but I just don't get it when people say, "Hey, hey everybody, I want to

00:03:55.600 | tell about 10,000 people I'm praying." Okay, don't want to be too hard, but I just don't get that.

00:03:59.760 | It just seems so contrary to this text, like when you pray, go into your closet. In fact, it says,

00:04:06.320 | "Make a concerted effort that your righteousness, your generosity to the poor not be seen by others,

00:04:13.280 | but be done in secret." Now, here's the counterpoint that Stephen is referring to in Matthew 5,

00:04:20.320 | 14 to 16 that creates the problem, and it is a real problem. I don't presume to have all the

00:04:25.440 | answers here, but here's the problem. Jesus says in Matthew 5, 14, "You are the light of the world.

00:04:31.840 | A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people put a lamp, nor do people light a lamp

00:04:38.800 | and put it under a basket, but on a stand that it may give light to all in the house. In the same

00:04:45.200 | way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to

00:04:50.400 | your Father who is in heaven." So here's a few observations. One, there are many practical good

00:04:57.440 | deeds that simply cannot be hidden, especially from those for whom you're doing the deeds.

00:05:04.240 | You can't stop and help somebody change a tire without them watching you do it.

00:05:08.640 | You can't risk your life at a public act of terrorism to rescue a child without the crowd

00:05:16.800 | seeing what you're doing. You can't join an emergency sandbagging effort to prevent flooding

00:05:22.720 | without being part of a hundred people who are doing the same thing. My guess is that this is

00:05:28.080 | what Jesus has in mind. He's mainly talking about public doing of good deeds of mercy and justice

00:05:38.560 | that you can't hide because they're public. I suspect, in fact, that Paul is thinking about

00:05:44.560 | those in 1 Timothy 5:25 when he says, "So also good works are conspicuous, and even those that

00:05:53.680 | are not cannot remain hidden." I'll bet he's pondering this. In other words, there are many

00:06:00.880 | kinds of good deeds which simply by their very nature can't be hidden, and there are some that

00:06:06.960 | can be. Like if you go online to click and give whatever amount you want to give,

00:06:15.360 | there's a little button that says "Give anonymously." A real test, right? I want them to

00:06:21.760 | know I did this! I don't think so. By their very nature, some can be hidden, and Paul says they're

00:06:33.440 | going to be found out later. Somebody's going to know, and he's okay with that. And I think so

00:06:39.360 | should we be, because later it will probably have more possibilities of bringing glory to God rather

00:06:47.200 | than bringing glory to you, because people will realize you never did try to draw attention to it,

00:06:51.760 | and yet you were doing it, and it came out at your funeral. Second observation. Matthew 5:16 makes

00:06:58.240 | clear the goal in all our good deeds is never merely the temporal, material well-being of the

00:07:08.560 | person we care about. This is so important for people who are into social justice and other

00:07:14.080 | kinds of wonderful things, but don't care about God getting the glory. He says the eternal well-being

00:07:23.440 | of the person in worshiping, being part of the worshiping family of God, is the goal of all of

00:07:30.880 | our good deeds to them. We want their temporal needs to be met so that their eternal praise

00:07:38.960 | would go to God. That's the great goal. Christians are never merely public do-gooders. We do not want

00:07:46.560 | to be known as merely public do-gooders. We want people to know God, love God, serve God, glorify

00:07:54.560 | God, be saved and with God forever. This is the great passion of mercy ministries and justice

00:08:01.440 | ministries, and if it's not, we're probably being politically correct in order to win the praise

00:08:07.920 | of whatever group we happen to prize at the time. Third observation. We all know that there is a

00:08:16.480 | way to act publicly which gives the impression that you crave the approval and the praise of

00:08:26.000 | other people. Certainly comes to the fore in Twitter and Instagram and other social media.

00:08:32.800 | And we know this is merely human. It's not godly. And so nobody is going to think of glorifying God

00:08:43.280 | when they see us do it, right? I mean, I look at things, I'm not the least inclined to glorify God

00:08:50.000 | when some Christian toots his own horn about all the good things he's doing. I'm just kind of,

00:08:54.720 | "Oh, roll them eyes, think of it." There goes a few more millennial people who look at all of us

00:09:00.000 | Christians and say, "Well, I'm done with that because that's just purely human." So I conclude

00:09:06.560 | that Jesus is calling for both in Matthew 5 and 6. So let me sum it up like this.

00:09:16.720 | One, that we should be deeply content with the reward of God, knowing him, loving him,

00:09:25.600 | treasuring him as supremely satisfying and glorious. That's first thing. Number two,

00:09:31.520 | that we would not crave the praise of man because God himself is not enough for us,

00:09:37.280 | which is what craving signifies. And you can taste it when somebody's angling and craving for other

00:09:45.120 | peoples to approve what they're doing. And three, that we would avoid ways of showing our piety

00:09:53.680 | or showing good deeds which aim at getting praise from other people. Now that's tricky. I don't

00:10:02.320 | presume to say that's black and white always, but that's our aim. And four, that we should genuinely

00:10:10.640 | love people, which means both doing good things to help them practically, materially, temporally,

00:10:18.720 | and passionately desiring through those good things that they would come to worship God and

00:10:25.840 | give glory to him. Now that doesn't answer all the questions of what we're supposed to do with

00:10:32.400 | our Twitter accounts or our Instagram or our camera or our video or our blog. It doesn't

00:10:40.000 | answer every question, but it does set up significant checks and fill us—I hope,

00:10:48.400 | this is what I long for anyway—fill us with spiritual desires, not vain egoistic desires.

00:10:57.520 | Let me say one other thing. I just got to tack this on here from Matthew 5 for Stephen and others

00:11:04.800 | to consider. Read the flow. Go back and read the flow of thought from Matthew 5, 11 to 16—not

00:11:13.520 | just 14 to 16, but 11 to 16—and notice that the salt of the earth and the light of the world are

00:11:23.200 | very likely not just good deeds in the abstract that people can see, but rather they are good

00:11:32.240 | deeds done in the face of disapproval, criticism, and persecution mentioned in verses 11 and 12,

00:11:41.120 | so that the saltiness of the salt and the brightness of the light is not good deeds in

00:11:47.760 | the abstract, which lots of unbelievers do, but the deeds done joyfully for Christ's sake in the

00:11:55.520 | face of opposition and persecution. That is what tastes salty and appears bright and causes people

00:12:04.160 | to glorify God, not just our good deeds.

00:12:07.600 | - That's so, so good. Thank you, Pastor John. And we've talked a lot about social media and

00:12:12.320 | smartphone habits over the years on this podcast, and especially during a season when I was

00:12:16.720 | researching and doing some interviews for my book on 12 Ways Our Phones Are Changing Us.

00:12:20.800 | You can find many of those interviews in the nearly 1,200 episodes now in our growing archive.

00:12:28.000 | And you can subscribe to our audio feeds, and you can find those past episodes in that archive,

00:12:32.800 | even reach us by email with a question of your own, even questions about something John Piper

00:12:36.080 | may have shared on social media. You can do all that through our online home at

00:12:39.760 | DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, we now break for the weekend. On Monday, we're going to be

00:12:45.920 | back to count the cost of following Christ. Jesus tells us to estimate the cost of following Him

00:12:51.520 | before we start following Him. So how on earth do we calculate the cost to begin with? It's another

00:12:58.160 | Sharp question from another Sharp podcast listener, because we have thousands of Sharp

00:13:03.040 | podcast listeners around the world listening and engaging with us and sending us great questions.

00:13:07.440 | Thanks for listening and participating in this community. I'm your host, Tony Reike.

00:13:11.600 | We'll see you on Monday.

00:13:12.880 | [END]

00:13:13.920 | you

00:13:14.000 | DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn

“Let Your Light Shine” — Should I Instagram My Good Works?

Chapters