To Instagram or not to Instagram? That is the question today. Specifically, should we Instagram our good works? We have sharp listeners sending us very sharp questions, and today's sharp question comes from a sharp listener named Steven who lives in Texas. "Pastor John, hello. You recently tweeted this. 'Let another praise you and not your own mouth.' That's Proverbs 27.2.

And don't mess it up by retweeting the praise. Of course everyone notices,'" you said, Pastor John, "to which I wholeheartedly agree with you." And I retweeted it as a matter of fact. "But I also see a lot of social media photos of Christians doing good deeds, say, and helping with hurricane relief.

So my question is, where and how do we draw the line between letting our light shine before others so that they may see our good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven?" That's Jesus' command in Matthew 5.16. "And yet being careful not to practice our righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them." That's Jesus' command in Matthew 6.1.

Any thoughts on how to balance these two truths on social media? Okay, let's put the texts in front of us, and then I'll try to make some distinctions. First, Jesus lays down this warning and principle in Matthew 6.1. "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's in heaven." Now, that's a kind of aim to be seen, which is evil, he says.

Shouldn't do it. And part of the evil of the aim to be seen is that it signals you are not content with your Father's reward. You need to add. You crave a human praise, and so God's reward is not sufficient for you. You need to supplement it by a little human adulation, and that's what makes it so evil.

Then Jesus gives us an example of what he means with regard to doing good to the needy in the next four verses. He says this. This is Matthew 6.2. "Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you. Don't tweak your soup kitchen stint at Thanksgiving, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others.

Truly I say to you, they have received their reward, not from God, but from man." Obviously, God's wasn't enough. "But when you give to the needy, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing." In other words, do it so quietly that your right hand is able to make the gift to the needy, and your left hand was just hanging at the other side, didn't even know what happened.

"So that your giving may be in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you." So there's the warning and the principle. Don't aim to be praised by others, and therefore avoid behaviors that look like that, like sounding a trumpet, or tweeting, or Instagramming, your piety and your good deeds.

I have a real problem with people who simply say, "Praying for all the hurt people in Las Vegas." Well, now, if you want to call people to prayer, yes. If you want to quote a Bible verse that would encourage people to pray, but I just don't get it when people say, "Hey, hey everybody, I want to tell about 10,000 people I'm praying." Okay, don't want to be too hard, but I just don't get that.

It just seems so contrary to this text, like when you pray, go into your closet. In fact, it says, "Make a concerted effort that your righteousness, your generosity to the poor not be seen by others, but be done in secret." Now, here's the counterpoint that Stephen is referring to in Matthew 5, 14 to 16 that creates the problem, and it is a real problem.

I don't presume to have all the answers here, but here's the problem. Jesus says in Matthew 5, 14, "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor do people put a lamp, nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand that it may give light to all in the house.

In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." So here's a few observations. One, there are many practical good deeds that simply cannot be hidden, especially from those for whom you're doing the deeds.

You can't stop and help somebody change a tire without them watching you do it. You can't risk your life at a public act of terrorism to rescue a child without the crowd seeing what you're doing. You can't join an emergency sandbagging effort to prevent flooding without being part of a hundred people who are doing the same thing.

My guess is that this is what Jesus has in mind. He's mainly talking about public doing of good deeds of mercy and justice that you can't hide because they're public. I suspect, in fact, that Paul is thinking about those in 1 Timothy 5:25 when he says, "So also good works are conspicuous, and even those that are not cannot remain hidden." I'll bet he's pondering this.

In other words, there are many kinds of good deeds which simply by their very nature can't be hidden, and there are some that can be. Like if you go online to click and give whatever amount you want to give, there's a little button that says "Give anonymously." A real test, right?

I want them to know I did this! I don't think so. By their very nature, some can be hidden, and Paul says they're going to be found out later. Somebody's going to know, and he's okay with that. And I think so should we be, because later it will probably have more possibilities of bringing glory to God rather than bringing glory to you, because people will realize you never did try to draw attention to it, and yet you were doing it, and it came out at your funeral.

Second observation. Matthew 5:16 makes clear the goal in all our good deeds is never merely the temporal, material well-being of the person we care about. This is so important for people who are into social justice and other kinds of wonderful things, but don't care about God getting the glory.

He says the eternal well-being of the person in worshiping, being part of the worshiping family of God, is the goal of all of our good deeds to them. We want their temporal needs to be met so that their eternal praise would go to God. That's the great goal. Christians are never merely public do-gooders.

We do not want to be known as merely public do-gooders. We want people to know God, love God, serve God, glorify God, be saved and with God forever. This is the great passion of mercy ministries and justice ministries, and if it's not, we're probably being politically correct in order to win the praise of whatever group we happen to prize at the time.

Third observation. We all know that there is a way to act publicly which gives the impression that you crave the approval and the praise of other people. Certainly comes to the fore in Twitter and Instagram and other social media. And we know this is merely human. It's not godly.

And so nobody is going to think of glorifying God when they see us do it, right? I mean, I look at things, I'm not the least inclined to glorify God when some Christian toots his own horn about all the good things he's doing. I'm just kind of, "Oh, roll them eyes, think of it." There goes a few more millennial people who look at all of us Christians and say, "Well, I'm done with that because that's just purely human." So I conclude that Jesus is calling for both in Matthew 5 and 6.

So let me sum it up like this. One, that we should be deeply content with the reward of God, knowing him, loving him, treasuring him as supremely satisfying and glorious. That's first thing. Number two, that we would not crave the praise of man because God himself is not enough for us, which is what craving signifies.

And you can taste it when somebody's angling and craving for other peoples to approve what they're doing. And three, that we would avoid ways of showing our piety or showing good deeds which aim at getting praise from other people. Now that's tricky. I don't presume to say that's black and white always, but that's our aim.

And four, that we should genuinely love people, which means both doing good things to help them practically, materially, temporally, and passionately desiring through those good things that they would come to worship God and give glory to him. Now that doesn't answer all the questions of what we're supposed to do with our Twitter accounts or our Instagram or our camera or our video or our blog.

It doesn't answer every question, but it does set up significant checks and fill us—I hope, this is what I long for anyway—fill us with spiritual desires, not vain egoistic desires. Let me say one other thing. I just got to tack this on here from Matthew 5 for Stephen and others to consider.

Read the flow. Go back and read the flow of thought from Matthew 5, 11 to 16—not just 14 to 16, but 11 to 16—and notice that the salt of the earth and the light of the world are very likely not just good deeds in the abstract that people can see, but rather they are good deeds done in the face of disapproval, criticism, and persecution mentioned in verses 11 and 12, so that the saltiness of the salt and the brightness of the light is not good deeds in the abstract, which lots of unbelievers do, but the deeds done joyfully for Christ's sake in the face of opposition and persecution.

That is what tastes salty and appears bright and causes people to glorify God, not just our good deeds. - That's so, so good. Thank you, Pastor John. And we've talked a lot about social media and smartphone habits over the years on this podcast, and especially during a season when I was researching and doing some interviews for my book on 12 Ways Our Phones Are Changing Us.

You can find many of those interviews in the nearly 1,200 episodes now in our growing archive. And you can subscribe to our audio feeds, and you can find those past episodes in that archive, even reach us by email with a question of your own, even questions about something John Piper may have shared on social media.

You can do all that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, we now break for the weekend. On Monday, we're going to be back to count the cost of following Christ. Jesus tells us to estimate the cost of following Him before we start following Him. So how on earth do we calculate the cost to begin with?

It's another Sharp question from another Sharp podcast listener, because we have thousands of Sharp podcast listeners around the world listening and engaging with us and sending us great questions. Thanks for listening and participating in this community. I'm your host, Tony Reike. We'll see you on Monday. you DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn