A podcast listener named Dan writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, how do I conquer the love of human praise? My heart is so prideful." Well let me say that Dan has already made two key discoveries that I hear in the question. One is that there are two kinds of pride.

There's the pride of the strong that praises itself, praises himself, and there's the pride of the weak that craves other people to praise me. And the other discovery that Dan has made is that he's more guilty of the second than the first. And I say more guilty because all of us are guilty of both.

Everybody draws attention to himself at some time and brags, and everybody wants other people to notice when we we do something. It tastes good to be affirmed and praised. So this is a universal question. He's not unique. And it is amazing to me how directly Jesus addresses this issue in the Sermon on the Mount.

Listen to this. Matthew 6 to 2, "When you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogue and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward." In verse 5, "When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others.

Truly I say to you, they have received their reward." Verse 16, "When you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces, that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward." So Jesus is amazingly aware of this issue, and he's got much to say about it.

In those three statements, verse 2, verse 5, verse 16, in Matthew 6, in the Sermon on the Mount, there are three incentives to help us hate this disease of praise-seeking. Number one, Jesus calls us hypocrites when we seek the praise of men. When you do something praiseworthy to get the praise of man, you're not doing the praiseworthy thing, you're doing the praise-craving thing.

You're a hypocrite. You pretend to do the good, but that is incidental to what you really want, applause. So we fight this craving, first by hating hypocrisy. Everybody hates hypocrisy. "Well, we are one." "Well, you don't want to be one." So don't do that. Second, Jesus says in all three cases of praise-craving, "They have received their reward." What's the point of saying that?

Well, I think there are two points of saying that. One, you lose something great, and you gain something pitiful. What do you gain? You gain the praise of man. You want it, you get it. That's it. And the connotation is that what you gain is pitiful. It's like a drug.

It gives a buzz, it's gone. Gotta have another fix. You're always insecure. You're always needy of other people's praise in order for you to be happy or to feel secure. It never satisfies. And so when he says, "You have your reward," he means it's a lousy reward. You're settling for such a little reward.

But the other point, this is the third incentive, is what you're losing, the reward of God. So here's 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 is in heaven." You gain this lousy, pitiful, drug-like reward, and you lose an infinite reward.

And it doesn't say what the reward is, but back in chapter 5, verse 12, it says, "Great is your reward in heaven." It's from God, and it is very, very great. So three incentives with which to kill this craving for human praise. One, it makes you a hypocrite. We don't like hypocrites, and so let's not be one.

Two, it delivers a pitiful reward. Three, it robs you of a great reward. And Paul, we go beyond Jesus now to Paul, he fleshes out this third incentive. He says in Romans 2, 29, that Christians are people whose praise is not from man, but from God. And 2nd Corinthians 10, 18 says, "It's not the one who commends himself who is approved, but the one whom the Lord commends, or praises." So do you want to be praised?

Let it come from God. "His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.'" C.S. Lewis called that "the weight of glory." How can it be that the infinite, perfect God would look upon my imperfect obedience and say, "Well done, good and faithful servant"? How could anything in me be praiseworthy?

Of course, the answer is 1st Corinthians 4, 7, "What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?" Everything I have is a gift. If God praises anything in me, He's praising His grace in me.

So these are some of the truths, and there are a lot more that we need to preach to ourselves in order to slay this dragon of craving for the praise of man. That's so good. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for the question, Dan. Tomorrow, Pastor John will answer questions from two different podcast listeners who are both asking the same thing.

What to do when an unmarried couple who's living together travels and stays in your home? Should you give them one bed? Should you give them two beds? Or should you even host them together at all? I'm your host Tony Rehnke, we'll see you tomorrow.