Ma-thi-ơ 6

Not for show

¹Take care not to put your righteousness on show for others to see. If you do, your Father in heaven has no reward for you.

²So when you give to the poor, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets to win praise from others. Truly I tell you, they have already been paid in full. ³But when you give, keep it so quiet that your left hand does not know what your right hand is doing. ⁴Your gift will be hidden, and your Father, who sees what is hidden, will repay you.^a

Prayer

⁵And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. They love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners where others can see them. Truly I tell you, they have been paid in full. ⁶But when you pray, go into an inner room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is there in secret. Your Father sees what is hidden, and he will repay you.

⁷When you pray, do not keep piling up empty words as the pagans do. They think they will be heard because they say so much. ⁸So do not imitate them. Your Father already knows what you need before you ask him.

The Lord’s Prayer

⁹So this is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, may your name be kept holy. ¹⁰May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth, as it is done in heaven. ¹¹Give us today the bread we need.^{b 12}Forgive us what we owe you, as we too have forgiven those who owe us. ¹³And do not lead us into testing, but rescue us from the evil one.’^{cde 14}For if you forgive others when they wrong you, your Father in heaven will forgive you as well. ¹⁵But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your wrongs either.

Fasting

¹⁶When you fast, do not put on a sad face as the hypocrites do. They make their faces look gloomy so that others will see they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have been paid in full. ¹⁷But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, ¹⁸so that no one but your Father, who is there in secret, will know that you are fasting. Your Father sees what is hidden, and he will repay you.

Treasure in heaven

¹⁹Do not pile up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moths and rust ruin them and thieves dig through walls and steal them. ²⁰Instead, pile up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where no moth or rust can ruin them and no thief can dig through and steal. ²¹Your heart will always be where your treasure is.

²²The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is sound, your whole body will be full of light.^{f 23}But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. So if the light inside you is really darkness, how deep that darkness is!

²⁴No one can serve two masters. Either they will hate one and love the other, or they will be loyal to one and look down on the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Do not worry

²⁵That is why I tell you not to worry about your life, about what you will eat, or about your body, about what you will wear. Is life not more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶Look at the birds in the sky. They do not plant or harvest or store food in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth far more than they are? ²⁷Can any of you add a single hour to your life by worrying?^{g 28}And why do you worry about clothes? Think about how the wildflowers grow. They neither toil nor spin thread. ²⁹But I tell you, Solomon in all his glory was never dressed as beautifully as one of them. ³⁰If that is how God clothes the wild grass, which is here today and thrown into the oven tomorrow, will he not clothe you much more, you who have so little faith? ³¹So do not worry and say, ‘What will we eat?’ or, ‘What will we drink?’ or, ‘What will we wear?’ ³²The pagans chase after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. ³³Above all, seek the kingdom and his righteousness, and you will be given all these things as well. ³⁴So do not be troubled about tomorrow; tomorrow can take care of its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.