When No One's Watching | Nick Bodine

Hey, what's up, Central family? Well, I'm gonna welcome you across all our locations, online and those who are joining us in our prison locations through our partnership with God Behind Bars and the Pando app. Thanks for being with us today. You know, at Central, we exist to introduce people to Jesus and help them follow Him. And one of the ways we do that is through Central Academy. This is our adult learning environment for people who wanna go deeper in their faith and really discover their purpose. We also have Central Kids Academy, where your kids can learn and go deeper as well. You know, we started Central Academy 10 years ago, and we really started it out of a simple belief, that God has placed gifts, purpose, and a calling inside of every person who's willing to say yes to Him. Now, listen, I know some of you, you may think, well, hey, school's not really my thing. And I get it, it wasn't really my thing. But I also look back and realize that for me, some of the most powerful moments in my faith journey really happened when people invested in me spiritually, when they challenged me to grow, when they helped me discover how God could use my life to really make a difference. And that's the heart behind the Academy. It's open to everyone,

and no matter your educational background, you can do it. And I wanna challenge you to do it. So if you're wanting to grow deeper in your biblical understanding, if you wanna develop your leadership, Central Academy can help. We have a special partnership with Southeastern University as well, and that allows you to pursue a college degree pathway alongside Central Academy if you choose. So classes start Monday evening, August 17th, at our Henderson location. And we also offer an online option if you're unable to attend in person on Monday nights. So if you have any questions, our team is here to help. I wanna encourage you just to check out our website or the QR code to get more information and to register for this next term. Well, hey, this weekend, we're starting a new teaching series called Audience of One. As Jesus continues in the Sermon on the Mount, He's really gonna challenge us to live before God as our primary audience. So if you wanna follow along with the teaching notes, you can get your Central app now and click the Experience button down at the bottom. But let's put our hands together and welcome up Pastor Nick as he brings God's Word. Welcome.

We'll make sure to give a shout out to Central Summerlin. We see you. Central Kingman. Central Aliante. Central Sunrise Mountain. We are all so excited that you're joining us. Church, can we give it up for all of our different locations? Those inside prison facilities, those online, we're thankful you're here. Well, I have a question for you. How many feel like I could use a summer vacation right now? Maybe you just got back from vacation and you can use a vacation from your vacation, right? How many feel like I've already traveled the world, I've already vacationed just by watching all the different posts on social media from my family and friends of all the vacations that I don't get to go on? It's all these pictures of like, here's me and my smoothie at the beach. You're like, I want a smoothie? I wanna be at the beach? Here's my sunset. Here's me in the mountains. Here's my feet by the pool. Can we just start banning feet by the pool pictures? Like none of us need the feet by the pool picture. But if we could acknowledge something, sometimes trying to get the picture ruins the moment. If you don't know what I'm talking about,

it's those moments where you order food, you're hungry, you've got dinner coming, you order an appetizer. The appetizer gets there. It's this beautiful plate of nachos. You go to grab a nacho and your wife slaps your hand and says, not yet, I need to take a photo first. Apparently the phone eats first. Or you're trying to get that sunset picture. You're standing there looking at this beautiful sunset. All of a sudden somebody says, turn around, put your back to the sunset and let's try to get a picture 15 different times and argue about flash or no flash or how do we get the perfect sunset in this picture? And then when you turn around, it's dark and the sunset's gone. Just trying to get the photo sometimes ruins the moment. And I'm not anti-pictures, and I'm not anti-sharing the photos, but I do. I do love capturing moments and memories and I love posting about them. But have you ever caught yourself doing something not because you wanted to do it, but because you wanted people to know that you did it? The more that I thought about that this week, the more I realized that this might actually be one of the biggest struggles in our culture right now. Because somewhere along the way, we stopped simply living life and we started performing life.

And it gets exhausting, doesn't it? I mean, we're constantly managing what people think about us. We wanna look like we have it all together. We wanna look happy. We wanna look like good parents. We wanna look successful. We wanna look generous or spiritual. And eventually it becomes so tiring trying to manage everybody's perception of us. which is why I'm excited about the new series that we're starting today called The Audience of One. And over the next few weeks, we're gonna be wrestling with a simple but powerful idea. The idea of what God thinks is more important than what anybody else thinks about us. What God has to say and what God thinks about us is way more important than what anybody else thinks. And we all have an audience, every single one of us do. Our audiences might look different, but it's family, it's friends, it's that group of parents at school pickup or on the other sports team that we want to be our friends, or maybe it's that girl or that guy you're trying to impress. Our coworkers can be our audience, our boss can be our audience. A lot of times it's just complete strangers on the internet that's our audience. But Jesus is gonna challenge us to live our lives

for an audience of one. And today we're kicking things off with a message titled, When No One's Watching. When No One's Watching. We're gonna be in Matthew chapter six, and this is a continuation of Jesus's sermon on the mount. One of the most famous sermons, the sermon that has ever been written by Jesus himself, the greatest teacher to ever walk this earth. And I love this because Jesus saw something in humanity that's still true today. That long before likes, long before social media, long before followers, Instagram, TikTok, all the different things, Jesus understood that we all have this desire to be seen, to be seen. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can become a dangerous thing when being seen starts driving the decisions that we make. Because here's the life problem that we're gonna try to solve today. We spend so much energy trying to just manage everybody else's perception of us, that we forget whose opinion matters the most. We forget whose opinion we should be living for. And that's where today's message is gonna go. We're gonna get incredibly practical because Jesus is about to show us that even good things can become unhealthy things if we're doing them for the wrong reason.

The best things can become unhealthy things if we're doing them for the wrong reason. Which brings us to a question I want sitting over this entire message today. This is a question that might make you feel a little bit uncomfortable, but that's good. We need to get comfortable being uncomfortable from time to time, especially when it comes to the Bible and God's Word, because that's how we grow. We gotta get a little bit uncomfortable. So here's the question that I want you asking yourself today. The question is, if nobody ever knew you did it, would you still do it? If nobody ever knew that you did it, would you still do it? Write that down, take a picture of that, whatever you have to do to remember that question. If nobody ever applauded, if nobody ever liked the post, if nobody ever thanked you, if nobody ever gave you the credit, if nobody ever even knew, would you still do it? Because that question might reveal who we're actually living for. So let's look at what Jesus has to say today. Matthew chapter six, we're gonna start in verse one. These are his words. I think it's incredibly important that we lean into his teaching and his words.

Like I said last week, more than anything else, he says this, he says, watch out, don't do your good deeds publicly to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your father in heaven. When you give to someone in need, don't do as hypocrites do, blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity. I tell you the truth, they have received all the reward they will ever get. But when you give to someone in need, don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Give your gifts in private and your father who sees everything will reward you. Your father who sees everything will reward you. Before we go any further, did anybody catch how funny Jesus actually is here? He says, don't be like the hypocrites blowing trumpets in the streets everywhere they go. I love that visual that I can just imagine it. It reminds me of a popular pitcher, a popular closing pitcher and their walkout song. He was a closing pitcher for the Mets. And the closing pitcher's job in the baseball is to come in in the last couple innings, primarily the last inning and save the game. So like, if you have a lead, you wanna protect that lead, you bring in your best closing pitcher to save the game, to save that lead.

And a lot of times your best closing pitchers get like the coolest walkout songs. And this pitcher for the Mets, he's with the Dodgers now, he has a particular. walk-out song that he got Timmy Trumpet to come play. And this is the walk-out song here. This is what this verse reminds me of. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It's catchy, right? It gets stuck in your head. When I hear it, when I read that verse, that's exactly the image that comes to mind. Can you imagine, like, you had your own personal Timmy Trumpet just always following you around everywhere you went? And every time you did a good thing, that song played. Like, every time you bought Starbucks for the person behind you in line, all of a sudden you just hear. ♪♪ Or you go to church, you give to your church, you serve at church, and then Timmy... ...is gonna work on the tape. ♪♪ Or you're pushing your shopping car into the stall in the parking lot, you're not leaving it. Trumpet sounds like, look at me! Saving the world!

Doing all the good things! For me, I probably would get a little annoying after a while, right? You'd have a headache by the trumpet always following you around. But that's Jesus' point. He's intentionally making this sound ridiculous. He's saying, don't announce every good thing you do. Don't sound the trumpets. Now, we might not actually have trumpets, but we definitely have our own versions of this, right? We post it, we mention it, we find a way to casually bring up whatever good thing we did in a conversation. We make sure somebody knows that we just did something good. Now, Jesus isn't saying here that it's bad to help, or don't try to help people, or don't try to do good things. No, doing good things is great. He's not correcting our actions. What he's doing is he's correcting our motives. Because what you do matters, but why you do it matters even more. And that's where we're gonna find our first challenge today. If we wanna live a life for the only audience that matters, an audience of one, well, the first thing we need to do is we need to check our motives, check our motives.

Have you ever heard of a humble brag? Has anybody ever heard of a humble brag? Maybe you have people on your own social media feed that like, they're always humbly bragging. This was a funny one to me. This is a great example of a humble brag. It says this, it says, it's really weird being friends with famous people. You hardly ever get to see them, and you have to schedule times to hang out a week ahead. Like, I'm so sorry for you and your life of hanging with famous people, but they make it so annoying. But it's a humble brag. It's like, I'm annoyed, but also I'm something great. Look at me. And we'd laugh at stuff like that because it's so ridiculous, but it's a little bit relatable, isn't it? Like, we all tend to do this just a little bit. Every single one of us has this tendency to humbly brag because we want people to know that we do good things. We want people to realize that we're a good person. Look at all that I did. And that's exactly what Jesus is addressing here. Not just generosity, not just serving, not just helping people, not just doing good. What he's addressing is the motives behind it all. Because sometimes we can do all the right things for all the wrong reasons, right?

We can be generous. We can give to help others, to give others support, or we can give because we really want recognition of our giving. We can serve others because we see opportunities to love people like the Bible asks us to do, or we can serve because we just wanna pat on the back. We can help people that need help for the sake of helping them, but we could also do it because we just wanna be liked by that person. See, the action can be good while the motive is unhealthy. And I think that's why Jesus starts this whole section with those two words that he did. I'm gonna pull that verse back up, verse one back up. We're gonna read it again, but I need your help. Here at Central, when there's red words, we say those out loud together, but they're the first two red words. There's an exclamation point there. That means you have to bring some passion to it. So I'm gonna count us in. You ready? One, two, three. Watch out. Watch out. Don't do your good deeds publicly to be admired by others, for you will lose the reward from your father in heaven. I love that because he's essentially saying, pay attention. This is a trap.

Don't let your heart start to drift here. And it is a drift, it doesn't happen overnight. Nobody wakes up just saying, I wanna become addicted to other people's approval. No, it's a slow drift, it's subtle, it's sneaky, it slowly creeps into our lives. And before we know it, we're doing things because we need to be noticed. Which is why I wanna give us an application, an easy practical application for this first point. Earlier this summer, I was talking with my friend Bob, who's this brilliant author, he's this brilliant thinker. And he does a lot of public speaking, he's in a lot of counseling opportunities. And he told me something that has stuck with me ever since the beginning of summer. I thought about it every single day. He said, every once in a while, he'll find himself in a conversation or he'll find himself on stage speaking. And if he realizes that he's going to a moment where he's starting to brag, or he feels like he's trying too hard, that he's putting on a show, if he realizes there's a moment that he's not being himself, the real me, right there in the middle of the conversation, what he'll do is he'll just clap his hand together. Just, just clap his hand together. You just see Bob do this, you'll be talking to him,

he'll be talking to you, and all of a sudden he'll just pause, and it's like, reset, like, in scene. What are you doing right now? Stop performing, just be you. It's just something he knows in his own head as like a, stop it. And I absolutely love that because maybe some of us, we need that one clap. Where we might be telling a story, we might realize like, all I'm doing here is I'm just bragging on myself, I'm putting a spotlight on myself. Just one clap, reset. I'm trying hard to impress that person in this conversation, just clap, reset. Move the conversation a different direction. If we're posting something and we realize that all we're really posting it for is just for validation, just clap to yourself. Delete the post, delete the comment, reset. If we feel like we're always just making sure everybody knows what good things we did, just clap, reset. Sometimes we need something that reminds us that we're not performing for people. We're living for an audience of one. And so maybe that's our homework this week. Just before we post it, or before we say it, before we announced it, ask yourself,

if nobody knew that I even did it, would I still have done it? Do I need to clap and reset? Because that question will expose our motives every single time. Like, would I still be generous? Would I still help? Would I still encourage someone? Would I still do the right thing if nobody ever knew? Remember, the danger isn't being seen, the danger is needing to be seen. And once our motives start to drift, we start chasing something that was never meant to fuel our lives. And that brings us to the second challenge Jesus is gonna put in front of us today. If we wanna start living for that audience of one, we need to stop chasing the applause. Stop chasing the applause. Have you ever noticed that we have an award for everything these days? Like everything, I know we all know this. It's like employee of the month, rookie of the year, MVP, best dress, best smile. My daughter just recently won an award at cheer that was the award tiny but mighty. She's like, I'm like, that's a cool thing. They're saying you're strong. She's like, no, dad, they're saying I'm small. Like, yeah, they kind of are.

Like, I didn't know tiny but mighty was an award. I recently found a trophy. I think it's a trophy that we probably a lot of us could use. This trophy is the award for I survived the drama. How many feel like you've earned this trophy right here? I survived all the drama. Probably a lot of us, right? Didn't even know that it was an award, but apparently it is. There's an award for everything. And awards are awesome. I love celebrating people. I love when my kids are celebrated, when they get an award. We should celebrate people, but somewhere along the way, we started believing that applause was supposed to fuel our lives. That recognition was supposed to fuel us. And that's exactly where Jesus is going in these verses. That's exactly where he went in verse two. He says, when you give to someone in need, don't do as the hypocrites do, blowing trumpets in the synagogues and streets to call attention to their acts of charity. I tell you the truth, they have what? Received. They've already received all the reward they will ever get. Jesus says they got their reward. They got their applause.

They got their recognition. Those hypocrites looking for all that praise, looking for those trumpets. They got their attention. They got their compliments and that's it. That's all they're ever gonna get. And Jesus is asking, is that real? Is that really enough for us? Because the problem with applause is that it never lasts. You get that compliment and it feels really good for like 30 minutes. And then what do we need? We need another compliment. We get the promotion. It feels good for weeks and months, but then we need another one. We post something online, people respond. That post goes viral and we're excited about it. And then all of a sudden we need another post to go viral, to feel like we're being effective because applause is addictive. It's addictive and here's why. Once people become our reward, we're always gonna need more people. Once people become our reward, we're always gonna need more people. And that's exhausting. Can we just recognize that's incredibly tiring? Because now your joy depends on people's opinions. Now your confidence is built,

your foundation is built on what other people think. Now your worth depends on other people's opinions. Your happiness depends on other people's opinions. And I wish I could say that as pastors, we're immune to this, but we're not. Sometimes I can preach a message and I can ask myself the question, like, did that truly help anyone? Did God use that? Did that speak to anyone? But if I'm not careful, I can start to drift and start to think, did people like that message? Do people like me because of that message? And that's a dangerous place to get. That's a place where I'm starting to touch God's glory myself, which he always gets the glory. I should never be tempted to touch his glory. I don't ever wanna find my worth in what I do to be based around the applause of man. Because I need you to hear again, people were never meant to fuel our life. Their opinions were never meant to fuel our life. Their applause was never meant to fuel our life. God's approval was, God's love is. Applause is a terrible fuel source. It's an awful thing to keep us going because eventually it's going to run out. It's gonna fade. It's gonna disappear.

And you'll spend your whole life chasing something that can never satisfy you. So we have to stop chasing the applause. I think that's why some of us are so exhausted because we're carrying the impossible burden of just trying to make everybody happy, trying to please others. We're performing, we're managing perceptions. We're trying to impress everybody. And Jesus says, you can stop. You can stop. Clap. Reset. Pause. Start over. Because there's already somebody that sees you. Jesus says, I see you. My approval is all you're ever going to need. And you're not gonna exhaust yourself trying to earn it because you already have it. You're mine. You have my approval. You have my love. And that brings us to the final challenge that we're gonna see today. And that is to trust that God sees you. Trust that God sees you. Can we go back to the very end of that verse? The last two verses here, they say this. They say, but when you give to someone in need,

don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. Give your gifts in private, and your father who sees what? Everything. Everything will reward you. I love that because it's so simple, but it's so powerful. Your father, your heavenly father, he sees everything. Not your father sees the big things. Not your father sees the impressive things. Not your father sees the things that everybody else is applauding for. No, your father sees everything. And I think sometimes we underestimate how life-changing and freeing that can be. Because a lot of us, we are so exhausted. We're tired just trying to be enough, trying to prove ourselves, trying to impress people, trying to earn approval, trying to manage everybody's perception of us. And we just feel like we're in this never-ending hamster wheel of earning and keeping and gathering people's approval. And church, it's a trap. It's a trap. And Jesus says something so freeing. He says, you can stop. You can stop because your heavenly father, he already sees you. It reminds me of one of my favorite stories in the Bible. It's the story of the widow with two coins.

There was this widow who walked into the temple one day. The Bible tells us that as she was walking in, there were wealthy people that were giving large amounts of money. And it's not necessarily the amounts that mattered, it was the way they were doing it. The boastful way that they were giving. They were showing their gifts off for other people to notice. Their gifts turned heads. It was the type of gifts that made people think like, wow, they're so generous. Timmy Trumpet would start playing if he was there. And then there was this widow, just a lonely widow standing there with two small coins. She's just got two small coins in her hand, no spotlight. No one gathered around her. Nobody was impressed. Nobody was talking about the gifts that she was bringing. And as I think about this story, I often wonder for just a moment, if she wasn't tempted to think like, why even bother? Like, why do I even put myself through this? What difference is this going to make? Nobody's even going to notice this. Why even bother? Have you ever felt that before? Like what I have to offer doesn't seem significant or what I have to give doesn't seem important or somebody else could probably do it better.

Somebody else could probably give more. And that's the beautiful part of the story. Everybody else overlooked this woman with two small coins, but Jesus didn't. Jesus saw her. Out of all the people that day, all the flashiness, all the show, Jesus noticed her. And he stopped and he pointed her out and he celebrated her. And I love that because 2000 years later, we're not talking about all the other people that were there with their flashy, showy gifts. We don't know who received all the recognition, all the applause. We don't know who impressed everybody else, who the crowd was talking about. But you know who we are talking about? The widow with the two coins. Why? Because Jesus saw her. Because Jesus noticed her. Because Jesus saw her faithfulness, her quiet generosity of all that she could give. She was giving it all. She wasn't giving for people. She wasn't giving for a show. She wasn't giving so that she could be recognized. No, she was giving for God. And church, that's the freedom Jesus is inviting us into as well, to stop performing, to stop trying to impress everybody,

to stop waiting until we feel like we have something big enough to showcase to the world and instead do the faithful little things that God puts in front of us, trusting that he sees every single one of them. Because God sees what the world overlooks. God sees what the world overlooks in you. And I think somebody needs to hear that today because you feel this wrestle with trying to get attention and trying to get recognized and trying to prove you're a good person. Listen, God already sees you. He sees the unseen sacrifices that you're making. He sees the unnoticed prayers that you feel like you're praying. He sees the hidden generosity. He sees the private obedience. He sees the faithful moments when no one's applauding. The things that you do in obedience, they may never be posted. They may never be recognized. You may never get an award for it. You may never get a trophy, but they will always be seen by God. And maybe that's the freedom Jesus is trying to give us today. You don't have to perform anymore. You don't have to exhaust yourself chasing everybody else's approval anymore. Because when you know God sees you,

you stop needing everybody else to. When you realize the truth that your heavenly father sees you, you stop needing everybody else's approval, everybody else's opinion, everybody else's applause. Remember one question today. If nobody ever knew you did it, would you still do it? As followers of Jesus, we don't live for the applause of man. We don't live for the applause of people. We live for an audience of one. Before we leave today, can I just talk to the person in the room who maybe has never received Jesus as your Lord and Savior? You know maybe the reason some of us are so exhausted trying to approve, trying to earn everybody else's approval is because we've never experienced that approval that only Jesus can give. Maybe you've never experienced that approval that only Jesus can give. Maybe for you, you've spent your whole life chasing it. You've been chasing approval from parents, approval from teachers, approval from coaches, from friends. It eventually turned into approval from coworkers and your boss, maybe it's social media, maybe it's people you've never met. Maybe you've spent your whole life trying to chase approval from everybody else.

And the crazy thing is, even when we get it, it's never going to satisfy us because we were never meant to be created, to be fueled by the applause of man, people's approval. We were created for a relationship with God. And if you're here today and you've never received Jesus as your Lord and Savior, I want you to know, that's the whole reason he came. Not so you could spend your life trying to prove yourself, no, but so that you could finally stop. He came to this earth not to get something from you, but to give you something, to give you forgiveness, to give you grace, to give you purpose, to give you freedom, to give you eternal life, to give you a relationship with him. Jesus, his whole earthly mission, he lived for an audience of one. He didn't live for popularity or applause or approval. He lived to obey his heavenly Father. And because he did, he willingly went to the cross for you and me. And today, maybe you spent your whole life trying to earn acceptance from everybody else, and you never accepted the love that Jesus freely offers you. I want you to know something beautiful. Jesus, he already sees you, the good and the bad. He sees your mistakes, he sees your regrets, he sees your sins, he sees your failures, he sees the parts of your life that nobody else knows about. And what's so beautiful about that

is that he still loves you anyway. He's still chasing you anyway. You don't have to perform, you don't have to impress him, you don't have to get your life together first, you don't have to prove yourself, because Jesus isn't asking you to perform, he's inviting you into a friendship, a relationship with him. And maybe for the first time today, your response is simply this, it's just praying a prayer, naming Jesus your Lord and Savior, saying, I'm done performing, I'm done chasing everybody else's approval, I'm done trying to do life on my own. Jesus, I need you. And if that's you, I wanna lead you through that prayer right now. If I could have everybody bow their heads and close their eyes. If you're ready to live your life for the only audience that matters, to turn it completely over to God, just pray this prayer after me. Pray, God, I know that I'm a sinner, but I know you sent Jesus to forgive me of that sin. I believe he died on the cross, but I also believe in the miracle of him raising from that grave. God, forgive me of my sins.

I named Jesus my personal Lord and Savior. If you prayed that prayer for the first time with every head bowed, every eye closed, if you just do me a favor, if you just slip your hand up in the air, just a bold act of confidence, reaching out to Jesus. His approval is the only approval you'll ever need. His love, his recognition is the only recognition you'll ever need. Thank you for every single one of those hands. God, for every hand in this room, for every hand at our different locations or online, inside prison facilities that we can't see, God, I pray that you just draw so close. Fill them with your love. God, for all of us, let us help recognize the important truth that we're not living for anyone else but you. Nobody's opinions even matter. Your opinion, your love, your forgiveness, your grace, these are the only things that matter. So let us live our lives in such a way, God, that's honoring of that. And as you pour out your love and grace and forgiveness, we're gonna continue to give you all the credit, all the glory for every good thing in our lives. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Hey, can we give it up for everybody that made a decision to follow Jesus today?

If that's you, we have a free resource we wanna give you. If you go into your web browser, you put central.family in that web browser, you'll hit a quick link that says, I've decided to follow Jesus today. If that's you, we have a free resource we wanna give you. You'll hit a quick link that says, I've decided to follow Jesus, and we'll send you that free resource to help you take steps in the upcoming weeks in your new faith. Well, I'm gonna go ahead and throw it over to all of our different location pastors.