Do keep your Bibles in hand and turn this time to the New Testament scriptures and to Matthew’s gospel, chapter 6; Matthew chapter 6. We’re going to be reading from verse 5. Our attention this morning will be on verses 5 through 9, though we’ll read through verse 13 – sorry, excuse me, we’ll read through verse 15 just to give some context.
I want you to see three things as we look at this passage. We’re continuing with our investigation into the teaching of Jesus on prayer, our new teaching theme this year. Three things to see here. First of all, the duty of prayer. Jesus calls us in this text to be people who pray. If we are His followers, prayer is not negotiable, but basic and essential. Secondly, the dynamics of prayer. And here I have in mind in particular the negative dynamics that often distort prayer and undermine prayer as we seek to engage in it. And then finally, the disciplines of prayer. Jesus teaches us two heart disciplines that will greatly help us as we seek to give ourselves to the ministry of prayer. The duty, the dynamics, and the disciplines of prayer.
Before we read God’s Word together, let’s bow our heads once again and ask for His help. Let us pray.
Abba Father, we come as Your children longing for You to minister to us by Your Word and Spirit. And so as the Scripture is read, help us to hear Your voice and help us to tremble at Your Word and seek to obey it, for Your glory, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Matthew chapter 6, beginning at verse 5. This is the Word of God:
“And 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. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this:
‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Amen, and we praise God for His holy and authoritative Word.
The Duty of Prayer
Let’s think first of all about the duty of prayer. The duty of prayer. Verse 5, “When you pray;” verse 6, “But when you pray;” verse 7, “And when you pray;” verse 9, “Pray then like this.” It’s perhaps an obvious point. I think it is one worth noting nonetheless. As Jesus teaches His disciples the ABCs of Christian discipleship in the Sermon on the Mount here beginning in Matthew 5 and running for several chapters, He insists that prayer is an absolute obligation not an occasional option for the Christian believer. Don’t we need to be clear about that if we are Christians? Yes, prayer should be a delight. Certainly prayer can be a lifeline. We can go further and even say in the life of a truly born again Christian, of every truly born again Christian, there will always be prayer to some extent and to some degree. Prayer is inevitable in the hearts of everyone rightly related to God through faith in Jesus Christ. It is an infallible mark and evidence and characteristic of the truly converted.
All of that is wonderfully true, but it does not undermine the fact that prayer remains our duty. It is our duty. We ought to pray. We must pray. You’ll notice Jesus commands us to pray in verse 9. “Pray then like this.” But in verses 5, 6, and 7 He simply assumes this is the basic obligation that we already understand and get; we fundamentally grasp the point. He doesn’t say, “If you pray, here’s how you should go about it.” He doesn’t propose prayer as a novel idea the disciples might want to give a try one day. As Jesus instructs His disciples in what it looks like practically for them to follow Him, He says, “When you pray.” Prayer is basic. It is fundamental. It is foundational to an authentic walk with God. Where there is no prayer there is no spiritual life. Just like where there is no breath there is no physical life.
So let me ask you, “What is your view of prayer?” I am not asking what you are supposed to think about prayer. I am not asking what the correct answer is, what your theology of prayer is. I am asking what your present prayer life reveals about what you really think about prayer. Is prayer the basic, fundamental, foundational step one, non-negotiable necessity of your Christian life? Is it? If it’s anything else, anything less, Jesus is teaching us we have a deficient understanding of its true place and value. “When you pray, pray like this.” Prayer frames authentic Christianity. Just think about our suffering brothers and sisters in Afghanistan for whom we are all praying right now. Think of them hunkered down behind closed doors or trying to find a way to flee to safety in another country. If they were caught praying to the triune God it likely will cost them their lives. But were we in their place, were such scrutiny happening here among us, I wonder, “Would there be enough evidence of prayer to the living God in your heart, in your life, to convict you?” The duty of prayer. It is a duty to which every Christian, every Christian, every Christian is called.
The Dynamics of Prayer
Then notice in the second place what we learn here about the dynamics of prayer. Jesus addresses two common mistakes in the way that we often pray. Doesn’t He? The first of them you can see in verse 5. Would you look there with me? “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.” Clearly the issue is not public prayer per se. We have abundant examples in the Scriptures of corporate and public prayer, including, by the way, several examples of Jesus Himself praying in public with and for other people. I have a very fine Christian friend who will not pray out loud over his meal in a restaurant because of this verse. But he is misunderstanding Jesus’ teaching here, isn’t he? It’s not public prayer that is the problem. What is the real problem? Look at the text. What does Jesus say? “These people are hypocrites,” He says. And the essence of their hypocrisy is that they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, that they might be seen by others. It’s not that they are seen and heard by others that is an issue; it’s that they love it when they are. That’s the problem.
Prayer as Performance
You may know the word for “hypocrite” originated in the context of the theater to describe what an actor does in a play. And that’s the real problem that Jesus is calling out here, isn’t it? These men are play-acting when they go to prayer. They are talking to God, but they’re really focused all the while on themselves. In other words, this is prayer as performance. Prayer as performance. The central problem is, these folks have the wrong audience in view when they pray. They make a great show of prayer, ostensibly aiming to bring glory to God, but secretly aiming all the while only to bring glory to themselves. They pray that they might be seen.
Before we move on, do notice the stunning conclusion Jesus offers about them at the end of verse 5. Would you look there again with me? “Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” They got what they were looking for in their prayers. That is to say, the admiration of their peers. Doubtless they wondered why their prayers had gone unanswered. Jesus is exposing what really happened. Here’s why their prayers go unanswered. Perhaps they wouldn’t recognize it about themselves but they were not really praying to God at all. They had been praying all this time at the altar of self. And because they were bowing at the altar of self, even though they took the divine name upon their lips they were not really looking for God to answer them. That’s not really what animated and fueled their prayers. They are really looking to be made much of in their prayers.
And they were. People looked at them admiringly and praised them for their beautifully phrased prayers. “How pious! How polished! How profound and learned and impressive your prayers are! Thank you for your lovely prayers!” That’s what they really loved. That’s what they liked to hear. That’s why they were really praying. And since that’s the reward they were seeking, that’s exactly what they got. I wonder, could it be one reason why our public prayers go unanswered is that when we pray we are far more interested in what people thought about how you did than we are about the glory of God and the salvation of the lost and the accomplishment of God’s will and the extension of God’s kingdom? That’s the rebuke that Jesus is offering us here.
Prayer as Persuasion
But then look down at verse 7. Notice the second common mistake when it comes to prayer. It’s one of the dynamics of how we pray when it goes wrong. The first problem is prayer as performance; prayer with the wrong audience in view. That is to say, prayer for our own glory. The second problem is prayer as persuasion. That is to say, prayer that tries to leverage what it needs from God by getting the formula just right; finding the secret key that will finally persuade God to see it our way and supply what we need. Look at verse 7. “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words.” Alright, so in verses 5 and 6 Jesus deals first of all with a major defect in the prayers of many of the Jewish rabbis. But now here in verse 7 he aims his guns at the prayers of the Gentile pagans.
And this time it’s not public display that is at fault. The issue here is summed up in two Greek words in verse 7. The first is “battologeo” – “empty phrases.” The second is “polulogia” – “many words.” Jesus has incantations and the rote recitation of sacred words invoking the deity like a mantra which were thought to be especially pleasing somehow to the god or to the goddess in question. And if we just say it often enough and intensely enough and for long enough then he or she will give us what we want. Of course that’s not really prayer at all at that point, is it? It’s magic. It’s an attempt to obtain divine favor by the performance of the correct ritual or the recitation of the appropriate formula.
Not long after beginning my ministry in London I was performing a funeral at a cemetery at a distant part of the city. Unsure about London traffic, which if you have ever spent time in London you will know can be truly horrendous. I left plenty of margin to get there on time; I actually arrived about 15 minutes early and I was shown to a sort of vestry area where clergy could wait and prepare before the funeral began. After a while I realized I was not alone in this room. I turned around to see standing at the back of the room, off in the corner away from the line of sight as you entered, two old men in long white robes with white turbans on their heads and long white beards. They were facing each other and they were chanting and rocking back and forth like this. Needless to say this was a new experience to a brand new minister. I smiled at them lamely, pretending like I’d seen this sort of thing a hundred times before; nodded, said “Good morning!” They did not even glance my way. Didn’t stop mumbling to each other for a moment. Did not stop rocking back and forth. Eventually time for the funeral arrived and on the way to the chapel I asked the cemetery staff about these two fellows. It turns out they were Zoroastrians. Their funeral rites last all day long, so long after the public part of the funeral was over and done with, the priests would retire to this back room and continue chanting and they kept on rocking, literally.
That’s what Jesus is talking about here, isn’t it? “Empty phrases” and “many words.” But ritual recitations and incantations like this have, obviously we all can see it, there’s no power in that. One commentator explains what all of that is trying to accomplish. It is an attempt, he says, “to inform God. They must repeat their requests over and over to make sure He gets it right. It’s an attempt to persuade God. He’s not a good God or a kind God or a loving God. No, He must be battered by a huge volume of words into doing what we want. It’s an attempt to obligate God. God is reduced to a calculating judge or a machine for whom prayer quotients are fulfilled in exchange for the desired gifts. It is an attempt to manipulate God. Words are viewed as having magical power.” But let’s be clear. Let’s be clear. It’s not just Zoroastrians who are guilty of this stuff. It’s not just pagans who fall into this mistake. If that were the case, Jesus would never have found it necessary to warn His own disciples of this danger. No, this is a perpetual temptation for bright, earnest Christians too. It’s a subtle and constant temptation for you and for me.
Haven’t you ever found yourself trying to get your prayers just right to pray with the right words or with enough fervor or intensity or for the requisite duration or frequency under the creeping, though often unexamined assumption that if God has not answered our prayers yet it must be because we haven’t been doing it right. If you could just get the formula right. If you could find the magic password, like Gandalf at the Doors of Moria. Don’t worry if you didn’t get that. That’s for the students who are new in town! If you just get the formula right, the gates of heaven will open. Haven’t you ever felt like that? I’ve felt like that. But back of all of that is a horribly deficient view of God. After all, think about it – what sort of deity are we really praying to if he needs an infomercial from us to make up his mind about things? Or if he needs coaxing and cajoling and persuading and manipulating into helping us out – what a pathetic, capricious, ignorant thing a god like that would be! And put in those terms, who would ever want to pray to a god like that in the first place? If you have to play games for him and jump hoops for him and appease him to get him to pay attention to you, he’s hardly worth a minute more of your time.
And just as an aside, I can’t help but wonder if that’s actually one reason so many people who have been raised in the church end up rejecting Christianity altogether. They’ve seen sincere Christians resort to prayer like a magic talisman or a bribe or a coin in the heavenly slot machine. And they think to themselves, “If that’s what God is like, I want nothing to do with Him. If I have to play games with Him and bribe Him and perform for Him, I don’t want anything to do with Him.” And they’re quite right, of course. If that’s what God is like, I don’t want anything to do with Him either. What they’re missing is that the kind of god they are rejecting is not the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. They’re actually rejecting the distorted counterfeit that Jesus is warning the disciples not to give place to in this very passage. It so often finds purchase in our hearts nevertheless, doesn’t it? Prayer is not a lucky rabbit’s foot. It is not a talisman. It is not a bribe or an argument or an infomercial or an attempt to persuade God to do something He hasn’t thought of before. “Okay pastor, if that’s what prayer is not – what is it? What should Christian prayer be?”
The Disciplines of Prayer
The duty of prayer. The dynamics of prayer. Now finally, the disciplines of prayer. Jesus does more than expose the unhealthy dynamics at play in so much of our praying here, doesn’t He. He offers a better way. He’s going to go on, as we read a moment ago, to give us the Lord’s Prayer to instruct us in the content of our praying. Before He does that, He teaches us about two heart disciplines that we need in all our praying if we are to pray well and faithfully. First, the discipline of looking away, and secondly, the discipline of looking up. Look away and look up.
The Discipline of Looking Away
Instead of prayer as performance, prayer for the wrong audience, prayer that looks only at attracting praise rather than giving praise, Jesus says, “I want you to look away.” That is, “I want you to look away from yourself.” That’s the first thing you must do whenever you begin to pray, whether in public or in private. You must look away from yourself. That’s what Jesus is talking about in verse 6, if you’d look there with me please. “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” To be clear, Jesus is not interested in whether your door is open or not. That’s not the issue. He is concerned that you take steps to kill ostentation and display, that’s the point. Get out of the line of sight. That’s the point. Be suspicious of your heart. Avoid public display. Take concrete steps in your daily routine to minimize public attention being drawn to your piety. Jesus knows just how subtle and pervasive sin really is. He knows you can do holy things – you can take the name of the living God on your lips, you can worship the Lord as we’ve been doing together this morning, with your mouth – and all the while as you go to God, your heart is still bowing at the altar of self.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones puts it well, I think. He says this. “We tend to think of sin as we see it in its rags, out in the gutters of life. We look at a drunkard, poor fellow, and we say, ‘There’s sin. That’s sin!’ But,” says Lloyd-Jones, “that is not the essence of sin. To have a real picture and a true understanding of it, you must look at some great saint, some unusually devout and devoted man. Look at him there upon his knees in the very presence of God. Even there, self is intruding and the temptation is for him to think about himself, to think pleasantly and pleasurably about himself and really to be worshiping himself rather than God.” Jesus knows the human heart, your heart and my heart, and how prone we are to take the name of God in vain by praying to Him while flattering ourselves. If you and I are to pray, to really pray, then we need to begin here by dying to self. Look away from yourself. Go into the closet, shut the door, get out of the line of sight, stop flattering yourself, stop praising yourself. Real prayer demands that we turn our backs on ourselves. So look away. That’s the first vital heart discipline if we are to pray properly.
The Discipline of Looking Up
But there is another that necessarily goes along with it. If you look away from yourself, you must secondly look up; look up to God. Jesus teaches us some vital truths about God in this passage without which we will inevitably pray like the hypocrites and the Gentiles. We will pray as performance or we will pray in an attempt to persuade God as if He were ignorant and indifferent and indifferent and needed us to straighten Him out. The key thing that Jesus teaches us about true prayer in this text is that it is not in essence about using the right words. In its essence, prayer is an act of loving communication between a child and her Father. That’s what prayer is. Verse 6, “Go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Verse 8, “Do not be like them for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” He is Abba Father. You are His daughter or His son.
Philip Ryken tells a moving story of a Christian couple in Brazil who ran an orphanage for street children in their home. One day they took a trip into the city. As they walked through the streets of Sao Paulo they saw a familiar looking boy sitting dirty, covered in a blanket, begging on the street corner. He looked familiar. As they got a little closer they realized this boy had lived in their home for a season and then one day, inexplicably, suddenly he disappeared. And as the realization hits them, they ran towards him with joy. And after they embraced him they said, “Why did you leave?” “I didn’t think you wanted me to stay,” he said sadly. Nothing could have been further from the truth, of course. They loved this boy deeply, but he had never felt secure in their love. “He lived for so long on the streets, so says Ryken, “he was not absolutely sure in his heart of hearts that he was wanted, and so the boy left home to become a beggar on the streets.”
Begging on the streets when you are in fact a beloved child who is always welcome home. That’s what far too many of us are doing as Christians when we pray. We have lost sight of our adoption as children and so we resort to empty phrases and many words, we adopt all sorts of strategies to try and leverage grace from the hand of a God that we assume is cold and aloof and distant and doesn’t really want us to stay. But Jesus says not only is He your Father, but He is – look at this really beautiful phrase in verse 6; do you see it? He is “your Father in secret.” It’s almost a title. It should be a capital “S” – “your Father in Secret.” That is to say He is your Father when there is no one else around and it’s just you and Him. His love is not just a show, put on for public display. It is not superficial or temporary or capricious. You don’t need to persuade Him to hear you out, do you see? You don’t need to coax Him into seeing things your way.
Listen, if you have come to trust in Jesus, His Father is now your Father and He loves you! Have you perhaps been praying like an orphan lately? Have you been praying like an orphan? I wonder if you have. If you trust in Christ you need to know that you are in fact utterly secure in the Father’s love. There is no need to beg for scraps in the street, trying by your performance in prayer to prize from the hand of a reluctant Father what you fear He is not willing to give. No, you are His beloved child and you have His heart!
Of course it may be some of you here today actually are orphans, spiritual orphans, Fatherless and lost. I want you to know you don’t have to be an orphan a moment longer. I want you to know that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ can become your Father right now. This instant He can become your Father. His Son Jesus came to extend that invitation to you. Did you know that He died as if He were an orphan on the cross, derelict and abandoned, so that you might become an adopted child of God? But you must trust yourself to Him today. Don’t run away. Don’t hide. The offer is real. There is a place for you in the family of God. It’s time to come home. It’s time to come home. If you’ll turn to Jesus, He will wash away the grime of the street, the grime of your sin. He will make you clean. He will make you a child of God.
And do notice before we’re done one last thing. Did you see how extravagant the Father’s love really is? Look at verse 8. “Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” Before it’s on your lips, He already knows. The point here is not to make prayer redundant. “If He already knows, why bother?” That’s not the point. The point rather is to make the orphan’s babbling desperation His attempt to manipulate what He is afraid He can’t get any other way – utterly redundant, unnecessary. You don’t need to do it. He already knows what you need. His heart is already inclined toward you, ready to answer with a Father’s tenderness. You don’t need to impress Him or persuade Him. You can go to Him in childlike simplicity, openly, honestly in your own stumbling words and pour out your heart. No show, no display, no pomp. He’s not impressed. You don’t need to impress Him! He gets it already. That’s Jesus’ point. And He loves to hear you run to Him and ask Him for things that His heart is already glad to give.
Isn’t that what Jesus says in verse 6? “Go into your room and close the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” That’s a promise to cling to. A promise of a reward you didn’t earn. That’s what Jesus is saying. “Go pray in secret and He will reward you.” There’s no merit in your desperate cries from your closet to the Father. He’s not saying, “You earned this.” He’s saying, “I’m going to lavish grace upon you that you did not look for, beyond what you have asked; beyond what you can imagine.”
What is the reward? Well certainly answered prayer is part of the reward Jesus has in view. I think heaven is also part of the reward. You remember how the hypocrites, they’ve already received their reward. They’ve had it. They were looking for the praise of men in their prayers – that’s what they got! That’s the extent of their reward. But for us, through all the glory and the grit and the grief of life here, there is the promise of a reward yet to come at the Father’s right hand in the presence of the exalted Christ. There is reward for those who commune with Him through faith in Jesus. Even more than that though, answered prayer in heaven, I think we can also say Jesus Himself is the very heart of the great reward the Father gives us. He is God’s richest gift after all. He gives you Jesus. Prayer is about a relationship. It’s not just about getting stuff. And so He gives you His Son. The governance and guidance of Jesus, fellowship with Jesus, the loving Shepherd care of Jesus, His High Priestly intercession. He gives you Jesus. What we need to see is that prayer in its essence is not mainly about getting stuff from God. It’s mainly about getting God in Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. It’s about growing ever more deeply into the wonder of the Father’s love.
Have you been praying like an orphan lately? You don’t need to pray like an orphan anymore. Come on home. Believer in Jesus, you are welcome. You are utterly secure in the Father’s heart. You can pour out your cries to Him. He knows what you need before you ask and He delights to give. Let’s pray together.
Abba Father, forgive us in our spiritual insecurity for running away, for trying to manipulate You, for babbling at You, for trying to impress You, trying to persuade You, to leverage from You what we think we need as though You were not willing, as though You were cold and censorious and judgmental. Forgive us for failing to see how Your heart beats with tenderness toward Your children. Having given Your only begotten Son for us, how will You not also along with Him graciously give us all things? You are a Father to us and we are welcome home, so we want to come back to You now. Please, Abba Father, forgive us for running away, for playing games with You, for using prayer for our own glory or our own ends. Instead, would You give us Jesus once again. And as we rest upon Him, help us to learn to delight in fellowship with You. For we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.