Sermon Tone Analysis

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Introduction

Good morning and thank you for the wonderful message of music.

If your new to FCC, we welcome you!

We believe it take the whole Bible to make a whole Christian, therefore, we simply teach the Bible simply one verse at a time, one book a time so we get the whole counsel of God.

We have come as far as verse 5 in Matthew 6, therefore, let us open our Bibles there.

Read Matthew 6:5-8

Prayer

Lord Heavenly Father, we have gathered together to worship you in Spirit and in Truth this morning as you have commanded us, and we have come Father with expectation desiring to hear from you.

Lord we are headed into a section of Scripture on prayer and since you know our hearts even before we reveal them to you, we confess that our prayer life needs work, in fact, we ask that you would forgive us for our prayerlessness and self-sufficiency and pride that it produces in our lives.

We ask now that you would fill us with your Holy Spirit and that you would lead, guide, and direct us into all truth as we learn about how not to pray.

Lord comfort the faint in heart and restore and revive us all.

In Jesus Name, we pray, we Love You! Amen and Amen.

Review

As we continue our journey through the Sermon on the Mount, I would encourage everyone to weekly or even daily read Matthew 5, 6, and 7.

So you come prepared to receive with meekness the Word that the Lord has for you each Sunday.

Because there is no way that I can cover the Word in its richness and the Lord desires to speak directly to you in personal study things that I may never teach.

And besides, when you do this, the Word will be more vibrant, instructive, and encouraging each week and growth will be the result.

Last week, we looked at Matthew 6:1-4 and the Lord taught us first what our giving should not look like and then what it should look like.

We are called not sound trumpets or toot our own horns in our vernacular when we give.

The hypocrites (Pharisees and Scribes) tooted their horns when they gave in the synagogues and in the streets to be seen be men.

They loved the praise of man, rather than the glory of the Lord church.

And this fit right in the self-righteous, legalistic system that they had created.

What is sad is that they recieved their reward from man and not from God.

The word reward here is a Greek accounting term that literally means to be paid in full.

Would you rather be paid in full from man of from your Father in heaven church?

To me, that’s a no brainer, but our flesh loves the affirmation of man.....

3. Then after Jesus teaches on how not to give, he goes on to teach how to give in secret, so our Father can reward you openly or publically as the language suggests.

There are two terms here that speak of intimacy church, two terms that speak of relationship.

The Father

And in secret

The Lord desires for us to spend time with him in secret church, he desire us to pour out our hearts to him and give as the Spirit leads us.

This was a totally new concept for the Jew, because they had been taught by the religious leaders of the day to toot their horn when they gave.

God desires us to take care of the poor and needy church and one way we can do this is through giving of our resources and of our time.

Here in Matthew 6:1-18, what we have is Jesus correcting the spiritual disciplines that the Pharisees taught wrong and what he does is to help his listeners understand that part of being Kingdom people means that we give, we pray, and we fast with proper motives and heart attitudes.

Sop we come to our next spiritual discipline and that is prayer.

There are two kinds of learning, positive and negative.

Often it is necessary to teach on what something is not, before teaching on what something should be or is to understand it full impact.

In Luke 11:1, the disciples asked Christ, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

So our Lord begins by showing them how not to pray before He tells them how to pray.

What is interesting about the text here in Luke 11:1, is that the disciples did not ask Jesus to teach them how to study their Bibles, raise the dead, give sight to the blind, etc…, but rather they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray because they somehow understood the power of prayer because the Jews embraced prayer more than all the nations they were surrounded by, but somewhere in the process they lost the genuineness and authenticity of prayer to mechanical nothingness for the sake of the tradition that was ingrained in them from birth.

Prayer can become hypocritical, external and mechanical for the Christian and, when it does, we are no better than the hypocritical Pharisees.

There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christians as our prayer life.

Have you ever noticed how much easier anything else is than prayer?

When we begin to slip spiritually, it is prayer that first is affected.

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to speak to others about God when your prayer life is going well?

You know we often share more of our problems with others than with God.

Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to pray in a group than to pray alone?

These are things that Christ will bring to our attention this morning, for a disciple of Jesus Christ externalism does not impress God.

The real test of a person’s spiritual life and condition is the genuineness and sincerity of his prayer life.

NOTE: All the great Christian men and women of history have been men of prayer.

If we desire to be used by God church, we must live a life of prayer...

True prayer is measured by weight, not by length.

A single groan before God may have more fullness of prayer in it than a fine oration of great length.

The Secret Of Power In Prayer, Volume 34, Sermon #2002 - John 15:7

Charles Spurgeon

Notice that Jesus says when you pray, not if you pray, just like he did with our giving?

He assumes that his followers pray church, but as you know prayer is one of the most difficult things that we do because everything in this life attempts to keep us busy and thus, our prayer life often suffers.

And if is suffers long, it is a slippery slope to becoming a backslidden Christian, because prayer is often the first thing to go...

Next, Jesus tells us that we should not be and pray like the hypocrites.

Hypocrite- hypokritēs-(hoop-ok-ree-tace') - an actor, a stage player, a pretender, or a deceiver, one who plays the part.

A hypocrite church is one who assumes a character that does not belong to him.

He is a person who acts outwardly what he actually is not inwardly.

In context, it is a man who pretends to be a man of prayer by praying publicly but he does it only to be seen by men.

His heart is far from God.

Jesus is actually teaching about the Pharisees here, for they wanted men to think they were spiritual and they gave off an air of being super-righteous or pious if you may.

ILLUSTRATION: I remember a story about a very great preacher who, one day when walking down the street in London, dropped to his knees, took off his hat, mumbled a few words in prayer and went on.

Those who saw it were very impressed, and tabbed this preacher to be a very spiritual man.

When I first heard this story, I too was impressed but in light of this verse it was quite fair to ask if he did it for men or for God? Could he have prayed without making a public display?

Did he pray when he arrived at home?

Only God knows this man’s real motive.

They love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners church, to be seen by men.

In the OT we find that there are three postures of prayer:

Standing.

Kneeling

Laying prostrate on the ground.

And the hypocrites loved the standing part church to be seen by men.

But none of these postures matter, if our hearts our not right and we are praying mechanically, ritualistically, or to be seen by men.

Here, Jesus is teaching on public prayer.

One will not pray publically, if they do not pray privately first.

And to top this off, Jesus uses a different word here for streets than he did when he was speaking of giving.

Streets here in Greek means a narrow street, while in Matthew 6:5, streets is a wide street.

They went to the busiest intersections, with the most people church, so they could be seen and thought of as the super-spiritual of the day.

Have you ever noticed that when you pray publically, that at times you say to yourself, that was really good?

They must of liked that one?

In this case, was your prayer about God or you?

Was it to be heard by men?

Note: Jesus says that they have there reward, just like those who toot their horn when they give.

The term reward here in the Greek, is an accounting term church, that means to be paid in full.

This means that the reward they recieved was not heavenly, but earthly and sensual.

Their reward was to be seen by men and affirmed by men and not blessed by the Father.

When Dr. Richard Halverson was the U.S. Senate chaplain, he spoke before a group of evangelicals who had expressed their anger about Congress’ inactivity on the subject of school prayer.

They were irritated that congress had not acted with a strong initiative to restore prayer in schools.

To these who were seeking greater initiative from the government, Dr. Halverson asked, “How many of you have prayed with your children this month, outside of church?”

Nobody raised their hand.

Spiritual initiative starts in the home, not on Capitol Hill.

But are the keys that unlock the passage, it means on the contrary, or is a term of contrast and that is exactly what Jesus is doing here.