Praying from your Heart

Matthew 6:5-8

a. Pray from the Heart (6:5-6)

b. Pray with Purpose (6:7-8)

1. INTRODUCTION

2. BODY

a. Pray from the Heart (6:5-6)

i. Jesus now moves on to teaching on the topic of prayer. As we saw last week, the three activities in which Jesus speaks about are giving, praying and fasting. All of these activities we can understand are godly disciplines that people during the time of Jesus would practice in public which would cause others to see their godliness by their outward behavior.

ii. So Jesus starts verse 5 with the topic of prayer. Jesus says when you pray, don’t pray like the hypocrites. This goes back to verse 2, where Jesus teaches about giving. When you give to the poor, don’t sound your trumpet like the hypocrites. Likewise, don’t be like the hypocrites when you pray. Don’t pray and stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men.

iii. I think the means in which people explain this is to not pray in public to be noticed. What we have to take into consideration is not that we shouldn’t be praying in public. The emphasis is not on location of where we pray but how we pray. If the practice of prayer is to be into exhibition our pious practice rather than praying and honoring God, then this is exactly what Jesus is condemning.

iv. Jesus is not teaching that public prayer is bad and that we should stop doing this. We see from Jesus’s statement that when they pray in the synagogues, this means that they are leading in prayer within the synagogues because not everyone had the ability to pray in public. So we can understand that Jesus is not condemning public prayer.

v. Again, the way to understand this is to understand the context of what Jesus is speaking about. Jesus had just taught that we shouldn’t give to the poor to impress others to make them think we are more godly because of the amount we give or less godly because we can’t give.

vi. Again, the heart of Jesus’s purpose in teaching in giving was to help us understand God is looking at the heart. We give because we understand what we have been given. If we don’t give, then we don’t fully understand what we have been given through the Lord Jesus Christ. Hence, giving is the fruit of our love for God because of our understanding of what He has given us in Christ.

vii. So what is Jesus talking about then? Jesus is focusing on the heart of prayer and getting to the core of what prayer is. Prayer is to enter into the presence of God. It is not merely talking with God, or asking God for things we need. It is entering into the presence, to stand in the presence of God. It’s like in the movies when we watch a person stand in the presence of a king, this is what prayer involves. It is that we stand in front of the king and talk to the King or ask the King for the things that we need.

viii. Similarly, when Jesus teaches here regarding prayer, we should be aware that the purpose of prayer is not to exhibit some sort of godliness as if it’s to impress others, but understanding that prayer is standing before God.

ix. So what does this look like in our context? I believe it comes down to praying so that we enjoy the public attention. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t spend time in working on our prayer or spending time to write out a prayer. That’s not the heart of what Jesus is speaking about. What Jesus is speaking about rather is that men would use prayer to elevate their positions or the way people think about them. Again, we can write out our prayers so that it causes people to think that we are some type of godly person, to try to win the hearts of those listening, rather than praying to honor God.

x. This phrase that Jesus says is key to our understanding. Jesus says, truly I say to you, that they have their reward in full. You see, what Jesus is condemning is that these hypocrites would receive a reward in their prayer. They would seek the acceptance of those listening and use prayer as a means to cause others to think more highly of them, instead of leading the people into the presence of God.

xi. Which is why it makes sense that Jesus says in verse 6, instead of praying in public for public attention, rather, pray in private. Jesus interestingly goes from speaking in the plural here to the singular. Instead of those people, you go pray in secret. Go to a place where people can’t see you and pray because the focus is not on others, but your personal prayer to God.

xii. Again, Jesus’s focus is that people would pray understanding that God is the audience that we should be seeking because prayer is going into the presence of God. Our priority in our prayer is that it is to God and that God is the one who rewards us.

xiii. Another interesting point here is that Jesus uses a play on words. Jesus says that we should pray to your father who is in secret, and your father who sees in secret will reward you. This phrase helps us to understand that God is omnipresent in that even in the secret place, although He is invisible, He is there with us who are praying in secret. It also helps us to understand that unlike men who can’t see our hearts when we pray, God can see our hearts when we pray which is why He can reward us as we pray. Again, Jesus’s point here is to make it clear that prayer is ultimately to God.

b. Pray with Purpose (6:7-8)

i. The focus this time is not on prayer performed with a view to human approbation but on an attitude and practice in prayer which betrays a misunderstanding of how God expects to be approached by his people. Jesus makes it clear here that when you are praying, don’t pray to God as if you don’t know who God is. So instead of trusting a Father to fulfill their needs, they think they must badger a reluctant Deity into taking notice of them.

ii. Jesus introduces this by stating don’t be like the Gentiles who suppose that they will be heard for their many words. Jesus uses an interesting description, by saying don’t babble. Don’t speak much or use many words. It is not necessarily purely mechanical, but rather obtrusive and unnecessary. It assumes that the purpose of prayer is first to demand God’s attention and then to inform him of needs he may have overlooked.

iii. You see the Gentiles don’t know that God is a Father to them, who is concerned for them and willing to fulfill their needs. Instead, they think of Him as some Genie who needs to be told what they need and wanting to pray to Him because they need Him to give them the things they want and reminding Him of the things that they need.

iv. This sounds a lot like much of the prayers within Evangelicalism today. Prayer is no longer within the realm of wanting to spend time with God or wanting to be in His presence, but rather, a rambling on of what they need from Him because He hasn’t delivered yet and we want to remind Him of what we need.

v. This is not to say that we shouldn’t go to Him with things we need. We should go to God for all our needs and go to Him with all our problems. But the problem here is a misunderstanding of what prayer is. Isaiah 65:24 helps us to understand who God is. In Isaiah 65, God is speaking about the New Heavens and the New Earth, but here He speaks briefly about their prayer and how before they call, He will answer. This is the essence of who God is.

vi. What God is making clear is, what prayer is, how it should be done and an accurate understanding of who God is. Before we pray, we should fundamentally understand who God is. We should know that God is a benevolent Father who is concerned for us and loves us. God always wants the best for us. This is why He wants us to pray.

vii. If we understand this, then it makes prayer unnecessary because prayer is not speaking to a God who is absent and unaware of our needs and doesn’t care about us. Rather, prayer is going into the presence of God and an expression of our relationship with Him and trusting Him as Father. It’s not a form of communication where we remind Him of the things He forgot, but going to God and sharing with Him what is on our hearts and minds.

viii. It’s hard for us to understand this yet we go through this all the time. Sometimes in my life, my wife tells me that she doesn’t want me to solve her problems. When she wants to talk with me, she doesn’t want me to solve all her problems. Rather, she wants me to sit there and listen to me and understand the things that she’s going through. That’s exactly what prayer is. Prayer is not simply telling God things so that He can solve all our problems. Rather, it is telling God things because we know that He cares for us and we can go to Him with our problems. It is relying and trusting in Him and expressing our concerns and worries because we know that He cares for us.

ix. This is the essence of prayer. It is to be able to go to God and talk with Him because we know He cares for us.

3. CONCLUSION