Prayer Before the Father

Introduction

As we met last week we looked at Christ’s continued sermon moving into the first four verses of chapter 6. As a brief reminder do not allow the chapter/verse designations to mislead you, this is a continual message given and as such this section of the text should not be separated from what we have already seen in chapter 5. In the passage from last week, we saw that Christ carried the righteousness required of His kingdom people into the very motives of our hearts. The truth of the issue pressing beyond merely whether a good work was done. Instead, we are faced with the greater concern of whether it was done for the glory of God or for the praise of men.

Last week we looked at Christ example of giving to the needy was the first example. We saw in that example that Christ was not merely dealing with whether we give or not, in fact the language used upholds the same principle that we see throughout scripture, giving to those in need is the expectation, and the concern was the motives behind our actions and now, as we move forward to Matthew 6:5-8, we see that Jesus applies that same principle to prayer.

In these verses, Christ warns His disciples against two distortions in their, and our, prayers. First, He warns against the hypocrisy of praying in order to be seen and praised by others. Second, He warns against the empty repetition of those who believe they will be heard because of the quantity of their words and their repetitiveness in approaching the throne. In direct contrast to each of these distortions, Jesus directs us to pray to the Father, with confidence in the Father, knowing that He sees what is done in secret, already knows our needs even before we ask Him, and trusting in His sovereign providence and provision. We will deal with the first of these this week and move to the second, verses 7-8, next week.

This means that the emphasis of this passage is not simply on where we pray or how long we pray, but on the heart with which we come before God. Christ is teaching us to pray before the Father rather than before men, and to pray in dependence rather than manipulation. This teaching leads into the prayer that has come to be known as the Lord’s Prayer. In fact, over the next several weeks we will be looking at this section of the text and as we have done in the past we will read the entirety of this text each Sunday to keep ourselves grounded on the whole of the passage. So, with that in mind, let us turn our attention now to God’s Word where we will read Matthew 6:5-15.

Text

Please stand for the reading of God’s holy, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, sufficient, complete and certain Word:

Matthew 6:5–15 LSB

“And when you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. “And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. “Therefore, do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. “Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is 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 do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’] “For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. “But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank You for the gift of Your Word, for the truth that you did not leave us without direction or guidance in this life but that You have provided, you are providing and you will continue to supply Your people with their needs. Father help us as we study this passage to approach this text in humility and submission, That we allow Your words to direct us, challenge us, expose us and correct us. Grant us the strength to live according to its truths even when this world would seek to shift us away from the truth of Your teaching.

Grant us now, by the power of the Holy Spirit through the truth of Your Word, that we recall that in ourselves we are not and shall not produce righteousness that is sufficient to enter Your presence which causes us to praise Your name even more for the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ, by whose righteousness we are accepted and adopted and can pray as we are taught, crying out Father and making our petitions known. We pray these things in Jesus name, Amen.

Performance or Prayer

Christ transitions from giving to prayer with these words, “And when you pray.” As He does so he is not speaking of prayer as though it were something optional in the life of His people. In the same way that the previous verses assumed that the people of God would give to those in need, this assumes that the people of God will pray. For God’s people, prayer is to be a part of our ordinary, regular life. It is not just something reserved for moments of crisis, nor is it presented as something practiced only by those who possess some unusual degree of spiritual maturity.

Since He begins with this implicit command this teaching is not concerned with if you pray, but rather what is taking place in our hearts when we pray. Prayer is commanded and good, it is a righteous action, but a righteous act can be corrupted by an unrighteous motive. And so the central issue of verses 5-8 does not change and the question remains the same: Who is the audience of our righteousness? Are these things being done before God and for the glory of God, or are they being used as a means to draw the attention and praise of men?

To better define this statement, Christ says, “you are not to be like the hypocrites.” That word hypocrites is important. It eliminates the idea of someone simply making a mistake. The term could be use of an actor, one who assumed a role and presented himself before an audience. By the time we come to its use in the New Testament, the word carries the moral idea of someone whose outward appearance does not correspond with the inward reality. The hypocrite presents one thing while desiring another. In this case, he appears to be speaking to God, but the attention he really desires is the attention of men. His words may be addressed toward heaven, but his concern is directed toward the people around him. Prayer has become a performance.

Which is evidenced by the words: “for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners.” Standing and location are not the issue at hand here. Standing was an ordinary posture of prayer, just as kneeling was an ordinary posture of prayer. Christ is also not condemning all public prayer. Scripture plainly records faithful public and corporate prayer. In 1 Kings 8, Solomon prayed publicly at the dedication of the temple. The church gathered together in prayer in Acts chapter 4, and Paul gave instructions in 1 Timothy 2 concerning prayer in the gathered life of the church. Christ is not restricting prayer to a place private place and a particular posture.

The issue then is why those locations were attractive to the hypocrite and the answer is because both places maximize their exposure to others. They have deliberately positioned themselves so that their prayers, an act supposedly directed toward God, received the maximum attention of men. The place became useful because it supplied an audience because the wanted others to know they prayed. This is why Christ continues with “so that they may be seen by men.” The words of Christ expose the purpose of the heart of the men. The hypocrite has and will religious practices with the goal of drawing as much attention as possible. Recall Matthew 5:16 Jesus said, “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” In this verse, men see the works and glorify the Father. In Matthew 6, the work is performed so that men will see the individual and give glory to him. These two truths reveal the difference between visibility and motive. The issue is not simply that someone noticed. The issue is whose glory was being sought.

Keeping that truth in front of us prevents us from turning Christ’s words into another external rule, as though public prayer were necessarily hypocritical and private prayer necessarily righteous. Scripture gives us clear examples of faithful public prayer, and a person can pray alone while still being filled with pride over his own supposed spirituality. The issue is not first the location of the prayer, but the direction of the heart. Christ is pressing beneath the posture and the setting to the motive of the one who prays.

That is what makes this warning so searching. Hypocrisy is easy to recognize when it is obvious in someone else, but far more difficult to see when it takes subtler forms within us. We may begin praying to God and then become more conscious of and concerned about how we sound to those around us. Our words may be orthodox and reverent but our heart begins to seek the approval of others and something that should be toward God has turned toward men.

Jesus closes verse 5 with the words, “Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.” The language carries the idea of an account being settled, of payment having been received. The hypocrite wanted the recognition of men, and that is exactly what he received. People noticed, people approved, and people were impressed. But that human praise was the full reward of an act that had been aimed at them.

There is something sobering in that. A prayer may sound deeply spiritual and still be emptied of its proper purpose if the heart is seeking an audience other than God. Christ’s warning is, Do not turn prayer into a performance. Do not use the appearance of dependence upon God as a means of establishing your own righteousness before others.

Before the Father

Verse 6 turns from the negative of the hypocrite to the positive regarding the prayer of the disciple and the contrast shown is very deliberate. We just saw verse 5 showing that the hypocrite seeks the places where he can be seen; in verse 6 Christ directs us away from the audience of men and toward the presence of the Father. A movement from performance to communion to our ultimately being satisfied that God Himself sees.

Once again Christ says, “when you pray.” Again, prayer is assumed to be part of the ordinary life of the believer. But the addition of “But you” makes the instruction personal: “But you, when you pray.” He has spoken of the hypocrites as a group, but now He addresses the disciple directly. Christ shifts the warning toward each of us and tells us what prayer should look like our motives are corrected.

Jesus says, “go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door.” The word translated inner room can refer to an interior room, a storeroom, or a chamber removed from the more public areas of the house. The particular architecture is not the point. Christ is intentionally describing a place where the one praying can withdraw from the eyes of others. Then He strengthens the picture by saying to shut the door. The man in verse 5 chooses the place of greatest visibility; the disciple in verse 6 is told to remove the visibility altogether.

The important point is the principle behind the instruction. Christ is not establishing a rule that legitimate prayer can only be offered behind a closed door. Scripture clearly teaches and demonstrates public prayer. The inner room and the closed door serve the purpose of removing the opportunity to perform. Go where there is no one to impress and no earthly recognition to gain. Christ is teaching His people that prayer does not require the eyes of men because prayer was never intended for them in the first place.

There is also something spiritually healthy about that kind of secret prayer. When we are alone before God, many of the things that can accompany public prayer are stripped away. There is no one there to be impressed by our vocabulary. There is no one to notice the length of the prayer. There is no one to evaluate whether we sounded sufficiently theological, sufficiently emotional, or sufficiently spiritual. It is simply the believer before God. And that exposes something important about our prayer life: Would we still pray if no one ever knew that we prayed? Would we still seek God if there were no reputation to gain from seeking Him?

As striking as that is, the heart of verse 6 is found in the words, “pray to your Father.” That is where Christ directs our attention. The answer to hypocritical prayer is not merely greater secrecy; it is a right understanding of God the Father.

Jesus does not simply say, “pray to God,” though certainly that would be true. He says, “pray to your Father.” That language carries us into the relationship that God, in His grace, has given to His people. We do not approach Him merely as creatures standing before the Creator, or subjects before the King, though He is our Creator and He is our King. Those who are in Christ come as children to their Father. As we prayed before opening this passage, we do not possess a righteousness of our own by which we gain entrance into His presence. We come because in Christ we have been accepted and adopted. The Son has brought us near, and therefore the believer may approach God as Father. This is why Hebrews 4:16 says to us “Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

That changes the entire character of prayer. The hypocrite needs men to see him because their approval is the reward he desires. The child of God already has something infinitely greater: access to his Father. We know that we do not need to create an audience or advertise our devotion. We know this because God is already present and already knows us. Therefore, prayer becomes an expression of faith. It says, in effect, It is enough that my Father hears me. It is enough that my Father sees. John Calvin rightly noted this principle when he wrote that we are to “have God always before our eyes when we engage in prayer.”

Christ continues, “your Father who is in secret.” God is not absent because He is unseen. This is one of the fundamental realities of prayer. We pray to the God whom we cannot see, yet by faith we know that He is present. The closed door may remove every human observer, but it does not remove the presence of God. In fact, that is the entire comfort of the command. The disciple can leave the audience of men because he is never outside the presence of his Father.

And then Christ says, “your Father who sees what is done in secret.” Men see only what is placed before them. They see the outward action. They hear the words. They form judgments from what is visible. But the Father sees what men cannot see. He sees the prayer offered in the room where no one else is present, but more than that, He sees the heart from which the prayer comes. Nothing about the believer's devotion is hidden from Him simply because it is hidden from everyone else.

We should find this deeply comforting because faithfulness that goes unnoticed by men is never unnoticed by God. There may be prayers offered through tears that no other person ever hears. There may be petitions repeated day after day for which no one else knows the burden. There may be thanksgiving offered quietly, confession made privately, and intercession carried before God without anyone ever knowing. Christ tells us that the Father sees.

At the same time, this truth also searches and confronts us because the Father sees more than the act itself. We cannot deceive Him with the appearance of spirituality. He sees whether our prayers arise from faith, dependence, repentance, gratitude, or whether even our secret prayer has become another occasion for self-righteousness. The secrecy of the room does not make the prayer righteous. The Father who sees the secret prayer also sees the secret motive.

Finally, Jesus says that “your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.” This stands in deliberate contrast to verse 5. The hypocrite receives his reward from men and receives it in full. The disciple leaves the accounting with the Father. He does not need to secure recognition now because he trusts the judgment and goodness of God.

We should not turn that promise into a transaction, as though private prayer earns payment from God. The relationship described throughout the verse prevents us from reading it that way. He is your Father. The reward is not the wage by which a servant purchases acceptance; it is the gracious recognition of a Father toward His child. We do not pray in secret so that God will owe us something. We pray because we belong to Him, because we trust Him, and because His approval is of greater worth than the praise of men.

So verse 6 redirects the entire focus of prayer. Christ does not merely move us from the street corner into a room; He moves our attention from men to the Father. The closed door removes the earthly audience, but the believer is not alone. His Father is there. His Father sees. His Father hears. And His Father is sufficient.

Conclusion

There is a danger here that we need to avoid. It is possible to hear the words of Christ and simply reduce them to another set of external instructions, leave saying that the lesson is simply that we ought to pray more often, that we ought to pray more privately, or that we ought to be more careful about our motives when we pray. Certainly those things have their place, but if that is all that we hear, then we have not allowed the words of Christ to press deeply enough into our hearts.

Why? Because of the standard Christ gives us. The standard of the perfection of God. That standard does not simply deal with the posture or location of our prayers. The Lord Jesus Christ is dealing with the heart of His people. A heart that should always seek the glory of God rather than the praise of men. Holding this truth regarding our prayer up against the standard of God, we should quickly recognize the truth of our inability. Which one of us can say that our motives are always perfectly pure? Which one of us can say that we have are never concerned with how we appear before others, allow pride to enter our devotion, or permit our attention to wander from the Father toward ourselves? Even in prayer, one of the most Godward things we can do, the corruption of our hearts follows us into the room.

And this brings us again to the truth that has followed us throughout the Sermon on the Mount. Christ does not expose the insufficiency of outward righteousness so that we will simply construct a better version of it. He exposes our lack of ability to be righteous because we need a righteousness that is not our own. The standard of the kingdom is not and cannot be met by our learning how to appear less hypocritical. We need the righteousness of Christ.

Herein lies the beauty, the One teaching us how to pray is also the One who possesses the righteousness we lack. There was no divided motive in Him. He never sought the praise of men in place of the glory of His Father. He perfectly loved the Father, perfectly obeyed the Father, and perfectly accomplished the Father's will. And the gospel is that those who are united to Christ do not come into the presence of God on the strength of the purity of their prayers. We come through the righteousness and mediation of the Son.

That is why the language of “your Father” is so significant. We do not make God our Father by praying correctly. We do not earn access to Him by finding the right room, closing the door, or eliminating every imperfect motive before we approach Him. Through Christ we are brought into the family of God, and because we have been adopted we are given the privilege of coming before Him as children. Hebrews tells us that because we have a great High Priest, Jesus the Son of God, we may “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace.” The confidence is not in ourselves; it is in Him.

This should change how we hear the command of Christ. The call to secret prayer is not a burden laid upon us to prove that we are righteous enough for the Father. It is the privilege of those who, through Christ, already belong to the Father. We may shut the door and pray without an audience, without recognition, and without applause precisely because through Christ, and through Christ alone, we already possess something infinitely greater than the praise of men. We have access to our Father. Because we have access, we come before Him knowing that our prayers remain imperfect, but also knowing that Christ is sufficient. We come seeking not to be seen by men but to commune with the Father who already sees us. And as we will see when we continue next week, the confidence of Christian prayer rests not only in the truth that the Father sees, but also in the truth that the Father knows. He knows His children, He knows their needs, and He does not need to be manipulated into hearing them.

For today, Christ leaves us with this simple but searching truth: prayer is not performance before men. Prayer is the privilege of a child coming, through Christ, before the Father who sees.

Closing Prayer

Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank You for the privilege of coming before You in prayer. We confess that even in this act of worship our hearts are not free from remaining sin. Our motives are not always pure, our attention is easily drawn toward ourselves, and we are too often concerned with the approval of men. Father, expose these things within us and, by Your Spirit, continue to conform us to the image of Christ.

We thank You that our acceptance before You does not rest upon the perfection of our prayers, but upon the perfect righteousness of Your Son. Thank You that through Christ we have been brought near, adopted as Your children, and given access to Your throne of grace. Teach us, then, to be satisfied that You see, that You hear, and that You are sufficient. Give us hearts that seek Your glory rather than our own, and cause our prayers to arise from faith, dependence, humility, and love. We ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.