Prayer Before the Father Pt. 2

Introduction

This morning as we return to Matthew’s gospel we will be picking up where we left off last week with respect to this section of the Sermon on the Mount where the Lord Jesus Christ deals with our prayer life. Last week we went through verses 5 and 6 where we are taught that true prayer, prayer before the Father, is directed to God and for the glory of God. Christ contrasted those who pray publically for the purpose of gaining the attention of men and those whose concern is merely with communion with the Father and His glory. As we discussed, this in no way is a command against public prayer or a statement that private prayer is the only acceptable means of prayer. However it is a statement that forces us to look inward and examine our motives in prayer, whether public and private.

In our focal text for today we see Christ dealing with another distortion that can enter our prayer life, meaningless vain babbling with the idea that this will garner attention from God. Once again, Christ presses beyond the outward act and into the heart, continuing the thread that has run throughout this sermon—the righteousness required of kingdom people.

But we need to be careful that we understand this requirement properly. There can be a tendency to hear these commands as though obedience to them is the means by which we are saved, but nothing could be further from the truth. While obedience in the life of a believer is important, it is not the path to salvation. To borrow from the late Voddie Baucham, “All the gospel requires is repentance and faith. Well what about obedience? That is not what the gospel requires. That is what the gospel produces.” So as we examine the words of Christ, we should understand that these commands do not provide the means by which we enter the kingdom; rather, they expose our insufficiency and show us the righteousness produced in a life transformed by grace.

With this in mind, let us turn to God’s word, as I stated last week, each week as we work through this section on prayer we will read the full text from Matthew 6:5-15 so that we remain grounded in the whole of Christ’s teaching. If you have not already done so please turn in your bibles to that passage and, once you have found your place,

Text

Please stand in reverence 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.

Our prayer for this morning is adopted from “The Valley of Vision: A Christian’s Prayer”

Gracious Heavenly Father, as we come now to Your Word, guard us from the snares that arise both around us and within our own hearts. Give us right thoughts of You, that we would not imagine that our prayers are heard because of the number of our words, the strength of our emotion, or anything found within ourselves. Teach us instead to come as children who trust their Father, knowing that You already know our needs before we ask.

By Your Spirit, expose every wrong conception of prayer and every attempt to depend upon our own efforts. Increase within us a desire to please You in public and in private, and form within us the character of Christ. Remind us that we are Your workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, and that our confidence in prayer rests not in ourselves but in Him. Give us ears to hear and hearts ready to submit to Your Word. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Empty Babbling

You may have already noticed that verse 7 opens almost exactly as verse 5 did: “And when you are praying.” The word translated and helps keep before us that Christ has not begun a new subject disconnected from what came before. He is continuing His instruction concerning prayer, and once again there is no command here telling the people of God that they ought to begin praying. Rather, as in verse 5, prayer is assumed. Christ speaks to His disciples as people who will pray. The focus continues to be on our motivations when we are praying.

In verses 5 and 6, Christ dealt with a distortion of prayer that concerned the attention of men. Now He turns to a different distortion, one that ultimately concerns our understanding of God Himself. He says, “And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do.” The phrase translated meaningless repetition comes from the Greek word battalogeō. This word is rare and its origins somewhat of a mystery, but allowing scripture to interpret scripture clarifies the meaning from Christ’s own explanation. Tyndale rendered it ‘babble not much’ while the KJV uses ‘vain repetitions.’ The issue is not in repetition, it is speech that is empty, mechanical, and multiplied under the assumption that the sheer abundance of words somehow makes the prayer more effective.

John Stott wrote:

The Message of the Sermon on the Mount 1. The Pagan Way of Prayer

The word describes any and every prayer which is all words and no meaning, all lips and no mind or heart. Battalogia is explained in the same verse (7) as polulogia, ‘much speaking’, that is, a torrent of mechanical and mindless words.

His statement well captures the danger of this type of prayer. Christ is not describing sincere prayer that happens to be lengthy. He is describing prayer in which the words themselves have become the mechanism. Prayer ceases to be communion with God and becomes an attempt to produce a result by saying enough, repeating enough, or speaking long enough.

This is why we need to be careful with the wording. Christ does not say, Do not repeat yourself. Nor does He say, Do not pray for a long time. The problem is not praying a prayer that has already been prayed nor is it the number of minutes we spend in prayer. The focus should be on the fact that the repetitions are vain or meaningless. It is an abundance of words that are divorced from understanding, faith, and from genuine dependence upon God.

Scripture itself prevents us from putting the emphasis on the repetitions. Consider our Lord’s prayer in Matthew 26:36-46 and specifically in verses 39, 42 and 44. The scene is in the hours leading up to the betrayal of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. We see the Lord Jesus Christ returning to the Father repeatedly with the same petition.

Matthew 26:39 “And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.””

Matthew 26:42 “He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.””

Matthew 26:44 “And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more.”

Three times and we know that Christ knew no sin, so He did not sin in bringing this before the Father more than once. The prayer expressed genuine anguish, dependence, and submission to the Father's will. We are not being taught that asking the Father for the same thing more than once is unbelief. There are burdens that we may carry before God for days, months, or even years. Persistence can be one of the clearest expressions of our dependence upon Him.

What Christ condemns is something very different: the belief that our words have power simply because we keep saying them.

For a vivid picture of this, we can turn back to 1 Kings 18, where Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. The question being settled that day was straightforward: who is truly God? Elijah stood alone as the prophet of Yahweh against hundreds of prophets of Baal, and the challenge was that each side would prepare a sacrifice but place no fire beneath it. The God who answered by fire would demonstrate that He alone was God.

The prophets of Baal went first. They prepared their sacrifice, and from morning until midday they called upon their god. Again and again they cried out for Baal to answer them. But there was no voice. There was no answer. Nothing happened.

And Elijah began to mock them. His words expose the theology lying behind their prayers. Perhaps, Elijah suggests, their god is occupied. Perhaps he has gone somewhere. Perhaps he is asleep and needs to be awakened. In other words, you had better cry louder. If Baal has not responded, then perhaps the solution is greater intensity, greater volume, greater effort, more words.

And that is exactly what they did. They cried louder. Their religious activity became increasingly frantic. They even cut themselves until blood flowed from them. And the text tells us that they continued in this frenzy, but still there was no voice, no answer, and no one who paid attention.

That scene gives us an extraordinary picture of the pagan understanding of prayer. The prophets of Baal believed that their god needed somehow to be reached. They needed to attract his attention. They needed to awaken him, persuade him, or compel him to respond. And if their present effort was insufficient, the answer was simply more—more words, more noise, more intensity, more sacrifice.

That is precisely the kind of thinking Christ confronts when He says, “do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do.”

The danger is that, although we may not pray with this same extreme action, we can begin to treat prayer as though it is only effective if it is correctly prayed. We may think that if we say the right words, pray with enough intensity, repeat the request enough times, or phrase it with enough spiritual language, then perhaps God will be more inclined to hear us. What happens is that our confidence has subtly shifted. We may still be speaking to God, but our trust is no longer resting fully in God. It begins to rest in our technique.

That is why this teaching belongs so naturally beside verses 5 and 6. In verse 5, the hypocrite has the wrong audience. He is supposedly speaking to God while seeking the attention of men. Here in verse 7, the Gentile has the wrong understanding of the God to whom he is speaking. He believes that God must somehow be moved by the performance of the worshiper. In both cases, prayer has ceased to be simple dependence upon God.

And we need to recognize how easily this can appear in respectable religious forms. Meaningless repetition does not have to sound wild or pagan. It can sound very religious. We can use familiar phrases so frequently that we cease to think about what we are actually saying. We can string together theological language because it sounds appropriate without our hearts engaging with the truth those words express. We can even begin to measure the seriousness of prayer by its length, as though a longer prayer must necessarily be a better prayer.

We must recognize that neither the words themselves nor our eloquence is the source of our confidence in prayer. The length and the intensity of the prayer are not the source of our confidence. None of these things obligate God to answer us.

The Father Knows

And this is important because prayer is fundamentally an expression of dependence. When we pray, we acknowledge that we are not sovereign, we are not self-sufficient, and we cannot provide everything that we need. We come before God because He is God and we are not. The danger of meaningless repetition is that it subtly reverses that relationship. Instead of depending upon God, we begin to imagine that something in our words, our persistence, or our manner of praying can somehow move God to respond.

Certainly, we should examine whether our minds and hearts are engaged when we pray. We can become so familiar with certain phrases that our mouths continue while our minds have wandered elsewhere. But Christ is not teaching that an imperfectly focused prayer is therefore worthless. If that were the standard, none of us could pray acceptably. We bring our remaining weakness and sin into prayer just as we do into every other part of the Christian life. The issue is whether our confidence rests in the words we speak or in the God to whom we speak.

And that brings us directly into verse 8, where Christ says, “Therefore, do not be like them; for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.”

Notice that word “therefore.” Christ is giving us the reason that His people are not to pray like the Gentiles. They pray the way they do because of what they believe about their god. The prophets of Baal cried louder because they believed their god needed to be awakened or persuaded. Christ says that His disciples are not to approach God that way. This is where a proper understanding of to whom we pray is critical.

Christ identifies Him: “your Father.” That language has already been central to this passage. In verse 6, Christ told us to pray to our Father who sees in secret. Now He tells us that our Father knows what we need before we ask. The prayer of a believer is not a desperate attempt to attract the attention of a distant deity, rather it is the approach of a child to a Father. A Father who already sees, already knows, and already cares.

This means that we do not pray in order to provide God with information that He does not possess. There is no circumstance that catches Him unaware, no burden that we must explain because He has overlooked it, and no need that suddenly becomes known to Him when we put it into words. Psalm 139 is helpful here to reminds us that the Lord knows us: Psalm 139:1–10 “O Yahweh, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Yahweh, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, And You have put Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I lift up the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me.”

This truth can cause us to ask: If the Father already knows what we need before we ask, why pray at all?

Calvin answered that question in this way:

Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke Matthew 6:5–8

The very design of prayer furnishes an easy answer. Believers do not pray, with the view of informing God about things unknown to him, or of exciting him to do his duty, or of urging him as though he were reluctant. On the contrary, they pray, in order that they may arouse themselves to seek him, that they may exercise their faith in meditating on his promises, that they may relieve themselves from their anxieties by pouring them into his bosom; in a word, that they may declare that from Him alone they hope and expect, both for themselves and for others, all good things. God himself, on the other hand, has purposed freely, and without being asked, to bestow blessings upon us; but he promises that he will grant them to our prayers. We must, therefore, maintain both of these truths, that He freely anticipates our wishes, and yet that we obtain by prayer what we ask.

Prayer does not exist as a means for us to inform God. It is one of the means by which God teaches us dependence upon Him. In prayer we acknowledge our need, confess our inability, submit ourselves to His will, give thanks for His provision, and entrust to Him those things that are beyond our control. The fact that the Father already knows does not make prayer unnecessary; it makes vain and meaningless words for the sake of manipulation unnecessary.

There is an enormous difference between those two things. We are commanded to ask, but we do not ask because God is ignorant. We persist in prayer, but we do not persist because God is reluctant and must eventually be worn down. We bring the same burden before Him again and again because we remain dependent upon Him.

This is why the repeated prayer of Christ in Gethsemane is so important. He brought the same burden before the Father more than once, but each time His prayer rested in submission: “not as I will, but as You will.” Repetition flowing from dependence is entirely different from repetition intended to manipulate. One entrusts the matter to the Father; the other attempts to control the outcome.

Conclusion

There is tremendous comfort in the words of Christ. Before we ever enter the room, before we bow our heads, and before we put the burden into words, our Father knows. He knows the need that we understand, and He knows the need that we do not yet understand. His knowledge is perfect, and because He is our Father, that knowledge is joined with perfect wisdom, goodness, and providential care. We do not come before Him hoping that the right words will finally gain His attention. We come because He already sees, He already knows, and He has told His children to come.

But even here we need to keep before us the thread that has run throughout the Sermon on the Mount. Back in Matthew 5:20, Christ told us that the righteousness of His kingdom people must surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees. In Matthew 5:48, He placed before us the standard itself: “Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Then in Matthew 6:1, He warned us to beware of practicing our righteousness before men in order to be noticed by them. Taken together, those passages continually press us beyond outward behavior and into the heart.

And when we allow that standard to do its work, we are confronted again with our need. It is not enough simply to avoid praying like the prophets of Baal. It is not enough to remove certain phrases from our prayers, shorten them, lengthen them, or somehow develop a better technique. The problem reaches deeper than our vocabulary. Our hearts are not perfectly dependent. Our motives are not perfectly pure. Even when we understand what Christ is teaching, we still do not come before the Father with a righteousness that originates in ourselves and meets the perfection He requires.

That is precisely why our confidence in prayer cannot finally rest in the quality of our praying. Our confidence rests in the Father to whom we pray, but our access to the Father is through Christ.

The One teaching us how to pray is also the One who perfectly possesses the righteousness He requires. Christ never prayed from unbelief. He never sought to manipulate the Father. He never trusted in the quantity of His words. His dependence was perfect, His submission was perfect, His obedience was perfect, and His righteousness was perfect. It is only because we are united to Him that sinners like us may come before the holy God and call Him Father.

That means we do not come because we have finally learned to pray perfectly. We do not come because our concentration never wanders, our motives are never mixed, or our words are always exactly what they ought to be. We come in the name of Christ, resting in His righteousness rather than our own. Our prayers remain imperfect because we remain imperfect, but our access to the Father does not rest upon our perfection. It rests upon Christ’s, which give us both humility and confidence. Humility, because there is nothing in the quality of our prayers that places God in our debt. Confidence, because through Christ we are not approaching a reluctant deity who must be persuaded to listen. We are coming as adopted children to the Father who already knows what we need before we ask Him.

So the answer to meaningless repetition is not simply fewer words. The answer is a right understanding of the Father and a right understanding of our access to Him. We ask because He commands us to ask. We persist because we depend upon Him. We trust because He already knows. And we come, not in the confidence of our own righteousness or the perfection of our prayers, but through the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ.

The foundation of Christian prayer is not the perfection of the one praying, but the perfection of Christ through whom we come to the Father.

Closing Prayer

Gracious Heavenly Father, we thank You that when we come before You in prayer, we do not come attempting to gain Your attention or to persuade You through the multitude of our words. You already know us completely, and You know what we need even before we ask.

Forgive us for the ways we depend upon ourselves, our words, our emotions, or our efforts rather than resting in You. Teach us to pray with understanding, faith, submission, and dependence, trusting Your wisdom, goodness, and providential care. Father, when Your perfect standard exposes the impurity of our motives and the weakness of our prayers, remind us again that we do not come before You in a righteousness of our own. We come through Jesus Christ, whose righteousness is perfect and whose work has brought us near.

By Your Spirit, teach us to pray as Your children, confident not in the perfection of our prayers, but in the perfection of Christ through whom we come. We ask these things in His name, Amen.