THE ART OF PRAYER

THE ART OF PRAYER Matthew 6:5-15 With grateful acknowledgement of these sources of direction and inspiration: the Holy Spirit; the Word of God; Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah; Michael Green, Matthew; John MacArthur, Matthew; Charles Swindoll, Simple Faith; Helmut Thielicke, Life Can Begin Again July 11, 2004 Given by: Pastor Rich Bersett [Index of Past Messages] Introductory As we study the Sermon on the Mount it is good to remind ourselves of a most important truth. The rigid righteousness that it seems to call for-being the person of character as described in the beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-10), being the effective salt and light witnesses, even martyrs (Matthew 5:11-16), obeying the law not only in our outward behaviors, but even at the level of our attitudes and motivations (Matthew 5:17-47), and being perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48)-these aspects of righteousness are not possible for us as sinful human beings (Romans 3:9-20). In fact the rigorous demands of the law, which Jesus clarifies in this sermon, really are intended to have the effect of convincing us that we are hopeless in terms of ever being righteous before God (Romans 7:13; Galatians 3:19-25). This despair drives us to cry out for mercy and salvation from the Lord. Of course, God has demonstrated His love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. In that death He paid the debt of our sin and condemnation. Once we trust in Christ we are free from the slavery of sin and our guilty condemnation before God. We have become God's children, been saved, not because of our good behavior, but because of His grace. Once saved, God not only forgives us of our sin and unrighteousness, but He puts His Holy Spirit into our lives. We have God living in us, we Christians! One of the benefits of being indwelt by God's Spirit is that we are now empowered to do the works of righteousness which we could not do BC (before Christ). Now we are capable of living a life that pleases and glorifies God! Ephesians 2:8-10 puts the whole thing this way: "For it is by grace that you have been saved through faith-and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by works" [our righteous deeds], "so that no one can boast. For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." The danger lurking in righteous behavior The New Testament is adamant that the life of the Christian is to be marked by the performance of good works-not in order to be saved, but because we're saved! As we approach the text in Matthew 6, we are about to discover that the doing of those acts of righteousness is potentially dangerous to us, spiritually speaking. In the first verse of chapter six, Jesus outlines that danger: "Be careful not to do your 'acts of righteousness' before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven." The specific acts of righteousness that Jesus deals with in chapter six are: giving money, praying and fasting. Jesus simply says that genuine righteous behavior will not be tainted with a motive of making you look good-either to God or especially to other people. God knows our hearts, and He is fully aware of when we are tooting our own horn or trying to prove to Him that we're really pretty good folks. This neither honors nor pleases Him. What pleases and honors Him is when we acknowledge our desperate need for His grace in our lives and humbly carry out our obedience to Him out of sheer gratitude for what He has done for us. What is even more profoundly sad is when a Christian falls into the trap of doing good works so that others will notice and think he's pretty wonderful. That is anything but righteousness. It is proud, self-serving behavior. It does not glorify God because it is too busy glorifying self, and Jesus adds that it is worthless in terms of our trying to please God or get His applause. Once I was waiting with a family in the Intensive Care waiting room while a member of their family was undergoing a very serious surgery. There was in that Catholic hospital at the time an organized team of volunteers whose job it was to help the families of the patients who were undergoing surgery. They would keep the coffee fresh, tidy up the room, and make sure the worried family members got a warm smile and a helpful attitude. One particularly helpful elderly lady seemed to go the extra mile. Without being a bother she was always right there to take care of needs, bringing a blanket to someone who was cold, replenishing the Kleenex on the end tables, tidying up the magazines. I noticed her extra-mile kind of work and when the family was busy I took a minute to share a word of thanks with that lady. She smiled warmly as I complimented her servant hood and kindness. "Oh," she said, "I'm just racking up more stars for my heavenly crown!" Somehow all my gratitude just drained away, and the whole afternoon of smiling service degenerated into a sick charade. Rita Rudner, the comedienne, once observed, "If you put flour and water together, you have glue. If you add butter and eggs, you have the makings of a cake. Where did the glue go?" Let's put it this way: If you put faith and good works together, you can easily just get a sticky mess. But if you add love and humility, you have the makings of genuine righteousness. Prayer and righteousness Jesus sets about applying this principle to three areas of righteousness-giving, praying and fasting. Giving comes first, in verses 2-4, and we will deal with this subject on a future date. Fasting as a topic of righteous behavior shows up in verses 16-18. Because it receives the most weight in terms of Jesus' comment about it, I want to touch on the topic of prayer this morning. "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." Mrs. Matha Kaptan of Calwell, Idaho wrote in to the Christian Reader: "My granddaughter overheard conversations about an occasional heart problem--loud beating--I experienced when I would try to sleep. One evening her father heard her concerned prayer: "And Lord Jesus, please make Grandma's heart stop so she can get some rest." That is a very sincere, if mis-spoken prayer. None of us has any doubt that, though it was delivered in naivet? this child's prayer came from a good heart with good intention. Her concern was for her grandmother. The ultimate choice in all we do, even in our praying, is between pleasing God and pleasing ourselves. Two wrong kinds of praying Please notice right off that Jesus assumed that God related people would pray. He begins this section of the sermon with the words, "…when you pray…" Prayer is more than simply an act of righteousness-it is itself the ultimate act of faith. When someone genuinely prays any question concerning his belief in God and God's goodness is instantly erased. And prayer becomes to the believer like breathing. Breathing is natural and it is necessary. It is perfectly natural for the child of God to want to talk with his Father. And like children, the only time we don't want to have a conversation with our Father is when we know we have done wrong. We started out by saying that even our best religious actions can become contaminated by our pride, selfish intentions and our insecure desire for recognition. Jesus deals with two wrong kinds of praying in verses 5-15 Self-centered prayer (vss 5-6) Jesus said we should not pray like "the hypocrites." What kind of praying do the hypocrites perform so we can avoid their bad example? First, He says, they pray standing… The problem wasn't that they stood while praying-the Bible is full of references to several different postures: kneeling, prostrate, and standing. Maybe you've heard about the debate in a little country church down south concerning the best posture for prayer: "The proper way for man to pray," said Deacon Lemuel Keyes; "The only proper attitude is down upon his knees." "Nay, I should say the way to pray," said Reverend Doctor Wise, "Is standing straight with outstretched arms with rapt and upturned eyes." "Oh, no, no, no," said Elder Snow, "such posture is too proud." A man should pray with eyes fast-closed and head contritely bowed." "It seems to me his hands should be austerely clasped in front. With both thumbs pointing to the ground," said Reverend Doctor Blunt." "Last year I fell in Hodgkin's well headfirst," said Cyril Brown. "With both my heels a-stickin' up, my head a-pointing' down; And I done prayed right then and there; best prayer I ever said, The prayin'est prayer I ever prayed, a-standin' on my head." The hypocrites prayed standing in conspicuous places, like synagogues and street corners. But the next phrase in that verses 5 is the most telling: in order to be seen by men. Before we too quickly cozy up to Jesus and say, "Yeah, those hypocrites! They don't know how to pray!" maybe we should consider our own sinful proclivity to be noticed for our good works. In one episode of the comedy show Seinfeld, the character George is frustrated because he is picking up a food order at a carry-out place and he's trying to leave a tip for the clerks at the counter. But every time he goes to drop the dollar in the glass tip jar, the clerk looks away. So George has a hard time dropping in the dollar because it won't be noticed. He does drop in the tip finally, but again the clerk was busy with someone else and didn't notice. So George reaches into the jar to try to fish out the dollar so he can try again to be noticed. Of course, he's "noticed" while his hand is in the jar and the clerk accuses him of the embarrassing crime of stealing from the tip jar. Let me hitchhike on poor George's dilemma for just a moment, because I believe it illustrates the very thing Jesus is getting at. Why did George need to have the clerk actually witness him giving the tip? It would have added nothing to the clerk to know who gave what-it only mattered that there would be money in the jar by the end of the day. Clearly, George was not tipping the clerk-he was tipping himself. His real concern was not to reward or honor the one who delivered him his meal. His real concern was to make sure he was well thought of as a generous tipper. Thus, being seen was mandatory. Had his only motive been to bless the clerk…he could have waited until no one was looking. Jesus says that the only way to keep us from the hypocrite's mistaken method of prayer is to actually hide when we pray. The Jewish pray-ers would pray three times a day, at appointed times. The question behind the story is why did these guys always end up in a very conspicuous public place at prayer time? For people of real faith-people who know God hears them, and who are absolutely uninterested in having others see and acknowledge their piety-for people of real faith, it is enough to hide in a closet during their prayers. I was tucking our preschooler in for the night when she asked if she could pray. Delighted, I told her it was a great idea to talk to Jesus. As she began praying, her words kept getting softer and softer until only her lips were moving. Then she said "Amen." "Honey," I said, giving her a hug, "I didn't hear a word you said." "That's okay, Mama," she responded. "I wasn't talking to you." True praying trusts the unseen Father, prays to Him in secret places, and trusts that's all that's needed. Does this mean that public prayers are wrong? No. Unless the pray-er is anxious to be seen and heard more than he is anxious to address Father God on behalf of the others around him. The self-centered prayer is wrong. But there is a second inferior prayer: System-centered prayer (vss 7-8) In these two verses, Jesus blasts prayers that rely on form rather than sincere content. The first kind of praying that He excoriates is Repetitious prayers. He says this is praying like the pagans-those who have many gods, and none of them is the true God. They think they will be heard for their many words… "Babbling" carries with it the idea of restating the same words or sentences over and over again, with the hope that the sheer volume or mantra-like recitation of those words will somehow convince God to come through with what is requested. Is repeating prayers wrong? The answer is Yes and maybe. Jesus clearly says Don't keep on babbling. Let me suggest this doesn't simply refer to long prayers, but also applies to repeating the same prayers at different times. The spiritual danger in that approach is this-that the pray-er may easily come to the practical conclusion that the power of prayer is in the formula and not in God. Ever heard "formula prayers" where the reciters sound as though they have no idea what the meaning of the words they're saying really is. They just say the words because that's what people who pray have always done, and I know I should pray, so… Ironic, verses 9-15 are most repeated prayer ever. It isn't just repetition that makes our prayers come dangerously close to paganism. It is the mindlessness of just going through the motions. ILUS of woman with Bible and cat. Question: Do you start your prayers always with the same words. For example, "Our most gracious heavenly Father…". If the Lord were to appear to you this morning and strike up a conversation with you, how would you respond? After you picked yourself up off the floor and mustered your courage, would you look at Him and say, "Our most gracious heavenly Father"? The issue is, when we pray, are we truly talking to God, or are we reciting familiar incantations that we superstitiously believe will carry some weight with God and somehow get done what prayer ought to get done? How do you think God thinks of our mumbling traditional jargon? How many times does the word "just" appear in your prayers? Question: Do you find yourself praying for and about the same things and using the same words all the time? I used to have a friend who would always say to me, whether on the telephone or in person, "Hi, Rich, howya doin'?" That greeting soon came to mean nothing to me-he didn't really want to know how I was doing. ILUS of clerk at Wal-Mart-"Thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart, Mr. Fellowship." Conclusion What do we need to carry away from this text this morning? I believe it would honor the Lord and His Word if we were to begin now to take prayer more seriously, to stop treating it as a religious activity and start treating it as the intimate communication tool with God that it is, to be fresh and real with our prayers, and to avoid any kind of attention or applause from others concerning our praying. The Right Kind of Prayer 1. Talk to God - "Stop bringing meaningless offerings…When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you, even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen…" (Isaiah 1:13, 15) 2. Know God knows - "O Lord, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar." (Psalm 139:1-2) Then verses 23-24: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." 3. Bring your heart - "Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place." (Psalm 51:6) Together, let's share meaningfully in corporate prayer by using the model prayer. Read together, slowly, meaningfully Matthew 6:9-15. [Back to Top]