Jesus on Prayer

The second of the three spiritual actions described by Jesus is prayer. Prayer was an important part of the Jewish religion. One would be hard pressed to find a Jew that did not pray at all. The problem was that their prayers were nothing more than empty words. They were talking to others and talking to themselves, but they were not talking to God. In this section Jesus identifies hypocritical prayer and instructs us on how we are to pray.

How not to Pray (5)

Jesus uses the term “hypocrite” again. The Jews of the day had become great actors. They appeared to be talking to God and they sounded like they were talking to God. However, it was all just an act. Jesus gives us some details describing hypocritical prayer.

*Hypocrites love to pray. Hypocrites are known for their allegiance to spiritual disciplines. Hypocrites attend church, give, serve, and even pray. A love for spiritual disciplines does not equate with a love for God. Muslims, Buddhists and cult members pray. They even love to pray. However, their heart is far from the One True God.

Our affection is not to be directed toward spiritual disciplines. Our spiritual disciplines should be a result of our affection toward God. If we love God we will pray, but simply praying does not mean that we love God. Prayer should not be our goal. Communing with God should be our goal. It is possible for us to divorce God from spiritual disciplines. In order to guard against hypocrisy we should be sure that our love for God is the reason we are praying. We want to speak with, hear from, and experience Him, and therefore we pray.

* Hypocrites love to pray in public. Jesus says that hypocrites love to pray in two places: in the synagogue and in the corner of the street. It is interesting that He does not say they love to pray at home. Jews had at least three times during the day in which they would commonly pray. They were the third (9:00), sixth (12:00) and ninth hour (3:00). This was even carried over into the early church (Acts 3:1). No matter where the devout Jew was, he would stop and pray during the normal prayer time. The hypocrite would make sure that he was in a public place at that time.

The synagogue was often a very crowded place as well as the street corners of busy cities like Jerusalem. It was in these crowded places that the hypocrite would drop everything and pray. It was easy for the hypocrite to time his day just right so that he would be in these public places when the prayer time arrived. It would have been just as easy for him to time it so that he would be in a private place.

In order to guard against hypocrisy we should examine where and when we pray. If our prayer life is limited to the public arena we reveal much about our hearts. The real measure of our prayer life is our private prayer.

* Hypocrites love to be seen of men. Hypocrites desperately want to be perceived as religious people. They want others to say “Wow, there is a person that really loves God!” The hypocrite does not want to be perceived as average. He wants to excel above those around him in spirituality. He wants the people to take notice of him. One can almost see the crowd of people as they stop and watch a hypocrite pray in the street. When he was done he would enjoy the glances and comments of the onlookers who stroked his spiritual ego. In stead of his audience being God, it became man.

The same is true for hypocrites today. They want people to think they are spiritual giants. They enjoy the compliments and the admiration from the “common” Christians. We must guard against the temptation to appear more spiritual than we are before others. It feeds our love of self and will transform us into hypocrites.

How to Pray (6-7)

Jesus not only condemns, He also corrects. He instructs us on the proper way to pray.

*Pray privately. Let me start by saying that Jesus is not condemning all public prayer. Great public prayers were prayed in the Old Testament (Nehemiah 9:5-38). Jesus prayed in public in the New Testament (Luke 11:1, Matthew 14:19). The early church prayed in public (Acts 4:24). Jesus is condemning the type of public prayer that hypocritical. We should understand that all of our public prayer is hypocritical if we do not have a private prayer life.

Jesus says that we are to find a solitary place and pray. A closet would have been a small isolated place. The only eyes that would be upon us would be the eyes of the Lord. Notice that Jesus says we are to “shut the door”. God wants us to shut ourselves completely off from the world and commune with Him in prayer. We can note a couple of things here.

1) It is our personal place. Jesus says “enter into thy closet”. We need our own place for prayer. It should be a place we have set aside so that we can go and commune with God.

2) It should be an isolated place. The shutting of the door represents solitude. Our prayer time should be just us and God. It does not matter if we are a busy house wife or an overworked father, whether we are in college or retired. God wants us to shut out all of the distractions of the world and enter into communion with Him.

* Pray in faith. It is a great act of faith to tell our cares to God alone. It implies that we are not trusting in man, but in God. As we pray we should have the faith that God sees and hears us. We are by ourselves, but we are not alone. The God of the universe is aware of our hurts and He hears our cry. We will not see Him and we may not even feel Him. However, we can trust that He is there and that we are indeed communicating with Him.

It is the temptation of man to reveal His hurts and needs to man in hope of relief. We should avoid that temptation and go to God in faith. He promises to reward us openly. The rewards of God are as vast as the petitions offered to Him. Nevertheless, just as God was aware of our prayers, we will also be aware of His reward. Our faith will be strengthened as we trust in God alone and experience Him answer our prayers.

* Pray sincerely. The religious hypocrites of the day used “vain repetitions” in their prayer life. This refers to empty chatter. They said the same thing over and over and never meant a word of it. Their prayer was more of a formula than anything else. The Jews had memorized prayers such as the Shema (Deut. 6:4-ff) that they prayed on a regular basis. There was nothing wrong with prayers such as the Shema as long as we keep some things in mind.

1) If memorized prayer is the only prayer we pray we become vain and repetitious.

2) If our heart is not in the prayer we become vain and repetitious.

3) If we do not understand the prayer we become vain and repetitious.

The hypocrites prayed repetitious and long prayers for one reason. They thought that made them more spiritual. They assumed the longer and more elaborate prayer, the more they would impress God. Jesus says that we should steer away from this type of prayer because it resembles the prayer of a heathen more than the prayer of a child of God.

1) Heathens believe in magic. They think that chanting incantations will move the hand of God (1 Kings 18:26-29).

2) Heathens are attempting to impress God by works. As believers we know that works do not impress God. Faith is what moves the hand of God. Our prayers can be simple because God is not looking at the prayer; He is looking at the heart.

We see a lot of vain and repetitious prayer today. The Catholic prays the rosary, the Muslim prays vainly and repetitious six times a day. Protestants even pray vain prayers. We have our repetitious prayers to bless our food, go to sleep, bless the offering, etc. We need to remember that God does not hear us just because we are praying. Communicating with God must be done with a sincere heart, a clear mind, and simple faith.

Why We Pray (8)

This has been a perplexing verse to many people. Is Jesus saying that we should not pray because Go already knows what we need? Of course not. In fact this verse should compel us to pray even more. It reveals truth about God that should inspire faith in us.

*Prayer is primarily communicating with God, not petitioning Him. We do not pray simply to get things from God. We pray to enter into a solemn time of worship with Him. Our relationship with God is not an “I do this for you and you do this for me” relationship. It is a relationship of love. We enter into prayer to enjoy intimacy with the God we love. That is why Jesus calls Him our Father. Do we serve Him? Yes. Does He take care of us? You bet. However, our service to one another is inspired by the relationship we have with each other.

* God knows our needs. In fact He knows our needs better than we do. We do not have to come to God dreading to tell Him something. He already knows before we get there. Even if in our prayer time we get so caught up in worshipping Him, we forget to mention a request or two, He knows our needs. He knows our hearts. God is not up there with a pencil and paper taking note of everything we say and limiting His blessing in our life to those things. Think about our relationships with our children. Sometimes in talking with them we recognize a need in their lives they have not verbally revealed. As I observe my little girl I may conclude, “You know what, Abigail needs a smile on her face. I think I’ll get her a happy meal”. As her father, I know what it takes to encourage her. God is the same way. He wants us to be transparent with our needs and hurts when we come to Him. If we place our focus on transparency in prayer we can trust that He will give us what we need.

* God invites us to pray to Him even though He already knows our needs. God really wants to commune with us. He wants us to pray to Him more than we want to pray to him. He knows everything we need yet He tells us to come and tell Him anyway. God wants a personal relationship with every single on of His children. His omniscience is no excuse not to pray. His commandment obligates us to pray. The fact that God knows our needs yet commands us to pray to Him is encouraging. It implies that He is willing to answer our prayers. As a child the fear of “No” would often keep me from asking my mom for something. Never allow that to keep you from praying. God already knows what you need and He invites you to come to Him anyway. The reason is simple. God likes it when we come to Him with our requests. It reveals we are depending on Him. It reveals that we are not afraid of Him. It reveals that we trust He is the only One who can supply is with what we need. Flee from hypocrisy in prayer, cling to sincerity in prayer and come to God in prayer.