Sermon Tone Analysis

Opening Illustration

It was at the Nashville Superspeedway

Race-fans packed the the track to watch 43 cars draft, bump, and wreck each other

As done since NASCAR’s inception in 1948, they invited a local pastor, Pastor Joe Nelms, to give the opening invocation— prayer.

He started off as you might expect, “Heavenly father, we thank you tonight for all your blessings you send, and all things give thanks.”

But then the prayer took a hard turn:

“So we want to thank you tonight for these mighty machines that you brought before us.

Thank you for the Dodges and the Toyotas.

Thank you for the Fords, and most of all, we thank you for Roush and Yates partnering to give us the power that we see before us tonight.

Thank you for GM Performance Technology and R07 engines.

Thank you for Sunoco racing fuel and Goodyear tires that bring performance and power to the track.

Lord, I want to thank you for my smokin' hot wife tonight, Lisa, my two children, Eli and Emma – or, as we like to call them, the Little Es.

Lord, I pray and bless the drivers, and use them tonight.

May they put on a performance worthy of this great track.

In Jesus' name.

Boogity, boogity, boogity.

Amen."

While this prayer will forever live in infamy, I’m not so sure I’d make this the model for your prayer life, but thank goodness that our Lord Jesus did give us a prayer we can immitate.

If you have your Bibles, turn to Matthew 6:5-13.

As you do, let me set the stage:

Jesus had just called the twelve, and his ministry was gaining steam around the Sea of Galilee area.

He was drawing large crowds, and Matthew says that Jesus took the opportunity to teach and preach to the crowds.

He went to a nearby mountain, he likely stood at the base and people took their seats above him (presumably for better audio) and he began to preach

Matthew has recorded snippets of his Sermon (often called the Sermon on the Mount)

One of the purposes that Jesus had for this sermon was to correct some misunderstandings about basic tenants of Jewish ethics and spiritual disciplines that had been influenced negatively by the religious elite.

Each snippet begins with “You have heard that it was said...” [presumably from from the Jewish teachers and their interpretations of the OT law] but then Jesus proceeded to clarify, correct, and reshape their views on the OT law, anger, murder, marriage, oaths, justice, love, giving, fasting, AND THE ONE I WANT TO FOCUS ON TODAY: PRAYER

So as we read this passage, I want you to pay attention to the ways Jesus corrects the Jews’ misunderstanding of prayer.

Matthew 6:5-13

Prayer is not a performance, but personal correspondence (vv.

5-6).

[Blank Slide]

Jesus knows what it’s like to be a Jew.

To have a job, busting your rear trying to make ends meet, doing business in the city, selling products in the market

All the while, you pass by the road and can’t help but hear at every street corner, a guy dressed in holy clothes praying loudly something like the publican in Luke 18:9-14 “God, I thank you that I am not like other people— robbers, evildoers, adulterer— or even like this tax collector.

I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.”

He calls them “hypocrites,” which carried the idea of actors in Greek theatre.

They get out there and act as holy men, though on the inside they are decayed.

Jesus looks upon his crowd and has compassion them, because their idea of praying has been tainted by religious people who have used prayer as a weapon to elevate themselves above everyone else.

And they have robbed the people of the intimacy that prayer really is.

Jesus teaches them that prayer is not a performance, but a personal correspondence.

(v. 6) says, “But when you pray, go into your private room (PRIVATE ROOM WAS WITHOUT WINDOWS), shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret.”

I don’t think that this means that public prayers are not legitimate, because we see Jesus, Paul, and Peter pray in public and commend others to do the same.

What Jesus is speaking against is when prayer is used as a means to elevate the one praying above others who listen… This is to be outright rejected.

Instead, Jesus directs us to the kind of prayer that seeks a personal, uninterrupted, intimate relationship with the Father.

This is the kind of relationship that our soul thirsts for and the kind of relationship that we can’t fathom not spending time with him alone . . .

where you can be vulnerable and not feel like you have to put on a show.

Here’s the thing— we are Sons and Daughters of a Father who wants to hear our prayers, not merely our words.

That is, he wants to hear prayers from the deepest recesses of our hearts, not a flamboyant self-seeking show.

When you have an audience, it’s harder to be authentic with the Lord.

When you have an audience, it’s easy to turn prayer (a supposed dialogue) into a monologue.

APPLICATION

As a preacher, this is a big temptation.

It’s just understood that at family meals, you’re going to get called on to pray.

The day after Thanksgiving, we make it to my extended family’s Thanksgiving lunch in Hopkinsville and I get asked to pray.

Mere hours later when we drove to Eddyville for Thanksgiving dinner, I get called on to pray there, too.

And what’s fascinating is that I am tempted to articulate my prayers a certain way, cover all my bases, make sure I thank the host for working so hard on the food, make sure I thank the Lord for his blessings, throw a gospel presentation in there somewhere, alter call if possible all without not going too long so that the food gets cold.

In those moments, I feel this pressure of “he’s the preacher, his prayers have to be perfect” and I pray in a way that meets all of these expectations.

Maybe you, as the father of the household or the mother of your children feel this pressure too.

Jesus speaks a calm word to all of us: Son, Daughter, your prayers are not a monologue to an audience of your peers.

They’re a dialogue with me, the Father, in the presence of many witnesses.”

Prayer is not about incantation, but transformation (vv.

7-10).

[Blank Slide]

Jesus would have been giving this sermon on a mountain, and when he said “Do not pray like the Gentiles do,” he might have even pointed across the Sea of Galilee

You see, the Jewish settlements were on the west side of the Sea of Galilee, and 8 miles on the other side, the Gentiles would have been in the Decapolis on the other side.

Certainly the communities were separate, but there would have been significant communication between the two groups.

So imagine Jesus pointing to them saying, “don’t pray like them over there” who “babble”

There is some evidence that these Gentiles would have concocted a formulas of nonsensical combinations of sounds in order to to get the attention of the gods.

The Jews would certainly be aware of this practice, and there are some ancient texts that show that Jews sometimes embraced these practices.

Jesus points to the pagans who spend so much time trying to find the right words/sounds that would be the key to unlock the gods favor and he says, “DON’T DO THAT!”

Why not?

Interestingly, because (v.

8) “your Father knows the things you need before you ask him.”

For Jesus, he says there’s no need to mix and match the right words to gain the attention of the Father.

There’s no need to ramble on with words just because you think there’s value in a necessarily long prayer (consider that Jesus’s prayer in the later verses is only 6 sentences).

I think we believe the lie that long or pretty prayers get us “As” in the eyes of God.

But listen, packaging your prayers in pretty Christmas wrapping and a neatly tied bow will not make it any more acceptable in the eyes of God, because he knows what’s on the inside before you ever hand it over to him.

Marina and I have walked through this recently with two miscarriages last year.

After we had tried for a year and had nothing but setbacks, that thought creept into our minds, “Did we not pray for the right things?

Did we not pray enough?

Should we have prayed for this or that?

Should we have been more strategic when we prayed?”

The fact of the matter is, the Son knows the Father intimately, and Jesus tells us that the Father knows what is on our hearts before we ask him.

The presentation of a prayer has virtually no effect on how it is received.

Your prayers don’t have to be a certain length to be heard.

In the midst of crying, they don’t have to make complete sense.

Your prayers don’t even have to be spoken or written to be heard.

Do you want to know why your prayers are heard?

First, because you pray to a God who hears.

Second, because you already have the ear of the Father.

The veil is torn.

The barriers of sin have been removed.

You have access to the Father through the Son Jesus Christ, who through his death, resurrection, and assension, have reconciled us to God.

Amen and Amen!

But perhaps you had the same question that I did when I read this.

If the Father knows the things we need before we ask him, then why pray at all?

If God knows what I want him to do, then isn’t prayer pretty much a meaningless exercise?

Get this: the power of prayer lies is in how it moves us more than how it moves God.

When you pray how Jesus teaches us to pray, not only do you put into words the praise and adoration that God deserves, but you also steep your mind and heart into awesome truths about who God is and you are transformed as a result.

Follow me into the first part of Jesus’s prayer.

Christian Standard Bible (Chapter 6)

Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.