Prayer Series

Good morning. We are continuing our series called Learning to Live Like Jesus. It is a series based on the passage known as the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is one of Jesus’ longest discourses and it covers chapters 5, 6, and 7 of the gospel of Matthew. We finished off chapter 5 a few weeks ago. Chapter 5 gives us a pretty well-rounded picture of what life in the kingdom is intended to look like. Last week, Austin opened up into chapter 6 and began to look at some of the hindrances to living the kingdom life. He spoke last week about the hindrance involved in wanting to do good deeds so that others might see. Next week, we are going to be talking about how we sometimes hinder our spiritual life when we do things like fast for the purpose of being noticed by men or women. Today, what we are going to do is talk about the concept of prayer and how sometimes people pray in order that they might be seen by men or women. Most of us know that when we pray, when we do acts of service, or even fast, when we do them to be in the spotlight before men or women it can be detrimental. It can be harmful to the spiritual life. But having said this, I would also say that by no means did Jesus suggest that we not engage in those things. That we would not pray. That we would not do acts of service. Or even that we would not fast. These are basically some of the core practices of the Christian life. Really what Jesus was concerned about was what was going on in the heart. In other words, what was the motivation for doing these things? Much of the motivation as we see is simply to be seen by other people. What we are going to do today is what we do all the time here. Just to have somebody stand up and read this passage beginning at Matthew 6:5-15. (Scripture read here.)

It is obvious from this passage that it is about prayer. There is an underlying assumption that I already mentioned that Jesus’ disciples were to be praying people. The first few lines speak of that when Jesus says “And when you pray.” There is a basic assumption that the disciples will pray. There is a basic assumption that we will pray. As I already mentioned, prayer is one of the core practices, if not the essential practice of the Christian faith. There have probably been hundreds or thousands of books written on the topic of prayer. Books about why we pray. Books about how we pray. When we pray. How often you pray. That sort of thing. That is because prayer is really part of not only Christian history but Jewish history. If we had time, we would look all the way back into the early passages of Genesis where we would see people engaging in prayer. So we know that the Jewish people were a people of prayer. In fact, although it was not required of them until later on, many Jewish people would do prayer three times a day. We see that in passages like Psalm 55 where David says “Evening, morning, and noon I cry out in distress and He hears my voice.” We also read in the book of Daniel that “Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed to give thanks to his God just as he had done before.” So we see that prayer was a regular part of the Jewish life. Praying three times a day.

As a side note, many Christians are following the practice of praying three times a day. That is basically known as fixed-hour prayer. There is nothing magical about the idea of fixed-hour prayer. It is exactly what it sounds like. It is that you pray at fixed hours throughout the day. It is common for many people to set their alarms to go off at certain times during the day. The alarm is simply a reminder that they are to pray. And a prayer can be something as simple as “Praise God” or “God have mercy on me” or it could be an extended prayer for 10 or 15 minutes or so. But the idea of the fixed-hour prayer is to get you into a rhythm of prayer. So prayer is not just isolated to morning times or evening times. It is incorporated throughout your day. It develops a rhythm of prayer that is not too unlike the rhythms of eating, sleeping, and drinking. In fact, I have a question that I wanted to ask. It fell flat the first hour but how many of you drink Dr. Pepper? Has anybody drank it for more than 10 years? What numbers are on the label of Dr. Pepper? 10, 2, 4. I guess the marketing campaign fell flat but why did they put those three numbers on the Dr. Pepper? Because they did a study and they found out that during the times of 10, 2, and 4, people tend to lose energy. Didn’t you ever notice that at work that you lose energy late morning, early afternoon, and late afternoon? They developed a marketing campaign around this idea of 10, 2, and 4 that should motivate you to drink Dr. Pepper at least three times a day. This has very little to do with what I am saying here, but it made me think the fixed-hour prayer is designed somewhat like that only it is not designed to give you physical energy. When do you the fixed-hour prayer, it is designed to give you a spiritual boost throughout the day. I would encourage you, if you are not doing that, to maybe take those smart phones of yours and setting times three times a day to remind you to stop whatever you are doing and say a quick prayer to God.