Prayin’ Like A Pagan - Matthew 6:7-8 Series

Matthew 6:5-8 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. 6 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.

7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Introduction: The blessed excurses

It is a comfort to those of us who are preachers to discover that even Jesus went on rabbit trails sometimes. Today we get to go down what has to be the greatest rabbit trail of all time. We have been studying verse by verse through the Sermon on the Mount and in Matthew 6 Jesus is giving three examples of hypocrisy: hypocritical giving, hypocritical praying and hypocritical fasting. He has the exact same pattern each time. Each time He says “Don’t be like the hypocrites who do it for self-glorification, but do it in private and your Father will reward you.” He says that about giving in verses 2-4, and then He says it about praying in verses 5-6, but then He does not say it about fasting until verse 16. You would expect verse 16 to come immediately after verse 6, but Jesus wants to go on a rabbit trail about prayer first. And so in between verse 6 and verse 16 Jesus goes on a little excurses on the topic of prayer. That rabbit trail ends up being one of the most precious treasures that ever dropped from the lips of our Savior – the Lord’s Prayer, which sits almost in the exact middle of the whole sermon like a diamond at the center of a pendant.

The errors of Pagan Prayin’

But before getting to that prayer Jesus wants to give us one more warning. He says, “Not only should you avoid praying like the hypocrites.., I also want you to avoid praying like the pagans. The word translated pagans in verse 7 is actually the word normally translated “Gentiles,” and in this context it simply refers to anyone who does not worship the true God – the heathen. When people who do not know God pray it generally ends up having two very serious problems. The first one Jesus calls babbling.

1. Mindless Babbling

The KJV translates that word “vain repetition,” and the ESV says, “heap up empty phrases,” but I think babbling is a good translation because it is just one word in the Greek. The word is battalogeo (ßatta?????). Logeo means “to speak.” You are familiar with the word logos (“word”), the verb form is logeo (“to speak.”). So the second half of the word means “to speak.” The first half of the word is batta. That word does not mean anything. It is most likely an onomatopoetic word (a word that sounds like what it means – like “buzz” or “zip” or “thump.” When the pagans would pray their payers were often long on noise and short on meaning. And if you heard it from a distance it just sounded like “batta, batta, batta, batta, batta…” So the word battalogeo just means “batta-speak” (babbling). It is kind of like our word “yada” Their prayers were just “Dear God, yada, yada, yada.”

What was it that the pagans were doing in their prayers that makes Jesus use a word like that to describe it? The most obvious thing that comes to mind is speaking in tongues. That was a very common thing in the mystery religions of Jesus’ time – ecstatic, unintelligible babbling that was thought to be a special communion with the gods. It was prayer that had no meaning. They were just making sounds that conveyed no actual cognitive ideas or thoughts, and they believed that practice was a special connection between them and the gods.

That is one thing Jesus may have had in mind, but I would not restrict it to that. I think He is probably also including any kind of thoughtless prayer. In most religions prayer is a ritual. It is not communication between two persons – it is just a religious practice of reciting words into the air. People who do not know God “say” their prayers. If you are going to have a conversation with someone you usually do not use the word “say.” You do not say a conversation. Pagans do not usually think of prayer as an interaction with another person. It is just a religious procedure. And so the prayer itself is thoughtless. They are verbalizing some words, but those words do not reflect what is in their heart at all.