When a Prayer is Not a Prayer - Matthew 5:5-15 - February 26, 2012
Series: Kingdom Life – A World Turned Upside Down #19
We’re going to start, this morning, with a deceptively simple question. The question is this: What is prayer? … What is prayer? We know we’re supposed to do it, we know it’s important, but what really is prayer? If you were to ask a dozen people that same question you would probably get a dozen different answers. In the next few moments I’m going to share with you how others have attempted to answer that question, and I hope that as you hear what they have said, that you will be challenged in your own understanding of what prayer can be. Here we go ... (All prayer quotes come from this website: www.stfrancis.name/prayer-quotes/)
• Prayer is the exercise of drawing on the grace of God.
• To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. If we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. The more we pray, the more we come to [the] heartbeat of God. Prayer starts the communication process between ourselves and God. All the options of life fall before us. At that point we will either forsake our prayer life, and cease to grow, or we will pursue our prayer life and let Him change us.
• To pray is to talk to God … In a word: to get to know Him and to get to know yourself.
• Prayer gives us strength for great ideals, for keeping up our faith, charity, purity, generosity; prayer gives us strength to rise up from indifference and guilt, if we have had the misfortune to give in to temptation and weakness. Prayer gives us light by which to see and to judge from God's perspective and from eternity. That is why you must not give up on praying!
• Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God. - Saint John Damascene
• For me prayer is an upward leap of the heart, an untroubled glance toward heaven, a cry of gratitude and love which I utter from the depths of sorrow as well as from the heights of joy. - Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
• Prayer is not given us as a burden to be borne or an irksome duty to fulfill, but to be a joy and power to which there is no limit.
• No Man can do a great and enduring work of God, who is not a man of prayer, and no man can be a man of prayer who does not give much time to praying.
• Poverty stricken as the church is today in many things, she is most stricken here, in the place of prayer. We have many organizers, but few agonizers; many players and payers, but few prayers; many singers but few lingerers; lots of pastors but few wrestlers; many fears, few tears; much fashion, but little passion; many interferers, but few intercessors; many writers, but few fighters. Failing here, we fail everywhere.
• The great people of the earth today are the people who pray. I do not mean those who talk about prayer; nor yet those who can explain about prayer; but I mean those people who take time and pray. They have not time. It must be taken from something else. This something else is very important. Very important and pressing, but still less important and less pressing than prayer.
• Some people pray just to pray and some people pray to know God.
• Until you are convinced that prayer is the best use of your time, you will not find time for prayer.
And we could go on and on and on but if we were to sum those up in our own words we could say that to pray is to draw on God’s grace, to lean on His strength, to be equipped by His great power for what each day will bring. To pray is to get to know God and to be changed in the process; to give ourselves to that which is of the utmost importance. To pray is the great need of Christians throughout all times for as we pray the eyes of our hearts are opened, our desires transformed, our wills surrendered, and our lives empowered to live in such a way that God is glorified.
And yet, as others have said before me, “There is a mighty lot of difference between saying prayers and praying.” Anyone can say a prayer; but not everyone who does so is actually praying. Jesus would agree. And as we look into God’s word this morning I would ask you to consider whether you are just a “sayer,” of prayers, or if you are indeed, a “prayer,” of prayers. Open your Bibles with me to the Gospel of Matthew. Mathew, chapter 6, beginning in verse 5.
Now, a few weeks ago I mentioned that towards the end of February we would be starting a new series on Marriage. That is still coming, it’s just coming a little later than originally planned. For today we are continuing in our study in the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus has been speaking of that practical righteousness – of what faith looks like as it’s lived out on a day to day basis. To help us understand what such faith looks like He uses three examples – three pillars of righteousness practiced by men and women who seek the face of God. Those three pillars are: i) giving to the needy, ii) actively praying, and iii) regular fasting. Last week we looked at what Jesus had to say about our giving; this week we see what He would tell us about our praying. Let’s begin in verse 5 …
“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 others. Truly I tell you, 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.
“This, then, is how you should pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’
For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:5–15, NIV)
And what we see in these verses is the same pattern we saw last week: A Warning Given, An Example To Avoid, A Principle to Follow, and finally A Reward To Be Received.
The warning is simply this: Be careful how you pray, for prayer which flows from a heart that is not right with God, is not prayer at all. Just like with our giving, when we pray, it comes down to the attitude, the motives of, our heart. If the heart is not right before God, then when we pray, we are like those whom Jesus called hypocrites. A hypocrite is someone who portrays themselves to be something that they are not. A religious hypocrite is someone who wants others to see a spiritual depth in them that is not really there.
Jesus gives us an example of how we ought to be praying. We call it the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus’ intention was not to give us a prayer to pray by rote, but to give us an example, a model if you will, of what prayer ought to look like. And because we looked at the Lord’s Prayer verse by verse two or three years ago, I’m not going to go into the same level of detail today as we did then, but I do want you to see the broader picture of what our prayers ought to be before the throne of God.
And as we look at the Lord’s prayer we understand this: Prayer is more about God than it is about us. And that’s probably a big shift in perspective for us. But folks, the ultimate purpose of prayer, is not that you and I get our desires met, but rather that God is glorified in and through our lives. Too often Christians treat prayer as a shopping list. “Dear God, give me this, and do that for me, and it would be great if you took care of this along the way.” And we go through and we list all the things we want God to do for us point by point but we give little thought to God in the process.
As you take a close look at the Lord’s Prayer you discover that the first half is all about God. Jesus says that the manner of praying that is pleasing to God is when we begin with God’s glory. As we pray we start out by acknowledging God’s glory and His holiness. We pray that His kingdom would come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven – not that our will would be done in heaven as we wish it to be on earth! We’re praying for God’s glory, His interests, His kingdom, His will. Only as we understand those things are our hearts properly prepared to bring our requests before Him. For as we pray in this manner, we acknowledge that when we bring our requests to Him we are not to ask for anything that would dishonor His name, work against His kingdom, nor that is contrary to His will. When we start our prayers right with God, we are not going to go on to ask God to bless that which is sin; that which is not right in His eyes!
So our prayers ought to begin with worship and desiring that which God desires. The second half of the Lord’s Prayer focuses more on our needs. Our physical needs such as food, our spiritual needs such as forgiveness, and our need to overcome all that would turn us from the abundant life that we have in Jesus Christ. And even in our needs and petitions God is really being glorified for as we pray for our daily bread we acknowledge God’s provision, as we ask forgiveness for our sins we acknowledge our debt of sin that only God can wash away, and as we pray to not be lead into temptation we acknowledge that there is a way that seems right to man, but which leads to death, and a way that is right before God, and leads to life.
That’s the Lord’s Prayer in a nutshell and Jesus says that’s the example we’re to be following when we pray, for if we don’t, if we don’t pray with God’s glory in mind, the desire to see His kingdom be established, a heart to submit our will to His, then we come to prayer as one who is a hypocrite.
And so He gives us An Example To Avoid as He reveals three errors that we can make as we pray. He’s got the Pharisees in mind here. The Jews of Jesus’ day prayed at three specific times during the course of the day. They prayed at 9:00 a.m., noon, and 3:00 p.m. And some of the Pharisees, because they wanted others to see how super spiritual they were, would make sure they were out in busy, public places when those times to pray came along so that others could see how spiritual they were as they stopped on the street corners to pray. The heart was not right. The motive was their glory rather than that of God. Jesus says, “Don’t be like them!”
They were praying to be heard by others. That’s the first error we can be given to in prayer. Now there is nothing wrong with public prayer, but whether prayer is public, or private, it’s the heart with which that prayer is offered that matters. If you do not have an active prayer life in private; you would do well not to get up and pray in public. That could very well be the act of a hypocrite – pretending to be something in public that is not true of you in private.
The second error Jesus mentions is the use of empty words or vain repetitions. “Do not keep babbling like pagans for they think they will be heard because of their many words,” He says. The belief was that the more you spoke the better the chance that God would hear you. Jesus says, we don’t need to do that because God already knows what we need before we ask. Instead of “many words,” your translation might read, “heap up empty phrases,” or “meaningless repetition,” or “vain repetition.” And it’s ironic that Jesus should say that just before we are given the Lord’s Prayer because that’s how many people use it. Even before I was a Christian I remember sitting in the hospital beside a man who had had a heart attack and hearing his wife repeat the Lord’s Prayer again and again as she sat by his side. I lost track of how many times she repeated it in her worry and fear but that image came to mind as I considered those words, “vain repetition.” Prayer is not a magic talisman to ward off evil. We don’t have to babble with many words to be heard. We simply need to come to God and bring our need, our request, our petition, before His throne.
We’re going to skip past the third error for a moment. We will come back to it before the end, but for now let’s move along to A Principle To Follow. At it’s heart, prayer is meant to be between you and God. It’s not for show, it’s not to prove your spiritual worth, it’s not to appear godly to others, it’s not to get your desires met. It really comes down to what the driving motive, the force of heart, behind your prayers is. James writes and says, “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” (James 4:3, NIV) The heart with which you pray is key, because prayer is communication between you and God. It’s an opportunity for you to be changed, transformed, to have your brokenness healed, sins forgiven, fellowship restored as you seek out the things of God’s heart. Prayer is a place for you to meet with God, and, while public prayer is not wrong, before you pray in public, you ought to be a man or woman of prayer in private. Jesus says, “When you pray, don’t make a show of it. Don’t announce it on Facebook, don’t tweet it to your friends. Simply find that quiet place where you can go and be alone and then spend some quality time with God.” That’s the example Jesus gives us throughout the Gospels – when He prays – and He prays often – He goes away to a quiet place to get alone with God and to spend time with Him.
That’s where the reward will be found. That’s where the blessing will be discovered. And again that word translated “reward” goes beyond the idea of mere physical gain, of a payment received for work done. It’s a word that attempts to convey the extent of the blessing of God that is poured out that goes far beyond anything we have a right to expect. And every Christian should know the reward that prayer brings both in this life, and in eternity to come, because Jesus’ expectation is that we will pray. He says “when you pray,” and the word is in such a tense that it conveys a lifetime command. Prayer is to be a continual, deliberate action to which we give ourselves to on a habitual basis. Why? Because prayer is where we do business with God. It’s where we seek His face, His Kingdom, His will, His purposes, His heart, His desires for our life, our relationships, our family, our marriage, our children, our neighbours, our work, our churches. It’s where we are to be led by His Spirit, where we come face to face with His grace, where we discover healing for our brokenness, hope for our future, peace for today, strength for the moment. We could go so far as to say that a man or woman who calls themselves Christian, yet does not pray, stands in the place of the hypocrite. How can we say we desire that God’s kingdom come, His will be done, His name be glorified, if we can’t even bother to seek these things as we come to pray?
We are meant to be a people of prayer. You don’t need all the fancy words. God just wants us to come with a heart that desires Him and the things of the kingdom. What does Scripture say? “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33, NIV) You know, you’ve probably got a lot going on in your life right now. A lot of needs, or concerns or worries that you want to bring before God. I just want to encourage you to do something. Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness. Do you know what the most common prayer is that we find in the Bible? In some way, shape or form it is a desire for more of God, to know Him better, to love Him deeper, to walk more closely with Him. Why is that the most common prayer? Because it’s about our greatest need! My experience has been that as we do that – as we seek His kingdom and His righteousness – the rest of life tends to fall into line as well and it’s then that we are better able to bring all these other needs before God’s throne.
Friends, I want you to understand that prayer is one of the greatest gifts that God has given us – yet it’s also one of the most forsaken by Christians today. So many people struggle to pray with any sort of confidence, regularity or hope. We forsake that fellowship with God either by choice – we fail to see the value of prayer and so do not practice it – or, because of this third word of warning that Jesus gives us in these verses. Sometimes prayer is difficult, ineffective even in drawing us closer to God and nearer His heart, because of sin in our lives that we have allowed to remain untouched by God’s grace. The psalmist says, “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” (Psalm 66:18, NIV) The specific sin in mind in our verses today is the sin of un-forgiveness. If you take a look at this passage you’ll see that the word “forgive,” appears in one form or another, six times, in just four verses. There’s an emphasis here! And it’s the only portion of the Lord’s Prayer that Jesus feels it’s necessary to expand on, and to explain, to elaborate on, in greater detail.
In the pages of God’s word, sin is pictured as a “debt,” and the sinner as a “debtor.” Sin represents both a wrong, and something requiring satisfaction. And forgiveness is close to the heart of God for He has forgiven us a debt of sin that we could never pay. That was done on the cross. Scripture says, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!” (Romans 5:8–10, NIV)
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.” (1 Peter 3:18, NIV)
“This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:10, NIV)
This is why forgiveness is so close to God’s heart for it is what He has shown us. Ephesians 4:30 warns us to not grieve the Holy Spirit of God and Paul goes on to explain that one of the things that grieves the Spirit is when we fail to practice forgiveness with one another. Not only does a lack of forgiveness affect our fellowship with one another, it affects our fellowship with God. And a life filled with an unforgiving spirit – or a church filled with unforgiving people – grieves the Holy Spirit. We must deal with our hurts, our anger, our lack of forgiveness for the sake of our own fellowship with God, our relationships with others, and the life of the Church.
Salvation is not what is being pictured here - but fellowship with God and His people is. We are forgiven in Christ Jesus our Lord. That debt has been paid, atonement made through the death of Jesus upon the cross. But we are a fallen people and we sin in word, thought and deed and by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. That’s why John writes these words, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 John 1:9, NIV) When we sin, our fellowship with God, and therefore our prayer life where we draw closer to God, is affected. When we repent and confess we receive forgiveness in the sense that that relationship, that fellowship is restored to what it is meant to be, and we are able to realize all the fullness of prayer.
Think of a husband and wife, married for many years, with a deep and abiding love. One day the wife does something thoughtless and careless that brings great pain and heartache to her husband. The fellowship, the closeness they share, has been fractured. They are still married but the relationship has been deeply impacted by the injury that she brought upon her husband. A distance will remain between the two until she goes to her husband, broken by her sin against him, repentant and seeking reconciliation. At that point forgiveness can be extended, the hurts are let go of, and the fellowship restored. That is perhaps something of what is being pictured here.
And if we, who have been forgiven so much, are unwilling to forgive the hurts done against us, we are choosing to sunder the fellowship between us and others, but also between us and God, that He holds so dear and for which Jesus died. Someone has said that “The only reliable evidence of a person’s being saved is not a past experience of receiving Christ but a present life that reflects Christ.” That’s what we’re giving evidence to as we forgive – a life that reflects the love and forgiveness that we’ve received from God.
And the Bible contains dozens of word pictures of what forgiveness is. I want to share a few of them with you this morning to help you understand this tremendous gift that we’ve received in Jesus Christ and which we’re able to extend to one another as well.
• To Forgive Is To Turn The Key, Open the cell door, and let the prisoner walk free.
• To Forgive Is To Write In Large Letters across a debt, “Nothing owed”
• To Forgive Is To Pound The Gavel In a courtroom and declare, “Not guilty!”
• To Forgive Is To Shoot An Arrow So high and so far that it can never be found again.
• To Forgive Is To Bundle Up All The garbage and trash and dispose of it, leaving the house clean and fresh.
• To Forgive Is To Loose The Moorings Of a ship and release it to the open sea.
• To Forgive Is To Grant A Full Pardon to a condemned criminal.
• To Forgive Is To Relax A Strangle hold On a wrestling opponent.
• To Forgive Is To Smash A Clay Pot into a thousand pieces so it can never be pieced together again. (John Nieder and Thomas Thompson, Forgive and Love Again [Eugene, Oreg.: Harvest House, 1991], p. 48)
Those are just a few of the images the Bible gives us to describe what God’s forgiveness of our sins looks like. When we truly consider those, and the extent of the forgiveness that we have received, how can we possibly refuse to forgive those who have wronged us?
Life can be full of hurts and grievances. God is aware of the hurt or the pain, of the wounds and injuries, that others have brought into your life. He is aware too of those that you have inflicted upon others whether intentionally or not. And He is fully aware of every sin in our lives that drove Jesus to the cross. We stand forgiven, not forsaken. We stand healed, not harmed. And that’s what we remember as we share the Lord’s Supper together this morning. The bread and the cup are reminders of the true cost of sin: Jesus died that our sins might be forgiven. God raised Him from the grave; proof that His sacrifice was sufficient to atone for our sin. And the freedom, forgiveness, and new life that are promised in Scripture is yours to receive through faith in Jesus Christ. His forgiveness is offered freely – it’s up to you whether you will receive that gift or not.
Let’s pray …
As the bread and the cup are being passed around I encourage you to spend some quiet moments in prayer and reflection, both giving thanks to God, and asking Him to bring to mind anyone whose forgiveness you need to ask for a wrong done to them, or anyone that you need to release from your hurt and anger as you forgive them. If God brings someone to mind, then act on it as soon as possible that your fellowship with God, and our fellowship with one another, would be restored and our worship rise before the Lord as a pleasing offering.
Distribute bread and cups …
Let us eat and drink together with grateful hearts …
Closing Song …
