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.
Going back to the passage, prayer was a common practice back in the day, but it was also, like many practices, subject to abuse. You would have these people that would be consistently praying three times a day, but they would begin to strategically locate themselves in the public areas of life like the marketplace or the steps of the synagogue. They would pray in order that people would be able to see what they are doing. This is what Jesus is calling out in his passage. He says “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.” Last week, Austin talked about the idea of the word hypocrite. It shows up quite a bit in the gospels. A hypocrite was just another name for an actor. These people were acting as if they were holy, but they really weren’t. Jesus was not against public prayers. He is not against praying on a street corner or praying at a synagogue. But he was against the inconsistency between what was going on in the heart and what was going on in the outward appearance. These people were seeking the approval of men. They were seeking the reward that comes by people acknowledging look at those guys. They are out there praying. Aren’t they cool? They were seeking that kind of a reward. That is the reward that they got. A reward that is so substantially less than the reward that God would want to give them. This is a hard passage for us to relate to because obviously most of us don’t prayer at synagogues. Most of us don’t pray on the streets of Bellevue. We do pray in a community-type setting. We obviously prayer at the church. We pray in small groups. We pray in discipleship meetings. There is a risk that we could be guilty of the same sort of thing. There is a risk that we could be more concerned about the people who are around us and what they see rather than what God sees. I speak to myself when I say this. There are people that are thinking so much about the words that they begin to craft their prayer in their head while other people are praying because they want to impress people with their words. But in the other scene, you have people who are so terrified about what others may think when they pray that they don’t pray at all. These are two extremes that Jesus would disapprove of because the focus is on what man thinks and not on what God thinks. Although we are all prone to this type of behavior, if it is something that you are preoccupied with all the time, then you may have a soul issue going on. You may have something that needs to be adjusted in your soul.
Fortunately, Jesus gives us a solution. The solution is if you are constantly always trying to pray in public to receive the affirmation of man or woman, then the solution is don’t pray in public. Go into your room and pray. That is why he goes on to say, “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.” The fix for the tendency to want to have people see you when you pray is to go into your room. Go into a private room. Some translations, if you use the King James, I believe they actually translate this “closet”. It is where we get the idea of a prayer closet. Other translations refer to it as a store room. The sense they are trying to get across is that you should go into a place that ideally doesn’t have any windows so that no one can accidentally walk by and see you praying and say look at that person who is praying at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. That is the point he is trying to get across. It is not that Jesus doesn’t want you to pray in public. He just thinks the bulk of your prayer should be in private. The public prayer should just be the tip of the iceberg of really a complete life of prayer. Jesus uses this analogy to speak to the importance of private over public prayer.
As a side note, it is also a pretty good metaphor of how we should approach God in our prayer. Many of you experience, whether it is public or private prayer, when you get ready to pray what is going on in your mind? All sorts of things are going on in your mind. I think Austin refers to it as the thought monkeys. You aren’t thinking about God. You are thinking about all the other things you have to do. That is a distraction. You never really enter into the presence of God. That is a big problem for most of us. In fact, a man named C.S. Lewis refers to those things jumping around in your head as wild animals. He writes “The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. The first job each morning consists simply of shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice; letting that larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.” I really think that C.S. Lewis got this idea from this passage. When Jesus says you need to go into your room and close the door, I think he is saying keep the external and the internal distractions of your mind out of that space because you are entering into the sanctuary. You are entering into a holy place. You are entering into the very presence of God. You have to get rid of those wild animals that are jumping all around. That is why the practice of silence is so valuable. We have talked a lot about silence lately in things like silence and solitude. I know a lot of you don’t want anything to do with it, but I don’t know how you get rid of all those wild animals jumping around in your mind when you are getting ready to pray. The practice of silence allows you to do that. It is a practice. It is a discipline. It is training. It is training to quiet your mind. Not to empty your mind but to quiet your mind. You enter into the sanctuary. The wild animals are outside. You are in the sanctuary and the presence of God comes in and then you are in a place to receive the reward that he wants to give you, which can be anything. Most likely, it is going to be some sort of revelation about God or about yourself.
Jesus obviously was into secret prayer, but he was also into short prayers. That is why he goes on to say “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 ask him.” We will talk about that in a few weeks when we look at a passage that speaks of asking God for things. Right now, the point is there were pagans, non-Jewish people, idol worshippers that really relied on their words to get what they wanted. They would heap on word after word, phrase after phrase, without even giving much thought to the meaning of the word. They would heap these on in their prayers to their gods and goddesses. The logic being that the more words they could heap on the better because at some point the gods or goddesses would hear a word or phrase that would resonate with them, and then they would reward them. They would give them what they need. Again, Jesus is not suggesting that we should not ever engage in long prayers because we know Jesus engaged in long prayers at times. What he is trying to get us away from is thinking that we can manipulate God by using a lot of words in our prayer. A lot of meaningless words if you think about it. We are not engaging with a God who wants to hear a lot of words until he can find one that resonates with him. We are talking about intelligent conversation between us and our God. We are talking about intelligent conversation between our Father and his children. That is what we are talking about. That is probably why in the next part of this passage Jesus lays out what we call the model prayer. We refer to it as the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus goes on to say “This 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.’” How many of you have ever heard this prayer? How many grew up hearing this prayer? We know this prayer pretty well. Unfortunately, we have a lot of disagreement on what exact words you should use and how often we should say the prayer. One thing we should be able to agree is that it is a prayer that is meant to be spoken inside the church, outside the church because it really is a model prayer. It lays the foundation for all of our requests to come. I don’t have a lot of time to break this all down, but I wanted to highlight a few phrases from this prayer.
The first and I say the most important phrase in the whole prayer is who it is directed to. It opens up by saying “Our Father in heaven.” The actual word heaven is actually plural, so it is actually “Our Father in heavens,” which basically has the sense that it is our Father who is right here with us and as close as he can be and he is as distant as we want him out in the farthest galaxy and beyond. That is the Father we are talking about. The Father in the heavens. Really, the key word is Father because up until this point in the Bible, God was never referred to as Father. It was too formal. The Jews would not refer to God as Father. They couldn’t even say the name God. We don’t even know the correct pronunciation supposedly of God the way they would have pronounced it. What is cool is that after Jesus came to earth and dwelled amongst us and then spent time doing ministry and ultimately dying on the cross for our sins, being buried, and raised on the third day, after that point, his Father became our Father. It is his Daddy who became our Daddy. And I don’t use the word daddy lightly. If you have been around Christianity for a while, the word that we translate father is the word Abba, which is basically more closely aligned with daddy than it is father. It basically just speaks of the intimate family relationship that we have between a father and a son or a father and a daughter.
That sets the foundation really for the prayer requests that are to come. Starting with the whole idea that our Father’s name would be exalted. It goes on to say “Our Father in heaven, hallowed by your name.” Hallowed is a strange word. It is a word we don’t use. We associate it with Halloween maybe. I am not even sure why the NIV still uses it. I don’t know if they use it in the most recent translation because it is a word we don’t use much. It does relate a bit to Halloween because Halloween comes from the phrase All Hallows Eve, which basically means the evening before the holy day, the holy day being All Saints Day, Nov. 1. Halloween is the day before All Holy Day. It is the day that all the unholy are given free reign throughout the earth. So we are familiar with the word hallow, but we don’t think about hallowing the name of God. What it means is not only is it holy, but it is held in high regard. What child doesn’t want their father’s name held in high regard? I would suggest that one reason we have such a moral crisis in the United States and the world is that the world has stopped hallowing God’s name. The world has stopped holding God’s name in high regard. Our first request is that our Father’s name would be hallowed.
Then it moves to the second request that God’s kingdom would continue to be expanded throughout the world. That is why it goes on to say “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” I have spoken about the idea of the close relationship between the word kingdom and the word will. In fact, will is just another way of referring to kingdom. Very closely related. I said we all have our own kingdoms. You may not agree with it, but every person has a kingdom. For some people, the kingdom is their house. Some people only have pets and they have a kingdom of their pets. We have a realm of existence where what we want done is done. Where our will is done. That is what we are talking about in a kingdom. Some people’s kingdom is limited to their house. Other’s kingdoms extend out into the community, out into the school, out into the workplace, and even the world. Their kingdom is the place where their desire is done. The prayer here again is that God’s kingdom would come. When Jesus came to earth, he inaugurated the kingdom. The prayer we are praying when we pray this prayer is that God’s kingdom would continue to manifest itself throughout the world. Manifest itself in our homes. Manifest itself in our schools. Manifest itself in the workplace. Manifest itself in the world and that the kingdom of darkness would be pushed out and pushed aside. That God’s kingdom would be done. That God’s will would be done. That is what we are talking about here.
Those are the first two requests. The idea that God is Daddy and we have this close relationship and we pray that his will be done and his name be held in high regard, then and really only then do we start praying for ourselves. It lays the foundation and actually allows us to pray in confidence because we know we have the King of the universe that loves us like a father to a child and brings us confidence like a father to a child and like a child to a father knows that the child can come in confidence and ask for their daily needs. We go on to say “Give us today our daily bread.” Bread back in the day was not just a food. It was all their basic necessities. It included food, shelter, and clothing. When we pray, “Give us today our daily bread,” we are saying take care of our needs. Take care of our basic needs. Jesus is not suggesting here that we should never pray for something that we are going to get in the future. He is suggesting don’t put your trust in those things. Trust that your good Father is going to take care of you. A lot of you have young children. Although some kids may be guilty of hoarding a snack or two, they pretty much know they don’t need to do this because mom or dad are going to provide their basic needs. They are not thinking about tomorrow. That is the type of innocence that Jesus is talking about here. Trust like a child trusts his parents for his daily provisions. We are to trust God, our Father, for our daily provisions.
Then we go on to ask that we would be forgiven of the things we do wrong. It says “Forgive us our debts (or sins or trespasses), as we have also forgiven our debtors.” Here it is the idea that God is not going to hold our wrongdoings against us. Like a good father, he is not going to just constantly slam us for something we did wrong five or ten years ago or even a few days ago. He loves us so he is going to show us that love by offering us ongoing forgiveness. Having said that it doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be consequences to our sins. He is not going to hold back all those earthly consequences. In fact, some parents are guilty are trying to keep all bad consequences of our children’s sin away from them. A little bit can be good. But in most cases I think it causes more harm than good because we deny the lesson that would be learned through the consequences of the sin. We worship a good Daddy who has mercy for us and really has pity for us because understands us. He understands how we are wired. In some cases, we are wired for sin and can’t help ourselves, but yet we have a God that is willing to show us compassion. Psalm 103 speaks of this when it says “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” He knows us. He made us. So he knows we are going to mess up. He is sad whenever we do, but he knows we are going to do it and like a good father, he shows compassion on us.
Finally, we ask that we would not be led too much into temptation. The last line says “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one.” Basically, this means God don’t allow us to be overly tempted. Don’t allow us to face things we can’t handle because the bottom line is everybody has their limits of what they can handle. God knows it. We are weak-willed people. Please do not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear. When Jesus talks about temptation, I don’t think he is talking about just the temptation that leads to moral sin, but the temptation that comes through various trials of life. When we experience too many trials in life, before we know it we start badmouthing God. Why did God do this to me? Why did God do this? We have the attitude eventually of Job’s wife. Job was going through all these terrible things. And Job said why don’t you just curse God and die? That is the temptation that comes through too many trials where we actually begin to dishonor the name of God. That is the temptation to sin. All the while, we ask that we be delivered from the evil one. The evil one being the Devil, Satan, call him what you want. But it is the one back there poking and prodding at us and trying to tempt us or use our temptations against us or use our failures and sins against us. Constantly prodding us. Constantly trying to destroy us. When we pray this prayer we are saying God just protect me from being overly tempted. Protect me from anything that would not only harm my body but also my mind and even my soul. Sometimes some things seem to slip through the cracks or we think they do for whatever reason, because God is a good father, I think he saves us from more things than we realize.
In closing, I am going to give an illustration that I think some of you may be familiar with. Some of you like baseball. Many of you probably saw an incident that occurred in a pre-season game in Orlando this past week. There was a game between the Braves and the Pirates. There was a father and son sitting in the stands and the batter took a swing and the bat flew out of his hands and headed right towards where the people were sitting, including the father and son. Everybody around them panicked. The father, out of instinct, put his hand out and blocked the bat from bopping the kid in the head. The kid was oblivious. The father sticks out his hand. Here is the image of the whole scene. It is really an amazing photograph. Look at the panic on all these faces. Look at the father. That is a picture of God. That is a picture of what God is doing 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We have no idea what objects are flying through space at our head at any given moment while we are oblivious and texting on our phone or doing things we aren’t supposed to be doing and all these things are coming at us. All the while our Father is there sticking his hand out and stopping this, sticking his hand out and stopping that. That is the point of the Lord’s Prayer. More importantly, what I realized is it also demonstrates what Jesus was talking about earlier in the passage. About why we don’t pray to be seen by others. The bottom line is the others really don’t matter. If you notice in this picture, there were people around there looking at the kid. There were people that knew the kid was there, but when that bat came flying, they were out of there. It all boils down to the people that saw the kid didn’t care as much as the unseen father did for the kid. Can I get an amen on that? Amen. That is what the whole section is trying to say. You have a relationship with a good Father. It is because of the fact that Christ came down on the earth. The word that became flesh and dwelt amongst us. Walked this earth for 33 years. Was willing to be crucified on the cross. Ultimately buried and raised on the third day that we will celebrate in a few weeks called Easter. Because of that whole event, the one that Jesus called Daddy we are able to now call Daddy. The one that he called Father, we are going to call Father, which means that collectively we can and we should together recite the words that Jesus taught us to pray, which is “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 thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.”
