When
You Pray
John Orlando
Preached at Westminster Theological Seminary, October 20, 2008
Text: Matthew 6:5-15
Intro:
My wife and I have a great relationship, and everyone that knows us are
well aware of the fact that my wife is the quiet one, and I'm the loud mouth of
the family.
And in the churches we've been
in over the years, I have been out in front of the people, so to speak, while my
wife has been quiet and behind the scenes. And
I think people look at this, and they think that I'm the spiritual giant.
But dear friends, in our
family, not only is my wife the quiet one…she is the real
spiritual giant, and that fact has been revealed numerous times to me over the
past 13 years just in our simple approach to prayer.
I can't tell you how many times
I've misplaced something and couldn't find it—my keys, or even, God forbid,
the remote control to the TV—which would then set me off into what us really
holy people do: stomp around and
throw a pity party, only to have my wife calmly say to me:
"honey, did you pray about it?"
Pray about it?!! You’ve got to be kidding me!
Why would I, the spiritual giant ever think to bring such a trivial
request before the sovereign Lord and King of Heaven and earth!
I think that if we're honest, most of us can relate to this.
Listen, prayer is one the most challenging disciplines in the Christian
life, and I think one of the reasons it is so challenging is because prayer
reveals to us just how much sin has really warped our hearts against God.
You see, the sinner in me doesn't
want communion with God. The sinner in me is forever seeking ways to assert his
sovereignty and autonomy over and against God.
And when the sinner in me prays, what takes center stage is his own
kingdom, his own agenda, and his own purely selfish motives.
And I believe our text today really speaks to this, and it teaches us
that Proposition: true prayer
is centered and focused on God and His kingdom in order that we might be
conformed to His image, and reflect His character to the world around us. And as
we look our text today, we're going to look at three things that Jesus lays out
about prayer. First, what not
do in prayer, second, what to do in prayer, and the third, how
to pray. So, let's look our first
point:
I.
What Not To Do in Prayer:
A. In verse 5 Jesus tell us
to not be like the hypocrites. Now the
word "hypocrite" in the ancient world was associated with play acting.
The hypocrite was one who was merely playing the part, and like every good
actor, they want people to associate them with the character that they are
playing.
Think of our modern day movie stars, where we see actors playing a part
and we forever associate that person with a character that they played in a
movie. For example, when people see
Sylvester Stallone, they almost immediately think of Rocky Balboa, but Rocky
Balboa is a fictional character and he is not Sylvester Stallone in reality, and
Sylvester Stallone is not Rocky Balboa in reality.
For the hypocrites here, the part that is being assumed is that of the
deeply religious and spiritual person, and the stage in which the performance
takes place is the one that would gain the most attention:
the synagogues and the street corners.
Jesus says that they love to pray standing in the
synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men.
Their motives for prayer then are exposed.
Instead of seeking to gain God's approval, they love to be seen by men
and they crave the approval of men. And
it is with this in mind that Jesus says that they have received their reward.
Instead of seeking the reward of God's approval, they receive the
temporal, and worthless reward of being approved by mere mortals, who do not
have the power over life and death, and whose lives are but a vapor that appears
for a little while and then vanishes away (James 4:14).
It also interesting that
Jesus says don't be like the hypocrites.
In other words, this is a specific group of people
that are well known both to Jesus and his hearers, and that group of people is
the Pharisees. And so Jesus again
draws the battle lines between Himself and the Pharisees, the religious
authorities in the land, and in doing so, He is saying, "I AM the
authority" listen to me! They
are the phonies, and you all know that they are!
Now it may be real easy for us to kind of think to ourselves, "whew!
John, I hear you brother, and I am so glad that I don’t have that
problem!" Well, let me ask
you, have you ever examined the motives of your heart when you pray in public? Do
you ever find yourself trying to come with the perfect prayer so that people
might say, "wow, that brother really has it together spiritually."
If you haven't, great!
And might I suggest that you may need to ask the Lord to forgive you not
only for the sin hypocrisy, but also for lying. J
You see, the truth of the matter is that we all want to be impressive to
others. And in our public prayers we
are oftentimes are more concerned about what others will think about us, and the
approval of God may not ever even cross our mind.
So, we're not to be like the hypocrites, and next Jesus tell us:
B. Don't be like the
Gentiles. V. 7 "And when you are
praying, do not use meaningless repetition, as the Gentiles do, for they suppose
that they will be heard for their many words."
In many of the false religions of the day, it was thought that you could
get the attention of the gods through long and wordy prayers.
The substance of the words themselves were not so much important as was
the mere act of simply vocalizing words, even the same words, over and over
again; just babbling. Now, there is
nothing wrong with being persistent in prayer.
But what's in view here is the kind of prayer that is void of any
substance. It is thoughtless, and
the sole concern is to try and impress God enough that He would be inclined to
do what we want.
Illustration: We're in the
election season, and of course we have been bombarded with advertisements by
politicians seeking our vote. They
need our vote so that they can get elected in order that they might implement
their agenda.
This what many of us do in our prayers.
We treat God as a voter, and without God's vote, we won't be able to
enact our agenda to bring about our own kingdom ideas, and so we say and do
whatever we think is necessary so that God would cast His vote for us.
But you see beloved, God doesn’t want our talking points, He doesn't
want us to tell Him what we think He wants to hear:
He wants our hearts. He wants us to shatter our agenda's and to seek
first His kingdom and His righteousness. True
prayer is centered on God's kingdom so that we would be radically changed and
reflect His character to the world around us.
C. And so in summarizing this
point here, both the hypocrite and the Gentile use prayer for purely selfish and
self-centered motives. The hypocrite
uses prayer so that he can be seen by others, and evidently gain the approval
and applause of men, while the Gentile wants to try and manipulate God anyway he
can so that God will do his bidding.
So, we have seen what not to do
in prayer, lets now take a look at our second point, namely,
II.
What To Do In Prayer:
A. Instead of the hypocrite
who uses prayer as a means to be seen, Jesus tells us in v. 6 that, "when
you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to
your Father who is in secret…"
Jesus isn't condemning public prayer, because after all, He Himself prayed publicly. What’s in view here is the motive behind the prayer. He is condemning the flamboyant and grandiose hypocritical prayers aimed at gaining the attention of men instead of the attention of God.
The idea of going into a room and shutting the door is the direct
antithesis of this kind of showmanship and craving for the applause of men that
drives the hypocrites. It conveys
the deeply intimate nature of what prayer is all about.
You see, when we come out from behind our closed doors into the world, we
all put on our actor's face as it were—we never allow ourselves to completely
let our guard down, and of course, who we are behind closed doors is often very
different than what people see.
But, behind closed doors I don't have to try and impress people.
Behind closed doors I am acutely aware of all of my fears, problems,
insecurities. Behind closed doors I
know the ugliness that is in my heart. Behind
closed doors is the place where I know that I can be completely vulnerable,
because I am completely safe to be vulnerable and "real" with what is
really going inside of me.
And so Jesus tells us to go to a place where we are free to just be who
we really are, with all of our hurt, all our fears, all of the sin that plagues
our heart, and come before our Father who is there…who is in that secret
place.
And this is the pattern we see all through redemptive history, in the
lives of Abraham, Moses, David, and the prophets, and we see it Jesus' own
earthy ministry, as withdraws from the crowds to be with the Father and to pour
His heart out to Him.
God's presence is to be found in those secret places, where we are open
and honest and broken before Him. We
don’t have to try to impress God, for a very simple reason:
He is God and He knows everything already.
But not only that, in Christ we cannot get any more impressive before God
than what we already are because of the perfect righteousness of Christ that has
been imputed to us! He is our
Heavenly Father who loves us with an everlasting love, warts and all, and bids
us to come that we might commune with Him, know Him, and that He might heal us
and transform us.
Secondly, we see that:
B. Instead of being like the Gentiles who use many words or vain repetitions thinking that they will be heard by God, Jesus tells us "Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him." A couple of things here:
1. First, the reason we don't use empty words and vain repetitions is directly related to the nature of God Himself: your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. You see, in prayer we are not providing God with new information whereby He says in effect, "Gee I didn't know that; that never occurred to me!"
The God of the Bible is not some cosmic Santa Clause who is waiting for you to say enough of the "right" words before He decides to interact with you because you have reached some self-righteous threshold. The God of the Bible is not some cosmic Impersonal Force that doesn’t know what's going to happen next and that can be manipulated if we just push the right buttons. No! The God of the Bible is the all knowing, all powerful, everywhere present Holy and sovereign King of the universe who does according to His will in the army heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, who already knows all of our needs and who cannot be manipulated in any way. And secondly:
2. This sovereign King is our loving Heavenly Father who has called us His own through the sacrificial and mediatorial work of Christ. We can now boldly come before His throne of grace with confidence knowing that He hears us, and as we pray in accordance with His will, He desires to answer us. And this brings me to the third point:
III.
How to Pray: In verse
9-13 we have the Lord's prayer, and my goal today is not to go through the
prayer in an in-depth fashion. Today
we basically want to take a telescopic view and make some basic observations and
applications that will help us better understand what prayer is all about. So
with that said, the first thing to note is:
A. The Structure of the
Lord's Prayer: The Lord's prayer
consists a preface, 6 petitions, and
a conclusion. The
first 3 petitions are directed toward God, while the final 3 petitions are
directed toward man.
And
so right away we see how consistent this prayer is with the whole structure of
how God has revealed Himself to us throughout redemptive history, such as the
Ten Commandments which begin by focusing on God before moving to man, and which
are of course summarized in the Two Great commandments of love God and love your
neighbor.
The
focus is always centered on who God is and His glory, and then flowing out of
that the emphasis is on bringing the ethos of the kingdom to bear in all of our
interactions and relationships with the world around us.
B.
With regard to usage of this prayer, the prayer can be
recited verbatim, however, as Calvin points out:
"The Lord's prayer does not bind us to its form of words, but its
contents." So the prayer gives us a framework that shows us the
proper focus and, meaning of prayer. So
let's turn our attention briefly to this prayer:
Preface: Our Father who is
in Heaven: God is not some
distant deity who can be manipulated, rather, He is our Father, a term that
conveys a deep sense of relationship.
Further, as the Gospel of John points out, to be able to call God "our
Father" is a privilege that is only given to those whom God has sovereignly
brought to Himself in a redemptive relationship, to as many as received Him, He
gives the right to be called children of God.
So prayer here is first and foremost a family privilege.
And we pray to our Father in who is in Heaven,
emphasizing the transcendence of God: His
eternal nature and divine majesty, and so we pray:
1st Petition. Hallowed be Thy name:
We desire to see His name—the sum total of who God is in the perfection
of His being and in all of His glory, to be reverenced both in our lives and in
the lives of others. And the third
petition is:
2d. Thy kingdom come:
Those listening to Jesus' words here may have thought of the socio-political
kingdom that the Messiah was to be establish on earth. They had waited
expectantly the Davidic King who would come to overthrow the enemies of
And
so Jesus saying, "Your Kingdom come" would have perked up their ears.
Jesus is indeed the Messiah, the Davidic King who would come, but the kingdom
that He speaks of is not aimed at overthrowing the tyranny of human governments,
at least not yet.
Rather,
it is aimed at eradicating the tyranny of sin, and as such He is indeed the
Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 who comes to bear our griefs and carry our
sorrows, and by whose stripes we are healed.
He has come to those who desperately need to be rescued from the
And
so He is also the true High Priest who offers Himself as a propitiation to God
dying in our place on the cross to
pay the full penalty for all our sins,
and then was raising bodily from the grave, and ascending
into Heaven. And He has now shed His
Spirit abroad into our hearts whereby we who were once God's enemies can now cry
out to God, "Abba Father."
And so the kingdom
has come, and we pray for its continued advance, and we also look forward to its
consummation at the return of the King, and until that time we cry
out to God and we pray:
3. Thy will be done, On earth
as it is in heaven. Jesus
is the True prophet who reveals to us by his word and Spirit, the will of God in
all things concerning our edification and salvation.
And in distinction from His will of decree, we pray for God's revealed
will, that we, and all men everywhere would obey and love God and
joyfully worship Him, just as it is in heaven.
And now we turn our attention to the final three petitions
which deal with our needs, and what becomes evident here is that even these are
centered on God and His glory, because they all convey our complete dependence
upon the providential care of God in every sphere of our lives.
4. 'Give us this day our
daily bread." Here pray for
all of our needs, not just food, and also recognize our absolutely dependence
upon God for everything. And not
only that, just as God has so graciously given to us, we pray that we would be
generous toward others that we see in need.
5. "And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our
debtors." This is so important that Jesus comes back to this theme of
forgiveness in verse 14-15. And so
here we recognize that we are guilty before God and are wholly dependent upon
His mercy and grace.
But
not only that, the very essence of what it means to be in relationship with God
is that as those that have been forgiven so much are to also display that same
thing to those that sin against us.
And
so this is sine qua non of what it means to manifest
God's character to the world around us, and the only way this is possible is by
God's grace working in our hearts, and it is a clear sign to us that God's grace
is indeed working in our hearts. Matthew
Henry sums it well: "He that relents toward his brother, thereby
shows that he repents toward his God."
6. And do not lead us into
temptation, but deliver us from evil. Luther says in his small catechism,
"We pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us so that the
devil, the world, and our sinful nature may not deceive us or mislead us into
false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice."
Conclusion: For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.' Here we end where we began, and in reality what the entire prayer has centered on: the glory of God in all things. The Lord's prayer teaches us about God and His sovereignty, power, and about our utter helplessness, depravity, and impotence. The entire prayer is highlighting our desperate need for God and our complete inability to do anything apart from God.
Conclusion:
Earlier I told the story about me and wife and our approach and attitudes
toward prayer. I think that many of
us, if we were honest, probably have more in common with me than with my wife in
this regard. And the irony is that all of us would surely say that prayer is of
the utmost importance.
But if prayer is so important…if prayer is so
critical to our growth in Christ, why do we spend so little time involved in it?
And just what is our attitude and approach in prayer? Do
I look at prayer merely as a duty to be performed?
Do I view it as means to make myself look good in public?
Do I look at prayer as the means whereby I approach God as if He is some
cosmic Genie who is simply there to help make all of my self-centered and
self-serving wishes come true? Do we find ourselves saying in a defeatist tone,
when a situation that is beyond our abilities to manipulate and control saying,
"well, all we can do is pray about it?"
The Lord here in our passage absolutely demolishes such notions by
teaching us that true prayer is centered and focused on God and His kingdom in
order that we might be conformed to His image, and reflect His character to the
world around us.
And just how do we take hold of this truth? First, by recognizing that God is God, and we are not. Second, by keeping our eyes fixed on Christ and the Gospel. And third, and very simply, as the old Nike advertisement used to say: Just Do It! Pray. Pray. Pray, recognizing who God is, who you are in Christ, and recognizing the fact that you are a child of God purchased by His blood so that you could have the privilege of calling Him "Abba Father." Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria