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| Order Of Worship (Liturgy) |
MATTHEW 6:5-8
(Reading: Matthew 6:1-8)
When You Pray…
If I were to walk down towards you now, and come right next to you, and then ask you personally “Do you pray?” what would you say?
“Of course I pray!”
“I’m in church now - aren’t I?”
“We pray in church - don’t we?”
“And at home we pray at dinnertime everyday!”
Now, let me ask you again, “Do you pray prayerfully?”
If you truly pray you’ll know what I mean.
For you realise there can be a difference between what we do on the outside and what we mean on the inside.
It is actually to you who do pray this way, or you who at least know how to pray this way, that this text is targeted.
You see, in the first place this passage tells us … NOTICE - THE BELIEVER DOES PRAY.
The text in verse 5 begins with the phrase, “And when you pray…”
Verse 6 begins, “when you pray…”; and verse 7 starts with it again, “And when you pray…”
There is an implicit understanding that the believer prays.
It’s as natural as breathing the air around us - as essential as food and drink to keep us alive.
I mean, you do pray - don’t you?
Congregation, we need to understand this point from the background of this text.
Just because there were certain Pharisees who prayed for the wrong reasons doesn’t mean that all the people were like this, or that all the Pharisees were like that either.
The Pharisees pictured by the Lord in verse 5 were actually those caught out by not having done their morning prayers by a certain time.
You see, by the third hour of the morning, 9 A.M., and the third hour of the evening, 9 P.M., that morning or evening prayer was meant to have been said.
If they hadn’t done it by that time they literally were expected to do it where they were - even on the street corners.
There were many who sincerely prayed; they meant that morning and evening prayer.
But there were also those who quickly said it, and, then, just as quickly, they were on their way.
Not any different than when we quickly fire out a prayer before a meal - you know, one of those ‘on-pat’ graces we say without thinking.
I mean, haven’t we done it sometimes with the Lord’s Prayer in a worship service?
The issue here isn’t something which we just don’t do and which we better do - or else!
This is about what we already are in Jesus Christ.
That’s how it already came to us from the four verses above the text.
There our giving is shown to be between ourselves and the Lord.
What a difference this is to all the other religions of this world.
Of all those millions living under the bondage of Hinduism, none can pray except the Brahmins!
Anyone from any other caste - even if he be the most talented or wealthy - has to get a Brahmin, often just a boy at school, to say his prayers for him.
In the same way, the Muslim can’t pray unless he has learnt some phrase in Arabic, for his god won’t hear prayers offered in anything apart from what they believe to be the holy language.
Only in the Christian faith is prayer the access of all!
NOTICE - THE BELIEVER DOES PRAY.
The giving before these verses, the praying in our text, and the fasting following this section about prayer, are all about personal piety.
It’s what we really are underneath, because we’re saved by the blood of Jesus Christ.
So, secondly … NOTICE - THE BELIEVER PRAYS BECAUSE IT’S REAL.
What’s real?
The prayer he prays - that’s real.
Here we are helped by seeing what the word “hypocrite” means.
It is a word that for us today describes someone who doesn’t do what they say.
When someone says “What a hypocrite!” it’s because they’ve just gone and done something which they had quite definitely said they were never going to do.
At the time of Jesus this word, “hypocrite”, came from the world of the theatre.
So these “hypocrites” had a religion which was only acting, pretending, instead of genuine.
You see, in ancient drama, an important part of the play was done by the chorus.
Like opera and musicals, the chorus gave a commentary on the action of the play.
They would “ooh” and “aah” at appropriate times.
A bit like American canned laughter on television sitcoms.
The ‘hypokrite’ in that ancient drama was, ‘the one who answered the chorus.’
He played up to them.
Which is precisely what the Pharisees had begun to do.
Their religious acts weren’t answering to God anymore.
Instead, their eyes were focused on the ‘chorus’ of men’s opinion of them.
It’s helpful to draw further into this picture of ancient drama.
You see, every one with a part to play in the play were a mask representing the part they played.
And isn’t that exactly a hypocrite!
He pretends to be one thing, but all the time he’s really something quite different.
His outward actions suggest his heart is thoroughly fixed on the Lord, but on the inside all he wants is being seen and praised by people.
Congregation, we have to be honest.
The church is full of hypocrites.
That’s deeper-rooted in our hearts - we naturally do it.
You can see it in your own response to praise or criticism.
Oh, yes, we can say the right ‘spiritual’ things when people praise or thank us, but inside we lap it up like we haven’t drunk for days.
And we might be receiving criticism with apparent humility, yet we’re really seething with resentment and that determination not to forget it!
But, the Lord goes on, that not what we’re meant to be like.
For those hypocritical Pharisees have received their reward in full.
That’s the end-all and be-all of their religion, and it’s the hollowness of that religion which will condemn in the end too!
We pray, however, because it is real.
Sometimes we may almost end up like that Pharisee in the temple in Luke 18, who was so full of himself while so empty spiritually.
We always come back, though, to the contrite tax-collector, beating our hearts in anguish, crying out as to how we could have done that to the Father!
It’s because prayer is real for us, that we know it is communion with the Father.
We can’t get away from him - and we don’t really want to either!
Do you?
Isn’t that how you see yourself with the Lord?
The Catechism says we need to pray because we know that God gives His grace and Holy Spirit only to those who do pray.
And not only do we pray but we keep on praying, asking the Lord for whatever we need, and thanking him too!
Prayer doesn’t only help us to do a greater work for the Lord, it is the greater work for the Lord!
We couldn’t live without it!
Friend - is that true for you?
Is your prayer your life?
Could you do without it?
The Lord Jesus showed the perfect prayer life.
He took time out to pray.
Who could forget that repeated expression in the gospels about Jesus, “…he went up into the hills by himself to pray.” (e.g. Matt. 14:23.)
That was the reward itself.
That was as when he was truly himself.
The story is told of a time when Charles Spurgeon was praying on Saturday night in preparation for the Sunday.
His servant came to him with the urgent message that one of the most influential and wealthy citizens in the city of London was waiting at the door, needing to see him.
Spurgeon told her to tell him that it was his rule not to see anyone at that time.
The man was still insistent.
He said to the maid, “Tell Mr Spurgeon that a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ desires to see him immediately.”
The frightened maid brought back the message.
But there was no difference for Charles Spureon.
He told his servant to dismiss that master of many employees with the words, “Tell him I am busy with his Master, and cannot see servants now.”
NOTICE - THE BELIEVER PRAYS BECAUSE IT’S REAL.
If we don’t take it as seriously as Spurgeon did, or follow the example of Jesus himself - if we don’t eat the benefits that are its spiritual meat - we aren’t feeding at all.
It’s not real.
That’s why regular prayer is healthy prayer.
Just as a good diet makes us perform physical our best, so daily prayer makes us fit spiritually.
We may not always like to do that exercise but we know what happens if we don’t!
And much as some may think it restrictive or even traditional to always pray in that regular way, if we don’t have that kind of helpful order to our lives there can soon be a lot of disorder.
Very quickly you can be failing to keep in touch with the One who counts most of all!
If Jesus followed the patterns of his time faithfully, we should make them ours too.
Then prayer will be even more that growing union with the Father because of the communion we have with his Son.
There is still another aspect to how we pray.
Verse 7, after beginning with the understanding that we do pray, has the words of Jesus that we should not keep on babbling like pagans.
You see, in the same way that we heard earlier of how other religions cannot have an open access with their god, so other religions are also different by the way they speak to their gods.
The Old Testament gives a vivid picture of this with the encounter Elijah had with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.
They called out to Baal from morning to noon, and after noon - when Elijah taunted them – they carried on until evening, even shouting out their constant refrains.
All that was to no avail - it brought no results.
The barely one-minute prayer of Elijah, though, brought the Lord’s fire burning everything instantly!
It’s interesting that the prayers of Jesus show the same.
The longest prayer we have recorded in his High Priestly prayer of John 17.
That’s a prayer which is more the exception.
His other prayers in Scripture are quite short.
When Christians have deviated from God’s Word, such as the time before the reformation, one sign that they were going away from him was how long their prayers were.
And also how repetitive their prayers were.
From going through the rosary to the choruses of the charismatic movement, we have a basic ignorance of prayer.
In this way we come to the third aspect in our text.
The verses 7 & 8 tell us … NOTICE - THE BELIEVER PRAYS SHOWING THAT GOD KNOWS.
This is what the Bible shows.
You can go through all the prayers in Scripture, whether in the psalms or elsewhere, and it all flows in the most coherent logic.
Even Psalm 136 which has the constant chorus, “His love endures forever,” has right throughout it the great and developing story of God saving His people through the ages.
Each verse introduces new material which tells us of even more great things about what the LORD has done for His people.
They’re not the euphoric mantra-like songs sung in many Christian churches today.
Sing those songs often enough and it doesn’t matter what you say anyway, because you’ve been taken away - on some emotion raising trip!
No wonder the apostle Paul declares he would rather speak just five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand in that tongues- language so popular in the Corinthian church.
He saw the danger of that babbling!
How would you appreciate it if someone communicating with you went on and on, ad infinitum, when they could have said it all in one simple sentence!
We soon enough complain when the minister is repetitive, sometimes even getting upset that he doesn’t think we’re bright enough to pick it up the first or second time, let alone the fourth or fifth!
And what’s more is that we pray knowing that God knows.
Since he is God even the unspoken plea - that desperate sigh, the anguished heaven-ward glance - he knows and he answers.
Do you believe that?
Oh Christian, when we draw into that kind of communion with the Father, then we’ve learnt the way to really pray.
This is the way which is Jesus’ way - the model in his prayer.
Because then our thoughts have so filled with what God has done, and so what we are in the Lord, that we’re being constantly rewarded by faith.
The believer who lives like that witnesses his or her witness.
In everything they instinctively look to the Lord, and he answers.
Not an answer which makes prayer an asking for the ridiculous, as some have made their prayer life.
And because they’re never answered in quite the same hugely rich way that their so-called Christian heroes are, they end up blaming God.
They tried to impress God, but he knows us through and through.
They will get their own reward.
Congregation, as a man prays so his life will follow.
In the words of John Owen, “He who prays as he should will try to live as he prays.”
May it be our prayer that, as we hear the preaching of God’s Word about prayer in the Lord’s Prayer, we’ll be moved even more to prayer.
Prayers are the glasses to see the way God wills us to go.
So not praying is not seeing.
Then don’t be surprised if the Lord seems far away at a time like that.
Being a hypocrite or a babbler really shows we’re pretending by what we do or what we say.
That’s not prayer - that’s not from in here!
And it’s not going to get up there!
“But when you pray…” it goes up there straight away!
And you do pray - don’t you?
Amen.
PRAYER:
Let’s do exactly that now - let’s pray…
O Lord Jesus, may you have moved by your Spirit to make us really want to pray.
That’s what you’ve just told us in your Word.
And may we keep on learning it as we hear and read your Word, whether in church, in fellowship, in our families, or in our own personal devotion time with you.
For it’s in your precious Name alone that we can and we do pray, Amen.
* As a matter of courtesy please advise Rev. Sjirk Bajema, if you plan to use this sermon in a worship service. Thank-you.
(c) Copyright, Rev. Sjirk Bajema
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