Prayer That Pleases God
Praying Without Hypocrisy
This morning I will have the privilege of
continuing our study of the Sermon on the Mount. We’ve been looking at
the 6th Chapter. And this morning, we find ourselves in verses 5-8.
(read) 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. 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. “
Now any time you get into any discussion of
prayer, you get into a certain area of difficulty. It’s hard to
completely comprehend how prayer works within the plan and the
sovereignty of the mind of God. And I’m not here this morning to unveil all
the mysteries about prayer. But what we do know about prayer and what
we must be committed to is that when the Bible teaches principles of
prayer, God expects us to heed them. Whether or not we can fathom the
mystery of how it works isn’t the issue. So we hear some teaching about
prayer from the lips of our Lord Himself, concerning the dos and don’ts
when we enter prayer .
Now let me give you some background. In the
text, He is not only speaking to His disciples, He is also speaking to
the Pharisees and the scribes who represented the phony religious
leaders of the nation, and also to the people gathered with them on the
side of that hill.
One of the main points in that sermon on
the Mt. was to show the difference between the true spiritual life and
the false standards of the Pharisaic, Judaistic system of that time. He
has already told them that their theology is inadequate in Chapter 5.
And we saw last week, their giving was hypocritical and now He deals
with the hypocrisy in their pray life.
We will see that in every dimension of
their religious experience seem to involved some kind of hypocrisy. They
were phonies when they gave. They were phonies when they prayed and
later we’ll see that they were phonies when they fasted. And Jesus lets
his disciples know that God’s standards for His kingdom is more than
what they were doing. And so He tackles them on this matter of prayer in
verses 5-8.
Now, prayer was a major issue among the
Jews. It was a tremendous factor in their religion. They were highly
involved in praying. In fact, the rabbis said, “prayer greater than all good works.” The rabbis also said, “he who prays within his house surrounds it with a wall that is stronger than iron.” Some
rabbis wrote that they regretted that they couldn’t pray all day long.
Now no nation has ever viewed prayer higher than Israel. No religion
ever set a greater standard of prayer than the Hebrew people.
But unfortunately as we have learned so far
in this Sermon on the Mount, Jesus lets them know that what they are
doing is wrong. As they’re giving deteriorated into a show, so too did
their pray.
Now I want to share with you several of the faults that crept in to the prayer life of the Hebrew people.
#1. Their prayer became ritualized.
Ritualistic prayers replaced a pure
outpouring of a heart to God. I think we all can identify with prayers
that become routine, prayer that become a ritualistic, that become
simply an exercise with little or no meaning or significance.
You see, every day, if you were a Jew, in
the morning and at night, you had to repeat the Shimah. And the Shimah
is basically Deuteronomy 6,
“Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.”
And they recited from Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and Deuteronomy 11:13-21 and then Numbers 15:37-41. They recited all those verses together and they made this long prayer out of them, and the Jew had to pray this prayer every morning and every night. So every morning and every night this was
the routine. And by the way, if the Shimah was a little long for you,
they had adapted a summary that you could pray if you were in a hurry. Secondly,
they had what was known as the SHEM ON EH ‘ES REH. And the SHEMONEH
‘ESREH was another formulized kind of prayer. It was composed of 18
smaller prayers concerning different things. For example, I’ll give you
prayer #12. “Let thy mercy oh Lord be showed upon the upright, the
humble, the elders of thy people of Israel and the rest of its teachers.
Be favorable to the pious strangers amongst us and to us all. Give thou
a good reward to those who sincerely trust in thy name.”
And they had 18 of these individual prayers
in the SHEMONEH ‘ESREH, that they had to recite each morning,
afternoon, and evening in addition to the Shimah. They also had an
abbreviated version of this if you were in a hurry. So it became pretty
much the standard that there was prayer at the third, the sixth, and
the ninth hours of each day no matter where you were or what you were
doing.
This is still quite common for the
followers of Muhammad. They’ll stop, roll out their prayer matt at the
prescribed time and say their prayers. So it pretty much became a
routine. Prayer became a ritualized function. Unfortunately it ceased to
be a personally meaningful communion with God. Now I’m sure for some it was a truly
honest, a pure-hearted loving communion with God. But most of the
people probably weren’t in that category. They probably fell into one of
the two categories. They became like the Pharisees, prayed to
demonstrate how religious they were. And then I sure there was a group of
people who didn’t honestly pray, they just mumbled their way through
those prayers just to get it through them. Whatever it was, they just
went, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, muttered along, just to get through
them so they could get back to whatever they were doing beforehand. So
in one we see pride involved in prayer and these others they were
indifference to it.
#2 The second fault that crept into the Jewish prayer habit, was the development of special prayers for special occasions.
They had prayers for everything. I mean, it didn’t matter what it was,
they wrote a prayer for it and when that thing happened, you prayed that
prayer.
They had prayers for light and prayers for
darkness. Prayers for fire, prayers for lightening, prayers for seeing a
new moon, prayers for a comet, prayers for rain and droughts, prayers
for a tempest, prayer for the sea, prayers for the lakes, the rivers,
they had prayers when you received good news, they had a prayer when you
received bad news. They had a prayer when you got new furniture. They
had prayer when you left the city. They had prayer when you were on the
road. And they had a prayer when you entered the next city. And that’s
just a few of the prayers they had.
They had a prayer for everything, and so
the common habit was to find out what the prayer was and learn it and
whenever something happened, you rattled off the prayer that was fitting
for that particular event. Now, I’m sure the original intention of the
rabbis was to bring everything into the presence of God to make every
part of life, every act of nature and every event in the world something
that drew them to God. But instead, the Jews became a more committed to
reciting prescribed, predigested, pre-developed prayers.
Now I believe that prayer is like
breathing. You don’t say it’s 12 o’clock, I’m going to breathe now. No,
you breathe all the time. Prayer should be a constant inhale and exhale
of communion with God that goes on in the life of a believer all the
time. Not to pray as to hold your breath. But for them, prayer became a
regiment of reciting a certain thing at a certain hours.
#3. A third fault that crept into
the Jewish prayer pattern was that they seem to think it was more
spiritual to pray long prayers.
I don’t think there is anything wrong with a
long prayer as long as it’s really a heart felt communication with God.
But you miss the mark if you think by saying a long prayers you are
more spiritual than those who pray short prayers, or that God is going
to be more impressed with you, or you do it trying to impress others.
The rabbis used to say whenever a prayer is
long, that prayer is heard. And the implication is that you’ve got to
spend the first few minutes just getting God’s attention. But is that
true? Of course not.
#4. That lead to a forth fault in their prayers. They picked up vain repetition from the pagans.
The pagan approach to prayer was you keep repeating yourself until the
God gets so weary of hearing you that He does what you want. That’s
basically it. Just keep doing it and doing it and saying it and saying
it until He gets so sick of hearing it, that He finally reacts.
And so the Jews picked this up and we find some old Jewish prayers which ramble on.
#5. But the worst fault and the one mentioned in our text, is that they prayed to be seen by men. That’s a major fault.
Look at verse 5. It says that “they loved to pray.” Now at first glance that sounds wonderful, “for they love to pray.”
But the question is why do they love to pray? Did they love to pray
because they loved God? Did they love to pray because it ushered them
into His blessed presence? Why did they love to pray?
Knowing the hearts of all men, Jesus said
that they loved to pray to be seen by men. They wanted to be on the
stage. The Word Hypocrite, or the original Greek work Hu po kri tase
originally referred to an actor. They were actors in a theater, in their
case on the street corner. They were putting on a show for everybody to
see. Oh look how holy they are.
That was the wrong motive, that’s what
Jesus wanted to deal with here; the motive of our prayers. We may never
unscramble all the mysteries surrounding prayer, but we can certainly
deal with the issue of the motive as the Lord does here. Our prayers are
not an exercise to puff up our ego, or to impress other. But rather its
a talk with God.
Do you ever pray and pray, and after you pray in some group you think to yourself in your mind, ‘Boy I bet they thought that was a good one?’ Or perhaps you thought, ‘Boy, I’ll bet the people enjoyed that.’
I just want you to understand something
about prayer, and you need to learn this, prayer is not so sacred that
Satan can’t invade it. Did you know that? Prayer is not so sacred that
Satan can’t invade it.
If we never learn anything more out of this
text, we need to learn that there’s no holy ground that Satan doesn’t
try to get in on. You’d think that when you are in your deepest devotion
and walk into the throne room of God to commune with Him in His holy
presence that we cannot sin, but we can.
Sin and pride can follow us into the very
presence of God. And it’s so sad when it does. In those quiet moments
when we try enter His presence and worship Him in purity, we can find
ourselves being tempted to worship ourselves, or judge others, or pray
selfishly.
There’s no sacred ground for Satan. He
invades it all. And I believe that the two greatest times of temptation
Jesus ever experienced in His life was in the wilderness and then in the
Garden of Gethsemane. And on both occasions He was by himself, and in
communion with the Father. And it was there in that very private place
of His communion with God in prayer that Satan invaded with temptations,
probably stronger than any others in His life. If it happened to Jesus
it can happen to us and unfortunately we give in and do selfish things.
Look at verse 5; and the whole passage will open to you now.
“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.”
These men gave in to their own selfish desires.
But when you pray, He says, don’t be like the hypocrites. Don’t be a phony.
Can we pray in public? Sure we can. Can I
pray al long pray, and pray for the same things over and over. I truly
believe we can. Want Jesus is addressing here again is our motive, our
sincerity, the condition of our heart. Sometimes the only thing that
will give us strength and courage in a time of need is to pray long and
hard. So do you really want men to hear your prayer or do you want God to hear? Do you want to be rewarded by God or by men?
As we pray I truly believe our prayers
should not be pretentious, nor ritualistic but rather should always be a
communication of words and emotion from our heart. I believe when we
learn to commune and pray like this, we grow closer to the Father. We
bond with Him. We find comfort in having someone to talk to that loves
us more than any man.
The sample prayer that Jesus gave when He
tells them what to pray Honors our Father in heaven, recognizing His
Lordship in all creation, and then Jesus lets us know that it’s ok to
ask our God to help us with our needs. But in it He again reminds us
that that we have to have the right attitude, a humble forgiving
attitude.
And so today I challenge you to do your
best to develop this kind of prayer life. And remember not to let Satan
tempt you to sin as you talk with your Heavenly Father
(Based on a sermon by John MacArthur)
For more lessons click on the following link: http://granvillenychurchofchrist.org/?page_id=566