Walking With God…How to Pray. Matthew 6:5-13
Sermon by Pastor Dennis Gleason -- November 12, 2006
5“And now about prayer. When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. I assure you, that is all the reward they will ever get. 6But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father secretly. Then your Father, who knows all secrets, will reward you.
7“When you pray, don’t babble on and on as people of other religions do. They think their prayers are answered only by repeating their words again and again. 8Don’t be like them, because your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him! 9Pray like this:
Our Father in heaven,
may your name be honored.
10 May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done here on earth,
just as it is in heaven.
11 Give us our food for today,
12 and forgive us our sins,
just as we have forgiven those who have sinned against us.
13 And don’t let us yield to temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
As we continue our study of How to Walk With God, we come to the section in which Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray. If we are going to walk with God, in an intimate relationship, we will have to know how to pray.
We have all kinds of ideas of what prayer is. My earliest recollection of someone praying comes from the
I found this as I was looking for something to illustrate what prayer is:
Dear Pastor, I know God loves me but I wish He would give me an "A" on my report card so I could be sure. Love, Theresa. (Age 8,
Dear Pastor, Could you say a special blessing for my Aunt Beatrice? She has been looking for a husband for 12 years and still hasn't found one. Yours sincerely, Debbie. (Age 9,
Dear Pastor, Do I have to say grace before every meal? Even when I am only having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?
Wesley. (Age 9,
Dear Pastor, Thank you for your sermon on Sunday. I will write more when my mother explains to me what you said. Yours truly, Justin. (Age 9,
Dear Pastor, Please pray for all the airline pilots. I am flying to
Dear Pastor, We say grace every night before we eat dinner even when we have leftovers from the night before. Yours truly, Jacki. (Age 9,
Dear Pastor, I say my prayer before I eat my supper but my mother still makes me finish my spinach and drink my milk. Julie. (Age 9,
We chuckle over what children think and say at times and what they think about prayer is no exception.
So what is prayer?
We need to understand that prayer is simple communication with God. It is conversation, intimate conversation with the Creator of the universe, with the Savior of our soul, with the Spirit of God who dwells within us. Jesus makes it clear the God is our Father, our Heavenly Father. And that makes us God’s children. And therefore, prayer is conversation between the Father and his children. Think of prayer in that way and you will have a good handle on what prayer is.
In verse 5 of our text, Jesus says: “and when you pray…”
The assumption here is that we will pray. The natural, normal expression of life should be that we pray. We should readily acknowledge God in our life. We should readily acknowledge God as supreme, as the Lord of our lives and recognize that everything we have ultimately comes from Him.
Having said that, let’s look at where Jesus goes in his teaching about prayer. He begins with the challenge not to be hypocritical when we pray. The illustration he uses is that of hypocrites who prayed for show, to impress other people about their piety and how holy they were.
The question for us is why. Why did Jesus start teaching about praying without hypocrisy?
I think the answer to that is to be found in the essential nature of sin. Sin is more than just doing things that are wrong. Obviously, doing things that are wrong in God’s sight is to sin.
But sin is essentially a disposition, a state of being, and a state of the heart that misses the mark of righteousness that God expects from us. The image given us in the word used for sin is that of an archer shooting an arrow at a target. Any arrow that does not hit the bull’s eye is a “sin” – a missing of the mark. Therefore, anything less than righteousness is a “missing of the mark” or sin.
Sin is something that is so terrible that it will not only follow us to the gates of heaven, but would, if it were possible, follow us into heaven itself.
Sin did not originate here on earth. Before man fell there was another fall. Lucifer was a perfect angelic being dwelling in the heavenlies and he had fallen in sin before man was ever tempted to sin. Sin has always been self-adulation that will follow us into the very presence of God if we are not careful.
Sin has so entered into our nature and is so devastatingly polluting to our whole being that even when we are engaged in what for us is our highest spiritual form of activity, we still have to battle it.
To understand the essence of sin, consider the greatest saint you can imagine. Think of that person on his/her knees in the very presence of God. Even there self is intruding and the temptation for that person is to think about himself rather than God.
Picture if you will, Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness. If Jesus was subjected to that kind of temptation, be assured that temptation and sin are something that will follow us even into the presence of God. Make no mistake about that.
Jesus is speaking to people who had placed their trust in him. As such they had been re-born, that is they had been born again into a new form of life. The old sin nature was gone and a new spiritual nature was evident in their lives.
And they needed these instructions. The instruction about praying without hypocrisy was essential for these believers and not for un-believers. Even born again people need to be careful lest in their prayers they become hypocritical.
Therefore, there is a right way and a wrong way to pray.
The wrong way to pray is prayer that is focused on itself. It is calling attention to the one who is praying rather than the one to whom the prayer is offered.
“When you pray, don’t pray as the hypocrites do.”
What did Jesus say they did? They would love to stand forward in the prominent place of the synagogues or the temple. They would stop on the street corners to pray. In Luke 18:10-14 we find this:
10“Two men went to the
13“But the tax collector stood at a distance and dared not even lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. Instead, he beat his chest in sorrow, saying, ‘O God, be merciful to me, for I am a sinner.’ 14I tell you, this sinner, not the Pharisee, returned home justified before God. For the proud will be humbled, but the humble will be honored.”
The illustration of a man stopping on the street corner to pray was something like this: he was on his way to the temple. He is so anxious to portray himself as a devout man that he simply cannot wait to get to the temple to pray. So he stops, stands on the street corner to pray. When he gets to the temple of the synagogue, he goes to the front, to the most prominent place to pray.
Jesus says that this is hypocritical. Why? Because the person is thinking of himself, and how others see him. This is what is important to him when he prays. The problem is obvious, when I want to be known as a man of prayer. Desiring a reputation as a man or woman of prayer is to fall into this error that Jesus tells us to avoid. Can you see how subtle sin can be?
What is the antidote to this hypocrisy? Jesus tells us to pray in secret. We are to go into our room, close the door and to pray in secret. Our heavenly Father will see what we are doing in secret and he will reward us.
We have to be careful even in praying in secret. Anything that is unusual will draw attention to itself and we can do that when we are trying to pray in secret.
There was a man once at a Christian conference who made it known that he would leave the conference and go up to a lonely rock to pray. Everyone came to know him as the “praying man of the rock”. He had his reward in the admiration of the others at the conference. He could have done it in a way that no one knew what he was doing. But he wanted to be known as a praying man, and fell into the trap.
“And when you pray, don’t keep babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” Verse 7. Most of us do not use prayer beads of such. So what could this mean to us today? I think it would apply to what we often hear in “beautiful prayers”. We all have heard them. They might be flowery, or could even be precisely stated, stately prayers. But if prayer is conversation with God, we have to recognize that we do not talk that way in ordinary conversation. We don’t address someone we love with polished, perfect sentence structure or glowing terms describing how wonderful they are.
We shouldn’t be concerned about how long we pray, how often we pray or about the form of our prayers. We can be so concerned about these things that we miss the whole point about prayer. A person can have a set time for prayer and become upset if someone intrudes on that time. What is the value of my prayer time if I lock the closet door and find myself thinking about my prayer or even about myself?
Now we should approach God reverently and respectfully. But real conversation and real prayer is really spontaneous. It is just normal conversation with each other or to God as we pray. That is God’s intention for us.
The story goes that one time when Bill Moyers was a special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was asked to say grace before a meal in the family quarters of the White House. As Moyers began praying softly, the President interrupted him with "Speak up, Bill! Speak up!"The former Baptist minister from east
The point Jesus is making in regards to prayer is that when we pray our whole being should be focused upon God, centered in him and oblivious to everything else. Even when we pray in public, we should no longer be conscious of each other, but be carried into the presence of God.
Prayer like what we find in verses 9-13 accepts the sovereignty of God. It recognizes the fact that He is faithful to keep his promises to us. It accepts the fact that we are sinners who need to be forgiven and forgiving.
We pray. And when we pray we need to realize that we are addressing the Living God, Creator of the Universe, Holy God who is our Heavenly Father. We are in a father/son relationship with Him and He cares for us and loves us with an everlasting, unconditional love. And he expects us to pray. And He warns us that when we pray, if we are not careful, sin will follow us into that very special, personal relationship with Him.
We must realize that God delights to bless us. He is ready to give us what we need. He who sees in secret will reward us openly when we pray in the right way. Let us approach God in prayer with confidence, without self and without doubt.
Let me close with this:
I asked God for strength that I might achieve.
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.
I asked God for health that I might do greater things.
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy.
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for power that I might have the praise of men.
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life.
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I got nothing that I asked for--but everything I had hoped for...
Almost despite myself, my unspoken prayers were answered.
I am among all men most richly blessed.
An unknown Confederate soldier.
Amen!
-- Dennis Gleason
