How NOT to Pray (Matthew 6:5-6)
The following is a sermon delivered on the Lord's Day, May 24, 2020,
at First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, KS. The text was from
Matthew 6:5-6 on the subject of how not to pray
5 "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. 9 Pray then like this:
"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen."
We are going to spend the next several weeks studying on how to pray. And it's interesting here that as Jesus begins His instructions to His disciples, He starts off by telling them how not to pray. As we go over this passage, we're going to divide this up into twos. We have how not to pray, followed by how to pray. And within how not to pray, we have this divided up into hypocrites and Gentiles. Under how to pray, we have the Lord's Prayer divided up into divine exaltation and personal petition.
We will spend most of our time today regarding Jesus' instructions on how not to pray like the hypocrites. Next week, we're going to consider how not to pray like the Gentiles. And then for the weeks that follow, we will concentrate on the parts of the Lord's prayer. What we want to glean from this as believers is a healthy practice of right, biblical, God-pleasing prayer.
When it comes to spiritual disciplines, you may be like me—prayer is just not one of those things that comes to you naturally. Of course it doesn't come to any one of us naturally—it is a supernatural enterprise to converse with the Almighty God, maker of heaven and earth. But when I say it doesn't come to you naturally, I mean that even as a Christian, as someone who is to be spiritually minded, prayer is just not the first thing you think about. You're not the kind of person who says, "I need to stop what I'm doing and pray. I need to get away from everyone for a little while and pray. I need to turn off the TV and the video games, and I need to pray. Kids, leave daddy alone for a little while. I'm praying."
Maybe it surprises some of you to hear me say I just don't believe I'm very good at praying. Recently our local radio station here in JC called me up and asked me to record daily prayers which they prayed every day for a month. All I did was pray the Scriptures. I opened up to the Psalms or a few places in the New Testament, and I would just pray what was on the page. The guy at the radio station who recognized what I was doing texted me back and said, "I think you plagiarized these prayers."
I was involved in a community production, and before we went out on stage, the director would ask me to pray. It was a privilege that I got to pray before every performance. Now, I knew that most of the cast were not believers, so I would put Scripture in my prayers without references, or I would just put the gospel in my prayer.
One night the director came up to me, and I thought she was going to tell me to tone it down a little bit. Maybe I was getting a little too preachy. But instead, she said, "Can we just have you come and pray before every show we do, even if you're not in it?"
I've been privileged to have been asked to pray before military funerals. Brother Dave asked me to pray at a couple of the Veterans motorcycle gatherings. I prayed at the governor's mansion a few years ago, when Sam Brownback was governor (I highly doubt Governor Kelly would ever ask me to come and pray). Prisoners at the jail and patients at the hospital have requested that I come and pray with them. You've probably asked me to come pray with you.
Yet I've just never thought of myself as someone who was very good at prayer. In fact, even when it comes to the act of prayer itself, I'm ashamed to say that more often than not, I hesitate to pray. Now, that's pride. I would certainly never pat myself on the back for that. When we refuse to pray or when we think we don't need to pray, that's prideful.
Perhaps you know 1 Peter 5:7 which says, "Cast all your cares upon Him because He cares for you." That's a pretty popular verse. You might have that as a magnet on your fridge. But consider what is said right before that: "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you, casting all your cares [your anxieties] upon Him, because He cares for you."
Humble yourself and take your concerns before the Lord. If you think that prayer is a last ditch effort—it's only a thing you do when all else fails—you have a wrong attitude about prayer. Prayer should actually be the first thing we do, not the last.
There's a famous quote attributed to Martin Luther who said, "I have so much to do today, I shall spend the first three hours in prayer." Yet for many of us—for most of us, I should say—the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. In the most distressing time of prayer in His life, in which Jesus shed drops of blood, He came and found His disciples sleeping, and said to them, "Could you not pray with me for one hour?"
I'd have been that disciple. Like I said, most of the time, I hesitate to make prayer a priority. As a husband and as a father, I'm confessing to you that I've done a poor job leading my family in prayer. So you really have a poor prayer teacher standing in front of you today about to teach you about prayer. This is as pressing upon me as it might be to you. But we have a teacher who is even greater than I am. May the Holy Spirit guide us into all truth as we look into the word of God and ask the Lord to teach us how to pray.
In keeping with Jesus' instructions here, we're going to begin by learning how not to pray, and this is just as important as learning how to pray—so important, that Jesus decided to mention this first.
Do Not Be Like the Hypocrites
Notice that verse 5 begins, "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites." Remember that I said to you last week that everything we read in chapter 6 flows from verse 1: "Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven." Taking that theme, Jesus applies that to prayer: don't pray as to be seen by others. Pray to your Father in heaven. That's who you're talking to. Talk to Him, not everyone else around you.
A friend of mine told me about a church he grew up in, and he talked about how funny that pastor's prayers were. It sounded like he was talking to God, but he was using the pastoral prayer to talk to people in the congregation without mentioning their names.
It would be something like, "Oh, God, we know you don't like it when a woman comes into your church, O Lord, and her skirt just doesn't come down over her knees."
And my friend said, "Some of us younger ones, we'd start looking around trying to figure out which of the women came in today with a skirt that wasn't low enough."
Then the pastor would pray, "Lord, please forgive some of us when we think we can start cutting back on our tithe, and we think that no one will notice. You notice, O Lord. Can a man rob from God? Maybe we don't need to buy that 70 inch television. Maybe we can settle with the 50 inch, and give the rest to the building fund."
And my friend said, "Brother Bill had just been boasting the week before about his new TV, so we knew exactly who the pastor was talking about."
That's not praying to God. That's using prayer as gossip time. Many will use the promise of prayer to fish for gossip: "Hey, is there anything that I can be praying for you about?" Which, by the way, that's a fine question. We should pray for one another. I'm saying check your heart and be sure you're not using that question to treat yourself to some personal information.
Avoid using prayer to spread gossip. "Hey, Philip. Pray for Jack and Gretchen, they're having marriage problems." When it's something personal, whether it's a medical issue or a death in the family or a disagreement or someone's just going through a difficult time—make sure you check with the person first before you start sharing their prayer needs. Be able to say, "I've checked with so-and-so, and they told me they were okay with me telling you this." Especially check the intentions of your heart. Do you have a genuine concern for people? Do you desire that your church is a praying church? Or do you just want to be the guy or gal that everyone thinks is in the know? Do you want to impress people?
Are you using prayer to complain about others? You get some people together and you say, "Me and so-and-so are not getting along right now. I'm having a really difficult time with this. Can you pray for us right now?" It might look like a genuine request for prayer, but what you're actually doing is poisoning the well. You're trying to get people on your side of a conflict. If that's your heart, then in your prayer, you are blaspheming God and taking His name in vain.
Now, I want to reiterate—there's nothing wrong with asking people to pray for you, even if you're in a difficult trial with someone else. The point I'm making is the point Jesus is making: examine yourself and check your heart. What is your motivation? Is this about the Lord, or is this about yourself? Do you want the name of God to be exalted? Do you want the person you're praying for to excel? Or do you just want other people to think you're the exceptional one?
Once again, "When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites." May your heart's desire be for God. He should be the very focus of our prayers. If you want to have a healthy practice of prayer, desire God. Don't be like the hypocrites who look to themselves in prayer. If your endgame in prayer is to glorify yourself rather than glorify God, that is going to become evident outwardly as well.
Do Not Pray to Be Seen By Others
Consider the next part of verse 5: "For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others." Now, the key part here is that they do this in order to "be seen by others." Jesus is not condemning public prayer. In 1 Timothy 2:8, the Apostle Paul says, "I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands." The men in the church are to set an example for prayer, and they do this by leading prayers openly. The keep their hands holy, meaning that they way they live is consistent with the way they pray. When a man leads an open, public prayer, people hear a man who is consistent in his speech and in his actions.
Public prayer, praying aloud in the church, leading prayer at prayer gatherings or in Bible study, leading prayer for your family—these are all good things. So Jesus is not prohibiting public prayer. Once again, he's confronting a heart issue. The hypocrites pray in the synagogues and at the street corners not to glorify God, but so they may be seen by others.
Prayer was a very common practice among the Jews. Twice a day, at sunrise and at sunset, the Jews would pray the Shema, which is Deuteronomy 6:4-9. This is the passage that begins, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." They prayed that section of Scripture twice a day.
Then there were public prayers in the synagogue and at the temple using a liturgy—meaning that these prayers were written out, they were traditional prayers, everyone knew them, and everyone recited them. Then there was the tefillah, a series of benedictions recited two or three times a day. Then there were the offering prayers, which were at 9am, noon, and 3pm. This practiced was derived from a legalistic rendering of Psalm 55:17, "Evening and morning and at noon, I utter my complaint and moan, and He hears my voice." We see in Daniel 6:10 that Daniel prayed three times a day.
In Acts 3, Peter and John went into the temple for the hour of prayer at the ninth hour, when everyone else was going to pray. It was during one of those offering prayers when they healed the lame beggar at the Beautiful Gate. There was also a prayer called the minhah that coincided with the time of the daily burnt offering in the temple. You had mealtime prayers, and then there were spontaneous prayers after the meal was over. So as you can see, prayer was a regular practice for the Jew.
The problem was that it had all become very mechanical. The people did it, but they didn't mean it. This was the very issue that Isaiah warned about in Isaiah 29:13: "This people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me." Jesus quotes this passage in Matthew 15:8. The Jews were a ridiculously religious people, but it wasn't real. Prayer for the sake of prayer is not good.
In 2006, the New York Times published an article entitled, "Long Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer." The study was conducted over a period of 10 years and involved more than 1,800 patients. And the basic conclusion to the story was this: prayer doesn't work. According to the study, prayer by strangers had no effect on the recovery time of patients undergoing heart surgery, whether they knew they were being prayed for or not.
I remember when the results of the study were released, I was in Christian radio at the time. Just about every atheist on the internet fell all over themselves, touting what they claimed was scientific proof that prayer doesn't work. If atheists had a bible, they'd have entered the study as canon. I mean, it was the greatest pseudo-science since Darwinism. I still get this bunk study thrown in my face 14 years later.
There was an internet atheist who made me a hobby-horse at the time. He went by the name Zero (we actually met in person once). On his blog, he wrote an entire article calling me out, saying that this study concluded once and for all just how foolish Christians like Gabe can be, praying to their non-existent sky-fairy. He even turned my name into an acronym—GABE: Grasping at Any Biblical Excuse.
Well, I responded to him and said, "Did you read who was actually involved in this study?"
And he said, "Yes, and everything was verified. But you Christians are so anti-science and anti-data, it wouldn't matter if Einstein conducted the study, you still wouldn't accept it."
I replied, "No, I'm not talking about the organization who conducted the study or even if it was peer-reviewed. I mean did you look and see who in the study was actually praying for these patients?" Those who were praying consisted of a contemplative Catholic order called the Teresian Carmelites, and a Catholic monastery and convent, both of whom deny the gospel, that we are justified by grace through faith in Christ alone. There was also a New Thought organization called Unity, who denies the Trinity of God, and that Jesus is God incarnate.
He said to me, "I suppose you're going to say those groups don't count."
And I simply told him this: "John 14:6, Jesus said, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one gets to the Father but by me.' If anyone prays by any other means than through faith in Jesus, or if anyone thinks that by virtue of their own merit they have earned a place before the Father, God does not listen to their prayers."
How do we know God does not hear a Muslim's prayer? Because they reject that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. It's even written in the Koran 4:171, "Exalted is [Allah] above having a son." How do we know that God does not hear the prayer of an orthodox Jew? Because they likewise reject that Jesus Christ is the Messiah.
How do we know that God does not listen to the prayer of a Jehovah's Witness? Because they believe that Jesus is not God but the archangel Michael. How do we know that God does not listen to the prayer of a Mormon? Because they believe in a completely different Jesus who is the literal brother of Satan and not the Creator of all things. God does not receive every prayer, no matter how solemn or religious the ceremony the prayer came from.
I went on to tell Zero the Atheist, "Even if study had concluded that the patients who were prayed for recovered faster than those who received no prayer, I still would not have received the study as legitimate." In Matthew 4:7 Jesus said, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test," and here, He says do not pray to be seen by others or you have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. So if you don't mind, I'm going to continue believing what the Bible says about prayer and not the New York Times.
I think you and I would agree that the Apostle Paul was more righteous, more humble a man than anyone in this room. He said in 2 Corinthians 12 that a messenger of Satan was sent to torment him, and three times he prayed to be relieved of it. How did the Lord answer him? "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness."
Now, you might look at that and say, "Why didn't God answer Paul's prayer?" But He did answer his prayer! He answered Paul with the greatest answer—Himself. Jesus answered Paul's prayer with Himself. And Paul said, "Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me."
My friends, if you think God does not answer prayer, because you did not get the answer that you wanted, could it be that the answer you rejected was Christ Himself? As we read from Psalm 34 this morning, "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! Oh, fear the Lord, you His saints, for those who fear Him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing."
The Bible tells us that there are other conditions for prayer. In Isaiah 1:15, the Lord said to wayward Israel, "When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen." Unless what? Isaiah 66:2, "But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word."
Psalm 66:18 says, "If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened." In 1 Peter 3:7, we are told strife in a marriage hinders our prayers. James 1:6 says that one who doubts will not receive from the Lord. James 4:3 says, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions."
Just consider 2 Chronicles 7:14, which says, "If my people who are called by my name." Brothers and sisters in the Lord, followers of Jesus Christ, that's you and me. That's not the United States of America, as this verse is often applied to. That's anyone who bears the name of a son or a daughter of God, adopted into His family by faith in Christ.
"If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways." So what do we have in our prayers? We have being humble before God, seeking God, turning from anything that is against God. He says, "Then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal—only then will I heal their land."
The hypocrites are not humble, they do not seek God's glory but they're own, and they do not turn from their wicked ways because they think they are righteous. That's the whole reason they put on the show that they do when they pray—because they want everyone else to see how righteous they are. "Truly, I say to you," Jesus says, "they have received their reward."
Instead of the public places to be seen by others, Jesus tells you where you should go to discipline yourself that your prayer habits would be about God and not yourself.
Pray to Your Father Who is In Secret
Look finally at verse 6: "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
Now, don't let these warnings about hypocritical prayer, praying to be seen by others, or even the conditions for genuine prayer hinder you from praying at all. You might be thinking, "Goodness, there's just so much here. All those qualifications. How can I be certain that I'm doing it right?"
My friend, it's very simple—seek God. Do you want to be with God? Then talk to Him. "But God is so holy and I am not!" You're right, you're not. But as I said to you when we were going through our study in Galatians, what God demands of you, He gives to you. Jesus said in the previous chapter that your righteousness must exceed that of the Scribes and the Pharisees. He said, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." If you are a follower of Jesus, then you have that righteousness He's demanded of you. You have the righteousness of Christ.
If you still ask, "But how can I be certain that He is listening to me?" Because Jesus said that He would. John 14:13 says, "Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son." Now, that doesn't mean you ask for a Ferrari in Jesus' name and it will be given to you, because remember, our request in the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray is "Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." If we ask God that His will be done in our lives to the praise of His glorious grace, it will be done. Jesus has promised us this.
We read in 1 John 2:1 that "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one." An advocate is a representative who speaks favorably on behalf of another. So think about that—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is speaking favorably of you before the Father.
We read in 1 Timothy 2:5-6, "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time." Romans 8:26-27 says that the Spirit of God "helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God."
So we have the Son of God mediating for us. We have the Spirit of God interceding for us. Even when we don't know what to pray for as we ought, we haven't lost touch with God. He's still holding on to us. He is a loving Father. Pray to Him.
5 "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. 9 Pray then like this:
"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, Amen."
We are going to spend the next several weeks studying on how to pray. And it's interesting here that as Jesus begins His instructions to His disciples, He starts off by telling them how not to pray. As we go over this passage, we're going to divide this up into twos. We have how not to pray, followed by how to pray. And within how not to pray, we have this divided up into hypocrites and Gentiles. Under how to pray, we have the Lord's Prayer divided up into divine exaltation and personal petition.
We will spend most of our time today regarding Jesus' instructions on how not to pray like the hypocrites. Next week, we're going to consider how not to pray like the Gentiles. And then for the weeks that follow, we will concentrate on the parts of the Lord's prayer. What we want to glean from this as believers is a healthy practice of right, biblical, God-pleasing prayer.
When it comes to spiritual disciplines, you may be like me—prayer is just not one of those things that comes to you naturally. Of course it doesn't come to any one of us naturally—it is a supernatural enterprise to converse with the Almighty God, maker of heaven and earth. But when I say it doesn't come to you naturally, I mean that even as a Christian, as someone who is to be spiritually minded, prayer is just not the first thing you think about. You're not the kind of person who says, "I need to stop what I'm doing and pray. I need to get away from everyone for a little while and pray. I need to turn off the TV and the video games, and I need to pray. Kids, leave daddy alone for a little while. I'm praying."
Maybe it surprises some of you to hear me say I just don't believe I'm very good at praying. Recently our local radio station here in JC called me up and asked me to record daily prayers which they prayed every day for a month. All I did was pray the Scriptures. I opened up to the Psalms or a few places in the New Testament, and I would just pray what was on the page. The guy at the radio station who recognized what I was doing texted me back and said, "I think you plagiarized these prayers."
I was involved in a community production, and before we went out on stage, the director would ask me to pray. It was a privilege that I got to pray before every performance. Now, I knew that most of the cast were not believers, so I would put Scripture in my prayers without references, or I would just put the gospel in my prayer.
One night the director came up to me, and I thought she was going to tell me to tone it down a little bit. Maybe I was getting a little too preachy. But instead, she said, "Can we just have you come and pray before every show we do, even if you're not in it?"
I've been privileged to have been asked to pray before military funerals. Brother Dave asked me to pray at a couple of the Veterans motorcycle gatherings. I prayed at the governor's mansion a few years ago, when Sam Brownback was governor (I highly doubt Governor Kelly would ever ask me to come and pray). Prisoners at the jail and patients at the hospital have requested that I come and pray with them. You've probably asked me to come pray with you.
Yet I've just never thought of myself as someone who was very good at prayer. In fact, even when it comes to the act of prayer itself, I'm ashamed to say that more often than not, I hesitate to pray. Now, that's pride. I would certainly never pat myself on the back for that. When we refuse to pray or when we think we don't need to pray, that's prideful.
Perhaps you know 1 Peter 5:7 which says, "Cast all your cares upon Him because He cares for you." That's a pretty popular verse. You might have that as a magnet on your fridge. But consider what is said right before that: "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you, casting all your cares [your anxieties] upon Him, because He cares for you."
Humble yourself and take your concerns before the Lord. If you think that prayer is a last ditch effort—it's only a thing you do when all else fails—you have a wrong attitude about prayer. Prayer should actually be the first thing we do, not the last.
There's a famous quote attributed to Martin Luther who said, "I have so much to do today, I shall spend the first three hours in prayer." Yet for many of us—for most of us, I should say—the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. In the most distressing time of prayer in His life, in which Jesus shed drops of blood, He came and found His disciples sleeping, and said to them, "Could you not pray with me for one hour?"
I'd have been that disciple. Like I said, most of the time, I hesitate to make prayer a priority. As a husband and as a father, I'm confessing to you that I've done a poor job leading my family in prayer. So you really have a poor prayer teacher standing in front of you today about to teach you about prayer. This is as pressing upon me as it might be to you. But we have a teacher who is even greater than I am. May the Holy Spirit guide us into all truth as we look into the word of God and ask the Lord to teach us how to pray.
In keeping with Jesus' instructions here, we're going to begin by learning how not to pray, and this is just as important as learning how to pray—so important, that Jesus decided to mention this first.
Do Not Be Like the Hypocrites
Notice that verse 5 begins, "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites." Remember that I said to you last week that everything we read in chapter 6 flows from verse 1: "Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven." Taking that theme, Jesus applies that to prayer: don't pray as to be seen by others. Pray to your Father in heaven. That's who you're talking to. Talk to Him, not everyone else around you.
A friend of mine told me about a church he grew up in, and he talked about how funny that pastor's prayers were. It sounded like he was talking to God, but he was using the pastoral prayer to talk to people in the congregation without mentioning their names.
It would be something like, "Oh, God, we know you don't like it when a woman comes into your church, O Lord, and her skirt just doesn't come down over her knees."
And my friend said, "Some of us younger ones, we'd start looking around trying to figure out which of the women came in today with a skirt that wasn't low enough."
Then the pastor would pray, "Lord, please forgive some of us when we think we can start cutting back on our tithe, and we think that no one will notice. You notice, O Lord. Can a man rob from God? Maybe we don't need to buy that 70 inch television. Maybe we can settle with the 50 inch, and give the rest to the building fund."
And my friend said, "Brother Bill had just been boasting the week before about his new TV, so we knew exactly who the pastor was talking about."
That's not praying to God. That's using prayer as gossip time. Many will use the promise of prayer to fish for gossip: "Hey, is there anything that I can be praying for you about?" Which, by the way, that's a fine question. We should pray for one another. I'm saying check your heart and be sure you're not using that question to treat yourself to some personal information.
Avoid using prayer to spread gossip. "Hey, Philip. Pray for Jack and Gretchen, they're having marriage problems." When it's something personal, whether it's a medical issue or a death in the family or a disagreement or someone's just going through a difficult time—make sure you check with the person first before you start sharing their prayer needs. Be able to say, "I've checked with so-and-so, and they told me they were okay with me telling you this." Especially check the intentions of your heart. Do you have a genuine concern for people? Do you desire that your church is a praying church? Or do you just want to be the guy or gal that everyone thinks is in the know? Do you want to impress people?
Are you using prayer to complain about others? You get some people together and you say, "Me and so-and-so are not getting along right now. I'm having a really difficult time with this. Can you pray for us right now?" It might look like a genuine request for prayer, but what you're actually doing is poisoning the well. You're trying to get people on your side of a conflict. If that's your heart, then in your prayer, you are blaspheming God and taking His name in vain.
Now, I want to reiterate—there's nothing wrong with asking people to pray for you, even if you're in a difficult trial with someone else. The point I'm making is the point Jesus is making: examine yourself and check your heart. What is your motivation? Is this about the Lord, or is this about yourself? Do you want the name of God to be exalted? Do you want the person you're praying for to excel? Or do you just want other people to think you're the exceptional one?
Once again, "When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites." May your heart's desire be for God. He should be the very focus of our prayers. If you want to have a healthy practice of prayer, desire God. Don't be like the hypocrites who look to themselves in prayer. If your endgame in prayer is to glorify yourself rather than glorify God, that is going to become evident outwardly as well.
Do Not Pray to Be Seen By Others
Consider the next part of verse 5: "For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others." Now, the key part here is that they do this in order to "be seen by others." Jesus is not condemning public prayer. In 1 Timothy 2:8, the Apostle Paul says, "I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands." The men in the church are to set an example for prayer, and they do this by leading prayers openly. The keep their hands holy, meaning that they way they live is consistent with the way they pray. When a man leads an open, public prayer, people hear a man who is consistent in his speech and in his actions.
Public prayer, praying aloud in the church, leading prayer at prayer gatherings or in Bible study, leading prayer for your family—these are all good things. So Jesus is not prohibiting public prayer. Once again, he's confronting a heart issue. The hypocrites pray in the synagogues and at the street corners not to glorify God, but so they may be seen by others.
Prayer was a very common practice among the Jews. Twice a day, at sunrise and at sunset, the Jews would pray the Shema, which is Deuteronomy 6:4-9. This is the passage that begins, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." They prayed that section of Scripture twice a day.
Then there were public prayers in the synagogue and at the temple using a liturgy—meaning that these prayers were written out, they were traditional prayers, everyone knew them, and everyone recited them. Then there was the tefillah, a series of benedictions recited two or three times a day. Then there were the offering prayers, which were at 9am, noon, and 3pm. This practiced was derived from a legalistic rendering of Psalm 55:17, "Evening and morning and at noon, I utter my complaint and moan, and He hears my voice." We see in Daniel 6:10 that Daniel prayed three times a day.
In Acts 3, Peter and John went into the temple for the hour of prayer at the ninth hour, when everyone else was going to pray. It was during one of those offering prayers when they healed the lame beggar at the Beautiful Gate. There was also a prayer called the minhah that coincided with the time of the daily burnt offering in the temple. You had mealtime prayers, and then there were spontaneous prayers after the meal was over. So as you can see, prayer was a regular practice for the Jew.
The problem was that it had all become very mechanical. The people did it, but they didn't mean it. This was the very issue that Isaiah warned about in Isaiah 29:13: "This people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me." Jesus quotes this passage in Matthew 15:8. The Jews were a ridiculously religious people, but it wasn't real. Prayer for the sake of prayer is not good.
In 2006, the New York Times published an article entitled, "Long Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer." The study was conducted over a period of 10 years and involved more than 1,800 patients. And the basic conclusion to the story was this: prayer doesn't work. According to the study, prayer by strangers had no effect on the recovery time of patients undergoing heart surgery, whether they knew they were being prayed for or not.
I remember when the results of the study were released, I was in Christian radio at the time. Just about every atheist on the internet fell all over themselves, touting what they claimed was scientific proof that prayer doesn't work. If atheists had a bible, they'd have entered the study as canon. I mean, it was the greatest pseudo-science since Darwinism. I still get this bunk study thrown in my face 14 years later.
There was an internet atheist who made me a hobby-horse at the time. He went by the name Zero (we actually met in person once). On his blog, he wrote an entire article calling me out, saying that this study concluded once and for all just how foolish Christians like Gabe can be, praying to their non-existent sky-fairy. He even turned my name into an acronym—GABE: Grasping at Any Biblical Excuse.
Well, I responded to him and said, "Did you read who was actually involved in this study?"
And he said, "Yes, and everything was verified. But you Christians are so anti-science and anti-data, it wouldn't matter if Einstein conducted the study, you still wouldn't accept it."
I replied, "No, I'm not talking about the organization who conducted the study or even if it was peer-reviewed. I mean did you look and see who in the study was actually praying for these patients?" Those who were praying consisted of a contemplative Catholic order called the Teresian Carmelites, and a Catholic monastery and convent, both of whom deny the gospel, that we are justified by grace through faith in Christ alone. There was also a New Thought organization called Unity, who denies the Trinity of God, and that Jesus is God incarnate.
He said to me, "I suppose you're going to say those groups don't count."
And I simply told him this: "John 14:6, Jesus said, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one gets to the Father but by me.' If anyone prays by any other means than through faith in Jesus, or if anyone thinks that by virtue of their own merit they have earned a place before the Father, God does not listen to their prayers."
How do we know God does not hear a Muslim's prayer? Because they reject that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. It's even written in the Koran 4:171, "Exalted is [Allah] above having a son." How do we know that God does not hear the prayer of an orthodox Jew? Because they likewise reject that Jesus Christ is the Messiah.
How do we know that God does not listen to the prayer of a Jehovah's Witness? Because they believe that Jesus is not God but the archangel Michael. How do we know that God does not listen to the prayer of a Mormon? Because they believe in a completely different Jesus who is the literal brother of Satan and not the Creator of all things. God does not receive every prayer, no matter how solemn or religious the ceremony the prayer came from.
I went on to tell Zero the Atheist, "Even if study had concluded that the patients who were prayed for recovered faster than those who received no prayer, I still would not have received the study as legitimate." In Matthew 4:7 Jesus said, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test," and here, He says do not pray to be seen by others or you have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. So if you don't mind, I'm going to continue believing what the Bible says about prayer and not the New York Times.
I think you and I would agree that the Apostle Paul was more righteous, more humble a man than anyone in this room. He said in 2 Corinthians 12 that a messenger of Satan was sent to torment him, and three times he prayed to be relieved of it. How did the Lord answer him? "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness."
Now, you might look at that and say, "Why didn't God answer Paul's prayer?" But He did answer his prayer! He answered Paul with the greatest answer—Himself. Jesus answered Paul's prayer with Himself. And Paul said, "Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me."
My friends, if you think God does not answer prayer, because you did not get the answer that you wanted, could it be that the answer you rejected was Christ Himself? As we read from Psalm 34 this morning, "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! Oh, fear the Lord, you His saints, for those who fear Him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing."
The Bible tells us that there are other conditions for prayer. In Isaiah 1:15, the Lord said to wayward Israel, "When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen." Unless what? Isaiah 66:2, "But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word."
Psalm 66:18 says, "If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened." In 1 Peter 3:7, we are told strife in a marriage hinders our prayers. James 1:6 says that one who doubts will not receive from the Lord. James 4:3 says, "You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions."
Just consider 2 Chronicles 7:14, which says, "If my people who are called by my name." Brothers and sisters in the Lord, followers of Jesus Christ, that's you and me. That's not the United States of America, as this verse is often applied to. That's anyone who bears the name of a son or a daughter of God, adopted into His family by faith in Christ.
"If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways." So what do we have in our prayers? We have being humble before God, seeking God, turning from anything that is against God. He says, "Then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal—only then will I heal their land."
The hypocrites are not humble, they do not seek God's glory but they're own, and they do not turn from their wicked ways because they think they are righteous. That's the whole reason they put on the show that they do when they pray—because they want everyone else to see how righteous they are. "Truly, I say to you," Jesus says, "they have received their reward."
Instead of the public places to be seen by others, Jesus tells you where you should go to discipline yourself that your prayer habits would be about God and not yourself.
Pray to Your Father Who is In Secret
Look finally at verse 6: "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
Now, don't let these warnings about hypocritical prayer, praying to be seen by others, or even the conditions for genuine prayer hinder you from praying at all. You might be thinking, "Goodness, there's just so much here. All those qualifications. How can I be certain that I'm doing it right?"
My friend, it's very simple—seek God. Do you want to be with God? Then talk to Him. "But God is so holy and I am not!" You're right, you're not. But as I said to you when we were going through our study in Galatians, what God demands of you, He gives to you. Jesus said in the previous chapter that your righteousness must exceed that of the Scribes and the Pharisees. He said, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." If you are a follower of Jesus, then you have that righteousness He's demanded of you. You have the righteousness of Christ.
If you still ask, "But how can I be certain that He is listening to me?" Because Jesus said that He would. John 14:13 says, "Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son." Now, that doesn't mean you ask for a Ferrari in Jesus' name and it will be given to you, because remember, our request in the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray is "Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." If we ask God that His will be done in our lives to the praise of His glorious grace, it will be done. Jesus has promised us this.
We read in 1 John 2:1 that "we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one." An advocate is a representative who speaks favorably on behalf of another. So think about that—Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is speaking favorably of you before the Father.
We read in 1 Timothy 2:5-6, "For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time." Romans 8:26-27 says that the Spirit of God "helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God."
So we have the Son of God mediating for us. We have the Spirit of God interceding for us. Even when we don't know what to pray for as we ought, we haven't lost touch with God. He's still holding on to us. He is a loving Father. Pray to Him.
