Prayer’s Right Attitude [A]

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Well, this morning we are on the 15th lesson so far in this series on prayer, and we won’t even make it to the Lord’s Prayer until next week. But it’s my hope that as we’ve gone through this series and we have studied probably more than some of you ever thought there was about prayer or ever wanted to know about it, hopefully you’re learning some things as I am to apply to your prayer lives. I didn’t start out this series because I knew everything about prayer and needed to instruct you, but we started this series because, as I told you when we first started, it felt like there was something lacking in my prayer life, that I needed to go to God’s Word and figure out where the issue was, and that hopefully some of you all could benefit from it as well, because I don’t think any of us pray with the intensity, with the purpose, and with the regularity that we’re supposed to.

And today we’re going to take a look at Matthew chapter 6, the passage just before he begins with the Lord’s Prayer, which we’ll get to next week, as I said. You’ll get the first three points of the message, maybe four this morning, and then the remainder tonight. So I hope you’ll come back tonight and hear the rest of the message.

But it’s very frustrating for me. I don’t know if any of the rest of you are as tightly wound about this as I am. but it’s very frustrating for me when things look one way on the outside and on the inside are not what they look like on the outside.

And I can give you a couple of examples. It irritates me to no end when I think I’m one of those rare occasions I get a sweet tooth and I think I’m about to bite into a milk dud and somebody has taken perfectly good chocolate and wrapped it around a raisin. Anybody else?

I mean, I like raisins, but when you think you’re about to have a milk dud, that’s kind of disappointing. And sometimes the milk dud and the chocolate-covered raisin look so very similar on the outside. And if they’re just in a little baggie instead of being in a package, you don’t know which they are.

They look alike, and yet they’re not the same on the inside. It’s disappointing, and it can be frustrating. Even more recently, I was even more frustrated about this problem of things looking similar on the outside and being different on the inside, because in the top drawer of my bathroom cabinet, a few weeks ago.

Among other things, I had a tube of toothpaste and I had a tube of the kid’s diaper rash ointment of similar size and color scheme. And fortunately, I took a second look and averted a crisis. I’m not sure what it would have done other than make me unhappy, but that would have been bad enough.

You see, the tubes look very similar on the outside. That tube of diaper rash ointment looked like my tube of toothpaste, and yet on the inside, there was no similarity. And it annoys me and it frustrates me when things become easily confused because they look like something on the outside, and yet on the inside, they’re completely different.

And I think, I see from the looks on your faces, some of you already know where I’m going with this. I think God is similarly frustrated, if not more so, when we look like one thing on the outside, and we are completely different on the inside from what our outward appearance seems to be. I know this for a fact, not only from the passage we’re going to look at today, but another good passage that came up in Sunday school was in Romans chapter, help me out somebody, was it chapter 2 or chapter 3 we looked at?

Chapter 2. Romans chapter 2, and Paul was writing to the church at Rome and was talking to them about how some of the Jewish background Christians thought that they were acceptable before God, maybe not even Christians, but some of the people of Jewish background, that would have read that letter thought that they were all right with God because they had this outward righteousness because of their heritage and they followed the law and they did all the things that they were supposed to do and yet their hearts were not right with God. And he said, a true Jew is not the one who is a Jew outwardly.

And he talked about the circumcision of the heart. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s throughout the Bible that God dislikes it when we put on a facade of being something outwardly when internally we’re completely different. Well, this passage in Matthew chapter 6 is no different.

As far as what we’ve got on the screen, I didn’t think to put the first four verses on there because I wasn’t going to go through them, but we are, and we’ll pick up in verse 5 on the screen. But if you’ve got your Bibles and can turn with me to Matthew chapter 6, we’re going to start in verse 1 where Jesus looks at the same group of people and says, Take heed that you do not do your alms before men to be seen of them, otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. And this word alms, if you’re not familiar with it, means to give money to the poor, to donate and be generous to the poor.

And so Jesus tells them, make sure that you’re not giving to the poor, that you’re not being generous just as an outward show, otherwise you have no reward for it, because there’s nothing internally that’s driving you to do it. He says in verse 2, Therefore, when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have the glory of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward.

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth, that thine alms may be in secret, and thy Father, which seeth in secret himself, shall reward thee openly. And so there were people who were outwardly, as religious people, were giving the appearance of being generous, loving people, and yet they were doing it so that people would look at them and say, look how loving and generous they are. I can’t imagine, say, you’re going to give money to a homeless person for some food and blowing a trumpet ahead of time and saying, hey, everybody, look at me.

In this day and time, most people would probably see through that, at least in that instance. Instead of saying, how generous is he? They’d say, look how self-centered he is.

And yet there are people in our society all the time who give money so that others will recognize it for the publicity so people can see. And they’re giving the appearance of being outwardly generous. And Jesus says, on the other hand, as God’s people, we’re to be more concerned with what goes on in the heart and what God can see rather than what men can see.

And he says, so do your giving in secret. And that’s good advice. Now, my problem is trying to be subtle and secret.

The harder I try, I’m usually the opposite. There have been times of trying to donate money that I’ve knocked over the whole thing. And that’s why I’m glad the Salvation Army things are on a tripod.

They’re harder to knock over that way. But he says to be subtle about it because it’s not about putting on a show and looking generous. It’s about being generous from the heart.

But then he turns and in the same theme, he takes aim at their prayer lives, at their outward religiousness and says, When thou prayest, verse 5, and when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. Now, I’ve always thought, as I’ve been, I remember being taught this passage from a young age.

When I was a little boy for a while, my dad was my Sunday school teacher. And you may not remember teaching on this passage, but I remember you talking about it. And I remember thinking how goofy it was, the idea that people would want to stand on the street corners and pray out loud.

And that idea still sounds goofy to me. The idea that we’re going to ring a bell and get everybody to come hear us pray. And I thought, why would these people do this?

but we do some of the same sorts of things without even really thinking about it. What they would do, these people that he’s talking about, these Pharisees and scribes and hypocrites, there were a certain amount of times a day that the Jewish people were supposed to pray, much like the Muslim people today where they have the five daily calls to prayer. The Jews, I believe it was three times a day, were supposed to go and pray.

But what I’ve discovered this week as I’ve studied the history behind this passage, they didn’t have to go to the synagogue to pray. They could pray where they were whenever it was time to pray. But some of these people were so concerned that the world around them would look at them and say, my goodness, how religious they are.

Look how observant they are. Look how they fulfill the religious duties. Look how they pray.

That they would actually time it in such a way that they knew that they were going to be in the center of town, in the marketplace, on the corner where everybody could see them when it came time for the call to prayer. Perish the thought that I should be at home by myself in my living room. when it comes time to pray.

Heaven forbid, when I could be in the marketplace. And then the call to prayer. It’s time to pray.

So of course, with everybody standing around, I become very religious. And here I am praying out loud for all the people to see so they can look at me and say, wow, look at how observant he is of the law. Look at how religious he is that he doesn’t miss the opportunity to pray.

So many lesser men would finish their business in the market and would go on with what they were doing and ignore the fact that it was time to pray and yet look at him. And so they would time it just right so that they would be in the marketplace where everybody could see them and know, look, he’s praying. He must be better than the rest of us.

And Jesus said when they did that, when they went out to the synagogue for the purpose of praying in front of everybody so people could see how wonderful they are, when they made sure they were on the street corners at the time for prayer so that they could pray out loud in a booming voice and everybody could see how faithful they were to keep their religious obligations. He said they have all the reward from that that they are ever going to get. They have all the reward from that that they are ever going to get.

Their reward is that people look at them and say, my, my, what a religious man is he. And the problem here is not that God is not willing to reward things unless they’re done in secret. Okay, we’ve all grown up hearing that you make a wish on your birthday candles, and if you tell anybody, the wish is not going to come true.

I don’t know how people figured that out. I don’t know how the earliest humans, you know, figured out birthday candles and that they worked that way, because neither science or the Bible have told me that. But it’s not like that, where God says, oh, if somebody knows what you’ve done, then there goes all your reward.

The problem was the condition of their heart in the first place that God was not willing to reward people who were not interested in following him because it was right or because they loved him, but were only following him outwardly for the prestige and for the public relations. And God said that kind of giving, that kind of prayer is not something that I’m going to honor and reward. And so if that’s the kind of religion that we are doing, is this outward religion that’s for show, then the praise that we get of man is the only reward for that we’re ever going to get.

Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. But thou, he says in verse 6, but thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet. And when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy father, which is in secret.

And thy father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. And before we take the, if you’ve been here very long at all, you know I am a literalist when it comes to the Bible. I believe in interpreting the Bible the way the writers intended, the way God intended, and that means a literal interpretation unless the text gives us some reason to suspect otherwise.

For example, we don’t want to read when Jesus said he would gather Jerusalem under his wings, we don’t want to read that in a wooden literal sense that Jesus had feathers. Sometimes the original intent involved symbolism and metaphor. But we want to read the Bible literally unless the Bible itself gives us an indication that we’re not supposed to.

Folks, I believe this passage means that we are supposed to at some time shut ourselves away in a place to block out the distractions of the world, to block out the very temptation of people seeing us and remarking of how religious we are, and sometimes we do need to just get alone with God. But at the same time, we don’t want to be so literal as to believe that the only place we can ever pray is in our closet, or that the only place we can ever pray is in secret. Folks, there are times throughout the New Testament when the people got together, when the churches got together and prayed together.

I think of one time in particular when they were praying, was it for Peter’s release in the book of Acts? Peter’s release from prison? The church got together and they prayed until he was released and showed up at the prayer meeting.

So don’t take this to the extreme of saying, well, it’s not right for us to pray in church. It’s not right for us to pray together. That’s not what it’s saying.

It’s not saying shut away in your closet is the only place to pray. But it’s warning us that if our prayer is only done for the purpose of letting other people see how spiritual we are, then our prayer is wrong. And there is a time and a place for getting away and getting alone with God, shutting out the distractions and getting away from the temptation of being seen for our religiousness.

He said, pray to thy father which is in secret and thy father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. Folks, we don’t have to put on a big show for God to hear us and answer our prayers. God sees what is done in secret.

Now in some instances, that is a comforting thought. In other instances, that can be a terrifying thought depending on where we stand with God. Because what that means is God also sees the secret intentions of our heart and whether we’re praying for the right reasons.

And God isn’t going to be fooled into honoring our prayer and rewarding us if we’re praying with the wrong motives. God is not fooled. Folks, if you learn nothing else from the Bible, God is not fooled.

God sees and knows everything that goes on. He says in verse 7, But when you pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. We’re not to pray just vain repetitions.

We’re not to just go through words that mean nothing to us. And we’ll talk about this part a little more tonight, but that even has become, I would say, problematic in some churches, but I think it’s problematic for most of us. I don’t know how many of you have ever thought about the words and phrases you use when you pray, but there are phrases that I’ve picked up and used as a little boy growing up in church, hearing the men of the church pray out loud and use those phrases, and then years later thought, I don’t know what that even means.

I’m saying that to God, and I don’t even know what it means. Folks, in our prayer, we’re to be more concerned with an honest heart and an honest conversation with God than we are getting the formula right. And so for vain repetition, I believe he’s talking here about the pagan prayers of chanting mantras and assuming that God is going to honor that just because we repeat it enough times.

I think it also applies to things like praying the rosary, Hail Marys and such, and just repeating prayers over and over that we’re saying the right words, but they don’t really, the condition of the heart is not behind it. And by the way, it doesn’t matter the condition of your heart. Don’t pray to Mary anyway.

Don’t pray to anybody but God. Can we just get together on that? And sometimes I think we can extend it as well and say the things in my prayer life that are just vain repetition that I’m just saying because I feel like they need to be said, just need to get rid of those stock phrases sometimes and be honest with God.

But when you pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for their much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your Father knoweth what things you have need of before you ask him. Folks, God already knows what we need.

And that’s not an excuse not to pray, well, God already knows, so why do I need to tell him? Folks, prayer is not so much to move God as to move us in line with what God wants. Prayer is about bringing us in line with God’s will.

Prayer is about praying that God’s will be done. And folks, God already knows the needs we have before we even ask. And this morning, in just the few remaining moments that we have, based on this passage, we look at the right attitude in prayer.

There is a right attitude for prayer. And if you want to know what the right attitude for prayer is, it is the complete diametric 180 degree opposite of what we’ve seen in this passage here with the Pharisees and hypocrites who would gather on the street corner to make sure that they were seen by everybody. It’s the complete opposite of the pagans who thought, if I just say enough words, my deity will respond.

Folks, there is a right attitude for prayer. There is a right way to pray and a wrong way to pray. And I believe God is first and foremost concerned with the condition of our heart.

First of all, this morning, God-honoring prayer is marked by honesty. God-honoring prayer is marked by honesty. If you’re following along and keeping notes in your bulletin or somewhere else, that’s the first point in the first blank this morning.

God-honoring prayer is marked by honesty. He starts out in Matthew 6, 5 by saying, do not be like the hypocrites. What’s a hypocrite?

Anybody want to answer that? It’s an actor, except one that’s not paid for it. It’s an actor who’s only fooling himself.

Another way to describe it might be someone who says, do as I say, not as I do. By the way, there’s an important distinction between do as I say, not as I do and saying do as I say not as I did. Don’t let people tell you that you’re a hypocrite if you have a changed life in Jesus Christ and you stand for what the Bible says and say this is right and this is wrong and the world says but look at what you did here.

Do as I say not as I did. Jesus Christ has changed me. But a hypocrite says do as I say not as I do.

In other words I’m going to continue on going in sin. I’m going to continue flagrantly disobeying God’s word. I’m going to continue doing everything I know that as a Christian I’m not supposed to be, but I’m going to make sure you toe the line.

That’s a hypocrite. A hypocrite is lying to himself, is lying to other people, trying to lie to other people, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. And a hypocrite is trying to lie to God as though God is going to be fooled by our pretensions.

God’s not fooled. God sees right through it. And Jesus says, when you pray, don’t be as the hypocrites are.

Everything about the way they were praying and why they were doing it was dishonest. And Jesus just very simply says to his followers, don’t be like them. We need to be honest with God. We’ve talked about that in this series already, being honest with God, and how often we hide behind our words and our phrases.

Sometimes we may be at a point where we don’t know what to pray, we don’t know what to say to God, and so we just start pulling out the stock phrases that we’ve heard other people use in prayer. Or we may talk to God and want to deal with a situation in our lives, but we don’t want to be completely honest with God about it. If you remember back several weeks ago, I talked to you about how we will say things like, God, help me to make better decisions.

God, can you forgive me for my mistake? And folks, we are willing when we talk to God to call our sin everything but what it is. Folks, God knows we sin.

God knows the condition of our hearts and He knows the sins we’ve committed, even the ones that nobody else knows about. And we need to stop coming to God and pretending that we are so self-righteous that we’ve got it all figured out and we just need a little bit of help from Him every now and then. And we need to be honest with the God who created us and knows us better than we know ourselves.

Folks, we need to agree with God about what He has said. We need to tell Him what He already knows and not come to prayer putting on a show. I think that’s why He tells us to go to the closet and pray.

It’s hard to put on a show. There’s a book that I’ve mentioned several times from the pulpit called Why Revival Tarries by Leonard Ravenhill, one of the best books that I’ve ever read. I don’t know if it’s still in print anymore, but if you’re lucky, you might be able to get yourself a copy on Amazon.

I’d encourage you to get a copy of it. But Ravenhill writes about the lack of prayer in churches, and it was written some 50 years ago, but I think the condition probably has not improved in that time. It talks about prayerlessness in churches and how the church pews will be full for the, if I can use this phrasing, the big show on Sunday morning.

And yet the pews are so empty other times of the week because people say, well, it’s just the prayer meeting. I don’t think I’ll go tonight. Because it’s hard to make a show out of honest prayer.

If prayer is what it’s supposed to be, if prayer is for us what it is supposed to be, it’s hard to make it into a show. Folks, let’s not make prayer into a show. Prayer that’s for show does not honor God.

It does not bring reward to us. Folks, God-honoring prayer is marked by honesty. Don’t be like the hypocrites are, he tells us.

Second of all, God-honoring prayer is marked by humility. God-honoring prayer is marked by humility. He points out in this passage, as we’ve already talked about, that they stand out in the middle of the street.

They stand in the synagogues. Some of you are thinking, who does that? I know some of you ladies, the thought of being called on to pray pray out loud in church just makes you want to dry up and blow away, not be here anymore.

For some people, the thought of having to pray, even in small groups when we were having disciple way, had some ladies who said, don’t call on me to pray. Probably some men feel that way. How holy they are, how righteous they are, boy, they’re right on it.

It drives me crazy. And you may have seen this as well. go sometimes to eat lunch on a Sunday afternoon.

And hopefully I’m not talking about myself because I try not to be this way. But many times I’ve seen somebody that will be in the same restaurant, and they’ll be in the suit, and the wife will be dressed nicely, and all the little children, they all just look like they stepped out of Church of the Year magazine, if there was such a magazine. They just look the part.

They’ve been to church, and yet they treat the staff who work there as though they’re beneath them They, you know, they’re there working. They didn’t go to church today. And there’s the thought, and I don’t want to judge them too harshly because I don’t know them, but I see what they’re doing outwardly, and I think, where is the humility?

Where did this idea come from that I’m God’s favorite? He loves me better than you. I’ve heard people tell people in jest, God loves everybody, but he only kind of likes you as a friend.

Where did we get that idea? I’m so wonderful and so righteous and so holy, and God loves me best, and I’m just going to stand out on the street corner and show you all how close God and I are. We’re like that.

There’s no humility in that at all. And the Bible’s also clear that God detests pride. God detests pride.

And so he tells us they, when he’s told us, don’t be like the hypocrites when we pray, the first thing he points out is that they love to pray standing in the synagogues, not just sitting there quietly praying, but standing where everybody can see them and say, man, what a good boy is he, that they may be seen of men, standing in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Folks, God-honoring prayer is marked by a humility that says, I recognize the holiness of God. I recognize the justice of God.

I recognize the sovereignty of God, that I’m not coming to God as though He’s my equal, and I’m not coming to God in such a way that I’m trying to give other people the impression God is my equal. I recognize that He is infinitely just, infinitely merciful, infinitely powerful, without blemish, without sin, and yet I, in comparison, am just a lowly, wretched creature. And prayer that honors God is marked by a humility that says, I am nothing in contrast to God, rather than trying to put on airs and show others how we’re so much better than them for our relationship with God. Folks, I’ve told you before on many occasions, if the message we’re putting out is how good we are, we are dead wrong.

The message that everybody else. The message that the world should get from our church, the message that the world should get from the way we live our lives and the things we say outside this church is not how good we are, but how good God is. And God-honoring prayer is marked by humility that says next to Him, I am nothing.

And I’m just thankful that He allows me to call Him Father. And third of all, finally, for this morning, God-honoring prayer is marked by pure motives. God-honoring prayer is marked by pure motives.

He says also in verse 5, Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. They’re out there putting on the show, saying how trying to show people how wonderful they are, how godly they are, how they and God are just like this. And if that’s their motive, if that’s the condition of their heart, if that’s what they want, then that’s all the reward that they’re going to get.

And it doesn’t honor God at all when we try to make prayer into honoring ourselves. Folks even beyond prayer, when we try to make anything about our service to Him, honoring ourselves. It doesn’t honor Him.

Folks, but prayer that honors God is marked by pure motives. That say, I’m praying because I want to spend this time in conversation with my Father. I don’t care who sees me.

I don’t care if they see me or if they don’t. I don’t care if they think I’m the most religious man since Billy Graham. I don’t care if they think I’m a fundamentalist nutcase.

It’s not about them and what they see and what they think. It’s not about me. It’s about honoring my Father and spending the time with Him that I need.

Folks, the real reward we should want to get out of prayer is a closer relationship with God the Father. And when we try to make prayer about our impure motives, the only reward we get is that people look at us and say, hmm, look at Him. He prays.

Good for Him. I’d much rather have the relationship with God the Father. Wouldn’t you?

Now, I don’t say this to you this morning as though I’m completely perfect in this. I have to fight these things just as much as everybody else does. and yet this is what we are supposed to strive for.

Prayer that is based on the right attitude honors God and we have the reward of a closer relationship with God if we honor Him in prayer. Folks, the greatest desire of the Christian should be to have a closer relationship with God. But sometimes we’ve got to sweep our ego, we’ve got to sweep our self-righteousness, we’ve got to sweep all of this out of the way and come to God in humility, Come to God in honesty.

Come to God in pure motives. And when we do, we honor Him, and that relationship is strengthened.