Prayer’s Right Attitude [B]

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Well, this evening, if you’ll turn with me to Matthew chapter 6 again, we’re going to pick up where we left off this morning in looking at the right attitude in prayer. And next week we will, Lord willing, begin in verse 9 and start looking at the Lord’s prayer and this model prayer that Jesus gave to His disciples and one that since we’re talking about vain repetition tonight and we did this morning, one that, you know, we need to be cautioned to just take this and say, well, Jesus gave it to the disciples and said, pray this way, and so let’s just repeat this prayer.

And there’s nothing wrong with reciting this prayer, but in many of the places where I’ve been, where they’ve done, where they’ve recited this prayer, done recitation of this prayer, that’s the word I was trying to think of, done a recitation of this prayer as part of a worship service, all too often it’s just vain repetition because we’re just repeating words that we’ve memorized rather than thinking about the attitude and the heart behind them. But before we get into what God expects us to pray, we are looking today at the attitude behind prayer. And we started looking this morning at Jesus’ condemnation, really, of the Pharisees.

He doesn’t name the Pharisees by name in this passage, but we know enough about them from his run-ins with them in other places in the Gospels that we can sort of read between the lines and see the Pharisees are among those that he’s talking about here, but I’m sure they were not the only ones who were involved in this. Jesus has in his crosshairs, so to speak, religious hypocrites, and I know that that word can bother us because it’s thrown around way too easily. Anybody who’s religious, anybody who believes in the Bible can very easily be called a hypocrite by the world because that’s one of their favorite words to apply.

But at the same time, there are hypocrites, there are hypocritical tendencies among people in churches. And we’ve got to be on guard against that. We’ve got to be on guard against that in our own hearts and in our own lives.

What he points out here, and we’re going to read the passage again and not go into as much detail in explaining it tonight as we did this morning. But what he puts in his sights in this passage are these very religious people who did what they were supposed to do outwardly but made certain that what they were doing could be witnessed by people because when you got right down to it, the motivation of their heart was not to serve God, was not to honor God, was not to obey God. It was to be seen and to be recognized for how outwardly righteous they were.

And so we start off again in Matthew 6, verse 1, where he says, Take heed that you do not do your alms before men to be seen of them, otherwise you have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. 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 just as with prayer, this passage about giving money, when he says do it in secret because those who do it in the open have their reward, isn’t telling us that if somebody somehow finds out that we gave money to the poor or if somebody somehow finds out that we prayed that God is not going to bless us or that God is not going to be honored in that.

What it is saying is that the people here who were purposely doing it outwardly so that they could be seen were not doing it with the right motives, and doing it with the wrong motives was something that God was not going to bless in the first place. It had nothing to do with people knowing. It had to do with the reason why they were doing it.

And I’m reminded of the story of the widow’s mite, where all these people came in ringing bells and blowing trumpets, the rich men coming into the temple to give their donations and clinking the coins into the box and showing how much they had donated to the temple, how much they had given to God, and they were trying to best one another, I imagine the story going. And yet this one woman sneaks in very subtly along the side and comes in and drops her coins into the box, a very small amount. Nothing that would be remarkable if we looked at it, but it was everything she had.

And we see from the biblical text that Jesus was more impressed by what she gave because not only did she give sacrificially and gave everything she had, but she wasn’t doing it to earn the praise of men. See, these people weren’t giving their money to the temple in order to honor God, to obey God. They were doing it to be praised by people.

Well, that’s not the kind of motive that God honors and God rewards. And so they had all the reward they were ever going to get. But then we come to prayer again and he says, 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. Again, they’re doing it for the wrong reasons. They make sure that when the time to pray comes, that they’re caught somewhere where it’s conspicuous.

Caught somewhere where the people are going to see them observing the required prayers. One thing I love about Daniel is the Bible records that when the decree was passed, that nobody should ask a favor of any man or God other than the king for so many days. Daniel didn’t just defy that ruling.

He didn’t just defy that ruling and say, fine, then I’m going to stand out here in the street corners and I’m going to pray to my God as though he was putting on a show about how godly he was. The Bible says he went back to his house. And people have speculated because of the open window, he was probably doing it where they could see.

I’ve heard people discuss the architecture of the day and say, we’re talking about a small window several feet up, where he obviously was not putting on a show and people were spying on him. Folks, Daniel was not putting on a show. That’s one of the things I love about Daniel.

He was obedient to God, but did it in such a way that he did it just to be obedient to God, not because he was trying to draw attention to how righteous he was. Verse 6 says, 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. But when you pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

Be not ye therefore like unto them, for your father knoweth what things ye have need of before you ask him. Now we got through Matthew 6, 5 today. We’re going to look at the final three verses of this passage tonight and see three more things about the right attitude in prayer, but just to recap, because I know all of you were not here this morning, and some of you may have had large meals and large naps since then, and sometimes I even have to look at my notes and say, what did I preach this morning?

First of all, God-honoring prayer is marked by honesty. Honesty with God. He tells them.

He tells us. See what the hypocrites are doing? Don’t do that.

That’s a pretty good rule of thumb. Whatever the hypocritical, dishonest people are doing, don’t do that. It’s because God values honesty.

A prayer that honors God is when we come to Him and we’re honest about who we are, we’re honest about our thoughts, our feelings, our sins, our shortcomings, our needs, where we don’t try to hide things from God. God-honoring prayer is marked by honesty. Second of all, God-honoring prayer is marked by humility.

We don’t come to God in a sense of trying to show people how great we are. We don’t come to God in a sense of trying to show God how great we are. But we come to God recognizing who He is, how holy He is, how just He is, how sovereign He is, how mighty He is, and in prayer we bend the knee before God.

And we do our prayer in such a way that we don’t give anybody the impression that we think we’re somehow on par with God. In contrast, the hypocrites, they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets that they may be seen of men. That people look at them and say, wow, they don’t even miss prayer time.

How great they are. Folks, I don’t believe you can truly pray to God and not be humble about it. We see people on television saying prayers to God, characters in TV shows saying prayers to God, and they’ll refer to him as things like big guy or the man upstairs.

They will talk to him like a buddy as though they’re his equal. Folks, a Christian, I don’t believe, can pray to God without a sense of humility. And I think we all know in our minds that God is higher than we are, that God’s more powerful than we are. I think we’d be much better served if we had a better understanding of that, though.

I kind of long for Isaiah’s vision, as much as terrifying as that sounds, to see God in his holiness and say, Woe is me, for I’m undone, for I’m a man of unclean lips and dwell in the midst of the people of unclean lips. Folks, we need to come to God realizing who he is and who we are in contrast. God-honoring prayer is marked by humility. Third of all, in recapping this morning, God-honoring prayer is marked by pure motives.

Because he tells us in verse 5, Verily I say unto you, they have their reward. Well, they have their reward because all they wanted was to be seen of other people. All they wanted was to have other people look at them and say how great he is, how religious he is, what a good man is he.

They didn’t care anything about obeying God or honoring God. And so the reward they sought is the reward they ended up with. Folks, it honors God when we come to him in pure motives.

not to be seen by other people, not to have the praise or the applause of other people, but we come to Him simply because we want to honor Him, we want to obey Him, and we want a closer relationship with Him. Now tonight, the fourth point of this message is that God-honoring prayer is marked by genuineness. Genuineness.

Now this is similar to honesty and humility. But he says here 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. See, we see in this passage, we see in this verse right here, verse 6, that we are at times supposed to get alone with God.

And as I shared with you this morning, we shouldn’t take this in the sense that the only time to pray is when we’re alone, we’re in our closet, because that would preclude prayer at church, that would preclude prayer together, that would preclude prayer at mealtimes. We would just have to simply go in our closet all the time and pray. I don’t believe he’s telling us that we have to be in our closet in order to pray to God.

Not only from what I’ve seen in the Bible, but what I’ve experienced in my own life, I believe you can pray just about anywhere. And we need to get past this notion that there are certain spots that are holier than others, and we have a better connection to God when we’re in this building or when we’re in a particular building. Folks, we are as connected to God through Jesus Christ right now as we ever will be.

Do you understand that? In terms of our relationship, we can’t have a, we can’t have, I want to make sure I say this correctly, we can’t have more of a relationship with God than what we already have through Jesus Christ. We can have a stronger relationship, we can have a closer relationship, but this assumption that somehow we come to a certain place and pray and God hears us better is foolishness. It comes from pagan ideas where they would build the high places, you know, in Solomon’s day, they’d build the high places up in the mountains because they thought if I go up on top of the mountain, surely the gods will hear me better.

Folks, that’s foreign to Christianity. We can pray here in the church building. We can pray in the restaurant.

We can pray in our living room. We can pray in our closet. We can pray in the workplace.

And hear me on this, we can pray in school. I did it all the time. I just didn’t stand up and have a teacher lead me doing it.

And we don’t have to draw attention to ourselves either. As a little aside, let the government or anybody else tell you you can’t pray anywhere. I could be sitting here with my eyes wide open and looking right at you and praying and you’d never know it.

Folks, we can pray anywhere and God hears us as his children. And to be honest with you, some of my best prayer times are when I’m in the car by myself. And when I get sick of listening to talk radio, I turn it off and I talk to God.

And those are some of my best prayer times. That for me is the prayer closet. But whether it’s a physical closet or not.

There’s something to be said about getting alone with God, getting someplace where you shut out all the distractions and you’re one-on-one with God. It’s not for his benefit that he suddenly hears you better because you’re in the closet. It’s for your benefit.

It’s for my benefit because we’re shutting out the distractions, all the things that try to sneak in and claim our attention, and we’re also removed from the temptation to try to put on a show for anybody else. Because when you’re alone in the closet with God, who is there to put a show on for? We can try to put on a show for God, but this verse makes it clear that He sees in secret.

He not only sees what goes on in that closet, He sees what goes on in our hearts. Folks, we can’t fool God. We cannot fool God.

And that’s why I say that God-honoring prayer is marked by genuineness. Folks, when we get alone with God, we’re locked in a room with Him. And He sees and knows everything that’s on our heart, on our mind.

knows our thoughts before we even think them, what do we possibly think that we can hide from God? Let’s just be who we are and stop all the pretense, stop pretending, stop acting like we’re holier than we are, stop acting like we’re better than we are, and be honest with God about our sins, our shortcomings, our needs, and everything else. We could be locked in a room one-on-one with just about anybody else and probably fool them about some things.

I’ve seen enough episodes of Law and Order to know that when they lock the officer and the suspect in the room with the mirror and they’re there one-on-one, they can grill them for hours, and sometimes they can pull the wool over their eyes about some things. But folks, God is not fooled. When we’re one-on-one with him in that room, there’s no pretense.

There’s no facade. It’s to our benefit to get alone with God at times. Go into the closet.

As I said, for me, I think the closet is, If I go sit in the closet to pray, I’m going to start organizing things. Can we just be honest? I’m going to go in there and I’m going to start praying, and then I’m going to see stuff and think, okay, that needs to be over there.

That just needs to be thrown away. And I’m going to come out with a clean closet and a dirty life probably. For me, the closet may not be a physical closet.

As I’ve said, for me, the closet is the driver’s seat of my car. For you, the prayer closet may be your kitchen table early in the morning before everybody else gets up. For you, the prayer closet may be to go out somewhere in the woods.

Folks, I don’t know, but we need to get alone with God, one-on-one with God, and have an honest heart-to-heart. One of the things I shared with you this morning, and maybe I’m belaboring this point too much, but I think it needs to be driven home a little forcefully because I think it’s so hard for us. But I shared with you this morning talking about the Leonard Ravenhill book, Why Revival Tarries.

And one thing that he says in there is that I believe he calls the prayer meeting the handmaiden of the church. Maybe not. Handmaiden may not be the right word.

I can’t remember exactly what word he uses. But back home, we would call it the redheaded stepchild of the church. We just treat it like it’s not even, you know, it’s Cinderella in the family.

You remember the story of Cinderella? The wicked stepsisters were treated like they were just up and Cinderella was just ignored and pushed aside. If I can use that word, the prayer meeting is the Cinderella of the church all too often.

Because you can’t put on a show. And I know in their day they would come and put on a show in their prayers. And it is still possible to put on a show in praying.

If I’m not careful, I can catch myself doing it. When I’m praying out loud in church, and at the same time I’m praying to God and trying to focus on what I’m saying to Him, I’m also thinking, oh, I wish I hadn’t said that just that way. That sounded stupid.

They’re all going to think I’m dumb. Okay, in a little way, I’ve just started putting on a show. It is possible.

But when you look at all the ways people today demonstrate their religiousness, just standing up and praying, isn’t one that’s really going to always make people impressed with us. And in fact, I submit to you, it’s one of the least showy things that we do. And we’ve experienced some intense prayer times together.

Just about a month and a half ago, everybody who was here on a Wednesday night came down front and stood around me and my family, and we cried together and we prayed together as you all prayed for me and lifted us up to the Lord. And folks, there was some serious prayer that went on. And if anybody was to tell me that somebody here was putting on a show that night, I would not believe it because I heard you pray and I saw your faces and I know it came from the heart.

We gathered around about two, two and a half months ago, brother Brad Gathright, before he left to go back to Honduras. And even though he’s not sent from our church, we prayed over him as he was about to go. And some of us prayed out loud and others of us stood here and prayed silently.

And for, not just together sitting in the pews, but that we’ve gathered around. We prayed around Mary and for her family and some others. And there have been times at Disciple Way that we’ve just canceled the Disciple Way session and we’ve had a prayer time together.

And folks, there was no show about it. Our prayer needs to be marked by genuineness. Our prayer needs to be marked not just by words that we’re spouting out, but by genuine feeling, a genuine desire to see God do something, whether it’s to fix the situation or to fix us in the situation, our prayer should be motivated, should be marked by genuineness, and banish any thought of putting on a show.

Because from what I’ve seen, those are the kinds of prayers that God does honor and that God does reward. God-honoring prayer is marked by genuineness. Getting alone with God somewhere and not trying to pretend with Him.

Fifth of all, God-honoring prayer is marked by substance. God-honoring prayer is marked by substance. You may be thinking, what does he mean marked by substance?

A lot of things are said in our society, and not all of them are worthwhile. If you don’t believe me, go home and get on Facebook or Twitter, and probably 80% of the stuff you’ll find on there is fluff and nonsense, unless you’re looking at my page. That’s a joke.

Just because something is said doesn’t mean it means anything. There was a song that came out a few years ago, well, I’d say a few years ago. It was when I was in high school, so a few times too, I guess, years ago.

It was written by a Christian singer, and the title of the song was Smell the Color Nine. Now, in the lyrics, I know it had something to do with God, but I couldn’t tell you what that means. He spent a lot of time writing the song, and I’m sure he had something he meant by it, but just from the lyrics, I could understand Smell the Color Nine.

Yeah, you’re saying something, but it doesn’t mean anything. Just because something is said doesn’t mean it’s meaningful, doesn’t mean that it has any substance to it. When we talk about substance, talking about the difference between a 12-year-old on Twitter and a Shakespeare play.

They’re not even in the same league because there’s a difference in substance. One is full of OMG and LOL and all this, and then you’ve got Shakespeare. Folks, substance is meaning, is importance.

And he says in verse 7, but when you pray, use not vain repetitions as the heathen do. Our prayer should have substance in that it shouldn’t just be meaningless repetition. That’s what vain repetitions means.

They were just repeating words over and over and there’s no meaning to it. Probably, well, when I hear the phrase vain repetitions, my mind goes to some of the Hindu groups. And I don’t say this to be offensive toward them, not that there are any of them here tonight.

But the Hare Krishnas in particular, I think of them, and they used to be a lot more prevalent, I’m told, in airports and things, and chanting mantras. And they’d say, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama. And I’m sure that means something in one of the Indian languages.

But at some point, you repeat it over and over enough, and really it loses all meaning. You’re just saying it because it’s what you’re supposed to say. I think of even Westerners taking yoga and repeating these mantras, the word Aum, which incidentally is anybody who thinks those things in Christianity are compatible, the meditation and the same.

Aum is some syllable about connecting with the Hindu deity Brahman. So if anybody tries to introduce meditation to you, don’t play with that stuff. But to sit there and repeat mantras over and over, and eventually it means nothing.

Or to hear people talking about doing penance in the Catholic Church and saying Hail Mary, full of grace, and repeating the whole prayer. And you’ll hear, well, for that, go say ten Hail Marys and five Our Fathers. And folks, just repeating words with no meaning behind them doesn’t cut any ice with God.

And as I said this morning, praying to Mary sure doesn’t cut any ice with God. Doesn’t benefit us at all. And sometimes we do the same thing.

Sometimes we do the same thing without realizing it. And I mentioned this morning, growing up in church and hearing people pray and sort of patterning my prayers after that. I grew up as a young boy.

My dad would come pray with us every night when we would go to bed, my sister and I. And we would, my sister and I would, you know how kids call shotgun and the first one to say it gets to sit in the front seat of the car. Whichever one was the first one to say, come pray with me first, because it was a competition to get dad to come pray with us first. And I grew up listening to my dad praying.

And one thing he always said was, after he addressed God, we thank you for this day. That’s not a bad thing to pray, is it? We’re thankful for the day that God’s given us and all his blessings.

But I realized when I was in college, from hearing that, that was just something I rattled off without thinking about it. And I remember being here, since I’ve come here, sitting down with a family who had just lost a loved one, and them asking me to pray with them, and me starting off with, dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. And I thought, oh, that was stupid.

Not that we’re thankful for this day, but they are really not, we’re supposed to be thankful in all things, but they are not in the place right now that they want to hear about how thankful we are for what God has done for us today. And I just thought, this is what happens when you rattle off words to God without thinking about it. And I started to think about all the phrases that I use in prayer.

And it’s not that they’re bad or that I don’t mean them, It’s just that they’re being said thoughtlessly, and they’ve become like vain repetition. And you may still hear me say when I pray, Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. But I try to be more careful now that when I say that, it really is because I’m thankful for what God has done for us that day and not just as something to say.

And how many times have we prayed, Lord, let your will be done? Because we’re told in the Bible that’s what we’re supposed to pray, and yet we really don’t mean it. I mean, because truth be told, we know what we want God to do, and we know when we want Him to do it.

And our attitude sometimes is almost shame on Him for not doing what I want Him to do. Folks, just saying, thy will be done, if we don’t mean it, is a vain repetition. Folks, prayer is a conversation with God.

And if you had a conversation with somebody here and you just spit out cliches and platitudes and never really said anything, people really wouldn’t want to talk to you too much. And yet we go to God and we do the same thing. He tells us, don’t use vain repetition like the heathens do.

Don’t just say words to be saying them. When we talk to God, we need to treat it as a conversation. We are speaking, ladies and gentlemen, to the king of the universe.

And even though his time is infinite because he exists outside of time, we shouldn’t waste his time by saying things we don’t mean. When we go to God, a prayer that honors God is marked by substance. It’s marked by meaning that what we say we mean.

And we really are having a conversation with God rather than just rattling off words. And finally tonight, God-honoring prayer is marked by faith. God-honoring prayer is marked by faith.

He tells them not to use the vain repetitions as the heathen do. And then says in verse 7, For they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. They think if they just keep talking, their deities will hear them.

That their gods will answer them. They think if they just talk enough, that God will do something. And he says, And I’ve mentioned before, every time I read this verse, and he says, don’t use vain repetition the way the heathens do, because they think if they just keep talking, their gods will answer them.

My mind goes to the story of Elijah at Mount Carmel. And they had the show-off, or show-off, showdown, excuse me, the show-off. They had those show-off-y priests of Baal. No, they had the showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal to see who really was God.

Was it the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or was it this God with a lowercase g, Baal? And they built the altars and said, whichever God sends down fire is the true God. And Elijah soaked his with water so that it couldn’t, I guess it couldn’t light on fire by accident.

And the priests of Baal started praying to Baal and nothing happened. And by the end of their time, we see them hopping around on the altar, and they’re praying ecstatically, I’m sure, with vain repetitions, cutting themselves, trying to get the attention of Baal, and thinking if they just talk long enough, if they just talk loud enough, that somehow he’ll hear them and answer. Folks, our God is not deaf.

Our God is not asleep. Our God is not on vacation. Our God hears our prayers.

Our God answers our prayers, maybe not in our time and maybe not in our way, But our God answers our prayers because he knows the needs we have before we even ask him. Prayer is not a matter of twisting God’s arm to try to get him to do what we think he ought to do. Prayer is coming to God and believing that he has the situation well in hand and asking him to do what we already know he’s going to do and take care of us and do what is for our ultimate good and his ultimate glory.

And sometimes that means working out the situation the way we want the situation worked out. And sometimes that means God working on us in the midst of the situation. And I’m not saying, ladies and gentlemen, that we should not pray to God for something more than once.

We’ve looked at other passages that indicate there’s something to be said for perseverance in prayer. But at the same time, we cannot treat prayer, or I should say we should not treat prayer, as though we are having to twist God’s arm in order to get Him to do the right thing. Folks, God-honoring prayer is marked by faith.

faith rooted in a knowledge of who God is and that he knows our needs before we ask of them, that he desires to meet our needs, that he can meet our needs. Well, really, what is left for us to twist his arm about? He knows what we need, he wants to do something about it, and he has the ability to do something about it.

What is left is for us to trust in the God who already knows our needs. And in the meantime, praying with that understanding is a prayer of faith, saying, God, I believe that you can work this out in your time. God, I trust you.

God, I thank you in advance for what you’re going to do. Lord, help me to be patient while I wait on you. Lord, help me not to despair while I wait on you.

Rather than saying, God, it’s been 20 minutes and I’m still praying and you haven’t done anything, what’s going on? Can’t you hear me? Folks, he hears us just fine and he knows our needs before we even ask him.

God-honoring prayer. It’s not enough to just say the right words and some of the things that we’re going to learn about next week. God-honoring prayer needs to be done with the right attitude.

God-honoring prayer needs to be done with the right attitude. The right attitude involves us trusting Him, believing in His promises, and not trying to hide from Him what He already knows. Looking at all the things that the hypocrites did and saying, okay, now we need to do the opposite of that.