There are some things in the truth of God that, quite frankly, make the head ache if you think about them for very long! For instance, try to really get your mental arms around the biblical teaching regarding the Trinity. God is three personages and yet one Being. Each person of the Godhead is fully God and equal with the others, and yet they are distinct. That is hard stuff!
And there are many others if we take the time to think of them. One of these “brain busters” is the prayer life of our Lord Jesus. Even though He is God the Son, He relied heavily upon prayer in His earthly ministry! Mark’s gospel succinctly captures the Lord’s prayer habits for us in 1:35 where it is recorded, rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. Check that out carefully: it was early in the morning…still dark…a desolate place. But beyond all that, it was God praying to God! I may not grasp everything that is within that text, but I do understand that prayer is critically important!
It is reasonably safe to declare that none of us can completely comprehend how prayer works within the infinite mind and plan of God. After all, we see how Scripture over and again emphasizes God’s sovereignty, and we understand that God will work according to His perfect will. On the other hand, we also see in God’s Word that God’s actions pertaining to man are affected by the means of prayer to the Almighty. Sometimes we are left with the quandary in our minds, asking, “Does it matter if I pray?”
Of course, the simple answer is “Yes!” It matters because God commands us to pray. It is neither necessary nor entirely possible to grasp the divine working that makes prayer effective. God simply commands us to obey the principles of prayer that His Word gives. In fact, it was our Lord Jesus who said in Matthew 6, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this…” In other words, God already knows what you need—so pray!
When Jesus was giving this teaching to His disciples, it was a fact of Jewish religious life that prayer had become ritualized. The words were set, the manner of how to pray was declared, and prayers were either read or repeated from memory. As you may guess, it does not take too long for such prayers to be offered with almost no attention being paid to what was said. It easily becomes a routine religious exercise.
Now, that being said, it is true that “ritual” prayers are offered with one of three basic attitudes: sincerity, indifference, or pride. Those Jews in Christ’s day whose hearts were right used the times of prayer to worship and glorify God. They would actually think about the words and with sincerity believed what they were saying when they prayed. Just because the prayers were written out and determined did not keep them from being genuine. Others, however, would go through the words with a minimum of thought and effort, doing whatever was deemed necessary just in order to get through the prayer time. They were totally indifferent with regard to prayer.
And then you had the scribes and the Pharisees who made certain that they recited the prayers meticulously, making sure to enunciate every word and syllable properly. It did not matter nearly as much to them if they knew or believed what they said — as long as they said it rightly! Three times a day they had a ready-made opportunity to parade their pious pride.
It was into this “mix” of prayer attitudes that the Lord Jesus spoke in Matthew 6:5. He said, “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.”
Now there is no denying that indifference and routine are genuine problems of the heart when it comes to prayer. But the Savior’s words seem to declare that the worst fault was that of wanting to be seen by others and heard at the street corners by other people. This motivation for so-called prayer was intrinsically evil, because it both came from and was intended to satisfy pride—all while pretending to honor God! The motive was sinful self-glory, an ultimate perversion of the means through which God is to be glorified in His Son (John 14:13).
This is the despicable fault that Jesus zeroes in on: “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites.” Prayer that focuses on self is always hypocritical, because, by definition, the focus of every prayer should be on God. Hypocrites are actors, pretenders, persons who hide their true self while playing a role. What they say and do does not represent what they themselves feel or believe but only the image they hope to create.
Jesus was saying the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees prayed for the same purpose they did everything else—to attract attention and bring honor to themselves. That was the essence of their “righteousness, ” regarding which Jesus said, “I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).
As always, the sin began in the heart. It was pride, the desire to exalt themselves before those who might see them pray, that was the root of the sin. Like the hypocrites who gave to charity for the sake of men’s praise (Matthew 6:2), those who prayed for the sake of men’s praise also had their reward in full. They were concerned only about the reward men could give, and that is all the reward they would receive.
But Jesus wants something better for His disciples. Jesus wants His followers to have the reward that only the Father can give. Jesus wants real prayer offered for real reasons of the heart to the only One who can answer such prayers! And He wants those prayers to be offered in the mode that is opposite of hypocrisy. Jesus wants us to pray with humility. After all, if we are truly bringing a genuine petition before the sovereign God of the universe, how can we be anything but humble? Christians, enter into prayer with honest humility, and leave the self-exalting hypocrisy to the pretenders.
Posted on February 1st, 2010 by Pastor Larry
Filed under: From the Pastor’s Pen