Matthew 6:5-8 "How Not to Pray"

1:11For a lot of people, we just think of prayer as simply talking to God, and so we conclude: if you know how to talk, you know how to pray. And there is some truth to that. But I think it's significant that when the disciples heard Jesus pray, they Said to him, Lord, teach us to pray. Lord, teach us to pray. Now remember, these men had grown up Jewish. So they had grown up hearing a lot of prayer.

1:48They had grown up praying a lot of prayers, probably multiple times per day. They were very familiar with prayer. And yet, after they heard Jesus pray, they said essentially, Lord, we do not know how to pray like you pray. So teach us to pray like you do. That is very interesting. Because remember, Jesus sent them out to teach, and yet none of the disciples said to Jesus, can we have a teaching lesson? Jesus sent them out to heal the sick.

2:27And not one of the disciples said, Jesus, I was absent that day. Can you remind us how we do that? Jesus sent them to cast out demons. And not a one of them said, what's the difference between casting out one demon and a legion of demons? Is that Leviosa or Leviosa? The disciples didn't ask Jesus any of these things. Things that almost all of us would say, yes, that is. Way harder than praying. But they did ask Jesus, Lord, teach us to pray.

3:09So, over the next four weeks, that's what we're going to do. We're going to ask Jesus to teach us how to pray. And Jesus begins his teaching on prayer by telling us how not to pray here in Matthew 5, or 6, rather, 5 through 8. And so, this morning, Jesus is going to train us by giving us two things not to do and then something to do. We're going to learn this morning that we must reject religious hypocrisy. We must reject pagan verbosity.

3:47And we must embrace Christian simplicity in prayer. So, let's take a look now at our text, Matthew 6, starting in verse 5. You notice here that he begins with the Jews, with the household of God, and he calls out their religious hypocrisy. So, a little background might be helpful here. You may know or you may not know that faithful Jews stopped three times every day, whatever they were doing, in order to pray. And if you've ever read the book of Daniel, you've come across this in practice. Daniel, who is in exile, stopped three times a day. He opened his windows towards Jerusalem, and he got down on his knees. He prayed.

4:32This is just what faithful Jews did. He wasn't doing this as an act of protest, he wasn't doing this to make a statement. It's just what he did. It's what all faithful Jews did. But Jesus notes here in verse 5 that there were some hypocritical Jews. And so, if they were, say, out and about running errands in the afternoon and the time came to pray, they would stop wherever they were, perhaps even on the street corner, university in Texas, and just start praying.

5:05They wouldn't make any attempt to find a private place to do that. And in the synagogue each week, it was customary for the synagogue ruler, the one who was in charge of the services, to call on one or more of the elders of the community to pray for the congregation each week. And that man or those men would stand before the congregation and offer a prayer. And because we're people too, we can understand the temptation there to pray in a way that you would impress those people with what you said or how you said it. You might be tempted to one-up the guy who just prayed before you or the guy who prayed last week.

5:47That's a temptation that's going to be common to all of us. And so here, Jesus confronts the religious hypocrisy of his fellow Jews. Look at verse 5. He says, 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. Now, I want you to notice, I think this is very helpful. Jesus does not call out any particular group of Jews.

6:20He doesn't say, don't be like the scribes, don't be like the Pharisees, don't be like the Sadducees, don't be like the Herodians. He doesn't call out any group of people because there are hypocrites in every single group of people. He just says, don't be like the hypocrites. And what makes these people hypocrites? Well, it is the fact that they are praying in order to be seen by others. So it's very important to note: Jesus is not saying, don't pray in public. He's not saying, don't pray with other people.

7:00Jesus did both of those things many times throughout his life and ministry. Think about Matthew 14 and 15 before he multiplies the fish and the loaves of bread for thousands of people. He looks up to heaven. He thanks God. He prays in front of these huge crowds. In John chapter 11, Jesus prays publicly before he raises Lazarus from the dead. In John 17, Jesus spends an entire night praying with his disciples. In an upper room. In Mark 14, Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane with some of his closest friends before he is arrested.

7:41And of course, on the cross, Jesus prays publicly, asking the Father to forgive those who are crucifying him and asking the Father to receive his Spirit. And so Jesus prayed both publicly and with others many times in his life and ministry. And if you read the book of Acts, the early Christians did this too. The apostles prayed often in public. Christians often gathered together in homes and at the temple to pray together. And so if Jesus intended to teach, you are never to pray in public, you are never to pray with other people, his own disciples did not understand that teaching because they did that stuff all the time.

8:24So the problem here is not praying publicly or with groups of believers, but praying to be seen by others. That is the problem. That's what makes praying both publicly or with others hypocritical when we do it to be seen by others. The question is, why would we do that? Why would we pray in order to be seen by other people? Well, the answer is pride. Pride. We want people to think well of us. Especially those who are in our circle. Whatever our circle values, that is what we want to be seen doing.

9:12So think about this for a moment. If your circle values a certain lifestyle of travel and experiences, then you're not just going to be tempted to do those things, you're going to be tempted to make sure that other people see you doing those things, perhaps on social media. If your circle values protesting, you're not just going to protest, you're going to want to be seen by others protesting. And if your circle values prayer, well, you're going to be tempted to make sure that other people see you praying.

9:57In John chapter 12, the Apostle John is talking about these Jews, these religious leaders, who believed in Jesus, but they didn't confess their belief in him because they were worried they were going to get put out of the synagogue. And look at what John writes about them. He says, for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. Boy, that is the human condition, isn't it? That is our dilemma in a nutshell.

10:30We are tempted to value the glory that comes from people more so than the glory that comes from God. So we are tempted to pray in order to be seen by others. And that can take a lot of different forms. For example, we may pray more often in public or with other people than we do in private, giving off the impression that we have a very robust private prayer life when really we don't. We might use certain words or phrases in public that we never use in private so that our prayers sound better to those who are listening.

11:14We might pray in certain places, maybe the break room at work, or a popular coffee shop in town, or on campus at the MSC, so that people will be sure to walk by and see us praying. We might even be tempted to tell others about our private prayer lives in not-so-subtle ways. Sorry, I didn't respond to your text. I've been praying and fasting since Thursday. So hungry. If you pray in order to be seen by others, then Jesus says, Truly I say to you, you have received your reward.

11:58If you want to be seen by others, If you want to impress other people, if you want to be complimented, if you want others to think more highly of you, Jesus says, congratulations, you have your reward. And that is the only reward that you're going to get. But, friends, as we'll see later in the text, God wants a lot more for us than that. So, make a note to ask yourself some tough questions today and going into this week. Why do I pray the way that I do?

12:35Why do I use the words I use? Why do I pray where I pray? Is it to be seen by people or the Father? Is it because I'm concerned with how I look and sound, or is it because I really want to talk to the Lord? Jesus says that when it comes to prayer, we must reject religious hypocrisy. But then he takes it a step further. He says we also have to reject pagan verbosity. Go down to verse 7.

13:08Jesus says, 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. So he starts off with the religious hypocrisy of his fellow Jews, but he is an equal opportunity offender. And so Jesus moves on now to the Gentiles, to those non-Jews, and he condemns their pagan verbosity. Now, the Greek word that's translated, excuse me, the Greek word that's translated here, heap up empty phrases, that is a crazy compound word that is not found anywhere else in the Bible or anywhere else in ancient literature for that matter. It is only found here in this verse. And so the context, namely the reference to how the pagans prayed, how the Gentiles prayed, as well as how the earliest Christians understood and taught this verse, help us to understand what Jesus is getting at here.

14:14So when they prayed, many Gentiles in the ancient Greco-Roman world, they would name all of their gods, all of the gods in the Greek pantheon, all of the gods in the Roman pantheon, and then they would say the same exact words to each and every one of those gods or goddesses, hoping that because they prayed all of those things to all of those different gods and goddesses, that one of them would answer. That their many words would move the needle with at least one of those gods or goddesses. Now, that shouldn't really surprise us because every other religion is based upon works rather than grace.

15:02In every other religion, you've got to make the right sacrifices. You've got to visit the right holy sites. You've got to avoid doing these things, and you've got to make sure you do these things. You've got to say these words and not those words. And by doing one or more of those things, you can hope to earn the favor of your God or gods. But, friends, the God of the Bible is different. We learn in Scripture that God reveals Himself to be holy, to be perfectly righteous in every way. So nothing that we can do or say is going to be good enough to earn His favor.

15:48But thankfully, God also reveals Himself to be a God of mercy and grace. So believers can come to Him, we can address Him, we can be received by Him, not because we've said or done the right things, but we can come to Him and be received by Him because Jesus has come, lived a perfect life, died in our place, and rose from the grave so that we could be received by the Father, so that we could speak to the Father. There is nothing more that we can do, and there is nothing more that we must do in order to. To be able to address our Heavenly Father.

16:34Now, just as Jesus wasn't saying that we can't ever pray in public or with other people, he's not saying here by saying don't heap up empty phrases, he's not saying our prayers have to be short, and he's not saying that we can't ever repeat ourselves in prayer either. Our prayers don't have to be short. Earlier, I referenced John 17, which is known as the high priestly prayer. Jesus' prayer takes up an entire chapter of the Bible. That was no short prayer. You think about many of the Psalms that were written to be prayed or sung. Many of those are not short at all. They're very long. Jesus once prayed and fasted for 40 days and 40 nights straight.

17:24So understand that when Jesus says don't heap up empty phrases, he's not saying don't ever pray long prayers. And he's also not saying that we can't repeat ourselves in prayer. Think about in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus is praying on the night that he's arrested and betrayed. He goes with some of his closest friends and he prays that the Father would remove the cup of suffering from him. And look at what Mark records. And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words.

18:01In Luke 18, Jesus tells the parable of the persistent widow who keeps going to the judge and demanding justice using the same words. She goes again and again demanding justice until she gets the justice that she deserved. And Jesus says that the whole point of this parable in Luke 18 is so that we should always pray and not lose heart, implying that it's not wrong to ask for the same thing over and over again. And then, of course, when the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray in Luke 11, Jesus responds, when you pray, say.

18:44And then he gives what we call the Lord's Prayer. Now, Jesus was not saying this is the only prayer that you can ever pray or the only prayer that you should pray, because keep in mind that aside from teaching us to pray in this manner, Jesus himself, as far as we know, never prayed those words. Rather, this is a prayer that we should pray together on some kind of regular basis, but it's not supposed to be our only prayer.

19:12So, back here in Matthew 6, Jesus is not saying that our prayers have to be short or we can't repeat ourselves. He's saying, don't heap up empty phrases like the Gentiles do. Don't repeat the same words over and over again, thinking that as long as you say it enough times, you obligate. God to answer you. He's saying, don't do that. So, how do we do this? I mean, my guess is there's not too many of us in the room who literally say the same words over and over in our prayers.

19:46But maybe we've got some other ways that we use empty phrases when we pray. Think about times that you've prayed with other Christians before. Have you ever been praying with a group of people and kind of the same clichés get said every time? I don't need to name them. You know what they are. Why do we do that? We don't do that in our private prayer life, I don't think. We don't do that when we're speaking with friends, saying the same exact phrase in the same exact way every time.

20:22Why do we do that with the Father? That could be a way that we're heaping up empty phrases. What about when we pray before meals and we say, bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies? I mean, nothing wrong with God blessing the food and asking him to do that, but if we thought about what we're praying, I mean, if you're eating healthy food, whether you're a Christian or a pagan, it's going to nourish your body. That's just science.

20:53And if you're eating donuts, I just don't think God's going to answer that prayer. So, maybe we should think before meals: what are we praying and why are we praying that? Some believers tend to use the names of God a lot. It's almost a verbal pause when we pray. So, instead of saying um, we say Father or God or Lord or Jesus or whatever it might be. But again, we're talking to our Heavenly Father. When Jesus teaches us to pray, He addresses the Heavenly Father one time and then makes His requests. When we talk to other people, we don't say their name over and over and over again in conversation. Why would we do that when talking to our Father?

21:41And so, friends, when we pray, we shouldn't heap up any kind of empty phrase, thinking that God will hear us because we say the right words or the right number of words. So, we need to reject religious hypocrisy, but we also need to reject pagan verbosity. So, how should we pray? We should embrace Christian simplicity. We should embrace Christian simplicity by praying humbly, praying faithfully, and praying to be rewarded by God. Let's go back here now to verse 6.

22:23After addressing the religious hypocrisy of the Jews, Jesus says, 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. So in this verse, Jesus teaches us to embrace Christian simplicity by praying humbly. Instead of praying to be seen by others, we should seek out a private place where only the unseen God can see and hear our prayers. Jesus himself set a great example for us. Look on the screen at Luke chapter 5.

23:03Luke writes, But now, even more, the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray. We often feel like we have too much to do, or at least too much to do to take the time to go away by ourselves and pray. Jesus may or may not have been the busiest person who's ever lived, but what is true is that from very early in the morning until very late at night, he had people lined up wanting to hear him, wanting to talk to him, wanting to be healed by him.

23:48There were many occasions where if Jesus didn't send the crowd away, they would have stayed there perhaps for days. But we need to remember that the busier that Jesus got, The more people that wanted to line up and hear him or touch him or talk to him, the more often he would withdraw to desolate places and pray. On the last day before his crucifixion, he spent hours praying alone and with his disciples in the upper room and then going out to the Garden of Gethsemane. Before the most significant event in human history, Jesus went to a private room in a private garden and prayed by himself and with a small group of friends.

24:40Friends, embracing Christian simplicity means that we pray humbly, not to be seen or heard by others, but just to be seen and heard by God. Do you have that private place? Some place at home or elsewhere inside or outside that you can go to to shut out the distractions, your phone and the noise, and the watching eyes and the listening ears, and just pray to your heavenly Father who is unseen. Do you have that place? If not, I want to encourage you to take time this week to find that private place where you can pray, whether by yourself or with others, to your Father who is unseen, where you can learn to pray humbly.

25:35Let's go down now to verse 8. After talking about the pagan verbosity of the Gentiles, he says, Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. In this verse, Jesus teaches us to embrace Christian simplicity by praying faithfully. Praying faithfully. Instead of thinking that we're going to be heard because of our many words that we heap up, we should pray, believing that God already knows what we need before we ask Him, and that He is a good Father who loves to give good gifts to His children. Look on the screen in Matthew 7.

26:24Jesus says, Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks, it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more? Will your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask Him?

27:07Friends, Jesus teaches us to ask and seek and knock because He is a good Father who loves to give good gifts to His kids. Our Heavenly Father is not a stingy God who will only dispense good things if we manipulate Him with the right words. He is not like that. He is a gracious Father who loves to give when we ask and who loves. I totally lost my train of thought. Thank you, Blake. He loves to give what we ask. He loves to knock, to open rather, when we knock. What a great father. We don't have to manipulate him. He is gracious. And so, brothers and sisters, I think one of the hardest things for us to believe is that we serve a gracious God.

28:11Friends, Jesus came and died for us so that we could be reconciled to the Father. He commands us to pray so that we will communicate with him. He tells us these things: ask, seek, and knock, because he loves to answer. He loves to be found. To open that door to us. So understand, embracing Christian simplicity in prayer means that we faithfully go to God, believing that He already knows what we need and already knows what we want. All we have to do is ask in faith, all we've got to do is pray in faith. So I encourage you to pray faithfully, believing that you are praying to a good and gracious Heavenly Father who already knows what you need.

29:00And then finally, Jesus teaches us to embrace Christian simplicity by praying to be rewarded by God. I want you to go back to verse 1 in this chapter. We didn't read this today, but this is an important verse because it sets up everything here in chapter 6. Jesus says, 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.

29:34Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people. Why? Jesus says, because then you won't be rewarded by your Father. Friends, a lot of people are uncomfortable with this idea. This idea that we should do things in the Christian life to be rewarded by God the Father. You know, we think like there's Something wrong with that because I shouldn't have any other motives. I shouldn't be doing things in order to receive a reward. But I think Randy Alcorn is so helpful here. He says, Look, God is not against storing up treasure. He commands us to do it. He's against us storing up treasure in the wrong place.

30:25He says, Don't do it here on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. He says, Store up your treasure in heaven. Wait for that eternal payoff down the road instead of some kind of temporary little payoff today. So, friends, being rewarded by God is the greatest thing that could ever happen to us. When we stand before God, and all of us will one day, we want to hear, well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master.

30:59And here in these verses, Jesus says that we should embrace Christian simplicity, praying humbly and faithfully in order to be rewarded by our Heavenly Father. That goes back to what we just saw in verse 8. We are praying to a good and gracious and kind Heavenly Father, one who is so gracious that he promises to reward us just for doing what he commanded. So I encourage you to embrace Christian simplicity. By praying to be rewarded by God rather than people, His rewards are the only ones that last, so they are the only rewards that truly matter.

31:43So, this morning, Jesus has helped us understand how not to pray. We've got to reject religious hypocrisy, we've got to reject pagan verbosity, we want to embrace Christian simplicity. But there's this one question that lingers here, and that is, how can we pray to God at all? We are sinners who have rebelled against Him. How can we approach a heavenly God and speak to Him? Friends, Jesus is the reason that we can pray to God and the reason that our prayers are heard and answered. He was born to save us and to reconcile us to God the Father. After living a life of perfect obedience, He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. He fell down on his face and he asked his Father to take away the cup of suffering. But he also prayed, Yet not my will, but yours be done.

32:45And then on the cross, as Jesus suffered in our place for our sin, he cried out to his Father, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And for the first time and the only time, His prayer went unanswered. Jesus lived and suffered and died and rose and prayed a prayer that went unanswered so that through faith in his life, death, and resurrection, we could be reconciled to God and we could come to him in prayer, knowing that no prayer we ever pray will go unanswered.

33:29So, if you've never put your faith in Jesus, if you've never turned from your sin and put your trust in his life, death, and resurrection, let today be the day. Your very first prayer, guaranteed to be heard and answered by God, can be, Lord Jesus, I confess that you are Lord and Savior. I believe in my heart that you rose from the dead. Have mercy on me, a sinner, and he will hear you. Because of Jesus, the Father will hear you.

34:15Then you can begin to talk to your Heavenly Father anytime. You can reject religious hypocrisy. You can reject pagan verbosity. And you can embrace Christian simplicity by praying humbly, praying faithfully, and praying to be rewarded. By God, I hope that you will, and I hope that all Christians here today will as well. Let's pray. Father, we are so thankful that we can approach you in prayer, that we can talk to you anytime, day or night. We don't have to wait in a line, we don't have to go through certain motions or do certain things.

35:23We don't have to make sure that we've had enough quiet times or the right quiet times. We don't have to have gone a certain number of hours or days without sinning. We can approach you anytime, anywhere, because you sent your son Jesus to live and die and rise again for us. Father, I pray that over the next four weeks, you would teach us how to pray. Many of us know. How to pray, but we can still grow.

36:04Others here have never started praying, and this can be the beginning for them. But Lord, as we've prayed much throughout this year, we pray that you would mold us into a praying people and a praying church. That we communicate through our actions and not just our words, not just what we say we believe on paper. That we cannot do anything apart from you, Jesus. So make us into a people of prayer, we ask. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen.

36:46Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.