Matt 6:5-15
We continue our series from the Sermon on the Mount. We are looking at Matthew Gospel 6:5-15. Our subject this evening is a very large one; that of prayer, Christian prayer. What is prayer? How should we prayer? Why should we pray? What is the purpose of prayer? Unfortunately the subject of prayer is so large that no one sermon can do it justice; most probably a hundred sermons could not do it justice. So I shall say just a few things, I will not cover the whole subject today.
I believe that it is vital for the church today to understand the work of prayer more fully. For when we as Christians, and when we as a church drift away from a life of prayer we drift away from the power of God. When the power and purpose of prayer is abandoned by the church we are in danger of becoming just like any other religious sect, social group or society. We are in danger of becoming just like any group of like-minded people meeting together to do stuff we want to do. You see when the power and purpose of prayer lessens in a Christian fellowship they are in danger of missing the power and purposes of God. The life of prayer is the internal dynamic of the church. It is God’s planned internal combustion engine for the Christian church and for the individual.
One of the problems with prayer is that it is easy to slip into a wrong understanding of prayer; and remember no-one is an expert at prayer. We are not and the apostle Paul reminds us we are in good company: in the book of Romans [8:?] he says ‘we do not know how to pray as we ought’. If Paul was humble enough to say he didn’t understand prayer fully, let us also be humble enough to recognise that we can still learn a thing or two about prayer.
First and foremost Christian prayer is a secret mystery; it is carried out in that secret place of our hearts. It is our communication with our Lord and God. So our prayers define our secret life as Christians; our prayers define how we relate to God.
It is very easy to think that prayer is just requests, spoken words; words said in the right way, at the right time, with the right theology and with the right passion. In public prayer it is easy to think that our prayer must sound right to the ears of people listening. This is what the some of the Scribes and Pharisees practised at the time of Jesus. They loved standing up in front of people making a big show of prayers spoken for all to see and hear. They made a show of praying to God but really they were praying for others to hear.
Jesus says true, honest Christian prayer is not like this; it is not just words spoken at God or man. In fact true, honest, Christian prayer may not use any words at all. It may be just waiting with open heart for God to speak to us. As David said is psalm 37:7 ‘Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him;’, Isaiah said [Isaiah 8:17] “I will wait for the LORD” and Jeremiah said [Lamentations 3:24] ‘The LORD is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.’ And I believe that God still speaks today; for those who have ears to hear what the Spirit of God is saying.
It is also very easy to think that if we go on and on and on, babbling, working ourselves up into a passionate state, that God will be more likely to hear us and grant our demands. It is easy to think that the more we speak the more likely we will get heard by God. It’s easy to think if we put a shift in, an all night-er, that God will do what we want.
Remember that story from 1 Kings 18:25 where the Old Testament prophet Elijah and the prophets of Baal had a face-off, in fact it was more literally a ‘pray-off’. The people of Israel were tempted to abandon their God and follow another religion. Who had the right ideas about prayer and God? Elijah and the prophets of Baal had this competition to see whose God was more powerful and whose prayers were more effective. Listen to the account,
25Elijah said to the prophets of Baal, "Choose one of the bulls and prepare it first, since there are so many of you. Call on the name of your god, but do not light the fire." 26 So they took the bull given them and prepared it. Then they called on the name of Baal from morning till noon. "O Baal, answer us!" they shouted. But there was no response; no one answered. And they danced around the altar they had made.
I love this next bit, the prophets of Baal had been praying and shouting and dancing all morning.
27At noon Elijah began to taunt them. "Shout louder!" he said. "Surely he is a god! Perhaps he is deep in thought, or busy, or travelling. Maybe he is sleeping and must be awakened." 28So they shouted louder and slashed themselves with swords and spears, as was their custom, until their blood flowed. 29 Midday passed, and they continued their frantic prophesying until the time for the evening sacrifice. But there was no response, no one answered, no one paid attention.”
They shouted, they danced and prayed all day, from dawn to dusk. They were so keen, they even spilt their own blood to try and get the attention of their ‘god’. Prayer was magic for them; if you just say the right words, in the right way, at the right time, in the right place for long enough you can invoke the power of god to get what you want. Prayer for them was like a slot machine, a one-armed bandit, if you pull the lever enough times you’re bound to win.
It is easy to laugh at these prophets of Baal but is there any danger that we share some of their thinking? Do we sometimes think that our God is deep in thought, or busy, or maybe sleeping? Are we tempted to believe that to get his attention we must wake God up with our efforts in prayer? I hope not; Listen to what our Lord Jesus says in Matthew 6:
5"And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
The word in this passage that would have shocked the Jews listening to Jesus was the word ‘father’ literary ‘daddy’. Our Lord Jesus tells us this, and we should know it if we are truly born again; Jesus says God is our loving and caring father and by implication we are His cared for and loved daughters and sons.
Let us rest with this idea for a minute. God the all powerful one, the creator and sustainers of all things, the weaver of the fabric of the entire universe, the architect of the laws of nature itself, is our dad. God the most honourable one, the most Good, the most holy and perfect; the One who sits outside space and time; who sees all that was, and is, and is to come, is our dad. And He is our father in more than just name. For He genuinely loves and cares for us, wanting only what is best for us. The apostle John put it (1 John 3:1) “1How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!”
He is on our side. Don’t ever think He is against us, for scripture teaches again and again that is He on our side. No matter what your struggles are in life, we must understand this more deeply. Pauls teaches this in Romans [8:28,31] “28And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. ... What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Our God is neither aloof, nor uncaring. He is not busy deep in thought or asleep or hard to get hold of. He is closer that our closest friend and dearer to us than the dearest member of our family. Remember that prophet, who went through so much suffering and disappointment, the prophet Jeremiah. He put it (Lam 3:22-24 [Message]), like this “God's loyal love couldn't have run out, his merciful love couldn't have dried up. They're created new every morning. How great your faithfulness! I'm sticking with God (I say it over and over). He's all I've got left.”
So when we pray, we do not go to a distant God, one who is so far from us, one who neither knows us nor cares for us. No we do not need to persuade Him or cajole Him into being on our side. He knows our situations; He knows our weaknesses and failings. He knows us through and through. There is nothing we can hide from Him. He is closer to us and understands us better than we do ourselves! Listen again to David’s prayer in Psalm 139
1 O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. 2You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. 4Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD.
Our Heavenly Father knows what we want and need, even before we ask Him. He knows our position, our worries, our hopes and fears. He knows where we’re at and what is going on inside our heads and hearts. Believe this, He still loves us and will always love us. – Wow and Amen!
Knowing all this, why should we even bother to pray? If He knows what we want, even without us asking, and He loves us; why must we pray at all? Well this question goes to the very heart and purpose of prayer. What is prayer for?
The incarnation, the coming of Jesus, was for many things, but fundamentally it was about three things: forgiveness, reconciliation and fellowship. God wanted and still wants to restore relationships between his children and himself. Mending broken relationships has a cost attached. Wrong things done have to be put right. By his death on a cross, Jesus paid the price for putting things right; so that all fairness and Justice was satisfied. So how can we make amends for our sins? We cannot; but Jesus death on a cross was all the amends we will ever need. When we come to Him and accept that He took the punishment that should have been ours; we are able to receive His forgiveness and so enter into fellowship with God.
Paul summaries this is a wonderful text, in 2 Corinthians 5:17-19
17Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
Yes we can come before God with a clean and new slate.
18All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
God is in the business of forgiveness and reconciliation; bringing a world to himself in Christ. And as a church this is our chief message. We should be a people of forgiveness and reconciliation. We must believe and trust that what the word of God says is right and true.
So what is prayer for? You see God is not satisfied with just knowing us but he wants us to know him; He wants us to know him. God wants fellowship, friendship with us. There cannot be a one-side friendship. Friendship and fellowship always must be two-way; the affection must flow from both sides.
Like with Adam, in the Garden of Eden, God wants to walk beside us in the cool of the day. God doesn’t want us to run and hide ourselves from him. God wants us to share our life with Him. As I have said, God is our father and we are his children. So we pray, first and foremost, to dwell in his presence and live lives in sweet fellowship with Him. The things we ask for in prayer, our supplications and petitions are simply a part of this dynamic fellowship with God. They are not the main purpose of prayer.
We should make our requests know to God, for God in His word asks us to. But remember this; God already knows what we need and He already wants to help. So don’t let your prayers be just a shopping list of requests; it is a dialogue with God not a monologue. I believe that Evangelicals today have much to learn about God’s part in prayer; I mean listening to God, waiting in his presence and sharing sweet fellowship with our God.
This intimate fellowship with God is done in secret; in that secret place in our hearts; for who else can see it, just you and God. As David said is Psalm 91 ‘He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall live under the shadow of the Almighty’. When we go to that secret place of God’s, that place in our hearts, we shall know true life; the new and full life that God has for us.
For prayer is the language of love between the believer and their God. So Jesus recommends that we do this humbly, in secret, withdrawing from the worlds view; closing the door of your room, and dwelling in his presence.
Prayer is sometimes full of our words as we try and express our feelings, our hope and fears before God. As Peter says [1 Peter 5:6-7] “6Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. 7Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”. Prayer should also sometimes be a quite waiting, without words, in God presence. As the Lord said through the Prophet Isaiah [Isaiah 30:15]“This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength” We should wait in quiet trust for God to reveal His plans, for His Kingdom, His plans for the people we know, His plans for us.
It is true that God’s revelation of truth is complete. All wisdom and teaching necessary for salvation is found in the pages of Scripture. I do not believe God has new additional teaching for us. However, God would have us understand more completely what He has already revealed in His word. God, the Holy Spirit speaks to us today, reminding us, teaching us, encouraging us, with power and compassion, within our hearts. This dialogue with God is prayer. God can and does still give us advice for living this life. Prompting our hearts, our believing hearts, to stay the course, to trust that what He says he will do.
Coming back to our requests in prayer, He knows what we need and He is willing and able to help us. So when we ask, and we should ask, we learn to believe and trust that what God is really like. Our requests and God’s answers, this two-way communication, can be a means by which we understand His ways and purposes more. In our prayers, we do not move the almighty God to actions that He would not have done. No, No, we join with Him in the actions He has already planned to do. We learn to understand Him in His ways. We learn to say Your Kingdom come; yours, not my, will be done.
You see God is living and active, bringing about His Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. He does this with or without us; whether we are aware of it or not. If draw close to him, in prayer, listening and waiting we start to see a living and active God. When we pray along with the Holy Spirit’s prayers, as Paul says in Romans 8, we pray in harmony with the will of God.
In conclusion, let as us as the prophet Hosea put it [Hosea 10:12]
Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unploughed ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, until he comes and showers righteousness on you.
Break-up the unploughed ground of our lives by opening up our hearts again in prayer to our Father who is in heaven. Let us worship and honour his name. Let us be concerned with praying for his Kingdom to come. Let us pray that His work of forgiveness and reconciliation extends to all the people we know. Let us recognise our own weakness and confess our failings to him, accepting the forgiveness He offers us. He will protect us from evil and guide us through all of life’s troubles and temptations. So let us hide ourselves in the Lord, in quietness and trust, in that secret holy place in our hearts. Amen.
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