Praying Without Hypocrisy
Matthew 6:5-8
Any time you get into any discussion of prayer, you get into a certain area of difficulty. It's hard to completely comprehend how prayer functions within the plan and the sovereignty of the mind of God.
On the one hand, you have the view which says that God is sovereign and so God's going to do whatever He's going to do whether you pray or don't pray. He's going to do it and so it doesn't really matter a whole lot. Prayer isn't really that essential in determining God's actions.
On the other hand, you have the view which says that God pretty well doesn't do anything unless somebody prays. So you have both extremes. And some people believe then that prayer simply is a way of communing with God about what He's already going to do any how and others feel that prayer is really beseeching God to do what He otherwise would never do.
And it's very difficult sometimes to deal with what is the truth because there are times when we see in the Scripture that men pray and it says God, as it were, changed His mind or His direction and did something that it appeared He wouldn't do.
There are other times when God says, I'm going to do what I'm going to do anyway. And so the mystery is difficult to solve.
But what we must know about prayer and what we must be committed to is that when the Bible teaches principles of prayer, God expects us to be obedient. Whether or not we can fathom the mystery of how it works isn't the issue.
And so as we approach Matthew 6:5-8, we hear some teaching about prayer from the lips of our Lord that is very basic to this matter of being obedient in our prayer life.
I trust that God will speak to all of us in regard to the lessons of prayer that Jesus teaches in this passage. Now let me give you some background. He is speaking on the side of a hill in the land of Israel to Jewish people.
He is speaking not only to His disciples, but He is speaking to the Pharisees and the scribes who represented the phony religious leaders of the nation and beyond them to the people gathered with them.
His point in this whole sermon is to contrast true spiritual life with the false standard of the Pharisaic, Judaistic system of that time.
He has already told them that their theology is inadequate in Chapter 5, He will tell them later in Chapter 6 that their approach to the material things of life is inadequate and here in our passage, He tells them their religious life is inadequate. And He picks three illustrations out of their religious life to show them their failures, giving, praying, and fasting, which are religious activities.
As we saw last week, their giving was hypocritical. As we will see next week, their fasting was hypocritical, as we will see this week, their praying was hypocritical.
They were hypocritical in their giving toward men. They were hypocritical in their fasting, which was dealing with self, and they were hypocritical in their praying which was toward God. So every dimension of their spiritual experience involved hypocrisy.
They were phonies when they gave. They were phonies when they fasted and they were phonies when they prayed.
And so He tackles the matter of prayer in verses 5-8. Most certainly He is dealing with the Pharisees and their religious show.
But it is also a good word for the disciples. Hypocrisy can find its way even into the life of one who is truly a child of the king. And all of us know well how that can happen.
Now, prayer was a major issue among the Jews. Prayer was a tremendous central factor in their religion. They were highly involved in praying. In fact, the rabbis believed that prayer was greater than all good works.
The rabbis also said, "he who prays within his house surrounds it with a wall that is stronger than iron." The rabbis regretted that they couldn't pray all day long, they wrote.
No nation has ever had a higher ideal of prayer than Israel. No religion ever set a greater standard of prayer than the Hebrew people. They really had a priority place for prayer.
But unfortunately as we have learned in the Sermon on the Mount, in almost every dimension of their religious life had errors and hypocrisy.
For instance, their prayer became ritualized. They were functioning in their prayers only in terms of a ritual.
They also became experts at developing special prayers for special occasions. They had prayers for everything. I mean, it didn't matter what it was, they wrote a prayer for it and when that thing happened, you prayed that prayer.
Another fault that crept into the Jewish prayer pattern was that they decided that it was spiritual to pray long prayers. Do you remember as kid how there were some folks that prayed those long, repetitive prayers? Saying the same things over and over?
Nothing wrong with a long prayer if it's a real prayer. But there's something wrong with a long prayer if you're trying to impress everybody with your vocabulary and your theology.
That is followed by another problem, and that is a tendency to vain repetition.
Keep repeating yourself until God gets so weary of hearing you that He does what you want. That's basically it. Just keep doing it and doing it and saying it and saying it until He gets so sick of hearing it, that He finally reacts. That, by the way is a pagan approach to prayer. It was the approach of the prophets of Baal on Mt Carmel with Elijah.
Look at verse 5. It says in verse 5, they loved to pray. Now at first glance that sounds so wonderful, "for they love to pray."
But the question is why do they love to pray? Do they love to pray because the love God? Do they love to pray because it ushered them into the communion of His blessed presence? Why do they love to pray? They didn't love to pray for any good reason. They loved to pray to be seen by men.
That was the root problem. They wanted to be the show; the center of attention. They wanted to be on the stage. They were an actor in a theater.
They were putting on something for everybody to see how holy they were.
And that’s what the Lord wants to deal with here. The motive of our prayers. We may never unscramble all the mystery of prayer, but we can certainly deal with the issue of the motive as the Lord does here. Our prayers are not to be offered to men, but to God.
Do you ever pray and prayer and while you're praying in some group, you're saying in your mind, boy I bet they thought that was a good phrase? Boy, I'll bet ol’ so and so heard that one, that'll get him. Or whoever you're particularly preaching to in your prayer.
Or perhaps you thought boy, you know, I'm coming along in my prayers. This is one of the best ones I've ever prayed. You know, it's amazing and I know this in my own life, sometimes I'll be praying in the morning service and I'll say a phrase and all of a sudden, I'll just be talking to the Lord, you know, and all of a sudden I'll think oh boy that was a good one. I'll bet the people enjoyed that. And that's sad, you know that?
But I just want you to understand something about prayer and you need to learn this, prayer is not so sacred that Satan doesn't invade it. If I never learn anything more out of this text, you know what I learned? I learned that there's no holy ground that Satan doesn't try to get in on.
You'd think that when I have my deepest devotion and when I walk into the throne room of God and when I commune with God in His holy presence that I wouldn't have sin on my heels, but I do.
Sin will dog you to throne room of God. It came from there in the beginning with Lucifer and it'll track you right back. That makes all kinds of sense when you look at what Jesus is teaching here. He’s talking about pride and putting on a show.
And what He is saying is sinful pride will follow us into the very presence of God. In those quiet moments when we would enter His presence and worship Him in purity, we find ourselves being tempted to worship ourselves.
We tend to think of sin as we see it in rags and in the gutters of life.
We look at a drunkard poor fellow and we say there is sin. That is sin. But that is not the essence of sin.
To have a real picture and a true understanding of sin, you must look at some great saint, some unusually devout and devoted man. Look at him there on his knees in the very presence of God. Even their self is intruding itself and the temptation is for him to think about himself.
That, not the other, is the true picture of sin. The other is sin, of course, but there you do not see it at its acme. You do not see it in its essence.
If you really want to understand something about the nature of Satan and his activities, the thing to do is not to go to the dregs or the gutters of life. If you really want to know something about Satan, go away to that wilderness where our Lord spent 40 days and 40 nights. That's the true picture of Satan where you see him tempting the very Son of God while He is communing with the Father.
There's no sacred ground for Satan. He invades it all.
And I believe that the two greatest times of temptation Jesus ever experienced in His life leading up to His death were in the wilderness and in the Garden of Gethsemane.
And both times were times when He was in solitary, isolated communion with the Father and it was there in that very private place of His communion with God in prayer that Satan invaded with temptations.
The lesson here is don't think that because you have gone to the place of prayer, you have avoided the enemy. He'll be there dogging your footsteps. Sin defiles our deepest devotions and Jesus is saying to the Pharisees you may be praying, but your prayers have fallen to Satan's temptation.
Now, in this text, Jesus condemns their prayers on two faults.
1. They Were Praying Self-Centered Prayers
Pride is always the fatal flaw and certainly it was in this case.
verse 5
Notice the word when. You see it in verse 5, "when thou prayest." You see it in verse 6, "when thou prayest." You see it in verse 7, "when ye pray." In other words, it's not if. The Lord assumes you'll pray. That's as normal and natural to believer as anything is.
It's not something you have to ask believers to do. It's something that they do because communing with the source of their life is a normal thing.
But when you pray, He says, don't be like the hypocrites. Don't be a phony. And there can be a lot of phoniness in prayer. A lot of it. Whether it's public or private. It can be phony, insincere, less than genuine.
One commentator said, and I think it's a great statement, "The greatest danger to religion is that the old self becomes religious."
Now, what is the self-centered prayer? Look at it. "Don't pray as the hypocrites," the actors on the stage. For they love to pray. Now some people say standing. Now that's the issue. They stand and pray. They're not just taking a quiet place like the tax collector in Luke 18 over in a corner, afar off, bent over, not lifting their head. They stand.
But that's not the issue here. Because standing was the normal Jewish posture for prayer. In fact, the Old Testament teaches three prayer postures, kneeling, lying prostrate, totally out on the ground, and standing.
Praying standing was very common. That's not the issue.
For they loved to pray standing, that would be very normal. No one would think anything of that if they were standing.
Others say well, no, the sin here is that they love to pray standing in the synagogues. No, that's not a problem either, because the synagogue was the place where lots of people stood and prayed. Synagogue is really the forerunner of the church. It was an assembly place. It wasn't the temple. It wasn't where the sacrifices were made. It was just where people assembled to hear the reading of the law and to have it interpreted and to pray together and to worship the Lord.
And so there was common prayer in the synagogue, that was very normal and there was nothing wrong with it. There is nothing wrong with public prayer.
Nothing at all, it was very much a matter of normal practice in Jewish life. And the synagogue was the normal place where the group of believers came and prayed and taught the word of God.
Others say well, it was in the corners of the streets. No, that's not really a major issue either. Because if you happen to be going down the street and it was time to pray, you prayed wherever you are. So that was very normal. Jews would be praying all over the place. If they couldn't all make it to the temple at the third, sixth, ninth hour, if they couldn't get to a synagogue, if they were outside their home, if they were in the street, that's fine. They would pray wherever they were.
And they could pray standing, very silently, very unobtrusively, not even being noticed, just simply bowing the head, the quietness of the moment. They could say their prayers and no one would know. That would be a very normal course of life. That isn't the issue either.
However, there is a sneaky little hint here that something's awry because the Lord changes the word for streets.
Notice back in verse 2 when He talked about giving to the poor in streets, He used the word for narrow streets or a lane. Now He uses the word for wide streets. Now that's a hint of something. And He doesn't just say in the streets. He says in the what? Corners of the streets. He says when you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who pray standing in the synagogues and in the widest possible intersections.
Now we're getting the picture. There wouldn't be anything wrong in praying at a wide intersection if you happen to be there when it was time to pray. There wouldn't be anything wrong with praying any place. You could pray in the middle of an intersection. You could pray anywhere you wanted.
It wouldn't matter. But that's not the issue. The issue is in order that they may be seen by men. Everything else up to that point could have been all right. You get a little hint that something isn't right when you get them in the main intersections doing it.
But the point is they did it to be seen by men. And what our Lord is dealing with is this, in your prayers, make sure you're communing with God, not performing for men.
Self-centered prayer to call attention to me has no place. Scripture doesn't condemn public prayer. It only condemns self-centered prayer. And you can pray a self-centered prayer in public or in private. Some people would say well, I don't pray in public. I do all my praying in private. That's just as phony as if you prayed in public, because it's the attitude of your heart. That's the point.
They did it to be seen by men. It's the attitude.
And He says at the end of verse 5, "they have their reward." What do you mean they have their reward? Well, they wanted to pray before men to get praise for men and they got it and that's it and it's a business word meaning a closed transaction that is receipted. They got their reward. God owes them nothing; nothing.
They prayed self-centered prayer, and they are rewarded in full with human applause.
Then notice the contrast.
verse 6
How do you avoid praying self-centered prayers?
Closet. It means an inner chamber or secret place. It was used of the place where you kept your treasures, the most private place. Where you wouldn't want to bring anyone for fear they might take something or know what you possess. The most private place you have. And when you have shut the door, make it as private as possible, then pray to your Father, who's in secret and He who sees in secret will reward you.
Do you want to be rewarded by God or by men? Do you really want men to hear your prayer or do you want God to hear? Because if you want men to hear your prayer, God doesn't hear it.
You get that? People say, you know, I've been praying so long and I pray and it seems that the Lord doesn't answer. Well, maybe you're praying for display and maybe you're praying to show how prayerful you are so that others will think you're righteous rather than really talking to God. Because if you're praying for men, you have your reward. But it won't come from God.
If you want to be rewarded from God, then lose yourself in the secrecy of communion with God and He who is in secret and who sees the secret of your heart, binds Himself together with you.
And no matter if the whole world is listening there is an intimacy in that communion that is unaffected and unself-centered. He isn't saying don't ever pray anywhere until you're locked in a closet. Listen, the closet could be the street if you were unpretentious and silent and unattracting.
On the other hand, there are some people who pray in secret but they pray so loud that everybody down the hall hears them praying in secret. The idea is attitude.
I feel my prayer life is very personal. I feel my communion with God is just that. Nobody has to know or needs to know when I’m communing with God. Nobody needs to know if and when I’m in the Gap.
He is in secret and He reads the secrets of my heart. I'm so glad God sees in secret and I'm so glad God is in secret, because no matter what I tell God, He never tells anybody, do you know that?
I can just talk to God and I can tell Him everything there is and it's all a secret between us. I can pour out my heart and it is God who sees the secret of my heart.
God knows whether my prayer is for Him or for you. God knows whether my prayer is for the audience around me or whether it's for Him. Pray in secret. Maybe that means going into your room. Maybe that means being in your closet, but it sure means more than that.
It means that even if you're in a public place praying, in the community of believers, in the assembly of the church, or while you're driving your car or at the office or walking down the hall or the corridor or the street, that whatever communion you have with God shouldn't be a display. It should be the quiet secret communion between you and Him that knows nothing of an audience, even though the biggest audience in the world should be there.
It didn't matter that there was an audience, because he wasn't talking to the audience. That's the point. He was talking honestly to God. Daniel prayed with his windows open, but he talked to God.
Jesus said the temple was the house of prayer and masses of people came there, but they were to talk to God, not to each other.
In fact, Jesus even said when you pray, pray our Father and our is a plural pronoun that demands a plurality of people praying. There's nothing wrong with community praying, as long as the heart is pure.
There was a second sin that sums up the faults of their praying.
It isn't self-centered prayer, and it isn’t to be
2. System Centered Prayer.
Hypocrisy is not the only sin to which Jesus speaks. The other one is indifference. One overplays prayer and the other underplays it.
One says I'll make a big deal out of prayer. The other says, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and just rattles it off; meaningless, words.
Again Jesus paints a vivid contrast.
Verse 7 is the false way.
By the way, the word comes from a verb that means to stammer or to stutter. In fact, when the Greeks wanted to speak of one who was not cultured, they used the word barbaros because all of the uncultured people with foreign languages were unintelligible to them and it sounded like all they were saying was bar, bar, bar, bar, bar, bar. And so barbaros became the word for barbarian.
And what we have here is one of those onomatopoetic words. Onomatopoetic is where the word means what it sounds like, like bzzz of a bee.
This word indicates mumblings and mutterings. And so He says when you pray don't mutter and mumble mindless meaningless terms like the pagans who think they will be heard for their rambling. In other words, they think that their gods are conned and intimated and hassled into responding because of repetition.
Now let me hasten to add there is nothing wrong with repetition if it is right.
Paul three times prayed the same prayer for the thorn in the flesh. In Matthew 26:44, Jesus went back into the garden and the third time prayed the same prayer.
In Luke 11, the man pleaded over and over again with constant repetition for his need and it was met. When it is the honest cry of a burdened heart, it is legitimate. When it is the mindless repetition of meaningless prayer it is sin.
We are not conning God. Nor is it necessary for us to constantly be informing Him about things as if He didn't know.
This was common practice in pagan religions, even in the New Testament it says in Acts 19 that for two hours the multitudes stood in theater and screamed "great is Diana of Ephesians, great is Diana of Ephesians, great is Diana of Ephesians." They kept saying it over and over for two solid hours. You can imagine the frenzy and the lather they were in after that.
After a Muslim funeral, it is not uncommon for the people to gather around after the funeral and say Allah el Allah, which means god is god and repeat it 3,000 times before they leave.
Buddhists have been known to put a written prayer on a wheel and turn it with a crank or let it be turned with the wind and every time the wheel turns, Buddha is supposed to be hearing the prayer.
It's not unlike Roman Catholic churches, where people light a candle and supposedly as long as the candle is lit, the throne of God is besought and besought and besought and besought with the same constant prayer.
Listen to Roman Catholics sit down and say their Ava Marias and run through the rosary, hail mary, full of grace. Blessed art thou among women. Blessed is the fruit of the womb, Jesus. And go down to the next bead and the next one and the next one and say all their Ava Marias. And by the way, the rosary came from Buddhism. It was passed through the Muhammadins and it found it's way into Spain and thus into Christianity. It has no biblical base at all.
Jews in Israel today stand in a spot with their little black suits and their little black hats and they repeat the same prayer over and over. They take that prayer, stick it in the cracks of the wailing wall and as long as it stays in the crack, it's being offered to God.
As if God needed information, as if God had to badgered into responding.
It is nothing but barbarianism. The endless, mindless, meaningless repetition of phrases to appease and appeal to a deity.
I've been guilty of mumbling mindless words before meals or before bed or in the morning or for some routine prayer to open a meeting or whatever. We can all fall into the pattern of treating prayer as something to which we are indifferent just as we can be hypocritical.
I'll tell you one thing, if the Lord appeared and He said, Terry I want to have an appointment with you and I want you to come in and I want you to tell me what's on your heart, and the Lord was in a room and I only had a little bit of time and I went in and I said oh Lord this is a wonderful opportunity. I'll tell you one thing, I'd sure be sure to say what I want to say. I wouldn't go in there and mumble a bunch of stuff. I wouldn't say now I lay me down to sleep and all of that. And I wouldn't mutter, I would speak my heart. Listen, no less is the truth when I pray than that I enter into communion with Him. Isn't that right?
And my thoughts and my words should be precise and exact and heartfelt and passionate and bringing the real burden of my soul.
Jesus is saying, “Don't you treat prayer indifferently like the pagans do. Don't try to con God by turning it into some kind of incantation and don't be hypocritical. They felt they would be heard for their much speaking. They turned their minds of and just rattled it out. And if they just kept saying it and saying it and saying it, that was all that was required.
Well, in case you think that, verse 8 says, "don't be like them for your Father knows the things you have need of before you even ask." God doesn't need that. He knows what you need. You don't have to badger God. You don't have to con God. You don't have to force Him into a corner. You don't have to force Him to react just to get rid of your incessant prayer. It isn't the length of it and it isn't the repetition of it. It's the purity of it. God knows your needs. You're not badgering and beating God into submission.
So what is prayer then? If we're not informing God and if we're not really letting Him know things, what is prayer?
I'll tell you what it is. Prayer, more than anything else, is sharing the needs and the burdens and the hungers of my heart with the God who cares. It's communion. It isn't getting things. It isn't forcing God to do something. It is just opening my soul to one who cares and that communes with me. Prayer is saying oh God, I come to you with the needs of my heart, display Your glory.
Prayer is giving God occasion to manifest His power, to manifest His majesty, to manifest His might, to manifest His love and His providence and His care and His concern. God will do things and we won't be able to glorify Him if we haven't communed with Him about those things. But if we've done that and we see His hand, we know it's from Him and we give Him praise.
In conclusion, what is Jesus saying? He is saying when you pray, first of all, pray with a pure motive seeking only the glory of God.
Secondly, a humble heart seeking only the attention of God, not men.
Thirdly, a confident heart knowing full well that God already knows all that you need and with childlike simplicity in faith, you simply take your heart to Him and await the majestic display of His glorious response.
And I believe if you pray in those terms, the end of verse 6 says, "He will reward you." He will reward you.
You know, D. L. Moody once said, that he got so many blessings from God that one day he prayed a very short prayer. This was it, "Stop God, Amen." That was it. Too much, too much. Maybe that day would come when we might say stop God, because we're drowning in His blessing if we learn how to pray as Jesus teaches here.
Let's bow together.
