Sermons
“HOW TO PRAY"
Matthew 6: 7-15 New Revised Standard Version
7 “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 “Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13 And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. 14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; 15 but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
SERMON
Recap: How NOT to Pray
Last week, we heard Jesus tell us how not to pray. We should not pray as the hypocrites do—merely to be seen—but that we should pray privately, for God’s eyes alone. Our prayers should be vertical prayers, meaning that they must be God-ward. Anytime prayer is meant for a worldly audience, it ceases being prayer and becomes some kind of conversation, usually a monologue. When we pray to impress or influence others, when the direction is not vertical but horizontal, we make our prayers more for the ears of others than for God.
“But shouldn’t we pray when we’re in groups?” Yes, of course we should, but when we do, we must take care to keep God the focus of our content rather than the others in our circle. When you pray, ask yourself: “Am I praying for God’s ears or those of my brothers and sisters?” We should all ask that question constantly.
“But what about Pastoral prayers? Aren’t your prayers meant for our ears?” The answer is yes and no. Yes, the prayers I publicly pray must be comprehensible to anyone listening so that they can offer the same words up from their own hearts. Yes, the words of these corporate worship prayers are attempts to speak for the whole congregation at once, as one voice. To this extent they are flawed and imperfect, but they also are God-ward. Our collective prayers in content seek God’s ears alone and God’s glory alone. If you should hear prayers stray from this line, you are right to speak up and say something about it.
Don’t Heap up Empty Phrases
Jesus tells us not to “heap up empty phrases”—literally, “don’t babble”—as the Gentiles do. We know a few things about ancient Greek worship. Among their practices was a way of praying that was just babbling in the hope that they might hit the name of an unknown god and call that god into service by doing so. It’s not unlikely that this practice was later baptized into practice in places like Corinth, where this kind of prayer was called tongues. But let us hear Jesus, who says do not pray this way.
It’s not that Jesus was against tongues, but He was against the kind of prayer—and any kind of prayer, by extension—that attempted to earn or cajole God’s presence. Those who think they will be heard for their many words need to take it down a notch, because God doesn’t need us to be wordy. As Jesus says, “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
Your Father Already Knows
And isn’t that good news? What is required in order for God to hear and understand us? Nothing. He already knows what we need and He knows what we mean to pray. There are no prayer “experts,” though there may be some very silver-tongued devils seeking to mislead people by their eloquent prayers. There are no requirements to our prayers, other than that they are honest, from the heart, and spoken to God alone.
You might ask, “But if God knows what we need even before we pray, then why do we have to ask for it? Why pray at all?” To make the question even more dramatic, keep in mind that Jesus also teaches us importunity in prayer—constance, persistence, even repetitive knocking at His door.
The only sense I can make of this is that prayer is more about our relationship with God itself than it is about influencing earthly outcomes. The result of prayer is a deepening relationship with God much more than it is about effectively influencing worldly events.
My father, a famous tightwad, made me bow and scrape whenever I needed something from him—the car, ten bucks for gas, a tiny loan now and then—and I asked him why he always made it so difficult. He said, “Maybe I like to hear you ask!” I think there is some truth about our Heavenly Father in this as well. He commands us to pray because He likes to hear us ask. He likes us coming near to Him. He wants us leaning upon Him. He desires our fellowship, which is an amazing wonder beyond description.
We pray to have and to exercise our relationship with God—not one another.
We Do Not Know How to Pray
Because we are flawed and fallen, there is no natural reason that we should think we would even know how to talk to God. The Apostle Paul reminds us that we don’t know how to pray at all:
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. —Romans 8: 26
Here, too, is good news. We may doubt that we can ever find the right words, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.
So enough with how not to pray, for Jesus does teach us how to pray, and the prayer He gives us is perfect.
Our Father
The Lord’s Prayer begins with an intimate address for God. Jesus instructs us to call Him “our Father who is in Heaven.” Abba, Father—as simple as Dad. As Jesus refers to God as “my Father,” He invites us to call Him, “our Father.” God the Holy, God the Infinite and Unthinkably Almighty, Eternal, All-knowing, and All-Powerful One—we are to call Our Heavenly Father. Nowhere in any world religion is there a more intimate address, and the Disciples must have been bowled over by it. It’s like meeting the Queen of England and having her say, “Oh come on—you can call me Lizzy.” Only moreso.
Simone Weil, one of the great souls of the 20th century, said that she limited herself to saying the Lord’s Prayer to only once per day because she found it so overpowering to pray. She said she never prayed it once without feeling changed.
I think I can say the same about that first line because I can stand to be reminded at least once a day that even I am invited to call Almighty God Father.
Three Petitions
Hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will be Done
In these first three petitions, we pray for ourselves and for the world by losing ourselves in God. Hallowed be THY name, THY kingdom come, THY will be done—the emphasis is always on the otherness of God, and when we pray these from the heart, we center ourselves not in ourselves, but in the otherness of our heavenly Father. Our center is no longer self, but God who is Lord, King, and Judge. To pray these is to acknowledge God’s absolute goodness and total authority over Heaven and Earth. We pray, “God, YOUR identity matters, not ours; YOUR goals, not ours; and by YOUR means, not the ways we devise for ourselves.”
Anyone can say they believe in God or believe that He is Lord, but that is insignificant—even Satan and devils believe—but when pray these things from the heart, we totally surrender ourselves to His lordship. It’s one thing to believe, but another to surrender ourselves to Him. It is the surrendering that matters, and we need to nothing more than pray this prayer for it to become real for us.
Consider: in praying Hallowed by Your name, we are praying for something that already is. God--God alone—is holy. When we pray, May Your kingdom come, we are praying for is absolutely promised by God to occur. We pray for what shall be by God’s authority. And when we pray You will be done, we ask for the inevitable, for God’s will surely shall be accomplished.
We pray for what is, and we ask for what shall be, and in doing so, we surrender our own ideas of what is and what ought to be.
But this is not resignation, as though we’ve given up on life, but rather a passionate desire for all things to be as they shall be and not else. This is what it means to surrender our will to God’s will.
Again, we ask for the total conformity of everything in time to align with the will of God. Simone Weil said it this way:
We have to desire that everything that has happened should have happened, and nothing else. We have to do so, not because what has happened is good in our eyes, but because God has permitted it, and because the obedience of the course of events to God is in itself an absolute good.
This is not easy to absorb, I know, but consider what is the necessary affect of daily praying, “YOUR name, YOUR goals, YOUR way—not mine.” I will also say that this is the perfect formula for human happiness, because if we pray this way and mean it, our hearts will be overflowing in gratitude.
If we only had these three petitions, the prayer would be enough. It would change our lives daily and forever.
Daily Bread
Next we pray for our daily bread, which can be just that—asking God to provide us with what we need to survive in this world. We pray for food, for shelter, for medicine—for whatever it is we need to go on another day. As Israel in the wilderness depended upon God for manna each day, we too depend upon God for all our needs and remain grateful for what He supplies.
But of course it also works at a deeper level. The daily bread is spiritual help as well. It is inspiration that we may not merely survive, but flourish as His children and disciples. Our daily bread is His gift of the Holy Spirit, which gives us hope when things are dicey, faith when we are doubtful, and love when we are fearful.
In this sense, our daily bread is our share of His Spirit needed to sustain us.
From Mercy to Mercy
Next is forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. This is a prayer for God’s mercy to us even as we show mercy to others. Jesus tells us that one can’t live without the other—there is no receiving mercy for those who refuse to be merciful to others. It could be that those who are most judgmental, when finally standing before the Judge of all judges, may not be able to receive the forgiveness of God—although it is offered freely—because they will never stop condemning themselves. To be merciful includes being merciful to yourself, which is another way of saying that in order to be saved we must be able to receive God’s mercy.
To be forgiven as we forgive others is to live from mercy to mercy. We may not feel particularly merciful, but as we give it, we become merciful. That is God’s will for us all.
Lead Us, the Unleadable
Finally, we pray for God to lead us and deliver us. When we are put in dire situations that demand more of us than we feel we can give, that is the true time of trial. We pray that God would protect us from ourselves—from our own weaknesses that would cause us to cave in and abandon hope. We are praying that God would protect us from ourselves, and lead us when we find it most difficult to follow.
Jesus is the Good Shepard and seeks out the lost sheep. Even when we stray and become utterly lost, we pray for Him to find us, to lead us, and to put our feet back on the right path.
And deliver us from the evil one.
The final line is for God’s ultimate deliverance. The evil one could mean the devil, but it could also mean any evil one who threatens or oppresses heart and soul. There is much cruelty in the world, and Jesus’ first hearers lived under the thumb of Roman oppression. The prayer for deliverance is that which cries out Hosanna, which means something like Lord, save us!
The cry of conversion is just this: Lord, save me! Lord, rescue me! As the prayer begins with acknowledging God as sovereign Lord, so it ends with our calm request that He would complete His plan and finish the Creation by His return.
Brief, Intense, & Frequent
Martin Luther said Prayers should be brief, intense, and frequent—BIF. God is not impressed with wordiness. Jesus teaches us to pray in private as well. We don’t need a special room, just a quiet heart. We can fill our days with little, heartfelt prayers delivered amid our other activities. And we should never think of the Lord’s Prayer as anything other than what Jesus teaches us to pray.
As a young Protestant, I used to think Catholics were kind of funny about these prayers. I’d heard of people going to confession and being told to go pray The Lord’s Prayer ten times over, and my thought was, “What a bunch of pointless repetition!” I went to confession once—you know, just for the experience—and Father Pat Carroll, who sat knee to knee with me as I confessed, told me to go pray the Lord’s prayer five times. Perhaps he saw a little bit of an eye-roll in me, because he immediately instructed me: “Pray it slowly, and think about every word and every phrase as you pray.” I did that, and after the second time through I felt renewed. By the fifth time, I felt like I understood the prayer more deeply than I ever had before.
The Catholics are not wrong about this. It is the perfect prayer. It needs repetition not for God’s ears, but for our own hearts to absorb its power. Let’s be clear: it is what Jesus teaches us to pray. There is no improving upon it, though we evangelicals try so hard to do so. We should pray this prayer every day—even more than once if you can stand its power—and outside of this, let’s keep our prayers BIF: brief, intense, and frequent.
QUESTIONS
- How do we “heap up empty phrases” when we pray?
- Is there a problem with long prayers and long prayer vigils?
- Vertical prayers are God-ward prayers. What are horizontal prayers?
- What is required for our prayers to be heard?
- If God knows what we need before we pray, then why do we pray?
- What is special about our invitation to address God as Father?
- What are the first three petitions and how does praying them affect us?
- What are different meanings for “daily bread”?
- How does forgiving others help us receive the forgiveness of God?
- What is God’s provision to lead each one of us?
- Who, aside from Satan, could be the “evil one”?
“FOR YOUR EYES ONLY”
TEXT:Matthew 6: 1-6 NRSV
SERMON
Beware of practicing your piety before others
Piety can also be translated as “righteousness.” Specifically, the works of righteousness that were easily recognized among Jews: almsgiving, prayer, and fasting. Now almsgiving was more than giving to the poor; it included all sorts of acts of righteousness and mercy. We do well to read almsgiving as good works.
This saying, beware of practicing your piety before others, suggests that our motives and intentions are more important than our actions. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13, we can have elegant tongues, magnificent faith, and good deeds that would impress the whole world; but if we have not love, we have nothing. Our acts of piety —our good deeds—are okay if and only if they are performed with God alone as our intended audience. Any other motive–such as the desire to be well thought of, or the desire to spread “religiousness”—all are ill-founded and worthless to God.
If God and only God is our audience, we worship correctly. If we do a thing for God’s glory, it is blessed; if we do it for our glory, it is mere vanity.
6:2 "So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.
Do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do
When the money boxes were opened for distribution, it is speculated that a shofar horn was sounded to call the poor in to receive their aid. It was something of a spotlight event, and major politics. The Pharisees or Sadducees who were there to deliver the funds at the sounding of the trumpet looked great for it—handing out other people’s money as if it was their own. They looked like the heroes, but as Jesus points out, the real heroes were like that widow who put in her two dollars—all she had.
Have you ever done something like this—worked a soup kitchen or a mission project where you helped distribute other people’s donations? Did people look at you like you were being wonderfully generous? It always leaves me with very mixed feelings. You have to be a real politician to hand out other people’s money while smiling for the news cameras.
Who remember telethons? The Jerry Lewis marathon telethon? “And here’s a big check from the Coca-Cola Company for $10,000!” Were we inclined to think of those donors and kind, good, and wonderful? Jesus says that their reward is exhausted right there.
But what exactly is that reward? Prestige? Honor? A kind of saintliness in the eyes of other folks? The earthly reward we seek is a good reputation. We want people to think well of us—to think that we’re good people. We want others to think that so we can think that of ourselves. This isn’t something we do consciously, but it is universal
Years ago I visited a church in Dallas that never did stewardship campaigns—they raised all the money they needed for the coming year in one night. How? Well, they made a show of it. A show and competition. Thousands filled their mega-sanctuary, and after some music and a brief but rousing sermon, the testimonials started. People stood to show their commitment level: “3000 a year, 5,000 a year, 10,000?” And people clapped and praised God. Then a line formed near the stage. One couple was ushered up to the mic who humbly declared their willingness to sell their boat and give the money to the Lord. Standing ovation. A businessman agreed to sell one of his several buildings and donate the sum: thunderous applause. Person after person, challenged and inspired by the giving of others, would take their turn at the mic and the congregation applauded, hooted (Texas, you know), and struck up the band, resulting in 3 million dollars raised in a few hours. Well, why don’t we do this? (I see our Trustees biting their nails hopefully).
Why not? Next verse:
6:3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing
This is a simple image that makes clear that acts of righteousness should be done with discretion. We should do what is right without a second thought, and definitely without any hint of self-congratulation. Keep your acts of righteousness so secret that they’re practically secret from even yourself. But how does that happen?
Quite simply, we do it for God, God alone, and disregard all other eyes, even our own.
Remember, Christ has sent the Holy Spirit to us to guide us and to work through us. That working in us and through us changes us—but you and I do not consciously manage those changes. The Holy Spirit is growing us into Christ despite our self-awareness of the process. We are being grown without seeing it ourselves. This is a gift to us and it is what every pious heart desires above all: for we pray again and again, “Lord, take us, shape us, use us,” and we don’t put conditions on how God should achieve this in us. We simply surrender ourselves to Him again and again.
The gift is that God can do this work in us without us seeing it—and thank God that He does! Otherwise, we would take pride in our spiritual growth. Yes, we would. So to be grown without self-consciousness of that growth is a true good. It is God’s good working in us while protecting us from pride. No matter how Christlike we should become in this world, all we will see in ourselves is our lack of Christlikeness. But that’s good, because we depend all the more on grace alone.
We want God to work through us in such a way that we can participate in His mission without our left hand even knowing what our right hand is doing. It is good to be used by God, but not if we know we are being used by Him at the moment. We need some of that healthy not-knowing so that we do not get in the way of God’s work.
We are to make no show of our giving. We do not give for the glory of giving, nor for the glory of the Church or the church community—but only for The Lord. Just as The Lord says, “Vengeance is mine” so also the rewarding of virtue is His. We do our good deeds for His Eyes Only, so that we may know His reward and none other.
Do not be like the hypocrites
Mt. 6:5 "And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever 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.
The word hypocrites means actors, but only in the negative sense: fakes, phonies, those who show off to impress others. And though many people may be impressed by their public performance, God is not.
In their day, it was the street-corners, synagogues, and temple courts that provided the stage for their displays. Today, people still take to the streets to display their “righteousness” filled with good intentions, no doubt, but even in COVID lockdown mode, we have our public stage online. Our new synagogue is Twitter, Facebook, and the user comments at the end of every online article. All equally provide the opportunity to wear one’s faith on one’s sleeve.
A few years ago, we evangelicals enjoyed plastering our witness to Jesus on the bumpers of our SUVs (or Priuses if you’re from Claremont), as well as the assorted Jesus T-shirts and other highly-marketed, so-called Witness Wear. Did we ever pause to question if God is actually honored by these things? I love Jesus so much I’m going to put Him on my bumper sticker! Does that not feel like a cheapening of the message? I question whether we were doing it for God at all—it seems more likely we do those things to impress our friends—particularly our Christian friends, because even the most desperate non-Christian isn’t likely to be turned on by that Christian fish swallowing a Darwin fish in the back window of your Elantra.
I think we do well to beware—to be extremely cautious—not to cheapen the gospel or our witness to it. We mustn’t settle for an easy, quick fix evangelism, manifest in crass marketing as if the good news of Jesus could be sold like fire insurance, t-shirts, or party politics. No, the gospel deserves better. We honor God when we treat the message honorably.
Our evangelism, like our prayers, must be intensely God-focused, without regard to any human audience. As we do not pray for the sake of impressing others, but only to give all honor glory to God, so we proclaim Him and share the good news of His saving grace with the same focus. That is, we do not do things in order to feel like good witnesses, nor do we seek to save souls to impress other Christians—which is a huge motivator in evangelical churches (truth is, only God saves. Yes, we pray to be used by him in the process, but it’s never any credit to us for being so used). The things we do we do only to bring Him glory and honor. That is the only intention that matters.
Hide Your Sufficiency
As we see throughout these teachings of Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, our religiousness is in and of itself sinful. Luther, Calvin, Barth, Bonhoeffer were all quite articulate on this point: our religiousness is itself sin. It’s kind of funny because it may be the one part of our self-awareness that doesn’t feel like sin—which is exactly what makes it so dangerous. That’s why Jesus warns us against it. That’s why Jesus is angry with the Pharisees and Sadducees more than the common folk. Our religiousness—the little observances, the doing of righteousness, of social justice, the public prayers—all of these things come from our sinfulness because they can feel sufficient. I go to church every Sunday, I give a tithe plus gifts and offerings, I pray three times a day, I read my bible, I give to our missions, so I’m doing just fine. These little lists we make in our heads to feel we’re okay are part and parcel of our sinfulness. In fact, these are actually our way of keeping God at a distance(which is why it is sin) because if we have the list, who needs Grace?
This is why we Christians must have that inner, private room. We each of us need to cultivate that private spirituality that we share with no one but God. God alone is our audience. Yes, we have a shared spirituality with our families and our corporate gathering here at church, but these are not sufficient; Jesus tells us we must have a secret audience for our prayer life and our exercise of righteousness. That audience is an audience of one: God alone.
AUDIENCES
We all play to an audience. We are all actors treading the boards on this stage of life, and we play for someone or a group of someones. For whom do you play? Is it family? Friends or colleagues? Who is your audience? To whom are you accountable for your choices? You buy a blue shirt or a red shirt—who is watching? Who do you think sees and who are you seeking to please? We all have audiences.
The major part of our spirituality begins when we reject every other audience but God. When we quit playing to the crowds and cease any attempt to impress anyone in this world, but rather live to impress God alone. That is the work of conversion.
So our old school friends look down on us a bit because we seriously follow Jesus? Does that slow us down? No—because we don’t care. We don’t play to them anymore. They are not our audience; we have an audience of one.
How we play to the Lord in turn will affect the way we play to our old friends, but it doesn’t work the other way. If we are trying to please family, friends, or anyone in this world, we are putting them in the place where God alone is worthy to be.
So let us keep God in that place. We play to the Lord; we answer to Him alone; we live to impress only Him.
And here’s some final good news. Can you guess what we do that impresses God? It’s probably not what you think. It’s not long prayers, not soul-saving mission work, not glorious songs or symphonies raised in praise to His name. But God is impressed by our repentance—by our awareness of the truth that we are sinners before Him, utterly inadequate and insufficient in and of ourselves. What makes Him smile is when we confess our sins and acknowledge how utterly we depend upon Him—His grace, His mercy, and His peace.
And so it should be our joy to confess our sins to Him, and let our religiousness—our little delusions of self-sufficiency—be always at the top of the list. For we must remember what Martin Luther says as far as this world is concerned, "Christ dwells only in sinners.”
May we all live in the constant awareness of our sinfulness, at may that awareness amplify our gratitude for God’s mercy, grace, and peace!
QUESTIONS
- How do you square “private piety” with Matthew 5:16: “let your light so shine so others would see your good works and glorify your father in Heaven”?
- What are the different actions which constitute what we call piety?
- What does “sounding the trumpet” represent?
- Left hand, right hand—how can we hide something from ourself?
- How can we do good without self-consciously trying to do good?
- Without getting totally distracted, name some contemporary hypocrisies.
- What does it mean for evangelism to be “God-focused”?
- In having a “private room” for prayer and righteousness, what is it that we are hiding and/or hiding from?
- Can you identify some of the audiences in your life? Which are most difficult to abandon?
- What is the one thing we do that impresses God?