Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction: In verses 1-18 of Matthew chapter 6 Jesus is instructing His disciples concerning three ways a believer worships God: through giving, prayer, and fasting.

Last week, as Pastor John opened up the Word, we saw the three snares of the charitable deed.

When we give genuinely, we give out of a heart of worship to God, and we should not give as the hypocrites do.

The hypocrites give to be seen by men and to draw attention to themselves.

Surely, they have their reward.

They sought to be seen and so they were.

Jesus, however, desires for his disciples to give secretly as an act of genuine worship not before men but before the Father.

Now as we turn to , Jesus continues to instruct his disciples by contrasting hypocritical and genuine worship in prayer and fasting.

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Prayer

Be Genuine in Prayer

Hypocritical Prayer

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Here Jesus is teaching his disciples that prayer must never be motivated by the desire to be seen by men.

The evil of the hypocrites in this verse is that they desire to use prayer as a means of self-glorification.

“Look at me,” the hypocrite says as he stands in the synagogue and on the street corners, “look at me for I am unlike other men, I am spiritual beyond all ordinary men.”

Men like this are correctly described as hypocrites.

As we know, the word hypocrite was originally used to refer to actors who would use large masks to portray roles they were playing.

Hypocrites were pretenders, and what a hypocrite said and did did not accurately describe who he was but only portrayed what he wanted others to see.

The hypocritical scribes and Pharisees prayed for the same purpose - not to portray their humility and dependence on God, but instead to attract attention and to glorify themselves.

Isn’t it ironic that God can give us the gift of prayer, which is meant to express our adoration for and our complete dependence on God, and the human heart can pervert that gift and use it for self-glorification?

Example: Tell them about when I used to speak to my friends hypocritically in order to earn brownie point with Mr. Musselman.

It is one thing when we do this facetiously with men, but it is wicked to worship self at a time when we should be worshipping God.

The scribes and Pharisees sought to make themselves rather than God the center of their prayers.

Genuine Prayer

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The basic definition of prayer is “communion with God.” So, if we are to pray God must be at the center of our prayers.

In contrast with the traditions of the hypocrites Jesus instructs that when you pray go into your room and shut your door.

The idea here is that when you pray find the most private place possible.

Jesus’ point is that if you are tempted to make prayer a show go to the most private place possible and shut the door.

Shut out everything and everyone else so that you can have communion with God.

When you are in your room and the door is shut and all possibilities of putting on a show have been closed down pray to your Father.

Do what you need to do to draw the attention away from yourself and place it on God alone.

This does not mean that Jesus is forbidding public prayer, but Jesus is pointing out that we must be careful to pray out of a heart of genuine worship and dependence on God, and it is for this reason that most of an individual’s prayer life is done privately.

There may be times when people know we are praying but what is said is not meant for them, but it is meant for the Father.

When we pray we are having fellowship with God and God alone, and when the believer prays in secret with a pure heart he has the attention of the Father.

When we pray genuinely to God out of a heart of worship and dependence on God we will have the reward that only He can give.

Jesus does not specifically say what this reward might be but the important truth for us to know is that God blesses those who come to Him in sincerity.

Let Your Content in Prayer Be Genuine

As for the hypocrites, they have already received their reward.

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Hypocritical Content

Jesus continues in verses 7-8 by also instructing his disciples to not allow empty, hypocritical content to invade their prayers.

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The Jews had picked up the practice from the Gentiles that the value of prayer was based on the quantity of prayer.

The longer the prayer the better because they think that they will be heard for their many words.

We see this heathen practice where the prophets of Baal cried out to Baal from morning till noon saying, “O Baal, hear us!”

And not wanting to miss the opportunity Elijah mocked telling them to just cry louder - maybe Baal is meditating, or busy, or on a journey, or sleeping.

Cry louder prophets of Baal and wake Him!

We see this practice again in the New Testament in when Demetrius and the other silversmiths of Ephesus aroused a great crowd against Paul and they repetitively chanted for two hours, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!”

We even see this today with Buddhist prayer wheels and the Catholic prayer candles and rosaries.

All of us have even been guilty of this at some point or another as we repeat prayers at meals and prayer meetings with no thought to what we are actually saying or the One to whom we are praying.

Prayer that is thoughtless and indifferent is offensive to God.

Now, we are permitted to repeat genuine requests.

Thoughtful and persistent prayer is encouraged.

The widow in was praised for her persistence before the ungodly judge and Jesus says, “ And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him?” In other words, if the ungodly judge responded because of the persistence of the widow how much more speedily will God respond to His own who are persistent in prayer.

Repeating genuine requests is not wrong but it is wrong to indifferently recite spiritual sounding words over and over again as a show of being religious.

Not only must we worship God out of a pure heart but also out of a mind that is focused on Him.

Heartfelt prayer is always thoughtful prayer.

Praying is sharing our burdens with our Father who already knows what we need but who wants us to confess our dependence on Him.

Prayer is worshipfully confessing our need for God to act in our lives and with faith giving God the opportunity to display His power and love to us.

A Model Prayer

Now, we might ask, what does prayer out of a pure heart and mind look like?

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Hallowed Be Your Name

Because genuine prayer is worship its first request is that we would see God as He is - holy.

He is unique and set apart from all others and there is no one like Him.

The first request in a genuine prayer places God at the center and prioritizes His glory as the number one priority of the believer’s life.

To see and to know God changes the Christian’s perspective on everything else.

It has been said that to see God as He is in the Scriptures is to then see everything else as it was meant to be seen.

It is also a request that we would live our lives in agreement with His holiness.

In other words, if we truly believe that He is holy we will obey what He has said.

For someone to call themselves a Christian and live in disagreement with His character it to malign rather than glorify then name of God.

This is a request that we must all pray every day as we are often tempted to disobey and tempted to believe that sin is more glorious than our heavenly Father.

To give ourselves over to sin is to confess that we do not believe that God’s name is holy, and so we are all driven to our knees as we realize our constant need to see Him as He is.

Your Kingdom Come, Your Will Be Done

The second request of genuine prayer is that God’s kingdom would come and His will be done.

Prayer should be evangelistic.

To pray for God’s kingdom is to pray for new converts and new kingdom citizens.

When we pray for God’s kingdom we are praying that God would give Christians boldness to open their mouths and witness, we are praying for those outside of the kingdom to repent and turn to God, and we are praying for opportunities for both of those things to happen.

Second, this is a request that God’s kingdom would come through our commitment to it.

This is a request that all believers would do God’s will and respond to His rule in their lives now so that His rule over them would be evident just as His rule is evident in heaven.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

The third request of genuine prayer worships the God who provides.

This request might sound irrelevant to us since the media constantly tells us of America’s obesity epidemic, but this is a request that God would provide for all of our physical needs.

I think all of us would agree that we all do have physical needs.

Lord, help my car to run tomorrow.

Father, allow my heater to make just it through the winter.

I really can’t afford a new computer so help this one to make it so that I can finish this big project for work.

Father, I don’t know where that $10,000 is coming from for my tuition but I am thankful that you do and I trust you

We all do have physical needs, and this is a plea for God to meet those needs.

In voicing those needs, this request is also a display of trust.

“Father, I can’t even meet my own needs, but you can and I trust you to meet them.”

And this is a request for daily bread.

Do you remember the rich fool from who said, “What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’

So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods.

And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”?

The heart that requests daily bread is completely the opposite of the heart that seeks to build bigger and bigger barns.

I think the best summary I have heard of the heart behind this request is when I was taking Rand Hummel back to the airport this past March and he made this comment to me, “The daily prayer of Amber and me is that God would provide enough for us to be content today, but not so much that we do not depend on Him for tomorrow.”

We truly do depend on God for all of our physical needs.