The Mount No.13 Genuine Prayer

Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets to be honoured by men.

I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

But 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. 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. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him.

This is how you should pray. And if you've got the NIV, perhaps you could join in with me to the end of verse 13. Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you.

But if you do not forgive men their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.

But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face so that it will not be obvious to men that you are fasting, but only to your father who is unseen. And your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. We're looking at a little parquet of teaching from our Lord Jesus, discovered in that sixth chapter from the fifth verse right through to the eighth verse.

And it's really a prelude for his magnificent prayer which our brother Tim will open up to us next week from the pulpit. We're going to be talking today about genuine prayer. What is genuine prayer? You recall that last week as an introduction to this chapter, I said that in one sense our Lord Jesus is privatizing piety.

I mean by that that he says in the opening verse, be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men. He's very concerned that your devotional life doesn't only have a public expression. He wants you to be actively engaged in those three disciplines found in the Old Testament, carried through into the New Testament, which might well be defined as acts of righteousness.

What are they? Well, almsgiving, handling your money, directing it primarily in this case to those who are in need, and in the more general spiritual sense for those who are members of the kingdom of God, ensuring that there is sufficient to support the work of God in evangelism and mission around the world. And then there is this great righteous act of prayer, another foundation of Judaism, a foundation of the Christian faith. And then, and it will be a few weeks before we look at this, from the 16th verse our Lord Jesus makes reference to this discipline of fasting.

But today we're going to be looking at prayer, and I'm reminded of the dictum of Murray MacShane, which I sometimes quote from the pulpit here, MacShane being a great Scottish preacher, one of the many men that Scotland has given to the United Kingdom who could exercise great authority in expounding scripture. A man is what he is, on his knees and he's nothing else. A man is what he is, on his knees and no more.

Lloyd-Jones says, man is never greater than when he is there in communion and contact with God. A man at prayer is at his zenith. Now that's an absurd comment, absurd that is outside the context of the kingdom of God.

The people who pass by the tabernacle, the ordinary person in the street would not agree to that. He might in some patronizing fashion say that prayer is useful, but no way would he say that man is at his zenith when he's on his knees before God. And that if you like gives a great distinction between the Christian way of looking at life and the secularist view of life.

Neil Kinnock said the other week, a most careless expression on his part, that there is no relationship between him and God whatsoever, and gave the impression that he didn't seek to secure such a relationship. Well I say that is most unfortunate. I quote his name because he went on record publicly, therefore I can publicly make reference to his comment.

Our Lord Jesus says when you pray, verse five, when you pray do not be like the hypocrites. And I wonder speaking very reverently and always bringing my own mind under the authority of the word of God, whether our Lord would have made such a statement as that today. You say what do you mean? Well you see here is the presupposition that in his day this great crowd of people who've gathered, you remember in this natural amphitheater to hear him, he's in the territory where he was brought up as a lad by the Sea of Galilee, and he's got thousands of people listening to him as his voice is broadcasted by the natural geography of the area, echoing back and then bouncing forward and eventually being lost on the Sea of Galilee.

And he says to these people when you pray, and the presupposition is that they do that. You know this is part and parcel of their routine day by day, and by and large that was the case. It would be the case if you went to India, they pray in India.

They pray in Southeast Asia. It's very rarely that you come across a person who doesn't pray. They pray in the Middle East, they pray in Africa.

It's only God help us in the sophisticated West where prayer becomes an exception rather than the rule. So I suggest that our Lord would have to qualify that statement if he was putting it across today. And you, if you pray, if you pray, well in the context in which he gave it, he says when you pray be ensured or assure yourself that the prayers that you are offering are offered in such a fashion as they become genuine prayer, acceptable to the Lord.

Now our Savior has one main objective as he's giving this discourse on the Sermon on the Mount. You see, and we've reminded you, I'm sure Tim has on past occasions, that he's preaching to a mixed audience. Now in some degree the audience here at the Tabernacle is mixed.

The admixture is different, I think, because I imagine that there's no one here who's not sympathetic to what I'm saying. But as far as our Lord was concerned, there were those who were distinctly antagonistic. They were his enemies and they were listening to what he had to say because, well, they looked on him as being a trumped-up rabbi from Galilee whose qualifications were questionable.

These were the religious clergy, the official preachers and teachers in those days. And Jesus singles these people out in his audience and he says in the 20th verse of the fifth chapter, I tell you that unless your righteousness, your spiritual disciplines, unless they are an improvement upon those of the established clergy, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. And now what we have here today are not the equivalent of Pharisees, although maybe there are some in our ranks of that description, but there are those who are not quite sure as to whether you're Christian or not.

Well, we're glad to have you with us and I hope that even one of the byproducts of my address this morning will be to show you very clearly that God loves you and has a purpose for you in your life and that this whole business of prayer is something that you can naturally engage into and discover enormous benefits as a result. So our Lord Jesus is going to set up for us what the structure of genuine prayer is. And those of you who were present last week will see that from the second verse through to the fourth verse, you've got a sort of preamble in terms of the structure.

There he was talking about almsgiving. Now he's talking about praying. He says that the almsgiving in the way that the Pharisees did it was wrong.

It was utterly unacceptable from the second verse. Now he takes up the theme with regard to prayer and in the fifth verse he says, when you pray don't be like those hypocrites. And he talks about things done in secret and things done in public and he talks about the Father and he talks about rewards.

You get exactly the same thing from the second through to the fourth verse repeated in the fifth through to the eighth as our Lord Jesus with the majesty that is his as a teacher enforces his lessons. In other words, what I'm saying though, I'm not inviting you to do so. If you listened carefully last week you could almost switch off because our Lord is saying those same principles that govern almsgiving to make those acceptable as a service offered to the Lord are also enforceable in this whole area of prayer.

And so he's going to set up for us what is the wrong way to pray. What is the wrong way to pray? Verse five, when you pray do not be like the hypocrites. Why? What is there wrong about the Pharisees to some degree and the Sadducees and the scribes in the way that they were praying? What is wrong in establishment prayers in the 20th century? Well our Lord Jesus suggests that one of the things that is wrong is the prayer himself.

The prayer, the person who actually engages in intercession. What's the matter with them? Well in the example our Lord gives us of the Pharisees, he says they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. In other words, the key word is ostentation.

They want people to know what they're about. Now Lord as he did in this whole matter of almsgiving says, no that's that's utterly unacceptable. That is showmanship.

That is parading. It's on with the theater. First we've dealt with alms and we've done it publicly.

Now we're dealing with prayer and then we'll be dealing with fasting. And the whole idea behind this triplet of disciplines is just to show how good we are. Now our Lord says if that's your objective then it's totally unacceptable.

That's why he uses deliberately the word hypocrite which actually is a word that we have that suggests drama and acting. An actor is always removed from reality. He's putting on a part.

Now God does not want you to put on a part. God wants you as you are to recognize who you are and to come to him as a sinner and to accept his mercy, his love, his forgiveness. So this is the problem that our Lord Jesus indicates constituting prayer as being unacceptable to the Father.

You get the classic example of this don't you in the 18th chapter of the of the gospel of Luke references made to the tax collector and to the Pharisee who went to the temple. You remember the ninth verse of chapter 18 of Luke, to some who were confident of their own righteousness Jesus told them this parable. And he spells out the idea of this Pharisee who goes into the temple and also the tax collector.

And the Pharisee goes right to the front of the church and there he parades his eloquence. And our Lord says it's unacceptable. It's as unacceptable in the temple for the Pharisee as it's as unacceptable for for people when they realize that it's a particular festive day to leave their village, to leave their nearby town and to go to the to go to the temple and to stop on the street corners and to engage in prayer.

Now says the Lord if you do that wanting to bring public attention to yourself then what you're engaged in is utterly unacceptable. The wrong way brings the spotlight on the prayer. And the wrong way also our Savior says is when prayer is babbled like the pagan rantings.

Look at verse 7. When you pray do not keep on babbling like pagans for they think they will be heard because of their of their many words. You remember some of you who are well into scripture the story of Elijah and how on that remarkable day on Mount Carmel when he was contesting with the prophets of Baal the water-drenched sacrifice that he had offered in in respect of of the Lord Jehovah was was enveloped with a flame and yet the unsaturated sacrifice of the Baal priests alas was not ignited and these men in the contest you remember the story that they pleaded to their God in a frenzy they work themselves up because the fact of the matter was the true God would reveal himself by igniting the animal the dead animal on the altar. Now says our Lord if your praying is the frenzied prayer of the pagans then it is utterly unacceptable.

You see you've got to use your mind in your praying you're not to pray by habit you're not to pray by rote. Those poor Tibetan peasants who've got their little prayer wheel you discovered it also in Nepal this sort of praying is is superstitious praying it's a sort of of prayer that a man offers because he's he's not too sure as to who God is or who the gods are and he's afraid and he believes that if he twiddles this this little prayer wheel and he says his mantra then somehow the spirits the evil spirits will be warded off. Now Lord Jesus says that true prayer prayer offered to the father is not like that it's not the going through of beads it's not the mindless chanting of some expression.

Prayer that affects the father is prayer that comes from the mind. So you see what our Lord is here doing he's talking about genuine prayer and he criticizes the person who brings attention to himself and the prayer that's absolutely mindless. Now going back on the person who's bringing attention to himself he says that actually what happens to them is they have their own reward.

Look at the latter part of verse five I tell you the truth they have received their reward in full. Someone has said there is no reward for those who seek it from men there is no reward for those who seek it from men whatever your piety is whatever acts of service that you're engaging in ostensibly for the kingdom's sake if you have got hidden pride there if your real target is that people might think more of you then that prayer is not only answered in terms of or rather that prayer is not answered and the reason why it's not answered is because you have sought for reward on the earth and that reward is full payment that's why our Lord Jesus uses in the authorized version as it's translated that solemn introduction to his statement verily verily I tell you the truth they have received their reward in full. You see there's nothing else there's nothing else to be paid they wanted the attention of men they have the attention of men they've deceived themselves by eclipsing the glory of the Lord and having it reflected in their own personalities.

Well says our Lord having dealt with the negative way of prayer he now moves on and he teaches us about the right way and what is the right way well he says in the sixth verse as you read it when you pray notice here how the pronoun distinguishes those who want to be different from the Pharisees and the Pharisees and the Sadducees when you pray go into your room close the door and pray to your father who is in scene this I argue is the the place of exclusion that our Lord is stating the place of exclusion. Do you have a secret place where you go not necessarily a room on your own perhaps you don't even have the luxury of that out in Hong Kong the flats there are so small the rooms are so crowded that it's not easy to have a place on your own to retire to for prayer but the fresh air is available maybe you do your praying out on the downs maybe on the seafront it doesn't really matter where but the point is this says our Lord Jesus when you pray remember the principle of exclusion go into your room close the door maybe he had in mind the old prophet who you remember when he was confronted by the boy who died went into his own prayer closet closed the door and brought the nature of the lad's malady before the Lord do you have a secret place of prayer yourself our Lord is so concerned about this so very particular that his disciples the member of members of his kingdom behave in a dissimilar fashion to those who've got a mystical mechanistic view of prayer I tell you when you pray go behind your door and pray in privacy in your own room realizing that God is there Martin Buber a Jewish theologian once wrote a book called IZ and his idea in this book was was to show how how God and himself can be in personal encounter God does not encounter everyone else exclusive to ourselves he wants you and me to engage in a personal relationship with him so that when you come together in community your strength of worship will be on the basis of the relationship you've already enjoyed when in the secret place there was just you and him you see prayer meetings are made that much more wonderful when the people who are praying don't just chalk up that public time as being their own personal devotional act you see what I'm coming from our Lord is saying that it's most important for people in his kingdom to have that secret place where they can come before God on their own and then when they've experienced something of the presence of the Lord to be able to over spill the blessing or the burden in front of their brothers and sisters the place of exclusion have you got it in your own prayer disciplines but not just the place of exclusion but also our Lord makes reference to what I've called the point of conviction then your father who is unseen he sees you then your father who's behind the closed door where you're praying he will release his presence you see it's most important that you and I to quote A.W. Tozer experience God for ourselves I want to talk to some of you men we've just had a lovely service of dedication at least an aspect of our service isn't it sometimes terrible that in families ostensibly Christian it's very often the woman who makes the pace in the spiritual area and that's not to be the case the brothers are to be alongside mum dad and kids being taught about the Lord with father knowing what it is to have been in the privacy of his own prayer closet where he's met with the even greater father and having learned from him he comes to tell his wife and his children what he's learned and he comes to steer that family well the right way to pray is to go into the place of exclusion and it's to come to the point of conviction is to realize that when you pray father is there isn't it amazing that one of the best epistles that Paul wrote if you dare to in any way grade the epistles are his prison epistles and when he's writing to the Ephesians he tells us in the 14th chapter of the 14th verse of the third chapter for this reason I kneel before the father from whom his whole family in heaven and earth derives its name now where was Paul when he wrote that epistle well he was in jail he's gone into the secret place now now the Romans didn't expect him to use the the cloistered environment the cell as a place where he could pray but Paul realizes that God is everywhere you see this is it when you've gone into the place of exclusion and you're under the conviction that father is there then you've taught yourself even if you didn't know the word what it means to believe in the omnipresence of God God is there with you and not only is God there as the omnipresent one he's there as of the as the omniscient one which means that he knows everything about you he knows all about your family life you see you can't fool him this is the absurdity of the hypocrite the hypocrite parades himself who does he fool well he can fool me he can fool you we can both fool one another but one person who's not in the stakes of being fooled is God so when you're in this occlusion of your own private place of prayer there you can come to the omnipresent father who's omniscient who knows all that there is about you and just to clinch it he's got all power too he's omnipotent now that's how our Lord tells us we ought to go about this whole business of prayer then you when you pray go into your room act naturally before the Lord don't be like the pagans you know we have a sort of 20th century western equivalent of pagan practices don't we sometimes it comes through in churches you know you get a pulpit voice or a prayer tone t-o-n-e I remember and I don't want to discredit the man's name the man's memory but I remember when I was brought up in Yorkshire as a lad you know how it is you're not always very sanctified as a lad as you're not always very sanctified as a man and and I used to listen to this man pray and sometimes I thought well if he ever spoke to the conductor on on Sheffield buses like he's speaking now that they think that he was weird he had a very high pitched voice which wasn't his naturally and in one sense the dear man was almost falling foul of the instructions our Lord here gives when you pray go to father go go into the privacy of your your own room or wherever and act naturally in front of father realizing who father is as you pray to him he doesn't need your frenzy he needs your faith and your belief that he is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that you can ever ask or think that's father and you men who run families I tell you your approach to your families your approach to your job your approach to your lifestyle would be utterly different if you believed and worked from this fundamental principle that father has an interest in you and wants to make his purposes real in your life so we've looked at the wrong way to pray and the right way to pray the wrong way has the result that well there's nothing less left to be given because people have already given their accolade the the congratulatory statement to the to the prayer but the man who is praying correctly the woman who is rightly uh dealing with her spiritual responsibilities well he she can know this blessed result that father who sees in secret the last part of verse six will reward them and the authorized version smuggles in the word openly and in one sense it's quite right because there is a sense as I was teaching last week that nothing finally is in secret because the day will come when all that we have done for the lord will be revealed and father will reveal will reward us openly are you working for your reward not in terms of something that you deserve but out of the largesse of father's heart he said that people who live their lives on earth to his honor and to his glory will be rewarded for so doing do you realize that now now get this right please nail this properly in your understanding i'm not talking about the man who's preaching a sermon that may or may not be credited as righteousness as far as far as father is concerned it depends how he's preaching it and what he's preaching it for pride can steal into the pulpit the devil can can follow our lord jesus into the wilderness he can follow the man who's who's preaching in the pulpit and try to eclipse the glory from god so it's deflected to him i'm talking about the the lady who had her children dedicated the father who stood at the front i'm talking about you businessmen i'm talking about you older people do you realize that everything that you do is in effect a piece at least potentially of worship that you can offer the lord living a decent life giving 100 pence to the pound ensuring that your personal morality is intact all those sorts of things are acts of righteousness which you can build up in private and god recognizes them and ultimately will reward you for them we're not talking about salvation salvation is something that is granted as a result of the finished work of our lord jesus on the cross i hope you're clear about that i hope you know what it is to become a christian you don't make yourselves a christian you become a christian because of the grace of god but having received his grace then there is the possibility of engaging in these spiritual disciplines arms giving and prayer and fasting and so forth and as you do these meticulously in the power of the spirit so you build up for yourself ultimately the congratulatory statement of god who will reward you in the eternal kingdom i hope as i say you're clear on these things it's most important our savior constantly is talking about rewards rewards rewards in the sermon on the mount as he directs this beautiful teaching to his own children but now we need to make one or two balancing comments in the way of conclusion and that is that you're not to feel that because our lord has been talking about privacy he is therefore saying that prayer meetings are not necessary you see i i pointed out i argued from you to uh in front of you last week when looking at the first verse of the sixth chapter that these statements our lord makes have to be balanced because sometimes he takes us to one point in his argument and the other times he'll take us to another point in his argument here he's talking about attitude and he's saying that fundamentally our attitude as we engage in prayer is to be one of utter sincerity without any charade whatsoever but there will be occasions when he will talk about the church coming together in prayer there will be examples in the acts of the apostles when you will discover all the company of god's people engaging together in prayer the business about engaging in prayer privately does not exclude the responsibility that is yours and mine as coming together in corporate prayer indeed as i've argued before i would say that the times that we come together for corporate prayer are enhanced in their quality when we have been faithful in our private devotions did you hear that you don't clock up as a sort of barter with god your communal time of prayer but standing in for your personal time of prayer god doesn't want an either or he wants a both and and when we come together i tell you on a wednesday morning or whenever it is that we meet together for prayer and we've already been engaging faithfully during that week personally in prayer so we come with hearts that are filled with the with a sense of the spirit of god we've already got our spiritual perception in focus and then together we can do business before the lord do you agree to that i do wish sometimes you'd say amen the controlling principle here the balancing statement is that our lord is not arguing against prayer meetings he's setting up teaching governing our private devotions neither is he arguing against lengthy intercessions he can't be can he what he's arguing against is mindless speaking i say he can't be because when you go into the 18th chapter you discover our lord jesus of luke's gospel you discover our lord jesus setting up teaching on prayer and when he makes reference to the to the granting of the holy spirit i'm just looking for that chapter he also refers to importunate prayer if someone's got that chapter will they shout it out for me please he makes reference to importunate prayer and asking the lord for the gift of the holy spirit it's the 11th chapter of luke's gospel i got it before you did he says verse five suppose one of you has a friend and he goes to him at midnight and says friend lend me three loaves of bread because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me and i have nothing to set before him our lord jesus gives that illustration as being a legitimate way in which we can look on prayer there are times for prolonged intercession there are times when we will come with brevity before the lord in our praying well then i conclude with this what is your prayer life like a man is says mcshane what he is on his knees and no more do you appreciate our savior's teaching on the wrong way of prayer do you ensure or will you ensure that there's no hypocrisy there's no charade as far as you're concerned you understand about the genuine prayer in exclusive in exclusion believing that god will meet you at that point in in the privacy of your room or wherever and then fortified in this area will you come together and pray with us what's your prayer life like do you know it's so easy to lose out on our prayer life isn't it so easy to lose out on these spiritual disciplines but i'll tell you something it's the flip side of that truth that i've learned it's so easy to get back god so easily is prepared to reinstate the disciplines that should be yours in your life and enable you to get these things worked out here's the challenge that i gave to maybridge coming across to the tab try when you wake up in the morning two chapters are the word of god just before you go to bed at night skip the last 10 minutes of the television two chapters of the word of god and having read five minutes or 10 minutes in prayer before the lord put all that together in one day and you've got at least half an hour of spiritual discipline which will not only bless the day that's gone but be preparatory for the day that is to come says our lord jesus when you pray he assumes that you will i plead with god his assumption may not be unwarranted as far as the tab is concerned