October 6, 2024
The Toolbox Opened
Matthew 6:5-8
Having the right tool for the right job is not just an adage, it’s an absolute truth. I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve been working on a vehicle or on some electronic device. I’ll struggle and struggle to remove a certain part. Then I come to a point where my frustration starts to overwhelm me, and I just want to give up. It’s in those times that I feel like I should just throw the thing into the trash and move to a place without cars or electricity. However, just before I carry out that thought, I learn that there is a tool that is made specifically for the job. Once I get that tool and learn to use it, it ends up making the job much easier and my frustration goes away. We always need the right tool for the right job. This adage works for more than just cars and electronics. You need the right tools in your job as well. Those tools can be both physical as well as mental. You need the right tools as you parent your children or need the right tools in your marriage, and you need the right tools as a follower of Jesus. God has given us the tools we need for this life in a wonderful toolbox that we call the Bible. Like any toolbox, it’s one thing to have the tools you need, but it’s another thing to know how to use those tools. So this morning, I want to start looking at some tools and how to properly use them to help us with one of the most frustrating parts of the Christian life — personally carrying out the Great Commission. If you were to ask the average church member what the Great Commission involves, most would probably say it involves sharing the Gospel with others. It does involve sharing the Gospel, but that’s not exactly what Jesus commanded us to do. In Matthew 28:18-20, Jesus says, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” The actual command is to “make disciples”. The first step of making disciples is sharing the Gospel — it doesn’t stop there. After we share the Gospel and someone responds by accepting Jesus as their Lord and Savior, we are usually clueless on how to continue in making disciples. In this new sermon series I want us to unpack and understand some of the tools that will help us with making disciples. One thing we need to remember about making disciples is to make disciples we first must be disciples ourselves. So to be able to become better disciples ourselves, as we follow through in obedience to make disciples of the lost, I want to start by looking at the tool that is one of the most important you will ever have. One of the most impactful of all the tools we have been given by God — prayer.
God has given us an awesome privilege when He gave us prayer. Not only did He give us the ability to speak with Him at any time, but He has also given us commands on how to use prayer. We are called to pray for our enemies (Matthew 5:44). To pray for other followers of Jesus (James 5:16). To pray for our spiritual leaders (Colossians 4:3). As well as peace in Israel (Psalms 122:6). The list goes on and on. To pray like we are called to pray we need to make sure we are praying properly. Starting in Matthew 5 we have recorded what we call Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount” in which Jesus starts sharing God’s Kingdom values which are in sharp contrast to what the world values. Jesus speaks on Kingdom attitudes. He speaks of the Kingdom's view of sin and speaks of how we are to view our enemies. It’s in Chapter 6 and verse 5 that Jesus begins to share what Kingdom prayer looks like. He does so by addressing 3 different groups of people who would have been present that day on the mount as Jesus taught. It’s in these 3 addresses that we see how we are to properly use the tool of prayer that God has given to us.
A Disciples' prayers must not be Hypocritical. - Matthew 6:5
And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.
The first group that Jesus addresses is the hypocrites. We know exactly who this is by looking at the context of this verse. These hypocrites were the religious leaders of the day, and they were the ones who Jesus spoke out against more than anyone else in the Gospels. Jesus even calls these hypocrites unwashed tombs (Matthew 23:27). They looked good on the outside, but on the inside, they were dead and rotting. These hypocrites would have been the people that many of those who had gathered that day would have looked to as an example of how to live a pious life devoted to God. However Jesus knew better. He knew their intentions, He knew their motives and wanted to make sure that those types of attitudes would never be seen in His followers. He begins addressing their attitudes by saying they love to pray. This seems like a wonderful thing. A love for God moving and motivating them to want to talk to God seems like what we should be doing. But God is not the object of their love, rather it’s themselves that is the object of their love. Their type of love just shows that their motivation is just to bring attention to themselves and that is not what prayer is supposed to do. The moment we bring ourselves into the picture of prayer, we have lost the ability to use it properly. Whether it is coming down to the altar thinking and maybe even hoping that people will notice us and think that we are holy because we come to the altar to pray, or on the other hand it can be when God calls us to come to the altar and we worry and think about what others might think. Both things are what Jesus is speaking against. Both things are hypocritical because prayer is not about you, it’s about the One to whom you will speak with. Jesus mentions the posture of the prayer here, but the physical posture is not the problem. Scripture tells us of many positions people took while praying (standing, sitting, kneeling, and bowed prostrate on their face). Standing up was the norm when it came to praying in the temple. Jesus is not concerned with their physical posture here but rather He is concerned with the posture of their soul when praying. These people only wanted the attention and adoration of the crowds when they prayed. They would time it perfectly that when prayer time would come, they would be on a very busy street in Jerusalem and would face the temple and pray out loud just so everyone could see them. This was the very type of prayers that Jesus spoke of in His parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector when the Pharisee prayed a very self-righteous prayer thanking God, he was better than everyone else. These acts of prayer that Jesus is describing are self-righteous acts you are trying to rely upon yourself and not on God in those moments. There is a reward for these types of prayers, but it’s not from God — it’s from man. These hypocrites were looking for the approval and awe of man and they got it. They played a game, but in a mask trying to show everyone how spiritual they were. They had been doing it for so long that everyone started to believe the lie. Therefore they got just what they wanted. They got the admiration of people, but God was not involved. As a follower of Jesus this is something that we must always be aware of. Are we trying to bring attention to ourselves or are we doing business with God? He’s not saying that we can’t pray in public, but when we do, we need to make sure the focus is not on ourselves but on God alone.
A Disciples prayer is Sincere. - Matthew 6:6
But 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.
Jesus uses a phrase to start verses 5,6, & 7 that show us the most important group He is addressing when it comes to prayer. That group is “you” or those who will be followers of Jesus. He starts each of these verses out with an emphatic “When YOU pray”. This phrase is not just a request to pray but it’s a command. He is telling those who will follow Him that they must pray and must pray often — it’s essential. The picture here is that as air is the literal life breath of a human, so prayer is the life blood of every Christian. We aren’t just to pray when we need something or when we are at church. We are to pray without ceasing. Of the three times He commands us to pray, twice He tells His followers how not to act when they pray. It’s here in verse 6 that He tells them how to pray. “Go into your room and close the door” was not a direct command. It was a reference to an inner room that all presents would have been familiar with in their own homes. It was a room that no one would ever gather socially. It was a room that was quiet. A room that didn’t have windows. It was a room without distraction — a dark room that only two people would be present in, God and the one who would be praying. This call was a call to pray without distraction, to pray with one focus, to pray with sincerity. When we truly pray it’s not for show. It’s not to bring glory to ourselves in any way, but rather it is a sacred and holy thing that is just between God and us. In that way it’s a lot like praise and worship. When we worship corporately here in church, we should not be doing so to make people think we are a great singer or performer and we should not even worry that people might think poorly of our talents, but rather it’s us bringing to God what He is worthy of. Prayer is the same way. We don't need to worry about anyone else around us because the moment that happens it ceases to be prayer and is now a performance. When we come to God alone in prayer (even if we are in a crowd) we are promised that God will reward us. This is not saying He will answer our prayers in just the way we want, but He will give us what we need and mold our will to His. We will get the good things the Father wants to give His children instead of the things that will always fall short, like the attention of man, He mentioned in the previous verse. There is another thing that sometimes vies for our attention and needs to be addressed as Jesus addresses the need to have absolutely no distractions when we pray — distracted mind. How many times have you been praying especially at night and your mind starts to wander onto other things? This is a problem. Since prayer is an act of worship and meant for God alone, when we are taking time to pray and our mind wanders, we are bringing our offering of prayer to something else besides God. That is why we need to make sure that we are focused when we pray — focused on the one to whom we pray and not the ten thousand other things that we face day in and day out. It’s a time to be alone with God, to be still in His presence and to speak with Him knowing not only that He always hears us, but that He always answers as well.
A Disciples Prayer can’t be Tedious. - Matthew 6:7-8
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.
The last group of people Jesus speaks of when He is explaining the Kingdom's way of praying is to the Gentiles. They would have been in the audience that day and they would have been the ones who would have worshiped a pantheon of Roman gods. In their worship they had a certain method of praying with repetition because they thought they had to get the gods attention. They even thought that they had to say the “magic” words that would cause the gods to listen and answer them. Jesus is telling all of those there that the real God is not like that at all. As a matter of fact, you don’t have to get His attention, nor do you have to repeat in vain your request over and over. He is always listening to you, and He already knows what you need before you even ask for it. He’s not saying there is a problem with repetition in prayer, but it’s the motive behind it. It's the vain repetition that is the problem. It’s a little ironic that Jesus mentions this here because He shares the most repeated prayer in all of History — the Lord’s Prayer. The fact remains (and helps us to understand the Lord's Prayer) that repetition is not what the Lord seeks, but instead He is seeking honesty in our prayers. In our prayer lives we might find ourselves in a season of life where all we can do is fall on our face and cry out to God the same thing over and over. Those are prayers of desperation and from the heart. Those are not the vein prayers Jesus is speaking of here. We don’t need to be robot like in our prayers, but we need to be honest and sincere knowing that God always hears and always answers with what is best for His children.
This is Jesus’ introduction to how to use prayer properly before He gives us a model prayer. We will be looking closely over the rest of this sermon series at the toolbox of discipleship. Today we have seen the groundwork that Jesus laid on how prayer should be used by a disciple. It should never draw attention to oneself or even cause us to worry about oneself at all. It should be a form of worship between you and God alone with no other distractions. It must be sincere not using a formula or a prayer that you pray the same over and over and over. That is the proper way to pray and should challenge all of us as we examine our prayer lives.
