6, and tonight we'll be looking at verses 5 through 8, Matthew chapter 6, verses 5 through 8. Get me a sip of water while you're turning there. It's been said, and you've probably heard this before, maybe even from me, that if you want to humble a man or a woman, you ask them about their prayer life. If you wanna humble a man or woman who professes to be a Christian, you just need to ask them about their prayer life. This evening, as we look at Matthew chapter six, verses five through eight, we're gonna be considering the topic of prayer. And every honest Christian is gonna admit not only that we should pray and that prayer is important, but we would also admit that we do not pray as often as we should. John Calvin likened prayer to a neglected treasure. Prayer is of really inestimable value. We would agree that it is a valuable thing, but we would also agree that it is undervalued in our lives. And I think every honest Christian would say the same. Tonight, as we look at verses five through eight of Matthew chapter six, we're gonna look at prayer, the value of it, and we're gonna look at what Jesus says as he begins to teach us how to pray. Now, the last time we were together, we said that as we move into chapter 6, we're moving not only into a new chapter, but into a new section of the Sermon on the Mount. And that section runs from verse 1 of chapter 6 down to verse 18. And we said that the focus in this section of the Sermon on the Mount is the focus of lived out Christianity. Jesus is looking at living the Christian life, what he calls up in verse 1, practicing your righteousness. And we said last time that what our Lord is doing in this section, verses 1 through 18, is really getting us to focus on our motivation when it comes to living the Christian life. Why do we practice righteousness? That's the question that we need to ask. Do we seek to live as Christians for the praise of man, or do we seek the glory and praise of God? What lies behind our actions as Christians? That's really the question that hangs over this section from 1 to 18. Are we trying to please man, or are we trying to please God? And we said that in addressing this question, our Lord takes up three major acts of piety. The last time we were together in verses 1 to 4, we looked at giving to the needy. And then in verses 5 through 15, Christ takes up the topic of prayer. And then down in verses 16 through 18, he will look at fasting, all with the focus of what is our motivation. But it's worth noting, as we consider our topic tonight, that Christ devotes the largest amount of time to the topic of prayer. The largest amount of time to the topic of prayer. So obviously, this is a very important aspect of the Christian life. It's an important aspect of practicing our righteousness. One commentator underscores the importance of prayer by saying these words, and I thought this was kind of right on the nose. He says this, the Redeemer, that is Christ, whose whole purpose in coming to earth was to open the door to heaven and bring men to God, has a special concern about how disciples approach his father in heaven. Clearly, there is something especially odious about perverting the instrument of personal communion with God. So Jesus here is going to begin to teach us how to pray. Now, as you can see, if you look down a little bit beyond our passage for tonight, beginning in verse 9, Christ will go on to take up what some people call the model prayer, what most people call the Lord's Prayer. We're not going to touch on that tonight. We will get to it. And the goal when we get to the Lord's Prayer the next time is to take the Lord's Prayer line by line, kind of like we did the Beatitudes. So we'll be in the Lord's Prayer for a while. I think that's important in learning from Christ about how to pray because when we get to the Lord's prayer, Jesus is really giving us the blueprint. But tonight we're gonna be in verses five through eight. So let's give attention to this passage and let us hear God's word. Matthew chapter six, verses five through eight. And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners. that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when 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. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do. for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let's pray and ask him to feed us with it this evening. Let's pray. Father, We love you and we love your church and we love your word, but we confess that we do not value your word as we should. We do not value prayer as we should. So we humbly ask you tonight that you would feed us by your word. Teach us about prayer. Teach us how to pray. Teach us how not to pray so that we might glorify you more. so that we might be like our great Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. So we ask for your help tonight, and we pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, as you can see at the beginning of our passage, Christ begins by telling us how not to pray. He begins with a negative example, and he does so by showing us the example of the hypocrites. Now, the last time we were together, we were introduced to this term. Jesus mentioned it in that first section, verses one through four. And we saw there that the word hypocrite originally had to do with a stage actor, somebody who was playing a role. They were not being genuine. They were not being themselves. They were being someone else. And Jesus uses that word and applies it to the Pharisees. And when Jesus applied that word to the Pharisees, he was highlighting that the Pharisees were not being genuine. They were not being sincere when they went about giving to the needy. However pious, however righteous those men looked, their giving to the needy and their prayers, as we'll see tonight, were just a show. They were just playing a role. They were playing a part. They were giving a performance, and they were doing so for the purpose of attracting attention to themselves and hoping to get praise for themselves. They were not genuine in their giving, and they were not genuine in their prayers. Now, it should be noted that when we look at our verses tonight, the focus really is on private prayer, private prayer. And we know this from verse 6. If you look there at that verse, you see that in verse 6, Christ begins positive instruction, teaching us how we are to pray over against the improper prayer of the hypocrites. And he says that you are to withdraw into your room and close the door. And the word you there in verse six is in the singular. So in this section, Christ has in view the practice of private prayer, the abuse of it, improper private prayer. And also what he's gonna teach us is proper private prayer. So what Christ is critiquing here is the improper, the twisted private prayer of the Pharisees. But it's easy to overlook that and maybe to not even notice it at all. And that is because the Pharisees are said to pray in the synagogues and on the street corners. Now, those don't exactly seem like prime real estate locations, you might say, for private prayer. And yet Jesus mentions these with respect to the Pharisees, the synagogues, and the street corners. And maybe you might say, well, I understand going to a synagogue to pray privately. That makes sense to me. And of course, there's nothing wrong with going to a synagogue in that day to pray privately. Today, a person might desire to go to a church and maybe go into the sanctuary to pray privately. We can understand that. And there's nothing per se wrong with doing those things. But with the Pharisees, there was an added element. They weren't just going to the synagogue to pray privately, like they're giving to the needy. They were doing it in a way that would draw attention to themselves. And we get an idea about this from a parable that Jesus teaches. A reference was made to this parable this morning. It's in Luke chapter 18, verses 9 to 14. We call this the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. And in that parable, you see these two men are going to pray privately. So in a sense, it's a parable about private prayer. The Pharisee and the tax collector are both going to the temple. They're going to the place of worship to pray and to pray privately. And what are we told about the tax collector in that parable? Well, you probably know the parable. We're told that the tax collector stood far off. We're not just told the content of his prayer, but we're actually told something about where he positioned himself. He stood far off. The Pharisee in the parable is said to be standing by himself. And it's easy to overlook that language, but what is being communicated there, especially in contrast to the tax collector who stood far off, is that the Pharisee positioned himself and did so intentionally in a prominent place in the temple. In other words, he selected for himself a place to go and pray privately so that other people would notice what he was doing. It was all part of his plan. And so you see in the parable, there's a sense in which the positioning of the two men reveals the hearts of those men, not just the content of their prayers, but actually how they positioned themselves, how they went about their private prayers. You see, the tax collector was humble before God, but the Pharisee exalted himself. And it's this kind of thing that Jesus is bringing into focus when he mentions in a discussion of private prayer that we are not to be like the hypocrites, the Pharisees, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues. There's nothing wrong with standing, that was a normal posture for prayer, but they were doing it, Jesus says, that they may be seen by others, that they may be noticed. You can imagine a conversation in the first century. Someone says, isn't that a devout and godly man, that Pharisee over there? Someone else says, well, how can you tell? How do you know he's a devout and godly man? Well, he goes to the synagogue to pray every day. Well, how do you know he goes to the synagogue to pray every day? Well, he knocks on my door to let me know he's going to the synagogue to pray every day. And did you know that he is kind enough to invite me along to watch him pray? You can imagine this kind of thing going on. This is what Christ is laying before us. But he doesn't just mention the synagogue, he also mentions the street corners. Now for the Old Testament saints, there were three recognized times in the course of a day when a person would engage in private prayer. You obviously were not limited to those times, but those would roughly correspond to morning, noon, and evening. We see this, for example, in Psalm 55 and verse 17, which says, Evening and morning and at noon, I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice. Evening and morning and at noon. Of course, we also see in the book of Daniel in chapter 6 and verse 10, that Daniel got down on his knees three times a day, probably those roughly same times, and prayed and gave thanks before his God. These were recognized as times for private prayer. And when Jesus mentions the street corners in a context of private prayer, what he is getting at, and this is almost hard for us to believe, is that the Pharisees would make sure that when those times came for them to do their private prayers, they just happened to be in a place where a lot of people would be congregating, like a street corner. And then they would go about their private devotional prayer. Once again, they were seeking out an audience. And our Lord says, and this is troubling to see this language, and he notes it, that these Pharisees love to stand and pray that they may be seen by others. They love to stand and pray that they may be seen by others. Notice that he does not stress that they loved prayer, that they loved communing with the Lord. And what is prayer? Prayer at its core, just a child would say, is talking to God, speaking to God, fellowshipping with God, communing with God. But sadly for the Pharisees, prayer was not a means to commune with God, to speak with God. Prayer was a means to another end, namely receiving the praise of man. They loved praying. They loved doing their devotions, private devotions, in public places because of the fame and the attention that it garnered for them. And Jesus says, as he said in verses 1 to 4, that they had received their reward. They wanted the praise of man, and they got the praise of man. No doubt people said, look at those Pharisees and listen to how they pray. But Jesus says that's all they're going to get. That's it. Nothing else will they get. They have received their reward and the language conveys that they have received it in full. There is nothing else coming to them. Now, how does this portrayal hit home with you? Remember, we've said that Jesus here, he began this section with the word beware. In other words, we said Jesus here is not saying that this problem is just with the Pharisees, but he's saying this could be a temptation for any of his disciples. The Pharisees are just held up as an example. Beware, this could happen to us. Have you ever noticed a tendency within yourself to tell others about what happens in your private devotions? Now, let me say there's nothing wrong with that insofar as it goes. Many times you're excited about what you learn from God's Word and you want to share that with someone else. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't want you hearing me say that there is. But remember that word, beware. You see, we have to ask ourselves sometimes, Jesus is saying, pull back the curtain, ask why are you doing what you're doing? Why are you sharing that you prayed for someone this morning? Why are you sharing what you've learned in your private devotions? Maybe a modern equivalent to what Jesus is laying before us would be someone doing their devotion at a coffee house with an open Bible and a bowed head, but there is nothing going on inside. It's all for show. They're not even reading what's on the page. They're bowing their head, but they're just daydreaming. It's all an act. It's all a show. Now, I'm not saying that's anyone here, but remember that word, beware. You see, it's easy for us. Maybe someone goes to a coffee house. Once again, nothing wrong with studying your Bible at a coffee house. Maybe you go there just in search of a place and you say, this is a good place. And maybe somebody comes up to you after a few weeks and says, you know, I love seeing somebody reading their Bible out in the open. And you don't think anything about it. But then later on, you think, well, you know, I found a better place, but you're not. Maybe I'll go back to that coffee house. You see, there is that tendency. We like the attention of others. We like the praise of others. Deep down inside of us, even those of us who know the Lord Jesus, the pharisaical tendency is there. It was not unique to them, so Jesus is saying, beware, beware. Why? And that's the question we have to ask if we choose, say, a public place to do our devotions, if we choose to tell someone. Periodically, we need to check in, why am I doing this here? Why am I sharing this? Why am I doing these things? And to drive home his point about the essence of prayer, Jesus says that when we pray, we are to do the following. He says, but when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret. And what he's doing there is distilling down to the essence of what makes prayer, prayer. He's saying, think about this. If you want to think about the heart of prayer going into a place where there is no one else, where there are no other watching eyes. And you are alone with God. You are alone with your father who is in secret and who sees in secret. And one of the things that Christ is saying here in these words is this. He is saying that private prayer is not optional for a believer. And let me say that again, private prayer is not optional for a believer. Private prayer in some form or fashion is a necessary outflow of the Holy Spirit working in a person's heart. If someone is born again, they will have a desire to commune with their heavenly father. They will have a desire to pray. If a person becomes a Christian truly as opposed to in name only, they will pray and they will pray privately. When the Holy Spirit changes the hearts of a boy or a girl or a man or a woman, then that person will desire fellowship with the Father. After the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, we read in Acts 9 about the Lord Jesus going to another disciple, Ananias, and saying, you need to go find Saul of Tarsus. And Ananias is afraid. We would be too because of the reputation of Saul of Tarsus. But Jesus tells Ananias, behold, he is praying almost as a confirmation. He is one of mine now. Behold, he is praying that shortly after the conversion of this man, Saul of Tarsus, what does he begin to do? He draws near to the Lord in sincere and private prayer. One author calls prayer the breath of the new creature, the breath of the new creature. J.C. Ryle, you know, he's one of my favorites, wrote a little tract on the value of prayer. That tract has been put into a book form. It's a little book you can get. I'm gonna promote it here. It's really good. You should get it. It's called, Do You Pray? It's published by Evangelical Press. Let me read you this quote from J.C. Ryle in that helpful little booklet, Do You Pray? God does not have any silent children. That is because when someone becomes a child of God, it is part of their new nature to pray, just as it is part of a newborn baby's nature to cry. God's children see their need of mercy and grace. They feel their emptiness and weakness. They cannot do anything else to help themselves. They must pray. They must pray. Now, just as it was said in the previous section, which is verses one to four, when you give to the needy, not if you give to the needy, Jesus here says, when you pray, not if you pray. When you pray, a disciple of Christ is going to pray. Now let me say this, when I say every disciple of Christ is going to pray, we need to make a distinction between desire and practice. The practice of private prayer may wax and wane. But a true disciple of Christ is going to have a desire to pray, a desire to draw near to God, right? There's a reason I began with that line. If you want to humble a believer in Christ, ask them about their prayer life. They will at once realize, yes, I want to pray and I wish I prayed more. And also I know I don't pray as I should. So there is a distinction between desire and practice. The prayer of which I speak does not have to be prayer with flowery language. It does not have to be prayer with big theological words. As that J.C. Ryle quote pointed out, prayer very often for the Christian is just this almost guttural cry to the Lord. You realize that you need the mercy of the Lord and you run to him in prayer. That is what we're talking about here when we say that a true Christian will pray, will pray. And of course, this desire needs to be discipled. It needs to be informed. It needs to be nurtured. And it can certainly atrophy in the life of a Christian. This is part of the reason why Christ, in this section, is teaching us how to pray. He knows that his people will pray, but they need further instruction in how to pray. Why does Christ mention going into a room and closing the door? Well, what he's doing, I mentioned this a little bit before, is setting before us a circumstance where a disciple is alone with his Lord. He is alone with his heavenly Father. There are no other humans around. And this doesn't have to be limited, of course, to an actual room where you can close a door. Christians in many lands don't have that open to them, okay? We do in our homes, but many Christians do not. The goal is to find a location where you can be alone with your heavenly father. We read of Christ in Matthew 14, 23. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. Not in a room with a closed door, but on a mountain by himself. Private prayer with his father. The point is not to limit private prayer to a room with a closed door. The purpose is to focus on getting alone with your heavenly father. I ask you tonight, do you speak to the father? Can you say that he is your heavenly father? Do you desire to draw near to your heavenly father in private? One of the reasons that Christ promotes this idea, and I do think that if you are able, it is beneficial to go into a room and close the door. One of the reasons that that is beneficial is that it removes this temptation It removes the temptation to be seen by others, a temptation that is real for us. Withdrawing from others to pray isolates the purpose of prayer, and it enables you to be able to pour out your heart to the Lord in a way that you cannot do when you are around other people, even other believers. Secret, private prayer helps us to concentrate on our prayers. It is difficult to pray around other people. Any pastor will tell you that doing public prayer, which is leading God's people in prayer, any elder will tell you that that is different. Of course, then private prayer, the content is different and the ability to focus is different. It is more of a challenge when you are in front of others. There is freedom in private prayer. That is an advantage that Christ is highlighting here. You are also able to be more specific. In private and closet prayer, there are things that you can pray in private that, to be quite honest, would be inappropriate in public prayer. One thinks about confession of sin. And confession of sin in terms of corporate confession of sin is always written in a way, at least it should be, to where the general believer can confess and read that prayer with a clear conscience. But in private, we can be more honest with God. We can be more specific. You see, Christ is dialing in on the fact that Prayer is to be from the heart. It is to be sincere. The prayer of the disciple of Christ is to be genuine. The hypocrites love praying and doing their devotions before others, as we've said, to be praised by them. We are to love praying because in prayer, we get to draw near to the Father. Now, we are not in the flesh, but the flesh is still in us. There are many things to pull us away from private prayer. There are many things that will try to convince us, things in us, that we would be better off doing anything else besides private prayer. But what Christ is doing in us is cultivating in us a love for drawing near to the Father. That very thing is what he is getting us to love. Do you draw near? When you are alone with God, do you have anything to say? That's something to think about. When you are alone with the Father, do you have anything to say? Does your Christianity go away when no other human is around? Does it disappear or is it still there? Is it still there? Christ is saying that there is a secret dimension to the life of the disciple, right? He's getting in our business here, okay? He's saying, if you're gonna follow me, you don't just follow me around others, but you're to be my disciple when no one else is looking. And prayer is a signal that there is a pulse, that there is faith. If you profess to be a Christian and you don't have a desire to draw near to the Lord in private, and maybe you would say that you've never prayed in private, then this is an occasion to ask yourself if you know the Lord. if you know the Lord. None of this is to put a burden on anyone's back. We could all pray more, as we've already said. Maybe you've gotten out of the habit of regular private prayer. My counsel to you would be call out to the Lord tonight when you get home. Like I said, it can be an honest, sincere, and we'll see in a moment, short prayer. Call out to him. If you're a Christian, This is encouragement, this language about calling out to your father that you are not calling out to a cold and distant God. You're drawing near and you're calling out to your father who is in heaven, who sees in secret. Let me encourage you also to learn to call upon the Lord throughout the day. When I was a young Christian, I remember believing that I could only pray privately when I could find that location, whatever that was, you know, a bathroom, a bedroom, somewhere where I could go in and close the door. And there would be things that would happen throughout the day, and I would have the thought to pray and be like, well, I'll pray later. I'll pray later. It was not until years later when I realized that, no, I can pray to God as I go about my day, okay? That is also private prayer. It's something that we have to learn to do. Some of the older writers would call these spontaneous prayers, right? We know these kinds of prayers, okay? When our cars break down, for example, okay? These are, we hope, sincere and genuine prayers. There's nothing wrong with praying in those moments. Your father, Jesus is saying, sees, he hears. Draw near with your problems. Draw near with your praise. Draw near with your sin and your thankfulness and your gratitude. And we ought to note, that our God is a forgiving God. Maybe you have had a season where you've not participated in private prayer. Confess those to the Lord. He will forgive you. He will forgive you. Do that in private. Draw near to him. Lastly, tonight, let's emphasize this, that our prayers are to be different because our God is different. As he closes out this section, Christ mentions the prayers of the heathen or the pagan Gentiles. Jesus does not see a big difference here. We should note between the Pharisees and their behavior and the behavior of the pagans. That would have been very shocking to many people in that day. The pagans pray long prayers. He describes them as prayers that heap up empty, some translations say vain, phrases or repetitions. Now, the goal here is not to forbid long prayers, right? Christ is highlighting sincerity and genuineness. There's nothing wrong with sincere, long, private prayer, but prayer doesn't have to be long to be true, to be sincere. What Christ is wanting us to see here is the emptiness of these pagan prayers. The prayers of the Pharisees were empty. They cared not about talking with God. And in that sense, they were just like the pagans. The pagans cared nothing about communing with God. God was a means to an end. And their view of God or their gods was that they were disinterested, that they were distant and they wanted nothing to do with people. And so you had to get their attention. And then you had to catch them up as to what was going on with you. And to get their attention, you had to go about these prolonged prayers. And those prayers were not clear and sincere and rational. They were not talking with their gods. They were just throwing up phrases, whatever works, whatever noodle sticks to the wall, maybe we'll get a response. That's what they were doing. Very often these prayers would involve chanting or the same words repeated again and again over and over and over. We saw that in the Old Testament reading tonight. The prophets of Baal, you saw the difference between their prayers And then the simple, sincere, genuine prayer of Elijah, praying to the true and living God. You see that difference? In Acts chapter 19 and verse 34, we read about the mob in Ephesus when there's a riot going on. And we read that they cried out the same words, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. For about two hours, they cried out those words. You see, the view of prayer there is the superstitious view. It is the view, the assumption that if you push the right buttons and enter in the right code, then eventually you'll get the result. If you pull the right lever, you'll get God to do what it is you want Him to do. See, prayer is a means. God is a means to just get you what you want. The question is, what's the formula? What's the formula? That's the superstitious view. The approach there, that superstitious approach is very prevalent among Roman Catholics who put a lot of stock in uttering almost mindless words, okay? The priest gives them the recipe. This is what you need to do. You take that recipe and you punch it in and this is what you do. And then you get the result. It's superstition. It's not true prayer. It's not true prayer. Jesus says plainly, and look at these words, do not be like them. Do not be like them. Do not pray in that way. Our father is not disinterested. He is not distant. He sees in secret. We do not have to twist his arm to get him to listen to us. He is ready to listen. This is part of what Jesus is saying. He says He already knows what we need before we ask. You don't have to catch Him up on everything that's going on. He already knows what's going on. And this recognition that the Father knows all, that He's omniscient, doesn't drive us away from Him. It drives us to Him. It should make us want to pray to Him all the more. One author says this. Superstition ascribes the reason for the granting of a prayer not to the mercy of God, but to its own godless work. Unbelief infers from the omniscience of God, in which it does not believe, the uselessness of prayer. Why pray if God knows everything already? Faith, however, founds upon this same holy, gracious, divine omniscience its poor, You see, there are many who would say, if God already knows, why pray? But you see, Jesus, and once again, He's really getting us to that heart of prayer. He's saying, well, you're not like the pagans, remember? You're not drawing near to the Father just to use Him. No, drawing near to the Father is an end in itself. Yes, He already knows. And the reason that we should go to Him is not to use Him, to go to Him. And notice what Jesus says, that the Father knows not what you want before you ask Him, but what you need before you ask Him. When we go to the Father, we're going saying, you know far better than I. And I submit to whatever answer you give, because you know, you know what I need before I even ask you, before the words are even on my lips, before they're even on my mind. You see, what the Lord is doing when we draw near to Him is He is making us like our Savior. And I do believe that one of the major reasons for backsliding in the Christian life, and yes, as Reformed Christians, we do believe in backsliding, one of the major reasons for backsliding in the Christian life is a neglect of private prayer. Very often, I believe, if you were to go to a Christian who just drops off, I don't know what's going on with you. And if they're honest with you, most likely they're gonna say, yeah, I haven't closed the door and prayed in a long time. in a long time. You see, this is one of God's means of grace. He is shaping us to be like Christ through this gift of prayer. We all struggle with it. We all struggle with it, myself included, but it is a gift. And in this prayer, and we finish here, The Lord teaches us to value the will of our Father in heaven, and we are never more like Christ than when we are concerned with the Father's will. You see, in private prayer is where we are shaped. Let us not pray like the hypocrites. Let us not pray like the pagans. We have done that. Let us repent of that and we will have to repent some more. But let us draw near in secret because our father wants to hear from us and he sees in secret. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this great privilege. And we have all neglected this treasure. We confess that and we own it. Help us to see that the excuses that so often come before our minds as to why we can't pray, that those are from the devil. They're from the enemy who knows how you use prayer. So help us to love prayer because it is time spent with you. Grow in us a love for you. We do not love you as we should. So help us to love you. Help us to love Christ, the Holy Spirit. Help us to love these times, however brief they might be, that we get to draw near to you in secret. And we pray all of this in the name of our Savior. Amen.