Matthew 6:5-8 (NKJV) 5“And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. 6“But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. 7“And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8“Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.
As we look at how we are to resist the devil, we have been looking at the weapons we are to use as we do. In our last post we began looking at the weapon of prayer. I must note that the use of prayer is not solely a weapon of our warfare. Its primary function is fellowship with the Lord. I have been places where it seemed that every prayer meeting was a time to bind the devil or aggressively declare the word of God over situations. There are times when that is valid, especially in times of intercession. However, that should not be the bulk of our prayer time.
The real power that comes from prayer is the fellowship and connection it fosters in our relationship to God. We should make our requests known to God when we have needs (Philippians 4:6.) We should pour our hearts out to him when we are in distress. There should also be times when we simply come into his presence and listen to him.
We see this in the way Jesus prayed. Many times in the gospels, we will see Jesus off by himself in times of prayer. As important as corporate prayer is to the believer, prayer is first a personal thing and second something we do together. In the times Jesus spent in fellowship with his Father he gained direction and insight. Jesus said he spoke the words and did the works his father showed him. It is in the intimate times together with the Father that Jesus saw and came to understand what he would say and do.
Prayer is a major part of our arsenal, both from the perspective of enlisting the help of the almighty and in building faith for the battle by strengthening our relationship with him. When we discuss prayer there are many good books and teachings available. However, there is no greater expert on prayer than Jesus himself. When his disciples wanted to know the secret of Jesus ministry, they did not ask him to teach them how to heal, cast out demons or even preach (Luke 11:1.) They asked him to teach them to pray. As part of the sermon on the mount, Jesus teaches them and us a number of things about effective prayer.
In Matthew 6:5 Jesus tells us that we should not pray like the hypocrites. What made their praying unacceptable to Jesus? He talks about how they like to pray in front of people so “that they may be seen of men.” As I was thinking about this, there are two things they did we must avoid. They saw prayer as a way to gain approval from man. I think we can be guilty of this at times.
I have been asked to pray at various public gatherings. Many who are asked to do so will spend a great deal of time putting together and writing down an eloquent prayer that will sound impressive and spiritual. When I have the opportunity to pray publicly, I do not view it as a way to impress. I do not write a prayer. I simply pray. I talk to the Lord in a way that will bring his presence into the situation. Our prayer time, public or private, is never about impressing people. It is about communicating with God.
It seems to me that the second thing Jesus is not pleased with in the hypocrites’ praying is that they pray for show, not for effect. Andrew Murry said that Jesus did not pray as a spiritual exercise. He prayed to get results. We should never pray as a matter of religion or ritual. Every time we pray, we should pray with purpose expecting God to answer. That purpose may be ministry to others, bringing our own needs to the Lord or just to have a time of fellowship and relationship with him. In any case, we should believe we are really speaking with the God of creation and believe that He hears us and that he will act on our behalf. It may not be how we expect him to move, but we must believe he will do what he promised.
To counter how the “hypocrites” prayed, Jesus says that we should go into our closet and pray to the Father in secret. This does not mean that it is never right to pray publicly. Jesus prayed publicly at the tomb of Lazarus and many other times in his earthly ministry. I think we need to understand that when we do pray in public, it must flow from the same place as our private time of prayer. If we have no private prayer life, our public praying will be no more effective than the hypocrites Jesus describes.
I think we might consider it this way. When I am in my private place of prayer I am talking to God not to people. When I pray in public, I should do nothing differently. Although there are things we might not say out loud publicly that we would privately, we should still treat prayer as conversation between us and God. Even when we pray for others, we are talking to God not to them. The fact that they overhear our side of the conversation can be a blessing to them, but we are talking to the same God we encounter in our closet.
There is a powerful promise attached to his direction about praying in secret. He says the Father will reward you openly. The hypocrites who pray to be heard by people and for show, also are promised a reward. They get the approval of men, and nothing else. If we come to God in faith, even though no one else may hear us, he promises to reward us openly. What does that mean? It means that we will eventually see his answer manifested in our lives. When people see that God has moved in our circumstances, it will bring glory to God, not us.
The next thing he says is that we should not use vain repetitions like the heathen do. He is not talking about the same group as those he calls hypocrites. This word means those outside of the Hebrew people. The world was full of pagan religions in that day. The word used for vain repetitions here means idle things. Vines dictionary says this word implies “meaningless and mechanically repeated phrases, the reference being to pagan (not Jewish) modes of prayer.” I expect we have seen movies or some such thing where there is pagan chanting or even witchcraft’s use of spells. They say words over and over again. The form and order of the words are what is important, not the meaning. That is vain repetition. Jesus says that they think they will be heard because of the quantity of their.
We must never let prayer become the simple repetition of words that are not ours. We should never think that we must say the right words in just the right way or God will not hear us. We must not think that we have to pray for hours and hours or he will not hear us. There are times and reasons to pray for hours, but not because we have to pay some penance before God will answer. In response to this thinking, Jesus reminds us that the Father knows what we need before we even ask. We do not pray to inform God of our needs. We pray to ask God for what he has promised and to draw from our relationship with him. That is the power of prayer.
Jesus instructs, “When you pray, do so like this.” This is a prayer model designed to be effective as we resist the devil. We will examine this pattern next time.
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