Privacy and Prayer. Matthew 6:5-6

Transcription

1 Privacy and Prayer Matthew 6:5-6 Samuel Chadwick was a Methodist pastor and author from another generation. He made a remarkable statement. He said, Hypocrites never pray in secret. Now, never is an absolute word, I know. But what an arresting thought: Hypocrites never pray in secret. As I wrap up this brief series of messages entitled, Prayer Starts with P, I want to talk to you this morning about Privacy and Prayer. Thus far we ve discussed Punctuation and Prayer, Praise and Prayer, and Persistence and Prayer. Today it s Privacy and Prayer. One of the more important components in a growing, healthy prayer life is privacy getting alone with God. We re looking today to Jesus Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6. Why don t you find your way there? Matthew is the first book in the New Testament, so it should be easy for you to find. Matthew 6:5-6. When I was a kid I loved to play hide-and-seek, and I was good at it. In fact, I had this particular place I loved to hide and no one ever found me there. I remember feeling one time, though, as I was completely hidden from my brothers eyes, that God could see me. God used that impression to speak to my heart at an early age, although I can t say that I ever really prayed there. Nevertheless, it was a place I could go to be hidden from others but I was never outside of God s view. When I got older I outgrew that place (quite literally), but I found another place where I could be alone with God and for a higher purpose than hideand-seek. I would drive down to the river bottom at night (my hometown of Savannah is on the Tennessee River in the western part of the state), climb onto the hood of my car, and just talk to God while staring at the stars. That was a special, solitary place to me on many a Friday or Saturday night. Some of my most treasured prayer times as a teenager happened in that river bottom with just me and God. There is a need to get alone and to be alone with God when we pray. Now, that s not to say that public prayer is wrong. But our public prayer lives should be a reflection of our private prayer lives. Otherwise, we fall into the trap of hypocrisy that Jesus warned us about in His Sermon on the Mount.

2 After warning his hearers to Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them, Jesus talked about the practice of our giving and then He turned to the subject of prayer. Let s read what Jesus said about Privacy and Prayer : 5 When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. 6 But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. I want you to consider three factors of Privacy and Prayer that all believers need to take to heart when they pray. First, the heart factor. There s a right way and a wrong way to pray and the difference is always in the heart. We need to remember the truth of 1 Samuel 16:7 (one of the foundational verses in my life) God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart. When we pray, God isn t looking at our posture or critiquing our vocabulary or even grading the preciseness of our theology.he s listening to our hearts. Our hearts determine our audience when we pray. Are we talking to God or are we praying before men to be noticed by them? Every one of us who has ever prayed in front of other people has struggled with this question whether we ve realized it or not. And those who fear praying in public really need to ask themselves why they re paralyzed by the thought of other people hearing the words they pray. Now, I can t see anybody else s heart I can t even see my own heart clearly for that matter so I can t say definitively whether a person is fearful because of pride or inexperience. But, at the very least, I can say that pride is lurking nearby when we worry about what others will think of the verbiage of our prayers. Who are we talking to? If God, then He s the only who matters. If I m talking to God, then your assessment of my prayer is irrelevant. Why should I care what anyone else thinks if God is pleased? Our hearts determine our audience when we pray. Our hearts also determine our objective when we pray. What do we hope will happen when we pray?

3 In Jesus day, the Pharisees had a habit of finding the busiest spot on the busiest street at the busiest time of the day to pray. And people praised them for their piety. Jesus said, Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. In other words, that s all the praise they would ever get. Since they prayed for the praise of men, their prayers were answered when men praised them. End of story. No matter the words they might have said in their prayers, their hearts determined what they were really hoping for as they prayed. So the heart factor is in play when we pray, and privacy finding that inner room, that prayer closet, that solitary place removes us from anyone s ears but God s. So, just as milk does a body good privacy does our prayer lives good because of the heart factor. Second, and similar to but not the same as the heart factor, there s the humility factor. Little will kill our prayer lives like pride. And it s a subtle sin willing to hide behind our religion but God knows why we do what we do.why we say what we say and pray what we pray. That s why we need humility when we pray. Andrew Murray wrote more than a century ago, talking about holiness but the principle still applies: The chief mark of counterfeit holiness is its lack of humility. Every seeker after holiness needs to be on his guard, lest unconsciously what was begun in the spirit be perfected in the flesh, and pride creep in where its presence is least expected. Pride is such a subtle, often sophisticated, sin. But God has made His position on pride abundantly clear in the pages of Scripture. Prov 16:18, Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. God said He hates pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech, (Prov 8:13). Psalm 10:4 says that when we are consumed by pride, we don t have room to seek God. The Pharisees Jesus described were so full of themselves that they had no room for God in their prayers. Let me tell you one reason that pride is so deadly to our prayers. Pride prevents us from seeing ourselves as we really are and God as He really is. And as a result, instead of God being the Center of our prayers we become the center of our prayers. Jesus told a story once about this very thing. Matthew 18:9-14

4 9 And He also told this parable to some people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and viewed others with contempt: 10 Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and was praying this to himself: God, I thank You that I am not like other people: swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I pay tithes of all that I get. 13 But the tax collector, standing some distance away, was even unwilling to lift up his eyes to heaven, but was beating his breast, saying, God, be merciful to me, the sinner! 14 I tell you, this man went to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted. So the humility factor is in play when we pray, and privacy strips away the opportunity to put on a show. There s nobody else there but God and He can see through our charades. John R.W. Stott said, Pride is your greatest enemy, humility is your greatest friend. That is nowhere more true than in prayer. So in the matter of Privacy and Prayer, there s the heart factor the humility factor and, finally, the honesty factor to consider when we pray. Only a presumptuous fool would lie to God because, as Jeremiah 17:10 says, the Lord search[es] all hearts and examine[s] secret motives. But am I the only one who has been a presumptuous fool at one point or another? Praying words as if God can t see my heart, especially when praying in a group of people? Jesus used the word hypocrites to describe some people when they pray. At times I ve been a hypocrite when I ve prayed. That word hypocrite was a word based in the world of theater. It referenced a person who would wear masks in order to act like characters in a play. That s the literal meaning, but it came to have a figurative meaning and that s how we use it today. It means someone who s two-faced. Get it? We all have the faces that we were born with, but hypocrites can put on another face and act like someone else. They re two-faced. Hypocrites say one thing but do another. The religious talk of hypocrites doesn t match their walk. The words of a hypocrite s prayer are hollow rather than honest. There was an interesting article from late January in the Wall Street Journal that reported on new research about employees and their bosses. Essentially it revealed what most of us already know that employees tend to fake positivity when the boss is

5 around, and all that insincere happiness can be exhausting. 1 we need to be still and know that [He is] God (Psalm 46:10). Privacy and Prayer. One of the reasons that some of us got tired and gave up on prayer is that we were praying someone else s prayers! And nothing will drain us to the point of burnout quite like phony living. So the honesty factor is in play when we pray, and privacy affords us the opportunity to be truthful and authentic with God when we pray. We don t have to fake anything for anybody s benefit when we pray. He s the only One with us in that solitary place. Conclusion: When we think of Jesus ministry, we usually think of the many times He was preaching or teaching or performing some miracle. But as you read the Bible, don t miss how often He retreated to some solitary place to pray. If Jesus found it necessary to pull away from the hustle and bustle of 1 st -century life to better hear the Father or to better express His worship, how much more we need to do the same! There is so much noise in our lives and so many distractions. Truly 1 Rachel Emma Silverman, "The Boss Is In: Quick, Look Happy," The Wall Street Journal ( ).