How Do You Pray?

In Matthew 6:5 Jesus revealed what those who pray must first consider if they want their prayers to be heard and answered. Again, the Lord assumed that those He addressed were going to pray. He said, “When you pray,” not if you pray. From there, He proceeded to warn against two classes of people whose prayers will not be heard: the hypocrites who pray to be seen of others and the Gentiles who pray with excessive but empty words.

First, he addressed the hypocrites of His nation because of the face they presented to those around them of devotion and obedience to their covenant God while caring only for how they appeared to an observer. The Lord focused on their righteousness (or lack thereof) and what their righteousness (right living) must demonstrate—how they kept their covenant obligations (Matthew 5:20). Deuteronomy 10 defines these covenant expectations: “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you, but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments and statutes of the Lord, which I am commanding you today for your good” (vv. 12, 13).

Fearing the Lord is rightly understanding who Yahweh is in all His greatness as described in verse 14: “Behold, to the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.” Obviously, no sinful human can fully grasp the magnitude of this awful truth and thus respond correctly to His awesome holiness in a way that even begins to acknowledge His majestic and glorious greatness. Yet, there must be a desire for God that fully consumes the whole of one’s existence. Fearing Him is to be fully consumed with Him.

Walking in His ways requires careful attention to His Word and responding in love, which is one’s grateful and humble response to God’s elective grace. “Yet the Lord set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day” (v. 15). Yet conveys the powerful truth of God’s condescension and desire to relate to chosen creatures. One would think that those to whom He revealed such gracious accommodation would respond with great love and careful obedience.

Praying is communicating, a natural activity, connecting with Him in everything relating to that relationship. Sadly, those who could identify as those on whom God set His heart were not so characterized. Their praying was not motivated by the fear of God and their love for Him. Instead, they were bound to formal worship expressed in externals, devoid of any response to God. These hypocrites fulfilled their obligation to pray, not to engage their God, but to impress only those who watched them. Jesus saw this as self-rewarding and wholly inadequate to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Prayer Is Calling Upon the Father

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites” (Matthew 6:5). Praying is an essential discipline of the Christians life. It is not if you pray but when you pray.” The Lord’s concern here is how we pray when we pray. It is not a ritual performance requiring some special technique that must be learned.

There is no formal instruction in the Old Testament on praying because it is a rather natural activity and there are abundant examples to prove this. The first mention of prayer is in Genesis 4:26 where the ESV reads, “At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.” Seth, who replaced Abel, had a son, Enosh (meaning a male or mankind; Isaiah 56:2), and at that time (probably Enosh’s birth) Seth began to call on the name of Yahweh. There is a problem here with English translations because there is no word for people in the Hebrew and the verb began is singular. The LXX reads, “He hoped [or, had faith] to call on the name of the Lord God.” The text teaches that Seth trusted God and began to call on Yahweh, the name of the true God. The implication is that Seth regarded Yahweh as a Father to whom he could pray.

Moses remarked, “For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him?” (Deuteronomy 4:7). When Paul wrote that the believers at Corinth should be separated from the world because the church there was the temple of the living God, he cited as proof a general quote compounding many passages in the Old Testament, the end of which reads, “I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty” (2 Corinthians 6:18).

Prayer is not intended to inform God, “for your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (v. 8). Psalm 17:6 states, “I call upon you, for you will answer me, O God; incline your ear to me; hear my words.” This verse provides a clear explanation of prayer—childlike crying out to God, recognizing that one is wholly dependent on Him. Prayer is to be spontaneous, personal, motivated by need, and unconditioned by time or place. It defines the relationship a child has with his father. This is the foundation of Jesus’ instruction: “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” (Matthew 6:6). Do no miss the wonderful significance of these words, “your Father.” Those who have been born again and have “believed in His name” are given the right to be called “children of God” (John 1:12). These children are assured that they have the ear of their Father. “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near” (Isaiah 55:6).

Take Heed

In the last article, we examined the danger of doing good out of a wrong motive. Jesus warned, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1). In this instance, the wrong motive for doing alms is self-promotion. As demonstrated, alms giving is a necessary and expected duty. Citing Psalm 112:9 to support his claim, Paul describes a believer as one who “having all sufficiency” “abounds in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8). Psalm 112 reads, “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord, who greatly delights in his commandments!” (v. 1). He is a blessed man because, among other things, “He has distributed freely; he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever; his horn is exalted in honor” (v. 9). This is the very thing Jesus encourages kingdom citizens to pursue if practiced solely for the glory of God. “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16).

Jesus began by warning His own to beware or, as the KJV reads, “take heed” of practicing one’s righteous acts before others. The warning intimates that there is a very great danger of erring at this point. Many are inclined to believe that the very act of giving alms to the poor, no matter what motivates the giver, would be seen by the Father as acceptable so long as the poor are helped. To the contrary, Jesus made it clear that the motive of the giver is critical to Divine approval. The issue is pride, and God hates that sin.

The Lord gave a parable about those who “trusted in themselves that they were righteous” while treating others with contempt (Luke 18:9). In the parable a Pharisee was contrasted to a “sinner”—a despised tax collector. The Pharisee pridefully boasted, “I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get” (v. 12). However, the sinner was accepted because he prayed, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” from a broken and humbled heart (v. 13). The Savior concluded, “Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted” (v. 14).

A great danger lurks in one’s doing whatever he will, especially good works, to promote himself for his own praise and glory. Such an one already has his reward and will have no recognition from the Father in heaven. Instead, with relentless self-examination, one must guard his own heart. He must be brutal against self-deception for “if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged” (1 Corinthians 11:31). Instead, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble’” (1 Peter 5:5). The admiration of shallow-minded onlookers is nothing compared to the honor that the humble servant of Christ will receive on that day when “his horn is exalted in honor.” He will hear, “Well done, good and faithful servant . . . enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21).

Giving Alms

Matthew 6 opens with a new section of the Sermon on the Mount, warning kingdom citizens against the wrong motives in their practice of righteousness. As noted, the previous section focused on what one practices as righteousness (right living); whereas this section focuses on how one is to practice that righteousness.

Jesus began the section presenting a general application of the principles necessary to the practice of righteousness. This presentation uses three acts that are typical of all religions: alms, prayer, and fasting. For example, the Koran teaches these three duties as necessary for one to enter paradise. Prayer carries a man halfway to paradise; fasting brings him to the gates, and alms give him entrance. Mohammad took these principles from Judaism and, no doubt, misapplied their function because of what he observed in the practice of them by the Jews. As mere religious acts, these things are worthless and do nothing to improve one’s status with God. As disciplines in our spiritual walk before God, they are important. What is more important is for whom we do them. The error of the Jews was that what they did they did “to be seen” by those around them (v. 1).

The Lord is not arguing that giving to the needy is unnecessary. The Lord clearly designated almsgiving as righteousness (v. 1). He assumed that His disciples were already in the habit of relieving the needs of the poor. However, what Jesus warned against was using benevolence deliberately to seek public recognition—the praise of men being the objective of the obedience.

The term translated alms is derived from the root meaning to have compassion or mercy. In other words, it is not that we give to the poor so much as what drives or motivates us to do so. Giving to relieve the needy is simply what ought commonly to characterize humanity. God requires His covenant people to practice benevolence (Deuteronomy 15:7, 8; Leviticus 25:35; Job 29:16; Psalm 41:1; Proverbs 14:21; 19:17; 21:13; 28:27).

Paul charged the Corinthian saints to be “cheerful givers” so that they may “abound in every good work” (2 Corinthians 9:8), supporting this by citing Psalm 112:9: “He has distributed freely; he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” Paul used only the portion of the psalm he wanted for his point, but an additional phrase ends the sentence: “his horn is exalted in honor.” Horn is a symbol for strength and power. The psalm describes the “blessed man” who is defined by his character, conduct, and destiny. The question is, who exalts him in honor? The scribes and Pharisees sought praise from others. Jesus argues that one should seek only that which comes from the Father. All glory is to be given to the Father through Jesus Christ. “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen” (Matthew 6:13).