Mat 6:5-8; God Knows All Things – How That Increases PrayerThursday August 1, 2024
Main thrust: Proper prayer is exclusion unto God, realization of God, and confidence in God.
Sin has so polluted us that we have to beware when we are doing our highest, or one our highest activities, fellowshipping and communicating with God. One of man’s noblest activities is prayer. Do we think that the man on his knees in prayer to God is sinning? He may very well be.
We need rebirth and new hearts. Rom 6:6-7
Jesus presents two errors in Mat 6:5-8 concerning prayer. Self interested (want others to see, know, and like to admire yourself). Self-deceived: that method determines success (many words of the pagans).
We are not to be interested in the promotion of self at all. That is self-worship. As Christians we worship God alone.
You have to truly lose all sense of self.
This is not a prohibition of public prayer. It is about desire.
Desire is formed by understanding. We need to understand our Father in the heavens.
How easy it is to lose sight of communion with the living God and become preoccupied with image.
How does knowing that your Father knows what you need before you ask Him actually encourage prayer rather than concluding that it is meaningless?
Meaningless repetition (many words with no meaning or thought) = prayer wheels, rosary, etc. evolved from the idea that enough words would influence a god to act. Implied is that the god does not want to act but must be motivated.
This is in direct contrast to God who does want to act. God who already knows what you need before you ask Him.
Proper prayer is exclusion unto God, realization of God, and confidence in God:
You are, in your soul, to go into your inner closet and shut the door - metaphorically meaning complete and singular devotion to God (Psa 86:1-13)
Realization of God (two ways)
We are in the presence of the Almighty, pure holiness, majesty, absolute power...
You are entering the audience chamber of infinite God. Does that naturally lead to self-promotion, adulation, or admiring self? (Psa 40:5; 131:1; Job produced some self-absorbed prayers and then God spoke to him .. Job 42:3; Psa 89:5-6). 1Jo 1:5
We realize He is our Father.
He is so attentive to His children that He knows what we need before we ask Him.
How does this statement not discourage prayer but in fact encourage it?
Contrast this to battologeo. It is meaningless words, said again and again only to either impress or annoy.
Prayers of the priests of Baal and Elijah (1Ki 18:20-40).
Asking God for what you need means that you understand Him and that you understand what He desires for you.
Knowing that God knows what you need before you ask Him encourages proper prayer. Quite the contrary to the surface understanding of this wonderful statement that causes people to think prayer meaningless.
Fellowship of common mind to what is important.
God desires to bless us, but if we do not understand Him then any blessing will not be understood for what it is, and then it is no longer a blessing.
Confidence: You are the child of God and have child-like faith in Him.
You have a relationship with God as Father who is a person, and this demands communication.
If you doubt it means that you lack understanding (Realization), Jam 1:6-8.
Faith in our response to God in all things. In the NT, faith towards God replaces love towards God. Not that we do not love Him, but God shifts our emphasis in the age of grace.
There are no OT quotes in Mat 6.
Conclusion: You are a royal child of God, prince or princess of heaven by His grace, blessed with the inheritance from God and the riches of Christ. We were not meant to live like paupers in this world.
The pauper is the one who has the Lord but doesn’t yet understand Him.
The spiritual pauper has his or her thoughts centered on the unworthy.
There is a lot to understand, but all of it is simple. The barrier is only ourselves.
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