A Review of "A Reasonable Response" by William Lane Craig

“A Reasonable Response” is a very intriguing, insightful, and instructional book on apologetics. Those who are already familiar with Dr. Craig’s work—and especially his website reasonablefaith.org—may have already encountered some of these topics and Dr. Craig’s responses to them, but this book is not meant to simply give you Dr. Craig’s answers to the questions presented—it is also designed to teach you how he answers questions, which is perhaps the most useful aspect of the book. In some of Dr. Craig’s responses, a highlighted box can be found that pulls back the curtain on Dr. Craig’s strategy for answering that particular question. That feature alone makes this a valuable book, even if one is already familiar with the answers that Dr. Craig offers.

The book is in a similar format to Lee Strobel’s “Case for…” series in that it is organized around specific questions and answers. The content of “Response” tends to be on a higher philosophical plane than the “Case for…” books, and thus it will likely appeal to a slightly different audience. Anyone who is brand new to the study of apologetics may find this book to be tough sledding in some places, particularly since the questioners may refer to arguments made by others without any further explanation of those arguments. Those who are more familiar with the subject, however, will find this book to be a very welcome and valuable addition to their library.

Though the subject matter is challenging, the book itself is very user-friendly. A long introductory section discusses such matters as the usefulness of questions in spiritual growth and practical matters regarding how to derive the most benefit from the book. Each major division in the book contains its own brief introduction that functions like an abstract in a scholarly paper—it allows you to get the gist of what you’re about to read before you read it.

The book covers a wide range of philosophical and theological topics, all of which Dr. Craig is well-equipped to address. But lest one think that the discussions are all theoretical with little practical application, the book also includes questions on such imminently practical concerns as protecting oneself from spiritual failure, facing rejection as a follower of Christ, preparing for marriage, and maintaining physical stamina (Dr. Craig writes from personal experience as one who suffers from a chronic disease which affects his muscles).  Those who are interested in questions about God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility will be particularly interested in the questions addressing Molinism and its concept of middle knowledge.

All in all, this book is a valuable resource for those who are actively engaged in Christian apologetics or those who are seeking philosophically rigorous answers to intellectual doubts about Christianity. Whether one agrees with Dr. Craig’s answers or not, he will leave an impression with you like that of C. S. Lewis—“he makes you sure, whatever you believe, that religion accepted or rejected means something extremely serious, demanding the entire energy of mind (Harper’s, quoted on the cover of “The Problem of Pain,” HarperCollins edition 2001.)

This book was provided by the publisher as a review copy.

Not So Fast--Sermon on the Mount Series

            Today, on this Sunday after Thanksgiving, we’re going to talk about something that we all might feel like doing right about now—fasting. Our study of the Sermon on the Mount has brought us to Jesus’ words about fasting at a rather ironic time since this is also a First Sunday, and we normally eat pretty well on these days, but I’ll give the Lord credit for this timing, and we’ll just “dig in” to this subject of fasting.

            I think its pretty interesting to look at the variety of opinions among Christians today on the subject of fasting. We can see a very diverse range of opinions on this subject. On the one hand, some Christians promote fasting as a virtual “cure-all” for the spiritual life. At christianbook.com, you’ll find books with titles like, “Fasting: Opening the Door to a Deeper, More Intimate, More Powerful Relationship with God,” and “The Power of Prayer and Fasting: God’s Gateway to Spiritual Breakthroughs.” Its also very interesting that you can’t “pigeonhole” this enthusiasm for fasting to any particular denomination or theological background.

            On the other side of the spectrum, there are Christians who only think about fasting on the day before a colonoscopy. Whether this is intentional or not, they just never really talk about fasting and don’t assign any particular value to it.

            So what should we think about fasting? Today, we’re going to begin with this passage from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:16-18, and then we’ll branch out to a more general discussion of fasting—because as we’ll see, the Lord’s warning about fasting here is the same warning that He has already given us about giving to the needy and prayer. Let’s read His words here in Matthew 6:16-18 [READ 6:16-18].

The Warning: Don’t use fasting as a tool to seek praise from others.

            As with giving and praying, Jesus warns his audience not to follow the example of those whom He calls “the hypocrites”—in other words, the actors or pretenders. We know from the context of this sermon that Jesus is talking about the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the Jewish people at that time. As part of their system of worship, the Pharisees fasted twice a week—on Mondays and Thursdays. That was not commanded by God, but apparently the Pharisees did it as a show of their great piety—and apparently they put on quite a show! Jesus said that they would disfigure their faces so that it would be obvious to everyone that they were fasting.

            And again, as with giving and praying, Jesus stated that any praise they received from others would be all the reward that they would receive. He then encouraged His audience to choose a different route when they fasted.

The Solution: Do your fasting privately.

            Jesus told the people that when they fasted, they should take all the normal steps of personal hygiene for that day so as to conceal the fact that they were fasting. Such actions would reveal that they weren’t trying to impress other people—they truly were fasting as an act of devotion to God. And for their sincere act of worship, God would reward them. And so we have another illustration of the Lord’s words in Matthew 6:1—“Beware of practicing your righteousness before others people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”

            Jesus mentioned fasting here—along with giving and praying—because it was a common part of Jewish religion at that time. It is not so common among Christians today, and that should cause us to ask some questions. Are we neglecting something that God wants us to do? Does Jesus expect His disciples to fast—perhaps even command us to in some way, shape, or form? I’d like to spend the rest of our time talking about these questions and discussing some potential dangers and potential benefits of fasting.

Does the Bible ever command us to fast?

            In the Old Testament law, God commanded the people of Israel to fast once a year on the day known as the Day of Atonement. That day was a very solemn and somber holiday on the Jewish calendar, a day in which special animal sacrifices were offered for the sins of the nation. The Lord told them in Leviticus 16:29 to “afflict themselves” on that day, and they—apparently correctly—interpreted that statement as a command to fast.

            And so they did, but that was the only commanded fast that the people had to observe. Over time, however, it became common for the people to fast more often—in fact, some of the prophets called the people to fast as a sign of repentance for certain sins. Fasting also became a common way to grieve the death of a loved one or to prepare for a particularly difficult or important task.

            Slowly, then, fasting became a part of Jewish worship, so much so that the Pharisees (as I mentioned earlier) fasted twice a week during the time of Christ. But in the New Testament, we do not find any commands to fast. Since we are no longer required to follow the Old Testament legal code, we don’t have to observe the annual fast that was mentioned there. In fact, fasting isn’t even mentioned in the New Testament after the Book of Acts. That would certainly explain why fasting is not a universal practice among Christians today.

So the Bible doesn’t contain a command for Christians to fast today. However, we should wrestle with the question…

Does Jesus simply assume that we will fast, so that we are violating His will for us if we don’t?

            As many Bible teachers have pointed out, Jesus does say “when you fast” in vv. 16-17 rather than “if you fast.” He used the same words earlier when He talked about giving and praying, so it seems that Jesus does assume that those who heard Him on that day would do all three of these activities—giving, praying, and fasting.

            But we are not the people who heard Jesus on that day, so we still have to sort this out a little bit. The people in Jesus’ audience that day already had regular habits of fasting as part of their culture, so it makes sense that He would speak to them with the assumption that they would continue to fast. But does Jesus still have that expectation of us today?

            I don’t think God has any expectation or requirement for us to fast today. We know that He wants us to continue giving to the needy and praying, but we know that because we have clear commands throughout the New Testament that tell us to keep doing that. We just don’t have a clear command or a clear expectation that Christians today should continue to fast.

However, that certainly does not mean that we cannot choose to fast as a spiritual exercise, and there could be some very real benefits to doing so.

What are some possible benefits of fasting?

            As we consider this question, I’m going to expand the concept of fasting just a bit beyond the thought of merely going without food. I think other forms of self-denial can work in much the same way as going without food, and thus can have very similar benefits.

1. It may foster humility

            Humility is the character trait that is most closely associated with fasting in the Bible. When we choose to fast out of proper motivations, it is a way to express humility before God and foster greater humility in our lives. It becomes a very tangible reminder of what Jesus said in Matthew 4:4—“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

            But how can an act like denying yourself food build a spiritual trait like humility? Its because of the connection between body and soul. We all know that spiritual issues can take a toll on our physical health. If a person deals with extreme guilt, stress, or anxiety for instance, those spiritual issues can create physical problems like ulcers or high blood pressure.

            That same connection between body and soul can work the other way as well. What we do with and to our bodies can shape our soul. Just think about all the things we do at times to our environment to change our frame of mind. Perhaps we put on some quiet music when we want to relax—or we put on some loud, upbeat music when we’re getting ready for a game. Maybe we turn on some mood lighting or light a particular candle to have a certain fragrance in the house. Perhaps we dress up for a special occasion. All of these actions can put us in a certain frame of mind and express or reinforce certain attitudes.

            Likewise, when we choose to go without something like food, we’re quickly reminded of our physical weakness. We remember again how frail we truly are, which drives us back to God as the source of our strength in all things—even our physical energy for the day at hand.

2. It may build self-discipline

            Choosing to say “no” for a time to a physical craving like eating can help you learn the self-control that you need to properly handle all of your physical urges. For example, sometimes our emotions may feel uncontrollable. We can get into such a rage from anger that we feel like we just have to scream or throw something. But self-discipline in one area tends to spread into other areas. Fasting can then become like something of a practice session for dealing with all of your physical urges and keeping them under control.

            Self-control is certainly a virtue in God’s eyes. In 1 Corinthians 9, the Apostle Paul wrote about the way that he sought to control himself so as not to cause offense to anyone else or to fall into sin against God [READ 1 Cor. 9:24-27]. It is quite possible that Paul’s efforts to maintain self-control included fasting; he was formerly a Pharisee after all, so fasting certainly had been a common part of life for him, and he may have continued that habit to some degree after he became a Christian. So for this benefit, fasting could be a worthwhile practice for us to consider as well.

3. It may help us avoid or battle addictions

            As we go over and over through the daily routine, its not always obvious to us when we’ve actually become addicted to something—whether it’s a certain food, a medication, a hobby, or some form of entertainment. So if we take a step such as fasting from these things to intentionally change up our routine, it can alert us to something that has actually become an unhealthy addiction.

            We’ve probably all had the experience of discovering an addiction after something that we didn’t anticipate threw our schedule out of whack. Perhaps something prevents us from having a favorite food or drink or we’re kept from pursuing our hobby for a while and we start to feel that irrational attraction to that object or activity. When that happens, we find ourselves thinking, “Wow! I didn’t realize how bad this was,” and then we choose to make some positive changes.

            Well, why don’t we just choose to mix things up from time to time? Why not intentionally fast from certain foods, or fast from the TV or the Internet or all kinds of other things? Such changes may alert us to a problem we didn’t know we had.

And following closely with this benefit is another benefit…

4. It may help us re-gain perspective in our lives

            Denying ourselves various things can help us truly sort out needs from wants. We’ve probably all had that experience where circumstances have deprived us of something, and we’ve come to think, “You know, that wasn’t so bad! I thought it would be terrible to go without that certain thing, but it turns out that I really don’t miss it.”

            Unexpected events can teach us those kinds of lessons, but once again, why do we have to wait for unexpected events? We can choose to go without all kinds of things almost any time we want, so why not do that every so often and see what you discover?

So there are some definite benefits that we might gain from the practice of fasting. We should also be aware, however, of some potential dangers that we must avoid.

What are some possible dangers of fasting?

1. The physical danger of going without food

            Before you might choose to fast, you should have a good understanding of your own health to ensure that you’re not making a decision that could actually be dangerous for you. Certain health conditions can be aggravated if you don’t eat regularly, and that could lead to complications, so you want to make sure that fasting would be okay for you.

2. Using the practice as a tool to manipulate God

            It is so easy for us to fall into that pagan mindset of thinking that certain rituals we perform or certain words we say will influence God to answer our prayers, and we can slip into that mindset when we think about fasting. Fasting feels like a rather extreme step to us, so we might think that by fasting, we’ll show God how serious we are about something and He’ll be more inclined to answer our prayers. When we think along those lines, we’ve simply turned fasting into a tool to manipulate God, which is improper.

            But as we learned today from Matthew 6:16-18, we can fast with proper motives, and that kind of fasting will be rewarded by God. I think we embrace the proper motives when we fast in order to devote ourselves to God, not to manipulate Him. If we are fasting to devote extra time to prayer or to cultivate humility and self-control or a renewed perspective, I believe those are desires that God will honor and which will thus receive His reward.

Pray Then Like This (Part 3)--Sermon on the Mount Series

            Last Sunday, the members of the music team and I got to talking briefly about the old party-line telephone systems that used to exist. If you’re not familiar with a party line, it was an arrangement in which you and your neighbors literally shared one phone line, so that if they were on the phone, you couldn’t make a phone call until they were done (or, if you wanted a little entertainment, you could just listen in on their conversation without them knowing about it!). That kind of arrangement seems completely foreign to us today with technology like cell phones, but it was fairly common not that long ago, especially in rural areas.

            Now, we are going to finish our study of The Lord’s Prayer today, and when we think about prayer, I suspect we normally think of it as a private conversation between us and the Lord—we feel like other people really have nothing to do with it. But as we will learn today, prayer is really more like a party line—not in the sense that other people can listen in on our prayers, but in the fact that the way we treat other people may “clog up the line,” so to speak. Our behavior toward others may cause interference for the prayers that we pray to God.

            Let’s quickly review the lessons that we have drawn from The Lord’s Prayer over the last two weeks, and then we will move on to consider two final lessons from this model prayer. So far, we have seen that we should pray in…

1. A manner that is personal

2. A manner that is respectful

3. A manner that is worshipful

4. A manner that is confident

5. A manner that is submissive

6. A manner that is petitionary

7. A manner that is repentant

            Now before we touch on our final two lessons, let me answer a question that you may have—what has happened to the words that we recite at the end of The Lord’s Prayer: “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” If you are following along in our pew Bible, you’ll notice that the words aren’t there. No matter what kind of Bible you’re using, you’ll probably find that those words are either omitted or included with a footnote that says something like, “these words are not found in early manuscripts.” What’s going on here?

            You may remember that a few months ago, when we looked at Matthew 5:22, we talked about the history of how the Bible was copied. Well, when we look at the ancient copies of Matthew 6, we find some copies that contain the words “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” and some copies that don’t contain those words. Our English translations are left to sort that out, which is why some translations omit those words and others include them with some kind of footnote.

            In my opinion, Jesus most likely did not speak those words on that occasion. Its hard to imagine why any copyist—let alone many copyists—would have omitted those words if they were in the original Gospel of Matthew. Here’s what seems to have happened—The Lord’s Prayer was apparently recited in church services from a very early date in church history (just as it is still recited in many church services today). In the earliest days of the church, Christians all shared a Jewish background, and at that point in history it was common for Jewish people to end their prayers with a statement like, “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever amen,” in the same way that we end most of our prayers with a statement like, “in Jesus’ name I pray, amen.” So its likely that The Lord’s Prayer was recited in church services with those additional words from an early date, and over time some copyists added them into their copies of the Gospel of Matthew.

            This discussion has more sentimental value than anything else, because it doesn’t affect anything that we believe as Christians and shouldn’t shake our confidence in the text of Scripture at all. But many of us have recited The Lord’s Prayer with those words since we were kids, so there is a sentimental connection there. Honestly, I don’t think there’s any problem with reciting those words when we recite The Lord’s Prayer; we can simply understand that we’re doing it as part of a long-standing Christian tradition rather than something that comes specifically from the text.

But let’s move along to our final two lessons from this model prayer.

8. A manner that is circumspect

            This statement simply means that we should pray with an eye toward our surroundings—not our physical surroundings, but our relationships with other people. This is why I said that prayer is more like a party line than a private line.

            Last week, we learned that is appropriate for us to ask for forgiveness when we pray, but there is a specific way in which we must show that we understand our need to be forgiven. In v. 12, the Lord teaches us to say, “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” That’s very interesting—Jesus ties our request to be forgiven together with our obedience to God in forgiving others. The idea is that by forgiving others, we have shown our understanding of our own need to be forgiven.

            Since the Bible commands us to forgive others, we are sinning if we fail to do so, and that means that if we ask God to forgive us, yet we fail to forgive others, we are sinning at the same time that we’re asking for forgiveness! That doesn’t make any sense. That would be like asking someone to forgive you for being a bully while you’re punching them in the gut!

            When we fail to forgive other people, that reveals that we haven’t fully come to terms with the depths of our own sins, and that is a requirement for being forgiven by God. The biblical term “confess” literally means “to say the same thing as another,” so when the Bible speaks of confessing our sins—as in 1 John 1:9—it means that we must say the same thing about our sins that God says about them—that they are vile and despicable and a great insult to Him.

            But if we fail to forgive others, that is a sure sign that we are downplaying the severity of our own sins. Jesus tells a great parable to illustrate this idea in Matthew 18 [READ Matt 18:21-35]. That’s what its like when we fail to forgive others—it reveals that we have minimized the severity of our own sins.

            That’s why Jesus elaborates on this thought in Matthew 6:14-15—“For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” When we forgive others, we are displaying a truly repentant heart, which is what God requires of us for our sins to be forgiven.

            Now let us not read vv. 14-15 as a requirement to either gain or keep our salvation. Notice that Jesus calls God “your heavenly Father”—He is speaking to those people in His audience who were already believers, those who could already call God their Father. We’re talking about the “family” forgiveness that we discussed last week—the kind that wipes away not any sort of legal charges, but the barriers that may hinder the fullness of joy and intimacy and inheritance from a father to his children.

            So we must understand that the way we treat others can cause “static on the line” when we pray to God; it may cause our “call” to be dropped, like when you drive through a dead spot in your cell phone network. Psalm 66:16-19 sums up the same idea: “Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for my soul. I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer.”

9. A manner that is trusting

            We draw this lesson from the final two phrases of the prayer: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Our English word “temptation” really does not do justice to the Greek word that it is attempting to translate. When we talk about “temptation,” we think of some enticement that is designed to make us sin, and its very confusing to think that we would need to ask God not to put us in a situation that is designed to make us sin. As a matter of fact, James 1:13 tells us that God cannot even do such a thing: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.”

            What we have to understand about this Greek word in Matthew 6:13 is that it can refer to all kinds of difficult situations. It can refer to temptation if the one doing the tempting is Satan or simply our own sinful desires, but it can also refer to times of persecution or even the hardship that comes from dealing with a physical illness. So we might do well to translate this term in a more general way—something like “lead us not into difficult times.”

            In my opinion, even the words “lead us” kind of obscure a beautiful word picture that comes through in Greek. This Greek verb translated “lead us” is the same verb used to describe the actions of the men who carried their paralyzed friend to Jesus and lowered him down through the roof. Here in this phrase, it creates the picture of God literally carrying us through life, and our request then is that He would not carry us into difficult times.

            When I think of this request, then, I think back to times when my family used to go for walks when I was very young. I had a hard time keeping up, of course, so when I got tired and we still had a long ways to go to get home, I would say, “Dad, its shoulder time for Timmy,” and he would put me on his shoulders and carry me the rest of the way home. I think with this request to God we’re basically saying, “Lord, could we just always make it shoulder time? I’m so weak, Lord, and I know that my strength might give out, so would you carry me out of these hard times?”

            But as every parent knows, our children must learn to walk on their own and to keep going even when they’re tired. God knows and has even told us about all the good that can come out of hard times, so sometimes He does carry us into difficult moments—even moments when we face attacks and temptations from Satan, who of course is “the evil one” mentioned in v. 13. We need only to think about Job, or the Lord Jesus Himself, who was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, or the Apostle Paul, who said in 2 Corinthians 12:7 that he was given “a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.”

            The book of James tells us that we should actually rejoice when we face hard times because of the good that such moments can produce within us: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials [the same Greek word as “temptations” in Matthew 6:13] of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

            But this encouragement from James sets up an odd situation—if James tells us to rejoice when we face hard times because they can do us good, why does Jesus teach us to ask God not to carry us into those times? I think the Lord is teaching us two lessons. First, that it is okay for us to bring our requests to God. Even though we know that hard times can be good for us, it is okay for us to ask God to do things a different way. Jesus prayed this very way in the Garden of Gethsemane when He said, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” He made His request for God to do things a certain way, but of course He ended that prayer with the words, “nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

            Second, I think Jesus is teaching us that its healthy for us to pray in this way. Whenever we pray for God to do something about our circumstances, we are acknowledging our belief—our conviction—that God really can do something about our circumstances. In the same way that it is healthy to tell your spouse “I love you” over and over throughout your marriage, it is healthy for us to continue to acknowledge the truths we believe about God. When we pray about a certain need, we are again affirming our belief in God as provider. When we ask God again and again to forgive us for the sins we commit, we are reaffirming our belief in God as Savior and Redeemer. And when we ask Him not to carry us into difficult times, we acknowledge again that He is in control—our lives are in His hands, and we pray to Him because we know that He can intervene in our lives and because we know that He loves us enough to consider our requests.

            And though Jesus may not have spoken these words on that day, it is not a bad way to express our praise to God by saying, “thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

Pray Then Like This (Part 2)--Sermon on the Mount Series

            Today, we’re going to pick up where we left off last week in our discussion of prayer, and in a way, I think that’s a fitting way to discuss this subject. Its similar to the way that we might actually think of our own prayer lives—one extended conversation that’s interrupted every so often but that we just take up again with a statement like, “now as I was saying.” We might not actually begin our prayers with a statement like, “now as I was saying,” but that can be a helpful way to think about our habit of prayer. Our prayer lives should be like one ongoing conversation that we just keep coming back to time and time again.

            And we don’t necessarily have to pray for a long time every time we pray. One thing that many people have pointed out about this model prayer that we call The Lord’s Prayer is that its very short—it doesn’t take much more than about 30 seconds to recite it out loud. Now on one level, that makes sense, because this passage is part of a larger sermon, and the sermon overall isn’t really about prayer. So its understandable that Jesus didn’t spend too much time talking about prayer on that particular occasion, but I think we can draw the lesson that we don’t always have to pray for long stretches of time.

            Last week, we drew four lessons from The Lord’s Prayer. We learned that pray should be offered in…

1. A manner that is personal

2. A manner that is respectful

3. A manner that is worshipful

4. A manner that is confident

We’ll continue today with three more lessons.

5. A manner that is submissive

            We learn this lesson from v. 10—“Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” This verse presents us with a reminder that prayer is not about an attempt to get God to do our will. We can certainly bring our requests to Him, but the bottom line is that we are to align ourselves with God’s will, not the other way around.

            Its like the old joke about the sea captain who noticed a light directly in the path of his ship. So he got on the radio and said, “This is Captain Jones of the US Navy. Our boats are on a collision course. Please change your course by 10 degrees.” The person on the other end said, “This is Ensign Smith of the US Navy. Please change your course by 10 degrees.” But the Captain said, “I am a captain and you are a ensign. You change your course by 10 degrees.” But Ensign Smith replied, “You change your course by 10 degrees.” Finally, Captain Jones said, “Smith! I am the captain of a US Navy destroyer! You change your course by 10 degrees!” And Ensign Smith replied, “I am a radio operator in a lighthouse. You change your course by 10 degrees.” God is not the one who needs to change course—we need to get our course in line with His.

            As I mentioned last week, this request for God’s kingdom to come is a reference to the many prophecies in the Old Testament in which God said He was planning to establish a kingdom in this world. When Jesus taught His audience to express this desire, He was building on the fact that they were familiar with these prophecies about the kingdom. In other words, they were knowledgeable about the Bible they had at that time, which was the Old Testament.

            This observation should teach us that knowledge of the Bible and effective praying go hand in hand. After all, if we’re going to pray for God’s will to be done, we need to be familiar with His will, and the place to gain that knowledge is the Bible. As we learn more about the way that God wants us to live, we gain an almost limitless source of inspiration for prayer. We learn, for example, that God wants us to be humble, so we can pray for God to help us become humble. That may bring to mind certain situations that really tempt us to be proud, so we can pray more specifically by praying about those particular situations.

            Bible study and prayer form a cycle of communication that belong together and feed off of each other. If you often feel like you just don’t know what to say in prayer, it could be that you just need to become more familiar with God’s desires for you as He’s expressed them in the Bible. You can’t knowingly submit to a plan that you’re not familiar with; likewise, we can only pray for God’s will to be done as we become more familiar with His will.

            As in basically all matters, the Lord Jesus is our best example for what it looks like to pray submissively. You may remember that in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus was about to be arrested and crucified, He made a very clear request of God the Father. He said, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me (which was a reference to the suffering He was about to endure).” He certainly made a request, but He ended His prayer by saying, “nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” We can certainly bring our requests to God, but it must always be in a submissive manner.

6. A manner that is petitionary

            This simply means that we come to God as people who are in need and asking for help. We learn this lesson in vv. 11-13, where Jesus teaches us to make specific requests about our various needs. Notice that He mentions both physical needs—like daily bread—and spiritual needs—like forgiveness and protection from temptation. As Jesus said in Matthew 4:4, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Thus, as we pray so often about our physical needs, let’s not forget that we have many spiritual needs as well.

            But let’s do focus for a moment on our physical needs as Jesus expressed them in v. 11—“Give us this day our daily bread.” When Jesus told us back in v. 6 that God knows what we need before we ask Him, He wasn’t telling us not to pray about our needs. In fact, I think He was encouraging us to pray about them with even more confidence in God’s faithfulness to meet our needs. After all, we must have confidence in God’s faithfulness to pray such a modest request as we find in v. 11. Notice how modest it really is—if I may paraphrase, the request is, “Give us the food we need for today.” That’s a very modest request.

            Now if you’re like me, you feel more like praying, “Lord, give me what I need for the next ten years, then I’ll handle it from here.” After all, I listen to Dave Ramsey! I’ll just make an envelope for each year over the next ten years, and I’ll have it taken care of! That’s what I feel like praying for—a big, lump-sum payment that I can manage myself.

            But that’s not the request of v. 11—the request is, “Give us the food we need for today.” I think its very likely that Jesus meant for us to think back to the story of God providing manna for the children of Israel in the wilderness. When the people of Israel left their slavery in Egypt, they were a family of at least 1 million people (perhaps more like 2 million depending on how many children they had). That would be a logistical nightmare to feed that many people every day, but God fed them every day with what Exodus 16 calls a “flake-like” substance that was left behind on the ground every morning after the dew had evaporated. The people were able to gather these flakes and make them into flour that they would then bake into bread. Exodus 16:31 says it was like coriander seed and tasted like it was sweetened with honey. The first time the people saw it, they asked each other, “What is it?” which in Hebrew is simply man. Before long they simply decided to call it man, so its name means “what is this stuff?”

            Now God gave the people a regulation about the manna—each day, they were only supposed to gather the amount they needed for that day and no more. God actually caused it to spoil overnight if the people tried to store more than they needed. The only exception was on the day before the weekly day of rest. On that day, the people were supposed to gather enough for two days, and the Lord kept it from spoiling overnight.

            So each day, the people received enough for that day but no more. Talk about a faith-building experience! Every day, you would wake up with no food, but God’s rations for you were there for you to gather so that you would be fed. It is this kind of daily, moment-by-moment dependence on God that Jesus calls us to have when we pray about our needs. In light of such a humble request, many of us have more thanking to do than requesting, because we already have our daily needs met for many days to come. Perhaps an appropriate challenge for us, then, is to consider how we should be generous with our excess and how we need to cultivate contentment rather than placing an ever-growing number of things into the category of “needs.”

            But let us do remember this lesson that Jesus teaches us to pray to God about our needs. And as we see in this model prayer, our needs extend beyond merely our physical needs. We have spiritual needs as well, such as the need for forgiveness. And so we are also taught to pray in…

7. A manner that is repentant

            We find this lesson in v. 12 with the phrase, “forgive us our debts.” Some of you may have memorized The Lord’s Prayer with the word “trespasses,” which simply comes from the other record of The Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11. Jesus offered The Lord’s Prayer as a model prayer on another occasion as well, and on that occasion He used the word “trespasses,” but on this occasion in Matthew 6 He used the word “debts” to create a metaphor that compares our sins to financial debts that we might incur.

            The meaning of the phrase is clear—it is a request for God to cancel those debts; to forgive our sins so that they are no longer held against us. Some people have taught that once we are saved, once we become Christians, it is no longer necessary for us to ask God for forgiveness. In fact, they would say that it is inappropriate and wrong for us to ask God for forgiveness. To them, such a request dishonors and disregards the forgiveness that we have already received.

            But I think the context of this statement teaches us that it is fully appropriate for Christians to ask God for forgiveness. Just think again about what Jesus has already taught us to pray—He has taught us to call God “our Father,” to express a desire that God’s reputation be honored and that His will would be perfectly accomplished. These are statements that can only be genuinely expressed by Christians. Only Christians may call God “Father;” only Christians would even want God’s will to be perfectly accomplished. So when we get to v. 12, why would we think that Jesus would mention something that is only appropriate for non-Christians to pray? The Lord’s Prayer is given as a model prayer for those who are already saved; thus, everything in it is appropriate for a Christian to pray.

            To understand our continued need to ask for forgiveness, we simply need to understand how our relationship to God changed when we were saved. Before we repented of our sins and accepted Christ, we related to God as our Creator and Judge. We had broken God’s laws, and we deserved to pay the penalty for our law-breaking. But when Jesus died, He paid that penalty for us, so that when we repent of our sins and accept Christ, the payment He made is applied to us, and on that basis God declares that our case is closed. The penalty has been paid in full and our legal troubles in God’s court of law are settled.

            According to Scripture, God then adopts us into His own spiritual family, so that now we relate to God as our Savior and Father. Now in our biological families, when we disobeyed our parents, it was appropriate for us to ask for their forgiveness—not from any sort of legal penalty, as though they were pressing charges against us, but from the hurt and pain we had caused them, from the damage we had done to our relationship.

            That is the sense in which we as Christians come before God to ask for forgiveness. We’re not asking Him to once again forgive the legal penalty of our sins, because that case has been closed. Instead, we’re asking Him to forgive us for the damage we’ve caused to our relationship, in the same way that we should ask our parents for forgiveness.

            We’ll continue with a few more lessons next week, but let’s briefly review what we’ve learned today. We should pray in a manner that is submissive. Our attitude should reflect a willingness to adjust our lives to God’s will, rather than thinking that prayer is a way to get God to adjust to our will. I think we encouraged to have this kind of attitude when we remember the great many needs that we have, and that God alone is able to meet those needs. We thus humbly come before him with our requests, and one of those requests that we should make is to be forgiven of the sins that we’ve committed, so that our intimacy with God will be all that it can be.

Pray Then Like This (Part 1)--Sermon on the Mount Series

            One of the most common problems we face in communicating with others is the problem of simply not knowing what to say. When we’re young, for example, there may be a lovely lady or a macho man who catches our eye, and we’d like to talk to them, but we never do because we feel like we simply don’t know what to say. Or perhaps as your parents grow older you feel a desire to somehow express to them all that they mean to you, but you hesitate for a long time because you just don’t know what to say.

            Since prayer is a form of communication, we might face this problem when we think about praying. I suspect most Christians would say, “I don’t pray as often as I’d like to,” and perhaps a major factor in that reality is the feeling that we simply don’t know what to say. Well, the Lord Jesus very graciously has given us a model prayer to teach us how to pray. Notice that I did not say what to pray, as though Jesus was saying, “You should pray the following words and these words only.” Rather, the Lord has given us something like an outline for our prayers that will help us pray with the proper attitudes.

            This teaching comes through the passage that we normally call today, “The Lord’s Prayer,” and we find one record of it in The Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:9-15. Let’s read this whole section, then we’ll begin to pull out the lessons that we should learn from it [READ 6:9-15].

            Remember that Jesus has just warned us not to pray with a desire to gain praise from others or in a manner that tries to manipulate God (as if we needed to do that!). So now that He’s told us how NOT to pray, He tells us how to pray, beginning in v. 9 with the statement, “pray then like this.” Notice that Jesus didn’t say, “pray this,” but rather “pray like this.” He is giving us an example of how to pray, not telling us what the exact contact of all our prayers must be.

            You may have grown up in a church or denomination that recited this prayer on a weekly basis, and that’s fine as long as we know what we are praying. But therein lies the problem—many people have recited this prayer without having any idea what they were actually saying! How many people actually know what the word “hallowed” means? If we recite a memorized prayer without having any idea of what we’re actually asking for, then we’re right back to that kind of pagan praying that Jesus warned us about in vv. 7-8.

            The point of Jesus’ instruction was not to give us specific words to pray—though again, it is fine to pray these words as long as you know what they mean. But the real point of Jesus’ instruction was to give us a model to follow, an example to imitate, in the same way that you might teach your children to imitate the style of your prayers.

So what is the manner or the attitude in which we should pray?

In What Manner Should We Pray?

1. A manner that is personal

            We draw this lesson from the simple address “our Father.” The Sermon on the Mount strongly emphasizes that we enjoy a relationship with God that is like that of a child to a father. In just these three chapters that comprise The Sermon on the Mount, God is referred to as our Father 16 times. This kind of repetition clearly makes a deliberate emphasis, and I think there’s a very practical reason for it—the kind of choice that Jesus is calling His audience to make is a choice that may put them out of favor with their own parents. As it is in some parts of the world today, when people at that time accepted Christ, they ran the risk of being rejected by their own family members. So as Jesus calls His audience to make that choice, He repeatedly reminds them that if they embrace Him, they will have God Himself as their Father.

            Through Jesus, we have a personal, intimate relationship with God, and we can express that reality through the privilege of addressing God as our Father. Remember how different that notion is from the way that the Gentiles thought about their own gods. They had no concept that their gods played the role of a father to them. Their gods were indifferent toward them, and perhaps if you did the right things in the right way you could move the gods to act in your behalf, but to think of the gods having the loving compassion of a father was completely foreign to them.

            This address—our Father in heaven—is also notable for how short it is. Last week I mentioned that the Gentiles would often pile on titles of honor when addressing their gods. That manner of speaking was found in Jewish circles as well. But for the Christian, we don’t have to go on and on with titles and formalities when we speak to God—we can address Him simply and plainly, because that’s the way that personal relationships work, isn’t it? We don’t use titles and formalities with friends and family.

            Last week, I was back at my alma mater, Calvary Bible College. I ran into several of my old professors, and I kept calling them “Dr. so-and-so.” But they kept telling me, “Oh, just call me Jim.” It’s a little awkward sometimes to make that transition, but they were letting me know that there was no longer any need for titles, no longer any need for formalities. They considered me a friend and a colleague now, so I could address them as such.

            And so it is with God—He is our Father, and we can address Him as such. Along with that, we don’t have to use formal language when we pray. We can simply speak using our normal vocabulary. We don’t need to get out a thesaurus and use all kinds of high-fallutin’ language—we can speak to God in a manner that is personal.

Yet of course we must remember to speak with…

2. A manner that is respectful

            Though we can relate to God on a level that is personal rather than formal, we must remember that our spiritual Father is still “our Father in heaven.” The fact that He is our Father does not diminish by one iota the fact that He is majestic and glorious and worthy of our worship. As 1 Peter 1:17-19 states, “If you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”

            So, as we embrace the freedom to speak to God in a way that is personal rather than formal, we must still pray in a manner that is respectful rather than flippant.

3. A manner that is worshipful

            Remember that the idea of “worship” or “praise” is the idea of declaring how valuable something is. I take this lesson that prayer should be worshipful from the phrase “hallowed be your name.” I think this is a place where traditionalism has not served the Church well. “Hallowed” is not a commonly used word today, yet modern translations of the Bible continue to use it, mainly just to uphold tradition.

            I read an article once by the man who served as the chairman of the New Testament translation committee for the English Standard Version that I preach from, and he said that when the committee discussed this verse, he pushed for a different translation. But the rest of the committee said, in effect, “Everyone has memorized this verse as ‘hallowed be your name’—we can’t change it!”

            And so we live with this word. The word “hallowed” simply means “set apart.” I think the best way to translate this phrase might be “may Your name be uniquely honored.” Remember that the idea of God’s “name” refers to his reputation. It’s the same idea we’re talking about when we say that someone is “making a name” for himself or “you’re dragging my name through the mud.” We’re talking about a person’s reputation.

            So Jesus is teaching us to express our desire for God’s reputation and fame to be placed in a class all by itself. Perhaps you can see then how this is a statement of worship. We are acknowledging that God is worthy to have his name or reputation honored in such a way.

            As we think about how to express this thought in our own prayers, I think we can take a lesson from the Old Testament book of Psalms. In the Psalms, the authors would frequently praise God by describing how they could see what kind of God He is through the things He has done. Think of Psalm 139:14 for example: “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” If I can paraphrase, King David was saying, “God I praise you because I can see how powerful and intelligent you must be through the way you made me.”

            So we might express an idea like “hallowed by your name” through statements of thanksgiving for example. We might say, “Lord, I praise you for being so generous in meeting my needs today.” And of course, when we express a desire for God’s reputation to be uniquely honored, we’re expressing a commitment to do what we can to honor God’s name. So we could also express this idea with some requests: “Lord, help me to honor you today with the things I say and the way I act.”

4. A manner that is confident

            I take this lesson from two phrases—first, the address “our Father.” Remember when we talked about pagan praying last week, I said that the Gentiles had no confidence that their gods even cared about them. But we have a very different context for our prayers—we are praying to a God who has actually taken the initiative to make us His children. Our Lord Jesus understands us inside and out, and now He is in Heaven as our advocate. That’s why Hebrews 4:16 says, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

            I also draw this lesson from the first phrase of v. 10, “your kingdom come.” In essence, this statement is a request for God to carry out the promises that He has made in the Bible. All throughout the Old Testament, God described His intention to establish a kingdom in this world ruled by His Chosen One, the Messiah. This kingdom would be a kingdom of peace, joy, and justice. It will be, when Jesus returns to establish it, the pinnacle of human history in this world.

            So this statement in v. 10 is a plea for God to move forward with His plan, to fulfill the promises that He has made. When we remember that we pray to a God who has a plan and is in control of history, that should give us tremendous confidence. Praying to God is far above the level of simply wishing upon a star or making a wish as you blow out the candles on your birthday cake. It isn’t just some shot in the dark all dressed up in religious language. We are praying to the One who actually can make a difference, the One who is in control. He has a plan and He has given us many details about it.

            This lesson is one that can keep us going through those times when it seems like we’re not receiving any answer to our prayers. Perhaps you have prayed for years for reconciliation with a family member or for some kind of need in your own life like a health problem or a financial need, and it just seems like you’re not getting any answer. In those moments, it is so easy to feel like there’s no rhyme or reason behind things or that nothing will ever happen. It is so helpful in those times to remember that God does have a plan. He has an overall plan for history about which we know many details, but that also means He’s in control of our daily lives to bring our stories into resolution with His plan. You may be five days, five hours, or five minutes away from receiving an answer to your prayers that is totally unexpected and better than what you had originally asked for in the first place!

            I want to close our time today by reading a parable that Jesus told in Luke 18:1-8 [READ Luke 18:1-8]. The Lord’s question is the question that we must wrestle with—will Jesus find us living in faith when he comes? According to this parable, faith is expressed by persistence in prayer. Will Jesus find us persistently coming to God with our needs, despite an apparent delay from God? Remember that God does have a plan will help us remain confident in prayer.

Are You Praying Like a Pagan?--Sermon on the Mount Series

            I bet most of you think you’ve never done anything particularly shocking or outrageous, but let me tell you, you are some pretty scandalous people! Maybe not “headline news” scandalous, but scandalous in a more subtle yet astonishing sort of way. Here’s why—because you are people who pray as if God actually wants to hear what you have to say. Let me explain what I mean.

            In the history of thoughts about God and religion, Christianity is kind of infamous because of the extraordinary claims that we make. We claim that God Himself became one of us, and that as a human He died to pay for the very sins that we had committed against Him. We claim that Jesus has provided the only way for us to be forgiven of our sins. But right up there with these incredible claims, we have to place the way we pray. We believe we pray, as William Barclay put it, to “a God of love who is more ready to answer than we are to pray.”¹

            Our beliefs about prayer capture some of the most distinctive elements about Christianity, yet it is here, in this very activity, that we face some of our strongest temptations to think and to act just like pagans. But our Lord Jesus has warned us about some of these temptations, and we would do well to pay attention to His warnings today.

            The Lord’s teaching on prayer in Matthew 6 stretches from v. 5 to v. 15. He first tells us how NOT to pray before giving us the model prayer that we refer to today as The Lord’s Prayer. We’ll go through v. 8 today to see what Jesus has to say about the temptations we face to pray in the wrong manner.

The Temptation to Pray in order to Get Recognition from Others

            This is the same temptation that Jesus warned us about with respect to giving in vv. 2-4. Now he sounds the warning about the same temptation with respect to prayer: “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.”

            Of course, the desire is not merely to be seen by others as in, “Oh, there’s Bob praying over there.” It’s to be SEEN by others as in, “Whoa—there’s Bob praying over there. Let us all bask in the warm glow of his holiness!” Jesus may have been painting a humorous word picture here. The Greek word translated “be seen” can be translated in some contexts as “shine.” That’s what the Pharisees wanted—they wanted to shine in the eyes of others, like people in toothpaste commercials who have that little sparkle of light reflecting off of their teeth.

            They wanted to have that kind of recognition from others, and to a certain extent they got it. But as with the previous paragraph, the Lord states, “Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” Any recognition they received completed all the reward they would ever get.

            Now, the Lord is not saying that we should never pray in public. It’s the motive that’s the problem, not the location. Jesus Himself prayed in front of large groups before some of His miracles, but in terms of his daily habit of prayer, Luke 5:16 says, “He would withdraw to desolate places and pray.” So that’s the example that He calls us to follow: “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.”

            If you have a walk-in pantry in your house, that’s the kind of room that Jesus was talking about in this verse. It’s a place where you’d be shocked to actually run into someone else. Of course, choosing a place like that to pray reveals that you’re not praying for an audience of anyone but God. And for that, Jesus says, “your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

            So we must be on guard against this temptation to use prayer as a forum for showing off. A good way to do that is to do your regular praying in private. Then, if you are in a public setting of prayer, just be aware that this temptation may rear its ugly head.

The Temptation to Use Prayer as a Tool for Manipulation

            Jesus has more to say about prayer than He does about the other activities in this section—giving to the needy and fasting. Exhibit A in the lesson of how NOT to pray was the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the Jewish people. For Exhibit B, Jesus turns his attention outside of Judaism to focus on the Gentiles, which is simply a general term for anyone who is not Jewish. Its usage is similar to the way that we might refer to all Native Americans as “the Indians”—it’s a very general term that lumps together lots of people into one category.

            Here, the focus is not on ethnicity but on the way that non-Jewish people around Israel at that time practiced their religion. In v. 7, Jesus says, “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.” What exactly does Jesus mean when He says, “do not heap up empty phrases?” The King James and New King James translations say, “do not use vain repetitions.” What is Jesus getting at?

            Some students of Scripture have thought that Jesus may have been speaking against the use of memorized prayers, since of course you are repeating the same words if you pray a memorized prayer on a regular basis. But I don’t think that memorized prayers were Jesus’ primary concern, at the very least. Obviously, the Lord does not want us to turn our brains on auto-pilot and just go through the motions, but you can do that whether you’re praying a memorized prayer or not. Just listen to yourself pray before a meal and ask how many times you’ve gone through the motions and used those exact words.

            All in all, I think using a memorized prayer can be just fine in the same way that singing “Amazing Grace” for the 20,000^th time can be just fine. If your mind is engaged and the words accurately reflect the thoughts of your heart, then using a memorized prayer could be just as acceptable to God as praising Him by singing an old hymn.

            The key to understanding the Lord’s warning here is simply to keep it in context. He says, “do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” One common thread in Gentile religion, whether it was Canaanite or Greek or Roman, was that prayer was an effort to convince a god who was indifferent toward you to intervene on your behalf. They had no confidence and no real reason to think that their gods really cared about them all that much, so their prayers had to persuade their god to act.

            Sometimes, they would butter up their god by piling on as many compliments as they could: “Oh great, awesome, majestic, wonderful, stupendous, spectacular deity…” Or they might remind their god of all the sacrifices they had offered, or make vows to do certain things if their prayer was answered. In some religions, they would cut themselves or do other painful things to try and move their god to show them compassion.

            And of course, the longer you did all of this, the better, because it would increase your odds of gaining your god’s attention. This is the kind of praying that Jesus is talking about. He’s telling us not to approach our Heavenly Father with the same kind of ideas that the pagans approached their gods. To put it another way, He’s telling us not to approach God the way we used to approach our teachers in high school when we would fluff up a research paper. Everyone knows an eight page paper looks better than a six page paper, so if you ran out of things to say too quickly, what would you do? You’d just fluff it up, right? Today you might search Google for a few more quotes that you could just stuff in there, even though you’re really not adding anything of substance.

            Basically, we were trying to manipulate our teachers to get what we wanted—a good grade. Jesus tells us that that is not the way we should view prayer—as a tool of manipulation to get what we want. We don’t need to fluff up our prayers and go on and on as though we can leave the Lord so flattered and impressed that He will answer us. Specifically, I think Jesus is warning us about two thoughts that can quietly cause us to pray in a manner that is essentially pagan.

            1. That God can be manipulated through prayer.

            It is so easy for us to think that if we get down on our knees and stay there until they hurt and our backs ache and our voices are hoarse, then God will see how serious we are about this whole prayer business and He’ll give us what we ask for. Likewise we can treat phrases like “in Jesus’ name I pray” as some kind of magical formula, and as long as we tack that on to the end of our prayers then God is compelled to give us what we ask for. My friends, the idea that effective prayer is all about standing the right way or saying the right things is not Christian prayer—it is paganism, but do you see how easily we can slip into this mindset?

            I know I encounter a strong temptation to think like this when I need to pray for forgiveness. I can approach those prayers thinking that I need to make myself feel really bad, and if I can just feel bad enough then I can be confident that God will forgive me. But this is simply manipulation! Our confidence must not come from our own feelings but from believing the promises of God, and if I don’t feel like my heart is grieved enough over my sin, I can simply ask God to help me have an appropriate response when I sin.

The second thought that may cause us to pray like pagans is perhaps even worse than the first, because it so clearly takes our unique and holy God and puts Him on the same level as dead idols.

            2. That God needs to be manipulated through prayer, otherwise He will not answer.

            As I said a moment ago, when the pagans prayed, they didn’t think that their god had any particular inclination to answer their prayer. Their gods had to be persuaded, nagged, coaxed, flattered; their prayers were like an unwelcome interruption.

            But what a different picture is painted for us in Scripture! When we come before the throne of grace in prayer, we don’t come as trespassers or uninvited visitors but as long-awaited guests for whom preparations have been made. We come as children to a loving Father who is already inclined to hear us.

            He is not annoyed by our prayers—He has been anticipating them! That’s why Jesus says in v. 6, “Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” God is already interested in our cares and concerns; in fact, He’s been keeping tabs on them. Like any good father, God is anticipating the needs of His children and He’s already working to meet them.

            Do you see why I say that prayer highlights all that is unique about Christianity? We are invited to speak anytime we like to our loving Father, who went to great pains to establish this relationship with us. He has already promised to meet our needs and is busy doing just that, so we can pray with the confidence that He is not only interested in us, but He is actually on our side, working to our advantage.

            Do you see what a subtle insult it is, then, if we approach God with the idea that we have to butter Him up or impress Him or bribe Him to get Him to take notice of us? Oh what a misunderstanding of God’s love and grace! We cannot say it better than the old hymn:

Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer,

Thy wings shall my petition bear

To Him whose truth and faithfulness

Engage the waiting soul to bless

And since He bids me seek His face,

Believe His Word, and trust His grace,

I’ll cast on Him my every care,

And wait for thee, sweet hour of prayer.

Notes:

1. William Barclay, The Gospel of Matthew, 2 vols., The New Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001), 1:227.

Mind Your Motives!--Sermon on the Mount Series

            The ABC Network has been airing a show for the last few years called “Secret Millionaire.” In each episode, a self-made millionaire goes undercover in a needy area by hiding the fact that he or she is fabulously wealthy. After getting to know to some of the people and the organizations that are trying to help them, the millionaire gets to spring the surprise at the end that he or she is in fact very wealthy and would like to give them a financial gift.

            I’ve watched a few episodes of the show, and it is very heart-warming to see the gratitude of the people who receive those gifts. But the set-up does make you ponder the real motivations of the “secret millionaire.” Are they really “just there to help,” or is there more to it than that?

            A show like that causes us to think about how murky our motives can be when we give to those who are in need. This is a good time to talk about our motives for giving, because in the next two months, every charity that knows you’re alive will be making some kind of effort to reach out to you!

            Perhaps its divine timing, then, that we come to a passage in The Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus discusses the proper motives for giving to the needy. What is it that drives us to give to those in need? Do we give only when our name will appear on a banquet program as a “gold partner,” or are we driven by other motivations?

            As we move into Matthew 6, we also move into a different section of The Sermon on the Mount. Remember that Jesus’ main goal in this sermon is to move the people from following the Pharisees as their religious leaders to following Him. In the latter half of Matthew 5, Jesus had been criticizing aspects of the Pharisees’ teaching which had distorted God’s standards. Now in the first part of chapter 6, He is going to criticize aspects of the Pharisees’ behavior—specifically, the way that they carried out their religious acts. Let’s read Matthew 6:1-4, then we’ll take a closer look at Jesus’ message [READ 6:1-4].

The Warning: Mind Your Motives!

            The Lord begins this chapter with a warning that addresses everything through v. 18, and His warning is for us to mind our motives. He says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.” Its that last phrase that mentions the improper motive—we are not to perform our religious acts with a desire for other people to notice us performing religious acts.

            Now I mentioned a few weeks ago that this warning initially may not seem to fit with the command in 5:16 to “let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” As I pointed out when we studied that passage, Jesus is not talking about the same kind of activities in 5:16 as He about to address in chapter 6.

            In this chapter, Jesus will deal with activities that every Jewish person at that time would have thought of as religious activities—giving to the needy, praying, and fasting. In today’s world, the equivalent might be attending church, praying, and reading the Bible. If anyone in our society saw you doing those things, they would think of them as religious activities.

            But in 5:16, Jesus was referring to actions that people wouldn’t automatically think of as religious activities, such as meeting practical needs for people around you. If we’re helping the sick or protecting the vulnerable, we can freely let it be known that we are doing those things out of obedience to Christ, but as far as actions that are obviously religious, we don’t need to play those up to get other people to notice us. In fact, it is better if we just do them quietly.

            So if you’re helping an elderly neighbor with some yard work, you can let them know that you want to share Christ’s love through what you’re doing. But when you come to church on Sunday morning, you don’t need to honk your horn as you go down the road and wave your Bible out the window. And of course, in everything that we do, there is the question of our motive, as Jesus warns us here.

            So He warns us to mind our motives, but the reason He gives for doing so may surprise you. He doesn’t say, “Mind your motives because its just the right thing to do,” or “mind your motives because its your duty before God.” Instead, He appeals to our desire to be rewarded for our actions. Jesus states that if we do not properly mind our motives, “then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.”

            If you’re ever inclined to think that the whole idea of pursuing rewards from God sounds terribly selfish, then the next 18 verses might feel downright scandalous to you, because the only motivation that Jesus appeals to in this section is the motivation to receive rewards from God. But, since God does not tempt us to sin, according to James 1:13, then whatever Jesus encourages us to do cannot be sinful. Thus, the desire to be rewarded by God for our actions cannot be sinful.

            This desire actually drives us away from sin because we have to obedient in order to gain the rewards. We have to embrace God’s values in order to receive rewards from God, which will point us away from sinful behavior and toward godly behavior. All in all, the desire to be rewarded by God is a powerful motivation for good and another reminder of God’s grace. God doesn’t have to reward us at all, but He chooses to, which gives us simply one more reason to serve Him with all our might.

So the question that Jesus challenges us with is this…

What Kind of Reward Do You Want to Receive?

            a. To receive a temporary reward, make a big show out of your giving.

            If your motive is to receive a temporary reward like praise from other people, then by all means, draw lots of attention to yourself when you give. Don’t give a penny unless your name is slapped on a building somewhere; create a TV show to broadcast your giving; walk into church on Sunday morning and ask the usher, “Will your church accept large bills?” Make a big production out of it to get all the praise you can, because according to Jesus, that is all the reward you will ever get.

            The Lord mentioned some pretenders in His day who sought to bring attention to their giving. In v. 2, He says, “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others.” That word “hypocrites” came into English directly from Greek; it is simply the Greek word ὑποκριτής. That was the term for an actor in ancient Greece; if you were an actor by profession, you were called a ὑποκριτής. There wasn’t a negative connotation to the word until Jesus began to use it metaphorically to refer to people like this—people whose supposed concern for the poor was nothing but an act. They simply wanted to be praised by other people, and in that culture at that time, giving to the poor was a way to get that praise. If there had been a better way, they probably would have done that instead.

            Jesus closes v. 2 by saying, “Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” The New American Standard and the NIV are a little better here; they read, “they have their reward in full.” The Greek behind that phrase was a business term that was written on receipts to indicate “paid in full.” The debt was settled, the account was closed, and that’s exactly what Jesus is telling us. If our giving is simply an act, if our motive is to receive praise from others, then when we receive it, we have been paid in full. We had better enjoy that praise for all its worth, because we will receive nothing more from God.

But then Jesus gives us another option…

            b. To receive a lasting reward, be discreet about your giving.

            In vv. 3-4, the Lord states, “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” What a memorable picture Jesus paints—to give so quietly with your right hand that your left hand has to say, “Hey, what’s going on over there?” To give in this way reveals a proper motive that pleases God. You’re not giving simply to draw attention to yourself but rather to extend love to a person in need, and thus display the heart of Christ.

            And for that, Jesus states that our Heavenly Father will take note of what we have done and will reward us for it. The Lord may reward us in this life with resources from which we can continue to give. That is the point of 2 Corinthians 9:7-11—“Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work…You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.” We might say this is God’s idea of compound interest! If God gets a good return of generosity from the money He entrusts to you, He may just keep entrusting money to you so that you can continue to be generous.        Notice what the true reward is—it’s the opportunity to continue serving God in a special way. And whether or not we receive any tangible reward in this life, we will certainly receive the reward of praise and honor from God in Heaven and the opportunity to serve Him in a special way in that place. So long after this world is gone, long after the praise of men which other people coveted has died out, long after the curtain has closed on the actors, the ὑποκριτής of this life, your reward from God will remain. Is it not obvious which reward we should pursue?

            My friends, let us allow this offer to sink deeply into our hearts. God offers us eternal rewards for helping those around us who are in need. How can we help but turn our attention toward such an endeavor? For centuries after the church was born, the calling card of Christian people everywhere was compassion for the poor, the sick, and the dying. When unwanted infants were left to die of exposure in the Roman Empire, it was Christians who adopted them and who cried out against this practice. When the poor in the great cities lay dying because they could not afford physicians, it was Christians who personally took them in and cared for them. When plagues swept through the Empire, even though some emperors tried to make Christians the scapegoats for them, it was Christians who went out with no fear of death to care for the sick and bury the dead.

            Why do we find asylums for the mentally ill in our world today? Why do we find sanitary, livable conditions inside of prisons? Why do so many hospitals have names like St. Catherines and Via Christi? Why is the debate in our country today NOT about whether the sick should receive care but simply how to go about it? Its because of Christianity!

            In our country today, we have many government programs that are meant to help the needy, but we must ask ourselves—do we really think the task is complete? Is there nothing for the church to do? It is not hard to envision a day for our nation when those programs no longer exist, and if that happens, who will step into the gap? If history teaches us anything about the care of the needy, it teaches us that Christians will answer the call.

            The only question that remains is, “What part are you playing?” What part am I playing? Are you only playing a part? Does your heart only open to others when the lights are bright and the cameras are rolling and the live studio audience is there to applaud your every move?

            “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”—James 1:27.

What's Love Got to Do With It?--Sermon on the Mount Series

            Perhaps no culture in history has spoken about love more yet understood love less than our culture today. Of course, we have a tool today in the radio that allows us to lump all of our thoughts about love together and try to sort out the mess the results. For example, Burt Bacharach sings about love as kind of a “cure-all:”

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

It's the only thing that there's just too little of

What the world needs now is love, sweet love,

No not just for some but for everyone.

But Carrie Underwood might have a thing or two to say to Burt, because she sings:

I bet all I had on a thing called love

I guess in the end it wasn't enough

And it's hard to watch you leave right now

I'm gonna have to learn to let you go somehow

Meanwhile, Tina Turner wants to convince us that love is nothing more than a physical sensation:

It's physical

Only logical

You must try to ignore

That it means more than that

[Chorus:]

What's love got to do, got to do with it

What's love but a second hand emotion

What's love got to do, got to do with it

Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?

But Tim McGraw wants to tell us that love is something that can be life-changing:

Better than I was

More than I am

And all of this happened

By takin' your hand

And who I am now

Is who I wanted to be

And now that we're together

I'm stronger than ever

I'm happy and free

Its your love

It just does somethin’ to me

It sends a shot right through me

I can’t get enough

And if you wonder

About the spell I’m under

Its your love

Bob Dylan describes love as something that sacrifices for another person:

I could make you happy, make your dreams come true

There's nothing that I would not do

Go to the ends of the Earth for you

To make you feel my love.

But Katy Perry just wants to use your love without getting too concerned about you:

I just wanna use your love

Tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight

I don't wanna lose your love tonight

(You don't mean nothing at all to me)

(You don't mean nothing at all to me)

Perhaps we need to tell Katy what Willie Nelson once decided:

If this is what you refer to as love

Then I'd rather you didn't love me

            Now, some of those musicians were singing about different kinds of love, and therein lies part of our problem—we can use the word love in so many different ways. One English dictionary lists 28 different ways that we can use the word “love.” I can love God, love my wife, love basketball, love bacon, and have a score of love in a game of tennis—all at the same time!

            That might explain some of the confusion we have when Jesus commands us to “love our enemies.” We better find out in a hurry just what it means to love, and fortunately, the Lord will help us do just that. Follow along with me as I read Matthew 5:43-48 [READ Matt 5:43-48].

The Problem: Granting a License for Hatred

            The Pharisees teaching, according to Jesus in v. 43, was, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” There’s no reason to look for a verse in the Old Testament that says that, because there isn’t one. You will find a command to love your neighbor in Leviticus 19:18, but you won’t find a command to hate your enemy anywhere.

            In fact, in the laws given to Moses, we find just the opposite. Exodus 23:4-5 says, “If you meet your enemy's ox or his donkey going astray, you shall bring it back            to him. If you see the donkey of one who hates you lying down under its burden, you shall refrain from leaving him with it; you shall rescue it with him.” And Leviticus 19:17 says, “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him.” Then, in the book of Proverbs, we find this statement that is repeated in the New Testament: “If your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink, for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you (25:21-22).”

            So how did it ever come about that the religious leaders were teaching the people, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy?” They may have been attempting to capture what the Old Testament says about God’s anger toward those who reject Him. Perhaps they thought, “Well, if its okay for God to be angry toward His enemies, then it must be okay for us, too.”

            Let me give you a very brief snippet of what the Old Testament says about God’s anger toward those who reject Him. In Malachi 1:2-3, for example, God Himself says, “I have loved Jacob but Esau I have hated.” God spoke through Malachi centuries after Jacob and Esau actually lived, so He’s talking about the nations that descended from those two men—the nation of Israel on the one hand (Jacob) and the nation of Edom on the others (Esau). The Edomites, throughout their history, had rejected God and even attacked the Israelites at times. God clearly states here that He hates them for their actions.

            Also, in Deuteronomy 7:9-10, Moses gives this description of God: “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.” Now the Pharisees may have read statements like this and concluded, “If we love those who love us and hate those who hate us, it sounds like we’re no different than God!”      But I believe the Pharisees forgot at least two important details about God’s love.

1. God takes no delight in the demise of the wicked

            Make no mistake—God is the final, appropriate judge of mankind, and He will ensure that justice is carried out. But like any good judge, He does not delight in the downfall of those upon whom He must pass sentence. Ezekiel 33:11 states, “As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” Though God will surely deliver punishment when it is just, He always does so with a broken heart.

2. God consistently does good for ALL people—even His enemies!

            That is what Jesus points out in Matthew 5—He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Notice how Jesus calls the sun “His sun.” It’s God’s sun! He can do what He wants with it. Remember, there was a time during the plagues on Egypt when God caused the Egyptians to sit in darkness while the Israelites enjoyed light. He could cause the sun to shine precisely where He chooses, but He gives it to all men equally. If God carries out punishment upon a man, it is only after He has provided food for that man every day of his life; it is only after He has protected that man every day from an earlier demise; it is only after He has kept his heart pumping and his lungs breathing and his brain working. The moment of punishment is actually an exception in an otherwise constant pattern of mercy and grace.

           

The Solution: Love Your Enemies, Too, and Pray for Them

The failure to do good for our enemies is the reason that we so often fail to imitate God’s love, and it is the reason why the Pharisees’ teaching was broken. Their understanding was that they had no obligation to do good to their enemies, so the Lord tells us instead in v. 44, “But I say to you, ‘Love your enemies.’” This command really challenges the common notion of love that we hold today. I’d like to point out two extremes that we need to avoid when thinking about love that will help us understand what Jesus is asking us to do.

1. Love is merely an emotion

            This is the extreme to which we are most vulnerable today, because from every conceivable angle we are told to “follow your heart,” or “be true to your heart.” And so, when most people say, “I love you,” if you dig down underneath that statement, what they’re really saying is, “I have pleasant feelings when I’m around you.”

            Now if we equate love with pleasant feelings, then this command from Jesus is utterly ridiculous. We don’t have pleasant feelings about our enemies, nor can we simply conjure them up at will. But as we see in the rest of this passage, Jesus doesn’t define love in terms of emotions but in terms of actions. God loves the evil and the unjust by doing good for them. So we can see that Jesus is simply expanding upon the idea of the previous paragraph—choose to do good to others even when they do evil to you.

But once we’ve grasped the idea that love is not merely an emotion, then we must be careful to avoid a second extreme…

2. Love for our enemies does not involve our emotions

            It would be easy to justify hatred in our hearts if we defined love solely in terms of our actions. For example, let’s say that my enemy is hungry. I would not be fulfilling this command if I drove past him, threw some bread at his face and said, “Here, have some bread you filthy animal! By the way, can’t you see how much I love you?”

            If we are to learn anything from Matthew 5, its that God wants our actions and our attitudes to be aligned; He wants our hands and our hearts to be on the same page. So God does want us to do good to our enemies, but He wants those good actions to flow out of a heart of compassion, pity, and mercy.

            We won’t have the same feelings about our enemies as we have about our friends, but that’s not what God is calling for. I think we can truthfully say that God Himself does not have the same feelings about His enemies as He does about His children, but what He does have is a commitment to do good to all that flows from a heart of goodwill. That could be a good “shorthand” definition of love—a commitment to do good to all that flows from a heart of goodwill.

            Jesus then mentions a very specific way in which we can love our enemies when He says, “pray for those who persecute you.” There is a beautiful word picture in this statement that kind of gets lost in translation. The Greek preposition that is translated “for” in this phrase is the same preposition that is used elsewhere to describe Jesus dying “for” us, and of course the idea is that Jesus died in our place, as our substitute. Jesus stepped in for us and did something that we could not do—namely, offer a perfect sacrifice for our sins. So the word picture here is that we are to step in for our enemies to do something that they cannot do—namely, pray to God.

            Its as though we’re coming before God saying, “Lord, I know my enemy is shut out from your presence because He has rejected you, so I am here in His place to pray on his behalf and ask that you would show mercy to him and do good to him.” What a humbling picture, one that crushes the pride and the hatred in our hearts to allow the heart of Jesus to be formed within us.

            Jesus then calls us to do these things with reference to God, first of all telling us that this is how we can show our family resemblance with our Heavenly Father. He issues these commands in v. 44, then says in v. 45, “so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.” This is the way that the family resemblance will be carved within us—not by loving only those who love us, or greeting only those who greet us, because that’s just normal human behavior. Anyone can do that, so if we want to truly act like a chip off the old block and be like our Father, we must love our enemies and pray for them.

            Jesus finally sums up His discussion in v. 48 by saying, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” I think the word “perfect” is an unfortunate translation in this verse. This Greek word can also be translated “complete,” and I think that word gives us a better understanding of this verse because of the way that we use the words “perfect” and “complete” in modern English.

            The word “therefore” tells us that Jesus is summing up or drawing a conclusion from everything He has just said, and in this section He has been challenging us to be complete people, to be whole, to have an integrity about our lives in which our attitudes and our actions are in sync. When our attitudes and our actions don’t line up, we’re like a jumbled mess of a person, like a Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde. Our actions and attitudes are not integrated—they are not a unified whole.

            But this is not so for God. His actions and His attitudes are in perfect harmony with one another, and so this is how the Lord calls us to be. And as we have been reminded today, God maintains this harmony between His actions and attitudes toward all people. This is another way in which we can be incomplete—if we display this integrity toward some people, but not all people. Our Lord’s challenge is for us to unite godly attitudes with godly actions, then act with that same integrity toward all people.

            As we close today, I want you to close your eyes and think about someone who could fit into the category of being your enemy. Perhaps it is someone who mocks you for your faith, or someone who tries to take advantage of you; maybe its someone with whom you’ve had a fight in the past or someone with different political convictions than you. As you think about that person, I want you to ask God to forgive you for any times in which you have failed to do good to that person from a heart of goodwill. Be specific if you can. Also, ask God to forgive you if you have failed to pray for that person. Finally, let’s ask the Lord to help us rely on His strength to carry out these commands we’ve studied today.