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.