Matthew 6:5 And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites: for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their reward. 6But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father who is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret shall recompense thee. 7And in praying use not vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 8Be not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. 9After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 10Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. 11Give us this day our daily bread. 12And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. 14For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

“When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites”

The hypocrites, the play actors, were playing at giving before. Now they’re playing at praying. Standing in the synagogues. Prayer at synagogue services was led by a member of the congregation who stood in front of the ark of the law for this purpose, and he led the congregation in public prayer.

The reference to streets probably refers to the fact that at times of public fast and perhaps also at the time of the daily afternoon temple sacrifice, prayer could be offered in the streets. If he couldn’t get to the temple, the brother might go just to the street and face the temple and pray.

What a splendid opportunity for a little bit of ostentatious piety.

Jesus is not speaking against public prayer and public worship any more than he was speaking against alms giving. Rather, it is the ostentation of it he’s speaking against.

He says, “Do not be like these hypocrites, There is a certain acclaim that comes with any public service.

“When you pray, go into you room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

A good test is this.

Do I pray more and more fervently when I’m alone than when I pray in a fellowship group? If most of your praying is done in public, then there is probably a large element of ostentation there. Perhaps the reason we don’t see more results is that we don’t pray more in private. “Your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

There is a further warning.

“And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.”

Here, there is a reference to heaping up of phrases. Some pagans thought that if they named all of their various gods they would have a better chance of getting their petitions answered because they hadn’t left anybody out. “Do not say idle things” is the chief thought. Don’t just be mouthing phrases. God is in heaven; you are on earth, so let your words be few.

It is not a question of not ever praying at length but rather not ever praying redundantly and repetitiously and in a babbling way at length, just praying at length because you’re supposed to pray at length.

“Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” This is not an incentive to abandon prayer. Rather, the idea is God as Father knows the needs of his family, yet he teaches his children to ask in confidence and trust.

In this connection, even the Lord’s Prayer can be a danger. As early as the Didache, a document written at the beginning of the second century, it was prescribed that Christians should repeat the Lord’s Prayer three times a day.

As soon as a thing is prescribed quite like that, it is degenerating again into this repetitious babbling. It’s just done because it’s done because it’s done. It’s that sort of thing Jesus is speaking out against.

The “Lord’s Model Prayer.”

It is not the prayer the Lord prays so much as the prayer he gives us as a paradigm that we should pray.

The petitions are divided between those concerning God and those concerning men.

Concerning God, there are petitions concerning his name, his kingdom, and his will.

Concerning men, there are petitions concerning our bread, our sins, our debts, and our temptation. God and his glory, God and his holiness are first, yet the prayer as a whole embraces both God’s glory and our needs.

His guidelines embraces both our physical needs (our bread) and our spiritual needs (our sins and our temptations).

Christians are not simply to pray in isolation. They are praying not only for themselves but for the whole church of the living God.

“Our Father.”

Jews occasionally addressed God like that, but it was rare. They preferred loftier phrases. Indeed, when you read the prayers of Jews in the intertestamental literature, the literature between the Old Testament and the New Testament, you find some spectacular displays of piling up of phrases.

“Great God of the universe, sovereign Lord of Israel, creator of all, sustainer of men,” and on and on. Jesus just says, “Our Father.”

Jesus’ own private address was even simpler. When he addressed the Father it was, “Abba,”

There is a sense in which God is the father of all men, but the vast majority of biblical uses of the word father have rather to do with the special sonship that comes by being a Christian. We are His children, Romans 8. “He has made us sons by adoption, and if sons then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.”

There is, on the one hand, an emphasis in the New Testament on the joy of personal relationship with God. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doesn’t even yet appear what we shall be.” On the other hand, there is a putting God back. He is God. He is transcendent. He is in heaven. Let the earth be silent before him.

“Hallowed be your name.”

A Name suggests what a person is in Jewish thought. Of God, particularly his nature as he has revealed himself. God reveals himself very often through his name. He is called, for example, El Shaddai, the Almighty One, or he is called Yahweh, or Jehovah as we transliterate it.
Now, Jesus says, pray, “Hallowed be your name.”

God or Jesus can fall so easily from the lips of men who do not know him, usually as a form of oath, a curse.

Jesus says, “May your name be hallowed.”

To hallow has to do with reverence and honor. It suggests that we are to glorify his name by obeying him. The intriguing thing is that for us to pray, “Hallowed be your name” is a prayer that the hallowing of his name will come to pass when what we really mean is that we are the ones who hallow his name.

What are we doing praying to God that he’ll hallow his name when it’s us who are, in a sense, to hallow his name by ascribing to him reverence and honor and obedience?

The idea is that even in the area of our obedience, even in the area of our giving in reverence, in point of fact, when we do give him reverence and when we are obedient to him, it is his gracious working in us that enables us to give him that reverence and obedience.

“Lord, hallow your name,” and it is part of praying, “Lord, make me holy. Lord, make me ascribe to you all that is yours. Lord, make me reverence you. Work in me so that I honor you. Hallow your own name.”

It keeps the focus not at the personal level of what I would like to be like personally but at the longer-range level of why I should be holy: to glorify God.

“Your kingdom come.”

The kingdom has to do with God’s reign, his king dominion. It came with the coming of the King, but it is still to come when he comes again.

Here part of our praying is for the final establishment of God’s saving reign. God is always reigning, He is always sovereign, but his saving reign, the way he breaks into men’s history and saves men, the positive saving effect of this rule, has broken in with Jesus and in its climactic form will be introduced when Jesus comes again.

At the end of 1 Corinthians, Paul writes, “Maranatha, our Lord come.” Look at the way the Bible ends? In the very last chapter of the last book Jesus testifies, “Yes, I am coming soon.” John writes, “Amen, come, Lord Jesus.”

The question is immediately raised, “Is that really what I want to pray?”

When that happens, and Jesus comes back, life as we know it here is over, do we really have a desire for that?

When you pray your kingdom come, that is what you are asking for.

In one sense, we are to occupy until he comes, but in another sense, all our focus of attention, all of our desires, ought to be for his coming back so that introduces the final stage of righteousness.

The issue is, most would rather have a mixture of righteousness and sin?

“Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

“Your will be done so that righteousness prevails.

We have seen already that in the kingdom the standards and ethics of the kingdom in its final state already prevail and pertain now.

There is a sense in which the ethics of the kingdom, the absolute demands of perfection and holiness, although they pertain now, have to be worked out in the context where there is sin and greed and selfishness and hate and bitterness.

Christians, therefore, who love righteousness hunger for the time when God’s will, will be done on earth as it is in heaven, without the exceptions, without the mitigations, just freely, openly, righteously, cleanly, purely.

“Give us today our daily bread.”

The word daily is one that occurs very rarely in Greek, and nobody is quite sure what it means. It seems to mean literally “day that is coming.” “Give us on the day that is coming our bread.”
It is also possible that it is itself a reference to Jesus coming back.

There is an acknowledgement here that all that we have comes from God. Paul asks, “What have you that you haven’t received?”

All that you have is from the Lord, from his gracious hand.

We don’t deserve any of it, for we have long since held up our rebellious fists in his face. But instead of writing us off, He sends his rain upon the righteous and the unrighteous. All that we have comes from him. So we go to him and say, “Give us today our daily bread.” Here there is a prayer for our needs.

“Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”

The word is debts in Matthew, trespasses in Luke. Both suggest sin.

Matthew 18 gives us the illustration of how this works. The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go. But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.

Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master turned him over to the jailers until he paid back all he owed. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

It’s a question, that we have not really repented ourselves, that we are still holding grudges against other people. There is a sense in which Christians stand in between two poles. On the one hand, we have been forgiven and therefore we ought to forgive, and on the other hand, we are going to need to be forgiven again and therefore we ought to forgive. In either case we ought to forgive.

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”

This is strange phrasing to be asked not to be led into temptation.
It is a plea not to be overwhelmed by temptation. There is a recognition here that it is God who keeps us, and we ask him to keep us. I can’t keep myself. I’m not strong enough not to sin, so we ask him that we not be led into temptation.

Practical steps that could help us in our praying.

Treat prayer at least as a duty. Much praying is not done because we don’t intend to pray much. If we simply wait until we have the urge, we might wait a long time.

Although it is important to avoid legalism, pray regularly as well as spontaneously. The Old Testament boasts both a Daniel, who prays three times regularly.

Mix themes of prayer. There should be a place for both praise and for petition, for intercession, for affirmation, for meditation, for wonder, for adoration, but also simply for thanking the Lord for what he has done and naming some of the mercies we have received from his hand.

Pray, meditate with the Scriptures. There are many parts of the Bible that are best tackled in this running dialogue sort of way. You read something from the Scriptures and you say, “Lord, I see all the ways that applies to me that I have failed in so miserably. Lord, forgive this sin, and help me to put this principle that I see here in your Word into practice today, especially with the person whose face I detest.

Sincerely abandon all known sin. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me,” the psalmist says. 1 John 3:21–22.

If it helps, pray out loud.

It will help you focus and not just daydreaming.

Maybe get a quiet prayer partner relationship described by Jesus in Matthew 18:19. “Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.”

Prayer is hard work. It means thinking things through, trying to understand what God’s Word had to say to a situation, and then claiming God’s promises for it.

Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer That calls me from a world of care And bids me at my Father’s throne Make all my wants and wishes known. In seasons of distress and grief My soul has often found relief And oft escaped the tempter’s snare For thy return, sweet hour of prayer.