Category: Sermon Supplements

Some scholars think that Matthew has done a massive bit of editing here, leaving out the transitions and connective tissue that would help make sense of unrelated parts. I do not think that Matthew has haphazardly arranged parts of this single sermon or is pulling pieces from several sermons for the following reasons.

1.  If 7:7-11 has no connection to the surrounding verses then why not place them in chapter 6 where Jesus teaches concerning prayer?
2. While Matthews’ account of this sermon certainly is condensed, every other part of this sermon has a flow to it.  I do not think Matthew near the end got lazy and just randomly started throwing pieces in.
3. Even if Matthew was getting sporadic in his selection, the Holy Spirit wasn’t.
4. The scene Matthew gives us in 5:1 and 7:28-29 is that of a single setting.
5. 5:1 forms and inclusio (think parenthesis) with 7:28 marking off the main body of this sermon with the repeated phrase, “the law and the prophets.”
6. Finally the strongest and most meaningful word in our text is the little word with which verse 12 begins, “so”. This “so” is the glue that holdes the sermon together.

Here is the breakdown, Matthew 7:1-6 deals with our relations as disciples of Christ to other people, verses 7-11 teaches us about prayer, then in verse 12 we return to how we are to relate to others.  What the “so” in verse 12 tells us then is that as we are reading about prayer we have not left the heading of personal relationships. The teaching on prayer relates to how we are to relate to others.

So, how then does this section on prayer relate to what comes before and after it? As you read verses 1-6 you realize your need for grace and wisdom and Jesus tells you prayer is for power to love people. You have a loving heavenly Father eager to give you such good gifts. Your love for others then overflows from His love for you. We are able to love because He first loved us.

This keeps the passage on prayer from being abused as a means to get whatever we want, and it makes the golden rule golden, that is, uniquely Christian.

Notice how Jesus deals with worry – He’s logical. Now if you know anyone that struggles with worry you know how insufficient logic is to battle anxiety. Statistics give no strength for the worrier. He only reasons, “I could be the one.” But Jesus isn’t simply logical, He is theo-logical.

Three times we are commanded not to worry in this text, and all three times Jesus introduces the command to worry with “therefore”. In light of what Jesus teaches, you are commanded not to worry.  His teaching should result in you not worrying. This knowledge should result in you not worrying. Jesus does not exhort you to pray for deliverance (you should, but this is not the primary way to deal with anxiety). Jesus does not tell you to seek an experience. Jesus tells you to think. The worrier may riposte that thinking is exactly what he has too much of. But when you worry, are you really thinking? Are you controlling your thoughts, or are your thoughts controlling you? Lloyd-Jones expresses this well when he writes,

I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression in a sense is this, that we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self. Am I just trying to be deliberately paradoxical? Far from it. This is the very essence of wisdom in this matter. Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself? Take those thoughts that come to you the moment you wake up in the morning. You have not originated them, but they start talking to you, they bring back the problems of yesterday, etc. Somebody is talking. Who is talking to you? Your self is talking to you. Now this man’s treatment was this [the man in Ps. 42]; instead of allowing this self to talk to him, he starts talking to himself. ‘Why art thou cast down, O my soul?’ he asks. His soul had been depressing him, crushing him. So he stands up and says: ‘Self, listen for a moment, I will speak to you’….The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself.

Now why is thinking so crucial? Why does Jesus call us to think, and then abandon worry as a result? The answer lies in another question. What is Jesus calling us to think about? We are to consider the character of the Sovereign God, our Master and Lord, who is also our Heavenly Father.  If I lack anything it is not because He is unloving or incapable. God is to be my Treasure, my Vision, my Master, and my Ambition. Worry therefore is God-belittling, that is, blasphemous, as it doubts His providence, and idolatrous as it reveals what we fear and therefore what we love, value, and treasure.

Worry wars against faith; big worry, little faith, big faith, little worry (Matthew 6:30). You fight against worry by fighting for faith. It is true that we cannot make faith happen, it is a gift of God. But God does use means that we can avail ourselves of to increase faith, namely His Word (Romans 10:17) coupled with prayer (Psalm 119:18). Why does the Word increase faith? Because there God speaks to us of Himself. Our faith is not ethereal, it has an object – God. Our faith is in Jesus Christ and all that God is for us in Him. By thinking God’s own thoughts of Himself, given to us in Scripture, we gather wood for the fire. The Spirit sovereignly ignites faith in our chests using the logs of Scripture as fuel. Faith flourishes as it looks to Christ and all that God is for us in Him. Jesus here is directing our gaze to God, who  is our Father in Him (Ephesians 1:5) so that our faith might flourish and our worry wilt.

The theological bedrock that you are meant to stand firmly on in this text is not that you will never hunger, but that God always cares. In Christ He is your Father.

God doesn’t give us our money, He entrusts us with His money.  It’s not a question of how much of our money will we give to Him, but how much of His money are we bold enough to keep for ourselves.  When Jesus uses strong language to rouse us to this reality He is not seeking to rob our joy. This command and the reward for obeying it are not about merit – they both come as further lavish grace in Christ – they are grace upon grace. Jesus wants us to unfurl our sinful fingers and give away temporal pebbles so that our hands are open to receive eternal diamonds.

Live on less, give more, and receive even more, this is heavenly math.

In Matthew 6:1-18 Jesus contrast how the hypocrites practice three acts of piety with the way His disciples should practice them. I can imagine someone reading this section and being really convicted by the first two. They may think, “I sometimes give hypocritically, and often pray hypocritically, but I never fast hypocritically.” But they never set themselves up for the fall.  They never fast hypocritically because they never fast. We’re not even sinning in the right direction.

I think we never or rarely fast hypocritically for the praise of men because there are better ways to achieve our sinful desires. In America we value appearance too much to disfigure our faces and put ashes on our heads. Why fast when there are sexier ways to look spiritual? Besides, you might be though odd for God if you were known to fast regularly. Instead of abusing God’s ordained means for our won glory, we craft our own means so that we get double the glory. We don’t need fasting, we use programs, positions, and ministries as outlets for our hypocrisy. These means, more than fasting, will lead to people seeing me, thinking me spiritual, gifted, and wise.

Our craving is for our own glory, not His. We do not fast because we are fat on the world.

Half of Christian fasting is that our physical appetite is lost because our homesickness for God is so intense. The other half is that our homesickness for God is threatened because our physical appetites are so intense. In the first half, appetite is lost. In the second half, appetite is resisted. In the first, we yield to the higher hunger that is. In the second, we fight for the higher hunger that isn’t. Christian fasting is not only the spontaneous effect of a superior satisfaction in God; it is also a chosen weapon against every force in the world that would take that satisfaction away.

The greatest enemy of hunger for God is not poison but apple pie. It is not the banquet of the wicked that dulls our appetite for heaven, but endless nibbling at the table of the world. It is not the X-rated video, but the prime-time dribble of triviality we drink in every night. For all the ill that Satan can do, when God describes what keeps us from the banquet table of his love, it is a piece of land, a yoke of oxen, and a wife (Luke 14:18-20). The greatest adversary of love to God is not his enemies but his gifts. And the most deadly appetites are not for the poison of evil, but for the simple pleasures of earth. For when these replace an appetite for God himself, the idolatry is scarcely recognizable, and almost incurable.  – John Piper in A Hunger for God

The most important prayer request is that the most important person in the universe would do the most important act in the universe.  – John Piper

Last time we reflected on Matthew I said that our biggest sin in prayer is not that our prayers are too short, but too small.  Small prayers both blaspheme and are idolatrous.  Prayer should be God-centered.

And now we come to the second half of the Lord’s Prayer.  We transition from “Your” to “us”.  Is this prayer at war with itself?  Does this prayer implode?  Does it self-destruct?  No, this prayer is perfectly at peace, because all other requests are submissive to the first and primary request, that God hallow His name.  All of the “we needs” are “to God be the glories”.  In one way this prayer is divided into two halves, but in the deepest sense it is a unified whole.  The “us” is still “Your”.

One way to see this is by noticing what is not there, what is not there at least in most good modern versions.  The traditional ending, “For yours is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen.”, is either in brackets, placed in a footnote, or omitted from modern versions.  I believe this is a good decision.  The oldest and most reliable manuscripts do not include it, it was not in the original document written by Matthew.  How did it come to be in the text?  Most likely this was a liturgical ending added by the early church inspired by 1 Chronicles 29:11-13.  Some assuming scribe then sat down to copy a copy of a manuscript and thought that the poor bloke before him left out part of the text.  That monk’s revised copy is then copied several times over until a whole family of manuscripts has the liturgical ending while the older ones do not.  Do not let this disturb you, when the manuscript evidence is examined we can be extremely confident of what the original author wrote.

So how does this help?  The early church saw no disparity between praying the first part of the prayer and the second for the glory of God, nor should we.  God is glorified in both halves.  Ultimately we ask for our daily bread, forgiveness, and to be kept from temptation and the evil one for His glory.

In the final three requests God is glorified as our Sustainer, Redeemer, and Treasure.  Further the Son is glorified in that He is the only way we can approach the Father and know Him in these ways.  God sustains all of humanity, but only through the Son can we come to Him as a Father and ask daily provision for our needs.  Only in Christ can we be forgiven by God.  And it is only because of the gospel of Christ that we see the ugliness of sin and the glories of God and cry, “No contest, give me the eternal pleasures of God and not the temporal pleasures of sin!”

“Us” is still “Your”.  At least is should be.

The biggest problem with our prayers is not that they are too short, but too small.  Our biggest sin in prayer is not the infrequency of our petitions, but the finitude of our petitions.  Small prayers are fit only for a small God, small prayers blaspheme!  Don’t strive to pray more as much as to pray big.

This language is not meant to push you toward using prayer for more health and wealth, but beyond that.  Praying big does not mean praying for more measurable stuff, but praying for the infinite.  Stuff is measurable, God is not.  Also this does not eliminate prayer for daily needs or casting all our anxieties upon Him (I Peter 5:7), but rather establishes the proper setting for such requests.

The Disciple’s Prayer is comprised of six requests that can be divided into two groups of three requests each.  The pronouns are your clue to the division.  The first three all concern “Your”; not your your, but His Your.  The final three concern “us”.  The first three are worshipful longings, the last three are needs humbly requested.

So prayer is to begin with God.  Prayer will reveal our priorities.  What you pray for (content) is what you pray for (motive).  That is, what you request in prayer, is why you pray.  The first petition reveals what should be first in our hearts, the glory and renown of God.  If this isn’t first, your prayers are idolatrous.  Pray big or sin, these are your options.

Prayer seeks the saving rule and reign of God to come and regenerate men’s hearts so that they hallow His name and so that His will is done on earth as it is in heaven.  The answer to our deepest longings in prayer should fall like a mountain thrust to the earth from the heavens totally rearranging the landscape of this world and we are asking only for feathers.

Pray prayers as big as God.  Pray prayers for God.

Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence—as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, and that the nations might tremble at your presence!  When you did awesome things that we did not look for, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence.  From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.  You meet him who joyfully works righteousness, those who remember you in your ways. Behold, you were angry, and we sinned; in our sins we have been a long time, and shall we be saved?  – Isaiah 64:1-5

Imagine two scenarios.

Scenario one:  I never talk to Bethany in private.  She tries to talk with me but I am never interested, until we get in public.  When other eyes are looking besides her own, and when other ears are listening besides her own then I seem greatly interested in her.  Why the difference?  The conversation that seems to be about her, isn’t about her, it’s about me.  It’s about putting on a show, putting up a façade to give an impression.

Scenario two:  I am away on a mission trip.  I hardly ever call Bethany until the last couple of days.  Those conversations are liberally littered with “I love yous.”  In our final conversation the day before I arrive I mention to her how horrible the food has been and how wonderful it would be if she would meet me at the airport with a Webber’s Root Beer and Burger.  She does not bring one, perhaps she is planning that we all go there as a family.  I am furious upon seeing her without the root beer and burger.   She then realizes that “all the right words”  that I said previous in our conversations were only empty phrases. The conversation wasn’t about how much I loved her, but about how much I loved root beer; she was simply the means to the end. I was not after her heart, I was after beverage and sustenance.

Scenario one is conversing like a Pharisee, scenario two is conversing like a pagan.  Prayer is dangerous!  The other acts of piety dealt with in 6:1-18 receive only one warning, prayer receives two.  The methods are not what is being contrasted here.  If you read this passage and only change your method, it is as if you put a bandage on your arm to deal with profuse internal bleeding.

In scenario one, now dealing with our text, vv. 5-6, the issue isn’t posture; for instance, the tax collector as well as the Pharisee pray standing in Luke 18:9-14.  The issue isn’t public prayer as opposed to private prayer; there are numerous examples of public prayer that are blessed by God in scripture.  The issue is praying in public to be seen and praised by others.  The issue is prayer for publicity, not prayer in public.  The issue isn’t the method, but the motive.

In scenario two, vv. 7-8, the issue isn’t repetition.  Jesus would repeat the same prayer in Gethsemane.  The pagan worshipper thought he had to appease or flatter the gods to get what he wanted.  He would use certain formulas so that the gods would listen.  The reason Christians are not to pray in this way is theological; we have a loving omniscient Father.  The issue here is not method either, it is the mindset with which we come to prayer.  Theology shapes your prayers profoundly, I would say more than anything.

If you want to grow in prayer don’t look for new technique, look to your God.  Ever more important than method is your motive and mindset.

Too often when we struggle with prayer we focus on the wrong things.  We focus on praying better instead of focusing on knowing better the one to whom we pray.  And we focus on our need for discipline rather than our need for God.  – Kevin DeYoung

Perhaps we can learn how to give by observing a certain hypocrite and thinking through why his giving in particular is especially ridiculous.  R.W. Glenn tells of a certain man who brought in eight figures yet consistently boasted of his giving.  He would speak of how he gave a thousand dollars to this charity and to that cause.  His giving is repulsive first because as we see in our text, it is not about God, it is not even about others, it is about self glorification.  But secondly it is ridiculous because it’s nothing, he is giving away pennies.  We think it would be easy to give away a few thousand if you posses such wealth.  Here, I think is where we can learn from the hypocrite.

Giving liberally might be thought to be easier in proportion to the wealth one already possesses, but wouldn’t it be equally true, no, more true, that it would be even easier to give in proportion to the reward one expects to receive for giving.  If I am told I will be given one hundred dollars for every Washington that I give away…

For the Christian both truths allow him to be liberally generous.  He is already immeasurably rich in Christ, and He is promised yet more for giving in a way that shows His devotion to God.  Focusing on the reward makes our giving unselfconscious.  We don’t boast because we don’t think ourselves to be giving but receiving.  Let’s focus on the scandal of the reward and the nature of the reward and see how it works toward this end.

First the very idea of reward is scandalous; how can God reward the spiritually bankrupt?  How can the poor in spirit merit anything?  They can’t!  Even when we do all that we should have done, we have only done that which was our duty (Luke 17:7-10).  Consider three further reasons why the idea of reward is scandalous.

1.  All our acts, even our best acts are stained, contaminated with sin.  They are acceptable only in Christ.  John Owen wisely wrote,

Believers obey Christ as the one by whom our obedience is accepted by God.  Believers know all their duties are weak, imperfect, and unable to abide in God’s presence.  Therefore they look to Christ as the one who bears the iniquity of their holy things, who adds incense to their prayers, gathers out all the weeds from their duties and makes them acceptable to God.

2.  The reward is immeasurably disproportionate to the service rendered.  This is a repeated motif through the gospels of which Matthew 19:29 is just one example.

3.  Our good deeds are not only accepted only in Christ, they are also only through and because of Christ.  God rewards his own activity in us (Hebrews 13:20-21, Philippians 2:12-13).  Commenting on 2 Corinthians 9:8 John Pipers says, “Good deeds do not pay back grace, they borrow more grace.”

The scandal of reward is the scandal of the gospel all over again, the gift that keeps on giving.  God’s grace moves us to be gracious.  But the most liberating freedom to give comes in contemplating what He has given us.  What is the nature of the reward?  Notice that Jesus does not go into spelling out exactly what the reward is.  Jesus does not say, “Give and you will have land and great wealth in heaven.”  If this were the case giving would be self-serving and not God-glorifying.  I think the reason the reward is not elaborated is because what moves us to give here is not what is given, but Who is giving.  In contrast to the hypocrite who gives to hear the praise of others, the Christian gives to hear the praise of His Father.  God is the reward.

So then the key to giving unselfconsciously is to believe God’s promises and be enthralled with the reward.

The engaged young man working two jobs to buy a wedding ring doesn’t think himself to be doing anything, why?  Because he is getting the bride.  He doesn’t draw attention to it, doesn’t manipulate her with it, he is in awe that she graciously said yes, and wants to put a rock on her finger that says, “mine!”  She is honored by his service and brags to others of it, but he doesn’t.  The reward is incredibly disproportionate to the service rendered.

But he is a man.  And there are times when he wonders if all this hard labor is worth it all.  How can he gain gusto to work with joy again?  By looking at her picture, conversing with her, dreaming of her, or seeing her.

If you want to give liberally and unselfconsciously think on your God, know His majesty, and remind yourself of the gospel and His promises.  Go to the Bible and be in awe that in Christ you can say, “He is mine!”  Do this and you will think all your meager giving ridiculous.