Today we go back into our discussion of Jesus’ teaching on the surpassing righteousness of prayer as worship. We began two weeks ago by talking about “when we pray”, not so much having a specific time that is right or wrong but being intentional and purposed about our prayer lives, learning the value and necessity of “the secret place” and choosing to protect and nurture our time alone with God. Corporate prayer has great value but I believe that Jesus teaches here that corporate prayer must flow from private, personal prayer in the secret place or else it can quickly become about us or others in the room rather than being initiated by God and done for the glory of God.
Today Jesus teaches us why we pray. As He has and will do in all of His teaching about the acts or righteousness or worship He begins by showing us the negative, “When you pray you shall not be like the hypocrites . . .” and “do not be like” the heathen. They hypocrites pray for applause, they pray for the attention of men, to be quite simple they pray to be seen. Their prayers, which Jesus points out, they love, are offered in pride not out of reverence. I think the intimation of Jesus here is that they don’t love to pray unless they can be seen praying, so prayer is not a gift from or to God prayer is a tool to get men to see them as they desire to be seen. Jesus then moves to the heathen (the Gentiles or those who don’t know God) and says that when they pray they “use vain repetitions . . . For they think that they will be heard for their many words.” If the hypocrites pray to be seen, the heathen pray to be heard. They don’t see prayer as worship that God has drawn them to they see prayer as a vehicle they must use to get God’s attention and gain His favor. Their prayer lives are just as prideful as the hypocrites because they have put themselves in charge of prayer, God is not initiating and God’s glory is not their objective, they are doing the work to get God to do their will not to surrender to His. If praying to be seen and praying to be heard are both wrong, then why do we pray? What is its purpose and what is our goal? R.T. Kendall writes “The issue is whether the glory of God is the aim.” The aim of prayer is the glorification of God, when I leave my secret place or when we leave a corporate gathering our satisfaction is not ever to be in if I was met in the place it has to always be that God was glorified. The beauty of God is that He meets when we glorify Him; the paradox of prayer is that we meet with God not for the meeting but for His glory. When man glorifies God, God satisfies man and as John Piper has so wonderfully said, God is most glorified when man is most satisfied in Him. Prayer is a circle of fulfillment, if our attention is set on God’s glory His presence rests upon us and when His presence rests upon us we bring God glory. The aim of prayer is to glorify God and I believe that Jesus shows us through His life that the purpose of prayer is always communion with God.