Prayer and Fasting Minus All the Pizzazz, Part 1

Technically speaking, when we say a prayer, we're talking to an audience of one.

Sure, we might pray in a setting with other Christians who are listening in, but ultimately our prayers are directed to God. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus urged his followers to keep this heavenly focus, lest they be tempted to perform to an earthly audience. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll is teaching from Matthew chapter 6 and a portion of Jesus' sermon that warns us about religious performance. Chuck titled today's message, Prayer and Fasting Minus All the Pizzazz. I've been reading today from Matthew chapter 6.

If you have a copy of the scriptures with you, please turn. Some of you have noted that I'm using various translations on occasion. I had been using earlier in our study of Matthew the New Living translation, which I do enjoy, and I think it would be good to use that in the narration part. But when you get to certain sections for careful instruction, I fall back on the New American Standard, which I'll be reading from today.

So we'll go back and forth from time to time, just understand that you haven't lost your place. We're just changing translations for the sake of clarification, and in this case, for the exactness of the New American Standard. Scholars will tell you that it is still the most accurate rendering of the Greek and the Hebrew text, but it is not the easiest to read or to hear. And my goal in communication is to make sure that I am not only accurate, but clear, and that it is understood by those who are not familiar with the teaching of scripture.

In this case, accuracy trumps what would be called a little easier reading. Matthew chapter 6 verses 9 through 18, Pray then in this way, Our Father who is in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen. For if you forgive others for their transgressions, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions. Whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face, as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that your fasting will not be noticed by men, but by your Father who is in secret.

And your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. You're listening to Insight for Living. To study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scripture studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message from Chuck titled Prayer and Fasting Minus All the Pizazz. One of the marks of maturity in the Christian life is balance. Balance.

The ability to guard against extremes, even though extremes are our natural tendency. Take, for example, evangelism. Instead of adopting a lifestyle of sharing the claims of Christ in a natural, comfortable, and gentle way, we go to the extremes. We either become mute and never open our mouths publicly about faith in Christ, or we elbow our way into people's lives inappropriately and offensively.

We lack the balance. I'm reading a wonderful book titled The Allure of Gentleness by Dallas Willard, the late Dallas Willard, and in it he simply extols the importance of gentleness when we speak of our faith, when we defend our faith, when we share the life of faith. Just gentleness.

It requires balance to remain gentle, confident but still pleasant to be with. Or let's take Bible study, and everything good can be said about the study of the scriptures. We, however, instead of valuing the Word of God and having a regular diet of time spent in the scriptures, studying and meditating on it, we either ignore our Bibles all week long and then scramble on Sunday morning to remember where we put it when we got home from church last Sunday because we haven't looked at it all week.

That's one extreme. Or we become Bible freaks where everything is about Bible study. We don't even do a good job at work because we've got a Bible there on our lap and we're more interested in that. We go to home Bible studies. We are involved in various Bible groups, Bible classes.

We may take correspondence courses or enter an academic institution where we can learn more about the Bible, the Bible. What's missing? It's balance.

Balance. You and I, we've all known teachers that lose their balance and they become a preoccupied with their one discipline, the one subject that has consumed their thinking. We have a name for them. We call them preoccupied professors. And who studied in any kind of institution beyond high school hasn't come across a preoccupied professor.

I certainly have. Cynthia and I know one whom we love dearly. But I mean, he was such a scholar. He could give you the irregular verb chart in the Acadian. He was such a student of the Semitic languages. But they moved to Philadelphia and on one weekend he traveled to Baltimore to minister.

And I'm sure his ministry was effective, excellent teacher of the scriptures, but preoccupied. Well, he flew back to Philadelphia and he was waiting at the airport for his wife and she didn't show up. And he called her, honey, where are you? Where am I?

I'm home. Where are you? He said, I'm at the airport. Why are you at the airport?

You drove to Baltimore. Can you imagine? Preoccupied professors can't match their socks.

They miss button their shirts. They have their mind fixed on one subject. I studied under the late Merrill Unger, loved Dr. Unger and respected him to the last day of his life. But Dr. Unger was not all together with the mind of the student. And he would turn, back in those days, they would put things on a chalkboard. Chalkboard. I know you've never heard of that, but back when I studied, they had chalkboards and Dr. Unger would turn it with a flash. He would hit the chalkboard with this Hebrew word. He said, let me show you. And he would write this left to right, because that's the way you read, or I should say, right to left.

I was going that way. Right to left, right. And he's writing it up there, right to left in your life. And he doesn't erase what was first on the board. He just writes over what is already in Hebrew on the chalkboard in your life. And finally, I said, Dr. Unger, could you just erase what he goes, why? Read the last layer.

Last layer. The missing of the balance is common not only among professors. It happens in most Christian's lives.

And I could use other illustrations. I think one of the great contributions Jesus made in coming to this earth and living among us was to model balance. Now, he's been misrepresented not only by artists, but by fellow pastors and preachers. He has been presented in one way when he isn't like that at all. It's not the way the scriptures present him.

Do you know the only time that he describes himself and his personality? I am meek and lowly in heart. You will find rest for your soul. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. Meek and gentle. Not weak.

Meek. What a great balance. What a great balance to be able to stand firm against the criticism of strong-hearted, legalistic Pharisees without becoming ugly and revengeful in return, holding a grudge against them. But he could speak firmly against them in ways that you would never forget. He is even so gracious as to teach us how to pray.

Isn't it wonderful that the second member of the Trinity who comes to this earth as the God-man to live among us for a little over 33 years would reduce all of the omniscience, the brilliance of all that was his and to reduce it to terms we could understand so that he would say something like, when you pray, this is the way to do it. I love that. Now we're in Matthew 6 and you may remember the last time we were here that everything began with a strong warning. Beware. Watch out. Remember? Mind your motive.

Remember the line? Mind your motive. Verse 1, it's easy to practice your righteousness before others that they might think better of you than you really are, so don't do that. What's he calling for?

Balance. He's not saying don't give and don't pray and don't fast. He's saying don't do it to show off.

When you go to extremes in these things, you become ostentatious and you're doing it so others will be impressed. And he's saying, no, no, no, no, don't. Verse 2, when you give, don't sound the trumpet. And do you know that the Pharisees did that? They had a trumpeter walk along with them and he would blast the trumpet as they took their money and put it in the offering. Oh, please, don't thump the bottom of the offering plate. Don't wave a hundred dollar bill before you drop it. Just give.

Just give. And by the way, when you pray, verse 5, you're not to be like the hypocrites. They love to be known for their long words and the ostentatious show of prayer and they like to be in a public place so they can look holy, whatever that means.

No, the best place to pray is in a private room and do your best work on your knees when nobody's around. And those are the words in effect that he is giving us in verses 5 through 8. In fact, he ends by saying don't be like the show-offs. And so, let's bring this into balance when it comes to how we are supposed to do it. And we come to the most familiar prayer in everyone's life, known to you and to me as the Lord's Prayer, though it isn't the Lord's Prayer. It wasn't a prayer he prayed. It was a pattern he gave us so we would know how to pray. This is the Christian's prayer. This is the believer's prayer.

The Lord's Prayer is in John 17 where he prays just before he goes to Gethsemane and ultimately under arrest in the cross. But this prayer is for you and me, so he says to us the simple words, pray, verse 9, in this way. Now, because it is so familiar, we no longer realize what we're saying.

Familiarity brings not just contempt but a lack of sensitivity. Probably haven't thought through this prayer as thoroughly as we should, so allow me to do that without being pedantic. Let me just put it in terms that we can all remember. The first part of the prayer is all about the Lord God. That's verses 9 through 10.

Yes, 9 to 10. It's all about the Lord. When you get to verse 11, down through 13, it's about you and me. So the first part is praise and adoration, and the last part is petition, as we ask God for certain things.

I want to give you four words for each section, okay? In verses 9 and 10, the words are name, realm, rule, and will. Name, realm, rule, and will. So when you pray, we begin with the name. Please observe it. Our Father, not dear Jesus. It doesn't say, when you pray, pray, now Spirit of God, no, we address prayers to the Father through Christ in the power of the Spirit of God. So learn that.

Learn to do it right. You hear a lot of prayers addressed to Jesus. I'm not beating up on folks like that.

I'm just saying it's not the pattern that was given to us. If he knew what was best and tells you, begin your prayers with our Father, then go there. And think of Father. Think of the Word. Hopefully you had a good Father. Understanding, accepting, forgiving, gracious, strong of heart, faithful, consistent, diligent. All those concepts come to mind when you use the word, Father. So when I begin my prayer, Dear Father, or Father in Heaven, or Dear Lord God, whatever word I may choose, my mind turns to those qualities that are true of a Father. And when I begin my prayer, my mind turns to those qualities that are true of a Father.

I'm encouraged by that. Now, look at the realm who is in heaven. The Greek says, in the heavens. Our Father in the heavens, get this, he not only inhabits, he encompasses the heavens. It speaks of his transcendence so that he is not in any way linked to, tied to time or year or season or date.

He is forever with us. Tozer put it like this, we think of ourselves as inhabiting some parenthetic interval between the God who was and the God who will be. And in this ever present now, we are lonely with that ancient and cosmic loneliness.

Why would we be lonely? Because we think of God in segments, but he is in the heavens. He is the same as he was in eternity past, since the passing of time to today, all through this day, tomorrow, and all into the future, into eternity future. He transcends because he is the one in the heavens. Above us, beyond us, around us, encircling us, encompassing us, enveloping us.

Our Father everywhere at one time in the heavens, that's his realm. And please observe hallowed be your name. I would bet you're to guess you have not used the word hallowed maybe three times in your life if that. We don't use the word today.

We don't even know for sure what it means. If you memorize the Gettysburg address, you know that Lincoln used it as he referred to the hallowed ground at Gettysburg where those brave soldiers had died. He even said, how could we, we're not able to hallow this place, that's your, only you could do this, Lord. The word hallowed means holy, get this, set apart, set apart, consecrated, separate from, implied, separate from sin. The Lord our God is forever holy. Isaiah, who wrote of him in chapter six, pictured him enthroned and angels around him as they praised him with the thrice repeated holy, holy, holy Lord God of hosts. Infinitely holy, perfectly holy, without a stain, without a mark of sinfulness, he is in the realm of that hallowed existence. No wonder Moses would write, as the Lord gave to him the commandments, do not use the name of the Lord God in vain. Break the habit of saying, oh my God. Don't lower him to a slang expression. Keep his name separate from all slang. Reserve a place in your life and heart and mind for the one who fills the heavens and is the separate one, though he has been gracious to connect with us who are so sinful and so in need of forgiveness.

We'll get to that in a moment. So we have his name, we have his realm, third we have his rule. Look closely, your kingdom come.

Let's take a double view of this word, okay? Kingdom, all through the pages of the Old Testament, periodically I should say, through those Old Testament references and into the New Testament there is an anticipation of the coming of the King who will reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is pictured in Revelation 20 as having come and the Lord Jesus is reigning and ruling over the kingdom for a literal thousand year reign, fulfilling the promise to Israel that he will reign over you and you will be his people and he will be your God. It's the beautiful eschatological portrait of the one yet future, the one who will bring with him his kingdom. Where you have a kingdom you must have a king and where you have a king you must have a ruler, which ties me into this word rule. The rulership is under the authority of Christ himself.

That's future. Let me show you the same prayer in other words. Go to the last chapter in the Bible. Here we go, all the way over there. Little dust pockets are forming in the pews as you move to Revelation 22. Haven't been here in a long time, have we? Revelation 22, if I can ever find it, Revelation. There. I always think some one of my kids cut out a verse or two when I was gonna get to it. Not now.

Look at look at 2217. The Spirit and the bride say, come, let the one who hears say, come, and let the one who is thirsty come, let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost. Your kingdom come. Verse 20, he who testifies to these things says, yes I'm coming quickly, amen.

That's the Lord Jesus. This is the Revelation singular. Don't call it the book of revelations.

It isn't plural. This is a great revelation singular of the plan of the Lord Jesus Christ as it has been mapped out by the Father and will be implemented through the power of the Spirit. This is the Son who's saying, I come quickly, amen, and John responds, come Lord Jesus.

21, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with all, amen. That's the end of the Bible. What a grand crescendo at the end of the Bible and it ends with that reference to his coming and setting up his enthronement.

We're only getting started in this message from Chuck Swindoll. He titled today's study in Matthew chapter 6, Prayer and Fasting Minus All the Pizzazz. If you'd like to learn more about the ministry of Insight for Living or these messages, please visit us online at insightworld.org. If you're prepared to dig deeper into Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, I'll remind you Chuck has written a book on this passage. It's our featured resource today on Insight for Living.

As students of the Bible, sometimes we complicate what it really means to follow Jesus. Well, in his book called Simple Faith, Chuck shows us how to replace hypocritical performance-based religion with the kind that Jesus described. To purchase a copy of Chuck's classic book called Simple Faith, call us.

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To give a donation right now, call us. If you're listening in the U.S., dial 1-800-772-8888 or go online to insight.org. And then as we enter into the weekend, remember you're invited to join us online for the Sunday Morning Worship Service at Stonebriar Community Church. In addition to hearing Chuck's sermon, you'll also participate in the Congregational Singing as well. You'll find all the instructions for streaming the live worship service at insight.org slash Sundays. Join us again Monday when Chuck Swindoll continues to describe Prayer and Fasting Minus All the Pizzazz, right here on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Prayer and Fasting Minus All the Pizzazz, was copyrighted in 2015 and 2021, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2015. By Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.