Church: Reformed Baptist Church of Franconia | Text: Matthew 6:9-13 | Date: September 7, 2025 | Speaker: Fred Zaspel

We’ll be looking at this topic of prayer just briefly, and then we’ll have our time for prayer. And so I thought the first place and the logical place to begin is what is called the Lord’s Prayer. If you would, turn to Matthew chapter 6. We’ve been doing this actually in our prayer group on Wednesday nights, looking at instruction in the Bible and examples in the Bible of prayer, so that we can learn from it how better to pray ourselves. And so we begin with that this evening.

Matthew 6. I think I’ll just begin with verse 1, and we’ll go through verse 15. “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them. For then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. They love to stand and pray in the synagogues, at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 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. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray like this: Our Father 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 have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Then in verse 16 and following, he gives this example of fasting. I doubt there’s any of us who has not wished at some point that we knew better how to pray. One of the, of course, leading motivations in prayer is faith. We pray not because we believe in prayer. We don’t believe in prayer; we believe in God, and therefore we pray, and that’s the leading motivation. And often in studies on prayer, both written and in sermons that are preached, often the approach is to shame us. “You don’t pray more, you don’t pray better.” There may be a place for that. That’s not the approach that we find generally in Scripture, though. But a leading, certainly a leading aid in prayer is understanding how better to pray. And it might be of some comfort if you feel that way, that you wish you knew better how to pray. It may be some encouragement to you to know that the disciples themselves felt that same need.

And so the account of the Lord’s Prayer in Luke’s Gospel records the disciples as prompting this example prayer by a question on their part: “Lord, teach us to pray. Teach us how to pray.” And it’s in response to that request specifically that Jesus gives them this model prayer. Now, it’s important to notice, then, that this prayer that he gives us, very famously in verses 9 through 13, is a model prayer. The focus here is not on the will to pray. The focus here is on how to pray. And we call this the Lord’s Prayer. There’s a sense in which that’s right, but this is not a prayer that our Lord himself would pray. Our Lord will not pray, “Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven others.” This is a model prayer for us to follow. And this is one of the functions of biblical prayers generally. What we’ve been doing recently at our prayer group is looking at the prayers of the Apostle Paul, learning from him and his example how to pray. Well, that’s what this one is for.

For context, chapter 6, this is the Sermon on the Mount. Beginning with verse 1 here of chapter 6, he’s dealing with the question of practicing righteousness. That’s the way it’s translated in our version. Verse 1, “practicing your righteousness.” This is your acts of piety. We probably would call this something like spiritual disciplines—the things that you do specifically as acts of faith, as an exercise of faith. And a concern here in this whole passage is the motive behind these practices. Are they really, truly acts of piety? And so he says, “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.” And there’s the critical turning point, the difference between a true act of piety and one that is not. So, practicing spiritual exercises, the spiritual disciplines, as a cloak for praise to yourself—that disqualifies you from any kind of spiritual benefit from it at all. In fact, he says, you do that, you’ll have your reward. People will be impressed, and that’s the reward that you get. But your Father will give you no reward for that kind of thing at all. So his caution, then: you will have no reward from heaven if you do not exercise these acts of piety in the right kind of way.

And so he gives an example in the opening verses, verses 2 and following: acts of charity. You do it in a way that draws attention to yourself—”look how much I’ve given.” He just says, you’ll have your reward. People will be impressed, and that’s the reward that you get.

In verses 16 through 18, he gives the example of fasting. There’s a place for that. But if you do it in such a way that you go away from it looking somber and glum and very pious, again, you will have your reward. People will be impressed. “What a godly man he is.” And Jesus says, that’s the only reward you’ll get. Your Father in heaven will not be impressed, and you’ll have no reward from him.

Negative Instruction About Prayer

In between those two, charitable giving in the opening verses, and then fasting in verses 16 and following, we have this instruction on prayer. And beginning with verse 5, first of all, he gives us some negative instruction about prayer. He says, don’t be like the hypocrites, the religious hypocrites when they pray.

Verse 5, “When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues at the street corners that they may be seen by others.” Now I don’t think we should understand this as precluding any kind of public prayer, obviously. But he’s talking here about praying in such a way as to draw attention to your own piety. If you do that, people will be impressed, and that will be the reward that you get. But your Father will not be impressed, and you’ll have no reward from him.

And then verse 7, some more negative instruction. Don’t be like the pagans who don’t know God. When they pray, “do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.” So mere ritualism, then, is excluded as well. Saying all the right words—I think we could throw into this category prayer beads, counting beads as though that’s prayer; incense going up, “that’s my prayer. See the smoke go up? That’s my prayer.” I think there could probably be other applications as well.

In our circles, we tend to like just the right intonations when we pray. We tend to like just the right clichés to use that are more impressive. None of that manipulates God in any kind of way. I’ve always thought it’s kind of amusing. A Christian who’s been in church really well for many years, when he prays he might say something like, “Lord, we praise you for your presence with us here this morning.” And then you get a new Christian in the congregation, and he prays, “Lord, we’d just like to thank you for being here with us today.” It’s very different. It’s the very same thing. I’m not saying the former is wrong, but we must be careful following this instruction here not to think that some kind of particular phraseology or intonations or holy groans or whatever is going to be more effective in prayer.

And then he says, don’t be like them. They think that they will be heard for their “much speaking.” So there’s a lot of repetition. Now, there’s probably some kind of chanting that goes behind this, saying the same words over and again, something like that. I don’t know that this refers to when we gather together in our prayer meetings and have two people pray for the same thing. I don’t know that that’s wrong. At some point, perhaps, we’ve fallen into this. I don’t think that’s the focus. It’s not wrong for many people to address the same need in prayer and to reason differently with God in the prayer. All of that, I think, can have its place. But we should not think in terms of just piling up verbiage that somehow God is going to be more manipulated by what we do.

And then he gives, in verse 8, some fascinating reasoning. Don’t be like them. Why? “Because your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” This is interesting. God doesn’t need us to inform him of our needs. That’s fascinating because it’s exactly what we do when we pray. We’re taking our needs to God. But don’t think that God is looking on saying, “Oh, oh you need that? Okay. I didn’t know that.” That’s not it at all. Of course, then that raises the question: then why pray at all if God already knows the need? And I think at least part of the answer is going to be to underline the relationship. What Jesus is doing here is encouraging us to seek God in worshipful trust—to recognize that everything we have comes from him. And if any need at all will ever be filled, it will be because of God’s grace in giving it. So we’re not going to remind him so much as we are underlining the relationship and going in a worshipful means of trust and looking to God for help. I think that’s the same as when we come particularly to the second set of prayer requests here in this Lord’s Prayer. “Give us this day our daily bread.” Again, it’s looking to God in a worshipful way to provide for us what we need. “Forgive us our debts.” It’s looking to God to provide for us what only he can give, and so on.

Positive Instruction

But now when we come to verse 9, he gives us positive instruction. And this is this model prayer that the Lord gives to us. And today we’re just going to highlight it, then next time we’ll look through the categories more carefully. We have basically two parts of the prayer. We have the opening address in verse 9, “Our Father who is in heaven.” And then the rest of verse 9 through verse 13, we have six petitions, six prayer requests.

Now these six petitions fall into two categories. We have two broad areas. First of all, the first three petitions are prayers for God’s glory, concerns that are concerns of God himself. And so it’s, “Hallowed be your name. Exalt your name in the earth. Your kingdom come. Your will be done.” These are God-ward in that sense. And then the next three prayer requests are our needs. The first three were for God’s glory. Second three are for our needs. And notice the “us” and the “our” here. “Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our debts, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” There’s some question whether verse 13 is actually two requests or one—”lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil”—is that two ways of saying the same? So, however you like it, we have then prayers, petitions. The first three petitions are prayers for God’s glory—”Hallowed be your name”—and we’ll see this next time, this is not a word of praise, “the Lord is hallowed.” This is a prayer request; it’s a petition. Lord, hallow your name in the earth, exalt your name, make it holy, recognizably so for others.

So we have prayer for God’s glory: hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done. And then prayers for our needs: give us this day our daily bread, forgive us, and lead us not into temptation. So God’s name, God’s kingdom, God’s will—that’s first. And then provision (“give us this day our daily bread”), forgiveness, and protection.

So we pray for God’s name, His kingdom, His will, and then we pray for provision, for forgiveness, and for protection.

Now notice, first of all, the order of these prayer requests. And I think that ought to set some priorities for us in our praying. Prayer is not, first of all, about us. The first category is God-ward: his concerns, his glory, his name, his kingdom, his will. Now it does not mean that our needs, petitions to help us and provide for us—it doesn’t mean that that’s not important. But it does seem to indicate a sense of priority in our concerns. That we’ve lined up our concerns, first of all, with God’s concerns: the promotion of his name in the earth, promotion of his kingdom, his will. And then once we’ve aligned with that, we can ask for ourselves: for provision, for forgiveness, for protection.

So prayer is first of all and foremost about God and his glory. I think many of you probably have learned the helpful little acronym for prayer, ACTS: A-C-T-S. Some of you are nodding your head. All right, you’ve seen that. I think it’s a helpful thing. Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. There’s your petitions. That’s generally, I think, what’s going on here.

Now that does not say that there’s no place in prayer, private or public, where the outburst is, “Lord help me!” There may be some sense of urgency, something going on. It doesn’t mean you have to take time, first of all, to work your way through this list in a particularly ordered way. But it does set the priorities for us that our first concerns in all of life, and when we pray, ought to be for God’s glory, for his name, for his kingdom, and his will to be done. I will do more of that next time, next month.

Next observation we’ll just make from all of this is when you are praying for your own concerns—provision, forgiveness, and protection—notice the pronoun there is not “give me,” but “give us.” Throughout all of these: “give us this day our daily bread,” “forgive us our debts,” “lead us not into temptation,” “deliver us from evil.” So even when we are petitioning God for our own needs, we are not to think as though we are God’s only child. But keep in mind there are a lot of others as well, and this I think opens the door then for what we call intercessory prayer as well. And one day when we get to it, we’ll see a number of examples with that from the Apostle Paul as well.

All right, so here, we’ll just deal with this for today. We have the model prayer. We have two basic categories: concerns that are God-ward and concerns that are us-ward. For God, we pray for his glory. His name, his kingdom, his will. “Promote your name in the earth, advance your kingdom, bring it to full culmination, and let your will be done in earth just like it is in heaven.” And then we turn to our personal needs; we say, “God, provide for us as we need. Forgive us from our sins and protect us from temptation.”

Now this then opens up—these are just categories for prayer—so this opens up, I think, a lot of subcategories, we might call them, for specific prayer requests, and we’ll work through those in the coming months.

Prayer and thanksgiving, praying for Christ’s return, praying for the advance of his kingdom, praying to “hasten the day,” as Peter calls it—hasten the day of Christ’s return for the culmination of his kingdom.

At that point, when we pray for God to sanctify his name in the earth, how’s that going to happen? Well, it certainly can’t happen apart from the gospel. So we’re praying for gospel advance as well. Praying for our witness and success in it and faithfulness in it.

This could include matters of praying for the persecuted church. This could include matters of praying for national repentance. And all of these subcategories we’ll work through.

But for tonight, let’s just keep these ideas in mind when we go to prayer: pray first of all our first concern for God and his glory, and then secondly for our needs as well.