Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him. ~ Matthew 6:8
Today, we return to our study of Matthew 6 which is the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. As we have noted many times before, the Sermon on the Mount is largely sanctification teaching. Sanctification is the process whereby God inculcates His culture into our soul, resulting in the changing of our soul. Our soul is made up of our mind, our will and our emotions. Sanctification happens in us when we chose to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior. This is known as justification which is a one time event. Once we were welcomed into God's family through believing in the Lord Jesus, we began to learn the value of turning away from the self life which we were given by the slithery serpent in the Garden of Eden. Justification gets us into heaven and sanctification gets heaven into us.
In our last study the Lord Jesus began teaching on the essential nature of prayer. Prayer is to us as believers in Christ the most important activity for our spiritual growth. Without prayer, which is talking with God, the born again believer can appear to not even have been born again. This is why we read in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, "1 Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly, mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly (carnal). For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans?" Carnal Christians are those who have yet come to see the intelligence behind obeying God, thus they obey themselves and their lustful desires that are yet within them.
In today's verse we read, "Therefore do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him."
These words are a logical outflow of a personal relationship with God. The Lord Jesus provided for all a contrast between those who have no personal relationship with God and those who do. Those who do not have a personal relationship with God are religious. They are those who think that through their good behavior, they are earning God's favor. At the end of their lives, their hope for heaven will be dependent upon their performance whether it was good enough or not. This is why they were noted as having drawn attention to themselves while they prayed, repeating certain words over and over. All of this was an attempt on their behalf to impress men and God. Of course, for those who depend on their good behavior to be made right before God, they will be sorely disappointed because no fallen human can be good enough for God to pronounce them just or righteous in His eyes. This is exactly why the Lord Jesus had to die on our behalf.
The combination of the words "Father" and "knows" are key to this verse. Throughout the Gospels, the Lord Jesus made more than 150 references to God as "Father." The Lord Jesus invites everyone into this most intimate of relationships, teaching us to address God as "Our Father." God as our Father is not just a metaphor; it is who He is to us. It signifies that we are in relationship with Him. We belong to Him and He to us. It’s a privilege given to us in our adoption as His children by God. In John 1:12 we read, "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God."
This means the goal of redemption was our sonship. We don’t see people in the Old Testament referring to God as Father because man’s sin made it impossible to be God’s children. But everything changed with the incarnation of Christ. It’s through the work of Christ on our behalf that we are welcomed into the family of God. The only way we ever have the right to call God "Father," is because He has adopted us through His Son. The biblical message of sonship is rooted and grounded in this concept of adoption, that only Christ is the natural son of God. And only if we are in Christ do we become sons of God.
The word "knows" in today's verse was written in the perfect tense meaning God knows everything before we even mention anything to Him. Since this is the case then why do we need to ask of Him anything? God knew that we needed to be saved, but He didn’t just save us because the need existed. Rather, He first requires us to believe and receive His salvation through faith in His Son. This faith, with its object as the God of the Bible, is essential for a personal relationship with God to begin. If God gave us everything that we needed simply because the need existed, we would take Him for granted and our hearts would not be engaged. It is through the exercising of our will through our faith in the Lord Jesus that we grow in intimacy with God. This is why the children of Israel turned away from God and they became presumptuous, arrogant, and dismissive of a personal relationship with God. Their hearts weren't engaged.
The last two words of today's verse "ask Him" are most instructive. God expects us to make our prayers known to Him without any religious notions or performance to then wait upon His response in His own good timing. We often struggle to understand prayer. We have been known to "claim healing in the name of Jesus." It is true that we are physical beings with physical needs, but God may have a purpose for our lack. To claim healing for something when it is not God’s will is then an implicit attempt to thwart God’s will. We, also, have been known to ask of God for wealth that is not spiritual but carnal. Granted, He meets our needs as He has promised, but He has never promised to make us wealthy. This is to say that if a believer in Christ is wealthy, God has made him wealthy for a reason, but we should not be bent on asking God to make us wealthy.
In the moment, we may not understand the reason for our financial trials, physical afflictions, loss through death, or other such things that profoundly and negatively impact our lives, but we should never question God’s goodness through these trials. The bent moments in our lives are designed to produce questions or prayers. We want conclusion more than process, but it is in the process that we get to know God in the most profound ways. The universe, after all, does not revolve around us. We must trust that His plan is perfect and that what He does is perfectly in accord with His perfect plan for our individual lives.
Martin Luther once said, "Prayer is much more God instructing us than ever is it God being instructed by us." Prayer is saying oh God, I come to you with the needs of my heart. Prayer is giving God the opportunity to manifest His power, His love and His concern in and through our yielded lives. God will always do or allow things that we will not welcome, but it is through these most difficult of moments that we get to know Him best. Through our trials, if we learn their purpose which is to commune with Him, we will begin to see His hand and we will begin to see His wisdom in causing and/or allowing such things into our lives. It has been 56 years since my mother died when I was five years old, and I am still discovering His wisdom in and through it. And, the ultimate goal in it all is that I might be granted a greater intimacy with Him, an intimacy that I can describe for others in helping them along in their journey with God.
Martin Luther once said, "Prayer is much more God instructing us than ever is it God being instructed by us." Prayer is saying oh God, I come to you with the needs of my heart. Prayer is giving God the opportunity to manifest His power, His love and His concern in and through our yielded lives. God will always do or allow things that we will not welcome, but it is through these most difficult of moments that we get to know Him best. Through our trials, if we learn their purpose which is to commune with Him, we will begin to see His hand and we will begin to see His wisdom in causing and/or allowing such things into our lives. It has been 56 years since my mother died when I was five years old, and I am still discovering His wisdom in and through it. And, the ultimate goal in it all is that I might be granted a greater intimacy with Him, an intimacy that I can describe for others in helping them along in their journey with God.
When we pray with a sincere and humble heart, God, according to Matthew 6:6 will reward us. The reward is intimacy with Him through His Son the Lord Jesus Christ. The religious leaders of Israel prayed prayers that never got beyond their own minds because they didn’t go to the Father through the Son. Prayer is not about using the exactly right words or saying something
in precisely the right way or talking for long enough so
that God will hear us and do what we want. No, prayer is the sharing of our souls with God who is poised to address the gapping needs found therein. If we view prayer the way the religious leaders of Israel did, then we will have completely missed the heart of prayer. But, if we view it as a means to intimacy with God, then we will find ourselves arriving upon something that is substantive and that lasts forever.
that God will hear us and do what we want. No, prayer is the sharing of our souls with God who is poised to address the gapping needs found therein. If we view prayer the way the religious leaders of Israel did, then we will have completely missed the heart of prayer. But, if we view it as a means to intimacy with God, then we will find ourselves arriving upon something that is substantive and that lasts forever.
