The Purpose of Prayer
Adapted from John MacArthur
By Dr. Roger G. Ford, Ph.D., P.E.
Part One

For many people, the disciples’ prayer in Matthew 6: 9-15 is simply something that they have recited, and in limiting it to that, you miss the whole point because it is infinitely more than that.

“This, then, is how you should pray: “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”

The believer must learn how to pray. In order to experience the fullness of communion with God, in order to open the flood gates of heaven, and to know the fullness of blessing from God, we must know how to pray.

This marvelous pattern of prayer will teach us that. And, of course, I think we’re all aware of how important prayer is. The apostle Paul said, “Pray without ceasing.” Pray and never stop praying. Now, anything that is so consuming in Christian experience must be understood. If we do not know how to pray, if we do not know for what to pray, then it does us little good to keep on praying. If however, we do know for what to pray and how to pray, then praying without ceasing has tremendous import.

Remember that in this particular section of the sermon on the mount, Matthew is presenting the king, as in all of this gospel. Here in chapters 5 to 7 the king is giving the standards of his kingdom. He gives the standard of his kingdom in contrast to the supposed of the standards of the day. The Jews of Jesus’ day had developed a system they thought was adequate to get them in the kingdom, but it wasn’t. And particularly, Jesus is zeroing in chapter 6 on their religious activities. Chapter 5, he said their theology wasn’t adequate. Later on in chapter 6, their view of the material world isn’t adequate. And here he says their religious life isn’t adequate, and he picks out three illustrations: their giving, their praying, and their fasting. Your giving is not proper. Your praying is not proper. And your fasting is not proper.

And he uses that as the backdrop to then reaffirm what is God’s true standard. So really, these are the standards of the kingdom. These are the conditions of being a child of the king. This is the way a true son of the king lives, not like the Jews of that time, but as Jesus points out here, the affirming of God’s standard.

Giving is important, but you’re going to give properly only when you give out of constant communion with God, only when you’re responding to God, only when your heart if filled with gratitude, only when you are giving out of the living vitality of a personal life communion with God. And fasting is meaningless apart from prayer.
So the concept of prayer, then, is very, very basic to all giving and all fasting. And that’s why when the Lord picks out three areas of religious life (praying, giving, and fasting), he concentrates most of the things he says on the subject of praying.

Now you say, “Well, that’s the Old Testament people. That’s the Jews of Jesus’ day. How does this pertain to us?” In the case of today, our religion in many, many cases is just as substandard and inadequate as it was that of the Jews of Jesus’ day. There is plenty of giving going on for self-glory. There is plenty of fasting going on to call attention to our supposed holiness. And there is plenty of praying going on that is a pretense, plenty of praying that doesn’t recognize the basic biblical, divine standards for true prayer.

In fact, the apostle Paul said in Romans 8:26 (and he said this about the church, he said this about people on that side of the cross, the side we live on), he said, “We know not what to prayer for as we ought.” He said two things there: We don’t know what to pray for, and we don’t know how we ought to pray for what we don’t know to pray for. We don’t know how or what in our prayers. Therefore, “the Holy Spirit makes intercession for us.” In other words, God is ever and always aiding our prayers because we don’t know how to pray, or for what to pray.

So we have the same problem. Many who aren’t even Christians pray. That kind of praying is no different than that of the Pharisees and the Scribes – inadequate and substandard prayer. So our Lord then in his corrective to giving, in his corrective to fasting, hits very specific religious activities. But never does he hit so hard as he does in his category of prayer. The most verses in this section are given to the theme of prayer. And what our Lord is doing affirming the need for a proper prayer. He says regarding giving, “Don’t do it this way.” Regarding fasting, “Don’t do it this way.” But regarding prayer, he says, “Don’t do it this way. But do it this way.” This is the only one of the three where he gives a detailed description of how we are to pray.

There’s not a lot of discussion about how we’re to “give” in this chapter. There’s not a lot of discussion about how we are too “fast”, just lightly touched. But how we are to “pray” is totally, generally, specifically, and comprehensively covered in this one simple prayer of 66 brief words. It is an absolute masterpiece of the infinite mind of an all-wise God who could somehow encompass the totality of every conceivable element in prayer and reduce it to one simple pattern for prayer. It is the economy of words that only God himself, with his infinite mind could ever have come up with.

There are two ultimate tests of true spirituality. One is the study of the Word of God, and two is prayer. Those are the two ultimate tests of true spirituality, and the Bible supports that the study of the Word of God comes first. Why? Because we will not even know how to pray unless we know what the Bible teaches about God, about God’s will, about our lives, and our problems.

Therefore, it is the study of the Word of God that gives birth to a meaningful prayer life. You can’t pray in a vacuum. It is not virtuous to say, “Well, so-and-so never studies the Bible, but prays all the time.” Well, if he’d study the Bible a little bit, he could probably cut down the time he needs to pray, because he’d eliminate a lot of superfluous stuff. When Jesus gave a pattern for prayer he gave it very, very brief. It isn’t how long your prayer is, it’s whether your prayer touches on the vital and necessary elements. And frankly, you can do it in 66 words, or you can do it all night long, as long as it intersects with these elements.

But the study of the Word of God comes first. There are people who plead with God to give them the Holy Spirit. They already have the Holy Spirit. There are people who plead with Christ for strength. The Bible says you can “do all things through Christ who strengthens you.” I have heard people stand up and say, “Lord, be with us.” And the Bible says, “Lo, I’m with you always.” There are people who plead for love for someone. The Bible says, “The love of Christ is shed abroad in your heart.” You don’t need it. You just need to let it out.

Unless we understand the truth of the Word of God, we don’t really know how to pray. So, the two ultimate tests for spiritual maturity or spirituality are the study of the Word of God and as a corollary prayer, prayer that is guided by a comprehension of God’s truth. And when we study God’s Word and discover God’s truth, we discover also the real condition of our own hearts, the real condition of our own spiritual lives, and that drives us into a private, personal prayer, where we open up our hearts to God.

Our Lord knew the place of prayer. The Bible says that Jesus very often would rise a great while before dawn and go into the mountain to pray. The Bible indicates that in the evenings, he would go down the slope of the backside of Jerusalem, cross the Kedron Brook, ascend the small slope of the Mount of Olives, and there he would take his place to commune with the Father, and often pray with the Father all night long.

The disciples saw in Jesus a tremendous commitment to prayer. And probably that’s what prompted some to say in Luke 11:1, “Lord teach us to pray.” And when that question is asked in Luke 11:1, Jesus repeats to them this very same pattern for prayer that’s here in Matthew 6. That’s a different incident, but he gives them basically the same pattern. And maybe right here as Jesus is speaking and he says, “I don’t want you to pray like the Pharisees do, to do it before men, and I don’t want you to pray vain repetition like the pagans, and I don’t want you to pray thinking you’re informing God” (God, I’ve got to tell you some things you really need to know.) “I don’t want you to pray like that.”

Jesus knows in their minds they’re going to be saying, “Well, then, teach us how to pray. If we’re not to do it like that, how are we to do it?” So, the Lord then says to them, almost presupposing the question, verse 9, “After this manner therefore pray ye.” Here’s the way I want you to pray, not like that, but like this. And so the Lord touches the great need for proper prayer.

This comes at a marvelous time in the midst of the manifesto of the king, at a great time in the heart of the sermon on the mount, setting for us for all time the understanding that prayer is vital to a kingdom citizen. For those who follow the king, prayer is a very essential part. This must have hit them very hard, because the Jews had given a priority place to prayer. But in the process of time, they had abandoned the purity of genuine prayer, and they had forsaken real prayer for the routine and the ritual of their religious exercises. They have their little formulas, their little “set prayers” that they prayed at set times, and all of this had supplanted by Jesus’ day the reality of genuine prayer.

But, that’s a reality they once knew. God had given them that. Let me share with you something of the historic Jewish prayer perspective. People say, “Well, this prayer is something brand new.” Not really. Not in total, it isn’t. It’s simply a reaffirmation of something very old. And that fits the sermon on the mount, doesn’t it? Because in sermon on the mount 5:17, when Jesus first got started in this whole discussion here in chapters 5, 6, and 7, he said, “Look, I didn’t come to take anything away from the Old Testament. I am coming to affirm the Old Testament. In fact, not one jot or tittle shall be removed from that law. I’m here just to remind you of the purity of God wants.” And when it comes to prayer, he affirms to them things they well should have known and should have been incorporating in their prayers.