Intro
We are in a sermon series on prayer, and what I said last week is that prayer, which for many of us may feel unnatural or uncomfortable, is something that we can learn. It is something that we can grow in, a practice that can be developed. The big question is, do we want to? Do we care enough to learn it? I tried to convince you of that last week, and I pray that God used me to do that. Because this morning we’re moving to how we are actually to pray. And we’re going to focus on a topic that is foundational to every other aspect of prayer. The actual words and structures of prayer are meaningless if you miss this first part. What am I talking about? I’m talking about the biblical posture of prayer.
When I asked some people in our church what the right “posture” in prayer was, a lot of people talked about their physical positioning while praying. That’s a legitimate concern. Obviously, you can pray standing, sitting, kneeling, walking, running, whatever. I would even say that our physical posture can express our prayers. For example, I’ve had times where I feel overwhelmed by my sin, or this sense of God’s holiness, and I’m facedown on the ground, breathing carpet fibres. Other times, I’m in awe of God’s goodness to me, and I’m standing with arms raised high. So physical posture can express what’s going on in our prayers. But when I speak about our “posture”, I’m thinking of it more in a metaphorical sense, in terms of our heart posture. What should be our mindset, the orientation of our heart in prayer?
Jesus tells a story about this in Luke 18:9-14:
9 To some who were confident of their own righteousnessand looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable:10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ 13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ 14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
Luke 18:9-14
1. Prayer that isn’t prayer
This whole story is framed by a word: righteousness. Luke tells us that Jesus told this parable to those who were “confident in their own righteousness”. Righteousness, to boil down a big, complicated idea, is right relationship with God. It’s being on good terms with him. It’s a life that is acceptable to Him. You know what it’s like to be on good terms with people as well as to be on bad terms. Righteousness is being on good terms with God. The parable ends with something similar. Jesus says that the tax collector went home “justified” before God. The root word, in the original Greek language, is actually the same as righteousness. He went home having been made right with God, he’s at peace with God, he’s in right relationship with God. A Pharisee who thought he was on good terms in fact wasn’t, and a tax collector who nobody would have thought was on good terms with God in fact was. And according to the parable, their prayers were a prime expression of that righteousness, or lack thereof. Our prayers reflect and indicate whether we’re in right relationship with God. How? Again, it comes back to our posture in prayer.
Let’s look at these two prayers, and the people who pray them. First, you have a Pharisee. Let’s say a few things about Pharisees, because it might be an unfamiliar term for some of you. The Pharisees were a special interest group in first century Judaism, in Israel. Today, we see a society polarized between conservatives and liberals. Similarly, first century Judaism was split between a number of different movements, all with a different position on how to fix what was wrong in their society. The Pharisees were the group who believed that to fix the problem of foreign occupation and oppression, the solution was closer adherence to God’s commands in Scripture. So they made it their goal to follow all these commands as closely as possible and to teach other people how to do this as well. If that was done well enough, perhaps God would overthrow the Roman occupiers and establish His Kingdom. And in this way, you might look at the Pharisees and say, wow. They seem pretty good. They’re really concerned about morality and honoring God. And in some ways, they had the most in common with Jesus. Other groups suggested that the solution was to accommodate with the Romans and benefit from them. Yet other groups suggested violent, militant overthrow of the Romans. The Pharisees would probably strike us as the most “spiritual” of these groups.
You see that in the Pharisee’s prayer. He talks about how he fasts twice a week. Most Pharisees would have fasted on the prescribed days of fasting from the Scripture. Not this guy. He went above and beyond, twice a week! The Pharisee diet, guaranteed to lose 20 pounds and win you major points with God. He says that he gave a tenth of all he received as well. What you needed to tithe was a bit of a debate in Pharisaism. In Matthew 23, Jesus talks about how the Pharisees will even give a tenth of their mint, dill, and cumin. I mean, some of you are generous givers, but do you give a tenth of your spices and herbs? I’m just saying, we have a major shortage of basil in the church office, where’s the basil tithe, guys?! This Pharisee resolved that debate by just tithing a tenth of everything he had. On the surface, this man, like many Pharisees, appears incredibly spiritual. He’s obsessed with doing the right thing, with following God’s instructions. And when he prays, he prays with confidence and with verbal polish.
He starts out with an address. His very first word: “God”. This is good. He’s acknowledging who it is that he’s praying to. That’s an important thing to do. He continues: “I thank you”. This is really good. Start with an address, then move to thanksgiving and praise. Wow! This guy was following a really solid model for prayer. Then he moves on to bring God’s attention to the people around him. Sometimes you’ll hear Christians in prayer talking about “lifting up” people. “Father, I lift so and so up to you”. Very spiritual. This guy, in his own special way, is lifting those people around him- adulterers, thieves, evildoers- up to God. And really, to thank God that your life has been spared from sins like this makes sense. That is something to be thankful for. So broadly speaking, you could say this Pharisee’s prayer is an example of a kind of structure you can use. Thanks, Pharisee!
But of course, this prayer is not acceptable, according to Jesus. He says that this man went home not right with God. The prayer was an expression of how far off this Pharisee truly was from God. Why? Part of the problem, of course, was the content of the prayer. I tried convincing you that the general structure of the prayer was great, but you saw through that. What he prays isn’t great. He barely addresses God at all. It’s like he starts off by saying, “hey God”, and then quickly moves to “look how awesome I am! Look at all the amazing things I do! And oh, man, have you seen these other guys? They are messed up! I’m so glad I’m not like them!” It’s just one long self-exaltation and comparison to others. There’s no request made of God, no awe of God, just self-congratulation. The question we probably ask, then, is why is he even bothering praying? What’s he getting out of this?
Maybe its just a way for him to check a box. Maybe, as a law-abiding Pharisee, he has it in his mind that he needs to do this, and so he’s going through the motions. It doesn’t matter to him what he prays, as long as he does it and gets it over with, that’s what counts. He can cross it off his spiritual to-do list. That might be part of it.
But I think it’s more than that. And Jesus makes this point about the Pharisees often: that what they are most concerned about is how they are viewed by others. They are concerned about appearances, including in prayer. In Matthew 6, in Jesus’ famous sermon on the mount, Jesus tells us not to be like the “hyprocrites”, a word he often uses to refer to Pharisees. We are not to be like them, because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and street corners in order to be seen by others (Matthew 6:5). Why do the Pharisees pray? For the same reason they fast and give to the poor: to be seen by others. To be acknowledged as righteous and holy.
That’s why Jesus says that when we pray we should go into a closet and pray where nobody can see us (Matthew 6:6). Some of you will go, “see, Craig! That’s why I don’t pray with people! Jesus himself said it!” Whoa, whoa who! Before you jump on that train so quickly, remember that Jesus also said that where two or three gather together in prayer, he’s there in a special way. Remember the witness of the early church, which was devoted to corporate prayer. The point isn’t whether you pray with others or alone, the point is the motive of prayer. And for this Pharisee, the motive of his prayer was to be seen by others, to put on a spiritual show and have others think well of him.
Jesus’ concluding phrase confirms that’s what’s going on here. He says that those who exalt themselves will be humbled. That’s what this Pharisee was doing in prayer. Rather than coming to God out of dependence and humility, he came exalting himself. His posture was one of pride.
Naturally, I was thinking about how this applies to us, in our prayers. And I have to tell you, my first instinct as a low-church, informal, spontaneous kind of guy was to pinpoint those traditional liturgical prayers. Those prayers that are pre-written and often are quite poetic and use all kinds of church-y sounding words. Some of you who come from those backgrounds will be appalled at this, but here goes. In my unsanctified moments, I tend to think of those prayers as useless and empty just recitations of what they or somebody else wrote in flowery, fanciful language. Uncharitably, I might even suspect that anyone who prays them is just going through the motions. They’re checking off a box, praying for appearances, and so on. Pharisees. And then immediately, when I thought that thought, it was like God pressed in and said, “nope, you’re vulnerable to this too”. People can pray those prayers with the right motive and intent. And people are more than capable of praying spontaneous, informal prayers out of a desire to show off to others, to put on the appearance of spirituality, to check off a box. Again, it’s not about the structure or the content, primarily. That’s not what makes a prayer acceptable to God. It’s the heart. It’s the posture. A prideful posture, prayer that comes out of a desire to exalt ourselves or put on appearances, won’t do a thing to draw us nearer to God.
But just before I move on, some of you might think you’re off the hook. You think to yourself, well, that’s not an issue for me. I don’t pray to put on appearances, I don’t pray to check off a box. No, because you simply don’t pray. It’s not a meaningful part of your life. Why? Because you don’t think you really need God. Maybe when there’s some big crisis, but on a day to day basis? You’ve got this. You’re self sufficient. Can you understand that if there’s a God who made us and loves us, that mentality is incredibly prideful? You’re saying that you, as a creature, can exist perfectly fine without your Creator. The Pharisee’s pride is exhibited in his prayer, your pride is exhibited in your non-prayer. Do you think that makes you more righteous than him? It’s pride one and the same, and that pride keeps you from God whether you pray or not.
2. Prayer that is prayer
All right, let’s look at the other guy in the story, the tax collector. Let’s say something about this guy historically and culturally as well. You know the modern stereotype of the fearsome tax man who’s out for your money? That’s not too far off from the first century situation. Except it was worse, because tax collectors were working with the oppressors. They were Jews who had crossed over to the other side, working for the Roman occupiers, all for the sake of personal material gain. They were hated for it. They were seen as traitors, and they knew it. They made the choice willingly, but apparently some of them felt quite badly about it.
What brought about the contrition within tax collectors in the Gospels was the presence of Jesus. And it seems it was his presence mainly because he didn’t see them as identified with their sin, or as merely representative of their group. Jesus seems to have seen them as individual human beings, created in God’s image. He saw them as those who he came to love and to save. One of the people Jesus called to follow him was a man named Levi, also known as Matthew, the author of one of the New Testament Gospels. Levi was a tax collector, hanging out with other tax collectors and “sinners”, whose life was renewed because of the grace of Jesus.
That same dynamic is evident in the prayer of this tax collector in Luke 18. You can see some similarities between the tax collector and Pharisee. They both come to the temple to pray. They both stand apart from others. They both begin their prayers with God and both have a certain focus on themselves. But that’s where the similarities end. The Pharisee stands apart to make it clear that he’s superior, that he’s set apart from these other miserable excuses for human beings and wants the attention. The tax collector stands apart because he feels unworthy. He doesn’t want attention. The Pharisee calls attention to his greatness and expresses no need for God, no request of Him. The tax collector calls attention to his sinfulness and asks God for mercy. He also does this presumably because he believes that God is merciful and that it is in His character to forgive. The Pharisee boasts, the tax collector beats his chest and won’t lift his eyes. He exhibits a physical posture which reveals his heart posture: one of confession, humility, brokenness, repentance.
And Jesus says that this prayer, the one by the tax collector, led to right standing with God. You’ve got to understand just how counterintuitive this would have been for those listening. On the one hand, you have the Pharisee. His prayer is sophisticated and dignified, his reputation is spotless, he lives in such a way that people hold him in high esteem and think great things about him. And yet Jesus says that this man was far from God. And on the other hand, you have a man whose group identity is about as unfavorable as you can get. You have a man who has up to this point lived his life poorly, compromising moral integrity for personal gain. A man whose prayer is raw and seemingly primitive. And Jesus says that this man, and this prayer, is acceptable to God.
See, you need to understand that prayer is not, at the core, about the words you speak or how you say them. As I have said numerous times, it is about the heart. That’s what God is looking at. We look at superficial things, God looks at the heart. And He is drawn to the heart that is dependent on Him. Here’s how Jim Cymbala puts it. He is the pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle, a church that I think is one of the most important examples to the rest of the Western church in terms of what renewal will look like. It represents a humble church absolutely devoted to dependent prayer. Cymbala says:
”God is attracted to weakness. He can’t resist those who humbly and honestly admit how desperately they need him. Our weakness, in fact, makes room for his power.”
Jim Cymbala, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, 19
You might be turned off b that, but it actually brings together a lot of pieces of the New Testament. For example, in 2 Corinthians, Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles and crucial figure in the early church, talks about some thorn in his flesh. There’s this weakness, some impediment, that he doesn’t go into detail about. But he asks God to take this thorn from him. And Jesus appears to him and says, “my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). It’s like Jesus is saying to him, this impediment that you want to get rid of, Paul? It leaves room for my power. If it was just your abilities and strengths, you wouldn’t leave any room for me, and the effect of your life would be limited. Your acknowledgement of your own weakness opens the door for me to do my work through you.
And so the reverse of this is also true. Leonard Ravenhill, who I have quoted many times before, says:
“Today God is bypassing men- not because they are too ignorant, but because they are too self-sufficient. Brethren, our abilities are our handicaps, and our talents our stumbling blocks!”
Leonard Ravenhill
What’s the problem today? Is it that we don’t have enough books? Is it that we lack theological knowledge? Is it that we don’t have enough sermons to listen to? No! It’s our self-sufficiency! That’s why God bypasses us! It’s why the Gospel is transforming lives in the thousands in places all around the world and yet we remain relatively untouched! It’s because we, in a place like North Vancouver, have become convinced of our own ability, and our lack of a need for God to live how we want!
In John 9, Jesus heals a blind man, and Jesus tells a crowd, a crowd that included Pharisees, that he had come to heal the blind. And then he told the Pharisees that their problem was that they thought they could see on their own. As long as they held to that opinion, they would remain blind (John 9:41). Jesus could only heal them if they recognized their blindness and their need of him.
Some of you will say, “well, I do only need God when big things happen, when there’s some sickness, when there’s something really bad that’s happened in my life. I don’t struggle to put food on the table day by day, I’m relatively happy, so I just don’t really need a lot of help”. A lot of Christians believe this too, whether they’d care to admit it or not. But here’s the thing: it’s not that you don’t need God. It’s that your vision of who you are, of who God is, of who He means you to be, is too small. It’s anemic. That’s why you don’t think you need Him. But if you understood the depth of your sin, if you understood that God has called you to reflect His image, to live with the same kind of love and compassion and wisdom of Jesus, if you understood that He’s called you to live with the power of the Holy Spirit, speaking boldly and living in such a way that it was clear God’s presence was within you, then you would know how much you need Him! Seriously, read the New Testament and tell me that His call on you is anything less than that. Once you understand it, you’ll know how desperate you are for Him, because you can’t do this on your own! You can make some money, find a home to live in, and treat people with a decent amount of respect. But that’s not what He called you to do! Your vision is too small! Increase your vision, and you will increase your dependence on Him. In turn, you will increase the degree to which you walk with Him and see His glory in your life! Again, if you’re with me, if you believe that humble, dependent prayer pleases God, and you want to grow in this, this is one great way to do it. Simply ask God to increase your vision of the life He’s given you to live, and your vision of what the church is to be.
3. The Gospel
The heart of prayer is this humility. It’s a recognition of your need for God. A need not just when the big bad stuff comes your way, but at every moment of every day because you need Him to live the live He calls you to live. He’s gracious enough to provide you with the power to do it. This is so central, not only to prayer, but to our relationship with God as a whole. It is central to the Gospel, the good news about Jesus that the whole of the Bible points towards.
This good news says that we are sinners, that this sin has infected us more deeply and broadly than we could have imagined. We live in a time when there is a singular focus on one sin: the sin of oppression, manifested perhaps particularly in racism. In the worldview that has quickly become the de facto way of seeing this, oppression is our singular problem, and any means to get rid of that sin is acceptable. Even if it involves things like hatred, violence, unforgiveness, bitterness, and so on. Now, let me be clear: racism is present in our world, including in its structural variety to one degree or another, and it is sin. Oppression is present in our world, and while there is disagreement on what exactly constitutes oppression, we can agree generally that oppression is sin as well. But these are symptoms, not the disease itself. The disease is the human heart turned away from our creator, a disease that is manifested in racism, oppression, hatred, unforgiveness, bitterness, sexual immorality, idolatry, pride, and so on.
The good news is that God, because of His great love for us, came in the person of Jesus and showed us the life we were meant to live. A life lived in intimate communion with God the Father, a life of compassion and mercy, of wisdom and justice, of joy and power. And then this Jesus was killed. He was crucified as a criminal or slave, despite his innocence. But in this, he was dying in our place, paying the price of our sin instead of us, so that we could be forgiven. He did this to both reveal the deep evil that resides in the human heart and to cleanse us of it. He did it to heal us and restore us to God and to give us His Holy Spirit. This is the Spirit who softens our hearts and shapes them into the image of Christ. This is the Spirit who gives us the power to live as we are meant to live, but that we lack the power on our own to do so.
And the entrance into all of this is the humble faith that recognizes our need of grace and that trusts God’s provision of that grace. It is to become like a child in terms of a humble dependence on our Father’s mercy. As long as you think that your human solution to sin is better than God’s solution, as long as you think that you’re better off without Him, as long as you think that you’re strong enough to save yourself, as long as you think that you can accumulate enough good deeds to be declared righteous in His sight, you will miss this. You will not understand the Gospel. You will not understand prayer. You will not be made right with Him. But if you do recognize your shortcomings, if you recognize your need for grace, if you trust in Jesus to save you where you were incapable of it, then you will know His forgiveness. You will know His grace. You will know His transformative power in and through you.
Conclusion
To wrap up, I want to emphasize again that you should not be anxious because you don’t know the right words to pray. You should not be anxious because you don’t think you measure up to others who pray. You should not be obsessed with “getting it right”. What counts is your humility. Your dependence on God. That’s what’s pleasing to Him. And a prayer that comes from that place is one of infinitely more worth than the prayer that is prayed to check off a box, or to display your spiritual superiority, or to exalt yourself. Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, those who humble themselves will be exalted. Humble yourself before God and be made right with Him.
