SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 10/21/2020 10:06 AM
My Worship Time Focus PT-1
“The Audience of Prayer”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 6:5
Message of the
verse: “5 "And
when you pray, you are not to be as the hypocrites; for they love to stand and
pray in the synagogues and on the street corners, in order to be seen by men.
Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.”
Now as Jesus talks about prayer in
this section of His Sermon on the Mount, one thing should be made clear and
that is that no religion has ever had a higher standard and priority for prayer
than those in Judaism. This is not to
take away from the grave errors that are seen in their prayer habits that Jesus
is point out in this section of the 6th chapter of Matthew.
John MacArthur writes “As God’s
chosen people the Jews were the recipients of His written Word, ‘entrusted with
the oracles of God’ (Rom. 3:2). God
spoke directly to Abraham and to many of his descendants, and they had spoken
directly to Him. No other people, as a
race or as a nation, has ever been so favored by God or had such direct
communication with Him. Of all people,
they should have known how to pray. But
they did not. Like every other aspect of
their religious life, their praying had been corrupted and perverted by rabbinic tradition. Most Jews were completely confused about how
to pray as God wanted.” Notice the highlighted phrase rabbinic tradition, as
this seems to me a major key in many of the things we have seen thus far in our
study of the Sermon on the Mount.
John MacArthur talks about what William Barclay wrote
about in his commentary on “The Gospel of Matthew.” Barkley “points out that over the years a
number of faults had crept into Jewish prayer life. For one thing, prayer had become
ritualized. The wording and forms of
prayer were set, and were then simply read or repeated from memory. Such prayers could be given with almost no
attention being paid to what was said.
They were a routine, semiconscious religious exercise.”
We
have talked of the “Shema” which comes from Deuteronomy 6:4-9, 11:13-21 and the
Jews would recite this three times a day.
“4 "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God,
the LORD is one! 5 “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and
with all your soul and with all your might. 6 “These words, which I am
commanding you today, shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently
to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and
when you rise up. 8 “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall
be as frontals on your forehead. 9 “You shall write them on the doorposts of
your house and on your gates” (Deut. 6:4-9).
The Jews would say this three times a day and sometimes they would say
an abbreviated version of Deut 6:4 was used.
Barclay
also points out that there was another form the “Shemoneth Esrei” meaning “The
eighteen.” Barclay states that faithful
Jews would also do this three times a day, and this too had an abbreviated
version.
Now
one of the things the Jews did, as mentioned was do these three times a day no
matter where they were, which meant that they could have been in the synagogues,
or on the street corners or any other place, like visiting a friend, at home,
working in their fields as the hours of their prayers were said at nine in the
morning, and at noon, and then at three in the afternoon. John MacArthur points out a number of faults
in his commentary, faults that we will be looking at in our next SD, Lord
willing.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I don’t see any spontaneous times of prayer
as I go through what I looked at in this section so far, and I can’t help but
think about Peter sinking in the water and all he could pray was “Lord save me.” As stated in our last SD I am to keep the
phone off the hook all of the time so that I can talk to God throughout my day.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I want to remember that even though I have a
prayer time set aside that I want to talk to the Lord at any time of the
day. I don’t want to make my prayer time
like those that the Jewish people did and just say what is on it, but to
remember Who I am talking to at all times.
10/21/2020 10:43 AM
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