Now Jesus warns us not to pray like the hypocrites, but exactly what is a hypocrite?  The word has evolved in our language to mean someone who says one thing and does another, but that doesn’t seem to fit here.  It is interesting to note that the word hypocrite, ὑποκριτής in Greek, originally meant an actor who plays a role of another person.  It is not truly who he is, but merely an artificial person.  That definitely fits much better because Jesus goes on to say that these hypocrites would put on quite the performance by standing in synagogues and street-corners just so that they could be seen by others.  So again such people have already received their reward. 

Jesus tells us that the correct way to pray is to be quiet and alone where the focus can be on our heavenly Father.  When you pray in this manner you will be rewarded openly.  Here again, I take this to mean that such prayer transforms our character into a more humble person rather than into someone who has become proud and arrogant about their prayers where their focus is more on how impressive they sound to others.

He then tells us that our prayers are not heard because of their eloquence and length for if God is truly infinite he already knows our needs even before we ask.  So then one might ask, “Why then do we pray if God already knows what we need?”  The reason is not that God needs to hear our audible prayers before he answers them, but rather they are spoken so that we can be transformed by putting our needs into words.  Our words complete our ideas and thoughts and also complete the emotion behind them.  I think that we fail to understand just how important the spoken word is to our psyche.

So then when we pray incorrectly like the hypocrites we become the center of attention and importance.  But when we pray with correctly we become humbled in the presence of God as he becomes the true focus of our thoughts and needs.

THE LORD’S PRAYER

Jesus gives us an example of how we ought to pray.  We address our prayers to God as our Heavenly Father.  We also proclaim the importance of his Name which is Yahweh (Jehovah).  The importance of this is to make the connection between the identity of Yahweh in the Old Testament with our Father in the New.  Many overlook this intimate connection that is extremely important in understanding the true nature of Christ.  

We must look forward to the coming of God’s kingdom rather than want to postpone it until we finish all our projects and the power of his kingdom will be just as wonderful on earth as it is in heaven.

We only need to ask for whatever is sufficient for this day.  In this way we are encouraged to live during this moment and not be so concerned for the future that we miss what’s happening right in front of us.

We ask for no more than what we are willing to do ourselves.  So when it comes to forgiveness we must be willing to forgive others because by doing that we pass God’s forgiveness on to others through the exercising of our forgiveness.

The next part of the prayer is very difficult for most people because sin is so attractive and its whole purpose is to lead us into evil.  But we are to ask God to take away temptation.  We are not to try to live on the edge of sin like many do.  We must remember that temptation is the beginning of sin.  If we could only repeat these words in this prayer with passionate sincerity we would be so much holier than we are.  Why should we want to be holy?  Because God is holy and so is his kingdom.

In verse 14 Jesus addresses forgiveness as being directly related to our forgiving of others.  This is not as though we are earning forgiveness by the act of forgiving others; it is rather our accepting the principle of forgiveness as being part of God’s character.  This fits nicely into our belief that the source of our transformation is not in anything that we do but is in God himself and that only by our love for him can we be transformed into the image of Christ.  If we do not forgive others, we are not letting our love for God work within us and by not forgiving others our faith becomes mere religious ritual. 

To better understand what Jesus is saying we first need to understand more about what forgiveness is.  According to the usage in this prayer forgiveness is not the same thing as when we forgive someone when they say they are sorry.  The forgiveness Jesus is speaking about is a response to a moral debt owed to us by another.  This is the general theme throughout this sermon: we must be prepared to show mercy to others if we expect God to show mercy to us.  By so doing we give others a chance to actually practice repentance by changing their behavior.  How do we forgive them and to what extent?  In the same manner that we want God to forgive us.  

When we consider forgiveness under these terms it eliminates the possibility that man can accomplish this by means of his own will. The source of our forgiveness than is not the human will, but the love of God.