- Matthew 6:5 ¶ “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 7 ¶ “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ comments on this passage greatly affected me as I read them tonight:
Sin, he shows us here, is something which follows us all the way, even into the very presence of God. Sin is not merely something that tends to assail and afflict us when we are far away from God, in the far country as it were. Sin is something so terrible…that it will not only follow us to the gates of heaven, but – if it were possible – into heaven itself. ..
The essence of the biblical teaching on sin is that is essentially a disposition. It is a state of the heart. I suppose we can sum it up by saying that sin is ultimately self-worship and self-adulation; and our Lord shows…that this tendency on our part to self-adulation is something that follows us even into the very presence of God. It sometimes produces the result; that even when we try to persuade ourselves that we are worshipping God, we are actually worshipping ourselves and doing nothing more…
This thing that has entered into our very nature and constitution as human beings, is something that is so polluting our whole being that when man is engaged in his highest form of activity he still has a battle to wage with it. It has always been agreed, I think, that the highest picture that you can ever have of man is to look at him on his knees waiting upon God. That is the highest achievement of man, it is his noblest activity. Man is never greater than when he is there in communion and contact with God. Now, according to our Lord, sin is something which affects us so profoundly that even at that point it is with us and assailing us…
The next portion of the quote hit me the hardest:
We tend to think of sin as we see it in its rags and in the gutters of life. We look at a drunkard, poor fellow, and we say: there is sin; that is sin. But that is not the essence of sin. To have a real picture and a true understanding of it, you must look at some great saint, some unusually devout and devoted man. Look at him three upon his knees in the very presence of God. Even there self is intruding itself, and the temptation is for him to think about himself, and really to be worshipping himself rather than God. That, not the other, is the true picture of sin (Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, pp. 300-301).
