Sermon On The Mount

Prayer

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 11-25

Genre:

Track: 11

Dictation Name: Sermon on the Mount – 11

Location/Venue:

Year: 1980

Let us first bow our heads in prayer and then we’ll proceed with this section.

Oh Lord our God who art the author of all things and in whose hands are all creation, all the nations and the hearts of all men, we come to Thee mindful of the ungodliness and insanity of our time and we know our Father that we are indeed desperately in need of Thy judgment and Thy salvation. Do Thou oh Lord judge the workers of iniquity in Washington and Moscow and all over the world and bring forth Thy salvation. Make us again a godly nation whose delight is in Thy word. Give us a spirit of prayer, a spirit of repentance and a spirit of obedience unto Thee. We know our Father that because Thou art on the throne Thou dost make all things work together for good for them that love Thee, to them that are the called according to Thy service. And out of these things Thou wilt bring forth a greater good and [unknown]. Bless us now as we study Thy word, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Matthew 6:1-15.

“Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:

4 That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.

7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

11 Give us this day our daily bread.

12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:

15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

We come here to a very important passage in scripture which I think in our time we especially need to understand. We need to be in prayer these days and we need to be concerned with works of righteousness. Our Lord begins by saying take heed that you do not your alms before men. If your bible has marginal notes you will find that it says ‘or righteousness, alms or righteousness’ in other words the word can mean charitable giving but it also has a broader connotation. What we do we do unto the Lord and not for show. Let me illustrate. Not too long ago I learned that a major western university received umpteen million dollars to put up a new building bearing the donor’s name. Now what happened there is something that happens again and again. The person who gave it has nothing but contempt for that school, the person regards that school as derelict, as immoral in its total approach, as opposing everything this person stands for but yet the gift is given. Why? There are Christian colleges, not many but some, that are deserving, many a cause that is deserving. Within fifty miles of her there is a small Christian college that while not perfect is doing the best job in that part of the country. Why did that smallish school of which he is aware receive no money and only the major university? The reason is a very obvious one. The donors name will be on the building in one of the major campuses of the United States and everyone will know that so and so gave this building which is named after them but in the small campus where it would turn that school around and put it on its feet for a generation who would know about it. The whole purpose was to be seen of men, to be seen of men.

This is the problem today. There are millions being given every year, well millions is too low a figure, hundreds of millions by individuals and corporations to schools and causes they despise but for one reason: to be seen of men. This is what our Lord is talking about. Take heed that you do not your alms before men to be seen of them otherwise you have no reward of your father that is in heaven. And he goes on to compare these hypocrites who give to things they know are not good. The men who go out with somebody sounding a trumpet before them to say hear ye, hear ye, see what the great so and so is doing for humanity or for people. This is what our Lord is condemning. We do things either for God or for man, either to promote ourselves or to support the kingdom of God and our Lord says verily I say unto you they have their reward, they have their reward from God as well as from man. God will judge them for their evil stewardship. But this kind of thing that our Lord is talking about is very much with us today and it is helping to destroy this country. As some of you may know today increasingly security and policing is in private hands where it is not politically controlled. And there are local securities, police and groups in every community and there are big international ones. There is the California based security group which does security work for highly classified manufacturing plants all over the world. They took over in these areas when it was demonstrated that federal and state agencies could not control the sabotage and the bombings that were taking place although they were not publicized.

Now I know because I was told in the president’s office that at a meeting a year and a half ago one such group was told do you know who is financing the terroristic activities that you’ve had sixty eight bombings in your plant? You are. Why? Because you are giving millions to various liberal groups who are channeling these funds to terroristic groups. They documented it for them, spelled it out, I saw the documentation before they went to the meeting and I asked afterwards what was their reaction? Well they just looked sheepish and said well, gifts to those groups are good for public relations. Verily they have their reward but when thou doest alms let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth that thy alms may be in secret and thy Father which seest in secret Himself shall reward thee openly.

“And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”

What doe sour Lord say? Go into your closet. Now he didn’t mean literally go in and shut the door but in other words your praying is to be in private, don’t make a show of it before men. You know one of the curses of prayer meetings across the country is that in every church you have a handful of people who hog the prayer meeting, that is, they pray five or ten minutes each to prove how holy they are and they make the prayer meeting a deadly dull thing. I did something years ago when I in the pastorate to end that, I had bidding prayers. I would say first what are we going to pray for and make up a list at the beginning of the meeting and then I said first we’re going to pray for so and so and so and so was sick or in the hospital. Now, let’s have a moment of silent prayer and then I’m going to ask so and so to conclude with a one minute prayer to sum up all our prayers. Then we’ll go the other and so on. That ended the hogging of the prayers but it didn’t end problems because they resented it. People like that love to make a show of how spiritual they are that they can pray ten minutes without stopping.

I have told on trips across country to ministers who come to me and said our prayer meetings are being killed by this type of person, I’ve suggested this and they said you know what this would do we’d have an explosion, they’d be so angry from being cut off from that little moment where they could make it show their righteousness. Verily they have their reward already in the contempt of others.

“But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.”

Some of you have heard me speak before on sentence prayers. The best way to pray is to pray all day long, to talk to God as we go through the day. If you are going to have to do something you’re not sure about and you are a little nervous about the problem you face you say Lord, give me the patience and the wisdom and the know-how to do this, or Lord this person sets my teeth on edge and I’ve got to meet with him and he’s an important person in connection with my work, give me patience to deal with him and afterwards Lord I thank Thee that Thou didst help me in this situation. But over and over again through the day just as you walk or you drive or you work to talk to God that way. Then you are doing it in terms of the very real problems of your life and it’s easier to pray when you come to pray formally at the table or at your devotions or at bedtime. But its sentence prayers that are not vain repetitions because in a sentence you are saying Lord, give me a hand with this, help me, I don’t know how to handle this situation. Now that’s praying. Then our Lord gives us a model prayer. Now some people will not use the Lord’s Prayer in church or in their family devotions or at the table because they say our Lord says we should not use vain repetitions. Well certainly the words of our Lord can never be van repetitions. Very wrong to call them that, it is absurd. Moreover we should all use the Lord’s Prayer regularly because our Lord says this is how we should pray and what the Lord’s Prayer does is to focus our mind on the things that have to be paramount in our thinking as Christians.

“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.”

We need to be thankful that God is God, that He is on the throne, that He is our God and that He has redeemed us. When we learn what is going on in this country we need indeed to begin with gratitude to God because it is He that overrules all the evil and insanity that men purpose to do and plan to do. And so we pray:

“10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.”

The focus has to be on God and His kingdom. Our Lord said seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things that you want shall be added unto you. And so in our praying our focus has to be on God’s kingdom, His righteousness, His justice throughout the length and the breadth of the land.

“11 Give us this day our daily bread.”

In one sentence we sum up our human needs, why? Because we thereby show our trust in Him. As children we never worried about our food and whether there’d be bread on the table the next day nor did we worry about whether or not we were going to get shoes and clothing. We knew our parents loved us and would provide for us. And so it is that although in our thinking and sometimes in our praying our human daily needs loom very large in the Lord’s Prayer it is in one sentence we are to ask for them and trust. Give us this day our daily bread. Take care of our human needs because Thou art our Father. And so we don’t go fearfully saying are you going to give it to me or aren’t you, I’m really up against it, Lord. No. We trust, we commit our needs to Him.

“12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

Now in some readings you find trespasses, some translations will give trespasses. In some churches it is the word trespasses that is used but in the original it is debt really.

Why? What is our Lord talking about He says forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Well, this goes back to the Jubilee law and to the Sabbatical year. Remember God in His law says that every seventh year was the year of release, that if we made a loan to somebody and they haven’t been able to pay on the seventh year we’d say it’s cancelled, it’s cancelled. Forgive us our debt as we forgive our debtors. Now this is a very remarkable fact and its one that we don’t like sometimes because well so and so has owed us money for ten years and he never paid. What happens when we have that mentality as some people do? Flying home last night I read a book which is a very interesting report on what is happening in Islam, particularly to the Islamic people in the Soviet Union. Some of you have heard me discuss one aspect of this before or namely that the birthrate of all the European and Russian peoples of the Soviet Union is falling so dramatically that by 1985 they will have an all Asiatic army, virtually, with only a sprinkling of non-Muslim, non-Asiatic soldiers. And it could well be by the end of the this decade since all the men , since all the men in the Asiatic are old men the men who come up are going to be Asiatic and the Soviet Union will be the major Asiatic power in the world and the major Muslim power. And the Islamic people know this, they are looking forward to it. They are going to outnumber the Europeans in the Soviet Union and take over. And this has the people in the Polish bureau and the [unknown] scared to death, they don’t have an answer for this. Now the two men who wrote this study are men who are important in their thinking and in the influence they’ve had on the Islamic world.

One of them has been very influential on [unknown] of Libya and then [unknown] in Algeria. And yet these writers in a sentence summed up the problem of Islam: Islam looks backward always, they said, while Christians look forward. Why? Because in Islam there is nothing like forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, what do you do in terms of what our Lord is saying, it isn’t trespassing here, it isn’t sins, its debts, things in the past. Forget it. Forget it, you’ve got a bad debt on your hands, forget it. Don’t live in the past perpetually. If you don’t, if you live in terms of the present and what God requires of you, why God is going to forgive your debts, your past. You don’t rectify everything in the future however much we try. There are things we can never change in the past but Islam never gives up on the past and that is why although there is a tremendous resurgence of Islam, it’s doomed. What’s happening in Iran? Iran today is in a position where they are so powerful in one country after another and they are destroying when they take over, as in Iran, because they are dreaming of the golden age of Islam under Ali. Well that golden age never existed except in their imagination. They are still fighting battles in Islam that are a thousand years old and they still have not forgiven things in each other that are a thousand years old, the hostility between Iraq and Iran goes back a thousand years and they refuse to get over it. It would be like the English saying to the French we’ll never forgive your for 1066 and the Norman-French Invasion. We’ll get even with you for that. It would be that absurd.

So when our Lord says ‘and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors’ we are to say to the past that cannot be altered or rectified, it is finished, we are living in the present, God has worked to us to do today and tomorrow and we are going to live in terms of that. Otherwise we have no future and yet today there are so many people who are past bound, that’s what psychotherapy is about. You put people back into the past as though that were the answer. I had a father or I had a mother who was terrible to me or my big brother or my big sister was terrible to me and I lived under very traumatic circumstances and psychotherapy attempts to deal with the past which is ridiculous. The only thing you can deal with and the only thing you can change is today and tomorrow and this is what our Lord is talking about. This is why Islam and its resurgence is doomed. It will only repeat in one country after another the mess it has made in every country where this resurgence Islamic revival has taken place. They fall on each other to kill one another, that’s their idea of the new order. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:

15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

But we are to recognize that the kingdom is God’s and God is eternal and we are here in terms of what we must do today and tomorrow and so instead of being concerned with the past lead us not into temptation, that is today and tomorrow. Deliver us, preserve us, from the evil one. The evil one is here today and tomorrow and if we concern ourselves endlessly with yesterday the evil one triumphs because we do not use God’s today and tomorrow. Time is something that no man can save up. Once it’s gone, it is gone. And time is important to God’s kingdom and we are called upon to redeem the times for the days are evil. We are to use the times for God and the glory of God and this is God’s calling for us.

Thy kingdom come Thy will be done. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. All this says all our endless personal concerns are to be realized as trifling as they really are and when we concentrate on the things of God because it is at the conclusion of this chapter that we have the great statement by our Lord: seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things, what are all these things? Our clothing, our food, our daily needs, all these things shall be added to you. God will provide, but the focus has to be bigger than ourselves in our lives and in our prayers. This is not to say we are not to take our needs to God, He commands it. But we are not to make our needs the be all and end all of our prayer and our lives for His is the kingdom and the power and the glory. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father give us grace to live and to pray ever mindful of Thy kingdom. Living not in the past but in the present and in terms of the future. Knowing that this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith, that we have been called to be more than conquerors through Jesus Christ knowing that Thou Lord will undertake for us. And so our God we come to Thee to cast our every care upon Thee knowing thou carest for us. We come to commit ourselves afresh to Thy kingdom and to Thy glory. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Someone in Atlanta showed me a clipping of that, I don’t know what to say about that except that it isn’t the Jesus who walked the earth obviously.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] I’m sorry that type of thing was publicized, of course [unknown] intended it to be publicized he said that the [unknown] Jesus was assured that his building project would be completed and the money would pour in. Well it’s a poor way to advertise a project and…yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Right. What we need to recognize is that when we are borrowing today the note is going to be written up in standard fashion, there is no way of changing it. Now as Christians we do not believe in long term debt and the bible says six years and no more, the seventh is to be a Sabbath, well we have a note written anyway they want to but we pay it off in six years. Now you mentioned emergency loans. I’m glad you did because this is an area I touched on last time and I feel that we need to start thinking very seriously about it and that Christians across country should do so. The bible speaks again and again, it is one of the most repeated laws in the Old Testament and it is stressed in a number of places in the New as well that when a brother is in need we are to make a loan without interest. Now the church once took care of this, the deacon’s fund in part did this sort of thing. The Chalcedon Presbyterian Church in Atlanta has taken this seriously and what they have done is to set up a loan fund which anyone can make a contribution and then anyone in the church who has an emergency situation can borrow without interest and pay when he is able. And what they have found is, is that this fund has been a tremendous blessing and help to young and old in the congregation.

As a result the fund is growing because everyone who has been helped by it wants to contribute or when they see what is done to others they want to contribute to it. I hope very soon we can start a fund here maybe with no more than fifty or a hundred dollars and add to it as we’re able so that we can help one another and there are problems like this. I got back as I said in the very small hours of the morning and I saw a letter from a very fine young man in the south somewhere and I opened it and put it aside, I didn’t want to read any further because it was a long letter but I knew immediately what it was. He was a medical student and through a variety of circumstances was up against it, he needs oh, maybe a thousand or eighteen hundred, something like that to be able to go back to medical school and there is no place he can get it. He’s really up against it. Now as a doctor he won’t have any trouble repaying that in a few years but this is the kind of situation, you see, that I encounter sometimes every week and it is the kind of situation Christians should be doing something about and they are not doing it. So I hope very soon we can address our selves serious to that type of need and it may be a while before we accumulate anything but at least we’re working on it. And this is what Christians should do so emergency needs are different from regular loans and business loans and house loans and that sort of thing. They are things that Christians should help one another with. Any other questions or comments?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. That was practice of the Pharisees, they felt it was good advertisement for stricter faith to make a show of their very strict obedience. Now the Bible has one fast a year on the Day of Atonement and even then it was only from sun up to sun down, there was a banquet on sundown on the Day of Atonement. And for us the day of atonement now is Christ’s death and resurrection and we don’t fast because what He has done has accomplished that for which the Old Testament fast was looking forward. Fast therefore as in the older days of America was in the days of national crisis, they were for special purpose. So my point is there was only one fast in the Old Testament and it was a very limited one, but the Pharisees fasted twice a day to prove how super holy they were and when they fasted they had ways of showing in their dress and manner that they were fasting so that everybody would know how holy they were and so with their praying, with everything, it was for show, a PR purpose. And this is what our Lord is speaking out against. Well we have the same motifs and motives today as I mentioned with giving. Its only changed its form. Well if there are no further questions we’ll adjourn, I will be gone next week but I will be here two weeks and perhaps two Sundays or perhaps three in November. I will let you know then the week when our next meetings will be.