What Are Vain Repetitions?

Thank you for listening to this message from the Ministry of Morse Corner Church in Leverett, Massachusetts.

Morse Corner is a non -denominational church that is committed to the preaching and teaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Our church was founded in 1896 by two students of the famous evangelist

D .L. Moody. We seek to encourage and edify the body of Christ through the proclamation of God's Word through the ministries of the local church.

If you'd like more information, visit our website morsecornerchurch .com. We hope you enjoy the message.

Let's turn to Matthew chapter 6, the gospel of Matthew chapter 6.

Last time we looked at Jesus teaching his disciples to do good and to do it the right way.

Jesus, in doing that, he said, do not be like the

Pharisees. Do not be like the chief priests, the scribes. Why? Because everything they did, it was just a show.

It was just to draw attention to themselves, to be seen by men. So he said, when you do a good deed, you know, don't make a spectacle of it.

Don't boast and brag and tell everyone. Don't seek recognition. Then Jesus moves on to the subject of prayer.

So that's what we're going to be looking at this morning, the subject of prayer, titled the message,

Vain Repetitions and the Lord's Prayer. So we're going to go through the Lord's Prayer. What is

Jesus saying? So let's begin reading in verse 7, Matthew 6, verses 7 through 13.

Christ says, And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words.

Therefore, do not be like them, for your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask him.

In this manner, therefore, pray. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

So we'll go through the Lord's Prayer in a moment. What is it meant for? Is it a model prayer?

Are we supposed to pray it word for word? Is it a vain repetition as some people claim?

No. Let me just throw that out there. No. But we'll cover some of those things.

But let's look more closely at verse 7. This is where we left off from last week.

Remember Jesus was rebuking the religious leaders of Israel. Do not be like them.

Now Jesus is telling His disciples, do not be like the heathen. So don't be like the

Pharisees, don't be like that religious crowd, but don't be like the heathen either.

Well, what did the heathen do? So in verse 7, He explains it. Now before we get into that, the word heathen, you'll have to excuse me if I say heathens with an

S, you'll have to forgive me because heathen is plural. Okay, so we don't need an S. But the

Greek word translated heathen is ethnikos, and it basically means foreigner.

So you can sort of hear that in the word, you know, ethnic. Basically this is just all the different people of the world.

In this context, basically non -Jews. So the heathen are just the people of the world.

And heathen religion, or what we would call paganism. Paganism is sort of a blanket term for all of the world religions that are not

Christianity. So paganism and the heathen they practice all sorts of things.

And one of the ways they pray, they pray using vain repetitions.

So Jesus is saying, don't be like the Pharisees who love to pray in public so they can be seen by men.

Look at me and how, you know, righteous I am. I'm such a godly person. Don't be like that. But don't be like the heathen either because they use these vain repetitions.

So we have to ask, what is a vain repetition? You ever wonder what exactly is

Jesus referring to? Some people believe that a vain repetition would be praying the

Hail Mary 10 times and the Our Father 15 times. Now, of course, Christians really shouldn't be praying to Mary at all.

Christians should be praying to God through Christ as our mediator.

But we get it. If you're just repeating the same words over and over and over and over again,

I suppose that could be called a vain repetition. But that's clearly not what the heathen were doing.

The heathen were not saying the Hail Mary or the Our Father, right? So that's kind of obvious.

So what does it mean? The Greek word translated vain repetition, it refers to stammering.

That's the primary definition, stammering. This happens when people say the same word or the same phrase over and over again.

So the pagans would do this. They'd just say the same thing again and again and again. And after they did it enough times, it can almost put people into like a hypnotic state.

It can cause people to go, their brain goes into neutral. Some have argued that much of the modern praise music, where churches will get rid of the hymns and they bring in the, what, 7 -Eleven choruses, where they're saying the same thing again and again and it just goes on and on.

And people can become very impressionable. So it can create this hypnotic -like state.

It can lead to fits of religious, what's called religious ecstasy. Maybe you've heard the term ecstatic utterance.

So they say the same thing again and again and again and they kind of work themselves up.

And many people throughout the ages have tried to Christianize this. And part of what

Jesus is saying is, don't do this. Don't pray like they do. But how have people tried to Christianize it?

Well, I saw one video on YouTube where a person was trying to teach just anyone and everyone how to speak in tongues or what he called tongues.

And this is what he did. He said, anyone can learn how to speak in tongues. You just take two or three words and start repeating them.

Repeating it over and over and then do it quicker and quicker. And you know, Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Lord, Jesus is

Lord, and Lord, you know. And then you start stammering and babbling and they called that tongues.

And I don't say this to be disrespectful to people who believe that way, but if you look at the book of Acts chapter 2, it's very clear when the

Apostles spoke with tongues, it was a foreign language.

Because the Bible says that each of the different people heard them speak each in his own language.

So biblically, tongues is speaking in an unknown foreign language. But whatever the heathen were doing, the point is whatever they were doing, it was like babbling and stammering and just repeating the same phrase or the same sound again and again and again.

And their idea was this would force the gods to act. If we do this enough, we'll keep doing it until something happens.

God will respond or the gods will respond to this. So Jesus is saying to his disciples, don't do that.

Don't pray like that. So in giving us the Lord's Prayer, it tells us, hey, use your mind.

Think about what you're saying. Use a prayer that has some structure to it. Pray with your mind, pray with your spirit.

The Apostle Paul in 1st Corinthians 14 was likely dealing with a Christianized version of this static utterance where he said in 1st

Corinthians 14, 15, and 16, I will also pray with the understanding, and I will sing with the spirit, and I will also sing with the understanding.

Otherwise, if you bless with the spirit, how will he who occupies the place of the uninformed say amen at your giving of thanks since he does not understand what you say?

So if somebody is stammering and you just can't really make out what they're saying, it doesn't make sense. You know, what good is that?

So Jesus and Paul would say, pray with your understanding. So I think this is some pretty basic advice.

When you pray, don't be like the Pharisees. Don't make a show of it. But when you pray, don't be like the heathen either who stammer and babble or just say the same words over and over and over again.

That is not going to make God pay attention to you anymore, okay. This is not the way that it works, but that's the mindset a lot of people had.

And you know you can understand if somebody was brought up that way, that's what they were always told, and everyone around them is doing that.

How do you know different? But Jesus is saying don't do that. Another thing along this idea of vain repetition.

I think we have some biblical examples of this in 1st Kings 18, the Bible says, how the prophets of Baal, they cried out to their false

God from morning until noonday. Can you imagine being there and they're just crying out to Baal for hours and hours.

Did Baal act? Did Baal respond? No. In Acts chapter 19, the pagans in the city of Ephesus, they cried out for two hours straight saying, great is

Diana of the Ephesians or Artemis. Can you imagine being there? Great is

Diana of the Ephesians. Great is Diana of the Ephesians. Great is Diana of the Ephesians. Great is Diana. I mean just listening to that for 20 minutes your mind would be like, ah.

You'd be affected by it, but this was their religion. This is, in their mind, this is how you get

Diana or Baal or whoever. This is how you get God to act, by repeating yourself until something happens or until you work yourself up into a religious stupor.

Jesus is saying, no, that is not the way Christians should pray.

We don't need to get God to act. We don't need to try to like force God or have some incantations or do something to get

God to act. You realize God wants to act on your behalf? God is not up in heaven disinterested and we have to force

Him to do something. It's not the way it is. God loves us. God wants to hear our prayers and answer our prayers.

Look at verse 8, so He says, therefore do not be like them for your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask.

You know we sort of take that for granted that Jesus is saying, you need to look at God as who?

Some deity that's up there and doesn't really care about you. No, He's your Father. He is your heavenly

Father. So God is well acquainted with your needs. He knows all about you.

As Jesus will later say, the very hairs on your head are numbered. And no,

I'm not going to make a joke about that for some people. Jesus will go on to say in Matthew 10, 29 through 31, are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin?

And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will. But the very hairs of your head are numbered.

So what's the point of all that? Do not fear. Therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows.

God cares about you. You don't have to do all this stuff to try to get Him to do something. So in the

Sermon on the Mount, Jesus, He's been speaking about what? The heart, right? The heart attitude of man, our motivations.

But what about the heart of God? We haven't spent much time talking about that. What about the heart of God? God is not only willing to act on your behalf,

God wants to act on your behalf. So Jesus is introducing really a new idea.

It's not new for us because we were just brought up with it. People today all over the world, all the different religions of the world have now latched on to this.

Well, not all of them, but many of them. The idea that God is our Father. For example, in Islam, they don't refer to God as their

Father. Some religions do. Some religions have accepted that. Islam doesn't. God is, you know,

He's the Master. We do what He says, but He's not Father. But for the Christian, God is

Abba, Father. He's your Heavenly Father which makes you what? Now, there is a condition.

It's not that every human being on earth is a child of God and that He's the Father of everybody. You have to have faith.

So for the one who puts their faith in Jesus Christ, you're adopted into the family of God, brought into the family through faith and baptism, but we are now

His child. Does a child need to coerce their parents into doing things for them?

Now, I realize that happens, but the general way it's supposed to work is parents care for the needs of the children.

It's automatic, right? A parent doesn't need a big production.

They shouldn't. They should just want to, hey, they love their kids. They want to do things for their kids. Thanks for listening.

I'm Pastor Michael Grant from Morris Cornick Church. If you'd like to listen to the complete message or if you'd like more information about the ministry, visit our website, morriscornickchurch .com,

and we'd love to have you join us some Sunday morning here in Leverett. Until next time, may the grace of God be with you.