We begin our
year by acknowledging that the church is
dependent on God for her life and vitality. It is true that God uses people to do His work, but it is even
more true that our people need to be empowered by God to do real, fruitful kingdom work in His way and not by human intuition. In this regard the Lord Jesus has reminded us, ”I am
the Vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit , for
apart from me you can do nothing.” (Jn. 15:5).
Our congregation that
has often been reminded and
instructed over the years concerning the importance
and the priority of the work of prayer, particularly on a
congregational level. There is little else that is left for me to say to you,
except by way of constant reminders and
exhortations to ‘always
pray and not to lose heart’ (Lk. 18:1).
Praying is never easy, but it is always necessary that we should pray. If you
struggle to pray then learn to pray. Say, like the disciples did to Jesus: Lord teach us to pray!” That is a prayer in itself. In the end the way to learn to pray is by praying! I can
speak to you about it and you can read many books about prayer, but in
the end we must pray. There are some that are
better trained in the work of prayer. Let us learn from them by all
means, but ultimately there are no
experts in prayer; we all need to
constantly learn and grow in this discipline. Prayer
is difficult for the
reasons I will give to you .
Our Text: Gen 4:26
Last year we began a
series of sermons in Genesis and in
that context we had read a verse which I would like us to re- consider as a starter
for our “fresh thoughts on prayer”
series in January.
"To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD.” (Gen. 4:26). I have chosen this text to answer some fundamental questions such as, “Why do we pray?” and “Why is it so difficult to pray”?
"To Seth also a son was born, and he called his name Enosh. At that time people began to call upon the name of the LORD.” (Gen. 4:26). I have chosen this text to answer some fundamental questions such as, “Why do we pray?” and “Why is it so difficult to pray”?
But first some
background to our text:
This text follows an intense series of events. In
Genesis 3 we have learned of the
fall of man by which mankind had become spiritually alienated from God. Before the fall, in the garden of Eden,
man had a wonderfully intimate, direct relationship
with his Maker. God and man walked together in paradise.
The fall brought an end to all
that. Sin caused man to be evicted
from Eden, that place of direct
fellowship. Man was now in a spiritual
desert. He was now surviving by his own instincts, devices and wisdom. He
now lacked that direct input and
instruction from God and now being influenced by the inclinations of his sinful
nature and also under the
tutelage of Satanic impulses, man
now became capable of the worst
behaviour.
And so we must not be surprised to read in Genesis
4:8 of Cain’s murder of his brother Abel. This
fact leads Cain and his offspring even further away from God. He settles in the land of “Nod” (wandering) , away from the presence of the Lord. Mercifully, God did not forsake the
people that He had made, and He continued to care and provide for them, although no longer in the
context of the intimacy of Eden. God nevertheless brings near to Himself a people
through another son of Adam and Eve, Seth by name, and
his offspring. It is in this context that we read, “at that
time people began to call upon the name of the LORD.” The
position here then is
that we have a people removed
from God, through sin but it is clear that
they still have a conscience and a longing to be in touch with the Creator.
So, our first question, “why do we pray? “ is answered. Men everywhere instinctively know that they have
been created by God and that is the reason
why they call upon God in prayer. We observe in this regard that prayer is a universal phenomenon. All modern religions have a practise of prayer.
This is also described in the New Testament. Read Acts
17:22-28 where Paul points out the inherent religiosity of the
Greek people of his day in v.
22. They have an inclination to “seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and
find to him” (v. 27). Paul is saying
that these people intuitively know that they have been created
by God, and by this virtue they wish to speak to their Creator. This does not mean that
their prayers are received by God
. We are simply making the observation that people pray everywhere.
This brings us to our
second question: Why
is prayer so difficult? Why do we so
often feel that we are groping in the dark as far as prayer is concerned? To the Athenians in Acts 17 Paul answers that
God seems far away to them, but he reminds them
that “he is actually not far from each one of us”(v.27b).
The actual reason why
God seems far away is not because He is actually far
away, but because man, by virtue
of sin, feels himself to be far
away. Sin indeed makes us feel far away from God. A little boy
once got lost in a shopping center because he disobeyed his mother’s command to
stay near her. But then he drifted away and lost sight of her, and he began to cry because he
feared that he had lost her, and yet
all the while she was near him. This is what
sin does. It makes us unsure of
the nearness of God. Sin endows us with a sense of alienation from God, and yet the truth is
that God is not far. He is in fact near to the humble, broken, contrite
sinner. He is also near to the arrogant sinner that denies His Maker. He is near in judgement
to Him.
So we observe then
that people everywhere pray and we
also observe that prayer is a real struggle for all people. I wish I could say that this was all there was to the matter of difficulty in prayer. But when people began to call on God in the
days of Seth there was another problem. Not only did God seem
distant because of the expulsion from paradise , the place of nearness and
fellowship with God, but there was also the fact that the very act of prayer
had become corrupted.
Read the familiar story of Elijah and the prophets of Baal[1]. Everyone is praying in this story, but what is the difference between the prayers to Baal and Elijah’s prayer? The priests of Baal had a God- conscience, but
they had no idea how to approach Him,
because they did not know Him according to what He had revealed to Israel in the OT Scriptures. Elijah by contrast knew YAHWEH
personally, and He walked (mostly) with
God, but the strength of Elijah’s relationship with God lay in the fact that
God had brought him near. He had revealed His Word to Him (1 Kings 17).
There is thus true and
false prayer. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes mention that in prayer we ought not to
“heap up empty phrases (NIV “babbling”) as the gentiles do” (Matt.
6:7). Here Jesus refers to a
corrupted form of praying which makes no
gain with God. He then proceeds to instruct His
disciples in the art and practise of true prayer, which begins
with a relationship in which they begin with : “Our Father in heaven!”
Even within the Christian
community there are prayer forms
that are closer to pagan sources
and practises and far from the prayer that
God would endorse.
This is partly because many Christians
have their ideas of prayer shaped by unbiblical
practises and pagan influences. The whole idea of works based efforts to obtain answers to prayer or prayers expressed through the mediation
of saints finds no sanction in the Bible.
Even in evangelical circles we frequently
find unbiblical notions of prayer. There
are evangelical Christians who focus on correct methods and who have a legalistic focus on the
conditions which we must meet, the
things we must do, in order to get our requests granted. The result is
that such people pray
out of a sense of guilt and not in
anticipation of the simple joy of meeting with God and fellow believers and delighting ourselves in
Him. On the other hand there are evangelical Christians who completely disregard the imperatives of Scripture with regard to prayer
(e.g. Eph.
6:18-20). They will make absolutely no effort to pray or to delight
themselves in the Lord (Psalm
37:4). They are faithful pew warmers
and, but you never get the sense that
they are with you in the great battle
that the church has to fight in
her day. There is in them also never a sense of pressing forward
to explore all the good things that God has given them to take hold of in this life.
“At that time people
began to call upon the name of the LORD.” It is not as
simple as it sounds. Prayer in a fallen world is difficult, but does that mean that there is no true
prayer to be found in this life
in which we currently live away from the manifest presence
of God?
No, not at all! Prayer
is possible because God makes it possible.
(i)
God Himself gives us help in prayer :
·
Rom. 8:27 The Spirit helps us in prayer
·
Rom. 8:34 the Lord Jesus Christ
helps us in prayer
(ii)
He gives us directives in prayer : Help is given us
by way of a general outline in
the form of the Lord’s prayer in Matt. 6 :9-13 (cf. Lk. 11:2-4). Here the Lord Jesus Christ helps us to see that all true prayer …
·
Is
to be directed to the God who is our Father in heaven. Note the familial terms with which we are called to engage God. Prayer
is not a technique. It is a FIRSTLY a relationship that is based on
knowing the One that I am conversing with.
·
Is
to be directed to Him Who is to be acknowledged as holy – set apart ,
Sovereign King
·
Is
to be directed to Him who has an
expressed will and purpose for mankind. It is perfectly done
in heaven , but not yet on earth.
Mankind is commanded to seek that God’s will should be established on earth
·
…
allows us to pray for all our needs, physical , emotional and spiritual.
So, ultimately true prayer is found as God awakens the hardened hearts of His
people through His Spirit and by His Word, by which Christians are now able to
pray because they are helped on the
basis of much greater and much more specific knowledge.
All this is possible because Jesus has come to show us the Father. And so as we
draw near to this communion table with a
sense of our clumsiness and fallenness and distance from God, we come by the new and living way made to us by God. We come as always in faith and dependence upon Jesus, the
Author and Perfecter of our faith. There will come a time
when we shall be in heaven,
when prayer as we know it now will no
longer exist for then we shall be in that place
of perfect revelation and
fellowship with the Father. Son and Holy
Spirit once again.
Amen!
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