(Against the background of Jesus’

teachings and practice of prayer)

Dr. Paul Tudor Jones

LESSON I — June 12, 1994

When Pat asked me to lead your class in a three weeks’ study on prayer I told her that I felt we could profit most by focusing our attention on the Lord’s Prayer. Begin with what we know. All of us can recite it from memory. But what we may not have done before is to check the gospel’s record of how and when Jesus prayed and what he explicitly taught about prayer. It is this relationship that we will be considering in our three weeks’ study together.

We know that our Christian churches differ widely in matters of doctrine, ritual, and government; yet all unite in saying the Lord’s Prayer. Never has there been a time when the Lord’s Prayer was not repeated by Christians in common worship and in private devotions. Roman Catholics for centuries said it in Latin: “Pater noster qui es in caelo,” high church Anglicans chanted it in their great cathedrals, Protestant congregations the world over have repeated the Lord’s Prayer in unison in their native tongues.

Ernest Finley Scott in his book, The Lord’s Prayer, remarks that all this longtime and widespread use of the Lord’s Prayer by Christians of every description should not surprise us in the least: “for after all it is the primary Christian document, and the only one which comes directly from Jesus himself. We are often reminded that He wrote nothing, and that all we know of His message is through the reports of others. But He was Himself the author of this prayer, and took care to write it indelibly on the memories of His disciples. In the attempt to discover what He taught we can go behind all the traditions to this clear statement, signed, as it were, with His own hand. The prayer is so familiar that we have come to take it for granted, like the ground we stand on or the air we breathe, and this is no doubt the reason that it has been so little investigated. But as soon as we fix our minds on it we are faced by many questions which require an answer. Why did Jesus make it? How did it differ from all previous prayers? How are its various parts related to one another? What is involved in the petitions when they are taken together, and one by one? What evidence do they afford us of Jesus’ mode of thinking, and of His attitude to God and man?”

We shall give ourselves during these three Sundays to a search for answers to these questions in an effort to recapture what Jesus intended for His disciples in the practice of prayer.

But first, we must briefly examine the:

UNDERLYING PHILOSOPHY OF PRAYER

Our Lord’s Prayer, the prayer Jesus taught His disciples to pray, was a new one, but prayer was not a religious innovation introduced by Him. People have always prayed. The old axiom is: “Man is a praying animal.” Scott, in his book, observed that: “people cannot live together unless they can communicate to each other their needs, therefore, they learned to speak. They were also conscious of a higher power upon whom their lives depended; therefore, they learned to speak to that power, or to pray. The first prayers were, undoubtedly little more than affirmations of human consciousness of the presence of this supernatural power.”

As far back as history can be traced, we find evidence that people thought of this unknown power as related to themselves. Is this primitive thinking? Not entirely. All our science is founded on the same faith, that the order we observe in our universe is related to human mind processes. This is no childish belief. (Cf. computers, space travel, astronomy, atomic power, television, etc.)

Also basic, is the belief that this power is beneficent, that it can be won over to our human side — that it can be appealed to show pity. Even the most primitive minds believed this that somehow the supernatural power might be placated by sacrifice, petition, etc., that the gods, however fierce and vindictive, could be won over to show favor to the human petitioner. (Cf. Biblical accounts of the practices of Moloch and Baal worshippers.)

The chief object of prayer has always been to ask for something. Physical and material requests are most rudimentary in prayers. But from early times, people prayed for other things they felt the superior powers had to dispense: deliverance from danger, health, victory, success, but also peace of mind, spiritual well-being, enlightened minds, forgiveness. (Illus. D. Day, June 6, 1944 — Wasson — Hammer and Tongs — churches open for prayer — varied petitions — family, victory, etc.) (Cf. Evacuation of Dunkirk)

Also, throughout time, also mixed in prayers have been: confessions, thanksgivings, expressions of gratitude — if for no better reason than to call attention to the fact that if their lives had been blessed to a certain extent by God, why couldn’t He do more for them?

But also, always in the basic philosophy of prayer there have been those who raise this argument against prayer: “If God is God, He knows our needs and will supply what is best. Therefore, is it not presumptuous to ask? Such an argument is based on a false conception of the nature of God and of our own nature. Such a view is not religion, but fatalism. God has made us living personalities with wills of our own. The first people who prayed were conscious of two things: that they had a will of their own, and that there was another will with which they had to cooperate, God. God could  never have intended that we submit passively, else He would not have given us personality and the power to think and to choose. Therefore, God expects us to pray and to come with our desires, to reason with God. God will deal with us as rational creatures, listen to our wants and desires, and grant them if they fit into His divine, larger plans.

JESUS’ CONCEPTION OF PRAYER

The Lord’s Prayer, which Jesus taught His disciples, is the final outcome of all His thinking upon the experience of prayer. In order to understand its petitions, and more important, its spirit, we should study it against the background of all Jesus’ teachings about prayer. What, in summary, do we find in the gospels of Jesus’ teaching about prayer? The Sermon on the Mount — Matthew 5-7 — contains much of His total instruction on prayer, but scattered through all four gospels are lessons in harmony with the Sermon’s teaching. (Read now – Matthew 6:1-15)

First, we find Jesus declaring repeatedly that the object of prayer is to ask God for what we need. We have noted that this has been from the beginning the basic concern of all praying people. Jesus admonishes in Matthew 7:7-9: “Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you, ask and ye shall receive.” But has not Jesus in the same sermon been teaching the extreme generosity of God, “sending the rain on the just and the unjust,” and caring assiduously for “sparrows and lilies of the field?” How reconcile such differences? There is really no conflict. Jesus was teaching a principle of the whole universe: Nothing is obtained without asking. To sparrows God gives food, but they must seek it and scratch for it. Products of the earth are waiting for human use, but we must find them and take them out. (Illus. From Jesus’ ministry: He was always demanding that those who wished His help ask for it, the sick for healing, the sinner for forgiveness, the would-be disciples must give up possessions and follow Him.)

Second, Jesus declares that prayer is a form of action. He had no patience with prayers that were mere words. (Illus. Matthew 5:23-25 — One come for worship must “leave his gift before the altar and go, be reconciled with his brother and then come and offer his gift.” Also — Parable of Pharisee and Publican.)

Third, Jesus thought of prayer as an act of ours which enables God to act on our behalf. He will do nothing unless we ask Him, and our refusals block His actions — as in our harboring an unforgiving spirit. (Illus. Matthew 6:12 — “forgive us, as we forgive others.” Also, Matthew 6:10 — “doing will of God.”)

CONDITIONS JESUS LAID DOWN FOR REAL PRAYER

1. It is necessary to wait upon God with a true conception of God’s nature. He is not a capricious cosmic power, nor an august sovereign, but a loving Father. (Illus. Matthew 7:9-11 — “What man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?”) (Cf. also — Luke 11:1 ff. espec. Addition — “egg for a scorpion” v. 12, and change to “How much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.” (vs. 13) (Cf. Also — “Abba” Father, Pater. Aramaic was what Jesus spoke.)
2. Pray with unquestioning faith. (Illus. Matthew 17:19-21 — “If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, etc.”)
3. Faith cannot exist without sincerity, therefore prayer must be sincere. Jesus dwells most on this, for His great disgust with some of the Pharisees was their pretense, insincerity. (Illus. — Parable of Pharisee and Publican — Luke 18:9-14) — It is not our words but our desires and our motives to which God listens. These He answers. (Cf. Fosdick — Prayer as Dominant Desire.)
4. Must put ourselves right with other human beings, if prayer is to be real and answered. (Cf. Matthew 5:23-24 — Gift at altar and unrequited wrong. Also: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”) Selfishness creates a barrier between us and God. Hate, envy, jealousy in the heart make real communion with God impossible.
5. Our motives must be right — we must be at peace not only with our fellows, but with ourselves. (Cf. “Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all these things (that you are asking for) shall be added unto you.” — Matthew 7:31-33)

SPECIFIC DIRECTIONS

Jesus usually was against the slavery to form and ritual. (Illus. Sabbath laws, etc.) But he laid down certain fundamental principles of discipline necessary for real prayer.

1. Must be personal — even in corporate prayer must have personal element to be real. Counsels solitude. Shut the world out. “Go into your closet and pray to your Father in secret” –Matthew 6:5-9. (Illus. Confession. Not just: “Forgive my sins,” but “Forgive me that lie I told about my friend, John, to his neighbor.”)
2. Simple language.  No vain repetitions or high flown language.
3. Brief.            Pharisees for pretense made long prayers in public places. Our needs are many. We might go on and on recounting numerous needs, but talking of our needs in God’s presence should enable us to reduce them to the essentials. Prayer helps us to get the proper perspective.
4. Insistent.  (Illus. — Luke 18: 1-8 — Judge and the widow. Friend at midnight for bread.)

CONCLUSION

To understand the prayer Jesus taught His disciples, we must consider it in the light of His various teachings and of His own attitude when He prayed. His object, when He made the prayer was to sum up, once for all, His whole conception of what prayer should be, and this is how men and women have regarded it in all the time since.