(Against the background of Jesus’

teachings and practice of prayer)

Dr. Paul Tudor Jones

LESSON II – June 19, 1994

As you read the Sermon on the Mount — Matthew 5:7 — and noticed especially what Jesus had to say about prayer, did you find anything which was out of harmony with this model prayer Jesus taught His disciples to pray in Matthew 6:9-13?

What about the rest of the gospel material, as you remember it, in the synopsis and the 4th gospel? Is it all of one piece — all in harmony with the spirit and pattern of the Lord’s Prayer?

(Pause for remarks and discussion)

We know that the gospels reveal Jesus always insisting on the newness of the message He was bringing, warning His listeners not to try to treat it like a new patch of cloth to be sown on an old garment, or like new wine to be put into old wine skins. Jesus came preaching a new order.

Jesus clearly meant His prayer to be a manifesto of the new message. We might, therefore, expect Jesus to make His prayer as different as possible from other prayers to emphasize the newness and radical difference of His message from all others. But this He did not do. His model prayer contains familiar old materials.

But this need not surprise us. Human needs are ever the same. The test of every good prayer is — can it be offered in any age by any people? God never changes. We must speak to Him out of our needs. This is the nature of the Lord’s Prayer.

How much then, did Jesus avail himself of the prayers long in use when He composed the Lord’s Prayer? Whole sentences and words used here were familiar to those who heard him. Scholars of comparative religions have pointed out that parallels can be found in all sacred literatures of: Egypt, Babylon, Persia, etc. But these are pure coincidences, for Jesus could not have had an acquaintance with the literature of these religions. Rather, the similarities are due to the expression of the universal needs of all mankind.

OLD TESTAMENT BACKGROUND

The only source upon which Jesus consciously drew was the Old Testament. This He knew. His principle source was the book of Psalms. The Lord’s Prayer echoes the spirit of the Psalmists as well as their words.

Biblical scholars like Kirkpatrick, Prothero, Deilisch and others have said of the Psalms that they are a perfect “Mirror of the Human Soul” — that they reflect all the human emotions: despair, hope, anger, self-pity, longing, etc. (Illus. Old story of David hanging his harp in a tree and when the winds would blow upon the harp strings, David would rise from his sleep and write down words to go to the celestial music.)

The Psalms in Hebrew were called: Praises of God. They were used in worship — public and private.

Christians have always turned to the Psalms for devotional reading in preparation for prayer. How helpful I have found them in “practicing the presence of God” — to say a few old familiar verses — scripture that has ushered me into a consciousness of God’s presence with me — like: Psalms 103, 23, 121, Isaiah: They that wait upon the Lord, etc.” (Ex. “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”) Recall whatever scripture, or moment of past experience that has spoken to your soul of the reality and nature of God. Then begin to wait upon and speak to Him.

How often, when I begin my day, I find that I have an emotional or spiritual problem on my hands that I need help in handling. It may be envy, or jealousy, pride, self-pity, or fear, or anger. How cope? Only God can help. Lay it out before Him.

The Psalms deal with all these and other spiritual problems. Jesus, in His Jewish home was brought up on the Psalms. It was only natural that the Psalms should be reflected in His great prayer.

SYNAGOGUE SERVICE BACKGROUND

But there were not only the Psalms in the religious nurture of Jesus, there was also the public worship of the synagogue that had strong influence upon His prayer life. Four prayers in the synagogue service were: The Shema, the Kaddish, the Shemone Esreh (or The 18 Benedictions), and the Morning and Evening Prayers.

1. The Shema was not strictly a prayer, but rather a call to worship used at the beginning of each service in the synagogue. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5) The Shema has no place in the Lord’s Prayer, but is presupposed. People are to pray to God in sure conviction that He is, and there is no other God beside Him, and that His character — who He is — is revealed in the Decalogue.
2. The Kaddish is also not strictly a prayer, but rather an exhortation that worshippers wait upon God in a reverent spirit. Before people are to ask something of God, they are to wait upon God realizing who He is and what His will is for them. The Kaddish is in two parts, the first of which is preliminary to the service as a whole, and is as follows:

“May His great name be magnified and hallowed in the world, which He has made according to His will, and may His kingly rule be established in your lifetime — in your time and in the time of the whole house of Israel. May the name of the Lord be praised from now on and forever. May the prayer and petition of all Israel find acceptance before our Father who is in heaven.”

The second part of The Kaddish preceded the address, delivered by some Rabbi who was present:

“Upon Israel and the Rabbis and their scholars and those who learn from their scholars and all who study the Law in this place and everywhere, may there be grace and mercy and compassion and deliverance, from our Father who is in heaven.”

Note these affinities of Kaddish to The Lord’s Prayer.

1. God — “our Father in heaven”
2. His Kingdom is coming
3. His name is to be hallowed
4. He is the giver of life and sustenance and deliverance.
5. The 18 Benedictions – used in every synagogue service. It was no doubt developed in the Temple worship. There are various versions of different lengths. We won’t read all of them — but a sample of several goes like this:
6. Blessed be thou, O Lord, our God and God of our Fathers; God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, a mighty and faithful God, a most high God, creator of heaven and earth, our shield and shield of our fathers, our confidence in all generations. Blessed be thou, O Lord, the shield of Abraham.
7. Holy and fearful is Thy name and there is no God beside Thee. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, the Holy God.
8. Bring us back to Thee, O Lord, that we may return in repentance. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, who has pleasure in repentance.
9. Forgive us, our Father, for we have sinned against Thee; blot out our transgressions from before Thine eyes, for great is Thy mercy. Blessed be Thou, O Lord, who forgivest much.
10. Morning and Evening Prayers — also a part of the synagogue service which undoubtedly influenced Jesus in formulating the Lord’s Prayer was this:

“Give me a portion in Thy Law and lead my feet into the power of Thy commandment, and lead not my feet into the power of transgression. Bring me not into the power of sin, nor into the power of temptation, nor into the power of evil.”

NOTE THE DIFFERENCES — between the Lord’s Prayer and four background sources from the synagogue service of worship:

1. Jesus’ prayer is brief and pointed while the others lose meaning in maze of many words.
2. Feeling Jesus is really speaking to God.
3. Jewish prayers never rise above the national level, while Jesus’ prayer is universal in scope.
4. Jewish prayers laud the Law as supreme, while Jesus’ prayer is intent upon an inner harmony of the soul with God.
5. One petition for which there is no parallel existing in Jewish prayers: “Forgive us, as we forgive” — that we be like God in our human relations.

(Cf. also — Jesus in His explicit teaching of forgiveness was blazing new moral ground.)

            BACKGROUND OF JESUS’ OWN TEACHINGS

AS REFLECTED IN LORD’S PRAYER

This is the most important part of our study. Even the words and phrases from the Old Testament prophets and saints and singers no longer mean the same to Jesus in His teachings as they meant to Old Testament characters. We cannot understand the Lord’s Prayer unless we relate these petitions to His teachings. (I’m sure this is what you discovered as you read the gospel selections of His teachings on prayer.)

1. How wise it was for Matthew to put the prayer in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount to show its affinity to Jesus’ teaching.
2. But how wise it was for Luke to place it in the 11th chapter where in the narrative Jesus is responding to a request of the disciples: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples” — showing that this prayer was none of the earlier teachings, but given later to sum up and express in codified form ideas and patterns of thought already made familiar to the disciples through long hours of teaching.
3. Take various petitions: “Thy Kingdom Come.” Taken by itself it means little, yet set against the background of Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom, a vast panorama of meaning bursts into view. The old Jewish idea of the Kingdom was a coming reign of God when Israel would triumph over her foes and God would rule the world through His chosen people. To Jesus, the Kingdom was the coming reign of God when all would be changed because each one knew God as his Father and God would rule by love in the hearts of all and they would rejoice to do His will. (Cf. Parables of the Kingdom, the Beatitudes, etc.) All these would come into mind as His disciples pray for the coming of the Kingdom. (Cf. this also to the other phrases in the Lord’s Prayer: “Our Father”; “Forgive us as we forgive.”)

ORIGINALITY OF LORD’S PRAYER

“In what sense, then, was the prayer original? When it is put side by side with the Jewish prayers, we are indeed struck by the resemblances, but still more by the differences. The Lord’s Prayer says perfectly what the others are trying to say. It brings us, as they fail to do, into an immediate relation to God. It says less and yet infinitely more. If there has ever been an original utterance, it is this prayer of Jesus which has transformed the whole meaning of prayer and given us a new conception of God and His purposes with humanity. Why does it bear this stamp of originality although so much of it is old?

“For one thing, Jesus does not merely repeat the older prayers but makes His own selection from them. They had contained much that was true and precious but this was mingled, almost hopelessly, with baser metal. In offering them people had been divided in their minds. They had asked God for His heavenly gifts while all the time they were bound to this world and were seeking their own advantage or that of their particular tribe or nation. They confounded the purpose of God with some party enterprise, often of a very doubtful character. Even in the loftiest of the Psalms there is almost always some jarring note of this kind, and the same is true of the later prayers.” (E. F. Scott — The Lord’s Prayer — p. 60ff)

There used to be in old churches a custom. Scrolls would be hung up in the front of the church in full view of the congregation. On one side of the pulpit would be The Ten Commandments. On the other side would be a scroll of the Lord’s Prayer. They are counterparts of each other.

The Law is multitudinous, but all is summed up in the Decalogue. Jesus’ teachings are broad and comprehensive, but all branch out from The Lord’s Prayer.

But there is this vast difference in the two: the Law is God’s will imposed from without, while The Lord’s Prayer sums up God’s will which, when taken in and uttered as a prayer, enables us to serve God, not by compulsion, but willingly and with a glad heart.