Word of Salvation – Vol. 27 No. 36 – Jun 1982

 

Father!

 

Sermon by Rev. H. O. Berends

Text: Luke 11:2a & Heid Cat. Q.&A. 120

Theme: Prayer

Suggested Readings: Psalm 145; Luke 11:1-13

Psalter Hymnal: 49; 201; 300; 436

 

Jesus’ disciples wanted to know about prayer, brothers and sisters.  They had seen Jesus praying on many occasions, and one time, after He had stopped praying, one of His disciples came up to Him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray”.  “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.”  In those days it was the custom for Jewish Rabbis to teach prayers to their students, their disciples.  John the Baptist had obviously followed that example.  Jesus’ disciples, who occasionally talked with John’s disciples, had heard them speak of this.  And so one of them in turn asks Jesus.  “Lord, teach us to pray”.

And Jesus responds to his question, as we saw in our reading.  He responds by, in turn, teaching His disciples, not by giving them specific instructions:- Now first do this and next that, and so on.  But, as He so often did on other occasions, by giving them a concrete example.  By teaching them a specific prayer… the Lord’s Prayer.

Do we want to know about prayer, brothers and sisters?  Do we want to know about prayer, like Jesus’ disciples?  We would do well to look at Jesus’ answer to their question.  We would do well, as indeed I want to do this morning/evening, to look at this prayer which Jesus taught them – the Lord’s Prayer.  And because it would be impossible to do justice to this whole prayer in one sermon, I intend to look at only one portion of it in fact a very small portion of it – the first word of the first sentence only – “Father”.  “And he said to them, “When you pray, say, “Father…!””

“Father”, what does that one word teach us about prayer?  Well, in the first place it teaches us that we pray to a Person; that prayer is a person-to-person conversation.  And not just any person-to-person conversation either.  No, prayer is a very intimate person-to-person conversation.  It is the type of conversation that can be likened to that of a child speaking with its father.  Prayer is, primarily, an intimate, person-to-person, conversation with our heavenly Father – with God.

Many people, even Christian people, don’t realize that, you know.  Oh yes, they know it intellectually, of course, but not in practice.  In practice, prayer, to them, is anything but an intimate, person-to-person conversation.  It’s more like going to the supermarket with a shopping list.  Or perhaps even more like playing a poker machine – you know, what they call a “one armed bandit”.  You put in your money and you pull the lever and – well, usually of course nothing happens.  But if you put in enough money and you pull that handle often enough, then, perhaps, if you are lucky, finally something may happen.  You may hit the jackpot.  But first you’ve got to put a lot into it, of course.  And even then you have to be lucky.  And that’s exactly the way many people seem to look at prayer.  They put in their request and they pull the lever and they don’t really expect much, but maybe, maybe if they pray often enough and hard enough, who knows, they may get an answer they may get what they want.  But it’s all so very mechanical.  God becomes a machine to be manipulated.  Instead of a person, a Father, with whom to talk.

No, that’s not what prayer is.  Prayer is speaking with a person.  It is having an intimate conversation with our Father, our heavenly Father, God.

Do you realize that, brothers and sisters?  Is your prayer an intimate conversation with your heavenly Father?  Or do you find that, when you pray, you put so much concentration on what you are asking – that you put your thoughts so much on yourself and your problems that you completely lose sight of the Father you are supposed to be addressing; that you completely forget that you are not just speaking a monologue to no-one in particular but that you are in fact, talking with God?

I remember reading once, somewhere, about one of the English poets William Wordsworth, I think, if I remember correctly, who was often in the habit, when meeting an acquaintance on the street, of grabbing him by one of his coat-buttons (they must have had big ones in those days) and shutting his own eyes, and immediately starting off on a long monologue into which his, often unwilling, hearer could not get a word edgewise.  Charles Lamb tells of once being the victim of one of these occasions, and as he had neither the inclination nor the time to listen, he took out his pocket knife and carefully cut loose the coat-button upon which the poet had fastened his hand.  He then went and had lunch.  Imagine his surprise when, returning from lunch a considerable time later, he found the poet still standing in the same place, eyes still shut, still firmly grasping the coat button, and still carrying on his monologue with as great a vigour as when he had first begun!

Are our prayers like that, brothers and sisters?  Do we grab God, as it were, by his coat button and shut our eyes firmly and then start talking without much regard to the one we are addressing, completely absorbed in ourselves and what we have to say?  That’s not what prayer is.  That’s not what it should be!  Prayer is not a monologue – it is an intimate conversation, in which we concentrate not only on what we are saying but also on the One to whom we are speaking.  When we pray we may shut our eyes outwardly, but inwardly we should be looking – looking up into the eyes of our heavenly Father.  For prayer is having an intimate, a person- to-Person conversation with God.

That’s the first thing.  The first thing we learn from the word “Father”.  That in prayer we are addressing a Person.  That prayer is an intimate, person-to-Person conversation with God.

The second thing is that not only do we pray to a Person, but we pray to a Person who is always willing to listen.  In telling us to start our prayers to God with “Father”, Jesus stresses that God is always available.  Just like a good earthly father should always be available to his children, always ready to listen to them, so God our heavenly Father is always ready to listen to us.

Have you ever thought of that, brothers and sisters?

Have you ever stood still and marvelled at the wonder of it?

That in prayer you may speak to God and that he listens?  That God is always willing to listen to what you want to say to him?

Have you ever tried to speak to the Prime Minister?  Try it sometime I wonder what would happen?  I wonder what would happen if you picked up the telephone and you rang Canberra and the Prime Minister’s office and you asked the girl who answered, who would probably be some very minor employee somewhere way down the line of importance, I wonder what would happen if you asked her, “I’d like to speak to the Prime Minister, please”.  Why, I don’t have to wonder, do I?  You know what would happen, don’t you?  I wouldn’t have a show!

But with God it is different.  With God you don’t even need a telephone.  All you have to do is open your mouth – no, you don’t even have to do that all you have to do is to speak to Him aloud or in your heart and He listens!  He is our Father!  He is always there!  He is always available!  He is always willing to listen to us!  Always!  Isn’t that amazing?  We don’t have to stand in line and wait our turn.  He never says: “One moment please, I’m busy with someone else just now”.  He never says: “Well that’s it for the day, I’m knocking off now, you’ll have to come back at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning”.

Do you remember Elijah as he contested against the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel?  How he taunted those priests when Baal would not hear them and their pleas for fire?  “Shout harder, perhaps he can’t hear you!  Perhaps he’s talking with people.  Perhaps he’s having a snooze!”

God is not like that.  He is always there to listen.  “The Lord hears when I call to Him,” says the psalmist.  And, in another Psalm: “the Lord is near to all who call upon Him”, and again, “He who watches over you will not slumber, indeed he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep!”  In prayer we can speak to, we can converse with God our Father – and He always listens.  Isn’t that amazing, when you really stop to think about it?  Sometimes when I am praying it really hits me – the sheer wonder of it, the utter incredibility of it!  That the God who made all this universe should be concerned about, should be willing to take the time to listen to my often feeble, often stupid, often insignificant, often so self-centred little prayers.  Do you ever feel that way?  And doesn’t then prayer become wonderful?  God seems to be right there in the room with you.  And you can’t get enough of praying.  You just don’t want to stop.

But, of course, that’s only sometimes, probably not very often.  And sometimes it’s just the opposite, at least in my experience.

Sometimes when I pray, and I’m sure it would be the same with most of you – sometimes when we pray our prayers do not seem to get any higher than the ceiling.  God does not seem to be listening at all.  It seems as if He’s a million miles away, and He’s taken his phone off the hook and there is no way, no way that we can reach Him.  That’s how it seems to be, anyway.  And when it seems that way then prayer becomes so hard, doesn’t it?  Oh what a struggle it becomes to continue, what effort it takes, even to start at all!

But, brothers and sisters, even then God is still listening.  We may not be aware of it we may not feel that close communion.  But that does not alter the fact of God’s assurance to us.  His promise is not affected by our feeling or not feeling His presence.  And ultimately it is not our feelings that are important, but our faith.  God is our Father and He always listens, even when we feel as if He doesn’t.  Even then our heavenly Father listens to our prayers.

That’s the second thing, the second conclusion we can draw from that word “Father”.  That God our Father is always ready to listen.  And the third conclusion is this one:

Not only is God always ready to listen, but, as a Father, He is also ready to answer our prayers.

God answers prayer, brothers and sisters.  We saw that also in the rest of our reading.  “So I say to you”, said Jesus, “Ask and it will be given to you”.  And in John 16:23 He says again to His disciples, “I tell you the truth, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.”  “My Father will give you whatever you ask.”  It couldn’t be much clearer than that, could it now?  Just as a Father will not refuse the requests of his children, so God our Father will not refuse the requests we make of Him.  Do you believe that, brothers and sisters?  God our Father answers our prayers!

But, you will be quick to point out, there are of course some restrictions.  There is of course some fine print at the bottom of the contract.  Not all our prayers are answered.  Not all our requests are granted.  When we ask our Father for a fish, to use Jesus’ own illustration, we will get it.  When we ask Him for an egg we will most certainly receive it.

But we must not expect our prayers to be answered if we ask for a snake or a scorpion.  Those are not things that an earthly father would give to his children.  And our heavenly Father most certainly will not do so either.  “If you ask anything in my name,” said Jesus, “you will receive it.”  “In my name” – therein lies the secret.  For that means in accordance with my will’.  If you ask anything in accordance with my will you will receive it.  But anything that is not in accordance with my will for you, you will not get.

Yes, God says He will answer all our prayers, but He adds an escape clause.  They must be prayed in the name of – that means according to the will of – Jesus.  If they are not, He will not answer them.

An escape clause?  But is that really what these words are?  God’s escape clause?  I don’t think so, congregation.  You know what I think?  That it is us who so often make them an escape clause.  It is not God who has provided Himself with an escape clause, no, it is us.

We pray and we ask for something.  And we conclude our prayer with “in the name of Jesus”.  And then we think inside ourselves – “well, that lets you off the hook, God” – but really it lets us off the hook, doesn’t it?  Because do we not so often use these words as an excuse not to believe that we will get an answer to our prayers?

Do you really expect answers to your prayers, brothers and sisters?  Your personal prayers?  The prayers you pray as a congregation?

Some years ago there appeared a story in “Underground Evangelism” about a Christian congregation in a small town somewhere in Russia.  I don’t know if it was a true story or fiction and for our purpose it doesn’t really matter.  It was a story about a congregation which had suffered from harassment and persecution at the hands of the local officials.  And their church building had been shut.  Now it so happened that there occurred a severe drought in that part of Russia.  And the church members saw their chance in this.  They went to the local officials and they said to them, “Comrades, we have a proposition to put to you.  We will pray to God for rain if you open our church for us.  And if rain comes you are to promise not to persecute us anymore.”

Well, the officials were quite happy to assent to that.  Not, of course, that they believed that anything would come of it.  But after all, it wouldn’t do them any harm either way.  If nothing happened the Christians would be ridiculed and if, by a remotely possible fluke, something did come of it, well, they desperately needed the rain.

So the next Sunday that congregation gathered together in the church building.  And they started praying.  And after 3 or 4 hours of praying, do you know what happened?  It poured!  Their prayer had been answered – it poured, rain was coming down by the bucketful.  But do you know something?  All those Christians, but one, who had gathered there together in that church building to pray for rain were stuck there for hours, until that downpour ended.  Because out of all that congregation there was only one lady who had brought an umbrella.

And aren’t we so often like that, congregation ?  Do we really expect our prayers to be answered?  Or do we merely go through the motions, hoping maybe, but not really expecting very much.  If we don’t, we do ourselves such a disservice.  For God is a God who answers prayer, brothers and sisters.  And that phrase “in Christ’s name” was never meant as an escape clause.  That is what we have made of it so often – an escape clause for our unbelief.  But that is not how God means it.  For God, as our Father, is ready to answer our prayers.

When you pray, said Jesus, say “Father”.

Father that means we are speaking to a Person, that prayer is an intimate, person-to-Person conversation with God our heavenly Father.  And it reminds us that He always hears us.  And it reminds us that He answers our prayers.  The Heidelberg Catechism puts it this way, in Question and Answer 120:

“Why has Christ commanded us to address God thus: our Father?”

“To awaken in us, at the very beginning of our prayer, that childlike reverence and trust which should be the ground of our prayer; namely, that God has become our Father through Christ, and will much less deny us what we ask of Him in true faith than our parents will refuse us earthly things.”

Reverence – towards God as a person.

Trust – that our prayers are always heard by Him.

And the knowledge that He will not deny us what we ask Him in true faith.

Are those the things we think of when we pray, calling God “Father”?

May it, by His grace, be really so.

Amen.