Word of Salvation – Vol.30 No.26 – July 1985
The Wrong Prayer
Or: The Prayer Of Joshua.
Sermon by the Rev. Keith Moerman on Joshua 7:7a,10.
Scripture reading: Joshua 6:15-19; 7:1-12
Psalter Hymnal: 169:1,4 & 9; 434:1,2,4 & 5; 292:1,2 & 3
Book of Worship: Hymn 805:1,2 & 7
Boys and girls, young people, Congregation of Jesus.
IF YOUR KNEES KNOCK, KNEEL ON THEM. ‘Know the saying?
Or perhaps this one:
DON’T EXPECT A THOUSAND DOLLAR ANSWER TO A TEN CENTS PRAYER.
‘Understand?
Prayer is the most difficult exercise.
Prayer is trying – is man’s effort – TO TOUCH THE MUSCLE OF THE ARM THAT MOVES THE WORLD… And BEWARE, once the muscle starts to flex.
There is a saying in Dutch which freely translated goes something like this:
A MAN IN NEED IS QUICKLY ON HIS KNEES…!
And is THAT true…!
You should have seen during the second world war.
The churches were packed out.
After a disaster people start flocking to a church.
When people get into a pickle, into a crisis situation, DOWN THEY GO, on their knees: “Please God, help…!”
Now just imagine that you ARE lying on your knees, praying, and someone walks into the room, kicks you in the back, and says: “Hey, what are you doing, get up, on your feet… and stop praying…’
IRREVERENT? To say the least!
And yet this is precisely what God did to Joshua.
Is that not making mockery of prayer?
“STAND UP, JOSHUA. WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON YOUR FACE?”
Is that God? The One Who tells us to pray to Him?
And now: “GET UP!”
Am I not even allowed to finish my prayer?
WHAT’S WRONG? Why did God say this to the leader of the people of Israel?
WHAT’S WRONG? WHAT’S WRONG? DISASTER!
The relationship between God and His people Israel had snapped, gone, broken. The covenant in danger.
Was THAT their mighty God?
Thirty-six people killed, you know. Thirty- six more widows in Israel. AND WHY? What happened? Remember the story…?
Made daring by the easy fall of Jericho, Joshua sent spies to report on the situation in the little town of Ai, the next city to be conquered. The spies came back: “Joshua, that’s nothing; that’s kid’s play; the lame and the blind can do the job. No point in trudging everybody up there. Three thousand men should do the job easily.”
AND JOSHUA DID NOT EVEN BOTHER TO TALK TO HIS GOD ABOUT THIS.
A small job only; fix it myself. (We don’t need God for small jobs, do we?)
“ISRAEL… MARCH… GO…!” Easy victory??
Well, was it? DISASTER..!
The army of Ai got them running ‘away’ (back). And snipers picked off 36 men.
HOW COULD IT BE? Had God left, forgotten Israel?
Had Jericho been ‘just luck?’
And then Joshua went to work. I mean to pray.
And it was not a quick prayer either.
Joshua and the elders of Israel: dust on their heads; tore their clothes; fell flat before the Lord, or rather, before the ark of the Lord, and remained there till evening. Nothing wrong with that, is there? And listen to Joshua’s beautiful and pious prayer: “Lord, WHY did You bring us across the Jordan anyway? Just so the Amorites could destroy us? WHY did You do it, Lord?”
There are many ‘why’s in the lives of people; even many ‘why’s in the Bible.
Why shouldn’t Joshua be allowed to come with his question- mark?
Everything went wrong, didn’t it?
And you have to try to get out of such a situation.
Joshua was just trying to untangle, to straighten out a big mess. WHY GOD?
And furthermore, and that is good, Joshua is bringing into his prayer the honour of the Name of God: “IF THEY WIPE US AWAY FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH, O GOD, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITHOUT A PEOPLE, TO DECLARE YOUR NAME”. Isn’t that beautifully said? Joshua is not so much busy with himself in this prayer, BUT IS CONCERNED ABOUT THE HONOUR AND GLORY OF GOD. It is surely a pious question which Joshua presents to the Lord. “O Lord, WHY did it all happen, and think about YOUR Name.” Surely, there can’t be anything wrong with such a prayer?
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It’s freezing cold. 25 below zero. I am walking out into the street in my swimmers. I catch a cold. I go on my knees. Dial the emergency number: Heaven, triple 7: “WHY DID IT HAPPEN LORD TO ME?” I ask God to heal me.
OR – Shall I say it? For 20, 30 or 40 years I have been smoking 40 cigarettes a day. I am developing lung cancer. “LORD… PLEASE, HELP ME..! Why does it happen to ME?”
OR – I am a busy man. I mean busy with watching T.V., work, mucking around with friends, busy social life. Hardly any time left. ‘Actually find it very difficult to make time available to read the Bible, to pray, to have my time with the Lord..(and yes, I HAVE to clean up that patch in the garden), LIFE IS SO DEMANDING…! “Lord, WHY do I not have strong and joyful faith?”
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“GET UP. ON YOUR FEET, Joshua!”
“What are you doing lying face down, anyhow?”
God is speaking here with a note of reproach. “GET UP… YOU SHOULD NOT BE ON YOUR KNEES, RIGHT NOW….! You are asking the wrong questions. You are praying the wrong prayer. How is it Joshua, that you are looking for answers at the wrong address? How is it that you are asking ME the God of Heaven and Earth, why things went wrong with YOUR people? You are at the wrong place, Joshua. You are knocking at the wrong door. You SHOULD have known that the Lord of Heaven and Earth is NOT a God of whims and fancies; the Lord is NOT A GOD WHO CHANGES HIS MIND TEN TIMES A DAY; God is NOT a God Who says the one thing and then acts differently… YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN, Joshua. And there is no need to be on your knees and asking me questions, however pious it may sound. It was NOT a SUDDEN CHANGE OF MIND. It was not a GAME OF FATE that Israel lost in the battle against Ai. So Joshua, the ‘WHY’ of your prayer is NOT NEEDED, it does NOT BELONG here. You should have known that when things went wrong and the battle lost that it was not ‘I’, the God of Israel who failed you, but somehow, somewhere, YOU, the people of Israel FAILED ME. Instead of lying on your knees YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN BUSY FINDING OUT ‘WHAT’ WENT WRONG; HOW and WHY the relationship between ME and MY people was broken. Instead of asking WHY DID ITHAPPEN? you should have made a confession of sin….!
Joshua, you KNOW that I am the UNCHANGEABLE ONE, YESTERDAY and TODAY and FOREVER…. My covenant stands forever, and its bonds I will not sever. I do NOT say one thing one day and something else the next. So your question should have been Joshua, “What Lord, what kind of sin brought the separation between You and Your people?”
You should have had a better, deeper spiritual insight”.
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O people of God, prayer is the most wonderful means of communication with the living God. Prayer is my very lifeline. But there are heaps of problems and tons of dangers. Prayer can be misused, abused. There is danger in asking God certain questions, coming with our, “Why did it all happen”, when there ought to have been a confession of sin and of our failures instead.
So often and so easily it can happen that WE do things wrong in our life, and then we ask God TO FIX IT UP AGAIN. (You know that emergency: heaven, triple seven). Instead of falling on our knees and pleading with God for His forgiving grace. And then we wonder WHY OUR PRAYERS ARE NOT HEARD. We are so disappointed. Heaven seems to be closed and so far away.
We may have problems with other people in the church, or even outside the church. Somehow relationships are not good. There is something wrong on the horizontal level. And yet we ask God, say, to bless us in our church life. But we refuse to accept one another as we are. And our prayer for blessings in our church life is not answered, BECAUSE WE REFUSE TO AMEND OUR WAYS. We are asking questions instead of confessing our sins and DOING SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
God is called the hearer of prayer (Ps.65). So true. But God does NOT listen, God does NOT hear IF WE STILL HAVE TO CLEAR AWAY A FEW THINGS IN OUR LIVES. God does not answer our prayer IF THE MOST OBVIOUS IN OUR LIFE is NEGLECTED.
If we pray, “God bless our church” but we refuse to speak to our neighbour about Christ, what’s the point? Our prayer has become useless already. If we pray “let us be a blessing to the community around us”, but we refuse to show compassion or carry the towel ourselves, OUR PRAYER HAS FAILED.
The Lord might even say to us, “get up, on your feet, you’d better start working and showing and doing something about your church; start living it out.”
If we pray – and of course we mean it – “God let our children come to love You dearly,” but we ourselves are not specifically setting an example of faithfulness and love and compassion for God and His Church and His people, then our prayer is being used to ask God to help in areas where we ourselves have failed AND ARE NOT WILLING TO DO MUCH ABOUT IT. Then we are praying the WRONG prayer. Our prayer should have been a confession instead.
Does confession take an important place in our prayers? Do we not too easily somehow ‘blame’ God for matters gone wrong… and that because of our own making?
“JOSHUA, GET UP … STOP PRAYING Israel has sinned. They violated my covenant. And you know what happened? Achan… took things from Jericho that were under the ban, of which God had said, “It belongs to Me”. Achan took it; stole it from ME; lied about it; and hid them with their own stuff. And now the WHOLE of Israel is under the curse. The WHOLE of Israel is under the ban UNTIL THIS EVIL HAS BEEN ROOTED OUT FROM AMONG YOU. Do NOT blame ME for the 36 killed, Joshua … but ISRAEL YOU have broken the covenant, and you Joshua, should have been busy finding out WHAT went wrong. Do your own soul searching first.
The WHOLE of Israel suffered because ONE MAN had violated the covenant of God; the whole of Israel was under the ban, because of ONE MAN. Doesn’t that make you shiver, people of God? The Church of Corinth suffered and many were sick and some died because some in the congregation had misbehaved at the Lord’s Supper and been drunk. The VERY HOLINESS OF GOD HAD BEEN AT STAKE.
The whole church to which we belong MAY WELL HAVE TO SUFFER because SOME, or one or two have committed sin, perhaps are LIVING in sin, refusing to love, and refusing to confess them before the Lord.
Shouldn’t that drive us ALL ON OUR KNEES??? But to confess our sins … to seek refuge, rather than asking questions: ‘why’ – for instance – does our church make so little impact on the community and yet other churches are growing so fast and rapidly, and there IS a spiritual hunger … We KNOW why, don’t we?
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Israel had broken the covenant … and Joshua was praying the wrong prayer. He should have known God better. We KNOW that God is on our side; we KNOW that His hand is not shortened; we KNOW that He is willing to pour out blessing upon blessing upon us … and if He does not … we should not ask, “WHY, LORD?” but rather, what have we done wrong? What is our sin? Where and how can we correct? What must we DO? What is Your will? What is Your direction? How can we change the situation?
Perhaps there is too much indifference, selfishness, formalism, worldliness? Perhaps too much lack of love? Not enough compassion? Too much unwillingness to reach out, to serve? Perhaps not enough tears for a lost world?
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Israel was under the ban … The WHOLE of Israel because of ONE man.
A dreadful, horrible thought.
God corrects Joshua with a critical question: “GET UP. WHY ARE YOU ON YOUR FACE?” BUT…..His will to ‘HEAR’ the Prayer is not questioned. And that becomes very clear from what follows. When Joshua got up and started to find out HOW and WHO had VIOLATED GOD’S COVENANT, and where they had gone wrong… AND CORRECTED IT… (hear that? corrected it… DID something about it)… then God gave a tremendous victory… then God was again on Israel’s side. Then God helps them through and blessed them greatly…! But: AFTER CONFESSION… AFTER: THE WRONG HAD BEEN RIGHTED…. after THE SIN HAD BEEN ROOTED OUT FROM AMONG ISRAEL..!
O Sovereign Lord… teach us that PRAYER without purity is USELESS; teach us that PRAYER WITHOUT PERFORMANCE is FUTILE… or as the poet puts it:
“SIN and FOLLIES UNFORSAKEN,
ALL WILL END IN DEEP DESPAIR;
FORMAL PRAYERS ARE UNAVAILING,
FRUITLESS then the PRAYER’S TEAR.”
But praise, glory and adoration unto God. For after confession… and correction, more things are wrought by prayer than this world can ever dream about.
Amen.