In Sydney, Australia, churches have the opportunity to have representatives teach the Christian faith in schools. There’s a story of a boy who came home from school one day and told his mother that the Scripture Teacher had asked each the class quietly to pray to God. Knowing that she had never taught her children to pray, never taught them about God, let alone prayed in their presence, she asked him what he did. ‘I didn’t know what to say,’ he said, ‘so I told God a joke.’
“When you pray”, Jesus said, “Say, ‘Father …” (Luke 11:2).
In his book, Knowing God, Dr. JI Packer asks, ‘What is a Christian?’ Answering his own question he says, ‘…the richest answer I know is one who has God as his/her Father’.
‘Not everyone can say this,’ he points out – only ‘those who, knowing themselves to be sinners, put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as their divine sin-bearer and master,…’ No one comes to the Father except by me, Jesus says. In other words, Packer writes, no one is acknowledged by God as a son/daughter, except by the supernatural work of God’s grace through the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus gives us this model prayer showing us that we can confidently express our privileged, personal relationship with God: we can call him, ‘Father’. Indeed, what makes our prayer, prayer, is the fact that we speak to the living, personal God. He is not some distant deity, nor the impersonal force of Star Wars. We can be bold and call him ‘Father’. It is a personal prayer.
Furthermore, the prayer is a simple prayer. There are no complex sentence structures or difficult language. It suggests God is not impressed by complicated words or ideas. He appreciates simplicity. It is also a restrained prayer: there are no wild extravagances. It’s coherent: it makes sense, and is rather matter-of-fact. It serves as a warning to anyone who feels they need to work themselves up into a frenzy, calling out, thinking that God will hear all the better because of it. God is not distant. He’s not even hard of hearing.
It is also a balanced prayer. The first three statements focus on God. Our first concern in prayer should not be ourselves, but God. Like Moses and Daniel in their prayers, we are to be concerned for the honour of God’s name, the triumph of his cause. It looks to the great day when every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. This is a big, exciting prayer.
But there is also the recognition that we have needs now. So the next statements concern us – food for our physical bodies each day and food for our spiritual needs. We also need the food of God’s Word. There are also sins to be owned up to and forgiveness sought; linked with this petition is our need to forgive those who have wronged us. As we read in Matthew 6, how can we expect God to forgive us if we ourselves are unwilling to hold out forgiveness to those who have sinned against us? And, there is also a petition to overcome the temptations that inevitably come our way.
Prayer is conversation with God. It makes sense that when we pray we let God begin the conversation. As we noted last Wednesday, we need to listen to God’s voice found in his Word. This way we need to get to know who he is, what he is like, how he thinks, and what he expects of us. Once we start listening we will want to talk with God, ask him questions, and make requests.
Prayer is a precious privilege. It brings us into the very presence of the God who is at the heart of the universe. Yet so often our prayer life is dead. Why don’t we pray more consistently than we do?
We are privileged to address God as ‘Father’: he is a person to be known, a Father to be honored. Our prayers should be simple. We should pray for the victory of God. We can pray for big things and for the little things— our fears and joys, our personal sins and the temptations we face.
The starting point is knowing God as Father. The question is, do we really know him as our ‘Father’?
What do you think of prayer? Do you pray regularly, and if your answer is ‘Yes’, do you pray with confidence? Blaise Pascal, the 17th French philosopher and mathematician wrote in his Pensées: God instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.
Pascal understood that the Bible tells us that in making us in his image (Genesis 1:26), God has given us extraordinary privileges. And prayer is one of them.
Yet how often we forget this, especially in those times when God does not seem to be answering our prayers – for work, for a sick loved one or child, for a significant other, or for a place to live.
A good starting point is to think of prayer as a conversation that starts with God. It’s an amazing thought that God who has the creative intelligence and power to put the vast, majestic and complex universe into place, would deign to speak with us. Yet the way Jesus, the Son of God, related to people around him, and what he teaches about prayer, tells us so much about God. Jesus’ actions and his words assure us that God, despite his awesome majesty, delights in speaking with us and having us speak with him.
A LESSON FROM MARTHA AND MARY
Consider, for example, the flow of Luke’s narrative, from Jesus’ words to Martha (Luke 10:38-42) to his words to his disciples specifically about prayer (Luke 11:1-13). Today we’ll look at the first scene.
In Luke 10:38-42 we find two sisters enjoying the company of guests – Jesus and his disciples. But the women were very different. Martha was a focused, active, responsible hostess, busy ensuring everything was done in preparation for the meal. Mary, on the other hand, was more content to be curled up on a lounge, chatting with the guests.
Suddenly Martha’s frustration at her sister’s lack of assistance bubbled over. Bursting in to where Jesus and the others were she blurted out, ‘Lord, when will you tell my sister to help me?’
Jesus’ response is unexpected. We might think he’d gently suggest to Mary that she should be in the kitchen. But he doesn’t. This is surprising, not just because of the culture, but because in the previous scene of Luke’s narrative Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, setting out the meaning of neighbor love.
‘Martha, Martha,’ Jesus chides, ‘You’re too focused on working. Mary has chosen the better portion.’
Jesus wants us to know there are moments in life when the demands of people and the command to love our neighbor pale into insignificance when compared with the prior claim to be with God. The first command is, ‘Love the Lord your God…’. ‘Love your neighbor’, is second.
Important though other things may be, we must not let the pressures of work, study, hospitality, or even ministry be the excuse which prevents us from obeying the first claim of a loving God.
SO, WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT?
Amid the frantic round of activities, we need to carve out time to sit at the Lord’s feet and listen.
It is significant that this little scene occurs immediately before Jesus teaches his followers how to pray. This suggests that when we come to the subject of prayer the first thing we need to do is put aside our busy-ness so we can listen first to God.
How do we do this? Not by simply emptying our minds of any thought but by opening the Bible and reading it.
Over the years I have found the Book of Psalms to be a great starting point for my Bible reading and prayer. Indeed, the Psalms form a helpful prayer book for they are ruthlessly honest as they explore what it means to trust and follow God in a confused and messed up world. The Psalms also give me the freedom to ask questions of God and to learn from him. Indeed, I find ‘a Psalm a day keeps the devil at bay and prompts me to pray.’ More than that, I find God uses the Psalms to start his conversation with me each day.
‘…There’s glory for you!’ ‘I don’t know what you mean by glory,’ Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t…till I tell you. I meant, “There’s a nice knock-down argument for you!” ‘ But glory doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”‘ Alice objected. When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’ So wrote Lewis Carroll in his, Alice Through the Looking Glass.
The word glory is complex in its meaning, and not least in the Bible and its reference to the glory of God. In a Bible text that has been foundational for my ministry we read: We do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 4:5-6).
OUR PROBLEM
Dr. Ashley Null, whose work involves high-level research into the life and work of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, makes this comment about Cranmer’s understanding of humanity: What the heart loves, the will chooses, and the mind justifies…’
In an interview in Sydney in 2001, he further noted that Cranmer said, ‘The trouble with human nature is that we are born with a heart that loves ourselves over and above everything else in this world, including God… If left to ourselves, we will always love those things that make us feel good about ourselves, even as we depart more and more from God and his ways.’
Why we don’t believe. In 2 Corinthians 4:3-4, Paul tells us: The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
While some say that the god of this world is a reference to the powers of evil, it makes more sense to understand it as, ‘the god who consists of this age’. To become preoccupied with the material things of this world blinds us to the spiritual realities of the next. Malcolm Muggeridge, a former editor of Punch magazine observed, men and women are trapped ‘in a tiny dark dungeon of the ego… So imprisoned and enslaved, we are cut off from God and from the light of his love.’
HOW THEN DOES ANYONE COME TO BELIEVE?
Surely we are all in the same boat as far as spiritual things are concerned – including the apostle Paul. We are all spiritually blind.
2 Corinthians 4:6 tells us what God has done:For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Paul’s imagery here is a reference to Genesis 1:3: And God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light. It is a powerful and encouraging image. Turning from unbelief to belief involves an act of divine initiative as awesome and as powerful as the act of creation. God says to our hearts, ‘Let there be light’ and there is light – and from that moment a new world begins.
We cannot truly love God unless he supernaturally changes our hearts. In the opening prayer in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer there is a Prayer for Purity where we pray: Almighty God … Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name, through Christ our Lord.
To quote Dr. Ashley Null again: ‘For Cranmer, the glory of God is to love the unworthy – that’s Cranmer’s fundamental theological tenet…’ The sign of God’s mercy in our life is when we respond to the news of God’s mercy found in the Lord Jesus Christ. In knowing Jesus, we see the glory of God and the light of his truth. We see meaning and purpose to our life. We experience the hope of the glory yet to come.
Furthermore, as we pray that God might be merciful to our friends, and as we play our part in introducing them to Jesus Christ, we can have every expectation that some at least will come to see the light of God in Jesus Christ. We need not despair. God never forgets his promises.
The old proverb, ‘Manners maketh man’ has an interesting history and meaning. It may well have been the personal motto of William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester in the 14th century. It is the motto of New College Oxford and Winchester (School) that Wykeham founded.
We also find it amongst the many proverbs included in William Horman’s Latin textbook, Vulgaria. Horman was headmaster successively of Winchester and Eton in early Tudor times. In his approach to teaching Latin, he drew from English ‘everyday sayings’ (Vulgaria) which he translated into Latin. The ‘sayings’ included a range of subjects – religion, manners, life and nature.
I introduce this proverb, not simply as a (northern) summer curiosity, but to introduce Jesus’ concluding words to his Sermon on the Plain: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I tell you?…”(Luke 6:46).
The title Lord (6:46) was often used as a term of respect for a rabbi or teacher; the twofold, Lord, Lord, is simply a Semitic emphasis. In the context of his developing narrative, Luke wants us to feel the impact of Jesus’ question. Jesus was well known and highly respected as an authoritative teacher. Lip-service is a totally inappropriate response to him.
MANNERS MAKETH MAN
Which brings me back to the proverb, Manners maketh man.
Commenting on the words as the motto of New College, Oxford, Mark Griffith (a Fellow of New College) makes the interesting distinction between the motto as a reference simply to outward behavior, good manners, and as a reference to a deep-seated inner moral change, arising from God’s grace, evidenced in Godly behavior.
Griffith makes the nice point that the founder of New College, ‘a bishop and, by all early accounts, a pious Christian, is unlikely to have selected a motto without strong moral import, still less would he have given such a one to an institution for the education of clerics.’
Certainly, Jesus, in his concluding words to his sermon, has every expectation that his followers will not only be hearers of his teaching but also doers.
He uses two dramatic metaphors to illustrate his point.
Anyone who comes to him and truly hears and obeys his words is like the person who built their house on a foundation of rock. Just as a house constructed on a rock is able to withstand the power of floodwaters lashing it, so too Jesus’ followers will remain firm, living as he has taught and withstanding the difficulties and challenges of life (Luke 6:48).
By contrast, anyone who hears and does not act on Jesus’ teaching islike the person who built a house on the ground without a foundation (6:49). In contrast to the first builder, the second is built on soft soils. As parts of coastal Sydney recently experienced, with powerful winds and seas, houses without a secure foundation get washed away.
FIRM FOUNDATION FOR LIFE
Jesus’ reference here is not primarily to the Day of Judgment, though the idea is present. Rather, he is talking about life now. How we handle challenges and difficulties in relationships, at work and even at church, the opposition and injustices we face, is dependent on the foundation on which we build our life – on Jesus as our Lord and Savior, or on an outward form of a Churchianity that has no substance.
The true follower of Jesus is someone who comes to him as Lord and whose life is transformed, who has a changed inward nature, through obedience to his word. As James puts it in his Letter, Faith without works is dead(James 2:17).
Throughout his Sermon on the Plain Jesus has insisted that anyone who follows him must not simply be a hearer of his teaching merely giving lip-service to their profession of faith. He calls us to be hearersanddoers of his word.
Manners (morals)makethman / woman. Rightly understood and applied this is not salvation by works, but about a life transformed from within by the grace a God – a life which reveals in attitudes and priorities, behavior and relationships what it means to know and love, trust and serve Jesus Christ as Lord of our life.
How different our world would be if everyone who professed to follow Jesus (including leaders) heeded his words. The starting point of course, is with you and me.
Daily we need to pray that by God’s grace we will grow to love the Lord Jesus Christ more and more, growing in his likeness so that we might be found his faithful and loyal servants in the midst of a troubled world.
How often do we ask at the beginning of each day, ‘Lord, what good things have you prepared for me to do today?’
Articles by thoughtful opinion writers continue to focus on the critical times in which we live. In the United Kingdom articles pose questions about the future of the country in the aftermath of the ‘Brexit’ vote, the incoming Prime Minister and the leadership divisions in the Labour Party. In the United States questions persist concerning the character of the presidential candidates on both sides of the political aisle. In Australia the governing party has been returned to power by the slimmest of majorities. Everywhere we look we see evidence of deep divisions fanned by animosities in a changing climate of cultural, racial and nationalistic attitudes.
BLIND GUIDES
‘Do we have a future we can look forward to?’ is one of the questions that is being asked.
Last Wednesday I referred to a recent comment by the actor, Kevin Sorbo who said in relation to the new film, Joseph and Mary: ‘The problems in America would be avoided if people had “any moral principles — any biblical principles in their [lives].”’ He added that ‘fans ask him every day to continue making faith-based, family-friendly films’.
His words remind me of the task of every professing Christian – namely, to play our part in making disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. All of us, one way or another, are called upon to live under the ‘Great Commission’ to ‘make disciples,… teaching them to observe all that Jesus commanded…’ (Matthew 28:19, 20). Whenever and wherever God’s people take up this challenge, under God and in the context of prayer, we hear of lives being changed for good.
In Luke 6:39f we discover how we can learn to do this. Towards the end of Luke’s record of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain we read: He also told them a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind person? Will not both fall into a pit?”
Jesus’ first point is a call to his followers to be careful in their choice of a teacher. Sound doctrine is essential for the work of the gospel and for the unity of God’s church. Jesus himself said it: “Those who worship him (God) must worship in Spirit and in truth”’ (John 4:24).
How critical it is that we sit under faithful and effective teaching of God’s Word so that we then are able to make disciples for Christ. As Jesus put it: “A disciple is not above the teacher, but everyone who is fully qualified will be like the teacher” (Luke 6:40).
SPIRITUAL FRUIT
And there is something else in Luke 6:43f: “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush…” Jesus said.
The metaphor is clear. A tree will always produce the kind of fruit that is consistent with its nature, either good or bad. The kind of person a teacher is, judgmental, condemning, or unforgiving, will become obvious to all. Jesus’ is asking how teachers can teach others if they themselves have not listened to him or been transformed by him.
The theme we find in these words of Jesus has its parallel in Matthew 5:16: “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven…”
‘Everything you are, everything you do,’ Jesus says, ‘must reflect all I have taught. That is how others will come to see the mind and the will of God. That is how lives can be changed. It won’t happen otherwise.’
Whether we like it or not, people look at us once they know we profess to be Christian. They want to know whether we are genuine and whether what we profess is true. As opinion writers are saying, ‘we live in a time of crisis’. People are crying out for help.
We often forget a significant line in the Book of Ecclesiastes: God has put eternityinto the mind of men and women, yet they cannot find out what he has done from the beginning to the end (Eccles. 3:11).
God has given all men and women a sense that life doesn’t end at the grave. And one of the ways he has chosen to reveal himself to the world is through his people.
Through the light of our lives others will be drawn to find out about Jesus. Through the words of our lips people will hear the good news, and come to glorify God on the final day.
