Prayer

A sermon delivered at Calvary Baptist Church, Derby, Kansas. Reprinted with permission from As I See It, which is available free by writing to the editor at dkutilek@juno.com.

Tonight, I want us to study a single word in the NT: proskartereo. It looks and sounds like a perfect candidate for use in a Jeopardy category: “twelve-letter Greek words that are difficult to pronounce”!

This word caught my attention as I ran across it at various times over the years in my studies of the NT in Greek, and I thought its various occurrences and uses rather interesting.

It is a compound word, composed of the preposition pros, which means, “to, toward, in the direction of” and kartereo, a verb with the root idea of “to be strong, firm.” So it literally means “to be strong toward something or someone.” As used in the NT, the word carries the sense and meaning “to be devoted to, to be dedicated to, to focus on, to be committed to, to persist in” some purpose, object or person.

This word is used ten times in the Greek NT, six of which occur in Acts. I want to briefly note each of these uses.

Jesus taught His disciples to pray by uttering a prayer. While some have taken this prayer—the Lord’s Prayer—as a kind of incantation to be recited on cue, it is better viewed as a template. In this most famous prayer, Jesus was providing His disciples with categories that they could use to construct all of their future prayers.

The prayer opens with the words, “Our Father, which art in heaven.” This marvelous phrase sets the tone for all the petitions that follow. In these syllables we learn whom to invoke when we pray and, by implication, in what attitude the invocation ought to be made.

“Our Father” is not a form of address that Old Testament saints typically used in addressing the Almighty. Jacob prayed, “O God of my father,” (Gen. 32:9). When the nation of Israel was about to be struck by God, its leaders prayed, “O God, the God of the spirits of all flesh,” (Num. 16:22). Defeated in battle by Ai, Joshua cried out, “Alas, O Lord GOD,” (Josh. 7:7). Out of the bitterness of her soul, Hanna prayed, “O LORD of hosts,” (1 Sam. 1:11). Solomon, given permission to ask for anything he wished, prayed “O LORD my God,” (1 Kings 3:7), and in the belly of the fish Jonah echoed this language (Jonah 2:6). At the dedication of the temple, Solomon repeatedly prayed, “O LORD God of Israel,” (2 Chr. 6:14, 16, 17). Interceding for the sins of his people, King Hezekiah prayed, “The good LORD pardon every one,” (2 Chr. 30:18). Later, facing conquest by the Assyrian army, this righteous king prayed, “O LORD God of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims,” (2 Kings 19:15). Some prayers began as simply as “O God,” or “O LORD,” but rarely did they address God as “our Father.”

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Jesus wanted to teach His disciples how to pray, but He also wanted to teach them how not to pray. In the Sermon on the Mount, He told them that they should not pray like the hypocrites (Matt. 6:5-6). For Jesus’ followers, prayer should never be offered in order to impress the people who might overhear it.

He also taught that His disciples should not pray like idolaters (Matt. 6:7-8). According to Jesus, idolaters pray in empty repetitions, believing that their verbosity will gain a hearing from their deities. The true and living God, however, is never impressed by pointless reiteration.

By forbidding empty repetition, Jesus was not forbidding all repetitions. Not every repetition is necessarily empty. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain how certain biblical prayers could have been honoring to God.

Perhaps the best illustration is Psalm 136, in which every verse ends with the refrain, “for His mercy endureth for ever.” This phrase is repeated twenty-six times in the space of a short psalm. That certainly counts as repetition.

It is not, however, empty repetition. God’s mercy (His cheesed or covenant faithfulness) is the point of the psalm. The psalm is composed of couplets, each of which begins with some fresh focus upon or description of God’s cheesed. The result is that each repetition of the refrain reflects a slightly expanded or re-aligned understanding of divine mercy. In other words, the refrain means something slightly different each time it occurs. A congregation that prays this psalm thoughtfully is never simply repeating itself, because the refrain takes on fresh meaning with each new iteration.

No one in the Bible was more interested in prayer than Jesus. Prayer was a natural and regular part of His life. He could speak to His Father spontaneously and almost conversationally. He could also devote long periods to planned prayer. Not surprisingly, prayer was one of the important matters in which He instructed His disciples.

A substantial portion of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 6:5-15) focuses on prayer. It occurs in the middle of a discussion of spiritual exercises, which is part of a larger discussion of idolatry, which in turn is part of a larger discussion of the meaning of God’s law. The positive side of Jesus’ instruction takes the form of the Lord’s Prayer, which is designed to provide a template for His followers to employ in their prayer lives. Immediately before the Lord’s Prayer, however, Jesus offers words of negative instruction. Before He teaches His disciples how they should pray, He describes two ways in which they should not.

First, Jesus tells His disciples not to pray like the hypocrites. This warning follows the pattern of Jesus’ instruction about giving and fasting. All of these spiritual exercises can be performed hypocritically.

How does one pray, give, or fast like a hypocrite? According to Jesus, spiritual exercises become hypocritical when they are performed in order to impress people—as the King James Version puts it, to “be seen of men” (Matt. 6:1, 5, 16). The reason is simple.

No one can serve two masters (Matt. 6:24). One must choose between God and money. In the same way, one must choose between God and human praise. When money and praise are pursued as ends, they become idols. Spiritual exercises performed in the pursuit of idols are idolatrous.

The opening chapter of the Fourth Gospel tells how two of John’s disciples turned aside from following the forerunner in order to follow Jesus. The story includes an exchange that is frequently overlooked. The two disciples asked Jesus where He lived, to which Jesus replied “Come and see.” The disciples followed Jesus to the place where He was living, but the day was fast waning. According to the text, the two “lived with Him that day” (John 1:37-39). Indeed, they never stopped living with Jesus—they became His companions throughout the rest of His ministry.

The idea of living with Jesus comes up again in John’s gospel. In John 6, Jesus used the metaphor of eating His flesh and drinking His blood as a way of referring to saving faith. He commented that someone who does these things “lives with Me, and I with him” (John 6:56).

This idea is deepened in John 14, where Jesus comforted His disciples in the face of His imminent departure. He stated that His Father’s house contains many “living places,” the future homes of His followers (John 14:2). Jesus also intimated that the Father lives with Jesus, and was the one who works through Him (14:10). He further stated that if someone loves Him and keeps His words, then the Father will love that person. Both the Father and Jesus will come to that person and “make our home” with him (14:23; the word for “home” is the same as the word for “living-places” in verse 2).

For over three years the disciples had been living with Jesus. Now that He was about to go away, this intimate relationship seemed to be threatened. Jesus assured His disciples that His temporary departure guaranteed a place where they would live together with Him forever. In the meanwhile, Jesus pointed to the inner, spiritual presence of the Father with Him as an analog for the spiritual presence of Jesus and the Father with the disciples. In other words, intimacy with Jesus was not merely an eschatological promise, but also an ongoing possibility during Jesus’ bodily absence.

Mark Twain is supposed to have said that everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Among Christians, almost the same thing could be said about prayer. We know that we ought to pray. We know it is important to pray. We talk about prayer, preach about prayer, and even publish books about prayer. For most Christians, however, not much praying gets done.

Indeed, most Christians have little idea how to pray. Usually they have been told that prayer is “talking to God.” That is true enough, but how many of us can carry on much of a conversation with an invisible, inaudible partner? Sure, we know that we are supposed to talk to God, but what are we supposed to talk about? What are we supposed to say?

This perplexity is not unique to modern Christians. Evidently Jesus’ disciples experienced something like it. After observing the Lord in His conversations with His Father, they presented Him with a petition: “Lord, teach us to pray” (Lk. 11:1).

Jesus did not despise their request. He neither rebuked nor ridiculed His disciples. Instead, He taught them to pray. He even provided them with a template, a model prayer into which they could insert their own concerns and locutions.

Jesus’ disciples had to be taught how to pray. Prayer did not come naturally to them. They did not intuitively know how to do it. If even the disciples had to be taught how to pray, then it is not unreasonable to suppose that Christians in the twenty-first century also have something to learn. Praying is not something that we do by instinct, the way that geese migrate to their destination. If we are going to pray effectively, we must be taught how.