On Prayer (Bullinger’s fifth decade, fifth sermon)

babbling like pagans…

[Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from Bullinger’s Decades and have been lightly adapted.]

What is prayer? Most Christians pray before eating meals. Many people cry out to God when the bottom falls out of life. Christians talk a lot about prayer. But what is prayer? Why are we to pray? How are we to pray?

Bullinger defines prayer simply.

Prayer is a humble and earnest laying forth of a faithful mind, whereby we either ask good things at God’s hands, or else give him thanks for those things which we have received.

It’s asking God for things, and it’s thanking God for things. I love the accessibility of this definition. It’s straightforward. It’s free from unnecessary complication. It’s easy to understand. It keeps prayer from being needlessly mystical or removed from normal life. We ask things of each other in our daily relationships, so prayer is asking our heavenly Father for what we need, and it’s thanking him for what he has given us.

That’s a great place to start if you’re learning to pray or if you’re trying to help someone else learn to pray. Just ask God for what you need, and thank him for what he’s given you.

Bullinger continues that one of our chief needs for prayer is for forgiveness. His example of the anabaptists is amusing, but also well worth considering in our own time.

The anabaptists, who pretend absolute pureness, and therefore, being pure, neither can nor ought to pray, ‘Forgive us our debts,’ since they have no debts remaining. To them the most holy evangelist and apostle John answers, ‘If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.’ For as long as we live in this world, there remain in us remnants of sin to be washed away every moment by the grace of Christ.

Do we pray today out of a heartfelt sense of our own sin? Our own sin, not the sins of others or sins around us? How many of us ask God to forgive us of specific sins, but really we think we’ve done pretty well? How many of us come to God out of sheer desperation, ‘If you don’t forgive me my sins, cleanse me from my unrighteousness, and renew me with your Spirit so that I grow, there’s no one else who can!’

I love the Book of Common Prayer confession of sin (I usually update the language when I use it in my church).

Almighty and most merciful father,
we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep,
we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts,
we have offended against thy holy laws,
we have left undone those things which we ought to have done,
and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.
But thou, O Lord, have mercy upon us,
spare thou those who confess their faults,
restore thou those who are penitent,
according to thy promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord;
and grant, O most merciful Father, for his sake,
that we may hereafter live a godly, righteous, and sober life,
to the glory of thy holy Name.
Amen.

It’s so much easier to talk about coming to God as sinners than truly feeling before God that we are sinners.

Bullinger reminds us that we need faith when we come to God in prayer. Faith, rather than duty and obligation, fuels right Christian prayer.

Let us consider what abilities he who comes to God with the purpose of praying needs. First, it is necessary that he lay aside all opinion of his own worthiness and righteousness. He must acknowledge himself to be a sinner, and to stand in need of all good things; so let him yield himself to the mercy of God, desiring that God will fill him with all things that are good…. Furthermore, and this is most important, it is necessary that they who pray must have a true and genuine faith. Let the doctrine of faith, particularly in the matter of prayer, be for us the light of the morning star. Let him who prays make his petition with an assured hope that he will obtain from God the thing which is asked.

And when God seems not to answer our prayers? Then we’re in good company with the whole communion of saints. How many of God’s people throughout scripture cried out to the Lord, ‘How long O Lord?’, with great longing, before they received what God had promised?

The Syrophoenician woman in Matthew 15 gives us a notable example of unwearied continuing in prayer or invocation. If God seem to neglect us or defer our requests longer than seems appropriate, let us always remember what the prophet has said, ‘Yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not delay;’ and ‘The just shall live by faith.’

Psalm 130 urges us to pray to God believing that the dawn will come. No matter how dark or how long the night, dawn will come.

Bullinger moves from discussing prayer as we normally think about it to discussing singing. This is a good reminder that music in the church really is a form of corporate prayer. Singing in the early church was often more a sort of chant than what we think of as song today. Rather like choral evensong. For the first centuries of the church, when there was song in the church it was usually the Psalms. There was also diversity of musical usage (in singing) in the first centuries of the church; some churches sang, some didn’t. And, per Bullinger’s reading of church history, it seems there was very little division over the use or lack of song. While the ‘worship wars’ often had and have very real theological principles underpinning the disagreements, there is much disagreement over music that is needlessly based on style rather than substance. We must remember that the primary matter in church music is singing scripture, or, at the very least, what is fitting according to the scriptures, for the glory of God and growth of his people.

Many things, even most things, are sung contrary to true godliness; neither are all things that are sung taken out of the holy scriptures, but they’re taken from I don’t know what kind of legends and out of the traditions of men. And those things which are sung out of the scriptures are for the most part so wrested and corrupted, that there remains no part of the heavenly sense or meaning. Creatures and dead men are called up…. To this foolish and ungodly kind of singing there is more heavenly or meritorious value attributed than true faith allows.

While I simply cannot find warrant for exclusive Psalmody in scripture (it seems odd – to say the least – to sing the Psalms that point to the Messiah but not be permitted to sing the Psalm of the one who bore the Messiah and saw his birth, or the Psalms we see throughout the New Testament), surely the church in the West today suffers greatly for its lack of psalmody and scripture soaked music. More often than not, church music today seems driven by an industry and affectation rather than Christian devotion. His Estate (20 Schemes) are a notable exception to this trend, with scripture-soaked songs that are pastorally focused and driven by the needs of the congregation. But whatever sort/style of music we use in the church, is what we sing taken from holy scripture for the edification of the flock?

The second half of the sermon contains a lengthy look at the use of the Lord’s Prayer. Well worth reading, as is Thomas Watson’s The Lord’s Prayer. The Westminster Shorter Catechism is also an excellent guide to the Lord’s Prayer…why don’t we use catechisms more in our churches today…

The sermon closes with a meditation on prayer as thanksgiving and praise. This is something I was convicted by recently, reading a comparison of Lutheran and Reformed liturgies. How much does praise occupy the focus of my own prayers, of the prayers in the congregation I serve, in the life of those in my church? I spend so much time pleading with God for what I think I need, and so little thanking him for what he’s already given. How little time I devote to praising God for who he is and what he’s done, why he himself is worthy of praise apart from anything connected with me. God is worth far more than mere gratitude; he’s worthy of worship for himself alone.

How much better it would be if, in my prayers as in my life, I reflect the words with which Bullinger closes this sermon: all glory is due to one God.

Next, on the sacraments

Tags: Plundering the Past