Sermon for HCBC (19 Apr 2020). For the audio of this sermon, click here. Also available on your favorite podcast app.
Introduction
Over the last two weeks, we’ve looked at a number of Psalms together. I’ve encouraged you to learn how to pray from those Psalms. The Psalms have always formed the foundation of Christian prayer. Today, I want to take one more sermon to consider the importance of the Psalms for shaping our prayer life.
Praying the Psalms is not just an idea someone came up with it. It is biblical. It is a pattern we see in Scripture. The most referenced part of the OT by the NT is the book of Psalms. The Psalms, then, are like a calibrating tool for Christians. They are a compass. They orient us in the world. They help us make sense out of where we are and where we are going. But in order to benefit from them as a calibrating tool, we must familiarize ourselves with them. They must become part of our habit. Their language must become our language. Let’s take a look at Acts 4.
Acts 4:23–31
Here’s the context. Peter and John have healed a man in the name of Jesus. This has created a public disruption, resulting in the arrest of Peter and John by the religious leaders. But there aren’t any real charges. So the religious leaders threaten them many times and release them. What’s the threat? It’s in Acts 4:18: “So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.” If they continue talking about Jesus, there will be serious consequences. What would you do?
Notice what Peter and John and the rest of the believers do. Verses 23–24a.* Their initial reaction is to pray. Is that our first response? Would that be our first response in the situation? Or would we rage and complain about it? Get on the phone and call our friends. Post something on Facebook. Contact somebody who has some political power. Read the words closely, “When they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God.”
Notice also that prayer is not an individualistic practice. We, especially in the modern evangelical tradition, have reduced prayer to a me-and-God-thing. Consider our public prayers even. We say things like, “It doesn’t matter if we can hear what is said because it’s just one person talking to God.” Statements like that don’t really have biblical traction. Corporate prayer is a vital activity of God’s people together. We see this in Acts 2:42: “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” There we have the essential elements of the church. Preaching the word of God. Fellowship. The Lord’s Supper. Prayer. But it can’t be individualistic. Preaching requires more than one person. Fellowship refers to a partnership and commitment. The Lord’s Supper can’t be taken alone. And prayer is also an activity to be engaged in together.
They begin their prayer in the second half of v. 24.* Notice how they address God: “Sovereign Lord.” Then they describe his character. “Who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them.” Why do they address God this way? They are recognizing his sovereignty. And it’s this truth that establishes the foundation for their prayer. They are appealing to God because he is sovereign. This is a common pattern throughout the Psalms.
What can we learn about prayer from their address? Prayer isn’t simply about rushing to ask God for things. Prayer is about fixing who God is in our hearts and minds. Prayer is about worshiping and praising God by acknowledging his majesty and glory. We refer to this as adoration. My guess is that most of us spend little time here. Don’t confuse this with thanksgiving. I bet about 95% of the prayers we hear begin this way, “Lord thank you for this day.” But here’s something worth thinking about. Are we more interested in what God has given than God himself? Why aren’t we exalting God? One reason is that the way we were taught to pray isn’t really rooted in Scripture.
Spending time in adoration, acknowledging who God is, is absolutely essential. Think about it this way. How often do you pray and find it doesn’t really help? It’s not surprising when our prayers are like this, “Lord, thanks for the day. Heal my cancer. Amen.” If anything, you’ll come out more anxious. But adoration reorients us. It changes our perspective. It infuses our mind and heart with biblical truth. When we spend time praising God, meditating on his character, adoring him in our prayer, it changes the script that our life is following. For the believers in Acts 4, it reminds them that the threats of the religious leaders are not ultimate. Even if they should arrest them, beat them, and kill them, the Lord is still in control. Now where did they get this from? They are immersed in the language of the Bible, especially the Psalms. If we want to navigate the world as Christians, our little Sunday School prayers aren’t going to cut it. We need a prayer practice that is robustly biblical.
That the believers in Acts are informed by Scripture is explicit because they quote Ps 2 as part of their prayer. Look at vv. 25–26.* Why cite a Psalm? Again, their entire view of the world is shaped by the scriptures. I think this is one of the most important lessons we can learn from this passage. Our minds need to be so saturated by Scripture that we have a biblical instinct. How does that happen? Our input needs to change. We are bombarded with info. Right now, it is info on the coronavirus. In six months, it may be something else. We need more biblical input. Not too long ago, faithful Christians attended morning prayer prior to work every morning. When I say morning prayer, I mean a service similar to the way we have done prayer on Wednesdays this year. Evening prayer was also common. When you are praying the Psalms and hearing Scripture in the gathered church every day, you will be shaped by Scripture. Yet, it is difficult to get weekly attendance at an hour-long church service, and if it happens to go over an hour, someone has some explaining to do. Then, we have the audacity to act pious and fuss about God being taken out of public schools or some nonsense like that. Let me suggest an alternative. Perhaps, those who identify as Christians should take a cue from Acts 4 and worry less about government intervention and instead pray together as the church.
Now why would they cite Ps 2? Without going into great detail, Ps 2 is crucial for understanding the whole message of the Psalms. Psalm 2 tells us about God’s King, the Messiah, who will inherit the nations. Yet, the nations will resist him. The rest of the Psalms are colored by this theme. Indeed, the whole of Scripture riffs on this theme. The believers in Acts 4 cite Ps 2 because it makes sense out of the world. In our world of information overload, truth has become a rare commodity. Our favorite political commentators spin stories to tell us how to think and perceive the world. Headlines are written to shape our view of things. What we need is to take a step back and attend to God’s Word as our source of truth, as our lens through which we see the world, as our compass for navigating the world.
Notice how Ps 2 shapes their world. They see their current situation through the truth of Ps 2. Verses 27–28.* They know Ps 2. It says the nations will oppose the Christ. They aren’t shaken by this reality because they are steeped in the truth of Scripture. It’s not surprising when the nations gather together against Jesus. But notice they also know that God has planned it this way. Let’s read v. 28 again.* We desperately need to recover a classical view of God. God is not scrambling to keep up with the troubles of this world. He is orchestrating and planning all things according to the council of his will. That’s the God of the Bible. That should be comforting. And it should cause us to worship. And it should keep us from idolatry. Idolatry is trusting in created things rather than the creator. Trusting in our country, our military, our economy, our smarts, our work-ethic, our money, fill-in-the-blank. When we exchange the Creator for the creature, we are breaking the first commandment.
Now comes the request. Let’s retrace the logic. Since the Lord is in control and since this is what we can expect from the world based on Scripture, we now make our petition. Verses 29–30.* What would we ask for in the circumstances? Most likely, we would ask for safety and protection. We might ask for fire to consume our enemies. But what does the early church ask for? Boldness. Why? So that they might preach the gospel. It’s that important, that weighty, that precious. Do you believe that? Is the gospel of Jesus the central pulse in your heart? Is he worth dying for? See that’s the prayer isn’t it? Give us boldness to face whatever they throw at us. Make us faithful in the face of persecution. A few years ago, a pastor in a persecuted country made the comment that he didn’t want American Christians to pray for them. He said, “They will just pray for our protection and safety. But what we need is boldness and faithfulness.”
Then there’s the Lord’s answer. Verse 31.* The Lord is sovereign, and he hears his people when they pray. He answers. Some of us may be skeptical of answered prayer, if we are honest. Some of that skepticism comes from the fact that we don’t regularly practice prayer. In his excellent book on prayer, Tim Keller says if we only pray occasionally about the big things, we can expect to only see one or two big answers in our lifetime. But if we regularly pray about everything, we will see many prayers answered. I think there is a striking contrast between us and these believers in Acts 4. Given the same situation, would we pray? I’m worried the answer is no. Do we pray about decisions at the church? We will gladly voice our opinions and complaints. But will we pray?
Conclusion
Church historian, Richard Lovelace, wrote the following in his book on revivals:
The proportion of horizontal communication that goes on in the church (in planning, arguing and expounding) is overwhelmingly greater than that which is vertical (in worship, thanksgiving, confession and intercession). Critically important committee meetings are begun and ended with formulary prayers, which are ritual obligations and not genuine expressions of dependence—when problems and arguments ensue, they are seldom resolved by further prayer but are wrangled out on the battlefield of human discourse…. Perhaps it stems partly from the deficient teaching and emphasis on God himself throughout the church, and partly from the man-centeredness of much religious activity. Deficiency in prayer both reflects and reinforces inattention toward God.
When the church becomes a community organization that gives neat little devotions and talks on being a good person, when the church is consumed with all sorts of cultural and traditional markers and ignores the worship of the triune God, when Scripture is merely read without exposition, when commitment to Scripture is not prioritized, when sound doctrine is ignored, man-centeredness ensues. When man-centeredness ensues, prayerlessness follows. I’m suggesting that our prayerlessness is a symptom of the deeper problem: our allergy to the living God. That’s why the prayer in Acts 4 begins with adoration of the sovereign God. To fix this, we must steep ourselves in Scripture together and seek God’s intervention.