Luke 19:45-46
What is a house of prayer, really? Do we too easily assume that it is any place where people worship God? Can it be a house of prayer if there is no prayer in it? Can it be a house of prayer if there is just a little prayer in it? The Pharisees thought they were doing a pretty good job of worshipping God in the Jewish Temple, but Jesus said, no. “You have made it a den of robbers.”
The difficulty is their blindness. They didn’t see a problem with the money changers making it easier for the travelers to worship. They thought they were obeying! They were not just talking about faith. They were trying to live it out, religiously! They were diligent in attending to worship and sacrifices and religious commandments. But somehow, they weren’t praying, or, the prayers they did offer, weren’t prayerful!
Religious people have a much harder time understanding the change of heart that has to happen inside to be right with God. Sinners have it easier. They never used to pray. Now they pray! Their new outward behavior proves they have put their faith in Jesus and repented of sinful habits. They have developed new habits!
But for religious people, with religious habits, what new outward behaviors can show up to prove they have put their faith in Jesus and repented of sinful habits? They can’t just start praying. They have been praying! So how can a formerly religious person who has become a true believer show the faith they now have? They may have prayed much by rote or ritual, or just listened while the pastor led the prayers. The heart change may be less visible outwardly, but the believer knows that now, he or she has begun to take part in the prayers, adding real sympathy and concern for others that grows in their hearts as the Spirit helps them.
They may have always sung the psalms and hymns as they occurred during the worship service. But now they really think about the words and use them to praise God with a full heart. Maybe not be as outwardly dramatic and different as learning to sing them for the first time, but that new joyful enthusiasm can shine forth noticeably. The joy, joy, joy, joy down in your heart can show up on your face!
Is this place where we gather for worship a house of prayer? Do we assume too easily that it is so? Does it depend upon how much prayer happens here? Or what kind of prayer we practice? Or should it be said that it is only a house of prayer if all we do in it is pray? In today’s message I want to talk about the preeminence of prayer, the purpose of prayer and the power of prayer.
Our text establishes the preeminence pf prayer. For the people of God to form the house of prayer in this sanctuary, prayer must be the top priority over any kind of activity that can happen in God’s house. But I don’t mean doing just what we normally think of as prayer, with our heads bowed and eyes closed while one person talks to God out loud.
The reality is supposed to be that everything we do when we gather for worship IS prayer. Even the sacrifices in the Old Testament days were really acted out prayers seeking forgiveness and offering thanksgiving. Worship is prayer. Praise is talking to God about how wonderful he is. Listening is also prayer, because prayer is two-way communication with God.
It is a form of prayer to be in communion with God and listening to God’s wonderful Words in order to be taught and commanded how we should behave in our world. When Mary, Martha’s sister, sat at the feet of Jesus to listen, instead of help with dishes, she was praying, by God’s definition. She was hanging on his every word, and that’s also worship, highly esteeming what Jesus wanted to say. I wonder how many of God’s people have ever thought of it that way. That prayer as a preeminent priority can cover everything we do for God and for and with each other in the fellowship.
When you sing, do you pay attention to the meaning of the words so that you can feel that the song is strengthening your faith to believe the gospel more deeply, or helping you tell God how much you love him, or helping you commit your life and will to serve him and trust him with everything? When you listen to the Scripture, do you really receive it as the very Word of God addressed to you personally, written for your own edification?
When someone, most often the preacher in our culture, talks about God’s Word, do you listen for inspiration? Can it move you to action? Are you fully involved in receiving what God has provided for you here in this hour? That puts a lot on me to be faithful in preparation of this message, I know! But I do not have to be the only one. In fact, I hear you talk about God’s word when we are in Sunday School or Bible study together. You can preach it too! And I like it when you do.
Paul says, pray without ceasing. That is another way of highlighting prayer’s preeminence as the most important activity in our lives. But how is it physically possible? Pray without ceasing becomes possible when it is the thing in which we do all things. By the way this mean that there is a time to do the dishes also. Martha’s gift of service to the Lord is not without honor and can be done unto the glory of the Lord. All things can be done prayerfully. His rebuke to Martha was not so that no one would ever do dishes, but only so that Christians would learn to discern when it is time to prayerfully listen and when it is time to prayerfully wash dishes.
But that’s not all. We do not want to forget that there is a special activity that is pure prayer, that must also be given top priority in our lives so that we do sit at Jesus’ feet in focused attention at regular intervals. Prayer requires the active involvement of your mind and heart for a purpose.
Now if God says his house must be a house of prayer, and that’s top priority, there must be purpose for it. The purpose of prayer is the shaping of Christian character in the children of God. Prayer is what God uses to build his house in us as a community of believers so that we become the light of the world that he wants. The Children of God are meant to be the light of the world and the light of the world is intended to bring more and more people out of the darkness. Isaiah 42:6 says, “I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles.” That’s our purpose. That’s the reason we exist.
The catechism teaches that the chief end of man is to know God and enjoy him forever. But there’s a lot of people who don’t know God and so they can’t enjoy him. Therefore, he sent his Son into the world, to reveal the true God to the world. Then, once Jesus finished his work on the cross and was raised again from the dead, he sends us into the world. In John 20:21, Jesus specifically said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” In fact, through us, Jesus is here, if we pray. Jesus said, in John 12:45, of his mission, “For when you see me, you are seeing the one who sent me.” That should be true for us too, so that when people see us they Jesus who sent us! Only by prayer.
Further, since Jesus prayed every day and maintained his connection with Heavenly Father every day through prayer, how can we do anything less? How can we expect to accomplish anything for Father God if we don’t pray and do whatever he tells us, just like Jesus did? The purpose of prayer is to keep us close to God. That is what will cleanse us of sin and change our hearts so that we grow in grace, die to self and live to serve, exhibiting more and more of the godly character that will draw all men unto Jesus.
The preeminence of prayer will help us fulfill the purpose of prayer and then we will see more and more of the power of prayer at work in the world around us. It is by prayer that we will know the hope to which he has called us, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and fully utilize his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms. I was basically quoting Eph 1:19-20 there.
Paul wants us to pray so that we see the power of God at work. The power of prayer is the power to move mountains, to raise the dead, to cast our demons, to do whatever God asks of us no matter how impossible it seems by earthly wisdom. When Moses parted the waters of the Red Sea that wasn’t his idea. God told him, “Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water.” Moses didn’t even put his rod in the water to stir it up or try to divide it. He just stood there in obedience.
When Ezekiel preached to dry bones to raise them from the dead. That wasn’t his idea. God told him to preach. In John 5:19, even Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.” Prayer is what enables us to see what the Father is doing and the obey his instructions so that we faithfully play our role as his partners.
If someone were to say to me. “Pastor we need practical help, and you want to talk more about prayer?” My answer would be, prayer is the most practical thing we can do. It is the foundation of our life in faith and the fountain from which the Spirit will enable us to respond appropriately, with Godly love and wisdom, to the world in which we live. The great Martin Luther once said something like, “I have so much to do today! If I don’t spend at least two hours in prayer I won’t get anything done!”
It is my belief that if God wants his house to be hose of prayer, then prayer is preeminently our first responsibility. If God’s house is not a house of prayer, it will be a house of cards, a fragile thing that cannot stand up to the opposition and the persecution that the world would throw at us. That is the purpose of prayer, to make us strong in the Lord so that we can fulfill our purpose in the world, to be the light of the world and preach the Good News in the power of the Holy Spirit so that more and more are saved with us.
Spiritual leader A.W. Tozer said, of prayer, “See to it that we pray more than we preach, and we will never preach ourselves out. Stay with God in the secret place longer than we are with men in the public place and the fountain of our wisdom will never dry up. Keep our hearts open to the inflowing Spirit and we will not become exhausted by the outflow. Cultivate the acquaintance of God more than the friendship of men and we will always have abundance of bread to give to the hungry. Our first responsibility is not to the public but to God and our own souls.”1
While that is addressed primarily to pastors, it must also be seen as applicable to every Christian who is in earnest about serving the Lord. And beyond the personal prayer times Christians have always been encouraged to engage in privately, we still have a responsibility to God that his house should be a house of prayer. So earlier I raised this question: “If the Lord is building the house, isn’t he going to be intent on building a house of prayer?” The answer must be, “Yes!” because Jesus expressly quoted the prophet Isaiah, so we have both an Old Testament and a New Testament affirmation that the Lord’s house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.
Now we know that unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. So, is the Lord building this house that we call our congregation? If so, it should be known and seen as a house of prayer. Is that what you think of when you think of this place where we meet? Is this a house of prayer? Could the Lord build it up to be even more of a house of prayer than it currently looks to be? Of course he can. And how will we participate in and cooperate with God’s desire for this place to be a house of prayer? That is the big question that we ought to be pursuing.
For right now, the decision to be made is do we want to be a house of prayer? Do we agree with God that his house should be a house of prayer? Are we willing to commit to seeking God’s face in prayer so that He can build us into the kind of community that he wants to see and that he wants us to be in this world? If we say yes, then we can be sure that we are in the center of God’s will. Prayer will be preeminent. Its purpose will be fulfilled in us, and we will see the power of God at work in the world around us to raise the spiritually dead people we know into new born again believers who rejoice with us.
Let us pray!
What is a house of prayer, really? Do we too easily assume that it is any place where people worship God? Can it be a house of prayer if there is no prayer in it? Can it be a house of prayer if there is just a little prayer in it? The Pharisees thought they were doing a pretty good job of worshipping God in the Jewish Temple, but Jesus said, no. “You have made it a den of robbers.”
The difficulty is their blindness. They didn’t see a problem with the money changers making it easier for the travelers to worship. They thought they were obeying! They were not just talking about faith. They were trying to live it out, religiously! They were diligent in attending to worship and sacrifices and religious commandments. But somehow, they weren’t praying, or, the prayers they did offer, weren’t prayerful!
Religious people have a much harder time understanding the change of heart that has to happen inside to be right with God. Sinners have it easier. They never used to pray. Now they pray! Their new outward behavior proves they have put their faith in Jesus and repented of sinful habits. They have developed new habits!
But for religious people, with religious habits, what new outward behaviors can show up to prove they have put their faith in Jesus and repented of sinful habits? They can’t just start praying. They have been praying! So how can a formerly religious person who has become a true believer show the faith they now have? They may have prayed much by rote or ritual, or just listened while the pastor led the prayers. The heart change may be less visible outwardly, but the believer knows that now, he or she has begun to take part in the prayers, adding real sympathy and concern for others that grows in their hearts as the Spirit helps them.
They may have always sung the psalms and hymns as they occurred during the worship service. But now they really think about the words and use them to praise God with a full heart. Maybe not be as outwardly dramatic and different as learning to sing them for the first time, but that new joyful enthusiasm can shine forth noticeably. The joy, joy, joy, joy down in your heart can show up on your face!
Is this place where we gather for worship a house of prayer? Do we assume too easily that it is so? Does it depend upon how much prayer happens here? Or what kind of prayer we practice? Or should it be said that it is only a house of prayer if all we do in it is pray? In today’s message I want to talk about the preeminence of prayer, the purpose of prayer and the power of prayer.
Our text establishes the preeminence pf prayer. For the people of God to form the house of prayer in this sanctuary, prayer must be the top priority over any kind of activity that can happen in God’s house. But I don’t mean doing just what we normally think of as prayer, with our heads bowed and eyes closed while one person talks to God out loud.
The reality is supposed to be that everything we do when we gather for worship IS prayer. Even the sacrifices in the Old Testament days were really acted out prayers seeking forgiveness and offering thanksgiving. Worship is prayer. Praise is talking to God about how wonderful he is. Listening is also prayer, because prayer is two-way communication with God.
It is a form of prayer to be in communion with God and listening to God’s wonderful Words in order to be taught and commanded how we should behave in our world. When Mary, Martha’s sister, sat at the feet of Jesus to listen, instead of help with dishes, she was praying, by God’s definition. She was hanging on his every word, and that’s also worship, highly esteeming what Jesus wanted to say. I wonder how many of God’s people have ever thought of it that way. That prayer as a preeminent priority can cover everything we do for God and for and with each other in the fellowship.
When you sing, do you pay attention to the meaning of the words so that you can feel that the song is strengthening your faith to believe the gospel more deeply, or helping you tell God how much you love him, or helping you commit your life and will to serve him and trust him with everything? When you listen to the Scripture, do you really receive it as the very Word of God addressed to you personally, written for your own edification?
When someone, most often the preacher in our culture, talks about God’s Word, do you listen for inspiration? Can it move you to action? Are you fully involved in receiving what God has provided for you here in this hour? That puts a lot on me to be faithful in preparation of this message, I know! But I do not have to be the only one. In fact, I hear you talk about God’s word when we are in Sunday School or Bible study together. You can preach it too! And I like it when you do.
Paul says, pray without ceasing. That is another way of highlighting prayer’s preeminence as the most important activity in our lives. But how is it physically possible? Pray without ceasing becomes possible when it is the thing in which we do all things. By the way this mean that there is a time to do the dishes also. Martha’s gift of service to the Lord is not without honor and can be done unto the glory of the Lord. All things can be done prayerfully. His rebuke to Martha was not so that no one would ever do dishes, but only so that Christians would learn to discern when it is time to prayerfully listen and when it is time to prayerfully wash dishes.
But that’s not all. We do not want to forget that there is a special activity that is pure prayer, that must also be given top priority in our lives so that we do sit at Jesus’ feet in focused attention at regular intervals. Prayer requires the active involvement of your mind and heart for a purpose.
Now if God says his house must be a house of prayer, and that’s top priority, there must be purpose for it. The purpose of prayer is the shaping of Christian character in the children of God. Prayer is what God uses to build his house in us as a community of believers so that we become the light of the world that he wants. The Children of God are meant to be the light of the world and the light of the world is intended to bring more and more people out of the darkness. Isaiah 42:6 says, “I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles.” That’s our purpose. That’s the reason we exist.
The catechism teaches that the chief end of man is to know God and enjoy him forever. But there’s a lot of people who don’t know God and so they can’t enjoy him. Therefore, he sent his Son into the world, to reveal the true God to the world. Then, once Jesus finished his work on the cross and was raised again from the dead, he sends us into the world. In John 20:21, Jesus specifically said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” In fact, through us, Jesus is here, if we pray. Jesus said, in John 12:45, of his mission, “For when you see me, you are seeing the one who sent me.” That should be true for us too, so that when people see us they Jesus who sent us! Only by prayer.
Further, since Jesus prayed every day and maintained his connection with Heavenly Father every day through prayer, how can we do anything less? How can we expect to accomplish anything for Father God if we don’t pray and do whatever he tells us, just like Jesus did? The purpose of prayer is to keep us close to God. That is what will cleanse us of sin and change our hearts so that we grow in grace, die to self and live to serve, exhibiting more and more of the godly character that will draw all men unto Jesus.
The preeminence of prayer will help us fulfill the purpose of prayer and then we will see more and more of the power of prayer at work in the world around us. It is by prayer that we will know the hope to which he has called us, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and fully utilize his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms. I was basically quoting Eph 1:19-20 there.
Paul wants us to pray so that we see the power of God at work. The power of prayer is the power to move mountains, to raise the dead, to cast our demons, to do whatever God asks of us no matter how impossible it seems by earthly wisdom. When Moses parted the waters of the Red Sea that wasn’t his idea. God told him, “Raise your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea to divide the water.” Moses didn’t even put his rod in the water to stir it up or try to divide it. He just stood there in obedience.
When Ezekiel preached to dry bones to raise them from the dead. That wasn’t his idea. God told him to preach. In John 5:19, even Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.” Prayer is what enables us to see what the Father is doing and the obey his instructions so that we faithfully play our role as his partners.
If someone were to say to me. “Pastor we need practical help, and you want to talk more about prayer?” My answer would be, prayer is the most practical thing we can do. It is the foundation of our life in faith and the fountain from which the Spirit will enable us to respond appropriately, with Godly love and wisdom, to the world in which we live. The great Martin Luther once said something like, “I have so much to do today! If I don’t spend at least two hours in prayer I won’t get anything done!”
It is my belief that if God wants his house to be hose of prayer, then prayer is preeminently our first responsibility. If God’s house is not a house of prayer, it will be a house of cards, a fragile thing that cannot stand up to the opposition and the persecution that the world would throw at us. That is the purpose of prayer, to make us strong in the Lord so that we can fulfill our purpose in the world, to be the light of the world and preach the Good News in the power of the Holy Spirit so that more and more are saved with us.
Spiritual leader A.W. Tozer said, of prayer, “See to it that we pray more than we preach, and we will never preach ourselves out. Stay with God in the secret place longer than we are with men in the public place and the fountain of our wisdom will never dry up. Keep our hearts open to the inflowing Spirit and we will not become exhausted by the outflow. Cultivate the acquaintance of God more than the friendship of men and we will always have abundance of bread to give to the hungry. Our first responsibility is not to the public but to God and our own souls.”1
While that is addressed primarily to pastors, it must also be seen as applicable to every Christian who is in earnest about serving the Lord. And beyond the personal prayer times Christians have always been encouraged to engage in privately, we still have a responsibility to God that his house should be a house of prayer. So earlier I raised this question: “If the Lord is building the house, isn’t he going to be intent on building a house of prayer?” The answer must be, “Yes!” because Jesus expressly quoted the prophet Isaiah, so we have both an Old Testament and a New Testament affirmation that the Lord’s house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.
Now we know that unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. So, is the Lord building this house that we call our congregation? If so, it should be known and seen as a house of prayer. Is that what you think of when you think of this place where we meet? Is this a house of prayer? Could the Lord build it up to be even more of a house of prayer than it currently looks to be? Of course he can. And how will we participate in and cooperate with God’s desire for this place to be a house of prayer? That is the big question that we ought to be pursuing.
For right now, the decision to be made is do we want to be a house of prayer? Do we agree with God that his house should be a house of prayer? Are we willing to commit to seeking God’s face in prayer so that He can build us into the kind of community that he wants to see and that he wants us to be in this world? If we say yes, then we can be sure that we are in the center of God’s will. Prayer will be preeminent. Its purpose will be fulfilled in us, and we will see the power of God at work in the world around us to raise the spiritually dead people we know into new born again believers who rejoice with us.
Let us pray!
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