A Primer on Prayer and the Psalms
Sermon Notes
Good morning, everyone. A couple weeks ago we finished up a long series through the book of Romans and we are now moving into a recurring series that we will keep revisiting over time in the book of Psalms. Louis will launch that officially next week, so I have been tasked this morning by focusing on one of our DNA codes at City Awakening that plays into what we will be talking about in Psalms. That DNA code deals with prayer. If you’ve been here a while or gone through Growth Track, hopefully you will remember this one. Prayer is…
Prayer code: Prayer is our first response, not our second.
If you are not a Christian, you may think that prayer is just people talking to themselves or to their imaginary sky daddy or something. And I get that feeling to be honest. Because here is a little secret about most Christians. Prayer is a common thing in Christianity, but almost nobody feels great at it. Just come to a small group or youth meeting and count how long the moment of silence is when the leader asks if there is a volunteer to pray. Prayer is something that all Christians know they should to but often leads to confusion, frustration, or distraction.
1 Thess. 5:16-18 instructs us to “pray without ceasing” but we find that even if we can set aside 10 minutes of our day to dedicated prayer that about 7 minutes of that is our mind wandering.
We feel more like a Christian version of Andy Dwyer’s from Parks and Rec when he is making some confessions and says, “I don’t know who Al Gore is, and at this point I’m too afraid to ask.” Many Christians don’t really know what a good prayer life looks like, but are afraid to ask. Today, we will look at how Jesus taught prayer, then prepare us for our Psalms series and its benefit to our prayer lives.
The first stop today will be Matthew 6 starting in verse 5. This is right in the middle of Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ main goal is to describe what the Kingdom of God is and what it looks like for us to live as citizens of the kingdom of God. He covers a ton of topics and prayer is one of them. We’ll take a quick look at some general principles we can learn from this passage then show how the book of Psalms is a great place to see these principles in practice.
5 “Whenever you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, because they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by people. Truly I tell you, they have their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
The first principle we see here is that God is the intended audience of our prayers. Now that sounds really obvious. But if we are being honest, a lot of our misgivings about prayer come from anxiety about praying in front of other people. We don’t know if we are gonna say the wrong thing or sound weird. We see and hear people pray at small group or in church services and we get jealous or feel inadequate. (the long pause for a prayer volunteer) Before we move on, this isn’t Jesus saying that all kinds of public prayer are wrong or hypocritical. Just that if our goal in prayer is to be seen by people, then we are missing the whole point of prayer.
So, if you want to grow in your prayer life, the focus should be on your private prayers between you and God. It helps to remove the fear of what to say and helps you focus more on growing your personal relationship with God, instead of getting caught up in comparison. Jesus gives us another helpful lesson on prayer in verse 7.
7 When you pray, don’t babble like the Gentiles, since they imagine they’ll be heard for their many words. 8 Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask him.
The second point that Jesus makes is the Prayer is a conversation, not an incantation. Jesus mentions the Gentiles here because in the Greco-Roman religion along with the other pagan religions of the time relied on elaborate, ritual prayers. They invoked the name of the god they were praying to over and over and did certain movements and actions to try and gain his attention and affection.
A great example of this can be found in 1 Kings 18 with the story of Elijah defeating the prophets of Baal. Elijah challenges the prophets to a trial of sacrifice and prayer. They each set up an altar that they will pray to their respective god to burn with fire. The prophets of Baal (there were over 400 of them) spent hours screaming, praying, and moving around their offering, even going as far as cutting themselves to try to get Baal’s attention. But nothing happened and the offering remained unburned.
Then it was Elijah’s turn. He upped the ante by having his offering covered in a swimming pool’s worth of water to where it was soaking wet and surrounded by a moat of water. Then after hearing hours or raving and praying, this is what Elijah prays. (1 Kings 18:36-37)
36 And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. 37 Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.”
After hours of craziness, Elijah gives a straightforward, 2 sentence prayer to God. God then proves his supremacy and existence by sending down fire to consume the entire offering including all the extra water that was poured on it. We can pray to God in the same way today. Being overly wordy or trying to throw in as much religious or churchy language into your prayers reveals an area of unbelief in our lives. It shows that we don’t fully believe that God is a personal God who loves us like a loving parent. When we feel like we have to pour it on, it makes God look like some high official that needs to be appeased or bribed to act or hear us. But the Bible shows us that God is like a loving parent, he desires to speak to us, give us good gifts, and comfort us in our distress.
Again, we don’t have to take the idea that God knows what we need or are praying for already to the other extreme where we never voice our requests or desires to God. Genuine emotion and care for what we are praying for should of course lead us to pray for things over and over again. It’s a way of giving those things over to God as an offering and it is also a way for us to love others well. It is a good thing to write down people’s prayer needs and take time to pray those to God. Not because God may forget about them, but because we so often do. Praying for someone’s need then following up with them about it is one of the sweetest ways to care for them and grow in Christian community.
Understanding these two lessons on prayer helps it to feel less like a confusing, frustrating, or frightening ritual and more like the life-giving, relationship-building conversation that it is intended to be.
Jesus now moves from these lessons to give us a model for prayer in the Lord’s Prayer. One prayer model that we use as a church is the simple acronym ACTS. It stands for Adoration (worship, praise), Confession, Thanksgiving, Supplication (requesting things from God). It’s a helpful way to think through what you are praying for. It isn’t a rigid formula saying our prayers should be 25% of each of these things, it just helps you realize the different elements that can be a part of prayer. You’ll see that the Lord’s Prayer displays these elements as well.
9 “Therefore, you should pray like this:
Our Father in heaven,
your name be honored as holy.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
These opening lines show us a clear picture of Adoration. They are dedicated to worshipping God for who he is and giving him glory. Remember this isn’t for the purpose of stroking God’s ego so that we can then get him to do stuff for us. It is simply using prayer as an act of worship that God deserves. Look at the repetition of “your” in the verses. It puts us in the proper perspective. When we pray we should understand that God is the one in control, he deserves and has earned our praise.
Throughout scripture this kind of adoration of God’s greatness and sovereignty is also a huge factor in our Thanksgiving. We can look at our messed up world and our sinful lives and be thankful that it is our perfect God that calls the shots and not us or some other sinful being. This posture helps us to keep our prayers from becoming a selfish grocery list of what God needs to do for us and instead helps us to understand that no matter what happens, God is with us and His good will will be done.
11 Give us today our daily bread.
This is our first example of Supplication in the Lord’s Prayer, making a request to God. Notice the posture that this phrase assumes. It is asking for God to supply our needs for today and for today’s needs. Having this kind of attitude acknowledges that God doesn’t owe us a certain level of provision everyday, so we don’t have to freak out when we go through hard times. It recognizes that sometimes we walk through plentiful seasons and other times we struggle through fallow ones. But God is still the one whose will is done, and He is trustworthy to provide for us no matter what. A theologian that I read a few years ago illustrated this using tools. God gives all of the tools that we need in order to complete the job of living for Him. Sometimes he supplies us with all the best power tools, but sometimes he gives us one screwdriver. It’s still what we need, but it will be a little harder that time. But we can go to God with the requests that we have of Him and know that they will be heard and answered. Growing in our faith is the process of us finding contentment and even joy in the answers that He gives us.
12 And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And do not bring us into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
We finish up the Lord’s Prayer with this idea of Confession, acknowledging that we are sinful and in need of God’s power to forgive us and help us to fight sin. We could all increase our time in prayer if we simply took the time to go to God with our sins and struggles. Remember that God does already know these sins better than we do ourselves. So, confession isn’t so that God can truly know what’s going on. It’s so that we can grow in examining our lives and recognizing all the ways that we need God’s presence and power in our lives more and more. Confession is foolproof antidote to pride, false humility, and the innate desire that all of us have to hide or hold on to sin in our lives.
Confession truly points out the beauty of the Gospel and grace of God. Here Jesus is encouraging us to tell God about our sins. We don’t have to sugar coat them or prove how good of a follower we are. We can admit that we are sinful and inadequate. And what we get is a loving response from our God. It’s this kind of prayer as a response to the Gospel that begins our relationship with God. 1 John 1:9 tells us that if we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us of unrighteousness. Romans 10:9 tells us that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised him from the dead we will be saved. Perhaps you need that kind of prayer today.
It’s this kind of raw honesty that is one of the biggest reasons why the book of Psalms is such a blessing to us. We see the heartfelt prayers and songs of God’s people. And just like the Lord’s Prayer demonstrates numerous elements that should be part of our prayer lives. Psalms does the same thing for us. Let’s do a quick overview of these different types of Psalms.
Just like we used the ACTS acronym to help us remember key elements of prayer, scholars have also classified different types of Psalms based on their main message and tone. As you read the Psalms you will find that there is tremendous diversity in them. If you are looking to grow in how you communicate with God, there’s no better place to learn, because you get over a hundred examples of real people communicating to God about any number of things. Some Psalms are recorded private prayers or thoughts of an individual like King David and others were specifically written by Israel’s worship leaders for the purpose of being sung in public. That’s why Psalms is the most quoted OT book by New Testament authors and it is the book that Jesus quoted the most. Let’s take a look at some of these categories.
The largest category of Psalms is referred to as General Psalms or Hymns. These are songs of praise to and about God. These mostly cover the Adoration idea that we spoke about. Themes you will see are focus on the power, work, character, and love of God. Psalm 23 teaching about the Lord as our Shepherd is a good example. Psalm 139 that focuses on the sovereignty of God is a good example. It is all about how God knows every detail about us and is with us at all times. But Psalm 139 is a good example of how all of this adoration can fuel our confession or supplication. Here is how David ends Psalm 139 after 22 verses praising God for his sovereignty and omniscience, he says this.
23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the everlasting way.
Praise of God directly leads to the trust in God to ask Him to shape you and lead you, even when that shaping may require you to be pruned in a way that can be difficult or painful. Thankfully there is an entire genre of Psalms that show how we can go to God in difficult and painful times.
These Psalms are known as Lament Psalms. These Psalms feature painful details of the sin and corruption that we experience in our fallen world and hard questions back to God about what He is doing about it. If you’ve ever experienced something horrible or seen an atrocity and thought, “Why did God not stop that, what is He doing?” you will find those same feelings in Psalms of Lament. They lead us to our deepest Supplication or requests of God (Please do something) It’s an encouragement, though, that we have these Psalms. God and the Jewish religious leaders didn’t see these kind of raw, doubting, and questioning psalms as problematic but as worthwhile texts for our relationship with God. We can approach God with our questions and doubts just like a father came to Jesus asking for healing for his child and said, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.”
Many of the laments end with a hopeful message about God’s faithfulness. Our eyes and hearts tell us that this world is not the way we would like it to be, but we can know that God is still faithful and He will make all things new. Psalm 73 is one of my favorite Psalms and a great example of this. It starts on a positive note saying, “God is indeed good to Israel.” But then the next 21 verses are all about how it doesn’t always feel that way. It talks about how the sinful appear to have better and easier lives than those that follow God. The author asks if following God is worth it. “Did I purify my heart and wash my hands in innocence for nothing?” But it shifts back in verse 23 to end this way.
23 Yet I am always with you; you hold my right hand. 24 You guide me with your counsel,
and afterward you will take me up in glory. 25 Who do I have in heaven but you? And I desire nothing on earth but you. 26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart, my portion forever.
It shows us that all of those doubts and pains are real, but we can still trust God. It helps us to be honest in our prayers to God. You’re not gonna run God off with questions or exhaust his patience, his people have been talking to him like that for a long time. Be encouraged by that.
That brings us to the third major category of Psalms, Thanksgiving Psalms. These are like the hymns but are specifically about being thankful for some aspect of God. These range from individual prayers to calls for others to be express thanksgiving to God. Famous examples are:
Psalm 136: Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, his love endures forever (which is repeated throughout)
Psalm 100: Enter his gates with Thanksgiving and his courts with praise
Psalm 32 Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covers…against whom the Lord counts no iniquity.
Reading through thanksgiving psalms is a great way to remind yourself of all that God has done for his people and will help remind you of what He has done specifically for you.
The last category that we will talk about is Wisdom Psalms. We usually think of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes when we think of Biblical wisdom literature, but there are multiple Psalms that talk about how to live wisely as followers of God. Psalm 1 that we will study next week is a great example focusing on being close to God leads to blessed and wise living. Psalm 119 is the longest Psalm at 176 verses and all of them are about the importance of God’s law for our lives.
These are just a few broad categories but they give us a clear picture of the many ways that we can talk to God in prayer. It leads us to our Big Idea, which is a play on our church’s prayer code, as we close out this morning.
Big Idea: Prayer is our first response, and there are numerous ways to pray.
You may be a skeptic in here that thinks prayer sounds kooky or mystical or you can be a longtime Christian that still feels intimidated or frustrated in prayer. But what we’ve seen today is that prayer understood correctly is simply an outflow of the thoughts and feelings that we naturally have as we go through life. We just direct them to God. We communicate to Him the highs and lows of our lives. We aren’t trying to convince or appease Him with special words. We are just showing that we know that He is ultimately in control and the source of our life.