The model prayer

by J. D. Jones

I would first of all call your attention to the circumstances of the origin of this prayer. My text sets these forth. Jesus Christ had been praying. He was a man of prayer. His favourite temple was the mountain top. Away from the noise and bustle of the town, in the solitude of the mountain summit, in the solemn hush and silence of the night, Jesus Christ prayed. No one can talk much with God without bearing about with him visible results of that high fellowship. Moses, after he had been on the mount with God, came down with a countenance that had caught and retained some of the divine glory. His face shone. John G. Paton, the heroic missionary, tells in his autobiography how his saintly father would withdraw every day to talk with God, and as children he and his brother used to notice with wonder and awe the beautiful light upon their father’s face when he came forth from that interview. Do not think me fanciful when I say that I believe that the Master’s face in the morning used to proclaim plainly in what sacred communion He had been spending the night. The halo of the old painters may be fancy, but I am sure that there would be a radiance about the Saviour’s face, an aspect of such unruffled serenity and calm upon His countenance, as would proclaim to all that Jesus had been spending the night in holy fellowship with God. There were many things to try our Lord in life—the malignant hatred of the Pharisees, the persistent blundering of the disciples; and often when Jesus left the mountain He was tired, worn, weary, but after His night of prayer Jesus always came down from the mountain peaceful, calm and strong. And I cannot help thinking that His disciples must often have noticed that expression of calm and peace on their Master’s face after His nights of prayer. It quickened within them the desire to pray as their Master prayed, that they too might enjoy the like peace and strength. And that leads me to remark in passing that people are to be convinced of the supreme value of prayer—not by tracts about prayer, not by eloquent and clever sermons which profess to explain away all the difficulties connected with prayer, but by seeing in us the effects of prayer. When they see us calm, happy, and strong in the midst of the difficulties and worries and cares of life, they will want to know the secret, and so they too will be led to pray. Was it not so with these disciples? Jesus had gone apart to pray. And when He ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, “Lord, teach us to pray, even as John also taught his disciples.” They wanted to be in command of the secret of peace. They wanted to be in possession of the key to God’s storehouse of power. “Teach us to pray.” And it was in answer to that request that Jesus gave to them the “Pearl of Prayers.”

Now, looking at this request of the disciples for a moment, will you notice that it is:

I. A Confession of Need. “Teach us to pray.” We ask the question sometimes, “Why do men pray?” Why do men pray! We might just as well ask, “Why does the nightingale sing? Why does the eagle soar into the boundless blue?” The nightingale sings because it was made to sing; the eagle soars away because its pinions were made for flight, and man prays because he was made for prayer. “Teach us to pray.” That is just the cry of men who must have their instincts satisfied. Man was made to pray. This is the cry that gives expression to the necessity of his nature. “Lord, teach us to pray.” Let me remind you that this is not a need which Christianity has created. Oh, no! the need is in the very make and constitution of a man. Christ only satisfied the need. Prayer is as old as man himself. The first man is far removed from us; in outward circumstances we are utterly unlike him, but we are like him in this respect, in our need of prayer. Society to-day is very different from the primitive simplicity of society in the time of the patriarchs; but we are like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in this respect—we all pray. The Bible is a book of prayers. It is the great prayer-book of the world. All the prayers in it are not on the same spiritual level. In many you will find much that is mistaken. But there they are—the prayers of Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Solomon, Elijah, Hezekiah—all bearing witness to the same need, the same instinct. And I will not confine what I am saying to the men who are mentioned in the Bible. This sense of need is universal. God made man for Himself, and wherever you find man you find his heart and flesh cry out for the living God. The African who worships his fetish, the Hindoo who prostrates himself before his idol, even those poor, benighted people who do their praying by machinery—all these by their acts bear witness to the universal need. Indeed, it is this sense of need that makes the wide world one. When an infant is in need of anything it cries, and the cry of the little one is its prayer. When we men are in need of anything we pray; we may pray in a hundred different ways; we may utter no spoken word, but pray we must. In this respect, men the whole world over are the same. North and south, east and west, whereever you find man, you find him with this instinct for God, under this necessity to pray. It was because these twelve disciples felt that necessity that they made this request eighteen hundred years ago to the Man who was best able to answer it, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

II. This request of the disciples is a confession of ignorance. “Teach us to pray,” said the disciples. Prayer was a necessity to them. But how were they to pray? What were they to pray for? These disciples felt that there might be a right and a wrong way of praying; that there might be a right and a wrong in the things prayed for. And they judged rightly. Prayer is the key to the treasure house of God, but it will lie useless in man’s hand until he is shown how to use it. So here comes the Confession of Ignorance, “Lord, teach us to pray.” “We know not how, nor what to pray for—Thou must show.”

“Teach us to pray!” Teach us how! for there is a right and wrong of praying. Man must pray—he cannot help himself. But how he blunders in his attempts at prayer sometimes. Look at the Hindoo cutting and maiming himself! Look at the Mongol with his praying machine! Ah, yes, man needs to be taught how to pray. I think the disciples wanted to know what I may call without irreverence the “etiquette” of prayer. “Wherewithal shall I come before the Lord and bow myself before the High God?” that was their difficulty. They knew not how they were to enter into the presence of the great King. If a man wishes to be presented to the King, he must obey all the formalities of Court etiquette, and to many that seems rather a formidable task. Perhaps these disciples thought there were equal difficulties in the way of approach to the throne of the Heavenly grace. They wanted to know the etiquette of God’s court. “Teach us to pray. We know not how.” Do we need an intermediary at the throne? Do we need to be introduced to Him that sits thereon? By what name shall we address Him? “Lord, teach us to pray. We know not how.” And here Jesus instructs their ignorance. “You need no intermediary, go boldly to that Throne yourselves; you need no introduction to Him that sits thereon—He knows you, calls you by your name; address Him not as King, Judge, Lord—call Him Father.” It was in answer to their confession of ignorance that Jesus taught His disciples how to pray.

But further, these disciples knew not what to pray for. They did not know what they were to ask for in their petitions! Nor do we! We are “the sons of ignorance and night.” We do not know what is best for us! I often think that if God wished to be unkind to us, He has only to answer our prayers; for we ask Him for things that can only do us harm. The little child often begs for things that look nice, or are pleasant to the taste, but the mother, who knows the harm that would result if these things were given says “No.” We are like little children in our ignorance, and have often asked our Heavenly Father for things that would only injure us. We have all of us to make this confession of ignorance. We have all of us to acknowledge “We know not what to pray for.” We all need to go to Jesus with this request, “Lord, teach us to pray.” And He will teach us. He will tell us what to pray for. He will tell us what He prayed for. He will tell us how He told out to His Father all His desires, but ended every prayer with these words, “Nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done,” and He will give us the assurance that whatsoever we ask of the Father in His name after the Spirit of His prayers, the Father will give unto us.

III. This request of the disciples is a confession that the old prayers are no longer good enough. “Lord, teach us to pray,” they said. Had, then, these disciples never prayed before? Yes, many a time, every day of their lives, and probably several times each day. I imagine that before Jesus called the twelve, they had been what the world would call “religious men.” In fact, we need not imagine it, we know it. Several of them had been disciples of John the Baptist before they became disciples of Jesus. The Jews were, we are told, particularly conscientious in the matter of prayer. Three times a day they withdrew for devotion. And these disciples were good Jews, strict Jews, punctilious in their regard for all points of ritual. We are justified, therefore, in saying that the disciples all through their lives had been attentive to the duty of prayer. What, then, is the explanation of this request “Lord teach us to pray?” Well, the explanation is simply this: the old prayers no longer satisfied them; even the prayers John the Baptist had taught them seemed strangely deficient or inappropriate. After living with Jesus, after hearing Him preach, after listening to His words about God, the old stereotyped prayers seemed to lose all their beauty and power. The disciples felt they could not pray them any longer. They had received from Jesus a new revelation of God, and this new revelation of God created the need for a new prayer. There is a familiar ballad the first line of which runs, “I cannot sing the old songs.” Some change has taken place in the singer’s feelings which makes the old song inappropriate, impossible. It was so with these disciples. They could not pray the old prayers, because their hearts were changed. We all know something of this kind of feeling. Sometimes I look back over old sermons, and very often I have to say to myself, “I could not preach that again.” God has been teaching me during the years of my ministry, and leading me into a fuller knowledge of the truth. In sermons, as in wellnigh everything else, “Time makes ancient good uncouth.” It was so with the twelve. They had been to school to Christ; from their great Master they had learned many a new and glorious lesson about God, and the result of their new knowledge of God, their larger, grander conceptions of His character, was the absolute necessity for a new prayer. They had outgrown the old ones in which they had been brought up. They no longer expressed their feelings or satisfied their needs. You have an illustration of what I am trying to point out in the history of Paul. He was a prominent man in religious circles before he became a Christian. He was scrupulous in his observance of religious duties. After the straitest sect he lived a Pharisee, and if the Pharisees were punctilious about one thing more than another, it was their prayers. But yet, in the account of his conversion, Scripture, after describing Saul as alone and blind in the house in the street called Strait, adds this remark, as if recording a new fact in Saul’s history, “Behold he prayeth.” Saul had said his prayers thousands of times before, but now, for the first time, he was praying the new prayer, which a sense of his own sin and the gentleness of God had made necessary. Oh, yes, when religion is a formality then a prayer which is also a formality will suffice. But once we see the love of God, once we feel our own unworthiness, we shall find the old formal prayers will no longer suffice. We shall need a new prayer then, and like these disciples we shall come to Christ with the request, “Lord, teach us to pray.”

Notice what the disciple adds, “As John also taught his disciples.” Christ might imitate John in the act of teaching, but in the prayer taught Jesus was no imitator. Here Jesus was grandly, supremely original. This was a new prayer He gave. John could not have given it. No man, however saintly and good, could have given it. It surpasses the best efforts of man as the sunlight surpasses the starlight. No one but the Son, who lay in the bosom of the Father; no one but the Son, who had intimate knowledge of the very heart of God, could have taught this prayer, for it opens with a New Name for God—the name Father—and no man knoweth the Father but the Son.

This short but perfect prayer is the Master’s answer to the request of His disciples. They say that prayer is never answered! This “Pearl of Prayers” is the best refutation of that statement. It was given in answer to prayer. “Lord, teach us to pray,” said the disciple, and the answer to his request was this prayer, which has met the needs and expressed the desires of God’s people throughout all generations. And so this prayer itself becomes the best proof of the truth proclaimed in our hymn,

Beyond our utmost wants