Organic Christianity: Devoted to the Prayers

I. Introduction

A. Overview of Series

1. Today we come to our second lesson in our series titled “Organic Christianity.” Our goal in this series is to examine the first century church and to see what Christianity looks like without manmade additives and changes, with the goal hopefully, to follow in their steps. Being “organic” – whether this is in reference to being Christians or a local church as God designed them to be, I believe, must be what we aim for if we have devoted ourselves to the Apostles doctrine as we talked about in our last lesson. Our goal; our aim as Christians, is to be pleasing to God, and we know that the Christians in the book of Acts, as they followed the direction given to them by the Apostles of the Lord Jesus, were pleasing to God

2. We have been focusing on the things that we have seen in that our earliest brothers and sisters in the book of Acts were devoting themselves to…

a) “And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” ( ESV).

b) Our goal for today will be to look at the final thing in this list in … how they were devoted to their prayers.

II. Body

A. As we did last week, we will begin with talking about some of the different views of this text, and in this case, the different translations of it, which does affect the meaning some…

1. The ESV, which I read, along with some others (ASV, YLT, RSV) translate the verse telling us that they were devoted to “the prayers”, including the definite article and making the word prayer plural

2. Then you have many translations that translate it “prayer” without the plural and the definite article (NASB, NKJV, NIV).

a) “devoted to prayer.”

b) Many of these translations do though, give in a footnote, that the text does literally say “the prayers” … and this is the case… The translation that includes the definite article and makes prayer plural is the most literal translation…

3. This translation shows that they were devoted to specific prayers… This would include probably a few types of prayers

a) prayer within the specific tradition they were brought up in as Jews

(1) Jewish Prayers and Prayer Times

(a) 3 times/day – 3rd, 6th, & 9th hours

(i) 9AM, 12PM, 3PM - During the primary times of sacrifices and the burning of incense, Jews would come to the temple to pray, or if they were not at the temple, they would pray wherever they were…

(ii) During these times of prayer, the prayers offered included quoting from the Old Testament scriptures, especially the law and the psalms.

(b) ;

(i) "Evening and morning and at noon I utter my complaint and moan, and he hears my voice." ()

(ii) "When Daniel knew that the document had been signed, he went to his house where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had done previously." ()

(c) – went to temple daily...

(i) The earliest disciple’s old traditions found new life and meaning now in Christ. So it is no surprise that we see them going to the temple to pray to God during the traditional hours of prayer, or praying privately during these times, as we see in a few passages in Acts.

(a) ; ; ,

(i) Peter and John (9th hour)

(ii) Peter (6th hour)

(iii) Cornelius (9th hour)

(d) Now just to make sure I am not misunderstood…

(i) I am not telling us these things to say that this is something that we must do. I don’t believe it is

(ii) But it is helpful for us see what our early Jewish brethren did and gain some wisdom from them…

(a) We do see here that it is pleasing to God to have set times of prayer

(i) Many of us already do this (meals)

(b) We also learn from outside Jewish sources that talk about the actual prayers that they prayed that it can be helpful to us and pleasing to God to use God’s word in our prayers.

b) Their being devoted to the prayers also would have included prayers that Jesus taught them ()

(1) This is a prayer that Jesus commanded His disciples to pray, whether using the words that Jesus gave or a form of them

(2) There is a lot of evidence that the early church in the 2nd and 3rd centuries prayed the content of the Lord’s/Disciple’s Prayer multiple times per day to remind themselves of their continued need for the Lord, His authority, His forgiveness, and His care.

(3) .

c) And being devoted to the prayers would also include prayers offered outside of these specific times…

(1) Their devotion to prayer at these specific times probably made them think about prayer, and their need to pray often, and they would not wait until their traditional prayer times to pray. We see in the Bible that they commanded prayer to be something that we are always in the attitude of…

(a) – gathered with God’s people to pray after they came back from being threatened by the authorities… the specific time is not mentioned (b) 12:5,12 – the church came together to pray for Peter, who was arrested by Herod. (c) 16:25 – Paul and Silas were praying at midnight (d) 20:36 & 21:5 – when leaving God’s people, they prayed with them…

B. Examples of Prayer in Acts

1.

a) Devotion to prayer before Pentecost

(1) As Jews, and being taught to pray by Jesus, they would have already been devoted to prayer…

(2) This happens before they received the Holy Spirit. They came together as a group to pray together.

b) Men and women were involved

(1) This group included all who continued to follow Jesus after his earthly ministry and resurrection

(a) We learn in verse 15 that there were 120 people present…

(i) This would have been a packed room!

2.

a) Prayer shows trust in God and need for His help

(1) They knew that they would be tempted to be afraid and not to speak the word of the Lord. So what do they do? They go to their brothers and sisters and they pray together to the God who could empower them to overcome.

b) They trusted and knew that prayer gets God involved!

(1) How often do we try to do things on our own; on our own power because we do not pray?

(2) Sometimes we see how often we are trusting in our own power and how often we are being proud enough to think we can overcome sin alone when we are not praying at those times! If we continue to do this, we will fail!

3.

a) The Apostles in viewed prayer as an important thing. Widows were being overlooked. What a terrible thing. They came to the Apostles and asked them to take care of this situation, but they responded in v2, there is something more important that we have to do. In verse 4 they say “we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word!” They had something more important to do than wait tables, so they appointed others to do the work.

b) How would we respond if we went to a preacher or teacher in a congregation that we were a member of to tell them of a few widows that have been overlooked in being fed, and the preacher said, I can’t take care of this, I need to spend time in prayer?

(1) Would we respond something like this: What do you mean that you need to spend time in prayer? You can pray at any time! You can pray on your way to help the widows! This is important! The Apostles said “we will devote ourselves to prayer.”

c) If we were in the situation of the Apostles, we would more than likely put off our time to pray till later to take care of the problem at hand. If you are like me, our time with God in prayer can easily be put on hold if something comes up. We can pray double later, which hardly ever happens when we think that to ourselves.

C. Other teachings on prayer in the New testament

1. Is prayer important enough to us that we would be willing to give up things important to us for a period of time to spend time with the Lord in prayer? (Food, Husband and Wife relations ())

a) The early church would give up food for periods of time so they could use that time to pray

b) Paul instructed that husbands and wives could give up sexual relations for an agreed period of time so they can spend that time in prayer instead...

2. "pray without ceasing," ()

a) Don’t give up trusting the Lord and praying to Him

b) Be willing and ready to do it at any time.

3. "Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray… Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord." ()

a) Prayer should be our first, natural response, whenever we are afflicted and sick, and it is commanded here by James in . James says earlier in the book that God uses suffering and trials to help us mature in Christ, so why not pray to Him during these timers, and even get others to pray for us also.

b) James says to call for the elders. Now the implication here, I believe, is that someone is so sick that they're most likely bedridden, unable to gather with the church and so the elders, at the invitation of that brother or sister would come to them and pray over them in their sickness.

(1) I don’t see why this is something that is not applicable today. At times of sickness and emergency, calling the elders to come and pray with you can be helpful to you.

4. "Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working." ()

a) If you are need of help because of a sin you are struggling with or entrapped in, you need help! James commands us to reach out, to confess our sins, and to get prayers

b) If we really want god’s gracious healing of our sin, then we will be willing to humble ourselves before one another. God desires that we hold each other accountable and that we hold ourselves accountable for our sin.

5. …

a) Refer to earlier lesson...

III. Closing

A. Prayer Challenge

1. Pray for your brothers and sisters daily by name (see prayer challenge in bulletin)

2. Pray for our family as a whole…

a) Some ideas included in the bulletin

B. Can we say that we have the kind of devotion regarding prayer that our early brothers and sisters did? What are we doing to work on this?