Untitled Sermon (37)

Remember Cain? He has a face to face encounter with God after being caught red-handed, but he neither admitted his weakness nor appealed for mercy.

It wasn’t natural for him.

In , David admits that it was as natural as it was destructive to keep silent about his sin rather than pray.

The disciples in realize that when lying prostrate, it’s much easier to sleep than to offer supplication to God.

Everyone who needs prayer the most finds out that it’s unnatural.

So the disciples ask Jesus (in ) to teach them to pray.

So what is prayer? Here in we find a foundational definition of prayer.

We sum it up this way: Prayer is calling on God to come through on His promise.

The first instance of recorded prayer in the Bible occurs in , outside of the garden of Eden:

Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church Calling on the Name of the Lord

The first instance of recorded prayer in the Bible occurs in Genesis 4, outside of the garden of Eden:

"Adam was intimate with his wife again, and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, for she said, “God has given me another child in place of Abel, since Cain killed him.” "A son was born to Seth also, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord.” ()

Calling on the name of the Lord is more than just saying his name aloud.

Throughout the Bible, the name of the Lord is synonymous with the nature of the Lord.

To call on his name is to make an appeal to his character.

It’s a cry for help, like when someone shouts, “Call 911!” We don’t ask, “After I call 911, what do you think the nature of the conversation should be?”

To call 911 is to make an appeal for help based on what we know 911 is—an emergency line.

The same is true for calling on the name of the Lord.

is a load-bearing” verse.

Non-load-bearing walls can be knocked down without compromising the structural integrity of a house.

Load-bearing walls, on the other hand, can’t be knocked down without the house collapsing.

Verse 26 carries this kind of heavy load when it comes to understanding what it means to pray.

It helps us to build a framework for how we should understand prayer,

since it’s the first time in the Bible we see people calling on the name of the Lord.

Here’s the backdrop of that load-bearing verse. In and 2,

God creates a perfect world, and he places Adam and Eve in it to relate to him and reflect his glory throughout all creation.

In , Adam and Eve are fooled by the serpent, and they decide to replace God rather than reflect him.

When God confronts them about their sin, Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent.

Then God begins to speak. What does he say?

In (another load-bearing verse) he speaks a word of promise.

One day, the seed of the woman will crush the snake.

The woman will have a child who will defeat this deceiver.

Although Adam and Eve sinned, God graciously preserves their lives and promises He will one day make things right through this Son.

So is hopeful at the beginning. Adam and Eve have a son,

and they believe their firstborn is God’s promise fulfilled.

They give him the name Cain, which means “acquired.”

They assume he is the covenant seed testified about in .

But after Cain comes back from the first church picnic with his brother’s blood on his hands,

he’s banished by God, and

it becomes apparent to everyone that he isn’t the promised seed God was talking about.

The rest of is a genealogy of Cain’s descendants that ends with a distant relative named Lamech. (Read 4:23-24)

Murder runs through the family of Cain, and Lamech now brags about how he has outdone his great-great-great-granddad.

That’s where verses 25 and 26 come in.

Adam and Eve have another son, Seth, who offers a contrast.

These people want God to fulfill his promise, even if that day isn’t today.

When people begin to call on the name of the Lord, they are “calling on God to come through on his promise”

of a son who will reverse the curse and defeat the serpent.

Prayer in the Bible is intimately linked with the gospel—

God’s promised and provided solution to the problem of human rebellion against him and its consequences.

The gospel shape of prayer is evident from the opening pages of the Bible—and in particular in ,

when people first begin to ‘call on the name of Yahweh’—

right through the end, when the church prays, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ (see ).

In a sense, then, prayer is saying, “Are we there yet, God?

Please bring about the things that you promised you would.”

Prayer in the Bible is linked to the hope of redemption and, thus, the gospel.

That’s the frame of heart that I’m hoping that we approach God with this morning.

Let’s read over the prayer guide again and I’ll open us up in prayer and we’ll just pray around the room of the things that God has brought to your attention.

Onwuchekwa, J. (2018). Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church. (M. Dever & J. Leeman, Eds.) (p. 35). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church Calling on the Name of the Lord

Prayer in the Bible is intimately linked with the gospel—God’s promised and provided solution to the problem of human rebellion against him and its consequences. The gospel shape of prayer is evident from the opening pages of the Bible—and in particular in Genesis 4:26, when people first begin to ‘call on the name of Yahweh’—right through the end, when the church prays, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’ (see Rev. 22:20).

Onwuchekwa, J. (2018). Prayer: How Praying Together Shapes the Church. (M. Dever & J. Leeman, Eds.) (pp. 33–35). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.