Relating To Our Lord #5

Q.   Would you mind sharing your knowledge of God's word on just how we relate to Jesus during the time we are living? I believe conservative Christians avoid being a cult type "Jesus person" and avoid Him completely except for a closing to prayers. Do we only talk thru Him as our mediator or do we also talk to Him directly? I don't want to ignore Him but I don't want to assume a relationship that is in any way disrespectful. - JWW. - - answer page #5

Some teach that the “Lord’s Prayer” is “the Christian’s Prayer.” If this were so, then it would be true that we deal only with God the Father in praying. Any other position would place us in danger as adding to the Word of God.ⁱ

When we compared the “Lord’s Prayer” (in the “gospels”) to David’s prayer in the OT’s 1 Chronicles 29 we discovered, without question, similarities. If David’s prayer is an OT prayer then what would we call the “Lord’s Prayer”? Surely, we would not call David’s prayer a “Christian’s prayer.” Consequently, should we label the “Lord’s Prayer” a “Christian’s prayer”?

Both prayers are parallel in at least two aspects. First, the prophet David prayed to the heavenly Father to prepare and keep the people’s hearts for the building of the physical temple for God in Jerusalem (verses 16 -19). Second, David asked God to give Solomon, David’s son, a perfect heart to assume his role as earthly king over God’s people (verse 19). David was dying.

Similarly, Jesus instructed his band of disciples, particularly the appointed apostles (Mark 3:14; Matthew 10:1), to pray FIRST for His coming spiritual reign (“thy kingdom come”) as David also prophesied in such passages his Psalm 132:11. “Therefore being a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne” (Acts 2:30). This reign did not occur until Pentecost in Acts 2 after Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. He sat upon the promised throneⁱⁱ, not the literal earthly decayed David’s throne on earth but that located at the right hand of God in heaven.

Second, Jesus had His immediate disciples to petition the Father to prepare them morally for their service as suitable as the foundation of His spiritual temple, (the church, the household of God). They would eventually be part of the foundation: “the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye [Ephesian Christians] also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit” (Ephesians 2:19b-22).

It was a model. The prayer was never meant to be recited by the apostles and certainly not by later Christians. Since it was given before the cross it was not intended as a limitation to how a Christian was to talk to Heaven. The context is clear as to why Jesus gave the prayer to his apostles when He did. Beginning in Luke 11:1b, “One of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples.” When one of Jesus’ close disciples asked Him to teach them how to pray, he was following an established practice among circles of rabbis in the first century.

A Rabbi’s Example For Praying. The giving of the prayer was incidental to the responsibility of a rabbi to his students. That is, the “inner circle” of students that followed a teacher such as John the Baptist had a common way of praying. This explains why Jesus gave the model prayer to His selected disciples when He did.

Disciples Of Rabbis. Jesus is identified as a “rabbi” (John 1:38, 49; 3:2; 6:25). Rabbi was, according to Thayer’s Greek Definitions, “a title used by the Jews to address their teachers (and also honour them when not addressing them).”ⁱⁱⁱ His personal instructions to His inner circle of disciples (i.e., class of students) would have been in keeping with the custom of the rabbis at that time. “A few (very few) of the most outstanding Beth Midrash students sought permission to study with a famous rabbi often leaving home to travel with him for a lengthy period of time. These students were called talmidim (talmid, s.) in Hebrew, which is translated disciple. … A talmid wants to be like the teacher, that is to become what the teacher is.”^iv

Followers Of A Rabbi. Rabbis of the first century not only had an inner group of close disciples. “Rabbis also had a larger following who merely attended their public lectures and adopted their rules for living. (The famous) Hillel supposedly had eighty disciples … Jesus had seventy disciples,* though they didn’t just listen to his public lectures—he taught them to preach and pray and sent them out to the many villages in pairs (Luke 10:1).”^v

Being Students Was A Full-time Work. “Being a disciple was a full-time activity and dedicated disciples were expected to give their whole lives to study.” Some of our current local “schools of preaching” follow this reasoning for their full time students. Homer Hailey, Bible evangelist and college teacher,^vi often expressed in my hearing that he would prefer full time local pulpit work with dedicated “preacher boys” on the job training under his supervision. This was apparently the practice in the first century.

“Lord, Teach us to pray like John does His disciples.” Hence, Jesus’ disciples requested special instruction on how to pray like the other schools. We are not told what others including John taught their disciples to pray but it is important, I believe, to know that this was a common practice and this is why the immediate disciples of Jesus desired it and brought it up.

However, this does not explain why Jesus taught the same prayer as a model as part of what is called the “Sermon on the Mount” (Matthew 5-7). Did He teach this prayer to the multitudes as well as to His inner circle disciples?

The Bible Record Actually Does Make A Distinction between the multitudes and Jesus’ school of disciples. Jesus left the multitudes at the foot of the mountain and “When he was set, his disciples came unto him” (Matthew 5:1).^vii That is, “His apostles came” according to the Pulpit Commentary’s interpretation. However, the compilation of lessons on the mount,^viii actually concludes with “And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people [literally, “the crowd”^ix in Greek; same word translated “multitude” in 8:1 and 5:1] were astonished at his doctrine” (Matthew 7:28). At what point had the multitude arrive? We are not told.^x So then the “Lord’s Prayer” may have been at least taught in the hearing of others besides the special Twelve students.

Continued: Values For us to profit from both David’s and The Lord’s Prayer.

- Gaylon West

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