Learning from Daniel to Pray the Prayer That God Hears

Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes.—Dan. 9:3 (Read Daniel 9:1–13)

It is almost seventy years since Daniel came to Babylon. Now a high official in the government, he is reading Scripture one day and discovers in Jeremiah’s prophecy that the Babylonian exile would last seventy years, after which God’s people would “return to this place—Jerusalem” (25:8–11; 29:10–14). It dawns on him that God’s promises are about to be fulfilled! With evident excitement, he turns to “prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes” (v. 3), and in the process he leaves to us one of the great prayers of recorded history. He prays to claim the promises of God, which can only be claimed in prayer, followed by obedient action. True prayer has five parts to it, two of which we consider today, and the other three tomorrow.

True prayer begins with an apprehending adoration of God (v. 4).  Daniel expresses the privilege and pleasure of a believing relationship with God—who is “the Lord my God.” He apprehends God personally. A. W. Tozer observes that to “most people God is an inference, not a reality. He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but he remained personally unknown to the individual.” Daniel recognizes three particular facts in his opening address to God:

• Who God is in himself: the “great and awesome God,” i.e., who is sovereign over all things and to be worshiped from the heart.
• Who God is to his people: he who “keeps his covenant and mercy,” i.e., who acts in sovereign grace to those who love him.
• What God requires of us: that we “love Him, and keep his commandments,” knowing that anything less is sheer hypocrisy.

When we pray, we are on holy ground, like Moses at the burning bush (Ex. 3:5), and, like Moses, we must enter God’s presence reverently.

True prayer continues with confession of sin (vv. 5–13). Daniel emphasizes two essential elements of a sincere and genuine confession:

Daniel confesses sin in specific terms. There is nothing here of the easy, generalized “we all sin in thought, word, and deed” approach so popular today. This confesses nothing and is no better than a means of evading any real facing up to our particular personal sin. Undefined sin is unconfessed sin. And admitting “mistakes” is not repentance, nor is “moving on” reformation. Confession requires self-conviction.

Daniel confesses sin corporately for the whole people of God. This is inevitable when anyone leads a group in prayer, whether in a pulpit at a church meeting or at home in family worship. One person speaks audibly, but all participate: “We have sinned and committed iniquity” (v. 5). Daniel cites three main categories of the church’s sin:

• Disobedience to God’s specific known commands (vv. 5, 7–9).
• Disdain for God’s messengers and their messages (vv. 6, 10–11).
• Denial of God’s warnings and discipline (vv. 12–13).

Daniel is here justifying God’s judgments upon his own people for their turning away from him. In Paul’s words to the Galatians, this says to them and to the world, “God is not mocked” (Gal. 6:7).

This is “the sort of prayer that God hears,” says Stuart Olyott. Daniel teaches us how to pray for ourselves and for our church. He teaches us that no one truly prays until he approaches the Lord in believing, heart-felt reverence. No one will truly confess their sin until they are convicted of it in their heart of hearts. Will you look your sins in the face, like Daniel? Cry to Christ, for he will receive you—it is his promise (see Matt. 11:28ff.). May we all pray with such transparent faith, heartfelt devotion, and godly discipleship!

Taken from Gordon Keddie’s recently published devotional book, The Prayers of the Bible: 366 Devotionals to Encourage Your Prayer Life (Crown and Covenant, 2017). I picked up the Kindle version free a few months ago and have been using it at the end of the day. It has been a wonderful blessing and given me instruction in and inspiration for a better prayer life.

This is the devotional for July 8, which is titled “Prayer That God Hears” (divided into two parts, of which this is the first part).

The Power and Blessing of Jesus’ Intercession for His People

Rome talks about providing an enduring efficacy of Jesus’ sacrifice in the mass.

We reject that. And why do we?

In order to preserve nothing more than a cold, bleak emptiness and hollowness?

No, a thousand times over, no! It’s because only the intercession of Christ maintains the efficacy of that sacrifice! It also provides the unceasing effort and all-enabling strength that sustains the souls of the redeemed day and night. It blesses them!

So don’t ever think that the praying that Jesus does happens now and then based on your petition, your request, or your imploring him for his prayer. It’s not like your Savior has to be asked to pray on your behalf before the throne of grace. Look, Jesus doesn’t just pray for you some of the time or only once! He does so ceaselessly. Praying for you is his preoccupation; it’s his purpose for living! He lives for it. His life revolves around praying for you.

…He lives for uttering his supplications on our behalf before his Father’s throne. Such praying is his very breath. It amounts to pouring out his soul on behalf of his people. Such praying reflects the sacred effort of our redeeming Hero on behalf of those struggling here on earth.

That’s why Jesus’ praying is the lifeline tied to your soul that prevents it from sinking.

Jesus is praying for you even while you’re sleeping.

He’s praying for you even when in the busyness of your daily life you are no longer thinking about him.

As your Savior, he’s praying for you even when you cause him sorrow and distress.

Christ imploring God on your behalf is your constantly flowing stream of life. It’s the wind that fills your sails and moves you forward, even when you lie down exhausted in your little boat and give up struggling.

Yes, even when you approach death and hover between heaven and hell, it will be the praying of Jesus that upholds you, offers you support, and ultimately saves you.

Taken from the new translation by James A. De Jong of Abraham Kuyper’s Honey from the Rock (Lexham Press, 2018), pp.394-95.

This particular meditation (#16 of Volume 2) is titled “He Lives to Make Intercession for Them” and is based on Hebrews 7:25, “Wherefore he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.”

A Prayer of Thanksgiving for God’s Goodness – G. Keddie on Psalm 31

I am enjoying ( that is, being edified and encouraged by) Gordon Keddie’s recently published devotional book, The Prayers of the Bible: 366 Devotionals to Encourage Your Prayer Life (Crown and Covenant, 2017). I picked up the Kindle version free a month ago and started using it at the end of the day.

Friday’s devotional (April 17) was based on David’s prayer recorded in Psalm 31, and it struck me as so relevant to our current situation. So I cut and pasted it from my Kindle into an email and now post it here for your benefit too. As you read it, I believe it will speak to your need in these times as it did to me. (This is not a disclaimer, but I add that Keddie uses the New KJV for these devotionals.)

A prayer of thanksgiving for God’s goodness

Oh, how great is Your goodness, which You have laid up for those who fear You… Ps. 31:19

READ PSALM 31

The goodness of God must be a doctrine believed if it is to be an experience enjoyed. This is most keenly tested when bad things happen to us, because it is not obvious that these are evidence of God’s goodness in our lives. After all, “His judgments are in all the earth” (Ps. 105:7), and at the time even “all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant” (Heb. 12:11). So the upsets, setbacks, disasters, and tragedies of life—“the same event” that “happens to the righteous and the wicked” (Eccl. 9:2)—cause us distress, not joy, and may tempt us to doubt the goodness of God altogether. We naturally cry out in pain and seek relief and resolution. Again, the Lord shows us the way…

To whom are we to turn in our troubles? Answer: the God who saves! David turns to God for deliverance (vv. 1–2), confesses him as his “rock and fortress” (vv. 3–5), and testifies to past mercies from his hand (vv. 6–8). Calvin notes that David “held it as a principle, that the hope which depends upon God cannot possibly be disappointed” and calls us all to act “from a firm persuasion that our safety depends on the power of God.” David worked hard at staying alive—running, hiding, fighting, even feigning madness—but he always depended upon the Lord. It is not an accident that he was given to utter words that Jesus would speak upon the cross: “Into Your hand I commit my spirit” (v. 5; Luke 23:46). As David foreshadows Christ trusting his Father, so we are called to after-shadow Christ our Savior, trusting in him as our surety in a world no less challenging in our time.

Why may we have confidence in the face of troubles? Answer: God is the God of sovereign grace, who delights in “exercising lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth” (Jer. 9:24).

David can claim God’s mercy for two basic reasons (vv. 9–13). The first is that God is in himself “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy” (Ps. 103:8). We are alive “because His compassions fail not” (Lam. 3:22). Even more, we live in “the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2), when “whoever calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved” (Rom. 10:13). This is true for every human being.

The second reason is that God is absolutely sovereign (vv. 14–18). Only because our “times are in [His] hand” do we have a prayer for deliverance (v. 15). “The people of God in every age,” writes Murdoch Campbell, “have had the same awareness [as David] of being exposed to constant danger; but ‘their life is hid with Christ in God’ [Col. 3:3].” God’s sovereignty is not cold and distant to us, for he is our “hiding place” (Ps. 32:7; 119:114), and we are his “dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the cliff,” safe in the Rock of Ages, Jesus his Son (Song 2:14).

What will believers discover even through their troubles? Answer: that God is good (vv. 19–24). In all your troubles, child of God, both physical and spiritual, from illnesses to insults, from foolishness and sins to injuries by others, have you not found with the psalmist that God has loved you through them all and been your “rock of refuge” in Christ your Savior? Indeed, it is Jesus who was “cut off from before [his Father’s] eyes” (v. 22), but “who, in the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear…” and “having been perfected,” became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him” (Heb. 5:7–9).

Dear Christian, you are safe in the arms of Jesus! You have found it so thus far, and will so find it in the glory yet to be revealed. Will you now “love the Lord, all you His saints…for the Lord preserves the faithful” (v. 23)? “Oh, how great is Your goodness!” (v. 19).

Keddie always ends his devotionals by calling the reader to praise God by singing the Psalm. Shall we do that? Here’s a good way to do so (sing along with the piano accompaniment). I include the first three stanzas below.

 

1. In Thee, O Lord, I put my trust,
I call upon Thy Name;
O save me in Thy righteousness,
Nor let me suffer shame.

2. Bow down Thy ear to my request,
And swift deliverance send;
Be Thou to me a rock of strength,
A fortress to defend.

3. Since Thou my rock and fortress art,
My leader be, and guide;
From all temptation rescue me,
Thou dost my strength abide.

 

*Postscript: If you are looking for a good devotional, whether personal or family, this is a fine one. Keddie’s material is not “feel-good fluff,” but Bible-focused, God-centered, and Christ-exalting stuff.

And while I’m recommending this Keddie publication, I highly recommend all his commentaries. I have used them many times over the years and never was disappointed. They are always sound expositions of God’s Word, with principled applications, by a faithful Reformed Presbyterian pastor.

A Prayer in Time of Affliction – John Knox (It’s harder than you think!)

Just and righteous art Thou, O dreadful and most high God, holy in all Thy works and most just in all Thy judgments – yea, even then when as Thou punishest in greatest severity. We have before, O Lord, felt Thy heavy hand on us, and when we cried on Thee in our calamities and afflictions, most mercifully Thou inclined Thy ears unto us. But, alas, O Lord, we have not answered in our lives glorifying Thy holy name as Thou answered us when we called in our distress, but we did return unto our accustomed sin and so provoked Thee through our misdeeds unto displeasure.

Therefore hast Thou most justly turned Thyself to punish [read as chastise] us again in bringing among us this troublesome and destroying pestilence, according to the threatening of Thy law, because we have not made our fruit of Thy former corrections. Our repentance, O Lord, hath been like the dew that suddenly vanisheth away; yea, the great multitude remained hardened in heart through their own pride and, walking in the lusts of their own hearts, confidently despised Thy blessed ordinances. For who hath mourned for the universal corruption of this blind age? …Yea, Lord, where could the man be found that sought not himself, even with the hurt of others and defacing of Thy glory? So universally did and presently doth that root of covetousness reign throughout this whole country. Yea, Lord, they to whom Thou granted worldly blessings in greatest abundance have been and are possessed with this unclean spirit of avarice. The more Thou gave, the more insatiably thirsted they to have, and they ceased not till they did spoil Thee of Thy own patrimony; yet in this matter they will not know themselves to sin and offend Thy majesty. Therefore cannot Thy justice longer spare, but it must punish and strike us as Thou threatenest in Thy holy law.

Now we know, Lord, that Thy judgments commonly begin at Thy own house, and therefore hast Thou begun to correct us, albeit yet in Thy mercy and not in greatest severity. Wherefore, good Lord, either else in the multitude of Thy mercies remove this bitter cup away from us or grant us Thy grace patiently and obediently to drink the same as given out of Thy own hand for our amendment.

We acknowledge, O Lord, that afflictions are disturbing, vexing, and hard to be borne with of fragile flesh; but Christ Jesus hath suffered heavier torments for us, and we have deserved more than we sustain who so oft have merited the very hells. If it shall please Thy Majesty to continue our punishment [read, chastisement] and double our stripes, then let it please Thee in like means to increase our patience and make our corporal afflictions serve to our humiliation, invocation of Thy name, and obedience to Thy holy ordinances. Or if of a fatherly pity it shall please Thee to be content with this gentle correction, let the calm appear after this present tempest that in respect of both the one and the other we may glorify Thee, in that first Thou hast corrected to amendment lest we should have slept in sin to our destruction and, secondly, that Thou hast taken away the bitterness of affliction with the sweetness of Thy comfortable deliverance, in Thee first having respect to the necessity and in the last to our infirmity.

…But, O Lord, now it is Thy own inheritance, for the which we sigh and groan before Thy Majesty. Look on it, therefore, from the heavens, and be merciful to Thy people; let Thy anger and Thy wrath be turned away from us, and make Thy face to shine lovingly on Thy own sanctuary. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, consider, grant our requests, for Thy own sake, O our God, and that in the name of Thy only begotten Son Jesus Christ, our only Savior and Mediator, in whose name we pray unto Thee…. So be it.

Taken from The Collected Prayers of John Knox, edited and introduced by Brian G. Najapfour (Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), pp.37-39. This is the first prayer in the section “Supplication in Times of Difficulty,” and when I read it last week, it struck me as so relevant for the present time. This prayer of Knox is prophetic.

And yes, it smote my own conscience. How fitting for our age, our country, our churches, yes – but, especially for my own heart and life, as we have sat in such prosperity, lusting for more and trusting in our idols to deliver us. And now the Lord is judging us, unmasking the vanity of our false gods and calling us to true repentance and full faith in Him alone.

Can we pray these words of Knox? Yes, as children of God we can, and we must. But will we? May God humble us to do so, and work genuine repentance in us in this time of affliction.

Christmas 2019: “In him thou hast given me so much that heaven can give no more.”

From our home to yours, wherever you are, we wish you a bright (with the Sun of righteousness!) and blessed (from the God of boundless, sovereign grace!) Christmas 2019!

For this special day of joy and hope, we post a wonderful prayer/devotional from The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions (Arthur Bennett ed., Banner of Truth, c.1975, p.16) that I have used before but which is fitting again.

May it instruct our minds and strengthen our souls, directing us to the Gift of all gifts, Jesus Christ and filling us with praise to the Giver of the greatest Gift, our Father in heaven!

O Source of all good,

What shall I render to thee for the gift of gifts,
thine own dear Son, begotten, not created,
my Redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute,
his self-emptying incomprehensible,
his infinity of love beyond the heart’s grasp.

Herein is wonder of wonders:
he came below to raise me above,
he was born like me that I might become like him.
Herein is love;
when I cannot rise to him he draws near on
wings of grace,
to raise me to himself.

Herein is power;
when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart
he united them in indissoluble unity,
the uncreated and the created.

Herein is wisdom;
when I was undone, with no will to return to him,
and no intellect to devise recovery,
he came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost,
as man to die my death,
to shed satisfying blood on my behalf,
to work out a perfect righteousness for me.

O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds,
and enlarge my mind;
let me hear good tidings of great joy,
and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore,
my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose,
my eyes uplifted to a reconciled Father,
place me with ox, ass, camel, goat,
to look with them upon my Redeemer’s face,
and in him account myself delivered from sin;
let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child
to my heart,
embrace him with undying faith,
exulting that he is mine and I am his.

In him thou hast given me so much
that heaven can give no more.

Jesus’ Prayer for Glorification – and Our Prayer for It

God the Father blessed the Son as the Mediator of the elect with a predestined glory that included his promised reward for faithful accomplishment of his work. The glory promised to him included being the Head of the church, Savior of the world, and visible image of God crowned with glory and honor.

God gave this glory to Christ, then, at the very moment that God predestined him to it, even though it was obscured to men in his state of humiliation. Because the Son was a preexistent person, this was not only possible but also suitable to God’s grand design and purposes. The Son knew before the foundation of the world the glory that would be his as Mediator. He voluntarily entered into this world of sin and misery, knowing that he alone would redeem the world from its present state of bondage and decay. Rightly, then, he asked for his glory as the One who would fulfill the preordained purposes of God.

We can and must pray for those things that have been given to us from before the creation of the world. God has blessed us in eternity with all spiritual blessings in Christ, including a conformity to his image (Rom.8:29). We can pray, ‘Father, glorify us, by making us like your Son in this life by faith and in the life to come by sight.’ We possessed this glory when we were chosen in Christ (Eph.1:4-5), but the fulfillment of this glory, which is ours, since we are raised with him already (Col.3:1), is still to come. Until then, we must pray for this reality to take place.

Taken from chapter 11 (“Jesus Prayed for the Glory He Had Before the World Existed”) of Mark Jones’ new book, The Prayers of Jesus – with the subtitle Listening to and Learning from Our Savior (Crossway, 2019), pp.99-105.

The significance of this prayer of Jesus recorded in John 17:4-5 is that God answered this petition of our Lord when he exalted His Son, in His resurrection but also in His ascension, the reality and blessedness of which we just marked as the church of Christ (this past Thursday, May 30).

That prayer of our Lord in the upper room hours before his death was this: “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”

Harrowing Your Heart to Hear God’s Word Preached

Jeremiah 4:3 – “For thus saith the LORD to the men of Judah and Jerusalem, Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.”

“Harrowing Your Heart to Hear” (Chap.3 in Expository Listening: A Handbook for Hearing and Doing God’s Word by Ken Ramey (Kress Biblical Resources, 2010), pp.35-49. We are currently taking time to read and draw on some of the author’s good thoughts concerning our calling to listen believingly to God’s Word proclaimed.

In this third chapter Ramey points to specific ways to ward off hardness of heart that leads to dullness in listening to and receiving God’s preached Word. Here are the points he mentions:

• Read and meditate on God’s Word every day
• Pray throughout the week
• Confess your sin
• Reduce your media intake
• Plan ahead, and schedule your week around the ministry of the Word
• Be consistent in church attendance
• Go to church with a humble, teachable, expectant heart
• Worship with all your heart
• Fight off distractions
• Listen with diligent discernment
• Preparation of the heart and soul

Now, let’s consider a few quotations to help us for Sunday’s messages:

Reading the Word on a daily basis will develop in you a healthy appetite for God’s Word. You can’t expect to come to church on Sunday with a hunger for God’s Word if you haven’t been feeding on it throughout the week.

…You need to pray for the preacher. Pray that the preacher would preach with great liberty and boldness and clarity (Eph.6:19-20; Col.4:3-4); that God’s Word would run rapidly, transforming people’s lives for His glory (2 Thess.3:1); that God’s Spirit would empower the preacher and use him to help you grow in your understanding of God and His Word and accomplish His purpose in your life and the life of the church.

One of the simplest, most effective ways to prepare your heart for the preaching of God’s Word is to spend some time on Saturday night or Sunday morning to prayerfully examine your life and humble confess your sins to God. David’s example of confession in Psalm 51 serves as a practical path to follow in getting your heart right before God.

Listening demands a great deal of concentration and self-discipline. Augustine said, ‘To proclaim the Word of truth as well as to listen to it is hard work…. Thus, let us exert ourselves in listening.’ Jay Adams writes, ‘Many today drift into church with their minds turned off, slouch in the pew, and expect the preacher to do the rest. Examine yourself, brother or sister: have you been guilty of becoming a Sunday morning version of the couch potato?’

When you fail to plan ahead, Sunday morning ends up becoming a chaotic crisis, and by the time you get to church, you are frustrated and frazzled and your heart is in no condition to receive the Word. But when you plan well and are able to arrive in a relaxed, leisurely way, you will be in a much more receptive frame of mind.

Come to church with a spirit of anticipation, fully expecting God to speak to you through His Word in ways that will make a lasting difference in your life. …It should be that you can’t wait to see what you’re going to learn and how God is going to use His Word to convict you, correct you, comfort you, and change you.

It is required of those that hear the Word preached that they attend upon it with diligence, preparation and prayer; examine what they hear by the Scriptures; receive the truth with faith, love, meekness, and readiness of mind, as the Word of God; meditate and confer of it; hide it in their hearts, and bring forth the fruit of it in their lives. (Westminster Confession Larger Catechism)

Why Is It So Hard to Pray? March “Tabletalk” on Prayer

Today I started reading the featured articles in the new issue of Tabletalk magazine. The March issue is on prayer – “Key Questions About Prayer” – and the opening article by editor Burk Parsons is a powerful introduction.

I plan to return to this issue again, but for tonight I wanted to follow up yesterday’s post on the new book on Jesus’ prayers with a quote from Parson’s article, “Why Is It So Hard to Pray?”

It’s hard to pray because humbling ourselves, getting over ourselves, and coming to the end of our stubborn and sinful selves is hard. When we pray, we die to self, and death hurts. That’s why our flesh fights so hard against prayer. When we pray, we are entering into real warfare against our flesh and against the flaming arrows of our accuser and his host. Although they are not afraid of us, they are terrified of the One within us and who is for us, and they despise that we are praying to the One who has crushed them and will destroy them.

Moreover, it’s hard to pray because our focus is too often on praying itself and not on God. We learn about prayer not so that we might know a lot of facts about prayer, but so that we might pray with our focus on God. By His sovereign grace, we know Him, and we know He is there and that He not only hears but listens—that He is not silent but that He always answers our prayers and always acts in accord with His perfect will for our ultimate good and for His glory. When we recognize God’s sovereignty in prayer, we are also reminded of His love, grace, holiness, and righteousness, and we are thereby confronted with the harsh reality of our own wretched sin in the light of His glory and grace.

That is good food for our souls as we enter a new work-week. Let’s remember to begin each day at our sovereign Father’s feet, pleading for His grace and Holy Spirit in our battle under the cross of His Son.

To finish reading Parson’s introduction, visit the link above. To read the other brief articles answering various “key questions about prayer,” visit the link below.

Source: Latest Issue – March 2019

The Prayers of Jesus: As a Child of the Covenant

A brand new book I requested and received from Crossway publishers carries a unique title and contains a special focus – The Prayers of Jesus – with the subtitle Listening to and Learning from Our Savior (2019; 221 pp.). The author is Mark Jones, pastor of Faith Vancouver Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Vancouver, B.C.

As the title reveals, this is a study of the prayers of our Lord as contained in the Bible. And where would you start in considering these prayers? To what passage would you turn first? Before you answer those questions, consider that the author begins with a solid, Reformed introductory chapter on Christology. That’s right – a biblical, historical, and confessional study of the doctrine of Christ.

Why?, you ask. Because we cannot properly understand the prayers of Jesus without understanding who it was that prayed them and how He could pray them. We refer, of course, to the fact that Jesus prayed to His Father as the One who is fully man while also being fully God. Did our Lord need to pray, or did He pray only to give us an example of how to pray? Jones establishes the truth that Jesus, the eternal Son of God come in our full humanity, prayed out of his own deep need for all the graces His life and mission required. That opening chapter is vital for grasping the rest of the book on Jesus’ actual prayers.

But now, back to those prayers. What is the first passage you would turn to find Jesus’ prayers in the Bible? Something in the New Testament? No doubt, that is where most of us would go. But then we would miss His earlier prayers. The author properly takes us to the Psalms, and specifically Psalm 22:9-10 (look it up – his chapter heading is “Jesus Prayed from His Mother’s Breasts”). And what he emphasizes from the perspective of this Psalm is that Jesus learned to pray as a child of the covenant, indeed, as the Son of the covenant. With this in view, Jones ends his treatment of this prayer of Jesus with these paragraphs:

Our Lord came into this world with the graces needed to live out his calling as the Son of God. As such, he had not only the abilities to live in constant communion with God, but also the identity that he was someone peculiar: the God-man. Such abilities and awareness, coupled with the Father’s resolve to have his Son know him, provide us with the proper context for the prayers of Jesus and why his life was lived in constant communion with his heavenly Father. Furnished with the Spirit, his life was constant Trinitarian activity: the Son communing with the Father in the power of the Spirit. Just as he first called upon the Lord by the power of the Spirit working upon his human nature, so his last words were calling upon the Lord by the Spirit (Luke 23:46; Heb.9:14).

And he closes with this application:

We should note the importance of starting well in life: it is easier to develop patterns and habits at an early age than to pick up those habits later in life for the first time. For some this is not possible, due to their circumstances (e.g., growing up in a non-Christian household). But in believing households, children must therefore be taught to pray, by faith, as early as possible and as frequently as they are able. In Scripture there are patterns for us to follow, words for us to use to help us in our prayers. God does not expect his own Son to be left alone to figure out how to pray. Thus, he certainly would not leave us to ourselves in so important a spiritual discipline.

If one of our readers is interested in reviewing this book for the Standard Bearer (of which I am book review editor for the rubric “Bring the Books”), contact me here or by email. The review should be brief – and the book is yours if you write it.

The Opening Prayer at the Synod of Dordt (Plus, a Hymn and a Psalm by a Dutch Men’s Choir)

The Fall issue of the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal contains a new translation (the first known complete one) of the prayer offered at the opening session of the great Synod of Dordt on Nov.13, 1618. The prayer was made by local pastor Balthasar Lydius, and the translation is a combined labor of Prof. D. Kuiper (PRC Seminary) and Dr. H. D. Schuringa (former CRC minister and seminary professor at Calvin and Westminster, CA).

Prof. Kuiper gives this historical introduction to the prayer and the nature of the translation:

Balthasar Lydius was a Reformed minister in Dordrecht from 1602-1629, and was delegated by the particular Synod of South Holland to attend the national Synod of Dordt. As the local pastor, two honors fell to him on November 13, 1618: that of preaching a Dutch sermon in the morning before the synod opened, and that of opening the first session of the synod with prayer. He prayed in Latin, in which language all of the business of the Synod was conducted until the foreign delegates were dismissed. Two partial English translations of the prayer have been available for centuries, one of which is based on the memory of some in the audience.  What follows is a new and complete translation, based on the Dutch translation of the prayer in the Acts of the Synod of Dordt. After the translation the reader will find the Dutch original.

The prayer is ornate. It breathes the language of Scripture. Its long sentences include many subordinate phrases and clauses. As is the Dutch custom, in these long sentences the subject is near the beginning and the verb at the end. This translation divides the long sentences into shorter ones so that the English reader today can better understand the prayer, Biblical citations and allusions are footnoted.

For our purposes tonight, we quote the first part of the prayer, encouraging you to read the rest at the link provided above to the PRT Journal. The prayer will give you a new appreciation for the times in which Dordt met, the seriousness of the issues it faced, and the humble dependency on their sovereign Lord the godly men at the synod showed . In addition, the prayer will feed your soul and teach us how to pray – for the present church and for the state under which we now live.

*(Note: In this post I have removed the footnotes, including those added by Dr. Schuringa showing the thoroughly biblical language of Lydius’ prayer. By all means pay attention to these in the original article as published in the Journal.)

Almighty, eternal God, Fountain of all wisdom, goodness and mercy, compassionate Father in Christ! We pray that Thou wilt open our lips so that our mouth may declare Thy praise.

We are unworthy of all Thy mercies which Thou hast bountifully bestowed upon the work and workmanship of Thy hands. Not only hast Thou created us according to Thy image, but also, when we through sin had become by nature the children of wrath, Thou didst recreate us according to Thy image. Since we already are indebted
to Thee because Thou hast created us, how much more do we owe because Thou hast also freely redeemed us?

It is great and marvelous that man was made in Thy image. How much greater it is that He who thought it not robbery to be equal with God made Himself of no reputation, took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in our likeness, who of God was made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption!

Also with these benefits Thou wast not satisfied. We were a people dwelling in the darkness and shadow of death, without hope of salvation, cast off in the unworthiness of our souls, for whom an unknown treasure would be of no use. But Thou hast enlightened us by the revelation of the Sun of righteousness and truth! Without this, we would have perished everlastingly in these errors, not knowing what way we must walk.

The enemy of mankind sowed tares among the wheat while men slept. This darkness gradually gained the upper hand. Yet through the light of the Reformation Thou hast delivered us from a greater darkness than that of Egypt. In these places Thou hast planted Thy vine, whose shadow has covered the mountains and whose branches are the cedars of God.

This prayer was also published in the Nov.1, 2018 issue of the Standard Bearer, the first of two special issues planned for the 400th anniversary of the Synod of Dordt (the second one will appear May 1, 2019, D.V.). These issues will be available online approximately six months after publication.

To this prayer we also add this beautiful and appropriate arrangement of the hymn “Thanks Be to God” sung in Dutch by “Urker Mannenkoor,” a men’s choir from the Netherlands.

And if you enjoyed that one, you will also love this version of Psalm 42 (by combined men’s and women’s choirs):