Tag Archives: Babble

A WALK THROUGH THE LORD’S PRAYER – 1b

Prayer, ,

Jesus’ first warning, in the preamble to His pattern prayer, was not to pray for attention, for people’s reward, but to pray in secret for the Father’s reward…

“And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.”
‭‭Matthew‬ ‭6‬:‭7‬-‭8‬ ‭NIV

His second warning was not to babble like pagans. This is more than using many words in prayer. Prayer, of necessity, is expressed in words, as one rabbi said, “Prayer without words in not prayer because being human involves speech.” God hears our “thought prayers” but our problem is that our thoughts are often random and wandering. 

There are two problems associated with pagan prayers. 

First, true prayer is the expression of a relationship between  a Father and His children. Pagan prayer is a delusion because no such relationship exists between gods and people. 

Second, pagans use words in prayer as mantras, believing that their god will hear them if they mutter the same words repeatedly, for example…like praying the rosary. 

Jesus said, ”Don’t do that because you are talking to a real heavenly Father who knows everything about you without your saying a word.“ 

However, this warning goes even deeper. The pagans’ mantras are about their preoccupation with “things”. Without God, material and physical things in life matter most because things take up all the attention of godless people.  Again, Jesus said, 

“So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.” 

Matthew 6:31-42 NIV

The real issue is…our prayers must be concerned with what is most important to the Father and what He has mandated us to do on earth…

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

‭‭Matthew‬ ‭6‬:‭31‬-‭33‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Everything else about us comes under the banner of a father’s responsibility towards his children.  A normal child never nags a parent about the next meal even if the fridge and the pantry are empty. He entrusts that concern to his parents. So, Jesus said, “Take care of God’s business and He will take care of yours.”

Notice, however, the order of Jesus’ promise…The Father doesn’t initiate our obedience, He reciprocates to our faith in who He is. If we consistently trust Him to be father, and submit to His authority, He will act as a good father, meeting all our needs. 

THE BOOK OF ACTS – WHEN THE HOLY SPIRIT CAME

Bible Study, , ,

WHEN THE HOLY SPIRIT CAME

“There were many Jews staying in Jerusalem just then, devout pilgrims from all over the world. When they heard the sound, they came on the run. Then, when they heard, one after another, their own mother tongue being spoken, they were thunderstruck. They couldn’t for the life of them figure out what was going on, and kept saying, ‘Aren’t these all Galileans? How come we’re hearing them talk in our various mother tongues?'” Acts 2:5-8 (The Message).

The Bible is a unique book! Written by more than forty people from all walks of life over a period of 2000 years, it is a whole and tells one story. Approximately 4000 years before this event on the day of Pentecost, the entire human race spoke one language and lived together in one area. From one couple, Adam and Eve, they had multiplied and become many tribal groups.

They had become so wicked that God destroyed them with a universal flood, saving only Noah and his family and pairs of animals and birds of every species to repopulate the earth. His instruction was that they multiply and fill the earth.

There were three major tribes, descendants of Noah’s three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. Instead of spreading out across the globe as God intended, they decided to establish a rival religion in defiance of God. They built a ziggurat at a place later dubbed Babel, which meant confusion.

God knew that they would do anything to defy Him if they stuck together. The only way He could force them apart was to confuse their languages. They separated into their tribal and language groups when they could no longer understand one another. From that moment they moved farther and farther apart until they inadvertently had done what God wanted them to do, to fill the earth.

In their rebellion and sin against God, in whose image He had made man to be one with Him and with one another, they lived in conflict and war from that time onwards. It was the coming of Jesus, who brought reconciliation to God and man through His death and resurrection that made unity possible. What happened on the day of Pentecost was the beginning of the reversal of Babel.

Jerusalem was full of pilgrims from every part of the Roman Empire which was the civilised world of their day. Passover and Pentecost were the great draw cards and Jerusalem the hub of their religious festivals. There must have been a babble of dialects, in spite of Greek being the “lingua franca” of the time

Into this scenario came the unifying power and presence of the Spirit of God who had left man at the beginning when Adam and Eve decided to go it alone. In a mysterious and miraculous way the disciples, who had been together worshipping Jesus, were speaking in all the dialects represented in Jerusalem.

The people were astonished and even more so because most of the disciples were from an outskirt province –Galilee — and spoke with a distinctive accent which gave them away. They were despised by the Judean Jews because they were far more liberal than their Judean counterparts and influenced by their non-Jewish neighbours.

The unthinkable had happened. They were able to understand the speech of these Galilean peasants who had never learned their languages. How did that happen? The answer is God! He did it as a sign to the Jews but, even more than that, He reversed what had happened at Babel. The time had come to reconnect alienated people to one another because the reason for their alienation had been removed.

Jesus prayed for the unity of all believers which would be a powerful witness to His coming from God. Now it was happening. Babel was being overturned because Pentecost had happened and is still happening every time another person embraces Jesus as Lord.

When God Speaks

Bible Study, , ,

WHEN GOD SPEAKS

“When Moses and Elijah had left, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, this is a great moment! Let’s build three memorials: one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.” He blurted this out without thinking. While he was babbling like this, a light-radiant cloud enveloped them. As they found themselves buried in the cloud, they became deeply aware of God. Then there was a voice out of the cloud: “This is my Son, the Chosen! Listen to Him.” When the sound of the voice died away, they saw Jesus there alone. They were speechless. And they continued speechless…” Luke 9:34 – 36 (The Message)

Babbling…speechless, what a contrast! Peter, James and John saw Jesus. Peter began to babble – empty-headed chatter about erecting three memorials on the mountain. Did he want to commemorate the experience or did he just want to stay there and never go back to the valley again?

Tabernacles…shelters…memorials…did this hark back to the wilderness where God’s presence was with Israel, but confined to a tent into which people were not permitted to enter? Peter had not yet grasped the significance of Jesus’ name, Emmanuel, God with us.

Remember Jacob. He was shocked when he found out, through his dream at Bethel, that God was not confined to a recognised altar or shrine. God was where Jacob was, out in the open sleeping on a stone. He blurted out, “God is in this place and I didn’t know it.” God reassured him, “Jacob, I’ll be with you wherever you go.” Jacob was also babbling, verbalising his ignorance. When God spoke he was locked into the truth…”I’ll be with you.”

Peter’s babbling, likewise, was silenced by the voice of God. From babbling to speechless, silent, struck dumb by the voice of truth. Until God spoke, Peter babbled. When God spoke, there was nothing more to say. God’s presence in the cloud…God’s voice in their ears…everything changed!

Peter never forgot that moment. He was so deeply impacted that, years later, he wrote about it to the people of God to whom he had ministered throughout Asia Minor (2 Peter 1:16-18). If he ever had misconceptions about Jesus’ identity, that moment in God’s presence, those unearthly words from God, forever cleared from His mind the clutter of unbelief, especially after the resurrection when he began to connect the dots and everything was unscrambled in his mind. He never again doubted who Jesus was. He was eyewitness to something that human beings had never seen or heard, God clothed in human flesh, and human flesh clothed in the glory of God.

Jesus warned us, “And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans for they think that they will be heard for their many words. “ (Matthew 6:7 NIV) How easy it is for human beings to babble until they meet the glorified Jesus. It happened to John on Patmos. It happened to Paul on the Damascus road. Everything will change when we stop babbling and listen to God speak.