Apart from telling us WHAT to Pray, the “Lord’s Prayer” shows us in at least three ways HOW to pray!
The “Lord’s Prayer” is a profound outline or guide for prayer. It is profound in that although it is so short it provides a framework for every necessary topic of prayer, and also in that it teaches us important things about the way we should pray about the things for which we ask.
The prayer is found in two places in the Gospels – in Matthew 6: 9-13 in its fuller form, and in Luke 11: 2-4 in an abbreviated form. This fact alone seems to prove that the prayer is a guide on essential topics to pray about, rather than a prayer with specific words to be learned and repeated by rote as some believe.
Looking at the longer form of the prayer in Matthew, there are seven specific petitions or requests directed to God; but in this article, rather than looking at those petitions individually, as is often done, let’s look at some of the overall aspects of the guide which can be helpful in teaching us how to pray.
• The Prayer and the Commandments
First, when we compare the overall structure of the prayer, we see that it is actually similar to the structure of the Ten Commandments: the first group of points relating more directly to our relationship with God, the second group of points to our relationship with others. There are even some basic but noticeable touch-points: “I am the Lord Your God …” – “Father in Heaven”; “You shall not take my name in vain” – “Hallowed be your name”; etc. This is not surprising, of course, because in both the Commandments and the Lord’s Prayer we are looking at the same things – our relationship with God and with others.
The dual stresses of the commandments and the model prayer are even clearer if we compare the words of Christ when he was asked which were the most important of all the commandments. Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40). When we understand this we see the Lord’s Prayer is not about asking for the things that we think will make us happy or that we want, but things that show our love for God and others. If the Ten Commandments show us how to love God and others, the Lord’s Prayer teaches us how to ask for help to do that properly.
Remembering this dual stress of the commandments and the prayer is truly important in helping us focus our approach to the Lord’s Prayer. Rather than seeing the prayer as an unrelated list of requests, we begin to see it as a prayerful “walk through” of key areas of our relationship with God and with others. That fact in itself gives us an important clue as to how Jesus’ prayer outline can be expanded, as we use it, to include all kinds of things relating to our spiritual relationship with God and the rest of His family. And we need to remember that dual aspect of the prayer’s focus. Humanly it may be easy to expand “Give us today our daily bread” by mentioning our many physical needs, but how much do we expand on requests such as “hallowed be your name”? Realizing the dual stress of the prayer helps us to better equally balance the things for which we pray.
• First Person Plural
Another basic thing to remember as we look at the model we are given is that there isn’t a single “I” or “my” in this prayer – only “you” and “us”, “your” and “our”. Considering how obvious this fact is, there seems to be a clear lesson – once again to focus our prayers on our relationship with God and with others.
Seen this way, the Lord’s Prayer is very different from the individual list of personal wants and needs we are all tempted to offer at most times given the problems of everyday life that we all face. There is certainly no problem in praying for ourselves, and the prayer outline does not deny us the ability to ask for the needs we have – it just puts our requests in the context of “our” needs, helping us to keep our minds on the fact that the problems of others are just as real – and sometimes much more serious – than those we face.
The Book of Psalms gives some great examples of this fact. Remember there are more prayers there than in any other book of the scriptures, and if you look at many of David’s heartfelt personal requests for help, they end with requests for others – for his people, for all of Israel (see Psalms 25:18, 22; 28:2, 9 for just two examples).
• Prayer Triage
When we kneel before God don’t dozens of things come into our minds – the many needs and concerns of our own lives and of those of family, friends and others we know. These many individual-level needs are in addition to things God shows us are even bigger needs – of worldwide scale. Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start and where to end. That fact underscores one of the great purposes of the model we have been given – putting things in the right context and priority. Think of the Lord’s Prayer as prayer triage. Jesus’ guide to communication with our Father sorts through all those clamoring thoughts and needs and puts our concerns and requests in the right order. Matthew 6:7-8 shows us that “… your Father knows what you need before you ask him”; but even though God already knows what our most urgent needs are, the prayer outline puts things in perspective.
Putting it all Together
As we saw at the outset of this article, the Lord’s Prayer is a guide to prayer. None of the recorded prayers of Jesus or the disciples after the time the outline was given follow the wording of the prayer (showing again that it is not a prescribed set of specific words to be prayed), although each recorded prayer in the New Testament stresses some aspect found within the guide. Perhaps we could say that while spontaneous – and especially urgent – prayers will often take their own form, the “Lord’s Prayer” provides a guide for those occasions when we wish to seek God in regular and complete prayer. Although God is doubtless more concerned with the content rather than the form of our prayers, the guide Jesus gave us covers all the main aspects of our relationship with God and with others; it constantly directs our focus outward to include the needs of others; and it helps us to bring order and priority to the requests we make. These three areas of guidance help us to keep in mind what regular prayer is all about.
The English word “context” is derived from two Latin words meaning “to weave threads” (contextus, from con- ‘together’ + texere ‘to weave’) and so our word signifies that which is connected or woven together.
The expression “context is everything” applies in many areas of life, and it certainly applies in the study of God’s Word. Every beginning student of the Bible soon finds that many statements cannot be taken from their biblical setting and understood or used in isolation. On the other hand, even experienced Bible students sometimes forget the need to seek context in everything that is studied and especially in looking at difficult or puzzling verses. Context can be more than just reading the chapter in which a verse appears and there are, in fact, a number of different aspects or dimensions of context that all play a part in the successful understanding of scripture. As Miles Coverdale, sixteenth century translator of the English Bible, wrote:
“… it shall greatly help thee to understand scripture, if thou mark not only what is spoken or written, but of whom, and unto whom, with what words, at what time, where, to what intent, with what circumstance, considering what goeth before, and what followeth after.” — Miles Coverdale, Preface to the Bible, 1535.
This article looks at four of the most important aspects of biblical context with examples and suggested study helps.
Overall Context
The first and perhaps most important aspect of maintaining context is that of seeing and interpreting every part of the Bible in the light of the whole. Some verses, such as John 3:16, may be clear in isolation, but even then taking in the other verses relevant to this very clear statement expands our understanding and appreciation for its meaning. In many other cases overall context clearly is needed for proper understanding.
In 2 Kings 2:1 the Bible tells us that Elijah was taken up by a whirlwind “into heaven”. It is easy to misunderstand this statement without overall biblical context. But when we put other relevant scriptures together we see that from the biblical perspective, there are three heavens (2 Corinthians 12:2). Over nine hundred years after the time of Elijah, Jesus Himself said “no man has ascended up to heaven” (John 3:13), meaning the heaven of God. So 2 Kings is evidently talking about the “heaven” that we would call the sky or the atmosphere – just as the Bible speaks of the “dew of heaven” (Genesis 27:28, 39, Deuteronomy 33:28).
In the New Testament, the apostle Paul frequently stresses that salvation comes by faith alone (Ephesians 2:8,9: etc.), yet comparing this understanding with the writing of the apostle James who states that faith without works is dead (James 2:14-26), we get the whole picture. In fact, if we look further into the writings of Paul himself, we find statements which back this up. Take for example: “It is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God’s sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous” (Romans 2:13). So overall context shows that we are saved by faith alone, but saving faith is never alone – living faith leads us to right behavior and good works.
Study Helps: For beginning students, putting everything together that the Bible says on a given subject can seem like a daunting task, but there are many study helps such as concordances and topical Bibles that make this task much simpler. Even the marginal references found in many bibles can be helpful in pulling important scriptures together for overall context.
Literary Context
It’s easy to think of the books of the Bible as being all essentially the same when it comes to studying its message. But the Bible contains many kinds of formats that we must keep in mind if we are to successfully understand what it is saying. Think of the phone book – it’s not all the same format: white pages, yellow pages, blue pages, all with their own format and different kinds of information. The books of the Bible not only have different types of literature – prose, poetry, messages, lists, etc. – within the overall book, but even within individual books. Take, for example, some of the things said in the Book of Psalms where David exclaims “Break the teeth in their mouths, O God” (Psalm 58:6). Such an example may be easy to see as poetic language which obviously is not meant to be understood literally, but when we remember that about 30% of the Hebrew Bible is written in poetic form it can help us better understand sections of the prophetic books, for example, where sections of narrative text are mixed with sections of poetic text. Older translations, such as the King James version, tend to obscure this fact by printing everything in the same format. More recent translations, such as the English Standard Version and New International Version, make a big difference by printing different literary formats in different fonts and layouts.
But it’s not just the Old Testament where this principle applies. Take for example, 1 John 1:2: “The Elder unto the well beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. Beloved, I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers.” These verses are often taken out of context as though they indicate that prosperity and physical health are things to be highly sought in the Christian life and are of great importance. In reality this is just a common letter opening expression of that day and age, just as we might write something like “I hope this finds all well with you” at the start of a letter to a friend today.
Study helps: Different translations often help to clarify changes in format in the original texts, but not always. If wording is still unclear, try checking different commentaries on the book in question, though remember that commentaries, by their very nature, may give the personal views of their authors – so you may wish to compare several.
Immediate Context
Ecclesiates 7:28, out of context, makes a seemingly startling statement: “While I was still searching but not finding – I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all.” At first sight this sounds like a very sad situation, but if we look carefully at the immediate context, we see that the section beginning in vs. 26 is talking about prostitutes who snare unsuspecting men. All Solomon is saying here is that although there may be “one in a thousand” men who resist such a woman (clearly using an idiomatic expression for a round number), he found not a single upright woman in this group. Other verses in this book – Proverbs 12:4, 31:10, etc. – show this is certainly not a condemnation of all women; and the Bible talks of many upright women, of course.
In the New Testament, a scripture with which most Bible readers are familiar is found in the Book of Matthew: “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (Matt. 18:20). While this verse is frequently taken to mean gathering in church fellowship, the actual immediate context is about correcting someone for a problem (vs. 15-18), and asking God’s help in the process (vs. 19). The teaching here is quite different from how it is often understood out of context.
Study Helps: This kind of contextual setting doesn’t usually need tools, though good commentaries can sometimes help if the verse just isn’t making sense. Also remember your Bible’s marginal references – sometimes they will point to a similar section of scripture where the same point is explained more clearly.
Cultural Context
Sometimes only knowledge of the cultures in which biblical stories are set can help us to understand exactly what a biblical narrative means. In Genesis 15: 9-21, for example, in the story of God sealing his covenant with Abram, God instructed Abram to take various animals and sacrifice them, dividing them into halves in such a way that someone could walk between the halves of the carcasses. Genesis then states: “When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram …” (Genesis. 15: 17-18a). This strange event is understandable when we realize that in many ancient Near Eastern cultures, land ownership “contracts” were sealed by the participants dividing sacrificed animals or walking between the parts of the animals. Without this cultural context the details of the story would be difficult to understand, but knowing the background helps us to see that God was simply utilizing the legal practices of the time in order to confirm his promises to Abram/Abraham.
In the New Testament, the story of the women who anointed Jesus’ feet and head (Matthew 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9, Luke 7:36-50, John 12:1-8) can be much better understood in cultural context. When we understand that a “denarius” was the average wage earned by a laborer for a full long day of work, and that the perfume used by the women would have cost upwards of 300 denarii – almost a year’s wages (Mark 14:5), we begin to realize the sacrifice these women, who were not rich, were making in their gifts.
Usually cultural context does not affect our understanding of doctrine or principles of living, but it can frequently illuminate the biblical stories and make them more understandable and real to us.
Study Helps: Carefully selected background books can help with understanding cultural context, but many are very detailed and it can be difficult to find the information needed. This is an area in which the internet shines. Doing a search for “dividing animals in sacrifices,” “biblical sacrifices + ancient Near East” or just “Genesis 15: 17-18” may find information on the background for the example used here. It is often worth doing a quick online search for background information (being careful to evaluate the quality of the site, of course) when cultural context is not clear.
Keeping these four types of context in mind can answer a good many questions about the scriptures and make them seem less puzzling. They can also deepen our understanding of the scriptures and make them more meaningful to us.
Have you ever thought about how the Bible emphasizes many of its important points? Of course, the original writers of the Scriptures could not utilize large print, highlighting or colored ink. Instead, they utilized techniques that were easily recognizable to those who read or heard their words.
One of the main ways the biblical writers emphasized important points was through repetition – utilizing what is called “reduplication for emphasis or intensification” – in what they wrote. This is not talking about repetition of the same things, such as the Ten Commandments, in different parts of the Bible, though that is clearly often done to emphasize something’s importance.
Reduplication for emphasis or intensification applies to repetition occurring in the same verses or passages of scripture. This is common in the Old Testament because the Hebrew language often uses repetition in this way in order to stress something that is being said. For example: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord your God” (Numbers 15:41, emphasis added here and in the following scriptures), or “…Then he will bring out the capstone to shouts of ‘God bless it!God bless it!’” (Zechariah 4:7).
This kind of repetition is easy to see and to understand, but there are other times when the reduplication is not so obvious. Hebrew storytellers often used the technique in stressing important elements of their accounts. If we look at the story of Joseph, for example, we may notice repetition but not think about its significance: Joseph receives two robes (one from his father, one from Pharaoh); his robe is used twice by those trying to destroy him; Joseph has two dreams in which his family bows to him; Pharaoh has two dreams foreshadowing the coming famine in Egypt; Joseph’s brothers make two visits to Egypt to seek his help; and so on.
The reduplication does not mean that the two events are not both part of the story, but that they are carefully selected to make the story’s main points.
The same principle is found in the New Testament. We see the same repetition of individual words and phrases for effect – for example “… But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God … For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:11-14) or, more simply: “… Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty …” (Revelation 4:8).
But repetition of ideas was also used in the Old and New Testaments as well as the repetition of words. We often find Jesus himself employing this more subtle form of repetition in order to stress important points in his teaching. For example, in his Sermon on the Mount we find that he gives numerous pairs of examples with only slight variation. He uses salt and light to teach about the responsibilities of the disciple (Mathew 5:13-14); he speaks of food and clothing as things that we should not be worried about (Matthew 6:25-31); he mentions both birds and lilies to show God’s care (Matthew 6:26-30); and he also uses dogs and pigs as examples of animals to which we would not give things of great value (Matthew 7:6).
This kind of reiteration in the teaching of Jesus was not accidental or unplanned. Both biblical and rabbinic tradition used the repetition of ideas to teach, and Jesus utilized the principle carefully in some of his most important messages. So if we realize we are “seeing double” in our study of the Scriptures, we need to take special notice – seeing double in the Bible often means that what is being said is doubly important!
An irony of faithful regular Bible study is that the more you read it, the more familiar the Bible becomes – and sometimes we may feel we are just not seeing as much as we did when we first, excitedly, came to the word of God. Now clearly, our major responsibility in this is faithful prayer along with the study – prayer to see and understand more each time we continue our journey in the book. We also need to study with a purpose – not just to be reminded of things we know, or to see something new, but to learn more of the mind of God, and to learn how we might take on that mind in the small things of which everyday life is composed.
But there is something else we can do to keep our interest level high and to be rewarded with new understanding. Get a new translation. Many of us stay with the same old translation simply because we like to stay with the same physical Bible. It’s “the Bible” to us, it’s comfortable and may have our markings and notes built up through years of reading. But we don’t have to end our relationship with that Bible in order to try a new translation.
I have my own favorite translation and it is the one to which I most frequently turn, but when I feel that I am not seeing anything beyond what I saw the last time I read a biblical book or pondered a single chapter or verse, I turn to another translation. It’s not that my regular version is not accurate enough, but that I want to hear the words with different stresses, from a different perspective as it were. Just recently I did this with the Book of Job. Rereading Job in a different translation opened up dozens of new insights for me. The words themselves were not necessarily so different from the translation I usually use, but time and again seeing the same verses from a different perspective helped me to see things I had read over earlier.
But I’m not talking about comparing lines or verses in different translations. That is fine for detailed study of exactly which words are “best” in translating a given verse. I’m talking about just taking a different version and immersing yourself in it – getting used to its speech patterns and style in the same way you would if you were listening to a new friend speak.
The great thing is just how simple it is to try another translation. If you like reading on a screen, many Bible versions are available online on various Bible websites (see our article “Five Bible Study Sites Compared”) and many Bible versions can now be obtained free for reading on the Kindle or with the Kindle for PC application or other e-reader. So, if you sometimes feel that Bible study is not as exciting for you as it was, or if you would just like to maximize what you see in a given study session, give yourself a lift – try a new translation.
The Four Gospels are a focal part of the Bible for all Christians and one most of us spend a good deal of time in reading each year. Although simply reading through the four accounts of the life of Jesus is certainly all we need to do to grasp their essential message, there are other ways we can occasionally approach these books for a fresh perspective and to help us see things we otherwise would have missed.
One of the best alternative ways of reading the Gospels is to use a “harmony” that arranges the material of the four books in such a way that we can read the different accounts of each event together. The value of doing this has been understood for centuries. In fact, the earliest known harmony of the Gospels, the Diatessaron by the ancient Christian scholar Tatian, was compiled in the 2nd century – almost two thousand years ago! This work attempted to merge all four accounts of Christ’s life into one continuous story. More refined variations of the Diatessaron using this or other techniques have continued to be made up to the present day, when we can now choose from among many print and online harmonies.
So what can we get out of using a harmony of the Gospels that we would not learn by simply reading through them separately? Not only do we find all the information on a given event together in one place, but also a harmony makes it possible for us to see things that one Gospel account has that may not be mentioned in the others – unique details that may help us better understand the same story in the other Gospels.
In addition to helping us to notice small but important details, harmonies also help us to get the larger overview – almost like merging photographs of a person taken from four different angles into one complete “three-dimensional” image. A harmony also often allows us to understand where stories which only appear in one of the Gospels fit into the overall flow of the others – to see them in their original setting. Seeing what is unique in each Gospel helps us get a sense of what is important to each writer, what he is trying to focus on and what his particular message is.
For example, the birth of Jesus is described in two of the Gospels – Matthew and Luke. The two accounts tell the same basic story, but when we put them side by side we find many details in Luke’s account that fill out Matthew’s story of the Nativity – such as the census that forced Mary and Joseph to go to Bethlehem and the story of the Annunciation to the shepherds. Matthew, on the other hand, gives us details such as the story of the wise men, the flight into Egypt, and King Herod’s massacre of the children in his attempt to kill Jesus. Both accounts tell us the essential story, but a harmony helps us to bring all the details together and in proper order. It also helps us to see that in many cases Luke focuses on the social background of the life of Jesus, while Matthew’s focus is more often on political aspects of the time that affected Jesus’ life. While this is just a simple example, in cases where events are described in three or all four of the Gospels, a harmony can be even more useful in bringing all the facts together.
Harmonies are usually of two types – “synthetic” or “parallel.” Either they synthesize or merge the different accounts into one single story flow as Tatian’s original Diatessaron did, or (more commonly today) they use a format with the material from the Gospels placed side by side in parallel columns. The parallel harmonies are often more useful because they help us to see what is not in a given Gospel as well as what is there so we get the clearest picture of what each author wanted to stress.
Making such a harmony is not simple, however. In the course of his ministry Jesus travelled around preaching in many of the cities and towns of ancient Galilee, Judea and their surrounding areas. This makes it likely that he repeated the same messages at different times and in several places. For example, both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke include Jesus’ instruction on how to pray – the Lord’s Prayer – but Matthew gives this as part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:9-13), while Luke sets the prayer at a separate time after Jesus had been praying and his disciples asked him how to pray (Luke 11:2-4). This means that in some cases it might seem that material in a harmony is not in the correct place or is being duplicated, but most modern harmonies are constructed with careful scholarship that takes this situation into account.
Today there are many harmonies that you can consult or read through in your regular Bible study. Some just compare the three similar or “synoptic” Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – while others also include John’s Gospel, which is sometimes difficult to mesh with the others, but which often adds much additional material, of course.
Whether you choose to purchase a printed harmony for use in your study of the Gospels or elect to use one of the available free online versions such as those mentioned here, using a harmony can give you a fresh and often fascinating view of the story these books tell. Whether you are a new student of the Bible or have read it for many years, using a harmony can enrich your study in ways that deepen your understanding of the gospel story and give you a much better knowledge of the unique and special emphasis of each verbal portrait of Christ.
When you read the word “lamp” in the Scriptures, what comes to mind? Usually we might think of the kind of ancient oil lamp mentioned by Jesus in his Parable of the Lamp placed on a stand to light a room (Matthew 5:15). But the word “lamp” occurs frequently in the Bible (some 100 times), and the meaning of the word can be surprisingly varied.
In cases where a literal lamp is involved, it is most frequently a small saucer or bowl-like holder for oil and a wick that is being discussed (Job 18:62, 2 Kings 4:10), though the large and elaborate seven-branched menorah lamp that illuminated the tabernacle and the temple (Exodus 25:31-37) is simply called a “lamp” in many instances. But we also find a number of figurative or symbolic uses of the word, especially in the Old Testament, as we see in the following scriptures:
Inner Illumination: “The human spirit is the lamp of the Lord that sheds light on one’s inmost being” (Proverbs 20:27).
Instruction: “For this command is a lamp, this teaching is a light, and correction and instruction are the way to life” (Proverbs 6:23).
These two meanings are fairly obvious ones, but sometimes the connotation of “lamp” is not so obvious unless we look closely at the context in which it appears. For example:
Protection: “How I long for the … days when God watched over me, when his lamp shone on my head and by his light I walked through darkness!” (Job 29:2-3).
Life: “The lamp of a wicked man is snuffed out; the flame of his fire stops burning” (Job 18:5).
Once we think about them, it is not difficult to see how “lamp” is being used in these examples, although the connection between the word and its intended meaning may sometimes be even more symbolic:
Descendants: “Nevertheless, for David’s sake the Lord his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem by raising up a son to succeed him and by making Jerusalem strong” (1 Kings 15:4).
Hope: “But Abishai son of Zeruiah came to David’s rescue; he struck the Philistine down and killed him. Then David’s men swore to him, saying, “Never again will you go out with us to battle, so that the lamp of Israel will not be extinguished” (2 Samuel 21:17).
Once we become aware of these different meanings of “lamp” in the Scriptures, we begin to see that the meaning of the word is often not what it first appears to be. Take for example a passage we find in 1 Samuel: “The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the Lord, where the ark of God was” (1 Samuel 3:3). We might naturally presume that this verse is speaking of the menorah light in the tabernacle, but the Law of Moses made it clear that that lamp was never to be allowed to burn out and that it had to be kept burning all night from twilight to the light of the following day (Exodus 27:21, Leviticus 24:3-4). So if this verse is not speaking of a literal lamp, what is the “lamp of God” to which it refers?
When we look at the possible meanings given above, the answer is that “lamp” in 1 Samuel 3:3 most probably refers figuratively to Israel’s “hope” in God. Similar expressions are used in 2 Samuel 21:17 (the lamp of Israel), 1 Kings 11:36 (the lamp of David), and 2 Kings 8: 19 (the lamp of David and his descendants). The meaning of “hope” is made even more likely when we look at the immediate context of 1 Samuel 3:3, which tells us:
“One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the house of the Lord, where the ark of God was. Then the Lord called Samuel” (1 Samuel 3:2-3).
In this case, “lamp” seems to refer to the fact that, despite Eli’s decline, hope was present regarding the boy Samuel whom God was about to call. Similarly, when Samuel records the words of David: “You, Lord, are my lamp; the Lord turns my darkness into light” (2 Samuel 22:29), it is hope, not literal light, that is in mind.
These are small examples, but in many cases in the Old Testament we should pause to think a moment when we read the word “lamp.” While context may make it clear that a literal lamp is involved, on the other hand, it may sometimes show that another, more symbolic, meaning is intended.
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