Nehemiah 9:5: “Then the Levites, Jeshua, and Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabniah, Sherebiah, Hodijah, Shebaniah, [and] Pethahiah, said, Stand up [and] bless the LORD your God for ever and ever: and blessed be thy glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.”
In the Babylonian Talmud Berakoth 63a I read something that gave me pause to wonder. In the Sanctuary of the temple the amen response was never given after prayer. What they said was bless the Lord God for ever and ever. I means try that one at your next prayer meeting. Rather than end your prayer with in the name of Jesus Amen you end by saying: Bless the Lord God for ever and ever. There are those who just might tar and feather you and run you out of the church on a pew. Yet, why do we say Amen at the end of a prayer? Do we even know what Amen means? Does the Bible really give a formula to pray. Is there some secret to prayer buried in the ancient works of the Jewish Talmud that just might get God’s ear?
I have seen books on how to pray. The book jacket promises a formula for prayer that really works. Pay $10.00 and you too will know the secrets to prayer. Then you will be able to say the right words, follow the right formula or recipe to make up a batch of prayers and you too will be healed, get that new car, house, job and all those other things you have been praying for. Such a book sells, people are desperate, they have a health problem that just won’t be healed, they have a financial need that is about to bury them and they will grab at any straw possible to get God’s attention.
Is there a formula? Look a little further back in this passage to verse three we find that when the people confessed their sins they prostrated themselves. That word prostrate in Hebrew is shachah which means they bowed down or they depressed themselves. The word for confession is yadah which is an archer’s word for shooting an arrow, it has the idea of casting away, throwing away something. When you confess you are throwing away your sins to God. That is a little hard to do lying down, but the burden of you sin will put you flat on your face.
Then in verse five they stood up to praise the Lord. There are various words in Hebrew that we render as stand. This word is qum which is a standing up to demonstrate power, affirmation. It is the word a leader would use when he ask, “Who will stand with me?” Worship leaders tell us to stand when we worship to show our affirmation to God. Do we really realize what we are doing or why we stand when we worship? Are worship leaders telling us to do this because they have to stand so they want us to suffer with them? Do they do it because we can sing better standing than sitting. Do they ask us to stand because that is the way it is done, the way it is always done, it is tradition? For most of us we stand because it is tradition and when you have a bum knee like I have that standing can be a real difficult matter especially when these worship songs go on and on and on. I am thinking more of my painful knee rather than concentrating on worshipping God. Last service I found myself thinking, “God if you want me to stand through all this and endure it, then you just better heal this knee because this standing is getting very painful.” I notice in charismatic services that people often come late, like toward the end of the worship service. You don’t see that in a Baptist church. Baptist worship leaders don’t force you to stand for hours on end singing monotonous songs. Everyone is on time, sing a few I like God songs and get on with the service. (I love blogging, you can say anything you want without some editor censoring you). I think it would behoove some worship leaders that if they expect their congregation to stand for the half hour or forty minutes of worship and praise they best explain why it is necessary to stand, especially to the elderly. I have never heard once an explanation as to why we must stand, we just do it because everyone does it, it is tradition and that worship leader tells us to do it.
The postures we are to take when praying worshiping and praising God and the words we are to use are not all that well defined in Scripture. We learn in Nehemiah that they stood to praise and that they prostrated themselves, laid face down to confess. In Luke 22:40 we learn Jesus knelt when he petitioned God. Those words in Greek are theis ta gonata which means to fall on ones knees. The Aramaic uses the word sum which can mean both to kneel or fall on your face, but the odds are that this is to be taken as falling on your knees. Still Jesus is in agony at this time, I find it difficult that he quietly knelt down, I mean he theis fell on his knees. I think this was the position that just naturally came as a result of his emotional state rather than a conscious effort to assume a proper position.
Still it appears that the Bible gives three positions we take when we pray. We stand to praise, we fall flat on our face to confess our sins and get on our knees when we are petitioning God. Then we end our prayers with Amen when we offer a petition and Bless the Lord forever and forever after a time of worship and praise. There it is a perfect formula for prayer, Biblically guaranteed to get God’s attention to answer your prayer. I mean God is an orderly God and He likes his table set up just the way He wants it and if you put a spoon after the fork rather than before the fork, well He will just not sit down to dinner with you that’s all, He will just go to another table where they know how to do it right.
Our culture is a mathematical and technical culture, our society is built on formulas and we have culturalized God into a just another one of our computers. If I am off by one dot on an email address that email will bounce right back to me and force me to do it over until I get it right. God is more like a search engine rather than a password. If you are off by one dot or one lower or upper case in a password it will shut you out until you get it right. Sometimes it will only give you three chances and then you are out of luck for the next 24 hours. God is more like the search engine, it only ask you to come close and it will take you somewhere. Even if you type in total nonsense it will still take you somewhere that closely resembles your nonsense word.
Our Western culture demands precision so we expect God to demand precision. The Talmud is oral tradition which was very prevalent during Jesus day. Jesus did not condemn oral tradition, he even quoted it. What he did condemn was that it turned God into a machine, a computer where you had to follow a formula before you got His attention. Jesus declared in Mark 2:27 that the “Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath.” In other words all these laws, all these postures in prayer and words we use in prayer are for us, not for God. We say Amen at the end of a prayer not because there is magic in that word but because we are affirming are trust and belief that God heard our prayers. We stand when we worship not because God wants us to suffer with our bum knee, bad back or just the elderly desire to sit down, we do it to express our qum our standing in agreement, our unity and our oneness with God.
I mean a wife does not tell her husband: “Ok, you can kiss me but before you do, you must look me in eye, say ‘I love you,’ touch my cheek with one hand, put your other hand on my back take a deep breath, ask my permission and if I give it then you may kiss me.” Odds are she will simply say, “Kiss me you fool.” The I love you’s, the posture, the touching that just comes naturally. So too with God the physical postures, the words, the check list, the Amens all just come naturally and work their way in. All God wants is that you talk to Him, all He is saying is “Kiss me you fool.”
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