The Day Prayer Began

When did people begin praying, and what was it that moved them to prayer?

I’ll admit that there is some debate over this question because there’s debate over what prayer is:

Were Adam and Eve praying to God whenever they talked with him?
Was Cain praying when he cried that his punishment was too much to bear?

One of the earliest, unambiguous, references to prayer happens to be in Genesis 4:25-26

Genesis 4:25–26 LSB

²⁵ Then Adam knew his wife again; and she gave birth to a son and named him Seth, for she said, “God has set for me another seed in place of Abel, for Cain killed him.” ²⁶ And to Seth, to him also, a son was born; and he called his name Enosh. Then men began to call upon the name of Yahweh.

Genesis really wants to draw our attention to this fact. If you look at Genesis 5, it starts the genealogy of Adam all over again with the purpose of taking us down the family line.

Genesis 4 wants us to stop on Enosh and see what people are doing. They’re calling on the name of Yahweh. Remember that every time we see LORD in those uppercase letters it’s a stand in for God’s personal name.

Why do people begin to call on Yahweh’s name in the days of Enosh? There’s nothing remarkable about him; nothing unique about his time that we’re aware of. It’s because of how unremarkable Enosh is that people begin to call on the name of Yahweh.

After Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, there are a number of curses leveled against them and the serpent who deceived Eve. Within those curses is also a note of hope for mankind. Speaking to the serpent, God says…

Genesis 3:15 ESV

¹⁵ I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

Adam and Eve are promised offspring, a specific child of theirs who will defeat the serpent by crushing his head.

How excited do you think they were when they had Cain? Is this the offspring who will defeat evil? Maybe it will be their second son, Abel! But then Cain lets sin and evil have mastery over himself and murders his brother. Cain isn’t going to crush evil; he’s overcome by it as are his descendants throughout the rest of Genesis 4. Abel is obviously not the promised offspring either.

So, we get to Genesis 4:25-26

Genesis 4:25–26 LSB

Eve is not just saying that Seth is a replacement – one son in place of the another. She is expecting Seth to be that promised offspring that would crush the head of the serpent. I think we see this in the connection between Seth’s name and the curse back in Genesis 3:15.

Seth’s name is a play on the phrase “God has set”
God has seth me an offspring
It’s also a play on Gen 3:15 “I will put”
I will seth enmity between you and the woman

Hope is placed on this son. He will be the one to crush the serpent!

But despite all of Eve’s hope’s that Seth would be the one to crush the serpent – he doesn’t. When Seth has his son Enosh, he doesn’t either. And people are looking around at an increasingly evil world, wondering when God is going to help them – and so they begin calling on the name of the Lord. You said you were going to do something – and we’re calling on you to deliver on those promises.

Prayer and Anxiety

Here’s what we know about prayer so far: Prayer is born out anxiety and a sense of powerlessness.

And that’s not a shocking revelation to us. Do you pray more when your kid is living life and getting straight A’s, or when they’re in the hospital?

It’s something even non-believers will do in desperate times. A poll in the UK found that 1/5 adults who have no religious convictions still find themselves praying – specifically at times of crises. They have this urge to reach out for something more.

When we become overwhelmed by life we turn to prayer – calling on the name of the Lord.

But the biggest struggle people are likely to have with prayer, is does God hear me?

One of the non-believers who was polled says “Yeah I pray, but I have no idea if it does anything.” And I think that’s a real struggle for believers as well. Prayer reaches out, but does it come into contact with a God who is not just able, but willing to answer back?

Calling on the Name of the Lord

Why did the people in the days of Enosh have an expectation that they would be heard?

The way prayer is described here is important. It’s not prayer – it’s not even calling out to Yahweh – it’s calling on the name of Yahweh.

A name is more than a random assortment of letters that you respond to. We tie it to our reputation and our character.

We want to build up our name as someone to be respected and trusted
We put our name on things we endorse (liking something on Facebook)
We put our name on our work
In business we call the companies, the names, that we’re convinced can do the job.

When we’re calling on the name of the Lord, we’re not just calling him because we think he’s strong – we’re calling on his reputation as a God who answers our cries of distress.

Babbling to Gods

When Jesus teaches us to pray, he says:

Matthew 6:7 NIV

⁷ And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.

The KJV and other translations have this as ‘do not us vain repetition.’ The way we’ve understood this most likely is that our prayers need to be genuine and heartfelt – not just repeating the same old prayer over and over again. As if God values originality more than anything in our prayers.

Jesus isn’t teaching against repeating a prayer or praying for the same more than once. He’s teaching us that we don’t need to pester our God to get his attention. Don’t babble like the pagans who believed that to get a prayer answered you had to get the attention of the gods. This was done at times like the annoying kid getting mom’s attention. MomX100.

The goal was to wear the god down so that they got so annoyed they had to give you some attention. Once you annoyed them to the point of exhaustion, they’re much more likely to grant your request just to get rid of you!

Praying to A Different Kind of God

That’s not how prayer works with our God. God has established a reputation as someone who responds to people when they call out to him.

In 1 Kings we have a stand-off between 400 prophets of the god Baal and the single prophet of our God. The Prophet of Elijah gives the rules: they’ll each set up a sacrifice for their respective god but won’t burn it up.

1 Kings 18:24 ESV

²⁴ And you call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, he is God.” And all the people answered, “It is well spoken.”

And surprise surprise…

1 Kings 18:26–29 CSB

²⁶ So they took the bull that he gave them, prepared it, and called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, “Baal, answer us!” But there was no sound; no one answered. Then they danced around the altar they had made. ²⁷ At noon Elijah mocked them. He said, “Shout loudly, for he’s a god! Maybe he’s thinking it over; maybe he has wandered away; or maybe he’s on the road. Perhaps he’s sleeping and will wake up!” ²⁸ They shouted loudly, and cut themselves with knives and spears, according to their custom, until blood gushed over them. ²⁹ All afternoon they kept on raving until the offering of the evening sacrifice, but there was no sound; no one answered, no one paid attention.

Even after all of their babbling, dancing, shouting, cutting, and raving – there was no sound; no one answered, no one paid attention.

And then Elijah takes his turn:

1 Kings 18:36–38 ESV

³⁶ And at the time of the offering of the oblation, Elijah the prophet came near and said, “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. ³⁷ Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” ³⁸ Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.

There’s no twisting of the arm, special pleading, or vain repetition. Elijah calls – God answers.

Your Prayers are Heard

Your prayers are heard just as easily as Elijah’s were.

I’ve been reading about prayer a lot, lately ancient Christians, and the way they describe prayer is really complicated. In order to pray you have to put in a lot of work to make yourself someone worth hearing.

Evagrius (4th century) was a guy who spent too much time in the sun and came up with all of these requirements for prayer:

Don’t expect reaching out to God to be easy
You can’t be anxious when you pray
Make yourself completely senseless to the world around you
Remove all sensations from your mind
And if you can’t do that, you can’t pray – you won’t be heard by God

All of that goes against what prayer looks like in scripture.

Prayer is born out of your anxieties
Prayer is full of your troubles

Most importantly, prayer is easy because God makes it easy. Your prayers are heard not because of who you are but because of who God is. He has allowed us, even in our sin, to still cry out to him that things are broken, and we need him to fix it. And he’s gracious enough not just to hear the request – but to take action.

Prayer began because things weren’t perfect. You don’t have to be perfect to be heard by God. You just have to call out.

But sometimes he doesn’t seem that responsive.

Gen 4:25-26 – Do we need to remind God of his promises as if he were forgetful?
We call out more often than Elijah did here. Does God only hear special prayers or occasions?

The Persistent Widow

Jesus understood that prayer would be a difficult thing for us to keep up. In Luke 17 Jesus talks about some hard times coming for his disciples. They’re full of suffering, confusion, death, and expectations of Jesus’ returning. Life’s going to be hard, and Jesus assumes that his disciples are going to do what’s natural – Call on the name of the Lord! Pray!

And he also assumes they’ll struggle to do it consistently.

Luke 18:1 ESV

¹ And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.

Jesus acknowledges that prayer isn’t an instant fix – but that doesn’t mean that we should just give up on it. When we flip a light switch and it’s still dark we don’t stop believing in electricity!

Likewise with prayer, we shouldn’t lose heart and think that God has stopped caring when his answers take longer than we’d hoped.

Here’s the parable:

Luke 18:2–3 ESV

² He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. ³ And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’

We have a really awful judge.

He doesn’t fear God – so he’s no interest in doing his will
He doesn’t respect man – nobody has any kind of leverage over him

Nobody can tell this judge what to do. Neither God’s laws nor public opinion can sway him. He only does what he wants to, never out of compassion, but self-interest.

And then we have the widow.

She’s in a place of anxiety
She can’t do anything about
So, she calls on this judge who has a reputation for not having any kind of compassion
And she calls again, and again, and again.

Yet nevertheless,

Luke 18:4–5 ESV

⁴ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, ⁵ yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’ ”

the judge answers her call not out of any sense of justice, not because other people begged him, not because of God’s law. He answered her because he’s getting worn out by her.

He’s just like those pagan gods! His motivation is nothing more than self-interest and being annoyed at this woman. So, he gives justice

Luke 18:6–8 ESV

⁶ And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. ⁷ And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? ⁸ I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

Here’s the point:

God cares about justice and his laws
God cares about people and his reputation among them

Yet we’re more persistent in wearing down people like the unrighteous judge than we are in calling out to God. We know people are awful, yet we keep pestering them to help out or fix the problem, but we give up so easily on God who we know wants to fix the problem.

We need to trust that our anxieties are important to God, and not hide them from him. He doesn’t want to ignore our troubles. He doesn’t minimize the problem. Before we’ve even begun our prayer to him, he’s got extensive notes on the matter.

When Jesus comes on the last day, whether it be the last day of the universe or your last day – will he find you calling out in prayer?

Application

Give your anxieties to God
Call out knowing that he’s heard you
Pray in patience