Lent 2

Matthew 15:21-28 - Lent Two – Reminiscere - Feb. 21, 2016         
The Command and Promise of Prayer

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God commands us to pray.  This is reason enough to pray.  Certainly this is enough reason to do anything.  When God tells you to do something, you should do it.   Jesus commands all nations to be baptized.  So what should all nations do?  Do what he says: repent, and be baptized.  Jesus commands his disciples to take and to eat – to take and to drink.  So what should his disciples do?  They should take what he gives them and do what he says.  Jesus commands sinners to come to him.  What should sinners do?  They should stop following their own ideas and false teachers who tickle their fancy, and go to him who commands them to come.  Jesus tells us to take up our cross and follow.  God’s commands are clear.  By them we are compelled to obey.  But the command alone, although clear and earnest enough, is not enough to prompt us to do these things in true faith.  I mean, one can go through the motions, certainly!  But if one is to do these things while trusting in God for a blessed outcome – if one is to gain any benefit – more than a command is needed.  That is why he attaches his promise. 

In Psalm 50, God says, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble …”  This is a command.  Call on me.  It is clear, then, that we should call on him when troubles arise.  But is it not just as clear that God is inviting us to expect his help?  He is commanding faith.  The thing is, though, about the day of trouble is that troubles prove too much for our weak and sinful hearts.  It is neither natural nor easy to cast our burdens on God.  That’s why we don’t do it like we should.  We want to find ways to solve our problems on our own or at least get a handle on them.  Or else we want to barter with God or even argue with him and give reasons for why he should help – “We don’t deserve what we suffer” – “No good can come from this!” – “Why would you allow this?”  But this is not calling on God in the day of trouble.  This is not casting your cares on him.  It is faithless complaining and even blaming.  We need first to know that God cares for us in order to do what he truly commands.  

That is why to his command God adds a promise, as he continues in the same verse, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you …”  That’s a promise.  Why should you call upon him in the day of trouble?  Because he tells you to, to be sure.  But how can you find the courage and strength?  Because he promises to deliver you, that’s how.  Faith in God cannot be engendered by a mere command to believe.  It is his promise that fuels your obedience, because it is his promise that works faith in your heart to look past the trouble and find God’s gracious willingness to help you through it.  Without the promise, we cannot pray.  With it, we can!  

This faith that trusts his promise is what glorifies God, as the verse concludes, “… and you shall glorify Me” (Psalm 50:15).  God commands us to pray.  He promises to hear us.  You cast your burdens on him not as an act of servile obedience, but as an act of filial love and trust towards your Father who cares for you.  This faith and confidence in the face of adversity honors him who tells you to pray and promises to hear you.  God himself gives us this faith and confidence in the promise of the gospel.  We see this very lesson played out in Psalm 27.  We pray that God would have mercy on us and hear us.  “When You said, ‘Seek My face,’ my heart said to You, ‘Your face, Lord, I will seek’” (Psalm 27:7-8).  We obey his command to seek his face – that is, our heart responds with boldness to do just that – on the basis of his promise to have mercy on us and save us.  

It is the promise that drives us to do what God commands.  His commands are easily ignored because of the weakness of our flesh.  Consider again those commands that I mentioned earlier: be baptized; take, eat; take, drink; come unto me.  

Is our getting baptized merely an act of our own commitment?  Is this what God is demanding of us?  Or is he rather requiring faith in his promise?  That’s right.  To comply with the rite of Holy Baptism simply out of obedience is to make the power of Baptism a power of our own will rather than the power of God’s mercy.  But what compels us?  What does God want us to have?  He says, “He who believes and is baptized will be saved.”  He says it gives the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.  He says the promise is for us and our children (Acts 2:38-39).  The faith Baptism requires is the faith Baptism gives.  And that right there bears repeating: The faith Baptism requires is the faith Baptism gives.  It is faith born from the promise to save.  What makes Baptism precious is not our own obedience, but the fact that it clothes us with the obedience of Christ!  

Surely the natural man, the unregenerate heathen, can, without any true faith, submit to the sacrament of Baptism – like the Gentile commander Naaman did, who finally complied with Elisha’s command to wash himself seven times in the Jordan to cleanse him of his leprosy.  But Jesus requires that we lay aside our natural objections to his commands.  He requires that we be born again – that is, that we learn to depend on his word and not on what we think is reasonable.  Laying aside our reason and strength, we find the Holy Spirit working faith where we are unable to conjure it.  He does so in the promise to save through water and the word.  

Jesus tells his disciples, and us, to take and eat and to take and drink.  Is this a memorial meal whereby we confirm our commitment to his grace within his covenant?  Is it an opportunity for us to exhibit the devotion of our faith?  Is this what faith needs?  No.  Consider what he tells us to do – what no man can possibly feel comfortable doing.  He tells us to eat and drink his very body and blood!  But why?  To what end?  How absurd!  How can we find any benefit in such eating and drinking?  We turn to the promise.  “Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sins.”  Believe this and you receive him worthily.  Believe this promise and the impossibility of his body being in many places and his blood quenching the thirst of so many people becomes a non-issue.  His promise is enough.  His promise is what drives your obedience.  And your faith in this promise is what glorifies God.  The very invitation to eat and drink exercises your faith by teaching you to bury the reasonable objections of your Old Adam deep in the grave that the Second Adam rose from.  He who bodily rose now offers you his glorified body and blood to bestow and confirm to you that he did it all for you.  

Finally, turn to the command to come to him.  “Come to Me,” he says.  But then doesn’t Jesus say, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (John 6:44)?  So how does the Father draw us?  He draws us where he reveals his good will toward us, that is, by means of the promise his Son makes to us.  “Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden,” – and here’s the promise! – “and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).  You need rest.  You labor.  You have burdens and troubles.  You have sin that you can’t get rid of.  You have the devil on your back accusing and tempting you.  You have loved ones who are afflicted by their own demons of addictions and pride.  You have children who scorn God’s word and rely on the wisdom of a perverse generation instead.  You have guilt.  You cannot bear it.  But Jesus can.  And he does.  That is why he commands you to come to him, to ask that it may be given, to seek that you may find.  And what compels you?  What gives you the strength and confidence to do so?  “I will give you rest.” “You shall find … the door will be open to you.”  It is the promise – the promise! – that reveals the love behind the command.  

Nothing glorifies God more than when Jesus bears your sin and every care of this sinful world.  Therefore you can glorify God in no greater way than when you call upon him who has earned your eternal rest, laying claim to his labor for you.  His labor is given to you in your Baptism, in the Lord’s Supper, and where he commands you who have ears to hear to gather where the gospel is preached in his name.  

This is the posture of faith – the faith that is necessary for prayer – prayer that God hears with a willing heart to grant what you ask for.  It is humility.  It is the knowledge that you need what you cannot gain on your own.  The faith needed for true prayer is faith that knows that the will of God is good and gracious.  It is faith that depends not on self – in fact even allows the self to be debased and insulted.  It is faith that rather depends on God who gives and delays in his loving wisdom.  Consider the woman of our Gospel lesson this morning. 

She calls out to Jesus, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! My daughter is severely demon-possessed.”  She knows her need, her helplessness, her unworthiness.  She is a Gentile who has no claim on the inheritance of Israel, because she is not within the covenant that God made to Abraham.  But in Abraham’s Seed all nations would be blessed, and it is this blessing she seeks.  She doesn’t claim her own right to ask him for anything.  She asks for mercy.  This word for mercy is a specific word.  It means, “Be propitious.”  It means, “Remove whatever reasons you may have for saying no. Am I a sinner?  Does God judge my sin?  Is my unworthiness good reason for God to deny me?  So be it.  Stand between me and God.  Stand between my sin and God.  Stand between my guilty doubt and your Father who would deny my prayer because of it.”  This is what it means to ask for mercy.  It is not simply to ask God to change his mind.  It is to ask God to keep in mind that sacrifice that has reconciled him to us – to place before his face not our sin, but the obedience of his Son in our place.  Kyrie Elieson.  That is, “Lord have mercy.”  To ask for mercy is to respond to God’s promise.  Mercy is found in Christ alone.  

Who is Christ?  This woman does more than identify him as Lord, Kyrie.  She identifies him as the Son of David.  He is the eternal God, yes.  He is also the Savior long promised through the prophets.  In order to give mercy – in order to deliver her from the devil who oppressed her daughter – she needed him to be the Lord God.  Only God has such power over the devil.  Only God can remove the sin that stands as a reason for him to deny your prayers.  So she calls him Lord.  He must also be a Man as he quite clearly was.  He must be Man, because what stands against us is our own human sin and rebellion.  The Man Jesus removes our human sin by bearing it in his human flesh and blood.  He prepares eternal innocence for us by obeying as a Man what God required of all men.  

This woman identifies him as the only one who can answer her prayer because he is the only one who can stand before both God and man as our advocate and intercessor.  He is David’s Son and David’s Lord who reconciles heaven and earth by his own blood.  

[Because we are compelled to pray by God’s command and enabled to pray on account of God’s promise, it is false prayer to pray for what God forbids.  And it is false prayer to expect what God does not promise.  Often people will justify their sinful decisions by saying that they prayed about it.  This is like saying that what you want is OK because you first let God know, as though God needs to be notified in order to sanctify your desire.  No.  When we pray for God’s guidance we do so by considering what God actually commands of us and what he actually promises.  Let it be to you as you desire is only spoken to one who first sees and recognizes and wants what God desires, like the Canaanite woman did.  When prayer is used as a cover for sin, God is mocked.]  

The Canaanite woman confessed this in few words.  Yet how did Jesus respond?  First, he seemingly ignored her.  But what kept her going?  His promise.  So also, his promise compels us to pray when God appears silent.  His seeming silence draws us closer to where his promise is not silent.  Next, Jesus seems to exclude her from his scope of mercy: she was not a child of Israel.  So also, it seems like our own unworthiness stands in the way of God’s willingness to help.  We doubt whether we are faithful enough to be heard.  Then what do you do?  Forget your unworthiness – or better yet, own it – and focus all the more on your need and who it is who call fill it.  Fall on your knees and say with the Canaanite woman, “Help me!”  Finally, Jesus insults her.  He calls her a house pet.  “So be it,” she concludes.  “Let me be a dog.  But at least as a dog I have opportunity to eat the crumbs that the children let fall.”  And fall they did.  Though he was rejected by most of the children of Israel – though the Bread of Life was rejected and shoved off the table – yet his promise stood available for all who would snatch it.  Jesus helped.  But not before he praised the faith that begged for it.  

This woman obeyed God’s command to pray by holding to the promise he made.  In this way she glorified him who came in the name of the Lord.  Such seeming denials of God toward us are just the type of thing that makes it impossible for the command to suffice.  We need more than a command.  Therefore when God seems silent, or to scorn us with denial, or insult us with further tribulation, we do what our sister in Christ did – we doggedly latch on to his promise and hold Jesus to it.  We grasp the crumbs of mercy that fall from every invitation to pray.  And relying on him we find our sustenance and our deliverance from Satan’s malice.  As children of God, we with her obey his command by believing his promise.  By prayer and God’s word, we bear our cross and follow Jesus who has won us everlasting life by bearing his. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.