Have you ever had your mouth run ahead of your brain? I certainly have. While rattling off words of which I think to be witty repartee, I easily stumble into a misuse of my mouth and say things that are either hurtful or understood to be hurtful. Once the mouth runs away what comes out of it cannot be recalled. It does terrible damage that cannot easily be undone. It hurts far worse than whips and scourges. What comes out of our mouths hurts or is understood to be hurtful by those who hear it (which are functionally the same). God did not create the mouth for the frivolous uses for which we employ it. Adam's mouth was created by His heavenly Father to speak the truth, so that his naming would make a thing what it was ( Gn 2:16). Instead, Adam was silent, declining to use his mouth to defend God's Word when our enemy misquoted God in the garden. Adam stood there like a cigar store Indian, refusing to name the truth of God's Word as the divinely appointed priest of his own household. He who named things what they are, would not repeat rightly God's word when necessary. Then Adam went from bad to worse. He found his tongue only to accuse God and the woman and to excuse himself ( Gn 3:12; Rm 2:15). How quickly he perverted the gift of speech.

 

How different the second Adam is from the first. Christ Jesus never used frivolous words. Whenever He opened His mouth divine grace came from it. In John 14-16 our Lord repeated His teaching to encourage His disciples in it on the night of His betrayal. Then without any interval he lifted up His eyes and offered petitions to His heavenly Father ( Jn 17). Teaching the truth led to prayer. Christ's mouth was formed around the most blessed words: those which "delivered the goods." For like the first Adam, Christ's words named things so. What He said came to be. Unlike the first Adam, however, that never changed; Jesus never was silent when divine speech was necessary. He was always silent when divine speech was unnecessary. Jesus prays this way to show us what the life of faith looks like. It begins in the word of God and proceeds to doxology in prayer. The conversation of Jesus with His Father in prayer was recorded by the Apostle for our benefit. It shows so beautifully that truth and worship are inseparable.

 

The great theologians have all been men of fervent prayer. They were always driven to pray the doctrine, as Jesus was. They were never too busy. The harder they worked and the more that was demanded of them the more they prayed. Martin Luther testified that when the pressure of his labor was greatest he spent most time in prayer and accomplished most as well. Daily involvement in theology and the trials of this life simply overflows in prayer. So it was for Jesus, placed as he was between the gospel message that he delivered to the disciples and his imminent arrest and crucifixion, by which He put that gospel into effect. He had to show us what prayerful petitions sounded like and how confidently and simply they could be offered.

 

How little we pray, we who have most to pray about! Jesus had far less reason to offer specific petitions to His heavenly Father than we do and yet He prayed much more and much more fervently than we do. His will was always perfectly united with His Father's will and yet He still prayed. We should pray that our Father would give us such a spirit of prayer that we will believe what we pray and pray what we believe.