Should Men Still Pray with Lifted Hands?
00:00:00.000 | Good Friday, everyone.
00:00:05.680 | On this podcast, we regularly take questions about how the early church did things, and
00:00:12.040 | then we ask what practices we read about in our Bibles are directly transferable to our
00:00:17.320 | local churches today.
00:00:19.960 | And within that category, I think would fit today's email from a listener named Robbie
00:00:24.840 | in Kentucky.
00:00:25.840 | "Pastor John, hello to you.
00:00:28.280 | In 1 Timothy 2a, we read that Paul exhorted men to pray in church while lifting up holy
00:00:35.200 | hands.
00:00:37.320 | What's the connection between lifted hands and holiness?
00:00:41.960 | And what about lifted hands and prayer?
00:00:44.240 | Is this practice culturally dated or is it a relevant one we should adopt today in our
00:00:50.120 | corporate church gatherings?"
00:00:53.320 | The text, namely 1 Timothy 2a, says, "I desire then that in every place the men," and the
00:01:03.000 | word is men, not just persons, it's males, "should pray, lifting holy hands, without
00:01:11.440 | anger or quarreling."
00:01:13.760 | And then Paul continues, interestingly, in verse 9, without a break, and shifts from
00:01:19.160 | men to women and says, "Likewise, I desire that in every place the men," and the word
00:01:22.640 | is men, "should pray, lifting holy hands, without anger or quarreling."
00:01:23.640 | And then Paul continues, "Likewise, also that women should adorn themselves in respectable
00:01:29.160 | apparel with modesty and self-control."
00:01:31.680 | And I think it's relevant for understanding the word to men to realize that it's paired
00:01:39.800 | with a word to women.
00:01:42.920 | It's relevant because it relates to the question whether Paul is addressing merely a peculiar
00:01:51.600 | problem at Ephesus or whether he's speaking more generally in a way that all of us should
00:01:57.000 | sit up and take notice, even in the 21st century, because it relates to our situation as well,
00:02:03.400 | male and female.
00:02:04.400 | Now, we might be tempted to think that Paul is focused here mainly on the situation at
00:02:13.320 | Ephesus because when he says that anger and quarreling should be put away, that triggers
00:02:21.900 | in our minds another text in 1 Timothy, namely chapter 6, verse 4, where he says there's
00:02:28.040 | a group of people in the church who have an unhealthy craving for controversy and for
00:02:35.320 | quarrels about words which produce dissension.
00:02:40.000 | So we might think, well, that's why here in 1 Timothy 2.8 men are told to pray without
00:02:45.480 | anger and without quarreling.
00:02:47.880 | It's a peculiar problem at Ephesus.
00:02:50.880 | And that may be why Paul put the emphasis here on anger and quarreling, but I don't
00:02:56.080 | think he means for us to hear his words as limited to the application for Ephesus.
00:03:05.120 | And I say that mainly because he says, "I desire that in every place men should pray,
00:03:15.160 | lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling."
00:03:19.480 | So the words "in every place" show that he's giving general instructions to men,
00:03:26.520 | and that carries over to the instructions to women as well.
00:03:30.440 | In every place, women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel with modesty.
00:03:36.280 | So it seems to me that Paul is putting his finger here on a typical male temptation and
00:03:46.760 | a typical female temptation.
00:03:50.400 | In general, men are more given to the temptation of angry, verbal jousting and outbursts of
00:04:00.080 | combative quarreling.
00:04:03.000 | And in general, women are more inclined than men to give attention to their appearance
00:04:09.200 | when they go out in public.
00:04:10.840 | Now, of course, those are generalizations, and there are exceptions for both of them,
00:04:16.040 | but Paul seems to be putting his finger on a problem that is more peculiar to men and
00:04:22.960 | a problem that's more peculiar to women.
00:04:26.320 | He's addressing them both in general, not just because of a peculiar problem at Ephesus.
00:04:33.680 | And our question here is about what he says to men as they gather to pray.
00:04:40.660 | And what he says is that he wants men in every place to pray, lifting holy hands without
00:04:49.140 | anger and quarreling.
00:04:51.080 | And the question is, is Paul saying that in all our praying we should be lifting our
00:04:58.560 | hands?
00:04:59.560 | I think that's the basic question that I'm being asked.
00:05:02.680 | And I think the first thing to say is, because we've seen it already, that the emphasis
00:05:08.280 | does not fall on the lifting of hands but on holiness and the renunciation of anger
00:05:14.960 | and quarreling.
00:05:16.200 | It's significant that when he says he wants men to lift holy hands, that he goes on to
00:05:23.320 | underline the holiness, not the hands, namely, get rid of anger, get rid of quarreling as
00:05:31.640 | you come to pray.
00:05:33.880 | That's where the emphasis falls.
00:05:36.320 | It's as if the lifting of hands is a given.
00:05:38.520 | It's just a given.
00:05:39.520 | That's what you do in worship.
00:05:42.500 | And so what he's telling them is not so much to do what they always do, namely, lift
00:05:46.880 | your hands.
00:05:47.880 | He's saying, lift holy hands, lift pure hands.
00:05:53.020 | Do it with peace and without quarreling.
00:05:56.760 | Now all of us from time to time speak this way.
00:06:00.480 | A teacher in grammar school might say to her students, "Now, young people, I want you
00:06:07.200 | to always come to class asking questions respectfully."
00:06:13.040 | Or a coach might say, "I want us to get out on the field and throw completed passes."
00:06:18.600 | Now, those are not statements about how often the student should ask questions or how often
00:06:27.280 | the quarterback should throw passes.
00:06:29.960 | Those are statements about do it respectfully and do it completing passes.
00:06:37.960 | That's the way I think Paul is speaking here.
00:06:39.880 | The command is not to always lift your hands.
00:06:43.280 | Be sure to always lift your hands.
00:06:46.200 | It's lift them with holiness.
00:06:48.720 | Be free from anger and quarreling.
00:06:53.280 | But let me add two other questions.
00:06:56.800 | First, why did Paul take for granted that it was so common in worship that men should
00:07:05.520 | lift their hands?
00:07:07.800 | He was just assuming it.
00:07:09.920 | And surely part of the answer is that the Old Testament refers to this practice often.
00:07:17.440 | Nehemiah 8.6, "Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, 'Amen,
00:07:23.880 | lifting up their hands.'"
00:07:26.920 | Or Psalm 28.2, "Hear the voice of my pleas for mercy when I cry to you for help, when
00:07:32.920 | I lift up my hands."
00:07:35.680 | Psalm 63.4, "I will bless you as long as I live.
00:07:40.040 | In your name I will lift up my hands."
00:07:44.440 | Psalm 141.2, "Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting of my
00:07:51.200 | hands as the evening sacrifice."
00:07:55.040 | So probably Paul simply assumed it because that's the way the church is worshipped following
00:08:03.720 | the tradition of the Psalms.
00:08:06.960 | It seems natural.
00:08:07.960 | I think that's why it happens in the Psalms, and that's why it happens today.
00:08:11.720 | It seems natural.
00:08:13.180 | If the heart is exulting before God over some great reality of grace, it seems natural that
00:08:20.960 | the body would join the Spirit in the exultation.
00:08:25.200 | I mean, why wouldn't it?
00:08:27.400 | We are body and we are soul, and we exult in this glorious reality.
00:08:32.560 | And here's my last question.
00:08:36.200 | Why wouldn't we lift our hands today?
00:08:40.160 | I'm arguing that it's not a command here, but that we lift our hands in holiness when
00:08:46.560 | we lift our hands.
00:08:47.880 | But I'm asking this question, why wouldn't we lift our hands in worship?
00:08:53.280 | And of course the answers are many, right?
00:08:56.800 | It's not the way I was raised.
00:08:59.560 | It's not my personality.
00:09:02.240 | It's not my culture or my ethnicity.
00:09:06.120 | It's not the way our church worships.
00:09:09.520 | It would be misunderstood as identifying with a group whose theology is defective.
00:09:14.000 | I remember talking with a leader in another country, and I said, "I spoke at one group
00:09:19.520 | in this city, and everybody was raising their hands.
00:09:22.000 | I spoke in your group with 5,000 people, and not a hand was raised.
00:09:25.880 | What's that about?"
00:09:26.880 | And he just sat flat out, because if we did it, we'd be aligned with the people with a
00:09:31.200 | defective theology.
00:09:33.480 | Or it would be phony.
00:09:34.480 | I don't want to just be carried along by my emotions, etc., etc.
00:09:38.960 | So there are a lot of reasons why people don't do what the psalmist says is natural to do.
00:09:46.800 | So I would just end with the question, given Paul's assumption that it was so common in
00:09:55.080 | the early church, and given the Old Testament exhortations and examples, and given the natural
00:10:03.200 | union between body and spirit in true exaltation, is the reason that you don't lift your hands
00:10:11.960 | a good reason?
00:10:13.960 | Good challenge, considering the cultural hurdles that are at play here.
00:10:18.440 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for joining us today.
00:10:20.960 | Ask a question of your own, or search our huge archive at AskPastorJohn.com.
00:10:28.680 | We break for the weekend now and return next week to ask another question about authentic
00:10:32.920 | living.
00:10:34.360 | Can a true Christian be saved if they never evangelize, never once shared the gospel with
00:10:41.840 | an unbeliever, and don't really intend to either?
00:10:46.520 | Can such a person be saved?
00:10:49.520 | Wow, that's a big question.
00:10:52.760 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we will ask Pastor John on Monday.
00:10:57.680 | See you then.
00:10:58.040 | [END]
00:11:00.040 | 1. What is the definition of "true Christian"?