Because men are sinners, prayer must always be employed in preaching. Prayer before and after preaching must not only plead that God graciously overcome the ruinous effects of our sin, but that God would also turn his anger away from our obstinacy and unbelief.

In his first sermon on our Lord’s prayer in John 17, Anthony Burgess (d. 1664), preacher and delegate to the Westminster Assembly, makes the case why prayer is necessary to all preaching.

“If therefore we would have our preaching and your hearing do any good, be powerful to a heavenly alteration and change, then look up with your eyes to heaven; It’s from God that this must do me good, It’s from God that this must teach my heart; In vain is a Teacher without if there be not also a Teacher within.”

For Burgess preaching is not enough. Of course, preaching is prescribed and essential to all good in the life of God’s people. The Church cannot live without preaching. Yet preaching cannot live without prayer. God alone possesses the key of all men’s hearts, says Burgess. Not the preacher. Not the people. The living God must come to us in preaching or we will never come to him.

Because men are sinners, prayer must always be employed in preaching. Prayer before and after preaching must not only plead that God graciously overcome the ruinous effects of our sin, but that God would also turn his anger away from our obstinacy and unbelief.

Humble prayer, spiritually prostrate before God, coming as lowly petitioners seeking benefits from the merciful God in the name of Christ, is our only hope that God has brought preaching to us and our children for better ends than he had in store for Judah when He sent Isaiah to them (Isa. 6:9-10).

Without entreaty to God and his gracious reply, says Burgess, “you hear yourselves into damnation, and we preach you into greater and greater spiritual judgements daily.”

Now it is not exactly clear how Burgess’ thoughts on prayer and preaching correspond to his participation in the Westminster Assembly. He was not a member of the subcommittee which drafted the Directory for Worship. Yet his concerns are clearly in accord with the Assembly’s own priorities for public worship.

The Directory calls for two prayers in relation to the sermon, one just before and one just after. The prayer before the sermon is when the minister “endeavor[s] to get his own and his hearers hearts to be rightly affected with their sins, that they may all mourn in sense thereof before the Lord, and hunger and thirst after the grace of God in Jesus Christ.”

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