Where Do You Pray?

Where Do You Pray?

Intro.: There are all kinds of places that people pray.

1. It may be in the church
2. It may be as they walk in the garden
3. It may be sitting alone at a bus stop
4. Late last week, as I began putting together this series on prayer, I was challenged to look at where Jesus prayed.
5. I want to spend the next few minutes examining that question.
6. Let me begin by reading one of Jesus' most famous prayers.

Read: John 17:1-26

Pray

T.S. The places that Jesus prayed can be divided into three categories. I want to look at those categories this afternoon.

1. Jesus prayed with the crowds
   1. The first thing that surprised me when I began asking the question, “Where did Jesus pray?” was how infrequently the gospels record Jesus praying with the crowds.
      1. The first example is the Sermon on the Mount. This was the setting for Jesus giving the Lord's Prayer. What made this unique is that this sermon was primarily for the twelve disciples – but there was a crowd standing around listening.
      2. Matthew also tells of a time that the crowds were bringing the children to Jesus – the disciples complained but Jesus put His hands on them and prayed for them.
   2. But my two favorite examples of Jesus praying occur in Mark 6 and Mark 8. These two events in Jesus' life are remarkably similar – but have important differences.
   3. In Mark 6, Jesus feeds the a crowd of 5000 people.
      1. But before he does, he sees the crowd and has compassion on them. Why?
      2. Because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
      3. And what does he do? He begins to teach them.
      4. Jesus sees what the people need, they need a shepherd – and he gives what they need.
      5. It is only later, at the end of the day, that Jesus realizes that the crowd is hungry – and he takes five loaves of bread and two fish, blesses them, and begins to feed the crowd.
      6. They were not going away hungry – they had spent time in the presence of the shepherd.
   4. Mark 8 presents a slightly different story.
      1. This time a crowd of 4000 people have been with Jesus for three days. And for the most part, those 4000 people had had nothing to eat for those three days.
      2. Jesus comes to the same conclusion that you do – they were hungary.
      3. And Jesus' reaction – he has “compassion” on the crowd. Same response as before – different reasons. Mark 6 – the people of the crowd “were like sheep without a shepherd. Mark 8 – the crowd was hungry. And the response was the same: COMPASSION.
         1. COMPASSION is an interesting word. It refers to a gut reaction.
         2. Whether Jesus saw people who were “like people without a shepherd” or he saw people who “had been with Him for three days and were hungry” -
         3. It effected him right here, in His gut.
      4. And like before, when Jesus had compassion, he gives what the people needed – food.
      5. He takes seven loaves of bread and a few small fish and begins to feed the crowd of 5000.
      6. They were not going away hungry – they had spent time in the presence of the one who called himself the “bread of life”.
   5. It may not have been often, but Jesus did find time to pray with the crowds.
2. Jesus prayed with the disciples
   1. I think it interesting that the two most famous prayers that Jesus had with his disciples occurred at the two ends of His ministry.
   2. The Lord's Prayer
      1. was given as part of the Sermon on the Mount –
      2. I said that earlier.
      3. But it was given near the beginning of His ministry
   3. John 17 has the other famous prayer.
      1. Known as the “High Priestly Prayer”
      2. Delivered in the evening following the meal he had with his disciples in the upper room – the Last Supper. On the eve of his arrest, the night before His death on the cross.
      3. Jesus prayed for
         1. Himself (it would be the most terrible life of His life),
         2. His disciples,
         3. … and for the rest of us

(Appl.) There are two lessons here for us –

1. Wherever we are in our Christian life, we are expected to pray. Jesus did so – so must we.  
2. As we pray, we can pray for ourselves, we can pray for those we are closest to, and we can pray for those we do not know. Praying for ourselves will be easy (I know what my needs are), praying for those we know won't be to bad (I know enough about my friends to share their load with God), but praying for those I do not know, for those I have never met, for those whose names I don't even know – that will be hard. Yet Jesus did it – so can I.

1. Pray for safety, 
2. Pray for health, 
3. Pray for wisdom, 
4. Pray that they may know God

4. Jesus not only prayed for His disciples, He also prayed with His disciples.

(Ill.)   D. E. Host, the man who took over for Hudson Taylor, wrote a book titled Behind the Ranges. He was trying to analyze a problem he had seen while working in two different villages in China. The people with whom he lived and worked were not doing very well. But the people in the other village across the ranges were doing great! He visited them only now and then, but they were always doing fine, so he began to ask the Lord what was going on. How could those across the ranges be doing better than those with whom he lived and worked? The Lord showed Host the answer. Although he was spending much time counseling, preaching, and teaching with those with whom he lived, he spent much more time in prayer for those across the ranges. He concluded that there were four basic elements in making disciples: (1) prayer, (2) prayer, (3) prayer, (4) the Word—in that order and in about that proportion.ⁱ

5. It seems right that we should pray with the church – with those who choose to follow Jesus Christ.

3. Jesus prayed when he was alone
   1. I was not surprised that Jesus prayed with His disciple.
   2. I was caught off-guard when I discovered how seldom the gospels contain examples of Jesus praying with crowds.
   3. But that was not the biggest surprise I discovered this week.
   4. I counted six times that Jesus spent time alone in prayer – on the hillside, by the sea shore, on the ground, at Gethsemane, and, at least once, in a “lonely place”.
   5. Not only that, Jesus gave very implicit instructions to His disciples, ““And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
   6. I grew up thinking that prayer was something reserved for church
      1. We never prayed in our home, even over meals – except for Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas
      2. But I would see praying in Sunday School and in each Sunday's worship.
      3. It was not till I started college that remember seeing people pray outside of the church on a regular basis. It was when I first became involved with Campus Crusades for Christ and, later, in the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship on our campus.
   7. But at some point, and I cannot tell you when, I became aware that I did not need the church to pray, I did not need a group of college students, to pray,
   8. Prayer is talking to God – whether as part of a church or part of a small group or alone at home – I can talk to God.

(Ill.)   I am told that in the years 1953-1955, during the first two years of Eisenhouser's administration, Congress “set aside a small room in the Capitol, just off the rotunda, for the private prayer and meditation of members of Congress. The room is always open when Congress is in session, but it is not open to the public. The room’s focal point is a stained glass window showing George Washington kneeling in prayer. Behind him is etched these words from Psalm 16:1: 'Preserve me, O God, for in Thee do I put my trust.' ”ⁱⁱ

9. The point of this room is that our elected officials need a place for private prayer.
10. Just as Jesus needed time for private
11. And we also need to find a time and a place for private prayer.

Conclusion:

Pray

iIllustrations for Biblical Preaching: Over 1500 sermon illustrations arranged by topic and indexed exhaustively. 1989 (M. P. Green, Ed.) (Revised edition of: The expositor's illustration file). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

iiFederer, W. J. (2001). Great Quotations : A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Quotations Influencing Early and Modern World History Referenced according to their Sources in Literature, Memoirs, Letters, Governmental Documents, Speeches, Charters, Court Decisions and Constitutions. St. Louis, MO: AmeriSearch.

The Bookends of Prayer

The Bookends of Prayer

Intro.: Do any of you own any bookends?

1. I like bookends, as well.
2. I can't say that I collect them – but the pairing of two bookends fascinate me.
3. Some of them are just make do bookends – a couple of coffee mugs here, a brick there.
4. But then some are kind of neat.
5. I have a set of molded bronze praying hands – that I have just above my computer.
6. I think my favorite are a set Sandra uses in the kitchen – they are a pair of elephant heads – though made out of some kind of synthetic material, they look like they are crafted out of marble.
7. But bookmarks also have been used to represent significant events in life – the beginning and end of project – from an idea to its completion. From signing the mortgage to making that final payment – bookends.
8. Or even of life itself – the bookmarks of birth and death mark each of our lives.
9. There are also spiritual bookends, so to speak. For example, we can look at creation as being one bookend. The other would be Christ's return.
10. I want to look at another set of spiritual bookends. At least one author has suggested that prayer has two bookends that help us to understand how and why we pray.
11. Let me begin by looking at what is probably the most well-known prayer in scripture.

Read: Matthew 6:5-14

Pray

Trans: It is important to remember that prayer is not just a New Testament concept -

1. If, as is commonly done, prayer is defined as talking to God, then the conversations recorded between God and Adam and Eve can be seen as the very first examples of prayer.
2. Prayer is either discussed, illustrated, commanded, or mentioned in every book of the Bible.
3. It is to be a part of the believer's life
4. Over the next few weeks, we will look at this thing called prayer.

T.S. Today, I want to look at what has been called the two bookends of prayer – two important concepts that will help us understand how and why we pray.ⁱ

1. On one side stands the bookend of a Holy, All-Powerful, Infinite God against whom we have sinned.

(Ill.) Do you remember that one time in school when you looked at your friend's school work to see what answer they had put down for that question? No one ever found out, but you knew you had peeked. But you felt bad – after all this was your favorite class, with your favorite teacher.
And then you feel it - the discomfort that comes with the memory. You know you have to go back and admit what you did. And that is hard!!

And that is exactly how we have treated God -

1. We have sinned against God – Romans 3:23 “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
2. We have sinned against the Holy, All-Powerful, Infinite God – and because we have sinned we will need to approach Him with reverence, respect, honor – he is God.
3. Prayer must begin by realizing that we are not just putting words our there, we are not just crying out for help;
4. We are talking to God – and we must never forget it!!

(Ill.) It was sometime near 1750 that Ignace Franz penned the words to his hymn

Holy God, we praise thy Name,
Lord of all, we bow before thee;
All on thy earth scepter claim,
All in heaven above adore thee;
Infinite thy vast domain,
Everlasting is thy reign.

Holy Father, holy Son,
Holy Spirit, Three we name thee,
While in essence only One,
Undivided God we claim thee;
Then, adoring, bend the knee
And confess the mystery.

          The verses of this hymn among the clearest affirmation of God's deity in the hymnal. Our hymnal only displays 5 verses of the eight well-known verses found in many hymnals. At least one survey suggests that this hymn is the #1 favorite hymn among Catholic believers.ⁱⁱ And it calls them, it calls us, to worship an all-powerful God. The God to whom we pray.ⁱⁱⁱ

2. The other bookend of prayer is the work that Christ has done that allows us to come to this Holy God.
   1. The call to come is found throughout the Scriptures
      1. Matt 11:28 Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden
      2. Hebrews 4:16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
      3. John 14:13-14 Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

(Ill.) I was thinking this week what would happen if I tried to approach the President of the United States to ask for something – food, a car, a new TV, whatever. I mean, even if I tried to approach the President without the proper credentials and preparations – I would be arrested and put into jail. I would never be allowed to do it. Yet God, who is far more powerful, far more important, allows me to approach Him.

2. What I cannot do with the President of the United States, I can do with God.

Conclusion: Two bookends

1. An awesome God
2. An approachable God
3. We must never forget these truths–
   1. God wants to hear from us
   2. he does not want us to hold anything back
   3. But we never approach Him carelessly or flippantly
   4. after all, He is God
4. Let me conclude by calling you to prayer this week – and as you pray, remember that you are coming to God with all your needs because he asks you to do so.

Pray

iThe outline, though not the sermon itself, is borrowed from: Wilhoit, J. (2002). Nelson's personal handbook on prayer. Nelson's Personal Handbook Series. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.

iihttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXwpNBlpJsE

iiiEckert, P. (1998). Steve Green's MIDI hymnal : A complete toolkit for personal devotions and corporate worship. (Electronic ed.). Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.