[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Your saints today will meditate on the mystery of Jesus’ prayer. On the way there, I want to pick up the last couple of verses of Isaiah. Isaiah 40 is an amazing chapter, and at the end of that chapter, he gives this promise. He says, “Even youths shall faint and be weary, young men will fall exhausted; but they who wait on the Lord, they who wait for the Lord, shall renew their strength, they shall mount up on wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”
Now, I’m not an expert on eagles’ wings, but I am somewhat of an amateur expert on buzzard flight, and that is because when I was a kid, me and my brothers had this great plan almost every day that we’d get our BB guns and we’d go lay in the hill behind our house and pretend like we were dead so that the buzzards would circle around, and as they would get closer we’d be able to shoot them. Ross told me, by the way, that buzzard hunting is illegal, which I didn’t know then, but I assure you there was no harm ever done to any buzzard in spite of our efforts.
That’s the amazing thing about the buzzards, how they fly. You sit there and watch them, and they sit there, they just spread their wings out, and they just kind of cruise around, and they look for the thermals, for the hot air that’s rising, and they’ll find that, and they’ll just spread their wings out, and they’ll just climb and climb and climb, without even flapping their wings once. I saw one time, this was a marvel to me, I saw, we were visiting the Grand Canyon, and we were looking around, and there down deep in the canyon was a buzzard circling. It circled, and it just kept getting higher and higher and higher until we were looking out even with this buzzard, and it just kept going and going without beating its wings once, just climbing and climbing until it was almost in the clouds.
This is amazing—that without any work, without any effort at all to be able to soar to such heights. This is, I think, the picture that the Lord Jesus is painting for us when he gives this image to the prophet Isaiah, and he says that those who wait on the Lord will lift up on wings like an eagle. Let’s just contrast it, shall we? The Lord says, “Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles.” Here’s the contrast: Those who trust in themselves shall mount up on wings like chickens.
You’ve seen a chicken; you know if it wants to fly to the top of a fence post, like three feet off the ground, it has to back up, get a running start, flap its wings like it’s demon-possessed, feathers flying everywhere, squawking all the energy it can just to get two feet off the ground. Now that, that is the picture of those who trust in themselves. You want to clamber up into heaven on your own works, by your own efforts, you will never make it. It’s by grace that we’re saved, through faith. That’s not our own; it’s a gift of God. If we want to trust, if we want to achieve the height of heaven, it is not by our own efforts or our own works but by the Lord’s mercy.
St. Paul says it like this, “To the one who does not work but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted to him as righteousness.” So we are lifted up on these wings like eagles. That is, we are resting in the Lord’s mercy, and he brings us to heaven.
Now unfortunately though, and I have a little bit of bad news about this verse, because there’s one word in that verse that I wish I could tell you was different. I wish the verse said this: “But those who trust in the Lord shall renew their strength,” or “those who call upon the Lord shall renew their strength,” or “those who believe in the Lord will renew their strength.” But that’s not what Isaiah says. It says this: “Those who wait for the Lord.”
And at least I’ll confess my own weakness. I am not very good at waiting. I don’t like it. I get tired of it, wearisome. I don’t have the patience that I should have, and I suspect this is true for all of us. Waiting is difficult. But the Christian life is a life of waiting. In fact, that’s what it means that the Christian life is a life of prayer. Because every prayer, remember, begins as an unanswered prayer. If we had the thing we were asking for, then we wouldn’t be asking for it. So our whole life, our whole Christian life, is that time waiting between the offering of our prayer and the Lord’s answer to our prayer.
I want to hone in on this a little bit with the text for the Gospel text from Mark chapter 1. Now, it’s an amazing kind of text. There’s a lot there. We’ll remember that it starts on Saturday afternoon. Jesus had been in the synagogue in Capernaum for their Sabbath service, and he had found there a man with a demon, and he had rescued him from the demon. So immediately after the service was over, Jesus went with James and John to Simon and Andrew’s house, and their Simon’s mother-in-law was sick with a fever and Jesus grabbed her by the hand and lifted her up and she was healed, and she began to serve them.
But then the sun goes down, first day of the week; it’s Sunday now, and this is important for us to remember that when the sun goes down on the Sabbath, then the Sabbath is over and the people can go back to work. So as soon as the sun goes down, this Sunday night, or this—how would you count it—Saturday night for us, early, it’s the first part of Sunday for the Jewish accounting. As soon as the sun goes down and all the people can break their Sabbath rest, they all rush to Simon’s house. It says the whole village was trying to cram into the door, and Jesus was healing them, and Jesus was rescuing them from demons, and Jesus was preaching. And this went on late into the night until morning came, and the work was done, and Jesus, instead of going to bed, goes out into the wilderness outside the village to pray.
When everyone else wakes up, they’re all looking for him. There’s a word used in the Greek in the text, it’s the word that’s used for tracking, like if you’re going to try to find someone who’s running away, and you’re tracking them through the woods, looking at the footprints and stuff. That Simon tracks Jesus down and says, “Everyone’s looking for you. They want you to come back into the village. There’s a huge crowd waiting for you to minister to them.” But Jesus says, “No, it’s time to go to the other villages to preach. That’s what I came to do.”
Now, there’s four things that are highlighted in the text, and I suppose that I’m going to talk about the one that’s the hardest. Jesus came to rescue from the demons, God be praised. Jesus came to heal from diseases, that’s a foretaste of the resurrection. God be praised. Jesus came to preach the kingdom of God, that the kingdom is near, that the Lord has mercy on sinners. God be praised. But then this fourth thing that I want to talk about: Jesus went to pray. Jesus went to pray.
I was talking with someone yesterday about this text. I was visiting with them, and we were looking at the text, and they asked me, “Pastor, does Jesus pray because of his human nature?” And I have to confess that I have not been able to stop thinking about that question since I heard it yesterday. Does Jesus pray because of his human nature? After all, he’s God; he shouldn’t need to pray. Is it because he’s a man that he prays?
Now I think in one way the answer to that is yes. Yes, we pray because we have great need. We pray because we need the Lord’s help. We pray because we cannot do it on our own. It’s part of being a human being that we are not contained in ourselves, but we need help from outside of us, as much as we hate to admit it. I don’t know why I hate to admit it. Maybe I— I mean, really this whole sermon, I’m kind of preaching to myself. I ain’t doing, I need help. And maybe one or two of you are like that also.
We think that we can do it ourselves, we can manage our own lives, and we can hold it all together. But when the Lord gives Himself the name Helper, He’s teaching you that you need help. Just like when He gives Himself the name Savior, He’s teaching you that you need saving. There’s a beautiful argument that the Lutheran confessors make. They were arguing against the Catholic Church of the time that we’re saved not by works, but by grace alone. And Philip Melanchthon makes the argument like this. He says, “When you read in the Old Testament all of the times that the saints prayed, you see that salvation must have been by grace alone because if they could have saved themselves, they wouldn’t have needed it from the Lord.” It’s a beautiful argument, really quite stunning, and true.
So that part of our humanity is the fact that we need the Lord’s help, that we need to pray. So I think it’s plausible that Jesus prayed because He’s a man. But I also think it’s plausible, and I would like to put this before you for your consideration, that when Jesus prays, it’s not because He is the Son of Man, but precisely because He is the Son of God.
Now, let me—I’m going to delve into a little bit of a mystery here and just confess that this is not something that I also understand. I’m going to preach it anyways. Jesus prays because He is God’s Son. The chief text for this is Psalm 2, which is perhaps the most important text for the divinity of the Son of God. Remember, Psalm 2 has the Father talking to the Son, and God the Father says to the Son, “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten you.” That’s the clearest text of the eternal begettedness of the Son, that the Father has in eternity begotten the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.
But listen to what the next words say: “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten you, ask of me, and I shall give thee.” In other words, the very first thing that the Father says to the Son is, “Tell me what you think, tell me what you need.” In other words, in eternity, before there was any people, before there was any earth or planets or stars or anything else, before there was even light and dark, there was the Father and the Son and the Spirit. And the Father was talking to the Son, and the Son was talking to the Spirit, and there was an eternal conversation of love between the persons of the Godhead. In other words, there was prayer before there was ever humanity.
Now this is a profound mystery, but I think it gets even more profound. I was reading a few years ago this book on prayer; it’s called With Christ in the School of Prayer by this Reformed missionary, Andrew Murray. He was a South African missionary, and he’s reflecting on this question: If God already knows the future, why do we pray? Now I think some of us ask the same thing. If God knows what I need, why do I have to tell Him what I need? If God knows what’s going to happen, if we can’t change the future, why do we ask Him for stuff? In other words, can God truly hear and respond to our own requests? Can there be responsiveness in God, who is all-powerful and all-knowing?
Now, here’s how he answers this question. Buckle up; this is an amazing thing. In seeking answer to such questions, we find the key in the very being of God in the mystery of the Holy Trinity. If God was only one person, shut up within Himself, there could be no thought of nearness to Him or influence on Him. But in God there are three persons. In God we have Father and Son and Holy Spirit in an eternal bond of unity and fellowship. When eternal love begat the Son, and the Father gave the Son as the second person, a place next to Himself as His equal and as His counselor, there was a way opened for prayer, and its influence in the very inmost life of the deity itself.
Read that one more time. When the Father gave the Son as the second person, a place next to Himself as His equal and counselor, there was a way opened for prayer and its influence in the very inmost life of deity itself. Just as on earth, so in heaven, the whole relation between father and son is that of asking and receiving, giving and taking. So before there was an Adam or an Eve, there was prayer, and the divine Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, would ask of the Father, and the Father would hear His prayer and answer. Now that means—this is an amazing thing to me—that means when Jesus would go into the wilderness and pray, He was not going there because He was the Son of Man, but precisely because He was the Son of God.
Now, if this does anything in our minds, it should do this practical thing: This should exalt our understanding of prayer. We are tempted, oftentimes tempted—again, I’m preaching to myself; I am tempted oftentimes to neglect my prayers. I think there’s a lot of other things that just seem more important, you know? If I don’t show up on Sunday morning to preach, people notice. But maybe—I haven’t tried it yet—but if I neglect my prayers, then nobody knows that but the Lord Himself. In other words, it’s an easy thing to put off for all of us. It’s an easy thing to think is not that important.
But when we realize that prayer is what happens when we are part of the family of God, then we realize how important it is. There’s something in the fact that when Jesus teaches us to pray, the very first words He teaches are that we pray this: “Our Father who art in heaven, our Father.” In other words, we are praying as God’s children. This means that those who are not the children of God do not pray. That those who do not trust in Christ and who are not adopted into God’s family are not heard by Him. Prayer is not a natural thing; it’s a privileged thing.
We remember, as an example, how Esther went in before the king. She said, “I can’t just go in and ask him unless I’ve been invited. If you go in before the king and ask him something, they cut your head off unless he lifts up that golden scepter, and then you can come and give a petition.” If it’s that hard to walk in before an earthly king, how much more to walk in before the throne of God in heaven? Unless we’ve been invited. And that’s what we’ve been. We’ve been invited into the conversation. In fact, we’ve been commanded to stand before the Lord and to ask Him for the things that we need.
So, the Christian life is a life of prayer. In fact, of all the works that we do, it is our prayers alone that are perfect. Your prayer is the only perfect work that you ever perform. I remember a pastor teaching this to me. He said, “Every time you preach, the devil can come along and twist the words that you say. Every time you have a conversation with someone, the devil can do the same. He comes along and he twists it. Every time you do something, the Lord comes along and he messes up with your motivations or your intentions or the way it’s received. The devil’s always able to mess around and get his hands on all of the good works that we do. In fact, they would all fall apart unless the Lord Himself protected them.
But prayer alone is perfect because our prayers are carried by the angels to God, and Jesus Himself perfects our prayers. He sanctifies our prayers, and He presents our prayers to the Father so that He delights in them, and He loves them, and He answers them perfectly. Even if you pray wrong, by the time that your wrong prayer gets into the ears of God the Father, it’s perfect and pleasing to Him, and He uses it to accomplish His will.
So by prayer we stand. Luther says it in the large catechism like this: “Our hope alone is in prayer.” Herman Sasa—remember Herman Sasa? He was a Lutheran theologian in the last century. He was chastising the church on this particular thing. Because what we are is we’re tempted to think that we make a difference in the world, we make a difference in the church, we make a difference in society by having meetings and conferences and radio shows and publishing and all this sort of stuff, and we forget that the difference that we make is when we pray.
The life of the church is in prayer. Here’s how Sasa says it: “At the time of the Reformation, people didn’t yet believe, as we do now, that the world could be renewed by conferences. We believe that by conferences and organizations, by declarations and by radio speeches, we can spare ourselves the bitter way of sorrows, of contrition and repentance. That is, until God’s mighty hand one day will also crush all of this and teach us that the Church lives by the means of grace and by nothing else, and that her life is expressed solely and only in this: that she becomes a praying Church again, as she was in the days of the Apostles. Then it was said of her, they continued steadfastly in the Apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and of prayers, and fear came upon every soul when they saw the praying congregation.”
The praying church, Sasa continues, “which we do not want to confound with the church of liturgical scholars,” I kind of like that bit, “the praying church is a power which shakes the social and political world of our century, because in her, and in her alone, he is present unto whom all power in heaven and earth is given. The life of the Lutheran Church in this century depends on whether she again will become the praying church in the sense of Luther and the Reformation and the early church. Will she become a praying church again?”
Jesus had all manner of success in Capernaum. He had the whole synagogue coming to visit him. He had healed all of the sick. He had cast out all of the demons. And more and more were coming to him the next day. They would be streaming from all the villages around them. They would be filling up the little church there. They’d probably have to go and take over the synagogue and gather more helpers, and Jesus goes to pray, and he leaves to preach. The life of the church is found in prayer.
Now we rejoice that the Lord has given us this great privilege, that we can stand before Him and tell Him what we need, and He hears our prayer, and He answers that prayer. Let’s also have this very, very clear: If we want to make a difference in Austin, in Texas, in the lives of our families, and our friends, and our neighborhoods, if we want our congregation, St. Paul Lutheran Church, to shine as a light in the world, it comes not from conferences, or organizations, or meetings, or pronouncements; it comes in prayer and prayer alone. It is our shield. It is our hope. It is our protection. It is our life.
And not because prayer has some sort of magical power. Not because prayer itself accomplishes the work, but because the Lord Jesus Christ who died for you and who’s risen on the third day, to sit at the Father’s right hand, and to intercede for you always, because He hears your prayers. He’s promised it. And He will answer. The Lord does it. He lifts us up. He carries us along. He protects and keeps us. He grows His church. He forgives our sins. He makes a place for us in eternal life, and He prays for us now and always.
Amen. May God grant us the Holy Spirit so that we would pray continually. Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and your minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
