Mark 1:35

Mark 1:35

The Prayers of Jesus.

Note:

I. The mystery of the prayers of Jesus. If Jesus is, as we believe, God, how could God pray to God? How were there any needs in His nature on behalf of which He could pray? A partial answer is found in the truth that all prayers do not spring from a sense of need. The highest form of prayer is conversation with God the familiar talk of a child with his father. It was so with the Son; but this communion does not clear away the mystery of Jesus' prayers. The only adequate explanation is Christ's humanity. Jesus prayed because He was a man. Human nature, even in Him, was a feeble, tender thing. He had to fall back on the strength found in prayer. And if He, perfect in every stage of His development, and with no past weakening every present effort, needed prayer, how much more do we.

II. His habits of prayer. Some of these habits are recorded. They are deeply interesting and instructive. (1) He used, for example, to go out of the house in which He was, into the solitudes of nature, to pray. (2) Christ prayed in company as well as in secret. We read of Him taking now two or three disciples, and again the twelve apart for prayer. United prayer acts on many minds in the same way as conversation. Where two or three meet together, hearts burn, and Christ Himself appears in their midst.

III. The occasions on which He prayed. Some such occasions get special prominence. (1) He prayed before taking an important step in life; (2) He prayed when His life was specially busy; (3) He prayed before entering temptation; (4) He died praying.

IV. The answer to His prayers. Out of these we shall select two. (a) The transfiguration was an answer to prayer. (b) His baptism was an answer to prayer.

J. Stalker, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 373.

Prayer a Mark of True Holiness.

I. Without doubt our Lord prayed for the furtherance of that work which His Father had given Him to do. It is remarkable that the occasions of retirement and prayer mentioned by the Evangelists are those which precede the miracle of walking on the water, the going forth to preach, the choice of the apostles, the transfiguration, the temptation of Peter, and His own betrayal in the garden. Amidst the contradiction of sinners, and the deadness of the unbelieving, with the foresight of the great sin of the world which should be committed in His own passion, with the whole career and probation of His Church through this perilous world, before His prophetic intuition, we may in some little measure understand what yearning desires of love and sorrow moved Him to all but unceasing intercession.

II. But His prayers were not altogether for others. Deeply mysterious as it is, they were offered also for Himself. It was a property of His true humiliation that He should derive strength through prayer; and a part of His humiliation for us that He should need to pray.

III. And once more He prayed while He was on earth, because prayer was the nearest return to the glory which He laid aside when He was made man. It was, if we may so speak, His only true dwelling, rest, home, delight. We read of His weeping, and His being wearied, and of His being troubled in spirit; but we never read that He rested, except upon the brink of a well by the wayside, nor that He slept, except in the ship. Prayer and converse with His Father in heaven was the only shelter into which the world could not break.

IV. From this view we learn (1) that a life of habitual prayer is a life of the highest perfection; and that our prayer will be more or less perfect in proportion as our state of holiness is more or less advanced. (2) The spirit of prayer is a direct gift from God. Prayer springs from compunction, and compunction from love to Him whom our sins have pierced; and to perceive this is the gift of God, sometimes given early in the life of a penitent, but for the most part after years of fear and mortification. (3) As the sacrifice of Christ is the one only effectual sacrifice, so is His the one only true and all-prevailing prayer.

H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. ii., p. 326.

I. The prayers of our Lord were not poured forth for an example only, but rather were the expression of the real feelings of our Lord's human soul the means whereby He sought fresh supplies of strength to meet the ceaseless onset of the powers of darkness. His powers of prayer were the times when He retired to the contemplation of that glorious object, on which, with His Father, He had entered, in them He surrendered His soul unreservedly to all the emotions of Divine love both that which He felt for the Father, and which He felt for all mankind, that thus He might the better dedicate Himself to the work He had undertaken.

II. How do we fail here to imitate our Saviour? There is a lesson here for us all, both old and young. Prayer such as Christ's is the great weapon with which the saints of every age have prospered in their warfare. There is nothing which those who spend a busy life have so much need to beg of God as the earnest resolution and the power, at whatever cost, to give themselves in very truth to prayer.

A. C. Tait, Lessons for School Life,p. 40.

One Habit of Jesus.

Great natures make their own habits. Their moods are not acquired, but are native to them. The habits of a great nature are shaped and coloured by the magnificent quality within. It is because of the greatness of Jesus, especially on the religious side of His nature, that He becomes the great object of studentship to one who would cultivate like religiousness in his own nature. That which was natural and spontaneous in Him must be acquired by us, and acquired, too, chiefly by the way of imitation. Let us be grateful to heaven that it gave to us an Ideal, to which, by gradual approximations and persevering effort, we can in the end bring the real.

I. Among His habits Jesus had one from which I wish to draw a lesson. It was the habit of retiring ever and anon from the presence of His intimate disciples to some secluded spot. We know that He loved to be alone with Himself. Perhaps this was the result of His greatness; that interior greatness of His nature which made Him, in one sense, uncompanionable with men of this earth. The Teacher wearied of being with His pupils constantly. Their thoughts were not His thoughts. He condescended to them, but the mental and spiritual posture which He had to assume when He stooped to their level wearied Him. In order to rest Himself He had to rise to the full erectness of His stature. This withdrew Him from them, for it lifted Him above them. Alone, with men withdrawn, their little world shut out, the noise of their babbling silenced, He could draw nigh to the Eternal Father, and see the invisible glories float around Him, and hold conversations with those who speak with a finer language than the tongues of this earth have ever learned.

II. Whatever was the cause out of which grew this habit of Jesus, we feel confident there was a cause. And it was a cause existing in connection with human natures, and in earthly circumstance. Men ministered unto Him, and men also interrupted ministration needed by His soul. Hence He mingled with men and He withdrew from men. He met them, and anon He departed from them. In the midst of His public life He clung to His privacy. Modern civilisation is a civilisation of trade, of commerce, of intercourse between man and man. There are times when the earth is a delight, and there are times, too, when we turn from the earth with a cry at our hearts that we might leave it for ever because of its burdens. In brief, there are times when the seen and the heard minister to us. But, on the other hand, there are times when out of the unseen alone cometh help, and the ravens of silence, as sent of God, coming on noiseless wing, alone bring bread to our starving souls. In retirement (1) we get a vivid idea of God as a real Being; (2) the soul regains its lost pre-eminence, and seems to the reason superior to all else.

W. H. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit,p. 408.

References: Mark 1:35. W. H. Jellie, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 196; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 81; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 143; vol. vi., p. 145.