Pray and Preach

Mark 1:35-39
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, November 03, 2019
Copyright © 2019, Gregory Broderick

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed.  Simon and His companions went to look for Him, and when they found Him, they exclaimed: “Everyone is looking for You!”

Jesus replied, “Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also.  That is why I have come.” So He traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.

Mark 1:35–39

Our passage this morning speaks about the importance of prayer, especially as it relates to evangelism.  We see Jesus praying in Mark 1 and then we see Him going out to fulfill His God-ordained mission to preach the gospel.  As followers of Christ, we are all called to preach the gospel.  Some are especially called to preach as pastors and to preach from the pulpit.  Some are called as missionaries to go to the uttermost parts of the earth, as our Pastor was sent to us.  Parents, you are called to teach the word of God to your children when you sit at home and when you walk along the road.  Whatever your station in Christianity, you are called to preach the word; that is, to share the gospel in some form or another.

Matthew 28:19–20, the Great Commission, is for all of God’s people: “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey [Christ’s] commands.” That is for all believers.  This requires us to pray.  We understand that we can preach and we can evangelize, but we cannot save.  We cannot convert.  Every sinner is dead in his transgressions and sins.  He is unable to confess Christ, no matter how clearly you explain the gospel, and no matter how convincing an argument you make for the cause of Christ.  The unregenerated man is spiritually dead and cannot understand or accept the clear facts and convincing evidence for the truth of the gospel.

You see, there is no problem with the evidence.  There is no problem with the argument.  No, there is a problem in our hearers, in our audience.  Even the heavens and the earth declare the glory of God every day all over the world.  They declare it to everyone and they declare it in a language that everyone can understand (Ps. 19:1).  So the problem is not with the declaration.  The problem is not with the convincingness of the argument.  The problem is with the audience.  They are dead:  spiritually dead.  They must first be made alive by God, regenerated by the Spirit, before they can confess Christ and receive eternal life.

This requires us to pray.  We cannot make them alive, but God can make them alive.  God must make them alive, or they cannot be saved.  We must first pray before we go out and evangelize.  We must pray that God will open their hearts as He did for Lydia by the river at Philippi, or for Paul on the road to Damascus, or for each one of us who has truly confessed Christ as Savior and Lord.  We were all in the same condition. We were dead, until God made us alive and then sent someone to speak the word to us and enabled us to believe it and confess Christ as Lord.

We will look at three points from our text this morning.  First, Jesus prayed; second, how Jesus prayed; third, Jesus preached.

Jesus Prayed

Verse 35 tells us that Jesus went to pray in a solitary place.  On its face, this does not seem to be all that surprising.  God’s people are to be people of prayer.  Jesus is to be our example, so Jesus went out and prayed.  But if we stop to think about it, it is somewhat extraordinary that Jesus prayed.  Jesus is no ordinary man.  He was a man, born of Mary, but He was no mere man.  He was also God.  He was both God and man at once, fully God and fully man, having two distinct natures in one unique person.  He was almighty and all-capable, and yet He prayed.  And when He prayed in this passage in Mark 1:35, He had just finished a miraculous healing of Peter’s mother-in-law.  He had driven out sickness by His power and His command.  After that, He had healed various diseases and had driven out demons and exercised divine authority over them (vv. 33–34).

So despite His position as very God and very man, we find Jesus praying in verse 35.  He is alone.  He prays alone, not for a demonstration or for a teaching.  In fact, if we look into the matter, we see that Jesus prayed all the time.  He prayed at His baptism at the beginning of His public ministry (Luke 3:21).  At that time, the Holy Spirit came upon Him in bodily form, and God the Father spoke from heaven, saying, “This is my Son whom I love and with whom I am well-pleased.”

We find Him in our text and in a parallel passage in Luke 4:42 praying in “a solitary place.”  This is before He went on His missionary journey to preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the whole country.  In preparation for that important event, He prayed.

Then He prayed on a mountainside in Luke 6:12, prior to the important task of picking His twelve disciples.  He prayed all night before choosing the Twelve, including Judas, whom He knew would betray Him to death.  We also find Jesus praying on a mountainside again in Luke 9:28.  At this time, He was transfigured, His glory was partially revealed and made manifest, and He spoke to Moses and Elijah about His upcoming betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection.  And again, God the Father spoke from a cloud, saying, “This is my Son whom I have chosen; listen to Him.”

Luke also records Jesus praying on the Mount of Olives in Luke 22:39 as He was about to face the most severe temptation, the most severe injustice, the most excruciating physical pain of crucifixion, and the most severe punishment:  the infinite wrath of God in our behalf.  As He prepared to face that, He prayed.  And it says an angel from heaven appeared and strengthened Him for the upcoming difficulties.

Jesus also prayed on the cross (Luke 23:44) as He suffered the full blast of God’s wrath against sin in our place, even though Jesus Himself was sinless.  In this most difficult time of separation from God, with whom He had enjoyed fellowship from all eternity past, He prayed.  The crucifixion is awful, terrible, painful, humiliating, and agonizing.  But the punishment He suffered was not mere physical pain.  Indeed, the physical element, excruciating as it was, was the minor part of the pain.  The full wrath of God the Father poured out upon the perfect sinless God-man was more severe than the awful physical torture.  Christ showed this when He cried out on the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Think about that.  He does not cry out, “My God, My God, why have You crucified Me?” or, “My God, My God, why did You have Me scourged?” No, “Why have You forsaken Me?” He was experiencing separation from God, the pouring out of God’s wrath.

Jesus also prayed many other times.  He prayed in His high priestly prayer.  He prayed in His prayer for Peter to return after Satan sifted him.  But it should be amazing to us that Jesus—very God, self-existent, all-powerful, in need of nothing, with more than twelve legions of angels at His disposal—this divine God-man, Jesus Christ, is always praying.  Before, during, and at the end of His ministry on earth, and at all the critical parts of His ministry, He is praying.  Now, if Jesus prayed all the time, how much more should we, His people, pray? You see, we are far more needy than Jesus.  He had need of nothing.  He is the vine, and we are the branches.  Apart from Him, we can do nothing.  Apart from us, He can do anything.  But apart from Him, we can do nothing (John 15:5).  We are weak; He is strong.  We are foolish; He is wise.  We sin; He does not.  We become confused.  We act in ignorance.  But the triune God, by contrast, knows all, sees all, and is perfectly holy.  He has need of nothing; we have need of everything.

More than that, He invites us to pray.  He says, “Call on Me, and come and pray, and I will listen to you” (Jer. 29:12).  He hears and answers prayer.  In fact, He tells us to approach His throne boldly (Heb. 4:16), and, indeed, He commands us to pray (Eph. 6:18).  He taught us how to pray (Luke 11).  And He tells us that if we ask for anything in His name according to His will, He will do it (John 14:14).

Jesus prayed, and so must we.  In fact, if we do not pray, we are not born again.  We are merely deceiving ourselves.  We are really declaring, “I do not need God.” When do you pray? You pray when you need God.  If you do not pray, you are declaring you do not need God.  Or perhaps you are saying that God will not listen to you as He said He would.  Or if we do not pray, we may be saying that there is no God there to listen.  We may profess that there is a God, but if we do not pray, we do not really believe that God is there to listen and to help us.  This is practical atheism.  If we reject God’s gracious invitation to pray and disobey His command to pray, then we are wicked, foolish, unregenerate, and, ultimately, damned.  So Jesus prayed, and we also must pray.

How Jesus Prayed

Mark 1 speaks an important word about how we must pray.  Jesus is our forerunner, our example to follow in everything.  That is true in everything, and it is also true in how to pray.  Notice, first, that He prayed very early in the morning while it was dark.  This speaks to the importance of prayer.  Jesus was a busy person.  He was about to go and preach in the towns and synagogues all over Galilee—indeed, all over Israel—and then sacrifice Himself on the cross.  This was a long and tiring journey He was about to undertake.  By most estimates, He traveled several thousand miles during His three-year public ministry, almost all of those by foot.  Jesus had just spent the whole previous day healing people and driving out demons.  Yet the next day, at the cusp of this important ministry to come, we do not find Him sleeping in or resting up for the long journey ahead.  Rather, He rises up before day, before dawn, and goes out to pray.

Jesus understands that prayer is of critical importance for the work to come.  He puts first things first—not His physical energy, not the rest that He surely needed.  No, He puts first things first, and goes out to pray.  He was surely tired.  He was fully God, but He was also fully man, and He got tired.  John 4:6 says He was weary.  But He knew that prayer was more important than sleep.  He needed prayer because He was fully man, and thus subject to our physical limitations.  But He also sought and needed fellowship with God the Father, with whom He lived in perfect harmony and unity in the holy Trinity from before time.  More than any physical need, He sought out this primary spiritual need very early in the morning.  “My food,” He said, “is to do the will of the Father and to finish it” (John 4:34).  Jesus wanted to know the Father’s will and seek the Spirit’s power to do it before He went out and did it.

So before beginning this important work of preaching the good news—this good news that Christ had come to save His people—before the most important work ever done in the history of the world, Jesus went out to pray.  Prayer is indeed important.

He not only prayed very early in the morning, but it also says He went off to a solitary place.  This tells us that prayer must be earnestly seeking God’s fellowship, direction, and help, not earnestly seeking other people’s attention.  Jesus did not pray to show off.  Many people do, but God detests such false and self-centered prayer.  Indeed, in Matthew 6:5, Jesus rebukes hypocrites who love to pray in the church or stand on the street corner and make their big prayers to be seen and admired. (GTB)  He rebukes those who babble on in prayer as showoffs.  He says, “Such people have already received their reward.” The reward they sought was publicity, and they already received it in this life.

No, Jesus said, that is not the way to pray.  Instead, He says, “Go into your room, close the door, and pray” (Matt. 6:6).  Meet with God, in other words.  Fellowship with God.  Pray to God, not to those sitting around you so that they can marvel at your great spirituality.  Secret prayer, pious prayer, earnest prayer—that is the prayer God will reward.  That is what Jesus Himself did in our passage.

There is, of course, an important place for corporate and public prayer.  We do it here every Sunday morning in this service, and we do it here most every Saturday at the prayer meeting.  It is a great blessing to come and seek God together.  But let us never cheapen God’s wonderful gift of prayer by turning it into a boastful public relations tool for ourselves or a chance to show off to others.  God cannot and will not bless such prideful prayer.

Jesus prayed as of first importance.  He prayed earnestly.  And we also see that Jesus prayed for a sustained period of time.  Although we are not told in this passage exactly how long Jesus prayed, it was long enough that Simon Peter and the rest went out looking for Him.  In fact, Peter exclaims to Him, “Everyone is looking for you!”  So He prayed long enough to be missed, and long enough for them to search Him out.  This shows that Jesus’ prayer was earnest.  He did not treat prayer as some mere obligation to be endured, or a formality to be done in the morning or some box to check.  No, instead, it was a key time of sweet fellowship with the Father and seeking out the Father’s particular will for Him that day.

As it was with Him, so it should be with us.  He is our example.  It should be true for prayer generally, and it is especially true for prayer that precedes evangelism.  That is what Jesus was doing here.  He was getting ready to go evangelize, to go preach the gospel, and He stopped to pray beforehand.

As I already said, we can speak the gospel, the words of life, but we cannot save.  We cannot persuade or argue someone to faith in Christ because all unregenerate people are morally incapable of accepting the truth of the gospel.  We must speak—this is not an excuse not to speak—but God must move in the heart of that unbeliever and regenerate him or her by the power of the Spirit.  We can make the most logical, persuasive, moving appeal to a sinner.  We can prove our case beyond a reasonable doubt.  But unless God gives that person a new heart, he or she will reject the good news of the gospel.

Therefore, we must pray.  We must pray for divine appointments, that God would guide us to His elect people and cause us to come in contact with those who need to hear the gospel.  We must pray for courage to share the gospel.  It does not do us any good to meet those people that God ordained if we do not speak the gospel to them.  We must share the whole gospel, without avoiding the subject or watering it down.  We must pray that we would not be ashamed of the gospel, but that we would boldly proclaim this good news of great joy.  We must pray that the Holy Spirit would give us the right words to speak when we evangelize (Luke 12:12).  He is there to do it, to help us.  Most of all, we must pray that God will move in the heart of that person by His Holy Spirit and regenerate him or her.  In other words, that God would apply to that person the redemption that Christ achieved on the cross as we speak the gospel to him or her.

Prayer is very important before evangelism.

Having Prayed, Jesus Preached

As soon as His disciples found Him and told Him that everyone was looking for Him, Jesus said, “Let us go somewhere else, to the nearby villages, so I can preach there also.  That is why I have come.” It was His mission.  So they went and they preached.

This is, of course, further evidence of the seriousness of Jesus’ early morning prayer and His fellowship with God.  Jesus also seriously sought out God the Father’s immediate will for them.  So He went to fellowship with God and to seek out, “What does God want Me to do?”  He learned God’s immediate will for Him and for His disciples was that they were to go and preach throughout Galilee.

If you look closely at the text, you see that this does not appear to have been in the disciples’ plans.  Peter and the others seem pretty pleased at their newfound popularity.  Jesus had healed many people.  Remember, the day before, He had healed Peter’s mother-in-law and many others.  Now it says, “Everyone is looking for You!”  Peter was very excited.  “Everyone is looking for us.  We are doing something!”  But Jesus did not come to be popular or famous or rich.  He did not come to be a local Galilean celebrity or a minor prophet or even a great rabbi.  No, He tells us, the reason He came was to proclaim the good news of the kingdom to all people and to fulfill His role as the Messiah.  So He would not stay in Capernaum, where He had performed a great number of miracles and where He was popular and where everyone sought after Him.  No, instead He would go in the will of God to preach the good news to God’s people.

You see, it is not where you want to be.  It is not where it is comfortable for you to be.  It is not even where it is your desire to go.  It is where God says to go.  You go where He wants you to go; you stay where He wants you to stay.  So Jesus would go to these other places.  He would take His disciples to these other places, preach the good news, and then die on the cross in our place.  That is, in fact, the good news He came to preach.  He came to tell all the people that God had fulfilled His promises made in the Old Testament to send a Messiah, His anointed, His Christ, to save His people from the power of sin and from the judgment due because of sin.

Our problem is that we are all sinners, deserving God’s judgment.  Only the righteous, only the sinless, can see God and dwell with Him.  God is so holy that He cannot bear sinners in His holy and glorious presence.  Indeed, we know His eyes are too pure to look upon evil (Hab. 1:3).  God is holy.  He cannot have sinners in His presence.  Yet all have sinned.  Every person has sinned and fallen short of what God requires (Rom. 3:23).  “There is no one who does good, not even one,” the Bible tells us (Rom. 3:12).  So the natural man is utterly sinful from birth; every inclination of the thoughts of his heart is only evil all the time (Gen. 6:5).  God is super-holy; we are super-wicked.   And God has decreed the just punishment for every sinner.  We rebelled and sinned against the infinite God, who is infinitely just and infinitely holy.  And so we deserve an infinite punishment, eternal agony in eternal hell (Ezek. 18:20; Luke 16).

That is the bad news.  But against this bad news that everyone is born a sinner and lives a life of sin and deserves eternal hell, is the good news that Jesus brought: We deserve hell, but there is a way out.  There is one way out, by repentance and faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  That is good news.  That is the good news He came to preach.

We could not earn our way out.  We could not pay that infinite penalty.  We are only finite beings.  So God in His great love and rich mercy sent His eternal Son, Jesus Christ, very God and very man, to become man, to live a sinless life and to bear our punishment on the cross.  He took all our infinite sin on Himself.  He paid the infinite price for us and He put His infinite righteousness onto us.  Jesus, who had no sin, became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21).  That is good news!  The wages of our sin was eternal death.  But praise God, the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ.  This is why He was sent, to preach this good news to the world and then to fulfill it.

Praise God, this good news, this good gift of eternal life through faith in Christ, is still available today.  If you have not received this gift of eternal life in Christ, I urge you to receive it today.  It is a limited-time offer.  Your time on Earth is limited.  Do not delay in receiving life in Christ, for you do not know whether you have another day, another hour, or even another moment to live.

And do not look for some other way to be saved.  It does not exist.  We sinners cannot repay the debt ourselves; I already said that.  Nor can any mere man pay it on our behalf.  Nor can any church pay it for us, or any institution.  No, nothing can atone for our sin except an infinite Savior who can pay our infinite debt.  In other words, we need God to pay it for us.

So He sent His Son, very God, to become a human being, a man, so that He could be our representative and stand in our place.  The old sacrificial system of bulls and goats could not get the job done (Heb. 10:4).  No, only the God-man could pay it.  He had to be God to pay the infinite price; He had to be man to stand as our representative.  We needed a God-man for our Savior.  We still need a God-man for our Savior.  And there is only one God-man, Jesus Christ.  Peter says in Acts 4:12, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.” Not Allah, not Buddha, not Mohammed, not Ganesh, not the Pope—only Jesus saves.  Indeed, Jesus Himself said in John 14:6, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.”  So I say, receive Him today as your Savior and Lord, and rejoice.  Confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, and you will be saved (Rom. 10:9).

Have you already confessed Him as Lord and Savior? Then go and tell others about Him.  That is why He came, and that is what He sends you to do.  And before you do that, pray.  Pray in a solitary place.  Pray earnestly, and keep on praying, that God would bring unbelievers across your path, that He would make you bold to evangelize, that He would give you the exact words to speak in that exact moment, and that He would move in the hearts of those other people to transform them, make them alive, and enable them to confess Christ as Lord and be saved.

And having prayed in preparation, then get up and go to the place God sends you.  Maybe it is to your own hometown or to the members of your own family where he is sending you.  Perhaps it is to the surrounding villages.  Maybe it is to Jerusalem or Judea or the uttermost parts of the earth.  Maybe it is to Orlando, Florida, or to India.  But wherever it is, discern the will of God for you and find out where He wants you to go.  If He wants you to go and speak in Capernaum, then you must go and speak in Capernaum.  If He wants you to go and speak in the surrounding villages, then you must go and speak in the surrounding villages.  Wherever that is, discern God’s will for you, and then go.  “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19–20).  In other words, go and speak the word of God where He wants you to speak it.

The Holy Spirit has been speaking to us.  We must go and share the gospel.  It is everyone’s job.  It is not just for the pastor; it is not just for the elders; it is not just for a handful of college students on the campus.  Evangelism is the job of every believer.  So let us pray in preparation and let us preach the good news as Jesus did.  It is what we are doing here.  It is why we are here.  It is why God brought us together in this place.  Yes, to be saved; yes, to live together; but also to go and tell others about Jesus Christ.  And God will help us to do it.  God will glorify Himself through our evangelism.  We are weak but He is strong.  We are unable, but He is able.  If you do not think you can go and speak the gospel to someone, God will help you to do it.  You can do it, and God will work through you.  God will save His elect and glorify Himself through your evangelism, and all heaven will rejoice at the salvation of sinners.  Amen.