A Most Amazing Jesus
Cornwall
June 21, 2003
One of the most amazing Jesus actions is recorded in the gospel of Mark, where we looked last week to see some of the ways he cares for us and for us to know what we can take to him for help. This action seems most unexpected and, even, out of character with all the helpfulness that we see in Jesus’ ministry. But this action is fundamental to our understanding of how we, and the church, need to be.
Mark 11. 15-18- the key phrase is: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
I believe the 12 disciples were as stunned as the crowd- nothing is said about their helping in this. All by himself, Jesus started pitching over the tables, blocking people who were carrying things, and saying, ‘Get out of here with that! You can’t bring that through the courts.” He stormed to the merchants of oxen and sheep and doves, saying, “Out! Get your business out of here!”
What made Jesus so agitated? His house was being prostituted for something other than what was intended. As the feathers were flying and the coins were clattering to the pavement and the businessmen were shouting of the police, Jesus said above the roar, “This place looks and feels more like a mall than a temple.” He reminded them of Isaiah’s word about the real point of this building- to be a house of prayer for all nationalities and races.
This action pulls us all up short and has to make us all think about what we do in God’s house. What and why we do whatever we do is something we have to consider. Jesus declared that the atmosphere of God’s house is to be prayer. The aroma around the Father must be that of people opening their hearts I worship and supplication. This is not just a place to make a buck. This is the house for calling on the Lord. We have to remember that God no longer centers his presence in one particular building, like he did in the Jerusalem temple. In the NT, we are now his dwelling place- he lives in his people. How much more important, then, is Jesus’ message about the first place of prayer in our lives?
What is supposed to distinguish Christian churches, Christian people, and Christian gatherings is the aroma of prayer. The house is not ours- it is the Father’s. The Bible speaks of the need for preaching, music, and the reading of the Word. These are important. But they must not override prayer as the defining mark of God’s dwelling.
We’ve just celebrated Pentecost- the anniversary of the beginning of the church. Have you noticed that Jesus launched the Christian church not while someone was preaching, but while people were praying? In the first two chapters of Acts, the disciples were doing nothing but waiting on God. As they were just sitting there- worshiping, talking with God, letting God shape them and cleanse their spirits and do things that only the Holy Spirit can do, the church was born. The Holy Spirit was poured out.
In Acts 4, when the apostles were unjustly arrested, imprisoned, and threatened, they didn’t call for a protest or reach for some political leverage. Instead, they headed to a prayer meeting. Soon the place was vibrating with the power of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 4.21-31- the apostles’ instinct was: when in trouble, pray. When intimidated, pray. When challenged, pray. When persecuted, pray.
Quote: J. B. Phillips- after completing his work on Acts:
“It is impossible to spend several months in close study of the remarkable short book…without being profoundly stirred and, to be hones, disturbed. The reader is stirred because he is seeing Christianity, the real thing, in action for the first time in human history. The newborn Church, as vulnerable as any human child, having neither money, influence nor power n the ordinary sense, is setting forth joyfully and courageously to win the pagan world for God through Christ…
“Yet we cannot help feeling disturbed as well as moved, for this surely is the Church as it was meant to be. It is vigorous and flexible, for these are the days before it ever became fat and short of breath through prosperity, or muscle-bound by over organization. These men did not make ’acts of faith,’ they believed; they did not ’say their prayer,’ they really prayed. They did not hold conferences on psychosomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick. But if they were uncomplicated and naïve by modern standards, we have ruefully to admit that they were open on the God-ward side in a way that is almost unknown today.”
When Saul was converted and God needed a believer to minister to him, when no Christian wanted to go within about a couple of kilometers of him, God coaxed Ananias along in an interesting way:
Acts 9.11- the fact that Saul was praying seemed to be the proof that everything had changed.
When we come to Christ and begin to enjoy the grace that he gives us so richly, it leads to some very powerful action. Notice how Paul outlines it for us in:
Ro. 10.12-15- sending leads to preaching
Preaching leads to hearing
Hearing leads to believing
Believing leads to calling on the name of the Lord
Believing is not the climax. There is one more step for demonstrating a real and living faith and that is calling out to God with all of one’s heart and soul. Belief leads to prayer- this identifies the ‘house of God’, according to Jesus.
Paul taught Timothy how to be a minister and how the church was to be:
1 Ti. 2.1- first of all- Why? Why first of all, before anything else? Because, we have to remember that God’s house is to be called a house of prayer.
v.8- That is the sign of a Christian church.
The book of Revelation says that when the 24 elders fall at the feet of Jesus, each one will have a golden bowl- and what is in the bowls? What is the incense that is so fragrant to Christ?
Rev.5.8- the prayers of the saints. You and I kneel or stand or sit down to pray, really opening our heats to God- and what we say is so precious to him that he keeps it like a treasure.
The Bible has all these promises:
Matt. 7.7- ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.
Jer. 29.13- You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
Jas 4.2- you do not have, because you do not ask God.
God says that when we pray, he will intervene. I have a belief that has been growing stronger of late. It is that there are a lot of societal problems around us- people are turning to drugs and alcohol, to live-in arrangements rather than marriage, to seeking all sorts of fun rather than the eternal values, to blaming others rather than taking personal responsibility- and the list could be long. What will change this? Preaching alone won’t do it; classes won’t do it; more money for more programs won’t do it. But turning God’s house into a house of fervent prayer will reverse the power of evil so evident in the world today. In our own lives with those matters that I spoke of last week, Jesus is there to help each of us. His able assistance is available to us when we turn to God in prayer- oh, some may not disappear all at one- some may take some time in prayer and many times of prayer- but the power is there.
The old hymn says: Oh, what peace we often forfeit
Oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer.
God has chosen prayer as his channel of blessing. He offers us every kind of wisdom, grace, and strength because he knows exactly what we need. But the only way we can get it is to pull up to the table and actually pray with the prayer of faith. Prayer flows from desire to be near God.
E.M. Bounds, Christian author, wrote:
“Prayer ought to enter into the spiritual habits, but it ceases to be prayer when it is carried on by habit only…Desire gives fervor to prayer. The soul cannot be listless when some great desire fixes and inflames it…Strong desires make strong prayers…The neglect of prayer is the fearful token of dead spiritual desires. The soul has turned away from God when desire after him no longer presses it into the closet. There can be no true praying without desire.”
God has all sorts of things for you and me, and when we ask, we will receive. He has grace, and we live with scarcity. He tells us to come to him with our needs- our burdens. Stop rushing and go to him! We are foolish to not turn to the One who supplies unlimited grace and power. He is our only source. Let us no longer ignore him- here and in our daily lives.
