Good Morning! 2010.06.09 - Matthew 14:23 - Jesus Prayed Alone

Good Morning!

 

And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into

 

a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come,

 

he was there alone.  (Matthew 14:23)

 

To get a better picture of this we have to go to the previous verse and read some in Mark and John.  To save space, we will use hyperlinks to open the texts up in BibleGateway.com. A hyperlink is indicated by blue letters underlined in blue. Put your cursor over it and click your mouse.

In the previous verse, Jesus had required that his disciples get into a boat and go to the other side. This is a good picture of how things are today. Jesus is up on the mountain in prayer and the disciples are down on the Sea of Galilee in a storm in the dark.  They picture us pretty well today, do they not?  Our Lord is seated at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us and we are down here in one storm after another.

 

Did Jesus not know He was sending His disciples into a storm? Of course He did! It is a red-letter day when Christians can realize that a part of their most effective ministry is when they are in a storm and go through it to tell how the Lord was with them. God can get to us through a nice poem or an uplifting hymn or a rousing sermon. But there is no substitute for going through a storm and finding that God is everything He said He is. You won't get that through standard channels of Christian experience. You won't be worth much and God will not be very real to you until He breaks you—not until you reach the place where you won't make it unless God comes through! A nice little ditty song or a nice little neat sermon is not going to establish the reality of God in you to the bone. When you get there, it will be a whole "nuther world for you.

 

It would be wonderful if we would meet with God like we're supposed to and we would experience first-hand the verse in Fanny Crosby's hymn: "Oh the pure delight of a single hour that before Thy throne I spend; When I kneel in prayer, and with Thee, my God, I commune as friend with friend! I'm afraid it is unusual for Christians to know what that means. If Jesus needed to get alone and pray why do we think we do not need to do the same?

 

We are perfectly content to feast on the loaves and fishes and get the grease on our lips and fingers and smell the odor of fish on our fingers every once in a while.  If we can keep God limited to the level of Captain D's fish sandwich then we can manage Him and be in charge. Our biggest problem is almost always wanting to manage God. Self! Self must be in charge!

 

Let's look further at the record in Mark 6:45-56 and John 6:15-21. Jesus had fed a crowd of five thousand men plus several more thousands of women and children and then gathered up twelve baskets of food after everyone had been served. The shallow, fickle crowd was about to try to force Him to be their king, of course to drive the Romans out and to restore the kingdom of David. It reminds us that when God does stretch forth His hand to do mighty miracles, it won't be long until a committee will show up to try to manage it for their own advantage. Jesus knew what they were up to and that was not in His program at that time. So, He put the disciples on the boat, dispersed the crowd and He departed to a mountain to pray. That's a good thing to remember when we are being forced into a situation that's out of God's will for us. Pray!

 

Barnes comments on this: "…when human honors were offered to him and almost forced upon him - he retired for private prayer; an example for all who are tempted with human honors and applause. Nothing is better to keep the mind humble and unambitious than to seek some lonely place; to shut out the world with all its honors; to realize that the great God, before whom all creatures and all honors sink to nothing, is round about us; and to ask him to keep us from pride and vainglory." That about sums it up, don't you think?

 

This article can also be viewed at www.bibleliving.blogspot.com

 

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