Mark 1:35-38

Solitary Prayer

Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, 28th Edition Chapter 1

*35 Καὶ πρωῒ ἔννυχα λίαν ἀναστὰς ⸂ἐξῆλθεν καὶ ἀπῆλθεν⸃ εἰς ἔρημον τόπον κἀκεῖ προσηύχετο.* 36 καὶ ⸀κατεδίωξεν αὐτὸν ⸆ Σίμων καὶ οἱ μετʼ αὐτοῦ,* 37 ⸂καὶ εὗρον αὐτὸν καὶ λέγουσιν⸃ αὐτῷ ὅτι πάντες ⸉ζητοῦσίν σε⸊. 38 καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς· ἄγωμεν ἀλλαχοῦ εἰς τὰς ⸂ἐχομένας κωμοπόλεις⸃, ἵνα καὶ ἐκεῖ κηρύξω· εἰς τοῦτο γὰρ ⸀ἐξῆλθον.

English Standard Version Chapter 1

35 And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed. 36 And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, 37 and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” 38 And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.”

Scripture References

English Standard Version Psalm 5

3  O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice;

in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.

English Standard Version Chapter 5

15 But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. 16 But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.

Septuagint with Logos Morphology Chapter 62

2 Ὁ θεὸς ὁ θεός μου, πρὸς σὲ ὀρθρίζω

INTRODUCTION

These few verses give us a window into the private prayer life of Jesus. This is what we will be considering this afternoon; the pattern of solitary prayer that marked Jesus’s life on earth.

Bear in mind that in our last Sunday studying Mark’s gospel we covered all of Jesus’s exploits on the sabbath, the day immediately before this one. He encountered the demoniac in the synagogue while teaching, healed Peter’s mother in law and then when evening came the whole city of Capernaum was gathered at the door and Jesus healed the sick and cast out demons. He had had an extremely busy weekend!

As we’ve noted before, Mark presents Jesus as the man of action! There is one Greek particle that is used all over in chapter 1 of Mark; it’s the word euthys. Usually translated; immediately or ‘anon’. It occurs just 51 times in the new testament, and around 1 fifth of those usages occur in this one chapter of Mark denoting the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. Mark wants us to know that this was a time of great activity, there’s barely time to pause and draw breath.

How many of you have experienced seasons in your life where you feel your barely able to draw breath; when things just seem to come thick and fast and you can’t see an end to the busyness in sight? You know something has to give. But what? Everything you’re doing seems essential. These moments in life can be so challenging, can we really justify just dropping what we’re doing and getting away to pray? Is that really a Christian thing to do? What about all of the urgent things that need doing? Surely we couldn’t just abandon these duties could we? That wouldn’t be very Christlike would it now?

‘Jesus refused to submit to the tyranny of the urgent’ - Margaret Magdalen

There is such a cult obsession with productivity in the west that we are wont to seeing busyness as synonymous with productiveness. I am as guilty of this as the next man. This obsession has come wholesale into the church; we’ve got programmes, initiatives, conferences and meetings coming out of our ears but are we really MORE productive when we’re busy? Are we really serving Jesus better when we’re too busy to be alone with Him?

Rising very early in the morning...

After His extremely full sabbath day, Jesus gets some sleep before waking up early, before sunrise we’re told. The word used hear in the original language is a term used for the 4th watch of the night, the final three hours before sunrise, probably sometime between 3 and 6.

He stole out of Peter’s house, onto the quiet streets and hurried along in silence until he reached the outskirts of the town and then hiking up into the barren hills around the Sea of Galilee he got away, he got alone with God.

As I preach this, I want you to be careful not to start beating yourself up over your own failures in prayer. If we move too quickly into comparison here before we’ve had a chance to savour this passage we’ll risk missing out on something greater.

Jesus teaches us about prayer directly in his parables and in his Lord’s prayer but also indirectly through the gospel narratives. Three things are important to note when studying the pattern of Jesus’s prayers; the time, the place and the manner. Studying these three aspects will help us see more of Jesus’s objectives in prayer and hopefully offer us some much needed direction in our own prayer life.

Time

Jesus picked out a specific time for prayer. Though He was doubtless always communing with The Father in prayer He still actually committed certain periods of time just for prayer. I’ve heard people before say things like; ‘I don’t need prayer times, I’m always praying.’ Well, if Jesus in His days on earth needed designated times for prayer how much more do we? Given that we are sinful and He was not and given our great capacity for distraction, having a time allotted for prayer is something we would do well to practice.

We find Jesus praying often while it’s dark, either late at night or early in the morning. On this occasion we find Him praying early in the morning.

“He did rise constantly at or before the hour of four of the clock, and would be much troubled if he heard smiths or other craftsmen at their trades before he was at communion with God; saying to me often, ‘How this noise shames me. Does not my Master deserve more than theirs?’ From four till eight he spent in prayer, holy contemplation, and singing of Psalms, in which he delighted and did daily practice alone as well as in the family. Sometimes he would suspend the routine of parochial engagements, and devote whole days to these secret exercises, in order to which, he would contrive to be alone in some void house, or else in some sequestered spot in the open valley. Here there would be much prayer and meditation on God and heaven.” - On Joseph Alleine by his wife

Giving our first few waking moments to God means we aren’t giving them to something else! My habits when I first wake up tell me about myself. What do I impulsively reach for first; unless we’re intentional about it we’ll reach for whatever grabs our attention first and react to that, living out the rest of the day in reaction on the back foot always. Giving those first moments to God in prayer does several things; it enthrones Him as Lord over our day, it centres us, and prepares us for what is to come.

Why get up super early, though? One word; silence. Jesus got up before dawn because there was stillness, peace, quiet. No distractions, no noise, no passers by to engage in conversation, no food to prepare or things to get done.

Solitary prayer requires silence, or at least as much silence as you can get!

Psalm 5:3 - O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.

2 Ὁ θεὸς ὁ θεός μου, πρὸς σὲ ὀρθρίζω - Psalm 63:1

“External silence is most necessary to cultivate the internal; and indeed it is impossible to become inward without loving silence and retirement.” - Mme Guyon

We have to recognise that our bodies and souls weren’t made to cope with 24/7 noise and activity. Clarke is wrong I believe in his commentary concerning Jesus’s prayers here, saying that His prayer is essentially just a bare example to us. I think this grossly oversimplified. Jesus was both man and God, just as the Chalcedonian creed affirms; He is like us in all respects except for sin. Though He is the eternal Word which was from the beginning He also has a fully human soul, and a body. This human soul needed quiet and solitude just as His body needed sleep and to eat. Jesus’s solitary prayer life was essential to His mission.

Jesus’s practice of removing Himself from noise and busyness to be with The Father in quiet places empowered Him to fulfill His Father’s business in the noisy places.

A life without a lonely place, that is a life without a quiet centre easily becomes destructive. - Henri Nouwen

Place

Luke 5:15–16 (ESV)

15 But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. 16 But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.

Jesus’s practice of solitary prayer also had a preferred location as well as a designated time. Jesus preferred to be in the desolate places, the wilderness, the deserts or on a mountain. Away from distraction. He could have perhaps just prayed outside Peter’s house, it would have been quiet. But the risk of waking someone and being sidetracked was too great there so He physically took himself somewhere where He couldn’t be gotten at, to a place where He was alone with God.

Being somewhere alone while praying allows you the freedom to really pour out your soul, too. You won’t wake the kids or annoy the neighbours. The space and time afforded by being away and alone in prayer allows your soul to decompress and you often find that you encounter God in a fresh way, or things bubble up to the surface that need dealing with that you hadn’t been aware of.

Mark 1:35 Mark (PNTC)

Greek word for “solitary place” (erēmos) is the same word for the wilderness where John preached (1:4) and where Jesus was tempted (1:12). As we noted earlier, in Mark the word does not connote a desert waste but, reflecting Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness following the Exodus, a place of repentance, restoration, and fellowship with God.40 Mark records Jesus praying only three times in the Gospel; here (1:35), following the feeding of the five thousand (6:46), and in Gethsemane (14:32–39). All three occur at night and in solitary places. All three also occur in contexts of either implied or expressed opposition to Jesus’ ministry. Amid a whirlwind of activity, Jesus seeks a still point in prayer with the Father.

Jesus often withdrew to pray in the wilderness either immediately before or immediately after big moments in His ministry. For example, immediately after feeding the 5000 He disappears up a mountain to pray alone.

This is no coincidence here; regular, solitary prayer was the powerhouse of Jesus’s ministry.

Secret prayer is the secret of prayer, the soul of prayer, the seal of prayer, the strength of prayer. - Spurgeon

And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, 37 and they found him and said to him, “Everyone is looking for you.” 38 And he said to them, “Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.”

The translation ‘searched’ from the Greek verb κατεδίωξεν is a soft one; the word can also properly be translated as ‘hunted’!

When they discovered Him they immediately lay on Him the urgent need. ‘Everyone is looking for you.’ This is one of my favourite things about Jesus here; instead of responding as one of us might have; ‘ah, ok sorry. I just needed a bit of prayer time, I should have let you know where I was going and when I would be coming back. Ok, let’s go and see them, hopefully we won’t have kept them waiting too long!’ Jesus doesn’t panic, He doesn’t feel guilty about taking time out to pray alone, He just dismisses this demand upon His time and tells them they’ll be heading to other surrounding towns to preach.

There’s no doubt here for me that it was prayer that enabled Jesus to answer this way. In prayer He was strengthened in His purpose and in the focus of His ministry, He wasn’t simply here to meet needs, He was here to preach the Kingdom.

Meeting needs is wonderful, but Jesus because He was stilled and rooted in prayer knew when it was time to move on. He didn’t stay and heal every sick person at Capernaum, He didn’t feel guilty about that, He was able to press on with His purpose.

I know that for many of us we are always aware of needs and it’s our privilege to meet the needs around us for His glory. But there is a place where that can get unhealthy, where we start getting a bit of a saviour complex thinking; unless I do this to help them now the world will fall apart, I don’t have time to pray today. Or we do pray but then we get a text message with an urgent request and we feel guilty, as though we’ve been doing something selfish and indulgent.

Jesus’s solitary prayer life teaches us the necessity of secret prayer, of silence, of seclusion and of putting time with God ahead of busyness and ‘productivity.’ If we’re not prayerful, we’re not really being productive anyway!

As you love God, and would desire to honour him by a useful life, put far from you the temptation to sip of the intoxicating cup of human honour. Draughts of worldly glory are not for the priests of the Most High.

Jesus’s Prayer Life Saves You and Sustains You

We musn’t think of Jesus’s prayer life merely as an example as Clarke seemed to suggest about this passage. If we think about Jesus’s prayer life as a bare example, we’ll undoubtedly be helped in our Christian practice, but we’d miss the truth that His prayer life was also for us; it was on our behalf. Jesus’s perfect obedience has been reckoned to us by Grace through faith, including His prayer life! Where we fall short in our devotion to God, Jesus was devoted to Him. You fall dreadfully short of the greatest commandment everyday; Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. Yet Jesus lived out this commandment perfectly on Your behalf; He met the requirements of pure, righteous devotion to God so that you wouldn’t have to. You enter into His perfect devotion by faith.

Jesus wasn’t only praying then either, He’s praying now. Jesus, as our Great High Priest offers intercession for His children before The Father. In His High Priestly Prayer of John 17 He prays for all those who the Father has given Him:

John 17:1-2 - When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

john 17:9-11 - I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

john 17:17-21 - Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

Jesus is praying for His children, for those who His Father has given Him. He will give them eternal life, and Jesus is praying for all of you Christians, that you would keep faithful to Him and that you would be sanctified by the word of God! Do you think Jesus gets His prayers answered? I do! If you are truly born again, if you have a true faith in Jesus you can have assurance that you will endure to the end, that you won’t fall away; why? Because the Lord of Glory prays for you!

Pray - End