CONVERSATIONS WITH GOD
PRAYER, CORPORATELY AND PRIVATELY
DR. JIM DIXON
MATTHEW 6:1 & 5-13
MARCH 18, 2007
Many years ago I told a story and I’m going to tell it again. The story concerns something that happened to me that’s kind of embarrassing. It happened when I was in college, at Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California. I was a freshman. One night we were in Van Kampen Hall on the Westmont Campus and a bunch of guys joined together in playing cards. The card game we were playing was called Hearts. Some of you have played Hearts. You know that in the game of Hearts, you win by having the least number of points so you try not to get points. And you get points in Hearts if someone unloads a heart on you. Each heart counts one point. The Queen of Spades counts 13 points, so you don’t want that unless, of course, you’re running and then you want all the hearts and the Queen of Spades and you give everyone else points if you win that.
As we were playing late that night, things were going pretty well for me and I was winning. Somehow, I was just fortunate and I was able to throw off a lot of the hearts and not take too many. When I was dealt the Queen of Spades, I was always able to unload it. The problem was I was always unloading it on the same guy. The real problem was this guy was really, really big and really had a temper. He was getting madder and madder at me as we played, and I kept kind of giving him the bad stuff. Finally in the course of the night, I was dealt the Queen of Spades again and I began to think, “How can I unload this?” I had a couple of chances to unload it but unfortunately it was to the same guy. This guy, when I threw the Queen of Spades to him, he just went ballistic. He got so mad you could just see fire in his eyes. He took his cards and he just threw them right in my face. Suddenly, there was quiet in the room. All the other guys looked at me and obviously expected me to do something because you weren’t supposed to catch cards with your face.
I didn’t want to fight this guy. I knew I did not want to fight this guy. On the other hand, I didn’t want to back down and be a wuss. I tried to disarm the situation. I said, “You’d better watch what you’re doing.” I kind of hoped that would be the end of it but it didn’t work out like that. He looked at me and he got this smirk on his face with just literally hatred in his eyes. He said, “I was watching what I was doing.” Everybody stopped again and looked at me so it was my turn again. I said, “You just better not do it again,” hoping that would be the end of it. I would have taken some kind of a stand, but not fight the guy. He wasn’t buying any of it. He reached across. He grabbed me by the shirt and he just lifted me out of my chair and he said, “Who’s going to stop me?”
Well, everybody in the room just scrambled for the corners. They all knew what was about to happen and I knew I had to fight this guy. Otherwise, I would just kind of lose face. I fought him. I did really poorly. I fought him and he just beat me up. It wasn’t very long. I remember it was just a short time later he had me on the floor and he was just ramming my head into the floor. He was holding the back of my head by my hair and he was just kind of rubbing my face around on the floor. Then he said, “Say Uncle.” I thought to myself, “This is like we’re 5 years old again.” I said, “Uncle” and he let me go and I just kind of crawled out of the room. I was embarrassed. I did not want to see those guys. We were all freshmen and we didn’t know each other all that well. We were kind of forming friendships. I was just embarrassed and so the next day I saw them and I didn’t know how they would respond. They were really nice. You could tell that they felt horrible about what happened. They were extra specially friendly. It seemed like they liked me. I guess they were impressed that I was willing to let somebody use my face like a mop. Even the guy that beat me up was really nice. You could tell he felt horrible about what he had done and the rest of the guys really didn’t want him joining in on our card games anymore because you don’t like playing cards with somebody who’s a poor loser. You don’t like playing cards with somebody who can’t control their temper, do you?
I think all of you have had situations in life, maybe in the world of sports, maybe playing cards, when the whole thing was spoiled because somebody was a poor loser or because somebody just couldn’t control their temper. Or maybe you have that problem. Maybe it’s hard for you to lose and maybe you struggle with a temper deal there. There’s always Solitaire, isn’t there? Solitaire is a French word. It’s a French word that comes from the Latin “solitarias,” which means, “alone.” Of course, Solitaire is played alone. You can do it on the Internet. You can play Solitaire on your Palm Pilot. It’s so easy now to play Solitaire or you can get a deck of cards and there’s no one to get mad at but yourself.
Cards are kind of like this. You can play cards alone or you can play cards in a group. You can join a bridge club. There are many different types of card games. Some people love Solitaire. It’s contemplative, reflective, relaxing. Some people love social stuff and they love to go into bridge groups and have a couple of teams, a couple of pairs of teams and play bridge. But of course, prayer is like that too, isn’t it? You can pray in a solitary fashion. You can pray alone, just you and the Lord. Nobody else. Or you can join a prayer group and I would ask you today, “What do you prefer? Would you rather just go someplace quiet and away and pray by yourself or would you rather be in a prayer group and have that social dimension to your prayer time or does it kind of depend on your mood and your life circumstance?”
Well today, we’re going to look at both of these. We’re going to look at corporate prayer and we’re going to look at private prayer. We begin with corporate prayer. The word “corporate” comes from the Latin and it means, “many coming together as one.” Kind of like “E Pluribus Unum.” The idea would be that when you pray in a group, it’s many people coming together and they pray as one, corporate prayer, group prayer.
I’ve been in many prayer groups through the years and I’m sure many of you have too. They take many forms. There are many sub-cultures of prayer, many styles of prayer. Groups function in a different way when you have a prayer group. People come together to pray in times of peace and times of war. I want you to see a clip from the movie “Glory” which is a wonderful movie and shows a black regiment heading for the North during the Civil War. It’s a great clip on prayer.
“Oh my Lord, Lord, Lord! Tomorrow we go into battle so Lordy let me fight with a rifle in one hand and the Good Book in the other, that if I should die at the muzzle of the rifle, die on water or on land, I may know that You, Blessed Jesus Almighty are with me and I have no fear.” Amen. “Oh my Lord, Lord, Lord. Oh my Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord!” “Lord, we stand before you this evenin’ to say thank you. Thank you Father for your grace and your many blessings. I’ve run off and left all my yung’uns and my kinfolks in bondage so I’m standing here this evening, Heavenly Father, to ask Your blessings on all of us so that if tomorrow is our great getting’ up mornin,’ if tomorrow we have to meet the Judgement Day, our Heavenly Father we want you to let our folks know that we died facing the enemy. We want them to know that we went down standing up amongst those that are fightin’ against our oppression. We want them to know, Heavenly Father, that we died for freedom. We ask these blessings in Jesus’ name.” Amen! Amen! Amen! “Oh my Lord, Lord, Lord.”
When that movie first came out, I went to see it with my son Drew and was deeply moved then and so was my son. It’s a great movie. If you’ve not seen it, I recommend you rent it.
I’ve never been in a prayer meeting quite like that one, but I do know that as Christians we are at war. The Bible makes it very clear that as Christians we are at war and we are fighting for the poor and we’re fighting for the oppressed and we’ re fighting for those afflicted by the evil one, for the diseased and the infirmed. We’re fighting for the souls of men and women and children the world over and we’re fighting just to get by another day. Life is not easy but Christ has given us each other and this thing called the Church, the community of Christ, and so we have group prayer. We come together and pray for each other with whatever we’re facing in intercessory prayer and petition, group prayer, and it’s powerful.
In Matthew’s Gospel, the 18th chapter, verses 19 and 20, Jesus tells us that “where two or three are gathered together in His name, there He is in the midst of them.” That’s verse 20. In verse 19, Jesus says, “If two or more of us agree on anything on earth, it shall be done in heaven.” It’s a hard passage and some have said, “Well, it seems to imply that when you come together in group prayer, Jesus is present in a special way and your prayers are particularly potent if you come together in group prayer.” Some have interpreted Matthew 18, 19 and 20 in that way. I don’t. I think that’s a misinterpretation of the passage because when you look at it contextually, you see that the passage really has to do not with prayer but with church discipline and Jesus is saying that when churches exercise discipline over congregants or members, they should not do it unilaterally but they should do it in harmony. Two or three coming together, the Lord will be with them as they make this decision. Also, they should seek to agree with each other and with the Lord in heaven. These are instructions for church discipline. But, you see, we don’t need Matthew 18, 19 and 20 to tell us that group prayer is powerful. It is powerful and it is very, very biblical.
If in your life you’re not engaging in any group prayer, you should not feel good about that. If your only prayer time is by yourself in some place apart, just you and the Lord, that’s great but it’s not enough because the Bible does call us to group prayer. So you come to Acts, chapter 1, and you see group prayer in the Upper Room in the context of approaching Pentecost. Group prayer. Acts, chapter 2, group prayer. Acts, chapter 4, group prayer. Acts, chapter 12, group prayer as they’re in the home of John Mark. In fact, the home of John Mark had become a place of prayer and so you go through the Bible and you see the Body of Christ coming together in special times for prayer. Even The Lord’s Prayer, while in its context, Jesus is talking about private prayer and closet prayer, still there’s a sense in which The Lord’s Prayer is corporate because He teaches us to pray, “Our Father … ” and “Give us this day our daily bread…” And so throughout Christian history while the Church of Jesus Christ has acknowledged that The Lord’s Prayer can be said in private by yourself, it’s also acknowledged that generally it’s a prayer that is meant for a corporate setting where we can pray together in saying, “Our Father…”
Synagogues were places of prayer. We should never forget that our faith, the Christian faith, grew out of Judaism. We don’t want to forget our roots. In Judaism there was much group prayer, much corporate prayer and in the context of the synagogue. Sometimes throughout Jewish history, the synagogue was called “proseuche” and proseuche is the Greek word for prayer. In this context, proseuche means, “a place of prayer,” so the synagogue is a place of prayer.
It is true that at other times in Jewish history, the proseuche was a smaller place than a synagogue built throughout the Hellenized world where there were small communities of Jews, not enough to justify a synagogue, so they would just build a proseuche down by the riverside where they could do various types of liturgical cleansings and washings and then also pray together in a place of prayer. But at other times in Jewish history, the synagogue itself was called proseuche, a place of prayer. Of course, Jesus called the temple a place of prayer, meant to be a place of prayer for all the nations.
The Jews prayed and they prayed corporately, and we know how they prayed. Archeologists have given us epigraphic sources. They’ve given us epigraphic inscriptions that they’ve unearthed and these epigraphic inscriptions tell us how prayers were conducted in the synagogues. We know that the in synagogues there was reading of the Torah, instruction in the Decalogue and the Law. In some synagogues, according to these inscriptions, they actually had separate rooms for visitors and guest and travelers but always synagogue gatherings included corporate prayer and we know what the corporate prayer consisted of. We can look at Talmudic sources in the Talmud and we can see that the Jewish worshipper would go into the synagogue and corporately pray the “Shema,” from Deuteronomy, chapter 6. Part of it is from Deuteronomy 11. Part of it is from Numbers 15 but they would pray the Shema together. “Hear O Israel, the Lord Your God is One God. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind.” They would pray the Shema together.
After they prayed the Shema together, they would pray the “Amidah.” The Amida was the prayer of the 18 Blessings or Benedictions. They would pray it together. “Amidah” means “to stand.” They would stand for this in the synagogue. They would stand and they would pray corporately together the Amidah, the 18 prayers of blessings or benedictions, sometimes called the “Tefillah.” Tefillah simply means “prayer.” It was the same every time they went into the synagogue. They would put on their prayer shawl, “the tallit.” They put on their prayer shawl, the tallit, they would pray the Shema and then pray the Amidah and they would do this corporately. This is how Jesus grew up. This is what Jesus was taught to do. Jesus went to the synagogue in Galilee and in Judea and in the synagogue He would pray and He would pray the Shema and He would pray the Amidah and He would put on the tallit, His prayer shawl. He knew about corporate prayer. He knew about group prayer.
The early church understood this and as Christianity was birthed, there was lots of group prayer. Jesus, strangely enough, also warns us that group prayer can be dangerous. Did you know that? Group prayer can be kind of dangerous. This thought has occurred to me many times, that when you go into prayer meetings and you have group prayer, it’s kind of a dangerous setting. Jesus warns us about practicing our piety before others. In group prayer there is that temptation always to practice your piety before someone else and so that’s the danger of group prayer, practicing your piety before someone else.
Jesus, in our passage of scripture today uses this word, “battalogeo”—”Do not heap up empty phrases.” Battalogeo. This word battalogeo can mean repetitive words. It can mean vain words. It can even mean pretentious words. Battalogeo. Demosthenes, the famous Greek Orator was called by his enemies “Battalos” because they felt like his talks were too lengthy and they were showy. They thought he was prideful and showy. Have you ever been in a prayer group where you saw this phenomena of battalogeo?
Have you ever seen anyone practice their piety before you, trying to impress you? Have you ever been in a prayer group and you felt like someone is praying too long unnecessarily or somebody is using words they wouldn’t normally use? This is hypocrisy, feigned spirituality and God doesn’t like it. So, yes, group prayer can be dangerous, particularly if at the core we’re kind of insecure and we’re wanting to impress people and you’ve got to ask yourself, “Who are you praying for? Who are you praying to?” When you pray, you’ve got an audience of One. Only God is worthy of our prayers. We pray to Him. We’re not praying to the other people but it’s tough sometimes and I think some of us are a little insecure so maybe we don’t even listen during group prayer. We just are thinking about what we’re going to say so we don’t look bad. Is that possible? I think so. So, Jesus is saying there is some danger here, some danger of practicing your piety before others and feigned spirituality. We should just know in general, not simply in the context of prayer, God doesn’t like pride. God doesn’t like pride and He looks in our hearts and He actually sees us. We can fool other people but we can’t fool Him. God knows whether there’s pride in our hearts.
I was reading recently about the election of 1872 which in American history was a very, very strange presidential election. In 1872, the Republican candidate was Ulysses S. Grant and he was the incumbent. Grant’s administration had been filled with corruption and by popular opinion he was suspect with regard to alcohol and so Grant was kind of an uncomfortable candidate. The Democratic candidate was Horace Greeley. Horace Greeley was the Editor of the New York Tribune and famous for that statement, “Go West, young man, go West.” Horace Greeley was a Socialist and the American people were not at all comfortable with Horace Greeley because he believed in Socialistic communes. In fact, Greeley, Colorado to the north of us is named after Horace Greeley and it was a communal experiment when it began. He was the Democratic candidate.
The Independent Party had this guy George Francis Train. He was wealthy, very, very wealthy, a multimillionaire in a time when there weren’t many. He was a global traveler and a character. Jules Verne’s book, “Around the World in 80 Days,” was the story of George Francis Train and his travel around the globe in the year 1870. So this guy was kind of fun to listen to and a great orator and he ran for President but he was not an ideologue. He didn’t have some agenda. There wasn’t something he was seeking to accomplish. He just wanted to be president because he was sold on himself and he wanted everyone else to be sold on himself and he thought, “This would be great. What better than being president?” He was a man filled with pride and traveled all over America in 1872. He spoke in over 5,000 cities and towns. He charged admission to get in and hear him.
Today, you know that people need a couple hundred million dollars to run for president it seems. He actually made money off of running for the presidency. But he failed. He failed because the people could see he was filled with pride, just filled with pride and they didn’t give him the vote. Of course, Victoria Woodhull was also running for President in 1872; free love, legalized prostitution, in 1872, a woman candidate for president. It was a crazy year.
The nation could look at George Francis Train and see he had a pride problem. God could look at all their hearts. God could look into the heart of Ulysses S. Grant. God could look into the heart of Horace Greeley. God could look into the heart of Victoria Woodhull. He knows. He looks into your heart. He looks into my heart. He knows if there’s feigned spirituality there. He knows if there’s any pretense, any hypocrisy, any pride, and He’s just not pleased with it. We need to avoid circumstances that prompt that. If you struggle with that, maybe group prayer shouldn’t be your regular diet. On the other hand, it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing and the blessings of group prayer are unique. They are unique biblically because, you see, Genesis 2 and 3, God creates man and God says, “It’s not good that man should be alone” and so God created us as relational beings. God delights in us coming together with each other in relationship and so we have the Gospel as we’re given the New Testament and the Gospel is a call to community.
In the western world here, we’re such individualists and entrepreneurs, we tend to this of the Gospel as simply a call to personal salvation. It’s simply a call to personal salvation as between me and God and we can go it alone, just me and Jesus. Certainly, the Gospel is about personal salvation but not only personal salvation. The Gospel is a call to community, this thing called the Church. The Gospel calls us into a body and there’s something very special about group prayer, corporate prayer when we are the body and we function that way and we come together and we pray together as one. It’s powerful. I think God blesses it in some very special and unique ways.
I’m very grateful for a church where we have many prayer groups and they’ve been so faithful through the years. All of you who are involved in prayer groups are heroes and this ministry is bathed in your prayers. God has released His blessings and His anointings in part through those prayers.
I thank God for an Elder Board that prays, and we pray together at every Elder Board meeting. But we also come together as Elders and pray over the sick. We do that corporately as a group and there’s some power there. I thank God for those Elders that stay after the Elder Board meetings in a special time of prayer. I just thank God for every small group at Cherry Hills Community Church that takes a little time for prayer. Maybe you have some food, maybe you have some refreshments, maybe you have conservation or Bible Study but prayer, you take time for corporate prayer out of the call of Christ.
I want us to take a few moments to take a look at prayer as private, take a look at so-called closet prayer. In our passage of scripture for today, in Matthew 6, Jesus said, “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Obviously, Jesus wanted us to carve out some time for private prayer, closet prayer. The Greek word is “tameion.” Tameion was a very special word. It’s translated “room.” “Go into your room,” tameion. But it didn’t refer to just any room and we need to understand in the Jewish world, in the average house, there were not doors. The rooms in the house were not separated by doors. They were just open and you could go from room to room and you could look into the room next to you. Rooms were not private places.
Tameion was a special Greek word that refers to a room that did have a door. Sometimes it referred to a storeroom. Sometimes it did refer to a closet but it was a room that had a special purpose and it had a door and so all Jesus is saying is, “Get into someplace where you can shut yourself off from the world, where you can be alone, where you can be apart.”
When I was dating Barb in Pasadena, California, she had three roommates. Two of them I had known in college, and one was named Linda. She had somehow been impacted by Matthew 6 and took it very literally. She did all of her prayers in the closet, literally. It was kind of an inconvenience for the rest of us. You go to hang up your coat and you’d step over Linda. She was taking it literally, but understand the idea that Jesus has in mind here is simply that we would get away from the world and from humanity and just be alone for a time of closet prayer. Very important and very, very valuable.
I will confess to you that closet prayer has a special place in my heart. I don’t always feel like group prayer. Sometimes I feel like group prayer and sometimes I just think it’s awesome. Sometimes I greatly desire group prayer but I don’t always desire it. Sometimes I just don’t feel like holding hands with a bunch of people. I just don’t. It seems like inevitably you hold hands and your nose begins to itch, doesn’t it? I have times when I’m just not in the mood for group prayer but I don’t think I ever have a time when I don’t want to do closet prayer. It’s like an oasis in the desert and there’s something so awesome about closet prayer and I sometimes feel two’s company, three’s a crowd and I’d just as soon pray me and Jesus. A lot of the stuff we’ve talked about over these past weeks and the singing of hymns, the reading of Psalms, and the combining of prayer and scripture and stuff that we do in our prayer time and going through praying the names of God; these are all things, at least for me, that work best in the closet and so it’s a precious time. The word “kruptos” in Matthew 6 which is the word “secret.” You get cryptology from kruptos, the word secret. Jesus is saying, “Go to a secret place. Pray to your Father who is in secret and who sees in secret and He will reward you. So there’s this desire for closet prayer.
But there are dangers here too. Jesus makes that clear. The Bible makes that clear. There’s dangers even to private and closet prayer. One danger is Monasticism. I don’t know how many of you have ever been to a monastery. I’m not going to ask for hands. I don’t imagine there would be a ton. I think some of you have been to a monastery. I think for brief periods of time, monastic experiences are awesome, but I think as a life call, the whole monastic movement was a failure in the history of the church.
The founder of western monasticism was St. Benedict. Strangely enough, his Feast Day is this Wednesday, March 21, (I’m sure you’ve all made special plans). But this Wednesday, March 21, is the Feast Day of St. Benedict. St. Benedict is the patron saint of all Europe, so declared by Pope Paul VI in 1965. But of course, he lived a long time ago. He was born in the year 480 AD. He was born in Umbria but at the age of 20 he moved to Rome and there he went to law school. He went to law school but he was just stunned by the materialism in Rome and by the hedonism in Rome. It seemed kind of like a debauched world to him. He was a deeply spiritual man, so he left the study of law and he went 30 miles outside of Rome and he went into a cave and he became a Monastic. He just began to pray, devote himself to prayer, fasting, the reading of scrolls and scripture and intimacy with God.
He was in the cave for years, extending through his 20’s, when men began to come up to him and say, “We would like you to be our Abbot and we would like to be your Monks.” He didn’t really have a desire to do that but he thought maybe God was calling him to do that so he opened a monastery. He became an Abbot and they became his Monks. You see, St. Benedict was very strict, very self-disciplined, very much willing to sacrifice, and his life was kind of harsh and he began to impose this on the monks and they began to resent it. After two years they tried to kill him. They did. According to Pope Gregory who wrote the biography of St. Benedict 45 years after the death of St. Benedict, they tried to kill him. They put poison in his wine and according to Pope Gregory, he did the sign of the cross over the glass of wine before he drank it as always he did and the glass shattered. St. Benedict discerned that this was a cup of death. He called his monks and said, “I suspect that you just tried to kill me. I want you to know I forgive you and I would suggest that you all go somewhere else. I didn’t want to be your Abbot anyway. I have no desire to be an Abbot. I would suggest you go and find another Abbot. I think I am too harsh, too strict, too rigorous, too disciplined.”
Over the course of time, God changed St. Benedict. He formed 12 monasteries, each monastery with 12 Monks, 144 Monks, and then later in his life, 80 miles from Rome, his largest monastery of all, The Benedictine Order. Of course, he made St. Benedict’s rule, which guided monasteries for hundreds of years and still does even today.
Now I get a lot of strange publications and books. This one is called “Christian History and Biography.” This is the Winter Edition of 2007. I love this publication. This issue is devoted to St. Benedict but it has St. Benedict’s rule here. It lays out what a day in one of his monasteries is like. This is the routine every single day. You rise at 2:30 in the morning, 2:30 AM for communal prayer. It’s called the Divine Office. It might not always feel so divine. 3:45-5:00, private reading and prayer in the Psalms. 5:00-5:45 communal prayer at dawn. 6:00 communal prayer at sunrise. 6:45-8:30 work in the form of housekeeping, crafts, and gardening. 8:30 communal prayer. 8:45-1:00 private readings. 1:00 communal prayer. 1:15 meal together in the dining room in absolute silence. 1:45-2:30 siesta. Could be the highlight of the day! 2:30 communal prayer. 2:45-6:00 work: housekeeping, crafts, gardening. 6:00-6:45 communal prayer. 7:00-meal together in the dining room in absolute silence. 8:00 communal prayer. 8:30 retire in your dormitory. So it is day after day after day, year after year after year. Again, I think we could all benefit from a few days like that. You might craft out a couple of days every year to go and have a monastic experience like that but Benedictine Monks have committed their lives to doing this every single day.
I think the Monastic movement failed because Christ has called us to engage the world. You understand Christ has called us to engage the world. In a sense this is just “monking” around. Christ has called us to engage the world. I think even closet prayer can be a problem for some people because they’d rather not engage the world. Maybe they’re contemplative and just extremely so and they just use their free time devotionally but they don’t go out and engage their neighbors. They don’t engage people in the workplace. They don’t volunteer for ministry. They don’t go into the inner city and tutor. They don’t teach Sunday School. But they pray a lot and prayer is precious and prayer is awesome and prayer is powerful but it’s also dangerous if it leads to a life out of balance. Of course, most of us are not unbalanced that way. Most of us are unbalanced because we just don’t pray enough or we hardly pray at all and that’s the tragedy for most of us.
I think there’s a certain asceticism that can be dangerous in closet prayer. Asceticism has to do with self-discipline even to the point of pain and sometimes Ascetics become proud of their passion and devotion and discipline and that can always creep in. Satan is so subtle. He can creep into group prayer or closet prayer. He can get to you either way and pride can become a factor anywhere. If you meet somebody who feels better than you because they pray more, something is wrong with them. Something’s wrong with that.
There are always dangers in spiritual things but oh the blessings are so great and I hope you understand the blessings of private prayer and closet prayer. I think uniquely closet prayer leads to intimacy with God. Group prayer can do that, but closet prayer is unique in its ability to give us intimacy with God. I promise you, if you, every day, participate in 15 minutes to a half hour of closet prayer, you will begin to feel close to Jesus. You will begin to feel an intimacy with God you’ve never had before. Do you want that? Do you want intimacy with God?