[Jesus said] “Therefore
I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have
received them, and they will be granted you” (Holy Bible: New American Standard Bible, Mark 11:24)
Some
passages in the New Testament, like the one cited above, can make prayer sound
like carte blanche; however, the context of this
passage explains its meaning. Jesus makes
this statement on the Tuesday morning after the Triumphal Entry. On Monday morning, Jesus and the disciples were
walking from Bethany to Jerusalem and on the way, Jesus cursed a fig tree that He
found to be without fruit. When they arrived
in Jerusalem, Jesus saw the corruption of the religious system and in reaction,
He drove out the people selling animals inside the temple. In His zeal, He shouted passages from the
prophets, saying that the temple was meant to be a ministry to all the nations,
but the ruling religious system had changed it into a den of robbers. It is the next day, when Jesus and the disciples
are making the journey again, that Peter notices the fig tree had withered.
These
events have led to this scene, and Jesus’s statement is made in that context. The religious system, that had been instituted
by God, had failed to reach out to the nations.
John the Baptist had cried out to Israel to make ready the path of the Lord,
fill in the ravines and lower the hills and mountains (Luke 3:4 & 5). The religious system had become a mountain in
the path of the Lord. Because of that,
Jesus tells the disciples that by prayer, mountains can be moved. The disciples, 12 men from the middle of
nowhere, with no political connections and no money, cannot undo the religious
system. It’s possible that 11 of the men
Jesus is talking to are under 20 years old [only Jesus and Peter paid the temple
tax in Matthew 17:27] and the Pharisees/Sadducees have been ruling in
second-temple Judaism since late Hasmonean period. In other words, this mountain is well established,
and the disciples are nobodies, with no power to move a mountain themselves.
In that
context, Jesus is telling them that prayer can move mountains standing in God’s
way. This mountain needed to be moved. It was blocking the Abrahamic promise of blessing
to all nations (Genesis 12:3c).
Therefore, prayers offered in accordance with God’s purposes can be prayed
with confidence[1]. This understanding is in harmony with John’s
explanation, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask
anything according to His will, He hears us.
And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have
the requests which we have asked from Him” (Holy Bible: New American Standard Bible, 1 John
5:14-15) .
Growth through unanswered prayers
Growth through unanswered prayers
Written by Pastor Ozzy
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1995. Holy Bible: New American Standard Bible.
LaHabra: The Lockman Foundation.
[1]
Mark 11:25-26 goes on to discuss a person’s prayer and their relationship to
forgiving others.
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