(upbeat music) When you pray, Jesus said, get by yourself, go into your room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. It's Matthew 6, 6. Sounds pretty straightforward. So we just pray alone, right? Wrong. (laughs) We don't only pray in secret, we pray together as well.

Something we see all over the book of Acts, for example, in texts like Acts 2, 42, 431, 1212, 133, and 2036, just to name a few texts. So why do we pray together and not just alone? What's added when we pray together and what's lost when we only pray by ourselves?

In 1981, Pastor John took up this very question in a sermon on 2 Corinthians 1, verses 8 to 11. There, Paul writes his testimony of his agonies, quote, "For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so bitterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him, we have set our hope that he will deliver us again," end quote.

And then Paul makes this request in verse 11, which is a little complex, so listen carefully, quote, "You also must help us by prayer so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many," end quote. Here's Pastor John. - That's a hard verse.

I noticed Glenn this morning, just like I, had trouble reading verse 11. He had to stop and make sure he had it just right because it's a very complex sentence. I had to read verse 11 again and again, and I could not get the gist of verse 11 until I drew it on paper.

Now, follow with me the line of prayer. Keep one eye on the text, one eye on the line, and both ears on me. The line of prayer begins with Paul, and he feels a need. That's where prayer begins. His need was probably, oh, how I need to rely on God more.

Oh, how I need to trust God for deliverance from all my adversaries more. So what does he do? He sends out a line of prayer. Help me, horizontally, to the Corinthians. Help me by prayer. And that's stage one in the line of prayer. Then the line of prayer curves up through the heart of the Corinthians as they hear the plea, and they look up to God and pray that God will, in fact, answer their prayers for Paul's deliverance and for his faith, and that's stage two, the prayers of the Corinthians heading up to God.

Then the line of prayer enters the heart of God who is there listening, waiting for the prayers of his people. And in response to the prayers of the many Corinthians, God sends down a gift or a blessing, as the text says, to Paul. What blessing? Greater faith in God, greater dependence on him alone, and deliverance from his adversaries.

And that's stage three in the line of prayer. Help us by prayer, stage one. God, help Paul, stage two. God's answer, stage three. Now, just as many people heard the plea of Paul to help through prayer, so many people now see the answer to the prayers. As they look, look, Paul got out.

He got out of the Philippian jail. He got away from Ephesus. He made it all the way through Berea and Thessalonica. He's coming down here to us. He's gonna make it all the way to Jerusalem with that money. He may make it to Rome, to the ends of the earth, and preach to the emperor.

Praise God. And that's line four. They see, they see the answer to prayer, and that curves up through their heart in praises and thanksgiving through many people back to God. And that's stage five in the line of prayer. And that's where the text stops. But I think there is something implied in the text that's not explicit, that is just a choice truth that I don't wanna leave out.

Namely, if Paul chose to motivate the Corinthians to pray for him by pointing out that it would abound in many thanksgivings to God, then it must be a great delight to Paul to think about God getting so many thanks. And if it's a great delight to Paul to see God being thanked, then that little dotted line that comes down from God is joy coming back into the heart of Paul as he sees God being thanked in response to many prayers, or the answer to many prayers.

So that's stage six that I've added. In fact, I could go on adding stage seven because God gets delight in Paul's delight and Paul gets delight in God's delight and his delight. And it's just a great spiral on up into infinite joy someday when there's no more sin to clutter up that spiral.

That's the line of prayer. Let me sum it up just briefly. Paul has a great need and he feels it. He knows he's coming into adversity. He said in Acts 20, verse 23, "The Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city "that afflictions and imprisonments await me." He needs help.

"Help me," Corinthians. They hear the word. "God, help Paul." God looks down. "I hear the prayer. "Here's the help, Paul." Paul is helped. He's delivered. He's free. He's preaching. He's full of faith. Who sees it? Lots of people see it. What do they do? Praise God. God has responded to our prayers and the thanks go back to God and he's glorified.

That's the line of prayer. That's what ought to be happening in this church again and again and again. And there are more lessons in this than I can begin to say this morning, but I want to mention two. Two lessons from the line of prayer. The first is this.

If you're like me, you've probably asked yourself why it is that corporate prayer is important. Why pray in groups? Why pray publicly? Why not just close the door, like Jesus said we should many times, and pray alone? Why does Paul not simply pray, God save me from the enemies, God fill me with faith, and not write letters and tell other people to pray for him?

Doesn't he think God can answer his prayer? Is he lacking in faith? Are we weak in faith when we ask many people to pray for something? That's the kind of question I came to this text with and I think the text gives a tremendous answer to why corporate and public prayer is so important.

Why might God be more inclined to answer the prayers of many rather than the prayers of one? That's my question. And I think the answer begins like this. According to our text, the thing that's different when many people pray, notice many prayers, is that the stage is being set for lots and lots and lots of thanks.

The more people that are earnestly praying for some blessing from God, the more thanksgiving will ascend to God when that blessing comes. Paul's argument is very simply this. You must help me by prayer so that many will give thanks when the prayers of many are answered. The reason for praying at all is so God might be thanked when blessings come.

And God loves to be thanked. God loves to be thanked. And that's the basic premise here for why this prayer becomes so effective. He loves to be acknowledged and praised as the giver of all good gifts. Therefore, when we urge, when I urge you, 400 people say, when I urge you to pray for some need, many people, I'm creating a situation in which the provision of that need will result in many, many, many thanksgivings, more than if each of us was praying privately.

And therefore, we tap into a tremendous incentive on God's part, because God loves to glorify himself by doing what he must do to get as many thanks as possible. And that means answering the prayers of many people. God loves to be thanked by many. And therefore, there is a power in church wide prayer, because the more people there are praying for the spiritual life of our church, the more thanksgiving will ascend when God gives it.

Now, the same reasoning, which comes straight out of 2 Corinthians 1:11, the same reasoning also shows that we should not only pray in large numbers, but that we should get together in groups to pray. I'll try to show you how that follows. Picture two possibilities. One would be a dozen people privately in their homes, praying for the release of Paul, say from jail in Philippi.

Okay? They pray, God answers, delivers Paul. They get word of it. They give thanks. God is honored. Great. But suppose that those dozen or so people met together in a group, in a room, in a living room there in Philippi, just like the saints did in Acts 12 to pray for Peter's release when he was in jail.

Suppose they got together and prayed. And the fervor of each other's prayer kindled each other's fervor up to God. God released Paul miraculously through this earthquake and they hear about it. Then what would happen? The praises and the thanks would ascend. And is it not human nature? You see, if this isn't true to your own experience, is it not human nature to feel gratitude more intensely when somebody you love is sharing the experience with you?

Is that not human nature to feel the joy of gratitude more intensely when someone you love is feeling it together with you? When you and I experience a blessing that we've asked for together, your thanksgiving deepens and heightens my thanksgiving because it works like this. Now, this is true for me and I think it's human nature.

When the answer comes, I see the blessing coming from God. I see it and I'm glad, I rejoice. But then I look down and I see it reflected in all your faces, reflected and magnified. And my joy therefore is compounded and my thanksgiving is greater. And God loves heightened and deepened thanksgiving.

And therefore he wants us to meet in groups to pray. And therefore we are setting ourselves up for tremendous spiritual blessing in this church when we gather in groups to seek God's blessing on our church. - Yeah, a vivid explanation of how 2 Corinthians 1:11 works based on a flow chart of the text.

A clip taken from John Piper's sermon titled "The Line of Prayer" preached back on January 4, 1981. I found this clip, but if you find one, email it to me. Give me your name, hometown, the sermon title and the timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio and make a note of what stands out to you.

Put the word clip in the subject line of an email and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Speaking of sermon clips, you might remember about a month ago, I shared with you a great sermon clip sent to us from a woman in Greece who struggled for years with an eating disorder and who only chose to open up and tell others about the sin after hearing a John Piper sermon clip on Romans 7, verses 14 to 25.

That clip, that clip that changed her life was sent to us and we published it as APJ 1751 recently. And while I was editing that clip, getting it ready for you all, I noticed that we've never entered the debate over Romans 7 itself, not here on the podcast. So is Romans 7 the struggle of Christian Paul or of pre-Christian Saul?

It's an important debate. Pastor John has a position, he believes it's the believer struggle and he will defend that position next time. We're gonna actually get down into the nitty gritty of that text. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we are rejoined in studio with Pastor John when we return on Friday for that big debate.

We'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)