vengeance pronounced by God so dire which does not yield to prayer.
There is no justice so flaming that is not quenched by prayer.
Take the record and attitude of Heaven against Saul of Tarsus. That
attitude is changed and that record is erased when the astonishing
condition is announced, “Behold he prayeth.” The recreant Jonah is
alive, and on dry ground, with scarce the taste of the sea or the smell
of its weeds about him, as he prays. “Out of the belly of hell cried I,
and thou heardst my voice.”
“The waters compassed me about, even to the soul; the depth closed me
round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.
“I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars
was about me for ever; yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption,
O Lord my God.
“When my soul fainted within me I remembered the Lord: and my prayer
came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.
“And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry
land.”
Prayer has all the force of God in it. Prayer can get anything which God
has. Thus prayer has all of its plea and its claim in the name of Jesus
Christ, and there is nothing too good or great for God to give that
name.
It must be borne in mind that there is no test surer than this thing of
prayer of our being in the family of God. God’s children pray. They
repose in Him for all things. They ask Him for all things—for
everything. The faith of the child in the father is evinced by the
child’s asking. It is the answer to prayer which convinces men not only
that there is a God, but that He is a God who concerns Himself about
men, and about the affairs of this world. Answered prayer brings God
nigh, and assures men of His being. Answered prayer is the credentials
of our relation to and our representative of Him. Men cannot represent
God who do not get answers to prayer from Him.
The possibilities of prayer are found in the illimitable promise, the
willingness and the power of God to answer prayer, to answer all prayer,
to answer every prayer, and to supply fully the illimitable need of man.
None are so needy as man, none are so able and anxious to supply every
need and any need as God.
Preaching should no more fully declare and fulfill the will of God for
the salvation of all men, than should the prayers of God’s saints
declare the same great truth, as they wrestle in their closet for this
sublime end. God’s heart is set on the salvation of all men. This
concerns God. He has declared this in the death of His Son by an
unspeakable voice, and every movement on earth for this end pleases God.
And so He declares that our prayers for the salvation of all men are
well pleasing in His sight. The sublime and holy inspiration of pleasing
God should ever move us to prayer for all men. God eyes the closet, and
nothing we can do pleases Him better than our large-hearted, ardent
praying for all men. It is the embodiment and test of our devotion to
God’s will and of our sympathetic loyalty to God.
In I Tim. 2:13 the apostle Paul does not descend to a low plane, but
presses the necessity of prayer by the most forceful facts. Jesus
Christ, a man, the God-man, the highest illustration of manhood, is the
Mediator between God and man. Jesus Christ, this Divine man, died for
all men. His life is but an intercession for all men. His death is but a
prayer for all men. On earth, Jesus Christ knew no higher law, no holier
business, no diviner life, than to plead for men. In Heaven He knows no
more royal estate, no higher theme, than to intercede for men. On earth
He lived and prayed and died for men. His life, His death and His
exaltation in Heaven all plead for men.
Is there any work, higher work for the disciple to do than His Lord did?
Is there any loftier employment, more honourable, more divine, than to
pray for men? To take their woes, their sins, and their perils before
God; to be one with Christ? To break the thrall which binds them, the
hell which holds them and lift them to immortality and eternal life?
V
JESUS CHRIST, THE DIVINE TEACHER OF PRAYER
_A friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing
to set before him! He knocks again. “Friend! lend me three loaves.”
He waits a while and then knocks again. “Friend! I must have three
loaves!” “Trouble me not: the door is now shut; I cannot rise and
give thee!” He stands still. He turns to go home. He comes back. He
knocks again. “Friend!” he cries. He puts his ear to the door. There
is a sound inside, and then the light of a candle shines through the
hole of the door. The bars of the door are drawn back, and he gets
not three loaves only, but as many as he needs. “And I say unto you,
Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it
shall be opened unto you.”_
—ALEXANDER WHYTE, D.D.
Jesus Christ was the Divine Teacher of prayer. Its power and nature had
been illustrated by many a saint and prophet in olden times, but modern
sainthood and modern teachers of prayer had lost their inspiration and
life. Religiously dead, teachers and superficial ecclesiastics had
forgotten what it was to pray. They did much of saying prayers, on state
occasions, in public, with much ostentation and parade, but pray they
did not. To them it was almost a lost practice. In the multiplicity of
saying prayers they had lost the art of praying.
The history of the disciples during the earthly life of our Lord was not
marked with much devotion. They were much enamoured by their personal
association with Christ. They were charmed by His words, excited by His
miracles, and were entertained and concerned by the hopes which a
selfish interest aroused in His person and mission. Taken up with the
superficial and worldly views of His character, they neglected and
overlooked the deeper and weightier things which belonged to Him and His
mission. The neglect of the most obliging and ordinary duties by them
was a noticeable feature in their conduct. So evident and singular was
their conduct in this regard, that it became a matter of grave inquiry
on one occasion and severe chiding on another.
“And they said unto him, Why do the disciples of John fast often, and
make prayers, and likewise the disciples of the Pharisees; but thine eat
and drink? And he said unto them, Can ye make the children of the
bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will
come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall
they fast in those days.”
In the example and the teaching of Jesus Christ, prayer assumes its
normal relation to God’s person, God’s movements and God’s Son. Jesus
Christ was essentially the teacher of prayer by precept and example. We
have glimpses of His praying which, like indices, tell how full of
prayer the pages, chapters and volumes of His life were. The epitome
which covers not one segment only, but the whole circle of His life, and
character, is pre-eminently that of prayer! “In the days of his flesh,”
the Divine record reads, “when he had offered up prayers and
supplications, with strong crying and tears.” The suppliant of all
suppliants He was, the intercessor of all intercessors. In lowliest form
He approached God, and with strongest pleas He prayed and supplicated.
Jesus Christ teaches the importance of prayer by His urgency to His
disciples to pray. But He shows us more than that. He shows how far
prayer enters into the purposes of God. We must ever keep in mind that
the relation of Jesus Christ to God is the relation of asking and
giving, the Son ever asking, the Father ever giving. We must never
forget that God has put the conquering, inheriting and expanding forces
of Christ’s cause in prayer. “Ask of me, and I will give thee the
heathen for thy inheritance, and the uttermost part of the earth for thy
possession.”
This was the clause embodying the royal proclamation and the universal
condition when the Son was enthroned as the world’s Mediator, and when
He was sent on His mission of receiving grace and power. We very
naturally learn from this how Jesus would stress praying as the one sole
condition of His receiving His possession and inheritance.
Necessarily in this study on prayer, lines of thought will cross each
other, and the same Scripture passage or incident will be mentioned more
than once, simply because a passage may teach one or more truths. This
is the case when we speak of the vast comprehensiveness of prayer. How
all-inclusive Jesus Christ makes prayer! It has no limitations in extent
or things! The promises to prayer are Godlike in their magnificence,
wideness and universality. In their nature these promises have to do
with God—with Him in their inspiration, creation and results. Who but
God could say, “All things whatsoever ye ask in prayer, believing, ye
shall receive?” Who can command and direct “All things whatsoever” but
God? Neither man nor chance nor the law of results are so far lifted
above change, limitations or condition, nor have in them mighty forces
which can direct and result all things, as to promise the bestowment and
direction of all things.
Whole sections, parables and incidents were used by Christ to enforce
the necessity and importance of prayer. His miracles are but parables of
prayer. In nearly all of them prayer figures distinctly, and some
features of it are illustrated. The Syro-phœnician woman is a
pre-eminent illustration of the ability and the success of importunity
in prayer. The case of blind Bartimæus has points of suggestion along
the same line. Jairus and the Centurion illustrate and impress phases of
prayer. The parable of the Pharisee and the publican enforce humility in
prayer, declare the wondrous results of praying, and show the vanity and
worthlessness of wrong praying. The failure to enforce church discipline
and the readiness of violating the brotherhood, are all used to make an
exhibit of far-reaching results of agreed praying, a record of which we
have in Matthew, chapter 18:19.
It is of prayer in concert that Christ is speaking. Two agreed ones, two
whose hearts have been keyed into perfect symphony by the Holy Spirit.
Anything that they shall ask, it shall be done. Christ had been speaking
of discipline in the Church, how things were to be kept in unity, and
how the fellowship of the brethren was to be maintained, by the
restoration of the offender or by his exclusion. Members who had been
true to the brotherhood of Christ, and who were labouring to preserve
that brotherhood unbroken, would be the agreed ones to make appeals to
God in united prayer.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ lays down constitutional principles.
Types and shadows are retired, and the law of spiritual life is
declared. In this foundation law of the Christian system prayer assumes
a conspicuous, if not a paramount, position. It is not only wide,
all-commanding, and comprehensive in its own sphere of action and
relief, but it is ancillary to all duties. Even the one demanding kindly
and discriminating judgment toward others, and also the royal
injunction, the Golden Rule of action, these owe their being to prayer.
Christ puts prayer among the statutory promises. He does not leave it to
natural law. The law of need, demand and supply, of helplessness, of
natural instincts, or the law of sweet, high, attractive privilege—these
howsoever strong as motives of action, are not the basis of praying.
Christ puts it as spiritual law. Men must pray. Not to pray is not
simply a privation, an omission, but a positive violation of law, of
spiritual life, a crime, bringing disorder and ruin. Prayer is law
world-wide and eternity-reaching.
In the Sermon on the Mount many important utterances are dismissed with
a line or a verse, while the subject of prayer occupies a large space.
To it Christ returns again and again. He bases the possibilities and
necessities of prayer on the relation of father and child, the child
crying for bread, and the father giving that for which the child asks.
Prayer and its answer are in the relation of a father to his child. The
teaching of Jesus Christ on the nature and necessity of prayer as
recorded in His life, is remarkable. He sends men to their closets.
Prayer must be a holy exercise, untainted by vanity, or pride. It must
be in secret. The disciple must live in secret. God lives there, is
sought there and is found there. The command of Christ as to prayer is
that pride and publicity should be shunned. Prayer is to be in private.
“But thou when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and shut thy door,
and pray to thy Father in secret. And thy Father, which seeth in secret,
shall reward thee openly.”
The Beatitudes are not only to enrich and adorn, but they are the
material out of which spiritual character is built. The very first one
of these fixes prayer in the very foundation of spiritual character, not
simply to adorn, but to compose. “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” The
word “poor” means a pauper, one who lives by begging. The real Christian
lives on the bounties of another, whose bounties he gets by asking.
Prayer then becomes the basis of Christian character, the Christian’s
business, his life and his living. This is Christ’s law of prayer,
putting it into the very being of the Christian. It is his first step,
and his first breath, which is to colour and to form all his after life.
Blessed are the poor ones, for they only can pray.
Prayer is the Christian’s vital breath,
The Christian’s native air;
His watchword at the gates of death;
He enters Heaven with prayer.
From praying Christ eliminates all self-sufficiency, all pride, and all
spiritual values. The poor in spirit are the praying ones. Beggars are
God’s princes. They are God’s heirs. Christ removes the rubbish of
Jewish traditions and glosses from the regulations of the prayer altar.
“Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not
kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment:
“But I say unto you, that whosoever is angry with his brother shall
be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his
brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever
shall say, thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.
“Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar and there rememberest
that thy brother has aught against thee:
“Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first, be
reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.”
He who essays to pray to God with an angry spirit, with loose and
irreverent lips, with an irreconciled heart, and with unsettled
neighbourly scores, spends his labour for that which is worse than
naught, violates the law of prayer, and adds to his sin.
How rigidly exacting is Christ’s law of prayer! It goes to the heart,
and demands that love be enthroned there, love to the brotherhood. The
sacrifice of prayer must be seasoned and perfumed with love, by love in
the inward parts. The law of prayer, its creator and inspirer, is love.
Praying must be done. God wants it done. He commands it. Man needs it
and man must do it. Something must surely come of praying, for God
engages that something shall come out of it, if men are in earnest and
are persevering in prayer.
After Jesus teaches “Ask and it shall be given you,” etc., He encourages
real praying, and more praying. He repeats and avers with redoubled
assurance, “For every one that asketh receiveth.” No exception. “Every
one.” “He that seeketh, findeth.” Here it is again, sealed and stamped
with infinite veracity. Then closed and signed, as well as sealed, with
Divine attestation, “To him that knocketh it shall be opened.” Note how
we are encouraged to pray by our relation to God!
“If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your
children, how much more shall your Father which is in Heaven give
good things to them that ask him?”
The relation of prayer to God’s work and God’s rule in this world is
most fully illustrated by Jesus Christ in both His teaching and His
practice. He is first in every way and in everything. Among the rulers
of the Church He is primary in a pre-eminent way. He has the throne. The
golden crown is His in eminent preciousness. The white garments enrobe
Him in pre-eminent whiteness and beauty. In the ministry of prayer He is
a Divine example as well as the Divine Teacher. His example is affluent,
and His prayer teaching abounds. How imperative the teaching of our Lord
when He affirms that “men ought always to pray and not to faint!” and
then presents a striking parable of an unjust judge and a poor widow to
illustrate and enforce His teaching. It is a necessity to pray. It is
exacting and binding for men always to be in prayer. Courage, endurance
and perseverance are demanded that men may never faint in prayer. “And
shall not God avenge his own elect that cry day and night unto him?”
This is His strong and indignant questioning and affirmation. Men must
pray according to Christ’s teaching. They must not get tired nor grow
weary in praying. God’s character is the assured surety that much will
come of the persistent praying of true men.
Doubtless the praying of our Lord had much to do with the revelation
made to Peter and the confession he made to Christ, “Thou art the
Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Prayer mightily affects and molds
the circle of our associates. Christ made disciples and kept them
disciples by praying. His twelve disciples were much impressed by His
praying. Never man prayed like this man. How different His praying from
the cold, proud, self-righteous praying which they heard and saw on the
streets, in the synagogue, and in the Temple.
VI
JESUS CHRIST, THE DIVINE TEACHER OF PRAYER (_Continued_)
_Luke tells us that as Jesus was praying in a certain place, when He
ceased, one of His disciples said unto Him, “Lord, teach us to
pray.” This disciple had heard Jesus preach, but did not feel like
saying, “Lord, teach us to preach.” He could learn to preach by
studying the methods of the Master. But there was something about
the praying of Jesus that made the disciple feel that he did not
know how to pray; that he had never prayed, and that he could not
learn by listening even to the Master as He prayed. There is a
profound something about prayer which never lies upon the surface.
To learn it, one must go to the depths of the soul, and climb to the
heights of God._
—A. C. DIXON, D.D.
Let it not be forgotten that prayer was one of the great truths which He
came into the world to teach and illustrate. It was worth a trip from
Heaven to earth to teach men this great lesson of prayer. A great lesson
it was, a very difficult lesson for men to learn. Men are naturally
averse to learning this lesson of prayer. The lesson is a very lowly
one. None but God can teach it. It is a despised beggary, a sublime and
heavenly vocation. The disciples were very stupid scholars, but were
quickened to prayer by hearing Him pray and talk about prayer.
The dispensation of Christ’s personality, while it was not and could not
be the dispensation in its fullest and highest sense of need and
dependence, yet Christ did try to impress on His disciples not alone a
deep necessity of the necessity of prayer in general, but the importance
of prayer to them in their personal and spiritual needs. And there came
moments to them when they felt the need of a deeper and more thorough
schooling in prayer and of their grave neglect in this regard. One of
these hours of deep conviction on their part and of eager inquiry was
when He was praying at a certain place and time, and they saw Him, and
they said to Him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his
disciples.”
As they listened to Him praying, they felt very keenly their ignorance
and deficiency in praying. Who has not felt the same deficiency and
ignorance? Who has not longed for a teacher in the Divine art of
praying?
The conviction which these twelve men had of their defect in prayer
arose from hearing their Lord and Master pray, but likewise from a sense
of serious defect even when compared with John the Baptist’s training of
his disciples in prayer. As they listened to their Lord pray (for
unquestionably He must have been seen and heard by them as He prayed,
who prayed with marvelous simplicity, and power, so human and so Divine)
such praying had a stimulating charm for them. In the presence and
hearing of His praying, very keenly they felt their ignorance and
deficiency in prayer. Who has not felt the same ignorance and
deficiency?
We do not regret the schooling our Lord gave these twelve men, for in
schooling them He schools us. The lesson is one already learned in the
law of Christ. But so dull were they, that many a patient iteration and
reiteration was required to instruct them in this Divine art of prayer.
And likewise so dull are we and inapt that many a wearying patient
repetition must be given us before we will learn any important lesson in
the all-important school of prayer.
This Divine Teacher of prayer lays Himself out to make it clear and
strong that God answers prayer, assuredly, certainly, inevitably; that
it is the duty of the child to ask, and to press, and that the Father is
obliged to answer, and to give for the asking. In Christ’s teaching,
prayer is no sterile, vain performance, not a mere rite, a form, but a
request for an answer, a plea to gain, the seeking of a great good from
God. It is a lesson of getting that for which we ask, of finding that
for which we seek, and of entering the door at which we knock.
A notable occasion we have as Jesus comes down from the Mount of
Transfiguration. He finds His disciples defeated, humiliated and
confused in the presence of their enemies. A father has brought his
child possessed with a demon to have the demon cast out. They essayed to
do it but failed. They had been commissioned by Jesus and sent to do
that very work, but had signally failed. “And when he was come into the
house, his disciples asked him privately, saying, Why could not we cast
him out? And he said unto them, This kind can come forth by nothing but
by prayer and fasting.” Their faith had not been cultured by prayer.
They failed in prayer before they failed in ability to do their work.
They failed in faith because they had failed in prayer. That one thing
which was necessary to do God’s work was prayer. The work which God
sends us to do cannot be done without prayer.
In Christ’s teaching on prayer we have another pertinent statement. It
was in connection with the cursing of the barren fig tree:
“Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, if ye
have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done
to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be
thou removed and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.
“And all things whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye
shall receive.”
In this passage we have faith and prayer, their possibilities and powers
conjoined. A fig tree had been blasted to the roots by the word of the
Lord Jesus. The power and quickness of the result surprised the
disciples. Jesus says to them that it need be no surprise to them, or
such a difficult work to be done. “If ye have faith” its possibilities
to affect will not be confined to the little fig tree, but the gigantic,
rock-ribbed, rock-founded mountains can be uprooted and moved into the
sea. Prayer is leverage of this great power of faith.
It is well to refer again to the occasion when the heart of our Lord was
so deeply moved with compassion as he beheld the multitudes because they
fainted and were scattered as having no shepherd. Then it was He urged
upon His disciples the injunction, “Pray ye the Lord of the harvest that
he would send forth labourers into his harvest,” clearly teaching them
that it belonged to God to call into the ministry men whom He will, and
that in answer to prayer the Holy Spirit does this very work.
Prayer is as necessary now as it was then to secure the needed labourers
to reap earthly harvests for the heavenly garners. Has the Church of God
ever learned this lesson of so vital and exacting import? God alone can
choose the labourers and thrust them out, and this choosing He does not
delegate to man, or church, convocation or synod, association or
conference. And God is moved to this great work of calling men into the
ministry by prayer. Earthly fields are rotting. They are untilled
because prayer is silent. The labourers are few. Fields are unworked
because prayer has not worked with God.