i. 15. _When ye make many prayers, I will not hear._
God has characterised Himself as "the Hearer of prayer;" and it is
the great consolation of His people that they cannot seek His face in
vain. But here He declares that He will not hear the prayers of
Israel, however many. This solemn and momentous declaration may well
lead us to inquire why prayer is, in many instances, rejected.
Prayer, to be heard, must be both _right_ and _real._ If it possess
neither of these characteristics, or only one of them--if it is
_neither right nor real,_ or is _right without being real,_ or _real
without being right_--it cannot fail to be rejected.
I. A man may pray _rightly,_ either because he has been taught the
principles of orthodoxy, or knows what language is conformable to
those principles, or because he uses prayers composed by spiritual
men, or, finally, because he used the very word prescribed or
sanctioned by God Himself. But in all these cases, while his prayer
may be right, it may be altogether unreal. He may neither know the
meaning of the requests it contains, nor desire their fulfilment.[1]
Thus do many men pray for a free pardon for Christ's sake, for entire
sanctification, and repeat the Lord's Prayer. There is nothing in the
heart corresponding to what is expressed by the lips; nay, the heart
and the mouth are often completely at variance with each other.
II. Prayer may be _real without being right._ A man may really
acknowledge mercies received, and petition for more; and yet neither
the acknowledgement nor the petition may be regarded by God. The
acknowledgement and the petition have reference to mere earthly
desires already gratified or yet to be gratified. He thanks God that
the "lusts have had the food which they craved;" he prays that they
may never want it. Pride, vanity, the love of ease, pleasures, and
worldly respectability are "lusts" on which he has hitherto
"consumed," and on which he intends still to "consume," the good
things which God has given, or may yet give him. The secret soul of
all his supplications is not any zeal for the glory of God, but
selfishness. His prayers are of the earth, earthy. The spiritual
blessings which God holds out in His right hand he passes by in
contemptuous neglect, and clamours for the natural blessings which
are in God's left hand.
III. Both the faults of prayer above referred to are often found in
one and the same individual, and the guilt of both accumulated on one
and the same head.
Let it not be inferred from what has been said that we lay an
interdict on natural blessings, and forbid the seeking of them in
prayer. Our Saviour has given us authority to ask for daily bread,
and this fully warrants the conclusion that natural blessings, as
well as spiritual, may and ought to form a subject of prayer. We
ought to "seek _first_ the kingdom of God and His righteousness," and
_then_ ask Him to fulfil His promise of "adding unto us all other
things."--_R. Nesbit, Discourses,_ pp. 308-319.