Notice that majestic 'but' with which my text begins, 'Satan hath
desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat, _but_ I
have prayed for thee.' He presents Himself, then, as the Antagonist,
the confident and victorious Antagonist, of whatsoever mysterious,
malignant might may lie beyond the confines of sense, and He says,
'My prayer puts the hook in leviathan's nose, and the malevolent
desire to sift, in order that not the chaff but the wheat may
disappear, comes all to nothing by the side of My prayer.'
Note the discrimination of the intercession. He 'hath desired to
have you'--that is plural; 'I have prayed for thee'--that is
singular. The man that was in the greatest danger was the man
nearest to Christ's heart, and chiefly the object of Christ's
intercession. So it is always--the tenderest of His words, the
sweetest of His consolations, the strongest of His succours, the
most pleading and urgent of His petitions, the mightiest gifts of
His grace, are given to the weakest, the neediest, the men and women
in most sorrow and stress and peril, and they who want Him most
always have Him nearest. The thicker the darkness, the brighter His
light; the drearier our lives, the richer His presence; the more
solitary we are, the larger the gifts of His companionship. Our
need is the measure of His prayer. 'Satan hath desired to have you,
but thou, Peter, dost stand in the very focus of the danger, and so
on _thee_ are focussed, too, the rays of My love and care.' Be
sure, dear friends, that it is always so for us, and that when you
want Christ most, Christ is most to you.
Then, I need not touch at any length upon that great subject on which
none of us can speak adequately or with full comprehension--viz. our
Lord as the Intercessor for us in all our weakness and need. We
believe in His continual manhood, we believe that He prayed upon
earth, we believe that He prays in heaven. His prayer is no mere
utterance of words: it is the presentation of a fact, the bringing
ever before the Infinite Divine Mind, as it were, of His great work
of sacrifice, as the condition which determines, and the channel
through which flows, the gift of sustaining grace from God Himself.
And so we may be sure that whensoever there come to any of us trials,
difficulties, conflicts, temptations, they are known to our Brother in
the skies, and the stormier the gales that threaten us, the closer He
wraps His protection round us. We have an Advocate and an Intercessor
before the Throne; His prayer is always heard. Oh, brethren! how
different our endurance would be, if we vividly believed that Christ
was praying for us! How it would take the sting out of sorrow, and
blunt the edge of temptation, if we realised that! O for a faith that
shall rend the heavens, and rise above the things seen and temporal,
and behold the eternal order of the universe, the central Throne, and
at the right hand of God, the Intercessor for all who love and trust
Him!