I
THE MAGNIFICENCE OF PRAYER
"Lord, teach us to pray."--Luke xi. 1.
"A royal priesthood."--1 Pet. ii. 9.
"I am an apostle," said Paul, "I magnify mine
office." And we also have an office. Our office is
not the apostolic office, but Paul would be the first
to say to us that our office is quite as magnificent
as ever his office was. Let us, then, magnify our
office. Let us magnify its magnificent opportunities;
its momentous duties; and its incalculable and
everlasting rewards. For our office is the "royal
priesthood." And we do not nearly enough magnify
and exalt our royal priesthood. To be "kings and
priests unto God"--what a magnificent office is
that! But then, we who hold that office are men of
such small and such mean minds, our souls so decline
and so cleave to this earth, that we never so much
as attempt to rise to the height and the splendour
of our magnificent office. If our minds were only
enlarged and exalted at all up to our office, we would
be found of God far oftener than we are, with our
sceptre in our hand, and with our mitre upon our
head. If we magnified our office, as Paul magnified
his office, we would achieve as magnificent results
in our office as ever he achieved in his. The truth
is,--Paul's magnificent results were achieved more
in our office than in his own. It was because Paul
added on the royal priesthood to the Gentile apostleship
that he achieved such magnificent results in that apostleship. And, if we would but magnify
our royal priesthood as Paul did--it hath not entered
into our hearts so much as to conceive what God
hath prepared for those who properly perform their
office, as Kings and Priests unto God.
Prayer is the magnificent office it is, because it is
an office of such a magnificent kind. Magnificence
is of many kinds, and magnificent things are more
or less magnificent according to their kind.. This
great globe on which it strikes its roots and grows
is magnificent in size when compared with that
grain of mustard seed: but just because that grain
of mustard seed is a seed and grows, that smallest
of seeds is far greater than the great globe itself. A
bird on its summer branch is far greater than the
great sun in whose warmth he builds and sings,
because that bird has life and love and song, which
the sun, with all his immensity of size, and with all
his light and heat, has not. A cup of cold water
only, given to one of these little ones in the name
of a disciple, is a far greater offering before God
than thousands of rams, and ten thousands of rivers
of oil; because there is charity in that cup of cold
water. And an ejaculation, a sigh, a sob, a tear, a
smile, a psalm, is far greater to God than all the
oblations, and incense, and new moons, and Sabbaths,
and calling of assemblies, and solemn meetings
of Jerusalem, because repentance and faith and
love and trust are in that sob and in that psalm.
And the magnificence of all true prayer--its nobility,
its royalty, its absolute divinity--all stand in this,
that it is the greatest kind of act and office that man,
or angel, can ever enter on and perform. Earth is
at its very best; and heaven is at its very highest,
when men and angels magnify their office of prayer
and of praise before the throne of God.
I. The magnificence of God is the source and the
measure of the magnificence of prayer. "Think
magnificently of God," said Paternus to his son.
Now that counsel is the sum and substance of this
whole matter. For the heaven and the earth; the
sun and the moon and the stars; the whole opening
universe of our day; the Scriptures of truth, with
all that they contain; the Church of Christ, with all
her services and all her saints--all are set before us
to teach us and to compel us indeed to "think
magnificently of God." And they have all fulfilled
the office of their creation when they have all combined
to make us think magnificently of their Maker.
Consider the heavens, the work of His fingers, the
moon and the stars, which He hath ordained:
consider the intellectual heavens also, angels and
archangels, cherubim and seraphim: consider
mankind also, made in the image of God: consider Jesus
Christ, the express image of His person: consider
a past eternity and a coming eternity, and the
revelation thereof that is made to us in the Word
of God, and in the hearts of His people--and I defy
you to think otherwise than magnificently of God.
And, then, after all that, I equally defy you to
forget, or neglect, or restrain prayer. Once you begin
to think aright of Him Who is the Hearer of
prayer; and Who waits, in all His magnificence,
to be gracious to you--I absolutely defy you to
live any longer the life you now live. "First of all,
my child," said Paternus to his son, "think magnificently
of God. Magnify His providence: adore
His power: frequent His service; and pray to
Him frequently and instantly. Bear Him always
in your mind: teach your thoughts to reverence
Him in every place, for there is no place where He
is not. Therefore, my child, fear and worship, and
love God; first, and last, think magnificently of God."
2. "Why has God established prayer?" asks
Pascal. And Pascal's first answer to his own great
question is this. God has established prayer in
the moral world in order "to communicate to His
creatures the dignity of causality." That is to say,
to give us a touch and a taste of what it is to be a
Creator. But then, "there are some things
ultimate and incausable," says Bacon, that interpreter
of nature. And whatever things are indeed
ultimate to us, and incausable by us, them God
"hath put in His own power." But there are many
other things, and things that far more concern us,
that He communicates to us to have a hand of
cause and creation in. Not immediately, and at
our own rash and hot hand, and at our precipitate
and importunate will, but always under His Holy
Hand, and under the tranquillity of His Holy Will.
We hold our office and dignity of causality and
creation under the Son, just as He holds His
again under the Father. But instead of that lessening
our dignity, to us, it rather ennobles and endears
our dignity. All believers are agreed that they
would rather hold their righteousness of Christ
than of themselves; and so would all praying men:
they would rather that all things had their spring
and rise and rule in the wisdom and the love and
the power of God, than in their own wisdom and love and
power, even if they had the wisdom and the
love and the power for such an office. But then,
again, just as all believing men put on Jesus Christ
to justification of life, so do they all put on, under
Him, their royal robe and their priestly diadem
and breastplate. And that, not as so many beautiful
ornaments, beautiful as they are, but as instruments
and engines of divine power. "Thus saith
the Lord, the Holy One of Israel,"--as He clothes
His priests with salvation,--"Ask Me of things to
come concerning My sons, and concerning the
work of My hands command ye me." What a
thing for God to say to man! What a magnificent
office! What a more than royal dignity! What
a gracious command, and what a sure encouragement
is that to pray! For ourselves, first, as His
sons,--if His prodigal and dishonourable sons,- and
then for our fellows, even if they are as prodigal
and as undeserving as we are. Ask of me! Even
when a father is wounded and offended by his son,
even then, you feel sure that you have his heartstrings
in your hand when you go to ask him for
things that concern his son; and that even though
he is a bad son: even when he sends you away in
anger, his fatherly bowels move over you as you
depart: and he looks out at his door to see if you
are coming back to ask him again concerning his
son. And when you take boldness and venture
back, he falls on your neck and says, Command
me all that is in your heart concerning my son.
Now, that is the "dignity of causality," that in
which you are the cause of a father taking home
again his son: and the cause of a son saying, I
will arise and go to my father. That is your "magnificent
office." That is your "royal priesthood."
3. And, then, there is this magnificent and right
noble thing in prayer. Oh, what a noble God
we have!--says Pascal,--that God shares His
creatorship with us! And I will, to the praise and
the glory of God this day, add this, that He makes us
the architects of our own estates, and the fashioners
of our own fortunes. It is good enough to have an
estate left us in this life, if we forget we have it:
it is good enough that we inherit a fortune in this
world's goods, if it is not our lasting loss. Only
there is nothing great, nothing noble, nothing
magnanimous or magnificent in that. But to have
begun life with nothing, and to have climbed up by
pure virtue, by labour, and by self-denial, and by
perseverance, to the very top,--this world has no
better praise to give her best sons than that. But
there is another, and a better world, of which this
world at its best is but the scaffolding, the preparation,
and the porch: and to be the architect
of our own fortune in
that world will be to our everlasting
honour. Now, there is this magnificence
about the world of prayer, that in it we work out,
not our own bare and naked and "scarce" salvation
only, but our everlasting inheritance, incorruptible
and undefilable, with all its unsearchable
riches. Heaven and earth, time and eternity,
creation and providence, grace and glory, are all
laid up in Christ; and then Christ and all His
unsearchable riches are laid open to prayer; and
then it is said to every one of us--Choose you all
what you will have, and command Me for it! All
God's grace, and all His truth, has been coined--
as Goodwin has it--out of purposes into promises;
and then all those promises are made "Yea and
amen" in Christ; and then out of Christ, they are
published abroad to all men in the word of the
Gospel; and, then, all men who read and hear the
Gospel are put upon their mettle. For what a
man loves, that that man is. What a man chooses
out of a hundred offers, you are sure by that who
and what that man is. And accordingly, put the
New Testament in any man's hand, and set the
Throne of Grace wide open before any man; and you
need no omniscience to tell you that man's true
value. If he lets his Bible lie unopened and unread:
if he lets God's Throne of Grace stand till
death, idle and unwanted: if the depth and the
height, the nobleness and the magnificence, the
goodness and the beauty of divine things have no
command over him, and no attraction to him--then,
you do not wish me to put words upon the
meanness of that man's mind. Look yourselves
at what he has chosen: look and weep at what he
has neglected, and has for ever lost! But there are
other men: there are men of a far nobler blood than
that man is: there are great men, royal men: there
are some men made of noble stuff, and cast into
a noble mould. And you will never satisfy or
quiet those men with all you can promise them or
pour out upon them in this life. They are men of a
magnificent heart, and only in prayer have their
hearts ever got full scope and a proper atmosphere. They would die if
they did not pray. They magnify their office. You cannot please them
better than to invite and ask them to go to their God in your behalf.
They would go of their own motion and accord for you, even if you
never asked them. They have prayed for you before you asked them,
more than you know. They are like Jesus Christ in this; and He will
acknowledge them in this. While you were yet their enemies, they
prayed for you, and as good as died for you. And when you turn to be
their enemies again, they will have their revenge on you at the mercy
seat. When you feel, somehow, as if coals of fire were - from
somewhere - being heaped upon your head, it is from the mercy seat,
where that magnanimous man is retaliating upon you. Now not Paul
himself ever magnified his office more or better than that. And it
was in that very same way that our Lord magnified His royal
priesthood when He had on His crown of thorns on the cross, and when
His shame covered Him as a robe and a diadem in the sight of God, and
when He interceded and said--"They know not what they do."
4. And then there is this fine and noble thing about prayer also, that the aceptableness of it, and the power of it, are in direct proportion to the secrecy and the spirituality of it. As its stealth is: as its silence is: as its hiddenness away with
God is: as its unsuspectedness and undeservedness
with men is: as its pure goodness, pure love, and
pure goodwill are--so does prayer perform its
magnificent part when it is alone with God. The
true closet of the true saint of God is not built of
stone and lime. The secret place of God; and His
people, is not a thing of wood and iron, and bolts
and bars. At the same time, Christ did say--
Shut
your door. And in order to have the Holy Ghost all
to himself, and to be able to give himself up wholly
--body, soul and spirit--to the Holy Ghost, the
man after God's own heart in prayer always as a
matter of fact builds for himself a little sanctuary,
all his own; not to shut God in, but to shut all that
is not of God out. He builds a house for God,
before he has as yet built a house for himself. You
would not believe it about that man of secret
prayer. When you see and hear him, he is the
poorest, the meekest, the most contrite, and the
most silent of men: and you rebuke him because
he so trembles at God's word. If you could but
see him when he is alone with the King! If you
could but see his nearness and his boldness! You
would think that he and the King's Son had been
born and brought up together--such intimacies,
and such pass-words, are exchanged between them.
You would wonder, you would not believe your
eyes and your ears. If you saw him on his knees
you would see a sight. Look! He is in the
Audience Chamber. Look! He is in the Council
Chamber now. He has a seat set for him among
the peers. He is set down among the old nobility
of the Empire. The King will not put on His signet
ring to seal a command, till your friend has been
heard. "Command Me," the King says to him.
"Ask Me," He says, "for the things of My sons:
command Me things to come concerning them"!
And, as if that were not enough, that man of all-prayer
is still on his knees. He is "wrestling" on
his knees. There is no enemy there that I can
see. There is nothing and no one that I can see
near him: and yet he wrestles like a mighty man.
What is he doing with such a struggle? Doing?
Do you not know what he is doing? He is moving
heaven and earth. The man is removing mountains.
He is casting this mountain, and that, into
the midst of the sea. He is casting down thrones.
He is smiting old empires of time to pieces. Yes:
he is wrestling indeed! For he is wrestling now
with God; and now with man: now with death;
and now with hell: See! the day breaks over his
place of prayer! See! the Kingdom of God begins
to come in on the earth! What a spot is that!
What plots are hatched there! What conspiracies
are planned there! How dreadful is this place!
Let us escape for our life out of it! Is that man,
in there with God, your friend? Can you trust
him with God? Will he speak about you when he
is in audience? And what will he say? Has he
anything against you? Have you anything on
your conscience, or in your heart, against him?
Then I would not be you, for a world! But no!
Hear him! What is that he says? I declare I
hear your name, and your children's names! And
the King stretches forth His sceptre, and your
friend touches it. He has "commanded" his God
for you. He has "asked concerning" you and your
sons. Such access, such liberty, such power, such
prevalency, such a magnificent office has he, who
has been made of God a King and a Priest unto
God.
5. And, then, to cap and to crown it all--the
supreme magnanimity, and the superb generosity
of God, to its top perfection, is seen in this--in the
men He selects, prepares for Himself, calls, consecrates,
and clothes with the mitre and with the
ephod, and with the breastplate. It is told in the
Old Testament to the blame of Jeroboam, that "he
made an house of high places, and made priests of
the lowest of the people, which were not of the
sons of Levi." But what is written and read in the
Levitical law, to Jeroboam's blame, that vary
same thing, and in these very same words, God's
saints are this Sabbath day singing in their thousands
to His praise before the throne of God and the
Lamb. For, ever since the day of Christ, it has
been the lowest of the people--those lowest, that
is, in other men's eyes, and in their own--it has
been the poor and the despised, and the meek, and
the hidden, and the down-trodden, and the silent,
who have had secret power and privilege with God,
and have prevailed. It was so, sometimes, even in
the Old testament. The New Testament sometimes
broke up through the Old; and in nothing
more than in this in the men,--and in their mothers,--who
were made Kings and Priests unto God.
"The Lord maketh poor," sang Samuel's mother,
"and maketh rich: He bringeth low, and lifteth up.
He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth
up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among
princes, and to make them inherit the throne of
glory." And the mother of our great High Priest
Himself sang, as she sat over His manger--"He
hath regarded the low estate of His handmaiden. . . .
He hath filled the hungry with good things; and
the rich hath He sent empty away." This, then,
is the very topmost glory, and the very supremest
praise of God--the men, from among men, that He
takes, and makes of them Kings and Priests unto
God. Let all such men magnify their office; and
let them think and speak and sing magnificently of
their God!
