Book 2, Chapter 5 – Emblems from the Mount

“For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest. And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that the words should not be spoken to them any more: (For they could not endure that which was commanded, and if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart: And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:) But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect. And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh: for if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we, receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire.”

These beautiful words recall our thoughts to the mount of fire in the ancient wilderness, and they claim for us in the Christian dispensation all that was gracious and permanent in that awful and yet glorious manifestation of God; and leave out all that is dark, terrific and temporary.

In our review of the history of Israel, we have come at last to Sinai. We have followed them across the Red sea and through the wilderness; we have seen them led by the pillar of cloud and fire; fed by the hands of God; refreshed by the streams from the desert; and made victorious over their enemies by the banner of God. But now, the scene changes. I know nothing more vivid and impressive in their history than the strange alteration in the manifestation of God’s presence at this time. Hitherto it has seemed as though a gentle mother had spread out her pinions and covered them with her feathers. But suddenly she becomes to them a form of terror. The voice that had been all gentleness, and longsuffering and love, the God that had borne with them in their disobedience and frailty seems to change in a moment; and as they look at Him this morning, enthroned upon that fire-crowned mount, He is a living terror. The mountain is all in flame. It seems to be rocking in a perpetual earthquake; quivering in the throes of dissolution; covered from top to bottom with the thickest darkness and smoke; while the lurid flames are flashing on every side. And more terrific than all, the deafening roar of the trumpet; and as it seems the mingling of the trumpets of a thousand angels, is sounding on their ears and making their hearts to quake.

Even Moses, accustomed to see God’s mightiest manifestations, called to his work from the burning bush and able to stay with God in the mount forty days, said, “I exceedingly fear and quake.”

What is the meaning of this sudden change? What is the meaning of this hour? Up to this time He had met their murmurings with water and manna. But now, the message is, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the law to do them.” “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” “Thou shalt not touch the mount. Nay, if a beast touch it, he shall die.” “Let the priests also which come near to the Lord sanctify themselves, lest the Lord break forth upon them.” Nor can the people hear His word. “Speak thou with us,” they cry, “but let not God speak with us lest we die.”

Is not this a strange and awful change, as you contrast it with a week ago, as you contrast it with His gentle dealings with Abraham and Isaac, and the children of Israel through the desert? What was the meaning of this sudden coming down to the mount, and assembling them before the throne of His immaculate purity and inexorable law? There must be some deep significance for them, and for our lives. Yes, beloved! it was necessary that these lessons should be taught, and taught in this way. And it is necessary in your life and mine that the very same experience must come. And it is the experience that comes to every soul that becomes thoroughly disciplined and established in the life of holiness. I believe this is the very picture of God’s dealings with many of us.

First, He took us out of Egypt, forgave our sins, and led us through the wilderness with such a gentle hand. We thought there never could be any deeper experience; we thought the work of our inner salvation was complete; we thought we were so free from sin we should never know temptation again.

As we now look back to our early experience, and see how free it was from temptation and doubt, we have wished that we could go back to the days of childhood, and return to that simple faith in God. But there came a time when out of the depths there arose the terrific forms of temptation that we never dreamed was there. And as they came the face of God seemed darkened, and there came the revelation of God in His majesty and holiness, as He comes to search the heart, and show us things we did not think were in us. Then we became discouraged, and went to work to make ourselves better. And when we sought to rise in our own strength, we were knocked down again, by the hands of the law, and became so discouraged that we even doubted our conversion. John Bunyan gives us a vivid picture of this. It is after Christian has left the City of Destruction, and is on his road to the better land. Suddenly he gets out of the way, and as he tries to get back he meets with Moses, the man of stern face with no ray of mercy in his countenance. Moses says, “Where have you been? What have you done?” And as Christian begins to tell his sin, Moses knocks him down. He cries for mercy, but Moses says he has no mercy, it is his business to give the law, and to judge by the law. Christian rises again, and is knocked down again. The lightnings gather on the mountain; he begins to despair, when good Evangelist comes along and shows him the blessed way: and so he gets back again but not by the hand of Moses.

And so with us. Our disobedience terrified us. We felt ourselves weaker and more helpless than ever. God was only showing us His own face, and our hearts: and He was showing us all this that He might lead us to something better than we had before. He was showing us all this that we might get rid of the evil that was in ourselves, that we might get the strength of Christ in our hearts; that we might get the power of the holy Ghost in our souls: that we might go forth to be saved, not by our works; to be sanctified, not by our attempts, but by the power of the Spirit of the living God, living and triumphing in our souls.

When we get past our Mount Sinai, we know ourselves better, and we know God better. I believe this was the object of God’s revealing Himself on Mount Sinai. It was first, that they might see God. They did not know Him. They had been trifling with Him. I do not believe any man can know himself, or be strong for true service, until he has seen something of the true majesty and glory of God; until upon his spirit there has fallen, not the vision, for men cannot see that in its fulness, but the revelation of God in His infinite purity. So it was with Isaiah. He was not ready for his work until in the temple yonder he beheld the vision of God’s glory, and said, “Woe is me, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” So with Job when he cried: “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” And so with Paul. His ideas were all confused and wrong until in the way to Damascus he saw Jesus, and was smitten and slain and altogether changed forevermore. There comes a time in a man’s life when he gets the thought of God, and sees his own egotism, and pride, and self-will. God lets him see himself, and then He reveals Himself, and God and His will henceforth are all; and the opinion of everybody else is insignificant. So it was necessary that they should see Him who was invisible, and that mighty face should cover all the sky and blot out everything else.

And not only must we see God, not only must we see Him in his holiness, not only must we see Him as a consuming fire, but we must see Him as the God of love. And I do not believe we can ever appreciate the love of God, until we have had back of it the vision of his majestic holiness. It is when your very soul quivers in the fire of his purity, and you say, “how can I stand in such a presence?” It is then that Jesus comes and fills you and lets you come into that very purity. It is then that the love of God is so seen; it is when you have seen his justice and righteousness and his inexorable law, when you see that He will not accept anything less; that He will by no means clear the guilty; and that He hates sin with eternal hatred; it is then so blessed to know Him as your reconciled God, holy as Sinai, and yet satisfying for you every demand of His law through Christ who fulfils every requirement. It is blessed to look at His righteousness, justice and ineffable purity, and think “how will I ever attain to that;” and then say, “Thy holiness, O Christ, is mine; thy purity thou givest me; thy very self thou bestowest on thy child; thy cloud in which thou art enshrouded, I wrap around myself; and then, in thy glory and purity, I come into God’s presence.”

I do not believe this glory ever seems the same to those that have not had the searching of His infinite purity.

Beloved, how has it come to you? Have you tried to make God a little easier with sin? Have you wished that God were just a little less rigid, and would lower the standard? Or have you let the standard be the very highest, and asked Christ to lift you up to it? God wants you to rejoice in His holiness. He does not want you to regret that he is so pure, but to remember that if there were any speck of sin allowed by Him in the universe, it would go to pieces in a moment. God does not save you by relaxing his purity one bit, but by bringing you up to it. He brings us to the heights of Sinai, and enables us to stand amid its very fires in the robes of His own spotless righteousness.

So we read a little later, that these people who were not permitted to come nearer, and who stood back because God was so holy, yet later could be received into His very presence. God said to Moses, “Come thou and the elders into the mount.” And we see the very people that were not permitted to let the soles of their feet touch the base of Sinai, ascending that hill; going higher and higher with Moses, where the sun is shining on them with all its cloudless glory, until the clouds are below them, and they enter within the very canopy of heaven. There is no lightning now, no stroke, no judgment; but lo, they sit down on the mount, and God prepares a feast for them; and we read that “they did eat and drink, and saw God. And on the nobles of Israel He laid not His hand.”

They were visiting with God, and yet they were sinful men. They were in the very same mount which Moses and they had stood back from. What was the difference? O, this time when they went up, they had the blood on their hands. They had slain the sacrifice at the foot of the mount; they had sprinkled the blood over them; and with this token, they could draw near.

God was not any less holy; but that blood meant that full satisfaction had been rendered. Nay, more, that they themselves, ceremonially at least, and as types of us spiritually, had been purified by the very life of Jesus, for the blood had been sprinkled upon them, and was the very type of the living blood of Christ. I wish you could understand the meaning of Christ’s living blood. I wish you could see something more than the drops of death that sank down into the ground at Calvary. That was not all the blood. I thank God that he shows us that Christ has blood that is not dead. Christ has blood that is as full of life as that in your veins. That blood He will put in your heart; and when He puts it in your heart, you will have His life, and His nature, and you can go into the very presence of God. It is not only that he died for you, but he lives in you today. And so we can come in where the Shekinah cloud is shining, and feel no spot of sin, without fear look into His face, and lean upon His breast, and hear Him say: “Thou art mine. Thou art all fair, beloved. There is no spot in thee.” Why? Because the blood of Jesus Christ covers you; because the blood atones for your sins; and the life of Christ fills your heart.

You sit down with God and eat, and drink, and see His face, and over you spreads the sapphire cloud of heaven and the banner of His love.

I am glad, beloved, that He is not less holy, but brings us into His very holiness, to meet Him there.

Again: Not only was that ancient mount designed to show them God’s holiness, and the necessity of it, but to show them their utter unholiness. God never gave the ten commandments with the idea in His mind that men were going to keep them in their own strength. It seems a bold thing to say, but I say it reverently, God never gave the ten commandments with the understanding in his mind that men were able or willing to keep them, until they got something better than they had in their nature. He wanted them to be kept, but He knew men could not keep them, until they had the Holy Spirit in their hearts, until they had the nature of Christ in their hearts. He gave them to show men what they could not do, and how weak they were. Paul says that righteousness could not come by the law. He says that the law made nothing perfect. It was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. I do not mean that God intended them to break His law, but he knew they would, and when they said, “All that thou sayest unto us we will do,” God saw them in anticipation dancing around the golden calf, and He may have smiled when he heard that promise, and said, “Poor children, you do not know yourselves.” And so He brings many a solemn test to let you know what you are. He holds up this standard of righteousness to show you how far you are from it.

This revelation of sin comes to every heart. We see Job pleading his own righteousness, and telling Eliphaz and all those miserable comforters he was as good as they were; and that it was almost a shame for God to treat him as He was treating him. And when he got through, and had written his own autobiography, then God came in a moment, and said: “Job, look at yourself,” and Job looked, and gave a great cry, and said: “I have been talking words without knowledge. I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Then Job saw his worthlessness; and was ready for a better righteousness.

Dear friends, do you not know what you might do if God would let you? God had to let Peter down head foremost, to show him what Peter could do. He let Abraham tell a lie, that he might see that in the lineof his very faith he was weakest. Paul says he too had a very happy time for a while. “Iwas alive without the law once. I thought I was good.” Suddenly there came a great trial, I do not know what it was; something that touched Paul’s pride;you know what it is when something comes and touches your pride. You say “I will not,” and God has to come and make you do it. “The commandment came and sin revived and I died;” that made him worse. The very moment he saw it was necessary to be done, he disliked it more than he ever had before. He found his heart was so weak and erring, hejust gave a great gasp of despair, then he died, and God lifted him up to a better life in and through Christ.

I have not time to dwell on this thought.The purpose of God dealing thus with us, is to show us how wicked our hearts are, and how much we need the power of the Holy Spirit in us, or we shall certainly fail,in the things we mean to do.

And so, I come to the third lesson of thelaw. It has shown the people what God was, and how He would not lower His standard; and how wicked they were, and how sure to do wrong in their own strength. The next thing was that it should be a kind of panorama to hold up the picture of Jesus,and show them what He was. You know that from the moment the people broke the law, God went to work to show them that there was One coming, who would keep the law; a man, like themselves; and that glorious One would become the end of the law for righteousness. He would stand as their substitute and atone for their sins. He would bear the wrath of Sinai which they deserved. He would save them from the curse of the law; and having done that, would go to work and teach them to obey the law. He would put the law in their hearts and enable them to keep it. Nay, better than that, would come down into their hearts and live there, and living there, would keep them; would be their righteousness, their wisdom, their life. He pardons me for having broken the law. Then He comes into me and enables me to keep the law. He not only does away with my mistake, but He says: “Now I will undo it. It is all pardoned; I have suffered; it is all settled, and now let us go on together, and make it right. I will come into you myself. I will put into you another Spirit. I will put my Spirit in you. I will write my law there; I will make you love it; I will put the desire there, so it will be natural. I will make it spring in your breasts. This is thecovenant I will make with you after these days. Not the covenant of Sinai which they break, although I was an husband unto them,” saith the Lord. “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days,” saith the Lord, “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts;and will be their God, and they shall be my people. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.”

So they got a new law. I am glad that Moses let the first ten commandments break. He let them fall out of his hands, as he came from Sinai; he got discouraged when he saw the people, and said there is no use in having a law. Well, I am glad it broke. God gave a better. He said in a few days: “Moses, come up again. I will give you another law. But I will not trust it to you to keep. I will put it in the ark of the covenant.” And so after that, the law was in the ark. So Christ hides the law in His heart, and puts it in our hearts, so that the things that once we hated, we now love.

A dear friend said the other day, it seemed as though there was someone else living in her. Some one seemed to be with her all night, and praying in her heart even when she slept.

O weary hearts, there is something that will come in and be a living strength and victorious life. It is Christ dwelling within you. And so, in the New Testament, the anniversary of the giving of the law was turned into Pentecost. For on the anniversary of that very same day that awful word came down from Heaven, “Thou shalt, and thou shalt not,” on that very same day the Holy Ghost came clown into men’s hearts and said, “I will enable you to keep the law,” for the Holy Ghost is our law. And so we read in the New Testament, “The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.”

Now, dear friends, let us spring into this new covenant, and let the Lord’s supper today be the heavenly seal. For not only does he say, “I will put the law in your hearts,” but he says, “I will be your God, and ye shall be my people.”

And so we close with that triumphant picture, “Ye are not come unto the mount that might not be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and. darkness, and tempest. But ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels. To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.” I do not know how near they are; but we are very near to them.

Let us add, “see that you refuse not Him that speaketh;” this mighty salvation, this mighty indwelling, inworking Christ; but receiving a kingdom that cannot be moved, a kingdom of grace and of power, let us have grace, not our own efforts, our own desperate struggles, but the grace whereby we may be enabled to serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear. He does not say, “let us try our best,” but let us have the grace of God to do it; and it will keep us, and enable us to so appropriate His holiness and love, that those words will not affright us, “our God is a consuming fire.”

The gold is not afraid of the fire. The paper would be afraid, but the gold says, “come on. I can come into your midst; you will not harm me.” The paper burns; the gold grows brighter and ever burns on. Burn on them, O celestial flame.

“Refining fire go through my heart,
Illuminate my soul;
Scatter thy light through every part,
And sanctify the whole.”



Book 2, Chapter 6 – Emblems of Grace in the Ancient Law

Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster.” (Gal. 3: 24, 25.)

We looked in the last chapter at the dispensation of the law as it was especially significant and symbolical of God’s spiritual order in dealing with his children under the Gospel. We shall look now at that which immediately followed the law; growing out of it like a flower growing out of the bosom of a glacier, namely, the types and symbols of the grace of God, so beautifully revealed to Moses by the Lord, and through Moses to the people, after the thick darkness and fire of Sinai had passed. There is no part of the Bible that has so many pictures of the grace of Jesus as this. It has been almost hidden by the thick clouds which are but the curtain of His glory, and behind which there are such visions of grace and beauty.

The law was our schoolmaster: let us this morning sit in the school and have the Master present the lessons. It was a Kindergarten school, not an adult one. It was for the infancy of the church, and so all its lessons are object lessons, and all its pictures painted upon the canvas, or drawn upon the blackboard, and interpreted by the New Testament writings.

I will look with you this morning at five of these object lessons of spiritual truth as they were given by God through Moses for his ancient people, but still more for our learning on whom the ends of the world have come.

THE ALTAR OF EARTH.

The first of these is at the foot of Sinai, before the smoke has cleared away, or the reverberation of the thunder has ceased to terrify the people. This first picture is very beautiful, but you might overlook it, it is so small. The wise have overlooked it; the moral have overlooked it; the deists and the rationalists have overlooked it. The poor sinner sees it, and how he rejoices after he finds it. How glad he is after that awful fire and tempest, and that voice that says, “Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of law to do them.” How he rejoices as he looks at the base of the mount, and there at its foot behold this little object which I am going to show you, and which is so full of Jesus and His grace. Here in the very chapter that contains the ten commandments (Ex. 20: 24) we find it. How different it is. The others are all, “Cursed is he that continueth not.” This is, “I will bless.” The other is, “Thou shalt do.” This is, “Thou shalt sacrifice.” The other is, high above our reach: this is down low and everybody can get at it. “An altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings, and thy peace offerings, thy sheep and thy oxen: in all places where I record my name I will come unto thee and I will bless thee. And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it thou hast polluted it. Neither shalt thou go up by steps unto mine altar, that thy nakedness be not discovered thereon.”

I suppose that you have overlooked that a thousand times. You have read the ten commandments, and did not see this. You saw the awful law but did not see God’s provision for the men that break it.

This is the first picture. The schoolmaster comes and touches the canvas with a few strokes, and you see this rude altar of common clay. If built of stone it is to be the simplest stone. There were to be no graven tools used in its construction, no figures cut on it as on our fine churches, and there were to be no steps. Some poor and feeble old sinner might come along, and not be able to get up there.

It is the picture of the gospel. It tells them in the first place, that Jesus Christ is going to come to this world to die for the men that are going to break this law. It is an altar where blood is flowing, where death is expiating sin by suffering, where the victim bleeds for the sinner. Then it is a place of great simplicity. It is the salvation that comes down for love of the sinner. It is the salvation that does not require him to carve it out with a chisel. Enough if he can heap a few stones together, and there offer the lamb of sacrifice that can take away his sins. Ho does not need to go up, or climb into a better state and make himself good; but anywhere and anyhow you may come just as you are, and call upon Him that says, “And him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out.”

Thanks to the old schoolmaster for this beautiful picture. O beloved, do not forget its lesson for yourselves and yours. And as you meet the poor and lost, lead them gently to Him. Thank God, I see men here today that have found Him who a week ago did not know Him. They thought it would be an awful task to find Him; they thought they would have to work themselves to some higher place, that they had to fulfill the law ere they could be saved. But they have seen that Christ has died to take their sins away, and all they have to do is to come and take Him. O, tell the lost and discouraged ones to build their altar anywhere, and go at once to Him. You do not need a temple at Jerusalem. You can find it on South street, or the Five Points mission, anywhere in your little room in the tenement house, anywhere that the poor sinner may be. No stairs to climb. “But whosoever will, let him take the Water of Life freely.”

“Say not in thine heart, who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above.) Or, who shall descend into the deep? (that is to bring up Christ again from the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach.” “That if thou shalt confess with thy month the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

Beloved, are you this morning a poor guilty sinner? Have you known the law of God and broken it? Are you standing, conscious of your wrong, and hesitating what to do? O, you do not need to come as far as this altar, but just where you are sitting in your seat, you can lift your heart and say, “O, Lamb of God, I come.”

THE HEBREW SERVANT.

The next picture, for we have to hurry as the canvas is withdrawn, is just as beautiful, but perhaps not so easily understood. It is in the next chapter (Ex. 21: 2-7.) “If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years shall he serve, and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing. If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master have given him a wife, and she have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children, I will not go out free, then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him forever.”

That is, the servant is to be liberated and go, if he likes. He is a slave, you know; but he is at liberty to claim his freedom. But here are his dear wife and children whom he cannot leave without a breaking heart, for they belong to servitude by the conditions of their birth. He has his choice; he can stay with them and share their burdens, or go out selfishly into liberty. But he is a noble fellow; he says I do not want to leave them, and I will not. So the law provides that they can make a covenant. And he goes to his master and plainly says: “I love my wife and my children and my master, I will not go out free.” Then he and his master go to the judges, and the master fastens the awl in his ear to show that he is bound over forever, and is his voluntary slave. The understanding was that it was a willing servitude, and as such, he was honored. This may seem to you a simple thing in the Hebrew code. But as we read the Bible, we see it again and again repeated as the type of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus, when coming to this world to suffer for you and me, uses this very language describing his coming. He says, “Lo, I come: I delight to do thy will, O my God. Mine ears hast thou bored, thy law is within my heart.” Thou hast nailed me to the door. Thou hast made me a slave forever. Thou hast made me a slave of love.

You and I who are called to be the bride of Jesus, the very wife of the Lamb, for that is the picture of the church in the Scriptures, were poor slaves, bound over by our sins to a condition of bondage and servitude. Jesus Christ, the blessed Bridegroom, is free. Had he chosen, he could have stayed in heaven. He was under no obligation to come down and be bound under the law, and endure the ignominies and suffering of the world. What would He do? Would He stay with His Father and the angels in that glorious kingdom? He said “I love my wife and children. Mine ear hast thou bored. I will take up the burden of the law. I will take up the sins of the people. I will take up the tasks of the heavy laden. I will be the righteousness which they cannot provide. I will do for them what they cannot do. I will bear their burdens, and fulfil their obligations.” So Jesus Christ was bound in the place of a servant for you and me. And God in speaking of Him says, “My Chosen Servant in whom I delight.” So He says Himself, “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.” And that is the reason why He was laden and crushed by our weight of sin, He was made a slave for us. He bought our liberty by the loss of His own. As the former picture was the picture of His sacrifice, so this picture is that of His righteousness, His obedience for us under the law, and His assuming for us all the burdens of our state of helplessness and sin.

Stop a moment, beloved, and ask do you understand this for yourselves? Has this been real to you? You and I were under tremendous obligations; have we taken Christ for them? You and I were born under sin; have we taken Him as our Savior? We Were heavy laden; have we let Him take our guilt? Have we thought what it meant to give up all for us? Let us say here to Him. “I love my Master. I will not go out free.” Let us be like the slave girl in New Orleans, when her master said, “Go, I have bought you.” She said, ” No.” He said, ” I bought you to set you free.” She said, “I will not go; I will be your slave, for you redeemed me.” And so, beloved, He became a slave for us that we might be willing servants for Him. It is easy to talk about it; but would you go for thirty-three years and drudge your life away for an enemy? Would you become a menial in the kitchen, a toiling slave of the brick field for some one that had never done anything to make you love them? He did it for you and me. He was tired for us. He endured the privations of life. He had no place to lay his head. He was driven from his childhood’s home, about to be hurled over the precipice and finally was hung on that cross outside of the city for our sins. Shall we not say, “I love my Master. I do not want to be free from my Savior.” As Paul said, “I am His bond slave.” He became a servant for me, I will serve him with loyal love. Come, beloved, and let Him fasten you to the door, and the pain that pierces your hands and feet will be sweet; and there will be a joy that selfishness never knew, as you look into His face and say, “I love Thee. Every drop of blood loves thee. Every fiber of my flesh loves thee. Every thought wants to be thine.” If you ever want to know a joy sublime just say this from the bottom of your heart. I have said to troubled hearts, “Give yourselves to God;” and I have seen faces flash with glory, when they could say; “I am thine. I give myself unreservedly for thee.”

You know what the old English pillory was. A man nailed to a post by his ear. Christ was pilloried for you. O let us return His love.

THE VISION AND THE BLOOD.

The schoolmaster has given us two pictures. Here is another we will just refer to, for we spoke of it in the last chapter morning. It is the story of the blood. The altar tells us of the sacrifice, the servant, of Christ’s righteousness and His service for us. And this third picture tells us of our access, and our nearness to God, coming into the most intimate fellowship with Jesus. It is in the 24th chapter of Exodus, verses 5-12: “And Moses came and offered burnt offerings, and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord. And he took half of the blood and put it in basins; and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And Moses took the blood, and sprinkled it on the people, and said, Behold the blood of the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words. Then went up Moses, and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel; and they saw the God of Israel. And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not His hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.”

What a beautiful picture. It was the same mount that was smoking yesterday; but it is serene today, calm and heavenly, like the very gates of glory. And now, Moses and these men are going up that awful mountain; and as they go there is no awful lightning, or muttered warning of terror. They have got basins of blood in their hands; and are all sprinkled with blood as they go. And as they pass the skies get clearer, as a sapphire throne, and as the body of heaven in its clearness. And lo, as they get up to some sequestered nook of the mountain, they pause and behold a table is spread. I do not know what was on the table, but it was the bread of heaven. And the God of Israel was there. Perhaps it was the softened fire cloud of the Shekinah. There was something they knew to be the presence of God. They sat down around it, “And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not His hand: also they saw God, and did eat and drink.” They looked up and it was as clear and blue as the sapphire of His palace. And their hearts must have thrilled as ours shall when we sit down at the banquet of the Lamb. It all meant that the curse was gone, and that the blood had put away the sin; and that the blood sprinkled upon them was the very life of Jesus. They were the sons of God. They had been redeemed by the blood of Christ, and could come as near as they liked. And we can have this blood sprinkled upon our hearts, His very life and nature is in us. We can come fully into the mount. We can eat and drink, and it will be the very gate of heaven.

Beloved, do you understand it? The first is the altar of sacrifice where he died. The second, is the servant taking your task. And the third, is the blessed Intercessor bringing you into the immediate presence of God. The blood shed and the blood sprinkled bringing you nigh.

The exposition of it in the New Testament is this, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He hath consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say his flesh; And having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.” Beloved, are you living there? Have you come thus near?

THE TABERNACLE.

And now, we have only time for a few moments to refer to one more picture. Again the wondrous schoolmaster changes the scenery ,and we look at the canvas and see on it the picture of a little house of skins and boards, a rude tent, but as we look within, it is very beautiful. Outside it is just common boards, and a few rough badger skins for a roof; but inside, it is all glorious. It is hung with costly embroidered curtains of richest colors, and a flashing lining of gold reflects the light from every side. Every article of furniture and the few simple things in this building are all magnificent. We pass in, and as we come to the first opening we enter the court, an altar of sacrifice, and here is the great basin full of water where they washed. We come up to another hanging curtain, we enter that, and are in the building itself. On the left are the golden candlestick and the table of bread. And before us a little altar from which incense and fragrance rise. This is the tabernacle. And had we been permitted to look in once a year, we would have seen another set of curtains drawn aside for a moment. We would have seen the splendidly robed person of the high priest go in, and as we looked in we would have caught a glimpse of the little ark containing some precious relics; and above it the cherubim, and between their wings the heavenly light was the very eye of God. And that Shekinah arose above the tent, until it became the pillar of cloud and fire.

This is the last picture that we will look at. It was the picture of the blessed Christ. It is the most instructive of all the types in the Bible.

I have told you that the other three pictures present Christ to us in different aspects. A sacrifice for sin, a provision for our righteousness, and our access to God; and I think this last picture is the sweet thought of home. It is a house; and the idea was that God was going to be the home of the children. He was going to make for them a home in this homeless wilderness. He was going to spread for them the Father’s table wherever they were. Through that trackless, homeless desert with its loneliness, He was every night to pitch his tent and be to them a sanctuary and a rest wherever they were. O, I think it was of that Moses sang one day when they had been going on so long, and they had been dropping, dropping, dropping to bleach upon the sands as they passed and leave their bones on the desert. He got so tired He said, “Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as asleep; in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. For all our days are passed away in thy wrath; we spend our years as a tale that is told,” etc. And then as he saw the tabernacle with its sweet refuge and rest for the weary, he thought of the God whose wings were spread over it; and whose bosom was within to shelter them, and he sang; “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all the generations.”Or, as it is in the more beautiful Hebrew, “Lord, Thou hast been our home in all the generations.” And the next Psalm, I should not wonder if Moses wrote it, it is so beautiful, and fits so perfectly with the ninetieth Psalm. “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” Yes, there is a home for you. We may, even here, dwell at home and sing, as we are going home, ” Abide with me from morn till eve, for without Thee I cannot live.”

That home had three departments. First, the porch outside. And in that porch there was provision for the guilty to put the uncleanness off their souls and off their garments. There was a fountain where they left their stains. But that was not home; that was only the porch. What a pity that so many Christians live in the porch. They do. Lots of Christians never get any farther in. They sit where the servants are, and the scullions. A great many Christians come to Jesus to get their sins forgiven so as in some way they could go to heaven. But it is not the Father’s house.

Putting aside the next curtain, you go in where God’s chosen servants always dwell. It was called the tabernacle. There was the golden lamp, and table of bread fresh every week; and the sweet altar of perfume, exquisite and homelike all the time. There they fed on God’s bread, and breathed the sweetness of heaven. It was where God’s children banqueted on His love. Some of you understand this. You know what it is to go in with Christ into the inner chamber, and have a light shine on your heart, that is not revealed to the world. To such, it is meat indeed, and drink indeed. You are in the secret place of the Most High; dwelling under the shadow of the Almighty. That is what Christ meant when he said: “Abide in me, and I in you.” Do not be so foolish as to dwell in the court. Suppose the prodigal had said, “Let me dwell in the kitchen, I do not want to go in there;” that would have been an unworthy thing; and if he had appeared to be so unworthy that father’s love would have been checked. You are nothing in yourself, but Christ has provided the sacrifice, and he wants you to get the benefit. It would be a very foolish thing if you went to some great store in this city, and deposited a hundred dollars, and said, “Mr. X can have all he wants,” for me to go down and say, “I don’t feel free to take this; I will only take two dollars and seventy-five cents’ worth,” and go off. The merchant would say, “It will do me no good, you might as well have the good of it.” And so, beloved, Christ has paid for the very luxuries of grace; He has paid for the best seats in his palace, do not let him feel that his fulness was wasted.

Then there was a third chamber beyond this so glorious that they of the old dispensation could not go in; could not even look in. But when Jesus died on the cross, the curtains of that inner chamber were rent asunder; when His heart-strings broke, then there was a great rent opened, and they could see it open; the curtains burst asunder in a moment, and every one could look in and see the holy of holies. Even heaven itself is now opened up to you and me, opened up so you can look in and not be afraid; so you can look in as He goes in before. You can look in and see your seat prepared, and know that you shall go in where the Forerunner has gone; may not only look in, but you can live under its light and glory; making your pathway a little heaven as you go. Blessed, blessed home! it tells us how the Christian is not merely a toiling servant, but a child at home. And it spreads its curtains for you when there is no other comfort and joy, and you can abide with Him until the time comes when it shall be said, “Behold the tabernacle of God is with men; he shall dwell with them. God Himself shall be with them and be their God. And He shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more sorrow or crying or death. For the former things have passed away. And He that sat on the throne said, “It is done; I will give to him that is athirst of the fountain of life. The Spirit and the Bride say come; and whosoever is athirst, let him come, and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely.”

Come home, dear friends; come home to God’s love, and stay at home. God grant that may be true for you. “Blessed are the homesick; for they shall find a home.” There is one. Are you tired today? is your soul lonesome? is it weary? come to Christ. He has got more than pardon. He can love you until you can feel it warm your heart, and know that it is not you, but He, that loves your love back again. Eye hath not seen, nor have we dreamed what it will mean bye and bye. God be your home, and give you the blessing of Him that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High.

We bless God for the old schoolmaster, but we say “good-bye.” Lord, it is good to be here on the mount, there is no man but Jesus here. The ministry of Moses is gone. “The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ.” We have been looking at the pictures on the blackboard, and while we looked the Master has stepped in. He is here. O that we may go forth in His presence.

We will find it is not the Tabernacle now, it is a person, it is Jesus. And so we retire into the secret of our hearts, and say:

“Blessed, gentle, holy Jesus,
Precious Bridegroom of my heart,
In thy secret, inner chamber,
Come and whisper what thou art.”



Introduction

The Life of Prayer — great and sacred theme! It leads us into the Holy of Holies and the secret place of the Most High. It is the very life of the Christian, and it touches the life of God Himself.

We enter the sacred chamber on our knees. We still our thoughts and words, and say, “Lord, teach us to pray. Give us Thy holy desires, and let our prayer be the very echo of Thy will. Give us Thy Spirit as our Advocate within. Open our eyes to see our Great High Priest and Advocate above, and help us so to abide in Him, and to have His Word so abiding in us, that we shall ask what we will, and it shall be done unto us.”And as in ignorance and weakness we venture to speak and think upon this vital theme, “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer.”And may every true word and thought of this little volume be a living experience to him who speaks and to all who hear, and so minister to the life of prayer in all our lives, that it shall bring, in some humble measure, an answer to the greatest of all prayers, and the prayer with which this opening chapter begins and to which this book is dedicated, “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” — A. B. Simpson



Chapter 1 – The Pattern Prayer

“And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. Give us day by day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.” (Luke 11:2-4).

This wonderful prayer was dictated by our Lord in reply to the question on the part of His disciples, “Lord, teach us to pray.” His answer was to bid them pray. This is the only way we shall ever learn to pray, by just beginning to do it. And as the babbling child learns the art of speech by speaking, and the lark mounts up to the heights of the sky by beating its little wings again and again upon the air, so prayer will teach us how to pray; and the more we pray, the more shall we learn the mysteries and heights and depths of prayer. And the more we pray, the more we shall realize the incomparable fullness and completeness of this unequaled prayer, the prayer of universal Christendom, the common liturgy of the Church of God, the earliest and holiest recollection of every Christian child, and the latest utterance often of the departing soul. We who have used it most have come to feel that there is no want which it does not interpret and no holy aspiration which it may not express. There is nothing else in the Holy Scriptures which more fully evolves the great principles that underlie the divine philosophy of prayer.

IT TEACHES US THAT ALL TRUE PRAYER BEGINS IN THE RECOGNITION OF THE FATHER.

It is not the cry of nature to an unknown God, but the intelligent converse of a child with his heavenly Father. It presupposes that the suppliant has become a child, and it assumes that the mediation of the Son has preceded the revelation of the Father. No one, therefore, can truly pray until he has accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and received through Him the child-heart in regeneration, and then been led into the realization of sonship in the family of God. The Person to whom prayer is directly addressed is the Father as distinguished from the Son and the Holy Ghost. The great purpose of Christ’s mediation is to bring us to God and reveal to us the Father as our Father in reconciliation and fellowship. It is not wrong to address the Son and Spirit in our hearts. The name suggests the spirit of confidence, and this is essential to prayer.

The first view given of God in the Lord’s Prayer is not His majesty but His paternal love. To the listening disciples this must have been a strange expression from the lips of their Lord as a pattern for them. Never had Jewish ear heard God so named, at least in His relation to the individual. The Father of the Nation He was sometimes called, but no sinful man had ever dared to call God his Father. They, doubtless, had heard their Master speak in this delightful name of God as His Father, but that they should call Jehovah by such a name had never dawned upon their legal and unillumined minds. And yet it really means that we may and should recognize that God is our Father in the very sense in which He is His Father, and ours as partakers of His Sonship and His Name. The Name expresses the most personal and tender love, protection, care, and intimacy; and it gives to prayer, at the very outset, the beautiful atmosphere of the home circle and the delightful affectionate and intimate fellowship of friend with friend

Beloved, have you thus learned to pray? Do wondering angels look down upon your closet every day to see a humble and sinful creature of the dust talking to the majestic Sovereign of the skies, as an infant lies upon its mother’s breast or prattles without a fear upon her knee? Can it be said to you, “I write unto you, little children, because ye have known the Father”?

IT TEACHES US THAT PRAYER SHOULD RECOGNIZE THE MAJESTY AND ALMIGHTINESS OF GOD.

The words, “who art in heaven,” or, rather, “in the heavens,” are intended to give to the conception of the Divine Being a very definite and local personality. He is not a vague influence or pantheistic presence, but a distinct Person, exalted above matter and nature and having local habitation, to which the mind is directed, and where He occupies the throne of actual sovereignty over all the universe. He is also recognized as above our standpoint and level, in the heavens, higher than our little world, and exalted above all other elements and forces that need His con-trolling power. It enthrones Him in the place of highest power, authority and glory.

And so true prayer must ever recognize at once the nearness and greatness of God. The Old Testament, therefore, is full of the sublimest representation of the majesty of God, and the more fully we realize His greatness, the more boldly will we dare to claim His interposition in prayer in all our trials and emergencies.

Beloved, have we learned, as we bow the knee in prayer, that we are talking with Him Who still says to us as to Abraham, “I am El Shaddai; the Almighty God”; to Jeremiah, “I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me?”; to Isaiah, “Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.”

IT TEACHES US THAT PRAYER IS NOT ONLY A FELLOW-SHIP WITH GOD BUT A FELLOWSHIP OF HUMAN HEARTS.

“Our Father” lifts each of us at once out of ourselves, and, if nowhere else on earth, at least at the throne of grace, makes us members one of another. Of course, it is assumed that the first link in the fellowship is Christ, our Elder Brother, and so there is no single heart, however isolated, but that may come with this prayer with perfect truthfulness, and hand in hand with Christ say, “Christ’s and mine.” But, undoubtedly, it chiefly refers to the fellowship of human hearts. The highest promises made to prayer are those who agree, or, as the Greek more beautifully expresses it, “symphonize”on earth. There is no place where we can love our friends so beautifully or so purely as at the throne of grace. There is no exercise in which the differences of Christians melt away as when their hearts meet together in the unity of prayer, and there is no remedy for the divisions of Christianity but to come closer to the Father, and then, perforce, we shall be in touch with each other.

IT TEACHES US THAT WORSHIP IS THE HIGHEST ELEMENT IN PRAYER.

“Hallowed be thy name” is more than any petition of the Lord’s Prayer. It brings us directly to God Himself and makes His glory supreme, above all our thoughts and all our wants. It reminds us that the first purpose of our prayers should ever be, not the supply of our personal needs, but the worship and adoration of our God. In the ancient feasts everything was first brought to Him, and then it was given to the worshiper in several cases for his use, and its use was hallowed by the fact that it had already been laid at Jehovah’s feet. And so the spirit that can truly utter this prayer and fully enter into its meaning can receive all the other petitions of it with double blessing. Not until we have first become satisfied with God Himself and realize that His glory is above all our desires and interests are we prepared to receive any blessing in the highest sense; and when we can truly say, “Hallowed be thy name, whatever comes to me,” we have the substance of all blessing in our heart.

This is the innermost chamber of the Holy of Holies, and none can enter it without becoming conscious of the hallowing blessing that falls upon and fills us with the glory which we have ascribed to Him. The sacred sense of His overshadowing, the deep and penetrating solemnity, the heavenly calm, that fills the heart which can truly utter these sacred words, constitute a blessing above all other blessings that even this prayer can ask.

Beloved, have we learned to begin our prayer in this holy place, on this heavenly plane? Then, indeed, have we learned to pray.

IT TEACHES US THAT TRUE PRAYER RECOGNIZES THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD AS THE CHIEF PURPOSE OF THE DIVINE WILL AND THE SUPREME DESIRE OF EVERY TRUE CHRISTIAN.

More than our own temporal or even spiritual needs are we to pray for the establishment of that Kingdom. This implies that the real remedy for all that needs payer is the restoration of the Kingdom of God. The true cause of all human trouble is that men are out of the divine order and the world is in rebellion against its rightful Sovereign, and not until that Kingdom is reestablished in every heart and in all the world can the blessings which prayer desires be realized. Of course, it includes in a primary sense the establishment of the Kingdom of God in the individual heart, but much more in the world at large, in fulfillment of God’s great purpose of redemption. It is, in short, the prayer for the accomplishment of redemption and its glorious consummation in the coming of our Lord and the setting up of His Millennial Kingdom. What an exalted view this gives of prayer! How it raises us above our petty selfish cares and cries! It is said of a devoted minister, Dr. Backus, of Baltimore, that when told he was dying and had only half an hour to live, he asked them to raise him from his bed and place him upon his knees, and he spent the last half-hour of his life in one ceaseless prayer for the evangelization of the world. Truly that was a glorious place to end a life of prayer! But the Lord’s Prayer begins with this lofty theme and teaches us that it should ever be the first concern and petition of every loyal subject of the Redeemer’s Kingdom.

Must it not be true, beloved, that the failure of many of our prayers may be traced to their selfishness, and the innumerable efforts we have spent upon our own interests, and the little we have ever asked for the Kingdom of our Lord? There is no blessing so great as that which comes when our hearts are lifted out of self and become one with Christ in intercession for others and for His cause. There is no joy so pure as that of taking the burden of our Master’s cause on our hearts and bearing it with Him every day in ceaseless prayer, as though its interests wholly depended upon the uplifting of our hands and the remembrance of our faith. “Prayer shall be made for him continually,” is one of the promises respecting our blessed Lord.

Beloved, have we prayed for Jesus as much as we have for ourselves? There is no ministry which will bring more power and blessing upon the world and from which we ourselves will reap larger harvests of eternal fruit than the habit of believing, definite and persistent prayer for the progress of Christ’s Kingdom, for the needs of His church and work, for His ministers and servants, and especially for the evangelization of the world and the vast neglected myriads who know not how to pray for themselves. Oh, let us awaken from our spiritual selfishness and learn the meaning of the petition, “Thy kingdom come!”

IT TEACHES US THAT TRUE PRAYER IS FOUNDED UPON THE WILL OF GOD AS ITS LIMITATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT.

It is not asking for things because we want them, for the primary condition of all true prayer is the renunciation of our own will that we may desire and receive God’s will instead. But having done this and recognizing the will of our Father as the standard of our desires and petitions, we are to claim these petitions when they are in accordance with His will with a force and tenacity as great as the will of God itself. And so this petition, instead of being a limitation of prayer, is really a confirmation of our faith, and gives us the right to claim that the petition thus conformed to His will shall be imperatively fulfilled. Therefore, there is no prayer so mighty, so sure, so full of blessing, as this little sentence at which so many of us have often trembled, “Thy will be done.” It is not the death-knell of all our happiness, but the pledge of all possible blessing; for if it is the will of God to bless us, we shall be blessed. Happy are they who suspend their desires until they know their Father’s will, and then, asking according to His will, they can rise to the height of His own mighty promise, “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” “Thus saith the Lord, . . . Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command ye me.” What more can we ask of ourselves and others than that God’s highest will, and that for us, shall be fulfilled?

How shall we know that will? At the very least, we may always know it by His Word and promise, and we may be very sure we are not transcending its infinite bounds if we ask anything that is covered by a promise of His Holy Word, but we may immediately turn that promise into an order on the very Bank of Heaven and claim its fulfillment by all the power of His omnipotence and the sanctions of His faithfulness. Why, the very added clause itself, “as it is in heaven,” implies that the fulfillment of this petition would change earth into a heaven and bring heaven into every one of our lives in the measure in which we meet this lofty prayer! This petition, therefore, while it implies the spirit of absolute submission, rises to the height of illimitable faith.

Beloved, have we understood it and learned thus to pray, “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven”?

IT TEACHES US THAT PRAYER MAY INCLUDE ALL OUR NATURAL AND TEMPORAL WANTS AND SHOULD BE ACCOMPANIED BY THE SPIRIT OF TRUSTFUL DEPENDENCE UPON OUR FATHER’S CARE FOR THE SUPPLY OF ALL OUR EARTHLY NEEDS.

“Give us this day our daily bread,” gives to every child of God the right to claim a Father’s supporting and providing love. It is wonderful how much spiritual blessing we get by praying and trusting for temporal needs. They greatly curtail the fullness of their spiritual life and separate God’s personal providence from the most simple and minute of life’s secular interests who try, through second causes or through ample human provision, to be independent of His direct interposition and care. We are to recognize every means of support and temporal link of blessing as directly from His hand, and to commit every interest of business and life to His direction and blessing.

At the same time, it is implied that there must be in this a spirit of simplicity and daily trust. It is not the bread of future days we ask, but the bread of today. Nor is it always luxurious bread, the bread of affluence, the banquet, and the feast, but daily bread, or rather as the best authorities translate it, “sufficient bread,” bread such as He sees to be really best for us. It may not be always bread and butter; it may be homely bread, and it may be sometimes scant bread, but He can make even that sufficient and add such a blessing with it and such an impartation of His life and strength as will make us know, like our Master in the wilderness, that “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” It implies, in short, a spirit of contentment and satisfaction with our daily lot and a trust that leaves tomorrow’s needs in His wise and faithful hand to care for us day by day as each new morrow comes.

Beloved, have you thus learned to pray for temporal things, bringing all your life to God? bringing it in the spirit of daily trust and thankful contentment with your simple lot and your Father’s wisdom and faithfulness?

IT TEACHES US THAT TRUE PRAYER MUST EVER RECOGNIZE OUR NEED OF THE MERCY OF GOD.

There are two versions of this petition, “Forgive us our trespasses,”and “Forgive us our debts.” This is not accidental. There may be an honest consciousness in the heart of the suppliant that there has been no willful or known disobedience or sin, and yet there may be infinite debt, omission, and shortcoming as compared with the high standard of God’s holiness and even our own ideal. The sensitive and thoroughly quickened spirit will never reach a place where it will not be sensible of so much more to which it is reaching out and God is pressing it forward, that it will not need to say, “Forgive us our debts,”even where perhaps it could not conscientiously say, “Forgive us our transgressions.”

This sense of demerit on our part throws us constantly upon the merits and righteousness of our Great High Priest and makes our prayers forevermore dependent on His intercession and offered in His name. This enables the most unworthy to “come boldly unto the throne of grace” to “obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” We do not mean that our dear Lord encourages us to expect to be constantly sinning and repenting, for the final petition of this prayer is for complete deliverance from all evil, but He graciously stoops to the lowest level and yet grades the prayer so as to cover the experience of the highest saint, to meet the finer sense of the most sanctified spirit as well as the coarser consciousness of actual sin on the part of the humblest penitent.

This petition presupposes a very solemn spirit of forgiveness in the heart of the suppliant. This is indispensable to the acceptance of the prayer for forgiveness.The Greek construction and the use of the aorist tense expresses a very practical shade of meaning, namely, that the forgiveness of the injury that has been done to us has preceded our prayer for divine forgiveness. Freely translated it should be thus expressed, “Forgive us our trespasses as we have already forgiven them that trespassed against us.”

There are certain spiritual states, therefore, that are indispensable to acceptable prayer, even for the simplest mercies, and without which we cannot pray. The soul that is filled with bitterness cannot approach God in communion. Inferentially, it must therefore be true that the soul that is cherishing any other sin and sinful state is thereby hindered from access to the throne of grace. This is an Old Testament truth that all the abundant grace of the New Testament has not provoked nor weakened. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me,” was a lesson which even David learned in his sad and solemn experience. “I will wash mine hands in innocency: so will I compass thine altar,” is the eternal condition of acceptable communion with the Holy One. The most sinful may come for mercy, but they must put away their sin and freely forgive the sins of others. Above all others there seem to be two unpardonable sins, one, the sin which willfully rejects the Holy Ghost and the Savior presented by Him, that is, the sin of willful unbelief; and the other, the sin of unforgivingness.

IT TEACHES US THAT PRAYER IS OUR TRUE WEAPON AND SAFEGUARD IN THE TEMPTATIONS OF LIFE, AND THAT WE MAY RIGHTLY CLAIM THE DIVINE PROTECTION FROM OUR SPIRITUAL ADVERSARIES.

This petition, “Lead us not into temptation,” undoubtedly covers the whole field of our spiritual conflicts and may be interpreted, in the largest sense, of all we need to arm us against our spiritual enemies. It cannot strictly mean that we pray to be kept from all temptation, for God Himself has said, “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation,” and “Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptation,”and, “Let patience have her perfect work.” It rather means, “Lead us not into a crisis of temptation,” “and lead us so that we shall not fall under temptation or be tried above what we are able to bear.” There are spiritual trials and crises which come to souls, too hard for them to bear, snares into which multitudes fall; and this is the peculiar promise to His own and the promise which this prayer claims, that they shall not come into any such crisis, but shall be kept out of situations which would be too trying, carried through the places which would be too narrow, and kept safe from peril.

This is what is meant by the word “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations,” and also the still more gracious promise in 1 Corinthians 10:13: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” When we think how many there are who perish in the snare, and how narrow the path often is, oh, what comfort it should give us to know that our Lord has authorized us to claim His divine protection in these awful perils to meet the wiles of the devil and the insidious foes against whom all our skill would be unavailing!

This was the Master’s own solemn admonition to His disciples, in the garden in the hour and power of darkness, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation,” and this was His own safeguard in that hour. The apostle has given it to us as the unceasing prescription of wisdom and safety in connection with our spiritual conflict, “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints.” “Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving.”

THE CROWNING PETITION OF THE LORD’S PRAYER IS A PETITION FOR ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION, INCLUDING DELIVERANCE FROM EVERY OTHER FORM OF EVIL.

“Deliver us from evil.” This has frequently been translated “from the evil one,” but the neuter gender contradicts this and renders it most natural to translate it, as the old version does, of evil in all forms rather than the author of evil. This is more satisfactory to the Christian heart. There are many forms of evil which do not come from the evil one. We have as much cause to pray against ourselves as against the devil. And there are physical evils covered by this petition as well as special temptations. It is a petition, therefore, against sin, sickness and sorrow in every form in which they could be evils. It is a prayer for our complete deliverance from all the effects of the Fall, in spirit, soul and body. It is a prayer which echoes the fourfold gospel and the fullness of Jesus in the highest and widest measure. It teaches us that we may expect victory over the power of sin, support against the attacks of sickness, triumph over all sorrow and a life in which all things shall be only good and work together for good according to God’s high purpose. Surely the prayer of the Holy Ghost for such a blessing is the best pledge of the answer! Let us not be afraid to claim it in all its fullness.

ALL PRAYER SHOULD END WITH PRAISE AND BELIEVING CONFIDENCE.

The Lord’s Prayer, according to the most correct manuscripts, really ends with “Deliver us from evil,” but later copies contain the closing clause, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever. Amen.” And while it is extremely doubtful whether our Lord uttered these words, yet they have so grown into the phraseology of Christendom that we may, without danger, draw from them our closing lessons.

This doxology expresses the spirit of praise and consecration. We ascribe to God the authority and power to do what we have asked, and give the glory of it to His name; and then, in token of our confidence that He will do so, we add the Amen, which simply means “So let it be done.” In fact, it is faith ascending to the throne and humbly claiming and commanding in the name of Jesus that for which humility has petitioned. Our Lord does require this element of faith and this acknowledgment and attestation of His faithfulness as a condition of answered prayer. No prayer is complete therefore until faith has added its “Amen.”

Such, then, are some of the principle teachings of this universal prayer. How often our lips have uttered it! Beloved, has it searched our hearts this day and shown us the imperfection, the selfishness, the smallness, the unbelief of what we call prayer? Let us henceforth repeat its pregnant words with deeper thoughtfulness and weigh them with more solemn realization than we have done before, until they shall come to be to us what they indeed are, the summary of all prayer, the expression of all possible need and blessing and the language of a worship like that of the holy ranks who continually surround the throne above. Then indeed shall His kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Beautiful and blessed prayer! How it recalls the most sacred associations of life! How it follows the prodigal even in his deepest downfall and his latest moments! How it expands with the deepening spiritual life of the saint! How it wafts the latest aspirations and adorations of the departing Christian to the throne to which he is ready to wing his way! Let it be more dear to us henceforth, more real, more deep, wider and higher, as it teaches us to pray and wings our petition to the throne of grace. And oh, if there be any one reading these words now who has often uttered it without having any right to say “Our Father,” or any real ability to enter into its heart-searching meaning, may you this very moment, beloved reader, stop; and as you think with tears of the lips that once taught you its tender accents years ago, but that are silent now in the molding grave, kneel down at the feet of that mother’s God, that father’s God, that sister’s God; and if you are willing to say, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us,” you may dare to add, linked in everlasting hope and fellowship with those that first voiced those words to you, “Our Father, which art in heaven.”

On a lonely bed in a Southern hospital, a soldier lay dying. A Christian friend called to see him and tried to speak of Christ, but was repelled with infidel scorn. Once or twice he tried in vain to reach his heart, but at last simply knelt down by the bed and tenderly repeated the Lord’s Prayer, slowly and solemnly. When he arose to leave, the infidel’s eyes were wet with tears. He tried to brush them away and conceal his feelings, but at last broke down and said, “My mother taught me that more than fifty years ago, and it quite broke me up to hear it again.” The missionary passed away, not wishing to hinder the voice of God. The next time he called, the patient had disappeared. Sending for the nurse he asked about him and was told that a night or two before the soldier had died, but just before the end she heard him repeating the words, “Our Father, who art in heaven,”and then he seemed to add in a husky voice, “Mother, I am coming! He is my Father, too.”

Dear friend, let this old prayer become to you a holy bond with all that is dearest on earth and a stepping-stone to the very gates of heaven!



Chapter 2 – Encouragements to Prayer

“And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say unto him, Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine in his journey is come to me, and I have nothing to set before him? And he from within shall answer and say, Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee. I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. 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. For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” (Luke 11:5-13).

This is our Savior’s second teaching about prayer. His first was an actual example of prayer. This is an unfolding of some of the special encouragements to prayer which are afforded by the gracious care of God, our Father and Friend, and also some deeper instructions respecting the nature and spirit of true prayer.

ENCOURAGEMENTS TO PRAYER

God is our Father. This had already been suggested in the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, but it is amplified in this passage by a comparison between the earthly and heavenly Parent: “If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?” God is not only a Father, but much more than any earthly father. How much this expresses to many of us! There are few who cannot recall, in the memories of home, the value of a father’s or a mother’s love and care; or, if they have been wanting, all the more, perhaps, has the orphaned heart felt its deep need and reached out for a father’s heart and hand. Who of us has not felt in some great emergency, needing a wisdom and resource beyond our own, “Oh, if my father were only here,” or, perhaps, has said to God: “If Thou wert my earthly father now, Thou wouldst sit down by my side and let me tell Thee of all my perplexity, and Thou wouldst tell me just what to do, and then wouldst do for me what I cannot do for myself.” And yet His presence is as real as if we saw Him, and we may as freely pour our hearts out with all their fears and griefs and know that He hears and helps as no earthly father is able to do either in love or relief. Perhaps even better than the memory of our childhood is the realization of our own fatherhood or motherhood. Who that has ever felt a parent’s love can fail to understand this appeal? It is a love which neither the helplessness nor the worthlessness of its object can affect. It is a love which often has gladly sacrificed everything, even life itself, for the loved one. But it was from the bosom of God that all that love came at first, and infinitely more is still in reserve. The depth, and length, and height of this “much more” can only be measured by the distance between the infinite and the human. Much more than you love your child does He love you; much more than you would give or sacrifice is He ready to bestow and has He already sacrificed; much more than you can trust or ask a father for, may you dare to bring to Him; much more unerring is His wisdom, illimitable His power, and inexhaustible His love! Shall we, then, with the little alphabet of our human experience, try to spell out all His love and learn the deeper meaning of the prayer, “Our Father, which art in heaven”?

He is our Friend. “Which of you shall have a friend?” This also finds its full significance through the actual experience of each one of us. Who has not had a friend, and more of a friend in some respects than even a father? There are intimacies not born of human blood that are the most intense and lasting bonds of earthly love. Jonathan was more to David than Jesse was, and Timothy was more to Paul than a very son. How much our friends have been to us! One by one let us count them over, recall each act and bond of love, and think of all that we may trust them for and all in which they stood by us; and then, as we concentrate the whole weight of recollection and affection, let us put God in that place of confidence and think He is all that and infinitely more. Our Friend! The One who is personally interested in us; Who has set His heart upon us; Who has made Himself acquainted with us; Who has come near to us in the tender and delicate intimacy of unspeakable fellowship; Who has spoken to us such gracious words; Who has given us such invaluable pledges and promises; Who has done so much for us; Who has made such priceless sacrifices, and Who, we feel, is ready to take any trouble or go to any expense to aid us — to Him we are coming in prayer, our Heavenly Friend.

He is a Friend in extremity. The case here supposed is a hard one. The suppliant is in great need, has a case of suffering on his hands and is wholly without means to meet it. It may represent any emergency in our lives. Other friends are for fair weather. This is always God’s time.

The friends who in our sunshine live,
When winter comes, have flown,
And he who has but tears to give
Must weep those tears alone.

But this Friend has authorized us to claim His help especially in times of need. “Call upon me,” He says, “in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me.” “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.” “Thou hast known my soul in adversities,” is the testimony of one who proved His faithful friendship under the severest pressure. “God that comforteth those that are cast down,” “The Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort” are His chosen names and titles. Let us not fear, therefore, to come to Him when we have nothing to bring to Him but our grief and fear. We shall be welcome. He is able for the hardest occasions, and He is seated on His throne for the very purpose of giving help in time of need. Even if the case seems wholly helpless and the hour is as dark as the dark midnight of this parable, cast thy burden on the Lord, yes, all your care, for “he careth for you,” and “the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.”

He is a Friend, not only in season, but at all seasons, and at the most unseasonable times. This parable is the story of a man coming to his friend when all reasonable ground for expecting a favorable reception was out of the question. It was midnight. The door was shut, literally barred, the house closed for the night, and the time for calls long past. Nevertheless that door was opened, that petition heard, that favor granted, and whatever may be the meaning of the reluctance of the earthly friend, certainly we know that the heavenly Friend assures us that none of these causes will prevent His hearing and helping in the most extreme and desperate straits and seasons. The peculiarity of God’s grace is that He helps when man would refuse to help, and its highest trophies are associated with hours when mercy seemed long past and hope forever dead.

Look at that wicked king, Manasseh, who for half a century was a brutal butcher of the prophets and saints of God. He had literally fed his brutality on the wreck of all that was sacred and divine. And then the hand of retribution struck him down and left him in his miserable old age a captive in a foreign prison. One would have thought that prayer from such a man was profanity and that all heaven would shut its ears at the very idea of his escaping condign and merciless punishment. But in that late hour Manasseh cried to the Lord in his affliction, and the Lord heard him and had mercy on him, forgave him all his sins, and brought him again into his kingdom. And then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God. Surely no soul can ever say again that the hour is too late or the door too strongly barred for mercy!

Look at that city Nineveh, the oppressor of the nations, the proud queen of Assyria, the scourge of Israel and Judah, the boastful shrine of every abominable idolatry! At length its iniquities reached to heaven, and the prophet Jonah was sent to proclaim its speedy and certain doom. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” That city went upon its knees; its kings, its priests, its princes and its peasantry were prostrated in penitential prayer, and the barred gates were opened, the doors of mercy were unlocked, the terrible decree was revoked, and Nineveh became a monument of the mercy of God; the very children in its streets and the cattle in its stalls being specified as the objects of His tender compassion!

Look at King Hezekiah to whom, in the fullness of his prosperity, the message came, “Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live.” Surely that looked like a closing and barring of the gates of the tomb. The sentence fell on his ears like a voice of doom. But in that hour Hezekiah prayed. A poor and trembling prayer it was: “I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me. Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward.” Though there was little faith in that heartbroken gasp of prayer, it reached the heart of God, and the decree that had seemed imperative and inexorable, the stern word that had set a barrier like adamant to the path of life and opened the cold stone portals of what seemed an inevitable tomb, was changed, and the messenger was sent back with the gracious reprieve, “I will add unto thy days fifteen years.”

Such is the Friend to whom we pray, Who stands between us and all the mighty bars and doors of material force, of natural law, of human purpose, and even of divine judgment, and turns aside with His hands of love every bolt and bar which stands between us and the fullest blessing which He can give our trusting and obedient hearts. Shall we ever again think anything too hard, or any hour too late? He loves the hour of extremity. It is His chosen time of Almighty interposition. “God will help her at the turning of the morning,” is His voice to Zion.

Summoned to the dying couch of a little girl, the mighty Master had time to tarry by the way until a poor, helpless woman was healed by the touch of His garment. But meanwhile that little life had ebbed away, and human unbelief hastened to turn back the visit which was now too late. “Thy daughter is dead; trouble not the Master.” It was then that His strong and mighty love rose to its glorious height of power and victory. “Fear not,” was His calm reply; “believe only, and she shall be made whole.”

Yes, let us go at midnight, for He that keeps Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps. Let us go when all other doors are barred and even the heavens seem brass, for the gates of prayer are open evermore, and it is only when the sun is gone down and our pillow is but the stone of the wilderness that we behold the ladder that reaches unto heaven, with our infinite God above it and the angels of His providence ascending and descending for our help and deliverance. “Men ought always to pray, and not to faint.”

He is a Friend that will not deceive us. He will not give us a stone for bread; that is, a barren, worthless, empty answer, but a real and satisfying blessing. He will not give us a serpent when we come for a fish; that is, a harmful gift, or one that contains a hidden snare of temptation or spiritual evil. Many of the things that we ask in our blindness have serpents coiled in their folds, but He loves us too well to give us such an answer, and sometimes, therefore, He must modify or refuse our petition if He would be our true Father in heaven. And we need not fear to trust this to Him or make the boldest requests lest they might do us harm, for He who gives the greatest blessing can give the grace to keep it from being a selfish idol or a spiritual curse. People sometimes say, “If God were to heal me or give me some temporal blessing for which I am praying, I fear it might not be best for me.” Can we not trust Him for the grace as well as the gift?

And again, our Father will not give us a scorpion if we ask an egg; that is, something that would leave a bitterness and a sting behind. “The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it.”How many earthly roses fade and leave a lasting thorn! How many drops from earthly cups have more dregs of poison than drops of joy! How many a love and friendship but adds to the sorrow of the parting and to the bitterness of the memory. But all that heaven gives us are everlasting joys. Let us trust Him for all we ask, and we shall have eternal cause to sing of His love and faithfulness.

This Friend gives full measure. “He will rise and give him as many as he needeth.” In our Father’s house there is bread enough and to spare. His measure is more abundantly. Three loaves He gave to the hungry wayfarer. Nay, three were asked; He seems to have given far more, at least, was willing to give as many as were needed. These three may be suggestive of our threefold life and God’s complete provision for it in every part — spirit, soul and body. Have we claimed the ample measure? Are we satisfied today and running over with superabundant life and love for the hungry wayfarers that come to us? He only asked it as a loan, but he received it as a gift, the only return required being thanks and love. So our Father and our Friend is ready to supply all our need “according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Let us come, exclaiming,

My soul, ask what thou wilt,
Thou canst not be too bold.
Since His own blood for thee He spilt,

What else can He withhold?

Beyond thy utmost wants,
His power and love can bless;
To trusting souls He loves to grant
More than they can express.

INSTRUCTIONS RESPECTING PRAYER

In its simplest form prayer is represented as asking. “Ask, and it shall be given unto you.” This expresses the most elementary form of prayer — the presenting of our petitions to God in the simplest terms and manner, and we are undoubtedly taught that even the most ordinary and imperfect request which is sincerely presented at the throne of grace receives the attention and response of our heavenly Father. It is probable that no honest heart ever asks in vain, even where, through ignorance or inexperience, it may but partly understand the principles and conditions of effectual prayer. The infant’s helpless cry reaches the mother’s heart not more surely than the feeblest gasp of need and supplication from His children’s lips.

There is a higher form of prayer, “Seek, and ye shall find.” This denotes the prayer that waits upon God until it receives an answer, and that follows up that answer in obedience to His direction until it finds all it seeks, whether of light, or health, or strength from on high.

This is the prayer that inquires of the Lord, hearkens to catch His answer, and hastens to obey it — “watching at his gates; waiting daily at the posts of his doors”; “following on to know the Lord,” and finding, as it follows, full light, help and blessing. For prayer is more than asking; it is a receiving, a waiting, a learning of Him, a converse and communion, in which He has much to say and we have much to learn. This is the prayer that has brought us so often His peace, His heavenly baptism of love and power, His blessed working out of the problems of our life; and it is of this He says in such oft-repeated promises, “Let none that wait on thee be ashamed.” “I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in vain.” “They that seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.” For prayer is not an asking for things so much as a seeking for Himself and a pressing into that fellowship which is beyond all other gifts and which carries with it every needed blessing.

There is a knocking prayer, to which the promise is given, “Knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” This is more than seeking. This is the prayer that surmounts the great obstacles of life, the closed doors of circumstances, the brazen gates and adamantine mountains of hindrance and opposition, and which, in the name of our ascended Lord and in the fellowship of His mediatorial rights and powers, presses through every obstacle and treads down every adversary. It is not so much the prayer that knocks at the gates of heaven and extorts an answer from an unwilling God, as the prayer which, having received the answer and promise, carries it forth against the gates of the enemy and beats them down, as the walls of Jericho fell before the tramp and shout of Israel’s believing hosts. It is the prayer which takes its place at the side of our ascended Lord and claims what He has promised to give, and even commands, in His mighty name, that which He has already commanded through His royal Priesthood and all-prevailing intercession. It is faith putting its hand on the omnipotence of God and using it in fellowship with our Omnipotent Head until it sees His name prevail against all that opposes His will, the crooked things made straight, the gates of brass opened, and the fetters of iron broken asunder.

It is Moses standing on the Mount with God while Joshua fights in the plain below, holding up the hands of victorious faith, seeing the hosts of Joshua keep step with his uplifted hands and the battle advance or ebb as those hands went up or down, until they waved on high over a victorious field and proclaimed the memorial name, “Jehovah-Nissi, the Lord is my banner,” a name which has become our watchword from generation to generation. It is written, “Because the Lord hath sworn that the Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.” It is when our hand is upon the throne of the Lord that He wages war with all our enemies, and they fall before His victorious will.

It is Deborah, kneeling in her tent that day when Barak led the host of Israel against the legions of Sisera, feeling in her great heart the surging tides of that glorious warfare, and knowing by the throbs of her faith and prayer when the battle waxed or waned, until she had fought it all over upon the field of vision; and as she claimed the last victorious onset and commanded the last foe to flee in Jehovah’s name, her exulting spirit shouted in the victory of faith, though perhaps her eyes had not seen the battlefield at all, “O my soul, thou hast trodden down strength.” Her soul had trodden down the foe; her spirit had triumphed in the conscious power of Jehovah; her faith had knocked at the gates of the enemy until the wall of adamant was laid in the dust and the gates of brass were shivered into fragments and scattered as by the whirlwinds of the sky. This is “the effectual prayer” which “availeth much.”

We are also instructed to come in the spirit of boldness and importunity. “Because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth.” This is a very difficult passage and one that has been variously interpreted. Dr. Walker, the thoughtful author of The Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation, has endeavored to show in his work on the Holy Spirit that this word here means “extremity,” and that the idea conveyed is not that the man is heard because of his continued prayer, but because of his extreme distress and the difficult emergency which is facing him. We cannot find, however, sufficient authority for this view. The Greek word literally means “without shamefacedness.” It is the negative form of the word “shamefacedness” which occurs in 1 Timothy 2:9, and it properly means boldness and audacity. There is nothing whatever unscriptural in this truth, which, indeed, is constantly reiterated in the New Testament, that we are to come boldly to the throne of grace, and, without timidity, for Jesus’sake, claim our redemption rights in all their fullness. “We have boldness and access,” we are told, “by the faith of him.” “Having therefore . . . boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, . . . let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.” “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace.”

There is no doubt that if Esther had hesitated to enter into the presence of the king at the crisis of her country’s fate, she would have both lost her blessing and risked the fortunes of her nation. There is no doubt that if modest Ruth had feared to claim her lawful rights at the feet of Boaz under the law of the kinsman, she probably would never have been his bride nor the mother of the long and honored line of kings, commencing with David and ending with the Son of man. And there is no doubt that our unbelieving fear and shrinking timorousness have lost us many a redemption right, and that a bold and victorious confidence which claims its inheritance in the name of our risen and ascended Lord is pleasing to God. And we believe this is the meaning and teaching of this beautiful parable — that we are to come boldly to our Father and our Friend, no matter what doors would seem to be closed or what discouragements may frown across our way. Someone has said that the secret of success in human affairs has often been audacity. There is, at least, a holy audacity in Christian life and faith which is not inconsistent with the profoundest humility and in which lies the secret of the victorious achievements of a Moses, a Joshua, an Elijah, and a Daniel in the Old Testament, and of the Syro-Phoenician woman and the glorious apostle of faith in the New, as well as the Luthers and the Careys who have been pioneers of gospel truth and missionary triumph in the Christian dispensation.

Perhaps the highest ministry of prayer is prayer for others. This petition was not for the suppliant himself but for a friend of his, who, in his journey, had come to him and found the larder empty and nothing to set before him. Literally it means a friend “who had lost his way.”

How tenderly it suggests the need of those for whom we have constantly to come to our heavenly Friend. It is of this that the Apostle James says in referring to prayer, “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”And then with special reference to this very case he adds, “Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him; let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall . . . hide a multitude of sins.” Thank God that we can bring to Him these cases that have lost their way — our unsaved friends, our wandering sons and daughters, our brethren who have gone back from their first love and the blessedness they knew when first they saw the Lord — and He will not refuse to hear their cry nor fail to give them the living Bread.

Often our boldest prayer will be the prayer for others. For ourselves we may fear perhaps a selfish motive, but for them we know it is the prayer of love; and if it be the prayer that seeks His glory, we can claim for it His mighty and prevailing will and intercession. Oh, you who have often felt your way closed for service, this is a ministry that all can exercise, and is the mightiest ministry of life! Let us be encouraged henceforth to use it in fellowship with Him who has spent the centuries that have passed since His ascension in praying for others and representing us as our great High Priest before the throne.

The last lesson that this passage teaches us about prayer is that the Holy Ghost is the source and substance of all that prayer can ask, and a gift that carries with it the pledge of all other gifts and blessings.

“How much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?”

This is spoken as if there were really nothing else to ask. It is still more remarkable that in the parallel passage in Matthew the language used is, “How much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?” So then “the Holy Spirit” and “good things” are synonymous. He that has the Holy Spirit shall have all good things. Was not that the symbolical meaning of the widow’s oil in the ancient miracle? Her pot of oil, poured out into all the empty vessels, became sufficient to pay all her debts and furnish an income for all her future life. All she needed was the pot of oil; it was currency for every blessing.

So is the Holy Spirit. He that has this heavenly gift is in touch with the throne of infinite grace and the God of infinite fullness, and there is nothing that he cannot claim. Oh, when shall we learn to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and know that all these things shall be added unto us!

Dean Alford calls attention to a beautiful Greek construction in this closing verse in the reference to our heavenly Father. The verse, “your heavenly Father,” in the original is, literally, “your Father out of heaven.” In the Lord’s Prayer a few verses previously it is, “Our Father which art in heaven,” but here the preposition is changed and it is “your Father out of heaven.” Why is this blessed and stupendous change? Our Father has already begun to move toward us and to enter our hearts by the Holy Ghost whom He has just sent to make a heaven below for every praying heart. So while we begin our prayer with our eyes directed upward, we end it with our inmost being filled with the presence and fullness of God and the throne of His abiding grace and power.

Blessed and heavenly altar of incense, standing by the rent veil, and breathing forth its incense into the outer and inner chambers! oh, let us be found forever there!

Where heaven comes down our souls to greet;
And glory crowns the Mercy Seat.



Chapter 3 – In His Name

“And in that day ye shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. These things have I spoken unto you in proverbs: but the time cometh, when I shall no more speak unto you in proverbs, but I shall shew you plainly of the Father. At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.” (John 16:23-27).

“For Jesus’ sake,” “in Jesus’ name” are phrases familiar to every ear and tongue in Christendom, but how little they are thoroughly understood we shall probably find as we glance at their deeper meaning. This is the profound teaching about prayer which the Master chiefly emphasizes in His closing addresses to His disciples.

Undoubtedly it means this much at least, that we are to pray to the Father as revealed in Jesus Christ.

“Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name” might be translated, “Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father as represented by me.” It expresses Christ’s identity with the Father. The Father had been known to them before by many different names: “Elohim,” the God of nature; “El Shaddai,” the God of power; “Adonai,” the God of providence; “Jehovah,” the God of covenant grace; but henceforth, He is to be known as “Jehovah-Jesus,” God in Christ. This is undoubtedly implied in the language of this passage, and involved in the thought to which the Savior is giving expression. It is the same thought that He repeats in the parallel verse, “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” There it plainly expresses that the Father and Son are acting in perfect concert, and it is through the Son only that the Father is glorified and revealed to man or understood by him.

The idea may be carried so far as to do away with the distinct personality of the Father and the Son, and this, of course, would be extreme and erroneous. But bearing this in mind and recognizing fully the dual personality, it is true that the Father Himself is revealed to us in the person of the Son, and that we are to ask the Father for our petitions and feel encouraged to expect His gracious answer because of what we know of Jesus, through Whose presence and teachings He Himself has become revealed to us. Would we come with confidence to our Saviour? Let us come with the same confidence to His Father, for “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” The words that He hath spoken, the Father that dwelt in Him spoke. The love that He manifested was the Father’s love, Whom He came to reveal. He is the brightness of that Father’s glory, the express image of His person, and the reflection of His will and character. It is to God in Christ, therefore, that we are to pray; to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; to Him, of Whom we know nothing except through the Son, and in Whom we trust, even as in Jesus Himself. Thus let us learn to pray in the Name of Jesus.

This expression, however, denotes far more than the identity of the Father and the Son. It expresses the great truth of mediation and intercession.

Not only do we come to the Father as we know Him in Jesus, but we come to Him through the Mediator. There are deep necessities for this in the nature of God and the relationships of sinful men with Him. So deeply did Job realize this that he cried out for a Daysman, who could “lay his hand upon us both,” some being that could touch at once both heaven and earth and bring them into harmony and fellowship. This is just what Christ has done. His incarnation has bridged over the infinite gulf between the eternal and spiritual Deity and finite man, and His atonement has healed the awful breach that had morally and imperatively separated the sinner from a holy God. Like the dying mother, who, with her latest breath, reached out one hand to her husband and the other to her boy, and, drawing both hands together, united them upon her dying breast and covered them with her tears and benedictions; so Jesus in His death has united the sinner with his offended God, praying, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do,” and appealing to sinful men, “Be ye reconciled to God.”

But not only has He brought God and men into reconciliation and fellowship, but He keeps that fellowship unbroken by His ceaseless intercession. “He ever liveth to make intercession
for (us),” and, therefore, “is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him.”

This idea of mediation is widely illustrated in the Holy Scriptures. We see it in the story of Joseph and his relation to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. “Go to Joseph,” was the king’s response to all who came to him for relief or judgment. All the affairs of the kingdom were entrusted to his administration, and he was the mediator and channel of all communication. We see it in the beautiful story of Esther as she ventured to touch the golden scepter and stand between her people and their oppressor and danger; and by her courage and patriotism she saved her nation from extinction. Still more impressively was it foreshadowed in the ministry of Moses, who became, at Sinai, the channel of communication between God and the terrified people. “Speak thou with us,” was their cry, “but let not God speak with us lest we die”; and God consented to use Moses as the channel of His revelations to Israel and to teach the lesson of our Great Mediator.

But the most striking of all the ancient types of Christ our Mediator was Aaron, the Hebrew High Priest. It was his special office to stand between the people and God and present their worship in the Holy of Holies and make intercession for their sins and needs. For them he passed through the open veil, stood beneath the Shekinah, presented the blood and incense at the mercy seat, and came back to them with the benediction of Jehovah. In all this he was but the type of the better ministry of the Great High Priest in the true Tabernacle of heaven. There He hath entered, with His own blood, through the rent veil of His own flesh, now to appear in the presence of God for us.

The ministry of Aaron may well express the deeper meaning of His High Priesthood. Upon his heart the ancient priest continually carried, engraven in precious jewels, the names of Israel’s tribes, and this was but to teach us that Christ, our Great High Priest, perpetually carries upon His heart our names, engraven in imperishable characters and worn as jewels of ornament and pride, even amid the glories of the heavenly world. It does not merely mean that He prays for us occasionally or takes our petitions and presents them to His Father. That, undoubtedly, He does, but He prays for us ten thousand times when we are too ignorant or too forgetful to pray for ourselves, and every moment He holds our names before His Father in unforgetting love and ceaseless remembrance. And not only upon his heart, but the ancient priest carried them also upon his shoulders. So, upon the strong arms of His omnipotence, our ascended Lord continually bears our burdens, as strong to help as He is swift to hear.

The ancient priest bore upon his brow a beautiful and significant symbol, a coronet with jeweled letters, carrying the significant words, “Holiness to the Lord.” This he was continually to bear as often as he entered the Holy Place, that he might bear the iniquities of the children of Israel in their holy things. So, our blessed Intercessor bears upon His brow this inscription, not for Himself, for His holiness is never questioned, but as the proclamation of our holiness and perfect acceptance. He covers the imperfection of our holiest services with His perfect righteousness and keeps us constantly accepted in the presence of holy angels and the infinite and heart-searching God. What infinite meaning these figures give to the simple words, “In his name!” How wide they open the gates of prayer, and how perfect the consolation they give to the timid heart! “Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, . . . let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

“In his name,” signifies that our prayers are to be grounded upon the finished work of Christ and our redemption rights through His death and atonement.

Indeed, His very intercession for us is based upon His sufferings and blood. It is on the ground of the cross and the accomplished redemption that He claims for us all the purchase of His blood and all the promises of the everlasting covenant.

We are all familiar with the incident of the brave soldier who had often pleaded for the pardon of his unworthy brother and saved his life from public execution on account of desertion, but at last had been told by his kind general that it was useless to plead any more, because if he repeated the offense, it would be absolutely necessary in the interests of public order that the penalty should be required. Unfortunately, the reckless man soon repeated the offense, and the sentence of the court-martial was about to be pronounced without mercy. Then the general, noticing the brave old soldier weeping silently in the ranks, asked him if he had anything to say for his brother, but the old veteran simply stood up and raising aloft the stump of his amputated arm, he silently held it up, while the great tears rolled down his cheeks, and many wept around him as they thought of all it meant of sacrifice and devotion to his country. That was all his plea. He knew that words were useless now, but he held up the pledge of his sufferings and love, and let it plead more eloquently than speech for his brother’s forfeited life. And eloquently it did plead, for, with tears of emotion, the old commander answered, “Sit down, my brave fellow, you shall have your brother’s life. He is unworthy of it, but you have purchased it by your blood.”

It is thus our ascended Redeemer pleads for us. He does not beg for mercy that would be simply gratuitous and unbought, but He boldly asks for that which is His purchased right, and for which His own blood has been sacrificed. Long before the incarnation and the cross He had entered into a covenant with the Father; and God had promised, by His immutable oath, that if He would bear the sins of men and settle for all the penalties of a holy law, He should receive as His mediatorial right forgiveness for every penitent and believing sinner who should accept His gospel, and all the resources of grace that should be needed to consummate the salvation of every sinner. And now He simply claims His redemption rights and our rights through Him by virtue of that promise.

Asking in Jesus’ name, therefore, is asking that for which Jesus has suffered and died, and which He has freely, fully purchased for all His own. Surely with such a plea, we may come boldly to the throne of grace and ask as much as the precious blood of Calvary is worthy to claim, and how much that is, it will take all eternity to tell. This is the strong ground of our prayer for salvation, that salvation has been purchased, and that forgiveness is the birthright of every believing penitent. This is the plea of our prayer for sanctification, “for by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified.”This is the foundation of our plea for physical healing, for “Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses,” and purchased redemption for our suffering bodies. And on this ground we may claim every other needed blessing, for “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”

Have we learned the meaning of His name and the power of His cross and blood as the strong and all-prevailing plea of the believing suppliant at the throne of grace?

“IN HIS NAME,” MEANS, FINALLY, IN UNION AND COMPLETE IDENTITY WITH HIM.

It expresses our relation to Him as well as His relation to the Father. It means in His person, in His stead, on His account, as if the petitioner were the very Son Himself. We all know something of how far a human name and introduction will go. The friend we introduce in our name is received, in some sense, as we would be received. Still more is this the case when he is commended to us on the ground of intimate relations with the one we love. The wife is received by her husband’s family as if she were part of him and kin with them. In his name she conies to them as he would come. Sometimes we see this relationship very strongly and strangely illustrated in the case of those who otherwise would have no claim whatever for consideration.

In the days that followed the American war, many an incident was told of the tender bonds of fellowship and suffering, on the battlefield or in the Southern hospital — bonds which often gave the stranger a place in the old homestead as dear as that of the fallen soldier boy whom he had befriended. One such incident is related of a wretched tramp who called one day at a farmhouse in the west and was refused, very naturally, by the suspicious housewife. But the stranger drew from his well-worn pocket a scrap of paper and handed it to the woman. It was the writing of her boy, and it told how this man had fought by his side and then had nursed him in the hospital until the last hour had come; and how, as these lines were being written, he was committing his dying body and his last messages for home and mother to his hands; and it asked them, if they ever met, to receive him and love him as he had been loved and cherished, for his sake and in his name. That was enough.

The haggard face and ragged dress and tramp-like appearance of the stranger were all forgotten, and the rough man was clasped in that mother’s arms and taken to that home circle as a child, for the sake of another.

It is thus that we become identified with Jesus, and our Father receives us in His name as He receives Him. This is what faith may claim as it comes in His name. We enter into His rights, we ask on His account, and we expect to be welcomed and loved even as He is loved. This was His own bequest to us in His intercessory prayer in the seventeenth chapter of John, “That the world may know that thou hast . . . loved them, as thou hast loved me,” and “that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” Is it too bold if we claim that which He Himself has asked for us as our place of privilege and right?

Not only, however, may we claim His rights; we must also come in His will and spirit, and ask as He claims and only what He Himself would ask. The privilege is limited by its own very nature. We cannot ask in the behalf of Christ what Christ Himself would not ask if He were praying. “In his name,” therefore, necessarily means in harmony with His will and at the prompting of His Spirit. We may not, therefore, claim from God that which would be sinful or selfish, or involve harm to another, or hindrance to the cause of Christ. All our asking must be within this eternal limit, “Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. But this will is as large as the utmost of our being. Within this large and ample place there is room for every reasonable petition for spirit, soul, and body, family and friends, temporal circumstances, spiritual services, and utmost possibilities of human desire, hope or blessing.

And, finally, this identity with Him implies that He will be in us as the spirit of faith, making it His prayer and supplying the spirit and conditions of effectual prevailing intercession.

Such then, beloved, is the divinely appointed channel of prayer. Oh, how it encourages the unworthy and weak to come with full assurance of faith to the mercy seat! You may be a poor sinner, but He who represents you yonder is the Righteousness of God, and bears upon His brow, above your name, the flashing jeweled coronet which inscribes your standing, “Holiness unto the Lord.” You may be an obscure and insignificant disciple, but He who endorses your petition has the mightiest name in earth and heaven. You may be a timid spirit and a faint-hearted child of unbelief and fear, but He who bids you have the faith of God and Who offers Himself to you as the spirit of faith and prevailing prayer is the One who said on earth, “Father, . . . I knew that thou hearest me always.” “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am,” and in His faith you may claim with boldness all His will, and go forth in deepest humility, but sublimest confidence, saying,

I am not skilled to understand
What God hath willed, what God
hath planned,
But this I know, at His right hand,
Stands One who is my Savior.



Chapter 4 – The Prayer of Faith

“And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things so ever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.”(Mark 11:22-24).

There is an unseen principle of force in the material world which is mightier far than all the physical elements that we touch and see. It is the force of attraction which, in its twofold form of cohesion and gravitation, holds the physical universe together. As the force that condenses and holds in cohesion the minutest particles of matter, it is the cause by which, in a sense, all things consist or hang together. But for this cohesive force, our bodies would dissipate into impalpable air, the raindrops and the oceans would dissolve into vapor, the mighty mountains would crumble to pieces, and the great world itself would explode in a catastrophe of wreck and dissolution. And in its wider and far-reaching application, it is the force that holds our planet in its orbit and keeps it, on its awful journey of a thousand miles a minute and more than five hundred million miles a year, from rushing into the distant fields of immensity, or diverging a hair-breadth from its unmarked path amidst the spheres, or even quivering in its course notwithstanding the terrific velocity of its career. It is the same force that holds all the planets on their aerial track, and all the systems that circle round ten thousand suns in all their spheres, without collision or catastrophe. It is the mighty power of gravitation. All unseen it is, and noiseless. There is no vibration in its mighty heart-throbs; no reverberation from its voice; no trace of its invisible but mighty arm. Yet, it is mightier than the earth which it poises in space and propels along its pathway; mightier than the mighty sun, from whose center it sweeps the circle of the solar system with its revolving circuit of planets; mightier than all the stars in all their spheres; the great, invisible, intangible, inaudible, impalpable secret of the material universe and all its mighty movements. How simple is this subtle force, and yet how sufficient and sublime!

But now let us ascend from the material world to the social, rational, and human sphere, and there, too, we shall find a corresponding principle which holds society together, even as the law of gravitation holds the worlds of space. What is that principle that binds the family together, that cements the friendships of life, that controls the partnerships of business, that forms the basis of commercial confidence and the greatest transactions of business, and leads men continually to stake their whole fortune and every material interest on their investments and securities? Why, it is simply confidence, trust, faith between man and man! Without it, the home circle would be torn with strife and wrecked with distrust and misery. Without it, political and national fabrics would collapse, and government would be impossible. Without it, business would be ruined. No single bank could stand a day without the trust of its constituents, and no security would be worth anything were men to cease to trust the promises and reliability of their fellow-men. The world is adopting this very name of trust in this day for its strongest institutions. Everything now is taking the form of a commercial trust. There must be some fascination in the term, and well there may be, for it is the very cohesive principle of society, the law of gravitation for the whole social world.

Let us now carry this thought to its true plane and apply it to the great spiritual kingdom of which all natural things are but imperfect types. Should it seem strange if this law of faith were found to be the very principle of the spiritual world as it is of the natural, the underlying force which holds it together, and the remedial principle which is to bring back our own lost orb to its true place in the circle of the heavens? Such indeed it is. Faith is the essential principle of the Kingdom of God. It was the loss of faith which separated man from God in Eden. The fall of the race began the moment they listened to Satan’s insinuations, “Hath God said?” and the recovery of the race commences the moment the soul begins to trust its God. This is why faith has been made indispensable to the reception of the gospel and the salvation of the soul. This is why it is forever true, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” Faith is the gateway of salvation, and it is not strange that it should be made the gateway of prayer.

Let us consider this great subject thoughtfully and prayerfully, and may the Holy Spirit search our hearts on this solemn matter, until we shall be convicted of sin, because we believe not. For this is the condemnation, because they have not believed on the name of the Son of God.

Faith is necessary in order to have acceptable and effectual prayer. This our Lord very distinctly states in this passage. He commands the disciples to have faith in God, and then adds, “When ye pray, believe that ye receive them.” But this is not the only place where this necessity is emphasized, for we are told in Hebrews that “without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” There must be a believing recognition of God’s personal existence and of His goodness and graciousness, and that He does hear and answer prayer.

So, again, in speaking of prayer for healing, it is declared that “the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up.” If we would understand what James means by the prayer of faith, we have only to turn to the first chapter and hear him say, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally” (or rather, “of course”), “but let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.” The language here is very emphatic. “Of course” God will give to all, but they must take by faith what God gives, or the giving is in vain. The man who wavers does not take, cannot receive. He is like that poor victim in the hospital who died in agony, with water held to his lips, but unable to swallow a single drop through the spasms which contracted his throat, arising from the most terrific of all human diseases. There are people to whom the Lord gives the Water of Life, but they will not drink it. There are people whose tables God has spread with the blessings of faith, but they do not partake of its bounties. There are prayers which God has answered, but we do not enjoy the answers. There are souls whom God has long ago forgiven, but they are in darkness and despair because they did not trust His pardon. Therefore, when the troubled and despairing father came to Him about his child, crying, “I spake to thy disciples that they should cast him out; and they could not . . . but if thou canst do any thing, have compassion on us, and help us,” the Master simply answered, as He turned the whole question back upon the man, “If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.”

It is perfectly right that God should require us to believe before He answers our prayers, because faith is the law of the New Testament and the gospel dispensation. The Apostle Paul speaks of two laws in the third chapter of Romans, the law of works and the law of faith. The former has been superseded, and the principle on which the whole gospel is based is the law of faith. “To him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” We have already suggested why this law has been adopted. No doubt in the light of eternity we shall find many reasons for it which we could not now fully apprehend, but it is enough to know that as it was through unbelief that men fell, so it is through faith that they must be restored. In a word, we must come back to the point from which we started in a wrong direction. When Bunyan’s pilgrim found that he had lost his roll on the Hill of Difficulty, he simply went back to the place where he had lost it and started on again. And so we must begin at the point of departure from God, by learning to trust Him. God is bound to act upon this principle if it be the law of this dispensation, and He cannot justly acknowledge our plea if we do not present it according to the prescribed rule.

If this be true, it works most solemnly in both directions; and while, on one side, it is gloriously certain, “According to your faith be it unto you,” yet, on the other, it may be just as true, “According to your unbelief it shall be unto you.” It may be that God for very consistency is required to keep His word to those who doubt Him as well as to those who believe Him, and that the enemy of souls might even accuse Him of falsehood and inconsistency if He answered the prayer of unbelief. He has announced this as the principle of His throne of grace, the very law on which petitions will receive attention and consideration, and surely we cannot afford to disregard this sacred intimation or venture into His presence expecting our unbelieving complaint and insulting doubts and insincerities to bring any blessing from His hand.

But faith is not only the law of the Christian dispensation; it is also a mighty force in the spiritual world. We are touching now upon a subject which the wisest spirits can but dimly comprehend, but upon which, perhaps, there is light enough to be well assured that the very act of believing for anything which God has promised is an actual creative force and produces effects and operations of the most important character. Indeed it seems that faith is the very principle upon which God Himself acts, and the secret of His power in creating matter and in commanding the events of providence. “He spake, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.” When the disciples wondered at the withering of the fig tree, Jesus simply said it was an act of divine faith. It was the faith of God that produced it, and then He commanded them to “have faith in God.” The faith of God must mean the faith which God Himself exercises. In the fourth chapter of Romans we are told a little about this faith of God, when it is said that Abraham acted like Him “who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were.”He commands that which is not and expects it and believes in the efficacy of His own command without a shadow of hesitation, and He sees it instantly or ultimately accomplished. And even for the things that lie in the future in His purpose, He counts them as if they were present or past. The lapse of time is nothing in His mind and involves no uncertainty as to the results. He sobelieves in the things that are not that He calls them by the names of actual realities. He called Abraham “the father of many nations,” before he even had a child, and made him call himself by the same significant name. He calls Jesus Christ “His only begotten Son,” “the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world,” and the cross was as real to the Father ages ago as it is now. He speaks of you and me as if we were already sitting in the heavenly palaces in the ages to come, and shining like the sun in the kingdom of our Father.

It was this faith in Jesus Christ that commanded and compelled the quickening of Lazarus in his tomb. It was a resistless force, a divine power that actually moved upon second causes and compelled their obedience; and if that faith of God be in us, it will be a corresponding force, and there shall be in us that effectual working prayer which availeth much, which, at the very moment we are offering it and believing for it, is moving something or upon some heart, and making someone conscious of the presence of the power of God.

Surely this is reason enough, then, that we should pray in faith. It is a spiritual force which God requires of us to cooperate with, to enter into, to use with Him and for His glory. The mighty forces of nature must have man’s cooperation or they are lost and wasted. The electricity goes to waste if we do not constrain it to our will and use it according to its own laws. And so God’s omnipotence must be taken hold of by our faith and actually used, in deep humility but holy confidence, for the carrying through of His own great purposes. Could we see what is behind the curtains of the invisible world, we should be able to trace living streams of spiritual influence passing from the heavens at the very instant that the prayer of faith is ascending from some lonely closet, and terminating upon the very persons at that very instant whose names are being held up before the throne. Two streams of heavenly power would be distinctly visible; one an ascending line of prayer from the kneeling suppliant, and the other a descending current of power upon some far distant heart. Such phenomena have actually been traced in innumerable instances. While Elijah was praying on Carmel, the clouds were actually marshaling on the distant horizon; while Jacob was praying at Peniel, the heart of Esau, as he lay in his tent that night, was going back to early memories, and melting into the tender welcome which he gave at that noontide to his once hated brother. While some of God’s remembrancers have been holding up special fields in far distant lands, it has been actually found at that very moment showers of blessing have been descending on that special field prayed for. While some weeping wife or mother has been praying for her husband or boy, that husband or boy was being converted hundreds of miles away. Faith is therefore a force as mighty as that which we control when we touch the electric button, or open the valve of the engine, or pull the little cord that explodes the mighty subterranean battery which up-heaves the mountain of rock or discharges the sunken torpedo. In requiring us, therefore, to pray in faith, God simply requires us to join hands with Himself in the exercise of His own almighty power, and be partakers of His mighty working.

The faith which God requires of us in prayer is essential to our own spiritual welfare; and, if it add no direct ulterior result in the actual answer, it would be abundantly repaid in the blessing which believing prayer brings to our own spirit. How it quiets our fears, tranquilizes our agitation, and stills our troubled spirit! How it enables us to submit to God and say “Thy will be done” as we never can until we believe that His will for us is only love and blessing. Indeed, so wonderful are the subjective benefits of prayer that many go so far as to say that this is all the value of prayer. This would be a very foolish conclusion to adopt, for it would be a strange blessing if we were only comforted by an imaginary dream which had no objective reality. Take away the actual reality of God and the facts of prayer, and you take away the foundation of our subjective comfort; for, if God be not real and the answer not actual, why, our comfort is a lie, and our ulterior peace a delusive dream. But if we know God is real, and that His promise will be actually fulfilled, then indeed we can rest our troubled heads upon His breast and our hearts upon His promises, and be still and know that He is God.

How self-possessed and restful the hearts that have learned to trust God for all they ask! How sweetly these two thoughts are combined in the benignant words of the apostle in Philippians: “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”There we have the injunction to pray about everything. the requirement to pray without care, doubt, or anxiety, and then the promise that the peace of God shall keep our hearts and minds through Jesus Christ.

But God requires our trust in order to keep us from hindering His answer to our prayer by our own restless activity or flight. When we ask God to do anything for us, we must give Him time to do it, and carefully avoid rushing off in unbelieving haste to do something that would probably quite hinder His plan. Many a time, if God were to come with the answer to our prayer, He would find that we were not there, but had simply run away in fear and doubt, first firing our gun like a sentinel, and then getting off as fast as our limbs could carry us. Suppose Israel had not believed God when they cried unto Him at the Red Sea, but had rushed back upon their foes or forward into the deep or away into the mountains, where God could never have answered their prayer by dividing the sea. To prevent this He had to say to them first, “Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord,” and then bid them go forward in His way and claim it.

If Joshua’s hosts had not believed in God and marched around Jericho at His command, they never would have found the answer which was awaiting their seventh circuit on the seventh day. We find, in the thirtieth chapter of Isaiah, the prophet pleading with his people to be quiet and not hinder the deliverance which they had asked God to give them from Sennacherib and his army. But instead of this, they insisted upon doing something to help themselves; they sent an embassy into Egypt for an alliance with Pharaoh. The prophet warned them without avail that the Egyptians should help in vain, and that their strength was to sit still. “In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength; and ye would not. But ye said, No; for we will flee upon horses.” And God answered, Get all the horses you want; you will need them soon, for “they that pursue you be swift.” Then the prophet adds, “Therefore will the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you,” for “blessed are all they that wait for him.” In due time they found out their Egyptian alliance was a broken reed and a reed that pierced the hand that leaned upon it. The Egyptians were helpless, and Sennacherib, furious that they should have gone to Egypt, returned with a fierce and cruel scorn, and bade his caged prisoners prepare for their doom. Then they were shut up to faith and cried unto the Lord alone, and lo! in a moment, without any of their contriving, God sent an angel at night, who simply swept along the line of Syrian tents, shook his fiery wings above those slumbering hosts, and their vital breath ceased and the morning saw an army of corpses, and the caged and invested city found itself gloriously free!

So God requires us to trust Him and be still until He brings His answer to us and works it out in our lives, and without faith we are sure to do something to hinder Him or get out of the place where we can receive the answer in its fullness.

It is reasonable to believe for an answer which we do not yet see. How can I believe for that which I do not know or see to be actually so? Simply because if you did see and know from other evidence, it would not be believing at all, but learning from the evidence of your senses. You only believe when you do not see. “Faith is the evidence of things not seen.” God’s way for us is to believe first, on the simple evidence of His promise, and to continue to believe without other evidence until we have proved our faith without sight; then He will permit us to see and know by the demonstration of the fact itself.

This is nothing more than what we are doing every day in the affairs of human life. Millions of dollars are invested in our commercial exchanges every week on the simple faith of a telegram or an item of news in the daily papers. Values are bought and sold on paper where the actual realities have not been seen by either party. Securities are constantly negotiated by those who buy them on simple trust. Every time we send a telegram and act upon it, we are venturing on simple faith in the operator that despatches it, on the wire that carries it, and the messenger boy that delivers it. We do not see it go, nor do we see it received, but we rest, and probably take most important action on the certainty that it has gone and that the matter has been settled. It is surely very humiliating that we cannot put the same confidence in the Word of our God as we do in the fidelity of a messenger boy.

Then again, we are constantly in the habit of recognizing things as done when in fact they are only decided and long weeks and even months must intervene before we see the actual accomplishment. A friend of mine had an application for a pension before Congress. It meant everything to her and her helpless husband and family. On one side was a life of toil and suffering; on the other, comfort and happiness for those she loved better than her life. There was considerable delay and uncertainty, but at last the message was flashed across the wires from Washington one day, and she quickly hastened to tell me the glad news, with tears of joy. She said, “I have got my husband’s pension, praise the Lord!” But if one of our critics had been there, I suppose he would have said, “Madam, you are telling a story; you have not a single dollar of your pension, and won’t have a single dollar of it for months to come.” And the critic, in one sense, would have been right, for she herself told me in the same breath, “It will be several months before we have it actually, for it has to go through a great deal of red tape, but that does not make any difference.” And so the dear woman went ahead in simple faith, and long before she had the money, all the arrangements for her future life were made as calmly and surely as if she had the first installment deposited in the bank. To her, the decree of the supreme authority was enough; the question of time meant nothing, and she could truthfully say, even in the face of the critic, “I have my pension.” Honestly and actually she did have all that was necessary to make it certain and to give her the benefit of it.

And so the moment our petition passes the Throne, we are justified in believing that we have just what we ask and in saying, like her, “I have got my answer, praise the Lord!” This was what God intended to teach Daniel when He sent the angel from heaven, after he had been praying twenty-one days, to say to him, “From the first day that thou didst set thine heart to understand, and to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words were heard, and I am come for thy words. But the prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me one and twenty days.”In the very beginning his prayer passed the Throne above, and he was justified all those three weeks in counting the answer given, but the delivery of the blessing and even the message was hindered by the opposition of the enemy. But all the opposition of earth or hell cannot hinder God’s purposes, and to His mind and the mind of faith, they are as certain from the beginning as after they have taken form like the solid mountains and become the facts and memories of actual life.

Indeed, all God’s promises to His children are gauged on this pattern. To the penitent sinner Christ’s word was instant and final, “Thy faith hath saved thee.” To the disciples His message of cleansing was, “Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.” To the sick and suffering the decree always went forth, “Be thou clean,” “Receive thy sight,” “Be it unto thee even as thou wilt,” “Thy son liveth,” “According to thy faith be it unto thee.” To Abraham the promise that carried with it all the promises of the future was in the perfect tense, “I have made thee the father of many nations.” And the explanation given was that God, as the very principle of His government, “calleth those things which be not as though they were.” This very thing that so many shrink from is the very essence of all true faith, and the lack of it teaches the very line of demarcation between effectual faith and that which is only hope.

Shall we then, beloved, recognize the reasonableness of faith and rise to something higher than the mere reasonings of probability and the mere hope and encouragements to which men can rise without the need of God at all? Shall we count God’s Word more true than all our evidences and feelings, than all the endorsements of men, than all the actual evidences of its fulfillment, for even the latter may not be abiding, but “the word of God abideth forever,” and “one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”

Let us learn to be very deliberate in our prayers. Many persons pour out a reckless mass of ill-considered supplication very much as a boy blows his soap bubbles into the air, scarcely expecting ever to see them again. It is doubtful if such persons go through the mental effort of believing or attempting to believe that they shall surely receive one in ten of these petitions. Certainly, if they should receive them, it would take a very busy life to hold all the answers and turn them to practical account. The habit of asking indiscriminately wears out the very power of believing. It is a pity ever to ask anything from God which we have to abandon or confess to be of no significance. It is a very serious thing to take the name of our God in vain, and everything asked in His name without meaning or effect is of this character. Every time we find our prayers ineffectual we are weakened for our next attempt, and after a time, like iron heated and cooled successively, the temper of our faith is worn out and its very fiber disintegrated like the rusty metal. If we would ever learn the prayer of faith, we must learn to pray with thoughtful deliberation and carefully weigh our words before the Lord as He has weighed His promises, for “the words of the Lord are as silver tried in a furnace.” The secret of faith is always to endeavor to ascertain, before we ask, whether we are asking according to His will, and then to take the simple stand of John the beloved: “If we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him.”

Let us cultivate the habit of definitely believing when we have thus prayed. Let us commit the matter to God and recognize it henceforth as one of the things He has promised and passed, and a thing for which we cannot pray again in the sense of an unsettled question. Faith is a matter of definite will, to a certain extent at least. We must choose to believe and fix our will as the sailor sets his helm; then God will swell our sails and hold our helm for us in the attitude in which we set it. We cannot create the faith, but we can choose to believe, and God will sustain us in our choice and uphold us in our trust.

We must claim the faith of God, the Spirit of Jesus, the enabling of His trust, to sustain ours. We choose to believe, but He must enable us to claim even His own promises. This follows, of course, consistently with the whole doctrine of Christ’s indwelling life. We must trust Him for our faith as well as for our love and holiness, but in each case we must yield ourselves and choose to stand in the position assumed, and then throw ourselves upon Him to sustain us. This He will do, baptizing us with such a spirit of prayer and confidence that we shall be enabled to claim and humbly command the blessing which He has already decreed.

And then we must stand fast, and not be shaken by either delay or apparent denial, drawing comfort and encouragement even from His seeming refusals, until at last our Lord shall look upon us as He did the Syro-Phoenician woman, with admiring love, and say: “Great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.”

Beloved, let us realize that God is educating us for higher destinies, and placing upon us, day by day, heavier loads of discipline, that we may be thus trained for the mightier activities of faith, which, in the eternal world, we are to share with our enthroned Lord. Let us not stagger under these loads, but, like Abraham of old, be “strong in faith, giving glory to God; and being fully persuaded that, what he had promised, he was able also to perform,” and we shall find that “our light affliction, which is but for a moment,” has worked out for us “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”



Chapter 5 – Hindrances to Prayer

“That your prayers be not hindered.” (1 Peter 3:7).

THE GREATEST HINDRANCE TO THE LIFE OF PRAYER IS SIN. “The Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear: but your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, that he will not hear.” God would rather let Israel be defeated at Ai and go into captivity to Babylon, notwithstanding the prayers of Joshua in the one case, or even Noah, Daniel and Job, if they could have interceded, in the other, so long as the answering of these prayers would have countenanced the sin of His people. Yes, even that beautiful and consecrated temple must be consumed to ashes and the very name of Jehovah dishonored by His enemies, rather than sin in the slightest degree be sanctioned by a holy God.

“If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” Even the cherished purpose of sin will thus hinder our prayers. The Apostle John most clearly adds his testimony to this heart-searching truth when he tells us that, “If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. If our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.”

The old farmer, who tried to get peace at the altar by the prayers of the saints, was quite right when he told them one night that the Lord would never answer their prayers “so long as that ox was in the wrong stall.” He hurried away to return his neighbor’s property and came back the next night with shining face and light heart to testify to the blessing that came the moment he put the hindrance away.

God can hear the prayers of sinners, or else none of us could have access to the throne of grace, but this is a different matter from expecting Him to answer our prayers while we are deliberately committing sin without an honest purpose to abstain from it. This is the coolest insolence and presumption in the face of heaven. The sin may be confessed and put away, and the Lord will freely bless; but while we stand with evil conscience and wrong intent and expect God to countenance our disobedience and presumption, we can only accept the awful message which He gave to the leaders of Israel in the fourteenth chapter of Ezekiel; “Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their heart, and put the stumbling block of their iniquity before their face: should I be enquired of at all by them? Therefore speak unto them, and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord God; Every man of the house of Israel that setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to the prophet; I the Lord will answer him that cometh, according to the multitude of his idols. . . . For every one of the house of Israel, or of the stranger that sojourneth in Israel, which separateth himself from me, and setteth up his idols in his heart, and putteth the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and cometh to a prophet to enquire of him concerning me; I the Lord will answer him by myself: and I will set my face against that man, and will make him a sign and a proverb, and I will cut him off from the midst of my people; and ye shall know that I am the Lord.”

This will frequently be found to be the cause of long unanswered prayers and the failure of God’s people to enter into the fullness of the blessing they are seeking. God is searching their hearts and bringing to their remembrance long-forgotten sins with which He wants them to deal thoroughly. Hence, when we are at some secret crisis of life, seeking, perhaps, entire sanctification, the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the healing of some critical and alarming disease, the life of some precious friend, or deliverance in some great emergency, God searches the heart as with eyes of flame, and brings to our conscience things long buried in oblivion, and enables us to search and try our ways and lay open all our heart before Him. Then we may receive His blessing unhindered and unbounded and know the blessedness of the man “whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, . . . and in whose spirit there is no guile.”

Beloved, let us search and try our ways, and turn again unto the Lord. Let us be willing to say, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my ways, and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” Let us bring every Achan to the light and to the sentence of death, and we shall find that even sin cannot hinder our prayers nor our perfect blessing if it is truly put away, but the valley of Achor will become the very door of hope, and the place of forgiven sin and self-crucifixion will be marked as the starting point of a new and higher life of usefulness.

ANOTHER HINDRANCE TO PRAYER IS SELFISHNESS AND EARTHLY DESIRE. “Ye ask, and receive not,” says the Apostle James, “because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.”God cannot give us all the things that our carnal nature clamors for any more than we would give our child the gleaming razor for which its little hands reach out in such eager desire. They would often be more hurtful to us than the keen edge of the steel to the thoughtless child. Many a good thing may be desired from an earthly and selfish motive and in a carnal spirit. Many a person seeks forgiveness to escape the remorse of a guilty conscience and that he may be at ease to go on again in a life of godless selfishness. Most people, who have no true sense of honor, are quite willing to be accepted as candidates for heaven if God will let them enjoy the pleasures of the world on their way. Prayer for healing may be simply the expression of the desire to get free from pain and be able to enjoy the pleasures of life. Even Simon Magus wanted the power of the Holy Spirit from a thoroughly base and unholy motive. Things that God in other circumstances would be quite willing to give us, He has often to refuse us as they would really separate us from Him. At a later period of our lives we find Him able and willing to give us the same things without reserve, because, in the meanwhile, we have been able to lay them all on His altar, to be used to His glory and in union with Himself.

Therefore, the Lord’s Prayer, as we have already seen, begins with the prostration of our whole being at the feet of God and the threefold consecrating prayer, “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done.” We cannot be trusted to ask anything for ourselves until our spirit is thus consecrated to God.

This is the meaning of that profound promise in the thirty-seventh Psalm, “Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.” The heart that has found its joy in God cannot desire anything that God cannot grant. He gives it first its desires and then their fulfillment.

Beloved, have not many of your unanswered prayers been thoroughly selfish ones? Have not your very longings for your own spiritual good been prompted either by a slavish fear or a narrow self-love? Have not your prayers for the salvation of your children and friends been as selfish as your desire to see them well settled in life, and perhaps you have never once offered a petition for anyone else’s child or made an effort to bring them to Christ? It is all right that we should seek these blessings for ourselves and for our own, but if it be a true spirit of prayer and union with God, there will be something higher than mere selfish or human love or desire.

AN INSUPERABLE BARRIER TO UNANSWERED PRAYER IS THE SPIRIT OF STRIFE AND BITTERNESS. “When ye stand praying,” our Savior said to His disciples, “forgive, if ye have ought against any.” “Let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbor,” is the message of the prophet Zechariah to the people of the Restoration, as he teaches them the secret of God’s blessing in their critical trials. Job had to pray for his very enemies and banish from his heart every particle of bitter feeling toward the men who had tormented him through months of sickness with their ignorance, misconstruction, and offensive interference, before God turned his captivity and restored him to more than his former blessings. One reason why the disciples could not claim the casting out of the demon from the suffering child was that they had disputed by the way which should be the greatest. The spirit of cherished animosity, lurking prejudice, sullen vindictiveness, or cold disdain will as effectively obstruct our intercourse and intimacy with heaven as a speck upon the crystalline lens of the eye will obstruct our vision, or the crossing of the wires of the electric machinery of a building will leave us in darkness.

There are a great many crossed wires in the church of Christ, and the consequence is dark hearts and mournful cries, “Hath God forgotten to be gracious?” “How long, O Lord, wilt thou not hear my prayer?” Just this long, brother, “If thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought 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.”

The spirit of prayer is essentially a spirit of love. Frequently when we are at some crisis of prayer and very much is hanging upon God’s answer, perhaps life itself, or something more precious than life, we shall find ourselves confronted with just such a test as this. Someone will be thrown across our path where all the strength of the natural heart, with its dislikes, prejudices, and self-wills, will be laid hold of by the enemy to hinder our victory. Oh, let us remember at such an hour that we cannot hurt another by our irritation or retaliation, but we can deeply wound ourselves and hinder the blessing of our God! In the presence of Infinite Love, no breath of hate can live one moment. The simple lines of the old English poet are sweetly true,

He prayeth best who loveth best,
All things both great or small,
For the great God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.

It is especially with respect to this matter of love that the Apostle John speaks of our heart condemning us in prayer, and above all other things it is perhaps that which we are most likely to over-look and God is least likely to pass by. “The greatest thing in the world,” as Professor Drummond so happily styles it, “is love, and it is the one business of life to learn it.”

Beloved, is this hindering your prayers? Can you think this moment of some brother or sister from whom you are wrongly estranged; some person whom you treat with studied harshness, neglect, perhaps disdain, or possibly with injury and injustice; some word that you have spoken against your brother, and which you should not have spoken even if true; some word to which you have listened against your brother, and never should have heard except in his presence; some cherished suspicion, criticism, or judgment where you have no business even to think evil? May God help you to see the way to discover some cause of unanswered prayer!

THE HABIT OF DOUBT IS A HINDRANCE TO PRAYER. “He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.” This is strong language, but there is no doubt that the sin of unbelief, according to the divine standpoint, is the most hurtful of all spiritual conditions. It destroys the very contact of the soul with God as effectually as the cutting of a telegraph wire would prevent the transmission of a message. We have already seen that the word ‘receive’ in this passage of James means take, and that it denotes, not so much God’s anger with the unbelief, for He does “give liberally and upbraideth not,” but it refers to the inability of the man to take what God gives. His doubt shuts up his whole spiritual sensibilities and capacities and renders him incapable of absorbing and appropriating the blessing which is offered him at the time. God holds us responsible for our doubt but does not require us to produce, by our own will, the faith which brings us into contact with His love and blessing, for this is His impartation; but He does require us to prevent it from running out, as from leaking vessels, through all the openings of our miserable doubts. There is one thing that we can all do – we can refuse to doubt; we can refuse to entertain the questioning and fear, the morbid apprehension and subtle Satanic insinuation; and if we do this, God will do the rest and enable us to stand fast in faith, and press forward to the fullness of His blessing.

This is where the enemy concentrates his strongest attacks, waiting when the hour of trial comes and our prayer seems to be refused and delayed, and hurling all his shafts of fire and evil suggestion into our trembling hearts to try to drive us from our confidence and get us to betray our own cause by consenting to his wicked questionings. Therefore Christ has said, “Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, . . . he shall have whatsoever he saith.” So “Abraham staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief; but was strong in faith, giving glory to God.” So we are to hold fast the faith we have professed without wavering, for, “He is faithful that promised.” “Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.”God waits to give His blessing to the soldiers who stand their ground, and who, when the blessing comes, are there to claim it.

But perhaps you say, “I have already doubted, and forfeited my blessing. Is it then too late to receive the answer?” No, not if you will repent of your doubt as you would of any other sin, and immediately bring forth fruits meet for repentance by refusing from henceforth and forevermore to be betrayed into the same sin. Often we shall find that such a fall becomes the occasion of thoroughly convincing us of the sin of doubting and curing us of it forever.

Beloved, have you been trifling with God in this matter of prayer and defrauding yourself of the blessings for which you have already suffered so much? May the Lord set your face this day like a flint, and fix your feet on the rock and stay your soul upon God!

OUR PRAYERS WILL BE HINDERED IF WE STAND ON FORBIDDEN GROUND, OR IN ANYTHING HOLD BACK FROM THE MASTER’S WILL. It is not necessary that there should be willful sin or actual vice and transgression of moral law. It may simply be disobedience to the Spirit’s voice in some definite leading to service or testimony. We have known many instances of persons who did not receive the full answers to their prayers for the baptism of the Holy Spirit until they had definitely obeyed the voice of God in some particular where they had been shrinking or hesitating. We have known many sad cases of persons who have failed to receive the answer to their prayer for healing because they were standing in some forbidden place, holding back their testimony for God, from timidity or the fear of man, or failing to take some step of faith to which the Holy Spirit was calling; and it was not until after months or even years of striving with God and bitter sorrow that they learned the lesson, and in prompt and thorough obedience received perfect deliverance and wondrous blessing.

The Bible has some very solemn instances of good men standing on forbidden ground and finding their power and defense departing from them. The mighty Samson lost all his hold upon God the moment he left his place of separation. Abraham had no power while in a compromising attitude in Egypt. Jacob had no vision of God during the years of his wandering. And even the good Josiah lost his heavenly protection and sacrificed his precious life because he stepped beyond the divine will and went unbidden against Pharaoh Necho, king of Egypt, who warned him of his fate if he persisted in his rash presumption. There is not one of us who stands on consecrated ground but would probably lose even life itself if we persisted in disobeying the distinct call of God to special service or pressing forward where He had said “No.”

It is a very solemn thing for those who are walking in the Spirit to trifle with His voice or be disobedient to His least command. Such disobedience may interrupt all intercourse and hinder all prayer.

BUT AGAIN, FORBIDDEN MEANS MAY AS EFFECTUALLY INTERRUPT OUR FATHER’S BLESSING. It is possible to ask God’s help in a proper manner and spirit, and then immediately go to work to help Him to fulfill our prayer in an unlawful manner. No doubt Jacob sincerely asked God for the coveted blessing, but he proceeded afterwards to take the most unworthy means to accomplish his purpose, and involved himself in years of waiting and sorrow. No doubt Moses sincerely asked God to deliver Israel by His hand when forty years of age, but he proceeded in the most rash and improper manner to accomplish his patriotic desire by slaying an Egyptian, and involving himself in crime and peril from the hand of the king. Doubtless, Abraham thought that his compromise about Hagar was going to assist God in fulfilling His own promise of a son, but he only silenced the heavenly voice for many years and brought upon himself domestic strife and trouble, hindering the object he had at heart. No doubt Saul of Tarsus sincerely prayed for salvation for many a year, but he sought it by his own righteousness and missed his aim by not submitting himself to the righteousness of God, and his whole race today are praying in vain for mercy, which they reject by rejecting God’s only appointed way.

Many a soul prays for sanctification but fails to enter into the blessing because he does not intelligently understand and believingly accept God’s appointed means by Jesus Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit. Many a prayer for the salvation of others is hindered because the very friend who prays for his friend takes the wrong course to bring about the answer and resorts to means which are wholly fitted to defeat his worthy object. We know many a wife who is pleading for her husband’s soul and hoping to win him by avoiding anything that may offend him, yielding to all his worldly tastes in the vain hope of attracting him to Christ. Far more effective would be an attitude of fidelity to God and fearless testimony to Him, such as God could bless. Many a church asks the Lord for His blessing, and then goes to work to defeat it by methods of worldly conformity which God never can countenance. Many a congregation wonders why it is so poor and struggling and its prayer for financial resources never answered, and yet it may be found that its financial methods are wholly unscriptural and often unworthy of ordinary self-respect, and such as a decent worldly institution would not stoop to depend upon. When we ask God for any blessing, we must allow Him to direct the steps which are to bring the answer. God will give His power to every heart that will let Him hold the reins. Many an invalid is praying for healing and yet directly neglecting God’s very prescription for disease and resorting to means which He has not countenanced, and which probably He would utterly forbid, especially to one who claimed to be in the attitude of simple faith. God’s answer must be brought by His own messengers, and the steps which we take in bringing about the answer must be based on His absolute direction.

Take, for example, the course of David the second time the Philistines invaded his realm after his coronation. Suppose David had done just what he had done before and marched directly against them and then asked God to bless him. He would have been defeated, for this time the command was entirely different from the previous occasion. “Thou shalt not go up; but fetch a compass behind them,” that is, take a circuitous course, march away from them first, then around by a flank movement, “and come upon them over against the mulberry trees. And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt bestir thyself: for then shall the Lord go out before thee, to smite the host of the Philistines.”Here we see that the answer was dependent on explicit obedience to the Lord’s directions.

Is this not the reason, beloved, of many of our unanswered prayers? Have we waited for our Master’s orders and sought the answer in the direction that He bade? Oh, how solemn are the words of the prophet Zechariah respecting one of God’s most precious promises, “This shall come to pass if ye diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God.” And that is but the echo of God’s word concerning Abraham, “I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.”

PERHAPS THE GREATEST HINDRANCE TO EFFECTUAL PRAYER, AND NO DOUBT TO THE LIFE OF PRAYER, IS IGNORANCE RESPECTING THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE INTERIOR LIFE. With so many, prayer is the hasty utterance of the mere natural heart. It is little more than the cry of a suffering brute or the wail of an almost unconscious babe. True, God hears the faithless cry of human misery, but this is not prayer. The voice which always reaches the Father’s ear is the voice of a trusting child and the Holy Spirit breathing in the heart of that child. True prayer should be His prompting, and it is because most persons know Him so little, and walk with Him at such a distance, that they are comparative strangers to the language of heavenly communion.

The life of prayer is an interior life, a spiritual life, and many persons do not know this, and do not want it. It holds too constant a check upon the heart, it requires too utterly that we should walk softly with our God. Most persons like to be their own masters, and the habit of walking step by step with God and submitting every thought and desire to an inward Monitor is intolerable to their imperious self-will, or at least unfamiliar to their experience.

But this is truly the very element of the life of prayer. It is an interior life. Its home is “the secret place of the most High,” and its dwelling, “the shadow of the Almighty.” It is the intercourse of an inseparable divine companionship. It is Enoch walking with God. It is Elisha clinging to his master and saying, “As the Lord liveth and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.” It is the very breathing of the inner man, and is as necessary and unintermittent as the pulsation of a human heart and the respiration of a human bosom.

Beloved, is not this the difficulty, after all, about your prayers? Are they not the spasmodic cries of great emergencies rather than the habitual intercourse of a heavenly life? If you were accustomed to walk ever by His side, you would not get so far that you need to call so loudly and so long in the hour of extremity. It is the habit of constant prayer that prepares us for the great conflicts of prayer, and he, who in this neglects the moment, will find himself unprepared for the emergencies. God is calling you to a closer walk with Him, to open your heart for His continual abiding, and to receive into your breast the Spirit of grace and supplications to become to you the Mighty Advocate who shall inspire all your petitions and bear them on the strong wings of His love and power to the Advocate on high, through Whom you shall receive the answer of that Father who ever answers the prayer which He inspires.

We sometimes see it advertised by our great financial houses that they have a private wire with all the great centers of trade. He who possesses in his heart the Holy Ghost has a private wire to the Throne, and at any moment can open and maintain direct communication with heaven and bring all its legions, if need be, to His immediate aid. O beloved, surely it is worth your while to yield yourself to a consecrated life and to allow your loving Lord to make your heart His temple and His throne, where prayer shall ever be the familiar and unbroken intercourse of a happy child with the Father Who is ever at hand.

Oh, how happy they, who are thus within continual reach of the supply of every need and the balm for every wound! Sorrow may overshadow, Satan may assail, difficulty may encompass on every side, but, through prayer, relief is always new and the victorious spirit returns fresh from every conflict with a strength, which, Phoenix-like, rises from its own ashes and grows, with each renewing, in freshness and gladness.

A South American traveler tells of a curious conflict which he once witnessed between a little quadruped and a terrific and poisonous snake of great size. The little creature seemed no match for its antagonist that threatened to destroy it and its helpless brood by a blow, but it fearlessly faced its mighty enemy and rushing in its face struck him with a succession of fierce and telling blows, but received at the onset a deep and apparently fatal wound from his poisonous fangs, which flashed for a moment with an angry fire, and then fastened themselves deep into the flesh of the daring little assailant. For a moment it seemed as if all was over, but the wise little creature immediately retired into the forest and hastening to the plantain tree eagerly devoured a portion of its leaves, and immediately came back, apparently fresh and restored, to renew the fray with fresh vigor and determination. Again and again this strange spectacle was repeated; the serpent ferociously attacked, greatly exhausted, and again and again wounded its antagonist to death, as it seemed, but the little creature successively repaired to its simple prescription and returned to renewed victory, until, in the course of an hour or two, the battle was over, the mammoth reptile lay still and dead, and the little victor was unharmed in the midst of the nest and the helpless little ones, who had been thus saved from destruction.

How often we are wounded by the dragon’s sting, wounded it would seem to death; and if we had to go through some long ceremony to reach the source of life, we must faint and die! But, blessed be His Name! there is ever, for us, a Plant of healing as near at hand as that which the forest holds in its shade, to which we may continually repair and come back refreshed, invigorated, transfigured, like Him, Who, as He prayed on the mount, shone with the brightness of celestial light; and as He prayed in the garden, arose triumphant over the fear of death, and strengthened from on high to accomplish the mighty battle of our redemption.

Oh, the victories of prayer! They are the mountain tops of the Bible. They take us back to the plains of Mamre, to the fords of Peniel, to the prison of Joseph, to the triumphs of Moses, to the victories of Joshua, to the deliverances of David, to the miracles of Elijah and Elisha, to the whole story of the Master’s life, to the secret of Pentecost, to the keynote of Paul’s unparalleled ministry, to the lives of saints and the deaths of martyrs, to all that is most sacred and sweet in the history of the Church and the experience of the children of God. And when, for us, the last conflict shall have passed, and the footstool of prayer shall have given place to the harp of praise, the scenes of time that shall be gilded with eternal radiance shall be those often linked with deepest sorrow and darkest night, over which we have written the inscription, “JEHOVAH-SHAMMA: the Lord was there!” Only that which God touched shall be remembered or worth remembering forever. These are imperishable memorials. Oh, that henceforth they may cover every pathway and every step of life’s journey, and that we may recognize whatever comes as but another call to prayer and another opportunity for God to manifest His glory and erect the everlasting memorial of His victorious love!



Chapter 1 – Wholly Sanctified

“And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calls you who also will do it” (1 Thess. 5:23, 24).

The prominence given to the subject of Christian life and holiness is one of the signs of our times and of the coming of the Lord Jesus. No thoughtful person can have failed to observe the turning of the attention of Christians to this subject within the past quarter of a century and along with the revival of the doctrine of the Lord’s personal and pre-millennial coming. The very opposition which these two subjects have received and the deep prejudice with which they are frequently met emphasize more fully the force with which they are impressing themselves on the mind of our generation and the heart of the Church of God. The only way we can often know the direction of the weather-vane is by the force of the wind, and the stronger the wind blows against it, the more steadily does it point in the true direction. And so the very gales of controversy but indicate the more forcibly the intense interest with which the hearts of God’s people are reaching out for a higher and deeper life in Him, and are somehow feeling the approach of a crisis in the age in which we live.

These two truths are linked closely together in the passage above. The former is the preparation for the latter, and the latter the complement of the former. Let us turn our attention, in prayerful dependence upon God and careful discrimination, to the explicit teachings of this passage respecting the scriptural doctrine of sanctification; and may the Holy Spirit so lead us and sanctify us both in our thoughts and spirits that we will see light in His light clearly, and our prejudices will melt away before the exceeding grace of Christ and the heavenly beauty of holiness.

I. THE AUTHOR OF SANCTIFICATION, “THE VERY GOD OF PEACE.”

1. This name implies that it is useless to look for sanctification until we have become reconciled to God and learned to know Him as the God of Peace. Justification, and a justification so thoroughly accepted as to banish all doubt and fear and make God to us “the very God of peace,”is indispensable to any real or abiding experience of sanctification.

Beloved, is this perhaps the secret cause of your failure in reaching the higher experience for which you long? “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Are there loose stones and radical difficulties in the superstructure of your spiritual life, and is it necessary for you to lay again the solid foundations of faith in the simple Word of Christ and the finished work of redemption? Then do so at once. Accept without feeling, without question, in full assurance of faith, the simple promises, “He that believes on the Son has everlasting life,” “Him that comes to me I will in no wise cast out,” and then take your stand on the Rock of Ages and begin to build the temple of holiness.

2. The expression “the very God of peace” further suggests that sanctification is the pathway to a deeper peace, even the “peace of God which passes all understanding.” Justification brings us peace with God, sanctification the peace of God. The cause of all our unrest is sin. “The wicked are like the troubled sea which cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, says my God, to the wicked.” But on the other hand, “Great peace have they that love Your law and nothing will offend them.” So we find God grieving His people’s disobedience and saying, “Oh, that you had heeded my commandments, then your peace would have been as a river and your righteousness as the waves of the sea.” Sanctification brings the soul into harmony with God and the laws of its own being, and there must be peace, and there can be in no other way. Furthermore, sanctification brings into the spirit the abiding presence of the very God of peace Himself and its peace is then nothing less than the deep, divine tranquillity of His own eternal calm.

3. But the deeper meaning of the passage is that sanctification is the work of God Himself. The literal translation of this phrase would be “the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly.” It expresses in the most emphatic way His own direct personality as the Author of our sanctification. It is not the work of man nor means, nor of our own struggling, but His own prerogative. It is the gift of the Holy Ghost, the fruit of the Spirit, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the prepared inheritance of all who will enter in, the great obtainment of faith, not the attainment of works. It is divine holiness, not human self-improvement or perfection. It is the inflow into man’s being of the life and purity of the infinite, eternal and Holy One, bringing His own perfection and infusing in us His own will. How easy, how spontaneous, how delightful this heavenly way of holiness! Surely it is a “highway” and not the low way of man’s vain and fruitless mortification. It is God’s great Elevated Railway, sweeping over the heads of the struggling throngs who toil along the lower pavement when they might be borne along on His Ascension pathway, by His own Almighty impulse. It is God’s great Elevator, carrying us up to the higher chambers of His palace without our laborious efforts, while others struggle up the winding stairs and faint by the way. It is God’s great tidal wave bearing up the stranded ship until she floats above the bar without straining timbers or struggling seamen, instead of the ineffectual and toilsome efforts of the struggling crew and the strain of the engines, which had tried in vain to move her an inch until that heavenly impulse lifted her by its own attraction. It is God’s great law of gravitation lifting up, by the warm sunbeams, the mighty iceberg which a million men could not raise a single inch, but which melts away before the warmth of the sunshine and rises in clouds of evaporation to meet its embrace until that cold and heavy mass is floating in fleecy clouds of glory in the blue ocean of the sky. How easy all this! How mighty! How simple! How divine! Beloved, have you come into the divine way of holiness? If you have, how your heart must swell with gratitude as it echoes the truths of the words you have just read! If you have not, do you not long for it and will you not now unite in the prayer of our text that the very God of peace will sanctify you wholly?

II. THE NATURE OF SANCTIFICATION.

What does this term “sanctify” mean? Is there any better way of ascertaining than tracing its scriptural usage? We find it employed in three distinct and most impressive senses in the Old Testament.

1. It means to separate. This idea can be traced all through its use in connection with the ceremonial ordinances. The idea of separation is first suggested in the account of creation in the first chapter of Genesis, and there, probably, we see the essential figure of sanctification. God’s first work in bringing order, law, and light out of chaos was to separate, to put an expanse or gulf between the two worlds of darkness and light, of earth and heaven. He did not annihilate the darkness, but He separated it from the light, He separated the land from the water, He separated the waters of the sea from the vapors of the sky.

And so we see Him in the spiritual realm immediately afterwards, separating His people. He separated the family of Seth from the worldly race of Cain. He separated Noah and his family from the ungodly world. He separated Abraham and his seed from an idolatrous family. He separated Israel from Egypt and the surrounding nations. The very meaning of the word “church” is “called out” or “separated,” and to each individual the same call comes still, “Separate yourselves,” “Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing: and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you and you will be my sons and daughters.” “Having, therefore, these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord.”

Sanctification then means our voluntary separation from evil. It is not the extinction of evil, it is the putting off, the laying aside of evil, the detaching of ourselves from it and placing an impassable gulf between. We are to separate ourselves not only from our past sins but from our sin, as a principle of life. We are not to try to improve and gradually ameliorate our unholy condition, but we are to put off the old life, to act as if it were no longer ourselves, and separate from our sinful self as the wife is divorced from her husband, and as the soul is separated from the body by the death of the body. These are, indeed, the two figures used by the Apostle in describing this separation in Romans. We are to reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin just as much as though we were no longer the same person, and the old heart was no longer that true self.

And so with respect to every manifestation of evil, whether from within or from without, to every suggestion and temptation, to every impulse that is not of God, we are to refuse it, to be in the attitude of negation and resistance, our whole being saying “no.” We have not to annihilate the evil or to resist it in our own strength but simply by a definite act of will to separate ourselves from it, to hand it over to God and renounce it utterly, to give Him the absolute right to deal with it and destroy it; and when we do so, God always follows our committal with His almighty power and puts a gulf as deep as the bottomless grave of Christ and a wall as high as the foundations of the New Jerusalem between us and the evil we renounce. We separate ourselves, and God makes the separation good. This is the first decisive step in sanctification, an act of will by which we renounce evil in every form in which it is made manifest to our consciences and brought into the light, and not only evil in its manifestations but the whole evil self and sinful nature from which each separate act has sprung.

And we separate ourselves also from the world and its embodiment of the old natural condition of things and the kingdom of the prince of evil. We recognize ourselves as not of the world even as He was not of the world. We put off, not merely that which is sinful, but that which is merely natural and human so that it may die on the cross of Jesus and rise into a supernatural and divine life; for “if any man be in Christ Jesus he is a new creation, old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new.” And so the Holy Spirit leads us to a deeper separation, not only from the evil but from the earthly, lifting us into a supernatural life in all respects, and preparing us, even here, for that great transformation in which this corruptible will put on incorruption and this mortal immortality, for as the first man was of the earth, earthy, even before he fell, so will he give place to the second man who was made a living spirit and who has lifted us up into His own likeness.

What then, beloved, is the practical force of this thought? It is simply this, that, as God shows you your old sinful self and every evil working of your own fallen nature, you are definitely to hand it over to Him, with the full consent of your will, so that He will separate it from you and deliver you wholly from its power, and then you are to reckon it in His hands and no longer having control over you, or, indeed, in any sense to belong to you. And as He leads you further on to see things that might not be called sinful and yet are not incorporated into His life and will, that from these, also, you separate yourself and surrender them to Him, that He may put to death all that is apart from Himself and raise up in a new and resurrection life our entire being. You will thus see you are delivered from the death struggle with evil and the irrepressible conflict with self, your part being simply to hand Agag over with your own hands for execution, and gladly consent that the Lord should slay him utterly and blot out the remembrance of Amalek forever. Beloved, have you thus separated yourself for God to sanctify? Yours must be the surrender. God will not put His hand on the evil until you authorize Him with your glad consent. Like Joab’s army of old, He encamps before your city and sends you the message that Sheba must die or the city perish, but your own hands must deliver him over. Have you done so or will you do so? Will you not now with glad consent lay your hand upon the blessed Sin-Offering’s head, and transfer your sinful heart, and the dearest idol it has known, to Him “who was made sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him”?

2. Sanctification means dedication. It is not only to separate from but to separate to. The radical idea of the word is, set apart to be the property of another. And so the complement of this act which we have already partly described is this positive side in which we offer ourselves to God for His absolute ownership, that He may possess us as His peculiar property, prepare us for His purpose and work out in us all His holy and perfect will. This is the meaning of the appeal made by Paul in the 12th chapter of Romans, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service.” This is the meaning of those oft-repeated expressions where we are spoken of as God’s peculiar people, which literally means, a people for a possession. This is the very ground on which the Scriptures appeal to us to walk in holiness, because we are not our own; we are bought with a price and should glorify God in our bodies which are God’s. It is true that God has bought us, but here again His infinite condescension refuses to compel our surrender, and will accept nothing but a voluntary gift. So, gladly constrained by love, we feel it a privilege to belong to Him and have Him stoop to take us in our worthlessness and be responsible for all the risks of our momentous existence.

This is what the term consecration properly means. It is the voluntary surrender or self-offering of the heart, by the constraint of love to be the Lord’s. Its glad expression is, “I am my Beloved’s.” It must spring, of course, from faith. There must be the full confidence that we are safe in this abandonment, that we are not falling over a precipice or surrendering ourselves to the hands of a judge, but that we are sinking into a Father’s arms and stepping into an infinite inheritance.

Oh, it is an infinite privilege to be permitted thus to give ourselves up to One who pledges Himself to make us all that we would love to be; moreover, all that His infinite wisdom, power and love will delight to accomplish in us. It is the clay yielding itself to the potter’s hands that it may be shaped into a vessel of honor, and suited for the Master’s use. It is the poor street orphan consenting to become the child of a prince that he may be educated and provided for, that he may be prepared to inherit all the wealth of his guardian. How ashamed we may well feel that we ever hesitated to make such a surrender, or that we ever qualified it with any condition but His good and perfect will! Beloved, have you made this full surrender? If so, how gladly your whole being says “Amen” to all that we have said to the blessedness of being only the Lord’s! If not, let it be done this moment and at His feet of love flatten yourself as a whole burnt offering and cry,

“Take my poor heart and let it be,
Forever closed to all but Thee;
Seal Thou my breast, and let me wear
Thy pledge of love forever there.”

3. Sanctification means filling. The literal translation of the old Hebrew word to consecrate is “to fill the hand.” It suggests the deepest truth in connection with sanctification, namely, that Christ Himself must be the substance and supply of our new spiritual life and fills us with His own Spirit and holiness. After the most sincere consecration, we are but an empty possibility which He must make real. Even our consecration itself must look to Him for grace to make it faultless and acceptable. Even our will must be purified and kept single and supremely fixed on Him, by His continual grace. Our purity must be the imparting of His life; our peace, His peace within us; our love, the love of God shed abroad in our hearts. Our very faith, which receives all His grace, must be continually supplied from His own Spirit. We bring to Him but an empty hand, clean and open, and He fills it. We are but a capacity and He is the supply. We give ourselves to Him fully, understanding that we do not pledge the strength or goodness required to meet our consecration, but that we take Him for all, and He takes us, fully recognizing the responsibility which He assumes to make us all that He requires and keep us in all His perfect will as we let Him through the habit of a full surrender. What an exquisite rest this gives to the trusting heart and what an infinite grace on His part to meet us on such terms and bear for us so vast a responsibility!

In the upper portion of our metropolis many of our citizens may often have noticed, especially in the past years, a great number of miserable shanties, standing on the choicest sites, perhaps on the corner of a splendid new avenue, looking out on a magnificent prospect, but the house was utterly unworthy of the site. Suppose that a millionaire should want to purchase this site, and that the owner should begin, before giving possession, to repair the old shanty for the new owner, putting fresh thatch on the miserable roof and a new coat of whitewash on the dirty walls. How the purchaser would laugh at him and say, “My friend, I do not want your miserable old wreck of a tenement fixed up like this. At the best it will only be a shanty when you have done all you can to it and I will never live in it. All I want is the ground, the site, and when I get it I will raze the old heap of rubbish to the foundations, and dig deep down to the solid rock before I build my splendid mansion. I will then build from the base my own new house according to my own magnificent plan. I do not want a fragment of your house, all that I require is the site.”

This is exactly what God wants of us and waits to do in us. Each of us has a splendid site for a heavenly temple. It looks out upon eternity and commands a view of all that is glorious in the possibilities of existence, but the house that is built upon it now is a worthless wreck, it is past improving. Our patching and repairing is worse than waste, and what God wants of us is simply that we give Him the possibilities of our life and let Him build upon them His own structure, that temple of holiness which he will make His own abode and which He will let us dwell in with Him as His happy guests in the house of the Lord forever. From the very foundations, the work must all be new and divine. He is the Author and Finisher of our faith, and the true attitude of the consecrated heart is that of a constant yielding and constant receiving. This last view of sanctification gives boundless scope to our spiritual progress. It is here that the gradual phase of sanctification comes in. Commencing with a complete separation from evil and dedication to God, it now advances into all the fulness of Christ, and grows up to the measure of the stature of perfect manhood in Him, until every part of our being and every part of our life is filled with God and becomes a channel to receive, and a medium to reflect His grace and glory.

Beloved, have we learned this blessed significance of sanctification and taken God Himself as the fulness of our emptiness and fountain of our spiritual life? Then, indeed, have we entered upon an everlasting expansion and ascension, and forever more these blessed words will deepen and broaden in their boundless meaning:

“Thou of life the Fountain art,
Ever let me take of Thee;
Spring Thou up within my heart,
Rise to all eternity.”



Chapter 2 – A Sanctified Spirit

Having seen the source and meaning of sanctification, let us next trace its sphere and extent. “I pray God to sanctify you through and through” is the meaning of this verse. And then Paul specifies the threefold division of our human nature, the spirit, the soul, and the body as respectively the subjects of this work of grace. The Divine Trinity has its counterpart in human nature, at least in some feeble measure. Man has been called a trichotomy or a triplex nature, and there seems good ground to claim that this division is recognized in the Scriptures. In the original account of man’s creation the body is first distinctly mentioned — “the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground.” Then we have the soul and spirit clearly distinguished in the words which follow, “God breathed into man the breath of life and man became a living soul.” We have first the breath of spirit of the Almighty imparted into man’s higher being and then the physical principle constituting him a living soul.

Again in the account of our Lord’s childhood we have the same division. “The child grew,” His physical life; “waxed strong in spirit,” His spiritual; “filled with wisdom,” His intellectual or soul life. Again in 1 Cor. 2, the apostle Paul very clearly distinguishes between the soul and the spirit in man. The psychical man, that is, the soul-man, he tells us, “does not receive the things of the Spirit of God neither can he know them for they are spiritually discerned, but he that is spiritual discerns all things.” The psychical man, therefore, is the man of the soul, the spiritual man is the man of quickened spirit. It will be noticed that in this passage he begins with the spirit and gradually descends to the soul and body as the subjects of sanctification. This is quite instructive and significant.

The other day in speaking to our builders, they remarked, “We always work from the top story downward and end with the basement, and so we never go back over our finished work, or need to soil the floors that have been cleansed and completed.” And so in God’s great house, He works from the top downward. So it is in the growth of the tree. Let it add a thousand layers, you will find that not one is laid on from the outside but each of them has a separate growth from the innermost pith of the tree. The tree’s life is from within, outward. So in the tabernacle, the great symbol of spiritual truth, in the account given us in the book of Exodus, we find Jehovah beginning in the Holy of Holies in the Ark of the Covenant, and traveling outward until He has traversed the sanctuary with all its sacred vessels, and reached the external court, with its laver and altar of sacrifice.

Beautiful type of the work of sanctifying grace; the holy Shekinah of the divine spirit and the indwelling Christ in the innermost chamber of the spirit, and spreading their heavenly life and influence abroad through every part until they penetrate every faculty of the soul and every organ of the physical being with their transforming and consecrating power.

I .WHAT IS THE SPIRIT?

In a word it may be said that the spirit is the divine element in man, or perhaps more correctly, that which is cognizant of God. It is not the intellectual or mental or aesthetic or sensational part of man but the spiritual, the higher nature, that which recognizes and communicates with the heavenly and divine.

1. It is that in us which knows God, which directly and immediately is conscious of the divine presence and can hold fellowship with Him, hearing His voice, seeing His glory, receiving intuitively the impression of His touch and the conviction of His will, understanding and worshiping His character and attributes, speaking to Him in the spirit and language of prayer and praise and heavenly communion. It is, also, directly conscious of the other world of evil spirits, and knows the touch of the enemy as well as the voice of the Shepherd.

2. The spirit is that which recognizes the difference between right and wrong, which loves the right and thinks, discerns, chooses in harmony with righteousness. It is the moral element in human nature. It is the region in which conscience speaks and reigns. It is the seat of righteousness and purity and sanctity, it is that which resembles God, the new man created in righteousness and true holiness after His image. Every one must be conscious of such an element in his being and feel that it is essentially different from the mere faculties of the understanding or the feelings of the heart.

3. The spirit is that which chooses, purposes, determines and thus practically decides the whole question of our action and obedience. In short, it is the region of the will, that mightiest impulse of human nature, that almost divine prerogative which God has shared with man, His child, that very helm of life on whose decision hang the whole issues of character and destiny. What a momentous force it is, and how essential that it be wholly sanctified! As it is, or is not, sanctified, the life is one of obedience or disobedience, and when the will is right, and the choice is fixed, and the eye is single, God recognizes the heart as true and pure, “If there be a willing mind it is accepted according to what a man has and not according to what he has not.”

4. The spirit is that which trusts. Confidence is one of its attributes and exercises. It is the filial quality in the child of God which looks in the Father’s face without a cloud, which lies upon His bosom without a fear and puts its hand in His with the abandonment of childlike simplicity.

5. The spirit is that which loves God. It is not now the human emotional love of which we speak, for that belongs to the lower nature of the soul and may be most fully developed in one whose spirit is still dead to God in trespasses and sins; but it is that divine love which is the direct gift of the Holy Spirit and the true spring of all holiness and obedience. It is nothing less than the love of God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit, and its appropriate sphere is the human heart.

6. The spirit is that which glorifies God, which makes His will and honor its supreme aim and loses itself in His glory. The very conception of such an aim is foreign to the human mind and can be only received by a spirit which has been born again and created in the divine image.

7. The spirit is that which enjoys God, which hungers for His presence and fellowship and finds its nourishment, its portion, its satisfaction, its inheritance in Himself as its all and in all.

This wonderful element of our human nature is subject to all the sensibilities and susceptibilities which we find in a coarser form in our physical life. There are spiritual senses and organs just as real and intense as those of our physical frame. We find them distinctly recognized in the Scriptures. There is the sense of spiritual hearing, “He that has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches,” “Blessed are your ears, for they hear,” “My sheep hear my voice and they follow me.” There is the sense of vision, “Your eyes will see the King in his beauty and the land that is very far off,” “Looking unto Jesus,” “Beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord,” “Having eyes they see not,” “He has sent me to open the blind eyes and turn them from darkness unto light and from the power of Satan unto God.” There is the sense of spiritual touch, “That I may apprehend, (or, grasp with my hand) that for which I am apprehended of Christ Jesus,” “Who touched me,” “As many as touched him were made perfectly whole.”

There is the sense of taste, “He that feeds on me will live by me,” “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good,” “He that comes to me will never hunger, and he that believes on me will never thirst.” There is the sense of smell. Very definitely is it referred to in the 11th of Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon him and will make him of quick smell in the fear of the Lord.” The spirit is a real subsistence, and when separated from the body after death it will have the same consciousness as when in life, and perhaps intenser powers of feeling, action and enjoyment.

Such is a brief view of this supreme endowment of our humanity, this upper chamber of the house of God, this higher nature received from our Creator, and lost, or, at least, degraded, defiled and buried through our sin and fall.

II. WHAT IS IT FOR THE SPIRIT TO BE SANCTIFIED?

It is indispensable, first of all, that it be quickened into life. Naturally it is dead, and the work of regeneration quickens it into vitality as a newborn life, inbreathed, given from heaven as unto us in the first creation, as from the very lips of God. So, in one sense, the unregenerate soul is not spiritually alive. Its faculties are alive, its animal life is active, but spiritually it is dead in trespasses and sins. When “By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin,” not only did man become subject to physical death but spiritual death reigned also. Thank God for the grace of God revealed in the gift by grace. Jesus Christ, whereby He has delivered us from the bondage of death and enables us to reign in life by one, even Jesus Christ.

But now what is a sanctified spirit?

1. It is a spirit separated.

Have you ever looked upon the dark, cold ground in early spring, through which if you drew your hand, it would chill and defile your fingers and perhaps it was mixed with the manure of the barnyard and the crawling earth worms that burrowed in it? Yet, have you never seen, growing out of that dark soil, a little plant or flower, with roots white as the driven snow, and leaf as delicate and petals as pure as a baby’s dimpled cheek, separated by its own nature and purity from the dirty soil that was all around it and could not even stain it? So the spirit born of God is separated in its own divine nature from its own self and the sinful heart, and the very first step of sanctification is to recognize this separation and count ourselves no longer the same person, but partakers of the divine nature and alive unto God as those who have been raised from the dead. And as such we are to separate our spirit from all that is not of God; not only from sin but from the world and from self and our whole old natural life. All our spiritual instincts, senses and organs are to be separated from evil and intuitively to turn away from even the touch and approach of temptation. We are to refuse to hear with our inward ear the stranger’s voice, to see with the spirit’s eye the fascinating vision of temptation, to touch in spiritual contact any unclean thing, to taste even the forbidden joy, and by the quick sense of smell at once recognize and turn from the unwholesome atmosphere, and as evil of any kind is revealed to the spirit, it is to renounce it and to ask God to separate it from it and to put the gulf of His presence between the soul and the sin.

And it must be separated ever from the spirits of others, and, indeed, from any human spirit that could control it apart from the will of God. All the aspects of the spirit which we have already referred to must be separated. The higher consciousness that knows God must be separated from all other gods but Him. The moral senses that know right must separate from all wrong. The will must be separated from the choice or inclination of all but His will. The power of trust must be voluntarily separated from every thought of unbelief or distrust. The power to love must be wholly separated from forbidden love. The aim and motive must be separated from all that is not for His glory, the source of its pleasure must be purified and the spirit separated from all joy that is not in harmony with the joy of the Lord. Beloved, is your spirit thus separated, cleansed, and detached from everything that could defile or distract you from the will of God and life of holiness?

2. A sanctified spirit is a dedicated spirit.

Its powers of apprehension are dedicated to know God and to count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. His Word is the object of its deepest study and meditation, and His attributes and His glory the theme of its most delightful contemplation. To know God and to be filled with His Spirit and to be ever in His presence is its highest aim. Its will is dedicated to God. It chooses Him deliberately as its portion and its sovereign Lord, and delights to abandon itself to His entire possession and to His perfect will. It is this element of a single heart and a supreme choice of God which constitutes what the Scriptures call a perfect heart, and which they affirm of many a Christian whose steps were not always perfect. Every moral sense in the sanctified spirit is dedicated to God. It chooses His standards of right and wrong and desires above all things to bear His image and be conformed to His nature.

Its power of trusting is dedicated. It is determined to trust God under any circumstances and in spite of all feelings, as an act of will that chooses to believe His Word notwithstanding every discouragement and temptation. A spirit that thus chooses God will be sustained by the very faith of God Himself imparted to it.

Its love is dedicated and its power of loving. It chooses to love God supremely and to love all as God would have us to love, regarding every human being in the light of God and His will, and adjusting itself to every relationship in such a manner as to please God. It is dedicated to the glory of God. It accepts this and not the applause of men nor its own pleasing as the true end and purpose of life and lays itself a living sacrifice on His altar.

And, further, it is dedicated to enjoy God. It chooses Him as its portion, its happiness, all and in all, and consents to find all its satisfaction in Him and Him alone, whether it be in the loss of every other channel of happiness or by His filling all the springs of life with Himself.

A dedicated spirit is thus wholly given to God, to know Him, to choose His will, to resemble His character, to trust His Word, to love Him supremely, to glorify Him only, to enjoy Him wholly and to belong to Him utterly, unreservedly, and forever. All its senses, susceptibilities and capacities are dedicated to Him. It yields itself to Him to be made by Him all that He would have it to be and to have His perfect will wrought out by it forever. It chooses to hear only what He would speak, to see only what He would have it behold, to touch only at His bidding and to use every power and capability in and for Him only. It regards itself henceforth as His property, subject to His disposal and existing for His great purpose regarding it. It is consecrated not so much to the works, or the truth, or the cause, or the church., as to the Lord. And this is done gladly, freely, without fear or reservation, but as a great privilege and honor to be permitted thus to belong to so great and good a Master, and have Him undertake so uncongenial a task as our sanctification and exaltation.

This dedication of our spirit can be made in the very first moment of consecration and before we have a single conscious experience or feeling answering to the dedication we make. As empty vessels, as bare possibilities with nothing in us yet but the entire consent of our will to be all that the Lord would have us, we yield ourselves to God according to His will.

This act of dedication should be made once for all, and then recognized as done and as including every subsequent act which we may ever renew as we receive more light in detail respecting His will concerning us.

It is possible for us, once for all and not knowing perhaps one thousandth part of all that it means, to give ourselves to God for all that He understands it to mean, and to know henceforth that we are utterly and eternally the Lord’s as certainly as we will know that we are the Lord’s after we have been a million years in glory.

And yet, after this one comprehensive act of dedication it is quite proper for us, as new light comes to us and we become conscious of new powers or possibilities we can lay at His feet, to say our glad “yes” to His claim as often as it is renewed. Yet this is only the working out in detail of the all-inclusive consecration that we made at first.

Beloved, have you thus dedicated yourself and your spirit to God, and will you henceforth dare to reckon yourself all the Lord’s, and as each new chamber of your higher nature opens to your consciousness, will you gladly put the key of it in His gracious hand and recognize Him as its Owner and Guest?

3. The sanctified spirit is a spirit filled with the presence and the Spirit of the Lord.

What it gives to Him is only a possibility. It is His presence that makes it a reality. Even when dedicated it is but a vessel, empty and meet for the Master’s use. It is He who fills it and pours it out for the supply of the needs of others or to satisfy the desire of his own heart. Even the consecration which we make to God, the very act of dedication itself, has to be made perfect by His grace. We cannot even yield ourselves to Him in a manner that is without imperfection, but we can choose to be His, and then He will come into our dedicated will and make the living sacrifice worthy of His holy altar.

We can lie down upon that altar in full surrender and because He, the great Burnt-Offering, offered Himself to God for us, once for all, we too can become to God a sacrifice of sweet-smelling savor. This was, really, the meaning of the Burnt-Offering of old. The offerer did not offer himself, but touched the spotless lamb and it became the perfect offering. So with our hand upon the head of Christ, our consecration is accepted in Him, and He comes into our will and our spirit, and so unites Himself with us that the sacrifice is acceptable and complete. And so, again, our knowledge of God and fellowship with Him are dependent upon His own grace to be made effectual. We dedicate our spirit to God, and then He reveals Himself to us, opening the eyes of our understanding, showing us the person of Christ, unfolding His truth to our spiritual apprehension, and making us to see light in His own light.

It is wonderful how the untutored mind will thus often, in a short time, by the simple touch of the Holy Spirit, be filled with the most profound and scriptural teaching of God and the plan of salvation through Christ. We once knew a poor girl, saved from a life of infamy and but little educated, in a few days rise to the most extraordinary acquaintance with the Scriptures and the whole plan of redemption, through the simple anointing of the Holy Spirit. We simply give to Him our spirit that it may know Him and He fills it with His light and revelation.

So, again, we choose to be transformed to His image, but we cannot create that image by our own morality or struggles after righteousness. We must be created anew in His likeness by His own Spirit, and stamped with His resemblance by His heavenly seal impressed directly upon our heart from His hand. And thus He does become to us our holiness, for Christ is made unto us our sanctification, and we are made the righteousness of God in Him. We turn from the sin, choose to be holy, and God fills our proffered hand with His own spotless righteousness.

So, again, our faith is but the filling of His Spirit and the imparting of the faith of God. We choose to trust and He makes that choice good by enabling us to believe, and to continue in the faith grounded and settled, and so living by the faith of the Son of God. Our love is but a purpose on our part, the power is His; for when we choose to love He sheds abroad that love within us and imparts to us His own Spirit and nature which is love. All our struggles will not work up one throb of genuine love to God, but He will breathe His own perfect love into any heart that chooses to make Him the one object of affection. We cannot love our enemies but we can choose to love them, and God will make us to love them. Often have we known consecrated characters placed in circumstances where they were obliged to come in contact with uncongenial companions whom they could not love; but, choosing at His bidding to act in the spirit of love, God has so inbreathed His very heart, that without a struggle they could adjust themselves to this relationship and meet the uncongenial associate, or even enemy, with quietness, and even tenderness, and a holy desire for his highest good.

So, again, it is with His joy in us. And so, likewise, the power to glorify Him is nothing more nor less than simply this, to let God Himself be manifested in us and so glorify Himself, as others see Him reflected through us. Sanctification is thus God’s own life in the spirit that is yielded up to Him to be His dwelling place and the instrument of His power and will. So also of our spiritual senses of which we have spoken. They are sanctified when they become the organs of God’s operation, when our spiritual ear is quickened by His Spirit, our spiritual eyes opened by His touch, our spiritual taste, and touch, and smell, made alive by His own quickening life within us.

Now, beloved, have you ever learned this wonderful secret of regenerated spirit and God’s Spirit, the Guest and Occupant of that consecrated abode? Will we illustrate this somewhat lofty conception by a simple illustration? Here is a common leather case which represents the body. Within it is a silver casket, which stands for the soul. We touch a spring and it opens and discloses an exquisite golden locket, which we will consider as the symbol of the spirit or higher nature, and within that golden locket is a place all set with precious gems for a single picture.

Is it empty in your spirit or is it filled with some other face, or is it dedicated to and occupied by your blessed Lord? Is it His shrine and His home and has He accepted it and made it the seat of His glorious abode and throne of His blessed kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost? Or are there some who read these lines who have not yet even learned the meaning of their own spirit and do not know whether it has yet been quickened from the dead and prepared to be the seat of Christ’s indwelling? All that they know of life consists in the physical organism, their mental faculties and their human affections. They have a keen, quick, human life, all aglow with emotion and mental activity, but the spirit, alas, alas! is so dead and cold that it has not even caught the grasp of these higher thoughts that we have been contemplating.

Ah, beloved! there is one world that you have not yet entered, and that is the eternal world to which you are hastening. The life you are living can never introduce you to the sphere of heavenly beings, for “flesh and blood cannot inherit eternal life, nor corruption incorruption.” Your physical life will wither like the flowers of summer, your mental endowments will rise to the highest human rank, but will not touch the joy of that celestial realm. You must have another nature before you can enter the kingdom of heaven. “Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Just suppose for a moment a man going to a great musical festival in Germany. He enters the great Concert Hall but he does not know a single word of the language spoken nor has the faintest germ of musical taste. To him the words are unmeaning gutturals, and the notes a jargon of confusing noises. He could understand a problem in mathematics, he could discourse with them with eloquence in English on questions of politics or philosophy, but he is out of place, he does not possess the key to their society or enjoyment.

And so let us suppose the highest intellect of earth entering the society of heaven. To him their songs and joys would all seem as incomprehensible as the conversation of a cultivated home circle would be to the little dog that sits at their feet or the canary that sings in the window. It belongs to a different race and cannot touch their world. Nor could such a man have one point of contact with these heavenly beings. It would be another world, a world unknown, a world as barren as a wilderness; and from its scenes he would be glad to hasten to find some congenial fellowship. He cannot reach its range because it is a spiritual race of beings, and he has but an intellectual nature. And, on the other hand, they would have as little in common with him as his range is infinitely below theirs.

We can imagine the porter of yonder gates asking him what he knows, and he begins to tell them about the lore of classical culture, the mythologies of Greece or the monuments of Egypt. The angel smiles with pity and answers, “Why, these splendid memories of which you speak are not worthy of comparison with the world in which we dwell. The grandest temple of Egypt would not make a pedestal for one of the stairs of heaven.” Perhaps he tells them of astronomy, the distance or magnitude of the stars. “Why,” the angel answers, “we have no need of these dim and distant calculations here. There is not one of yonder worlds we have not visited and we could tell you ten thousand times more of its mysteries than you have ever dreamed of, but the glories of these cannot be compared with the glory of Him who sits upon the throne, whom you have not eyes to see, or the sweetness of these redemption songs which you cannot even hear because you have not ears to hear. One thrill of the rapture we feel you cannot ever know because your heart has not been quickened in one heavenly chord. You do not belong here. You live in the lower realm of mind alone, but this is the Home of God and those who have received His nature, His Spirit, and are admitted as His children to dwell in His presence and share His infinite and everlasting joy.

Beloved, this is the high calling which is given to every one of Adam’s race who has heard the gospel. You may become a son of God, you may receive a new spirit which can know and enjoy Him, and that spirit can be so sanctified, so cleansed, so enlarged, so filled with Himself, as to be able to reach the highest sublimity of His grace and glory and joy. Will you separate it from all that defiles and dwarfs it? Will you dedicate it to Him to be exalted to its highest possible destiny and will, henceforth receive Him to be its life and purity, its satisfaction, its nature, and its ALL and in ALL?

These four short lines of simple poetry express the depth and height of holiness, namely,as a great need and an infinite supply for that need in God. Beloved, will they express, henceforth, your emptiness and your divine filling?

In the heart of man-
A cry;
In the heart of God-
Supply.