Now that the air is very hot, and the atmosphere heavy and becalmed, our
friends find it difficult to listen, more difficult even than the speaker
finds it to preach. Now, that I may have your attention yet once again-and a
change of posture may do you all good-will you stand up and put the text into
use by offering an intercessory prayer and then I will go on again. It shall
be this one:
“Pity the nations, O our God,
Constrain the earth to come;
Send thy victorious word abroad,
And bring the strangers home!”
(The congregation here rose, and sung the verse.)
III. The third head is A SUGGESTION AS TO THE PERSONS FOR WHOM WE SHOULD MORE
PARTICULARLY PRAY. It shall be but a suggestion, and I will then turn to my
last point. In the case of Job, he prayed for his offending friends. They had
spoken exceedingly harshly of him. They had misconstrued all his previous
life, and though there had never been a part of his character which deserved
censure-for the Lord witnessed concerning him, that he was a perfect and an
upright man-yet they accused him of hypocrisy, and supposed that all he did
was for the sake of gain. Now, perhaps, there is no greater offence which can
be given to an upright and a holy man, than to his face, to suspect his
motives, and to accuse him of self-seeking. And yet, shaking off everything,
as the sun forgets the darkness that has hidden its glory, and scatters it by
its own beams, Job comes to the mercy seat, and pleads. He is accepted
himself, and he begs that his friends may be accepted too. Carry your
offending ones to the throne of God; it shall be a blessed method of proving
the trueness of your forgiveness. Do not do that, however, in a threatening
way. I remember having to deal faithfully with a hypocrite, who told me, by
way of threatening, he should pray for me. It was a horrid threat, for who
would wish to have his name associated with a prayer which would be an
abomination to the Lord. Do not do it in that sense, as though like a
supercilious hypocrite, you would make your prayer itself a stalking horse
for your vain glory; but do it when you are alone before God, and in secret;
not that you may gratify your revenge by telling the story out again, for
that were abominable indeed; but that you may remove from your erring brother
any sin which may have stained his garments, by asking the Lord to forgive
him.
Again: be sure you take there your controverting friends. These brethren had
been arguing with Job, and the controversy dragged its weary length along.
Brethren, it is better to pray than it is to controvert. Sometimes you think
it would be a good thing to have a public discussion upon a doctrine. It
would be a better thing to have prayer over it. You say, “Let two good men,
on different sides, meet and fight the matter out.” I say, “No! let the two
good men meet and pray the matter out.” He that will not submit his doctrine
to the test of the mercy seat, I should suspect is wrong. I can say that I am
not afraid to offer prayer that my brethren who do not see “Believers’
baptism” may be made to see it. If they think it is wrong, I wish that they
would pray to God to set us right; but I have never heard them do that; I
have never heard them pray to the Lord to convince us of the truth of infant
sprinkling-I wish they would, if they believe it to be scriptural, and I am
perfectly willing to put it to the old test, the God that answereth by fire,
let him be God, and whichever shall prevail, when prayer shall be the
ultimate arbiter, let that stand. Carry your dear friends who are wrong in
practice, not to the discussion-room, or to the debating-club, but carry them
before God, and let this be your cry, “Oh! Thou that teachest us to our
profit, teach me if I be wrong, and teach my friend wherein he errs, and make
him right.”
This is the thing we ought also to do with haughty friends. Eliphaz and
Bildad were very high and haughty-Oh! how they looked down upon poor Job!
They thought he was a very great sinner, a very desperate hypocrite; they
stayed with him, but doubtless they thought it very great condescension. Now,
you sometimes hear complaints made by Christians about other people being
proud. It will not make them humble for you to grumble about that. What if
there be a Mrs. So-and-so who wears a very rustling dress, and never takes
any notice of you because you cannot rustle too! What if there be a brother
who can afford to wear creaking boots, and will not notice you in the street
because you happen to be poor! Tell your Father about it; that is the best
way. Why, you would not be angry, I suppose, with a man for having the gout,
or a torpid liver, or a cataract in the eye; you would pity him. Why be angry
with your brother because of his being proud? It is a disease, a very bad
disease, that scarlet fever of pride; go and pray the Lord to cure him; your
anger will not do it; it may puff him up and make him worse than ever he was
before, but it will not set him right. Pray him down, brother, pray him down;
have duel with him, and have the choice of weapons yourself, and let that be
the weapon of all-prayer; and if he be proud, I know this, if you prevail
with God, God will soon take the pride out of his own child and make him
humble as he should be. But particularly let me ask you to pray most for
those who are disabled from praying for themselves. Job’s three friends could
not pray for themselves, because the Lord said he would not accept them if
they did. He said he was angry with them, but as for Job, said he, “Him will
I accept.” Do not let me shock your feelings when I say there are some, even
of God’s people, who are not able to pray acceptably at certain seasons. When
a man has just been committing sin, repentance is his first work, not prayer;
he must first set matters right between God and his own soul before he may go
and intercede for others. And there are many poor Christians that cannot
pray; doubt has come in, sin has taken away their confidence, and they are
standing outside the gate with their petitions; they dare not enter within
the veil. There are many tried believers, too, that are so desponding that
they cannot pray with faith, and therefore they cannot prevail. Now, my dear
brethren, if you can pray, take their sins into court with you, and when you
have had your own hearing, then say, “But, my Lord, inasmuch as thou hast
honoured me, and made me to eat of thy bread, and drink from thy cup, hear me
for thy poor people who are just now denied the light of thy countenance.”
Besides, there are millions of poor sinners who are dead in sin and they
cannot pray, pray for them; it is a blessed thing-that vicarious repentance
and vicarious faith; which a saint may exert towards a sinner. “Lord, that
sinner does not feel; help me to feel for him because he will not feel; Lord,
that sinner will not believe in Christ, he does not think that Christ can
save him, but I know he can, and I will pray believingly for that sinner, and
I will repent for him, and though my repentance and my faith will not avail
him without his personal repentance and faith, yet it may come to pass that
through me he may be brought to repentance and led to prayer.”
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
